#so I don't know dude we all have our contradictions

[fexarii]

Dude, , I just gotta ramble about Jevil and Spamton's character designs and how genius they are in a shape language sense..

(this is completely impulsive and I haven't played the game in like a few months by now so don't mind it if I misinterpret their personalities a bit. They're very blorbofied in my brain but I will put my biases for these literal criminals aside.)

First of all,, what is shape language? In short, it's a meaning we've attached to shapes in art, specifically character design in this case! Square is tough and reliable, triangle is dangerous and pointy and circle is friendly and approachable. There's more shapes and more theory but yaaawn no one's here for a lecture.

So onto the actual deltarune stuff, the secret bosses, Spamton and Jevil both have clear use of shapes throughout their design. Spamton relies very heavily on triangles while Jevil does so with circles.

Peep these examples , ,

((His nacho body type is so funny to me sorry </3))

Yet this seems to contradict their behaviour!

Jevil is in no way friendly, well, he was at some point. As a court fool it makes sense for him to be squishy and friendly, he's a walking squeaky toy meant to entertain. We don't know what exactly he looked like before being thrown in his prison, but we can assume that his body probably didn't change that much since he had no body morphing shenanigans going on like Spamton did.

But as he devolved and his games only got more and more violent, that squishiness is all gone. Yet when you walk in, you still see him like that,, luring you in a false sense of security until uhoh!! He's kinda fucked up in the head and wouldn't mind turning you into slices!!

Spamton on the other hand, is way less inclined to violence than Jevil. I mean, the way to unlock his secret bossfight in the normal route is by bartering with him, he even berates you for beating him up.

He prefers using his words over his fists to lure you in instead, and even offers you items with... Varying quality. But despite his insistence on being friendly and helpful and allat, his shape language betrays him, feeling almost dangerous to be around. He could poke you with that sharp nose and hair.

This only gets more clear with NEO, where he does resort to violence to get Kris' soul. His hair and armor are all straight up triangular shapes, he's no longer using reason! Attacking his strings is the only way to get through to him.

((This is not mentioning snowgrave btw, , Spamton is straight up a villain there, but funnily enough you don't even see him there until he's NEO, ,))

Okay that's all . I'm typing this while my head hurts like shit so I hope it made sense uhmm👍👍yywah

Toby is a genius, thank you for always subverting our expectations as the media critics say.

#spamton #deltarune #spamton g spamton #jevil deltarune #jevil #deltarune analysis #fex thoughts #not my usual way of posting #i promise I'll have more art soon ! just recovered from a depressive episode uhrm yippee!!! #but my second wave of midterms is coming so aagh #wish me luck I'll desperately need it LOL

[runthepockets]

I can see how a lot of the maltreatment trans men receieve in the trans community could be read as misogyny, but imo it just reads to me as the standard way people tend to be sexist towards dudes. Like I know for a fact no one is secretly misgendering me in their head just cus as a black person I don't really have the luxury of being seen as a delusional little waif regardless of whether I'm male or female, cis or trans, and I'm generally, just, very naturally a masculine individual in essence (idk how else to describe it, I just don't do girly shit and don't care for any of it).

The whole "suck it up and take it on the chin stop derailing women's issues" mindset that's chucked at us is very much just toxic masculinity repackaged, I remember seeing it imposed on my brothers as a younger kid pretty much verbatim and they're all cis and straight. Like this is just the "man box" thing and unfortunately it's other trans people perpetuating it this time. I'm honestly not mad or surprised about it just cus everyone does it both conciously and subconciously, patriarchy is a system we all uphold and its been around for longer than any of us have been alive, hence our inability to even notice we're doing it a lot of the time. It's just that a lot of people doing it deny that they're doing it because it contradicts this ridiculous self image they have of having transcended all that ~facile~ icky binary gender cis people stuff. But the reality is we're all products of society and we're all capable of doing harm, so, just let the dudes in your community be vulnerable around you instead of raising your hackles and making everything about yourself and your needs. You don't like it when (cis) men do it to you so why are you doing it to trans men now.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

Aita for getting my polycule to cut someone off?

Okay, so, my bfs started dating this guy we were previously friends with. He had always made me uncomfortable, but I don't want to dictate who they can and can't date. So I stayed off to the side, trying to put together why exactly he made me uncomfortable as hell.

Well, one day we were all talking and he decided to mention a weird dream he had, completely unrelated to our conversation, that was about me being Jewish. It just stuck out to me that the reason I may be uncomfortable is because it felt tokenizing to suddenly bring that up when everyone else was talking about something else. This, and he would come to me asking if he was allowed to wear patches with the 🚫 and swastika in it without really considering I never said I was comfortable with that before.

I called him out on it after days of feeling so uncomfortable I isolated. He apologized and one of my bfs was there for when he apologized because, I admit, I was trying my damndest not to address the issue out of fear I would be broken up with.

After this, he kept making sexual passes at me and my main bf. Me and him had sex once, at the very start of us getting to know each other. He seemed experienced, so I decided it'd be best to have my first time with him. After that I showed no sexual interest, but he also kept wanting to have sex with my main bf who witnessed the apology. Which, was fine by me, but I didn't want to be involved.

When I stepped away from that, and my bf never had sex with him, so he treated me differently. Or well, it seemed like he tried to treat me normally but then he would look at me like he was trying to get a read on me.

Flash forward, this guy's fiance breaks up with him so he starts to rely on my bfs more. The whole situation is just sketchy to me, so I talk to his ex fiance. Well, said fiance reveals some very troubling things to me. This guy had always viewed me as an obstacle, got mad when I didn't want to have sex, and tried to make it seem that I was keeping him from having sex with his "2nd main partner". He would always make the relationship seem a lot closer than it was. My main partner and I talk all of the time, so it came as a surprise to both of us that he considered my main partner as his "2nd main".

I told my bfs, and they all agreed he needed to be talked to and removed from the polycule groupchat. I let him have it when I talked to him, caught him up in lies and contradictions, and then I told him he's never allowed around me again.

Instead of acting like he cared he hurt me, he just asked if this meant everyone was breaking up with him. I told him I don't speak for them and instead of talking to any of them individually like they all wanted, he ran and blocked them. Accusing us of ganging up on him.

I still talk to his ex fiance, they're super cool and we used to play d&d together.

Was I the asshole to bring all of that on at once? Dude got broken up with by who he thought was a life partner and 2 other people in the span of 2 weeks.

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole

[digitaldavis]

Rough thoughts on the movie in no particular order now that I have a moment:

Going in with the heavy hitters 'cause I can't stop thinking about it but Lui's claims that he is the first person to ever partner with a Digimon are unsubstantiated and lack hard evidence - also, unless it was explained in Kizuna and Tri, I'm pretty sure Digimon Adventure contradicts this?? (I'll check into this when I have more time, don't @ me).

The implication that Ukkomon made all of the Digimon hostile towards one another so that the Digi-Destined would fight to defend themselves and therefore Lui is nonsense and even if there is nothing to directly contradict it in Adventure and 02, I'm gonna hard pass on that canon because it lends itself too much to the idea that all Digimon would just be wholesome and good if not for Ukkomon making them fight and that feels like it excuses the things that Devimon, Piedmon, MaloMyotismon, and the other villain Digimon did or removes their free will?

Also, have I mentioned what Lui said didn't make sense???? Lui might be closer to Tai's age so it's feasible he could have become digi-destined around the same time as Tai but DUDE, Owikawa and Cody's dad discovered the Digital World and Digimon when they were kids????? AND THAT WAS AGES BEFORE LUI WAS BORN. It just doesn't make sense unless this is some alternate universe where that didn't happen or Lui is a time traveler or something (which is possible they did time travel...)

Speaking of, I'm so interested in the implication that Lui went back in time and talked to his mom about his younger self and she seemed to snap out of it for a second, like, if that was a permanent change do you think he created another alternate reality in that instance?

Moving on though, Davis. DAVIS. Seeing him in the film cured my depression. His reaction to Lui's mom was so so so Davis and I felt so strongly about it and then Ken's immediate "we can't we could ruin our own future" response is exactly how I've always imagined a time-travel AU would go between them.

ALSO: DAVIS AND KEN. The flirting. Ken just straight up grabbing both of Davis hands. (He's so COMFORTABLE WITH HIMSELF NOW) Ken throwing himself off Paildramon after Davis. I'm LIVING. The little high five they did to congratulate themselves. Ken's remark that summoning Paildramon was a little much seconds after I was like "wow that's so gay and unnecessary". Both of them were just so on point in this film. Davis was upbeat and optimistic and just believes the best in people/digimon so hard and when his tendency to charge in got in the way Ken was there to mellow him out so he didn't do anything rash.

Yolei did feel kind of off for some reason in the film but that might have been because I was so excited for the film that I couldn't pay attention to everything that was happening. I was only able to see it once and I missed so many things I know it. I can't wait for it to be released physically so I can own it and just rewatch it a dozen times.

Speaking of Yolei, though, I cannot believe the film framed her like Uhura trying to come between Kirk and Spock (which is comically absurd btw). In nearly ever scene possible it's Davis, Yolei but slightly offset and then Ken beside Davis. Like the animators are desperate to push the Kenyako narrative, like, clearly they know about the Daiken feelings being very strong with fans but they were trying to visually remind us painfully hard that, hey, actually the pairing is Kenyako. But buddy did that feel forced and it's probably why Yolei felt off to me.

