#((I will probably need to limit these sorts of questions because they're a lot and are usually the ones that take me the longest))

[jaydenism]

I would love to see what your hypothetical Kanade crash out would look like ngl (you don't need to draw for this if you don't want to a text explanation would still be awesome)

ok soooo this isn't exactly the crashout but rather building up to it i guess :P

the rest of this post is gonna be rambling and predictions ⬇️

alright this ask enabled me, im gonna just dump all my thoughts as of now on what's to come for kanade's story :) i could end up being completely wrong, but hey im just theorizing and having fun here while i wait very impatiently lol

To start, I don't think kana5 will be on the scale of mizu5 (i mean i might be biased but idk if anything will come close to that level of insanity again), mainly because there hasn't been as much build-up to a breaking point. Kanade's issues have been pushed aside (by herself especially) and not heavily focused on up to this point in the story. There hasn't been any increasing tension for things to reach a climax yet. Having her big break be in this next event would be too sudden and sort of unprecedented. For this event at least, I highly doubt that'll be the case. Instead, I think this event will start to touch on Kanade's buried issues more, and begin building that tension for something bigger. I can see this being a multiple event arc, similar to the events leading up to the climax of Mafuyu's story. Summarizing that, yes I think Kanade's got some real tough shit ahead of her, but that's why this won't be a one-off event story. I think it'll just be the beginning.

That being said, to touch more on my predictions for kana5 itself, I think Kanade will start to slip, and the others, Mafuyu especially, will take notice. I can't really predict anything specific, but I think something will happen that will make her question her ability to save people, or cause her to be harder on herself, as she has in the past, to keep composing persistently, neglecting her own needs and health. However, things are different now than they were before niigo. She has more people around her that will be able to see the damage she's doing to herself. But she also knows they all look up to her, and that her music lifts them up. She knows they all have a lot they're dealing with, and she needs to be there for them. She can't let them down.

Then, when Kanade pushes herself past her limits at the cost of her well-being, what will she do then? She meets with the others on nightcord every night, and Mafuyu is living at her place. She won't be able to rot away by herself anymore without people noticing. But she still feels this need to be the group's rock and to be the one to save everyone, so she'll try her damn hardest to prevent the others from worrying about her. She'll shoot down their attempts at trying to talk about it. I think she might be especially stubborn this time around, and it might cause niigo to have to figure out a way to help Kanade, since they won't be able to get through to her at first.

Kanade has shown in the past to get uncharacteristically aggressive when she's pushing herself too hard, as shown above. She starts to take on everything herself, and snaps at anyone who tries to stop her. I think this side of her will be shown more going forward, as she begins to go down this kind of self-destructive path yet again. At least, that's where I think her story will go. Her tendency to work herself to the bone hasn't really been resolved, and she's gone so far with it before to end up in the hospital after passing out. She doesn't care what happens to her, as long as she can save people. The only reason she has ((slightly)) gotten better at taking care of herself is so that she can be able to keep composing without ending up in the hospital again. Not because she cares about her health. Because she must keep composing. She still only does the bare minimum for herself. If it's her cooking, she's only having instant ramen, and most days she's probably not going to see the sun. She still doesn't sleep much, and Mafuyu has said that she's often falling asleep at her computer.

This might be getting a little rambley atp, but my point is that Kanade neglects her own needs in her determination to save others. I mentioned how she neglects her physical health in the last paragraph, but she also neglects her own feelings as well.

She minimizes her own problems or just doesn't even talk about them. I think she truly believes that her problems don't matter, that they only distract her from her goals. The reason she doesn't open up is likely because she herself doesn't believe her feelings are important at all. She doesn't pay them any mind, and she doesn't want anyone else to either.

Of course, I have to bring this card up. I think this is just a perfect visual representation of Kanade's feelings, and it's great foreshadowing for what's to come. Those feelings are buried deep within Kanade, yet to be addressed or solved. THIS is what we're getting into. Kanade, depicted as an angel, surrounded by death. I think this is related to her guilt surrounding what happened to her father, believing it was her fault. That she destroyed everything. But because of that incident, she told herself she has to keep composing, and never stop, in order to save people. She feels like she owes that much, and that that's her sole purpose. She won't allow herself to think otherwise. No matter how much it destroys her, she must be a savior for others.

Last thing I wanted to add, because I saw this reblog under a prev kanade analysis post, and they brought up great points. Especially how dangerous Kanade's composing grind can get. We wouldn't even have a story if Honami hadn't found Kanade unconscious!!! I think she might get to a really low point again like this, but having Mafuyu there especially, it won't be able to go unnoticed. I don't have much else to add to those tags though cus they speak for themselves 🙏

Finally, just real quickly going back to the little comic I drew, this is just a rough idea of how I think Kanade could act. She'll get noticeably worse, but will try to hide that fact from the others and deny any help from them. I also mentioned that I think we could see more aggression from her again, so I included that, as she feels threatened in a way by Mafuyu worrying about her. She can't let that happen. Also, Kanade's impending doom aside, I think this progression in the story may also spark some change in Mafuyu. She might show some more emotion in this or future events, and she may realize how much Kanade means to her, motivating her to do more for her. I think it'll be a full group effort to save Kanade, but I wanna see Mafuyu taking a bigger role in this. I just think this also has the potential to grow Mafuyu's character more.

Also, as for the Kanade crashout, I really don't know how they'll handle that. I can't really predict what they're gonna do with her climax. But I want her screaming yelling and crying !!! like she better go insaneeee 🙏 and I also feel like they have a lot of potential with her seiyuu/VA and stepping out of the soft quiet voice to do some crazy shit, maybe in the songs too pls pls pls give us loud kanadeeee

OKAY THATS ENOUGH YAPPING its 5 am i havent slept....

[tanadrin]

Can you explain in what what you think eugenics doesn't work? Does this basically boil down to skepticism about the accuracy of GWAS studies? My understanding is that academic consensus is "G probably exists, disentangling direct genetic inheritance vs genetic cultural inheritance is complicated but possible, we can identify a number of alleles which we're reasonably confident are directly causally involved in having a higher G factor"

when it comes to intelligence, its heritability, and its variation at the population level, my understanding of the science is:

highly adaptive traits don't, in fact, vary much at the genetic level between populations of a species because they are strongly selected for. in an environment where a trait is being strongly selected for, a population that failed to express that trait strongly will be rapidly outcompeted.

intelligence is probably the quintessential such trait for humans. we have sacrificed a great deal of other kinds of specialization in favor of our big brains. we spend an enormous amount of calories supporting those brains. tool use, the ability to plan for the future, the ability to navigate complex social situations and hierarchies in order to secure status, the ability to model the minds of others for the purposes of cooperation and deception means that we should expect intelligence to be strongly selected for for as long as our lineage has been social and tool-using, which is at least the last three million years or so.

so, at least as a matter of a priori assumptions, we should expect human populations not to vary greatly in their genetic predisposition to intelligence. it may nonetheless, but we'd need pretty strong evidence. i think i read this argument on PZ Myers' blog a million years ago, so credit where that's due.

complicating the picture is that we just don't have good evidence for how IQ does vary across populations, even before we get into the question of "how much of this variation is genetic and how much of it is not." the cross-national data on which a lot of IQ arguments have been based is really bad. and that would be assuming IQ tests are in fact good at capturing a notion of IQ that is independent of cultural context, which historically they're pretty bad at

this screed by nassim nicholas taleb (not a diss; AFAICT the guy only writes in screeds) makes a number of arguments, but one argument I find persuasive is that IQ is really only predictive of achievement in the sense that it does usefully discriminate between people with obvious intellectual disabilities and those without--but you do not actually need an IQ test for that sort of thing, any more than you need to use a height chart to figure out who is missing both their legs. in that sense, sure, IQ is predictive of a lot of things. but once you remove this group, the much-vaunted correlations between IQ and stuff like wealth just straight-up vanishes

heritability studies are a useful tool, but a tool which must be wielded carefully; they were developed for studying traits which were relatively easy to isolate in very specific populations, like a crop under study at an agricultural research site, and are more precarious when applied to, e.g., human populations

my understanding based on jonathan kaplan articles like this one is that twin studies are not actually that good at distinguishing heritable factors from environmental ones--they have serious limitations compared to heritability studies where you actually can rigorously control for environmental effects, like you can with plants or livestock.

as this post also points out, heritability studies also only examine heritability within groups, and are not really suited to examining large-scale population differences, *especially* in the realm of intelligence where there is a huge raft of confounding factors, and a lack of a really robust measurement tool.

(if we are worried about intelligence at the population level, it seems to me there are interventions we know are going to be effective and do not rely on deeply dubious scientific speculation, e.g., around nutrition and healthcare and serious wealth inequality and ofc education; and if what people actually want is to raise the average intelligence of the population rather than justify discrimination against minorities, then they might focus on those much more empirically grounded interventions. even if population differences in IQ are real and significant and point to big differences in intelligence, we know those things are worth a fair few IQ points. but most people who are or historically have been the biggest advocates for eugenics are, in my estimation, mostly interested in justifying discrimination.)

i think the claims/application of eugenics extend well beyond just intelligence, ftr. eugenics as an ideology is complex and historically pretty interesting, and many eugenicists have made much broader claims than just "population-level differences in intelligence exist due to genetic factors, and we should try to influence them with policy," but that is a useful point for them to fall back onto when pressed on those other claims. but i don't think even that claim is at all well-supported.

[alexanderwales]

Alright, here's my dream Stardew Valley style game, designed for my own tastes.

