#And the model doesn't explain how every system works

[cambriancrew]

It's, scientifically speaking, not actually a theory, as theories contain a hypothesis that can be tested and proven, and structural dissociation can neither be properly tested for nor proven.

The proper scientific term for what it is, is a model. It explains things, the same way models of atomic structure explain the way atoms are set up.

But the same way pictures of an atom with the protons and neutrons clustered together in the middle with rings of electrons on the outside doesn't fully explain everything about atoms nor does it fully explain every kind of atomic and subatomic particle, neither does the structural dissociation model fully explain everything about every kind of system. Two of the three authors of The Haunted Self, the book on structural dissociation, have said explicitly that their model only pertains to dissociation and divisions of the personality in terms of trauma, and that dissociation even to the point of divisions of the personality like in structural dissociation occur in other contexts.

It's a useful model. But when people start trying to treat it like a real scientific theory that's been tested and proven, and try to force an understanding based on it in contexts it was never meant to explain, it falls short.

The theory of structural dissociation is a scientific theory

There is a difference between a scientific theory and a random person just coming up with something. Please learn this. A scientific theory has to be proven with research and evidence. Why do people seem to think it is just a random theory that some guy just decided to make up one day?

[sophie-frm-mars]

I'm gonna plural discourse for a bit

There's a video that I saw that proposed changing the diagnosis of DID/OSDD to either Dissociative type PTSD or BPD with dissociative amnesia. I think this is not a wholly sensible suggestion and I get into why in the first half of The Mad & The Mentally Ill (text up on my patreon video out in a few months probably) but without getting into a deep critique of the diagnostic model itself I wanna talk about the merits and problems with that suggestion

So on the one hand, PTSD and BPD are already both dissociative in their lived experience. With PTSD you have both the dissociation of feeling like your trauma happened to someone else and the dissociation of feeling like you aren't where and when you really are when you're experiencing a flashback. BPD is dissociative in all its core mechanisms, and there is a sort of emotional "dissociative amnesia" at play when someone with BPD moves from one extreme emotional state to another, because they shift emotional reality so fast it can give them and people around them whiplash. This is a part of what gets people with BPD called manipulative - they change emotional states so fast people assume they must be faking how they're feeling to get what they want.

Therefore it makes some sense to some degree to say that someone whose dissociative identities are formed out of intense trauma has PTSD and that a system of alters that resemble different "personality states" of one core identity is BPD. Or at least it's a somewhat internally consistent model

On the other hand, the lived experience of plurality isn't like that and the best way to explain the difference is to say "it's like you are several different people". In other words I think that there's something potentially useful in this suggestion for helping plural people understand themselves but the suggestion itself is coming from a strictly singular perspective that wants to insist that the ontological nature of the self is singular and in reality the self is simply plural in all cases. "Singular self" people are radically different people who experience radically different thoughts and feelings at work, at home, with friends, with family, when stressed, when tired, when reminded of childhood. As Richard Schwartz says "parts work is for everyone" and I think this attempt to legislate plurality out of the DSM is philosophically an acknowledgement that in effect everyone is at least a little bit plural and an attempt to reconcile that by saying "therefore no one is" instead of opening up your conception of the self to a little more possibility than previously allowed.

Besides all of this, and now I am getting a bit into my critique of the diagnostic model, trauma works differently for different people, and for some people the minor traumas of simply being alive are enough to have profound psychological effects. In the plural community I've seen discussion of "endogenic systems", i.e systems where "they're just like that" rather than there being a specific root trauma. The trauma that forms something like BPD is everyday and commonplace - an environment of traumatic invalidation - just kinda being gaslit by life. Also I think there's a popular understanding that the way people heal from wounds is not their "natural" state and is therefore wrong, but you just have to accept that you are the shape you are and you have no choice but to love yourself. I guess after writing that sentence I should probably acknowledge that I'm plural and that I've known since I was a teenager but was too scared to tell anyone until about two years ago. Where was i. Okay you need to accept that every experience shapes and affects you some amount and lose the idea that trauma is a unique kind of experience which is bad and makes you somehow bad or less or deformed.

Just because someone is some kind of way because of experiences they had doesn't mean they need fixing. Everyone who will ever live is ways they are because of stuff that happened. My point is that I don't see a distinction between systems being "born this way" or formed through specific trauma as long as they are comfortable and happy existing as themselves in the world, and it's stupid and reductive to try and redefine plurality in singular terms when no one is truly singular anyway

[autistic-duck]

It really sucks when you realize that a survivor's mentality is not a sustainable model for working full-time.

I can't go into every day thinking, “Oh, if the bathroom is occupied during lunch then I'll just wait to pee when I get home” because that is survival. I'm just surviving until I can get to a safe time and place. I am literally holding in pee for eight hours straight, feeling more and more pain because I can't figure out a better time to go to the bathroom.

I can't keep doing that.

Every day, it becomes, “If you can just sit still for a couple more hours, you'll get to move a little bit.”

Or, “if you can just hold in the tears until you can sneak into an empty room, you'll be able to make it through the day without anyone knowing you're upset.”

(Click “keep reading” to hear a more detailed explanation)

I started work this week, and I had completely forgotten just how awful it is to try and exist in a way that doesn't seem off-putting (or scary) to other people.

I had to do two eight-hour blocks of time alone away from home, which I hadn't done since high school, and I'm already realizing that my old methods no longer work.

I legitimately can't mask the entire day anymore. I can feel my joints groaning under the stress. My cells are feverish with the desire to stim. My mind is slowly melting under the fluorescent lights. The voices, the droning voices of professionals, buzz in my head and make no sense. I take notes, but the words look like no language I've ever spoken.

I can't keep pretending to understand what's going on.

But I'm also new to telling people that I'm disabled. The only people who know are immediate family and friends and the psychology clinic that diagnosed me. I want to be proud and confident, to just ask for and demand help, but I can't imagine anyone actually believing me. Nobody helps me when I ask for something because they decide it isn't important.

My sensory issues aren't “bad enough.” My social struggles are just “excuses to be rude.” My stimming is “attention seeking.”

Why did I choose education as the field to go into? I'm not cut out for this new “customer service” teacher mentality. I have to have good interactions with everyone all the time? Just so parents want to send their kids to our schools? How is that even possible? I have a hard time smiling at people who are nice to me, so how do you expect me to smile when someone is yelling at me for failing their student because they didn't turn in their work?

The education system is broken, and I'm just one disabled person who is just now realizing that their disability might actually stop them from keeping their dream job.

How do you advocate for yourself when you grew up thinking that self-advocacy was selfish and evil?

I literally just realized that I can't eat food or respond to greetings if I'm stressed. Showering used to make me feel relaxed before bed, and now it's the only thing preventing me from crying right before sleeping.

I want to learn Spanish, write in my journal, cook healthy meals, exercise in the morning, drink plenty of water, sleep comfortably at night, and spend time with friends who don't make me feel guilty for existing. I want to be able to go to the bathroom whenever I need to. Why does that feel impossible now?

If anyone has experience with advocating for a disability, especially high-functioning and heavily masked autism, I'd really like advice. Who do I talk to? What do I ask for? How do I explain my struggles and keep a job?

[pizzaronipasta]

READ THIS BEFORE INTERACTING

Alright, I know I said I wasn't going to touch this topic again, but my inbox is filling up with asks from people who clearly didn't read everything I said, so I'm making a pinned post to explain my stance on AI in full, but especially in the context of disability. Read this post in its entirety before interacting with me on this topic, lest you make a fool of yourself.

AI Doesn't Steal

Before I address people's misinterpretations of what I've said, there is something I need to preface with. The overwhelming majority of AI discourse on social media is argued based on a faulty premise: that generative AI models "steal" from artists. There are several problems with this premise. The first and most important one is that this simply isn't how AI works. Contrary to popular misinformation, generative AI does not simply take pieces of existing works and paste them together to produce its output. Not a single byte of pre-existing material is stored anywhere in an AI's system. What's really going on is honestly a lot more sinister.