J U S T I C E F O R C O D Y. That's all.

THEY COULD HAVE LET ROBBIE DAYMOND DO A TERRIBLE TEXAN ACCENT!!! THEY SHOULD HAVE AT LEAST TRIED!!!!

Kari actually didn't have very many major lines in the film I felt like but I loved the little scenes of her at the beginning, actually, though, she was kind of just there next to T.K. the entire time because the film also framed them together so hard it's SO WEIRD THEY AREN'T CANON.

T.K. though. God he was just so T.K. in this film. The trauma of losing Patamon in Adventure and then whatever happened in Tri like. It was just the most T.K. thing to do and say when they were talking about what they had to do. But also, I loved whenever the cops showed up and Davis goes "WHAT, HOW DID THEY FIND US?" and T.K. was like "ARE YOU KIDDING!???? YOU AND YOUR BOYFRIEND SUMMONED A GIANT FLYING MONSTER!!!!"

Honestly, this movie was everything I ever wanted really. About three minutes before we went into the movie I was talking about ghost game with my friend and how I wished it hadn't been for kids because it had such great and frankly horrifying concepts and everything was just sunshine and rainbows for children and nothing bad ever really happened which was disappointing.

And then I watched The Beginning. This movie felt so much like coming home from the start because I felt like I knew these character's so well (I lost count of how many times I sat in the theater and said a thing, only to have one of the character's also say the thing a second later), and everything was so bright and nice and then it became an eldritch horror show.

Let me tell you, when I watched the trailer for the first time I said to my friend "dude what was with that trailer??? The music????? Why is it so sinister???" and, despite that, I still did not see the horror coming and neither did anyone else in the theater. Everyone and I do mean everyone went very still and quiet and tense the second the first hint of bad began. We were all so unprepared and it was very upsetting.

As I was leaving the theater, I heard a woman fighting with her husband over having brought their very little daughter to see the movie. The mom clearly thought it was a fun kids movie because it was animated and whoever is in charge of American films absolutely thinks all animated movies are for kids so it wasn't rated which is how the film industry always handles anime films.

They seem completely incapable of understanding that animation doesn't equal child friendly. Watching it, though, it's never been more clear that a Digimon movie was for older audiences than watching The Beginning. Like, this film was not for kids. This film was for us. The setting. The themes. The fact that 79% of the entire movie is exposition/dialogue...

When the little girl's dad asked her if she liked the film as it ended, he sounded strained and his wife was complaining that the film was going to give her nightmares and while his daughter said yes, she liked the film it was in a way that you could tell that no, she didn't really because she had no idea what was going on - it was bright and colorful and there were cute characters sometimes so that was probably fine but she couldn't have been older than six so it was probably very boring for her.

That is one of my few complaints about the film, actually. It was nearly all talking and exposition. I wish there had been more action. I wish it had been a little more light hearted and goofy at times. The eldritch horror/really messed up part of the movie felt like it went on forever but that might have just been my lack of prepardness for it. I was just so shocked even while my brain was like "yes, this is what we always wanted I AM LIVING" - also because I imagined that kind of awful, dark underbelly of the world of Digimon existing for the character's I already know and love.

Nothing is going to stop me from headcanoning that Davis reaction to Lui's mom being The Worst was so immediate and visceral because he's dealing with his own trauma from his mom's refusal to accept that he's trans, okay?

I didn't care a great deal for Lui and Ukkomon obviously disturbed me to no end - I know it wasn't Ukkomon's fault, they didn't know better but also it's fair to say that I was scarred for life about Lui's parents and the baseball bat scene and I would probably like Lui a lot more if his story weren't all conjecture and exposition. Also he was so negative (understandably) and was such a downer the entire film, honestly, thank god Davis and his endless queer energy was there to breakthrough to Lui and help him see the light of queerness friendship.

Anyway, did I mention Lui's claim that he's the first ever human to partner with a digimon doesn't make sense to me? I've thought about it a little more and, fine, maybe it's possible that Lui could be the first person to partner with a Digimon but the idea that everyone else became Digi-Destined because of him and Ukkomon still doesn't sit right. Oikawa didn't get a digimon until he was an adult and died and so even though he knew about Digi-World he technically didn't become Digi-Destined and the Digital World could have existed for ages before anyone partnered with a Digimon. Those things aren't mutually exclusive, I have to remind myself, but it just doesn't feel right to me and their claims being baseless seems more legit.

Okay, I'm done, that's it for my rough thoughts on the movie, I think. They probably won't get any clearer. I'm gonna use the film to further my Trans!Davis/Daiken headcanons for sure though.

One last thing though and it's that my friend said he hated Lui because Lui took away from the 02 kids and I had to remind him that Willis exists in Hurricane Touchdown and the majority of that film is Willis and Davis talking/fighting and the other kids just existing. It's not some wild new Digimon format to have a new Digi-Destined to center the plot around.

And speaking of the plot, a final thought is on the bit where their Digivices weren't relevant anymore. That isn't off-brand either actually. I don't like that they disappeared because I have an emotional attachment to them but I understand that the narrative was not needing to prove their bonds with their Digimon and therefore anyone can have strong bonds of real friendship with or without a Digivice aka being Digi-Destined - it also makes sense with the whole "we didn't need the tags and crests to Digivolve our Digimon because our real strength comes from within" narrative that the OG Digimon Adventure established. The Digivices and tags/crests were just tools to remind them of their bonds with one another.

Anyway, that's it. I'm shutting up. This post got so long I'm sorry but also if anyone wants to share their thoughts on the movie or my bad takes but in a fun way that's cool feel free. I'm always here to talk about Digimon and how this is gonna influence all my future headcanons things but seriously don't @ me out of malice. K THX

#Digimon 02 The Beginning #The Beginning #Digimon Adventure 02 #Spoilers #Davis Motomiya #Ken Ichijouji #Daiken #Yolei Inoue #Cody Hida #Yukio Oikawa #Lui Ohwada #Ukkomon #Digimon Adventure #T.K. Takaishi #Kari Kamiya

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Genuine question, what’s wrong with the DSM?

[OP refers to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which I mentioned being unpopular among mental health professionals.] Disclaimer: I'm not a psychiatrist, I'm not a therapist, and I'm not trained in counseling. I'm a social psychology researcher. If a therapist contradicts me, listen to the therapist.

The problem with the DSM as I understand it: a lot of counselors/ psychiatrists/ etc. want to move away from a category- and source-based diagnostic system, toward a symptom-based treatment system. For example, think about Pepto Bismol: you feel nauseous, you chew pink tablets, it ends your nausea. It doesn't matter if your nausea is indigestion or seasickness or lactose intolerance. You match a treatment (pink bismuth) to a symptom (nausea) and don't waste time or money on diagnosis unless that treatment proves ineffective.

A large percent of counselors etc. would like to take the same approach to mental health. So we'd be researching treatments for nightmares (neurofeedback? MDMA?) in the long-term, and giving clients treatments for nightmares (meditation! Ambien!) in the short-term. All without worrying too much about whether the nightmares are caused by General Anxiety Disorder or a phobia or Seasonal Affective Disorder. There are many strengths to that approach.

Only, see, there's this big purple dinosaur holding us back.

[Image ID: Hardcover copy of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, DSM-5, American Psychiatric Association; the title is white text on a purple background.]

So if everyone who uses the DSM also hates the DSM, why does it still exist and why do we keep buying it every time a $100 text revision gets published? Two reasons, in order of importance:

Insurance

Communication

Insurance is, I kid you not, the DSM's #1 reason for existence. American insurance companies won't cover treatment unless it's for a diagnosed illness, and so therapists put diagnosed illnesses on what they'd often be more comfortable describing as "bro, this dude is hella distressed and I'm trying to help undistress him." Note the word American on the cover; other countries have other manuals, and no other country's counselors are as chained to theirs as we are to ours. This means that the DSM helps — yay, affordable therapy! It means the DSM hurts — sets of symptoms get grouped artificially, spectra get split into categories, and diagnosis happens way too early in the therapeutic process.

Another comparison to unmental health: I don't have carpal tunnel syndrome, but my insurance provider thinks I do. I only announce that I don't because I haven't told you who I am or where I live. (If the insurance companies find us... Well, we just won't let them find us. The thing you should know is everyone is getting screwed by health insurance. Yeah, even you.) I have wrist pain and tingling. It has the wrong antecedents for carpal tunnel, and it has weird manifestations — pressure on the base of my thumb causes pain in my pinky — but my OT wrote down "Carpal Tunnel" on the forms because the alternative was a $500+ round of diagnostic scans. No one cares whether my median nerve is inflamed or not; occupational therapy still looks like "try this stretch, that stretch, this brace, that brace, and these activity changes; keep whichever combination makes the pain and tingling go away."

This kind of thing also happens in mental health all the time. Many therapists don't care — and neither should you — if your serotonin levels are low; if you're miserable and an SSRI prevents the misery, take the dang SSRI. If your mother was harshly critical and now you feel panic at any hint of criticism, it doesn't matter whether that better fits C-PTSD or NPD; it matters whether you cope with soothing self-talk or if you cope with alcohol. Put something from the DSM on the forms, and focus on finding which stretches (breathing exercises) make the tingling (panic) go away.

