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headspace-hotel · 11 months

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An attempt at summarizing the controversies that embroil mycorrhizal network research:

a bunch of scientists are miffed at how the media has taken "plants communicate and distribute nutrients through the mycorrhizal network" and run with it, finding the "mother tree" thing too anthropomorphizing and too presumptive about something very poorly understood

unfortunately all of the major models for understanding the mycorrhizal network are anthropomorphizing, even the more competition-centered ones...to the point that papers discuss whether the network is a "capitalist" or a "socialist" system

other researchers, screaming STOP USING LOADED TERMS THAT PROMOTE AN ANTHROPOCENTRIC INTERPRETATION

But, setting aside the question of whether trees can "intentionally" do something or be altruistic...how do we know the plant is the one in control? Are the trees "sending" nutrients or is the fungus taking the nutrients and sending them to other trees? Wait, how do we assign agency in a system like this at all? Isn't it unscientific to assume that any part of the system, fungus or plant, is consciously acting? Wait...are they actually separate organisms with their own interests, or is it more accurate to view all the members of a mycorrhizal network as one big super-organism? (Wait, is it anthropomorphizing to consider organisms as having interests? If yes, how do we describe what's happening using language?)

Basically, yes we have demonstrated and established that nutrients move from one plant to another plant in the mycorrhizal network, including from fully grown trees to saplings, plants in sunlight to shaded plants, and other things that are definitely fun to interpret as one plant "helping" the weaker plant. However, we don't actually know the intentions of plants, so for all we know, the fungus could be doing everything. Or it could be completely stupid to describe any of it as "one individual organism in the network Intentionally Does A Thing."

Big Problem: Although a shit ton of research is being done, most research in the mycorrhizal network is done on very simple networks of 1 or 2 plant species with a handful of selected fungal inoculants in otherwise sterile laboratory settings. These conditions do not reflect the natural world at all.

in fact, experimental conditions used to study mycorrhizal networks are mostly completely unlike anything that would ever exist...you know, Outside,

most of the research pertains to agriculture and there are many demonstrated benefits, and many farmers are ALREADY using methods to promote mycorrhizal networks, but my guess is that it's not as simple as matching crops up to fungal inoculants that help them for instant 20% yield increase, at least in Real Outdoor Soil with an existing microbiome and seed bank.

Roughly speaking, 50% of mycorrhizal associations benefit seedling establishment, and the remaining 50% are themselves split halfway between "no effect" and "negative effect." Doesn't this mean that the mycorrhizal network is not always chill and altruistic?

Well, those findings might mean absolutely nothing either way, since in a field-setting plant community, there are dozens if not hundreds of fungi species (the diversity and number of specialists increases in later-successional communities) that are part of the mycorrhizal network, and through them any given seedling might be linked to a thousand different plants.

Some researchers find it puzzling how so many mycorrhizal partnerships seem to have no effect. Maybe the effect only comes online in certain conditions?

Parasitism, mutualism and commensalism aren't fixed types of relationship, and two partners in the mycorrhizal network can and do switch between the three constantly. This is another problem: the experiments don't usually follow both partners in a plant-fungal pairing to the end of their natural lives, and it's been shown that a fungus can be mutualistic early in a plant's life and later on become more parasitic (for example). Or that a fungus can be beneficial in poor soil conditions and become parasitic in rich soil conditions.

But...is this really best understood as a situational switch between types of symbiosis, or can we judge it by the net effect on both partners throughout their life spans, or...my brain is breaking

Like, a fungus that mostly decreases the fitness of the host plant, BUT becomes very helpful in the presence of extreme drought...is it a parasite or mutualistic partner?

Some researchers lean toward a source-sink model where nutrients tend to flow toward plants that are most lacking and away from plants with most abundance. This is a rough approximation of something ridiculously complicated

Plants can and do select fungal partners to pair with and reject fungi that contribute fewer benefits.

Fungi also appear capable of selectively distributing resources based on the fitness of the host, or at least they did this one experiment where the fungus was connected to two different trees and researchers ripped all the leaves off one of the trees. This caused the fungus to divert its nutrient flow to the undamaged tree (throwing in its lot with the tree most likely to survive). However, we're not sure if this would happen in a forest or other natural plant community, since in the lab, the fungus was totally dependent on the two trees for survival and there were no other participants in the network. So basically, it's kinda like those behavior studies on captive wolves?

#plants #trees #mycorrhizal network

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gremlingottoosilly · 4 months

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Lego still not sponsoring me (dark!Konig x fem!Reader)

Konig is a nerd who needs to get sprayed with water for being a fucking creep. You're an adorable cashier at the Lego Store in Berlin who doesn't know any better and is too nice to lose. He will have you. Mostly because he wants someone to do his Lego sets with.

Details count: 2922 AO3 TW and Tags: Dub-con/Non-con, age gap, size difference, kidnapping, awkward colonel Konig, nerd Konig, hurt/comfort, Konig's POV(mostly), awkward German, yandere Konig.

You didn’t want to build Millenium Falcon with him.

You didn’t want to shower or eat, you didn’t want to do anything besides crying, and even though your tears, as he expected, were beautiful and adorable, it was kinda hard for König to take care of your mental and physical needs while he was rock hard from watching you cry so sweetly.

König is patient, kind, and a model citizen through and through. Why are you upset? He is doing everything he can, just to make you smile! Seriously, Schatzi, the desire to make him as miserable as you possibly can doesn’t make you pretty or cute or even the least bit adorable. Good thing that he is used to feeling sad and kinda of bullied – you’re lucky he doesn’t even try to feel good anymore. Not in his destiny book to live a good life. — I brought food.

You groan lightly, whimpering somewhere in the corner of his basement. To your justification, his basement is a bit dirty. He forgot to visit the house for months after deployment, which was never enough to fill out the blanks of loneliness in the empty rooms. His dogshits methods of choosing decorations also made the mere existence in the house a hard mission even in itself. He looked at the anime posters in the guest rooms, which made him want to sell the property to anyone willing to pay 50 Euros for the processing fees. The posters(Sword Art Online because why the hell not, he likes cool swords and a power fantasy about a loser getting the chick) and artwork of his queen and savior, The Busty Blond Lady From Fate because, unlike those waifu-obsessed freaks, he did have a life and not enough time to actually remember her name. Something about light sabers. Or cats. — Are you going to kill me?

He sighs because you sound like a broken record. All the time – the questions about his intentions, like you can’t see the tent in his pants every time you open your eyes, about letting you go, about at least allowing you to text your family that you decided to change your country of residence and would need to revoke your German visa. You’re way more soft than he thought you’d initially be – no fighting, no arguing, just pure terror and desire to die every time his hands brush over you. König is a sweet guy, as sweet as someone like him can be – but he only has a few weeks until his next mission, and even a few days of your moping around is bound to make him not just blue-balled, but also very, extremely, offensively hot-headed.

He spent two days with you chained up in his basement and, he thinks, that should be enough for foreplay. He is extremely generous and kind – usually, at this point, he’d already start breaking the fingers of whoever poor fuck is his torture victim for the mission.

— I don’t want to kill you.

You whimper – somehow, his answer didn’t calm you down. Fucking women and their inability to talk to their kidnappers – he considers spiking your food just this once, so he could have a nice session with your little drunk self and some roofies but, of course, he is a nice guy who brought you takeout in a reheatable container, with a cute plastic fork and some sparkling water in a glass, just so you won’t feel like he is making you eat some garbage. It’s good food, too – he’d love to cook like this, but the heights of his skills are runny eggs and burnt coffee. He hopes you like the Italian because it’s the most inoffensive stuff he could have brought you without resorting to pizza and cup noodles. He will never let you eat cup noodles on his watch.

— Are you going to rape me?

He can’t exactly say no because, as a matter of fact, pulling your cute body under his is one of his intentions. He wanted to do it since he was you in this fucking store, but, of course. saying this to a pretty girl is lame. And completely counter-productive. And would make him a villain in your eyes, even though he tries so fucking hard to be a hero. He can make you feel good if you were to just open your pretty legs for him and moan under his tongue – god knows, he wants to make you feel good. He wonders what would it take for him to please you. If he could have a full-time job at this.

