#like I just can't grok it

[aeide-thea]

obviously, you know, other people have real problems, but—i do every once in an indigo moon wonder what it's like to have a culture/heritage you actually feel connected to

#just thinking abt like. the idea of learning a language that actually means something to you *personally* for heritage reasons #like everything i've learned was just like. i thought it sounded neat. even the german doesn't really feel like ~connecting with my roots~ #even though i guess *technically* it is #and like—people have written a lot about how like. the flip side of white privilege is getting disconnected from everything specific #like afaik i'm some sort of mongrel mishmash of english and irish and german and did any of that make it through to me? nope #i mean i guess you could make a case for like. irish catholic ideas abt Suffering and english protestant ideas abt Suffering probably #but like. literally we do not have family traditions. period. we don't have a community. period. #anyway i hope it's clear i'm not saying other people have it better! just like. hashtag the costs of Whiteness #and in many ways the biggest cost is that i'm SO separated from the whole concept that i can't even really grok the cost

[golvio]

Zant is a Dualie main who never learned how to properly dodge roll.

#this idea brought to you by toru minegishi being the composer behind zant's boss theme and the splatoon soundtrack #splatoon #legend of zelda #loz thoughts #zant #as a fellow lover of dualies who still can't quite grok how to control dodging i can sympathize #ganondorf is the anchor teammate with either a hydra splatling or an e liter #who's screaming at zant to stop super jumping to the front lines and immediately dying #he is behind cover for a reason zant! super jump to him! #meanwhile zant's just like 'i will earn splats for the glory of my dark god' without checking the turf map

[iii-days-grace]

i almost never say that I feel anxious about things, because the experience of having clinical anxiety and having a feeling about something are miles apart. i usually say that i have anxiety about it, as in an anxiety disorder, of which I have several.

ofc part of it is just people underestimating how bad it can be, like with any disability. but I think STRESS is a better way of communicating what it feels like to live with an anxiety disorder, not just "feeling worried" (or "feeling shy" for social anxiety).

all those jokes about stress giving you ulcers and stuff and people don't seem to realize this is what that means! and the shitty thing is that navigating life with these disorders just makes you MORE STRESSED, which compounds the problem.

#original post #anxiety disorders are to feeling worried what feeling scared is like to post-traumatic stress disorders #depression is a little harder to compare #again its the thing of like: people mostly get better from whatever illness or bad feeling they've had so they can't grok that you're just #Like This. all the time. #dysfunction junction #anxiety is a bitch #i feel like such a baby even talking about my anxiety disorders even though i really am disabled by them at times (even physically). #not just because of this stuff from people who dont have anxiety disorders but because it's assumed that like #depression and anxiety are the baseline 'vanilla' mental illnesses or something.

[bitterkarella]

Midnight Pals: Hackin'

King: i can't believe elon's grok is pretending i'm friends with him King: i need to stop that AI before everyone believes it! King: i've got to hire a hacker King: franz, you've got to help me Franz Kafka: what? me? Barker: steve, no

Kafka: i'm not a hacker King: oh i thought franz was a hacker Barker: what gave you THAT impression? King: you know, with the cat ear headphones and the striped thigh socks Barker: no steve that's something ENTIRELY different Kafka: n-no it isn't, on second thought yes I'm totally a hacker

Kafka: it means i'm a hacker, nothing else Barker: sure franz Kafka: it does! it totally means i'm a hacker! Barker: franz, go play with your blahaj plush, the adults are talking here

Barker: you know who you need? you need william gibson Barker: the best hacker money can buy King: william gibson? how do i contact him? Barker: you don't Barker: he'll contact you

King: can you really hack grok, william? William Gibson: [wearing black duster and fingerless black gloves] my hacker name is shadow gigabyte King: oh sorry Gibson: can i hack grok? listen kid i was cyberbyting the megabyte mainframe when you were just rebooting your motherboard mouse data bandwidth modem email King: wow!

Gibson: my CPU is a neural net processer, a learning computer King: wow he really sounds like he knows what he's talking about! King: that definitely sounds like hacker talk to me Gibson: CD Rom Gibson: internet Joe Hill: dad can i talk to you for a second King: not now joe daddy's hiring a hacker

Gibson: [wildly slapping keyboard] i'll re-index the mega bit blaster cyber codex Gibson: [wildly slapping keyboard] now we'll cybersecurity the lock box data center King: hey what happens if you push that button? Gibson: what the-- no!! [klaxons sound] King: what's that mean? Gibson: shit Gibson: we've got company

Gibson: sentient cyber virus electronic guard cyberbots Gibson: real high tech Gibson: state of the art in bio-tech wetware neural-data scrapers Gibson: [putting on sunglasses with red laser scope] and they ain't friendly

King: what are we going to do?! Gibson: kid, you keep your hands to yourself unless you wanna become roadkill on the information super highway!!! Gibson: hold on to your CPU (central processing unit)!!!

Gibson: [wildly slapping keyboard] gotta reconfigure the darkweb logistics for ethernet wavetech Gibson: [wildly slapping keyboard] upload the memory downloader for dumpware backup Gibson: [wildly slapping keyboard] uncodify the cyberpatch modifer aaaaand Gibson: i'm in

King: wow, you hacked twitter?? how did you do it? Gibson: the greatest hackers never reveal their secrets [earlier] Gibson: [wearing fake mustache] hey elon its me catturd Gibson: could you give me your password? Elon Musk: sure it's "picklerick420"!

#midnight pals #the midnight society #midnight society #stephen king #clive barker #franz kafka #joe hill #william gibson #elon musk

[jupitermelichios]

Hey, we need to talk about the way Batfamily fans write Cass using ASL, because a lot of it is really fucking ableist

But Cass can't speak, of course she needs to sign!

