#other lives don't matter half as much. they take the influence these people have on them for granted

[datastate]

i really love mishima [said while focusing in on the worst years of his life]

#in fairness i do this with reko as well. it's just interesting seeing that slow shift of change after an inciting incident #alice's betrayal & reko lashing out to the point no one will speak to her. she's alone. #mishima's arduous work (& superiority complex) coming up entirely empty w the exam. and without that future he is a shell of a person #they both struggle so much with hurting people (through blunt honesty & deceit) to uplift themselves for the longest time #putting their entire life's value in their own personal work. not themselves as a person. but their Work. #other lives don't matter half as much. they take the influence these people have on them for granted #& have to learn all over again how to be. compassionate. and find value in living outside of what they personally achieve #in not letting envy feed their drive. but embracing these new experiences to motivate & better themselves #jestersvaguely #yttdposting #auigk. i really like them

[a-chip-in-inosukes-nichirin]

The Hashira at the Gym

I just started going to the gym with a friend and now I have a brainworm about the Hashira and what they'd be like at the gym.

Tengen:

Tengen is a gym influencer. He's also the kind of guy who wears the tightest shirt possible every time he goes, and he spends just as much time working out as he does flexing in the mirror and taking selfies with other people. People don't mind though, because the amount of weight he can bench press is impressive. He's almost constantly on the ab machines and doing weights. This man lives off pre-workout and spends all his extra time at the gym. His girlfriends also workout, but mainly are into Pilates.

Rengoku:

This man wears muscle shirts but not because he wants to show off, just because they were on sale when he was getting gym clothes. He never skips leg day. Never. This man's thighs are sturdier than tree trunks. He could crush a watermelon between them without a second thought. Everyone loves him, even if he's a little loud. He drinks protein shakes every day, and will bring Senjuro to the gym sometimes.

Giyu:

He pretty much exclusively does treadmills and stair-steppers, but he also will use dumbbells. He only wears hoodies and basketball shorts. Headphones are in 100% of the time. Will stare at people until they are off the machine he's waiting for. Doesn't drink protein shakes, but will drink preworkout. The caffeine does not seem to affect him in the slightest.

Gyoumei:

He likes the treadmills for walking. They're meditative for him. He teaches yoga, but also does weightlifting. He can both bench-press and squat more than anyone in the gym. He has several of the same exact tracksuit for working out. Has never tried pre-workout and says he never will. He's a vegetarian and only drinks vegan protein shakes if he does drink them at all.

Shinobu:

She's into calisthenics and pilates, but mainly does a lot of running, especially on inclines. She can do the least amount of weights out of all the Hashira, but she makes up for it with endurance and speed. If she sees Giyu at the gym, she'll get on a machine next to him and make sure that she's on it longer than he is, on a harder setting. Giyu doesn't notice most of the time because he's wearing headphones, but occasionally he will and thinks that Shinobu is just being friendly and that she's trying to be his gym buddy. She is not. She's being passive aggressive.

Mitsuri:

Not an influencer, but she always wears cute matching sets in pink, green, black, or white and people assume she is. Everyone at the gym loves her. Mitsuri has a pink water bottle decorated with sakura stickers. She always has snacks on her; protein bars, protein mixes, fruit, and other goodies. She does pilates, yoga, and weightlifting (and gymnastics and ballet). Misturi surprises a lot of the new gym goers with her strength. She is regularly asked to crush watermelons between her thighs, and she loves doing it.

Obanai:

He goes to the gym only because his crush goes. He'll pick up dumbbells here and there, but mainly works out on the stair-steppers and bikes. His clothing of choice is a hoodie and joggers. Always wears a mask no matter the season or if he's sick. This man wipes down every machine and weight before and after he touches it. He has seen Misturi break open watermelons with her thighs no less than six times. He is smitten.

Sanemi:

This man works out at their weirdest hours and is never consistent with when he shows up but does appear almost every day. He does weights and calisthenics, and despite never touching pre-workout, he has incredible stamina. Sanemi wears tank tops to workout in, and half the time they're cut into v-necks because he "can't stand feeling like he's being suffocated". He's brought his brother a few times, but mostly works out alone. He has gotten in trouble for fighting a dude who was recording a girl doing squats without her knowledge.

Muichiro:

This boy does yoga and ellipticals, and not much else. He'll bike occasionally, but he only comes to the gym because his family has a gym pass and he likes to watch shows with his headphones in while he's walking or biking. Wears a t-shirt and basketball shorts, and sneakers with mismatched ankle socks. Doesn't take anything seriously, but enjoys how protein shakes taste.

#kny hashira #demon slayer #kimetsu no yaiba #kny #rengoku kyojuro #tengen uzui #himejima gyoumei #obanai iguro #mitsuri kanroji #shinobu kocho #sanemi shinazugawa #muichiro tokito #giyuu tomioka #hashira thoughts #headcannons

[mageknight14]

The Dangers and Flaws of Idolization: A NEO TWEWY analysis post

Transplanting and expanding on a thread I made on Twitter to fit within a Tumblr format.

One of the most interesting aspects I see in NEO TWEWY that I don’t see many people touch upon is the commonality between Rindo, Fret, and Shoka in how they look up to others as role models while simultaneously being blind to their flaws/who they actually are up to the end and how the game's themes are reflected in those relationships and today, I'd like to showcase why.

First, we have Rindo and Motoi. With that relationship, the game makes it pretty clear that Rindo looked up to Motoi as An0ther and used his words as encouragement to get through his own daily life and anxiety. The kid could barely decide what he could even eat for dinner before he had come across the account, so if you thought his current indecisiveness nature was bad, he was even worse before the events of the game.

However, what I find interesting is that even though he constantly spouts An0ther's sayings in an attempt to try and steel himself for the challenges he faces, he thoughtlessly does so and only lives by the sayings half-heartedly, since his indecisive nature and fear of responsibility prevent him from committing all the way. I think it's telling that despite claiming that "don't miss your chance to make a friend" is one of his favorite quotes, he's constantly at odds with the idea of bringing potentially new players on board the team even before he gets the chance to properly know/meet them and grimaces at the thought of the structure of the old Reaper's Game in the original.

Keep in mind that Beat saved Rindo's life at the hands of Susukichi at least two whole days ago before this occurrence.

Nagi’s Dive into his head on W1D3 actually does a LOT to reveal aspects of his character: he puts other people at arm’s length (besides Swallow due to their online anonymity) because he’s afraid of the fallout of what would to happen if he got involved with them.

"What if I end up taking on more than I can handle? What if other people end up dragging me down with them? If I just stay at the sidelines and shift the blame onto others, I won’t get into trouble for this."

"I'm in a group project; everybody is contributing and making decisions about how we should go about doing things. I keep my mouth shut and refrain from pitching in despite maybe thinking some of their ideas misses the point of the assignment, because God forbid my ideas could be helpful (or maybe they won't; that's life, but I won't know unless i speak up). We end up handing in our project and whoops, we got a C-. I guess I'm not responsible for receiving that grade because I never made a decision, therefore I shouldn't be accountable for my lack of contribution. It just makes sense."

If you've known/are a person that have had similar thoughts to this mindset, then congrats; you know/are a Rindo Kanade in real life.

This culminates into him latching onto others he finds capable and taking the relationships around him for granted, tying other people's worth to their prowess in might or influence. After all, why bother relying on yourself and others when you can just rely on someone else for you to solve your problems? Especially since it means that if everything goes south, YOU won’t take the fallout for it. After all, they’re clearly much more capable than you are.

To get back to his dynamic with Motoi, Rindo looks up to him immensely after finding out that he was his idol an0ther and came to value his input regarding matters within the Game. So when he eventually finds out the truth and is forced to confront the fact that his hero was nothing more than a content thief and a schemer who would trample over others just to survive, he’s understandably heartbroken.

However, instead of just leaving it there, the game decides to flip the script and have Motoi legitimately apologize to Rindo for his actions, leading to the lad in question learning to recognize that Motoi is ultimately an incredibly flawed human being instead of just writing him off entirely, (even giving him another chance!) and is, in many ways, a mirror to Rindo. Like Rindo, Motoi was deathly afraid of responsibility and the fallout of letting other people down, leading to him copying and pasting other people's quotes so that he wouldn't have to face that possibility. This aspect of himself only got worse when he got trapped in the Reaper's Game for multiple loops on end, forcing him to become a worse version of himself, lying, cheating, and backstabbing just to survive and even looking towards becoming part of the Reapers, the same group that trapped him there in the first place, just so he wouldn't have to be Erased, un a manner that's eerily reminiscent to how Rindo would took towards overly relying on others so that he would make it out okay. In that sense, Motoi is a look at what a grown-up Rindo would look like if he didn't take the lessons he learned within the Game to heart, which is part of why the latter decides to take Motoi’s copypasted quotes and apply them to his life in a positive way, deriving his own meaning from them so that in a way that contrasts him following them in a shallow manner from before.

