#... im not sure id be opposed to that idea actually

[djevelbl]

Hello :) I was wondering if you could do one of our lord and queerbaiter branzycraft

It's always refreshing to take off the uniform at the end of a long shift, don't you think?

(click on the image for better quality; reblogs are greatly appreciated — even without a comment helps me!)

[kaedesjournal]

so i made this post several months ago and almost immediately i got stuck on the idea of twins who share my maladapted ideas about sisterhood and within a couple days id fleshed them out into fully realised characters and they distracted me from actually writing Sarah for a good while. and while i do want to write a proper story about them some day, it'd be after i finish sarah. so in the meantime i can at least talk about them!

[made with this] (information under the cut bc i dont wanna take up all your screen real estate)

so these are the twins! the one on the left is the older sister Mary, and on the right is the younger sister Clair. in-universe they go to the same college as sarah's brother alec, though how much that will come up (if at all) is up in the air. theyre a couple of friendly, sporty stem majors (specifically, clair studies astrophysics and mary studies engineering). theyre identical twins, but mary has a scar under her eye from an accident when they were children, and she also straightens her hair and does more with makeup, so its easy to tell them apart unless theyve just showered, though still possible.

as is to be expected from me, their relationship turned sexual pretty early and remains so to this day, despite some Problems it caused in their middle school days. theyre codependent and have a tendency to ignore each others faults. you could probably count on one hand the number of nights theyve slept in different beds.

but their relationship is *not* romantic. its just sisterly. neither of them is opposed to the other having a romantic relationship with someone else, but the problem that arises is when theyve tried dating, it always gets to a point of 'you spend too much time with your sister' and then they break it off, because fuck you thats my sister. theyve both kind of given up on romance, especially clair. mary enjoys having casual flings with people she meets on campus, but she makes sure to go back to her own dorm to sleep. neither of them really see a problem with fucking other people bc sex has never really been correlated with romance or anything for them. thats just something you do together and its fun.

personality-wise, mary's very outgoing and forms emotional bonds quickly. she values her friendships and doesnt have a lot that bothers her, but things that *do* bother her can send her off the handle pretty easily. clair meanwhile is basically only interested in her sister, but she maintains friendships with most of mary's friends just because she's always around. she plays it off pretty well, but their actual bonds are barely skin-deep. clair annoys easily, but she doesn't care enough about most of her friends to actually do anything about it. they both see these as charm points in the other. its admirable that mary 'wears her heart on her sleeve' and that clair 'is so calm and composed.'

the girls mother is out of the picture, but their dad is nice and they like him so they chose a college nearby so they could visit on weekends and breaks. the family's originally from the south but they moved west in middle school, so their dad still has the accent. the two of them picked up the local accent to fit in at school better, but they slip back into the southern one when theyre tired or alone together.

i might import some bsky lore or other picrews later but im so fuckin tired girls its time to get ready for Bed

[edwad]

it’s not that you think marx should be read primarily as an economist. it’s that your project of contextualizing marx in terms of the economic thought that both predates and follows him is valuable, but it runs up against hard limits in terms of both explanatory power and ability to generate practice that you can only solve by situating marx in the context of the actual political movements that both produced and drew from him and the concrete actions that resulted (cont.)

you wont find the key to a systemic analysis of capitalism purely in the realm of ideas, whether they be economic, philosophical, or political, you need to connect your analysis to some sort of concrete political reality for it to have any teeth. sure, no movement has succeeded at ‘achieving communism’ but they have made undeniable gains in the anti-colonial struggle and general social welfare (cont.) the latter thing, despite what you say frustratingly often, is not simply reducible to social democracy, and it shows how little understanding you have of the actual material history (as opposed to ideological), that you think western social democracy is comparable to the social welfare achievements of socialist countries, and that’s without even taking to account that the former is directly predicated on imperialism and neo-colonial exploitation of the global south

im finally getting around to this 3-message wall of text which i should realistically ignore because its not really productive and its clear by the end that youre just typing your frustrations at me, but it gives me a chance to say a bit more about a particular angle of what im doing with marx.

you say:

"your project of contextualizing marx in terms of the economic thought that both predates and follows him [...] runs up against hard limits in terms of both explanatory power and ability to generate practice that you can only solve by situating marx in the context of the actual political movements that both produced and drew from him and the concrete actions that resulted"

what limits? and what explanatory power is lost here? you dont say, although your immediate pivot toward the need to "generate practice" implies that youre suggesting some sort of practice-oriented information. frankly, i dont really understand why this enters here. if marx is totally wrong (which is further than i would go!) and nothing can be salvaged from him whatsoever, you would be upset because this critique of him wouldnt generate immediate practice? on what grounds could that desire for practice even be justified? marxist ones? some new, un-marxist one which can only come out of this (assumed to be, for sake of argument) successful critique of marx which still, for some reason, is immediately interested in the development of practice (sounding an awful lot like marxism btw)? or is your problem simply that it fails to account for actual marxisms after marx? if its the last option, then thats a non-criticism if part of my point is that i am trying to say something new about marx. the fact that he might've been received otherwise would only work as a refutation of my criticism if it weren't a necessary part of the criticism itself (ie, id be wrong for agreeing with myself).

whichever one of these it is, it misses the point. however it works as a segue to what i imagine you really want to talk about, which is concrete struggles. your initial way of getting there is to try and make me reckon with a proper contextualization of marx in his political environment as well as those he influenced. the latter, as ive just said, isn't necessarily damning (because it is part of my point), but the former is definitely worth lingering on.

so you say in your second message

"you wont find the key to a systemic analysis of capitalism purely in the realm of ideas, whether they be economic, philosophical, or political, you need to connect your analysis to some sort of concrete political reality for it to have any teeth"

you seem to think i fail to do this. ironically, i see my chief criticism of marx to be that *he* fails to do this. he tries to identify the development of political economy out of patterns of class struggle, but he constantly gets the facts wrong on both counts. yet even if we could take him at his word and assume he got all of these things right (which is definitely necessary for coming to terms with the nature of marx's project as he saw it), then i would argue that he actually saw his political environment as being shaped, in large part, by the reception of political economy in the workers' movement. this is already clear from the radical/popular economic literature which, in his eyes, arose and declined alongside (and, to some extent, within) the ricardian school, which is why he deals with it at length in theories of surplus value (in a deliberately historical mode, for the record). the socialist appropriation of economic categories to explain the ills of capitalism is something which animates much of his work beginning in the 40s. for example, in the poverty of philosophy, he announces at the outset that he aims to "protest" the "double error" of seeing proudhon as a "good German philosopher" or "one of the ablest French economists" on the basis of marx's being both german and an economist. this goes to show the economic terrain of marx's approach to his socialist rivals and how significant the economic angle was to him and to the movement around him more broadly. the critique of his rivals (especially proudhon) as economic thinkers appears again in capital, as william clare roberts has demonstrated in his work.

