#Cognitive games for cats

[hsmagazine254]

Exploring Kenya With Your Pet: A Guide To Travelling Safely & Happily - H&S Pets Galore

Embark On Pawsome Adventures: Tips For Travelling With Your Furry Companion In Kenya Travelling with pets can be a rewarding experience, especially in a country as diverse and beautiful as Kenya. Whether you’re planning a safari or a city escape, bringing your furry friend along requires careful preparation. Here are some tips to ensure a safe and enjoyable journey for both you and your…

[bun-latte]

Sometimes i really wish there were more agere posts about littles who are like, 9-15 years old. :(

it only ever seems to all be things 0-6 years old, mostly focused on pre-school to MAYBE first grade age.

I think itd be nice to have more posts that focus on later school years, and about social/cognitive norms for those ages too.

[damienkarras73]

An essay on Furiosa, the politics of the Wasteland, Arthurian literature and realistic vs. formalistic CGI

Mad Max: Fury Road absolutely enraptured me when it came out nearly a decade ago, and I will cop to seeing it four times at the theatre. For me (and many others who saw the light of George Miller) it set new standards for action filmmaking, storytelling and worldbuilding, and I could pop in its Blu Ray at any time and never get tired of it. Perhaps not surprisingly, I was deeply apprehensive about the announced prequel for Fury Road's actual main character, Furiosa, even if Miller was still writing and directing. We didn't need backstory for Furiosa—hell, Fury Road is told in such a way that NOTHING in it requires explicit backstory. And since it focuses on the Yung Furiosa, it meant Charlize Theron couldn't return with another career-defining performance. Plus, look at all that CGI in the trailer, it can't be as good as Fury Road.

Turns out I was silly to doubt George Miller, M.D., A.O., writer and director of Babe: Pig in the City and Happy Feet One & Two.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is excellent, and I needn't have worried about it not being as good as Fury Road because it is not remotely trying to be Fury Road. Fury Road is a lean, mean machine with no fat on it, nothing extraneous, operating with constant forward momentum and only occasionally letting up to let you breathe a little; Furiosa is a classical epic, sprawling in scope, scale and structure, and more than happy to let the audience simmer in a quiet, almost painfully still moment. If its opening spoken word sequence by that Gandalf of the Wastes himself, the First History Man, didn't already clue you in, it unfolds like something out of myth, a tale told over and over again and whose possible embellishments are called attention to in the dialogue itself. Where Fury Road scratched the action nerd itch in my head like you wouldn't believe, Furiosa was the equivalent of Miller giving the undulating folds of my English major brain a deep tissue massage. That's great! I, for one, love when sequels/prequels endeavour to be fundamentally different movies from what they're succeeding/preceding, operating in different modes, formats and even genres, and more filmmakers should aim for it when building on an existing series.

This movie has been on my mind so much in the past week that I've ended up dedicating several cognitive processes to keeping track of all of the different ponderings it's spawned. Thankfully, Furiosa is divided into chapters (fun fact: putting chapter cards in your movie is a quick way to my heart), so it only seems fitting that I break up all of these cascading thoughts accordingly.

1. The Pole of Inaccessibility

Furiosa herself actually isn't the protagonist for the first chapter of her own movie, instead occupying the role of a (very crafty and resourceful) damsel in distress for those initial 30-40 minutes. The real hero of the opening act, which plays out like a game of cat and mouse, is Furiosa's mother Mary Jabassa, who rides out into the wasteland first on horseback and then astride a motorcycle to track down the band of raiders that has stolen away her daughter. Mary's brought to life by Miller and Nico Lathouris' economical writing and a magnetic performance by newcomer Charlee Fraser, who radiates so much screen presence in such relatively little time and with one of those instant "who is SHE??" faces. She doesn't have many lines, but who needs them when Fraser can convey volumes about Mary with just a flash of her eyes or the effortless way she swaps out one of her motorcycle's wheels for another. To be quite candid, I'm not sure of the last time I fell in love with a character so quickly.

You notice a neat aesthetic contrast between mother and daughter in retrospect: Mary Jabassa darts into the desert barefoot, clad in a simple yet elegant dress, her wolf cut immaculate, only briefly disguising herself with the ugly armour of a raider she just sniped, and when she attacks it's almost with grace, like some Greek goddess set loose in the post-apocalyptic Aussie outback with just her wits and a bolt-action rifle; we track Furiosa's growth over the years by how much of her initially conventional beauty she has shed, quite literally in one case (hair buzzed, severed arm augmented with a chunky mechanical prosthesis, smeared in grease and dirt from head to toe, growling her lines at a lower octave), and by how she loses her mother's graceful approach to movement and violence, eventually carrying herself like a blunt instrument. Yet I have zero doubt the former raised the latter, both angels of different feathers but with the same steel and resolve. Of fucking course this woman is Furiosa's mother, and in the short time we know her we quickly understand exactly why Furiosa has the drive and morals she does without needing to resort to didactic exposition.

Anyway, I was tearing up by the end of the first chapter. Great start!

2. Lessons from the Wasteland

Most movies—most stories, really—don't actually tell the entire narrative from A to Z. Perhaps the real meat of the thing is found from H to T, and A-G or U-Z are unnecessary for conveying the key narrative and themes. So many prequels fail by insisting on telling the A-G part of the story, explaining how the hero earned a certain nickname or met their memorable sidekick—but if that stuff was actually interesting, they likely would have included it in the original work. The greatest thing a prequel can actually do is recontextualize, putting iconic characters or moments in a new light, allowing you to appreciate them from a different angle. All of season 2 of Fargo serves to explain why Molly Solverson's dad is appropriately wary when Lorne Malvo enters his diner for a SINGLE SCENE in the show's first season. David's arc from the Alien prequels Prometheus and Covenant—polarizing as those entries are—adds another layer to why Ash is so protective of the creature in the first movie. Andor gives you a sense of what it's like for a normal, non-Jedi person to live under the boot of the Empire and why so many of them would join up with the Rebel Alliance—or why they would desire to wear that boot, or even just crave the chance to lick it.

Furiosa is one of those rare great prequels because it makes us take a step back and consider the established world with a little more nuance, even if it's still all so absurd. In Fury Road, Immortan Joe is an awesome, endlessly quotable villain, completely irredeemable, and basically a cartoon. He works perfectly as the antagonist of that breakneck, Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote-ass movie, but if you step outside of its adrenaline-pumping narrative for even a moment you risk questioning why nobody in the Citadel or its surrounding settlements has risen up against him before. Hell, why would Furiosa even work for him to begin with? But then you see Dementus and company tear-assing around the wasteland, seizing settlements and running them into the ground, and you realize Joe and his consortium offer something that Dementus reasonably can't: stability—granted, an unwavering, unchangeable stability weighted in favour of Joe's own brutal caste system, but stability nonetheless. It really makes you wonder, how badly does a guy have to suck to make IMMORTAN JOE of all people look like a sane, competent and reasonable ruler by comparison?!?

…and then they open the door to the vault where he keeps his wives, and in a flash you're reminded just how awful Joe is and why Furiosa will risk her life to help some of these women flee from him years later. This new context enriches Joe and makes it more believable that he could maintain power for so long, but it doesn't make him any less of a monster, and it says a lot about Furiosa's hate for Dementus that she could grit her teeth and work for this sick old tyrant.

3. The Stowaway

Here's another wild bit of trivia about this movie: you don't actually see top-billed actress Anya Taylor-Joy pop up on screen until roughly halfway through, once Furiosa is in her late teens/early twenties. Up until this point she's been played by Alyla Browne, who through the use of some seamless and honestly really impressive CGI has been given Anya's distinctive bug eyes [complimentary]. It's one of those bold choices that really works because Miller commits to it so hard, though it does make me wish Browne's name was up on the poster next to Taylor-Joy's.