Next up, we have Fret and Kanon, who form a interesting parallel to Rindo and Motoi's dynamic. Whereas Motoi is a look at one of the worst possible paths that Rindo could take if he didn't learn how to properly deal with his flaws, Kanon actually tries to coach Fret into becoming more true to and genuine with his actual self. She also shows herself to be a genuinely affable and honorable person even in spite of the bad first impression that she had given at the beginning of the game by stealing Rindo and Fret's pin for herself.

However, that's only the surface level stuff, as the game actually goes deeper with her character. While Kanon at first seems to be true to herself and genuine at her core in a way that Fret isn’t, we can see from the Dive into her head on W3D3 that she’s holding back a LOT underneath the surface.

"You always did have a way of destroying things" tends to get glossed over by some and for those who do look at the words, they seemingly come out of nowhere and can be seemingly brushed off as her just being under the influence of the Plague Noise. However , when you look back at some of Kanon’s actions and her words towards the Twisters (accusing the Twisters of sabotaging Fuya and making Motoi drop out of the Scramble Slam against his will, her mood changing when she finds out about Fuya challenging the Ruinbringers in one timeline as opposed to her more cheerful attitude towards Fret when she didn't find that out just yet, her acting suspicious towards the Twisters regarding their prowess as a team, etc), the implication is that she doesn’t just resent the game as a whole but also secretly the Twisters as well.

The thing about the Player teams is that they have formed an unspoken agreement where the top 3 teams (sans Ruinbringers of course) keep their footing by sending new players and other teams to last place, which the Wicked Twisters screw up just by existing. Their synergy and impressive Imagination powers (well, Fret, Nagi, and Sho’s at least) threaten the balance the teams have struggled to keep up for so long, hence why Kanon initially just sees them as another team to point snipe before she changes her mind on them. And while the Twisters do almost bring about change by beating the Ruinbringers, it ultimately doesn’t even matter in the long-run due to how incredibly rigged the Shinjuku game is and as a result, the DRS are eliminated, getting rid of Kanon’s and Motoi’s safety net.

Imagine this from the players’ perspective: you’re stuck in essentially what is a never-ending death game but you’ve got a system going where you can at least stave off your deaths for a bit longer. Then a couple of kids come around and throw that whole system entirely out of whack. And you think, "well, at least they can take out the top team and give us a fighting chance, right?" Only for those hopes to also get dashed because the rules are just that rigged. Like Kubo said, life ain’t fair and the afterlife sure as hell ain’t either. W1D5 and W2D4 are excellent explorations of this kind of mindset as it showcases the player teams falling victim to their desires and abusing their powers as a result of being stuck in an endless loop of playing the Game over and over again with no hope of escaping, as well as highlights paints certain comments made by the leaders in an even darker light.

With all of this in mind, it’s honestly no wonder that Kanon resents the Twisters but what’s interesting is that she tries to keep this resentment under wraps because she knows that it isn’t fair to them. They’re just kids after all who would have no idea about all of that. Hence why she admonishes herself in her Dive for wishing that they had just wipe out the Reapers altogether and why Fret is shown to be hurt hearing her inner thoughts about the Twisters in a way that’s pretty reminiscent of Rindo’s reaction when he found out about Motoi.

And finally, we have Shoka and Ayano. While it’s pretty clear that the two do genuinely care for one another, it’s a relationship that’s been tragically scarred by the events surrounding Shinjuku and the Reapers in general, resulting in a mutually unhealthy dynamic. 

What I find interesting about the relationship is that while Shoka gets pissed whenever Rindo insinuates that Ayano must’ve treated her badly, she sadly realizes in another convo that she doesn’t know much about Ayano on a personal level or what her interests even are.

In spite of how close they are and how much they mean to each other, Ayano still put up emotional walls and closed herself off, never allowing herself to be on equal footing to Shoka and instead just be someone who guides and mentors her over the 4 years they were together.

This is due to her feeling betrayed by Shiba/others while simultaneously using Shoka as her one stable point in life regardless because everything is going up into chaos surrounding the Shinjuku Reapers and she finds herself unable to trust anyone around her anymore. And Shoka herself doesn't even realize this until the end when it’s too late because she was just happy to simply have Ayano by her side without thinking deeper about her and their relationship as a whole due to her own emotional issues and troubled past.

When it comes to children from broken homes, they are prone to imprinting on any adult figure that interacts positively with them and in Shoka's case, this is exactly what she did with the Shinjuku Reapers, especially Ayano.

A running theme throughout all of these instances is how they all involve the younger generation looking up to the adults in their lives as idols as opposed to just role models and thus fail to see them for who they are as actual human beings. And by the time they that finally do, it's too late for the adults.

You also see nods towards this theme via the Shinjuku Reapers and their relationship with Shiba or Shiba’s (who himself is parallel to Rindo if his tendency to subconsciously take on the values of others and mistake his as his own was twisted into the worst possible outcome) relationship with Kubo, with Hishima even flat out stating as such. "You fell at the feet of an idol like an utter fool", indeed.

And this all fits, as well, into NEO's larger theme that even as a 'follower', you have to question the 'leader'. Role models aren't bad -- but idols and failing to recognize their limits/flaws/toxicity are and will end up screwing you over in the long run if you aren’t careful. And I think NEO did an excellent job at exploring the little nuances that come with that, from Kanon’s internal resentment she knew wasn’t fair to the unseen distance between Ayano and Shoka to Motoi being a complete deconstruction of it all. It shows the good and the bad of idolizing someone too much. It shows how you can see the real them and turn the image you liked into something more with Rindo, or how to hold them in your heart while moving on like Shoka. It's okay to acknowledge the flaws and shortcomings of the people you look up to. Hell, it’s probably healthy to do that in some ways. As long as they’re still a good person or even helped you grow, you can still celebrate the good they brought

#neo twewy #twewy #the world ends with you #neo the world ends with you #analysis post #rindo kanade #shoka sakurane #tosai furesawa #fret furesawa #kanon tachibana #motoi anazawa #ayano kamachi #ntwewy

[deathonthe]

ferrari parked outside | 1633

pairing: charles/max

rating: explicit

word count: ~5000

tags: established relationship, slightly non-linear narrative, under-negotiated kink, somnophilia, riding

summary:

Max is an embarrassing amount of gin and tonics into the night when Lando shouts very loudly into his ear. “Does Charles pay for everything for you?” “What?” Max shouts back. “I mean like– Seems like he’s always paying for you, mate,” Lando says. Holds both hands up in the air and dubiously glances to the side. “Not that I’m judging or anything.” “He doesn’t pay for everything,” Max lamely insists.

director's cut:

the following are my notes and thoughts during the writing of this fic. they should in no way influence the way you've interpreted it! but feel free to read it to gain some extra insight into my pea-sized brain

ok. one thing u should know about me is that i will constantly push the max verstappen babygirl agenda no matter what. sugar baby max is pretty adjacent to that

i spent an awful about of time deciding the opening scene, between first scene (B) and the following directly after (A), idk how many times i swapped the two. i was afraid if i started off with B, it would kinda give a tacky record scratch effect when u reach A. but starting with A made the progression into B seem unnatural and too abrupt so. in the end i went with B, then A because the fic gradually loses its seriousness and matches the kinda light humour it progresses into

the line "I want chocolates and those bread rolls they bake fresh." took me a god awful amount of time to write. at first i wanted max to specify a monte carlo cafe to make it seem more genuine but all the reviews for cafes in monaco were in french! which i suppose i should've expected. in the end i went with that even though i'm not completely happy with it

another thing u should know about it is that i care about character voice and characterisation above all else. i try my best to emulate how these people sound. i always sift through so much interview material while writing a fic to try and get the drivers' voice tones and linguistic quirks and body language as accurately and naturally as possible. and too be honest, i don't think i did that very well in this fic. i think i could have imitated it better

a little bit of french, of course. they live in monaco, charles speaks french. max doesn't speak enough, so not quite as much french as other fics (for example, for esteban and lance, i would generally write about half of their dialogue in french if they were only speaking to each other in a scene. it feels more authentic as esteban and lance communicate in french when they are talking to each other in real life)

i designated charles three terms of endearment: baby, cheri and mon cher

nothing made me happier than when it became canon that max calls charles 'charlie' in real life, because i was gonna scrap it from the fic because i thought it sounded ooc

to be clear, i never intended to give charles a daddy kink in this fic. you can assume he doesn't have one. neither does max

the running joke is that this is actually a proposal fic and not a sugar baby one

in the lando scene, when max cuts him off before he can finish his sentence, lando is about to say: "and charles also paid for martjin to dj at this red bull party for u." i wasn't sure if the implication was very strong, though

in actuality, max cuts off lando with a "fuck off" and lando says later "why the fuck would i be, charles isn't my fucking boyfriend" but i thought that was too many fucks and ended up taking all but one of them out

i know charles doesn't drive a red laferrari

the other running joke in this fic is obviously charles is not ever watching the whale documentary seriously. he was instead always thinking or focused on something else in his head

the ice cream scene came to me in a fever dream

charles can't actually procure the cheesecake factory, he's about $125 million in net worth. the cheesecake factory is over $1 billion

i am not a fan (i.e., i am actually just a hater) of when max is depicted like an aggressive, overly possessive, hyper-masculine suave, dom caricature from an e l james erotica novel and when charles is just delegated the softer, more feminine counterpart automatically. so. u see me subverting that expectation a lot

i had a lot of fun writing victoria's part where she cooks both charles and max within 100 words

did you know this fic is exactly 14 pages on google docs? i thought that was pretty cool

if i had to sum up this fic in three words: chekov's schrodinger's proposal

thanks for staying 'til the end!