— Nein. Thought I told you already.

— I don’t…I shouldn’t believe you.

He shook his head, pushing the plate(he had to go out of his way to actually put the pasta from the tray to a proper plate, enjoy this, woman) towards you. You’re adorable like this – naked, trembling, a bit too weak to actually fight him over not eating anything for the past two days – you’re repeating the same conversation over and over again and König wouldn’t mind living in a groundhog day if the loop would end with his fucking you on that thin mattress each time.

Speaking of mattresses – he needs to get you a thicker one.

Speaking of thicker mattresses – he needs to relocate you into his bedroom as soon as possible.

Speaking of his bedroom – he is fucking bricked.

— If you don’t trust me, why do you ask?

You bite your lips. He can see you’re hungry and thirsty – he doesn’t want to forcefully feed you, so, yeah, you better be very hungry very soon. He pushes the plate towards you, hoping you won’t launch it on his head. He survived worse, a 6’4 British dude in a ski mask falling on him with the speed of Brexit, but getting hit by a plate when your angry girlfriend is being an angry girlfriend is…the best thing that could ever happen to him, actually. Gott, he is miserable.

— I…I don’t know. Don’t want to get killed.

— I won’t kill you.

— But you will hurt me.

— I don’t have to do that, Liebling.

No, he doesn’t.

But he sees the way your plushy thighs are squeezing into that tiny corner where your mat is, your squishy body getting all shaky and trembly, your lips in a tight line with tiny blood droplets from biting on them too much – and, by his fucking god, you’re beautiful. He wants to make you wet, to make you squirm, to make you beg and cry for mercy as he pounds into the sweetness of your cunt. He wants to try you on the inside and out, lick you all over from the inside, and then make you lick your love juices from his lips.

König knows he is hard and can’t really hide it – it’s useless now, really, he is being very nice and considerate to you. Changing your life is hard, especially with how quickly you moved to his place – like a good boyfriend, he should help you adjust. And aid you in recognizing that he is, in fact, your boyfriend and future husband. The perfect partner to ever exist. — What is it?

— Pasta. It’s…it’s good. Should be good. He is nervous, anxious. Seeing a pretty girl in her natural habitat – a Lego store – is one thing. He was barely able to talk to you properly, especially right after his deployment, where the only female attention he ever got was Roze asking to cover her or additional female soldiers groaning in pain as he stomped them. But you…he shouldn’t be colonel around you – absolutely not. You’re soft and civilian, you’re as polite as a girl in a basement could be, and you deserve to have something nice for once in your life. Licking his lips, König gently picks up a fork and presses a small amount of pasta – rich, creamy, with some nice cheese that smells divine - -against your lips.

You refuse.

A smart move, he could have poisoned it – so he thinks for a few seconds, staring at you like a smart girlie you are, and then – lifts his hood. If only barely, revealing his scarred chin and bruised lips. The initial swelling after getting his head bumped by a guy who was speaking like an edgy teenager in the Counter-Strike lobby was already gone by the time he managed to get you into his basement – but no amount of rest could hide all other marks from his job.

Despite being a seasoned mercenary with hundreds of killed targets and completed objectives, he feels…insecure. You’re a nice girl, a good girl, the type that used to look at him with hatred while he was bullied at school. Hatred or pity – but you only look at him with fear, and it cements his understanding that you’re not going to give in to loving him so easily.

König sighs deeply, his lips, curved into that awkward, boyish smile that creeps on his face every time he as much as thinks about you, now transforming into a scowl as you proceed to whimper and try to get lost in the wall behind you. Like he wouldn’t be able to track your scent if you would disappear. He slowly presses his fork towards his mouth, chewing on the food – showing you that it’s not poisoned.

He smiles again when he sees you slowly parting your lips, expecting him to feed you with less of a fuss. He’d propose something else – maybe even untying your hands and allowing you to actually for yourself, but something in your helpless state made his cock throb in his pants. God, König knows he isn’t his strongest soldier, but could he please make you less adorable? He doesn’t want to push you on your knees and make you suck on him until he whimpers, but the way you lick all of the cheese from your lips and try your best to look presentable in front of him… The process of feeding someone shouldn’t really be sexual, but König gently pushes the hair away from your face and lifts up the fork over and over, sometimes only changing to bring a glass of water to your lips. He can do this all day. Every day. Pleasing you already becomes second nature – and he spends most of his life thinking that the only thing he can take care of is his rifle and a few tortured enemies that need their teeth extracted. You require gentle handling – and he wants nothing more but to give you that. Just…a bit later. Preferably after the already came in your pussy at least two or three times and made you choke on his dick as a little thank-you gift.

You finish eating after a short while, thanking him for bringing you a napkin to clean your lips. König gently caresses your head, enjoying the sensation of your hair under his palm – it’s like petting a cat. A soft little pet just for him and no one else – if only he could actually bring you to like him. He has a few bond activities in mind, though. — You liked it, ja?

You lick your lips again, and his breath hitches. This is going to be hard, this is going to be impossible, it’s worse than having to work with high Krueger on a ship that made everyone feel like they were the ones doing crack in the backroom of their makeshift base.

— I…I did.

He pets your head again like you’re his pet – and you gently move your head to lean into his touch. Perhaps you’re dumber than he thinks. Or way smarter – a clever strategy to make him relax and nice to you without making him too suspicious. You slowly get back into your corner, but König wouldn’t have any of it – he drags you back by your arm, making you whimper and sob in his hold. It’s bad, he doesn’t want you to squirm from under him as much as you do, but…if you don’t want to be a good girl, he might as well force you to.

You cry as he pushes you deep into the corner, his hands roaming over your body. Thank god he ripped your clothes before you woke up – now there isn’t anything protecting you from his hands, not even that adorable bra he ripped in pieces because, as much as he loved wearing a uniform with straps and buttons everywhere, he could not figure out how to take this thing off you without breaking it. The last time he was sleeping with a woman, she wore a sports bra that could be taken off easily. It’s your fault that you decided to be more girly, really. Not his.

His hands cup your breasts roughly. Tugs and twists your nipples, a few shaky moans telling him exactly how sensitive you are – he might not have a girl in a hot minute, too busy with being the best freaking mercenary in the world, but even he knows how to take care of a pretty thing like you. Your tits fit in his hands perfectly, even more, reasons to believe you were just made for him. Not for some lame job at a Lego store counter – you should be waiting on your knees in his bedroom, with your mouth open wide and neat to fit his cock right in. With some sweet things lingering on your tongue as he bullies himself right in, getting what he deserves for protecting peace – and installing violence – while doing his job. He might not be the best freaking guy around, but he deserves something nice.

He pinches your nipples until they’re firm and swollen, every little cry escaping from your lips is only encouraging him to proceed. Licks on the open skin of your neck until his eneve stubble makes you whimper from how sensitive you are – it should be painful, he thinks, with how bloody the little bite marks from his teeth have become.

König marks you as thoroughly as possible, smiling each time you cry and beg for him to stop. You’re changing between bad German and good English, between loud cries and small whimpers, which he can’t determine from pleasure to pain. Not like he cares, too determined to make you cry his name – even though you probably don’t know it. All of his desires to claim you taking full power now, not listening to the way you plead with him. Whimper for him. Your skin is a clear canvas, allowing him to paint you with hickeys and marks, enjoying the little blood droplets covering your collarbones.

— Quiet, please. Don’t…don’t move, Schatzi. I don’t want to hurt you.

— Please, please, just…anything but… — Won’t take long. Promise.

— I don’t want to- — Quiet. I know you don’t, Liebling. Just…Scheisse, you…fuck.

— Stop! — Can’t. I apologize, Schatzen. Relax for me, ja?

He whispers, he whimpers, he is almost out of his mind when he can finally put his tongue on your swollen nipples. For some weird, depraved reason, he almost expects the milk to start flowing from your chest, allowing him to drink up as much as he wants. If he could get you pregnant, he might enjoy it for a few months – although having a kid on his hip isn’t as fun as it could have. He tried to babysit Hutch kids once when he brought them to base – and it was the worst fucking day of his life. Besides, little children can’t be around Legos – it's already a deal breaker for someone like him.