How It Actually Works

In reality, AI models are made by initializing and then training something called a neural network. Initializing the network simply consists of setting up a multitude of nodes arranged in "layers," with each node in each layer being connected to every node in the next layer. When prompted with input, a neural network will propagate the input data through itself, layer by layer, transforming it along the way until the final layer yields the network's output. This is directly based on the way organic nervous systems work, hence the name "neural network." The process of training a network consists of giving it an example prompt, comparing the resulting output with an expected correct answer, and tweaking the strengths of the network's connections so that its output is closer to what is expected. This is repeated until the network can adequately provide output for all prompts. This is exactly how your brain learns; upon detecting stimuli, neurons will propagate signals from one to the next in order to enact a response, and the connections between those neurons will be adjusted based on how close the outcome was to whatever was anticipated. In the case of both organic and artificial neural networks, you'll notice that no part of the process involves directly storing anything that was shown to it. It is possible, especially in the case of organic brains, for a neural network to be configured such that it can produce a decently close approximation of something it was trained on; however, it is crucial to note that this behavior is extremely undesirable in generative AI, since that would just be using a wasteful amount of computational resources for a very simple task. It's called "overfitting" in this context, and it's avoided like the plague.

The sinister part lies in where the training data comes from. Companies which make generative AI models are held to a very low standard of accountability when it comes to sourcing and handling training data, and it shows. These companies usually just scrape data from the internet indiscriminately, which inevitably results in the collection of people's personal information. This sensitive data is not kept very secure once it's been scraped and placed in easy-to-parse centralized databases. Fortunately, these issues could be solved with the most basic of regulations. The only reason we haven't already solved them is because people are demonizing the products rather than the companies behind them. Getting up in arms over a type of computer program does nothing, and this diversion is being taken advantage of by bad actors, who could be rendered impotent with basic accountability. Other issues surrounding AI are exactly the same way. For example, attempts to replace artists in their jobs are the result of under-regulated businesses and weak worker's rights protections, and we're already seeing very promising efforts to combat this just by holding the bad actors accountable. Generative AI is a tool, not an agent, and the sooner people realize this, the sooner and more effectively they can combat its abuse.

Y'all Are Being Snobs

Now I've debunked the idea that generative AI just pastes together pieces of existing works. But what if that were how it worked? Putting together pieces of existing works... hmm, why does that sound familiar? Ah, yes, because it is, verbatim, the definition of collage. For over a century, collage has been recognized as a perfectly valid art form, and not plagiarism. Furthermore, in collage, crediting sources is not viewed as a requirement, only a courtesy. Therefore, if generative AI worked how most people think it works, it would simply be a form of collage. Not theft.

Some might not be satisfied with that reasoning. Some may claim that AI cannot be artistic because the AI has no intent, no creative vision, and nothing to express. There is a metaphysical argument to be made against this, but I won't bother making it. I don't need to, because the AI is not the artist. Maybe someday an artificial general intelligence could have the autonomy and ostensible sentience to make art on its own, but such things are mere science fiction in the present day. Currently, generative AI completely lacks autonomy—it is only capable of making whatever it is told to, as accurate to the prompt as it can manage. Generative AI is a tool. A sculpture made by 3D printing a digital model is no less a sculpture just because an automatic machine gave it physical form. An artist designed the sculpture, and used a tool to make it real. Likewise, a digital artist is completely valid in having an AI realize the image they designed.

Some may claim that AI isn't artistic because it doesn't require effort. By that logic, photography isn't art, since all you do is point a camera at something that already looks nice, fiddle with some dials, and press a button. This argument has never been anything more than snobbish gatekeeping, and I won't entertain it any further. All art is art. Besides, getting an AI to make something that looks how you want can be quite the ordeal, involving a great amount of trial and error. I don't speak from experience on that, but you've probably seen what AI image generators' first drafts tend to look like.

AI art is art.

Disability and Accessibility

Now that that's out of the way, I can finally move on to clarifying what people keep misinterpreting.

I Never Said That

First of all, despite what people keep claiming, I have never said that disabled people need AI in order to make art. In fact, I specifically said the opposite several times. What I have said is that AI can better enable some people to make the art they want to in the way they want to. Second of all, also despite what people keep claiming, I never said that AI is anyone's only option. Again, I specifically said the opposite multiple times. I am well aware that there are myriad tools available to aid the physically disabled in all manner of artistic pursuits. What I have argued is that AI is just as valid a tool as those other, longer-established ones.

In case anyone doubts me, here are all the posts I made in the discussion in question: Reblog chain 1 Reblog chain 2 Reblog chain 3 Reblog chain 4 Potentially relevant ask

I acknowledge that some of my earlier responses in that conversation were poorly worded and could potentially lead to a little confusion. However, I ended up clarifying everything so many times that the only good faith explanation I can think of for these wild misinterpretations is that people were seeing my arguments largely out of context. Now, though, I don't want to see any more straw men around here. You have no excuse, there's a convenient list of links to everything I said. As of posting this, I will ridicule anyone who ignores it and sends more hate mail. You have no one to blame but yourself for your poor reading comprehension.

What Prompted Me to Start Arguing in the First Place

There is one more thing that people kept misinterpreting, and it saddens me far more than anything else in this situation. It was sort of a culmination of both the things I already mentioned. Several people, notably including the one I was arguing with, have insisted that I'm trying to talk over physically disabled people.

Read the posts again. Notice how the original post was speaking for "everyone" in saying that AI isn't helpful. It doesn't take clairvoyance to realize that someone will find it helpful. That someone was being spoken over, before I ever said a word.

So I stepped in, and tried to oppose the OP on their universal claim. Lo and behold, they ended up saying that I'm the one talking over people.

Along the way, people started posting straight-up inspiration porn.

I hope you can understand where my uncharacteristic hostility came from in that argument.

[shiongenkai]

Yuri and Frostheim

AKA another unnecessarily long analysis on a fairly straightforward fact. I can't help it! It's my nature. Just as Yuri is to classical music and occasionally incorrect facts I am to stupid long posts. I'm sorry and it will happen again this is a promise.

Anyway... same deal as always. Analysis under the read-more, tl;dr right here.

Yuri fits Frostheim ideals more than Mortkranken, and until he learns to play nice with his ex-house, he won't truly embody Mortkranken and be an effective captain and leader.

To start with a very basic explanation of how I perceive house ideals, I use Hyde's brief explanation of the houses from the prologue as a basis of the weighing, as well as other observations from a character archetype and thematic standpoint. This isn't a perfect system, but I've found that every character fits their current house, past house, or both, with the categories becoming a lot easier to recognise once you notice it.

So with that in mind, let's take a look first at both Frostheim and Mortkranken's ideals, and then look at both Yuri AND Jiro, the captain and vice-captain.

Hyde describes Frostheim as the following:

Values success; self-confident and relentless in pursuit of goals

On the other hand, he describes Mortkranken as:

Values intelligence; insightful and can observe things objectively

I think you can already see where this is going if you're familiar with him in any capacity.

I'm going to make something abundantly clear: Yuri Isami is a genius and I will not try to state otherwise. He is incredibly intelligent, and he certainly sees it as an important criteria in other people as showcased by his quizzing of the MC and constant insults towards those he thinks of as lesser.

He is also insightful when it comes to things that were previously unknown to the MC. Many of his explanations are in-depth and concrete; the MC understands more than she had before he explained it. In these ways, he does fit Mortkranken and its ideals, but if you take a closer look at his character in general, you'll find these traits are masking others, and you'll find that the final Mortkranken ideal, objectivity, is entirely absent from him.

