#Like maybe its cause our understanding of these animals is always changing and evolving but one thing we DO know with lots of clarity

[theropoda]

honestly does anyone else much prefer pre-WWD paleontology documentaries because there is something MUCH more interesting there to me than paleo documentaries now that are mimicking wildlife documentaries with no one but a narrator, no interviews, minimal history of the study/finds just someone narrating dryly over some usually pretty poopy cgi dinosaurs.....

pre-WWD documentaries seem to put a greater focus on the history of the paleontology itself, the backgrounds of each find like what where paleontology was at the time of a find and who found it where and how, and also my personal favorite which is footage and explanations of actual digs and fossil prep....learning the human side of paleontology is much more fun to me than a guy going Here is spinosaurus....scientists think he is a swimmer who eats fish....he lives in the late cretaceous....here he is going to fight another spinosaurus over the carcass.

[erijuice]

My Revision Of Wish (pt 4): Orion

Welcome back to more of my personal revision of Wish. Today, I will be talking about our starboy, the legendary wishing star himself, Orion.

One of the many things I didn't like about the canon version of Wish is how Asha didn't have a partner to bounce off of or develop her character with, she was just talking to a ball of light that squeaks and squeals, and I heard how everyone in the world agrees that Star should've been a humanoid figure and Asha's romantic interest. We miss having a real romance couple in Disney films, but of course, Disney doesn't want to do that, because.. well.. "girl power!" And furthermore, this is supposed to be the origin story of the Wishing Star, doesn't he deserve to be in the spotlight ?

Orion is the adorkable Disney Prince to Asha's timid Disney Princess. He is born from the power of positivity, joy and hope. Energetic, ever-so-curious about the new world he's in. His purpose is simple. He was meant to be Asha's companion, or at least, that's what he believes. As one of the many Wishing Stars of the sky, his purpose is to help the mortals who send their wishes to him. But since Magnifico and Amaya are the key wish-granters of Rosas, people stopped wishing on stars and relied on the royal couple for their dreams to come true. No one has ever wished upon a star since then... until Asha.

Asha's wish was pretty vague, all she wanted was help from above to save her kingdom. Orion doesn't know what to do either. He has the appearance of a teenage boy, and the mentality of a newborn child, and is blissfully unaware that he has omnipotent power to help everyone, but right off the bat, he knows that he is there to help Asha in her time of need.

Orion: Wait, what even is my purpose anyway?

Asha: Oh, well, I wished on a.. star?

*Orion points to himself with a puzzled expression*

Asha: Yeah, and.. I'm not sure what I wished for, maybe it was for help, or guidance, or just someone to help.. me?

Orion: Oh, it all makes sense now! I'm here for you!

Asha: Me?

*Orion nods*

Asha: It's weird. I just had a feeling that someone would hear me, you were the reason why I wished, and I don't even know you yet.

Orion: I've been watching you from the skies but I was too afraid to interfere, but it's your love that brought me here.

Orion, however, has no sense of right or wrong, he is very similar to Pinocchio in the sense that he needs to learn about morality, and Asha serves as his conscience figure.

Orion's power correlates to Asha's sense of hope and optimism. The happier and more hopeful she is, the more powerful Orion becomes. He learns that he can shapeshift into many forms, and disguise himself as various animals for when he needs to hide himself from the evil royal couple.

Orion (as a horse): I don't get why humans only have two legs, having four legs is much more fun, and I can run even faster!

Asha: You're glowing.

Orion: Aww, thank you!

Asha: Eehhhh no, you're glowing too bright! Can you..?

Orion: How should I know, I don't know how!

He can stretch and change the shape of his body, and sometimes he is able to disconnect his head or his limbs from his body, and it doesn't hurt. He can bring plants to life, make animals talk, and even when he doesn't, he can always understand animals in their language. He is also able to make things (both living and nonliving) grow or shrink to extreme sizes.