but also, at a different level, he very deliberately intervenes in engels' anti-dühring by contributing a single chapter which is *specifically* designed to take dühring to task for his critical history of political economy, in large part (as reading the text makes obvious) because marx alleges that dühring gets the history wrong. this was because, among other things, dühring's work was having a large influence on the german socialist movement and several of marx and engels' peers. this wasn't some apolitical intervention, it had meaningful stakes for marx's practical work. clearly, the critique of political economy and the ability to properly account for the history of economic thought was politically significant for both marx and the socialist movement around him. if i am being accused of over-estimating this angle, then that would only serve as another criticism of marx himself.

however, you continue (or, really, you pivot entirely, but you continue talking)

"sure, no movement has succeeded at ‘achieving communism’ but they have made undeniable gains in the anti-colonial struggle and general social welfare[.] the latter thing, despite what you say frustratingly often, is not simply reducible to social democracy, and it shows how little understanding you have of the actual material history (as opposed to ideological), that you think western social democracy is comparable to the social welfare achievements of socialist countries, and that’s without even taking to account that the former is directly predicated on imperialism and neo-colonial exploitation of the global south

this has absolutely nothing to do with what im dealing with here, and its bizarre of you to include it in the first place, not least because you seem to think that by me criticizing communists around me for not having a political horizon capable of overcoming social democracy, that i am overly critical of socialist experiments in the 20th century for feeding themselves. if anything, i think the point of political theory should be to achieve the greatest possible "good" (whatever that might be taken to mean) for the greatest majority of people. despite their obvious flaws, i count the 20th century socialist experiments as among the greatest examples of social organization ever achieved and if communism were proven to be impossible tomorrow, i would be a dogmatic social democrat (ive actually said this for years).

im not the cartoonish ultra leftist that some of you think i am, as if i care more about establishing some magical bar for communism than i do about the people who are supposed to reach it and live in it. i dont say any of those things "frustratingly often", and youre unable to correctly attribute my own views to me, which i think is pretty telling. if anything, the things i try to talk about here dont stem from an allergy to anything less than whatever perfect ideal i might hold in my head, its out of a frustration with communists who dont even recognize that they might as well be social democrats. thats not necessarily an insult (ive worked with a lot of good social democrats in my life and will continue to do it as long as it produces worthwhile results), its just supposed to clarify the stakes and what i see as the limits to their analysis of the system (which ought to matter to them, even if i dont get much out of it!).

my focus on the history of economic thought as it relates to marx's critique of political economy, is admittedly pretty far removed from some of this stuff, but i dont take that distance between the two as a problem of my ability to reckon with the global south or the success-rate of communist movements around the world, i take it as an issue which only results from the overexertion of your stretched criticism to try and get me to talk about something else. next time you want my opinion on something other than what im posting about, you can just ask!

[39472034658449305249465224devils]

i am not often very happy with like adoptable culture and stuff but it's not because im opposed to the idea. i like making adopts a lo, because i like to design but.. i dont really like to draw the designs. like, im not gonna use them. im not very creative at making up stories on my own anymore, and i just do not have the time to draw all my characters already, and im the type who really does want the designs i have to get used. so id rather trade them off to people who will use them. it feels very win-win to me. i also struggle a lot to connect to designs i make myself, im sure many others feel similarly. i know that i prefer adoptables to commissioning custom designs too. i feel like customs are just SUCH a gamble that i just do not risk taking anymore.

"if you like to design but dont want to keep them, why dont you just give them out for free"

first of all i dont... think that the idea of charging for my services is wrong. an adoptable is just an artistic freedom commission done before the buyer knows, in a sense. adopts are not some kind of unique evil, i really dont believe that.

but second of all, i have. in fact i used to a lot more. the truth is, a lot of the people who pick up free adopts dont actually use them, theyre impulse 'claims' from people who get really twitchy over the idea of owning something so nobody else can first. there's no way to garentee anyone who homes any design by me is gonna use it- and like 90% of the time, they dont. heartbreaking, but its easier to forget if i got something in return.

"why is it your business if they use it or not? who cares." i dont entirely disagree, but i think i have a right to be a little put-out by it. my standard for adoptables is that "if i am not tempted to keep it, it's not good enough yet." so the majority of adopts i design are ones i let go of telling myself "theyll use it more than you would." it makes me a bit sad when my ocs go into literal collection folders who just get named numbers or something by someone who doesnt intend to ever draw or write anything regarding them. like, yeah we dont always upload the art of our ocs or write what we have in our heads about them, but there is a tier separate from that which is people who genuinely just. do not ever intend to do anything besides, yes, hoard the design. ive seen people who i wont name directly who for a time, at least this specific person (who i think doesnt anymore) would literally just buy basically any sparkledog so nobody else could have them. pages upon pages upon pages of characters. never intended to be used. enjoy characters in your own way but... idk. it just ends up feeling kinda wasteful or manic or gluttonous or something.

these days i really try to focus on what characters i will use, and trying to draw at least 1 picture of a character i obtain. it means a lot as an artist to see your design get loved.

on the same topic, sure, im not entitled to it, but youre not entitled to applause after your concert either, but if every time you bore your heart on stage you were met with silence, you'd probably quit doing it. i think that is whats lost when people complain about how artists 'arent entitled to reblogs at all' and how writers shouldnt be sad when nobody reads their works. like, yeah, blame people for being sad other people get more compliments than they do, explain it in a faux wise way like "you should create and share it for yourself, not for others. you feeling sad is a sign that you're a bad person." or whatever. but it makes you sound like a jackass who does not understand the situation at all. this is like, a basic human response. when other people get something nice but we're left out, it makes the human sad. do i think banners and such are overdoing it? sure. but getting pissy about people venting that they feel like not making artworks because people silently stare at it and walk away in a sense is just. like really rude and stupid? get off your high horse.