Speaking of legos…

You wiggle in his grasp, as good as you can with your hands still in the handcuffs – he should give you that one, at least you aren’t just laying lifelessly in front of him. At least you’re putting up a fight. At least he doesn’t feel too bad about restraining you without proper reasoning. You lick your lips again, that cute tongue of yours going over all the bite marks. You take a deep breath, shaking in his hold. God, he can just look in your face the whole day – barely knows how to handle himself around you. — I…I thought you wanted to…build this set with me? Smart girl. Way smarter than he gave you credit for – you know how to make him stop in his tracks and finally look at you differently. Maybe, you’re too good for him. Maybe, he doesn’t really care about that. Millennium Falcon, still sitting in the box – König hoped you’d start slowly putting it together but, seemingly, you need a bit of encouragement. The only thing that could tug him away from your breasts is the expensive set sitting just next to him.

Might start bonding with you as well. He tugs away from your nipples with a loud pop, an obnoxiously wet sound emerging as a thin line of saliva connects your breasts and his tongue. You whimper when he smiles, that scarred face of his twisting in a huge grin. Knows he’s not the most charming person around, but it’s not like you have any choice now – not with the limited options he gave you. Like a good girl, you’d probably pick doing Lego Sets with him than taking his cock in that tight pussy of yours. He’d be satisfied with any outcome. — J…ja. I’d like that. He has to give this one to you – you really know how to get a man going.

Bu building this insane set with him, that is.

#cod #konig x reader #konig #yandere konig #cod x reader #call of duty #yandere cod #cod x you #konig mw2 #konig x you #konig cod #lego

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toaarcan · 20 days

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Every now and then I see the Capitalism Ruined Tieflings post float past and my brain just goes "Skill Issue."

For context, this is a popular post that states that in D&D's second and third editions, Tieflings had a huge variety of appearances and then in 4e they were homogenised into generic devil-people because Hasbro was calling the shots and demanded that Tieflings all look relatively the same because that way it was easier to sell minis of them, and now Tieflings are ruined forever because you can't make one with greasy skin that smells like farts.

But here's the thing: You can absolutely still just do that.

"But the book says-"

Fuck the book! This hobby is 50% improv and the highest authority you'll ever have to deal with is most likely going to be your friend Jim, when it comes to pure roleplay things, there is literally nothing stopping you. The D&D Police aren't going to kick down your door and haul you off to RPG Jail for the crime of not playing a Tiefling like they're described in the PHB, because there is no D&D Police.

The PHB is great for telling you what you get mechanically (or the "crunch") and can be entirely ignored for everything in terms of lore (or the "fluff").

I've been playing 5e for something like seven or eight years now, and during that time, across all those groups, we've used vanishingly small amounts of official lore, one official setting, and precisely zero Hasbro miniatures (largely because all of those games have been online).

If I had gone to any of those DMs, both the good and bad ones, and said "I wanna use the Planescape Tiefling tables for my character's appearance", I don't think any of them would've said no. Now, that's not something I personally would ever do (I'm not leaving my character's design up to the RNG that hates me), but I don't doubt that the option would exist if I wanted it.

Additionally, people have always broken from the official limitations of the books with these things, and a few really obvious ways.

Per the books, Tieflings have the full range of human skin tones, plus varying shades of red. Now, how many people actually keep to that limitation? I've seen blue, purple, orange, green, yellow, bone white, grey, black, pink, etcetera. Even the Planescape table only gives you red, green, and blue, random 5e players going "What if it was purple!" and disregarding the PHB is fully and openly accepted.

Hell, two of the most prominent Tiefling characters in the current era of D&D are Jester and Molly from CritRole's second campaign, who are blue and purple respectively. "Tieflings are just red" says Hasbro, and "No they aren't" says literally everybody else. Even Hasbro themselves don't care too much about it, there's an official Lego D&D Tiefling minifigure coming out this year, and they're orange, not red, when Hasbro could easily have demanded that Lego make them red.

Additionally, the book says Tiefling eyes are a single, solid colour, with no visible iris, pupil, or sclera. Yeah that one gets ignored a whole lot too. In fact, that one gets ignored more than it gets followed. I've made at least ten of these fuckers and one of them followed that rule, and only did so after her Sorcerer bloodline activated, and nobody, DM or player, has ever called me out on it.

The book says nothing about them having weird legs, I've still seen plenty with varying forms of digitigrade gait, whether it's with hooves or something else at the end of them.

If you want to make your Planescape Tieflings, then you absolutely still can. And if your DM says no, then they're probably just still in their Rules Stickler phase. Give 'em a little time and they'll loosen up, it happened to most people in this hobby.

That's the great thing about playing D&D. Most of the time, you really can just do whatever the hell you like as long as it doesn't futz with the mechanical side of things (and sometimes you can do it with that too).

Capitalism didn't ruin Tieflings. Sure, you can argue that it tried, but the only thing letting it succeed is a lack of imagination and an unwillingness to go "Hey, can I just do X instead" on the part of the players.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go make a character that's mechanically a Tiefling and lore-wise a completely different species, because nothing can stop me doing that.

#D&D #Dungeons and Dragons #Dungeons & Dragons #Tiefling #Tieflings #D&D 5e #D&D 4e

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not-poignant · 3 months

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Ooh, cool! Thank you so much for the long reply! A lot of this was genuinely completely new to me -- I'd never known there were ongoing discussions that early, but of course it makes complete sense there were, both on LJ and predating it. I think it also goes to show how well we could self-segregate on LJ, I think moreso than we can now.

I think, in retrospect, that a lot of my experiences with 2000s fandom can be summed up with, 'I was a teenager' and thus wanted to be 'cool'. There was a lot of 'not like other girls'-ism going on in those sporking and Mary Sue comms, and I always just assumed we were all teenagers -- it certainly felt that way. The few people I've kept in touch with from those days have largely grown out of it, though it doesn't surprise to hear there were (and probably still are) grown adults who shit on others' fanfics.

(As an addendum, I could add that slashfic and that sort of 'canon non-compliance' was completely okay in the fandom spaces I ran in back then, but people would get very upset about extremely arbitrary things-- 'transfer students' in HP, changing characters' ages, making up a minor oc side character for plot purposes because all ocs were apparently bad (and especially if female), etc. It was strange which hairs people decided to split.)

Anyway! Thank you VERY much for such a long and in-depth reply! It's cool to see how these things have changed and developed, and I'm glad to see my experience wasn't emblematic of fandom as a whole.

Thanks for such a thought-provoking question! It really got me thinking about how Livejournal was really excellent at creating different sort of pockets of experiences, and in a while is really reflective as proto-social media of like, the big echo chambers we have happening now all across social media! That's really interesting to think about.

For me, it's funny, most of the fandom folks I knew were all older than me, many were in their 40s and 50s while I was in my 20s. Very few teens comparatively were attracted to certain fandoms like The X-Files and NCIS some of the other spaces I was in, so while there were definitely teens, it was like... a different feeling. Like, even these days I find it fascinating how there are 'younger' fandoms (in terms of how many younger folk are in it) and 'older' fandoms.

And yeah you're so right about people getting upset about arbitrary things! And also that um, 'not like other girls' which now itself is kind of mocked by fandom, so things really did come full circle on that front where now it's not cool to be one of the people who says that x.x

Honestly it's hard to be a teenager on the internet! All the things that play out like... all the dynamics, a lot just play out online instead, and they still exist. A person still wants to be cool and accepted and liked (and that's not age specific, like, most of us want a degree of at least some of these lol), and cliques can form very quickly. I remember how bad it felt back then even in my 20s when I got unfriended by a mutual who I thought was a really good friend, that stuff was devastating!