Speaking of CGI, I should talk about what seems to be a sticking point for quite a few people: if there's been one consistent criticism of Furiosa so far, it's that it doesn't look nearly as practical or grounded as Fury Road, with more obvious greenscreen and compositing, and what previously would've been physical stunt performers and pyrotechnics have been replaced with their digital equivalents for many shots. Simply put, it doesn't look as real! For a lot of people, that practicality was one of Fury Road's primary draws, so I won't try to quibble if they're let down by Furiosa's overt artificiality, but to be honest I'm actually quite fine with it. It helps that this visual discrepancy doesn't sneak up on you but is incredibly apparent right from the aerial zoom-down into Australia in the very first scene, so I didn't feel misled or duped.

Fury Road never asks you to suspend your disbelief because it all looks so believable; Furiosa jovially prods you to suspend that disbelief from the get-go and tune into it on a different wavelength. It's a classical epic, and like the classical epics of the 1950s and 60s it has a lot of actors standing in front of what clearly are matte paintings. It feels right! We're not watching fact, we're watching myth. I'm willing to concede there might be a little bit of post-hoc rationalization on my part because I simply love this movie so much, but I'm not holding the effects in Furiosa to the same standard as those in Fury Road because I simply don't believe Miller and his crew are attempting to replicate that approach. Without the extensive CGI, we don't get that impressive long, panning take where a stranded Furiosa scans the empty, dust-and-sun-scoured wasteland (75% Sergio Leone, 25% Andrei Tarkovsky), or the Octoboss and his parasailing goons. For the sake of intellectual exercise I did try imagining them filming the Octoboss/war rig sequence with the same immersive practical approach they used for Fury Road's stunts, however I just kept picturing dead stunt performers, so perhaps the tradeoff was worth it!

4. Homeward

Around the same time we meet the Taylor-Joy-pilled Furiosa in Chapter 3, we're introduced to Praetorian Jack, the chief driver for the convoys running between the Citadel and its allied settlements. Jack's played by Tom Burke, who pulled off a very good Orson Welles in Mank! and who I should really check out in The Souvenir one of these days. He's also a cool dude! Here are some facts about Praetorian Jack:

He's decked out in road leathers with a pauldron stitched to one shoulder

He's stoic and wary, but still more or less personable and can carry on a conversation

Professes to a certain cynicism, to quote Special Agent Albert Rosenfield, but ultimately has a capacity for kindness and will do the right thing

Shoots a gun real good

Can drive like nobody's business

So in other words, Jack is Mad Max. But also, no, he clearly isn't! He looks and dresses like Mad Max (particularly Mel Gibson's) and does a lot of the same things "Mad" Max Rockatansky does, but he's also very explicitly a distinct character. It's a choice that seems inexplicable and perhaps even lazy on its face, except this is a George Miller movie, so of course this parallel is extremely purposeful. Miller has gone on record saying he avoids any kind of strict chronology or continuity for his Mad Max movies, compared to the rigid canons for Star Trek and Star Wars, and bless him for doing so. It's more fun viewing each Mad Max entry as a new revision or elaboration on a story being told again and again generations after the fall, mutating in style, structure and focus with every iteration, becoming less grounded as its core narrative is passed from elder to youth, community to community, genre to genre, until it becomes myth. (At least, my English major brain thinks it's more fun.) In fact there's actually something Arthurian to it, where at first King Arthur was mentioned in several Welsh legends before Geoffrey of Monmouth crafted an actual narrative around him, then Chrétien de Troyes added elements like Lancelot and infused the stories with more romance, and then with Le Morte d'Arthur Thomas Malory whipped the whole cycle together into one volume, which T.H. White would chop and screw and deconstruct with The Once and Future King centuries later.

All this to say: maybe Praetorian Jack looks and sounds and acts like Max because he sorta kinda basically is, being just one of many men driving back and forth across the wasteland, lending a hand on occasion, who'll be conflated into a single, legendary "Mad Max" at some point down the line in a different History Man's retelling of Furiosa's odyssey. Sometimes that Max rips across the desert in his V8 Interceptor, other times driving a big rig. Perhaps there's a dog tagging along and/or a scraggly and at first aggravating ally played by Bruce Spence or Nicholas Hoult. Usually he has a shotgun. But so long as you aren't trying to kill him, he'll help you out.

5. Beyond Vengeance

The Mad Max movies have incredibly iconic villains—Immortan Joe! Toecutter! the Lord Humongous!—but they are exactly that, capital V Villains devoid of humanizing qualities who you can't wait to watch bad things happen to. Furiosa appears to continue this trend by giving us a villain who in fact has a mustache long enough that he could reasonably twirl it if he so wanted, but ironically Dementus ends up being the most layered antagonist in the entire series, even moreso than the late Tina Turner's comparatively benevolent Aunty Entity from Beyond Thunderdome. And because he's played by Chris Hemsworth, whose comedic delivery rivals his stupidly handsome looks, you lock in every time he's on screen.

Something so fascinating about Dementus is that, for a main antagonist, he's NOT all-powerful, and in fact quite the opposite: he's more conman than warlord, looking for the next hustle, the next gullible crowd he can preach to and dupe—though never for long. For all his bluster, at every turn he finds himself in way over his head and writing cheques he can't cash, and this self-induced Sisyphean torment makes him riveting to watch. You're tempted to pity Dementus but it's also quite difficult to spare sympathy for someone who's so quick to channel their rage and hurt and ego into thoughtless, burn-it-all-down destruction. When you're not laughing at him, you're hating his guts, and it's indisputably the best work of Chris Hemsworth's career.

It's in this final chapter that everything naturally comes to a head: Furiosa's final evolution into the character we meet at the start of Fury Road, the predictable toppling of Dementus' precariously built house of cards, and the mythmaking that has been teased since the very first scene becoming diagetic text, the last of which allows the movie to thoroughly explore the themes of vengeance it's been building to. A brief war begins, is summarized and is over in the span of roughly a minute, and on its face it's a baffling narrative choice that most other filmmakers would have botched. But our man Miller's smart enough to recognize that the result of this war is the most foregone of conclusions if you've been paying even the slightest bit of attention, so he effectively brushes past it to get to the emotional heart of the climax and an incredible "Oh shit!" payoff that cements Miller as one of mainstream cinema's greatest sickos.

Fury Road remains the greatest Mad Max film, but Furiosa might be the best thing George Miller has ever made. If not his magnum opus, it does at least feel like his dissertation, and it makes me wish Warner Bros. puts enough trust in him despite Furiosa's poor box office performance that he's able to make The Wasteland. Absolutely ridiculous that a man just short of his 80th birthday was able to pull this off, and with it I feel confident calling him one of my favourite directors.

[livingslime]

Frequently asked questions

When will the full game be released?

The release date for the full version is still to be announced. I work on this visual novel in my free time, so progress may vary. Currently, the project is in its early stages, making it difficult to project a completion date. As development progresses and I get closer to finishing, I hope to have a clearer timeline.

Is MC really in a hospital?

It is intentionally ambiguous whether the MC is truly in a hospital. The absence of nurses and Dr. Anselm being the only one attending to the MC are deliberately meant to provoke player suspicion. This mystery and the setting’s true nature are meant to unravel in later chapters.

Where did the MC's pee go?

The MC has a urinary catheter, a medical device used to drain urine from the bladder into an attached collection bag.

Urine collection bags connected to a catheter are typically changed every 5 to 7 days.

In the later chapters, there will come a time when Anselm has to change the MC's peepee bag.

Does MC actually need a urinary catheter?

In cases of severe traumatic brain injury (TBI), a urinary catheter may be necessary, especially in the early stages of recovery. TBI can lead to a range of symptoms, including impaired mobility, cognitive changes, or decreased control over bodily functions.

Also MC was unconscious for 2 days before waking up, catheters are commonly used for unconscious patients.

Will MC ever take a shower?

Yes I was planning to use this as content for later chapters.

Fun fact : Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) patients in hospitals usually do not take showers independently, especially if they are in a critical or unstable condition. Instead, they are often given sponge baths or bed baths by staff to maintain hygiene without moving them too much, which could be risky. huehue

Will there be an ending where MC and Anselm are together?