You come to a small town with the usual twenty to thirty people. It's in the middle of nowhere. It's a fantasy town, and no one actually farms anymore, partly because it's only questionably profitable, partly because a lot of the knowledge has been lost. Instead, everyone uses these magic doodads which are very powerful but also very limited. The tavernkeeper has a doodad that makes him a single kind of weak ale and a single variety of off-tasting wine. The clothier has basically a square mile of linen to work with, and everyone wears her drab clothes. Tools are made from a doodad that the blacksmith owns, not even made of any actual metal, just a material that wears away after a month and needs to be replaced by a new copy from the blacksmith's doodad. People get their meals from the doodads. They get their medical checkups. It's all a bit shit.

Because I'm a worldbuilder at heart, I would have this all exist in the wake of a large-scale war that depleted the town of its fighting-age population, with the doodads being a sort of government program to ensure that more of the lifeblood of the town could be drained away. And for there to be some reason for the town to continue existing, perhaps the government is harvesting some resources necessary in the creation of doodads. That's enough for a pro-doodad faction and maybe some minor drama with them, though I do like the idea that the only reason things are Like This is because there was a war and things got bad. It's not necessarily a bleak town, but there's definitely a listlessness to it, a "what's the point".

So you're a farmer, but no one is really a farmer anymore. Maybe there are a few books, but you don't learn farming from books, you learn it from practical experience; that's a lot of what this game is about. When you start, there's no one to buy seeds from, there's just a bunch of wilderness where farms once stood, now all long overgrown.

So you go out and forage, for a start, and you clear the land, and you pay attention to the plants and how they can be used, and you start in on making recipes with them, maybe with the help of your grandfather's old, partially incomplete books. You find some wild corn that's a descendant of the old times. You find some tomato seeds in an urn. You discover potatoes because you see them dug up by a wild boar, which itself was once a domesticated animal.

In my ideal game, you need to pay attention to the soil quality, to how far apart things are planted, to what crops work well together. Farming is a matter of companion planting and polycultures. You get some chickens by giving them consistent feed, and you keep them around because they're natural pest control. Your climbing beans climb the stalks of your maize. You're attracting pollinators. (From a gameplay perspective, yeah, we probably put this all into a grid, and you have crop bonuses from adjacencies, and emergent gameplay that comes from all that, some plants providing shade, others providing nitrogen fixing.) You're a scientist making observations about the plants, maybe with your incomplete book giving you confirmation on the nature of all your crops once you hit certain production goals or a perfect specimen or whatever.

Cooking is the same. There has got to be a system that I like better than just "combine tomato with bread to get tomato bread". I'm pretty sure that it's some variant of the actual process I use when cooking, which is making sure that things are properly cooked, balancing flavors against each other, adding in a little salt or acidity or umami or whatever. Time in the kitchen, in this game, is often about making meals, ensuring that if you have a fatty piece of meat you have some asparagus that's coated with lemon to go with it. (From a gameplay perspective, I think building the dish once is probably sufficient and it can be automated after that, and building the meal is the same. I don't want to play this minigame every time I'm cooking a dish, I just want to play it a single time until I have good knowledge of the best way to grill a BBQ chicken breast with a homemade sauce.)

But if we're having a little minigame here where we pay attention to how long we're cooking the kale to make sure that it's the right texture, and we're paying attention to abstractified mouthfeel and palette, then we can get something else for free: variation. See, you're not just cooking to get an S grade, you're cooking for people with different tastes. The cobbler has a sweet tooth, the librarian loves fruity things, the mayor cannot stand fish, that sort of thing. From a gameplay perspective, maybe we represent this with a radar graph with some specific favorite and least favorite individual flavors, and maybe it's visible to the player, but the important thing is that player gets feedback and have a reason to strive for both "good" and "perfection" and some of this is going to depend on the quality of the ingredients.

And this is, gradually, how the town is brought back into the fullness of life. You're not just cooking for these people, you're also selling them food, and they're making their own recipes, and all the stuff that's not food is making their businesses not suck anymore. After the first test keg of ale goes swimmingly, the tavernkeeper wants more, a lot more, and puts in an order for hops, wheat, grapes, anything he can use to make things that will improve nights at the tavern. The clothier will skeptically take in wool and spin her own yarn, and then eagerly want more, because how awesome is it to have a new textile? There's a chemist who is extremely interested in dyes and paints, and wants you to bring him all kinds of things to see what might be viable for going beyond the ~3 colors that the doodads can provide.

So by year two, if you're doing things right, you're the lynchpin of the revivalist movement. People are now moving to the town, for the first time in decades, because they hear that you're there and doing interesting things with the wilderness. Maybe there are other farmers following in your wake, but maybe it's just new characters who are specifically coming because a crate of wine was shipped to the capital city. Maybe some of them bring new techniques for you, or a handful of plants from a botanical garden, and there are new elements for the minigames, or maybe some automation for the stuff that's old hat.

I think something that's important to me is that there's a reason for the crops you plant and the things you do. I always like these games best when it feels like I'm doing something for someone, when I can look at a plot of cabbages and think "ah, those are the cabbages I owe to Leon". Where these games are at their worst, everything is entirely fungible and I've planted eight million blueberries because they have the highest ROI.

And yeah, in most of these games, there are other minigames like fishing and mining and logging and crafting, and since this is just a blog post and not a game, I definitely could massively expand an already sizeable scope.

I think for mining the player would use doodads of their own, and maybe you could make a mining minigame out of that, using the same planting tile system to instead create an automated ore harvesting machine that plumbs the depths of the earth (possibly dealing with rocks of different hardness, the water table, and other challenges along the way).

Fishing is a question of understanding the different fish species, what they eat, where they congregate, and then setting nets or lines, since I have never met a fishing minigame I really enjoyed. Again, there's some idea that the player is gaining information over time, building up a profile of these fish, noticing that some of them go nuts when it rains, understanding the spawning season, that they go to deeper water when it's cold, etc.

Crafting really depends on what you're crafting, but if you're reintroducing traditional artisan processes to this town, then people are going to need tools and machines and things. I'm not sure I know what a proper crafting game looks like. The only experience I have to draw on is wood shop, where I made wooden boxes, cutting boards, and picture frames. Since this is an engineering-lite puzzle-lite game, you could maybe do something in that vein, e.g. defining a number of steps that get you the correct thing you're trying to make, but ... eh. I love the idea of designing a chicken coop, for example, or building a trellis if I want my climbing beans to not need maize, or whatever, but I don't know how you actually implement that. There are definitely voxel-based and snap-to-grid games where you build bases, and I tend to find that fun ... but it's mostly cosmetic, for the obvious reason that doing it any other way than cosmetic requires programmatic evaluation, which is difficult and maybe unintuitive. The closest I think I've seen is ... maybe Tears of the Kingdom? Contraption building? But I don't know how you translate that to a farming game. Maybe I should ask my wife about this, because she's always doing little projects around the house (an outdoor enclosure for our cats, a 3D-printed holder for our living room keyboard, a mounting for our TV).

Making an interesting crafting system is difficult, which is why pretty much no one has done it.

And if I'm talking pie in the sky, without concern for budget or scope, I want the villagers to all have a mammoth amount of writing for them. I want petty little dramas and weird obsessions, lives that evolve with or without my input, rudimentary dialog trees that let me nudge things in different directions. This is just an unbelievable amount of work on its own, it would be crazy, but I would love having a tiny little town game where sometimes other people would fall in love. I would like to be invited to a wedding, maybe one that happened because I encouraged the chemist to hang out with the clothier, and in the course of working together on dyes, they fell in love. With twenty people in town and another ten that come in over the course of the game if you hit the right triggers, I do think this is just a matter of having a ton of time/budget. You write tons and tons of dialogue so there's not much that's repeated, you have some lines of conversation between characters that are progressed through, you have others that trigger off of events, and then you have personal relationships between NPCs that can be progressed through time or with player intervention. Give single characters a pool of love interests, have their affections depend on their routine which depends on what's changed in town ... very difficult to do without spending loads and loads of time on it though.

Anyway, that's one of my dream games. No one is ever going to make it, it would be a niche of a niche, and as scoped here, is too much for a small team to ever actually finish, let alone polish. But it's the sort of thing I'm imagining in my head when I think about playing Stardew Valley and its successors.

[mneiai]

I think one of the worst parts about the MC in ikevil, her falling so in love and changing so quickly regardless of the route/LI/plot, is directly related to one of the most ridiculous parts of the setup in general: the one month deadline.

In ikepri, a month makes sense: they literally don't have a king and a month is probably the absolute maximum amount of time they can give a Belle. So while stuff feels rushed, at least it makes sense WHY it's rushed.

And Belle mostly just has to be like "wow, this guy has a tragic backstory, but look how great he actually is" within that month, whereas the ikevil MC normally has to be like "wow, this guy has a fucked up backstory, magic powers that might really mess with me, a destined horrible death, and can only have some sort of unhealthy relationship because of those things, and also he's a murderer."

But, in ikevil, they literally could have given her three months, six months, a year, even.

The missions she often does could easily each take weeks instead of a few days, with the off-screen surveillance, fact checking, etc etc (which the side characters normally do anyway), and they wouldn't actually have to adjust the scripts much, just give a throwaway comment here or there to show the passage of time (which they already do a bunch, but normally for hours/a day or two).

"But what about if she wants to go back to her normal life?" I'm pretty sure most routes show she's too far in after a week or two, anyway. Like how do you even go back to such a life after knowing such secrets of the world? (Nevermind the privileges and stuff she gains)

Also, they give her a cover, so it's not like she'd have to explain where she was. In that time period just normal travel can take weeks, some extra months isn't going to make or break anything, especially since there's multiple times within different routes/events where the post office is still understaffed, so likely she'd just slot back into her old job even after months away.

"What about the restrictions on her?" I mean...what restrictions? There's multiple routes where she leaves the castle alone or stays out on her own before the month is out, it's clear that they start trusting her fairly early on (and why not? they've got multiple experts on reading people and an actual lie detector) and don't really care except insofar as her own safety is concerned, which honestly in some of the routes would still be an issue even if she left and cut ties with them.