"making up a minor oc side character for plot purposes because all ocs were apparently bad"

Ahaha this is one of the reasons I still sometimes have like apologetic tones in some of my comments about the amount of OCs I add, because yeah that was really disapproved of! I remember that and I still have like... shades of that at times. I'm mostly over it now, but oof I remember the first time I did it and I was like 'is this okay *chews on fingernails* I bet people will hate this because of it.' (And then that turned into Fae Tales so).

The Mary Sue stuff was really aggressively unpacked, like in very popular kind of fandom-friendly journalism spaces at the time, I mean that's how we ended up with the journalism site 'The Mary Sue' in the first place. People really took a stand on that one. In a way, we were all kind of looking at our own attitudes, like, *why* is it bad to do this, or *what* does it mean that a girl feels like they can't be like other girls - is that internalised misogyny (and sometimes it was), and I miss that kind of meta discussion because I do feel it happens a little less now.

There was a time when I didn't like Mary Sues, no one did, though I think that was before I found my first meta community where it was like 'oh people are talking about EVERYTHING I thought was like universally accepted in fandom.' Though we never got that far on how racist fandom could be, which is still an issue, but one that does get talked about (it would just be nice if AO3 talked about it too).

I sadly think a lot of people in their 40s and 50s can act a lot like teenagers in fandom spaces sometimes, some of the antis in like teenage spaces today are like 40s kind of 'guiding them along' this path of moral puritanical righteousness and almost role-modelling how to bully others. And some of the folks running public Sporking blogs were like... older folks who fostered connections to younger folk.

LJ was wild tbh :D

Anyway, it's so interesting to think of all the different pockets we ended up in. I'm sure there's like countless more that we both have no experience of, where someone else would be like 'oh I was in LJ fandom what's a Mary Sue?' and that would be entirely legitimate too. Sometimes it's easy (I fall into this trap) to think of historical fandom as being one thing instead of like a thousand things. So yeah, this was cool! Thank you :D

#asks and answers #pia on fandom #i actually still really miss livejournal as it used to be #i like dreamwidth but it's different #also i keep forgetting to blog there lmao

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beardedmrbean · 10 months

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That article reminded me of the course I had not long ago.

It really does seem that Gen X is an afterthought or just viewed as non-existent in some cases. Like the course in question was about demographic and designing ads for different groups including age demos.

In all the documents from the class resources to the mock company project treated all parties as either boomers or millennials. (Even then the latter felt more like in name only, as their description was a better fit for zoomers then millenials).

And the course, is designed by industry professionals to give those looking to enter a real feel for how projects are approached...

To me at least, it gave a good insight to why it feels like there's a cultural disconnect. It's in part because there is a genuine disgard and/or misunderstanding of who the demographics are.

Had a really long thing written out, decided to shorten it significantly.

Gen-X got that moniker because they couldn't pinpoint something about us that covered anything collectively, don't think they ever did.

We got to see and participate all kinds of major historical change, the bulk of which was for the good.

"end" of communism, aids appears and becomes managable, LGBT acceptance advances by leaps and bounds, folks of all different races and creeds are getting a long much better with the live and let live attitude we'd cultivated as a generation then that whole internet thing popped up and we got to experience it before all the online 'activism' began.

There's a lot of hope in the members of Gen-X because of what we've seen.

But ya, that doesn't really turn into something marketable.

I do have a feeling that with the Gen-X crowd rotating in to the top things may turn around in some areas, and for the better.

Even if it doesn't look like it's better when it's happening.

Don't think we're going to see $.25 McDonald's hamburgers on Wednesday's return or $.50 cinnamon twitsts at Taco Bell either, but hopefully our chill catches on.

#anonymous

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malaurymalfunctional · 1 month

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1, 6, 12, 39

get asked things, dork (affectionate

welp, get your reading glasses out everyone

1: 3 things that shaped me into who i am

-1: luck. from the classic things like being born in a wealthy western country, being white (not inherently lucky but made me privileged/safer), having a relatively nice familly with no financial struggle, etc, to smaller stuff. like, it's a miracle i was never bullied in school. if it wasn't for that one person, maybe i would've died. i had free access to the internet since i was like 9, and somehow never stumbled on stuff that was inapropriate for my age

i consider myself quite lucky, despite all the hardships

-2: being trans. sorry to the people who think it's cringe when we make it our whole personnality, but it is litteraly so important. so central. i cannot fathom what i would be like if i weren't trans. that's just not the same person

-3: having weird ass parents. by that i mean that they're almost not like parents, more like... people i lived with that cared for me? i of course mean that in the sense that i don't have any special emotional attachment to them and all, but also that it doesn't feel like they raised me because they transmitted so little to me. my way of seeing the world, my hobbies, my fears, my political opinions, my general knowledge, my understanding of myself and others, my skills, i got them from, well, not them. the internet school, my friends, but not my parents. truly, i don't really know these people

6: best and worst part of being online

i've been here most of my life, so all the bad is just part of it. yes, that's where all the haters are. sure, all of the horrible things in existence can be found here. but that's also where my friends are. that's where community is. that's my only way of accessing at least 50% of what makes me happy. it has taught me so much about the world and myself, has held so many fulfilling experiences for me

if i had to choose 1 worst, i'd say transmisoginy i guess? i dunno, girl, i'm not even popular enough to get hate mail

12: a piece of advice i'd like to give

like i said in a previous post of mine i'm just 18. i'm like a baby. i feel like the least qualified person on earth to be giving advice. but i'll say one thing: advices are kinda bullshit. in essence they're opinions you think will be helpfull to someone else. but in my experience, they rarely are, especially when talking about life choices, mental health and the such. i watched hundreds of hours of self help videos, listened to people, went to therapy, and i felt like a fucking moron. i knew all the things, i had the advice, but it wasn't working. in the end, what helped me crawl out of the pit is time, love, and a bunch of stuff i'll never know about. find what works for you and ditch what doesn't; it's not because a piece of advice is true that it is helpful. searching for your solution will probably work better than just trying to apply the solutions others found

39: a youtuber i'm obssessed with

hard and specific

brennan lee mulligan? absolutely obssessed. a youtuber? not really

thegreatreview (he's french)? amazing youtuber. so fucking talented. obssessed? not really

dougdoug? obssessed by his entire cinematic universe for a while now. a youtuber? maybe 50%? it's all twitch streams highlights

john and hank green? ok i'll stop there

let's settle for brian david gilbert then, the man so nice they named him thrice. please buy his bed.

most well known for his Unravelled series on Polygon's channel, like the one about the sonic bible or the one about the smash bros osha violations, his personnal stuff is simply perfect, sometimes whimsical, like "i wish that i could wear hats" or "Pumpkin Cowboy", sometimes horrifying, like the one about the american healthcare system or "Teaching Jake about the Camcorder, Jan '97", often a mix of both, like "we like watching birds" or "earn $20K EACH MONTH by being your own boss". his comedic genius is at its best when it is also at its weirdest. he's also the guy who made the sibling dance song, i guess

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missbaphomet · 1 year

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This is not related to anti-kink but how radfem sees sexuality is just very very weird. I remember someone criticize one part of Islam (I'm an ex muslim myself) saying that, "If muslim woman goes to heaven and died as a jihadist and got herself 72 maidens that are men, that would be creepy! Basically gangrape! I would feel afraid with that too many man!" And I'm just.. do these people think a woman who wants handsome harem who will do anything doesn't exists? Have they seen the japanese?

Reverse harem is a pretty popular trope, I can think of at least one erotica novel on that premise and I don't even read erotica.

Also as someone who works tech, I work with a lot of men. I've been alone in places with a lot of men before. I have never once felt fearful. I've never even felt fearful leaving the BDSM club I'm a member of at 2am (although club rules say that women who came by themselves MUST be escorted to their car by a male member of the club). I've never had an issue with any man who has ever walked me to my car or anything, and I am totally 100% confident I don't even need the escort, it's just a nice bonus to have one because the club really does genuinely care about the personal comfort and safety of all their members.

I genuinely feel so bad for radfems because it's not normal to have this deep-seated hatred or fear of 50% of the population of the planet. Is it a trauma response? If so, why are you not trying to heal from it? I was groomed, I know how hard recovery can be, but when you finally break through that trauma it's so liberating! It's like, I'm sorry something bad happened to you if that is the case, but you will be so much happier if you put your effort into healing and growing than being a misandrist who harasses random women online for being normal.