#max verstappen #charles leclerc #lestappen #mv1 #mv33 #cl16 #3316 #1633 #f1 fanfic #i call it a director's cut but really it's just me yapping #my fic #f1 #formula one #formula 1

[solarianastrology]

RANDOM ASTRO OBSERVATIONS

These observations are based upon my personal interactions with these placements and energies. As a wise woman I know once said "take what resonates and leave the rest on the shelf, go back to it later, see if it resonates again, if not, throw it away".

I dislike seeing people say in order to be an astrologer you have to have read a certain amount of charts, you have to have certain years of experience.

astrologer (n.)

late 14c., "an observer of the stars," from astrology + -er (1). It drove out French import astrologein, which, had it survived, probably would have yielded *astrologian, as in Chaucer's "The wise Astrologen." Also in Middle English in reference to cocks as announcers of sunrise.

astrologer | Etymology, origin and meaning of astrologer by etymonline

You are all astrologers because you study and observe the stars and never let anyone tell you you're not!

Having Neptune in the 6th house, you'll feel this need to be of service in your career in a healing/helping way whether it be people, pets, plants, you have to help in some way.

Neptune in 6th house natives need a career where they can be in control of their schedule because when it comes to sticking to a traditional routine, they absolutely neglect them. They don't pay attention to time; they don't even remember the date half the time lol. They really live in their own reality. They can easily get used because of their need to help and be of service to others. Meditation comes easy to them. Their job can affect their health if not's not allowing them to express their creativity, healing abilities, nurturing qualities, and spirituality. Great placement for MedSpa workers, nutritional dieticians, herbalists, life coaches, artists, etc.

Chiron conjunct Vertex are here to heal!!!!Life is going to constantly connect you with a lot of "broken" people and you have to ability to influence their inner healing. You will also meet a lot of wise people along the way and will feel like they are fated and meant to be. I've heard someone with this placement say, their Chiron is conjunct Vertex in Sagittarius, and their mentor is a Sagittarius and has taught her so many life changing health habits, life habits, and much more. She said, "It feels like an action movie where the hero is fighting the villain and he's the guru or guide leading her along the way", I was like wow.

3H Mercury, especially in air signs love learning. I've seen them studying and they weren't even in school, they just value information.

Cancer moons never forget anything, watch what you say and do to them.

Anybody else find Virgo risings extremely private about information about them but knowledgeable about how to fix and heal everyone else? Hmm, probably that Scorpio 3H.

Libra moon and risings have to look good out in public, it doesn't matter the occasion. They value fashion.

Ever met a Taurus full of Gemini placements? No one can pull off double life living like these men! They present it so well and will have 2 girlfriends and a boyfriend on the flip side.

Mars in Capricorn natives hate apologizing and being told what to do. Mars in Capricorn could also have a very difficult relationship with the father, he could be angry, aggressive, etc.

Asteroid Prevert 18624 conjunct Saturn could signify your father being a pedophile or pervert, I know this because It's in my chart and my father is a well-known offender.

Make a Libra Mars angry, it'll feel like an Aries Mars wrath... They are so calm and hold so much in to keep away from conflict but once their justice and their peace is compromised, you get an entirely different side, their anger is explosive, also any form of unfairness makes the scales tip.

Cancer Suns with Scorpio Moons are some of the most manipulative people I've ever met, (my mom) included, lol. They feel everything deeply, can feel a sense of change in the mood of a person on instinct. They have a tendency to self-sabotage to avoid vulnerability, but I mean, no judging. Emotional understanding is a superpower, use it correctly cause Pluto does not play Scorpio Moons.

Neptune in the 6th house need to always pay attention to their health and always trust their intuition, that higher self, no matter what. Connect with the foods you eat, study that food's effect on your body, it'll aid in tummy heath of yours.

Why do I mostly find Libra's and Sagittarius together? lol

I hope you enjoyed, thank you for reading. Your feedback and opinions are important to me.

#astro observations #astro notes #libra moon #cancer sun #virgo rising #chiron #6th house #astro community #astro posts #astro placements #natal chart #birth chart #libra rising #for fun #vertex #sagittarius

[hyperlexichypatia]

Hi! Something I’ve been wandering is if there is no point where a brain is truly fully developed, then how do we gage what age should be the age of consent? /genuine I was wandering if you have thoughts on that because it’s something I feel pretty befuddled about

First, I'm sorry this answer is a little late, because I had to think about it a little bit. I think this question, which is a good one, has almost two answers -- one for an ideal youth-topia, and one for our current, ageist, kyriarchical, very-much-not-youth-topia world.

Also, heads up, I'm going to be talking about child abuse in a few paragraphs.

In an ideal world, I think children should begin having some say over their lives and bodies as soon as they're able to express their own opinions, but in conjunction with at least one trusted adult to provide guidance. As the child gets older, the balance should gradually shift over time, with the child's opinion gradually carrying more "weight" over time. Then at some fixed end point, which should be no later than the late teens, the new young adult should have 100% autonomy with no oversight (they can still ask for advice -- which I specify because half the time this comes up, someone asks "What if a young adult wants their parents' advice!" and I have to say "Then they can call and ask, it's not illegal").

An adult will have to make pretty much all the decisions for a baby, because babies don't really know what's what. A toddler's decision-making ability mostly maxes out at picking which toy they want to play with and then crying because actually they wanted the other one. But a school-age child can start having some say in the decision-making process and can practice asking questions at the doctor's office, being included in the conversation, having things explained at their level, understanding things like "I know the shot hurts, but it will help keep you from getting sick later," or "I know you don't like taking pills, but they help your headache go away" or "If the pills don't help your headache go away, say so, and we'll ask the doctor for something that works better." And a teenager can really start taking the lead in their own decisions, with guidance, especially if things like making thoughtful decisions, asking questions, weighing pros and cons, and doing research with reliable sources has already been practiced and modeled over the years. And by the time they're in their late teens, they should have sole final say in what happens to their bodies.

But. All of that is very much the "in an ideal world, youth-topia" answer.

We do not live in an ideal youth-topia. We live in a world where many (I'm being generous and not saying "most") adults in positions of influence over children and young people intend to manipulate or exploit them ("for their own good" or otherwise), and it can be really... extremely... difficult to keep kids from being abused or exploited by parents, families, doctors, capitalists, administrators, politicians, and others.

Most of the arguments I get into are about people wanting to raise the age of majority or some other minimum standard for ""real adulthood"" to some age higher than 18, usually invoking some spurious argument about "the brain."

And I will die on the hill that this is wrong and that 18 year olds should be considered full real adults with full bodily autonomy to do whatever they want no matter how unwise anyone thinks it is -- drink, smoke, take medicine, refuse medicine, have sex, have children, get married, have abortions, get their tubes tied, whatever.

Okay, but then you might say, what about 17 year olds? What about 16 or 15? Is an 18 year old really "more mature" than a 17 year old?

Well, no, of course not. The problem is that the legal status of minors is so absolutely abysmal that, within that legal status, it's hard to asses what "consent," let alone "informed consent," even means. It's not that I think a 17 year old isn't "mature enough" to choose to have surgery, say, but an 18 year old is "mature enough." It's that when you have zero (0) legal rights, having the right to make one (1) choice is really constrained.

Throughout the U.S. -- and I'm only going to be talking about the U.S. here because I can't confidently speak to any other country's laws -- it is legal, to varying degrees (and with even more varying degrees of enforcement), for parents to beat their minor children. It is legal, to varying degrees, for parents to restrict their minor children's movement. To restrict their food. To keep them in conditions barely above prison. To send them to "troubled teen" farms that are literally prison. Even if the mistreatment crosses into some threshold of legally actionable "child abuse," there is no guarantee that the law will be at all enforced. There is no guarantee that the abuse will be stopped. At most, the government will remove the child and place them in a foster home which is likely to be just as abusive if not moreso.

I'm not saying that minors shouldn't have the legal right to make more medical and general life choices than they currently do -- they absolutely should -- I'm saying that in the absence of certain basic physical safety guarantees, a technical on-paper "choice" doesn't mean much.