Instead of her falling in love in like a week and then by the end of the month having already completely accepted whatever weird fetish and gruesome death/suicide pact she's invited (or all that shit with Alfons), they could have had it take more time. Instead of cramming so many encounters into a single day, they could have spread them out (instead of having almost everyone recover from like getting stabbed in a few days they could have lengthened that, too, lmao).

A lot of people complain about rushed routes that don't have enough time to show either how the MC feels or the LI, or both. That isn't just a constraint of the chapter limit (which, yeah, is an issue, but I don't think most players want to have to do even more chapters for a normal route, though there's some validity to how short some of the chapters are), but also of how much they can have the characters change in just a month. William's route, for example, is more or less the starter route, but is pretty controversial because most of what they needed to show of his feelings within the route is shown instead in events, so you get people questioning whether they're even actually in love, but of course it should take him longer to express his feelings given his hangups even if the MC is speedrunning things.

(Not even getting into stuff like the amount of time certain things they do would actually take with the technology of the day, or her learning enough sign language to have entire conversations in seemingly a few days, or that half of them have real jobs that they couldn't always have her around for, and stuff like that)

[stevelieber]

Thoughts on giving critiques to comics artists.

Seeing lots of discussion from students about sour experiences with an unhelpful art teacher, so here's a long, long post about giving critiques.

NB: I have no formal training as a teacher, but I was a student, and I've spent decades giving artists feedback on their work.

When someone brings me a portfolio, I like to establish my limitations & clarify my perspective. My work is firmly rooted in traditional US comics storytelling (i.e., not manga or art-comics.) I can give feedback on other approaches but they should know where I’m coming from.

“We've only got a little time for this, so I'm going to spend that time focusing on things to correct. That doesn't mean you're doing everything wrong, or that there’s nothing good here, but it’ll be more helpful if I identify some problems and show you how to fix them.”

Why? Because for many young artists their entire sense of self worth is wrapped up in being good at what they do. (It was for me!) In school they were probably the best artist in their peer group. But now if they're hoping to turn pro, they’re at the bottom.

Sometimes you know what’s up when you see page 1, but try to keep an open mind. Some build their portfolios by sticking new pages at the back & don’t weed out the old stuff up front, so the work gets better as you go. When it’s like that I ask: “Show me your best 8 pages.”

I ask questions: "What's the goal? Do you want to be hired to work on someone else's project, or to get the story you're showing me here published?"

If 1, I steer towards a portfolio that'll showcase hirable skills. If 2, I look for what tweaks will make that particular story more effective.

"Do you have teachers giving you regular feedback? What are they telling you?" Sometimes a student is getting bad advice. In cases like that, I'll do my best to be extra clear WHY I'm giving them advice that's 180 degrees from what they've been hearing.

“What artists are you looking at? Is there someone you admire or try to emulate?” This often helps me understand choices they're making, and I can sometimes incorporate things those artists do into my suggestions.

I ask myself questions about what I’m seeing. First: Is there a narrative? If not, I make it 100% clear I'm not speaking as any sort of expert. I'm good at critiquing storytelling, but don't have anywhere near as much to offer illustrators or designers.

Can I follow the story? Or am I confused about what's going on? Are the characters and settings drawn consistently? If not, is the artist at least making use of tags (distinctive clothing, hair etc.) to keep the characters recognizable?

Does the artist demonstrate a good command of basic academic drawing? If not, Do I think they need it? Do I focus on "how to draw" or on "what to do when you can't draw?" Is the artist putting the viewer’s eye where it needs to be to tell the story effectively?

(At this point I’m usually doing little doodles to go with my instructions. I scribble out ugly little 5 second diagrams that I hope will clarify what I’m talking about. Or they might make me seem demented. Hard to say!)

Is the artist making choices that are creating more work than necessary? Is there a particular weakness? I once spoke to an artist with a portfolio full of great work when he was drawing animals and monsters, but his humans were amateurish in comparison. I spent that critique talking about drawing people.

A crit can be a grab bag. In addition to big-picture advice, I'll point out tangencies, violations of the 180-degree rule, wonky anatomy, weird perspective, places where the artist neglected to do important research, odd choices in how they spotted black, whatever catches my eye.

I also try to make a point of defining the terms, so that jargon like “tangency,” “180-degree rule,” and “spotting black” don't go over their heads. Find simple, concrete ways to talk about these things, & clarify why it's a problem when they aren't done correctly. Draw diagrams!

Recognize that even a perfectly phrased explanation might not sink in. Some lessons can only be learned when a student is ready, and it might take a year or two of work before they can understand what you were saying. It's good to plant seeds.

Are there other artists who are particularly good at solving the problems the student is trying to solve? I steer them towards that artist's work. And I always recommend life drawing & the use of reference to give work specificity, variety, and authority.

Despite what I said earlier about focusing on what's wrong, I try at the end to find something encouraging to say. And if I’ve really piled on the criticism, I emphasize that I only spent the time and energy to do so because I take their efforts seriously.

If I've done my job right, they'll leave my table with tools to make their work better. And maybe in a few years they'll be looking at some younger artist's work, surprised to discover just how much you can learn when you're asked to teach.

[sciderman]

Quick Question, does Wade need to eat, as in is eating necessary for his survival need to eat? Forgive me if I'm wrong but in my head the way his powers work is all of his cells dying and regrowing all at once, so he wouldn't really need to eat because of that, the newly alive cells already have the energy/nutrients/etc etc. that food provides. Not sure if I'm reading him wrong but I imagine eating might actually make him sick? If they're all regrowing and dying I don't imagine they're actually working to digest the food he's eating, so it would stay there for a lot longer than is probably healthy. It would probably cause all sorts of digestive problems? Please correct if I'm wrong but in my head that's a cause of why he has a low metabolism and that lovely extra cushion, just very curious. <3

i think you might be putting a little too much thought into it,, the comics certainly don't put that much thought into it. wade eats, like any normal guy. in fact, i think it's been mentioned a few times that the reason wade is so high-appetite a lot of the time is because he needs it to heal. just like normal humans. i don't think his body, in the way it's described, works all too differently than ordinary humans do. except that his skin and brain are in constant flux. i know that on paper, they say his entire body is in flux, whatever that means, but, functionally, it's just his brain and his skin. if we thought about all the ramifications of his entire body being in flux, well, that's just about as good of a time as thinking about how ben grimm's organs work now that he's made out of rock. how does he digest food? he still eats! generally, when posed the question, it's shown that, actually, it's just his skin that's rock and his organs are still fleshy and pink underneath. (i don't like to think about it, so we don't think about it.)

i think the way i approach wade - which, you know, definitely isn't how most people approach him - is that, on terms of abilities he's basically normal. he isn't low metabolism, he's pretty normal. pretty average. he's getting soft in places the same way any man his age with his diet would. it's just that in typical circumstances, his body would be healing from injuries and he'd be, you know, fighting, doing backflips. doing whatever this is.

his metabolism works in overtime when he's pushing his body to the limit. when he's healing from injuries. since he's not doing deadpool stuff, his body is getting all soft. in the way any normal human who is not doing backflips and healing from injuries might.

in a same vein, i know his wiki says "super strength, stamina" yadda yadda, but i don't think so. i think, sure, he's definitely capable of feats of strength and stamina that no normal human would be capable of, but not because he physically is that strong but - that he can push his body beyond what normal humans can, because a normal human worries that if they push themselves beyond their limits they'll suffer injury. but wade doesn't care how many muscles he pulls or bones he breaks. so a normal human couldn't stop a helicopter with sheer strength without sustaining irreparable damage. but wade can. not because he's, like, as strong as spider-man, but because he can take the damage.

i think that's why i kind of write peter as being kind of wary whenever wade says something is "n.b.d" because he knows wade isn't super-strong, and things aren't actually "n.b.d", and that it costs wade just as much as it would cost any normal human, it's just that wade's convinced that he'll heal. ergo, no big deal.

peter knows wade tries to diminish the strain that he's under, and doesn't like peter to know just how much harm or pain he's feeling - whether it be physical or emotional. but peter knows that wade suffers. just as much, or more than any normal, frail, not-blessed-by-spider-bite human being. and so peter tries to protect wade, just as much as he would any normal, frail, not-blessed-by-spider-bite human being. healing factor or non.

i do think the thing that keeps wade's healing factor fighting so hard is that it constantly has something to fight. i think, in my head - in a way that some might think is tragic, but others might think is bittersweet, that if wade doesn't keep exerting himself to his limits and having to heal from physical injuries and, say, decides to retire and live a normal, docile life where he's not putting himself into the line of fire all the time then - well, his healing factor, not having to work so hard, eventually starts to slow down in the same way his metabolism does. his body doesn't have to fight so hard anymore. it gets lazy. he puts on weight, he ages. like any normal human guy. he grows old. the cancer does, eventually, beat out his healing factor. he dies. like any normal human man.

BUT! if he DOES have to put the suit back on, and get back into form for any reason, to say, i don't know, protect eleanor from her inevitable stupid future superhero shenanigans, then i'm sure his drive to be an unbearable dad for his daughter for the rest of all time will keep him from dying a slow, humble death.

RIP to peter, though, eventually. (though i do think, with his spider-longevity, peter could live well into his 100s. I think he'd look amazing, even in his 70s. like cher. (if he doesn't get his stupid ass killed prematurely.)