[puhpandas]

plural anon from earlier figured id offer some info since you mentioned wanting to learn! obvious preface that im not an expert and this is just from my experience and what ive learned from others :) everyones experiences vary and im definitely not the be all end all lol

also this may get long, its a bit of an infodump! ^^;

i figured first id explain some of the stuff i said. i refer to myself as “plural” mostly, and said “plural system” as system is more often used from what ive seen, and plural offers more context to me. its honestly up to the person what they want to be referred to with. plural, plural system, plural person, just system, a collective, a group, there are probably more but those are the main ones i can think of!

also i should probably clarify, i said “pseudo-plurality” referring to the in-universe rab and vanny, as it isnt really confirmed whether that is an act put on by glitchtrap/will/mimic, or vanessa, or something, or if its actually a separate person. (i like to think of them as headmates/alters, but given that they are villains some folks dont want to which is also fair! it was very common to use the “evil alter” trope in horror so it can definitely put people on edge and rub them the wrong way. i like to explore and see this concept explored, but obviously with the headmates being actual people, not just boiled down to “ooo evil alter” for scare factor. i read a fic once where vanny was formed as a response to williams invasion and manipulation to protect vanessa, which is way more interesting to me than the evil alter trope!)

also, i should warn with the previous paragraph, if you do ever explore the idea of rab or vanny being opposition to gregory and vanessa, some people might get upset even if you are doing it well. unfortunately its the internet and theres a lot of bad rep out there and a lot of mean people. im sure you know the drill tho.

more general thing, some systems prefer to say headmates, some prefer alters, some prefer other words, some just refer to them as their friends or as the others. its dependent on the person! and the “main” person is called the host usually, or the core, typically the core ive seen used for systems who consider themselves to be “facets” of that core. my underdtanding of facets is that theyre more like branches off the host, rather than fully separate (ive seen some people use “admin” or other similar words too tho lol). the host is often said to be the “original” person, in the case of gregory and vanessa, those two would be the hosts, and rab and vanny would be alters/headmates/etc. but hosts dont HAVE to be the original person, it can change. i dont know the exacts of what makes a host a host, but from my understanding its basically a role someone has. and not every system uses roles or falls into them, for example id argue that the daycare attendant has “roles” in their system (moon takes care of naptime, sun takes care of playtime) but lacks an actual designated host, possibly because they dont really feel a need for one and just work(ed) as a unit.

on the topic of the daycare attendant, some plural folk will use a collective name or a “singletsona” (singlet just referring to a nonplural individual) of sorts. the daycare attendant has a collective name, which is, yk, “the daycare attendant” as it can refer to any/all of them. and rab sort of used gregory as a singletsona as opposed to telling his friends hes rab (sort of. he did use it as a pen name). in the same vein, there are also global pronouns, first person pronouns, and collective pronouns (these are the best ways i can simplify them lol).

global pronouns - for us anyways - are pronouns everybody can be referred to with. for us, our main global pronoun is it/its.

first person pronouns is just, how the person talks when referring to themself/themselves. i/me, us/we, and a mix of both. some systems only use plural first person pronouns when referring to the system/multiple folks in the system, some just always use we/us, some use i/me regardless, as usually it depends on the system and some stuff i havent even gone into. and for collective pronouns, its similar to the global pronoun thing, except its just the system as one entity’s pronouns. often it is the plural or singular they/them, we personally like plural and singular it/its for our system. its kinda like the bodys pronouns, which is why it can be singular to me. i hope thst made sense!

oh before i cut myself off i should probably mention switching. i dont switch out really so i cant provide much here but some systems experience amnesia/time loss/etc, some dont, but like i said i cant give you much because i dont switch out. im sure someone else can help with that ^^;

this ask is already very very long, so i wont go into other stuff like monoconscious, polyconscious, co-conscious, co-fronting, being frontstuck, sticky front, headspace/inner world, system origins(which will inevitably include system discourse thing unfortunately), headmate sources, source memories, introjects…… theres a Lot and i dont think i would even have enough characters to send an ask with everything i know

i hope this wasnt way overdoing it, i learned a lot from prior to and after i learned i was plural because i enjoy researching topics like this, and sharing the information i know is fun!

also you said you werent feeling well, hope you feel better soon!

thank you for the info anon! it helped a lot to understand more and was very insightful! I appreciate all you put into this!!

[scourgefrontiers]

thoughts..

i wanna make a furry magical girl story. i think. a story about a magical girl who transforms into a furry???? or a story set in a world of furries that happens to have magical girls???

not sure if i wanna go the angelicate avenue route or what honestly...i do know i wanna draw furries in some capacity but idk if i want the world to be a furry one or if i want the transformations to be the furry aspect. hard to decide but i will get there eventually

actually the. the magical girl furry transformation is sounding more and more appealing by the minute LOL shit i might go w that...i was just torn bc i do want a furry story (besides glowfade. glowfade is full of action and craziness and powers but i wanted smth more lowkey yet still whismical) and if i went with the non-furry version then id have to make A Different Story to scratch the furry itch. augh. i guess im not necessarily opposed to the idea of another story. you know my ass over here making story after story after story until i die

speaking of other stories i also wanted to make like...well. i THINK i want to make a magical girl soccer story but thatd literally just...be chrono stone LOL. like, they would have ultimate moves and have transformations to become more powerful. i was about to say "auh but i dont know how to make it Not inazuma eleven" as if im not ready to just make it inazuma eleven anyway LMAOOO like cmon girl..

many ideas going thru my brain lately

[9w1ft]

ever since the jaylor break up, i've been seeing a lot of swifties become receptive to gaylorism subtly — for instance, they're more willing to accept when songs radiate queer vibes and they're hopping on the "boyfriend taylor" trend even though that's kind of our joke 🤣 as much as it annoys me a little to see swifties act like they're the pioneers of something us gaylors, kaylors, and related sub communities have come up for years now, i would hate to gatekeep it as that'd create an obstacle in their path to actual gaylorism, you know?

oh dear im sorry anon i went on a free-form tangent that i’m pretty sure isn’t aligned with your ask but i’m gonna keep it anyway because i wrote a lot 😆

i know what you mean about the attitudes and i do agree that sometimes it can feel annoying to see people lift things from tumblr, for example, and then these people get credited for the idea by their peers and they don’t correct or cite sources, which can be awkward

and sometimes i will see people reinvent the wheel when the answers are already available and written better here by all of us.. and i want to be like! come here!! there are some incredible things for you to find here!! you know? i know these feelings can often come off as gatekeeping, and, because i don’t really have any big issue with things spreading like folklore because that can become a haze to hide in, i do agree with you that it’s best not to try to micromanage things in general.

