#I don't think I have the cognitive capacity to use them

[explainslowly]

I've been contemplating lately whether I should become one of those ppl who has different pronouns in English vs native/spoken language

[local-hellhound-steals-spaghetti]

Would you say that the intelligence and emotional capacity of dolphins are overstated? Would you say the same for orcas(I know they’re dolphins lol but for every “dolphins are evil post I see “us flawed humans can learn so much from them” comment under an orca post).

Don’t get me wrong, they’re intelligent but I think in a “baboon/crow/parrot smart and not “human/mystical higher being” smart.

Oh 100% yes.

Certain lobbyists and activists love to overstate the cognitive capacity of dolphins and orcas and essentially anthropomorphise them into basically "humans with fins".

It tells me that these people haven't spent a lot of time around them because they're definitely not that.

They're certainly smart and they learn new concepts very quickly - but most of their intelligence comes from social intelligence rather than complex thought.

Most of what makes them unique is based on the environment they live in. Signature whistles, for example, makes sense for a social animal that interacts in the world through sound. Echolocation also makes sense for an animal that often navigates dark/murky waters or has to detect prey over long distances.

But yeah there's no actual scientific evidence that suggests dolphins are these hyper intelligent beings that are beyond human intelligence. And after spending many long hours observing behaviour and working with bottlenose dolphins, I would say that they don't need to be.

They are their own incredibly complex animal with indvidual variability and personality that is very well adapted to the ecological niche they occupy. Honestly I don't even like comparing animal cognition to human cognition becuase it measures them up to something that they have no evolutionary reason to be.

And they don't need to be "just like us" to be worthy of attention, conservation and study.

Anyway here's a picture of Caliban because she's gorgeous and she deserves the world.

[saintsenara]

How do you think memory charms work from a brain science perspective, and what might the implications of such technology be? Given the complexities of memory—how it works, its function (e.g., in identity formation, decision making, psychological well-being, etc.)—the fact that these spells are so routinely used on Muggles who witness magic—especially under traumatic circumstances—is so sinister…

thank you very much for the ask, pal! a very interesting question to think about!

as you say, memory is the central part of human experience. it's integral to who we are, why we understand ourselves to be that way, and how we function daily. without the ability to remember things we've learned or which have happened to us in the past, we don't have the ability to understand the present or plan for the future, or apply context to why we behave in or feel certain ways. memory is so important to our understanding of our own existence that many people would say losing it is the thing they fear most...

and i think there's a very credible case for jkr being one of them.

in its understanding of the body, the harry potter series prioritises cognitive function above all things.

physical illnesses, injuries, or disabilities don't upset or frighten it unduly. this is partially because its genre conventions need to take this approach to physical impairment in order for their plots to advance - harry being able to take a bludger to the head and live to tell the tale is the same as john wick being able to fall from the top of a six-storey building, get up, and keep going: they're action heroes, and the person following their exploits wants that action to continue.

but it's also because the series' central theme is choice - and, specifically, the choice between good and evil. this choice - as the books understand it - is something freely and rationally made, with no cognitive impairment preventing it.

[hence - as i've written about elsewhere - voldemort's horcruxes do not - despite common fanon - make him insane.]

as a result, injuries, disabilities, or experiences which lead to a loss of cognitive capacity - thereby making it impossible for choices to be freely made - are presented by the text as uniquely horrifying.

the revelation that frank and alice longbottom can't recognise neville after they're attacked by the lestranges brings a "bitterness harry had never heard there before" into dumbledore's voice.

lupin is primarily ashamed of the loss of rational thought his transformations bring, and the wolfsbane potion works by preventing this loss of rationality:

"As long as I take it in the week preceding the full moon, I keep my mind when I transform... I am able to curl up in my office, a harmless wolf, and wait for the moon to wane again. "Before the Wolfsbane Potion was discovered, however, I became a fully fledged monster once a month."

harry thinks that "bathilda bagshot" [really nagini in disguise] is starting to forget how to perform magic, and equates this loss of function with the dark, dank, foul-smelling house in which she lives.

ariana dumbledore's trauma-induced cognitive disability gradually ruins her family’s lives.

harry, our hero, is never, ever affected by the imperius curse.

and, of course, the dementor's kiss - which canon understands as the single most frightening thing which could ever befall somebody - brings about a state where bodily functions continue, but cognitive ones are lost:

"You can exist without your soul, you know, as long as your brain and heart are still working. But you'll have no sense of self anymore, no memory, no... anything. There's no chance at all of recovery. You'll just - exist. As an empty shell. And your soul is gone forever... lost."

as a result of this, canon presents memories as things which are straightforward and factual. while they may be interpreted subjectively - harry's horror at snape's worst memory, for example - they are - in and of themselves - objective accounts of events. the memories which harry views in the pensieve, for example, are not "witness statements" - subjective, personal accounts of how an individual experienced an event, which might be contradicted by another person's own subjective recollection - they are fact. what they say happened actually happened. sirius' version of snape's worst memory would be identical to snape's.

and canon understands that memories are - therefore - devoid of things like perception, assumption, imagination, habit, and emotion. indeed, these things are not only irrelevant to the memory... they are detrimental to it.

slughorn's attempt to modify his memory of telling tom riddle about horcruxes is because he wishes to soothe an emotion - shame, at giving riddle the information he needed to commit such evil and then not telling anyone - by presenting an imagined version of events in which he looks better. his attempt to apply these two things to the memory are what curdles it. what dumbledore is asking harry to do, in sending him out to retrieve the unmodified memory from slughorn, is to acquire the objective facts:

"He has tried to rework the memory to show himself in a better light, obliterating those parts which he does not wish me to see. It is, as you will have noticed, very crudely done, and that is all to the good, for it shows that the true memory is still there beneath the alterations."

in saying that slughorn's "true memory" remains accessible, what dumbledore is saying is that slughorn should be judged as having full cognitive capacity. he's compos mentis, he's of sound mind. if the true memory did not remain - if slughorn had managed to corrupt his memory to such an extent that he genuinely believed that his conversation with riddle had never occurred [rather than knowing it did but wishing he'd behaved differently and therefore pretending he had] - then he would, in the eyes of the series, be insane.

now... this - unsurprisingly - is not how human memory actually works. memory is fragile, inconsistent, and subjective. we forget things. we misremember things. we remember things through subjective lenses. we invent false memories.

but we can - nonetheless - use what we know about human memory to uncover a wizarding theory of memory formation which would explain why they think this way.

and why they feel so comfortable tampering with people's memories.

[and why this is horrifying.]

what are memories?

in canon, memories are presented as something tangible - wisps of silvery liquid. and memories actually are physical things - albeit absolutely microscopic ones - which take up physical space in the brain. they're just kept out of the way of our conscious awareness until we need them.

[basically, they're christmas lights in a box in the attic. they physically exist and they're physically present in the house, but they sit - turned off and with no attention being paid to them - until they're needed, when they're brought out of storage and switched on.]

they are made - like almost everything to do with the brain - from neurons, which are a type of cell. neurons work like the wires in a telephone exchange - they transmit chemical and electrical signals across the brain [and, therefore, across the body] in a vast, high-speed, interwoven network:

a digital model of the neural network from a sesame-seed-sized fragment of human brain. there are about 50,000 connections shown. [source]

a neuron receives a signal, which it then interprets. it then sends a response [or action potential] along its stem [axon].

at the end of the axon, there are synapses, which form a bridge to other neurons, linking a chain of communication together.

synapses are generally activated by chemicals called neurotransmitters - such as serotonin, melatonin, adrenaline, dopamine [which are likely to be the ones most people have heard of], and others.

so: neuron x receives a signal, interprets it, and transmits that interpretation as an electrical signal along its axon, causing the release of adrenaline into the synapse linking it to neuron y. this activates the connection between neurons x and y. the signal passes across the synapse into neuron y, which interprets it, and the process continues.

each neuron has thousands of synaptic connections to other neurons. and these connections aren't static - they get stronger or weaker depending on exposure. the more we use the connection, the stronger the connection is.

one way to think of this is to imagine the synaptic connection as a volume dial, which controls how loudly two neurons "talk" to each other. if the connection between neuron x and neuron y is very strong, the synaptic connection allows them to shout at each other, thereby understanding each other clearly. if the connection between neuron x and neuron y is very weak, they're only whispering to each other, are having to strain to hear each other, and will probably only partially hear the communicated information.

the brain will therefore prioritise the information it can "hear" the clearest. this is why, if you learn two pieces of information, and then revise the first piece of information every day for a month and do no revision of the second piece, you will find it much easier to recall the first piece when asked - the brain prioritises the "loudest" voice.

when we learn or experience something we create synaptic connections, linking neurons into circuits in an ever-changing map across the brain.

these circuits are memories.

remembering something is the process of activating a specific neuron cluster, thereby retrieving the information it contains and communicating it as an electrical signal to another part of the brain.

this process of remembering can be unconscious - a smell might prompt us to remember something without us actively intending to; when we write something, we're not consciously thinking about how we learned to write, we just do it - or conscious - we might sniff a particular perfume bottle in order to summon up a specific memory; we might intentionally decide to remember a day we spent writing in a particular place.

what are the different types of memory?

there are two main categories of memory - short-term and long-term.

short-term memory is the brain's capacity to actively hold onto a small amount of information [about four things, on average] for a brief period of time [and by brief we mean around 15 seconds - any memory which can be recalled after that period of time is a long-term one] in order to allow you to do things, like take down a telephone number.

long-term memory, in contrast, is something the brain possesses an infinite capacity for. it can be divided into two subcategories.

the first of these is implicit memory. this refers to recollections which are unconscious, habitual, primed, or conditioned. learned motor skills - things like holding a pen or riding a bike - which you can do without having to think about how [procedural memories] are an example of implicit memories. so are things we are conditioned to do via the association of an action with a stimulus - like pavlov's dogs salivating when they heard the ringing of the bell - and things we are primed to do by general knowledge or contextual experience - like being shown the word "bread" in a word association game and responding "butter" without having to actively think about why that connection exists for us.

the second is explicit memory, which refers to the conscious recollection of a specific thing. explicit memory has two subcategories: episodic memory - the recollection of events or experiences - and semantic memory - the recollection of knowledge or information.

i know that belfast is the capital of northern ireland and paris is the capital of france. these are semantic memories.

i know i went to a restaurant in belfast with my partner last week and that i went to watch the french open in paris with my friend this spring. these are episodic ones.

episodic memory is highly dependent on context and association - you can remember where you parked your car by thinking about the shop you parked next to - some of which is semantic memory in its own right - you can tell that your friend has misremembered a story they're telling about your teenage years because you know you were sixteen when the event took place, your friend is talking about driving, and you possess the semantic knowledge that the legal driving age in the united kingdom is seventeen.

explicit memory is the aspect of memory most clearly affected by conditions like alzheimer's disease, while implicit memories tend to be recalled for much longer.

explicit memory is also the thing most clearly affected in canon by memory charms...

how are explicit memories formed?

at its most basic level, the brain is divided into three parts - the cerebrum, brainstem, and cerebellum. the cerebrum is the thing we’re concerned with today.

its main part - comprising about half of the brain’s weight - is the cortex, which is the wrinkly surface you probably picture when you hear the word “brain”. the cerebral cortex is divided into two hemispheres. each hemisphere has four lobes [so you have eight lobes in total] which relate to specific functions.