[eldritch-elrics]

one of the most interesting things about the silent hill 2 remake to me is the sort of... cascading effect that its particular brand of realism has on the entire experience, especially when it comes to james's characterization.

i'll try to explain concisely what i mean.

both 2001's SH2 and 2024's SH2 have what you could call a realistic artstyle. between the two games, this is achieved in very different ways. the original game uses realistic textures, proportions, animations, and especially lighting. this is what gives the fmv cutscenes their uncanny feel - the low resolution means that we focus not on the details, but whether the overall shape and lighting of the scenes feels consistent with reality.

the 2024 remake, meanwhile, follows in the tradition of recent AAA releases by upping the detail. silent hill, as a location, feels more real than ever. now, you can debate about what this does or doesn't add to the game - is an important part of the character of silent hill the eerie, empty, and unreal atmosphere it gains from the limitations of the ps2? that's a valid question. but being a 2024 AAA release, and one that clearly has a lot of effort put into it, the remake goes for realism by adding a whole lot of stuff.

now you have a game that is full of stuff. objects. clutter. this creates a problem. in the original silent hill games, important objects are not indicated with any kind of ui. instead, they're highlighted with particular colors, textures, lighting, etc. the remake does this too - but it also adds a little nondiegetic indicator when you're standing next to something you can interact with:

for a game with this artstyle, this is 100% a necessity. sure, some objects (especially stuff with uniform designs, like ammo or health items) stand out regardless. but for other things... it just isn't always clear!

imagine the game without these indicators. you would probably be able to find most of the important objects. but you'd need to spend way, way more time searching through rooms full of clutter in order to pick out the stuff that's necessary to progress. this is how the original game works! and it works in that game because the levels are smaller, and there is less random crap. but it would just be so tedious to do in the remake.

adding an interaction indicator doesn't so much create a clear boundary between "important" and "not important" - plenty of the stuff you can interact with in the remake is random stuff like posters that add nothing but worldbuilding detail, or drawers that don't actually contain anything - but it does create a clear boundary between "things the developers meant for you to focus on" and "things the developers meant as background details." this cannot help but change the entire experience of the game. in the original game, anything has the potential to be interacted with - you don't know whether you can or not until you've walked up to it (and made sure you've walked up to it at the right angle...) and pressed the button. this makes you consider your surroundings in a different way! it makes you search differently! it makes you more aware! it also adds more mystery - it makes the world feel that much more complicated, because there is so much stuff you could be missing!

one detail of the original game that i was very sad not to see in the remake is the abundance of commentary that james has on a bunch of the objects around him. and they could have added at least some of this! just a couple dozen more voice lines! but a lot of it is, well:

it is usually not particularly profound commentary. but it encompasses far more than the sorts of things to which the remake adds an interaction indicator, and i assume that is at least one reason (apart from its general characterization of james as taciturn) why the remake does away with it entirely. because there is such a black and white distinction between "interactable" and "non-interactable," they can't justify adding that little symbol to every potentially interesting thing in a game full of interesting clutter. why would gamers want to be told to focus on something, only for james to tell them right back that it's not worthy of his focus?

now, these objects things may not be important or noteworthy. but what makes them interesting - and what makes me as a player want to interact with every possible thing i can, just so see if it has associated dialogue - is that james tells you that they aren't important or noteworthy, and this tells us a lot about james. it makes us feel like we're seeing the game through his eyes, not the eyes of the developers who are putting in the buttons telling us what to focus on. instead, james is deciding what is "not a particularly special photograph," what is "...just a regular stage," and what is a collection of bottles so mesmerizing that he feels compelled to expatiate on his alcohol problems.*

*this is a particularly interesting example, because it's a completely missable detail from the original game that, as far as i'm aware, isn't in the remake's version of heaven's night. and yet... the remake references it! the scene in the remake where james refuses to drink the glass maria offers him in heaven's night reads completely differently whether you know this detail or not!

it's also possible that the lack of random commentary from james - the more substantial stuff, that is, not just "i don't need toilet paper right now" - is a deliberate choice on the part of the remake dev team to get rid of something that they saw as only in the game because the design decisions of the original silent hill games necessitated it. maybe they thought that the only reason for james to have that much commentary at all was because the game needed to give players feedback as a little reward for exploring around - a type of exploring that the remake does not incentivize. maybe they thought that a more "true" version of james would not say anything at all when faced with an object he had no strong feelings about. (especially as opposed to a protagonist like heather, for whose characterization this object-commentary is vital.)

but the thing is... even the presence of the less substantial commentary adds substance to james's characterization! it tells us what he's interested in, what motivates him or doesn't, what reminds him he needs to get a move on (shows us his one track mind - his drive towards his quest!), and what he's noticing but deliberately not thinking about (for example, sexually charged imagery). and it's so interesting that, very likely, this design decision is in part a consequence of an entirely different decision that was made because "that just how AAA games are" !

so, in short, the cascading effect is:

realism -> more detail -> harder to see what objects are important so devs need to add ui elements to point out what you can interact with -> you're not going around and interacting with everything you see -> james doesn't do random commentary on unimportant stuff -> changes how his characterization feels

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

idk if this is something you would answer but how do you unlearn shame of being horny 😵‍💫

hi anon,

this is a complex question. unlearning shame of any kind can take a long time to sort out, and will be driven more by internal work you do to challenge and shift your own thinking than by anything else.

a good place to start may be by doing some reflection as to what you find shameful about being horny in the first place and working back from there to recognize sexuality and desire as morally neutral things.

for instance, I get a fair number of people asking if it's okay to think about real people that they know when they're horny, or masturbate to fantasies about those people. they feel a lot of shame about this, as if they're causing harm to these people by imagining them in sexual scenarios. but making up funny little scenarios in your head to nut to is a harmless act that only you will ever know about. it's not like whipping out your dick (gender neutral) and masturbating at strangers on public transit; what you do to get off in your private time only impacts you.

a problem would only arise if you decided to start treating your real, actual acquaintance, not the imaginary sexy version of them, differently, for instance by making untoward comments about their body, treating them as if they are obligated to be interested in spending time together or having sex with you, or, god forbid, telling them in detail about your sexual fantasies. now you're doing sexual harassment, which is inappropriate because of the hurt and discomfort is causes the recipient. being horny isn't the problem here, it's how you're treating another person.

people also feel a lot of shame around many other types of fantasies, especially if they involve dynamics that are off-limits or illegal in real life. often, the worry seems to be that being aroused by these imagined scenarios is akin to expressing support for these things to happen in real life.

listen: sexual fantasies about rape are some of the most commonly reported among cis women, and that's not because tons and tons of cis women secretly think that rape is a cool thing that should happen more. the people playing Baldur's Gate 3 and fucking Halsin while he's wildshaped into a bear aren't all chomping at the bit to commit a sex crime against a real animal. noticing that "teenage" characters on TV played by actors in their 20s and 30s are hot does not make anyone a pedophile. fiction is a safe realm to explore and enjoy things that we would never in a million years want to see happen in real life. I love Batman, but I can assure you I would not be a happy camper if a real-life billionaire started running around doing vigilantism in a fursuit while endangering a gaggle of teenage sidekicks.

and if you want to explore some of the stuff you're into in real life, awesome! great! there are ways to go about negotiating a lot of different kinks safely and responsibly (although probably not the bear thing, sorry about that). the world is full of people who want the experience of being stalked, beat up, kidnapped, and sexually assaulted - all mediated through pre-negotiated arrangements with people that they have chosen to enact these fantasies with them. so what is there to be ashamed of in that situation? sure, the situation you're engaging in might sound scary without proper context, but so do a lot of things. a stranger cutting open my skin, very likely causing bleeding, and leaving me with a mark that I'll have for the rest of my life sounds scary, and it definitely would be if it wasn't a situation that I agreed to! but that's also what getting a tattoo is, and that's an experience that I love so much that I pay for the pleasure. nothing to feel bad about there as long as you're playing safely!

listen: there's nothing wrong with being horny. the human sex drive is a completely natural one born from biological need that makes getting off feel good. there's no more sense in feeling shame about being horny than there is in feeling shame about being hungry or needing rest, although people do of course manage to feel bad about those as well. regardless of what causes it, when you feel the shame well up you have to push back on it and ask yourself who actually directly benefits from you feeling badly about yourself in that moment, and who is actually tangibly hurt by the actions you're shaming. and if the answer is "no one," move it along!

[elumish]

keeping in mind the strategic/operational/tactical failures discussed in your earlier post, what would be the major failure point of the worldbuilding in iron flame? feel free to spoiler tag. is it the nature of the enemy and the common public narrative about that?

Okay so even though I finished Iron Flame fairly recently, I have also read a lot of books in the interim, so this may be a little general and may not get every detail totally correct. I'll stick all of my thoughts under a Read More, so if you don't want Fourth Wing/Iron Flame spoilers, just skip this post.

Strategic: To be totally honest, I didn't have a huge issue with the strategic-level worldbuilding of the Empyrean. I think the question of why dragons take part in this whole thing and also why dragons vs. griffins are totally neatly divided by country borders that are relatively new is not clear and sort of a problem, but I could mostly suspend disbelief there.

It definitely is not the most well built out/robust strategic worldbuilding, but I was basically fine with it. My feeling basically boiled down to "it didn't make me actively annoyed so I lived with it and can't currently think of a major issue." Also I like dragons.

Operational: Okay! So!

I found the entire organizational structure/setup of this entire world absolutely baffling to the point of being incomprehensible.

This probably doesn't need to be said, but I will anyway: a major goal of a military is to have as many trained fighters as you can. Attrition is one of the biggest issues faced by militaries (other than logistics) and the more people you are starting with, 1) the more you can do in general and 2) the more people you can afford to lose.

This means that you really want as close to 100% of your potential fighting force to survive training. Even if you only view people as cannon fodder, literally the point of cannon fodder is to put them in front of the cannons, not kill them in training.