Yes, absolutely! There will be an ending where MC and Anselm end up together. These endings will naturally come at the game's conclusion, and as I get closer to writing the finale, I'll have a clearer idea of how many good and bad endings there will be in total.

Was Anselm the one to cause MC's injury?

So this mystery is also to be unfolded in the later chapters. I hope readers understand that this visual novel has mystery/horror elements, there wouldn’t be much of a story if I revealed everything outright (ᗒᗨᗕ)

Does Anselm love the MC or just taking care of them?

Anselm's heart belongs entirely to the MC; they're the only one he truly loves.

Is Anselm a dog or cat person? or any other animal?

Anselm doesn’t usually keep pets, as he’s often away and lacks the time to care for one. But if he and the MC were living together and the MC wanted a pet, he would happily bring one home and enjoy caring for it together with them.

If he could, Anselm would create a beautiful bird terrarium—a place where he could observe them freely within a controlled space. There, they’d be safe, unable to leave but he alone is able to admire their beauty.

[kerink]

i used to have a black cat. i had him for 15 years and for most of his life i didn't know about the outdoor cat debate and by the time i learned i thought it would be cruel to deny him something in his last few years of life that he'd always had. so i let him stay an indoor-outdoor cat. this came back to bite me squarely in the ass because one time he was picked up and taken to the shelter.

when i was driving to go pick him up i was so anxious that i wouldn't be able to tell him apart. he wasn't chipped at the time, so there was no sure-fire way to identify him. and he had no distinguishing features. think of a black cat and that was him. i was so worried there would be other black cats there and i'd be fucked. this was insane, of course, because i immediately was able to tell him apart from the other two black cats there because i'd had him for 15 years and he'd been my companion through some of the worst shit in my life and i knew him.

but the thing is, i couldn't tell you why. other than a slight notch in his ear there was nothing special about his appearance. i could tell you the difference between my mom and step-mom down to minute details, but can't tell you the shape of my cat's face compared to other standard all-black american short-hairs.

i think about this experience a lot when i think about the stan switch in the fearamid. yes, to us, it was obvious who was stan and who was ford, but that's because we're humans.

bill isn't just an alien but he's from an entirely different dimension, in both sense of the word. yes bill has some phenotypical similarities to humans, in that he has four limbs and an eye, but even those aren't the same as ours.

would bill have known to look for a cleft chin? is his color vision the same enough for him to tell that ford's hair is not only a different color but two-toned? does bill even grasp the concept of facial hair let alone personal styling? even if he does cognitively understand it, are they obvious enough to him that he can clock them as easily as we can? and especially while desperate and under pressure? you get tunnel vision when you're angry, after all.

i'm sure if i'd asked my cat about it he would have been offended i couldn't tell apart the facial features and fur length and whisker alignment that made him different from the other black cats. let alone things cats use to identify each other that we can neither register nor comprehend, like scent.

what's the primary way euclydians tell each other apart? color? shape? that's not enough, that's like saying ethnicity and body type are all i'd need to distinguish two people. those are certainly helpful starting points, but i'm going to need a lot more, and most of those things are so subtle i'd probably struggle to describe them. have you ever tried to make yourself or a loved one photo-realistic in a video game? huge pain in the ass, right? there's always something not right about it and i bet you're never able to tell just what exactly is wrong.

that cat has since passed and i have two new cats. they're both tabbies, both girls, both the same age and size and body type. they are different colors and different patterns, but i don't even need that to tell them apart. i can tell them apart by fur-texture alone. rolling over in the middle of the night and bumping someone and knowing just who it is.

if bill had picked "ford" up would he have been able to tell it was stan? would the weight of him, the way "ford" struggled to find footing on his palm, the way bill's fingers didn't wrap around him right, the texture of "ford's" hands against his skin, would all of that have given away the ruse? this is not what it feels like to hold ford, just like i know kiki is silky and bubbie is soft.

my covid lock-down hobby was rescuing stray cats. my neighborhood was just infested with them and i'm good with cats and my neighbors were not so fuck me i guess this is my job now. i ended up rehabilitating, socializing, and re-homing 22 cats that year. a lot of those were kittens that wound up being born in my yard or in the crawl space. one of the litters wound up having twins and i couldn't for the life of me tell them apart. they were just brown tabby 1 and brown tabby 2 until they got a little older and one of them wound up having longer fur on the top of his head and i could work with that.

so much of telling other animals apart, for us, is color and shape and obvious details like fur length or injury.

ford wore the same stupid trench coat for over 30 years. even when he was in his scifi action hero getup, he was still in a trench coat. and when he changed into his post-portal fit, it was exactly the same as his scifi look just in a different colorway. and i know, obviously, this is because he is a cartoon character and that's how character design works but play with me here.

is ford dressing himself in a uniform to be obviously and consistently distinguishable?

i have a leg-up on telling cats apart because we're both mammals and share a common ancestor. yes humans and cats are very different, but not really. i think it'd be obvious to an alien that we came from the same planet; or if not obvious, then once told i'm sure it'd be believable.

bill is a 2 dimensional being that's over a trillion years old and has been all over the multiverse and has fist-fought time baby and the cosmic axolotl owes him a favor. humans are probably less than bugs to him.

but i have friends who keep insects and molluscs for pets and they can tell you just the same as i can with my cats: once you know a creature, you can tell them apart.

bill probably could have told stan and ford apart if he'd given himself a second to think, but he didn't. he was angry and tired and just ready for this to be over, so he let heuristics take over: this one has the shape and color and sound of ford, so that must be him. he didn't even pause long enough to see that the biggest, most obvious cue was missing: the extra finger.

if i had only given myself the time bill gave himself, and if the shelter people had been putting as much pressure on me as the town was putting on bill, would i have noticed the small notch in my cat's ear? or would i have made a split-second decision on pure instinct alone?

i had 13 more years than bill to get to know my pet, and i've sure as shit lived a smaller life than him, so maybe... but would i have banked the freedom and safety of my entire dimension on it?

[davekat-sucks]

Daaaamn that last ask I made did numbers! I think I’m gonna do a part 2, the alpha version.

1st, some addendums:

1. I saw that reblog saying people were flanderizing Gamzee as being a religious healer and spiritual person when he’s a juggalo and I just wanna say, okay I did lean in hard on his spiritualism but you gotta remember Alternian juggalos are part of an obscure clown cult and Gamzee was heavily invested in Miracles so I still think he’d make a Yourube channel for spreading his gospel, but doubles as also a music review channel. He 100% is invested on who’s part of the rap game and wants to teach people how to spit bars. His rap game is just so ass people would rather watch his miracle videos instead. Also when he livestreams he does it on his unicycle to keep him “physically and mentally balanced” as he says

2: my headcanon is that everyone is alive and living on Earth C as adults because I can do anything when Lord English is dead.

3: I could not say enough how many combos everyone would interact each other. There’s some underrated dynamics here like Eridan being Rose’s #1 hater and claiming all her evidence and recordings of the horrorterrors summoning black magic can be scientifically proven to be fabricated, and when John steps in and says he knows when to spot a fake and this is 100% real Eridan just calls John a simp.

Now that that’s off of my chest, what is everyone else up to?

Alpha trolls/

Damara: she’s not a Youtuber, her aggression and comments usually get her banned from interacting with her other friends, she more uses Instagram and Pinterest to upload her story. It’s a lot of photos of landscapes, anime girls, and for some reason the interiors of mansions color shifted to be green. Her captions are all in japanese (or East Alternian) and usually vaguepost towards how she’s lost and abandoned, she wants to be alive and someone to be with her and understand what she’s actually saying and that everyone who has wronged her is going to inevitably suffer. Her posts usually get 1-2 likes and they’re from Rufioh and Aranea.

Rufioh: he is an anime news and fandom channel. He is quite the reputable journalist and consistently finds leaks and obscure interviews from creators to share what is coming soon for the anime industry. When he’s not making news he does speculation and powerscaling videos, a lot of “what if” ideas and top 10 lists for hottest anime baddies. How does Rufioh stay so much on top of anime news? You’d have to ask his ex-girlfriend.