Orion is accompanied by his tiny starbeing companion, Little Dipper. (Star in the canon version). Little Dipper has already evolved centuries - if not eons - beyond human language, so he communicates through pantomime. Little Dipper also serves as a fast friend companion to Asha's pet goat Valentino (And thankfully, he does not talk in my version). Despite its youthful appearance, it appears to have more maturity than Orion himself. Orion has only granted one wish, and Little Dipper already granted two wishes, but the two are a mischievous wish-granting duo that end up causing a lot of chaos. After Orion and Asha get in trouble for granting too many wishes for the people of Rosas, the King and Queen mistaking Little Dipper for the star, and they capture it for its energy. Orion would take a much dangerous risk to rescue his friend and exposure himself to the royal couple in the process.

Orion didn't start out as the North Star (The biggest, brightest star in the sky), he was just a tiny little star that needed experience in wish-granting. Asha's eyes were fixated on the North Star, but she believes that she might've missed her mark, and should've been more specific. But he eventually will be the biggest, brightest star at the end, and it will feel very rewarding! Orion mentions at one point that the bigger star is his mother, the Blue Fairy. There are multiple Blue Fairies in his realm who become stars after they die in the mortal realm, but they need to be pure of heart in order to become Blue Fairies. (I'd say that Cynthia Erivo's portrayal of the Blue Fairy would be his mother. They really do look like mother and son!)

Orion is constantly bursting with curiosity and energy. He's as quirky as Rapunzel, and as mischievous as Peter Pan. Once Orion is summoned, he is instantly enamored with Asha. He gives her big hugs, asks her tons of questions, and is extremely eager to help the Princess. He is very enthusiastic about learning about humans and Earth animals, and he enjoys taking all kinds of forms to study what they're really like. Orion fully understands that most wishing stars of his kind are only supposed to intervene from a distance, instead of floating down to Earth to help, but the power and desperation of Asha's wish was enough to bring him down to Rosas. He can't help but to interfere and to help the mortals in person. He deeply cares about Asha and her desires, but he feels a huge sense of responsibility granting everyone's wishes.

Oftentimes, he regrets coming down to Earth and causing chaos just by being there, he contemplates or whether or not he should go back to the night sky, but he remembers that he is there to help Asha and the people of Rosas, but it's Asha who needed him more than anything. (I'm giving him a solo Prince song, think Evermore or Wild Uncharted Waters) He develops a wish of his own, to become human and stay on Earth, but he learns that he wants to grant wishes for everyone in the world, he is heartbroken to leave Asha, but he grants her the honorary title of a Blue Fairy so that she can grant wishes on her own for the people of her kingdom.

Essentially, he is a mixture of Peter Pan, Prince Philip, Genie, Pinocchio and Tramp, with a few shades of Moana and Rapunzel. All-in-all, Orion is a living embodiment of joy and hope, the living answer to Asha's wish. He may have his moments of self-doubt in being the savior that Rosas needs, but he remains hopeful and determined to heed, to love, and to protect Asha at all costs.

[yaytomhiddlestonyay]

capitalism/growth ideology is bad, neoliberalism is bad, austerity is bad, automation is bad, AI is bad, and the future is bad

this is bleak

the luddites were, in general, right

and so were all the people who would have chosen to live simply and peacefully in the distant past

how do we stop this from going any futher

it already went too far a long time ago

Yes fine i know that technology has enabled scientists and psychologists and anthropologists and doctors and dieticians to study human functioning and needs faster/more,

but but...... to have a similar level of good useful knowledge/results/outcomes for human, animal, planet wellbeing in many ways, we could have instead just....

....just not had capitalism and greed and technology and violence disrupt and destroy and degrade and assimilate healthy cultures + systems + lifestyles in the first place

fuckin borg

I suppose.... I suppose a lot of changes bring good as well as bad

Why can't we get our shit together and just codify a bunch of human, animal and planet needs and givens that have to be super carefully protected, like much better/deeper than we currently do or ever have, and include human diversity and community and concepts like in that in a big way,

and then in advance just always disallow any changes or developments to impact those givens, or disallow them to be used in ways or settings that impact those givens...

I suppose maybe i am overlooking/dismissing an obvious human need/maybe human culture/anthropological need

desire for ever-expanding knowledge

and maybe other ones that i can't understand that much or be sympathetic to if i'm not an inventor or engineer

but......

if we could just make the perogative for change and 'advancement' not be greed or profit or growth, and disallow it to be used for that and disallow those things a fair bit, and disallow negative impacts on people or animals or the planet

maybe that's the way

I wonder if tribal elders and sages and wise men and mystics and, well, teenagers and stoners and artists and poets and weirdos, have had this same discussion from the beginning of time

from rocks and flints and implements

to standing upright and carrying stuff

to fashioning objects to carry stuff and alter the environment and use resources and and.......