I know the argument presented in the series by Violet is that it inures them to death so they can keep going when their teammates die, but that is terrible for a military. Yes, people need to be able to keep going when their teammate dies, but the training system has them killing each other. They are incentivized to kill each other! And so this school is literally training them to commit friendly fire incidents. Do you know what happens in a military that trains its soldiers to commit friendly fire incidents? They all kill each other and can't work effectively as a team. And being inured to that? That's just PTSD! You are just fucked up!

So having this military school system where they need to kill each other to win makes for a dramatic story but is an absolutely awful military training setup.

But also these are (or should be, if they had a non-awful system) highly trained members of the military, which makes them extremely valuable and also extremely expensive. People who fail out should just get stuck in a different part of the military instead of basically being killed.

And actually to that point, this whole setup would make much more sense if they had the equivalent of basic training and then had people specialize, the way they do in the real military. You absolutely want your military forces to be interoperable, and they are not even a little bit in this world.

Also why the hell don't these people use more ground forces? The number of dragon riders is limited to the number of dragons, but you can just have as many infantry as you can logistically sustain. Set up an effective border defense.

If you look at the traitor people (I can't remember what they're called right now), sticking them in the elite fighting force school also doesn't make any sense. I know they gave some in-universe reason for it, but especially because of the incomprehensible "if more than three of them are near each other then we can't magically surveil them" system if they were actually viewed as a security risk, they shouldn't have been allowed anywhere near the military, much less in the dragon forces.

They're a literal flight risk! There is absolutely nothing keeping them from defecting en masse. They can't be surveilled when they're together! Also they could commit friendly fire attacks! None of it makes any sense!

I also never really understood why they were keeping the real enemy a secret and why there was such a concerted effort. It didn't seem like the military leadership/king got any real benefit from maintaining a massive conspiracy to...kneecap their own military force.

The funny thing is that since finishing Iron Flame I've read basically all of Rebecca Yarros's other books, which are basically all contemporary romance, and she writes a lot of military-adjacent books, and they generally don't have this problem. Her husband was (is?) in the military, and she seems to have a decent understanding of it, so I'm not sure why she threw that all away for this.

Tactical: Okay so this is a lot related to the issue of "why are the trainees incentivized to kill each other" but Violet's ability to poison her way through her sparring didn't make any real sense if they was any point to the sparring. She should have just been made to spar with some instructors. And also they should have had some real fighting training. Though again that's more an operational issue.

Violet definitely had a lot of Plot Strings (the plot "coincidentally" moving her to the right place at the right time to do something only she could do): especially, that she (the person who happened to have the father who knew all of the plot-relevant things for some reason) happened to get magically soul-bonded to Xaden (the person leading the group that happens to know the truth about everything). I understand the whole situation with her mother, but her mother didn't control the soul bonding.

Overall the issue on a character level was more of a "wow this person just happens to have/be exactly what we need at this time" (the prince! who was just there! until he was extremely plot relevant coincidentally just when we needed him!) but each character was mostly believable taken in isolation.

[bimboficationblues]

what are the differences between marxism and anarchism?

one is based on the writings of Karl Marx and the other is based on the writings of Jean-Luc Anarquis

the respective ways in which they annoy me

it's difficult to get precise because anarchism is notably more expansive, which is sort of inherent to its nature. Marxism is thoroughly modern and often emphasizes its breakage with the previous radicalisms and socialisms that influenced it (while also being explicitly based on the models and preoccupations of a specific guy or set of guys). and although a lot of anarchism is to some extent also modern and similarly birthed out of 18th-century radicalism, it has a claim - much like communism outside of Marxism - to a longer, more extensive intellectual and political history. not to mention these two are, both being forms of socialism, kind of on a gradient (communization theory is a good contemporary example of a synthesis of the two). any attempt to kind of boil down either, and framing it as a binary in the first place, is going to miss a lot.

to bang my metapolitics drum: goals should be derived from values, and strategy and tactics are derived from both. I feel like you're probably familiar with the strategic/tactical disagreements among Marxists and anarchists (parties, cooperatives, state power, etc.) because they're...fairly obvious, so I'm more interested in emphasizing that first process.

there are (or at least can be) a number of overlapping values between Marxism and anarchism, even if the substantive content can vary. I think a notable breaking point is the central object of their ire. Marxism is interested in the rule of capital and its representatives, how this distorts and deranges social life, and more broadly how class conflict emerges from different methods of organizing social needs in ways that are destructive/irrational/restrictive on flourishing. I think anarchism's attention is towards processes of obedience and submission, how is it that people come to be positioned in hierarchical and coercive dynamics and either lose or surrender their personal and collective liberty, and how the state/political organization act as the chief source of this repression. I think there's obvious linkage here, and I wouldn't say they're mutually exclusive, but where you place your emphases matters and is going to lead you to different assessments of goals.

they primarily split on the question of what to do about political power, which I would suggest is related but non-identical to the break over what to do about political economy. assuming a revolutionary scenario (which not all anarchists do, see the individualist strain derived from thinkers like Stirner which I am somewhat influenced by, but this is the conventional tale of the Bakunin/Marx split): should political power, conceived as a weapon of class rule, be seized in some capacity before we seek its full abolition, or should this mode or conception of politics be abolished through the act of making revolution?

again, there's kind of a spectrum of answers here. I think how you flesh out the substantive content of specific values will inform where you land on this question, of exactly how to get to statelessness. fwiw, I think nobody has really cracked the problem of the state as a force with its own inertia and limitations for forming a desirable society vs. the demands of a defensive revolutionary position, but I think recognizing that it is a dilemma is more fruitful than just pretending it doesn't exist or like a clean answer has been handed down from on high by our predecessors.

and, to some extent, there's also a disparity (though not universal between the camps) on the matter of whether a post-capitalist society should have things like markets - not all anarchists are necessarily communists. not all Marxists are either but they usually at least pretend to be.

anyway, I think there's obviously a lot of other historical and ideological differences and tensions for a variety of reasons, but I think these are some of the most interesting threads right now. in conclusion,

[kouyou-arc-when]

Hey, this is a great ask and I am so sorry for not replying earlier. I am responding like this because I actually broke the character limit since I'm dumb -_- I've written a lot of posts about this on reddit, and many people came up to me and asked me something similar. Your line of thinking is good. Regarding Dazai:

So, the thing is - to properly diagnose any personality disorder, you need to talk to that very person to understand their inner mechanisms. There are certain behavioral traits we can observe from the outside and make some guesses based on that: for example, Dazai's broadly dented empathy and why that's often found in people with ASPD.

However, for many other personality disorders it is very difficult to conclude much without the person saying ~I feel x because of y. I do c because of b.

Why? Personality disorders are internal structures that cause a person's behavior to be challenging to either them or others. To understand these mental processes is much more demanding than seeing a person just feels sad or anxious, to explain it simplistic terms.

The key behind many disorders is to know WHY a person is doing what they're doing. This one thing changes whether a person has x,z,y,t,n or whatever condition.

An example: BPD and CPTSD are often mistaken for one another. Same as with BPD, CPTSD, Autism and ADD in women, but BPD and CPTSD tend to have the largest "overgap", you can even have both at the same time. That's because many of the outside observable symptoms are the same.

An example: unstable relationships are a symptom of ALL of the above, but BPD is sort of...an outdated PD according to many specialists due to the fact that it was used as an "everything" disorder, where people with socially unconventional emotions were dumped. That's why you'll find two people with BPD that are almost nothing alike.

However, even if we hold to classic diagnostic criteria, let me show how the same symptom can be a product of entirely different circumstances.

For example: Someone with BPD will have unstable relationships due to an extreme fear of abandonment. Someone with Autism may have unstable relationships due to differences in communication styles Someone with ADHD will have unstable relationships due to various circumstances: emotional regulation, executive functioning etc.

So really, the outward result may be the same, but the cause is different.

However, now, typically the main reason someone could have BPD is either due to extreme splitting, favorite person behavior, numbness and/or abandonment issues.

Dazai 100% has "favorite person" syndrome going on with Oda - the way he idealized Odasaku and then devalues everyone around him in comparison is pretty clinical - doesn't mean their relationship isn't lovely, but it's certainly something a therapist would take note of.

It's no shocker Dazai has unstable relationships, but we don't 100% know why he does what he does.

That's the whole thing Asagiri said - the character is meant to be like a donnut, where you don't really know what's in the middle - so it's extremely difficult to say which PD fits him for sure, probably even more difficult than the average neurodivergent character. In my opinion, several interpretations of Dazai are simultaneously valid due to the fact that you could assume multiple personal struggles within him, and come to a reasonable conclusion.

Does Dazai have abandonment issues? He says he always loses everything he wants, is EXTREMELY bitter over Ango, and definitely shows some levels of "splitting", especially in how he treats Oda vs Ango, Akutagawa vs Atsushi etc etc.

I'm pretty confident he has PTSD, and everything that comes with that. He certainly has a personality disorder too, due to the fact that a lot of his difficulties stem from his personality, and not just brain chemistry.

Kunikida says that most of his emotions "seem" like an act, which raises a lot of questions to what is even happening on the inside. Asagiri said Dazai is really only himself in front of people like Oda and Fyodor. That version of Dazai is...much less cheerful than with everyone else.

I don't personally think Dazai is autistic since he has a good hang on social cues and overall communication. Mamoru Miyano said PM Dazai was still learning to communicate with others back in his Dark Era days, but it wasn't that he couldn't do it - he was just not interested in learning it.

I feel like Asagiri gave Dazai this "unrealistic" trait of being primarily isolated because he's extraordinarily intelligent (which is not how geniuses tend to feel irl, most of the time) but I always feel like there is something more to it.

There is definitely some /disconnect/ between Dazai and "normal" people, where he doesn't fully seem to understand certain things, he falls short there. As someone who has CPTSD diagnosed, I get the impression he maybe has a similar thing going on as many of us: A extremely traumatic experience disrupted a lot of normal emotional and cognitive processes, and now he's both extremely hypervigilant and unable to snap out of that "shellshocked" state. He needs to "perform" conventionality, and being a normal person.