Communication is the biggest strength of the DSM. It means that clients can benefit from labels ("I'm not lazy, I'm ADHD") and consistent standards of treatment can be applied across different clients in different states. The DSM has huge lists of things like "if your client shows memory problems, be sure to check for alcohol abuse" or "if they have self-harm, make sure it's non-suicidal before you do anything else" that are tremendously helpful. It can help therapists who encounter a set of behaviors they've never seen before to go "client is rigid, rule-bound, and lacks insight... huh, looks like I'd better refer them to an OCPD specialist." (It's also the source of a lot of toxic misinformation on social media when symptom lists get taken out of context without that all-important differential diagnosis information, but I digress.)

However, diagnosis should never be the beginning point for therapy — it's impossible to know your client's mind without first building trust and transference — but reliance on the DSM for insurance often forces it to be. Diagnosis should never be the end point for therapy — knowing your perceptions don't match others' because of Bipolar I won't stop you hearing the dang hallucinations — but home use of the DSM often acts that way. Categorical diagnosis is limiting if your therapist is primarily interested in how depressed you are but the Beck Depression Inventory uses an absolute cutoff point for "depressed" or "non-depressed." Categorical diagnosis is useless if over 50% of people diagnosed with a depression are later diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, and vice versa. So it's an imperfect book that does a lot of things well and a few things badly, and many of its heaviest users would argue that it shouldn't exist at all.

For further reading, I recommend The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk. I don't agree with all the axes he grinds or all the ways he grinds them, but he's got decades of psychiatry experience and is (I hope) predicting the next paradigm shift in mental health.

For instance, van der Kolk argues that it doesn't matter if at intake your client has long blond hair and is named Linda, only to show up the next time with no hair and the name Gerald, only to come next time with short red hair and the name Taylor. The therapist should only be asking "how does the client feel about these changes?" and "what are these changes doing for the client?" If Linda can't remember what Gerald did, then focus on the terrible memory gaps that alter identities create. If Taylor became Gerald to try and please you, then focus on teaching mindfulness and self-compassion. If this is a happily genderqueer person, then figure out why they're seeking help and don't worry about the appearance changes. If this is someone who thinks in absolutes and regards their personality as constantly changing, then work on teaching them to see the world and themself with moral complexity. It doesn't matter whether Dissociative Identity Disorder exists or not; just ask your client what they need and how you can help, then go from there.

Anyway, the DSM is an imperfect solution to a complex problem, and a lot of mental health practitioners view it as a relic of a more paternalizing era. No one has come up with a really good solution for how to remove and replace it, so for now it's the least-bad option.

#dsm #dsm 5 #psychology #psychological research #therapy #counseling #mental health #diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders #psychiatry #diagnosis #long post #(almost) nothing to do with animorphs #depression mention #ptsd mention #suicide mention #american politics #to be 100% clear: I *do not know enough* to have an opinion about whether or not Dissociative Identity Disorder exists #i only know that some very expert people have argued for it *and* that some very expert people have argued against it #and that all these very expert people absolutely agree on listening to the client howsoever the client chooses to identify #more research is needed #I reiterate: I AM NOT A THERAPIST AND NONE OF THIS IS MEANT AS MENTAL HEALTH ADVICE

[isthedogawolfdog]

youtu(dot)be(slash)g-7cLXyMp8E?si=OQ_6WDtl_dnMj9DP

Thoughts on this video on the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone and also the article that it cures which claims the Yellowstone narrative is factually inaccurate?

BAHAHAHA I am fucking CACKLING.

Okay so this video:

was posted in late 2020 and BOY HOWDY is it a wild ride. Because I need a distraction and am feeling particularly petty right now I'll see if I can break down the video and it's... um... "facts".

Before I start though the dudes YouTube is chock full of extreme vegan takes so I wouldn't say he's the top tier candidate for good sources lol.

"Introduction"

The beginning is meh. Y'know the usual thing some Youtubers do with the whole "is this really true???" thing with unreasonable amount of suspicion? yeah. He pretty much makes comments on how maybe the reintroduction of wolves into YNP wasn't the "incredible success story that it was made out to be." Which I feel like the, y'know, the many hundreds of research papers on the wolf reintroduction into YNP and the massive benefits it's created kinda contradicts? but I mean what do I know.

"Yellowstone narrative is misleading"

So this part opens up with this video (which I don't feel like watching rn if I were being honest so I'll save that for later) that blew up a bit ago regarding how wolves change rivers, and the claim that it was misleading, untrue, etc. The youtuber (who we shall call Hancock because "Youtuber" will get boring) uses this source to stake the claim that the positive impact wolves have had on rivers in YNP isn't true.

As we would know if we actually did research and didn't talk out of our ass, wolves didn't directly affect the rivers just by hunting elk, but beavers as well. Aspen and willow are, surprise surprise! a favorite food of beavers. Prior to wolf reintroduction riverbeds and waterways in YNP were in terrible shape, mainly due to erosion and lack of support from water loving plants, which are... tada! willow and aspen! Beavers and elk chowed down on these plants in huge amounts due to their numbers being so vastly out of control due to lack of predators. So when wolves came around and started hunting the plentiful beavers and elk, the willow and aspen were basically like "oh shit! we aren't being eaten to the point where we're all dying!! lets grow more!!" and in turn the more willow and aspen = more footing for the soil along waterbeds which means the rivers were saved. Some of this was mentioned in the article that was linked but wasn't mentioned by Hancock so idk what's up with that.

To sum it up, wolves made an impact! And it's silly to just write that off completely!! I think my issue with this part is that Hancock completely writes wolves impact on the environment off, which is frankly ridiculous. The original video may have overstated it a bit, but it's not like it doesn't exist.

"The balance of ecosystems"

Hancock then talks about the complexity of the YNP food chain (kinda), and how some people feel the need to restore the balance in nature if we humans fuck it up which?? like yeah?? we should?? He goes into a schpeel about values or whatever and if we value certain ecosystems over others??? Idk I was NOT tracking.

He mentions his thoughts on "which balance is best for the animals that live there". Goes on slight anthropomorphizing tangent then dives into the next part...:

"Ecology of fear"

Ah, lads, we are back in biology class aren't we. Except this time we are anthropomorphizing the hell out of everything! "The deer are afraid of being eaten alive, so afraid that they sometimes choose to eat less..."

Okay, did anyone tell this guy that the amount of food the herbivores (ungulates namely) before wolves were reintroduced was literally killing everything? Without wolves to balance the prey populations out they overgrazed, populations skyrocketed and so did disease.

The rest of this is a tangent, so I'll skip over it.

"Wolves suffered too"

Hancock cites the outbreaks of canine distemper disease that have occurred in YNP since reintroduction. This is a bit of a mute point, since canine distemper can fuck any canine population up whether it's a brand new reintroduced group of wolves or they've been there for decades.

Also, can we note how he talks about canine distemper then shows a wolf with mange?? hmmmm.

"Numbers of animals vs welfare"

Dude talks about random bullshit regarding animal rights. Loooooots of emotional heartstrings attempting to be pulled. He is 10000% coming from one of those anti-predator perspectives. Biiiig yikes.

"It's too complex (human health analogy)"

This section was basically mansplaining but with vegans lol.

"The choice we have"

He brings in wild animal contraception?????? I???? Girl what. I mean it's a thing yeah but I did not expect that to be where he was going.

Hancock talks about "one of the cruelest, and unfortunately most romanticized and thus most prevalent methods of population control" AKA reintroducing predators. Hmmmm it's almost like he didn't read about the mass amount of ungulates and other prey animals dying off in YNP when winter came (prior to reintroduction) and there wasn't enough food to sustain them all, subjecting them to excruciating deaths and long drawn out starvation and disease.

Hancock then goes onto how animals eat each other alive, which like, yeah, they do. AND THEN he talks about "wild animal suffrage" which, frankly I refuse to google. Blah blah blah he's anti-hunting who would've thought.

"we didn't do it for the animals"

Okay this actually has some value to it. Hancock talks about how wolves weren't reintroduced for their benefit, or anyone else, but only for people and tourism. This is both right and wrong.

I'm sure that all the biologists and hard working members on the reintroduction team would disagree that it wasn't done for the animals, but who knows. Anyway, the point that tourism would rake in a lot of cash for the state was also something that helped wolves get reintroduced, since we know many government officials weren't in it for the animals. So yeah, sort of true, but not really.

Hancock goes on about what animals are concerned about, even adding a little wolf with a thought bubble (which tbh, I'm sure if wolves knew about the technicalities of biodiversity they would love it, since it usually means a better quality of life). More anthropomorphizing and entitled vegan guilt tripping.

At this point I stopped watching, since it's already been roughly an hour, and although I could do this all day, I have to work later.

To answer your question anon, this video is very poorly put together and I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole. There is little to no research done prior to creating it, and the creator talks from a animal rights activist point of view, which is never helpful.

#this is so fucking funny #wolves #wolf #yellowstone national park #yellowstone wolves #animal rights

[treasureofmammon]

Warning: RANT POST! ‼️

This happened to me this week:

So, between my recurring "Mammon-lover" posting, there was this person who interacted with one of my stupid posts and nagged about Mammon being mean to his bros and a robber, and- you name it. This person "call me out": "... and you know it" -they say. Yes, I know everything he is. Despite this, I chose to see the good side of him because that is the side he shows us, MC. Just like all the brothers do to us once we passed the first lessons in our relationship with all of them.