[here's a video of a dissection of a real human brain - if you fancy it - which goes into its anatomy in more detail]

nestled in each hemisphere of the cerebrum are several deeper structures.

in the temporal lobe, we find two of these structures - the hippocampus and the amygdala - which are crucial to memory formation. we have one of these in each hemisphere [so two hippocampi and two amygdalae in total] as part of our limbic system - a group of brain structures that regulate things like our sense of smell, emotions, memories, and autonomic behaviours [heart rate, breathing, sweating, etc.].

[here's a dissection of the limbic system, again - fair warning! - using a real human brain]

the hippocampus

when our brain decides it wants to hold onto a piece of information, it's channelled from the prefrontal cortex [in the frontal lobe], which controls short-term memory functions, to the hippocampus, which is then responsible for linking all of the relevant context surrounding the information together - like it's making a patchwork quilt.

let's go back to the example of being asked to take down a phone number. and let's imagine that the person who asks us to take down the phone number is also our fandom-style soulmate. several pieces of information will be created in the brain at once - the memory of being asked to take down the number, the memory of physically doing that, the sensory input of what our soulmate looks, sounds, and smells like, other sensory inputs [what the broader environment looks, sounds, and smells like; the fact we're drinking a coffee; the fact we're wearing a scratchy jumper], the emotion of knowing we've met our soulmate - which are then sewn together by the hippocampus into a coherent, linear account of what occurred.

the hippocampus is selective - it's more likely, even in an episodic memory as emotionally powerful as this one would be, to hold onto information which is comprehensible to it [so, for example, if a song is playing when you meet your soulmate, but its lyrics are in a language you don't understand, it's less likely to retain that as a key part of its account than if it's a song you understand and, especially, a song you already know and like].

it's also inventive - it will fill in gaps in the recollection of an episode. these inventions are often logical and based on both your semantic knowledge and parts of your implicit memory. for example, in the memory of being a child and going to hospital to meet your new baby brother, he is likely to be wearing a blue hat. it is highly unlikely that you actually remember the colour of the hat he was wearing - especially if you were quite young - but your brain settles on blue to fill that gap in your recollection because it knows you were raised in a culture which associates the colour blue with baby boys.

but they're also subjective. you may, for example, have more than one memory of the same event - with each memory's patchwork quilt having a slightly different pattern. to go back to the memory of meeting your soulmate, you might have one version of the memory which was stored by your brain on the day you first met, in which the thing you primarily remember is how nervous and awkward you were and how you were worried your soulmate didn't actually like you. you might then have a second version of the memory which is altered by contextual information you learned after the first version was created - after your soulmate asks you to marry them, for example, you are less likely to dwell on the parts of the first memory which are about worrying they didn't like you.

while the hippocampus is integral for the formation of long-term explicit and implicit memories, it's not the place where these long-term memories are permanently stored. instead, long-term memories appear to migrate [or awaken] from the hippocampus throughout the cerebral cortex, and to become progressively more independent of it over time. when it comes to explicit memories, the older, stronger, or deeper a memory is the more likely its independence from the hippocampus will be.

we know this because of a man called henry molaison, who had most of his hippocampus surgically removed in the 1950s in an effort to treat his epilepsy. following his operation, molaison was only able to form new episodic memories which lasted for less than a minute before they vanished forever from his consciousness, and essentially lived every single day as brand new, with no context surrounding it. the exception to this rule was that he could recall memories relating to significant experiences in his life which he'd formed years - and often decades - before his surgery. he could also recall certain facts - semantic memories - which he'd already known, but he couldn't form new semantic knowledge.

semantic memory also appears to become progressively independent of the hippocampus over time, much like implicit memories we have acquired through conditioning or priming. for example, the memory of the first time we drank a coffee while tired transforms into the general knowledge that drinking coffee generally helps us with tiredness, bolstered by the semantic knowledge that caffeine is a stimulant.

the amygdala

in the analogy of memory formation as being like creating a patchwork quilt, the amygdala is responsible for one of the most important squares the hippocampus sews together: the emotional significance of the memory.

this is one of the most important bits of context which the hippocampus applies to its account of a memory. the more emotive a memory is, the more likely it is to be remembered.

and this isn't just the case when it comes to specific episodic memories - such as remembering your wedding day, or the time you were in a car accident. it applies to semantic memory - if i tell you that paris is the capital of france and then punch you in the face, you'll remember it - and to implicit conditioned and primed memories.

imagine you are three years old, you're in the park, and you meet a dog. the dog is on a lead, calm, quiet, and well trained. you are asked if you'd like to pet it and you say yes. the dog is happy to be petted - it wags its tail and it licks your hand - and you enjoy the experience and start laughing.

the hippocampus takes care of the "bullet points" of this event - the actions and the order in which they occurred, where they took place, and so on. the amygdala assigns an emotional response to the specific episodic memory - that is, when you recall it later, you will feel happy - and to the implicit memory you have accrued from the experience - that is, the next time you see a dog, even if it's not the dog you petted, your brain will be automatically primed to feel calm, safe, and happy.

and now imagine you are three years old, you're in the park, and you meet a dog. the dog is loose, agitated, barking, and much bigger than you. it bounds up to you while you're playing and knocks you to the ground. it growls and you see its teeth. you're afraid and start crying.

the same process occurs, but with a fear response. the hippocampus remembers what happened and in what order, the amygdala remembers how the specific memory made you feel and extrapolates from this to assign that feeling to your implicit memory. the next time you see a dog, even if the dog is on a lead and behaving perfectly calmly, your brain will be automatically primed to feel afraid.

and this reference to fear is important. as i've said, the brain prioritises remembering emotional memories… but it prioritises remembering stressful and/or frightening emotional memories above all other kinds. and it also tends to really cling on to things we have acquired by fear learning - the process by which we unconsciously associate a stimulus with a frightening event.

to return to the scenario above, if you met the nice dog first and then met the frightening dog later, your brain would prioritise the memory of the frightening dog. if you met the frightening dog first and then met the nice dog later, your brain would still prioritise the memory of the frightening dog. and even if you lose the ability to recall the specific episodic memory of meeting the specific frightening dog, your brain would still remember that it was afraid of dogs in general.

the amygdala plays a major role in this fear learning and fear-based recall. and it does this via channels of communication which don't need to involve the hippocampus - it communicates bi-directionally with the cerebral cortex, both with and without the hippocampus also being part of the conversation.

and this has an enormous implication for our wizarding theory of memory.

and so - at last - we come to...

the neuroscience of memory charms

we know from canon that memory charms focus on the removal of explicit memories - and, specifically, the explicit episodic memories which the series understands as objective snapshots of events.

we also know that short-term memory and implicit memory can experience collateral damage when the explicit memory is removed - especially if the charm is performed poorly. we learn in order of the phoenix, for example, that gilderoy lockhart lost the ability to write [an implicit procedural memory] after his charm backfired, and has had to undergo something akin to physical therapy [the way someone who'd received a head injury would] in order to regain this motor skill:

"I'm very well indeed, thank you!" said Lockhart exuberantly, pulling a rather battered peacock-feather quill from his pocket. "Now, how many autographs would you like? I can do joined-up writing now, you know!"

we also know that the recovery of an implicit behaviour - his fondness for signing autographs, a response based in an unconscious assumption he makes whenever he meets anyone [that they're a fan] - is taken by his healers as a sign that his self-perception is stabilising:

"He was rather well known a few years ago; we very much hope that this liking for giving autographs is a sign that his memory might be coming back a little bit... This is our long-term resident ward... For permanent spell damage, you know. Of course, with intensive remedial potions and charms and a bit of luck, we can produce some improvement... Gilderoy does seem to be getting back some sense of himself."

crucially, we see here no expectation that any specific memories - episodic memories, canon's factual accounts which prove someone to be of sound mind - will return. what the healer means by "his memory might be coming back a little bit" is something general. a memory charm - as the text understands it - affects something discrete.

but lockhart also shows us that the specific episodic memory impacted by a charm isn't deleted from the brain. it remains in storage - and, therefore, retains the potential to be reactivated.

and he also shows us that this potential reactivation is very likely to depend on an emotional stimulus, especially a negative one:

The smile faded slowly from Lockhart’s face. For a few moments he gazed intently at Harry, then he said, "Haven't we met?" "Er... yeah, we have," said Harry. "You used to teach us at Hogwarts, remember?" "Teach?" repeated Lockhart, looking faintly unsettled. "Me? Did I?"   And then the smile reappeared upon his face so suddenly it was rather alarming. "Taught you everything you know, I expect, did I? Well, how about those autographs, then? Shall we say a round dozen, you can give them to all your little friends then and nobody will be left out!"

lockhart clearly associates a stimulus - something to do with harry - with a fear response [probably from being frogmarched at wandpoint and forced to jump into a hole]. this emotional context calls out to an episodic memory it has been severed from, but can't get there and falls silent again, drowned out by the louder activity of the implicit memory, telling lockhart to talk about autographs because these are fans.

so lockhart hasn't lost this specific episodic memory - he just can't access it. from this, we can conclude that memory charms block communication across synaptic connections, thereby preventing a memory from being retrieved.

and we can also conclude that - since wizards regard episodic memories as objective, factual accounts of events, which are unaffected by things like perception, assumption, imagination, habit, and emotion - they only understand the formation of these memories as they happen in the hippocampus. and, specifically, that they understand memory formation only as the hippocampus ordering events into a coherent, linear account - which they regard as objectively correct. we can further conclude that they do not understand anything other than this ordering of events as forming part of the episodic memory process, and, therefore, that they do not understand memory charms as needing to affect anything other than these "factual" snapshots.

