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dogmasks · 1 year

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[ID: a blurred photograph of a black cat with white mittens and throad running on grass, which is illuminated by setting sun. behind it is a text written in an old-school white serif font that reads: writeblr (re)introduction. /end ID]

𓇢 WHO

haiii. i'm Quail. or Hearth. or Meloe. any pronouns / 19 / spirit with a fox clay head / impact crater in the shape of a zoomorph / huh whuh

this is a reintroduction only in technicalities, because even though i made an intro for writeblr, i did absolutely nothing. fortunately i've since graduated hs, so now i can actually do stuff 👍🏽 yay!

𓇢 WHAT

i've been drawing and painting for longer than i've been writing, so this blog is a general basket of all things i create. my bigger writing projects are mostly worldbuilding-heavy fantasy, and these motherfuckes do take their time to develop. i also dabble in poetry-writing and short stories, which i do post here. usually. sometimes .

my recurring themes are an insight in culture, its artefacts and cultural dynamics, the human condition and how to navigate it, grief and love (intristically tied), the little rituals of everyday life that keep us together, gender, and post-colonialism.

𓇢 WHICH

i currently have two that are not on the backburner! if you're interested in others, i am inviting you to look at my desktop WIP page ^__^

CHAOS THEORY 🏗 ⚖ is a webcomic in works with a few novella / short story off-shoots. 𓇢 on a continent wherein the human has married the machine not so soon after she began her discovery of the surrounding world now grows a tumor of a nautical empire, slowly digesting the land alive with its dreams of Carbon and asciension to the higher self. a group of workers inside the so-called Furnaces decide to up the stakes, causing a strike aiming at the root, which might either swallow them whole... or who knows. ━━━━━━━

TEGUMENT 🧿🐟 is... it's own thing. a narrative with drawings and stories written in-between. set in a cassette-futuristic world and centers on insanily codependent lesbians who want to reach godhood as one, while also dealing with a growth spurt of fake idols and a growing gap between their identities.

𓇢 WHERE — miscellany

this is a sideblog: i interact from @burialcloth! i also have a substack where i will either crosspost things i post here, or my essays. we'll see: in all honesty, i should just polish (taki żarcik) my CSS + HTML skills and finally code that fucking neocities site i have. i love being tagged in things, dmed / sent asks :-) and if you'd perhaps like to be on a taglist for any of my projects just hit me up 'n i'll see you around u__o

#now's the time for putting this thing in the tags and be perceived fuuuuck.#writeblr #writeblr introduction #writeblr reintro #writeblr intro

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mixedstyles · 2 years

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A Week (or two) in the Life of musician!reader via Social Media

Author’s Note: Audrey Nuna, who I was planning on having as the face claim for this story, doesn’t have too many photos to use so I used 1 (one) Mitski photo. EDIT June 28: I am currently debating on switching the FC to Sarah Kinsley

EDIT June 26: your/bff is going to go by Auden, her IG user is auden.png apologize if this upsets or irritates readers. It’s just way easier for me to keep track of comments and more importantly characters in the full chapters.

Part of THIS series

Post 1 location: NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development

Liked by gracieabrams, novoamor and others

areyoulistening working hard or hardly working? New music is in the works!!

user1 stop this makes me so happy

user2 ALREADY?? it’s only been a couple weeks

↳ user3 that’s what I’m saying 😭 this girl needs to slow down

↳ areyoulistening the grind never stops 😩

gracieabrams bitch, you better be joking

↳ areyoulistening i never joke

auden.png Is this why you’re always in the studio?

↳ areyoulistening no, i just enjoy the ambiance... yes it’s why i’m always there

↳ auden.png I often wonder why I’m still friends with you

Post 2 location: Paris, France

Liked by giamargaret, phoebebridgers and others

areyoulistening feelin like a chic french artist writing their music in the park. oui, oui, bitches. 🥖 🇫🇷 👩🏻‍🎨 edit: i’m not actually in paris. you guys should know by now that i’m almost never where my location says i am 😩

auden.png more like a babushka

↳ areyoulistening why do you always come for my throat like this? i thought we were friends

fan4 I swear I just saw her in NYC today

fan6 OMG! I live in Paris

↳ areyoulistening oh no, i’m not actually in Paris. i’m so sorry for the confusion!

Post 3 location: Cheeto Headquarters, Texas

Liked by mamaL/N, oliviarodrigo and others

areyoulistening a couple days ago i said that the grind never stops, but it stops for food. fuel your body!! 🤧😤 so here’s a self timed photo of me eating flamin hot cheetos because my shorts match said snack.

fan4 We love a Queen who cares for her fans 👸🏻

fan2 can you start doing the ‘eat with me’ tiktoks again? i loved those 🥹

↳ areyoulistening of course! i wasn’t sure if people were super interested in them but i can definitely do at least one this week 😌

user7 what an icon. matching her shorts to her snacks

↳ areyoulistening why they didn’t invite me to the MET Gala is beyond me 🙄

auden.png gosh, you embarrass me sometimes

↳ areyoulistening you say that like you weren’t with me when i took the photo

Post 4 location: Madison Square Garden

Liked by auden.png, harrystyles and others

areyoulistening i was fortunate enough to play a little ditty or two at madison square garden... kidding, i played at “Baby’s All Right” in Brooklyn. thank you to all of my friends, family, and fans (!!) who came out to support me!

harryfan1 stfu did Harry styles just like this post??

↳ harryfan5 but he’s not even following her

mamaL/N So proud of you!!

↳ areyoulistening i love you so much, thank you for being my biggest supporter 🤍

fan7 we stan a legend!

auden.png I really hate to admit it, but you’re pretty cool

fan8 I cried during your set

↳ areyoulistening oh no! why 😥

↳ fan8 omg!! nothing bad. your music just means so much to me and i’m so thankful that i got to see you live. especially before you become huge

↳ areyoulistening you stop it right now 😡 or else you’re going to make ME cry

#Harry Styles #harry styles x reader #harry styles imagines #harry styles smau #harry’s house #harry styles fanfic #Harry styles fluff #Harry styles x musician!reader #Harry styles x student!reader #Harry styles x you #harry x band member!#harry styles x oc #harry styles fake instagram

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disco-elysium-via-polls · 2 months

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Before we continue...

THOUGHT COMPLETE: ACTUAL ART DEGREE

BONUSES:

-1 Hand/Eye Coordination: Hands shake from anger from how shit it all is Conceptualization passives heal +1 Morale and give +10 XP

SOLUTION:

Trite, contrived, mediocre, milquetoast, amateurish, infantile, cliche-and-gonorrhea-ridden paean to conformism, eye-fucked me, affront to humanity, war crime, should *literally* be tried for war crimes, resolutely shit, lacking in imagination, uninformed reimagining of, limp-wristed, premature, ill-informed attempt at, talentless fuckfest, recidivistic shitpeddler, pedantic, listless, savagely boring, just one repulsive laugh after another.

"I got this special strike brew the Union uses." (Give it.)

IDIOT DOOM SPIRAL - "Interesting." He grabs the thermal cup and shakes it. "Ah, this is what they use to keep the working man going."

Item lost: Goracy's brew

ROSEMARY - "Hey, Spiral-Boy, you gonna share that?" one of the other bums interjects.

DON'T CALL ABIGAIL - "Don't call Abigail!"

IDIOT DOOM SPIRAL - "Shut up, guys, I'm telling a story here." He turns to you. "Something happened to you. Something happened to me, too -- my actual name is George, but around here... you already know..."

"I was a once a reasonably high-net-worth individual. A founder slash junior partner at a high-concept creative services agency. When my story begins, I had just landed a major contract with an insurance firm…"

"Go on."

IDIOT DOOM SPIRAL - "I used the profits from my agency to finance what I called a 'cultural incubator' -- abstract value generation, value per person, high-concept stuff..."

"I developed the paradigm, worked within the paradigm. But the burden of leadership weighed heavily on me, so I went jogging every so often to keep myself sane."

"Wait -- how many people did you have working for you?"

"Did the jogging help?"

IDIOT DOOM SPIRAL - "Twenty-two full-time employees. An all-star team. A potentially historical set of individuals. Worrying about them often kept me up well into the morning hours."

"Did the jogging help?"

"I could probably use a good run myself."

IDIOT DOOM SPIRAL - "It helped, truly. With my trusty Sansarique Lickra(TM) tracksuit I felt like I could conquer the world..."