In one wan chapter, he "made a joke" that you start doing one bad thing after another, and suddenly you feel nothing at all. That's the trademark numbness in both CPTSD and BPD.

There was this TDIPUD moment where he talks about how a personality is just a bunch of unstable premises that survive to uphold the basic instincts of the human mind - but how it's easily destroyed for that reason. This is a scene where he tortures the guy, and I was like "wow, I really get it". Severe trauma can just destroy the very structure of your personality, because extreme pain just numbs everything within you. "You" as a person can't survive.

BPD is also related to an unstable sense of self - which could be connected to the former paragraph. Sometimes lowered empathy is also a byproduct of BPD, in fact, the thing is that both BPD and CPTSD come from trauma 99% of the time. They're shockingly similar disorders.

So, does Dazai have BPD? No idea. He could also be schizoid to some extent, which is funny, because Franz Kafka had this disorder, the author that inspired Asagiri's nickname.

For now, I'd just leave at he has CPTSD for sure

Most of these disorders are very broad descriptors, and it's difficult to label most humans in a way that will genuinely encompass what their experiences are. Most of the time, these diagnostics are used to match a person with the best treatment available, or to explain what they're going through - so I don't think there is a perfect diagnosis for Dazai aside from PTSD, but he's definitely extremely neurodivergent. Thanks for reading <3

[benrey-did-nothing-wrong]

hello user benrey did nothing wrong

can i have tips on how to write benrey as a character speech wise?? he's just so unpredictable and i really struggle to convey him when im writing stuff... thank yew :)

ok so this is a loaded question and I'll do my best. thank you for choosing me tumblr user benrey-did-nothing-wrong! I hope you send this message to multiple authors who have an open inbox though, and if not:

i also will ask other authors to please put their two cents in! I'm not really an authority on benreyisms.

I try to be a bit of a Benrey language purist about 80% of the time and then the last 20% I go crazy.

So as writers we have a tendency to project our own slang and humor onto our characters. I'm no different. I try to always have a precedent for that behavior though. I'll start off with what I tend to avoid using liberally and save for quick punches.

Pog: Benrey doesn't actually seem to care much about streaming, unlike Gordon. He's more of a 2005-2014 era fellow. I have him say pog once specifically because my beta reader choked on his saliva reading "Pogaccino". Pog doesn't seem to really be in his vocabulary. Instead, replace this with NICE or COOL! He says both of these things quite a bit.

Cringe: Another thing that isn't really in his vocabulary, oddly enough. Cringe seems to be too light of an insult for him. He likes to go for the throat. I do use this term for him though as I tend to write him slightly less mean than he is in canon. "That's so cringe" would probably be "Oh you think that-you think that's cool? Idiot?"

He's not very eloquent. He'll dumb conversations down to like, a 3rd grade speaking level. His vocabulary is extraordinarily plain. The spiciest shit he says is Youtube Yownloader. Try to keep the words he uses at minimal syllables. This is something important i don't see a lot of people bring up. Of course he can use bigger words! But he tends to avoid that.

A lot of people write him a slurring a lot of his words, and this just really isn't the case. He's fairly articulate in my opinion. Lots of "M not human" and not "I'm not human". Even though he articulates fairly decently.

Do NOT have him be very perceptive. Benrey seems to be operating on a Baaulp with no oranges brain level. He doesn't tend to notice things unless they're obvious, and if he does he extrapolates something bizarre out of it (hole in the skull = donut, locker = box, etc.) And once again this ties back into him having a limited vocabulary.

Sony references! Read up on some PS3 era references and games. I'd even go as far as to suggest reading gaming magazines. To get in the Benrey mindset you really need to start living like you're Poargu. (Scorpy) A lot of people tend to make him a Nintendo fanboy but he seems to hold Nintendo in a low esteem compared to Sony (extrapolation from his monologue).

He is NOT nice, even when he is nice he isn't nice. He'll tend to show it by action and not words. Although (Gir or Holly) pulling the trigger during the gargantua fight is what killed it, in lore, Benrey kills the Gargantua with his Song of Death to protect everyone. and then he immediately says "IT PEED!!!! =D". Benrey cannot show verbal affection very well and it also is demonstrated in his catcalling and harassment of Gordon. Which yes, this is what it is. Catcalling and Harassment.

He actually doesn't say 'Dude' as much as I remembered him saying it. He's more of a "Bro" and "Man" guy.

He only BBBBB's underwater or spitting out bullets he ate! A lot of folks make this a regular part of his vocabulary but it really isn't. I try to use it sparingly.

Ok for stuff I do:

Most important to Benrey's patterns I think it's his way of being sort of a tease, and may implement video game references into this. "Butterfingers" "Chicken Hat (MSGV reference)" "Clumsy Boy" "Gordon Feetman", and "Baby".

He's very concerned about people breaking rules but doesn't seem to understand most rules of law. He knows stealing is wrong. He seems to be ambivalent to death, and views it as an inconvenience or something funny rather than, you know, the end.

"Wow." and "Woahhh". Common exclamations of wonder.

"Please" and "Sir" are used more often than you'd think

He points out the OBVIOUS. This is in addition to him not being perceptive. He will see something and describe it as he sees it without anything interesting to add on.

When he doesn't want to have an argument or hear Gordon yapping he'll default to "MYAHMYAHNYAHBLEAAGH". Total manchild.

He sometimes mixes words up. "Psychics and Physics", "Electrolytes and Electronics".

He likes being funny in his own Benrey way. If something makes Gordon laugh he'll do it. A lot.

On top of that, he's into corny jokes too (See: Mine not yours)

"Yo"

Makes references to his favorite video games. He seems to like Heavenly Sword, MAG, Metal Gear, Call of Duty, Team Fortress 2, Tekken, and GTA games. And even more. He's really a certified Sony and PC gamer. He loves the PS3 a lot. I've never seen him reference the Vita to my knowledge.

He's okay with horny talk and he thinks it's funny. If he hears something out of pocket he is HERE for it. (See: THE SUIT INCIDENT)

If he fucks up he tends to brush it off as not being his fault. A guy who is a sore fucking loser. If Gordon beats him in something he'll probably just say "I won!" anyways.

He has a fundamental misunderstanding about everything. The reason why the Not a Game AU sheltered lab rat shit works so well is because Scorpy just makes it seem like Benrey has never seen anything before in his entire life. Everything is a new and novel experience but he's pretending he knows what he is doing and can be very confidently wrong. Either that or he's REALLY fucking funny and the bit is being confidently wrong.

he is full of contradictions. He will act like something minor is killing and hurting him SOOOOO bad, but he just spits out bullets peppered into him. With Gordon, he shows a lot of aggression and adulation. He really just seems to do whatever he thinks would be funnier or more annoying.

He's a shithead brother IMO. he's got that shithead dudebro energy.

Watch a scorpy stream and take notes if he says anything that makes you giggle. i pepper a few scorpyisms here and there to add authenticity.

Unpredictability is a part of it. sometimes you just need to close your eyes and let yourself get possessed by the demons

go crazy, go stupid! Have fun! Life's a party! dont listen to ANYTHING I've said and just write him however you life!

[goodluckclove]

CRIMEEEEEE

TELL ME THE CRIMEEEE

So I think this is from when Sleep Deprived Hangover Man invited the internet to ask them about the crimes they committed as a youth. I will be honest, this is not a super great thing I did. But because the statue of limitation is up and honestly none of the crimes are really - significant? They're just weird. I was an angsty, turbulent, manic youth.

And it turns out, I'm an equally turbulent adult. I tried to list the weird semi-crimes I've done in my childhood, and it sort of turned into a guide on how other young people can kind of break the law and get away with it. Maybe not law. Policy? Yeah, so it's not great and I'm putting it under a read more.

Disclaimer, since this is still technically my author page: I do not think any minor should do most crimes without just cause. Like within the legal system the trouble it could get you in sounds like it could really set you back for a long time. I actually don't even think you should immediately implement my advice across the board without practice and introspection and observation. It's actually a way harder skill to cultivate than people might expect, but if you can it will help you for a long time for things other than crimes.

Ideally you don't do it. If you want to, learn how to tell when the right time to do it would be. Don't make a point to inconvenience people more than you have to, both because that's a nice thing to do, and because it improves the odds of you getting away with it. I need to stop telling young people how to do crimes. Or do I? I don't know. If anyone has questions about my philosophy and experience you can ask and I'll say more.

I am a professional weirdo. Let's do this.

Let's go in a vague order!

I was suspended for terrorist death threats in the third grade. I do not believe this is fully my fault but it is a thing that happened.

I shoplifted a pretty decent amount, but not in a way I think any other youth would find cool. I stole candy and pens. But like GOOD pens.

I used to carry glitter glue on me for the sake of writing poetic phrases on various surfaces

Once I walked into an empty business lobby and moved around some plants and furniture, and then I left. If there was a camera there I probably created a strange story.

I generally trespassed a bunch of places all the time. All the time, straight up. If there was an open door or unattended hall that I wasn't supposed to explore I'm absolutely exploring it and taking whoever I'm with with me. I learned pretty quickly that I was charming enough to pull off being caught and getting myself out of it without any consequence. Literally, if you aren't actively causing trouble and just wandering around someplace you know you're not supposed to be, just tell someone who finds you and asks questions that you're lost and you aren't sure where to go. Like maybe you thought this was a way to the parking garage or the bathroom. Assuming I wasn't stealing, causing damage, or shouting slurs, this has worked for me 100% of the time.