Not true! There is nothing physically wrong with Cass's vocal chords or mouth, there's nothing in her brain stopping her from making sounds, and she is not an elective mute. She actually learns to speak individual words really quickly after she puts herself into an environment where that's a useful skill. Basil teaches her to quote huge chunks of Shakespeare in Nu52, and that's easier for her than forming simple sentences. That would definitely not be the case if she had any physical limitations on her speech.

Cass's disability is that she was not taught any language, and so she is having to grok the entire concept of language from the ground up. Grammar and syntax; tonality; how to combine words to convey more complex ideas; how putting two words next to one another can change their meaning; how to break down a whole idea into the individual parts needed to turn it into words; the fact that people's words might not line up with their tone and body language so you have to pay attention to both; how to tell if someone wants a response or is stating a fact; how to work out meaning from context if a word is new or someone has an unfamiliar accent; how to know if someone is using a new word or if they actually just have an unfamilar accent and all the ways words can be bent and changed before they become something new; the fact that two words can use the same sounds but have the same meaning; the fact that there can be two different words that mean the same thing. This is all stuff she didn't learn as a baby, and not knowing it would be just as much an impediment to learning ASL as learning English (for accent, swap out things like having limited movement in their hands, or having learned slightly different forms of the same sign, using a lot of home-signs etc, it's the same concept in a different medium).

There is no language on earth Cass wouldn't have these problems with. ASL is not any kind of shortcut.

But she reads body language, and ASL is kind of like body language right?

Not true, also pretty abelist! Just as the sounds which make up spoken language are essentially arbitrary (there's no objective reason why the sound "gud" should mean good, English speakers just all agree it does) so most of the signs in ASL are arbitrary! There's no reason for

to mean good. ASL users just all agree that it does. Cass knowing body language would not help her any more with ASL than it would with English, and if anything, it might make it harder, because sign uses the whole body and therefore changes the way people use body language so unless she saw a lot of ASL users as a child (and there's no particular reason to think she did), she would have to adjust what she knows about body language to account for those differences!

But she signs in the comics!

Nope! She uses hand gestures to communicate sometimes, but that's not signing. Pointing at food and miming eating to convey hunger is not sign. Pretending to punch someone and pulling it at the last second to convey you could hurt them but won't (Cass's actual first communication with Bruce in the comics) isn't signing. I've done the point and mime thing in countries where I didn't speak the language, that does not mean I knew that country's native sign language!

But she learns ballet, that's like a physical language, so sign is the same thing!

Nope! Also low key kinda abelist. Dance is a method of communication, but it isn't a full language. There's almost no grammar or sentence structure, the vocabulary is extremely limited, and also you can just make up new dance moves or use moves from different styles of dance together and still convey your meaning (you cannot just make random gestures or use BSL and expect ASL users to understand you, because they're full complex languages). Cass vibes with dance pretty hard, but that's precisely because it isn't a language, it doesn't require any of the skills she struggles with in order to communicate emotion.

But ASL isn't like a real language, it's not as complex or nuanced as spoken English so it would be easier for her to learn

That is so fucking gross I don't even want to have this conversation with you. Go and sit in the timeout box and think about what you've just said, and then commit to doing better.

But I just think that once she learned it, she'd like using ASL because [it's very expressive/she's used to her world being very quiet/she can use it on stealth missions more easily/etc]

Valid, understandable, have a lovely day

But I'm writing an AU were she uses ASL because her backstory is too comic-book-y to fit in no-capes AUs but I didn't want to erase her communication difficulties so I've written her as having a different disability

Cool. Send me a link when you're done.

But what if I write her using makatong?

(For context, makatong is a form of sign developed for people who have intellectual or phsyical disabilities that affect language use, which uses more descriptive signs which require less precise hand possitioning than other sign languages, and which has very simple grammar, making it easier to learn than ASL). Yes this would be easier for her, because it's intended for people with similar difficulties to hers, but since her difficulties stem purely from a lack of experience which can be (and are, in canon) overcome with practise, it would be kind of needlessly limiting compared to her just starting out with very simple spoken language, and wouldn't give her as many chances to develop those language learning skills. Makatong is also not mutually intelligable with any other sign language, so she couldn't easily transition from that to ASL once she got used to signing, she'd have to start learning it from scratch.

But I HC her as deaf

There is 0 comics evidence to support that, but it's a headcanon, so who cares. You do you. Have fun.

But learning sign language would be better than learning to speak anyway because it's a universal language!

That is not even slightly how it work. Go read the wikipedia article on sign languages around the world or something. Do some research.

TL:DR; Cass does not use ASL in the comics, and nothing about her disability or sign languages in general would make learning ASL easier or more convinent for her than spoken English. That does't mean writing her signing is inherently bad, but you should examine your reasons for doing it to ensure you're not just perpetuating ableist stereotypes about the language.

#cass cain #cassandra cain #batfam #batfamily #asl #tw: ableism #black bat #batgirl #batgirls #orphan

[ms-demeanor]

I've been going through the stuff my cousin left here (almost an entire bedroom's worth of stuff when she initially moved but we've managed to sell the crib and changing table and she gave a stroller and a playpen to friends) when she moved out a year ago; I'm posting a bunch of it online to sell and she says I can keep whatever I want from the pile. We are tremendously differently sized people but I don't think I'm going to need to buy a dress or a shirt or a cardigan for like ten years.

However I'm also going slightly insane. I think that I had intellectually understood that a huge part of fast fashion is people buying a ton of clothes that they don't wear more than a couple times but I didn't emotionally grok it until I filled five huge trash bags with all the stuff that wouldn't even be worth it to list but is still brand new (stuff like leggings and tee shirts that nobody is looking for on craigslist but that I would totally buy at a thrift store and that still has the original tags).

I haven't even started working on the toys left behind yet but I have no idea what to do with some of this stuff. It's just trash. Is there anything to do with stuff like happy meal toys and bouncy balls or should this all just go to the landfill? I feel horribly guilty for thinking about throwing away stuff that wasn't even mine. Does anyone have any advice about what to do with used crappy toys? (There are things like racetracks and those little toddler push cars and other stuff that we're either listing online or having a yard sale for, but I'm going nuts what do I do with a plastic knotts berry farm lunchbox full of coin machine toys?)