which means that a memory charm will block the retrieval of the "bullet points" of an episodic memory from the hippocampus - and, therefore, someone whose memory has been modified won't remember the specific order of events surrounding the memory.

but it won't block the other bits of information - other patches of the quilt of the memory - from being retrieved. it will just remove them from their context.

and - right on the canon page - we learn that this failure to remove anything other than the bullet points, even in memory charms which are accurately and skilfully performed, makes the experience of having a modified memory profoundly disorienting to the person affected.

we see this - for example - in the case of morfin gaunt:

"So the Ministry called upon Morfin. They did not need to question him, to use Veritaserum or Legilimency. He admitted to the murder on the spot, giving details only the murderer could know. He was proud, he said, to have killed the Muggles, had been awaiting his chance all these years. He handed over his wand, which was proved at once to have been used to kill the Riddles. And he permitted himself to be led off to Azkaban without a fight. All that disturbed him was the fact that his father's ring had disappeared. 'He'll kill me for losing it,' he told his captors over and over again. 'He'll kill me for losing his ring.' And that, apparently, was all he ever said again. He lived out the remainder of his life in Azkaban, lamenting the loss of Marvolo's last heirloom, and is buried beside the prison, alongside the other poor souls who have expired within its walls."

morfin's verbal tic is a manifestation of a emotional response which now lacks any other context - the fear caused by his nephew visiting him, on the day the riddles were murdered, and incapacitating him [in a way which would allow him to steal his wand] just before the crime took place. in repeating it, what he's saying is "i know i didn't do this, even though i confessed, but i can't explain how i know this, and i am afraid".

and we know that dumbledore is able to use this emotional clue as the end of a line of string, which he can then follow back across deactivated synaptic connections to the suppressed [and, in canon's view, objective] episodic memory of tom riddle meeting his uncle:

"But he had this real memory in him all the time!"   "Yes, but it took a great deal of skilled Legilimency to coax it out of him," said Dumbledore, "and why should anybody delve further into Morfin's mind when he had already confessed to the crime? However, I was able to secure a visit to Morfin in the last weeks of his life, by which time I was attempting to discover as much as I could about Voldemort's past. I extracted this memory with difficulty. When I saw what it contained, I attempted to use it to secure Morfin's release from Azkaban. Before the Ministry reached their decision, however, Morfin had died."

we see something similar in voldemort's treatment of bertha jorkins:

"But Wormtail - displaying a presence of mind I would never have expected from him - convinced Bertha Jorkins to accompany him on a nighttime stroll. He overpowered her... he brought her to me. And Bertha Jorkins, who might have ruined all, proved instead to be a gift beyond my wildest dreams... for - with a little persuasion - she became a veritable mine of information. "She told me that the Triwizard Tournament would be played at Hogwarts this year. She told me that she knew of a faithful Death Eater who would be only too willing to help me, if I could only contact him. She told me many things... but the means I used to break the Memory Charm upon her were powerful, and when I had extracted all useful information from her, her mind and body were both damaged beyond repair. She had now served her purpose. I could not possess her. I disposed of her."

something we are told about bertha jorkins across goblet of fire - including by both sirius and dumbledore, characters the doylist narrative of this book trusts to be telling the truth - is that she loved gossip. and this - feeling intrigued in, scandalised by, and excited by a piece of information - is an emotional response.

voldemort - like dumbledore - seizes on this emotional component as the end of a line of string. bertha provides him with a piece of semantic information - the triwizard tournament is to be played - which makes her think of piece of general information - she knows barty crouch sr., who is organising it - which causes an emotional response which places the string in his hand - barty crouch sr. = scandal. voldemort then follows that string across deactivated synaptic connections to the suppressed [and, in canon's view, objective] episodic memory of bertha discovering that barty crouch jr. [about whom she possessed various contextual information, such as the fact that he was found guilty of being a death eater] was alive.

ergo, memory charms block the point-by-point recollection of specific episodic memories, unless someone is determined either to do a lot of careful forensic work or to commit murder.

but they do nothing to block the additional context - above all, the emotional context - which is so important to memory formation and recollection. and this is what makes the casual use of them - especially the casual use of them on muggles - so terrifying. because their efficacy is dramatically reduced in circumstances where a memory has an emotional context.

and witnessing someone performing actual magic would undoubtedly inspire quite a strong emotional response...

the circumstances in which they work well will be those like tom riddle sr.'s run-in with morfin. the ministry response to the incident is speedy, which means the memory hasn't been consolidated for long-term storage beyond the hippocampus. the incident seems to be the first time riddle ever interacts with morfin - meaning that he doesn't retain a conditioned implicit response that morfin is frightening or dangerous. riddle talks about the gaunts in a way that suggests he thinks they're funny and ridiculous, laughs at bob ogden as he's chased from the shack, and is happy riding along the lane where he was attacked, which shows that he didn't develop a fear response to the incident [nor, indeed, any significant emotional response at all]. preventing him from recalling this memory is simple, and it has no repercussions.

[in terms of his brain health, that is. obviously, it has a major repercussion in that it removes any pre-warning he might have given himself about merope…]

but outside of this context - in which the ministry essentially gets incredibly lucky that riddle sr.'s brain reacts in the only way which actually makes them viable - memory charms are clearly nowhere near as effective as wizards seem to think.

because, when it comes to people's strongest, deepest memories, the only thing being removed is the ability to run through the summary of events - to go down a checklist of what happened, and to contextualise an emotional response [for instance] by situating it within the account of the event which triggered it. the emotions these memories provoke, and the way in which they're bound up into the knowledge which helps us understand our place in the world, remain. all that happens is that these feelings can't be situated in a point-by-point context which explains how they might have occurred.

and so, to come to the memory charm the series thinks is noble and benign... what hermione does to her parents is remove the bullet points surrounding the most important memories of their lives from their heads, leaving profound, lingering emotional responses, which respond to stimuli even though the grangers can't understand why...

when she says that they don't know they have a daughter, what she means is that they don't remember the list of events which proved that fact to be true. mrs granger doesn't remember that she took a pregnancy test which was positive, mr granger doesn't remember that he witnessed hermione being born, neither of them remember taking her to the cinema to see the little mermaid, or buying her first school shoes, or taking her to see her grandparents on her sixth birthday.

but the evidence of canon is that the emotions attached to these events - and the unconscious knowledge which emerges from them - would remain.

and this is why hermione's modification of her parents' memories is an example of the series' black-and-white, protagonist-centred morality which i absolutely loathe. not because the watsonian text isn't horrified by it [why would harry know how memory charms work] but because the doylist text handwaves it away as something easily reversed [via jkr saying that hermione immediately restored her parents' memories the second the war was over] which left no adverse effects.

because - sure - i'm not quibbling with the need to think of hermione's decision to wipe her parents' memories as necessary, but it needs to be understood as one of those horrific choices which only become necessary because the alternative is worse.

and this necessity doesn't erase the fact that what hermione does to her parents is meaningfully no different from what bellatrix and company do to the longbottoms. we see that alice longbottom retains the emotional context to a memory - she knows that she loves neville and wants to give him a present - even if she no longer remembers who he is and what his relationship is to her. the same thing will have happened to the grangers.

and so "monica wilkins" might have found herself driving down a street in suburban melbourne one december afternoon when a christmas song came on the radio… and for reasons she doesn't understand, she burst into tears… and she went home and started making dinner… and she'd adapted the recipe she was using so it didn't have any coriander in it… but she doesn't know why, because she likes coriander just fine, and so does her husband… and then "wendall" came in, and she told him about her strange experience… and he said that he turned on the tv and meet me in st louis was showing and he had to change the channel because he thought he was going to cry… and this made them both intensely uneasy… because they've got no reason to behave so strangely… so irrationally... they don't have any memories associated with that song or that film… right?

but that's because they don't remember the facts of how their only daughter - who's got the coriander-tastes-like-soap gene - only lasted two days of a family skiing trip in december 1995, even though they hadn't spent any significant time with her since august 1994, before she swanned off back into a magical world which seemed to be robbing them of her piece by piece.

they can only remember how sad it made them feel.

[nevesmose]

So I don't want to leap right into saying "please create fascist symbolism for me" but sure, feel free to give it a try if you'd like to!

There are definitely a lot of elements you could play around with. Like the Aberdeen city council logo recently had a "futuristic" redesign that feels quite dystopian to me whenever I see it...

Why are the leopards so skinny and oppressive looking now? Why is it purple? Where has the crown gone? To be honest you could redesign the city flag with the purple colour and simplified coat of arms elements and it'd end up looking the part...

Purple on grey/black with the simple blocky towers and the much more aggressive, jagged looking flory-counterflory pattern would give it a suitably unpleasant vibe imo

In this house we support Aberdeenshire Shortlisted Design B

🫡

Also I figured it out, when you see it moving Design E doesn't just look generically fascist but in particular it looks like something a monarchist Helghast faction would use in a Killzone game.

[max1461]

I didn't know rationalism of the online rationalists was not the same as the one that has the Wikipedia article. When I first saw the term on Tumblr I went to that article and skimmed it and decided I don't really get what those bloggers' perspectives are. After your post I now have even less knowledge than I did before.

The following is an oversimplification, so for those who have quibbles with the history here, well, forgive me.

Online rationalism was founded by two guys named Eliezer Yudkowsky and Robin Hanson on the blog LessWrong. Of these two figures Yudkowsky has been much more influential. The ideology that Yudkowsky promoted is roughly as follows:

humans are, relatively soon, likely to develop a superintelligent AI which has the capacity to self-improve by rewriting its own code. This will cause the AI's intelligence to rapidly explode beyond anything we can imagine, a process which rationalists onomatopoetically call "FOOM".

This superintelligent AI, if it could be harnessed and controlled, could cure death, and possibly revive all already-dead humans in a simulated world, leading to a technological utopia in which humans have merged with machines; this is called "the singularity" (the idea of the singularity predates the rationalists, and is a broader transhumanist trope).

However, it is almost certain that a superintelligent AI could not be harnessed and controlled; in fact, if such an AI was created, there is a very high probability that it would end the world (in rationalist jargon this is called an "x-risk"), perhaps usurping all of the accessible matter and energy on earth, then in the solar system, then in the galaxy and beyond in pursuit of its inscrutable goals. Thus, humans have a responsibility to make sure we never create such a superintelligent AI (in a recent op-ed in Time, Yudkowsky went so far as to say that the US should use drone strikes to destroy any datacenter found to be training a large AI model).