#baph bleats #asks

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volunteerismandanarchy · 9 months

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Labeling someone as white and privileged is the weapon of last resort for an increasing class of infantilized people. They seek to blame others for what they lack in their lives. They would rather force you to change then deal with their own inadequacies.

I'm not saying White Privilege doesn't exist. I'm saying I don't care. I used to care - a great deal, actually. Now I don't. If I could travel back in time and speak to the young man I was at 19, I would tell him to embrace his privilege. Seek out the opportunities available to you. I would warn him that to not try doing this he might find himself waking up in his late 50s with very little to show for all that so-called privilege. If you failed miserably, at least you tried. That is more than the infantile political class is doing.

The people calling you out for your privilege don't care about you or your struggles. They don't care if you didn't even recognize your privilege. They would just tell you that was a sign of your privilege. So embrace privilege. Take what is yours. You can be ethical. You can be generous. They are not antithetical to personal power. I would tell him to seek feedback from people who have the kind of life you might enjoy, and forget validation from the online social media crowd.

There is no wisdom in a crowd. There are only those who are week-willed followers and forced consensus for the rest. The wise are much quieter. I fear I may have gone on a wide tear here. Avoid political movements altogether. They are all self-appointed saviors of society. When you are dead no one is going to care that you were on the so-called "right side of history." After a few generations, you won't be remembered at all. Be your own Messiah. No one can save you but you. No one can heal your trauma but you. Trauma is a great tool for enlightenment.

Personal pain is a teacher like no other. It's like Mark Twain said, "A man who swings a dead cat learns a lesson he can learn in no other way." Sometimes we need to be the ready fool who chooses to learn these lessons. Let's lock arms with those in search of truth and run quickly from those who claim to have found it.

#White Privilege #Privilege #Agency #Self respect

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mcrmadness · 1 year

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Really wondering if it's an ADHD or ND thing, RSD or just something completely else - the way I easily see human relations. Or, the way they make me feel.

Usually it's said that ND friendships are the type where you can be without talking to the other person for months and then when you do talk again, you continue like there never was any pause as if you spoke just yesterday. I do have friendships like these, and they are my favorite type of a friendship. Mostly because they feel stable and something that even the time (passing) cannot kill. I suspect that these are also often friendships that have already existed for a longer period of time, and people I'm quite close with and can talk about almost anything with. People whom I consider IRL friends too even if I have never met them irl - people whose real name I know and whose real face (or the face that belongs to the body they live in currently) I have seen either in photos or in a video call (or irl if I've met them).

Then the rest of the people I know. I just have the constant feeling of one day growing apart. I don't know when, I just feel like it will happen one day, and this feeling can be triggered by not talking with them for a day or two, or only after months of not interacting. And it can be that I've been talking with someone a lot and then not for a few days and I'm already wondering whether this is The Day we start to grow apart. Especially when we weren't even that close, or didn't even know each other for that long that there would even really be anything to grow apart from. I'd say that I even barely know But I definitely feel that this is more common when I don't have that long history with someone yet. This person can be an irl friend, a classmate, an online friend or an online acquaintance.

The latter version is quite exhausting, to say the least. I think I'm not the only one it's exhausting to, I think it's also exhausting to other people who have to interact with me. Like, sometimes I feel like I just lost a friend just because an online acquaintance has changed a bit, and we never even were friends. Literally just spoke online sometimes, and then I randomly have again the "oh we're growing apart :o" mood when there literally never was anything to grow apart from! I barely even knew the other person!

I don't really know how my brain defines the people I interact with. It seems to be completely random. There probably is something my brain sees in those people that I don't see. Maybe I like someone as a person so much that I'm constantly afraid of losing them. But that still doesn't explain it, because shouldn't I then be afraid of losing my best friends too? But I am not afraid of that, cos the friendships feel so stable. Sure one huge thing probably is whether I have talked about this issue with a friend of not. But even that alone doesn't mean this fear/sensation would go away. I often talk about this with people and while talking, it might feel very secure and that with this person I'll be friends forever and we're super close friends and whatnot. Then I'm alone and suddenly I feel like the cake is a lie. I don't feel secure anymore, I am no longer sure that I'm gonna be friends forever with someone and that the "friendship level" will remain stable no matter how much time would pass.

I feel like I'm kinda hovering somewhere between the neurotypical and neurodivergent view over friendships. I'm never sure about whether someone likes me as strongly as I like them, and for some reason it's always very embarrassing to me if I like someone more than they like me. And I'm also very confused if someone seems to like me more than I like them. I'm kinda constantly looking for this 50-50 type of liking ratio. I always compare it to how friendships are in The Sims games - everyone always likes each other mutually as much and it can't be that X like Y 80/100 and Y likes X only 50/100. It's always 80/100 or 50/100 for both. And IRL it always confuses me when people can like each other in uneven amounts.

The same way this "growing apart" thing is for me like the friendship notifications in The Sims games. I have talked about this before too, but I really feel like my frienships work as TS friendships do - after not interacting for a while, you get this notification "Sim X haven't called sim Y in a while and they're no longer friends." This is literally how this whole growing apart thing feels like to me, and it's so confusing because I might think I no longer have ANYTHING in common with someone. Until they start talking to me again and it's like there never was any pause. And it confuses me even more because I do not know where we're at. Friends or not? And I don't feel comfortable about asking in case I misunderstood everything because I have ADHD and emotional dysregulation.

But yeah, it's very exhausting. Maybe it's also related to my generalized anxiety. But it'd be nice if I could just not worry about friendships "possibly ending soon" cos these stable friendships you can put on hold are just so much nicer so why can't I view every friendship like this? Or is that because so many of my past friendships have ended, and I'm trying to protect myself with this so when/if a friendship ends, it's not that big of a shock because I was already prepared for it ending one day... idk.

#mcrmadness' deep thoughts

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headspace-hotel · 2 years

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What feels so strange about growing plants, and making friends with plants, and generally being aware of my ecosystem, is that it's not a "head" knowledge, it's a "hands" knowledge.

It feels strange for me, at least. My formative years were spent in a homeschool co-op that was roughly 50% anti-vaxxers, so in spirit, I'm the sort that has yelled "just believe science!" until my throat hurt. I've clung to peer-reviewed papers, as an abstract concept, as the sole beacon of truth in a dark world, and found Facebook groups full of people that thought just like me: if it's not proven, if it's not science, it's false, and science is truth.

There are online communities of people who "believe in science," and t-shirts that affirm the wearer to "believe in science." This is not the worst place you can be, in a world where people believe things like "eating lemons makes your blood more alkaline, which cures cancer" and "polio was renamed to ALS in order to hide the fact that polio vaccines don't work."

However, science is not a doctrine. It's a process. It points to truth, but it doesn't produce truth as an end result. There is no end result. The results are endless, actually.

What word do I use to describe what I've been doing? I'm gardening, sure, but that makes it sound like I do things to plants, when mostly, the plants do things to me. I'm learning about the living things already around me. I've learned to identify so many plants, and I know about what role they serve in the ecosystem.

"Gardening" is a difficult word because it means planting things in the ground and tending to them, but plants plant and tend themselves. So since we have to use the word "gardening," we have to think of plants as either belonging to a garden or not, depending on whether a human put them there. Plants either grow on their own or a human, a "grower," "grows" them. Isn't it weird how that verb is transitive?

However, I understand now that even knowing the name of a plant is, in some way, "gardening" it, because it affects my behavior toward that plant, which is the thing that "gardening" is, just in a different amount.

Humans can transport seeds and plants, supplement nutrients and water, but this is just participation. A gardener doesn't create plants, they help them to grow. So it follows that any act of "helping" is also gardening—thinning out a stand of wild plants, moving a wild plant from one spot to another, choosing not to mow a wild plant down.

I have more of something than I used to. The thing that I have more of now is knowledge, but a lot of this knowledge isn't facts. Ecology is a science. Scientists study ecosystems. It is possible to know facts about ecosystems. But ecosystems are not made of facts.