I hope you're all happy with the back problems and spine problems and neck problems and foot problems from standing upright and carrying stuff.

absolute madness

did i just end up back at tao/yin/yang/duality/alan watts/ lore and mythologies and prometheus and pandora and icarus, and whatever the opposing stories of those were... Are we so dumb now from our technology and our destroyed cultural functions that I dumbly wasnt taught this unsolvable paradox/conundrum via tribal lore and mythology already, instead everybody has to annoyingly and exhaustingly get there on their own

either that or do the bothersome treadmill of seeking money or success or blah blah

what if we finally did fuck up the fundamental nature of humanity and human culture

i would give anything to know all the lore and mythology of any sustainable & humane tribal cultures, and compare it with that of early cities, capitalist/growth civilizations, etc

what if knowledge retention and growth drive is fundamental to humans and human needs

that wish for enough resources for all young, and ease and comfort instead of struggle

and at its problematic level, i guess overemphasis to a problematic degree on abundance, excess, security, control, etc

what if every bird and insect and creature's biology & DNA is constantly desperately trying to evolve towards getting enough resources to raise all young well, instead of losing some, and a magical desire to not be at the mercy of weather conditions or rain level or....stuff, and getting the best mate/gene mix possible, and the best health of you and your kiddos, to go further and better

and the only reason they arent causing havoc in the process is brain's less developed, can't oppose thumb, can't make good implements, can't stand upright and carry stuff.

Well I mean...... nature is kind of horrible

I guess they kind of do miserable havoc

maybe a somewhat alternative to that struggle and certain unpleasant things was tools, agriculture, knowledge, and setting aside resources and land and .... 🙄

and maybe an alternative to watching your offspring struggle was....

marriage, passing down property/wealth, amassing armies or strongmen & building better weapons to beat other assholes, honing knowledge, gathering more and better resources to do this.....

oops accidentally invented civilization/growth/capitalism

Edit:

OK fine i forgot about birth control

and probably a few other things

But those are EXCEPTIONS

[lost-little-fawn]

i am not a honey throated nymph with teeth like budding flowers- 

theres no power behind the words i release from my thankless mouth.

theres no witchery in the way i cook, no belief imbued in my thoughts, 

no sigils of safety squirreled away in my actions. no magic upon my skin. 

no gods have ever once protected me from the foul and the evil- those, 

these (men) among us planting their seed in those who havent opened their garden. 

because when i was a kid, sometimes i cried so hard and for so long

that i was certain id drown. i would muffle my face into my favorite stuffed animal

and sob. sob for the broken and needy and hurting parts of me that didn't 

and would never experience peace. my lungs would become so full, 

so occupied with my own pain and suffering that i wouldnt be able to breathe.

salt tracks would crest like tsunami waves on my cheeks. my pillow would 

feel waterlogged and heavy, wet and lingering. i was a ship out to sea

trying to navigate the storm- panting, whimpering, gasping like a landlocked fish

-and even then, even unable to speak, begging for air, even dizzy, 

my parents viewed this as obstinacy. demanded responses to their own soapboxes. 

my abuser viewed my absolute terror, hysteria, genuine fear of death

that any therapist would have explained to me as a panic attack, 

as rebellion. and so, for so many years, i thought i was just overreacting. 

i thought my emotions were too much, even when my reactions were dulled and 

chipped down, fragile and flighty, either too much or too little. 

thats how i know theres no god. i had to evolve. i had to become a different person. 

no powerful being would let that happen to a child for so long that she changed 

so much of herself just to stay alive. hands tangled in her hair, fingers

in her mouth, pain like fireworks wherever hands had touched. unheard 

and unloved, and devalued, invalidated, for so many more years yet, baby. 

my inner child is a wounded and feral animal. she doesnt know the words to explain 

her pain. doesnt know or understand love. wishes mommy would be nicer. 

mixes up happy and sad on the chart the therapist puts in front of her. 

can never show her on the doll where he touches her because its not her he touches

she goes far away, never trusts her body or her memories. 

it mustve happened to someone else, because she sees it 

in 3rd person like a disney movie. she doesnt know why she can never stop crying. 

never a family, never a daughter, always a burden, a stuffed toy, a pet. 

nobody wanted me to grow, not even myself. i wanted to stay a child forever. 

and i guess maybe my inability to believe may have caused my peril. maybe

our god is vengeful to those who forsake him. it wouldn't have been fair, anyway, 

to ask him to help me out of the stupid situations i put myself in. 