Literally, if you do crimes that aren't crimes, you should practice being genuinely nice

Not fake snarky nice, like actually polite and respectful

You didn't realize you weren't supposed to be hanging out in that lot or in that parking garage. You were just trying to find a place to sit and chill. But yeah, you'll leave.

Yes, in retrospect walking down the lightrail tracks wasn't a safe or practical idea. But you took the wrong train and you genuinely didn't know how to get back and this was the only idea you had. You're just trying to get home. Look, you're even buying a ticket (I like never did that as a youth holy shit)!

a teenager is not going to win a fight with an adult who perceives themselves an authority. I don't think you should do whatever adult authority figures say. I do think that you should learn how to navigate your way out of conflicts within spaces in a way that means you can still use that space

if you break a rule and, instead of fighting, take the honest stance that you didn't mean to do that and, in fact, you actually need help from an Adult Authority Figure for a slightly unrelated thing that doesn't actually matter to you (directions to a place, maybe).

I genuinely just wandered around wherever I wanted and this always, always worked for me. I'm really good at looking confused and like I need help, because most of the time I am actually confused and need help

You are not in a sitcom and being sarcastic and snarky to a person that catches you trespassing will not not to anything but make you think you're cool. They'll still make you leave, and now you can't go back to the place you explored because you're the person that started shit instead of the person who got confused and made a mistake and apologized and left.

Adults in authority positions automatically assume a young person in a place/doing a thing they aren't supposed to do will turn it into a conflict. If you genuinely, honestly respond with respect and curiosity, I almost guarantee you'll get away with it. Fucking say you've never tagged before and you weren't really sure if it was still a crime in a place like this, but you get why the person is upset.

Offer to clean your own tag. Like not ironically. Ask if they have some supplies or if you can come back. Be entirely serious, say you're realizing it wasn't a good idea and you kind of regret it. This doesn't have to be true, but it will rattle a security guard or manager far more than if you call them a fascist.

They might yell still, but if you give them nothing they can justify as a reason to keep yelling at you they're actually going to look like the weirdo to themselves and everyone around them

thesis: misdemeanors are a lot easier to get away with if you are unafraid to look like you're naive and willing to learn and adapt. You might feel like it's a blow to your pride, but in the long run you will be able to do way more questionable shit. i came to this conclusion when I was 14 years old and decided I'd rather do weird shit than have the adult minor authority figures think i'm a peer or a worthy adversary, because neither of those things would happen anyway.

Okay so this just turned into a guide on how to do a misdemeanor. I should say now that there are crimes that are bad. Even tagging, something I truly enjoy, does create more work for employees and sanitation workers. That's frankly why I like ways that are easier to remove than spray paint and postage stickers if it's something you want to do.

And I'm not necessarily pro-shoplifting as, like, a hobby? I don't think it's great, mainly because if you are caught it'll probably lead to you being banned from the store you stole from. Which, if you're young, can be pretty hard to hide from the adults in your life. And the shaming that results from doesn't seem worth whatever you took. I still have a mug I shoplifted from Target, and I am not thrilled that I stole it, because it reminds me of a time in my life when I felt so shitty I decided to steal something to feel in control of a situation. And that sucks.

Compare that to moving furniture in some random office and then walking way. That's so fucking funny and I do not regret doing that at all. Imagine you're looking at security footage and you see that. That's some cryptid shit.

Young people - if you are weirder and nicer about it, the amount of stuff you can do widens extensively and you can potentially confuse adults who work otherwise boring and stressful jobs for a long time to come. Case closed.

[pepperf]

Sending this ask to a few tua accounts!

Diegolila is probably my favorite ship in the show, but I've been thinking about this a lot lately. What would you change about their relationship in season 4? Obviously they're not in the honeymoon phase anymore, and they have three kids, so I feel like naturally they would go through a rough patch. But what made me sad in season 4 was that none of it got fixed. The five/lila relationship aside, it was weird to see Lila be just completely disconnected from Diego and not come to any realizations about her relationship with him, especially because she IS a deep character and she really does love him. Plus, I don't completely agree with her being a housewife either. It hurts to see them fight and stuff because I feel like they're 2 characters who are really in sync with each other and who make each other better people, but it hurt a lot more when their arcs ended in them basically not really loving each other anymore.

TLDR how would you rewrite their relationship in season 4? Would Lila still be a housewife/Diego a delivery driver? Who would try to fix the relationship first? Why would the relationship go through the rough patch in the first place? Is it because they're both just tired of each other/suburban life/kids? Or is it something else? Would they try to fix it in the first place?

Sorry this is a really long ask, but I love all your tua takes and I feel like they ripped off Diego and Lila in the worst way this season. Would love to know your thoughts.

Extremely belated reply to this, because @lochrannn answered it so well and I couldn't think of what else to add at the time - but I've been thinking about this recently, and now I do have some thoughts!

Honestly, I'd like to rewind the show back a bit further, to the start of s3. I wouldn't have had the pregnancy plot for Lila, I am not a fan. Love it in fanfic! Have written it myself! Came around to it for those two because they were just that chaotic! But as a canon plot, I think it both limited them, and also cemented their relationship too soon. I wanted them to have a lot more uncertainty for longer, more back and forth. I would have had Lila gone for longer - Diego hadn't even changed his clothes by the time she came back! He needed more time to fret/pine/let all those stupid emotions come to a nice simmer, and then Lila returns (her time apart from him was excellent, on the other hand, no notes). Then - conflict, sex, reconciliation, surprises, reconciliation v2, etc.

And then in s4, I would still have had the time jump, for practical (Aiden) reasons, and still have had the D/L kids - but giving them a little while to just live their lives together, child-free. And I would have kept the fact that their first kid was totally unexpected, lol. And all of that could happen off-camera, it doesn't need to be filmed, just there as backstory. Then I would have started s4 in a sort of similar position, in that they would be having some problems (these two are MEANT for conflict lbr), but they would both be sneaking out to do vigilante/spy type stuff. I'm neutral on whether they both have shitty jobs, but I wouldn't have Lila as a full-time stay-at-home mum. And then, plot stuff happens, and they learn lessons, and reconcile by the end of the season - although preferably in a more interesting way than just "talking to some guy" or "being stuck somewhere", something more in keeping with their chaotic natures and weird priorities. And they would adore their kids, this wouldn't even be a question.

Anyhow, that's my take. I don't think it needs to majorly alter the overall story (although I also hate the ending - but that's a separate issue!), but they could've done so much more exciting and unexpected stuff with those two characters, and the actors were wasted on the duff material they were given in s4 especially.

Thank you for the question!

[nitewrighter]

Hey Nite! Just wanted to say that your various librarian posts you've made over the past year-ish that I've been following you on here inspired me to go take out a book from my local public library for the first time in like 15 years! Honestly forgot how good the ~vibes~ of reading in a library were, and I'll probably make it a semi-regular habit for whenever I need a new book.

As a related question, I saw a post on Twitter this morning about how being a librarian (at least in the US) requires a master's degree? I'll admit my knowledge of the day-to-day work of a librarian is fairly limited, but the fact it needs a masters degree feels like a rather high barrier for the position to me.

Ah the "it doesn't look *that* hard, why do you need a master's degree?" question.

Well the thing is, not all of the staff you see around a public library (at least a larger library like the one I work at) are actually librarians. A lot of them are Aides or library assistants--even those working at the desk! And those jobs don't actually require a degree in library sciences because they're more limited in function--circulation, shelving, assisting patrons with library cards... I was a library assistant for a long time before I made librarian, even with my master's!

Being an actual librarian means having the training to run a library both on administrative and a services level. There's collection development, program development, budgeting, but there's also managing, training aides and assistants, professional development, and general advocacy. In Library school, you also tend to kind of get sorted into different specializations--there isn't just public librarianship, there's academic librarianship, school librarians, special collections, archiving--the information sciences really are their own body of sciences. I chose public librarianship because I felt it basically put me on the ground level--it's a public utility, so as far as I figured, it was a means to help the most people in the most direct way. Also in my time at library school, there were people who did have the job title of "librarian" but they were also in way more rural areas or smaller libraries, so they were basically thrust with the title of "librarian" as a kind of probational thing, I think? I think what I mean to say is, it also varies according to the available resources of the community a library serves.

But, TL;DR: There actually is a lot more to librarianship than what you see at the front desk! And honestly the title of master's sounds intimidating and a high barrier, but it's actually a very straightforward course--you do definitely need a bachelor's just to kind of keep up with the academic requirements, but it's honestly compatible with a bachelor's of virtually any background. I completed mine online as an asynchronous course, so it was very flexible with my schedule.