I know that most people desperately need to know more about the ecosystems around them. They need to know about the plants and trees near them. I think this is literally essential to saving the world as we know it. But they don't need to learn facts—not just facts. They need to learn something Else.

For the past several months, I have been learning things that are not facts. I hesitate to call them skills. But they are like skills. Both gardening and plant identification are impossible to fully teach from a book or a written resource, because you have to know not what something is, but what it is like.

I rely on my senses—feeling the suppleness of a twig, the dampness of potting soil. Identifying plants is so hard starting out because the qualities that identify them best have to be experienced.

Back when I was first learning to identify trees, I discovered that there was a black walnut tree at the end of our road. I was just then entering the extremely frustrating reality of how many plants there are and how few photos of them at all growth stages exist on the internet. I didn't know what a fucking "petiole" was. Leaves all just looked like leaves and I wanted to cry.

But I tore a twig from one of the trees down at the end of the road, and I instantly knew it was a black walnut tree! And I couldn't describe to you how. I caught a whiff of the smell of the crushed leaves, and it pulled up a memory of the walnut trees at the farmhouse when I was a child, dropping their heavy green fruits all over the grass. I'm not even sure how to describe the smell. It's very fresh and spicy, but earthier and less "clear" than the word "fresh" would suggest.

And I identify a lot of plants in ways that you can't just...depict. Alianthus altissima, tree-of-heaven, is hard to draw or photograph in a way that lets you see through the picture what makes it distinctively Alianthus altissima. The best way to identify it is by its odor. Tear off a leafy twig and smell it—it smells exactly like peanut butter and the mustiness of a damp basement.

I am learning things that don't exist in books, that are specific to my immediate surroundings. The specific community of organisms found in my backyard, what they're doing. How my plant and animal neighbors are related, and how their relationships change.

I am learning just how little we know. There are so many plants, so many local plant communities. There are more relationships in an ecosystem than there are scientists that could possibly study them. I look up a question about a particular plant and there's just...nothing.

I have to use my own knowledge, my own observations. I have to do tiny science every day, where Big, Capital S Science can't help me. "Is this non-native plant harmful enough that it is better to get rid of it even if I can't replace it yet, or is it providing enough benefits to other organisms that it is better to let it stay?" Sometimes no website or book or article can answer this. Constantly I encounter this kind of question, and I have to observe and decide myself. I have to trust that I can be taught by my ecosystem, and that this knowledge is, in its own way, valid.

It is uncomfortable to be here. I want to convey my knowledge to others, but it sometimes feels almost pseudoscientific, superstitious. I want to be rational and rely on the experts, and teach other people to do so; I know that what "seems" right often isn't, and that personal observations are flawed, even useless, in many areas. But not only are these fuzzy, instinctual observations sometimes all we have, they are an essential skill that is needed to save our world.

There's also the fact that research doesn't happen fast enough to function all alone as a guide. Invasive species lists on state websites are basically decades out of date and not regionally specific enough. The Callery/Bradford pear tree, bane of my existence, is not "officially" designated an invasive species to my knowledge, and there is relatively little research on its role as an invasive species, but it is declared invasive, primarily by common consensus that it's Satan in tree form. Crowding and shading out other mid-succession shrubs and trees, forming thick, almost monoculture masses of ugly glossy foliage replacing whatever else would have grown there.

And the severe threat of the Bradford pear is specific to my region; its particular severity may be specific down to the square mile of land I live on. Some scientists may be studying it, but they're not studying my state, my county, my neighborhood.

It's insane how many TYPES of forests there are. You would think that within a specific biome and climate, a forest is a forest is a forest, but no. There are a bajillion specific associations of trees with specific relationships that form special ecosystems. It's insane how many types of moth there are, too. And it really blows your mind to look up a moth's host plants and read that we're not really sure of the full range of plants its caterpillars can eat.

You'll be reading something and it will say "We don't know this" but you will know, because you've seen it—and then you think to yourself, well, isn't that what people say about Nessie and Bigfoot and little green aliens? Can we trust what we observe for ourselves? Can we trust people to know what they see?

Maybe not—but we have to.

#learning #trees #plants #ecosystems #native plant gardening #gardening #science #knowledge #questions

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atdmoney1 · 1 year

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ATD Money - Instant Loans For Small Retailers

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#payday loans #quick cash loans #personal loans #business

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before-all-death · 2 years

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Chapter 2 page 50

FIRST PREV NEXT

So ends another chapter. It's another 3 panel split meant to show small glimpses of the main trio's current lives. I bet this is confusing tho. So lemme over-explain it for you.

The top is a fridge with a paper by Sarah with a big ol' "F" on it. Kinda a twisted thing for her mother to post on the fridge but she must think it'll motivate Sarah to try harder somehow. Btw her failing grade here is what the text she sent Sarah about back on like page 28. Her mom is super strict with her grades. Or at the very least won't tolerate any Fs in this house.

The middle is supposed to be Mike's laptop. I think he's on discord or something? Which makes this comic so displaced in time since it's supposed to take place in the 2010s but discord didn't exist then but as you can see by the timestamp there I finished this page in 2020. So. Mostly I couldn't think of what to show for Mike's panel. So I went with his computer cuz he definitely spends the majority of his time in his room online.

Lastly the bottom panel shows the dolls in the shoebox from Emily's room. Which I guess doesn't represent Mitch at all but as you just saw in the previous pages he's being comforted by his little sister rn.

Dang didn't even notice it but somewhere in this very chapter I started using a ruler. Turns out rulers make drawing straight lines a lot easier and faster! Crazy invention those rulers! Moving on!

#bad #before all death #comic #webcomic #chapter 2 #page 50

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staminaoverlook · 2 years

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Devlog 14/01/2022

Deadline was met 🙌

While hosting Development Stream #75 (thank you to everyone who attended ❤️), I finished Scene 5, combined all the animated bits together and produced a completed trailer. It was a bit late in the evening when I sent it tho (like... exactly midnight...), so I'm still waiting for any sort of feedback. It's interesting how, despite the fact that I have everything completed, I still have things to stress about and can't fully relax.

Speaking of things I need to stress about. I still have exams coming! And I need to concentrate on preparation and study, so devlogs will be a bit scarce these upcoming two weeks. If I'm lucky, I'll still get time for streams; and when that happens, we're getting full speed back into development, friends. ❤️

I will NOT be posting the full animated trailer online - for now. FOR NOW. Firstly, it's not polished. I had to cut many corners in order to meet the deadline, and I'm not happy with how some of the bits turned out because of that. I want to redo them before putting this baby of mine out there. Secondly... I feel like posting it now wouldn't really be appropriate? Considering the fact that this is a trailer for a game that doesn't exist anywhere outside of my laptop yet. Basically, I want to have a playable build ready first - and release the trailer in conjunction with it.

However, what I decided I can share is a highlight from Scene 5 that I finished today. Here ya go ❤️

(see those buildings in the beginning? yea, im not happy with those buildings.)

Also, I have done the math, and this entire trailer...🧐🧮 is at least 50% your support 🤗 without you and this awesome community, I would have never been able to accomplish the task of creating an entire animated trailer in a bit over 2 weeks. Thank you all guys so, so very much. ❤

This marks a new stage in the development process. I may talk about it more in the future. For now, I wish you all an incredibly pleasant Friday 🤗🤗🤗❤❤❤

#phantom of the opera #poto art #phantom art #poto #poto game #phantom of the opera game #poto game dev #opera ghost's love story

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spacetwinks · 2 years

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It's good to see you on here! I've always wanted to ask you as a long-time follower, first-time caller just how you deal with Twitter and all the dumb bullshit that goes with it? Specifically not caring about what people say about you, follower count, amount of positive reactions to your posts, etc.

It feels like Twitter has legitimately affected my mental health because all I ever get exposed to on there is CONSTANT negativity. Even from folks I generally tolerate. I would love to just stop using it, but everytime I try it feels like I'm missing out on a lot. Plus it's where most of my friends are.