Like, I just said that I would fight for 18 year olds' right to be sterilized or get married, and also, I'm vehemently opposed to sterilization of minors and firmly support raising the minimum marriage age to 18. That's not because I think decision-making maturity and wisdom magically kick in at the 18th birthday. That's because an 18 year old can leave and file assault charges when their parent says "Sign this consent form or I'll beat you and send you to a prison farm."

So... with that in mind... I do think there are ways to protect minors' right to consent. I think people over 12 or 13 should have to give their own consent for any medical procedure that isn't an immediately life-threatening emergency. And ethical doctors shouldn't perform procedures on people they have reason to believe are being coerced.

As for minors seeking out medical procedures, I think we can look at some contextual questions like: Is the need for this procedure urgent or time-sensitive? I.e. is there any reason it can't wait until the person is older? Can someone interview the young person to try to assess whether they're being coerced? Can the young person articulate the risks or give some indication that their choice is informed? Can they talk about how the medicine/treatment/procedure makes them feel? Do any adults benefit financially from the young person's decision? Are they having an undue influence over the young person? (That isn't just about medical treatment, it's also questions like "Why are child beauty pageants a thing?" and "Why do 7 year olds play American tackle football?") Have they been exposed to other points of view?

Obviously these are all really contextual questions that depend on people in power behaving ethically, which... is a lot to depend on.

So. That's my long answer. I guess.

Final note, mostly I'm talking about medical treatment in general and life decisions in general, but I wanted to quickly mention transition and gender-affirming care in particular. I do support youth gender-affirming care. I didn't always. When I first heard about youth transition, I thought it was a risky thing that young people were going to be coerced into. I thought there would be parents coercing their gender non-conforming children into transitioning to the "other" binary gender and doing surgeries on them before they could object. I was wrong. I know that now, after learning more about how youth transition actually works. Doctors involved in gender-affirming care for youth really seem to be doing it right. They interview the young person. They make sure it's really what the person wants. They go slowly at first. The young person has ample time and opportunity to change their mind. I think other forms of health care for youth (looking at you, psychiatry) (looking at you, weight loss) (looking at you, reproductive health) should model themselves on the kinds of youth-affirming, consent-affirming practices that are standard in youth gender-affirming care.

#youth rights #youth liberation #cw child abuse #medical abuse #medical ethics

[naranjapetrificada]

I was having a WIP chat with one of my betas (@epersonae) earlier and one thing she said is there's probably a universe where people who understood what the show was trying to do with Izzy are able to joyfully dig into his character because there's no canyon and I'm currently feeling very jealous. I've already been having to think about him lately and ironically my other beta (@sabra-n) said something yesterday in a completely different context that's got me turning him over in my mind no matter how much I'd rather think about anything else.

I've mentioned before that it always feels like the Ed POV sections take the longest to feel right, and yesterday sabra was like "what if it's because your Ed's so different from canon?" So when I sat down to get some work done with that in mind, I started thinking about how it's probably going to continue to be tough to write this Ed when he a) didn't have the abusive father of canon, b) has two older sisters who love him and c) has a social position where Izzy's influence can't look the way it did in canon.

Deep in my braindump document for this fic there are plans for and half-written scenes about violence, legacy, performing masculinity, daddy issues, trauma, and other themes from the show, but in order to get into stuff like that that will help put Ed as a character in more familiar territory, I'll have to come at it sideways. And Izzy could be a really great vector for that here, even if it doesn't look the way the show did, and that means I'm stuck thinking deeper about that greasy little rat (affectionate? nah, not quite) more than I've ever wanted to.

I figured out a way to make him useful in this way, but it's going to require giving him a level of interiority I don't want to. In that other universe, where you don't feel like you have to be on your guard to defend yourself from canyon takes, giving Izzy interiority could be a really fun writing challenge! But with the miasma of just...everything that's happened in our version of the fandom that's harder, because in our reality we've had to think about him even when we didn't feel like it, just because we were trying to wrap our minds around all ass-backwards canyon takes.

I hope there's a version of me in that universe writing this fic. If there is, she's probably already posted chapter 3 because she had a lower barrier for entry with accepting the amount of thinking about Izzy that's been required. She's also probably less worried about accidentally making him sympathetic, so she doesn't have to confront her lack of experience writing unreliable narrators. That bitch is so lucky.

(another thing I said to Elaine earlier about writing Izzy is that at least we're both miserable, which should probably be its own tag. At least I have the consolation of knowing that he's definitely having a worse time living the story than I am writing it.)

#with all the conversations I've had about stuff like concretes and original fiction vs. fic #i very much want to get all this right #and even if half the stuff I've thought of about how to fit Izzy into this world doesn't make it into the fic proper #that doesn't mean I'm off the hook for writing it #i need to be able to answer certain questions about him #who what when where why how #those kinds of questions #and writing is how you answer this questions #at least we're both miserable #izzy hands #he was a fucking nightmare #fic writing #writing process #chapter 3 #from the firmament #ofmd #our flag means death #fandom meta #fandom critical

[trashcanfanfics]

Hi, can you do one a part 2 with “overlords dating somebody from royalty” (if you don’t want to just ignore it)

It's been a while since then, I had to reread that ask and now I'm excited about this!!

Alastor:

*Sathanas hasn't been a big influence per say, but he has been in contact with Alastor a lot more

*They enjoy visits that involve tea and gushing over you

*Wants to know what your true form looks like and to feel the power radiate off of you

*You actually did smuggle him down to the wrath ring to show him where you grew up and he loves it!!

*Was super excited to be shown everything and to meet your other parent!!

*Made a good impression and now you've got both parents asking when there's going to be a wedding

*Alastor would have to ask for you hand properly, though

*Your dad might just burn down half the ring if he didn't

Rosie:

*Makes sure you're properly hydrated

*Goes as far as asking your parent about how to do that

*Enjoys that you break the rules by letting her go to the beach with you

*People glare and practically turn green whenever they see you two

*Rosie doesn't mind, in fact she finds it hilarious, and others would too if they really knew you

*She's seen you fuck up SO many mundane things because you're used to castles and servants

*The only time she's seen YOU envious is when she has to clean up the remnants of your attempt at dinner and fixes it up herself

Valentino:

*You practically LIVE in your comfort wear and he tries CONSTANTLY have you try on lingerie

*When you finally agreed and tried it on, you fell asleep with how comfy it was

*Notices that when your dad comes around, you slink off to rest somewhere

*Finds out that you find your dad's energy exhausting and it makes you really tired

*Gives you caffeine, just to see what happens

*Mistake.jpg

*Your other parent's characteristics come out because now you're at Full Function TM

*You organize his entire filing cabinet but you crash hard and end up asleep knees deep in his closet

Velvet:

*You take her to your dad's establishment and she's giggling the entire time

*Everyone is looking at you rather than the dancers and it's pissing them off

*And you're not even doing anything, just sitting there with a shit eating grin on your face as you wink at a particularly peeved dancer

*You make out with Velvet to further gain attention and that's when your dad decides to kick you out

*He thought it was funny tho

*Loves that you actually don't care too much about your appearance and will let her dress you up

*She likes to match you :)

Vox:

*Has never lived so decadently

*You've given him access to the finest restaurants and drinks

*The parties and the food and you in that outfit oml, he's overheating

*Always gets you the foods you're craving

*Is impressed that no matter how much you eat, you can always eat more

*Your dad has family dinners that Vox only goes to half the time because he ends up sick afterwards

*Beelz thinks this is hilarious and teases both of you for needing to leave early

#hazbin hotel x reader #alastor x reader #rosie x reader #valentino x reader #velvet x reader #vox x reader #trashcan answers you

[karistiltskin]

what if i said "but I would die for you in secret" but imagine merlin and arthur.

peace lyric analysis as merthur:

"Our coming-of-age has come and gone

Suddenly the summer, it's clear

I never had the courage of my convictions

As long as danger is near

And it's just around the corner, darling

'Cause it lives in me

No, I could never give you peace"

OUR COMING-OF-AGE?? okay, listen. as we know, arthur's coming-of-age moment is linked to his coronation. He literally has an episode called "The Coming of Arthur" parts one and two (S03 E12-E13). it's arthur becoming king and merlin starting to finally feel like he's getting somewhere with their destiny because of arthur's crowning. this is our setting. we're now in the after.

"I never had the courage of my convictions as long as danger is near" SHUT UPPPP SHUT UPPPP like actually oh my god. as long as danger is near is so so sick and speaks so loud. merlin absolutely does have the courage of his convictions and just to clarify, collins dictionary [colin morgan ;) ] states it as the confidence to do what you believe is right, even though other people may not agree or approve. BUT when arthur is in danger he does not do the "right" thing. he listens to the giant lizard instead or gaius (still love him) and does anything, anything, to make sure arthur doesn't get harmed no matter what.

rip morgana and getting poisoned.

rip mordred's entire existence.

although arthur attracts danger, merlin attracts just as much. and merlin is magic. (ugh, I'm getting sad and the only reason i won't cry is cause i'm in the middle of a lecture. a nighttime lecture). merlin can never give arthur peace because he is everything arthur was conditioned to hate. arthur can never give merlin peace because he's a king with expectations from Camelot and neighboring kingdoms. aka they can never be peacefully together without the threat of danger from them both and towards their relationship.