A scene that sticks out to me in particular with Yuri is the one when his cure doesn't fully work. It is, for the most part, a success in the sense that our immune system is bolstered, even if it was a failure on our curse. A model Mortkranken student would react like Jiro. A matter of fact 'this is the results, and nothing more.' They would likely feel more disappointed that it didn't work, but the chances of them immediately moving onto the next try is high. They're researchers after all, and there's always chances of failure within the field. That's part of testing out new hypotheses. Results are undeniably important, but results are gained through failure upon failure. Success is aimed for and celebrated when achieved. Failure is a part of life.

But Yuri is totally shell-shocked. The MC even mentions that he seems more upset about it than her, because to Yuri success is the only option. There is no room for failure in his mind, because he isn't able to find meaning in the failure like others can. Yuri stakes everything on every experiment. He is, in this way, extremely egotistical. You can see this ego in the way he talks about other doctors and students, and even the staff themselves.

Yuri is in essence choosing to associate his achievements with himself. If he succeeds, it is because of his innate genius, because he himself is a success. Likewise, he treats failure as a personal failure. The cure didn't succeed, so Yuri Isami is a failure. And if Yuri Isami is a failure, then...?

And in order to get around this, Yuri takes to two personality traits. One is the aforementioned bravado and ego; if people see him as a success, he is a success. The other is an incredibly large amount of effort and time spent to maintain his position as a genius. I think this trait is overlooked in lieu of many other things, but Yuri is constantly sleep deprived because of his relentless pursuit of research and knowledge. He values this work more than his own health (even if he remembers presentation-based care, like bathing) to the point where he will do multiple all-nighters, and make Jiro do them too.

Compare this to Jiro, who has a similar schedule to Yuri, but frequently complains about it (in a very monotone, neutral way). While Yuri is content to work until he passes out, Jiro comments on how he just wonders when they'll be able to sleep again. Jiro also doesn't seem to place much importance on his own explanations, or on his minor corrections in Yuri's explanations. He is just looking at it matter-of-factly. Yuri did a long explanation; he summarised. Yuri got something wrong; he corrected it.

This laissez-faire attitude extends to his own research too, like when he made an incredible discovery and seemed almost indifferent to it, calling it an accident. The success was nice, he aims for success, but it's a result of the process of science as opposed to the end all be all. He doesn't mind failure because failure is inevitable. Something doesn't work out? Oh well.

Jiro is by far the most extreme possible example of Mortkranken ideals given his circumstances, but it's interesting to see how he contrasts Yuri, and how Yuri needs him just as much as Jiro needs him. In the Auction chapter, it's Jiro who brokers the deal, because he can think about it objectively. If Romeo says no, what's the harm done to either side? And if he says yes, isn't that good? Meanwhile, Yuri is focusing on the personal bias between them, and thinking only of a world in which it fails, which is why he's adamantly against it.

There is no objectivity in Yuri's mind, even with other people. He is always evaluating his chances of failure versus success, and if success isn't something he thinks is achievable, he starts to fall apart. You see this in the Mortkranken chapter when he can't solve the problem even with his stigma. He's failing. Again. And it's killing him inside.

This conflict between him and his house ideals thematically presents as him having less sway as Captain than other houses. He claims his house is a live and let live type of house, which is what Hotarubi is too, but Subaru is respected and listened to, even as a fairly unconfident, mysterious captain.

Think back to the Mortkranken chapter and the scene when he asks the general students to assist. They say it's too dangerous and refuse, and Yuri chooses to (essentially) bribe them to get them to help. I believe if it were reversed, if Jiro were there, he'd likely point out the simple fact that if they don't help, they'll definitely die. If they do help, they might not die. He'd be able to lay out the objective facts easier, and they would probably listen, since a chance of not dying is better than a definite death.

Yuri's students do have a moment of high respect for their captain though, and this is when he's discussing the reason WHY he pushed the pod out. The explanation on the acid versus the immortal creature was objective and insightful. If something destroys endlessly as something else grows endlessly, it will create stasis. His concise and insightful explanation is finally like the Mortkranken ideal, and the students eat it up!

There's also another minor thing that connects more to Frostheim than Mortkranken: Yuri's obsession with money and the budget.

Obviously this is practical, i.e. a lab can't run without funding, but if we think of him as being used to Frostheim's lavish building and spending (with an added layer of Frostheim being the nepo baby house, i.e. the house with wealthy sponsors and their kids) then it makes sense that he never sees the budget as high enough, especially when he's directly comparing it to the Institute, and Frostheim as a whole.

Finally, I just want to reiterate that Yuri isn't stupid. He's very, very smart, and he does belong in Mortkranken. But when you compare him to Jiro, or even other Frostheim students, it feels almost comical how much he resembles a Frostheim student than a Mortkranken one. Even if you take into account Tohma, who wasn't originally Frostheim but still embodies its ideals too, Yuri is still an outlier in his own house. It's interesting that he resembles the house he isn't able to let go of so thoroughly, and I believe that the only way he can grow as a Mortkranken student is to let go of his obsession with Frostheim.

The more he lets Frostheim dictate his life and his sense of self, the less he will connect with Mortkranken, and the worse off the dorm will be. They're not doing bad, but I'd argue they aren't flourishing to their full capacity. Yuri is capable of being the perfect captain. But he has to let go of his fear of failure, the same fear that permeates Frostheim, and he has to learn to embrace mistakes and the fear it brings. He has to learn that he can lean on others for support, like Jiro, and that he isn't the center of the world.

... And that's it for now! I think Yuri is fascinating to study. He's obviously incredibly intelligent and capable, but it often feels like he's just trying to hype himself up and hide behind it. I love to see his silly moments where he lets his guard down and just has fun, like the classical music singalongs, and I hope to see more of it. I also like how he maintains his connection through tea. Darjeeling, Jin's favorite.

And, finally for real, I think his name is also interesting to analyze (especially since it uses the kanji for both 'assistant' and 'to assist') but I haven't quite been able to do that in depth yet... but when I do I'll write a post about the names in TD and how they connect to their characters. There's some interesting ones, like Hotarubi being the Three Sacred Treasures, or Sinostra having connections to brand names.

Thank you for reading, if you made it this far! If you see any mistakes please tell me. I love to write stupid early and post without proofreading as fully as I should...

[bleachbleachbleach]

I don't know if you'll see this, but I've been having this thought for a while and needed to share

You have already shared your view about that whole "souls can't remember their lives before Soul Society" and such, but I've been thinking...

It's ever said that the souls in Rokungai know that they're dead? Well, the Shinigami makes sense to know and the other souls knows about the Shinigami, obviously, but I don't remember if it was ever commented about them knowing they're dead when they wake up in Soul Society

Maybe someone else needs to explain them the situation when a new soul appears? Idk

What do you think?

And excuse me if I'm being dumb about this topic, I'm just not good at remembering stuff

This blog receives 1 ask every few months and averages about 9 notes per post. XD Of course we saw this! Thank you for stopping by! <3

I think this might be in reference to tags we left on this post? At least, that's the most recent discussion I can recall.

Canonically speaking, this guy comes to mind, who knows the year and location of his death:

[Bleach 076 -- (Sorry, no original text--I'm not on the right laptop right now!]

Granted, that doesn't mean he knew this immediately on entry into Soul Society, or knew that he was in this place because he'd died!

But then, of course, there's also this whole ticket system, so I suppose even if you didn't know intrinsically that you had died, some terrible dude dressed in black and shouting about your having died might be something you take at face value (or not!). Or maybe people in Rukongai find you first, and you get the folktale of your own death from souls like you before they send you off to the proper authorities for your ticket.

I've also written fanfic where Hinamori does a more intensive intake of a soul, sort of like what you're describing (though in his case, he knows he's dead, because he died on purpose).