[i can't say anything about the clothes but in my cousin's defense about the toys she has asked all of the family to literally never give her children toys or clothes as gifts, only books, but their grandmother brings them over brand new toys every time she sees them, which is like four times a week so this isn't 100% my cousin's fault]

[performing-personhood]

I learned a kind of funny thing and I need to tell you bc it's important, cmere. Lean in so the others can't hear okay?

Ok so like

I know that the reason we are the way we are is because at some point we took up some space - as people do - and someone turned to us and went "whoa, excuse you! What do you think you're doing" or something, right? And they were, like, surprised and offended that we took up space and told us to stay real small and subservient? And we were pretty young, you and me, and we didn't really grok Peopling yet and so we assumed that everyone else was going to have that expectation too?

Okay I just learned: that isn't true at all, that person was just an asshole.

Babe. BABE. This is big.

Ok do you realize ??? that most people when they're around someone - anyone, this is important, it's an unconscious reflex and happens rather automatically - and that person is like "I have an opinion and desires and also some needs and I am going to express them openly" Did you realize, because I didn't, that most people completely intuitively go "oh! There's another person here! Lemme just scootch over so they fit better :)" PEOPLE MAKE ROOM FOR YOU.

People don't ignore us, when we're silently having wants and needs and waiting our turn to be noticed, they just have similar very loud brains and have no idea because beung corporeal is Distracting™️. Not only do people just need a reminder that you're there, they're totally happy to accomodate. In a distinctly "ope! My bad, lemme just- here-" sort of way.

My spouse has a loud brain and drowns it out with Mario Kart. I've spent most of my life quietly entertaining myself in all of these instances, because at some point someone told me I was supposed to "go play" and nobody wanted to play with me so I entertained myself right? Okay. Well I recently had a sea change and decided I was gonna pop my headphones in and watch TV on my tablet when he was doing his Mario Karting. Because the boy will easily go for four hours and I just spontaneously realized that it would actually be ridiculous if he got butthurt at me for putting some quiet tv on for myself instead of watching a grown man play the same video game for hours.

You know what happened? Not only did nobody's feelings get hurt, but I have never made it more than twenty minutes into a show before he ends a match and switches the console off. And I have never asked him to do so. When I'm over there doing my own thing with my own TV show like a person instead of just scrolling on my phone trying real hard not to exist, somewhere in his unconscious he goes "there's a whole other human being on the other end of the sofa from me. I want to turn this off and engage with that person!"

Okay do you understand what I am telling you??

When you behave like a human person and treat yourself like a human person, other people also instinctively treat you like a human person and they're happy to be reminded that they get to engage with you. The person in our past that reacted differently and got mad at us for being a person, plainly and simply: they were just being an asshole to us.

The people we love want to engage with us. Almost all of them!!! And not only that?? Most other human beings feel the same way.

Huge. Big huge.

Don't take my word for it baby cakes okay, take a sec and muster up the courage (it'll be scary the first time, but the thinking about it is always scarier than doing it I swear) and then get back out there and practice being your very own human person occupying human people space, around someone who loves you, and just... watch what happens. The first time someone warmly, graciously, voluntarily accommodates you is the greatest feeling a corporeal being can experience, and you deserve it too.

#recovering people pleaser #recovering from abuse #recovering from trauma #recovering codependent #recovering from cptsd #cptsd recovery #actually cptsd #just neurodivergent things #actually neurodivergent #mental illness #things I learned in therapy #therapy works

[ghelgheli]

17! but also using the opportunity of the ask game to get to know more about the effortless worldbuilding in sff :)

from the end-of-year book ask

17: Did any books surprise you with how good they were?

I think Three Body Problem is the only one meeting this condition this year so I'll have no trouble staying on topic :> but I'm gonna specifically talk about "hard" SF as I conceive of it—I haven't read any analysis so this may just be a jumble of improvised thoughts.

SF, being "speculative" fiction, of course has to take on the problem of speculating and of presenting things that don't (and perhaps cannot) happen. On average this is accomplished thru a healthy combination of scientific grounding and good-natured handwaving: I drop a few sentences about "quantum entanglement" and you go along with my ansible, or you tell me about "positronic circuits" and I agree that you can make a brain with them. This is the compact that makes SF work because you fundamentally cannot expect speculation without, well, ceding ground on reality.

But at least a subset of SF readers are of the kind to really want to grok how it is that this or that scientific feature of the world works or may come about. Every contraption and novel technology is like a puzzle to be riddled out. This is the place where speculation becomes sincere mechanical prediction, and it's why I love hard SF.

This subset of readers can be matched to a subgenre of writers who commit fully to filling in as many blanks in their technological, biological, etc. speculation as possible. The rows of astronomical data can't be left vague—tell me what frequency of light we're dealing with here—xenobiology isn't taken for granted—what is the neurology of your aliens??—and so on. The dots are connected, the rest of the owl is drawn for real, the image is made crisp. Like fireworks for the reader's brain.

When this kind of worldbuilding is executed well imo it looks effortless. Looks, not is, because behind every explanation of near-c travel is hours of research into at least special relativity and time dilation, along with calculations by-hand. Behind every account of an exoplanet's atmosphere is probably a few papers perused on the subject and several articles on scientific american. Peter Watts, in the note at the end of Blindsight, includes a fucking bibliography of a hundred or so references as well as thank-yous to many an academic he split handles of liquor with. And this is only the visible fragment of what has to be a library of knowledge accumulated both passively and actively to make a speculated world feel as concretely plausible as possible.