"But I'm a fire, and I'll keep your brittle heart warm

If your cascade ocean wave blues comes

All these people think love's for show

But I would die for you in secret

The devil's in the details, but you got a friend in me

Would it be enough if I could never give you peace?"

merlin lights arthur fires. that's it. that's the tweet.

merlin is also arthur's closest friend and confidant. he definitely gets arthur to see other perspectives on a situation and makes sure he remains compassionate and fair. for example, that look arthur gave merlin in S05 E11 during kara's trial?? my god. or the episode where arthur killed that one king's son under the influence of his uncle, the sleaze.

THEY WOULD DIE FOR EACH OTHER IN SECRET. NO ARGUMENTS. they've proved episode after episode again that they would no questions asked. people who don't know them just go "he's just a servant" or "you would choose him over your kind?" (ouch) not knowing the depth of their relationship. but yes. yes they would. and they would not have a single regret. they would deny the hell out of it but the proof is in their actions.

but you got a friend in me yes ma'am they do.

and it would be enough. it would. do they need a reminder that they were both born in mind of each other? that it was written since the beginning of time? that both of them have their own personal demons that instead of running away they'd take care of each other instead? that they're the most important person for each other and nothing can split them apart because they've grown to trust each other so much that their souls have intertwined? two sides of the same coin? other half of my soul, as the poets say???

"Your integrity makes me seem small

You paint dreamscapes on the wall

I talk shit with my friends

It's like I'm wasting your honor"

from arthur's pov he knows merlin is better than him. the way he interacts with people, his morals and values, his humbleness, just everything really. he pretends to be mad and upset about it but there's such deep admiration in it that he's actually self-aware.

dreamscape (google) definition: a landscape or scene with the strangeness or mystery characteristic of dreams

arthur finds merlin so strange!! so strange and mysterious.

the walls: i read this one fanfic on ao3 called "The Tragedy of Godhood" by Lilmia_Casand (read it!! it's so good. short, but beautiful) and the summary states:

"Merlin had gotten better at controlling his magic over the years, but it still spilled over, as if he were the source instead of someone calling upon it. It seeped into the castle walls, into the stone floors..."

This was the first thing I thought of (this quote stuck with me, it got bookmarked) and i couldn't have said it better. here's a play by play: arthur lives in a castle. the castle has walls. a lot of walls. he sees these walls everyday. the walls are familiar. the walls stay. the walls are forever. he can't imagine the castle without his walls.

walls = life/the future

magic is part of merlin's mystery because he's essentially hiding HIMSELF.

(does this make sense? no, prob not but bear with me)

there's an air about merlin where when you think about him, you realize you actually don't know much about him. he's a mystery. you know his jokes, you know where he's gonna be at whatever time of day (not the tavern, contrary to what arthur thinks), you know his favourite food. you don't know about his parents, you don't know why he saved arthur at his first feast, you don't know why he stays around.

arthur reflects on this and realizes it one day when merlin starts to become unavoidable in his mind. then he thinks, 'i really know nothing about this boy.' over time, merlin stays by his side, always, and arthur is so dependent on him that he starts worrying if he'll ever leave and if not him, camelot (he has abandonment issues 100%).

also see: S01 E10

hence, "you paint dreamscapes on the wall" is arthur saying, "you're the biggest mystery i've ever met and you make me wonder what every day will be like with you. will you be here tomorrow? and the day after that? until I'm married and have children who will favour you over me? will you be here to see them? to see me? i can't see it through the haze. i can't see you through the haze."

moving on—fuck that was so much longer than it needed to be—arthur and merlin talk shit about each other ALL THE TIME it's hilarious. and they know the one "bad" thing they talk about doesn't define their entire character because they hold each other in such high regard but... well...

(they definitely have regrets after)

"And you know that I'd swing with you for the fences

Sit with you in the trenches

Give you my wild, give you a child

Give you the silence that only comes when two people understand each other

Family that I chose, now that I see your brother as my brother

Is it enough?"

they both go all out for each other but with a focus on merlin, he goes ALL. OUT. it's war with him. nothing is half-assed. he fights, and fights, and never takes it less than seriously. but he also is there at arthurs lowest moments. when they're losing and when arthur is feeling too much or has too much on his shoulders. he's there. through it all.

merlin will give arthur anything he asks. he's already given him the purpose of his life and has hidden his magic until arthur's dying day because he thought that's what arthur needed and thought he would never accept him as he is so he gave it up.

but he's also given arthur the best thing he has. a friend. understanding. communication without words. souls recognizing souls, so much that the silence may be quiet but words are being exchanged through that same silence.

also, speechless eye conversations that range near the line of sexual tens—

then in the last line, merlin is saying: your people are my people. your burdens are my burdens.

"But there's robbers to the east, clowns to the west

I'd give you my sunshine, give you my best

But the rain is always gonna come if you're standing with me"

this goes both ways!! the only difference is that arthur's is visible and merlin's is hidden. explanation: arthur no doubt has enemies, it's not a secret. being a king and a target from the magic community, that man is almost getting killed everyday. it is not a peaceful life. he knows that. but nonetheless, he has shown merlin his best before—merlin is literally the reason he reaches the best person he can be, like the growth omg—so he knows he can give it but he knows there's a lot of baggage (external and internal) that comes with being with him.

as for merlin, his enemies are a secret. and they're dangerous. arthur faces some of those same enemies but from the product of what they've created, not them personally. no, merlin goes head-to-head with the people who curse/try to kill arthur. and he gives arthur a version of his best (he still has to keep many many secrets) but even if it's limited it's still genuine. although his secrets, his late nights, and his pure exhaustion are a part of him as well. and you can't have sunshine without rain.

okay ,WOW, i'm wrung out. it feels incomplete so i might add additional things later on but for now, enjoy.

once again, thank you if you read this, thank you bbc merlin, and thank you taylor swift.

(notice how i didn't use the word love once)

#merlin #bbc merlin #bbc merthur #peace #taylor swift #taylors version #folklore #merthur #merlin x arthur #merlin emrys #merlin fandom #merlin and arthur #morgana #lady morgana #queen guinevere #king arthur #knights of the round table #camelot #lancelot #percival #sir leon #sir elyan #gwaine #arthur pendragon #colin morgan #bradley james #katie mcgrath #angel coulby #merlin wizard #warlock

[eternalfarnham]

The core of Aigis's crisis, in The Answer, is that she has exactly two invested human relationships, one of which only half-counts because it's with a dog, and the other just died.

Note that in the post-Nyx "epilogue" month, where relationships formed via SEES kinda-sorta persist (MC-Yukari-Junpei trio, Ken and Shinjiro, etc.), no one remembers Aigis besides the protagonist, or even mentions her unless she's right there. She's some girl in their dorm. This influences her self-perception and indecision in the Abyss – Metis is the way she is, fixated on a single person and incapable of caring about anyone else, because Aigis was that way.

Compare/contrast Yukari – she ends up putting herself back into the position of "enemy of SEES," contesting them for the sake of achieving (the truth behind her father's death/the MC's resurrection), failing to acknowledge her relationship with Mitsuru (who takes her side partly due to the history between them, and who reminds her of that fact).

Aigis... just genuinely doesn't have anyone in the way she had the MC, not like Yukari does. The question of suicide via sacrifice is a real and legitimate one for her; it's why she gets Metis in the first place! Metis is both her capacity to care (the part of her that wasn't mechanical and rote) and her fatal flaw, her failure to recognize that there are other people to care about in her life, represented pretty directly by Metis insisting on being Aigis's "sister" and living exclusively to protect her. Aigis turned herself into an Arisato (complete with Wild Card!) and generated an Aigis to never, ever let her go like she wished she could've in the first place!

This is part of why I think Junpei's point, that they are nowhere near guaranteed a win in a rematch with Nyx, is so much more thematically potent than Akihiko's "respect MC's decision to sacrifice himself, because changing the past is wrong!" The world is full of people. Everyone's alive. "Accept loss" falls flat for me, considering the whole Great Seal thing and also, just, my entire understanding of life, but "there is no quantity of losing others you can experience that can make life stop mattering as a general case, because the world is full of people, and the best way to keep going is to keep caring about people and finding people to care about" works for me.

And this is absolutely not a tack any other Persona game could take about its MC! It's been noted that SEES aren't quite friends as a group, just psychodrama paramilitary coworkers, but it's that awkwardness and growing into imperfect relationships with one another that lets them live without the MC. Yu Narukami is more of a "most important person" to the Investigation Team – Yosuke, obviously, and Teddie, and arguably Rise – but they do at least have dynamics with one another, kinda, Chie-Yukiko and Naoto-Kanji.