here’s the tangent… your ask made me think about how there were similar patterns to this in spring-early summer 2019, as lover promo was rolling out and it (the promo) was markedly optically gayer than rep. i remember seeing an incredible heel turn from some otherwise notoriously hostile swifties, where suddenly they were like yeah maybe taylor is bi, etc. i also remember there being a whole new generation of wide eyed gaylors on tumblr at the time—because taylor was still here—and so many were in my inbox and my friends inboxes asking and researching and it was all good and fun for the most part..

so i will say this from the perspective of someone that has experienced mass onboarding in the past and has seen how it can and cannot work

contemporarily speaking, kaylors can’t really gatekeep gaylorism. because we’re kinda already gatekept from gaylorism by Gaylorism tastemakers. lowercase g gaylorism exists in concept but i think that as it currently stands, it’s actually a pretty on-rails ride that is curated by some that would seek to influence their own worldview onto gaylorism subtly, that positions an onboarding to their benefit. and i don’t think it’s something always done with strategic intentions.. humans tend to want to tell and guide others to what they believe is right, and strive for an environment that works for them as opposed to against them, it’s human nature in a way.. still, Gaylorism presents gaylorism as something objective but, it’s actually done pretty subjectively, imo.

and i haven’t minded standing on the periphery as a kaylor because, one, i think that it’s better in some cases to gatekeep (or keep niche) parts of kaylor because, given it is true, taylor and karlie probably don’t want it going full-on mainstream. at least not right now. so i might see rumors or theories that make up stuff or use incorrect dates or just in general takes that feel so wrong and needing correction but i try to accept it existing as a way for lots of otherwise clever people to be distracted from seeing what kaylors see.

and also, i think it’s best for people interested in kaylor to come to conclusions on the basis of their own research, and at times be incorrect, yes, but for it to be first and foremost something people come to believe of their own volition. because if it’s directed under one tent pole then weird interpersonal dynamics can happen, as is the nature of fandom.. id rather a thousand people have all different slightly incorrect understandings of kaylor but an understanding that is unified by and grounded in love for taylor and karlie, than a thousand people have the same understanding of kaylor but for people’s feelings to be defined by one single source.

and separately, i worry about trying to make kaylor too approachable or to not gatekeep (maybe the word isn’t “not gatekeep” maybe the word is “overshare”) certain ideas because of the sensitivity of the subject matter. if kaylor gets too mainstream then you get a huge wave of people and statistically some of them will inevitably be people that are into kaylor not for the girls but because its the trendy thing to do. that can lead to a disconnect wherein people engage with kaylor as an endeavor for us to analyze and not an idea that is grounded in the lives of real people. and that disconnect can produce frenzied behavior…

sorry i don’t have a good way to tie these feelings together into one conclusion but basically, i don’t think we as kaylors can really gatekeep gaylorism but i think that’s fine and i also think that at times kaylor might benefit from holding back a little and maybe that difference is because of what each thing has as an end game, maybe. if that makes sense.. yeah.

i think what i mean to point out is, i think there has been an influx in people who see gaylorism as a concept without orchestrators, for better or for worse. the word gaylorism didn’t exist even three years ago, and nobody new seems to know why or think about it. for better or for worse.

[revindicatedbyhistory]

hm ok the flower that bloomed nowhere culprit theory time. im putting it under a cut just in case im somehow right. and also there´s prose text describing gore lol

so the bardiya corpse description in red never actually states the corpse belongs to bardiya. we know it has to be *a* corpse but it´s not necesarily baridya´s, especially considering it doesn´t have a face

so this is my theory: the corpse is not bardiya, and bardiya is a culprit

bardiya has reason to be a culprit: he has combat experience and he was literally in a revolution against old people, so he might be opposed to the order in the grounds of perpetuating age-class disparity

as to who is the corpse, there is only really one possible suspect: balthazar, who is unaccounted for, and the only one whose mutilated corpse could pass for bardiya´s (i think they are both blond? id need to check again their introductory descriptions)

(the face being mutilated would stop an event with ophelia i think, since from the way it´s said, it seems like the problem comes from two individuals having similar faces)

so this is the theory: balthazar is killed, his corpse is put in the area, culprit!bardiya goes and does a switcheroo

obviously the theory has a lot of holes, i´m not sure how exactly he would even do it (I CALL DEVIL´S PROOF), i would need to do a lot of rereading to formulate it properly, but its my only idea lol

[wern]

the reason he accused me of animal abuse is literally THEE stupidest thing in the world im gonna put it under a read more

so my dad has this anti-bark device that he used on his dogs consistently for a year. i was actually originally opposed to him getting it bc ive heard it's inhumane, but i couldn't stop him, and the dogs treated it like a minor annoyance and it reduced their barking. whatever. i know the device well bc it was turned on when i dogsat for him and after a couple weeks i turned it off bc it would go off if you even put down grocery bags or opened a door. i could hear it go off those times (my dad can't hear it btw but can see the light go on) but the dog didn't react.

now hes moving out of country so the dog will be staying with me. im taking all the dog's stuff to my place, and today when i dropped by his place he gave me his anti-bark devices (he actually owns 4 now for some reason, i guess he kept losing them in his apartment. he does stuff like that all the time). i was holding onto one while sitting down and talking to my dad, and i idly turned the dial a couple times (from off to the low setting to the high setting). i heard it emit the noise, and after id done it a few times i said "oops, i probably shouldn't fiddle with this because it's making the noise. i'll just turn it off." then i did turn it off and it stopped making noises. btw the dog didn't react to the noise at all. he was across the apartment doing his own thing

but my dad says "you should put it down because it can make noise even if you just move it around." and i said "no, i turned it off so it won't do that." he said "it's going to make noise if you drop it." i was like "it won't make noise, look i'm shaking it around and knocking it. it's off. and im not going to drop it anyway" and he said "you don't know if you're going to drop it. thats what dropping is you do it by accident. i can't believe you won't just do this one thing i ask". we went on for a few more lines but this is the idea.