None of this is necessary for good SF. The aforementioned compact means any author can opt out of this commitment at any time. But it's what it takes to make tightly-written hard SF, where your conceptual hands are kept diligently at your side, waving an idea through maybe once every five chapters when you have no other choice.

So anyway, Three Body Problem is a tour de force in doing this and doing it cleanly. It uses a storytelling device a lot of hard SF employs to make it work: rather than stuffing dense exposition into narration (at which point, just read the source papers) it deploys a cast of characters who more than anything else, really know their shit. We get exposition trickle-fed through experts who are trying, along with us, to make sense of their novel environments and unfamiliar technologies using their knowledge of the present limits of human understanding. This is what Watts does in Blindsight too, by the way: a claustrophobic ship crewed by technical specialists makes first contact, so everyone has something encyclopedic to say about everything and it's only natural.

What astounded me about Cixin Liu's writing is that he made it work just when I least thought he would be able to. I was sure I was being shown things completely inexplicable and necessarily supernatural until he went and explained them in plain terms; better yet, he explained them in ways that made so much sense in retrospect that I was kicking myself for not seeing the answer. This has exactly the flavour of a good puzzle.

The trade-off hard SF makes is that you are often limited in the metaphorical/thematic work you can do through your speculation. I think the contrast between "calendrical science" in Yoon Ha Lee's Machineries of Empire series and Asimov's "psychohistory" illustrates this well.

Yoon Ha Lee has mathematical training, and calendrical science is a speculative field consisting of theorems, conjectures, proofs, etc. in the language of mathematics that stand in for cultural hegemony and power projection. This makes for a great operationalization of soft power: space is filled and distorted by the quantifiable effects of whatever regime is dominant there (the "calendar" here being synecdoche for culture writ large). But obviously he can't fill in the blanks of how a calendar causes spacetime distortions that specifically make one side's weapons more effective, or provide certain formations with shielding effects. This is, I guess, semi-hard (lol) SF—you can see how it's supposed to work, but it's clear that it just won't. What you get in return is pretty politically interesting storytelling.

Psychohistory is the converse: a deterministic-enough lovechild of economics and sociology explained in the Foundation series as using all the familiar methods of linear algebra and differential equations together with unfamiliar innovations of just how to quantify human behaviour in order to make reliable predictions. There are entire chapters dedicated to explaining the conceptual nuance that went into developing psychohistory ("the hand on thigh principle" from prelude to foundation is just about how the theory resolves divergence by reducing insignificant terms to zero) and an entire book to exploring one of its limitations. It's fascinating to read. But you also get little narrative depth out of it, because hard SF, even when done well, is not guaranteed to make a story thematically interesting or politically compelling. This is the Three Body Problem problem too: its political commitments are threadbare and unserious because that's just not what it's about. I couldn't recommend it on those terms, but that's not what I like so much about it. I will say the conceptualization goes a little off the rails in the final chapters, but I think most SF authors were in some kind of string theory inspired fugue state at the time.

What I would love to see (and I'm sure exists) is hard SF that also has interesting politics. Unfortunately that's an intersection of two already-narrow intersections.

ty for ask✨🐐

#ask answer #idk if that's what u were asking about but. well. #got some sleepy thoughts out #also this is not to say that there isn't tons of research in “soft” SF #it's just that it would be a different kind of research and a different library of knowledge

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

I plan to go back to school next fall, so I have a little ovet fourteen months to master all seven subjects. I won't need two full months for algebra 1; cracking open the first chapter, it's all stuff like "here's what a plus sign means" and "variables look like letters, but they really stand for numbers!"

It won't hurt to brush up on factorization, but I think I can bang this one out in a week or two. All the better, because calculus kicked my ass in high school and it's not gonna be any easier now that I'm my own teacher. I passed it once (by the skin of my teeth), but have forgotten almost everything about it in the last decade, so I'll need the extra time to really get it down pat. I have to be able to derive and integrate in my sleep if I'm to stand half a chance at earning an astrophysics major. Astronomy would be slightly easier, but not by much, so I may as well go for gusto. The very first class astrophysics requires is calc 2, so I can't enroll until I'm 100% sure I know calc 1 forwards and backwards. Physics too, but physics and calc feel like two sides of the same coin, so I'll try to work on them at the same time (again, I managed to pull it off once, I'm sure I can do it again).

Chances are these Dummies books will be insufficient for me to grok all this math in one year, so I'll end up buying more textbooks, workbooks, study guides, SAT and AP prep, etc. I had plenty of cram sessions in my first go around at college, but nothing quite like this. This will be a herculean undertaking compared to the easy-A humanities program I coasted through originally. I had no motivation back then, no drive, no goal for "the real world" upon graduating. I went to college because it was expected of me, and I was told I needed it to get a good job. What I wasn't told is that not all majors are created equal; there's not a lot you can do with an English degree besides, well, teaching English. I just hope 14 months is enough time, because I would really prefer not to take another year off; 2024 is the ten year anniversary of when I started college the first time, so it would mean so much more to me if I started again that August rather than put it off until 2025.

I guess it doesn't matter in the end. If I'm not ready, I'm not ready. I can't force myself to start an extremely advanced program before I've mastered the pre-reqs. If I need to start later, so be it. As long as I'm consistently working towards my goal, it shouldn't matter how long it takes.

#my plan #college #math #maths #algebra #algebra 1 #geometry #algebra 2 #trigonometry #precalculus #calculus #physics #calculus 1 #physics 1 #science #astrophysics #astronomy #i got this #2024

[textfromthelookout]

Did you hear of the news?

I have. :(

Everyone else has their tributes so, here, a summary of my experience with Dragon Ball.

I was in fourth grade art class. A kid had the February 2005 issue of Shonen Jump, back when Shonen Jump was still physically printed here. I recognized Atem on the front cover because the Blockbuster around the corner from our house had DVDs (I think they were DVDs and not VHSs then since I distinctly remember it having a menu and special features) of some of the later episodes of Duelist Kingdom and my brother and I watched them on repeat. So I was like oh, hey, what's this? They make books of that stuff? I don't remember the conversation but the kid ended up giving me that issue, and I took it home with me.