Joker is the person who matters most to every single Phantom Thief, absent dead family members and NPCs who spend most of their time offscreen, and Royal makes it clear that they don't have the same "any cost" dedication to any of those dead family members or NPCs that Aigis and Yukari had for P3MC. Does Ryuji even hypothetically have more important dynamics with anyone? Certainly not Akechi. Not Yusuke. The Phantom Thieves would risk killing the world for Joker's sake. It isn't even really a question!

P3 was just so thematically aberrant compared to the rest of modern Persona that I can't help but admire it. I disagree with many of its takes, but by god does it have them.

#persona 3 #persona 3 meta #the answer #persona meta #p4 #p5

[max-nico]

hey anon from the clothing ask here~

i meant the mobian culture around clothing but you can pick the one that you like more! :)

sorry for not clarifying

Ofc ofc !!!! You're all good Anon 🫶🏾 forgive me if I take a bit to answer this ask, I need to organize my thoughts into words lol as of me writing this sentence I'm trying to condense an essays worth of writing into somewhat easily consumable bullet points.

Hope this is to your liking 🫶🏾🫶🏾

Gloves

I've been Headcanoning gloves are worn for decency's sake, as in they are the Mobian equivalent to undergarments for humans, but I hadn't really put more thought into it than that

I'm sure it's either for practical reasons, or it's more of an emotional trust type of thing.

For example, cats typically don't let you pet their stomach or their paws unless they're sleeping and they leave them exposed to you, hence trusting you.

Or, animals typically don't all experience touch the same way. Some bugs can taste with their hands and feet, and I'm sure it'd be uncomfortable to be tasting every single hand you've ever held. So, gloves.

I'm also sure there are plenty of animals who are highly sensitive to touch or temperature, which would also make accidentally bumping hands in the street uncomfortable

I understand that, as someone who's touch averse and germaphobic I completely understand the need for everyone to wear gloves.

I'm sure some Mobians wear them less than others, like deer (idk much about deer so I could be wrong) probably can't feet much through hooves, and I'm sure their Mobian counter parts have hands but maybe the low amount of nerve endings carry over

Maybe it's more of a politeness thing? Like not wearing gloves in public is a bit of a dick move, because even if it doesn't affect you personally it could affect the person you're next to.

I also don't think young kids have to wear gloves. Have you ever tried to get shoes on a toddler who hates them, and will just take them off and lose them anyway? It's a lot of work for zero reward

You obviously have to teach your kids to wear them though. Especially once they start hitting about preschool age...

..But I'm just spit balling here lol

Clothes

I definitely think clothes are a human influence, Mobians don't really wear clothes generally. Most of our cast wears like- shoes and gloves + a jacket at most

Even Sally's original design followed that pattern

I think Mobians who grew up around humans, or have at least spent a long time around humans have adapted to wearing clothes most of the time.

Take Amy who has always worn clothes, and has basically always been in a city, compared to Sonic and Tails, who have always been living fast and free, yk?

Or Knuckles who grew up on a secluded floating island compared to Rouge who literally has a government job lol

Ofc, Shadow exists, and he doesn't wear clothes but he's also this half alien science experiment on immortality who grew up in space and then was put into stasis for 50 years and then suffered from severe memory loss

So... I feel like he may be a huge outlier lol...

I'm sure clothing for Mobians is a huge tell on where everyone's from, because Mobians from Holoska, Empire, Soleanna, and Spagonia, do not all dress the same, even if the patterns on their coat are similar

Basically the same thing people do when it comes to cultural clothing and skin color

I think it'd be cool if Mobians would've naturally progressed into face paints and hair(fur?) dye instead of clothes without human interference

Other

I was thinking about animal habits that carry over to their Mobians counterparts, then I started thinking about crows lol

Crow type Mobians, no matter where they live or are from, would typically gravitate toward maximalism and shiny garbs. But then I was like... Okay that's cool but where do stereotypes begin and instincts end?

Then I learned that crows might not actually collect shiny things and that it's probably a myth and decided to apologize to the crow Mobians I made up for stereotyping them lol

My question still stands though !! I also feel like someone asking a Mobian something along the lines of "So do you wear necklaces because wild crows like to collect shiny things?" Would be more of a human thing lol

I feel like Mobians in general have a better understanding of each other's instincts than humans do, which can definitely lead to inappropriate questions

But crows are still hoarders though... So maybe if raised by their own they all do tend to wear a maximalist style, but then would that end up being nature or nurture?

And THEN I was talking to my girlfriend about this and she was like, "well maybe these hypothetical crows all grew up hearing these stories about their ancestors that could be true or false, but they've just been honoring this traditionally shiny clothing for so long that it's second nature"

and was like wow.... And now there's even more questions to ask and we've been talking about hypothetical crows for a long time and I feel like we're getting too far from the original point bc now we're getting into specifics instead of more broad topics

But I figured I'd put it here anyways

#sth #sonic the hedgehog #i have the mic #asking and answering #sonic headcanons #headcanons #i love world building. this isn't even close to everything i could talk about. thank you sm for the ask #i needed to cut off the post somewhere or else i would go on forever #archie sonic #sonic #sth headcanons #sth hcs #sonic fanfiction #i didnt even talk about sticks the badger but i could've

[darkreconstruction]

Since this is a good space to go on and talk for a long time, i wanted to discuss my pieces for Art Fair 14C today.

The orange:

These three pieces are rooted deeply in eco-brutalism. The venom-like orange drips menacing and foreboding, equal parts inspired by soviet brutalist architecture and the chaos magic practice of sigil crafting.

The urge to create a symbol that manifests something into reality, a sign that MEANS SOMETHING, while not universal, is a common desire. It is a practice that, I personally feel helps me to connect to the past while planning for my future.

Many people find brutalist architecture to be boring, ugly, an eyesore. There will be photos of blank, featureless soviet buildings, with no inhabitants or surroundings,and all anyone can say is, oh, how ugly. However, to me, these don't exist in a vacuum. A granny will put a flowerbox on her balcony. Another neighbor will hang up the laundry to dry. Maybe you'll get moss or some green climbing thing growing. Maybe some seeds will take root in the cracks of the cheap, shoddily made concrete. People will be born there, live there, die there, and the echoes of their laughter and the stains of their tears will color the walls and the stairwells.

I felt the urge to bring brutalist architecture and chaos magic mysticism together, to symbolize that no matter how far forward we will push, how far away we will go from the organic shapes and colors of life, we will always feel the urge to look up at the sky to make a wish on a shooting star, to influence the world around us, to make a connection with a higher consciousness, to take a physical step toward making our dreams come alive.

I also was visually inspired by apocalyptic scenes, especially those from 90s anime and manga, where skeletons of ruined buildings rise up from dust and the abyss. Think X/1999, Evangelion, the Legend of Basara, or even more modern examples such as the gorgeous ruins in My Time at Portia.

The greenery also is meant to bring forth the organic, the natural, the growth and healing and our origins. The trees, the forests, the orchards. The things that grow, an easy and clear symbol of things that come from the earth.

Titles

The titles are jamais vu (a volatile system), deja vu (blood and apricots), and presque vu (the stars are afraid of you)

The titles are a two part equation - one half deals with the common human experience of unreliable nature of memory and the other half, with the much awaited apocalypse.

Jamais Vu (as you Disco Elysium folks may know) is the sensation of encountering a place /situation/moment you have lived through previously, and yet having no memory of it.

Deja Vu, the most easily explained, is the sensation of having been here before, though you have never been here previously.

Presque Vu is the sensation of almost, but never, remember what it is you've forgotten. It's at the tip of your tongue, you can almost taste it, but it just isn't coming to you.

These feelings have been experienced by every human who has lived, and every human who will come after.

The secondary parts of each title come from a certain conversation 🦗from the end of Disco Elysium. It is a conversation that discusses the end times.

Also - how many apocalypses have we humans lived through? Our worlds have ended a thousand times over. Yet here we still are, and here we'll remain.

During the process of coming up with the names of these pieces, I definitely had at least an hour long meltdown over what direction to take them in, so Uhh shout out to my Disco buds who were there for me in my darkest hour, when I actually had to name something.

I wanted to bring a bit of Disco to these pieces, because Disco has brought a bit of Disco into me.

The colors:

A soft sky blue, labeled at the store as "Aztec blue". So many native cultures, slaughtered in the name of expansion of empires and growth of wealth, and now in the paint aisle at the hardware store. It's a little weird. The blue was the prefect shade though, for what I wanted out of this.

Multichrome and metallic blues add dimension to an otherwise flat sky

The greens... I used about 10-15 different acrylic paints in various shades to create the depth and dimension of the leaves.

Orange - neon, vivid, acidic, venomous, vibrant, violent. The antithesis of a natural color. Glows ominously under blue lights.