Also, I can't stop loving him. I honestly didn't choose to love him. If I could, I'd have chosen Simeon, but I can't, ok?! The heart wants what the heart wants. I just fell for him and built this one-sided weird relationship with a 2D guy, like the childish adult woman that I am.

And, honestly, I love all of them: all the 7 brothers, from Luci to Belphie, and the secondary characters too. They all make my heart race, bury my face into my pillow, and throw my feet like a fidgeting high schooler. I just like Mammon better.

I guess this post is more of a rant and, to say, straight to "everyone's face," that, if you're here (in my blog) expecting me to change my preferences for Mammon, just because he's morally wrong a lot of the times, you can leave my humble little Tumblr page. Bye.

And don't get me wrong, I can see everything he does, yes, I can! But let me indulge in my man here. He's the one I like the most! Let me be! I ain't hurting others. And definitely, I'm NOT running through every goddamn post to change people's minds on Mammon, nor to call people out for their preferences. Would it kill you to do the same? Would it kill you to be a person who respects other people's preferences and tastes?

Also, what OM!/NB game are you playing?! These dudes are demons! They all are the literal definition of each capital sin. WTF?

Also, like, we can have a healthy discussion over the brothers being their sin, about Mammon and his interesting personality: as he is so kind yet greedy, as he puts his family in bad situations yet he also puts them first. On how he tries to hold himself high, but he's probably the one who hates himself the most, because he doesn't want to be a burden for his brothers but can't stop indulging in his sin, who is himself: greed, and ends up doing whatever he's tempted by, with the side effects that he didn't want, which is hurting others, most likely his loved ones. And yet, he acts like an angel sometimes, for example <SPOILERS ahead>: on how he was willing to put himself in an uncomfortable position, being blackmailed by witches for years, so a child can have a decent life, being this, probably, the only debt that he pays without fail, but he can't stop himself from self-destructive attitudes like continuing his gambling addiction that keeps to build up his debt higher and higher and ruin himself. Yet he finds the way to endear us, always. Our protector and our troublemaker. Both. He is both: my wonderful baby boy and my headache (and heartache too, honestly). And yet, he's (allegedly) the better of them all (said by Satan who is also and probably the most rational of them all, along with Lucifer), meaning that Mammon is the most humane. Mammon is flawed: he's bad yet he's good. Aren't rl humans like that too? Walking contradictions? And also, we can have a healthy discussion, about the other 6 brothers too, being the way they are and who they are, which aren't any better than Mammon, btw. Yet they are also endearing and kind to us. And that's ok.

It's just that you can't go through people's posts thinking that you are a moral compass, changing people's minds because you think they are wrong and you are right like some random unlikable elementary-school bully.

And now that we are on it. This blog is strictly feminist, open to all LGBTQ+ communities, anti-homophobic, anti-xenophobic, anti-transphobic, anti-racism, anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist. Because I understand that all of these are born from empathy and acknowledging other people's realities. Which is where this all comes from, EMPATHY: "the ability to understand and share (or at least, try to) the feelings of another".

That's all I'm asking. It's not much. I do this. I understand people have different preferences, I respect that. Can you respect mine then?

So:

This Barbie loves empathy.

This Barbie loves Mammon 💖✨️💛

This Barbie loves shitposting.

This Barbie loves to see people happy with their beloved OM! character, whoever he or they are.

So kindly go fuck yourself if you can't comply with these. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

Here's a hot Mammon if you read the whole post.

Ps: English is not my first language, there might be ortographic and syntactic errors.

#if you don't like Mammon you don't have to be here #You are free to leave nobody will judge #everyone has their own preferences and that's ok #shitpost #obey me #obey me shall we date #obey me mammon #mammon #mammon avatar of greed #obey me! #mammon x mc #rant post #obey me rant

[fala-alfredo-pasta]

On the topic of Nagito resenting Izuru, I actually think it could go beyond that. Something that I'm not totally convinced about is none of Class 77 having any hard feelings towards Hajime. While them loving him inside the simulation makes perfect sense, would that really carry over smoothly once they were back out? Because his actions led to both them being brainwashed and for their deprogramming session being sabotaged in the first place. And to add insult to injury, he can take some solace in feeling less "tainted" than they are. Izuru had more autonomy and self-control during the Tragedy, while they were reduced to vicious idiots acting on whatever violent impulse came to them. Like with Sonia, she has to live with being known to the world as the tyrant queen who brought her homeland to ruin (though I personally like to headcanon that Novoselic is recovering). Meanwhile for the few people who are aware of a 15th Remnant, Hajime is "that one other dude with the long hair that we're not even sure killed that many people". I mean if I came out of the NWP with all that mental (and possibly physical) baggage, and the dude in our group who was most responsible for the rest of us becoming so fucked up was conversely the least guilty of us AND got handed a thousand super-talents...well I think I'd be a wee bit resentful and jealous. And going back to Nagito, it also seems a bit unrealistic to me that in most fanfics there doesn't seem to be any resistance from him to accepting medical aid from Hajime. Or dismay at discovering it was done while he was in a coma. Because on top of him probably not feeling like he'd want to prolong his life, accepting that kind of aid from the former Izuru would probably feel kind of infantilizing to be honest. Dude gets handed everything you ever wanted including a better version of your luck, he betrays Hope's Peak because he's bored, does absolutely nothing while someone dear to you is murdered and you and your classmates get brainwashed, sets things up so that your attempted suicide will actually result in you getting possessed by your nemesis...and now you're just meant to let him assert the power of a doctor over you and welcome him as your savior? I just think there'd probably need to be a moment where Nagito is convinced to accept treatment, rather than it being done to him without his consent. Make him feel assured that he has agency and control over his own body, and that continuing to live was his own choice. Because otherwise I think it could get really nasty. " I don't care that you're the most talented man alive. Even if I'd wanted to live, you, of all people on this planet, YOU are the last human being on Earth that I would want help from."

Ooo this be a spicy take! But some very good points! First off, sorry for taking so long to reply to this question it just this got me back into my Dangan theorist mode, and I wanted to replay all of Chapter 0/6 as well as read a summary of Zero in order to re-examine how the game and novel present Izuru Kamukura.

I’ll try my best not to derail this because Izuru’s whole existence and backstory is just…..such a brain worm for me that I can speculate on for hours. There’s just so much we don’t truly know if we’re basing this solely on the games (which I usually prefer to do seeing as the anime is filled with contradictions). But, doing so would mean having to excuse his involvement (or lack of) in preventing Chiaki’s murder and class 77’s brainwashing since there’s nothing within the games that indicates such things happening since even within game it flat out states Junko manipulated her high power connections (ie: the Ultimates), one by one and not in a batch.

She really only used video footage of explicit killing to manipulate the Reserve Course into rioting (Dr0), the rest of the world into more despair (Dr1) and as a way to taunt the Future Foundation (SDR2). Hell, technically, there is no proof that Chiaki actually existed in real life if we’re going only by the games too. That was something canonized by the anime.

Well okay. There may be ONE thing in the second game that can potentially confirm Chiaki’s existence in the real world and that’s her presence being listed in the book Nagito got with everyone's info. However, this was given to him by Monokuma and Nagito did destroy any of the information regarding his classmates time in and out of  school that could have very well revealed that Chiaki wasn’t ever there—but I digress and this aint about Chiaki rn this is about Izuru.

What we do know of him through the game is that he sees himself as being used by Junko and thus brought in a flash drive with her AI to insert into the Neo World Program as a virus so he could use her instead. This feels contradictory though, if the end result would be Junko taking over all their bodies. You can’t even argue that he did it so Hajime could override his present self and come back because that would have happened regardless (that was literally what was SUPPOSED to happen). So then why bring Junko back? How was he using her in that regard? Well, the only thing I can think of is that he pretty much already knew how it was all going to end, and that creating a killing game was the only way to ensure everyone stayed alive whilst retaining their old memories thus decreasing the chance of them falling back into Ultimate Despair when re-awakened and in a way saying “fuck you” to Junko’s despair and destroying the last remnants of her both in name and digitally.

Cool beans. He still lied to them all though. Junko states that each of them willingly went into the program knowing well that her virus was going to force them into a killing game to cause despair. Izuru, though, didn’t tell them his whole plan or how it was truly going to end, otherwise no one would have joined. And that’s not necessarily bad–he was doing it for their own good! Except, well, there’s not conclusive proof that he did so for their sake (and since we don’t know if Chiaki existed irl we don’t know if he did this for her). Also given how indifferent he is in-game, the fact that his surgery left him emotionally distant, and his lack of connection with class 77, well it’d be easier to believe that Izuru did this all purely out of self interest in a way to get “revenge” at Junko and perhaps alleviate his boredom.

Now, present Hajime WOULD have an emotional investment in class 77 and it’s that reason he sticks around to help them recover. But, honestly, I agree that the ex-remnants would take some time to come around to fully trusting him again because remember: they ARE still recovering from despair. It would not be surprising if their residual remnant emotions feel betrayed by him for lying to them and essentially killing off Junko for good. Add in their in-game memories conflicting with their past memories every time they see Hajime and he’s not quite the same Hajime they befriended thus reminding them that he’s also  that guy who just randomly showed up one day then manipulated them into a scheme for seemingly his own self interest, yeeeah it might take them a while before being buddy buddy with him.