There were a LOT of significant, groundwork things happening in that issue, now that I think about it. We were just beginning to see Sanji truly in action against Pearl. The Dark Tournament was in it's early stages still with Roto fucking around and finding out against Kurama. Sakura shears off her hair in a move that rearranged sexualities the world over. The reason Atem was on the cover was because Yu-Gi-Oh Millennium World was just debuting its first and second chapter. Bleach wasn't even serialized yet. And Dragon Ball, of course, was also there, about a hundred and fifty chapters ahead of everybody else.

Keep in mind that this was my first experience with manga, period. So my very first experience with Dragon Ball opened on this:

and ended on this:

Yeah. Truth be told, at the time Yu Yu Hakusho piqued my interest more than Dragon Ball (a guy fighting with plants? how creative!) but I never did forget these chapters. I thought the art style was so different from the others.

At some point after this, probably between several months and a year and a half, the TV happened to be on one evening when Toonami was airing Dragon Ball Z. Oh hey, I said, I recognize that art, I know those characters. So I hung around and watched some of episode 281. Two things about watching that episode stick with absolute crystal clarity in my mind to this day. Firstly: Buu choking Vegeta out with his arm freaked me the FUCK out as a child. I could not tell you why I had a fear reaction to it but hey, there you go. The second is this:

Specifically I remember 'You died once. If anything happens to you now, you won't exist anymore. There'll be nothing I can do to bring you back.' Not precisely word for word over the years, but Schemmel's tone of voice on this particular lineread. If I had to guess I'd say it was because at that point in my life, uh, death was kinda permanent? So wait, what do you mean died ONCE. Doesn't that apply to everyone?

This still wasn't enough to get me super invested in it though, it just didn't seem like something that would appeal to me that much. So a couple years go by, I don't think about it all that much, and then of course, TFS hits the scene and drops DBZ Abridged. So you know. As a shithead middle schooler with a shithead sense of humor I thought it was the best damn thing since sliced bread. (My biggest character flaw is that I still think a lot of Season 1 is genuinely funny)

And that was really the extent of my interaction with the franchise for the next several years. Say what you will about DBZA but they did manage to put it all together such that someone who had a nonexistent concept of what the original context was could grok it with not a lot of effort. Some time in high school, I think I was around 15, I decided to bite the bullet and read all the manga, as much to increase the funny factor of DBZA as sheerly for the sake of being able to say I had. Stick it to the other weebs, y'know. Now they can't say I didn't know anything about good anime. This was unfortunately at a time when all that was available online were dirty poor-quality scans and questionable translations, but read it I did. I went 'yep, that sure is about what I expected', and proceeded to get on with my life. GT came and went, I looked up and saw Battle of Gods coming out and went 'oh hey that's still a thing huh', kinda was peripherally aware of all the divisiveness of Super as it was happening, didn't really pay it much attention, just stuck to DBZA and quite a lot of wiki-ing.

And then, this time of year about three years ago now, in the middle of conversation with @prophecydungeon, Dragon Ball somehow came up. Something to do with 'Even though I'm not hugely into DBZ's story or whatever Toriyama does have some great character designs' (yes I was referring to Vegeta and Future Trunks at the time, no i will not stop being predictable, yes i am a parody of myself). They eventually brought up the DBS Broly movie and said, and i quote: 'that was a solid 1.5h of unbelievably fun and wacky animation'. Having seen the Gogeta vs Broly part of it on twitter and been like 'damn that animation's kinda off the hook actually, good for them good for them', my response was to be like. Oh word? I've got a spare hour and a half to kill, sure, fuck it, why not, time to watch DBS Broly.

I think that movie was precision crafted to hit me in the hyperfixation, if we're being honest. Opening on a solid 20 minutes of Lore and Worldbuilding and then having most of the rest of the runtime being mindless slobberknocker fun by way of some of the hardest animation flexes ever? I was done for.

In summation. I have been aware of Dragon Ball for a lot of my life, in that its presence was pervasive and enduring as I grew up. I may have been late to the game of actually wholeheartedly enjoying it, but enjoy it I do. Dragon Ball is the roots of a vast tree of anime, and in reading it I began to understand why that is. I respect it for that, and I love it for that. My current fixation may have shifted, but as far as time devoted to one individual thing goes... it took me a year and a half to watch my way through all of the anime and read all of the manga. ALL of it. So there's something good in there, I'd say.

#rip to a legend #text from the mod #tangentially related: i am not actually dead #it's just that between school and my job and the pirate brainrot #(the previous four months of which was feverishly consumed with a 16k word project) #i have had neither time nor impetus to make dragon ball funnies #there is also the fact that my stupid autism brain is still fuming over the website changes #that have fucked up the Aesthetique of the text posts and made them much more annoying to get in a usable form #thus adding steps to what was a simple and comfortable process #and aforementioned idiot dumb brain has not stopped pitching a bitch fit over the inconvenience. #i know it's a stupid hangup. believe me i am fully aware. but there is so little i can do about it #so i am sorry about my long absence. i really truly am. #especially to the asks that have been chillin in my inbox for all this time now #it's just that they're interesting questions that deserve me giving 100% of my brainpower to them ya feel #i want to devote appropriate attention to these little funnies and not phone it in or half ass it LOL

[nerves-nebula]

Do you have any loveless/heartless characters? I think they're real neat <3

this post got superrr long lol. im avoiding my homework <3

so this is a complicated ask for me because my definition of "love" is intentionally different from a lot of more mainstream conceptions of it. love isn't a feeling to me, it's something you DO for people you care about, right? you make someone feel loved by doing things that show you care. you putting in that effort and correcting your behavior for their sake is love.

so in that way i don't consider any of my characters loveless. because to me Love is something you chose to do so nobody can really be loveless inherently, they're just choosing not to act loving towards someone.