[m0nost4tic]

someone's gotta hear me out here;

octopath traveler ii apocalyptic au.

it has SO MUCH raw potential, no matter which route you want to take for it.

soooo.... prepare yourself for a ramble on potential ideas. do keep in mind i divided it up by sections only after writing most of it though 💔

-- general concept //

i've mentioned the idea to a handful of friends, and most of them assume i mean an apocalyptic au placed in a more modern setting. that in itself is interesting and a whole other concept to explore, but what i've *really* been thinking of is one set in solistia.

at first, i wanted to use the stereotypical zombie virus. but when i further thought on it, that wouldn't really make sense in ot2's context. i mean, yeah, it could be a situation like castti's - but how would a mutated virus tie back to an overlooming shadow the same way trousseau's poison does?

there were a billion different ways to create or sever that tie. the virus' mutation could have been caused by the darkness, or the virus itself originating from a creature of it, or something else among the lines of that. i couldn't really settle on just one solid idea - until i remembered osvald's final chapter.

osvald's final chapter features people who are "possessed" by this shadow magic. they are unable to speak and appear violent to *some* extent. plus, after you're able to free them from this trance, they seem to be unaware of what had only just taken place.

in addition to this, while playing the game, you have a set chance of encountering a monster who looks *just* like one of the others, save for its darker palette and shadow-themed battle scenery. this also appears in ochette's final. and temenos' final, when that magic mutates kaldena into some sort of monster? AND the darkblood blade causing a similar instance with mugen?? ANDDD the dark akala/mahina for ochette's final???? and not to mention trousseau using "poisonous shadow energy" to cause fatal illness. the perfect set-up for a zombielike concept is literally all RIGHT there

-- hikari //

HOWEVER. using the shadow as a direct cause of it brings up a few questions that need solving. if we go with a "the last of us" sort of concept, where the people who are infected are *alive* but serve as "hosts," then what would that mean for hikari??? there's a bunch of different ways to explore that. would he technically be born infected and, therefore, have partial immunity?? if so, how would his infected state affect not only him but the other travelers as well??? i imagine it functions pretty similarly to the original curse, maybe with a few sickly symptoms?

i think one of the key differences with hikari and other forms of the shadow is sentience. with the people from osvald's ch. 5, they're reduced to just making animalistic sounds in place of speaking. in hikari and temenos' finals, both mutated versions of bosses have a VERY limited speech pattern and seem to entirely lose themself. in ochette's story, it afflicted animals. on the flip side, when it comes to hikari's curse, we have this shadow within that can speak and think for itself. while it is a possibility this sentience is limited because most (if not all) of what it thinks about is violence, it's perfectly capable of interacting with people (...if it ever wanted to without hurting them)

so...maybe it wouldn't act like the other infected whenever hikari loses control of it? but it probably still has a strong lust for blood. PLUS, being that this is set in an apocalyptic setting, being around violence is going to be an incredibly common occurrence. hikari'll have to be dealing with it. a LOT. i feel like at some point the other travelers start to notice that something's up, depending on which representation of the curse you wanna go for. like, if it's just partial infection immunity, hikari could be bitten at some point, start feeling a faint bit sickly, and everyone's grieving and preparing for his loss, and then...it just. doesn't happen. or, if you wanna go for something like the shadow being recognized as something similar to the infected, there could be an instance where hikari is struggling against it, and the infected they were in the middle of fighting charge toward him, set to attack, and— then they just walk around him, as if he didn't exist at all. this would probably act similar to the whole smell disguise thing in the walking dead or like the zombies ignoring the ill in world war z

-- throné //

the shadow's relation to the apocalypse would also raise a few questions for throné. for instance, if this widespread infection is marking the beginning of vide's return and the end of time, what would this mean about throné being a 'vessel?' what about her own blood ties to d'arqest (and the ones she shares with hikari)?

since throné doesn't have 1-to-1 interactions with her dark ancestry (the shadow), i wouldn't go quite as far as hikari's concepts. like, i don't think she'd be immune to them. buuuuut, as she was born as a potential candidate as vide's vessel, i can see her being better at handling the infected. maybe it'd be something like a heightened sense or intuition of their actions. there could be more of an understanding that's beyond just empathy of the tragedy. after all, these things are technically vide's creation, and she's not so far off from being considered one too. i wouldn't go off into fantasy land and say she can talk to them or something, but i can see her predicting some of their behaviors. if they ever try to sneak up on the cast, both because of her assassin/thief history and this trait, she'd be the first to notice them and spring into action-- even before they're actually near the group. it's like a feeling of paranoia except, most of the time, it's true

ochette could perhaps possess a similar ability (though not quite the same) due to the orign of the beastlings, and because of her being basically pure light LMAO. even vide couldn't find a way to corrupt her

another note- i feel like traveler stories relating to vide would be much more rooted in cultism than they were originally. you've probably seen films or shows of post-apocalyptic scenarios. cults spresd FAST. and, speaking of which...

-- the moonshade order //

THESE GUYS. eugh i both love and hate them sm i'm gonna throw them

anyway. so, in this version of what i'm describing, the only main world change is the timeline order. long story short, these guys managed to pull a lot of the big bad strings way back, maybe even before some of the travelers were born (glances at agnea) but i haven't fully arranged it out yet

ALTHOUUUGH, as we know, there are circumstances that were only capable thanks TO the travelers. (ex. kazan using the ku civil war to retrieve the blade). i think this is EXACTLY why vide has yet to fully return. maybe they've managed to get 2 or 3 of the flames out (i'm not completely sure which ones are possible and which ones aren't. i'd have to look back at it later... it's currently 12 am at the time of me writing this, so there's zero way i'm checking atm </3). in this csse scenario, i see this like a weakening on the seal, and hence, allowing for the beginning of the end to start

otherrr than that, post-apocalyptic, i see them functioning as a cult. ..well, they technically already are, but a more influential one. like, let's take kazan, for example. he would definitely use the apocalypse as an opportunity to 'advise' the king and general mugen. ...iiiin other words, basically manipulating them.

!! subsection about ku because i rambled a bit //

since ku's so war-heavy, after the kingdom falls (and, geographically wise, they'd likely be one of the last standing), i envision them having a survivor group ran by the royal family. kazan would use the chaos and conflict to paint himself in to a higher, more influential role in this group. as hikari would be pretty young when the apocalypse began, i can picture kazan becoming his mentor in this au. he'd probably speak to hikari and other people of ku about vide and the end of the 'cruel and ugly world' and such, and, because most people are willing to listen to just about anything in this stats of emergency, they start believing in it, too. maybe not as deeply as kazan, but it might influence them in behaviors or habits, like serving to only worsen ku's war-thirsty nature or people of the group beginning to adapt a more "ah, well, it is what it is. this cruel and ugly world will end soon anyway" mindset

also, on kazan mentoring hikari, this would definitely be another manipulation tactic. enough people of ku know about the curse (and, in mugen's case, about hikari's mixed ancestral bloodline) for it to be expected that kazan is fully aware of it. i wouldn't even be surprised if part of the plan was to use hikari to, at last, fully free vide. orrr, maybe kazan treats hikari as if he's vide's intended vessel? either way, this would cause much deeper rooted psychological problems for hikari. like...ku's violence meter probably went WAAAY up due to the stress and panic of the apocalypse. and then you add in the blackouts associated with the shadow within that he's not fully aware of until adulthood. and also a lot of the similar event sequences to his original storyline.

i just really quickly fetched a few small hypothetical concepts i sent to a friend about post-apoc ku late october;

" hikari's upbringing would therefore likely have a lot more of kazan's involvement in it, as well as all those bad behaviors.

ofc, just like he strays from his family's history of violence in canon, hikari often strays away from the path kazan tries to set up for him. he disagrees with all the violence and a good amount of the questionable behaviors clan ku exhibits

in facctttt

one idea i had for this version of ku, was that they sometimes keep others hostage for bargaining, torturing for information, cult-like related reasons, etc. but this would be pretty rare because ku would fucking murder most of their hostages

there was one scene i imagined would perhaps make a tie between him and another character (most likely partitio due to ku and oresrush's proximities)

in this case, lets say there's been a group near their area that they've been struggling to "sniff out," and they finally happen to find one of the members of that group. if this was as a tie to partitio, then this would likely be one of his friends - nikki, joe, maybe even alrond, etc.

young hikari realizes he's roughly the same age as the hostage and, ofc, feels super fucking bad. and hence sneaks out at night to bandage the captive's wounds and maybe try to free him

during that whole interaction, i imagine him saying something along the lines of "it's okay," offering out his hand to show the bandages and his intent to help, "...i'm not like them."

if/when he frees this person, kazan would definitely have the suspicion it was hikari and eventually find the evidence it was (likely through manipulating hikari to spill), and young hikari would get *a ton* of shit for it

to mimic a lot of things that happens in hikari's story, another thing i did sort of want portrayed was his mother's death;

but i thought it more similarly to a twd character, where his father clings onto a zombified version of her (and this could serve as another reason for the occasional captive and excessive bouts of manslaughter)

until, one day, she's found fckin dead. wound indicates a sword to the head and all. hikari personally felt a sort of peace with the fact, because he saw it as her *finally* being allowed to rest properly. he knew and recognized that the walkers were anything but human, and while they once were, the person they were before was most definitely *gone*. (hence he'd be the type to go out of his way to put an end to walkers that're trapped or hung, because he wants those people to finally feel a sense of peace instead of being trapped in whatever sort of hell that was. if the shadow was to have a big hold on him, it would also contribute to this sympathy because he'd *know* some of the hell they'd gone through)

....however, the rest of clan ku would *not* see it that way and treat it as an assassination. and that's another pointer to hikari that things around him are kinda lowkey fucked up

....and because of the way he viewed it, and him being young and not yet really knowing that view was VERY frowned upon, a lot of the clan ends up thinking he was the one who carried it out. henceee more of the shit hikari receives. the shit w/ jin mei would also be connected 2 this "

!! back to moonshade //

mindt may cause something sort of like that among the church, or be able to spread the word of vide under the disguise OF the proper church of the sacred flame. people are 10x more likely to listen to official clerics instead of some rambling lunatic, right?

okay i'm getting too tired to keep writing tjis it just turned 1 in the morning and i didn' sleep yesterdah. 😭😭. i MIGHT come back and revisit this if anything else comes to mind!!!! most of my thoughts have pertained to hikari and thr ku kingdom, so if this post somehow manages to pique anyone's interest at all, i'm really open to hesring any ideas you might have for any of tje travelers or ot2 chatacters! orrr any input about things i've already thought up. i really wanna find some way to implement ships into this too but i haven't gotten to think on it much. i'm personally a sucker for partikari, castthroné, and knightlight/crimenos. but also just relationships in general, like the close-knit friendship between throné and temenos. .....this is making me realize how much more thinking and planning i have to do 😭

ps i'm newer to tumblr so i'm sorry if the formatting in this is god awful💔. i wanted somewhere to rant about my silly little slow work in progress apoc au in the middle of the might and thought you guys would be best suited lmfao