Mituna: Guy Who Annoys You On Purpose. Mituna is someone who since has been left by his friends for his declined mental cognition decides to have fun by trying to make new friendships his way, unfortunately that way is his erratic and vulgar way. He likes to go on GTA V servers and Omegle chat rooms and annoy people. He likes to quip jokes, distract or overwhelm people with his rambling and his body language. He most especially likes when it gets quiet and he jumpscares everyone with a loud scream. It makes him laugh his full body suit off.

Kankri: Video Essay Breadtuber. He makes those 2-4 hour long videos stitched together and scripted about different pieces of pop-culture or the current thing on social media through a lens of social justice, but his version of social justice happens to be morally condescending and judgmental. The average title of his essays would be stuff like “Michael Bay’s Transformers, the uncritical advocate for the patriarchy.” And you know these get dislike bombed into hell and back. A surprising theme of many of his video essays is the themes of sex and family dynamics. These essays commonly conclude that the only liberating relationship is lesbian polyamory and men should be celibate to save their sperm for the next generation of people to be raised.

Meulin: 100% a drama channel that covers recent topics, like Penguin0 but Charlie is a cat lady and the video focus is much more on people than online trends. Meulin loves to speculate and draw diagrams on the personalities and types each person has and what other e-celebs are the most compatible with. This discussion goes off topic from the actual events happening and usually becomes a nuisance. The neat thing is all her videos have working subtitles, since she wants deaf people like her to enjoy her content as well!

Porrim: Lifestyle Blogger. Porrim wants to show the world there’s a different way for women to love by and their own way to go, so she bought a farm and raised herself in the homestead. She likes to do many things around the house, like home improvement, cattle handling, cooking and cleaning, and decoration. Her audience is such a mix because her subscriber base is both lesbians that want a pretty lady like her and misogynistic guys who view her as a “tradwife” who is missing a worthy husband. She has the most subscribers out of any channel, reaching 750k subscribers and getting her own Youtube awards.

Latula: She’s quite the gamer. She reviews video games and loves to livestream her playing various Esports titles like League of Legends or Street Fighter. She encourages her subscribers to stay physically fit and active, and her Youtube shorts consist entirely of a Go-Pro recording her doing sick skateboarding tricks. When she’s not recording anything she’s miserable and uses Mituna as an emotional crutch to keep her happy. Kankri also tries to call and text her, but Latula never replies.

Aranea: She loves to talk about things that happened and her opinion on them. She is the Sarah Z of the Homestuck cast. Her focus, similar to Sarah Z is also on fanfiction and fandom culture. Her Youtube channel has about 225k subscribers but her Tumblr blog only has 20k. Such is the rot of this hellsite.

Horuss: Men’s Advice Channel. The twist for Horuss that deviates himself from the likes of fitness YouTubers or pickup artists is he actually strives to be a Beta Male. He makes videos with titles like “don’t let the others get in your head, Beta is Better” or “Smile and keep quiet, you will be rewarded” and goes on and on about being submissive, obedient, and empathetic are actually the good things men should do and Alpha Males get it all wrong and push women away with their misguided masculinity.

Kurloz: he’s the silent type. His videos probably would be more akin to artistic performances or interpretative dancing. Kurloz’s way of dancing, however, is more akin to doing mime things and charades than bodily rhythmic motion and expressionism. In a way, doing mine shit is one of the greatest ways to express one’s self through silent theatre.

Cronus: He’s the nerd. To try and connect with humankind as much as oossible and be humankin he has tried to buy as much content and toys from human media as possible to connect and act like a human. He 100% has a wall of Funko Pops, and he wants to show you them.

Meenah: She’s a Sims Youtuber, but instead of making silly guys from cartoons and TV shows interact with each other, all her episodes involve her ex-friend group and the Alpha kids. She likes to play God, randomly rewarding and punishing her sims in ways she sees fit. She finally has the control she always wanted, and amazingly she has 400k people subscribed to her antics.

Wow the alpha trolls were quite a group, now onto more familiar faces!

Alpha kids/

Jane: baking and food palette channel! Her cooking skills are unrivaled, and she’s even sold a few books on how to cook like her. While her cookbooks are good for generally feeding yourself with delicious recipes, her Youtube channel is more focused on fun and entertaining an audience. Her spin is every plate she makes is treated like a detective story. The ingredients for the recipe are used as clues for a crime scene, and she even uses tape, chalk outlines, and utensils in plastic bags as props for her investigation. Every crime is solved when the culprit is revealed to be the completed dish and the crimes they commit vary from wanting to not be eaten, or first degree homicide against multiple minors (don’t worry the minors in this case are chicken eggs)

Roxy: Genetics and Cat videos. Roxy is a cat breeder Youtuber that wants to show you how to make a cat even without a mate, and she does this through the wonders of ectobiology! She has tips and tricks for how to set up your ectobiology machine, how to track your cat through space and time. How paradox clones are made and when you can retrieve your cat at the right time, and most importantly, how to store freak clones of your favorite pet. Dave has gone on her channel to explain and show how animals are preserved in resin (yeah remember that’s a thing Dave liked to do? Reread his introduction pages back on Act 2)

Dirk: Animation and Story channel. Trying to pick up off of Dave Strider’s work on Sweet Bri and Hella Jeff, Dirk has took it on his own to create the next generation of incredible irony. He has made a 134 episode comic series about Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff coming across a portal to a parallel universe where they meet their bizarro twins, Sweet Jeff and Hella Bro. The webseries has it all, a simple start full of lighthearted shitposting and comedy evolving into a metanarrative about the nature of humanity, the struggles between stoicism and the desire to be loved and vulnerable to others, a Geromy redemption arc and a plot thread involving the Mane Six from My Little Pony becoming REAL. It’s considered the greatest work of Internet culture since Problem Sleuth 2: The case of the Midnight Crew.

Jake: Reaction Channel. Jake does not have a creative bone in his body, and rarely an original thought, but what he absolutely loves to do is support his friends, so he made a reaction channel where he reacts to the videos other people have made. He’s reacted to a lot of content, like all of the Alpha and Beta kids content, Karkat’s rant videos, Equius’s electrical engineering work and even some aloha trolls like Latula and Mituna. It’s the lowest bar for Youtuber content but tbh Jake is a page and it’ll be a while until he reaches his full potential and starts making his true calling: videos of himself shooting things from very far away. He’s a Marksman still getting used to his aim.

Yeeeeah! I did it woooooo all alpha trolls and kids done!

These are so goddamn good!

[quinton-reviews]

have you ever thought about doing a Game Shakers video? or is the show too boring to really justify such a thing?

So when it comes to doing Henry Danger and Game Shakers videos, there are really a few things I think people need to keep in mind...

The mini-series so far is really heavily about me revisiting my nostalgia and kind of answering my curiosity about where these shows went. So reviewing iCarly and Victorious worked because they were of "my era." Sam & Cat worked on that level of "What happened after I stopped watching?" I think that if I don't have a specific goal or pitch, just flippantly watching kid shows from faaaar past my childhood works less as a concept.

One of the great things about iCarly and Victorious is that both shows are barely, and I mean BARELY, in the copyright system on YouTube. Once or twice per season, I'd get one clip or one episode that I had trouble with. But it was shocking how much I could get away with. Sam & Cat was hell because it was clear that by 2013 Nick was uploading stuff to the YouTube copyright library as it was made. So no matter what I did, I would get a copyright claim. This is honestly why those final two videos were much more indulgent than my usual style. I kind of went, "if I have to fight copyright anyway, might as well show more clips..." I regret this somewhat, as now my new video still has 20+ days until I'll have full ads AND I now have a reputation for only recapping plotlines. But that's what you get I guess.

This is much more a thing for Henry Danger than Game Shakers, but another issue is just how much content there is with these shows. Henry Danger has a decade of content, recapping all of it would be both unsurmountable journey and... Well, not fun to watch. So if I ever did these shows, I would have to really focus more on season-by-season analysis rather than actual episodes.