All together

Together these pieces are a visualization of the past, present, and future of humanity. It contains the roots of our past, the promise of future apocalypses brought on by our own actions, and a hope for a future that we can build to our own imagination. It's a discussion of the unreliability of our memory, and the common things that bind us together.

If you have any questions let me know! Thanks for checking out my work!

#eco brutalism #contemporary art #disco elysium #discoelysium #abstract #modern art #art #apocalyptic #art fair 14c #blue aesthetic #Vaporwave #retrowave #naturewave #nature wall art #nature worship #witchblr #chaos magick #sigil creator #healing sigil #jamais vu #Presque vu #deja vu

[theempresstrash]

Sculpting a Digital Identity

A crucial part of being a digital artist is forming a digital identity. I’m not going to say this is how become a successful artist, everyone’s road to success is different but from my observations the most successful artists I've encountered present a finely tuned digital identity.

Marketing gurus, business minded type and influencers will tell you this a brand. However, many artists hiss violently at this as if it were sunlight on a vampire and run screaming from this word. Why? Brand = commodity. At the core, all artists know we are more than a commodity. We are a living, breathing, feeling human with a lot of soul put in our work, even digitally.

Brand has a sense of rigidity. It’s set color pallets and fonts, it’s the same logo over and over. Digital Identity on the other hand gives a sense of personal ownership and life to the individual. Identity as a human and artist is ever changing and growing as we move through this life.

As an artist, it takes trial and error and loads of experimentation to uncover and then actualize this identity. Another word for it could be persona, depending on how the artist wants to approach it. Either way it is distinctly different than a brand in that it not a template and one size fits all process.

I think this is why a lot of us crypto artists (not all) shy away from fully diving into a 10k PFP culture and identity because it’s someone elses work. Even for me taking on a DOS punk, I still had to remix it to make it my own. Until I did that, it didn’t feel like me. I could write an entire article why 10k collections are successful but that's not my focus. I’m here to write about being an independent artist.

I personally experimented a lot over the course of the last year and a half as a crypto artist with my identity. Previous to that I experimented for years - decades - in and out of school and navigating underground art communities in Oakland/Bay Area and online here in Tumblr, Insta and FB to form Empress Trash.

No one can really tell you the right or wrong way to do this process. In fact, a large portion of the process is learning to stop listening to others and start listening to yourself. What is important is to have a safe space to explore and create without the influence of people who maybe don't have an artists best interest in mind.

This doesn’t mean don’t have people who inspire you and guide you as friends, mentors, teachers, heroes and inspiration ~ more so don’t listen to people trying to control your creative energy for their own gain only (ie exploit you). For some this is easy, for others due to trauma or poor conditions to self actualize, it’s a harder road. I can say my road was a pretty tough one.

It’s important to keep going though. Not for anyone but you and your souls need to express itself. Something drove you to create in the first place; it’s always there waiting for it’s moment to come out. Don’t let the world take that precious flame away from you.

Keep experimenting, finding who you are and building space around you to foster the formation of that persona. Make multiple digital identities even, kill some of them for fun. In the end, though there has to be a main one to focus growth on depending on your goals, ambitions or dreams.

Even once you land on an identity keep experimenting. One thing I’ve noticed is some artists grow stale after they hit it. This is because even though they have gotten to a level of success they were striving for they lose the flame of play, having fun and trying new things. They fear too much they will lose what they got with a mistake or wrong turn so keep trying to do the same thing over and over that happened when success hit.

It’s like they are stuck on repeat and some eventually sink.

They don’t seem to remember the success came from them taking risks, helping others and building bridges. Always keep that no matter how success comes your way.

To some of you who barely make sales right now, the thought of even being successful is almost laughable. I get there myself, daily. It’s important to break that thought. We will manifest what we focus on ~ good or bad.

Take some time daily no matter how hard it seems to focus on what you truly want and dream. Your identity is your sculpture to make. No one else can do this for you.

My soul sees yours and I believe in you. 🖤

#empresswrites

[sneezemonster15]

It’s my 13-year-old niece about a year and a half two years to finish reading the series she finished it she called me, she was so confused. She literally said that she didn’t understand how it could’ve ended the way that it did because she was under the impression that these guys were going to run away together.

“They’re straight?!”

“Only because they needed a next gen and honestly if you read that? No. They’re still not straight.”

So she started reading the next GEN stuff and she called me yesterday, still very confused because she’s like “so they just needed to have babies to continue their family lines? What kind of archaic garbage is this? I just want Sasuke to be happy.”

Hehehe. Any reader who reads the story for the story's sake will come to the same conclusion like your niece did. If you follow the narrative and visual language, and you let the story absorb you, and not project on it left and right like most Naruto fans do, you will find that that's what the purport of the story was.

It's archaic to fans from a certain worldview. Yes. And yes, the ending did facilitate the narrative necessities required for the sequel. But the ending itself isn't archaic. Because gay men are closeted for one reason or the other the world over still. If mostly in heteronormative societies. That's just the sad reality of the world. It will take a lot longer for it to evolve. And the way Kishi made sense of it in the actual narrative was to resort to using the narrative trope of the apparent indifference of the world. Or even contempt. No matter what Sasuke and Naruto did, no matter how much suffering they went through, no matter how much effort they exerted, a happy ending didn't come to fruition. The existentialist themes of this manga culminated in the apathy of this world, where even after everything, the ending didn't really change anything, nothing mattered at the end of the day, no revolution took place, no matter how much it was actually needed for this dystopian world to be reformed. And Sasuke and Naruto, both were reduced as mere pawns of this world that they saved putting their own lives on the line. And now live in abject misery, as mere husks of their former selves, doing their best to support the same world that couldn't understand or accept them. Real life is very much like this.

Gay narratives will take more time to be normalised. More effort, more awareness, more education, more empathy, a keener perception of the world. Any deviation from the well established norm is seen as undesirable and an enemy. Because of lack of understanding, it is seen as dangerous and evil. What we don't understand, we fear and revile. But all deviations from the norm start like this. Take any revolution that changed the world. Be it renaissance or the industrial revolution or the suffragette movement.

The right narrative needs to be set up. The obsolete and reductive ones need to be discarded and rejected. Deviations need to be understood and assimilated properly into the general worldviews of people. A critical understanding and intelligent dialectic needs to be developed and nurtured. One must complicate these concepts to understand them properly. Perception of easy binaries need to be critically examined and henceforth, rejected. Like I always say, our understanding of stories is only as good as our understanding of the world. Those two cannot be divorced from each other. And as long as we have people such as the antis, who in order to protect their linear and normative worldviews, will twist and deliberately misunderstand the story from top to bottom in the most ridiculous of ways but simply won't admit that a man can love another man, as long as they would reduce gay narratives to superficial terms disparate with the story itself, as long as they would ignorantly reject that homosexuality can exist in Japan, as long as they would refuse to see the deeper meaning and literary and narrative influences of this story, as long as they would stick to their harmful heteronormativity that simply reduces, demeans and rejects any deviation to the norm, it will take even longer.

#ask #sns #narusasu #sasunaru #naruto

[balanceoflightanddark]

Dinotopia Lost

Alright, so a while back I made a post describing how sentient predatory dinosaurs were handled in the original Dinotopia books. I mentioned a novel called Dinotopia Lost that actually focuses on the predators of the Rainy Basin along with an intriguing premise about pirates landing on the normally peaceful island, and how I considered making a post about it should I get the opportunity.

Well, that opportunity is now.

Written by noted sci-fi writer Alan Dean Foster, Dinotopia Lost can best be described as a crossover between Pirates of the Caribbean and The Lost World: Jurassic Park.

...no, I'm not kidding. It's a pretty accurate description of the book.

Swept up by a freak storm, the pirate ship Condor, lead by the fearsome Captain Brognar Blackstrap and his first mate Smiggens, is marooned on Dinotopia. Deciding to make the most of their impromptu visit, they come across a family of Struthiomimus and immediately take them captive to sell them to the highest bidder, believing them to be a rare species of animal. Naturally like all dinosaurs on the island, they are sentient, but aren't able to communicate this at all to the newcomers. To make matters worse, the pirates not only decide to make a foray into the dangerous Rainy Basin, but they also kidnap a juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex.

One of the Struthies manages to escape her bonds and manages to relay the incident to Treetown, securing help from Will Denison, a Skybax rider and one of the protagonists from the original books. Along with a Protoceratops named Chaz, the three make their way into the dangerous Rainy Basin in pursuit of the pirates. Things get complicated though when the juvenile Tyrannosaur's gigantic parents are on the prowl, and tension begins to run within the ranks of the pirates. Along with an oncoming monstrous storm on the horizon, it's a race against both time, man, and beast as the heroes try to rescue the captives from Brognar's clutches.