[lunatic-fandom-space]

Comparing RWBY and YGO DM: The Handling and Evolution of Themes

Hey! Its been a hot minute since I last posted anything RWBY-related but Im laying in my bed right now and Im sick and bored so I guess we're doing this. Today I will do my best to analyze what I percieve to be the main themes and messages of both of these shows, or more specifically, how theyre handled narratively. Im mostly focusing on that part because, while these series do have similar themes and messaging, they are still a few things in which they are wildly different. And with that, lets start with this essay-post-thing!

1. Theres something we need to adress first

Okay so, before we can really talk about this, theres something I feel the need to clarify here: Neither of these stories was "planned from the beginning".

Now, I dont think a story being planned from the beginning or not nesscessarily makes the story any better or worse by default, however, it is still important to acknowledge because the way the story is planned is going to affect every facet of it. Things are not going to be foreshadowed properly, things are gonna be set up only for nothing to come of it, the story might drastically change directions, characters might act differently, etc, etc.

And, this is bit off-topic but, it's much better to just admit that the story was not planned than trying to pretend that it was. Like, there are a lot of reasons why I tend to be so forgiving towards YGO even though its not very good, but one of them is definitely the fact that, as far as Im aware atleast, the guy who wrote it isnt pretending to have had this big master plan all along and neither is the fandom. With RWBY on the other hand... yeaaaah, its kinda the opposite. From what Ive seen of RWBYs fandom, there seems to be this pretty popular narrative that everything was planned even though it clearly wasnt. Thats pretty bad and honestly lowers my opinion of the writers so much more than if they would just admit to not having a proper plan.

Like, I initially consumed YGO like this: Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Monsters, Yu-Gi-Oh (aka Season 0), like, a quarter of the Yu-Gi-Oh manga (I still havent finished it)

In all three of these we have the character of Yami Yuugi, or just Yami. Broadly speaking, he is an ancient egyptian gamer spirit who lives in a magical puzzle that has not been solved for 3000 years until this highschooler named Yuugi Mutou comes along and solves it, thus setting him free and allowing him to possess Yuugi and have access to the vague magical powers of the puzzle.

In Duel Monsters he's perfectly fine most of time, morally speaking. There is an instance of him almost murdering a guy and its a bit unclear what exactly happens to those he mindcrushes but overall he's very much a pretty good guy. In Season 0 most of what he does is set up these games for bad people, where they will go insane no matter what they do. From how I understand this whole Shadow Game, Penalty Game stuff, if you lose a Shadow Game, you get violent and intense hallucinations and you will always cuz yknow, gamer spirit. But if you try to cheat, which most of the bad people do in this show, you get violent and intense hallucinations as a punishment.

Since the two anime are generally considered two different continuities, its perfectly fine that Yamis characterization is wildly different in both of them. But in the manga both of these characterizations appear, basically one after the other with no real arc or consequences, for that matter. Why is that? Simply put, someone thought it was a good idea to try to turn an episodic, very slice of life-y light-horror manga into a more traditional, more plot-driven battle shounen. From what Ive heard, it was apparently largely because of network interference or something, but the point is, it changed directions incredibly drastically with little planning and everyone knows this and I can understand that for the most part.

In RWBY we have the character of Blake Belladonna, who, in the first 3 volumes/seasons atleast, was this aloof, more toned down loner-type character with a pretty strong sense of justice. She's an in-universe marginilized racial minority and she clearly cares about racial injustice. The way its initially framed makes it seem like she had a very hard life and no stable support system, which is what eventually pushed her to join a Civil Rights group/Terrorist organization (good god, the Faunus subplot is so awful, I could write a whole essay about it but Im already de-railing rn so I'll just save that for later).