I think my videos on iCarly, Victorious and Sam & Cat are all connected by certain themes and points that I am now drawing closure to. The gags about "the creator," the cognitive dissonance, the attachment to childhood, etc. So if I do reviews on other shows, I have to find new angles and themes to establish. Drake & Josh and Zoey 101 are topics I like because instead of focusing on the creator, I can focus on the lives of the stars and how fame affected them. When it comes to Game Shakers and Henry Danger, the only possible throughline I can think of is how the shows were effective by the collapse of their creator and production studio. Henry Danger continued and improved while Game Shakers was effectively canceled early and fell on its face. But we've already covered all that. Game Shakers just doesn't have that pull to me, and because of that, I can't imagine finding an excuse to review it.

[couldurfaveescapeaperturescience]

i dont really do propaganda on my polls but this one is important to me especially for the non homestucks this propaganda is pulled from their intros because there is just so much to get into otherwise roxy and dirk will be the most helpful here but i want to get into them all also i obviously have an alpha kid prefernce im sorry rose passion for obscure literature, enjoys creative writing, has a fondness for bestially strange and fictitious, and sometimes dabbles in psycoanalysis dave spins incredibly ill jams using turn tables and mixing gear, likes obscure bands, collects and preserves weird dead things, amateur photographer, and he runs multiple ironically humorous blogs, websites, and social networking profiles roxy goddamn does she love wizards, wishes they were real and that so too is their magics, she enjoys writing fanprose about them that is not so great, she is however great at the esoteric sciences such as ectobiology, dark fenestrology, and appearification, she has accured many dead preserved cats from here expirments, she likes video games that are past their prime, she has a soft spot for old school technology, and her coding credit is totally rediculous she is as deadly to the grid as she is beautiful dirk holy shit does he love puppets, he has extreme dexterity to operate them unseen, that is when they are not pre-ambulatory through lovingly imbued mechanization, he digs writing cognitive algorithms, he's self taught on ancient civilizations, master of mythologue, a popculture academe, he dabbles in the sequential arts, against the better judgment of those his age he builds robots and sets them to kill mode and spars to the death, he also does rap battles with them and use sendification to give them to his friends dirk splinters lil' hal an autoresponder dirk made when he was 13 which is basically 13 year old dirk in a pair of anime sunglasses brobot only here because his is obvious a dirk splinter i dont like his name so i dont think about him, anyways he was sent to jake by dirk in order to keep jake on his toes by fighting him ghost brain dirk is a version of dirk that was made from dirks heart powers and jakes hope powers there are others that i am not including to me those three are the main ones

[takami-takami]

Oh you know exactly what I want😈

Keigo + Primal Play

Go wild with it! ❤️

☕️anon

When it comes to primal instincts, Keigo Takami is king.

For all the years of sexual repression he endured as he focused on work, of shoving down his desires like neatly folded clothes in an overpacked suitcase, he didn't anticipate a curveball such as yourself to go ahead and unlatch the lock.

It starts the moment he lays eyes on you. Pretty little thing, he thinks, so excited to shake his firm hand and introduce yourself to the number two.

His gaze drops to the flesh of your neck.

You're unmarked.

He can keep it locked a little longer, over the months and years you get to know each other, as you become intertwined in your perfect little romance of an origin story.

You let your guard down around him, he thinks one afternoon, with your feet propped lazily on his couch. He tries not to watch out of the corner of his dilated eyes, the way your legs absentmindedly kick back and forth. The vulnerable to prey pipeline in his mind isn't one he prefers to give any credence to; but frankly, it is quite loud. Pressure builds and builds, and a dog held back by its kennel will grow restless in the absence of an outlet for such instincts.

It drives him up the wall, the way you'd let him do anything to you. Thoughts plague his mind on repeat as he stares up at his ceiling in the middle of the night, twisting a single feather between his thumb and index finger. Do you even know what you're asking for? Oh, he thinks you do. When he presses you down against the bed with a kiss, your legs fall open, entirely subconsciously. When he grips you with his nails tight enough to leave marks, you choke out a moan.

It takes every ounce of his cognitive effort to tap into the rational part of his mind, the part that wants to give it to you slow and sweet.

Saccharine as you are, sweet is what you deserve. But Keigo can see it in your eyes, in the wide-eyed way you blink up at him when he's on top of you, the way you roll your head to expose your jugular: sweet isn't what you want.

The last of his resolve cracks when you lean in and whisper, "you can do whatever you want to me. I want you to."

From that moment on, he starts to allow himself those indulgences. If he wants to make hickies bloom in obscene places, he'll do it. With his eyes so lidded he can barely see, he obliges your request and clicks a collar around your neck. He twists and stares in the mirror at the crimson claw marks on his back after each nightly shower, feathers trembling with a giddy thrill.

Satisfied, finally.

This newfound game of cat and mouse keeps him perfectly stimulated, feeds his need for enrichment and satiates his instincts exactly as he needs it. When you ask him what he'd think about playing a less than innocent game of hide and seek, he swears he's died and gone to heaven.

You're just perfect.

His favorite little chewtoy.

[hsmagazine254]

Unleashing Brilliance: Mind-Stimulating Games For Pets - H&S Pets Galore

Engaging Activities To Challenge And Enrich Your Pet’s Cognitive Abilities Beyond the ordinary walks and play sessions, introducing mind-stimulating games can work wonders for your pet’s overall well-being. This article unveils a spectrum of creative games designed to engage your pet’s mind, providing mental stimulation that contributes to a healthier and happier furry friend. Puzzle Feeders:…

[miniherodesktales]

Sick Days

It was Tuesday morning, a time Lister usually avoided by sleeping until mid-afternoon, but not today. Today he had chores and sick crew mates to care for.

'Again, Bob?! Seriously, don't!'

Chore one: free Bob the Scutter from the toilet. Remind him that there is no treasure down there. That was a lie.

Lister hoses the Scutter down in the shower and finishes just as the alarm started blaring.

Chore two: put the fire out. Cat doesn't like his pancakes being all "flamey". Curry sauce is good at dousing the flames. A little ketchup sweetens them up.

Even when ill the Cat looks elegant, reclining on the sofa in a pink silk dressing-gown and matching slippers.

'I want salmon, bud,' he rasps. 'And milk in a saucer with a gold straw.'

'You've just eaten.'

'Gotta keep my strength up.' The Cat coughs weakly. 'I feel really bad. My eyes are growing weak. I think I'm really going...'

Lister's watch starts beeping.

'Fine! Just give me 10 minutes.'

'Don't be long!' The Cat opens a magazine.

Chore 3: Ignore Kryten

'I'm sorry I'm not well enough to help with the daily chores, sir, I feel terrible.'

'It's fine, Kryten. Stop going on.'

'Very well.'

'....Well?'

'Well what, sir?'

'What did you call me for?'

'Just to say sorry, sir.'

'That's it? Kryten, I've just ran down the corridor to help you!'

'Oh, alright, I just wanted to make sure that you've washed the mop heads correctly. Because if you don't use the right setting on the machine they shed, sir, they shed everywhere.'

'I have to go check on Rimmer!'

Chore 4: Calm Rimmer down

Ion storms had a strange effect on the hologram. Some storms would leave him a foul mood, while this one...

Lister stumbled against the wall as Rimmer hugged him tightly. He had leapt down from the top bunk and was now firmly latched onto Lister.

'Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back!' he sang. 'I missed you, Dave!'

Lister smiles wearily as he pulls himself free.

'Did you get any sleep at all?' he asked.

'How could I when everything is so wonderful and amazing and exciting? Why won't let me out? I can help. I can help with everything!'

'You know why. Because right now you're completely loopy.'

'But I'm bored!'

'Did you do the jigsaw?'

'Yes! But was too easy.'

Lister glances at the JMC medical standard issue subtle cognitive test jigsaw. A simple 10 piece puzzle of a sad looking holographic cat designed to help assess the mental capabilities of holograms whacked out by ion storms. The cat was crying, a single tear drop rolling its face.