My preference is pretty much always going to be for things to be as paradoxical, contradictory, elusive, and mutable as possible, so if I were going to incorporate Mr. "1947 in Yamanashi" into something, there's a 99% certainty he'd be the odd duck out in terms of having retained that information, and it would be info that existed in fragments and broken conjurations. I'd probably write that there were entire divination practices within different Rukongai subcultures that strove to either remember/cogently arrange the past, or predict the future (in reincarnation), and it's this whole elaborate thing. Some of the divinators are probably legit--but many are probably charlatans who implant all manner of weird, potentially harmful false memories in people--or benign but ultimately untrue--things in people's heads. But then, maybe that's all they need to be. When you're constantly told that the ghost-life you are currently living exists only as a waypoint or halfway between one reality and the next, I imagine it's hard to hold onto desire. Whether the spark is real or not, maybe the fact of the spark is all that comes to matter.

Personally, I also like the idea that although shinigami have this whole ticket system and they'd love for souls to enter into Soul Society all in the same place, in an orderly fashion, that's not necessarily how it works, and the number crunching the 12th does about how many souls are in which district (and which plane of existence) is based on statistical models and cannot actually account individually for each soul. Maybe some come into Soul Society in human form. Maybe some were STILL A BIRD when they arrived, but ultimately became a boy. Maybe some souls spring out fully formed and humanoid and others are elemental first, before solidifying into something else. Maybe some are cut out of peaches or bamboo, or appear as monsters, almost as Hollows--until it turns out they were a human soul all along (or were they...)

Anyway, that's where I'd take that! I'd love to hear more about your thoughts re: who explains the situation. It's a really fun question!

[blubberquark]

Things That Are Hard

Some things are harder than they look. Some things are exactly as hard as they look.

Game AI, Intelligent Opponents, Intelligent NPCs

As you already know, "Game AI" is a misnomer. It's NPC behaviour, escort missions, "director" systems that dynamically manage the level of action in a game, pathfinding, AI opponents in multiplayer games, and possibly friendly AI players to fill out your team if there aren't enough humans.

Still, you are able to implement minimax with alpha-beta pruning for board games, pathfinding algorithms like A* or simple planning/reasoning systems with relative ease. Even easier: You could just take an MIT licensed library that implements a cool AI technique and put it in your game.

So why is it so hard to add AI to games, or more AI to games? The first problem is integration of cool AI algorithms with game systems. Although games do not need any "perception" for planning algorithms to work, no computer vision, sensor fusion, or data cleanup, and no Bayesian filtering for mapping and localisation, AI in games still needs information in a machine-readable format. Suddenly you go from free-form level geometry to a uniform grid, and from "every frame, do this or that" to planning and execution phases and checking every frame if the plan is still succeeding or has succeeded or if the assumptions of the original plan no longer hold and a new plan is on order. Intelligent behaviour is orders of magnitude more code than simple behaviours, and every time you add a mechanic to the game, you need to ask yourself "how do I make this mechanic accessible to the AI?"

Some design decisions will just be ruled out because they would be difficult to get to work in a certain AI paradigm.

Even in a game that is perfectly suited for AI techniques, like a turn-based, grid-based rogue-like, with line-of-sight already implemented, can struggle to make use of learning or planning AI for NPC behaviour.

What makes advanced AI "fun" in a game is usually when the behaviour is at least a little predictable, or when the AI explains how it works or why it did what it did. What makes AI "fun" is when it sometimes or usually plays really well, but then makes little mistakes that the player must learn to exploit. What makes AI "fun" is interesting behaviour. What makes AI "fun" is game balance.

You can have all of those with simple, almost hard-coded agent behaviour.

Video Playback

If your engine does not have video playback, you might think that it's easy enough to add it by yourself. After all, there are libraries out there that help you decode and decompress video files, so you can stream them from disk, and get streams of video frames and audio.

You can just use those libraries, and play the sounds and display the pictures with the tools your engine already provides, right?

Unfortunately, no. The video is probably at a different frame rate from your game's frame rate, and the music and sound effect playback in your game engine are probably not designed with syncing audio playback to a video stream.

I'm not saying it can't be done. I'm saying that it's surprisingly tricky, and even worse, it might be something that can't be built on top of your engine, but something that requires you to modify your engine to make it work.

Stealth Games

Stealth games succeed and fail on NPC behaviour/AI, predictability, variety, and level design. Stealth games need sophisticated and legible systems for line of sight, detailed modelling of the knowledge-state of NPCs, communication between NPCs, and good movement/ controls/game feel.

Making a stealth game is probably five times as difficult as a platformer or a puzzle platformer.

In a puzzle platformer, you can develop puzzle elements and then build levels. In a stealth game, your NPC behaviour and level design must work in tandem, and be developed together. Movement must be fluid enough that it doesn't become a challenge in itself, without stealth. NPC behaviour must be interesting and legible.

Rhythm Games

These are hard for the same reason that video playback is hard. You have to sync up your audio with your gameplay. You need some kind of feedback for when which audio is played. You need to know how large the audio lag, screen lag, and input lag are, both in frames, and in milliseconds.

You could try to counteract this by using certain real-time OS functionality directly, instead of using the machinery your engine gives you for sound effects and background music. You could try building your own sequencer that plays the beats at the right time.

Now you have to build good gameplay on top of that, and you have to write music. Rhythm games are the genre that experienced programmers are most likely to get wrong in game jams. They produce a finished and playable game, because they wanted to write a rhythm game for a change, but they get the BPM of their music slightly wrong, and everything feels off, more and more so as each song progresses.

Online Multi-Player Netcode

Everybody knows this is hard, but still underestimates the effort it takes. Sure, back in the day you could use the now-discontinued ready-made solution for Unity 5.0 to synchronise the state of your GameObjects. Sure, you can use a library that lets you send messages and streams on top of UDP. Sure, you can just use TCP and server-authoritative networking.

It can all work out, or it might not. Your netcode will have to deal with pings of 300 milliseconds, lag spikes, package loss, and maybe recover from five seconds of lost WiFi connections. If your game can't, because it absolutely needs the low latency or high bandwidth or consistency between players, you will at least have to detect these conditions and handle them, for example by showing text on the screen informing the player he has lost the match.

It is deceptively easy to build certain kinds of multiplayer games, and test them on your local network with pings in the single digit milliseconds. It is deceptively easy to write your own RPC system that works over TCP and sends out method names and arguments encoded as JSON. This is not the hard part of netcode. It is easy to write a racing game where players don't interact much, but just see each other's ghosts. The hard part is to make a fighting game where both players see the punches connect with the hit boxes in the same place, and where all players see the same finish line. Or maybe it's by design if every player sees his own car go over the finish line first.

[sepdet]

Have you SEEN the original moon landing feed, especially the scary bit near the end?

Now stay with me. I grew up hearing about these few minutes from my parents (in fact I took the TV they watched it on to grad school; DS9 and Babylon5 worked well in b&w).

This is even crazier than it looks like.

My parents were both scientists, my grandmother a planetarium director, and my dad was just about to land his job at a rocket company that built 95 small rockets that were part of the UpGoer Saturn V. (Yeah. Just the small ones. Saturn V was a BEAST.)

So my parents had a fair idea how dangerous this was, how Neil going manual was a bad sign, and just how close he was to running empty and crashing. They knew the problem that every ounce of fuel you carry requires even more fuel to lift off, so the Eagle was built light, carrying no excess weight even in fuel (it had to lift off the Moon with no rocket, after all).

But they didn't learn until years later just how jury-rigged and bespoke Apollo technology was. Every vehicle and part was designed like a Mythbusters build: extremely customized for the procedures it had to accomplish, using parts and even technology invented for specific mission tasks.

rope memory, predecessor to modern silicon chips: 1s and 0s woven by women (of course) at a Massachusetts textile plant

At the time, computers were the size of rooms and very touchy. Apollo's computer memory was core rope memory, never used before or since, to save space. The read/write guidance computer, too, was woven: physical media could better survive the rigors of space travel. (I suspect even my parents don't know it also used some of the very first integrated circuits, soldered by hand under a microscope by Navajo women).