"But now dreams are worn thin, much like my tracksuit," he says thoughtfully, brushing dust off his shit-stained pants.

"What happened?"

IDIOT DOOM SPIRAL - "One day I left on my evening run. As you may know, it's impossible to clear your head when you're distracted by the sound of keys jangling in your pockets." He shakes the bottle and makes a ringing sound.

PERCEPTION (SIGHT) [Medium: Success] - His eyes are clouded, his dilated blood vessels encircling his irises like stinging brambles.

CONCEPTUALIZATION [Medium: Success] - His eyes are your eyes.

Thanks to Actual Art Degree, we gain 10 XP and heal 1 Morale.

IDIOT DOOM SPIRAL - "So I removed the keyring and put the keys for the front gate and the apartment into different pockets, to stop the jangling, you see. At least that was the plan..."

"I was halfway done with my usual lap when it started to rain. The reality situation became very wet, very quickly."

"How *wet* are we talking, exactly?"

"Go on."

IDIOT DOOM SPIRAL - "It was a day not unlike this one here..." You both glance skyward.

"I made my way back home and discovered that I didn't have the key to the front gate -- I'd mixed it up with the key to the letter box. Which was useless."

"Naturally, the situation required me to climb over the gate, which I did. There was no climbing down, because I slipped and landed on my ass."

"Ouch!"

"I would've landed on my feet. I've got feline reflexes."

(Say nothing.)

SAVOIR FAIRE [Challenging: Failure] - No, you don't.

IDIOT DOOM SPIRAL - "Whatever. The point is, reality was looking rather grim, just then -- me lying on my ass in a mud pit in the middle of a heavy shower. But when life knocked me down, I always got up..."

"So I made my way across the yard. Standing in front of my apartment door, fumbling with my pockets, I realized that I'd also forgotten my apartment key!"

"You've got to be shitting me!"

"Okay, so what happened next?"

IDIOT DOOM SPIRAL - "I wish I were, Tequila. I wish I were." He turns his head towards the skies. "Instead of my apartment key, I'd taken the key to the office."

"Okay, so what happened next?"

IDIOT DOOM SPIRAL - "I rang my neighbours' buzzers. It was late, and most of them didn't even answer. Those who did assumed I was trying to sell them something and hung up before I could even explain the situation..."

"People are naturally wary of ad men, you see. One moment someone chats you up, five minutes later you've bought a box of edible lingerie and a strap-on. I don't begrudge them, especially since I was known to be one of the best…" He pauses meaningfully.

EMPATHY [Easy: Successs] - Heavy is the head that wears the crown.

IDIOT DOOM SPIRAL - "Just then I experienced a moment of clarity: I still had the key to my office! I could wait out the storm there..."

"But when I reached my office I remembered that I'd asked one of my producers to change the locks that day -- and since I hired only the best, he'd already done it, and I couldn't get in…"

"Anyway, long story short, life spiralled out of control. I haven't gotten into my apartment for years, and my girlfriend left me because she didn't want to date a homeless man. The company, well, you see where I'm going with this…"

PERCEPTION (SIGHT) [Legendary: Success] - He pinches his thigh as if to check whether this reality is *the reality*.

IDIOT DOOM SPIRAL - "So, now you've heard my tragic tale. What do you think? Like nothing you've ever heard, huh?" He takes a long swig of his drink.

"Wait, is that it? I feel like there are some steps missing."

"I've only been a hobo cop for a few days now, but it doesn't seem so bad."

"Look on the bright side -- you've got one hell of a story."

"You do realize all of this is your own fault?"

"I literally can't believe it."

IDIOT DOOM SPIRAL - "Tequila, I've thought about this series of events for a long time. If there was anything else to it, I would have thought of it by now."

KIM KITSURAGI - "Why didn't you go to the authorities?"

IDIOT DOOM SPIRAL - "Well, at one point they came to me, but you know, I didn't have any ID on me -- so they tossed me in jail for two days..."

"I can't say it increased my faith in the RCM. No offence, gentlemen." He shakes his head.

3. "Look on the bright side -- you've got one hell of a story."

IDIOT DOOM SPIRAL - "Yeah. Maybe I've exaggerated certain parts over the years. When you tell a story too often, it begins to take on a life of its own..."

"But what matters is that it's true to my subjective experience. Anyway, that was all the story one bottle gets you." He looks at it. "Almost empty this one…"

+5 XP

CONCEPTUALIZATION [Medium: Success] - Truly, he has the soul of an artist.

Nice, another 10 XP and healed Morale.

"What do you guys do around here?"

"Why do you keep losing all your stuff?"

"I want to hear the story of your name again."

"Have you got any more stories?"

"Be seein' you." [Leave.]

IDIOT DOOM SPIRAL - "Good fucking question, Tequila! If I knew the answer, you think I'd be hanging out on a beach in this formerly premium but now extremely dirty two-piece Lickra(TM) tracksuit?"

"I used to own my reality situation. My business buddies and I had our own creative services agency. I had a nice apartment, an even nicer piece of ass, but somehow it all got away from me..."

"Now I can't hang onto anything. Just last week I stole this nice new jacket, but then I lost it, too. The only things I haven't lost are these two drunks."

EMPATHY [Medium: Success] - You of all people should empathize with this. Perhaps this lost jacket is something you could help with...

"What was the name of your agency?"

"What's up with the tracksuit?"

"What about the other drunks?"

"What's this about a lost jacket?"

"Let me ask you something else." (Conclude.)

IDIOT DOOM SPIRAL - "My agency, man..." He takes a long, melancholic sip. "The Boom Boom Room. Our concept was combining high art with the lowest forms of marketing -- the colour red, breasts, and oil painting..."

"I convinced my partners to reinvest some of our profits in an even-more high-concept 'cultural incubator' called 'Thin Air'. The artists were happy, the clients were happy."

"I was financing a group of poets in East Revachol who were developing a new, universal poetic language… but then it all went to shit…" He looks toward the bay.

CONCEPTUALIZATION [Medium: Success] - Sounds intriguing. What say you, art cop?

LOGIC [Medium: Success] - If it sounds like it makes no sense, that's because it doesn't.

#disco elysium #idiot doom spiral #don't call abigail #rosemary #harrier du bois #kim kitsuragi

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asukaskerian · 10 months

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(Cherry wine ask!)

The way you write complex political stages that have such powerful undercurrents of cultural significance is SO CAPTIVATING TO ME. The way you combine the political world building with ABO plot is awesome. How do you figure out how far in depth to go? Do you find it a struggle to balance the plot development (with such complex machinations and layers) with the ABO side?

ahhhh #^__^# thank you.

the political stuff honestly just happens, and KEEPS HAPPENING.

... hm. actually i might be conceptualizing clans and political entities (countries, villages etc) like characters in their own right? kinda sorta. wow, i never thought about it like that, but basically? characters have set parameters for behavior/range of IC moods/atmosphere-mouthfeel which vary with outside pressure and a path (or several) for evolution due to outside pressure and inner growth and conflicts with other characters, and so must political entities? huh.

anyway when i wordbuild i'm usually sitting here going :

ohhhh i had a fun anthropological idea the other day (month, year) from reading that article, wonder if i can retool it so this clan can use it

alright, WHY is it like this... let's make up a historical reason.

ok now this historical event/pressure might have caused other developments elsewhere actually and i need a contrasting habit/tradition so let's give THAT development to this other clan so we can root the conflict through their mutual history and make it feel more solid

wait shit this is giving me OTHER possibilities for ELSEWHERE

etc etc

it's basically just my brain going "what IF" and giving me five answers to every background question, and since i'm a squirrel i try to fit all of it in. :/

i've been wrestling with the ABO genre for, uh, a LONG while, desperately trying to make it make sense, which is why my tag is ABO quest in the first place. because it's hot as fuck! and i love humans with weird nonhuman mindsets! but it DOESN'T MAKE ANY EVOLUTIONARY SENSE. and like, if the betas do nothing the alpha/omega dynamic is basically "alpha male stereotype/swooning female stereotype (+ the guy who does the laundry and MAYBE gets to give sage advice). and i also love polyamory and different concepts of family/romance group worldbuildings! so when i remembered that fraternal marriage was a thing i was like "oooooohhhh" and then it was just a long game of "ok but how does THAT interact with this and that part of the warring clans clusterfuck".

if i were writing just politics it would be too dry to keep me interested but if i only wrote romance and porn i would =__= "ok the outside world exists tho, this is soooo unrealistic" all the way through. unless it's a oneshot i can't be motivated by "the fallout is that they get to fuck", and if it's just cardboard cutout characters making Important Events Happen i can't make myself care. human element plz!