HOWEVER, from what i've gleamed from a quick google search about loveless aros, it doesn't necessarily seem that being loveless is exclusive to my definition of love?

like, i'm seeing loveless aros talk about not having those kinds of feelings or doubting/opting out of western ideas of love that don't fit them. some talk about not forming that kind of "deep emotional bond" though I'm confused if they mean like.. in general, or just romantically. cuz i've never had a deep romantic bond but i've never really considered that an indictment of Love Itself so much as a type of love that I'm just not a part of.

some people are describing it as specifically romantic love that they know they can't feel. but then again some people are just using it to mean they reject "love" as a label for their emotions/experiences, so like. idk.

it feels like im on the exact same page as a lot of these people it's just that their conclusion was to throw out the word love and mine was to not accept the premise that romantic love is the highest or most important kind of love and focus on, like, other forms of love that are important to me. like my siblings and friends.

soooo i can't say any of them are loveless for sure, cuz i don't identify that way and i'm not sure i grok it yet.

HOWEVER,

I do have aromantic characters, if that's what you mean. though a lot of them are in weird psychosexual situations with each other (just cuz i dont wanna have sex doesnt mean its not fun for my characters to), though there's one or two healthy QPRs thrown in there.

tbh my understanding (or lack thereof) of romance seeps into all of my characters so even the ones who are supposedly in love are doing it with hints of aromanticism cuz like. i dont care what a crush is, yknow? there's only so far romantic tropes can take me before i tap out and just do my own thing.

but as for like canonically aro characters i've got Hondo & quinn, dotty, toasty, Thomas (you guys don't know Thomas yet lol she's a peach), Ezra and Pet (pet is a weird monster tho and Ezra is sort of dead so idk if that counts), Misha Mistaka, Pasiflora, and probably my new one, Benbeck.

I also consider Groe aroace but that's like, a whole thing. cuz Groe is mostly known for having been married to Maureno (one of my characters i explicitly consider allosexual, if not alloromantic) and their relationship takes front and center at every point sfsdf.

because even when i dont see it as romantic i LOVE to make characters lives intertwined and dependent on each other. due to my own personal issues. to be honest i dont think groe and maureno are "in love" i just think they're inextricable dependent on each other. i think their "romance" is an inherently aromantic one because it's not about romantic feelings its about their friendship and trust, which includes kissing and sex sometimes but isn't diminished when they don't do those things.

I don't think Groe feels romantic feelings but i get that two characters who ostensibly have their weird fucked up "romance" be the core thing going on in their life isn't exactly the aromantic rep that ppl are looking for. i mean, it is for ME, but not for everyone.

i guess im just not Good Aro rep tho, cuz im not interested in romance but i AM interested in finding a person who i know I can depend on for everything and share my life with, yknow? i want someone who i know will always be on my side.

and that looks the same to a lot of poeple as romance but the experience of it was way different. cuz i can be with them forever and never want to do more than kiss their forehead as a sign of affection and that'd be great for me, while i KNOW that's unthinkable for a lot of people.

but when writing my characters it's hard to really portray that internal difference. so i think ppl just assume it's romance, and like, that's fine i guess?

so like, groe and maureno fuck cuz it's fun and cuz they have unresolved issues but it's not crucial or even really important to their relationship- to the point that they care WAY more about who each other is hanging out with than who each other is having sex with.

but now i'm rambling about asexuality and stuff.. uhhh the point is YES i have aromantic characters NO I dont know if they're "loveless"

but if a character isn't aromantic or at least aspec that's probably cuz i made a concerted effort to think of them as such.

#nnstuff #ask #nnoc #arospec #aromantic #aro #groe caluna

[drdemonprince]

Finally watched Call Me By Your Name (mainly for the Sufjan songs). It's obviously a beautifully golden and green little film, and one where very little happens, which is fine for a romance but the actors' chemistry is lacking for me. I think Hammer and Chalomet both commit well to their parts, so I can't fault them on a performance level, and it's not that I think they handled being gay with any distance or squeamishness -- some moments like Chalomet's sobbing in the car and glowering over the flames in the ending are quite moving! But between the two men there's no real sizzle for me. Their flirtations early on are too cold for me to grok, even when they're textually obvious, and the sex scenes, while competently done, do nothing for me. For all the beauty and the tender moments precisely placed in the film, like swarovski crystals positioned with tweezers, in the end it's just inert. All in all the film is like a beautiful music box: a lovely sparkling sweet sounding thing that's kinda just empty inside, but does make you sad.

[thewickedkat]

i can't help but think that some folks were expecting...less humane more hubristic PCs here. not that the hubris isn't present (because it very much is; all of our characters see events in terms of themselves first and foremost and think of how the world affects them; yes, even Zerxus), but i think some were expecting to see the grandiose, sweeping arrogance emblematic of many wizards in d&d.

instead, they're just folk. granted, they're incredibly powerful, inherently magical and wondrous folk, with the equivalent of bottomless money at their fingertips, but still. just...people. who have no idea of what is coming. and why should they? everyone's focus is narrowed to the realm of their own experience and interpretation: Laerryn is cock-a-hoop with glee at the possibility of...doing whatever she's been faffing about with? Loquatius is focused on branding and networking and keeping his monopoly on news locked down. Patia is neck-deep in wizard guild dramacide. Nydas is busy being a hypercapitalist. Cerrit and Zerxus, to be honest, are the only two of the party who can start to see how pieces of this Rube Goldberg Apocalypse Engine go together--but even then, they don't see what we the audience sees (esp those of us who have been picking up on the lil easter eggs laid out). they don't know that they don't have all the pieces, they don't know what they don't know--and why should they? when a catastrophe is unfolding, we only see all the pieces in the aftermath. and we point and say 'o noes how could they not See' well because when you're so close to it, it looks just like any other day. a day with quirks, sure, but just another day ending in -Y.