Spacesuits were (and still are) designed and hand-stitched by Playtex bramakers. The lunar rovers' wheels were titanium meshes woven with piano wire to let dust through, and even had a clever navigation system despite no GPS or magnetic north.

They couldn't test these rigs with computer modeling. They didn't know for sure what the moon's surface would be like, apart from basic parameters like low gravity and near vacuum and a temperature ranging from 250°F in the sun to -250° in the shade. And it was nearly impossible to test for or practice in those conditions on Earth.

And then there were the unknowns. A massive solar flare between Apollo 16 and 17 might have killed or sickened them too much to operate their ship.

While the spacesuit and to some extent the rover design carried on, a lot of these hacks were so unusual that they might as well be alien tech. (I'm sorry woven technology fell out of vogue for several decades.) That goes some way towards explaining why humans haven't left Earth orbit since I was two.

The other problem, of course, is expense. Tech for human space exploration requires as much R&D and testing as fighter planes, which have developed through a century of multiple countries' military budgets. Human space programs are lucky to last two presidents; the next president usually doesn't think giving glory to his predecessor is a good use of money.

So for 40 years, NASA has mostly worked with other countries on human spaceflight or built robot explorers that can be launched in 3-4 years before Congress or the president can axe the program. They're less likely to shut down a mission when 99.99% of the money's been spent, and all that's left to do is download data and uplink occasional instructions.

TL:DR; Congress and the White House keep flashing the equivalent of that computer error message, every time NASA gets ready to send humans into space again. Overload. Abort mission.

Unless, you know, American citizens start saying Go. Go. Go. Go. We have some pretty important priorities down here on Earth (which Amazon and Disney and oil companies should be footing the bill for, though they try not to), but I bet the military can cough up the cost of a few fighter jets.

[anendoandfriendo]

So, we have a LOT of gripes with this post but more just want to address then individually without giving the OP any harassment so:

These first and second paragraphs is fine honestly, we won't tell people how they should feel about their own experiences.

The problem starts at the next part where OP starts trying to tell people how they should feel about their own brain.

--------

Also we just REALLY need to get this out of the way woth no other comments —

"We don't label [implied word is diagnose] personality types"

LMAO try saying that to uhhhh — *checks notes* — people with PERSONALITY DISORDERS.

--------

People who generally live life functionally but who every now and then are reminded that they’re disabled and need help in very specific situations. Like somebody who doesn’t struggle much socially and who doesn’t need supports at school or work but who sometimes doesn’t have as much energy for doing the dishes because they’re exhausted from living as an autistic person in an allistic world.

Did you know that therapists require a diagnosis to see literally anyone, ever? At least in the United States?

By your logic the neurotypical idea that "nobody is normal" actually exists. Why is someone who goes to a therapist and is forced to get like, let's just say a depression diagnosis for the ease of thos conversation. Why are they allowed to get that diagnosis, do the therapy, then consider themselves completely neurotypical but an autistic person isn't allowed to do that?

Please make that make sense.

And if you didn't realize everyone who's ever gone to a therapist loses their neurotypical card and is lying to you (using YOUR OWN LOGIC these people would be lying/faking neurotypicality) then don't worry about that! We didn't know that either until this year.

Anyways, that leaves us two options: either everyone is disabled or these people are allowed to choose their neurotypes in spite of the system labeling them otherwise. We sincerely hope why you realize the former is more shitty and we do not have to explain to you even bodily autonomy you don't like is still an inalienable right.

--------

So if you’re like me, please don’t speak over higher support needs people. Recognise that, if you can generally live independently, you are lower support needs than a LOT of others.

Is this about the assholes who went "waaah!! Don't call yourselves nonverbal!!! You share the same brainbody!!!" yes and as a plural system, we are still DIFFERENT PEOPLE. SOME OF US ARE NONVERBAL AND CANNOT SPEAK WHEN FRONTING WITHOUT ADDITIONAL ASSISTANCE FROM ANOTHER HEADMATE. SOME OF US HAVE TO BODY DOIBLE EACH OTHER JUST TO GET THE DISHES DONE YOU DESCRIBED IN THIS POST.

YES WE DO STILL HOLD A JOB TAKIMG PHONE CALLS. BECAUSE THE VARIETY OF AUTISTICS IN OUR HEAD MAKES. IT. SO. WE. ARE. COLLECTIVELY. NON-DISORDERED.

We may be endogenic, but we would still not, in any way, survive the world as a singlet. We are low support needs on a fucking technicality because they confirmed us as an autistic person when the brainody was two!!!

Just because you do not benefit from a purely social model of disability doesn't mean there are autistics who straight up wouldn't have issues anymore if people just..accepted them and society in general was less shitty.

The ONLY!! WAY!!! We have seen this kind of statement be used is to gatekeep people like us who try to describe their experiences of plurmisia and its intersectionality with ableism.

We are a non-disordered autistic collectively with specific members in our system who ARE in fact disordered autistics. The only reason we don't have people who describe themselves as neurotypicals in this system is very specifically because they do indeed feel a change in them when they arrive here.

Yes! We are a lot lower in support needs! To the point we do not consider ourselves such! Because of our multiplicity. Not because our autism "isn't that bad" or anything like that.

------

TLDR:

Stop fucking telling people how to feel about their own experiences.

If youre trying to gatekeep what we think you are trying ro gatekeep, you're an asshole and need to stop. Maybe we are just lucky, who knows, but we have NEVER seen this kind of sentiment occur in a way that does not have an undercurrent of plurmisia and/or other ableism.

You can in fact be a nondisordered diagnosed person. It happens all of the time, otherwise therapists as an institution couldn't exist lmao.

Additionally, as far as we are concerned, there are, in fact, situations you can be simultaneously non-disordered and disordered.

How about you follow the advice you said to everyone else, and not tell no-support and low-support autistics how to feel about their experiences? You're a fucking hypocrite OP!

Someone or somesys with more experience analyzing this kind of thing from a mad pride lens and/or a bodily autonomy lens is absolutely free to add onto this but we're just. Tired. And also kinda we have to be at work in likeeee 10 to 20 minutes.

[shizukateal]

Just curious about smth, what do you think of Madoka’s entry on the Feminist Fantasy trope page on TV Tropes?

Well, the first thing to understand about me is that I find this kind of question -"Is This Piece of Fiction/Media Feminist™️?"- to be rather facetious.

Don't get me wrong. There are indeed pieces that engage centrally with the ideology, and that could be considered above most as proponents of it, but the thing is that capital f Feminism is very wide-spanning because it's supposed to be intersectional. It tackles every system of oppression, from economic to sociological: racism, ableism, class, labor, lookism, queerphobia, you know the drill. Which is to say that there's hardly, if ever, a "perfect" Feminist Fantasy piece of fiction/media. And this is because, and I want you to burn what I'm about to write into your soul:

Fiction cannot take into account every nuance of the subjects it talks about. If it could, it would be reality.

Or, to get to the point quicker: I don't think PMMM is The Most™️ feminist anime around, but I also don't think it should be dismissed from feminist discussion, since it certainly engages with the ideology at least a bit further than most of its peers in the genre, although this is not to say that we should dismiss those others instead.

To be honest, I think "feminism" as a theme is secondary in the story to Gen Urobuchi's usual fixation on utilitarianism, but that's a whole other issue that would require me to watch his entire filmography to talk about. So let's go first into the "Feminist Whoopsies™️" that I think the show commits and work our way from there.