Though they will eventually, but let’s focus on Nagito for a bit because he’d be the absolute last person to come around in fully trusting Hajime/Izuru. Because you see, while it was stated that the remnants agreed to be part of the killing game, we know for a fact that not ALL of them did so. And we know this because of chapter 0. In it, we see Nagito meeting Izuru for the first time (as Nagito literally says he’s never seen Izuru before), thus Izuru has not been in contact with Nagito to inform him of the plan (which actually brings into question WHY Nagito is even there/agreed to re-programming but that’s a theory for another day). We also see Nagito being very confused about Izuru’s talking about his flash drive with Junko’s AI in it. And, although he doesn’t fully understand what Izuru is planning, what he takes from it is that he’ll be able to see Junko again and get the chance of killing her himself. Izuru does not correct him or inform him of anything else. Meaning, Nagito knows absolutely nothing of the killing game he unknowingly signed up for nor of the possibility of his body being taken over by Junko.

In other words: NAGITO DID NOT CONSENT TO THIS AT ALL.

Unlike his classmates who can forgive Hajime’s actions as Izuru because yeah technically they DID agree to it, Nagito was not even informed much less had the option to say yes. You can argue that Izuru did so intentionally knowing that Nagito’s strange half-remnant state and intense resentment towards despair and Junko would have made him too much of a risk to the plan that is was better to leave him in the dark, but it still doesn’t change the fact that Nagito didn’t get a choice. Add in our previous discussion of why Nagito would be resentful towards Izuru because of all his gifted talents along with this and I’d say yeah, Nagito wouldn’t be all that welcoming toward accepting Hajime’s help post game.

This doesn’t even add in your note on pro-longing his life without his input or anything from the anime, so if Chiaki’s death was actually used as a trigger for class 77 and Izuru could have done something about it–YEAH that’s going to make the resentment exponentially worse.

So your last tidbit of Nagito getting a chance to decide something for himself just hits so strongly given he never got the chance to do so before. It’s the least he deserves now.

#anonymous #danganronpa #komaeda nagito #fala replies #sorry for the long post but once i get an excuse to talk about some of my #dangan theories and thoughts BOY do I use it #that being said pls never message me about my UDG theories because I WILL WRITE SO MUCH #(pls feel free to message me about my UDG theories i will write so much ;--;) #gosh this message really got me goin' lol replaying part of the game four years #later after knowing all the deets really reminded of...how mean Izuru was lmao #and the way he talks about talentless people is so on par with Nagito its honestly kinda #meaner than Nagito lol even Nagito basically just says “well it is what it is" #rather than wholeheartedly agreeing with him as you'd think he would #when even Nagito is like ''damn bro chill'' maybe you SHOULD chill lol #love me a sassy izuru #a e i o queue

[akwolfgrl]

LFT 34

“I'm back! Did you finish polishing my Shigure?” A familiar voice stepped up next to Zoro, a wrapped sword in her arms. “You’re okay. I was worried about you.” She turned her attention to him. “There was an incident where some Marines were attacked earlier near where you were mopping, what with you disappearing I was worried, assuming you were kidnapped, I would have been responsible for your well being since I was the one who put you to work.”

Zoro was not panicking whatsoever, although he had to admit she wasn't the brightest, he would have assumed that the person who disappeared near where the Marines had been attacked was the one responsible and had fled the scene.

“The fact that you're here and unharmed must mean you ran away,” She wasn't wrong, Zoro did flee the scene of the crime before he was caught. “How sad, you must have no idea how to accept love when it comes your way,” Zoro had no idea how they had varied into this topic. It was too soon to say if he was in love with Sanji, he sure as shit wasn't running away from what they had. Besides, he loved Luffy. It was hard not to. His captain drove him crazy but he was loyal to him to the end. “So here's your stupid money back,” She took the money from her pocket and handed it to him. Now he was just confused. Wasn't she the one who said that he had to pay her back for the glasses he broke? “I don't need it, I simply can't accept it from such a heartless ingrate.”

Zoro had half a mind to go into great detail about what he had been up to last night and the fact he had a boyfriend…partner? Fuck they hadn't discussed that. “Besides look! I already got new glasses, how do they look?” She put on her new glasses and looked down towards his sword still in the shopkeeper's hands. She gasped. “That sword looks just like the Wado Ichimonji!” She exclaimed excitedly. She took his sword out of the other man's grasp. “Is this really the sword?” Zoro was confused, was his sword famous or something? It would explain why the shopkeep was desperate for it. Why was it named Wado?

“It's beautiful,” She held the sword up into the air. If he was going to name his sword he'd have named her after Kuina. “This has to be one of the twenty one O-Wazamono swords,” Zoro watched as she took out a small book and flipped through the pages, the book was filled with pictures of different swords. “See…look at this. It says here that this sword is worth no less than ten million bellis,” The shopkeep was trying to jip him, and was clearly upset that he had been caught going by how he was shaking. “But you're broke; how'd you manage to have such a legendary sword?” She asked him.

“It used to belong to my dojo master’s daughter before she died, that's all I know,” Zoro didn't even bother to contradict her statement about him being broke. “Also I'm not running away from love, I'm seeing someone we had our first date last night,” She opened her mouth to speak.

“Dammit Tashigi! You just couldn't keep your mouth shut! You just had to keep talking and tell him how much that sword was really worth! I'm gonna sue your ass for obstruction of business!” The man yelled, slamming his fist down on the counter. The dude was lucky it was him here and not Sanji who'd kick him for being rude to a lady or Nami who'd blackmail and swindle him.

“Obstruction of business? I'm so sorry for whatever I did wrong, please forgive me,” She was way too naive for her own good. Her and Kuina’s personalities were vastly different outside of sword fighting.

“Here I finished polishing your precious Shigure for ya, what a timid girl like you is doing with a sword like i'll never know,” The man pulled a sword with a green and white scarf with gold detailing. “Now just take it and get the hell out of my shop. I don't want to see you in here ever again,” The man tossed her sword, which she managed to catch before stumbling into a display of swords. How someone could be so graceful when fighting but so clumsy any other time baffled Zoro. “Pick up your damn mess and get the hell out of my shop before you destroy anything else!”

“I I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to.”

“Man did she ever help you dodge a bullet. It is a complete waste to have an amateur who has no clue what its true value is wielding a legendary sword like the one you have,” The man sat back down shaking his head, he glanced over to the side. “You can pick from our lovely selection over there. Their barrel swords for 50,000 a piece. Fitting for an amateur like yourself, pick any two you like. I don't care,” the scarcum was thick in his voice.

#one piece #fanfic #roronoa zoro #zoro #lust filled thoughts #tashigi #sword #swords #wado ichimonji

[amyintherapy]

Semi-recently, when discussing something about somatic or embodying type therapy, my therapist explained how somatic work makes sense because our bodies respond first. He used the example of how if someone hides in a closet in your house and pops out and says 'boo' when you aren't expecting it...if you could break it down into slow motion...

First your body reacts. You might step back, or you might raise your arms up, or make a fist.

Then emotion hits. You're scared/irritated/unsettled/whatever

Then thoughts come in. "Why did you do that?" or 'AGh, you got me!' or whatever.

And that's not just true for fear, it's true for all emotions. It's just that we don't often realize our body reacts first, as many of us spend so much time in our heads that we think of our feelings as basically being thoughts, when thoughts really are stories we make up to try to explain our feelings.

Anyway.

Recently, my partner mentioned that a truck pulled into our driveway that looked kinda like my dads. A late 80s or early 90's big, boxy truck. And how it took him a minute to process what was happening, and how he was feeling about it.

And I empathized, and shared how I've had that type of experience except when seeing people around his age, who share his really-tan-for-a-white-dude skin tone, who are wearing a dark green carhartt type coat like he had. And it really is just a split second, a fraction of a second - but it's enough of a whiplash that it feels like my heart got turned upside down.

I've heard other people call those types of experiences "forgetting" that they're gone. And while I understand what they mean, and I don't know of a concise explanation that would put it any better... that's always felt incorrect to me. Because I never feel like I forget. From the moment I heard his last breath, I have remembered that he's dead, 24/7. Even in my dreams, if he is alive, it's that he came BACK to life, it's never that he didn't die. And I've never really known how to make sense of these conflicting experiences where I react as if something I saw was him, and yet I didn't literally forget he was dead.

But I think the somatic thing...about how our bodies react to our environments before we actually think about them...is the answer to that contradiction. I think my emotions and my thoughts have always known he was dead since he died. But my body only knew him to be alive for 30 years, and 2 years isn't enough to change that, so it kinda forgets that reality has changed, while the rest of me can't.

#grief #no idea why this is coming out today but i'm just rolling with it #sigh #i'm really really tired of grief and I have a lifetime to go

[olderthannetfic]

I guess this sounds silly, but... do you think a cishet man can write good fanfic? I've been trying for years now, and I can just never get the emotions to rise properly, or the prose to flow right. All the good writers I know - hell, every other fanfic writer I know - is female or queer in one way or another, and when I try asking them for advice they all say contradicting things about how to make a story work (or even just why they're proud of writing).

--

Ahahahaha. Is this for real? I hope so because it's charmingly facepalm-inducing.