... ok but the real struggle is that i always end up having a bazillion super cool ideas and forgetting to save them into a word document for later.

#writing woes #writing yays #ABO quest

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tortoisesshells · 1 year

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As I'm someone who hasn't seen Mercy Street yet, can I ask if you would recommend it and if so why?

Depending on what you're looking for in a period drama, but generally: yes! With some caveats?

Pros:

It's a show that tends to signpost Big Historical Moments (the Battle of Antietam, President Lincoln's visit) in the middle of the US Civil War for ease of keeping track of the context, even as it dabbles in speculative history (a fairly ridiculous assassination plot)- there really was a Union Army Hospital in the former Mansion House Hotel in Alexandria, Virginia; many of the named characters (Mary Phinney von Olnhausen, Henry Hopkins, the Green family, Frank Stringfellow) are based on real people mostly.

There are so genuinely great (and genuinely, bafflingly bad) costumes, so you'll have something to look at - and even laugh at.

The cast is largely very good even when some of the writing decisions are. hmm. a lot. Seriously - half of the cast are established actors who just get to go ham. There's a fair amount of scenery chewing on the way to Performances.

Mary Phinney von Olnhausen is a great outsider character who is thrown/throws herself headfirst into the butcher's shop of a Union Army Hospital in the US Civil War, and purely in the sense of having a narrative thru-line, she's a great POV character on the chaos (medical and moral) she finds there. Also, she's played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead (who is entertainingly described as 'sufficiently plain'. which. okay. I wish I were as plain as MEW.) She has a belligerent into romantic dynamic with surgeon Jed Foster (Josh Radnor, proving he can act) who is an absolute tire-fire of a human being, but who tends to follow her pretending very ardently that he would not lie down in a puddle if Mary asked him to, because he can afford to have his fancy waistcoats laundered while she's living out of a carpet bag. He's an ass and cannot help but stick his foot in his mouth constantly, but he gets Character Development and enjoys very little of it.

I personally really enjoy the soundtrack, especially this cover of "Johnny Has Gone For A Soldier". If you're doing something about the US Civil War there's got to be at least one haunting camp song, dammit.

Cons:

If you're more squeamish than not, you'll be at least a little uncomfortable - any way that someone could die in a mid-19th century war, they will. The sound design for amputation and trepanning is weirdly good, for whatever that's worth. I'm not sure that last is a con, but it seems worth mentioning.

The writing is breakneck. Nothing gets to breathe. Jed gets over a morphine addiction in the space of two episodes. Chaplain Hopkins has a crisis of faith that's resolved in two episodes. Emma Green, the oldest daughter of the Confederate owners of the hotel, pulls a near total about-face on her politics in - you guessed it - the space of about two episodes. And this is what gets screentime! Offscreen, we have allusions to major fights over Charlotte Jenkins' school run in the freedman's camp adjacent to the hospital, Mary Phinney von Olnhausen's tragic widowing, Jed Foster's Divorce Plot, Samuel Diggs' application to attend medical school ... there's always something world-ending going on, but there is not time to dwell when the fate of a nation and certainly the fate of whatever poor soul who caught a minie ball/typhoid/gonorrhea hang in balance for the episode.

At best, the show dabbles in the political/cultural dimensions of the US Civil War: it's primarily concerned with the Case(s) of the Week and the relationships between the main and minor characters - in a world where US popular cultural depictions of the US Civil War have been largely dominated by Confederate apologia from the late 19th century through to the late 20th, it left me wishing that Mercy Street (while being the first period drama I'm aware of where the romantic lead almost certainly voted for the Constitutional Union party in 1860) had been more interested in discussing race and slavery and the US Civil War. It suffers by comparison to other series which were explicitly about race and slavery and the coming war (Underground, for example).

Pursuant to these last two points: I think, sometimes, the show doesn't know what it wants to be - or isn't allowed to be what it wants to be. Is it a straight hospital drama complicated by no one knowing what antibiotics are? Is it a romantic drama? Is it a political thriller? An espionage thriller? Is it a War Is Hell war story? Is it a coming of age story? Is it a treatise on 19th century masculinity (and, conversely, womanhood) as determined by race, class, and region? It's got a runtime of less than 12 hours total and it tries very hard to be all of these things. Stuff falls to the wayside.

Mercy Street put Patina Miller, Norbert Leo Butz, Donna Murphy, & Bryce Pinkham in one lousy hospital and there was no musical episode.

I'm not really much of a Mercy Street authority, though - I hope no one minds if I tag in @jomiddlemarch, @sagiow, @fericita-s, & @mercurygray? who are all longer-standing fans of the show than me.

i just run around in the background with absolutely batshit crossovers.

#polkaknox talks

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lavideenrose · 9 months

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"Basic dynamic in life: there is nothing meaningful enough to make you happy that could not make you sad if you lost it. This is the paradox of feeling, and it’s inherent and existential. If things inspire real positive emotion in you then they are necessarily things in which you are sufficiently invested that you would feel negative emotions when they’re gone. One of the fundamental choices that you face on Earth is the degree to which you’ll pursue deeper but riskier fulfillment or practice avoidance that exempts you from bad feelings but leaves you bereft of good ones. We all move in one direction or the other, from one day to another, certainly including me, but it feels to me as if our society is decidedly embracing the latter. Depth and intensity of feeling risk too much; Xbox and hard seltzer and HR culture anesthetize. Pop culture soothes and placates with a steady series of uncomplicated morality tales in predigested narratives where nothing ever really changes and so there’s no worry that the storyline will move in a way that hurts your feelings."

...

"I find it very very bleak! Here you have kids talking about why they prefer online life and identifying precisely the conditions that make me despondent: they like being online more than living their real lives because their online lives serve as an intermediary and distraction from what they don’t like about themselves and their world. They’re too young to know that you’re not supposed to admit that the point of being very online is to avoid the self. They say the quiet part out loud. Online life is more “peaceful and calming” because online you’re permitted to be a vegetable. Online you can mute yourself, render yourself an unperson, remove yourself from existence and in so doing avoid the pain of being alive. The attitudes here are indicative of young people who have been failed by the adults around them, who in addition to the responsibility to keep them alive should be forcing them to contend with the inevitability of sadness and the need to come to terms with themselves. Someone has to tell these kids, “wherever you go, you’ll find yourself there, and you have to start to do the work of accepting who you are, as much as you may not like yourself.” The stakes are high. I don’t mean to get dark here, but a kid who fantasizes about the ability to mute himself in real life is a kid I worry about someday muting himself permanently in real life."

...

"What would a healthy culture and caring parents do for those kids? They would be pulled aside and told: you are you, and you will always be you; we live here, on this planet, in this culture, as this species; you live in the times you live in, and you will never live anywhere else. There’s no escape, for any of us. The world gets better and it gets worse. Your life gets easier and it gets harder. Progress happens. Happiness is possible. But the world is an irredeemably broken place, tragedy is the endowment of our bodies and our gods and our world, and you will always, always, always be you. You can hide in your room, but you’ll still be you. And you’ll still be you when you head off to college and make brand new friends, and you’ll still be you after you come out to your parents, and you’ll still be you after you get that job or that promotion or that raise, and you’ll still be you after you lose those last 10 pounds, and you’ll still be you after you fall in love, and you’ll still be you after the AI revolution or the socialist revolution or the love revolution or any other revolution. The only sensible path forward is to learn to accept the brokenness of human life, to develop resilience in the face of its petty cruelties, and to learn to live with yourself. Not to love yourself; I mean, if you can love yourself, great, but in general I find the commandment to love yourself paternalistic and annoying. Even with all the therapy and meds and growth I’ll never be someone who loves himself. But I have learned to live with myself. Young people need to be gently guided in that direction, but the anonymity and disconnection of online life directly obstruct that goal."