The reason that people do not recognize the truths above is because people are too irrational to see them. Therefore, people need to be taught to be more rational, by Yudkowsky via the blog LessWrong. The tenets of being more rational are laid out largely in a series of blog posts known as "The Sequences", later published as a book. The main take-aways are: (1) use Bayes' Theorem all the time to estimate the probability of things, and (2) to eliminate one's various cognitive biases, as outlined in The Sequences.

LessWrong attracted a lot of people who did not agree with Yudkowsky about AI, but who liked the Bayes' Theorem stuff and the commentary on cognitive biases. There is a joke that "anyone who has ever disagreed with Yudkowsky is a rationalist". The people who settled on LessWrong were largely drawn from the milieu of Bay Area tech workers, economics blog enthusiasts, and sci-fi fans. They would come to be known as LessWrongers, rationalists, or aspiring rationals. From this group, two major subgroups worth mentioning were spawned:

First is the Effective Altruists. Effective Altruism, to my knowledge, isn't a strictly LessWronger phenomenon, and has also been influenced majorly by philosophers like Peter Singer. However, they have been so intertwined with LessWrongers throughout their history that I think they are worth mentioning as essentially an offshoot of rationalism.

Effective Altruists believe that, in order to do the most good in the world, one should use one's money in a way that does the maximum amount of good per dollar. Rather than e.g. donating to charities willy-nilly based on what feels important, one should use quantitative methods to estimate how much impact each dollar is making, and donate in a way which maximizes that. The Effective Altruists are split along one main ideological line: neartermism vs. longtermism. The neartermists are basically focused on what we would traditionally think of as charitable activities: fighting disease, giving people clean water, that kind of stuff. I think neartermist Effective Altruism is pretty sensible, and I think they've done a lot of good work evaluating charities and so on. GiveWill is an essentially neartermist Effective Altruist organization, and I think their activities are very worth supporting.

The longtermists, on the other hand, are focused on "the long-term interests of humanity". They are, well, in my opinion, basically a bunch of people trying to turn their sci-fi fantasies into a reality. They are often very worried about AI x-risk, like Yudkowsky, and they're often pro-singularity, and sometimes pro-eugenics, and a bunch of other stuff. Remember Sam Bankman-Fried, the guy who committed the largest act of financial fraud in human history? Well, he was an Effective Altruist with some longertermist sympathies. Some of the money that he stole he actually gave to worthwhile charities, but some of it he used on stupid longtermist sci-fi fantasy shit. His girlfriend Caroline Ellison, who helped him do a bunch of that fraud, was a member of rationalist tumblr. Some of my mutuals were mutuals with her.

The other major group spawned out of LessWrong were the Neoreactionaries, or NRx. These guys, too, weren't a purely LessWronger phenomenon; they were also majorly influenced by people such as the philosopher Nick Land (former student of Baudrillard, who took a far-right turn in the 2000s and started advocating for "hyper-racism") and blogger Curtis Yarvin a.k.a. "Mencius Moldbug". These guys are a rag-tag group of authoritarians, eugenicists, and racists, who are interested in rationality insofar as they view it as a path that leads to their desired sci-fi-inflected far-right future.

Oh, right, last but not least I should define the term "rat-adj". It means "rationalist-adjacent". Uh. So, I was never a LessWronger, and as I think my description makes clear, I find like 90% of this rationalist stuff either goofy or actively harmful. But I have, somehow, ended up basically acquainted with a bunch of people formerly or presently part of the LessWrong milieu, and in light of this I am what one calls "rationalist-adjacent". I talk to various rationalist bloggers somewhat often. And most of them are much more normal than all this would suggest, part of the rationalist discursive sphere but not really believers in the imminent AI apocalypse. Uh. So, there you go.

[snugglebugs]

KAI SMITH flip (caregiver-leaning!)

Kai Ninjago Smith is ABSOLUTELY an age regressor are you KIDDING me are you JOKING me. He is BASICALLY CANONICALLY an age regressor!!!!

"I bet he loves being treated like a baby..." (Nya, Season 14, Episode 6, Call From The Abyss)... Yeah he does because he IS a baby. He is THE baby. He is BABY.

His entire traumatic backstory is that, after his parents were taken from him from an early age, he had to step into a parental role for his little sister and become the adult of the family while still being a child himself. He had to grow up before he even really had a chance to grow at all. On-screen, we see that once his parents return and he's no longer forced into that role of responsibility, he canonically regresses into childish habits and language we have never before seen him use or display beforehand.

"Ham and cheese sandwiches with crispy bacon? Oh thanks, Mommy! You're the best! Mm... bacon is the best, too!" (Kai, Season 14, Episode 6, Call From The Abyss).

Conclusion? Kai Smith is the most age-regressor to ever age regress ever I will not take criticism because I am OBJECTIVELY CORRECT.

Anyway!! I think Kai is regresses from 5-9~ years old. We can tell from his diction that he doesn't seem to be a baby regressor (at least in this scene), as he's capable of fully-formed sentences and has the cognitive skills required to play video games, so that leads me to believe he might be a little-middlespace regressor! Kai's parents left when he was around 5, so it makes sense he wouldn't be an infant regressor, but around the little-middle spectrum, regressing into the same range of years in which he didn't have a chance to be a child before.

I don't just think he's an age regressor, though, I also think he's a flip, too! He definitely has some care-giving tendencies built-in to him from having to be a caretaker for his little sister for so many years, and so he pretty naturally slips into the role of a big brother caregiver! I imagine he leans more towards the caregiving side then the regressing side, just because being a caregiver is what he's used to being - what he's always had to be - but that may be prone to change as he becomes more comfortable with his regression! He hates regressing around the other age regressors, especially when they're regressed, because he feels like when they're small he has to be big and adult to take care of them regardless of his own headspace. We can see his caregiver tendencies displayed in... countless interactions with Lloyd. Speaking of...

LLOYD MONTGOMERY GARMADON age regressor!

I am, once again, OBJECTIVELY correct. Lloyd is basically canonically an age regressor. He IS canonically an age regressor. He is, quite literally, a child stuck in a teenager's body -- as in he was a child and then magic age-up tea turned his body into a teenager's but still left him with the mental capacity of a child. Which is the DEFINITION of what an age regressor is!! Bodily an adult but mentally a child!! He IS an age regressor!!!!

And even if that WASN'T the case, he'd probably be an age regressor anyway, because, like. Look at him. He had the weight of the world on his shoulders since he was, like, eight, was unable to be a child because he had to endure constant rigorous training and when he WASN'T training he was undergoing countless traumatic experiences while he was still a child.

Lloyd: Well...The latest issue of Starfarer just came in at Doomsday Comix and it's a limited run, so if I don't go out and get it, it's going to sell out. Last they left off, intergalactic rogue Fritz Donnegan was surrounded by the Imperial Sludge, and if I don't find out if he gets out alright, I think I might have my own doomsday! Kai: The fate of Ninjago rests on your shoulders. As the Green Ninja, you have a giant responsibility to hold. I'm sorry, but you don't have time for such childish things. Lloyd: Other kids get to play and have fun. All I ever do is train...(Season 2, Episode 18, Child's Play)

I don't even think I need to argue my case that hard for why Lloyd is an age regressor. I think it'd be harder to argue why he ISN'T an age regressor, actually. TRY to argue that he's not an age regressor. TRY. I BET you CAN'T.

I don't have much evidence for this one, but I imagine he may be a pet regressor, too! He's an oni-dragon-hybrid, after all, and his heritage have proven to come with strong instincts regarding this animalistic half of his genes, as seen throughout the Oni Trilogy. Even if he doesn't have any physical traits, it's likely he at least has psychological ones. I imagine he growls, gnaws on things, et cetera!

COLE BROOKSTONE caregiver!

Look at him. JUST LOOK AT HIM. The most caregiver to ever caregive ever forever. He has chronic can't-stop-adopting-children syndrome. He's adopted, like, three separate children at this point. It is becoming a problem.

"Huh? Oh, no. Don't make that face. Don't cry. Oh, I can't take it any more. Hey, look at me. Hehe. Yeah. I'm not sad. Ha-ha, I'm not crying. Oh, fine. But this is between you and me. Shine, little glow worm, glimmer glimmer. Hey there, don't get dimmer, dimmer. You like that, huh? Well, there's more where that came from. Glow, little glow worm. Glow and Glimmer—" (Cole, Season 8, Episode 5, Dead Man's Squall)

When his mentor canonically (mentally & physically) regressed into an infant his first and immediate instinct was to adopt and care for them. If that isn't agere caregiver behaviour I don't know WHAT is. HE BECAME THE FATHER TO AN INDIVIDUAL REGRESSED FROM THEIR NORMAL HEADSPACE INTO A CHILD.... HE'S LITERALLY A CAREGIVER GUYS!!!!!! I DON'T KNOW WHAT ELSE YOU WANT ME TO SAY!!!!!!! I AM JUST STRAIGHT-UP CORRECT!!!!!!!!!!!

JAY WALKER padded regressor!

Jay: Aah! [He picks up a ruined stuffed toy.] Mister Cuddlywomp… [sobs] is a teddy bear I used to love when I was five, but now he's totally lame and—

Cole: We know you still sleep with him.

Jay: And I don't care who knows it! Mister Cuddlywomp... (Season 7, Episode 6, The Attack)

Jay Walker is DEFINTELY a regressor. His personality has been noted to be very child-like and babyish at times, to the point where the fandom (and showwriters) tend to infantilize him, despite the fact that in his own right he can be a very serious character when he need be. As much as I do believe he's an age regressor, it's important to remember he can be very capable and competent character when he's big, too, and not to define him by his regression!

If he's any regressor, it's definitely a padded regressor. Throughout the show, it's become a running bit that he's a bedwetter and has a weak bladder:

Jay: But I don't wanna get wet. I...I only have one pair of underwear.

Kai: Jay, this is no time to be making jokes. The Bounty can only take so much.

Jay: You think I'm trying to be funny? (Season 2, Episode 9, The Last Voyage)

Harumi: Uh, forgive me, but is that... underwear?

Jay: We're usually more organized. Ahem. But our leader got lost in a time-stream. Uh, they're Cole's.

Cole: They're blue!

Kai: You're lucky they're not yellow. (Season 8, Episode 3, The Oni & The Dragon)

Jet Jack: Then tell us, who do these diapers belong to?

Kai: Oh, those are Jay's. Tell 'em, Jay.