Rimmer had neatly stacked the pieces into a tower and then dribbled honey all over it. It was topped with one of those paper novelty umbrellas silly people have in drinks.

'You might need another day off,' Lister concluded. 'Go to bed, go to sleep.'

'No! I want to go dancing! Come dancing with me! Your eyes are so beautiful.'

Another bear hug. Lister tries to push him towards the bunks.

'You're sick. I have chores.'

'I feel incredible! I have so much energy! Don't leave me!'

'Sorry.'

'I love you.'

'I love you too, but right now you're not in your right mind.'

Suddenly Rimmer's mood shifts with the storm.

'I hate you!' he snarls. 'I love-hate you! I hate that so much!'

'That's my man. Be back later.'

Chore 101: Sleep

Much, much later, Lister drags his feet back to the back room. Rimmer is fast out on the sofa. The room was a terrible mess, with books, clothes, mugs, and video games flung everywhere, but it's a relief to see him resting, a good sign that he was finally in the recovery stage.

Lister covers him over with the weighted blanket.

Rimmer stirs.

'I said something...' he mumbles thickly, words slurred. 'I said I hated you...sorry...'

Lister smooths back his hair. 'Not to me. You must have dreamt it.' He kisses Rimmer's cheek. 'Back to sleep. You'll have a migraine tomorrow.'

Rimmer holds onto his hand. 'Stay.'

Lister squeezes his hand back. 'Okay.'

[baphometsss]

will the haters' patronisation of solas enjoyers ever end

for some reason people feel like hating a character who starts off with a shitty outlook and then has it challenged and unravelled in the story makes them morally superior. it's purity culture at its finest. we're literally at the point of these people accusing solas enjoyers of being racist/xenophobic/manipulative/abusive/insert whatever hatemongering buzzword they can think of as if it somehow bolsters their argument, when it actually just makes them look childish and willing to reduce very real and painful struggles to a metric in point scoring for petty online squabbles

i have actually seen people accuse critics of the veilguard as a game to nazis. i wish i was joking. like this is the point that we're at and it's so unbelievably dumb it's kind of funny

one of the reasons arguments based on this logic don't really achieve anything is because they frame every single thing around victimhood and a false dichotomy of victim/perpetrator. like t/erfs for example. they're a fringe movement within feminism for a number of reasons but one of the fundamental reasons is that they heavily focus on reinforcing victimhood rather than empowerment. they seek out and prey on traumatised women, take their trauma and twist it into hate by validating victimhood repeatedly until there's nothing else left but piss and vinegar for other people who aren't exactly like them. in fact, this formula is straight out of the radicalisation playbook used by neo-nazis, terrorists, and similar pieces of shit

instead of reinforcing self-actualisation, self-belief, hope, communion with other people, and understanding of the vulnerability inherent to all human beings (the things trauma survivors actually need), they focus on biological essentialism and other claptrap to explain why more segregation and hate is necessary. it makes this messy, complicated world more digestible for people with cognitive distortions that are so extreme. all under the guise of 'women's safety/rights'. it's unsustainable, because at some point we become perpetrators too and this ideology doesn't make room for that. hence why there's truth to phrases like 'scratch a terf, find a racist'. they flatly refuse to acknowledge intersectionality, because that requires accountability for oneself and by the time they're radicalised they can't view themselves as anything other than victim. and once you're radicalised, you can't connect with people who haven't also been radicalised, so it becomes a vicious cycle.

it's something that's so insidious but it's made its way into every part of our lives. you're not perfect. no one is perfect. everyone is a clusterfuck of bullshit mixed with beauty and love and the potential for pretty much unlimited evolution. that's why i love solas. he's an absolute fuck up in so many ways, but he's also a victim of eras-long emotional abuse, he's suicidally depressed, he's a monumental failure, he's a sad wet cat in elven form and he's one of the most interesting characters i've ever seen. i would take that over some morally 'pure' but flat, one-dimensional and boring companions who talk in therapy speak all day long.

but while we're on the topic of 'fixing him'... what exactly is that even supposed to mean? people can't be 'fixed'. all you can do is heal. and love is nourishment in its purest form. lavellan doesn't 'fix him', nor do they try. they try to help him because they love him, but they're not trying to 'fix' him. the use of this phrase only reinforces my belief that people are falling for the radicalisation in online spaces even more, because it screams cognitive distortion. if you play a high approval inky, they're trying to help him grow and learn and understand. it's sad that so much of social justice has become divorced from love when love is the most important aspect of any kind of justice. people hand-wave and piss on love as if its a bad thing. it's not. and it's certainly not a bad thing to love a character who's fucked up, because they're the hardest ones to love, and therefore the ones who need it most.

[glitter-stained]

Some advice to protect and support your brain

1. Wear a helmet. Please.

2. I know this must feel exhausting to see repeated if it's something you struggle with, but exercise really does help, in any capacity you can do it. Go for a walk, do a light routine, anything you can. Ask your doctor, look on the internet, if you can figure out a way to do something that works for you and doesn't feel like the nastiest chore in the world I encourage you to try it, at any frequency you can afford.

3. If you get a concussion, even a light one, go to the hospital. If the hospital doesn't orient you towards a neuropsychologist for an evaluation, insist on seeing one, and if they still fail at their job, go see a neuropsychologist in private. (Again, I know this sucks because it's expensive and not affordable for everyone depending on where you live and I'm sorry, this is the best I can give.) Same thing if you got hit in the head, didn't feel like it had consequences at the time, but have since been experiencing struggles with remembering stuff, impulsivity, etc. In general if you've experienced cognitive changes I encourage you to see a neuropsychologist but if you remember getting hit in the head, do mention it to them. Also, do monitor yourself for potential epilepsy, check what the signs are (they can be much less visible than you think), if you think there's a risk make a card to let people know what to do. If you think there's a risk you might have developed epilepsy after the hit, go back to the hospital, and while explaining your concerns mention that you got hit in the head.

4. Do stuff. Look, there are so many experiments and studies about how juggling helps the brain, or music, or knitting, or writing, or learning a language, or gardening, or. So of course I could just tell you to do all of that with a list of studies and be done with it, but it would be pointless. A lot of cognitive remediation programs based on these studies fail because what happened is a therapist who liked piano saw a study on the benefits of playing the piano and shoved all their patients into a piano therapy group. People, whether they're patients with brain damage or you, random tumblr user, have tastes and you do not have to force yourself to learn a new language or whatever pop psych instagram account tells you is the newest brain-hack. It's much more simple than that: your brain grows when you use it, and that creates extra padding that protects you in the case of trauma, injury, but also the effects of aging and the risk of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's. (Well, it's not literal padding, the term is "cognitive reserve", but I think the metaphor is pretty accurate.) So try out shit: board games, reading (audiobooks are also a really cool and undervalued invention like this shit is wonderful), learning a new language (comics or watching stuff in the language helps make that fun), juggling, memorising the dsm-5 criteria for every type of disorder, get into comics, learn an instrument, get into baking, explode your microwave in the process of making raw cookie dough, try being around animals (horseback ballad at a ranch go to a cat cafe etc), learn how to dance from YouTube tutorials... Do whatever you want, figure out what's fun, try to avoid ideas of shame at not being immediately good or the idea that it's childish (it's not immature to have fun, i promise.) And give yourself permission to give up. This isn't an assignment, you don't have to push yourself, explore yourself with the energy of a fourteen years old figuring out how they want to dress: what matters is you find a bunch of stuff you find fun.

5. Socialization is really good for you, both for your cognitive functions but also in general for your mood, resources etc (and also all of those are linked). Whether it's a rpg group, an association you're at, even like people on a discord server, meeting friends on zoom, being a regular at quiz night at the club, trying to connect to people in any way you can really helps. I know it's hard, especially for people who struggle with stuff like autism, anxiety, etc. but building connection with other people, in whatever way works for you, really helps improve your quality of life.