#quote #social media #escapism #pain #risk #courage #depression #anxiety #melancholia #link #we live here #meaning #shallow #dystopia #suicide #suicidal ideation #mute yourself #avoidance #start doing the work of accepting yourself

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iturbide · 9 months

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What are your thoughts on Heroes directly linking dragon degeneration to a sense of deep, deep despair and loneliness? I think it's interesting, personally, because I think I, too, would despair with a life as long as they can have. Regular interaction with humans in manakete form would probably help keep perspective, IMO.

Is that what Heroes is saying at this point? Well, that's disappointing.

Honestly? Not a fan. Really not a fan of that. It directly contradicts a lot of what we know about degeneration -- because degeneration preceded the dragons' numbers declining. A long life is not a bad thing, particularly when your entire species lives for that long and your culture and society are built around it. Members are able to learn constantly, develop skills, try hobbies, and generally find a lot of very good reasons to enjoy their lives when their friends and neighbors are doing the exact same thing.

On top of that, when degeneration first became an issue, the dragons' populations hadn't been impacted yet: they specifically noticed declining birth rates before recognizing the effects of degeneration, but that has nothing to do with mature members of species. Dragon populations were impacted only after degeneration became a major issue and the Divine Dragons went to war against the Earth Dragons, wiping out virtually all the Earth Dragons and decimating the Divine Dragon population.

Degeneration equating to despair and loneliness doesn't make sense for a society that has shown ample evidence of forming communal bonds. From Naga, Duma, and Mila's friendship to Tiki's familial bonds with Bantu, Gotoh, and Xane, it absolutely does not track for me that despair would set in on a societal scale like that.

(This isn't even getting into the fact that Medeus established Dolhr specifically because of humans' abuses toward manaketes, and how that long-term victimization seems a lot more likely to bring on the despair that would result in degeneration than having a society of peers and friends who are pursuing skill and knowledge and joy with you.)

#answered #anonymous #fire emblem: heroes #this is why i don't take a lot of heroes additions as canon #there are times when they knock it out of the park #case in point: grima's level 40 dialogue #but things like this are just so shoddy

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bleachbleachbleach · 9 months

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7/29 - 8/6/2023

I started last weekend really excited about writing Renji 2, and had a good time with that. And then proceeded to have no writing time past last weekend. =_= I just need to chill out and accept that life is going to be about driving and People and racecars and the Women's World Cup rn and not about my blorbos and stories. Not that I don't also like the aforementioned but also MY BLORBOS AND STORIES THO. ):

As excited as I am about this chapter I'm still not sure if it ~works because Renji is just infodumping about 79 different things, and the part I wrote was about written vs. actually-followed easement policy in West Rukongai and how long it takes to run places. Which on one hand, Renji Why, but on the other, Why Not, Renji.

Something I have done a lot of this week, though, is driving—more in the last 7 days than in the last 7 months, to be specific—and I got reacquainted with my nemesis, audiobooks. I still don’t think I actually like audiobooks, but all of the books I listened to were very enjoyable in spite of the format, and I recommend all of them! This is especially exciting because these choices were guided by "what is currently available at the library."

The week’s roadtrip audiobook selections:

H is for Hawk, Helen MacDonald (2014)

Psalm for the Wild-Built, Becky Chambers (2021)

Orange World, Karen Russell (2019)

The Nickel Boys, Colson Whitehead (2019)

H is for Hawk, Helen MacDonald (2014) I’ve been wanting to read this book for a long time, but I’m glad I didn’t get a chance to until now, because coming off of condor!Tobiume this book was especially exciting. I didn’t realize until listening that it drew so heavily on The Once and Future King (and TH White’s biography in general) as intertext, which has really made me want to re-read that book, since I haven’t read it since the summer after I graduated high school. H is for Hawk is a falconry memoir, and it is quite a bit about birds—the goshawk Mabel in particular—which I figured would be a good time, from a creative nonfiction, ecology writing POV, two genres I generally like. But oh my god it is so much better than I already thought it was going to be! MacDonald has such strong analysis of masculinist, neoliberal cultures past and present, and the kinds of mythologies falconry comes from with regard to class and gender (and sexuality, re: TH White), and her own parsing of these things as she grows up. I want to read this book again.

Psalm for the Wild-Built, Becky Chambers (2021) I am OBSESSED with this book and I keep recommending it to everyone I see. It’s about a tea monk on a future moon where, in the distant past, robots developed to work in human factories gained sapience and left the human places to go live freely and separate in the wilds. Yearning for something missing from their life, the tea monk sets off into the wilds and encounters a robot who has been sent out to check in on the humans, and to answer the question, “What do humans need?” I don’t know that I am usually a robot person—but I am a traveling tea monk person haha—but I love these robots so, so much. They name themselves for the first things they see, so they all have plant/animal names. They hyperfixate on watching stalagmites grow, for centuries. This book is so soft and thoughtful and incredibly thought-provoking. It’s about a future that doesn’t rely on post-apocalypse; nothing overtly dramatic happens but everything is gripping.

Orange World, Karen Russell (2019) This is collection of short stories—I was able to pay attention to some far more than others, but Russell had the most interesting prose for me. There were lines where I was like, man, I wish I were reading this so I could copy this down.” Really strong sense of region and place in each story, and the world building (as one might hope of a book titled Orange World) is superb. I was familiar with Russell conceptually but hadn’t read anything by her before. My favorites were the story about Plains State/Midwestern storm farmers, who captured, husbanded, and rented out storms of various stripes—and now their industry was being affected by climate change. And the story about four sisters who are gondoliers, and use echolocation (of a sort) to navigate the span of a short story.

WIP-wise, I guess LOL I’d love to write as beautifully as Karen Russell does!! But more seriously I guess it’s about being bold about the mechanics of a world and how much it is possible to accomplish even in the span of a short story.

The Nickel Boys, Colson Whitehead (2019) I’m only halfway through this one, but it’s historical fiction about a reform school in the South during Brown v Board of Education, and the false promises experienced while attempting to integrate the South.

As far as where this could be WIP research, Whitehead does a great job of minor timeskips across the parts of the novel, including skips of actually writing out major precipitating events, which makes me feel more embolden about how I’ve structured some of this WIP.

#stories for the sea

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creppersfunpalooza · 6 months

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hi can u tell me more about Koi and ur ocs i think they’re really cool !!

yeah absolutely!! now that u have background knowledge i can tell you more about his backstory.

Koi is not a human. he thought he was, as did most people around him. the only people who really knew was his mom (Clarissa Riverson), his dad (Samuel Riverson, he’s dead now but we’ll get into that later), a private medical staff (to be fair they never knew much about it, they just knew he definitely wasn’t normal), and the D.A. later on. also Astir Bettencourt (i’ll talk abt him some other time if someone asks) but that was his own personal conspiracy theory and he told himself that there was no way that was even plausible (it was!)

koi’s actually a dreamwalker (don’t know if i’ll keep the name, but that’s what it’s been for years so), which is basically a shapeshifting being able to see into and alter the dreams and thoughts of others. in the beta version they could also take over someone’s body and possess it (with the drawback being that their natural form would be asleep while doing this), but i don’t know if i’ll keep that. if i do, it’ll only be for much more experienced ones. Dreamwalkers come from the Void and have very specific and strict customs and practices and have a very spiritual culture, considering themselves descended directly from their gods. Among one of these customs is letting their young develop their own forms free from anything else’s influence by keeping them in isolation for a number of years until they’re fully developed. somewhere along the timeline there was a massive doomsday event which lead to a mass extinction or something i don’t know the dreamwalkers have had a ton of rewrites i kind of lost track of what exactly happened. i need to rewrite them again too so a lot of this is bound to change. but yeah, most of them are dead. somehow koi’s bio. parents managed to like toss him out of the dimension or something seriously i don’t know i need to rewrite stuff desperately but i’m doing things in chunks and that’s not what i’m worried abt rn.

so yeah, koi’s form original is basically an amalgamation of random things he saw as a tiny guy, resulting in a primarily humanoid form. this has some interesting results though when you take into account that these were mainly just outside appearances with makeup and such, not to mention the fact that there were no internal organs that made sense with the regular human’s anatomy because, well, he didn’t ever see anything like that.

Along comes Clarissa, a wealthy businesswoman/CEO of a quickly growing tech company. She sees a random kiddo who seems to look less human the more she looks at it? that’s her son now. yeah no questions asked. that’s clarissa for you. she doesn’t question the strange or abnormal and welcomes it with open arms. For his own safety, she raised him as a normal kid and put in an effort to help keep his form consistent enough that it wouldn’t be questioned. before she knew for sure that he was, well, abnormal, he still had normal public healthcare. this turned out to be a terrible idea. fortunately, most people are very susceptible to hush money!