Jay: Oh. I have a weak bladder. (Season 9, Episode 2, Iron & Stone)

These are only a few of many, many examples (You can find others throughout the show, such as in Only One Can Remain, The Darkness Remains, Darkness Within, etc) of this bit, and though it's usually spun as a joke, there's no harm and shame in it! I imagine the ninja do actually buy him diapers, and as much they tease and prod, they never actually judge him whenever he has an accident!

ZANE JULIEN caregiver!

"I was built to protect those who can't protect themselves!" (Zane, Season 3, Episode 8, The Titanium Ninja)

I don't know what else you want me to say guys... he said so himself.,,,,,,. was built to protect those who can't protect themselves...,.....

Zane's entire identity is hinged around adaptability. Though I could go on a WHOLE 'NOTHER ESSAY about Zane's relationship with identity, the point here is that he often adapts to what people need him to be! I mean, he downloaded thousands pieces of detective media onto his hardware in order to try to track down the other ninja after they went missing, if called for I imagine he could very easily slip into the role of caretaker (he WOULD download hundreds of resources on age regression to help the other ninja)!

I don't have a lot of evidence for this one beside source: bro trust me but bro. trust me. The Vibes,,,, theyre there

These are just my personal headcanons based on evidence I've gathered from the show - I am in NO WAY saying these are the only headcanons or that they are the "correct" ones!! In fact, if you have DIFFERENT headcanons for the ninja (esp. ones I didn't provide a lot of detail for), I encourage you to share them in the tags, I'd love to hear other's opinions!!!! ^^

If this gets enough interested, I might make a pt. 2, so stay tuned!!

[sharpth1ng]

Hihihi sharp, sharpie, sharp guy, sharps disposal! Silly sharp man, I sent an ask for writing tips not too long ago, and I am yet again asking. Nay, BEGGING 🙏. If you have. Any writing tips. On Stu’s character. Ouhg. What’s your thought process on writing him?

Anything helps/nfta

If I mischaracterize him I will cry, broski. Jelp.

This is a little late but maybe it will still be helpful.

The way I see Stu hes someone that copes with positivity and humor. If someone he cares about is upset his first instinct is to make a fool of himself to distract them. He's an extremely social person because he finds people entertaining, even though he cares for relatively few of them.

I dont consider him a psychopath but think that relative to the general population he has high levels of cognitive empathy and lower levels of emotional empathy. This means that he's good at understanding people, and because he can understand them he can manipulate them, but he doesn't necessarily feel for them.

For example he's bummed to lose Tatum because he enjoyed spending time with her but he doesn't experience deep grief after her death. The emotional empathy he does experience is extremely selective, and most of it is directed toward Billy.

Put this all together and you have someone who is extremely socially capable. He knows how to fit in and get what he wants out of people. A lack of emotional empathy means he doesn't experience much guilt or shame. Guilt and shame are social emotions, to feel them you have to care what people think of you and how you affect them, and Stu mostly doesn't.

All of that said, Stu has the capacity for emotional empathy, he isn't neurologically incapable of it. I see this as something that kind of atrophied or got shut down through a combination of societal privilege and parental neglect.

The dark side of all that social energy and a history of neglect is that he still craves attention and affection, but he knows better than to just fully be himself around most people. If he did that he wouldn't be able to pass as normal, so thats where Billy comes in.

Similar to the way that Stu is special to Billy because he's the only person who really knows how fucked up he is, it's the same for Stu. Billy is the only person thats safe for Stu to fully let loose with, the only person fully capable of giving Stu the attention and affection he craves.

In that way they're pretty co-dependent, and Stu specifically isn't even trying to hide that dependence. Some people decide from a young age that they're going to be an astronaut or a doctor, and then they devote everything to that until they get it. Stu decided from a young age that he was going to be by Billy's side, however he was allowed. For the most part Billy is his first priority.

I think the paradox of childhood neglect is that you want attention and care but you don't actually know how to be cared for, and it can feel a lot more comfortable to care for someone else than to let them care for you. In some ways Stu can focus on Billy because it's more comfortable than focusing on himself. He understands Billy and I think he enjoys the special relationship he has with him. Even before they're romantically involved he knows that Billy gives him a kind of attention he doesn't give anyone else and that feels incredible.

So that's kind of the way I see his emotional motivation and internal psychological state, that's what I use to figure out how he would respond to various events in my writing.

In terms of his dialogue and internal voice he's jokey, he sees and delights in the absurdity of situations he's in. He uses a lot more slang than Billy and will choose silly turns of phrase just to make people laugh and because he thinks they're funny. He's a fairly sensory person but not as much as Billy, and he's a lot better at identifying his own emotions than Billy. Billy will describe emotional reactions in terms of their physical correlates (eg instead of saying he's embarrassed he'll say he feels sick and his face is getting hot) whereas Stu is often able to just identify that those things mean embarrassment.

Again in contrast to Billy he prioritizes pleasure and joy regardless of what that might mean about him. As a result he's not likely to spend much time in denial about his experiences and he mostly doesn't bother to make excuses to himself about the things he desires. He's pretty brave, he's willing to sacrifice a lot for what he wants and he's ok with a little bit of suffering, even if it's not the kind of suffering that turns him on.

Alright theres your Stuart essay 😭 i hope you find it helpful!

[writing-for-life]

Perspective Requires Being Anchored in Reality

These thoughts were brought on by discussing "The Sound of her Wings" in our community…

I absolutely think Death is worried and tries her best as a sister (that she can’t be anything else than her function is a deeper layer that resurfaces many times over the whole run, and that’s of course also a valid discussion to be had).

It’s the reason why I personally don't think it’s warranted to give her a hard time over the tough love approach (but we all see things differently, and maybe that's not a bad thing).

Do we always find the right words? I’m sure most of us are guilty of not being perfect that way, but I also think she made a very valid attempt at trying to refocus him. It is what he needed to hear (sometimes, it is contraindicated to pussyfoot around stuff, and sometimes, we need to word things in a way that is uncomfortable to hear. And of course that can backfire, but so can sugarcoating everything and hanging on to the illusion that if we only find the right words, or don’t speak at all, we’re helping, or by extension, we’re never going to hurt or trigger someone. It’s a harmful kind of concept creep that’s taken hold of what supposedly constitutes “safe” communication, but I digress).

But what we need to hear doesn't always land right, neither is it not prone to being misunderstood, because we are the ones who filter it through our own cognitive bias.

There are no guilty parties in this conversation, neither Dream nor Death. They both are who/what they are. They say what they say and hear what they hear because of that.

Connection

Death reminds Dream of the true value of connection, and he *does* hear it, and he *does* try. It’s just that he is not grounded in reality as she is, because it goes counter to his function. If you’re the personification of all that’s not real, HOW are you holding on to reality? And true connection needs that, and that is the very root of his dilemma…

Death and Dream relate so differently to humans because of this (and they to them), and doorway man is a bit exemplary for that.

gif by @athousandyearstime

Dream is far more “terrible” than Death. Which is half-joke, half-truth. There is probably something about him that is “uncanny valley” to most mortals (plus: being confronted with all that’s darkness and not just light in ourselves is terrifying, but also necessary). They brought that out masterfully in the comics, but we tend to forget about it in the show because, well, he’s played by a human. But it’s still there, and we shouldn’t forget about it. Dream is *not* human, and all the deeper contact he ever has to humans (bar very few) is when they aren’t lucid. Unlike his sister, who literally walks in reality all day, every day, and is there for you when things are as real as they get.

Meeting Dream in reality must be… weird, or potentially unsettling depending on who you are, what your inner world is like. At least judging by the reactions of the people we see in that alley (not just doorway man, the school kids as well). Maybe it’s not like that all the time, but I certainly think he feels it acutely all the time—it’s not that he doesn’t long for connection (it’s so obvious in everything he does) but rather that he can never take it as far as he probably wants to.

In this context, it’s certainly interesting to think about Dream seeing most of his lovers in dreams/the Dreaming—at least most of the time. And that’s also where he has some of his other closest relationships (Lucien/ne and Fiddler’s Green in particular spring to mind, if he were ever to admit he feels close to them). And while one could argue it doesn’t make these relationships any less valuable, they have one thing in common: They don’t play out in reality, and they are failing as soon as they get taken there. And more crucially: The ones that are taking place there have the capacity to hurt him and/or also don’t save him (if we assumed he needed saving—I personally don’t).

The Onslaught of the Collective Unconscious

But there’s another thing: Dream holds the subconscious of every sentient being. He is constantly bombarded with dreams and hopes, with ideas of romantic love and friendship and all that makes us who we are (just talking about humans now because I can’t speak for cats 🤣). But he can’t have it in the same way despite so desperately wanting it (he is the reason the no mortals rule was introduced—let’s not forget that). It must be like dangling that carrot in front of your nose, and the more you try to catch it, the more elusive and frustrating it gets. Because he knows what it’s like without ever being able/allowed to have it. And I think in certain ways, that’s a similar conflict to the one that Death has with life, only that she made peace with it (maybe?) by experiencing mortal life every 100 years.

But what’s the alternative for him?

Give himself a relationship every 100, 1000, 10000 years (insert random interval here)? He does that, but it doesn’t work.

Surround himself with sentient beings in the Dreaming so he’s not so alone (he’s the only one of the siblings who does this, if we don’t count Despair’s rats. Now there’s another thought about Despair, but this is getting too long already)? He does that, but it doesn’t work.

And now we can say, “Dude, you’re lacking perspective!” Yes—yes he does in a way. But that’s the whole point.

Because perspective requires an anchor in reality. And it’s impossible for him to have that perspective, or hold on to it, due to who and what he is—unreality. All the Endless are outliers compared to their siblings in one way or another. And this is unfortunately his outlier status 😩

[hadesoftheladies]

"you are killing a baby"

i am killing a fetus, not an infant. an egg is not a chicken. potential is not actuality.

"you are murdering an innocent."

it doesn't matter who is innocent. a hungry lion may be innocent in wanting to eat me only because it is hungry and may not have the cognitive capacities to exercise something like restraint or conscience. that does not mean i should not defend myself from harm. it is still self-defense. all animals are expected to protect themselves first and foremost. you are just so used to the idea that women (especially mothers) are supposed to sacrifice their lives for their children in order to be good people--like they aren't human beings with self-preservation instincts.

harm equals anything that threatens the life or health of a person and pregnancy does both.

"your body was meant/designed to do this"

miscarriages are as natural as pregnancies. why do you think the placenta exists? pregnancy sickness? the female body can grow a person, yet also has resistance mechanisms for a pregnancy.

also, just because i have genes that make me a good runner doesn't mean i have to become a marathoner. like think for a second.