Already the premise is pretty intriguing. Dinotopia as a setting is depicted as a utopian society where pacificism is the norm. So the idea of a group of pirates, a decidedly not pacifistic career, landing on their shores is quite an interesting scenario. Does it work?

...well. Actually, it does. Captain Brognar and his crew (especially Smiggens) are arguably the stars of the novel since the first half details them exploring the wilderness and encountering dinosaurs for the first time. Thing is, the majority of them aren't portrayed as your typical swashbucklers. They're a motley crew that comes from many nations, all brought together since society had rejected them (one almost got arrested for stealing bread for his family). While Brognar comes the closest to being your stereotypical pirate captain, the narrative makes it clear that he's the one that brought everyone together, a figure that the crew both admires and fear in equal measure for his courage, his temper, and his surprisingly quick thinking. He's not exactly the best person to work under, but you can understand why anybody would respect him.

His first mate Smiggens is the opposite. He's the only one that comes from a learned background, which puts him at odds with the others when he gets curious about the island they landed on. Including Brognar, though the captain does have a good deal of respect for his reliability. It's also Smiggens who's the first to realize that the Golden Age of Piracy is ending since their fleeing from a galleon was got them in this mess in the first place. Hell, it's a fact many of the pirates do admit as the story progresses and that many of them, outside of Brognar and his most violent followers, actually resent their lot in life. Brognar's just that much of an influence that they believe they don't have much of a choice. They're not entirely bad people, just caught up under really bad circumstances.

Their opposites in the Dinotopians bring this out. The novel does a decent job of introducing the society they live in. Especially with Will Denison as a daredevil looking to make a name for himself. He's reckless, taking the opportunity to go save the family without much backup aside from Chaz and Keelk (the escaped Struthiomimus). But he's not completely out of his depths since he's had his fair share of adventures in the past, and works more as a diplomat than an action hero you might expect from a story like this. Especially once he gets to the Rainy Basin and encounters the pirates where he tries to negotiate with them to...varying degrees of success.

His opposite is Chaz, a young translating Protoceratops who has a bit of a chip on his shoulder due to an incident involving Will's father and the famous translator Bix when they initially arrived in Dinotopia. Chaz is stuffy, not really used to going out into the wilderness and hasn't gotten the experience of his peers. He does mean well mind you, but he's not gonna be happy about it. Thing is, he's not one to back down and when Will is captured by the pirates, he's one of the most adamant that the human gets rescued. Even braves the teeth of the carnosaurs to translate for Will.

As for the carnosaurs, they're the other real stand out stars in this novel. Like I mentioned before, how Gurney handled them as choosing to live like their ancestors but aren't above negotiation is handled well here. The society of the Rainy Basin denizens are given a lot of focus which is actually very engrossing. For one, there are laws that basically say that everyone that ventures into the Rainy Basin is fair game for the carnosaurs (which makes sense given the amount of warnings and common sense everyone practices around that place). Even then, the carnivorous dinosaurs don't actually hunt most of the time since most of their diet consists of dying dinosaurs that have made pilgrimages to various graveyards throughout the rainforest (won't stop them from hunting, but it's explained as an innate predatory instinct). They also deeply respect the boundaries of each other, actively avoiding fights and even eating alongside one another if there's enough meat for everyone.

And they do have a strict code of honor. Crookeye and Shethorn, the two parent tyrannosaurs, willingly work with Will to find their kidnapped daughter after some negotiations. While Will is a bit nervous about working with them, Chaz assures the humans that no carnosaur will go back on their word. While there is some tension due to the understandable worry and anger of the parents, they do come to respect Will, Chaz, and Keelk. Even giving them names in their tongue, which is a great honor in itself. They naturally consider the party friends by the time they depart ways.

Turns out giving the heroes names in their tongue is the best thing they could've done since Will is able to use what he's learned of their language to communicate with Prettykill, the juvenile. Prettykill has just as much of an attitude like her parents, but amplified by her poor treatment and being separated from her family. It's a very understandable emotion that Will is able to sympathize with. It's especially easy for readers to see the tyrannosaurs not necessarily as monsters but a concerned and scared family trying to get back together. Especially since we get a foil in Keelk, the Struthie who is worried sick to death about her parents and siblings being held captive and almost runs herself to death trying to get help.

Which honestly one of the big themes of the novel: looking past the surface and finding what unites instead of dividing. The carnosaurs do have a form of society that, while different from the civilized Dinotopians, still have a lot of the same customs and values. The heroes and tyrannosaurs are united in their concerned for their loved ones being kidnapped and wanting to do the right thing. Even the pirates are humanized, with Will's previous experiences being a newcomer to Dinotopia being used as a comparison to how the pirates view the dinosaurs as either animals or monsters. Hell, Smiggens actually ends up wanting to stay in Dinotopia since he knows there's no future for the crew in the outside world, and manages to convince the vast majority of the crew along with Will's convincing. Plus the majesty of Dinotopia awes them into rethinking their violent ways.

A particular favorite character of mine is a good example of this: Tarqua. Tarqua is an elderly Deinonychus who had chosen a life of an ascetic. He's the first dinosaur to speak directly to the pirates, even causing them to pause a bit when he demonstrates his capability to use martial arts.

...yes. This book has a Deinonychus who meditates for most of his time, delivers some actually relevant philosophy (making him a literal Philosoraptor) and knows martial arts.

And yes, it's just as awesome as it sounds.

As a whole, I definitely believe Dinotopia Lost is worth a read. The themes and story are well executed and the characters while not perfect (a vast majority of Brognar's crew aren't that well developed and Will only gets involved around the mid-point) are still able to carry the story and are well done and developed overall. I really do think Foster does a good job of bringing Dinotopia, in particular the Rainy Basin, to life and does justice to such an interesting concept.

#dinotopia #dinotopia lost #alan dean foster #dinosaur #dinosaurs #dinosaur media #paleomedia #tyrannosaurus #struthiomimus #protoceratops #deinonychus #pirates #pirate books #dinosaur books

[butchhansolo]

Ok well now you've got me interested in your thoughts on crosshair, please go off on one I'll gladly read it

oh GOD where to even start

well first of all let me just put it on the table that i don't like the Crosshair Still Has His Inhibitor Chip Through To Season 2! camp like at all. sorry. i'm taking this way more seriously than i should but that's kind of the fun of it for me so here goes -- this theory does 2 things that i dislike about blorbo fandom-/woob-ification, for me: 1) his agency and flaws are wiped away in favour of crosshair being the universe's favourite punching bag pathetic little meow meow who everything bad happens to for no good reason just because they want to be mean to him through the deus ex It's Not His Fault Actually! mind control, granting him total absolution from, and 2) it completely ignores the narrative of the overall story which requires crosshair to have agency in his own decisions or else it all falls apart. there would be no weight to his poor decisions in the latter half of s1 and no weight to the batch letting him choose to stay with the empire. cody literally outlines the point of crosshair's narrative: "We make our own decisions. Our own choices. And we have to live with them too." -- the point is making bad choices and living with it and being better, the point is that he makes mistakes and is irrational and angry and so so heartbreakingly human, and as all humans do, just as he has a say in his misdeeds, he also has a say in choosing to be a better person than he was before.

having his chip be the influence causing him to do the idiotic shit he does is literally a detriment to his character at the point we're at now -- it makes him less interesting in favour of turning him into a Nothing sob story, and it's just a disservice to his character. even if s3 pulls it out of the bag as an A-Ha, Gotcha! where he does have his chip in, all that'll do is sink tbb to an F tier show for me because literally why. what's the point anymore.

crosshair is interesting/a favourite for me specifically because of how raw and human he is. he hates that his brothers left him behind enough to choose to side with the empire to spite them, but he still loves them so he keeps them safe from the empire despite it. he loves his brothers, he's a piece of shit, he protects those he's close to but that circle is comically small and he fails to recognize who it is that are in the same boat as him and who they should be facing as a common enemy (the regs and the empire, respectively) until it's shoved in his face (yaaaay character development). and he thinks he's special and talented and skilled enough to outpace the fact that he's a clone, he's naive enough to believe that the empire will ever see him as more than canon fodder just as long as he's useful, just as long as he's more useful than all the other clones, just as long as he's a good soldier, and permit me to connect this to my own experiences with being a minority but this in particular resonated because like. the people who hate me aren't ever going to see past what i was born as, no matter how much i put myself in a nice box and make myself palatable. and putting down others who don't do the same only harms the people who are my family. it's a worthy lesson to learn, and it has a lot of potential in crosshair's story, if they develop it further than the episodes we got with cody and mayday (doubtful given how kinda dogshit they are at committing time to these things but we'll see).

i guess in the end crosshair is compelling to me as a character who is all about growth. making bad decisions, choosing to be better, feeling and loving and caring too much or not enough and learning and growing and just being. human

#.txt #oh boy that was a doozy #anyways stan crosshair he's a piece of shit #unedited i am Not reading this again you r getting my raw thoughts #analysis