and we did not expect the families of our players. sure, there's a shared history amongst them all, but families? loved ones? kids? i remember when people were shocked in C2 when Veth revealed she had a husband and a child. suddenly the stakes are more real. actions will have consequences outside of the party.

all of those children bouncing through Avalir will die. all of them. Brennan knows this and is reminding us every chance he gets. that man does not fuck around. he understands the stakes, what can happen in catastrophes and wars, and he sure as shit groks what a god is to a mortal.

i do not think our PCs understand what a god really is--look at how their society views the Matron of Ravens! as if ascension to godhood, divinity, apotheosis is just something you do before afternoon tea! like it ain't no thang! and their society, like it or not, does influence how they perceive things around them: exhibit A, how Purvan was 'welcomed' and treated. i mean--fuck, i am a dyed-in-the-wool Agnostic to hell and back, but if someone came round and was introduced to be a Champion-with-a-capital-C of a god? i might not believe but i sure as shit wouldn't be rude about it! at least have some fucking manners, rich tit wizards! cos that's just tempting fate!

someone else here on tumblr (forgive me, i read much good cronchy meta last night before sleep and i can't remember who wrote it, apologies) mentioned that disconnect between the gods and the citizenry of Avalir. that (and i'm paraphrasing) the gods are just basically seen as...mortal plus. mortal with spice. and i think that person was bang-on accurate in that assessment: there's anthropomorphising your deities in order to make them seem less Awesome, less terrifying; and then there's making them more like us so that we could tear them from the heavens. to make them killable. both aspects can be dangerous. especially in d&d because the gods have teeth (so to speak), and actively participate in the Prime Material plane. member that whole parable about being welcoming to strangers, in case they're an angel or god in disguise? d&d gods are like that but moreso. and i think the citizens of Avalir do not see that. at all.

as for the Betrayer Gods and the whole 'whom were they betraying?' well. we do know that history is indeed written by the winners--or, in this case, those on the ground who survived and had any context whatsoever for what City life was like--and we also know that villains seldom see themselves as the Bad Guys. they might know that others see them as Bad and Not-Good and Big Big Meany Dookyheads--but themselves? seldom. they have reasons, justifications, through-lines of logic to explain why they are doing what they do (monster-logic but logic nonetheless). it doesn't matter if their contemporaries agree with them, much less mortals. i do not think there's going to be a woobification of the Betrayer Gods (and i wouldn't want one, either; sometimes we just need villains who are villains and we don't always need to soften their jagged edges, thanks), but if we get a supplemental narrative for what their angle is on this whole CalamityFest is? i'm down.

i will probably have more pointless rambles as this miniseries progresses, but so far i am enjoying the ever-loving shit out of it. last night was a roller coaster of me being riveted, flapping around like a wounded duck, and screeching gleefully into cushions so as not to wake my partner. and i can't wait for more.

#critical role #cr spoilers #exu spoilers #exu: calamity

[quetzalpapalotl]

I do have to admit that aircee is more about what Aileron can do for Arcee than vicerversa. But I don't think this really matters since Aileron does get something out of the relationship, and Arcee not only has more protagonism (she's kind of the deuteragonist of Barber's works), she is the thesis statement character. Everything regarding her is very important for the themes of exrid/op as a whole and Aileron fits very neatly into that.

You see, from the beginning of ExRID Arcee is trying to be better. She got to kill Jhiaxus over and over again which was very cathartic (good for her) and once she scratches that itch she figures, well, there must be something better than this.

Arcee has a hatred for Cybertron that is born from both, the fact that she has never fit in and a reflection of her own self hatred. They have both always been drenched in violence, Arcee was there on the first expansionist expedition and she has never quite forgiven herself for it. She hates the Decepticons for keeping this up (and being even better at it), she hates Cybertronians for maintaining this cycle.

So it's important to note that Arcee working for Prowl was actually her trying to do better. This is all completely voluntary on her part. It's just that well, she's only good at violence, so she trusts Prowl to direct her in order to help Bumblebee.

Arcee likes Bumblebee, Arcee explicitly says that she admires what Bumblebee is trying to do, even if she can't be a part of it. So yeah, supporting Prowl in supporting Bee from the shadows must be the way to go. Because Bee is not someone she gets. And Bee tries to be nice to her, but he's also put off by her attempts at friendliness.

Arcee is desperately lonely, but she struggles to recognize this. She also doesn't think that she's someone that can have friendships to begin with. So she tries to bond with people that she feels could get her, people she can have camaraderie with. Unfortunately because she's Like That, the people she ends up relating to have their own universe of emotional baggage that also makes them suck at relationships (this is where I would insert the Impactor/Arcee agenda, but that's another post).

This is most clear with Sideswipe who keeps shutting her attempts at bonding down and it literally took him dying to admit they're friends. Sideswipe is as much of a bloodknight as Arcee is, but he still wants to think he's different from her. Sideswipe admits to missing the war and the easiness of punching your troubles only with nonchalance. He doesn't want to admit how lost he is without war, without violence, how unfit he is for peace. That would mean that there's something wrong with him and not the state of affairs. Arcee can correctly identify she and Sideswipe are of a similar disposition, but admitting to ther connection for Sideswipe would mean admitting to many other things Sideswipe is not ready for.

Something similar goes on with Prowl. Prowl is ruthless, which goes well with Arcee's straighforwardness. These people are gettting in the way of peace, so it makes sense to just kill them. Prowl makes sense to Arcee. What's more, they both have this disgust for the very Cybertronian race that mixes with self-hatred. Arcee then thinks she can trust him to factor in the things she lacks an understanding of and is okay with working for him. But this is completely one-sided, Prowl doesn't actually respect Arcee the way Arcee respects him and treats her like a weapon. He is uncomfortable with how much Arcee groks him because it makes easy for her to challenge him. Prowl also wouldn't want to admit to being similar to Arcee because she's some crazy murder lady, while Prowl is a rational guy that makes the decisions no one else can. Prowl doesn't have issues adapting to peace, it's just that peace is not peace until he says so.