"what will the father think?"

women don't owe men or society themselves. i know that's very hard for you to grasp but there's no time like the present to start. there is no ethical way to make a woman a commodity or government assigned asset for reproduction or sex.

"the baby is conscious"

so is the lion in the hypothetical. also, that's debatable. also, what are your thoughts on veganism? since you care so much about the suffering of conscious beings (that is beings with selves)

"but animals aren't humans. they don't deserve the same rights as humans because of their lower cognitive capacities"

great. now apply this ethic to babies and mentally disabled people and then try to explain to me why that has to be different without mentioning how you feel or your religion. :)

"a baby has more potential than an animal."

okay, and why does that potential automatically mean better or more valuable? higher cognitive capacities haven't stopped wars and mass murders have they? (and i would argue that bringing a child into a violent world increases their chance of becoming unhealthy or complicit persons, so you can almost know what the character of your child will be like for certain based on where you're raising them).

"a baby has a soul"

there are two kinds of dualisms within christianity: thomistic and cartesian. cartesian dualism has gone out of fashion even amongst christian theologians and philosophers.

Substance dualism, or Cartesian dualism, most famously defended by René Descartes, argues that there are two kinds of foundation: mental and physical. Descartes states that the mental can exist outside of the body, and the body cannot think.

'Thomistic substance dualism' (TSD) centers around two beliefs: 1) the rational soul is an immaterial substance, and 2) this immaterial substance is the human person.

aside from the fact that both of these philosophies are rife with problems, I think thomistic dualism is the stronger of the two. the rational soul is, in a way, a word for the self.

regardless, both of these describe a self as a soul. so i'm just going to define a self.

The psychology of self is the study of either the cognitive and affective representation of one's identity or the subject of experience. The earliest formulation of the self in modern psychology forms the distinction between two elements I and me. The self as I, is the subjective knower. While, the self as Me, is the subject that is known.

a self is a centralized consciousness with their own memories, introspection and reflections. we know through neuroscience, psychology, behavioural science and sociology that a person or self is formed via experiences (where memories and impressions are gathered, how people learn), language and socialization (economy, history, family, culture) and possibly some genetic expressions (although i think this is more about capacity than actualization).

this is why things like dementia or alzheimer's are so scary and difficult. when a person loses memories, they lose aspects of themselves. when a person changes their environment, they also become different people (even while maintaining some similarities with their past selves).

this is mirrored in popular media, characters that lose their memories lose versions of themselves. this is also why, when you look at stories that feature a multiverse, the same character becomes a different person in different lives. in short, you are not born a person. you become one, and although your self remains singular and centralized (even with age), that self still changes. both the self and the people around the self create the self.

this is also why socially isolated individuals devolve and become mindless or sick (and even have reduced lifespan). certain higher human capacities like "conscience" or "empathy" can be socialized out of a human being, as well. i'd even go so far as to say that children begin conceptualizing themselves as individuals only when they begin to sense the presence of other human beings. they cannot conceptualize their own identity without the presence of other people. they probably don't know they are a self until they recognize other people and then realize they themselves are also people, and people are individuals.

legally a person is:

. . . an entity that the law recognises as having its own distinct personality. This usually means one that is able to act in its own right, and capable of possessing legal rights and liabilities, including individuals (or "natural persons") and corporate organisations.

my point is, how can a fetus with virtually no experiences (which born animals have), no language or skill (learned) to introspect or reflect (or abstract), possibly have a self? when they are not exposed to the outside world? certainly they have the capacity to develop a self, but as established earlier on, potential is not actuality. so legally and psychologically, a fetus is very likely not a person.

but we do not need this to be true to justify abortion regardless, because an innocent person is still causing harm, whether directly or indirectly. so the woman/girl has every right to resist.

[its-the-sa]

Different anon. God just boiling down the slugcats to 'animals' angers me in a way I didn't think I could be angry. Yes, they are animals, but by all means they are cognitive and understand complex emotions, communicate with a supposedly complex language, are able to be taught to do things. Why else would the iterators use them as messengers constantly? It's not like they're messenger pigeons where it's just going from point A to point B, they understand exact instructions. If this was just some random animal, making groans and grunts, they wouldn't be able to understand what Five Pebbles even meant when he was explaining how to ascend. Even with the mark, could you imagine if he told a lizard this? Artificer, arguably, is a prime example of this. Just an animal would get over their fallen children, sure they'd grieve but in the end they'd just make more. Arti not only is so enraged by their death, that she is physically incapable of ascension, but also swears vengeance upon a whole other species. This isn't just some animal who lost her children, this is a mother who is enraged at her children's murder. Sure, they aren't on the same level as humans are. Like obviously. But I'd argue it makes sense that a scavenger and a slugcat could fall down the path of enemies to lovers. Especially when you consider the fact that death isn't permanent in Rain World's universe. That would definitely change one's perspective on it. I dunno if I make sense, I'm juggling like three things at once, but I had to say what I needed to say. Wording bad, slugcat smort.

tbh it took me a minute to figure out what this was even referring to, because honestly I don't think that anon meant to use the word 'animal' to dehumanize arti in the first place. it sounded to me like they were just using it as a non-human equivalent for 'person', like "why would anyone fall for a person who committed hate crimes against them?" which is a valid question. it never even occurred to me that they could have meant it in the sense of calling her an inferior creature.

that said... you ARE 100% right and you should say it, lmao.

I very nearly got into this exact argument once, bc i saw some comments from a guy scoffing at the idea of arti showing mercy to baby scavs. because by his logic, 'she is just an animal, so she isn't bound by human morality. in the wild, animals kill any young that don't belong to them without hesitation'. and it just pissed me off so much, because not only was it such an edgy "mercy is for the WEAK!" alpha-male bullshit take, it was also just factually wrong. many animals can and do adopt the young of other animals, even other species, especially when they've just lost their own. and like you said, they can grieve, but then they move on. they keep surviving, and making more babies. they don't dwell on injustice, or let rage consume them to the point that it becomes a hindrance to their own survival. they don't go on single-minded revenge quests. they dont try to justify their own violence by demonizing entire species, and they dont end up plagued by guilt in their sleep. those are very, very human things.

and yeah, i see a lot of people theorize that it's the mark of communication that grants the slugcats higher intelligence, but I don't really buy that either. i think the mark just lets them understand the iterator's language. they must've already had the capacity to understand it, or else it wouldn't work at all. it'd be like trying to install windows on a calculator. also, even without the mark, slugcats are obviously shown to communicate with each other. they have their own culture, they tell stories and make art, and they're apparently able to understand karma and the nature of the cycle at least enough to be able to ascend. so like... any creature thats capable of spiritual enlightenment must at least be sapient, right??

it seems like in the absence of the ancients, both slugcats and scavs are beginning to move in to their niche in the ecosystem

[ckret2]

Hi! Been keeping up with your fic for the past few months, absolutely loving it!

What is your take on Bill and empathy? In an earlier chapter he refers to it as an alien concept. I was wondering if he's never felt it before? Or if he's repressed it through eons of denial and self-absorbed partying?

Thanks!!

Let's start with definitions, because empathy is one of those words that gets a broad range of definitions from the colloquial (such as "empathy = caring about people") to the academic/scientific ("empathy = capacity to comprehend what another person is feeling"). I'm skewing toward the academic definition. You can care about people whether you experience empathy or not.

These days researchers define two kinds of empathy, "cognitive empathy" and "affective empathy". "Cognitive empathy" means "I can use my intellect to identify and understand someone else's emotions," and "affective empathy" means "when someone else is feeling an emotion, it makes me feel an emotion too (e.g. I'm sad because they're sad)."

When Bill says he considers empathy alien, he's referring to affective empathy. When he's not busy lying to himself about how others feel ("I'm sure Ford would be thrilled to be my friend again!"), he can be very good at cognitive empathy ("With all the stress Ford's under from his dwindling money and his parents' demands for financial success, he'll be desperate for a big break. This is my chance"). But Bill doesn't consider that empathy, he considers that "being smart enough to figure out what people are thinking."

I don't know whether Bill has never-ever-ever experienced affective empathy. He does possess the capacity to care about other people; and he does have the capacity to feel happiness when good things happen to them and anger or sorrow when bad things happen to them; and what exactly is the dividing line between "a person I like is happy -> that makes me happy" (empathy) and "a person I like is happy -> because I like them, I want good things to happen to them -> so I'm happy a good thing happened" (something that's not empathy)? Where do you split hairs between "I feel bad FOR you" and "I feel bad WITH you?" If Mabel comes home crying and Bill immediately gets angry and asks who he needs to murder, do you consider that affective empathy or just (a violent kind of) sympathy/compassion?

What Bill DOESN'T do is feel casual affective empathy for just, like, anybody. If a woman's husband is murdered and she loses the house and she loses her job and her children are sick, Bill's less likely to go "awww :(" and more likely to go "lol. 🍿" If he's in an unusually noble mood, he might go "man, what kind of a messed up society are you guys running that a lady gets fired for crying at work a week after her husband died? Do you not understand how grief functions in your own species?" but like, that's "disbelieving and condescending about how stupid y'all are being," it's not being sad because she's sad.

I don't know whether he's always had low/no affective empathy, or whether he initially had more and then it was reduced. I do know that if he ever did have more affective empathy, it had decreased before he was out of childhood, long before he destroyed his dimension. One of the things that drastically reduces empathy is receiving too much power without a stable social network and coping skills to keep you grounded, and Bill was given a LOT of power as a teen with zero healthy relationships and all the emotional maturity of a typical socially isolated teenager. By adulthood, he had already emotionally walled himself off from the world—there's me (superior) and everyone else (inferior), and anyone with the potential to be my equal is a threat—so if he'd ever had a capacity to feel with other people, he'd shut it down by then.

I'm trying to imagine what he would've been like at eight years old. If he saw some rectangle with an ice cream cone get bumped, drop the ice cream on the ground, and start crying, would he feel sad too? Maybe a little bit. Not enough to share his ice cream though. He'd just keep eating and hope someone else gives the rectangle a new cone. So at one point he definitely felt affective empathy. Not a lot, but some.

But that was a trillion years ago and Bill tends to say what feels truthy rather than what is true, so "empathy is alien and I'm suspicious it even exists" is what he thinks to himself.