Then, in volumes 4-5 it turns out her father is actually like, the mayor or chief of this island-place called Menagerie and she grew up in this big mansion with multiple guards/servants. Oh and also, apparently "space is a commodity" on there, so theres that. She still retains large parts of her personality but she's kinda like, worse somehow I think. I cant really describe it in a meaningful way but I hope you get what Im saying anyway. Then in Volume 6 she confronted her emotional abuser Adam (sorry for not mentioning him sooner but yeah, he was like, her abusive boyfriend, which is something that a lot of people disagree with but I wont really say anything about it either way because I dont really feel any specific way) with her friend, Yang, and ended up killing him.

After all that, she pretty much lost the rest of her personality, as well as her arc about all the Faunus stuff. She just kinda became the meek, generically nice, recovering abuse victim. Why? Well, the actual reason is that they didnt plan out shit and are just kinda flying by the seat of their oversized clown-pants and if they and the fandom just admitted it, I would have less of an issue. I still wouldnt be as forgiving towards RWBY as I am towards YGO because the crux of the issue, for me, is just that I dont particulary like RWBY but also like. Do you really expect me to take MKEK seriously as writers after admitting to not have a timeline because iT wOuLd CaUsE pLoThOlEs?

However, since they want us to believe that everything was planned out from the beginning, the explaination would be.... Idk, they deliberately butchered one of their main characters?? Because.. they hate her?? Maybe????

So yeah, that was quite a detour however, I would like you to keep this mind going forward.

2. Themes of the Early Series'

First, what do mean by 'Early Series' for both of these shows respectively? Well, for YGO that would have to be Season 0 or if youre reading the manga, everything pre-Duelist Kingdom. Basically, the part of the series thats a episodic, very slice of life-y light-horror series.

For RWBY that would be the first three Volumes, also known as the Poser-Era. Back then it was just kinda an action series that took place at Anime Warrior Academy (also known as Beacon) with some pretty bare minimum worldbuilding, character-driven plots and developments but now its more of an epic high-fantasy story with more of an emphasis on plot as opposed to just action.

The themes and messages in Early YGO are kinda vague, very confusing to me and if you were to follow any of it literally that would be pretty bad. For now Im just gonna say the main themes are Friendship and Identity and mostly focus on the Identity aspect.

Now, it took me a little while to figure out RWBYs deal but I think the main themes for Volumes 1-3 are also Friendship and Heroism. Once again, I'll mostly focus on Heroism and touch on Friendship more briefly later.

I dont have much more to add to YGOs themes right now, so I'll briefly go over Heroism in RWBY.

In RWBYs setting there are these man-eating monsters called Grimm that have basically infected the planet. In order to deal with that, they have people called huntsmen and huntresses that kill them and protect people. Theyre trained at special academies like Beacon and go on missions there and stuff like that. Our four main characters, Ruby, Weiss, Blake and Yang, are training to become huntresses and one day they go on this mission to clean up a grimm infested city block with one of their teachers. Obviously, that takes a long time so they have to camp out in one of the empty houses. Weiss, Blake and Yang cant sleep because theyve been thinking about this question that their teacher asked them when they were fighting grimm: "Why do you want to become a huntress?"

They have a heart to heart and we find out about their motivations; Weiss wants to bring honour back to her family, Blake want to distance herself from the White Fang (that terrorist organization I mentioned earlier) and as an extension from Adam, Yang wants to have a life of adventure. They also talk about why Ruby wants to be a huntress and it turns out that she judt wants to help people. Unlike the others, she has no motivation besides that. We're meant to listen to that and look at her as a sort-of personification of Heroism: kind, but not naive, strong and most of all, selfless. The others on her team are not portayed as bad for not being like Ruby by any means but we are clearly meant to admire her the most out of all of them.

Okay, now comes the part Ive been looking forward to the most:

3. How did these themes evolve in the Modern Series'?

Alright, before we can really delve into the way they evolved in YGO I'll have to give you a brief summary of the character progression. At the start of DM, during the Duelist Kingdom arc, Yami Yuugi is just that; A darker Yuugi. Hes more confident, bolder, his voice is deeper, hes somehow taller, more ruthless, all that good stuff. Notably, he doesnt actually seem more skilled than Yuugi even at the start of this story, but he's still dependent on Yami. Yami on the other hand, has no identity of his own or even hints at one at this point. He's just The Other Yuugi.