Koi’s dad, Samuel, was a pretty generic guy. i don’t know how else to describe him. Koi didn’t ever know him that well, but he worked with Clarissa under her company. One night during a fundraiser she was hosting, he had to leave early for whatever reason. He didn’t return home. A few days later, his car and body was found in the woods, heavily damaged. Many of the wounds he suffered didn’t quite make sense, but nothing came of it during investigation. After that, Clarissa became much more protective of Koi. She never really had him in the public eye to begin with, but after that, she was even more careful about it. In the following years after her husband’s death, she gave him a lot of attention. Unfortunately, work picked up again and she was forced to focus more on her career than him, pretty much removing her from his life with the exception of a few occasional visits and check ins.

Koi grew up pretty lonely. his personality was considered overwhelming to a lot of people and he had a tendency to ramble about stuff nobody seemed to ever care about. He did, however, manage to make one notable friend. Juniper. Juniper’s mainly rewritten already so most of this is up to date. She also struggled a lot with making friends and had very overbearing parents who barley even let her leave the house other than for school. The two quickly became inseparable and started dating in their freshman year of high school. In their junior year (maybe sophomore, haven’t decided yet), Juniper became friends with a girl named Eshima, who quickly joined their little friend group. Eshima’s got her own silly plot line and had a major crush on Juniper in high school, but that fizzled out over time (mostly!). Koi barely graduated, considering the fact that he struggled to ever pay attention or understand what was being taught and even ditched class pretty often. Juniper on the other hand was kind of known to be a straight A student due to a lot of academic pressure from her parents. She helped him a bit (a lot). Juniper was looking yo go to a college for astrophysics and managed to get a pretty good scholarship, Eshima attended law school because her dad wanted her to (but dropped out after a few years, which stirred up a bit of family drama), and Koi… Well, considering everything, it was obvious he wouldn’t get a scholarship or anything. Hell, he probably wouldn’t even get accepted into a college.

until that letter showed up. it advertised a new experience, one that would be far more interactive and still provide a proper education. it sounded perfect.

you know what happens from there! ish.

anyways here’s some general facts about him!!

- he was 17 when he graduated and just about 18 when he joined the D.A.

- clarissa used to take him literally everywhere with her. like he was not allowed to leave her side.

- he really likes the super sugary smoothies and energy drinks. he just has a major sweet tooth in general

- He was ~22 when he got out of the D.A. and is 23-24 in present time (this may change)

- I don’t know how this works considering species but he may have ADHD and obviously CPTSD

- He’s pansexual

- technically, he doesn’t have a gender assigned from birth. whether that makes him trans or not is up for interpretation imo because dreamwalkers don’t really have genders. bliss just goes by she/her because it works better for communication but she’s agender

- While he’s not polyam himself, he’s alright with open relationships

- He’s a big sci-fi nerd and before the D.A. was absolutely obsessed with Star Wars and Star Trek too. i like to think that he and Juniper would just hang out and watch stuff together. He’d reference it to no end. He also probably collected dvds and such.

- Due to the burn marks on his arms, he always either wears arm warmers, thick bracelets, or long sleeved shirts and hoodies.

- In beta, he had a much more feminine fashion style. i decided it doesn’t fit his character though. i mainly just did it because it was easiest for royale high which is where i used him a lot LOL

- His canonical friends include Kate (somehow. i don’t know how yet. in fact there’s no reason they should be friends.), Ophelia (surprisingly), Eshima (it’s a bit complicated. eshima thinks he just cut them off completely and he’s not ready to tell her what happened yet.), and That One Guy Who I’m Not Sure If I Should Re-name Or Not Because Of Silly Stuff

if u want me to go into depth for any other characters just lmk i love talking about these silly guys

#oc #ocs #crep rambling about their characters again #ask box #ask #tw death #tw parental death

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citybops · 2 years

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1. mana -a gothic manwha. zion is a girl who forms a contract with a ghost and starts a business as a shaman. we follow her through different paranormal situations, learning a little bit about korean culture and superstition. the art is really good, the characters are very likeable and the little hunting adventures are ok, but... it feels very amateurish, the direction it wants to take isn't clear and the end is way too rushed. still, is a good fast reading and the fashion is serving and slaying absolute penis. 6/10

2. alichino -a gothic fantasy manga. alichinos are supernatural beings that feeds on human souls in order to become strong in exchange for a wish. tsugiri hates them, he's a "bond" (the purest soul above all) so he's been chased by humans and alichinos alike throughout all his life. the prettiest art I've ever seen like literally there's not a single bad panel or a sloppy silly drawing... the story is intriguing and it has lots of potential in exploring concepts or good and evil, loneliness and isolation BUT i only has three volumes and it's been discontinued so fuck our silly baka lives i guess. 9/10

3. fairy cube -gothic fantasy manga. this one is about the world of humans and the world of fairies and monsters and ravens and etc etc everything u mind can imagine. ian is a kid that can see fairies but no one ever believes him, he also can see another him, an ian with blue eyes and green hair that is focused on making his life miserable. it has 18 chapters, the lore is not complicated and it has various twist and turns that keep u entertained, so it is a very easy read... nothing too much. 6/10

4. vampire girl - well, this is a gorhic-ish manga abt vampires what do u expected. wana has fallen in love with this mysterious guy she often sees in the streets and after some time ahe musters up the courage to talk to him the next time she sees him. trigger warnings for blood, death and sexual assault. i liked this one a lot, the pacing and writing is really good, it doesn't feel heavy or boring and it flows nicely. as expected from this author, the art is also really pretty. i dont wanna spoil too much so this review is kinda vague, but this is because i really want u to read it and then come and complain to me abt the absolute mindfuck that is the ending. 9/10

5. R.i.p -a gothic-ish lolita manga. transylvanian rose (lmfao) is an angel bored of being in heaven so she travels down below where she encounters a boy commiting suicide. she finds him extremely cute so she rips off one of her wings and gives it to him in order to save him from eternal damnation. this one is short, funny, sweet and very fashionable. recommended for times when you're bored out of your mind and don't know what to do. also, god is a hot vkei man. 7/10

6. dokuhime -a gothic-ish lolita fantasy manga. poison princesses are made by taking a baby and feeding her poison little by little so they grew used to it. these girls are the kingdom's greatest weapons, a kiss, a tear, or even living in close proximity with them, will slowly kill you. this one was really intriguing, the plot is interesting and it builds anticipation and suspence nicely, the art, once again, is splendid like these bitches are serving looks after looks. HOWEVER.... this manga's fatal flaw is the depiction of this one tribal desert based kingdom. it is pretty bad and distasteful. 6/10

7. akusaga -kind of gothic-ish mystery manga. zen is the most wanted criminal of the country; he's cruel, has superhuman abilities and doesn't hesitate to kill and destroy everything that's gets in his way. this rebellious quality of his seems to attract all kinds of people, so he gets stuck with some companions along the way. ok... zen is saurrr pretty, that's why all bitches want him. this manga is very short, only 8 chapters, but thats enough to to flesh out his, and only his, story and character so you're left wishing the author had developed some other points, etc, etc. this one talk about war and class so u can expect some fucked up things that needed more exploring and questioning. 6/10

8. innocent -a gothic historical manga. this is the story of two siblings of the sanson family, a family of executioners, years prior to the french revolution. this manga is on the lengthier side with around 90 chapters, but it is still an easy read as the story has a pretty good flow. the art here is soooo pretty and the characters so intriguing !!! the story is a serious one so it hooks you up pretty easily but it still has its what the hell moments that helps break the tension here and there. it isn't a read for the faint of heart though as it is pretty guresome... but what we expected this is a story abt a man who killed around 3000 convicts. there's some moments where the author handles class, gender and race issues rather poorly though. this manga has a sequel but tbh it's not worth it so i recommend just reading this one. 8/10

#couldnt find 10 manga to read this is the tragic state of the gothic genre #wanted to add trinity blood but at this rate i'll finish it in like a year it is just sooo slow #well .... here it is ... my most influential work till now thank you all for ur support

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thedawningofthehour · 1 year

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Now that I myself am in the process of writing my own fic for my AU I now understand how difficult it is to think of coherent world building. For example, do the Yōkai have a movie industry? They have recording technology, they should have one. Do they get movies from the surface? Are they allowed? Or are they just smuggled in? Draxum definitely watched Lou-jitsu movies. Did they see them in those spheres? How do they change the format?.