[lucianalight]

The Missed Opportunities in Loki Series

While I was writing my review of S2, one of the topics I had problem with, was the redemption of TVA and its agents. I couldn't understand why "not having their memories" and "didn't know they were variants" could possibly be a good explanation for the atrocities they committed. I mean why does it matter? They were still killing people. Didn't they know that?...wait…let me google sth real quick…by which I mean reading interesting articles about the psychology of dehumanization and brainwashing that led me to some interesting results and a new perspective into how the series, especially in S1 missed its chance to explore some of the most important issues of Loki and his backstory.

The short answer to my question "Didn't they know they were killing people?" is "No, they didn't". And not in a racist or bigoted way the humans thinking other humans who aren’t like them, are subhuman. In a literal sense they didn’t consider anyone on the sacred timeline as people.

Empathy for another’s happiness and suffering depends fundamentally on recognizing that the other has a mind minds—that is, the same capacities for thought, emotion, desire, intention, and self-awareness as ourselves. Without appreciating others’ minds, empathy makes no sense[1]

To TVA agents those on sacred timeline weren’t people like them. They didn’t have thoughts and minds and emotions like them. And anyone making a different choice from what was considered for them was a “variant”. For a lack of better word, the TVA had dehumanized anyone but those who were working for TVA which is a necessary perception if you want to facilitate inhuman acts of torture and slaughter.

Dehumanized perception is a cognitive bias characterized by spontaneous failure to think about mental contents – thoughts and feelings in a social target’s mind. [2]

According to TVA propaganda, TVA and its people were created by the Time Keepers. They were different. They weren't like the ones on the sacred time line. The chaotic and disobedient "variants" should have been "pruned". None of them mattered except the right order of time.

The only ones TVA agents considered as people were each other. They were friends and coworkers and cared about each other's lives. And they had no memory of their previous life. But when they found out they are variants themselves, they realized “Those we were killing were like us. They had minds and emotions like us. We’ve been killing people all this time”. This should have been the explanation for their change and redemption. Their memories were taken from them and they were brainwashed by a propaganda that dehumanized anyone else and let them commit those atrocities easily. It shouldn’t have been “they’re variants themselves” but “the variants were people like them”.

So, while TVA can be compared to a totalitarian regime, there's probably no exact irl example for TVA agents because their situation for the most part is fictional. But perhaps the angels and demons in Good Omens have a close mindset to them. They care about each other but not the humans. The humans are just a tool for them to start the final battle according to the great plan.

This would have been easier to pinpoint if TVA was framed as evil from S1. Also if you want your characters to be likable or redeemable give them personality and show that they're doubtful and uncomfortable with what they're doing from the start not when they find out the truth or in the last episode of the last season! And don't frame torture and dehumanization as sth hilarious, therapeutic and deserved for one character and completely opposite for another character if you want to reach the conclusion that those actions were atrocities.

What bothers me more is that they missed a perfect parallel and opportunity to address Loki's identity issues. I don't even think the parallels were intended, considering how much the show is indifferent to them.

First the parallel with Loki finding out about his heritage. He was stolen from his homeland, grew up learning to hate and fear his own race. Like Loki people in the TVA didn't know about their past. Like Loki they would have an identity crisis. This was explored a little in S2 but they failed to make the connection with Loki's past. I mean you could let Mobius call Loki an ice runt as an insult, but didn’t bring up the topic when he had an identity crisis and talking about it with Loki? Although maybe that's too much expectation from the people who treated Loki being adopted and not knowing about it as sth unimportant, and didn't mention the racism and favorism he grew up with even once.

The parallel isn't accurate though since Loki weren't going around killing frost giants. He even didn't really consider them less than Asgardians. Not until he thought that's how his family actually sees them. That was his breaking point.

"You could have told me what I was from the beginning. Why didn't you?" "To protect you from the truth" "Why? Because I'm the monster parents tell their children about at night?"

This is the reason Loki went on his genocide attempt. To prove to Odin he wasn’t one of the monsters. That he was an Asgardian. That he belonged with them.

The second parallel with Loki's story that they failed to address is Loki being brainwashed by Thanos. You want to say your characters are redeemable because they were brainwashed? Show it! Make a connection with the main character's backstory. How they have missed this chance is beyond me…On second thought, they probably didn't even connect the dots, because they presented torture and brainwashing as a positive thing.

Brainwashing is the process of manipulating a person’s beliefs, thoughts, or actions through psychological manipulation. If a person is brainwashed, they may no longer be able to think for themselves and may act on orders without considering the consequences. Brainwashing is often used by totalitarian regimes to control their citizens, and can also be used in cults and other groups to manipulate members.[3]

Some people are more susceptible to brainwashing like people who are going through a difficult period in their life or a change that may or may not be of their own making[4]. It is also useful to consider identity when it comes to brainwashing.  

Someone experiencing an identity crisis is in desperate need of a new identity. Because brainwashing promises them a new identity, it makes them more susceptible.[3]

Through the events of Thor 1 Loki’s going through an identity crisis. All he ever knew his life were lies. Even his skin was a lie. At the end not being accepted by his father no matter what he does, he commits suicide. That’s when he meets Thanos. And Thanos and his allies through torture and using mind stone, brainwashed Loki. People who go through brainwashing give up their previous identity and adopt a new one.

The person’s thinking and behaviors are altered by the indoctrinated beliefs that support their new identity. The individual changes into a whole new person, in some cases.[3]

This change in personality and ideas is easily noticeable in Loki in Avengers vs the other movies. The way he talks in Avengers is eerily similar to the way Ebony Maw talks in EG.

This could be a parallel with how TVA agents memories’ were removed and replaced by propaganda. But no mention of what happened to Loki during his time with Thanos. Nothing.

What’s interesting though is that when you read about how brainwashing is done, there isn’t only one example of it on screen. There are two. The steps for brainwashing are:

1.Isolating the victim

2.Degrade the target

3. Promise a better identity

4.Offer rewards

What Mobius was doing in S1 wasn’t therapy unlike what the writers claimed. It was brainwashing.

Another interesting point is that the way Loki treated Mobius was the right way to undo brainwashing. Those steps are separate the person from their group, be on their side and question their beliefs like what Loki did during 1x02 and tell them they’ve been brainwashed like what happened in 1x04.

I find it really funny though that every time they try to show what a villain Loki was and that he needed the guidance from these heroic™ people, he turns out to be the most moral person in the group if you look at the story objectively. Loki befriended and tried to help the people who arrested, tortured and tried to brainwash him, even before he knew they were variants.

In the end, I don’t give the credit for these parallels to the series. Because I don’t think they were intentional. Otherwise, they would have delved into Loki’s past and compared it to what happens in the show and wouldn’t have disregard it completely. What a huge waste of opportunity.

Sources:

From Dehumanization and Objectification, to Rehumanization

Dehumanized Perception

How To Undo Brainwashing

How to Recognize and Avoid Brainwashing

[lupins-hehim-pussy]

Ngl if the sigewinne story was more 'Neuvillette instructed the melusines that it's alright gifting people in need gifts despite past prejudice' i would be fine with it. But the fact they wrote it in a way that implies that he instructed them specifically to care for Wriothesley makes me uhhhhhhh

Sir you are aware this child is an orphan and the best you can do is tell the melusines to feed him? What about other orphans? You have the guards at your command to help people??

I'm alot more fine with the 'Neuvillette cant do anything about the shit law despite being iudex' thing, like I'm okayish chalking it up to he's not human, it wasn't his job / wasn't told to fix the law and shit he is a judge first and foremost. But this story is NOT helping because it implies he HAS the capacity to comprehend SOMETHING is wrong and has the will to fix it and just... does nothing???

Sir this is not helping the collusion allegations

Idk man i'm a wriolette apologist i'm so alright with waving off the shallow plot beats to cater to the shippers thing but they had to make it super obvious huh head in hands

Yippey (running around in circles I love yapping and getting big asks).

Personally with shipping and media enjoyment, I'm very much the guy who is like "these are my OCs now" and I will enjoy things regardless of how I feel about the canon materials. I don't care about 'canon proof' for ships and for most scenarios, I don't think canon should be used to dissuade a person from shipping either. Obviously there's gonna be things that makes me think you're weird, but things like self-insert/canonxoc is cool and that will Never have any basis in canon material anyway. So like. Take the limiters off and reach for the sky.

As for the Neuvillette-and-melusines thing, yeah. I think it's weird that they made it specifically about Wriothesley. In general, how they portrayed Wriothesley always irks me, because they make his entire characterisation around how he 'overcame' his past because he's just a special guy who, instead of complaining about the shit hands he's dealt, accepted his sentence gracefully and pulled himself up by his bootstraps and got to where he is because he's strong and crafty. Wriothesley doesn't actually value these traits (he thinks of himself as just some guy), but everyone around him considers him 'special' because he's able to network and rally people and make a name for himself in Meropide.

That would have made for a more interesting narrative if they actually did something with it and really show some actual conflict between his view of himself and how the public sees him, but now, as it read to me, it just reeks of individual exceptionalism. He's successful because he has that capitalist mindset in him lol. Wriothesley becomes Fontaine's idealised "rags to riches" story. Then, not only is he extraordinary, he also is 'humble' about it. "You don't know you're beautiful/That's what makes you beautiful" moment lmao.

With Neuvillette, had they actually shown that he's ill-equipped to do his job as someone who struggles to relate to his subjects, I would have been like, yippee! Cool! Like I have reworked his story and characterisation to work in my mind to an embarrassing extent, and I whole-heartedly think it can be done with the premise they have set up for him. He could be complacent because he's never actually been allowed to step into the backstreets, because from the moment he stepped foot in Fontaine he's been treated as the upperclass, even when the Melusines were going through their fantasy racism shit. He's never had to fear for his life, or wonder when his next meal is. He gets water imported from all across the world, when people in the Fleuve Cendre/Meropide/Poisson probably struggles to get good plumbing and clean water.

And Focalors kept him there. He's very intentionally isolated so he can serve in her grand plan. It could also be an empathy issue, right, he can see people starve and think, cognitively, that it's just how the world is. That's just how humans are. You can really lean onto the Otherness of Neuvillette and portray him even as a overwhelmingly large, eldritch cryptid, who's trying to keep an ant colony alive simply because he likes ants. But he doesn't understand them, and because of that, he lets them die purely by accident most of the time. And he feels bad for it!