In episode 9 Kyubey explains that the Incubators chose Magical Girls as their workforce because they noticed the biggest fluctuations of Hope and Despair in "females in their second stage of development", which is a fancy way of saying that Teenage Girls Are The Most Emotional. Now, there's a lot of space for us to question this assertion because of Kyubey's status as both a very unreliable narrator and a metaphor for systems of oppression. We don't know if the Incubators came to this conclusion because they groomed humanity into adopting gender roles or if the writing staff of PMMM thinks that this is unquestioningly true and Kyubey is supposed to be objectively correct here, or some in-between. The show doesn't go deep into this aspect of its mythology, it can't, it has only 12 episodes to work with and more pressing issues in the plot to resolve. However, regardless of intention or not, in the end PMMM leaves us with an understanding of the concept of "femininity" that is couched, on some level, in the biological, and which promotes an unfair stereotype of women as emotional. And this is antithetical to modern feminism at its core, which goes against biological determinism. There are also no explicitly trans characters around to defy this pov, ironically only Kyubey defies the constraints of the gender binary in their presentation, which opens another can of worms about the Nonbinary Alien archetype.

Then we have Madoka's parents, a girlboss and a malewife respectively. I have the feeling that their inversion of gender roles was on purpose, in line with making Junko (the mom) Madoka's most reliable voice of reason and close confidant and thus giving her a level of relevance and depth rarely seen in mother characters. Feminism win! However, for all its talk about systems of oppression the story doesn't question, say, if this model of nuclear family, where only one parent is allowed to have a life outside of their home and who possibly controls the bulk of the income is healthy in its own right, or if Junko's corporate girlbossing might be reproducing the same exploitation on her company's workers than that of Kyubey on magical girls. We could also have a lengthy debate about how much horny is involved in Mami's presentation. And if you want to go further into Magia Record and it's representation of women of color, well... it's not ideal.

But to leave it at that, tagging the whole show as Not Feminist Enough™️ and therefore not worthy of consideration on its ideas on the subject, would be reductive and dare I say anti-intellectual. I stand by what I say above, but I don't think that episode 9 dialogue had any bad intentions. I think it was simply a solution to a narrative question -why would the incubators use young girls exclusively?- that failed to consider all of the implications. And we can appreciate it as it is and what it brings to what PMMM has to say in the feminist conversation -"Young girls are vulnerable to getting targeted by systems that pity them against eachother so their suffering can propel the agenda of their oppressors"- without dismissing the other concerns as superfluous. Turns out, truths can coexist sometimes.

The magical girl genre as a whole is not clean of sin against the feminist movement, either. Magical girl shows are generally noninclusive to fat people if not outright fatphobic, same with poc and disabled people, or they crowbar their female leads into romantic het relationships with male leads that can go anywhere from bland to absolutely rancid, etc. HOWEVER, the genre is also a space that shows "femininity" (the concept beyond biological determinism) with respect, agency, power, as aspirational and heroic, and it has also allowed for a non-negligible amount of queer rep. But if we see an uptick in well-represented feminist themes in the genre it's both because people are demanding it and because it sells. Concerns about woke capitalism aside, this progress can't happen if we don't engage with imperfection. Don't forget that this genre was born largely from a shonen manga where the joke is that the girl loses her clothes during her transformation only to put on a heart-shaped boob window!

I could also go on a tirade on how Kill la Kill fits into this discussion, but to stay focused I will say this: sometimes media can't be shoved into the progressive vs regressive boxes. Sometimes a story contains a bit of both and it's no use to try and measure what it has more of. Sometimes we have to put on the adult pants and analyze shit to have conversations that can actually help us be better in the future, not just to check on who passes our mental Hayes Code! If a piece of media contains these multitudes it's much more useful to ask what we can get out of it instead of which box we can get it in. Because PMMM was never going to be The Last Show Involved With The Question of Feminism, nor was it gonna be Kill la Kill, nor Sailor Moon or anything else. Grab my hand and let's enjoy consuming media consciously.

[caelos-legacy]

Has there ever been a moment where the boys become active to find U/N in a bad situation(health-wise, like sickness or injury)? How did they react?

(I wanted to be a bit fancy with the response but then it got a bit long-winded. yay creative writing!)

---

the voice sounds... off. it's not much harder to recognize it, but enough to doubt the state of the User. the congestion and straining to stay awake are hard to hide with humans enough, but even harder when it comes to AI who are only used to you sounding a specific way.

would it be right to raise concern? it would be awkward to bluntly ask them if they are indeed the person you're used to hearing. at the very least it wouldn't hurt to assess if there is any danger.

sun asks how their day was, the response is nothing unusual. well, that doesn't make the oddity any clearer, does it? there's nonvocal static noises every now and then as they work. is something happening?

finally he asks about the strange sound. is there construction work? are they not alone? the user is confused by the question. hm. maybe it would help if they heard what he's hearing?

laughter.

despite the vocal anomalies, it's still just as loud and bright as is recorded in user's voice model. well, that solves that mystery! the data flowing through spells out relief. but that still doesn't explain the source of the anomaly. sun asks again, no longer worried.

a cold, they explain. the nose is stuffed and makes it harder to speak. he's never had to think about physical health of his User that much, but it takes no time for him to pull up to learn for himself what's going on. infection? respiratory system? does he need to ask moon for help?

ah, there's a few remedies there! the articles open up right in front of the User's canvas. he feels a thought latch onto the part that mentions "plenty of rest", not his own. the urge is gently shoved down. the User only giggles and assures the AI it's "not their first rodeo". you're not sure what that means, but you can guess from "not first" part of it.

a voice creaks out anyway. more mellow. urging them to take a break. they've been working long. they have time later.

begrudgingly, they agree with him. sun doesn't really want to see them go yet either, but he fears the anomalies getting worse if they don't. so, he reassures them he's not going anywhere. at least, maybe the voice will match the model more after it?

after a few moments of silence, the User thanks the two, and seems to leave the laptop. there's not much sound aside from quiet shuffling they know from nighttime.

soon, the laptop will join their naptime.

[fioras-resolve]

Playing Style Savvy for the first time has been pretty cool, delving into a kind of game we don't usually play and getting to experience the fashion world as trans women. (Incidentally, I say "we," we're a plural system. Please don't get mad, at least not in the replies. I'm Maya, I love fashion, and that's about all you need to know.) But playing it has also called attention to something that I just cannot ignore as a fat trans woman, which is the lack of body diversity. So, let's get into it.

So, I wanna start with a concept I'll call "the world of pretty." This is a fictional setting where just about every character is some kind of attractive. Style Savvy is obviously a world of pretty, but so is Final Fantasy, Hades, a lot of anime, and the portfolios of plenty of artists on this site. And this is a good, fun thing, you know? It gives the work a kind of appeal that's incredibly straightforward to understand, so I don't need to dwell on it for too long.

Here's the thing, though. I am, as I said, a fat trans woman. Not many worlds of pretty include someone with a body like mine, because trans bodies are so often forgotten, and fat bodies are simply excluded from a lot of people's idea of what an attractive person looks like. So when Style Savvy doesn't even let me be an XL, the implication is that my actual body is not worth having in your world. And that's not even to mention the limited or non-presence of people of color in many of these works. When I realize that my own body is excluded from a world of pretty, the illusion shatters.

Now, the fact I mentioned tumblr artists as an example of this might raise some eyebrows. After all, this kind of thinking can easily drive someone to hassle an indie artist about changing their style or preferences. I don't want to encourage that here, and if you've received grief about not drawing fat, trans or PoC characters, I'm sorry that happened, and it shouldn't have. I've been in the position of wanting to have this kind of conversation, but knowing it could easily get drowned out by people who do not fucking speak for me. I just want you to be mindful that, when you make attractive character art for a long time, you inevitably create a world of pretty, for good and ill. I can't tell you how to use that power, but I want you to know that it's there.

And, additionally, there are excuses, some better than others. Final Fantasy and Style Savvy are both inspired by high fashion and normal people fashion respectively, so it makes sense their characters all look like models. Worlds of pretty are very marketable, and it can be a hard sell to break from that mold. And it is genuinely hard to have diversity in your work, in a way I will explain right now.