Don't make me think about technomancy, please.

WELCOME TO THE WORLD-BUILDING HOLE. YOU WILL NEVER LEAVE.

But seriously, there's just so many moving parts to any society, it's so interesting to think about how they all fit together. And you will virtually never run out of things to think about, especially as you learn more about the world and why shit is the way it is.

The thing I've been keeping in mind here is that the Yokai world is very small. Literally, since most of them live underground with limited resources and they can't just expand however they want, but there's also just not a whole lot of them. I haven't put concrete numbers on it, but considering the population of NYC is around 8 million and the Yokai can't outnumber them or the humans would realize something was up, I've been assuming there's about five million Yokai altogether.

This is not a lot. Just pulling up some Wikipedia, that is the population of Ireland. New Zealand. Costa Rica. Not together; each of them have a population just over five million. For other Americans, I live in Minnesota, which is about 5.7 million. California has almost forty million people. Five mil is the population of Alabama. Imagine if every human on earth died aside from the people in Alabama.

So you do have to work that into your world-building. A big reason humanity has advanced so much in the past few centuries has been the dramatic increase in population-we're at eight billion people right now. We only hit one billion in 1800. We've gone up by 2-3 billion people in my lifetime. That's billions more people to feed, yes, but that's also billions more people working, studying, figuring out more efficient ways of doing things, moving our technology forward. That created a snowball effect as those extra people not needed for shit like farming and other low-level work were able to invest their time into making machines to help with the farming, freeing more people from their labor and adding them to the 'fuck around and find out' class, making advances in medicine, which meant more people living to fuck around and find out, and so on.

This happened in reverse with the Yokai. They aren't all peasants working in the dirt to scrape out a living because they have developed technology in the past that made gathering basic resources less labor-intensive, plus they have magic. They have universal healthcare and provide free education because they know from experience that those things are nothing but beneficial long-term. And Yokai do live longer than humans, so a highly educated citizen will likely keep benefitting their community for a few hundred years rather than the 50-70 years we can expect out of a human.

But...they still need some farmers. They still need teachers and baristas and primary care doctors, and their population is so small that there just isn't a ton of people left over to do shit like Draxum and Galois are doing. And then you add capitalism into the mix, which further decreases overall productivity because now you have people like Bella doing IT work to pay her bills and then numbing the pain of existence with drugs because she's way overqualified for a job like that and it's really not a job that needs to be done in the first place.

This is a very long way of saying that they're likely at a standstill in regards to developing their own technology and culture, and are probably in the process of being taken over by human culture due to cultural dilution. I doubt they have the resources to create Yollywood or whatever-Hollywood also really relies on the international market too, don't forget, (especially China, which is why so many movies have 'gay rep' that can be easily edited out-Chinese law forbids that) and with the Yokai's small population/need for secrecy, there just wouldn't be enough of a market to make high-budget movies worthwhile. (and they can't get away with charging exorbitant ticket prices because Yokai kids would just stream human movies instead) In my fic they do have some Yokai TV shows, but they're like...soaps and reality TV. Stuff that can be made on a really low budget, because that's all that profitable. They absolutely could not outlaw human stuff because so much of their society is human stuff.

Also keep in mind that since Yokai live longer, cultural shifts would probably take a lot longer. They wouldn't be outright hostile to change, (if you live for hundreds of years, like, you've seen the world change a lot with your own eyeballs, if you don't get over it and accept that change happens you're gonna have a real bad time) but they would take a lot longer to get used to it. A lot of Yokai still don't have televisions or computers because they're used to their magic glasses, and cell phones are just now catching on with Yokai teenagers. Draxum thinks his house is modern by virtue of having an electric fridge. (that he bought in the sixties) They have modern technology, but it's all mixed in with shit from different periods in the last two hundred years or so.

As for how magic systems work-that's the fun thing about magic systems, they're magic! By definition, they're not supposed to make logical sense. You can hand-wave a lot of shit that way. The only real rule with establishing magic systems is that you have to stay consistent with your ruleset. So say like for Death Note-the rules for the Death Note are well established and are an integral part of the storyline. If the L plotline was wrapped up because Light just wrote 'L' in his Death Note while picturing his face, we all would have rioted because that would have gone against how we understood the magic system. Conversely, if I gave Leo a piece of paper that killed people and just let him write 'goatman'-I mean, from a story standpoint that wouldn't be very good, but as long as I didn't call it a death note I could get away with it. If anything, I would have established a rule for how my own magic system worked.

#I DID IT AGAIN BUT I DID EAT FIRST THIS TIME #doth #doth asks

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thornquillthefiendish · 1 year

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I think I need to do one of these but uhh, hey I’m Thorn, you can also call me Thorny! I’m a bit of a fandom elder in warriors I guess? Not in the sense that I’m old, but that I’ve been within the fandom since I was a wee whelp though comparatively I’d say I’m slightly older than the average fan.

I’m a young adult (saying this for clarities sake, I do not want anyone to be uncomfortable near me), and I try to be as clean as possible on my account, but I’d say rating wise, everything here is pg13 and if it notes of anything outside of that, it’ll be tagged of course to avoid those uncomfortable with said topics stumbling onto them! If I mistag something or forget a tag, please let me know, I’ll try to correct the error immediately! That being said, content on this blog will dip into darker topics, but mainly topics I’ve already seen in media targeted for all ages or younger ages. I will also cuss a fuck ton, nothing explicit of course, but I have a vocabulary that would likely make a sailor blush, so know that I’m trying to be inclusive and safe for younger fans whilst still keeping my own edge.

Some other bits about me, I’m afro-brazilian (live in the states), trans male and gay as all fuck! Hawkfrost (of course) is my favorite warriors character, my favorite arc is TPB, my favorite clan is WindClan and I write on the side of art. My favorite color is pink! Some other media I enjoy is RotTMNT, Gorillaz (2D kinnie-), The Portal Series, Watership down, Horror media, fnaf (guilty pleasure it’s brain numbing), The Hades games, Zelda games, anything based in studying animal, plant and human life, comics, monster hunter, Pokémon, anything mythology, yakuza like a dragon annnnnd honestly the list is far too long to fully count, I like a lot of weird stuff.

I don’t have any currently active blogs outside of this, b u t if you’re interested, you can check out my old au blog, @fireclawisexhausted for an old au idea that I might continue some day but likely not soon.

Some unique tags on this blog and what they mean are;

#thorn’s carvings = art/general art

#thorn’s wc designs = my designs for canon characters

#Embers of Revolution rewrite = rewrite tag

#kitty studies = random non au related character studies about warriors characters

#thorn loses his fucking mind = me being mad at Warrior cats

#EoRR char profiles/notes = information on a character in the rewrite, pages will be updated as the story is written

#EoRR Clan Lore = lore for the rewrite regarding the clans, optional read but recommended to do so AFTER reading in a few chapters, though I know people love lore so it’ll likely have no affect if you read it ahead of time

#EoRR Other Lore = lore outside of the clans

#EoRR updates = updates involving new chapters being uploaded, breaks, polls and feedback, warnings, etc

#EoRR artworks = art related to the au in events, though also applies to alternate designs for a character in the au

#other EoRR info = things that aren’t really lore but connect to EoRR

For some added context, EoRR is my currently planned rewrite of the series (mainly TNP and everything after, but I’ll be revising some of the first series too), focusing on better character development and implementation of better narrative focus, character consistency, improved and revised arcs, better representation of characters that closely parallel irl groups of people based on writing, added lore and cultural dynamics and improved relationships. I’ll be making an AO3 account for “books” in the rewrite and post updates on here whilst also ofc posting other stuff about it onto the blog!

Dni; basic things that I expect to be common sense, ofc no nsfw or explicit content blogs (not personal just uncomfortable with that based on the content I’m posting on here), anyone who claims and consistently surrounds themselves with proship and anti stuff because I do not want to be involved in those conversations.

Not really dni but something to be careful with around me, please avoid talk of homestuck I have some admittedly strange issues regarding it and how it’s connected to some bad experiences I’ve had. Ofc I won’t be mad at anyone who does, even if it’s not inherently a mistake, but it just makes me really uncomfortable.