i get that i was being stubborn. but so was he. minor disagreement right? the thing is he is the type of guy who will try to say youre wrong about everything. here's a convo i had with him 2 hours before:

him: im meeting my friend in thailand

me: oh when?

him: what do you mean when?

me: when are you meeting him?

him: when? when? that doesn't even make sense what are you taking about?

me: i was just asking about the timeline of your plans

him: right but the sentence is in present tense. it doesn't make sense to ask when

LIKE... im just saying he's a dick about everything. after this barking device talk he started giving me the silent treatment. i tried a few overtures but he just muttered "yeah sure". my mom was there so she smoothed things over a bit and we left. i thought that was it. until i get a barrage of texts accusing me of not caring about him and the dog, and also accusing me of literal animal abuse because i kept using the device that "damages the dog's ears". im like. IT WAS OFF???? I WAS SHOWING YOU IT WAS OFF??? AND YOU USED THE DEVICE CONTINUOUSLY FOR MONTHS. anyway that's the story.

me: yes, you're using the present progressive to talk about a future action. is it happening before you go to the philippines?

him: whatever. before

[yuukei-yikes]

any thoughts on remind blue?

currently, it is my favorite kagepro song (this changes like every week but i digress...) and i really want to make a pv for it but i lowkey have no idea where to start

your analysis/ramblings on things is really interesting to read and see, so also just wanted to let you know that i love all the content you post!! :D

I LOV remind blue. like every kagepro song makes me want to rip my face off ♥️♥️♥️ but this one is one of those that make me feel so strongly that i cant listen to it ♥️♥️♥️ cuz i do that btw. i cannot listen to kagepro songs without preparing myself emotionally and it has to be when i am alone in my room. i could never listen to them in public. that'd be weird. im drawing and suddenly a kagepro song comes on in my playlist and im like this is so fucked up who put this here (<- i did)

songs like summertime record, lost day hour, remind blue and ayanos theory of happiness specifically i basically never listen to because it causes something in me both mentally and physically. im normal though.

TOTALLY support the idea to make a pv!!! i wouldn't know how to start either tbh💔 who would u make it be sung by?? like the song is so good but for the lyrics im like meh like str is already a thing. idk it sorta has the same vibe. its like summertime record and lost day hour's lyrics had a little baby together. which is why i always liked to interpret it as a haruka song but fuck it ig its shintaro's.

i also liked the idea of it being seto's or hibiya's. i think they'd deserve a song like this, especially hibiya!! tho for hibiya the whole "adult" thing is different LOL and even seto, he's just 17... ive always loved haruka being the punchbag for the "im an adult wtf" feeling because he goes from living his whole life thinking he will die and then he doesn't. or well he DOES die but then comes back, and suddenly he finds himself with his whole life ahead. like haruka and his early 20s crisis abt i did NOT think id be alive this long and now i gotta deal with everything those feelings bring me but at the same time i have to pay rent and worry abt what to make for dinner soooo erm fine ig. that's also what i think lost day hour is about, i know jin describes it more like a song abt old friends but girl idk it rly only has a couple lines abt that as opposed to all the rest of the song... erm. what was i talking about again.

i just think it was rly funny how we were all like ok remind blue uses "boku" so it's seto kano hibiya or haruka (or konoha). and then jin was like hehe. shintaro♥️ SHINTARO DOESNT EVEN USE BOKU whatever im pretty sure he also said it can fit anyone and its more a general mekakushi dan song. but tbh so is summertime record sooooo. sorry im sidetracking a lot

i dont particularly care for remind blue so much (LIKE THE SONG SLAPS im still talking about lyrics) bc it's very heavy on the shit abt like growing distant and stuff sortof??? like kagepros ending/str is implied to have the mekadan not grow apart but kinda do their own thing while still meeting to hang out, bc kagepro is also about growing up and with growing up comes maybe growing distant from these friends you love, but they will always be important and one of a kind in ur life and when u meet its like time hasnt rly passed between you. not to mention the whole thing about combining eyes and how all the snakes will always end up gathering by the queen no matter what, meaning the dan will always be bound to make their ways back to each other no matter what, and are connected to one another by the literal narrative that theyre all actually sort of aware of a little bit (they always refer to their tragedy as a "story"..kagepro is a little meta lol). and like that's all so beautiful but also fuck it. they all meet for pizza nights every week. erm. the passage of time am i right

ALSO TY FOR READING MY POSTS:///3 I LOVE KAGEROU PROJECT A NORMAL AMOUNT AND IM A NORMAL PERSON

[kozykricket]

a tale of two minecrafts (of which i love)

(nonetheless there are two) (and i dont mean bedrock and java, or vanilla and modded) (two ideas of what constitutes the identity of the game)

i will move forward as minecraft moves forward. but its a bit of a bummer, to think of. sometimes thats what ill say for now. ominously. ill make a post about this whole schtuff later perhaps. either way todays snapshot is amazing and god im i am indeed loving the future of minecraft with these minor-yet-major updates. it just happened to do something that reminded me of what the devs prioritize as being minecrafty. that being.. Not Jank

end of the day i know that i love mc tho. both potential directions to take mc. i aint gonna try and tell people that they shouldnt enjoy where the games going :p it'd be such a dumb Boomer thing to do to be like waahh back in my day XYZ, which was Definitely 100% Better !!

tldr ill say for now is that i'd group together the old bundle controls with old rigid mob animations and with lack of keepinventory and that id group together the really nice to use bundle controls and the really nice mob animations and all that game design with... well. i suppose its just more friendly, intentional, and clean as opposed to janky, aesthetics and gameplay decisions. yknow? theres certain new-aesthetic things i love, like the new music. but i also wont deny that it definitely feels like it groups well with the new mob animations that are livelier. aka its , definitely mojangs vision, to make minecraft more of a Polished feeling game. intentionally relaxing music, intentionally designed dungeons, and . clear advancements that tell you what content they're proud of

if anyone is CURIOUS about what the hell i mean then like. yeah ill make a post talking more about this but ill just clarify that my ultimate goal is to remember to not be a grumpy boomer about anything about minecrafts new direction. which isnt hard. because its easy to love. like the sniffers animations. they DO have so much personality, they're really amazing. even if i think that isnt where i'd have taken minecraft personally its where its going and... sure! itll grow and change. just. wish mojang would at least acknowledge they're cleaning up the games image to be less jank lol

I shan't let it bring me grumpiness. rather i will learn to love the growth, and move forward with the game. pushing against it would be a lot more of a mental toll, and generally less whimsical!