How do you shut out the voices in your head that make that website a goddamn nightmare?

part of it is just curation of who you're following, actively muting certain terms and phrases that might make things bad for you in your head, having a locked account for venting shit (this is one i think is crucial because sometimes you still want to post just to get bad energy out of you but you need a space where it won't be seen by EVERYBODY - maybe just a few people, or maybe even just yourself, tho in the latter i'd recommend getting a regular ass journal for that purpose), all that sort of regular social media stuff but part of it is for me, personally... i just had a break a long time ago with wanting to be The Funny Guy.

because i’m me, this is gonna get long. bear with me.

it's something i actually brought up forever ago on tumblr itself, and how i approached this platform in contrast to my existence in other online spaces before it, my approach would be I Just Post. from serious shit to funny shit to dumb shit, i just let it out of my head, emptying it out. in times WAY long ago in my personal life i would want to be The Funny Guy because that was how i saw myself as having value, which pushed me into unhealthy patterns, needing to 'perform', needing to be 'on', and losing my own sense of value if i wasn't making people laugh, wondering if i'd be pushed out of friendships or social spaces if i let my true self out. i'd keep all sorts of my real feelings inside of me and just simmer with awful thoughts because i had to be The Funny Person, at least that's how i thought of it at the time.

so i fucking ditched it. it wasn't healthy for anybody, not for me, not for the people who came to see me as The Funny Guy either and what preconceptions they might have of me because of it. this also lead to giving less and less of a shit about having high follower counts or whatever. people get it really twisted 1. what a high follower count *actually* is and 2. what it means, materially, for the person who has it. i got 27k on twitter and to someone who doesn't have 1k followers on twitter, yeah, that'll seem like a lot, but here's the thing:

follower counts don't pay bills. follower counts don't help you eat. the only time these numbers are materially useful to me in any way is when i have something new to sell, a twine, a pack of photos, or whatever. and even then, i still have to regularly advertise that stuff, because this relative high follower count doesn't automatically translate to success, to money, whatever. a lot of the people following me are a lot like me: they do not have a lot of money to pass around. this isn't the pre-'08 crash era where we're all tossing 5 bucks at some webcomic's paypal donation bar to get some 800x600 computer wallpapers, everything costs more and everybody has less disposable income. people with a lower amount of followers have, i think, an understandable assumption that high follower count = something materially beneficial, but... no, not really. if we all had more disposable income again, maybe.

but we don’t.

and i'd be fucking miserable if i approached my online presence that way too. just trying to get more followers, focusing solely on that above all else, to get bigger to achieve - what? i get a couple more freelance writing job offers that pay 50 bucks to, at most, 300 dollars? fucking god awful, man. that's not a life i wanna live.

also, seriously, digging in more into how 'high follower counts' are relative: it's not just that my numbers are nothing compared to actual literal celebs, but they're also frequently nothing compared to, say, some random fursuiters i might've never seen before, who are, again, themselves nothing in follower count compared to actual celebs. i think sometimes fixate on a random person who SEEMS popular and get lost in how that 'popularity' can be extremely relative. it's good to step outside of it and see where other people are much, much more popular, and then also to check if THAT greater popularity actually translates into something material for the person with it. it's less common than people tend to assume!

same goes for the ‘not caring what people say about me’. it’s not a ‘haters gonna hate’ deal, it’s ‘sometimes people just won’t like you’. some people just won’t like me. that’s fine! maybe it’s because they think my jokes suck, or i post too much/am too longwinded (these are incredibly justified reasons to dislike me in particular, i do post too much and am too long winded), or for whatever reasons. so long as someone isn’t like trying to start shit with me over it, it’s... whatever, y’know? there’s people i just don’t like too. trying to make it so Everyone Likes Each Other or Trying To Make Everyone Like you is disastrous for everyone’s mental health, especially one’s own. i’d very much rather not end up like fucking amanda palmer obsessing over some Guardian reviewer who didn’t like her work, or a YA author finding some student from several years ago mildly dunking on their books in the article of a small town college newspaper and blowing their top over it. and some of those fuckers - like amanda palmer there - actually make a SHITLOAD of money. they could be jet skiing all the time on a private island, but instead they just fuck themselves up over the fact that some random critic didn’t like their music. not healthy for amanda palmer - or for the critic!

other thing about twitter: it’s the fucking Id of social media platforms. no other site is more ‘everyone is just dumping out what they’re feeling with zero thought for curation’ than twitter. it’s just not designed with curation in mind! i’ll post about whatever the fuck comes to mind, because it all gets into the ‘waterfall’ of people’s feed, people EXPECT things to be all over the place on twitter, ESPECIALLY if they follow a lot of people. someone following 2000, 3000 people, and i’m one among them? my thoughts are just one of many, bursting forth and then disappearing into the flooded ether among the rest! i don’t worry about being ‘consistent’ or having a ‘presence’ because twitter isn’t built for it nearly as well as anything else. i talk about depression, beat ‘em up video games, communism, and which version of master splinter i think is the hottest, maybe all of them in the same day, and it’s just fuckin’ whatever. i find it personally so much preferable than trying to ‘be’ some particular performance, like being ‘the funny guy’ how i used to.

also: right now? twitter is gonna be a lotta negativity in particular! the world is in all sorts of fucked up flux emergency states right now and worse yet for many of us there’s no structure in our lives that actually values and gives time for us to pour out our grief and worry and fear in a healthy way and with the dedicated time necessary to do so. it’s all just sorta scrunched into one fucking cube. some people will handle it okay-ish, for various reasons. i think i do okay-ish, largely because i’ve just been extremely online since i was a kid and i’ve absorbed so much poison that i’ve immunized against a lot of it and process it different. other people won’t handle it as okay-ish, and there’s... nothing wrong with that! not the fault with them for not being able to handle it, but the fault of our societal structures that they don’t give us any real means to handle it but just ‘rugged individualism’ bullshit.

if going cold turkey sounds too much for you right now, i’d say instead just take large steps back from it instead of throwing it out completely, cut down your numbers of who you’re following and/or temporarily deploy more tactical mutes, make a locked account for brain venting purposes, and put more time and mental energy into fulfilling hobbies elsewhere during times you’d spend more on twitter.

you can’t eat twitter clout, you can’t pay bills with it, caring about ‘getting big’ on twitter or w/e is bad for the self and for others. dramatically reassess and change how you interact with that website, find ways to do so that are better for yourself, build other means of communities with your existing friends (and making new ones), do what’s right for you. take care, anon.

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mocacheezy · 3 years

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Things that made watching Transformers (2007) easier and even enjoyable:

[note: B'verse gets the treatment that it gets by fandom for good reasons. There are tons of posts that dissect the bullshit of these movies far better than my second-language-english-non-american self could ever tackle, so I am not doing that, or plan on doing that. But if I decide that I'll get through every continuity of the franchise I will find a way to make it fun for myself. And so, this is my search for golden nuggets in these movies, because they did bring in new fans to the franchise and that's why we have other continuities that we might not have otherwise. Credit where it's due, and some positivity for those that did find B'verse at least amusing if nothing else. ]

🍴🥄🔪🍴🥄🔪🍴🥄🔪🍴🥄🔪🥄🔪🍴🥄🔪

Frenzy

Anytime Frenzy was on screen made me smile because his movements and personality were hilarious, he is just so expressive despite looking like someone super glued a bunch of knifes together. I wouldn't know it was Frenzy if I didn't go to the Wiki, but no matter that, he was funny and that's what matters.

The original Cybertronian robot modes

We don't see them for long, but the glimpses were glorious. Just look at Optimus

Gorgeous. What I wouldn't give to see the details up close. Maybe I'll go looking eventually, but this is just so nice.

We also get a "sexily rises from the pool" scene with Ironhide (probably unintentional and I am biased due to being a robofucker. In any case, very very nice and Cybertronians look so good as aliens)

"Excuse me, are you the Tooth Fairy?"

You see this kid?

This little girl was the only human I cared about in the movie until I saw just how badass Mikaela is, and how cool the military dude is. I don't like kids, but I would lay down my life for this girl.