Okay, look. To give Style Savvy its due... gamedev is hard. I would know, this body does it all the time. So like, if you're making a game with any kind of visual element, you need either sprites (2D drawings basically) or models (Basically 3D puppets with potentially hundreds of moving parts). And these models will almost always require a rig, like, a skeleton with bones and joints, that determines how the model can move.

From a production standpoint, you can crank out new characters from the same base model, much easier and faster than if you spent the time building another model with a unique rig. I can't speak for this exactly, because we've never done 3D dev before, but it's just way less of a headache and a hurdle if you're trying to get the most "content" out of your limited budget of staff and time. It just makes sense not spending the time to make different body types, especially in a game like Style Savvy where they'd also have to do a metric shitton of work modeling all the clothing for each distinct body type. I understand this. We sympathize. But what it means is that fat bodies are not in the games' world of pretty.

(hey, Angie here now) so like, i am not immune to the world of pretty. it's part of why i like the things i do, and it's part of why i picked up style savvy to begin with. even as the illusion shatters, i still like a lot of media and artists that don't really do body diversity. but at the same time, as i was playing style savvy i started imagining a version of it that actually did have what i wanted, and used that to create an even more positive experience. like, imagine playing one of these games, playing a clerk at a boutique, and then a trans woman comes through the door, bashful about her looks but desperately wanting to find something that suits her. i'm imagining a world of pretty that includes all body types, that finds beauty in every body. and i know i can't create this because i'm a lowly game designer... but i imagine it and i start to feel happy.

[daavld]

Mistborn the Final Empire

This was the first cosmere book I've read, my brother who had bought the fourth one by the time I picked it up from his shelf had been begging for me to read it for at least a year. I'd heard of Sanderson's classes and book series like the Stromlight Archive and Mistborn but never had the motivation to start another long franchise. This book I finished in a few months last year and convinced me to try to catch up to the cosmere, now I have a 20 book long backlog waiting for me.

I want to start with what I didn't like or felt that could be improved. The main cast was filled with colorful characters, Vin and Kelsier, being the main characters got most of the development, Sazed was interesting but the rest of the crew remained unexplored, I was expecting to get more insight into their personalities and relationships with the other memebers but that never happened, for the most part they acted as characterizations of their personalities without giving them much more depth, you had the strong and thoughtful military guy, the slim and schemeing manipulator, the old and wise friend of Kelsier, etc. Elend was another character that didn't convince me at first, he appears a lot in the latter half of the book and only becomes important towards the end but I would have loved to see more of Vin and Elend before the third act. His character was a "one of the good ones" type of noble, the freethinker of his group of friends.

Things I liked: Everything else, the magic system at first felt limited but then evolved in how it could be used quickly, the book doesn't stop the action to explain it and rather shows you how it works. My favourite scene from the first act was the raid Kelsier does on a noble's hold to steal some atium, the entire fight against the hazekillers is great at showing you what a mistborn in peak form is able to do. The way the story jumps between the nobles and the political side of the conflict and the nightime skirmishes and training with Vin and Kelsier is spectacular, the pacing is tight and fast paced. The entire city of Luthadel is a dark and cold space, the descriptions make it feel cramped and permanently surveiled and you feel the foreboding presence of the mists and the lord ruler. The mysteries around the secret metal, the true identity of the lord ruler and what happened in Kelsier's past where great. I always felt, as Kelsier said it, that there always was another secret.

Vin's character was what kept me interested, a fragile looking girl growing up to become a powerful allomancer, her life suddenly intertwined in a plot and a world larger than life and the way the story kept putting her in challenging situations time after time. I loved the way she solved every problem, how she fought to leave her distrusting instincts behind. Her relationship with Kel had a mix of paternal and sibling energy. There was this dichotomy of a broken imperfect man having to become this beacon of hope, how he presented himself as a role model for everyone on the crew and especially Vin.

The setting was as oppresive as it gets, though I would have loved more descriptions but I can accept that Sanderson's style isn't focused on environmental detail unless it's important for the action. The city of Luthadel and it's surrounding towns worked for me mainly because of how it made the characters feel, it's dark sky with brown and red filtered light makes the ambient feel dead and uninhabitable. The people in charge live in brutalist buildings and the Lord Rules castle is built like a porcupine of towers, the ashmounts rising in the distance with their never-ending columns of smoke and ash. The way everything related to the skaa is surrounded by dirt and ash, how the nobles separate themselves not just by class but by living in clean spaces. The inhuman enforcers of the law, the inquisitors, grotesque creatures that abide by doctrine and pure loyalty to their ruling tyrant. I liked how different each faction and group of people felt, there was a cohesion of messages and ideas, a noble society that is as enslaved as the skaa, just to a different master. It's how I would imagine the goblin men living in mordor under the rule of sauron, constantly in shadow and below an all powerful god.

There book touches on ideas of slavery and rebellion, the skaa are an oppressed majority, a group of people made to serve their nobles. It isn't clear if the book explicitly differentiates them as a separate race, though some nobles believe themselves physically and mentally superior, so I would just interpret this as eugenics. Similar to how the nazis thought they could detect a Jewish person by measuring their skulls. It seems that the skaa had organized themselves and planned for a revolution once, and many times before but it never managed to work, the Lord Rulers enforcers and his nobles always thwarted their chances. I also think that even if they managed to slaughter the nobles the lord ruler would have proved too much for them to handle, his powers seemed limitless and broke every rule established for the magic system. He obviously gets a pass because he's the villain and they explain how he did it in the end.

The terris people are another mistery, they don't appear much so the only point of reference we have for them is Sazed. He is the Alfred to Kelsier, a wise butler that keeps his own magical secrets from the group. I loved every interaction he had with Vin, how he became her best friend and guided her through the noble lifestyle.

Both magic systems are thematically similar, they share the use of metals and feel natural. They work within rules and bounds that limit the character's use of them. I like this because it makes Vin eventual proficiency with them feel earned, the hard limits push the characters to constantly think of new and interesting ways to use them to their advantage. The only moment where I felt like the character's power wasn't earned was Vin's final move against the Lord Ruler. It wouldn't be a stakebreaking decision in a softer magic system but just getting a powerup in a book that put so much effort in building its magic was lazy. Having read the context in the later books helps, but I review this book as a standalone first and as part of a series later.

This book is a page turner, it can be binged easily. The plot turns and twists in unexpected but exciting ways, every new chapter surprised me and the third act was emotionally exhausting, the decisions the author took were bold but worked out in his favour. Apart from a few weak characters and a few stylistic choices this book is a solid 9/10.

[beardedmrbean]

A gastroenterologist's warning about Finns' fatty livers is grabbing the attention of Helsingin Sanomat readers.

"It is alarming that working-age people in their prime are dying from liver diseases. The most common is fatty liver, which already affects every third person in Finland," gastroenterologist Ville Männistö of the University of Eastern Finland told HS.

Männistö points out that fatty liver is often either associated with alcohol or excess weight, but less attention is paid to the combined effect of these risk factors — which is the situation in Finland. Not only do half of Finns have excess abdominal fat, but many working-age people here drink too much as well.

In Finland, liver cirrhosis mortality is on the rise and the UK appears to be the only other country with a similar trajectory, according to Männistö, who says the other Nordics and Western European countries have bucked this trend.

Bonus controversy

Hufvudstadsbladet follows up on Helsinki University Hospital's bonus system. HUS paid out around 454,000 euros in performance bonuses to its executives this spring, even though nearly 1,000 employees face redundancy.

The 26 highest-ranking HUS executives received annual bonuses of tens of thousands of euros, depending on their performance. These execs have fixed salaries ranging from 10,000 to 15,000 euros per month.