What you're basically asking is "Can cishet men write?" and the answer is obviously yes. Lots and lots and lots of professional writers are cishet men, and I'm sure at least some of them seem good to you.

Fanfic comes in a variety of types. I'm going to guess you've been exposed to the sort of thing people call "AO3 house style". So we're talking shippy fic or very feelsy gen hurt/comfort. There might be a plot, but relationship development often takes center stage.

This is as opposed to, say, a 100k plot epic about Ranma time traveling and leveling up into an even bigger badass. There used to be a lot of those on Usenet. I'm sure the Naruto equivalent is well represented on FFN. Stereotypically, lots of these are by cishet men, and some are well written. Aesthetically, they seem to be pulling from airport thrillers and dude adventure fiction.

AO3 house style, though, owes a lot to "chick" genres. Do you, cishet man anon, read lots of romance novels? Did you grow up on Georgette Heyer? Jane Austen? Do you watch romcoms? Do you read trashy Anita Blake style urban fantasy? Books from the YA boom? Agatha Christie and other cozy mysteries if you're going for something plottier? Hell, Buffy, even, which was written by Joss.

Most people are not great writers until they've had a lot of practice, and maybe not even then. If you're less good than your friends, that doesn't mean anything about cishet men's ability or even about your personal level of talent. It means we're hypercritical of our own work and that everybody could always use more practice.

But on top of that, if you grew up reading stereotypically male genres and you are now trying to recreate the emotional beats of stereotypically female ones, you may be behind on your research compared to those other writers.

It takes a long time for all of the media we consume to percolate, and a lot of the stronger fic writers are going back to Heyer et al., not just taking their inspiration from other fics. If you haven't had that time for fic styles to sink in and if you don't have that background exposure to other media, then it's not at all surprising if you're struggling to hit the emotional beats you want to.

Good prose is mostly just about practice, but exposure to media you want to imitate helps there too.

Yes, cishet men can write, you doofus. Have a little faith in yourself!

[bettsfic]

craft essay a day #3

well now i'm angry.

"Don't Write What You Know" by Bret Anthony Johnston, The Writer’s Notebook II: Craft Essays from Tin House

beginner | intermediate | advanced | masterclass | don't bother with this one lads

filed under: process, how did this get published wtf

summary

Johnston introduces this essay by subtly but smugly noting that he teaches at Harvard. not a great start, bud. he says on day 1, he gives his students a list of things not to do in fiction.

"Don't start a story with an alarm clock going off. Don't end a story with the whole shebang having been a suicide note. Don't use flashy dialogue tags like intoned or queried or, God forbid, ejaculated. Twelve unbearably gifted students are sitting around the table, and they appreciate having such parameters established."

DO THEY?? ARE YOU SURE??

anyway. he goes on to say his last rule is "don't write what you know." (why not "write what you don't know" which is, you know, encouraging?) his very long-winded yet simple point is that you shouldn't write fiction that is an exact replica of your own life. the result of doing this is creating a work that is self-referential and thus meaningless (which he later contradicts by saying intending meaning in fiction is Bad).

"For me, it's the difference between fiction that matters only to those who know the author and fiction that, well, matters."

i have never wanted so badly to punch a craft essay.

he then undoes his entire argument by saying 1) he has in fact written autofiction and 2) writers should use their experiences as inspiration for fiction, but not let those experiences become the fiction itself. which could make sense, but not the way he pitches it.

"Instead of thinking of my experiences as structures I wanted to erect in fiction, I started conceiving of them as the scaffolding that would be torn down once the work was complete."

my dude. if you wanted to write an essay about scaffolding, write an essay about scaffolding. don't couch it in meaningless prescriptive rhetoric.

he cites many authors who have written works inspired by their lives but not about their lives, like Tim O'Brien. Johnston makes a good point here (except it's actually just O'Brien's point): in changing real events into fiction, whatever is fictionalized then invokes meaning. his example is that O'Brien wrote both a fictionalized and autobiographical version of his experiences in Vietnam, and they are decidedly different.

here, we have the potential to get interesting, to actually say something important about craft and life and identity and fiction, but instead he moves on to say that the cardinal sin of fiction writing is intending meaning, rather than allowing the creative process to create meaning, and allowing the reader to interpret meaning.

"Another deeper, more essential part of me dies when a workshop student says, 'What I wanted to do was ________.' The idea of a writer 'wanting' to do something in a story unhinges me. At best, such desire smacks of nostalgia; at worst, it betrays agenda."

and then he goes into a very boring white guy rant about how everybody should be able to write about the experiences of everyone else regardless of race, orientation, ability, etc., with all the nuance of a slab of concrete. personally, i'm not firmly on either side of this debate, but i do feel strongly that it should be discussed with sensitivity and the acknowledgement of the greater historical context of the part american literature and the publishing thereof has played in systemic oppression. but that's just me.

lastly he declares something i really do agree with:

"I say fiction is an act of courage and humility, a protest against our morality, and we, the authors, don't matter. What matters are our characters, those constructions of imagination that can transcend our biases and agendas, our egos and entitlements and flesh. Trust your powers of empathy and invention, I say."

in short, you're better off reading the Zadie Smith essay, "Fascinated to Presume: In Defense of Fiction" which i'll probably review tomorrow, out of spite.

my thoughts

oh boy, here we go.

first, i don't claim to know everything about writing. i don't even claim to know a little about writing. at best, i have considerations. possibilities. observations, maybe. i don't present things in shoulds and should nots. but what i do know is teaching writing. i know the shoulds and should nots of pedagogy. and this guy is not doing it right. every word of this essay is condescension. it feels like a grotesque power play. he came up with his clickbaity title and then said something ultimately pointless.

his entire argument is a polemic of a false premise. is there really anyone out there writing their exact experiences as fiction? and if there are, how is it anyone's business? instead of entering this topic with curiosity and consideration, he just paints these broad, bland strokes. if i were to write this, my question would be, who are the writers who write their experiences as fiction, and why? how do they do it? what can be gained or lost? to what degree could you or should you fictionalize the events of your life? i have a friend from Gaza who came to the US to write about her experiences there. important experiences that she can't write as nonfiction and which have enormous consequences for herself and her family. why shouldn't she write about that? in what way is telling someone like her "don't write what you know" going to help her? it's not. it's going to silence her more than she's already been silenced.

one point of this essay is that you shouldn't write with intention of meaning. this is a widely held belief in many MFAs, and one i rallied against for a long time. i have since come to see it the way i see all writing advice: there are consequences and considerations to going one way or another. and you don't know them until you write the thing. and to write the thing, you can't have someone shouting down at you that you shouldn't.

the truth is, every word of fiction ever written has been framed by the experiences of the writer. that cannot be denied. we are beings made of memory, and those memories create our lens through which we see the world. it doesn't matter how fantastical or imaginative your work is. it's still from you. it still has pieces of you in it. when approaching fiction, all your work is going to be on a spectrum of closeness to your lived experiences. and even if you attempt to convey them as true as they happened, they're still distorted through memory. our memories themselves are fictionalized. the depiction of real and not real, fiction and creative nonfiction, is a false dichotomy: everything is unreal, because it is merely being rendered. and ultimately, as a teacher, as a reader, my job isn't to declare a piece of work too real to an experience and therefore too self-referential; my job is to interpret it, firstly, as myself. it is simply not my business as a reader to know what happened in reality and what didn't.

i'll never understand creative writing professors who don't know the very basic tenet of creative writing pedagogy: help writers write. encourage them to write. say what they need to hear to get words on the page and be excited about them. be proud of them. as a teacher i don't give a fuck about helping writers become better. what i want is to help writers become more true to themselves, get closer to the work that's most meaningful to them. to say i know how to help writers become good at writing would be so egotistical. it presumes i know what good writing is. it presumes i believe that there's good writing and bad writing, and not just myriad lenses of personal taste. who cares what's good? all i care about is helping a writer move a little farther along on their journey. clearing a path for them. but it's never my intention to pave that path myself, to say here's your destination. how fucking hard is it to accept that creativity is the pursuit of the unknown? and that we need to have a fundamental respect for that pursuit in any shape it takes? and without that respect, we as teachers aren't helping writers at all, we're only carving them into our own likenesses?

okay, i'm going to stop here for now because i'm getting upset. but i'm not done with this topic. i have several essays in me that present some of the premises here in ways that aren't destructively prescriptive and condescending, and hopefully i'll find the time to get them down.

craft essay a day tag | writing advice tag | ask me something

#cead #process

[colorful-white-ideas]

I agree with what you just said about this place, basically Bill's fandom and I use that word loosely, being dead AF. It's, he, is so boring lately. It took me awhile to really mean that bc I wanted to hope his light would come back again. But he doesn't seem to care about his fans or even himself anymore. Have you noticed he wears the same black outfit (black shirt black pants or jeans) all the time now? He only manages a smile when he's not with you know who. And yet he keeps showing up with you know who. If he can't bother to care why should his fans? I just hope his acting hasn't suffered like his life has. I loved watching him in pretty much anything. Dude can act and it comes naturally. That's something other actors would kill for.

I see hes trying to give some content and trying to look good, younger ( thus the rings and earring , and all that dark clothing) BUT is not enough. He is always hiding , the news that get to come out its because fans are looking for them ... his team is most of the time silent. There is no hype around him , not even in this fandom ( not as it may have been 4 years ago x example) and next year is key , he will have at least 3 movies out in different times of the next year.