but we'll all find our moments with any game that gets continually updated, where we feel out of touch with it. at those moments, is when we shall remember... yeah, okay. not for me, but probably good for the game itself actually having a future. (and again this. really isnt over todays snapshot, it was just moreso brought to my mind as something i had wanted to post about)

[bitdemonic]

hey, id like to participate in your tarot game, it seems so fun!

id like to choose two (sex on the beach) and six (devil’s breath)

my initials are HJM, im 19, and my big three are pisces sun, cancer rising, and cancer moon. thank you so much, i appreciate the time and energy u put into this <3

hi sweets! tysm for playing, i appreciate your kind words and patience so so much🤗

no. 2🍹 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐞𝐱𝐮𝐚𝐥 𝐝𝐲𝐧𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐜

🃏the hanged man. 4os. 3op↺. kingowands. 8os↺. balance↺. rejection. peace.

this dynamic def has a “leader” and a “follower”, in sexual terms this would translate as a sub and a dom (submissive, dominant). it feels authoritative or demanding, very “ass up face down” vibes lmao it’s actually very hot. this feels like bdsm, or incorporating bondage and blindfolds—sensory deprivation is significant, but it’ll be an every day thing opposed to only when y’all are in the mood to. i do sense some uncertainty around the idea, potentially on your side more than your partner? it feels unsettling, but only because it’s outside of what you’re used to in the bedroom. if you’ve ever watched fifty shades of grey, this energy feels like ana’s initial reaction towards the red room contract.

it’s going to throw you through a loop just because of how in your face it’ll be; you’re used to things going slow or at a pace that you can ease in to but this person operates at lightning (eh) speed. i can see you going ghost for a few days, maybe even cutting contact off for a week or two—overwhelm will get the best of you and you’ll feel suffocated. it’s more anxiety than it is being trapped where you don’t want to be, but i see your partner being patient and using that as a guide to calm your fret. after the nerves subside you’ll be all in and open for them (woah lmao), i can even feel you anticipating this after a long day of whatever. it’s fun and inviting, y’all will even set up the room or “energy” together (sub initiating foreplay or asking for it, decorating the bedroom, going out and having “moments” before the actual act etc.). it’s something that you treat as an actual treat, you’re excited for the taste because it’s always so good.

✞

no. 6🍷 𝐬𝐞𝐱𝐮𝐚𝐥 𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐥 & 𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐠𝐲

🃏 4ow. 8os. 5op↺. 6os. 7oc. strength. disruption. hunger↺.

tbh it was hard to pinpoint what or where your energy stems from, especially before i listened to the channeled song; it definitely feels like you’ll have to trust or be very emotionally invested in the connection (person) before tapping into your sexual side. it doesn’t have to be 100% trust (although it should be bae), but you’ll have to feel comfortable and safe around them for sure; this gives off friends or close acquaintances. i can see that you’re a boss in these situations; knowing who the person is gives you leverage and it instills this confidence of getting something done. imagine yourself in high heels (or f**k me pumps) and strutting down a hall full of men and women that want you—want to be you even. commanding their attention and keeping it with each step, never giving their eyes a chance to leave or watch anything else.

your energy definitely corresponds with the song; the upbeat tempo combined with the instruction in the lyrics make up who you become in a sexual light. “i’ll take the lead, i got the energy.” once you’re certain of what it is that you’re doing or feeling (confidence, attractive, determined etc) it’s not hard to control whatever circumstance is in the room. i see your prescthis translates into getting on top or telling someone what to do with it; making them lick here or kiss there. to anyone else there’s steps that go into becoming that bold, but for you it’s natural—it’s not a challenge to become a force in the bedroom, it’s all about letting it happen. i can see this coming out of things catered to yourself like; pampering or spoiling, taking cute pictures or posting them, sunbathing in the grass, even doing shadow work or inner healing.

✞

[two-calicos-in-a-trenchcoat]

THANK YOU

I hate myers briggs and it’s pretentious but I’m right

[writingpuddle]

I totally agree with the extra content opinion you recently reblogged.. I’m of the mindset (which might not be your exact mindset) that extra content is canon when written by the author.. so the lack of ilys and smiles I can accept as a natural Andrew recovery… and I agree that a lot of people struggle with that bc that’s not their version of progress.. but my one hottake on the extra content (which I might be remembering incorrectly it’s been a while) is that I disagree with the “they never hug” thing.. I think that was in there and idk I cannot wrap my head around them never hugging.. RARELY hugging sure but sometimes there are scenarios in my brain where they would hug.. even if brief or in extreme situations, or barely ever.. I do see them eventually working up to hugging each other tho.. thoughts?

yeah i get you there, i dont quite agree with 'everything the author writes is canon', id probably only include the actual published books myself, but also as someone who primarily writes au and isnt doing like. actual literary crit theres a point where i dont really...care whats canon or not canon. i cherrypick both canon and the ec looking for ideas for what would make sense in the context of my current au and then fill the gaps with my own stuff

that being said, as someone who is touch-repulsed and aroace, a lot of the ec really resonated with me because i will never and can never have a conventional future and while i will obviously never complain to any individual person about their interpretation just because their happiness looks different from mine it does sometimes feel a bit disappointing when so many interpretations tend to push the characters into being more conventional. i like that nora gave them a strange, abnormal future and that she also said they wouldnt have it any other way because they are happy! they love each other and they are happy but these are not the words or ways they say that!

as for hugging, iirc she said they would in certain situations (ie the heat of the moment after winning a game) and im inclined to think they would find a lot of comfort together and that yes, that would occasionally take the form of hugs. sometimes i picture a big baltimore-esque scene where one thought the other was gonna die and theres a big physical embrace but then again we know in canon how they dealt with that and it was controlled but extremely charged physical touches and very intense dialogue. the apres-olympic win scene nora described is probably the one that fits the best with them in my mind.

but mostly i picture them having a lot of more casual just. being near each other and making a point to be touching. i personally much prefer leaning on people or just draping my legs over somebody as a form of physical affection as opposed to a Hug which is a Thing. so this is me hardcore projecting but i like to think of andrew and neil just on the couch, shoulders against each other, maybe one of them puts an arm over the other so its more comfortable, barely even paying attention to each other just being pressed together and for once not worrying about it.