#blog intro #thorn’s carvings #thorn’s wc designs #Embers of Revolution Rewrite #kitty studies #thorn loses his fucking mind #EoRR char profiles/notes #EoRR Clan Lore #EoRR Other Lore #EoRR updates #EoRR artworks #other EoRR info

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missalicevalentine · 1 year

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Ocean Eyes. (G/T merman AU)

Hello! I'm fairly new to the Tunblr RP space and the G/T community as well. I've always been an advid consumer of G/T content but I'm new to RPing it! As for Role Playing, I've been on the RP scene for around six years now, so I am rather well versed.

Plot

As for RP I have a plot in mind I would love to discuss and even develop between a potential partner/s! I, however would love to play the Tiny character! For this role play, I want it to be about both characters just as much, learning to grow, bond and become closer well moving on from their differences!

This plot is rather straight forward! I was thinking it could be set in a medieval eara and set, you guessed it! In the ocean and around the ocean. I'm sure we've all wondered what mysteries lay in the ocean and I think it creates an amazing atmosphere for a story that can tap into the humans natural obsession, fear and curiosity of its vastness!

Anywho, you're character will be a giant merman/ocean dwelling creature/god. My OC will be a human woman who is travelling via sea to a new land. Her ship is under attack by this giant monster! Whilst in the action and torment she ends up over board. The ship sinking behind her well she comes eye to eye with the giant. For this part, it could go one of two ways! I am a sucker for soul mate AUs, but with a twist! Think their souls are bond but it does not mean they are inlove. There is just a draw, a contention between them they cannot explain. It's nothing romantic unless they do fall for one another (spoiler alert they will) it just starts off as a desire to keep one another safe even if they do not like it at first. Or the creature spares her life simply because maybe much like in the movie the Sea Beast she saved it from some sort of attack on the ship. (Maybe it could caught in the sail and she cut the ropes, simply to try and save ship.)

Either way, a bond is formed and the giant takes her/saves her. The story, of course we can develop ourselves! Both learning about each other, maybe even magic being involved and my OC teaches him how to speak english, think Tarzan. We can explore the cultural differences, the stigma and of course the hardships and strains something like this would have on anyone. Later on in the plot, my OC can maybe learn the reason the giant attacked the ship was simple because maybe he has been being hunted by other ships and pirates and his attack was simply anger or aggression in an elaborate attempt to keep himself safe.

There is so much conflict and ways for characters to evolve together, one made for land and small whilst the other is giant and designed for the ocean. There could he so many clumatic and dramatic scenes along with funny miscommunications and understandings!

Genre & Rules

As for genre, I'm very interested in mystery, horror, romance(duh!), slow burn romance (double duh!), action and adventure!

If you've read this far, omg thanks so much! As for rules, I do not have to many, just a couple!

Be 18+

OC X OC

SFW. I do not mind subtle nsfw, just nothing straight up smutt or fetish content!

Tell me your triggers and topics you wish not to he used/discussed!

Be at least semi literate. I, myself can write anywhere from two or three paragraphs to full messages and a half (discord.)

Write in 3rd person! Please this is so important!

Be willing to make becomes friends outside of rp! I'm an artist and will most likely draw our characters, create playlists and simply talk about our characters or life!

I am fairly active but can become inactive sometimes due to uni or work so I expect you to please understand!

At the moment I am looking for GxB!

Discord please! Its easier for me to navigate and use, as I am so not used to usimg tumblr just yet!

If you are interested, feel free to dm me or comment/interact with this post!

#g/t #g/t sfw #g/t writing #g/t commissions #discord rp #rp #role play #sfw #sfw rp #giant/tiny #g/t roleplay #giant #tiny #oc x oc #merman #merman au #merman rp

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bluebeezle · 1 year

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AI Art

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As a technical artist who's spent much of his career automating away as much of the hassle in the animation pipeline as I can for the artists I work with, I have mixed feelings about AI. I thought I should weigh in, since I feel a lot of the criticisms launched at Corridor have been unfair. They're excited about a new technology and sharing a proof of concept. I'm excited with them. Sure, they’re overselling and maybe naïve about its application. But AI is a powerful and exciting tool. It's an amazing human achievement in its own right.

That being said, using AI art for profit, in its current state, and in the context of our current economic system, isn't morally defensible. Artists' work is being used without their consent to actively hurt them. The argument that AI just does what humans do, mixing and combining influences, just much faster and more expansively, is a fair one. But in an economic system where property dictates survival, a line has to be drawn between one property and the next, and making sure there's a human in there seems like a better line than most. If we don't, there's nothing stopping people from stealing anything they want from everyone else just by laundering it through AI. If we lived in a culture of open source, as Corridor ostensibly endorses, this wouldn't even be a debate. It’d be an exciting new option and tool. Imagine, if we all had a common cause and people's survival didn't depend on employment. Imagine being able to create a tool we could all contribute to that was so powerful that it was the sum of all our talents and skills rolled into one. Like a fuckin infinitely deployable artistic/[place-skill-here] DBZ spirit bomb. So clearly, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with the technology. It's only an issue because of the economic system it finds itself in.

The other problem I side against AI art on is the danger of the homogenization of art. I think that alone ensures the importance of manual artists in a future living with AI.

Just as an aside, though, I'd like to point out that I don't see why artists are special in this regard. Programmers, journalists - EVERYONE's work is being scraped. And while I'm not as plugged into social media as others, so I may just not be aware, I'm not hearing battle cries on their behalf. AI is clearly incompatible with our current economic system, but its potential is too much of a boon to humanity to pass up. I say we make the changes we need to accommodate both the people our systems serve and the technologies that would greatly improve our lives. UBI, please. We’ve needed to address systemic problems for some time. Maybe the fallout from AI affecting so many industries will finally force some action. Until then, this version of AI art is not acceptable.

Part of me wants this tech. It needs to allow more control and allow for variable levels of automation, depending on how much the user wants to control it, but it could be a powerful tool. I wonder how many stories were never told because a writer didn't have the time, resources, or skillset to execute on a personal project. Some people are more interested in telling an anime story than they are learning how to draw. I’ve definitely had ideas that work better in one medium or another. Fortunately, I have enough skill in the mediums those ideas work in that I can just do it. Some people don’t, and don’t share the passion to learn that process. The over-the-top nature of the Corridor short is clearly directly inspired by anime. They’ve done live action anime videos in the past. But anime is the medium the story and the style they’re telling it in works best in. I don't see what's so wrong with wanting to create a technology that allows people to execute on ideas instantly. If there's technology to help them do that, whether or not they develop the skill themselves is their decision to make. It's not for us to tell people what part of the process they should be interested in. I'm still going to keep drawing even though there are tools that will create better and faster results, because I enjoy it and it's mine. But I'm not entitled to being paid for my art, just like I'm not entitled to being paid for my code, when AI can do that better and faster, too. I don't hold it against people who are more interested in the results than the journey. Their priorities are their own business.

And as the auteur rises and costs to produce full animations decreases, we won’t be relegated to seeing a select few animations that play it safe because of all the money involved. We’ll get all kinds of weird and wacky stuff. Everyone can contribute a verse.

I don't buy the lazy, work-averse critique. First, it's irrelevant. Second, you can tell hobbyists with a feature length personal passion project there’s no reason they can’t animate it by hand themselves, but even after they develop the skill, they have decades of work ahead of them unless they can afford an animation team. Third, that's what technology is about. Making difficult things easier. Is Arc System Works cheating by creating 3D animations that look 2D, while not having to draw every frame from every possible angle they want the camera to be able to be placed? Am I cheating by using masks on layers while I'm crosshatching? Am I lazy for using a car to get to get groceries instead of walking? I'm making a game. I can program and animate. Am I lazy if I use AI to generate sound effects, if I'm not interested in learning how to do that well? I can only assume the aversion to this shortcut stems from fear rationalized with a puritanical fetishization of hard work for its own sake. If we could educate the next generation Matrix style, teaching them kung fu in seconds, would that be immoral? In a capitalist society, John Henry can complain all he wants about how much harder he had to work, and how lazy people are for using machines. But it seems to me plenty of us have been happy to reap the benefits of automation and the steel driving machines that best him. I agree we lose something by not driving the steel ourselves. But it's an aesthetic argument, not a moral one.