Sorry for the following rant it's just to get it out of my chest. I won't talk about that anymore from now.

I want to also say something since sometimes I get some ask that I later erase with the typical " you just hate you are not with him".

Im not stupid , I'm not in love of someone I DONT KNOW. Also I have nothing personal against Alida M, I don't know her personally to hate her. But I DO HAVE A PROBLEM with wasted privilege.

The reason why I started to like Bill and - why not- his family is because you can see they all worked to get what they want. They may have had it easier in some ways but they always wanted to go beyond , try something else to make a name on their own. I admire that. They are not the classical nepo rich kids.

A is the very opposite. She wanted to be a public persona and that's fine but only promoted her rich kid personality while traying ( in interviews ) to portray herself as a working woman. I hate fake humility. It's ok if she just wanted to be a socilite ... why lie ? why say you are an actress but don't look for more projects? why dont take classes? and if its not for you then why not USE THE POSITION you have to build something else? There is alot to do for the industry : casting, writing, make up, production, etc. She bragged on her personal social media acc about the wrong things. Contradiction at it's finnest

A contradiction that reflected onto Bill later on , the humble funny likable guy aware of his upbringing disaspeared before our eyes , he sounded in interviews more and more cocky and selfcentered. He claimed being private but at the same time was being recorded on intimate moments very often. We started to see him stressed , tired ,a shadow of who he was.

There were no changes... 'till now. I gotta acknowledge her attemps to change, also what Bill is trying to do to save - idk - his image and maybe his family too ¿? . Still the damage has been done

Anyway i'm just one among millions in the world , if I or all the people in this fandom leaves , new ones will arrive. We are replaceable.

I wish him luck in whatever he is trying to do.

And yes he can act , thats the only things that keeps his fandom slightly breathing.

[butchviking]

What does "feminism can and must be compatible with trans issues" mean to you? Ive been trying to be more inclusive, but trans issues often to seem to be incompatible with feminism.

hm well that was one line of the post that i did think 'i wouldnt phrase it quite that way'. i think besides the weird-ass conservative strains of feminism that dont reflect what i consider feminism at all, feminism IS compatible with trans issues. not that "it must be" like feminists have to change what they're doing to revolve more around trans issues or anything - feminism has no obligation to fight for trans issues just like the anti-racism movement has no obligation to fight sexism and the gay rights movement has no obligation to fight for disability rights - but that those causes simply ARE compatible. classic example: the public bathroom debate. right now that's often framed like feminism and trans activism are diametrically opposed and there can be no resolution for one that doesn't contradict the needs of the other. the trans activist movement wants all public toilets to be unisex and based on gender identity instead; the feminist movement wants sex-segregation regardless of gender identity. only, most feminists i know all agree by now that just. adding a unisex/gender-neutral option is literally the obvious and best way to keep people safe. and if there's no room for adding an extra, convert all the current spaces to single-stall unisex facilities. that way literally everyone is kept safe, no-one's rights are encroached on at all and anyone who takes issue is either a predator upset that they don't have the opportunities for abuse they wanted or a selfish weirdo who only cares about how they feel abt women or trans ppl or whatever ("but thats not good enough i want to use the WOMENS room!!"/"why should we have to give up OUR space just because of the transgenders!!") rather than about the actual safety & wellbeing of both of those groups. we're made to think feminism and trans rights activism are incompatible on this, its one of the biggest talking points in conservative media bc they KNOW it gets everyone at each others throats. but theyre literally compatible theyre literally so so compatible there is no reason on this earth anyone should still be having this stupid fucking debate its such a COLOSSAL waste of all our time.

there are certain things i think some feminists could do with not being so weird about. a lot of women are still super yucked out by male gender non-conformity and a lot of them for some reason still won't even admit it even though they bang on about it aallllll the time - but oh no, that's not bc they think it's creepy and fucked up for dudes to wear dresses and makeup, they're only saying these horrible things abt it because this one dude is transgender and that means they're evil and misogynistic by default so theyre fair game! (does anyone remember - haha kidding i know u remember i know i never shut up abt it - how many women on radblr were so so weirded out and for some reason ANGERED by gerard in his little dresses & skirts. he's not even trans. in fact suddenly everyone seemed to be saying "oh yeah he's definitely going to come out as trans sometime soon 🙄 he's obviously drunk all the gender kool-aid 🙄" like shut up you literally just made that up in your head to try and justify ur anger. shut upppp.) or sometimes it's like "men shouldnt wear makeup because its mocking our oppression it's wearing our chains for fun" - it really isnt and you need to get over yourself.

there are also certain things some trans activists could do with not being so weird about. if i see one more fucking transwoman act like its her god-given right to be included in lesbian dating pools, or transman that its his god-given right to be included in gay mens dating pools, i am going to start burning things i am going to start burning so many things and people too and i am going to squidge all the organs from inside these people until all the moisture is wrung out and i am going to set those on fire too. homosexuality is fucking natural innate sex-based and NORMAL and HEALTHY and GOOD. ive seen pro-trans lesbians turn into "terfs" based on this point alone btw - they were so fucking sick of all the homophobia they became vehemently opposed to the whole movement. they began to believe that feminism, gay rights activism, and trans rights activism AREN'T compatible. i still believe they are i just think some people need to throw out the bullshit that isnt actually relevant to either cause.

#my break is over so i am forced 2 shut up. its for the best this is long i talk so much sry #ask #anonymous

[mothfishing]

radi our friend radi

miss radiance...

favorite thing about them

i just think the most about characters and factions who existed on hallownest's fringes, and the radiance is the ultimate example of that. and she's just a character who we see very little of, and not for no reason! so you have to piece together a lot of shreds of information to get an idea of the kind of person she was...

like for one i think the fact the moths are peaceful as a rule is something that would make sense if it reflected on her? ive seen people refer to her as a war god and that's like. okay then explain to me why a war god would create people who aren't known for carrying weapons...and i spoke about it in the seer ask, but her being associated with death and funerals and ghosts is also something that makes sense to me. basically i think it's interesting that she's a character who exists almost entirely by implication, who you have to go to a decent amount of effort to figure out anything about her

least favorite thing about them

no one in the world has ever been normal about her (SAD)

trying to figure out how to put this...are you really gonna tell me there's nothing at all fishy about the pale king coming to hallownest, sealing the radiance away so he could rule without equal (this is stated explicitly in a dev note...), having the goal of ruling over the entirety of hallownest unopposed, and having bad relationships with every single other faction that didn't bow to hallownest rule...? like there's nothing weird going on there at all? the mantis tribe's treaty explicitly stated that it was something they agreed to to protect their village from hallownest expansion. like are you telling me he's not a colonizer and imperialist,

idk it gives me a weird bad vibe. like very genuinely the impression i had after doing dream no more (& again, i played hk totally blind save for knowing ghost & hornet were siblings) was like. "huh? so the radiance and the moths got subjugated by some dude But Actually taking revenge for that is so much worse and we have to put her down now you guys:((((((("

and i literally thought that was unfair and i was probably misunderstanding, which i note to say i really am not approaching this in bad faith and this isn't a square reading i'm trying to force into a round hole. the reason i stopped doubting it was because i spoke to multiple friends who saw the same thing without my input =/

it makes it so i just can't dislike her. and it's pretty disappointing how fan reaction to her is primarily to either demonize her and attribute bad things to her that we either don't have evidence for or we have evidence that contradicts it, or they bring in real world struggle in a way i find wildly disrespectful & fetishistic. we are in a nightmare world basically

favorite line

she isn't really a character with dialogue, so instead i'll talk about a piece of the seer's dialogue which gives me Thoughts about the radiance. even though i already talked about it in the seer ask. which is months ago at this point so whatever i guess

What a terrible fate they've visited upon you.

To cast you away into this space between body and soul.

Will you accept their judgement and fade slowly away?

Or will you take the weapon before you, and cut your way out of this sad, forgotten dream?

i just think it's so interesting! it's difficult for me to think the seer isn't drawing a parallel between ghost's situation and what happened to the radiance...this is not the first time ghost has been judged unworthy of life; if they were a good child, they would have died all that time ago, another body lining the abyss

the dreamers have condemned them to the same fate. there's no way to escape the dream; without the seer's aid, all they can do is, as she puts it, fade slowly away. and what for? yet another sacrifice extracted from them for the sake of this dead kingdom. by this point it isn't possible to do anything the dreamers fear - they need the dreamnail for that. they are condemned because they are inconvenient

and, well, the radiance was also put in that position...a lot of the game is about death and accepting that things will end, and the core arrogance of hallownest is repeatedly framed as the pale king declaring it would last forever. it's what vespa says the bees will have no part in, and there's ozymandius signs all over the damn place. so at least personally i find it significant that the radiance is repeatedly associated with the dead and the remembrance of the dead, her sacred place being a graveyard and her last follower being its groundskeeper, and she's also the one who pk needed to get rid of in order to make his eternal kingdom possible.

but accepting that things end is not the same as lying down and dying just because someone wants you out of the way for their own gain...which is exactly what the pale king wanted for both of them

brOTP

for a literal "bro" i actually see grimm as her brother who she's on fairly good terms with. idk, just never thought there was any particular reason for them to be at odds, and my own read of grimm's actions and the ritual was that he's enacting some kind of belated vengeance against hallownest for what happened to the radiance. by his nature, he could never have arrived "on time", but desecrating a corpse is well within his abilities.