Both these attitudes are heavily influenced by Arcee's reputation. They can't admit to being similar to Arcee because of their own self-denial, but also because they have such a low opinion of her to begin with. As far as most people are concerned, Arcee is just some weird person who hates Jhiaxus and loves violence.

From the strat of Exrid Arcee keep receiving comments about asking what does she know about anything other than fighting or people being weirded out that she cares. Literally the best recognition she got of having feelings other than bloodlust at the start, was Optimus apologizing to her for forgetting that she and Hardhead had been friend and not telling her he died.

Between all these comments, her lack of social graces and lack of standard social projection of affection, some displays of alexythimia and the fact that she has been alone for most of her extremely long life (this woman is so autistic jfc) Arcee has internalized the idea that things like friendships are just not for her, even if she respects it, even if deep down she wants it.

After falling out with Prowl because she realized he doesn't actually trust her and that he's far less rational than he pretens to be. She does manage to create something like camaderie with Optimus, even tho she doesn't exactly trusts him, at least he does seem to be trying to do the right thing and is not constantly dismissing her and someone should keep an eye on him anyway. But both of them have too much shit going on to really support each other emotionally. Point is that, by this point Arcee still hasn't given up on trying to break the cycle of violence and be better. She just now has to figure what better even is all on her own.

And we finally get to Aileron. Aileron does not have a war background from which she can relate to Arcee. Aileron starts a pretty naive character. But this also means that she's not clouded by whatever reputation Arcee has. To her, Arcee doesn't seem any more messed up than all the other war veterans.

Aileron has hes own arc about learning the harsh truths of the world, but not losing her way, but rather to think for herself and stand up. And it's great actually. She doesn't have as much protagonism as Arcee, yes. But she's also not satellite to her. She goes through her own stuff that ends up complimenting Arcee's own struggles.

Aileron initially does cower before Arcee, but soon enough she's actively challenging one of the most feared Cybertronians ever, because she has no reason to think Arcee would harm her. To Aileron, everyone is going through it and Arcee just looks like a mech trying to find her way and do what's right. Someone mourning her friend. Someone who is lonely. In contrast to everything up to that point, in OP #7, Aileron actively tries to emphatize with Arcee by relating to the loss of a friend. Their lives have been completely different up to this point, and yet Aileron is the one person that tries to do this. Even when Arcee falls back to her own ideas about herself and reacts with anger, Aileron doesn't flinch.

Aileron sees Arcee for who she is, Aileron sees Arcee for the person Arcee is trying to be. And aileron stands her ground as she learned to do and remind Arcee that she can have something better if she wants. Aileron is not going to let Arcee fall.

And really, that's what this is all about. Taking all your baggage and moving towards something better. And it's hard, but anyone can, if one tries and we support each other.

I love them.

#well this is long might as well maintag #arcee #aileron #aircee #idw1 #transformers #yes this is about that prowlcee post i made weeks ago i haven't stopped thinking about it #quetzal rambles tf

[anotherbeastarsblog]

I think there's an underrepresented niche in Jack/Legoshi content where Jack is just so understanding and accommodating that as they get older and Legoshi has worked through some of his trauma and depression issues that he gets to just, really let that autism energy out and get infinitely more weird over time.

Jack picking up on every cue and need and tic and discomfort Legoshi has without him ever needing to ask so he doesn't even realize it, he just knows that he feels safer and less stressed out and on-the-spot whenever he's with Jack and it manifests as the house just getting littered with stim objects and signs half-forgotten special interests and 6 hour completely one-sided info dumps and walking around the house like a gremlin and so much nonverbal communication.

Maybe Jack doesn't quite realize it either, that this is actually a huge amount of effort he's put into learning how his husband works and most people wouldn't do that, and if anyone ever tries to point this out to him he just shrugs like what else is he supposed to do? It's what anyone is supposed to do for the people they care about, and people try to tell him it's one-sided but it's not supposed to be reciprocal, not necessarily, seeing Legoshi relax and be comfortable around him in a way he isn't around anyone else is already more rewarding than anything he could ask for even if Legoshi can't cue into Jack's needs on that same level.

Some of the other 701 boys listening to Jack talk dreamily about all the stuff he gets to do for Legoshi are some of those people that worry it's an unbalanced relationship at first, actually, that Jack's putting more in than he's getting back, but the first time any of them go to visit and see Legoshi being an even bigger puppy than usual immediately grok it like "OOOOOOOOH so we just straight up did not know ANYTHING about this boy before" like yeah of course this is how they'd be how could they be any other way.

#Legoshi #Jack #Jackgosi #701 #original post #as always started with a sentence of an idea then I just kinda went til I didn't have anythign left in my head so #sorry if it's a little incoherent

[dovesndecay]

I think one of the reasons I've always grokked so well to social media is that, at least for me, it's one of the easiest and low-spoons way of keeping the people I love caught up on what's going on. Even when I was younger, I found it exhausting to have individual conversations where I went over the same information with different people, and now that my spoons are in a constant negative? Having the ability to post a status of "here's what's up, how I'm doing, and what I need/if anything" and then, like, if I have conversations about it after that, I don't have to go over the base information.

And, like, maybe that's fucked up in a way I just don't realize yet, and I know it doesn't work for everyone, and it's not a replacement for actively interacting with the people I love. I feel bad that I can't provide the level of connection with people that I want to, for a whole host of reasons -- most of them boiling down to a disabled neurodivergent "however tired you think I am, make it worse."

My brainfog has been so bad for the past while that I sometimes have trouble holding onto my most recent thought, take long pauses to answer simple questions, and can't maintain a sleep schedule to save my life.

I don't have a further point to this so...bye.

#original post