and then sometimes also doing the thing where they sit on opposite sides of the room and everyone is like ???? are they fighting??? and meanwhile andrew and neil are just slow blinking at each other like cats

[un-pearable]

i moped i whined i dragged my feet i read at least six hundred thousand words of ninjago fanfiction in the span of like 4 days probably but i did it. i finished season 8. it was... ok honestly it wasnt that bad i knew i was being dramatic about it at the time but it wasnt that bad. part of that was because i already knew what i was getting into via getting spoiled by fic but im glad for it because otherwise i dont think i wouldve made it through. SO. some thoughts.

as you are already fully aware, i was not……. particularly enthused by the changes made in season eight. in fact you could even say i was particularly unenthused by the changes made in season eight. but disregarding my personal war against the authors re: lloyd & garmadon, one of the things i noticed was definitely the massive tonal shift that i honestly... think couldve been handled better. im not opposed to the idea of a tonal shift - 9/10 i am always okay with something getting more serious and genuine. but like, here... they kind of killed half the heart of the series for me. i feel like they tried to lean so hard into the ninja stuff that it kind of feels like somebody wanted a gritty reboot of ninjago without actually being gritty and without actually rebooting it, if that makes sense.

like half the scenes in the first few episodes take place exclusively at night, there's a huge ramp-up in them doing actual ninja things, and lloyd is now Mature and Serious and The Leader (<- things regarding lloyd that i am bitter about, number 385734356091573: the fact that they made half an attempt last season to kickstart a character arc for lloyd abt him growing into the position of leader and what that means for 1) him 2) his relationships and 3) his future and then they completely bypassed that entire thing via timeskip because the writers are lazy hacks and also lopped off half his personality along the way so now he feels like an entirely different character and also completely devoid of personality at the same time).

my qualms with lloyd aside. ninjago is, inherently, an incredibly goofy series. the premise is literally a bunch of lego dudes whose epic power is spinning like tops, and who are allegedly ninja despite the fact that they Really Suck At Being Ninja. i feel like for this season, somebody was like "okay guys we need to make ninjago not for BABIES anymore and also make new character designs so we can sell more lego sets so we're gonna make it MATURE and DARK and [something something]" and as a result it lost half its personality. most of it, even. they barely even did spinjitsu. do you know how disappointed i was by this? no. no you cannot even fathom how disappointed i was in the writers. and its. okay for lack of a better comparison bear with me here while i talk about one piece for two seconds

one piece is also, inherently, an incredibly goofy series. the premise is a kid eats a weird fruit and gets rubber hose powers and wants to become the king of the pirates. the stupidity is consistently present throughout the series and if you take out the dumb humor you've got a completely different series (both in regards to themes and also, again, the literal premise). but on the other hand, it also deals with some kind of brutal stuff (oppression, totalitarian governments, censorship, genocide, prejudice, slavery, more genocide, trauma, abuse, etc.) in a competent and mature way that doesn't feel cheap or fake-deep. both the stupidity and the seriousness are integral to its identity. these two things are not mutually exclusive.

though granted id like to say that the stupidity and the seriousness are all part of the very basis of the themes of one piece, but ninjago also just. doesnt really have themes. frankly. im not sure the writers have anything they want to actually say outside of "wow ! ninja cool !", but thats a complaint for a different time. but also still sort of relevant here because the reason these two seemingly opposed things work so well in one piece is because they're baked into the premise and main themes of the story, and... well. not so much with ninjago. it also probably doesnt help that ninjago was originally set to go for like two seasons max, but still.

EITHER WAY my digression on that aside, its very very possible to have both of these things co-exist in a series without one cheapening the other, but, unfortunately for me, the ninjago writers either a) cant do that or b) dont want to do that. and whoever was part of making the decision to marvel-ize ninjago: i hate them. personally. like i guess it worked out for everybody else given that the show is still going but im very annoyed about this. maybe it gets better in the later seasons but honestly im not counting on it. head in hands.

also speaking of marvel-izing ninjago i feel like this season they tried to work in some bad meta jokes and it was mostly rather embarrassing and i hope they do not do it again. its the typical "did he just-" "yes he did" / "i did not think that through" / "that didn't go as planned" / etc. schlock. i dont like that.

now, onto other things, aka namely: the harumi problem.

so harumi. her backstory is that at some point when she was younger (unclear because she has the baby lego model but it cant have been THAT long ago but she also acts and looks like a normal adult so as always the ninjago timeline eludes me, but thats irrelevant. mostly. well it depends on how you look at it but we'll get to that later) she thought the ninja were super duper epic and then when the great devourer showed up and wrecked the city her parents died because the ninja didnt stop it soon enough (or, more accurately, lord garmadon, but she doesnt blame him for some reason). anwyays so after that the royal emperor and empress decide to adopt her and she becomes the princess despite not asking for and not wanting this position or the responsibilities that come with it and being terribly traumatized and generally all around miserable. which sucks, for sure.

but for some baffling reason, she decides that the person whose fault this all is is... lloyd. like she says the ninja in general, but lloyd is the only one she ever seems to target. which is really strange, frankly, because lloyd's first appearance in public as the green ninja is either the great devourer, or like a few days before it, so why she'd single out him for this problem despite him clearly being new to the whole thing is beyond me. because its not like she blames him for opening up the tombs or something which is... well okay frankly half of this is misako's fault by virtue of being the deadbeat mom ever, but you already know my extensive opinions on misako's incredibly bad parenting.

either way, maybe she sees him later as the leader and retroactively decides to place all the blame on him as the ninja grow in fame and infamy, but the show never really tells us that - assuming that her bitterness towards the ninja grows as everybody praises them and calls them world saviors and so on and so forth is extrapolation, and usually in a more competently written series i'd be able to somewhat confidently assume that this is what the writers intended, but also this is ninjago and i have no such faith.

so harumi's whole thing is that she lost everything and blames it on lloyd, for some reason, instead of like. pythor or something. unfortunately this is kind of cheapened by two things. 1) she literally becomes princess of ninjago. like it'd be one thing if she was on the streets after that it'd be a little more understandable, and 2) she's... acting like she went through so much more than lloyd. unfortunately for harumi, she's trying to compete in the parental issues olympics with lloyd garmadon, winner of the "most parental issues in ninjago" award every year since 2011. so when she's waxing poetic about how much her life has sucked and how sad she is about her mommy and daddy or whatever, the audience is kind of just sitting there like... girl. lloyd has gone through so so so much infinite crap his life has sucked since pretty much day one he probably has enough mommy & daddy issues for the whole team, frankly.