nOTP

all of them. my god

random headcanon

the whole "erasing her memory" thing was referred to as a seal in a developer's note. it's even referred to as a prior attempt before the hollow knight plan - "Thus the first attempt to seal Radiance failed, and the King had to try another method - the Vessel."

i really can't think of her as not being a death god; it's just the impression i get from both her explicit connection to dreams, and how the dreaming and the dead are so tightly linked. the dream nail shows you both, after all, and the ghosts you fight are dream warriors. also, a place important to the moths, and presumably to her as well, is a literal graveyard. and that adds another dimension - it is specifically important to her that the dead be remembered and honored.

she has no physical form, which is funny because every other god we know of does. the pale king, the white lady, unn, grimm, even the lifeblood creature...grimm and unn both have some connection to dreams as well, so it isn't like that precludes you from possessing a physical form.

so...well...i keep thinking about that first seal, and that attempt to erase her memory. did it involve killing her? is there a corpse somewhere, long forgotten in an unmarked grave? to one such as her, what greater insult could there be?

unpopular opinion

man. i have so many.

first is that i think it's honestly kinda gross to say that the pale king and the radiance were equally at fault for what happened - one of them's a fuckin colonizer who goes around trying to absorb every group in the area into his kingdom, and the other is the god of one of those groups. they are not on equal terms here...

i also think it's gross to make her worse for the purpose of making whoever your fave is - often grimm or the pale king - Better. like she needs to be the worst most evil sister so grimm can get some pathos, she needs to be the most violent beast so the pale king can get some pathos, etc.

i could go on but i would literally never stop.

song i associate with them

toothsmile by bent knee is such a radiance song to me...

favorite picture of them

this art

#devourerofjourneys #asks #this ask is from MAY!!!!!!!!!

[aks-of-the-weak]

Incipit: My stupid fucking game doesn't work. These two stupid functions have like 450 lines together and the whole thing is like half a dozen for() loops all nested into each other nested into a while() loop. I tested it thoroughly. I thought i was done with it and put a nice bow and wrapping on it and sent it in the mail. Now i find that the recipient was always destined to be and that this gift is not a beautiful craft of art, but an abyss which beckons for my gaze just as it also beckons to gaze back. And i will gaze. But not today. Today is a day for coping. Today i will chain lose seven games of League of Legends, but sandwiched between those i will attempt a brand new coping method, #homestuck OC improv writing. Let's goooooooo.

3rd Post: Gemoloron, The Sign of the Potent. No, i'm not going to use That meaning of the word… i hope?

Constellation: Oh man, what could this one be? Maybe this bit represents eyes, but then what has ma— Biblically accurate angels. C'mon, I know it's a biblically accurate angel, you know it's a biblically accurate angel, even the homestuck redditors knew it was a biblically accurate angel. This brings up at least one question, is the Troll Bible a thing? The answer to that question is basically irrelevant, so i won't ponder it any further. I actually already know where i want to go for those first two paragraphs because i thought of it while writing the intro. You know what else has many eyes? That's right, Flies, and maybe dragonflies, and maybe basically half of all other bugs, but that includes Flies. A Fly's two eyes are actually compound eyes which contain thousands of individual lenses inside. There's probably a connection to make with Belzebub who's sometimes also an angel, but i don't really wanna. Point is, Rage being the aspect of Chaos and Goldies being the caste for duality makes them a match made in heaven (heh). The nature of this sign is all about contradiction, being both Gracious Holy Angel and Gross Disgusting Fly. This is a design i want to communicate in both the constellation and the lusus while emphasizing the eyes, so here's what i'm thinking about (see picture below) (i fucking hate insects, why did i pick this, i don't want to be editing a picture of one for many minutes) (Holy fuck, the GIMP perspective tool is awesome. Why have i never used that before??). Ok, so, facts first, this image is awful. It also kind of fucks (heh). A fly with human eyes, yet another mystical symbol. I really thought mystical symbol constellations weren't going to be a dime a dozen back when i was on the first post, yet here we are. As stated before it symbolizes Contradiction and Contrasts, but primarily between the Ugly and the Beautiful.

Lusus: Aight, i actually image edited the lusus too this time around. Gods, brace yourself because this one is also genuinely awful, no "it fucks" involved. (see picture below). This time instead of being a fly with angel (human) eyes it's an angel with Fly eyes. It reverses, because contradictions, contrasts. This guy is actually stupid as fuck, like fly-level intelligence. When the character is introduce we quickly notice that all their window are broken. Then, a bit later we hear a sound of broken glass from out of frame and the next panel pans out with this jackass with his head through a window trying to crawl out of it. Right next to him is a wide open door. He's at no risk of harming himself on the sharp glass tho, he's actually ~3m tall with physical strength enough to rival the Spidermom, but he's so stupid he can't use a weapon or even punch or kick. The only way he ever attacks is by flying at extreme speed and crashing his body into shit. Our character can't invite anyone to their home because this dude is too stupid to understand the concept of a "friend" and will just ram any and all that gets close to the house, killing it instantly. He's not vicious or anything, tho. When something aproaches he'll stand visibly and menacingly in the sky, meaning he mostly only ever murders wild animals too dumb to understand that warning. Finally, the only thing it ever does other than murder shit in the stupidest way possible and break windows trying to get in and out of the house is clean. Because flies do that. Any sign of dirt, dust or glass shard he sees gets broomed right out of the house. Because apparently he's smart enough to use his limbs for that. Ok dude.

Physicality: You might have noticed this lusus has a single clipped wing which i haven't mentioned. This is because i just added it, right now, after the lusus paragraph is done. Why? To establish numerology, of course. I have a last name to start this character with. Beluth. The name is a deformation of Belzebuth, another name of Beelzebub, but also alludes to the last symbolic element of the character which i will get to shortly. Beluth is, like many gold bloods, a powerful psion. Unlike most goldbloods, Beluth's powers are particularly stunted in the range department, allowing her to levitate objects no further than her arms' reach, which are fortunately rather long. She uses this power effectively through their kind abstratus, 5xRevlvrkind, by levitating each revolver simultaneously. Each revolver having, of course, 5 chambers per cylinder. For physical appearance, the eyes are pretty important so i'll start with that. Remember Die from The Felt? Remember that guy? Remember how he always has that look as if you just caught him doing something unspeakable at 3am. Essentially, that's Beluth's resting face, but she's self-conscious about it so she's grown out long bangs that covers her face. Beluth is a great fan of alternian "Western" movies (troll cowboy movies) and so dresses herself in a cowboy jacket, a large cowboy hat further obscuring her face and 6 revolver holsters stacked on top of each other. The middle left holster is always empty. Her body shape is very lanky, tall and thin, which gives her an intimidating/badass look when her face is covered and inversely furthers the crazed kinda bozo look when it's unveiled.

Personality: Finally to tie it all together. Rage is the aspect of Truth, Chaos and the Incomprehensible. The human-eyed fly is a constellation that symbolizes the contrast between the ugly and the beautiful. Gemolorn is titled the Sign of the Potent. That third element i feel isn't as important to be smoothly integrated so i'm writing it off as done from the generally high power level of the character and her lusus. The second is integrated from the previous paragraph, though subverted. "Ugly" has been replaced by "Gaunt, kinda bizarro look", Beluth's inner appearance, and "Beautiful" by "Cool badass cowboy look", the outer appearance which she has crafted for herself. The obvious arc from here is a "learn to let down the mask and accept yourself for who you are" narrative, but imo that fucking sucks right now. This style is something Beluth has made for herself, something that reflects her hobby and something that's partly fed from her inner appearance itself. So rather, as the story progresses, Beluth progressively goes from a fangirl simply mimicking cowboys to actually becoming one. she loses the hat, the jacket, even the bangs, yet she's still out there ridin' through the wasteland catchin' outlaws. "Quickest barrels this side o' the empire. She be shootin' so fast, even 'er shadow's surprised", says an old grizzled ranger drinking his whisky from the corner of a saloon. Get it? The crazed look itself becomes part of her mythos. You are the cowboy Beluth. it's you. I think that's pretty good over all. Her gunslinging style comprises particularly bouncy bullets that bounce all over creating an incomprehensible/chaotic barrage. It think that, plus everything before which kind of relates to finding an inner deeper Truth is enough to relate her to her aspect.

Excipit: I liked this character a lot. I hated the making of this post a lot. i meant for this series to be quick writing exercises for when i have a few hours to kill, but it turned out to be day-long endeavors, partly because of my chronic inefficiency at basically everything. i actually wrote the first and second half of it with a 1 and a half week gap between the two. Plus now i have to see it through because i thought of a decent way to recycle the signs and the ideas for the constellations for one of my games. Also, originally i meant for most of these characters to be ungendered because gender isn't usually relevant to the kind of characters i write. But that makes it marginally more of a pain to write so i'll just use whatever pronouns i hc them as. also i didn't use that meaning of the word. Congrats present me from past me.

#homestuck improv writing #improv OC writing #homestuck #troll sign #extended zodiac #custom extended zodiac #custom troll sign #homestuck oc #Fly fly fly whatcha say #Whatcha gonna do #Change your ways #change your life #Change your point of view