6. Again, I may sound a bit like the doctor you want to punch in the face, but a diet full of all the vitamins and protein and general nutrients you need really helps. And honestly whatever way works for you getting these nutrients helps. I often get b-12 deficient because I struggle with the texture of most meats, so I try to eat eggs and sometimes as a kid my mom would put my steak in a blender and my doctor sometimes prescribes me b-12 supplements so I don't faint: that's what a healthy diet looks like for me. And I know exactly what b-12 deficiency does to the brain, so I use those strategies to incorporate it in my diet because I like the memory issues about as much as I like light-headedness and fatigue. (This also works for diets like veganism or gluten free or literally anything. A healthy diet isn't one where you have to eat every food, it's one where you get the nutrients you and your brain needs, and if that involves taking supplements then that's what's healthy for you.) Eating carrots in carrot cake or zucchini in brownie (getting creative with it) or eating premade soup because you want to eat vegetables but don't have the time or struggle with the texture or really hate vegetables and need them to be in a cake where you don't really taste them- that's what a healthy diet looks like. There's a lot of strategies about eating around sensory issues or restrictions and I'm not an expert but like, the ressources are out there. Keeping hydrated is also really important! Similarly, for people who struggle with water, flavouring packets and teas really help!

7. Sleep is so important. Like, to the point it makes diagnosis harder because lack of sleep fucks up everything from mood to cognitive functions to development so if your patient isn't sleeping, good luck figuring out what they have. So talking to your doctor if you have trouble sleeping, working on designing a bedtime routine that helps you, working to reduce nightmares with your therapist, all of that is super important... And don't underestimate the usefulness of napping! Napping rules.

Now, you may have notice that everything in this list (except maybe the helmet one, though these things do cost money) is easier if you have money. I manage some of the items on that list, but don't assume that I am preaching: more often than not, my diet is the cheapest ramen noodles I can find, and I sleep 4 to 5 hours a night.

That's because neuropsychology, like any form of psychology, is inherently political. It's better wages and union rights to have the time and money to afford eating the diet you need and spending time and money on activities and group outings etc. It's equality in the household so you don't have to spend all the time you do have on taking care of all the chores and kids and never getting to enjoy anything or rest. It's, of course, universal healthcare so you can go to the hospital after you get hit in the head and get those scans and EEG go see that neuropsychologist and meet that therapist and get your doctor to prescribe you medicine that works rather than the medicine your dumbfuck insurance company thinks you should fail. It's good food regulations so that you designing a healthy diet can be about getting the nutrients you need and not avoiding getting poisoned by the food you spent your damn money on. It's all of that and more; it's defending your rights, and fighting for those you don't have. So this is all the advice I have, do your best to be kind to yourself, and I hope you have a wonderful year.

[elysianstars]

Elysian Plays Persona 5 and Makes Silly Commentary About It, Part II.

Ryuji I admire your spirit of justice, but I could have told you immediately that your plan of 'two guys nobody likes try to make abuse victims admit what's happening to them' was bound for total failure.

We are now up to the FOURTH visit into this castle, and I still haven't gotten to kick that creep's ass yet. But you don't need to defeat him in battle, you just need to steal the treasure and that will make him stop. Don't care. Still wanna beat him up. I deserve a treat.

Why Is That Enemy Shaped Like That.

Morgana why are you crushing on a human girl. Are you like the reverse of a furry or something. I'm gonna take you to the vets and get you neutered.

I appreciate the mechanic of 'toy guns work in Palaces because it's a cognitive realm, and ammo regenerates because your enemies don't think you'd be stupid enough to point an unloaded fake gun at them'. Much better than having to keep an actual stock of ammo.

Restaurant Guy has risen massively in likeability to me, after he a) complained about the new cat, b) accepted the new cat, c) spontaneously brought a dish of food for the new cat, and d) lamented the fact he didn't get to name the new cat, in the space of five minutes.

Oh no, the doctor lady at the clinic is hot. Why does she have a poster on her wall of a teddy bear getting stabbed with multiple syringes.

Is there any downside to picking silly conversation options? Because sometimes stuff is presented that's clearly wrong but highly tempting to me.

The Persona fusion process makes me feel guilty. Especially using ones I negotiated with, who seemed all cheerful about joining up. Thinking we're allies now, just to get thrown in a bag and guillotined. Mean.

FIFTH visit to the castle and I finally get my treat. I appreciated that the guys stepped back and let Ann have final choice over what happened.

I also respect that she went to a fancy buffet and ate nothing but plate after place of cake. Relatable.

Just explored Mementos for the first time. I'm having a lot of fun! Only one brief glimpse of Akechi so far but there's plenty else to be entertained by!

Not the batting game though, that batting game can go right back to the hell from whence it came. Desperate to find other ways of raising Proficiency, since it's my only personality stat still at level one (plus I want to dodge that other asshole teacher who keeps throwing shit during lessons).

[thegeminisage]

taking a swing at the hornet's nest under the cut nobody be weird at me please do not send me death threats about a video game i have a long day at work today

i'm gonna make a polite and private reply to this post instead of engaging with op because, respectfully speaking, the notes on this post seem to indicate that neither of us would enjoy that. i wish OP nothing but joy and peace in their life and i want zero people to be harassing them for video game opinions, which everybody is allowed to have. also, disclaimer that there was a lot of stuff i really liked about veilguard.

THAT SAID,

it makes me feel crazy to see SO MANY PEOPLE agreeing so vehemently w this take BECAUSE...

first: tevinter

a very big fucking deal was made about the setting of the last game finally going to tevinter, which is a very big fucking important location in dragon age canon. tevinter is the reverse of the rest of the world. everyone else hates slavery but loves oppressing mages. tevinter is happy to participate in slavery but they let their mages rule things. there's two different chantries. tevinter used to own the entirety of northern thedas and some of southern thedas too. tevinter conquered and colonized the elves. it's different from any dragon age place we've ever seen, maybe the MOST different.

but when we get to dock town, it's...actually the most uninteresting location in the game. i can't tell you how many "poor part of town but make it fantasy" settings i have traipsed through in DRAGON AGE ALONE. alienages in denerim and kirkwall, other sections of denerim humans live in, dust town, and lowtown and darktown in kirkwall. aside from a few floating buildings and a bunch of cats, dock town isn't even VISUALLY DISTINCT from many other dragon age settings; we can't even see the big floating ring most of the time. tevinter has been sold to us as "ancient rome but with fantasy" and yes, obviously ancient rome had poor parts of town, but so much of what makes tevinter different and interesting has been completely left out of veilguard; so much of what makes it CRITICALLY IMPORTANT to this universe's lore is just. not touched on at all.

second: neve

while a lot of the choices in veilguard felt like they didn't matter very much (should harding face her past with anger or calmness and does this emotional outlook matter at all whatsoever to the current dwarves? should taash, a character who is about not choosing between binaries, choose between rivainni or qunari culture and does that impact the world at large in any way? should lucanis forgive his cousin or not forgive his cousin, resulting in illario being alive and lucanis being the first talon either way?), i think neve's suffered the most. should dock town have a protector or should it have hope? demonstrably there's...no difference?? neve's gonna keep on protecting dock town either way, and her doing so will continue to give the people she protects hope either way, so ???

but one SINGLE LINE line from neve's quest teases at a much more juicy storyline: when aelia says, "minrathous is broken, but you like it. does it flatter your ego to leave the city as it is? to prove your cynicism right?" neve loves minrathous, as evidenced by her devastation if minrathous is not the city saved during the dragon attack. but minrathous is, obviously, majorly flawed. we see some of this in dorian's character in inquisition: he has extremely complex feelings about tevinter, because he loves his homeland, but he knows it needs to do better. meanwhile if you go "yeah, fuck slavery!" dorian is like "wait what i didn't mean SLAVERY. i just hate our reputation." it's the ULTIMATE cognitive dissonance. it is also true to real life. i am from a place that is awful (south carolina). it is a place with an awful history filled with awful people who do awful things. and i am not the only person on earth living in a place with values and history that i find reprehensible! what do you do when home is bad? how do you cope? do you leave and publicly condemn it, or do you stay and try to change it? which one is easier to do? which one is easier to live with? this is a story that could have had massive relevance and impact...