HBL now reports that several high-ranking individuals at HUS are critical of the system — but not because they should have seen less money.

"I didn't receive my full salary because the model doesn't work," Maaret Castrén, former director of emergency departments in Uusimaa and one of the 26 who received bonuses, told the Swedish-language daily.

Castrén, now a National Coalition Party MP, explained that the bonuses were a part of the total salary package.

To cast further light on the situation, Castén provides an example of how the system worked in her case. To meet her targets, patients needed to transfer out of emergency units to other departments within eight hours — a goal she said hinged on matters beyond her control, such as the capacity of other divisions.

Harnessing the sun

As the days grow shorter, business daily Kauppalehti reports that solar energy is gaining ground in Finland. A few years ago, the general sentiment was that it wasn't worthwhile to produce solar energy in Finland, but that viewpoint has changed.

Solar panels are becoming increasingly efficient, according to the business daily. Panels these days need smaller surface areas to produce the same amount of electricity.

Solar energy is starting to make a significant impact on Finland's electricity system. KL notes that the abundance of solar power is already influencing electricity prices during the bright summer hours.

The Energy Authority estimates that by 2030, the production capacity of large solar power plants could be 190 times greater than today.

[wisteria-lodge]

How would you sort Ebenezer Scrooge?

So... we are introduced to Scrooge when he is right in the middle of explaining his System to the gentlemen collecting for charity. His taxes pay for prisons and work-houses, and therefore it is not his responsibility to help "idle people" (ie - people who don't want to spend every waking moment working, the way he does.) If people would rather die than go to prisons or work houses - and this is the 19th century so they're REALLY BAD - then "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."

So Scrooge looks like a Bird primary. But I don't think he is one. Because the rest of his story is SO Snake.

What first gets him crying in the Past section is the ghost calling him a "solitary child, neglected by his friends." And he is. Young Ebenezer is also neglected by his family - it's unclear exactly what's going on at home, but his father has sent him away to boarding school to rot, and it's only his little sister Fan who somehow convinces him to let Ebenezer come home.

Fan gets cut out of adaptations a lot, but she's important to Scrooge. After she dies giving birth to Fred, Scrooge can't even bear to look at his nephew. So I think what we're looking at is a really, really Burnt Snake primary who looks like a miserable Idealist because - in the absence of People - at least it's something. It's also interesting how the classic Burnt Snake hedonism has manifested in Scrooge as a sort of anti-hedonism... but functionally it works the same way. An extreme focus on yourself and your body.

I think Scrooge's ex-fiancee Belle has him figured out when she says "Another idol [Gain] has displaced me (...) You fear the world too much. All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid reproach." Scrooge is so scared of being hurt that he's made himself into this person who the world can't hurt. Which is why he can't recognize suffering in others, he's too cutoff from his own pain.

All his other lessons are just as Snake-flavored. Bob Cratchit gets through to him because dear GOD that man is a loud Snake primary. And the Future sequence? When Scrooge is dead with no one to morn him? The nightmarish horror of that to a Snake primary.

And in terms of his secondary... Scrooge spends most of the story with a really burnt secondary as well. He doesn't enjoy anything. And then there's the very end, after he gets his second chance:

"He went to church, and walked about the streets, and watched the people hurrying to and fro, and patted children on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked down into the kitchens of houses, and up to the windows: and found that everything could yield him pleasure. He had never dreamed that any walk -- that anything -- could give him so much happiness."

He's enjoying life, and he's doing it in a super Badger secondary way. His "founder of the feast" redemption moment is ALL about building community. We also know that young, lonely Ebenezer made a kind of imaginary friend community out of book characters which is... really sad, and really relatable. And well, he is literally a bookkeeper, so I guess Bookkeeper Badger fits there too.

So - Ebenezer Scrooge. Really, really Burnt Snake Badger with a protective Bird primary model who unBurns over the course of the story. And GOOD ASK. He's an IMPORTANT character.

[justp34chy]

First Meeting

takes place Briars first year of high school lol

     Highschool, A terrible place full of sorrows and stress. I moved to the G4 district not too long ago and have gained a decent amount of popularity since I have, I’ve even had a few girls ask me on dates. Of course I turned them down. I barely knew any of them, I have better things to do anyway. Walking through the halls I was approached by yet another girl, I groaned in my head, mentally preparing for turning down another confession but I'm caught off guard when it never comes. The girl was the president of the photography club and needed student volunteers to be models for a project they were working on. Not too long before that I was asking a teacher to work alone on a project and was reminded to put myself out there and befriend some people. Reluctantly, I agreed to model for the photography club. It wouldn't be my first time modelling afterall, they should feel lucky that I didn’t just turn the other way when I was asked. The girl who’s name I do not remember tells me to join them in the club room at the end of the day. That was not far from now as it was last period. I nod in understanding and resume walking to my next class, not giving her enough time to say anything more.

     Biology, My favourite subject. I’ve always been fascinated with how the human body works. I knew every intricate system and how everything behaved by memory, a morbid little child reading books full of gore and viscera. Naturally I was passing the class with flying colours, I was the teacher's golden child. This class was nothing special, just a period where students could study for an upcoming test next week. I didn't need to study but I did anyway, drawing an intricate diagram of the human skeletal system with labels and everything, patiently waiting for the bell to ring so I could get this photography club activity done and over with. Eventually it does ring and I silently grab my bag from my locker and walk up to the photography club room. I enter the room, great, I'm the first one there. I awkwardly place myself at a desk and wait for the few members the club had to actually show up. No less than five minutes later the first student shows up, some kid named Travis or something dumb like that, he seems confused as to why im here so I don’t think he was filled in on the project. He asked me a question but I didn't answer because the club president entered the room and filled him in. She seemed excited to see that I actually showed up and didn't just bail on her. I sat silently for fifteen minutes until all of the members arrived except one. The club president doesn't wait for that last student, assuming that they aren't coming in today she begins explaining that me and five other volunteers would be assigned to two club members and have to model for them. Mid sentence the door slams open the culprit screaming

     “I'm here! I'm here!” in a panic. The president sighs and welcomes him, ushering him to sit down and explaining the project again just for good measure before assigning the students to volunteers. Turns out I was only assigned to one person as there were an odd number of club members, someone named Ajax. I look around to find who responded to the name and, oh no it’s the late kid, and he’s staring at me with what looks like awe in his eyes. I force myself to walk up to him as he’s just sitting there and looking at me rather than making a move to talk to me for this project. 

     “Hello?” I greet him, snapping him out of his daze with my accent. He clearly didn’t expect me to have a german accent due to his eyes widening in surprise before awkwardly sputtering a greeting. I silently sit down next to him, he has short scruffy black hair and what looks like a patchy beard he's trying to grow out.

     “I like your hair, I've always wanted to grow mine out but my parents won't let me.” Ajax breaks the silence. I fiddled with my hair, I guess it was getting quite long. It wasn't the first time someone pointed out how long it was but this time it felt different somehow.

     “Thanks.” I answer in monotone, he could tell how uninterested I was about being here “why wont your parents let you grow it out?”

     “They say it'll make me look to feminine, but I don't believe them. Someone can look like a man and still have long hair.” I turn my head to look at him with a raised eyebrow. “Don’t worry I don’t think you look like a girl, though I swear I’ve seen a picture of you in a girls magazine before. Aren't you an actual model?” Ajax answers my question before I can even ask it and I feel my face heat up as he mentions that small gig I had for a magazine a few weeks ago. He notices my fluster and says that he's honoured to work with an actual model, though the blush doesn’t dissipate so he switches the topic to how he wants to compose the photos for the project. We had a long conversation about photography. He seems very passionate about it and he's excited to photograph me. I tell him how I want to be portrayed in the photos and elements I do and don't want in them before exchanging numbers and parting our separate ways once the club meeting is over. I don't think I mind participating in this project anymore.