But I think the problem with it is that Genshin can't......... commit, and they can't stay consistent. They can't say he's powerless because Focalors is pulling the strings, or because of his own ineptitude, because they want Focalors to be sympathetic, and they want to say Neuvillette is cool and powerful. Like he has canonically enforced judicial changes. He essentially set up anti-discrimination laws for the Melusines. He's fully capable to. But now, because MHY forgot about that, now it seems like he only makes changes when it affects him and those he cares about, and not the hundreds and thousands of children who died due to poverty and incarceration in his time as Iudex. Then the whole thing with how he's able to pull strings to Get the Traveller into prison, but you tell me he can't... I dunno, fudge the verdict a little every once in a while? When he has to sentence a child to prison???

And obviously, these inconsistencies aren't intentional, because if you try to rationalise them, Neuvillette would end up looking like a weirdo bigot who only cares about one specific species and took a specific liking to one minor for no discernible reason. And he's not meant to be seen as that. The Melusines lore was meant to show that he cares about them. The Wriothesley lore is also meant to show that he cares about this poor starving kid. MHY just forgor there's many other starving kids in Fontaine.

His whole character hinges on the fact that underneath his cold impartiality is a guy who has a bleeding heart, who literally cries all the damn time. That's his Core Concept. MHY just sucked at writing it because........ writing teams aren't talking to each other.

Like, once people realised a lot of characterisation debates in genshin fandom can be answered with "MHY is just shit at their job", half of the complaints would be redirected to the fucking company instead of the characters/shippers lmao. Like, Lanoire. Wriothesley would have never allowed her to keep living like that. Now if you try to rationalise that whole quest, you have to think "maybe Wriothesley doesn't care all that much" or "maybe he doesn't know Meropide as well as he does," both of which contradicts canon facts about him. Because he has eyes everywhere (and even if he doesn't, his guards would 100% just tell him instead of just trying to sneak the kid out, because they canonically get Rewarded for shit like that). And he, canonically, cares about people's quality of life and safety in Meropide. He'd hate to have something like this fall under his nose.

So yeah yippee. I mean, I will keep drawing art and writing wrlt, obviously. I don't gotta explain that to anyone else. I think I know better than MHY /lh

[saintsenara]

What is your rationale for disagreeing with the fanon that the horcruxes affected Voldemort's sanity?

that it's literally canon that they don't!

i obviously don't have an actual problem with people using the idea that the horcruxes affect voldemort's sanity as a trope, if that's what works for their story, but what irks me is that this idea is often repeated by voldemort enjoyers as canon fact, when the impact of horcruxes on cognitive function is spelled out clearly in half-blood prince:

Harry sat in thought for a moment, then asked, “So if all of his Horcruxes are destroyed, Voldemort could be killed?”  “Yes, I think so,” said Dumbledore. “Without his Horcruxes, Voldemort will be a mortal man with a maimed and diminished soul. Never forget, though, that while his soul may be damaged beyond repair, his brain and his magical powers remain intact. It will take uncommon skill and power to kill a wizard like Voldemort even without his Horcruxes.”

in half-blood prince - as in every book prior to deathly hallows - dumbledore functions as the "word of god" character, which is to say that the information he provides us - as long as it relates neither to harry nor himself - isn't up for interpretation, it's understood within the narrative as correct. we can also be sure that he's done his research on horcruxes, knows exactly how they work, and is speaking as an expert when it comes to their impact on the mind - and we can also note that slughorn [who also seems to know what he's talking about when it comes to horcruxes and their function] doesn't mention them causing any cognitive damage when discussing them with the teenage tom riddle.

but nobody has ever made as many horcruxes as voldemort! maybe one doesn't affect the mind, but seven certainly could.

except this doesn't align at all with how the series understands the relationship between the soul and the will.

one of the central themes of the harry potter series is the value of choice. all of its main characters have narrative arcs which hinge - in some way or other - on them making a choice, very often the choice between what is right and what is easy. ron chooses to leave and then chooses to come back; hermione chooses to stay. sirius chooses to take a stand against the life his family expect of him. snape chooses to repent of his sins and work forever to atone for them. harry chooses to walk into the forest and die. lily chooses to ignore voldemort's request for her to stand aside.

all of these choices are made of the character in question's own free will - and the same applies to everything voldemort does in the series. he chooses to kill and to keep killing of his own free will, with the full capacity to understand his actions, and he refuses, right until the very end, to show the slightest bit of remorse for what he's done - and it is this, in the narrative's view, which makes his behaviour so heinous and which causes his behaviour to have such an impact on the state of his soul.

if we assume that voldemort's grasp on rationality declines with the number of horcruxes he makes, we are also assuming that his capacity to understand the full wickedness of his actions also declines - but his motivation for killing myrtle to make a horcrux and his motivation for killing frank bryce to make a horcrux are exactly the same: he wants to, and he doesn't give a solitary fuck about the life he's just taken.

and this stands in contrast to something else we see in canon - the idea that killing does not automatically have an impact on the soul:

“And my soul, Dumbledore? Mine?” “You alone know whether it will harm your soul to help an old man avoid pain and humiliation,” said Dumbledore.

this - the set-up to snape's mercy-killing of dumbledore - suggests that your soul is not harmed if you know without question that the death you cause is justified.

snape kills dumbledore of his own free will, but this suggestion also implies that it would be perfectly possible for the soul to remain unharmed if a killer was understood to be non compos mentis. that is, if someone lacked the capacity to understand their actions were not justified, then their soul would see them as "not guilty by reason of insanity" and not splinter.

voldemort's ability to make so many horcruxes in the first place, then, must depend on his capacity to understand exactly what he's doing - to know he could choose not to kill and then still do it anyway.

and we do actually see in canon that - while he's shown to be someone who kills with the slightest provocation in the films - the voldemort of the books is clinical and methodical in his violence:

“Nice costume, mister!” He saw the small boy’s smile falter as he ran near enough to see beneath the hood of the cloak, saw the fear cloud his painted face: Then the child turned and ran away... Beneath the robe he fingered the handle of his wand... One simple movement and the child would never reach his mother... but unnecessary, quite unnecessary...

the canonical voldemort's known kill count is actually surprisingly low, and each of his victims is clearly selected with a rational [in the "does he have a disorder of thought?" sense, not in the "is this morally justifiable?" sense] motivation driving his decision to attack them - even if his actions are also affected by an emotional trigger [he does not, for example, kill his father or massacre the goblins who tell him that the cup was stolen for reasons which are irrational or delusional - incandescent fury or fear that your secret is out are not insanity].

voldemort kills and makes his horcruxes out of choice, and the series is clear that his capacity to understand that choice does not degrade across the course of his life.

ok, but you have to admit that he's definitely not... all there, personality wise...

sure. but i don't think this has anything to do with the horcruxes...

the idea that voldemort runs around shrieking and cackling to himself is an invention of the films. the canonical voldemort is shown to be lucid and thoughtful even in deathly hallows, he remains a formidable strategist right up until the end - and i think it's also worth noting that the films really gloss over just how successful his takeover of the government is - and his prodigious intellect and magical talent are acknowledged by the order throughout the series.

his more volatile personality traits - his fondness for monologuing, his rapid switching between being superficially charming and feral, his tendency to get lost in his own obsessions, his emotional brittleness - are all ones the eleven-year-old riddle is shown to possess, and i think it's much more interesting to explore the idea that they remain aspects of the person he once was which the adult voldemort cannot hide behind the mask he has constructed.

but - yes - its certainly true that the resurrected voldemort of order of the phoenix onwards is more paranoid, harder to soothe, crueller to his death eaters, more inflexible in his thinking and so on than he is implied to have been in the 1970s, and so i understand why many readers interpret this as evidence that his last two horcruxes [harry and nagini] - plus the arcane horror of his resurrection ritual - might have sent him round the bend.

but i think that the implication of canon is that this behaviour has much more mundane causes.

in october 1981, all the evidence we have is that voldemort is about to win. he is an unassailable terrorist kingpin with an army of highly-trained, highly loyal minions and - we can assume - widespread popular support.

and then only four of these supporters try to find him.

it's clear - as we can tell from the fact that barty crouch jr. is so shocked to discover that he didn't massacre the reassembled death eaters where they stood - that voldemort is livid that none of his "loyal" servants came to rescue him from the tree in albania his soul piece was hiding in, choosing instead to pretend they were under the imperius curse and that they'd never have been seen dead supporting him had they been in their right minds. it's also clear that he has no choice but to welcome these death eaters back to the fold once he's resurrected because he'd have no core supporters otherwise.

but it's also clear that he doesn't trust any of them one single bit once their commitment is proven to be so fragile - and that it is this, this evidence that he's just a human being with human feelings, rather than a creature of pure magic whose mind has been warped by that magic, which provides a much, much more interesting explanation for his increasing volatility as the war draws to its conclusion.

voldemort is at his most interesting - in my opinion - when his humanity [and his failure to outrun it] is foregrounded. this isn't incompatible with his creation of the horcruxes at all. but it is, i think, incompatible with the idea that they warp his mind.

[maria-sand-22]

Was just watching season 3 of From and I don't understand why people hate Jim, they're saying he's an unsupportive ass for not being happy with being left alone with the kids while tabby was gone but are yall just brushing over the fact tabby started that fight out of nowhere for no reason and accused him being useless BEFORE he brought up that point cause she didn't like the words of comfort he was using and wanted someone to take her guilt and regret out on for being a dumbass who didn't even bother with making an Internet post about fromvill before getting in a car and back on the road while a powerful entity that steals cars into its realm is still around so that maybe a witch or a fae expert or an FBI supernatural devision person or some shit may help or know what to do or anything, nope no no it's all Jim's fault for being literally the only person doing anything that may get them home without constantly blaming and insulting everyone when he fails for being stupid and for being distressed that his 8 year old started fantasising about his wife's rotting bloated corpse

It didn't sound like he was upset she left it sounded like he was upset that she didn't understand the weight of her leaving fuck she even wanted to do something even more dangerous again AND TOOK THEIR SON WITH HER

Yeah no Jim's not perfect by any means he was an asahole in episode 8 and had his asshole moments like literally every single other character in the show including boyd, donna, and tabitha but he's not this terrible villain either and Tabby is not perfect but what pisses me off is how she doesn't seem to realise that fact unlike Jim who very much seems to be aware that he makes mistakes and isn't always right, I've never seen him start shit he had no business starting or playing the blame game unprovoked or for no logical reason at all completely out of left field unlike some characters like ellis, tabitha, or fatima.

He's no Saint and yeah he can be a jerk but it's no more bad than any other character and the hate he gets is definitely more of a "I have no cognitive capacity to form thoughts of my own so I'll just listen to whatever other fans say so I don't have to think or analyse anything on a higher scale than a 2nd grader" kinda phenomenon.

[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.