I don't think any of us are entitled to a career that will never become obsolete. I joined the 2D animation industry knowing 3D was kicking its ass because I love it. I don’t just love the product; I love the process. Otherwise I’d get into cel shading in 3D. I knew the risks when I made the decision to pursue 2D, and I'll keep doing it well after it's viable as a career. If I can still afford a Cintiq.

AI is not removing humanity from art. I like art being personal. Even if what I put out is absolute garbage, it's mine. I did it, and it's my contribution. AI can never touch that. AI taking my job wouldn't stop me from pouring my heart out on a page (or a screen, as it were). It wouldn't stop Powerhouse employees from being able to animate Castlevania at home. This whole argument is about money and prestige, and being able to do what we love in exchange for it, and I don't see it as any loftier than that. AI doesn't stop anyone from creating art in their own time. Tie your identity to your own, unfettered, personal work. It'll make it less fragile. Less pretense. More real.

If people were really concerned with personal voices in art, they wouldn't be flocking to fanart, franchises, and memberberries.

AI art is morally problematic because of the scraping, but none of the other critiques aimed at Corridor are morality arguments. The “tech bro” shit is really exhausting. Apparently being a fan of science and technology is a bad thing now, and you can just add the word “bro” to things to paint people as fratboy assholes and win arguments rather than engaging in the discussion.

Calling the rotoscoping ugly is a level of petty I’d expect from social media, I suppose. If you’re mad about the scraping, complain about that. But denying that, as basically a glorified filter, this is a vast improvement above any other filters by comparing it to hand drawn animation just screams butthurt. Of course it’s worse than hand drawn animation. When a five year old shows you their drawing that is better than the one they did yesterday, you don’t spit on it because it’s not as good as Glen Keane’s work. You can be angry at AI’s methods and recognize its progress at the same time. If you can't, your argument has a shelf life. AI art is the worst it will ever be right now. None of the aesthetic/technical criticisms will hold water as the technology gets better.

Anyone arguing that Corridor isn't "democratizing" animation because you can animate at home for free isn't being honest about scale. Yes, I can animate at home for free. But unless I'm willing to devote decades of workhours to it, we're not talking about anything feature length. If each state only had one voting booth, yes, technically, I could still be represented. But making voting booths more accessible would be an act of democratization.

Obviously, I can't say Corridor made no money off the video (who knows how much ad revenue from YouTube, subscription traffic they attracted, or shirts they sold), or that the art they scraped (VHD for their local model, and countless others for the model in general) didn't have anything to do with the success of the video (albiet as an indirect draw), but I can't imagine it's too much more than the effort they put into pioneering the technology merits. And honestly, if selling fanart is stealing ideas and creating art, I don’t see how creating ideas and stealing art on this small scale, and for this little compensation, is so much more egregious.

It's also a shame Corridor missed out on an opportunity. They mentioned that people should use original content to feed into the AI.... and then proceeded not to do that. To make their point, they could and should have used someone in-house or contracted an artist to create the training images. Even better, they could even have the artist copy the style of Vampire Hunter D, just as a cheeky nod to the nuances of the debate.

I've seen Niko defend this, saying that they didn't know how much art they'd need, what kind of art they'd need, etc. I still don't see how that prevented them from seeing that it worked with their Vampire Hunter D test privately and then moving forward training on original art for their public release. I think this is more about them being too excited about a technology to give any moral qualms much credence. Or they saw the purpose they were using it for as innocuous. A proof of concept. Or maybe they just see it as an inevitability. Which, in all honesty, it probably is. Or maybe they don't see it as a moral problem at all. And that's fine. It's a discussion. Demonizing them seems incredibly unnecessary. In the end, they don't have a say over what way the Getty Images case goes, anyways.

As always, I’m open to civil and intelligent opposing views. I have no stake in holding this view; very clearly, I have a stake in holding the opposite view, as both of my professions are in AI’s crosshairs. If there’s something I’m missing, I’d be glad to hear it.

#corridor #ai art #Youtube

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ziracona · 2 years

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Yeah, they really made an absolute dogs breakfast of the writing in Inquisition? It's so abysmal that I don't know if it'll ever recover, much less if the writers would even WANT to. In all honesty, I know the previous two games were far from perfect but at least the writing was more or less consistent, can't say the same for DA:I unfortunately...

Yeah. I kept hoping the end would somehow fix stuff but the end was worse than most of the game. O_O I could have written a god-tier game with the concept and basic outline for Inquisition, but alas I am not head BioWare staff. And we sure as hell did not get a god tier game. Tbh I have no interest in DW unless I hear they’ve like, wildly changed the game/writing course of their development. And I don’t exactly have high hopes, because they seem to have mostly staff from Inquisition on it. But I in good conscience can’t keep forking over piles of money for a tripple A game and DLCs when they U-turn from lauding me for massacring a bannon for what they did to my husband, Alienage, and friend, and even Lady agreeing that while she wants the descendants free, the original humans the Keeper went after absolutely deserved their fate, with a little DLC that talks about the cultural appropriation of indigenous people in the world and the loss of their own history to their invaders to the point a circle mage can read and speak more elvish than the Dalish companion, and how terrible it is, to a game where they refuse to take any stance really, finally to a game where they frame Briala & Celine together as cute & sweet with no tell to player who hasn’t read TME on their own what that woman did, retcon the godhood of every culture they based (often not just visibly but explicitly Word of God as well) on minority cultures until the only not retconned god is Fantasy Catholic God, so the only paths forward are Fantasy Catholic (traditional white Europeans are right & all other cultures wrong) or Atheism (modern white European ideology is right and all other cultures wrong), both terrible, and are so allergic to a minority rights narrative they retcon the entire elven history of the franchise to make it Opulent Suddenly European And Slaver Society back in its glory days, and kneecap the game’s second best character by making his sudden face heel end game goal Racial Supremacist Genocide to go back to Opulent Suddenly European Styled Culture for Elves?? And-ah forget it this would go on for a while day. Just. Yeah. It had wild potential as a game and I loved scenes and characters, and am retreating to DAO->DA2 with the things I liked in the divorce, and I could have made SUCH a DAI. But as it stands, I just. Both don’t and can’t really care going forward. I love the games I played and characters and that won’t change, but I have no faith they’ll not just keep getting worse (personally), and I’m not Paying to see that. But yeah, the others ain’t perfect, but they’re fun and solid enough. Even though I think DAO is easily the most well made, DA2 has such a fun cast and interesting concept and story, and such moments, it was my favorite. And he’ll, Nothing is perfect. That’s normal and expected. But there’s a big difference between ‘I don’t like these aspects but I like the whole enough’ and like

#ask #anonymous #dai spoilers #I still can’t BELIEVE they gave Solas one of the most God-Tier charcaters of all time in DAI and then in Trespasser went ‘haha psych! time #for racism species Supremacist Genocide Intellectual Dude Bro motives!’ like wtf I’m taking him & Cole in the divorce and leaving #they really had a charcater all game that was ‘pretending to be a calm Lawful Good professor but he’s Wearing the Mask & sometimes it cracks #but when you see behind it it’s not death sidius it’s Bugs Bunny sawing florida off the United States and ALSO he’s a big wolf’ and then #didn’t even let him actually be a trickster god just some dude who’s willing to kill every species in existence to hit race supremacy again #UNBELIEVABLE writing move in the worst way. I could have made the most amazing upsetting Solas starts a war finale while he’s still a god #and elves keep their elf culture and shaken the franchise to its knees and delivered writing unknown to man and done RIGHT by the bald man #but the devs fkn decided to massacre their franchise and my boy right in front of me #well not on my watch. I’m taking him and leaving back to previous games and writing my own - better inquisition in my head #if this timeline won’t deliver I’ll make my own! it won’t be the first fkn time #GOD it’s the little things too! in DAO I can help my bestie kill her abhsive mom but in DAI I’m supposed to find Flemeth sympathetic??? shes #the same flemeth who ruined my girl’s life as she has countless others! they really nosedive into so many piles of shit in DAI #to unfortunately paraphrase Trespasser Solas: I would be /thrilled/ to be proven wrong by BioWare. like you can’t imagine #but I’m not holding my breath. one fan who loves a charcater generates in a month 12x more usable DAI story and lore than the entire team in #the last 9 years

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