...but this line from aelia is never brought up again in neve's story, save for one banter with lucanis. what does it MEAN to witness horrible things happening in minrathous every single day and still love it, and still hope for change? i don't know, because the only thing we witness is some strung up bodies if you save treviso. DOES neve hope for change, or is aelia right about her? in a world state where she is blighted, she can die if she's not hero of the veilguard - shouldn't that hero status mean reckoning with that cognitive dissonance, especially because her "fuck you" line to elgar'nan is "this is MY city"? what does it mean for neve, a human, to say something like that, even as a human who frees slaves and fights for the oppressed and powerless? DOES minrathous deserve to be saved or should we let the blight wipe it out? it would be nice to find out but we can't because the game goes out of its way to mention slavery as little as possible!!!

third: slavery

slavery has been the ghost haunting the narrative SINCE ORIGINS. even outside of tevinter, where it's illegal or the pope will kill you (i guess technically that can also happen in minrathous when he's moonlighting as tuxedo mask, but you know what i mean), people are still bought and sold. example: zevran and other crows. example: the elves in denerim's alienage. fenris's experiences as a slave color his outlook on mages so deeply he may turn against hawke during their hour of need if you haven't earned his respect. in inquisition, calpernia's history is just as present, the frustration of her situation causing her to ally willingly with the enemy; krem's own father had to sell himself into slavery to escape poverty, and tevinter is a place he can never return to. for fifteen years we heard stories about how tevinter is backwards and mages rule instead of remain oppressed and slavery is legal and we're about to meet the final boss of game locations...

...and then we don't actually grapple with any of that. we don't even see it. "show don't tell" is the oldest rule in storytelling. no, i'm not after "exploitation porn," and we don't need to walk past the fucking auction block every time we go in or out of the eluvian - what we needed were the perspectives of people like zevran, fenris, and calpernia (and by the way, all of these characters viewed their situations differently and reacted to them differently; zevran and fenris, for example, could not possible be further apart in terms of personality and how they cope with trauma).

people wanted a rook with a slave backstory because THERE IS NO ONE ELSE TO SPEAK FOR ENSLAVED PEOPLE. a lord of fortune rook gets a single, throwaway line and it is never brought up again. a shadow dragon rook makes a LOT of sense as a slave because a former slave would have every reason to fight against systems of oppression in minrathous. it SUCKS that the only npc we know was enslaved was the shopkeeper lorelei, a ferelden elf, who is outside doing work, while people like dorian and neve and maevaris (tevene human mages), are all inside making the big decisions about who's going to be the next archon and how they'll tackle the issue of slavery. we ask the viper (the pope) and we ask tarquin (not magic, but still human), but at no point do we ever ask anyone who has been enslaved, because those people DON'T EXIST. how many lines does lorelei have? what do you know about her? who does she think should become archon? how can you denounce slavery without talking about it? where are the slaves? why don't they get a voice? why aren't they in the room?

fourth: mages, elves, and crows

i don't really know a polite way to say this but i think the people who say veilguard DID show us dark and gritty stuff and DIDN'T sanitize itself if you are a smart player who can read between the lines are either extremely sensitive to this content in fiction or are maybe not being wholly honest with themselves. case in point: slavery isn't the only systemic evil in thedas. you've also got the oppression of mages, the racism against/colonization of the elves, and the buying and selling of people to turn them into crows.

mages: i'll never forget the post floating around awhile back where the anon asked someone what the circle of magi was because they'd only played veilguard and didn't know...how often does veilguard mention templars and mages? it was the entire subject of da2 and the first half of inquisition. why is a mage rook allowed to wander around freely wherever they want? why is emmrich? what happened to the mages when the circles were abolished? WERE they abolished? lots of mages preferred the circles; what happened to them? what happened to the templars? have they stopped taking lyrium? did some keep taking it?

elves: this, arguably, has the most content in the game...though the oppression of elves is largely hinted at as a vague, abstract concept. the evanuris are bad because they used to enslave people, but all that is ancient history, and they were elves too. aside from davrin and bellara's banter, we never really see or hear about how hard it is to be an elf in thedas, and it is also wack that we can walk around in a place like minrathous as an elf without being bothered; in dragon age absolution, just sitting at a bar with a drink on the stool a human wanted was enough to almost get miriam turned in to the city guard. sera's internalized racism is so severe she'll dump a dalish inquisitor who insists on sticking with her religion. but in veilguard, there's never any tension between the elf and non-elf party members, we have no city elves to talk to, no formerly enslaved elves, no elves who agree with solas, nothing. it's two dalish elves and they barely get to grapple with the idea that their gods used to be slavers, let alone say anything about what it meant to be an elf in thedas before that.

crows: lucanis and illario have had shitty, fucked-up lives, but they were born into those lives, not sold into them. meanwhile, nearly every other crow...? just joined up out of patriotism, i guess? like, viago's sitch is its own thing, but what about teia? jacobus? chance candide? rook themself?? the crows don't seem very intimidating or cruel in veilguard, but they BUY PEOPLE because that makes them money. zevran was bought for three gold and he remade that amount thousands of times over, and the life he led as a crow was so cruel he was trying to commit suicide by warden when you met him. what was teia's life like before veilguard? why is she so close with caterina? what was a crow rook's life like before veilguard? where do the crows come from, if they're not bought?

we don't talk about that stuff because someone in the executive department decided to scrub out the more controversial elements of thedas in veilguard. which means no more tough decisions, morally gray characters, or nuanced worldbuilding.

and THAT is the kind of enrichment that would have contributed to my enclosure.

[dragon age masterpost]

edit: i forgot to add this in the initial post, but scrubbing 99% of mentions of slavery and racism against elves is why nobody got to talk about the viper secretly being the black divine. the viper feeling like he can't do enough from within the system to enact meaningful change (and so he goes outside of the system, and works both angles), is incredibly interesting! it's deeply relevant to the conversation of who should be the next archon (maevaris, who wants to work from within the system, and dorian, who want to work outside of it). unfortunately, it's not at all explored in the game because in order to even explain why there's two divines to begin with you'd have to explain why one chantry is different from the other (one is ok with slavery but not locking up mages, the other loves locking up mages but hates slavery, and also they both hate elves), and we can't get that deep. like, there is an entire plotline - a really good one! - that got censored because this game is afraid to depict slavery in any meaningful way. it's not about exploitation porn.

[0809sysblings]

not new information by any means, we been knew Amane's motive, but. im never never NEVER gonna stop thinking about how its implied so so often that Amane's murder was, at its core, self-preservation and out of "self-interest" (i hate phrasing it like that because that word has a pretty negative connotation but i hope u get what im saying). like i was listening to her 2nd trial voice drama again and it just hit me how obvious the information is given, how Es just told us straight up that it wasn't the cult that lead her to murder her mom, it was Amane herself. that she's playing a game of pretend acting like shes doing this all on the cult's behalf when, really, it's just her.

its her that wants to help Fuuta. its her that wants Shidou punished. its her that tried to attack Es. its her that killed her mom. its her that was horrifically abused. its her that helped the cat.

theres a sort of cognitive dissonance happening with her and the cult (wow who knew being brainwashed and tortured could do that!). on the one hand, shes Amane and she has always been Amane and nothing is forcing her to act in any way. just cause shes a child doesnt mean she has no free will and is brainwashed! her insistence that she can choose to murder someone and its of her own volition sorta implies thats what she did with her mom. SHE killed her, no one made her do anything. but then on the other hand... it was for the cult and it was something that was mandatory to do for the cult because her mom broke the rules to such an extent that it warranted the worst punishment, death. it wasnt really Amane who did it, she was just acting on the cult's behalf.

she is both Amane and Not Amane. these coexist but they are also inherently contradictory. she is Amane. she is also her faith. her faith is and always has been at direct odds with Amane. they are constantly in conflict with one another. her faith wants to purge her of everything that makes her Amane Momose. but she doesnt want to be anyone else but herself. she cant.

so she has to be both of these things. she wouldnt be able to function otherwise, would she?