pitting pretty much anybody against lloyd in a battle for trauma is not going to end well for your villain if youre trying to make them sympathetic. honestly. and like its not even that the concept of her backstory is bad, its just that her anger is completely misdirected and pointed in probably the worst possible direction as far as drumming up sympathy goes. because the ninjago writers remain ever incompetent. it also really doesnt help that shes like "omg people died because of you guys!!! you havent saved anybody youre just little kids pretending to play hero" despite the fact that ninjago absolutely 100000% wouldve died twenty times already if they had just sat back and done nothing. my dear friend goose had some very good thoughts so im just going to copy paste what she said here

so. harumi. couldve been done better, had some interesting concepts, but the incompetency of the ninjago writers strikes yet again. also rip lloyd, getting horrifically traumatized yet again. cant wait for lloyd getting his heart ripped out and stomped on and having his trust completely 10000% betrayed and the world getting almost destroyed by somebody who he thought was an incredibly close ally to never get brought back up again after harumi gets kicked out of the picture

also im very very very so glad harumi was evil because i had some incredibly . choice words about how bland and uninteresting she was at the beginning of the season. so thank you harumi for becoming interesting, even if your writing is kind of mediocre and mostly rather confusing 🙏

other than that im very sad that theyre brutalizing garmadon like this but at least i came prepared for what i was going to see via spoilers from fic. im also very sat that they're brutalizing lloyd like this but i was also prepared for what i was going to see via spoilers from fic. ninjago writers give them a break challenge.

some other misc. thoughts / live reactions (you can really tell that the first three were from when i started the season like last week from the amount of bitterness leaking out from the text 😭😭😭)

ah hell yes the return...

completely completely understand. breaking immersion with spoilers is sometimes. necessary. especially given how much of a shift the attitude is here... the desire to recreate the series is an understandable one but leaning so hard on the tropes that this show has had a loose relationship with at best, at the expense of the existing character dynamics.... ugh. the irony in them trying to age up the series with it's audience only backfiring and alienating the very kids who related to lloyd the most is great. the loss of spinjitzu is completely unforgivable though its integral to the ecosystem. keystone species but for a doofy fake martial arts show. we're loosing biodiversity here people. bad metaphors aside, YEAH. the seriousness works because the rest of the show is lighthearted, not in spite of it. your one piece comparison is perfect.

despite my "lloyd is a comic protag" post blowing up it completely didn't cross to mind to think about marvel there and you 100% have a point. s8 and on ninjago was DEFINITELY influenced by the boom in popularity of the mcu. considering this is when they brought on schut to help write and then he completely took over for s9 and on,, i don't know nearly enough about the guy and his work to make a judgement about that but it would be very interesting to look into

harumi..... harumi is very much the kind of theoretically interesting kids media villain where i can understand why their concept works for a lot of people and can be interesting to see, but is so overdone that i just. i can't care. i literally could not give a shit about harumi. no matter how well her arc is executed she's such a predictable brand of villain that fandom always looses their shit over and i get why but it just doesnt work for me. she also falls into the category of "villain who assumes they know everything about the hero and that they suffered more" which. can also be interesting when its about how the characters are perceived by the public, but when its treated seriously by the narrative? incredibly frustrating. i have pages and pages of talking about this back when i was reading archie for the first time so not to derail into sonic again but the appeal of scourge and sonic's dynamic to me is that while they both suffered, they responded COMPLETELY differently. the idea that scourge deserves to be heard out bc he experienced such a hard and tragic life is completely negated by the fact that sonic's life in the comics is a unending deluge of traumatic bullshit - and scourge knows this. scourge doesn't get why sonic didn't respond the way he did. that's like the ONLY way this kind of dynamic is interesting to me - the narrative validating that harumi was right actually and her life sucked more and thus her point is valid and makes sense and we don't need to look any further is. frustrating. "the villain points out the heroes aren't actually helping/good people" is the furtherest thing from an interesting plot to me, especially when its clearly such a cop out. your friend has an extremely good point, the need for the villain to be focused specifically on the ninja destroys any actual nuance her motivation had, if she was more generally focused on the systemic problems ninjago so adamantly refuses to face it would be an infinitely more interesting story. but also this is a kids show and that's far too bold for a series that just introduced a monarchy for shits and giggles.

okay aside from. all that. asdfjdk thank you for the olympics line. yeah. yeah. dear god this poor kid will continue to never get a break. the lack of capitalizing on the oni stuff... do these people not understand their fanbase. we are still drawing fanart of snake jay. we will go crazy over literally any non-human traits imaginable. curse you for reminding me of voltron in 2022 but asdkfjsdkdf. cole dad....

between the heartbeat, decoded letting the ninja download themselves into his brain, and just. everything about the most recent few zane oriented arcs. fascinated the implications for zane's physiology. do you think he could keep the others around in his head like he used to have pixal.

[gammija]

here's the most salient things, in hindsight, i said in the discord about the finale

[Image ID: 4 discord screenshots of messages sent by Josefien, all dated before March 25th. First image: "this is 100% interpretation, but I think Martin is so opposed to Jon martyring himself because Martin did it before. And what did he learn? It doesn't work! it just isolates you from your support system, and then the world ends anyways". Second image: Gammija (same profile pic as Josefien in the other images): "mhmmmmm. backreading a bit - i hope we dont get anything that more strongly implies a kiss than what we've already had, cause im a bit over the idea of The Kiss as the pinnacle of romance" PeriPeriwinkle: "kisses are overrated, fabric rustles are where it's at." Gammija: "and by doing so in the penultimate episode, even if its not implied that its their first kiss, narratively it is the first to us and its. hmm. i wouldnt mind if they kissed in general, but not as an emotional beat in the finale." Third image: "also i think the idea of, if there are only 5 people deciding for the entire world, and 1 of them is sure they have unique insight that allows them to go against the majority vote, are they morally allowed to? Is an interesting question. and one i hope they dont answer by having Jon do exactly that. Cause, imo, a large part of Jon's character arc has been to trust other people, and trusting their decisions. If he went behind their back to enact his own plan because he knows best. i would actually be mad." Fourth image: ""if anyone's hearing this.. take these tapes as a warning, I suppose. and thanks for listening" [click]." /End ID]