This one scene just makes me think of what would happen if her parents showed up way earlier. Ironhide would be her guardian and it would be both adorable and hilarious because "Honey, you have to drive in a sentient alien that looks just like our car because the goverment men said so or there will be consequences and potential alien threats."

There are so many joke potentials there; the cultural barrier, the "I am the ine that is supposed to keep her safe" glaring contests, there is just so much shenanigans that could happen.

Also, tea party with the kid. Tea party with the kid.

Sam Witwicky actually reacts like an average human would when faced with the situations he finds himself in

Do I like Sam Witwicky? No, he is the kind of character that I would want to punch irl because of his personality and actions. He is disgusting. But watching him scamper and scream and stutter when faced with giant metal robot aliens that can squish him like a bug? Good, that was a beliavable reaction and I enjoyed it a great deal.

Megatron. Just, ✨Megatron✨

(the best screenshot of the few I could take while watching, no, I am not going back for a better one, he looks perfect like this)

I also laughted at how they kept him frozen like a popsicle. And not even well, like, they COULD'VE made an actual freezer and pop him in instead of using those couple of tubes just so he was displayed for all personell to gawk at. HE CRASHED IN THE ANTARCTIC!

The design looks so good, because it looks ALIEN and POINTY and AGH!!! The colors? There are no colors that would make him stand out, he looks like someone opened a cutlery drawer, mixed up what's inside, threw in some extra knifes for a good measure and then shook the whole thing until this guy materialized from the pile. It is both incredibly annoying and satisfying.

🔪

Mr. Welker did an amazing job with his voice, I don't know what the directions were, but oh man it sure sent shivers down my spine. That is the kind of voice that spells "You are going to die" and I already have my coffin picked out.

EDIT: SO APPARENTLY! IT WAS NOT WELKER THAT VOICED MEGATRON.

It was Hugo Weaving, and yes the man did am amazing job, but I apologize a million times, I was CERTAIN that THE OG VA OF MEGATRON WOULD ALSO HAVE VOICED MEGATRON. LIKE, OKAY BAY, OKAY!

🔪

LOOK AT THE AMOUNT OF ICE! With how quick he came back fully online once Frenzy turned off the freeze liquid tubes, I bet he was half awake through the whole thing. Systems just below idling or something, in any case, AGENTS YOU ARE SO DUMB! WHO WAS GIVING SUBPAR FUNDING TO THEM, THEY BETTER BE FIRED!

I also was glad that Sam refused to call him by the name the sector asigned to him, despite Megatron being in stasis. And that he insisted they use the correct name. Good job Sam, acknowledge the threat by the actual name and show respect to a fellow sentient lifeform. Even though said lifeform is hellbent on destruction of the universe and your world.

ALSO, AND I CANNOT STRESS THE LAUGHTER AND AMUSEMENT HERE; the sheer DISRESPECT! They don't disassemble Megatron's corpse. No, these idiots, these absolute morons decide to dump him into the ocean, letting him sink to the lowest possible point (not sure if they did say it was the M' Trench or not), where there are proper freezing temperatures - good! You're learning, good job!! - just... In full. Full corpse. What's left of him. Just blup! Down with the fishies he goes!

I understand that they probably didn't know how to approach Optimus about it, but... At least behead the guy. He came back ONCE, who is to say he won't come back again?! Safety precautions my dears.

They also completely disregard what a giant extraterrestrial metal alien rusting away on the bottom of the ocean could do to the ecosystem at large. Like, I find this incredibly amusing, because this ISN'T something most folks think about when watching a movie but we have giant squids down there. We have so much weird things down there, the ocean isn't even fully explored AND YOU WANT TO CHUCK AN ALIEN CORPSE DOWN THERE?!

Now the real question: is he a looker? *looks at the pictures* hmmmm, depends on if you like knifes. Like, really like knifes. Like really, really REALLY want to get it on with a fine assembly of kitchen knifes that were exposed to the elements but somehow haven't rusted away completely.

I think he's neat.

Needs a good long powerwash though. Preferrably with something to help the whole "I was frozen for more than 50 years and sprang back to action as soon as I woke up" thing that happened.

My man needs to take a moment and get his bearings, like dude. Please. You can conquer the world after some energon and slow system boot-up period. The strain on the systems my dude, you ain't young.

Also love that this "death" was probably reused in TFP because lord golly, do we love our faves ending up under the sea. (Though Megan took a much bigger fall, Bayverse WAS PLOPPED INTO THE WATER LIKE A NEWLY ACQUIRED FISH I CAN'T YOU GUYS I CAN'T!)

In short: I love the comedy of american military giving such disrespect to an Alien Warlord. These guys are really sealing their fate.

I loved the way they got the Witwicky family to be important to the plot

The whole "selling my great great grandpa's glasses on e-bay" thing gives us a very good self insert/OC/rewrite/movie AU potential. Don't like Sam and his disgustingness? Find a way to write a cousin or some far off relative or hell, even just someone who buys the glasses off e-bay and go wild with it!

Archibald was also clearly an inspiration for Isaac Sumdac as far as I can tell, what with both of them using Megatron as a means of helping technology advance.

Only difference being one of them lived and actually talked to Megatron after he came back online and the other got driven to madness and death due to the amount of information beamed into his brain. Isaac also acquired a space baby daughter, so the guy is absolutely luckier of the two.

Mikaela being fucking competent and badass throughout the movie, and not being just fanservice eyecandy

I could do without the fanservice, but her personality? I loved it. I loved that she wasn't crawling to Sam and wasn't being "hard to get". Which is also why I was very displeased at the very sudden "oh yeah, romance! She returns his feelings after he took her for a ride and let her vent her frustrations!". The movie is 2 hours long and they could throw in some moments where these two connect?

Welp, it is an action movie, boy gets girl no matter what, can't complain about the staple in the genre.

However, Mikaela x Optimus? Now THAT is something I considered as soon as the two locked eyes and interacted. Like, even taking my shipping goggles off, these two could have a very interesting dynamic and Mikaela could be a very good protagonist. I wonder what the movie would be like with her as the lead and Sam being the fucking moron she has to drag along with her.

BUT ALSO! Can we talk about the horrible, excruciating fact that her and Bumblebee drove around with Bee's damaged legs dragging over asphalt all the time he was shooting at 'Cons? There were sparks flying! SHE WAS DRIVING BACKWARDS! She took command of the situation and did what she could because Bee still wanted TO FIGHT!

Also, they way she beat up Frenzy? Gorgeous, I want to slap Sam's non-existent balls off for not atleast saying "thanks". The dude would be sliced thinner than cabbage if she wasn't there.

The millitary man we are supposed to care about because his wife gave birth while he was on duty and we see his baby three times in the whole movie, actually being a pretty awesome and well-written character

Look, personally, I was a little confused at the reason why we were seeing his wife and baby interacting/the scene where she thinks her husband is dead. Mostly because I don't like kids, so scenes like that, when I don't even know who the character is, have no impact at all. Him having a baby isn't going to make me like the guy more, unless I know his character. Him being absent because he's on duty doesn't mean he'll be a good dad (though he looks like the kind of man that will try his best, and I like that in a man). So seeing his wife and kid at the start of the movie seemed pointless to me.

BUT! FOCUSING ON THE POSITIVES HERE!

Lennox is a good character and whenever he was on screen I was invested in what is going to happen to him. He's the kind of action movie lead that would have me invested, despite my meh interest in mainly gun fight oriented action movies.

Essentially, loved the guy, would love to see more of him while also being able to tell what's happening on screen. Also the comedy scenes he was in were usually funny.

Okay so these are the things I like about the first movie! It was very long, had to watch it on 2,5x speed because it simultainously dragged while ALSO giving me too much information, but the moments like these and the way my imagination latched onto characters I liked made it watchable. It isn't a movie I'd use to introduce someone to the TF franchise, but it provided me with lots of material for my imagination to run wild.

#moca watches #transformers #transformers bayverse #moca screeches #Yes the cutlery divider is due to the Decepticons looking like they do. It amuses me greatly.

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