Then during the Battle City arc, they find out that Yami was actually a pharao prior to being sealed in the puzzle, he just didnt know because of amnesia, I guess. So now they need to find out his real name and then send him to the afterlife because hes meant to be dead, but not before saving the world from being swallowed by darkness, which is also a thing they have to do now.

Then we finally get to the Memory World arc, where Yami, Yuugi and the rest of the gang astralproject to ancient egypt via puzzle magic. Yami is trying to figure out what the hell is going on and who all these familiar people are, while Yuugi & Co are trying their best to help him. Then some weird shit happens and it turns out that all of that is not just Yamis sealed away memories, but also a giant D&D Shadow Game that will destroy the world if Yami loses. So now theres Pharao!Yami who is still clueless on the metaphorical and literal playing field and Player!Yami, who is kinda controlling himself now? I guess?? Yamis opponent, The Spirit of The Ring, has something similar to that going on where hes both controlling and properly participating in the game. So Player!Yami is now fighting against Player!TSoTR, Pharao!Yami is now fighting against Thief King Bakura (who is like, the human, ancient egyptian version of the Ring Spirit) and Yuugi is now fighting against Yami Bakura (who is like, the human, modern japanese version of the Ring Spirit). Yuugi gets Yamis real name, he and the gang go over to Pharao!Yami and tell him his name, meanwhile Player!Yami is also somehow helping as well and they defeat the Ring Spirit, thus saving the world. Then they travel to modern Egypt, the Ceremonial Duel happens and Yuugi wins, sending Yami to the Afterlife where he can finally rest and that was the series!

I originally wanted to recount the stuff that was going on with the Ring Spirit and his host as well because they parallel eachother, but this summary is already far too long and I think youll get the point without me needing to explain any more.

My point here is, that the story went from being vaguely about Identity, maybe? to being very clearly about Self-Discovery and Learning to Be Independent. I think this is a very good way to evolve the messaging of your story. How does RWBY track on that?

Well, uh... its not great. I will acknowledge that they have tried to introduce new themes and ideas since, even though I wont really be talking about them in this post. But yeah, the whole Heroism thing really regressed.

Like, I didnt explicitly say it when I was explaining grimm earlier, but theyre not going away. The grimm have always been there and people who sign up to become huntsmen and huntresses are effectively signing up for a job that will never truly be done, no matter what they do. Characters like Ruby and even more minor ones like Phyrrah have shown us that that doesnt matter when youre a hero. No life isnt worth saving, no grimm isnt worth killing, no criminal isnt worth arresting. Then, in volume 6 they find out about Salem. Salem is the Big Bad of the show, shes immortal, controls the grimm and is supposed to be very powerful.

What do our heroes do? They give up. Sike! They were just mindcontrolled by monsters or some shit, of course they didnt give up their mission (which is to bring an Important Macguffin to a city called Atlas, sorry I didnt mention it)!

But then they arrive in Atlas (which is llike, a city thats floating over another city called Mantle) and yknow, they do some plot stuff thats not really important right now until the city gets invaded by Salem and this big grimm army she has.

What do our heroes do? Well, Ruby, Weiss, Blake and some side characters are chilling, drinking tea in a mansion and Yang and the B Team were actually trying to do something, but even those efforts seem incredibly minimal.

Oh wait, I also forgot to mention that Ironwood (a fairly minor, vaguely antagonistic character up until now) wanted to lift Atlas even higher to save Atleasian civilians from danger while leaving Mantle vulnerable to Salems invasion.

What would be the most heroic thing to do?

A) Let Ironwood lift Atlas, get as much support as they can down to Mantle and save as many Mantle civilians as they can from the invasion

B) Prevent Ironwood from lifting Atlas but then split up in order to protect both Atlas and Mantle civilians

C) Prevent Ironwood from lifting Atlas and then dont do anything else

Congrats! If you choose C, you think exactly like the writers!

And I just

This is so mindboggling to me, I feel like I shouldnt even have explain how this is bad. And like, it wouldve been so easy to actually make them seem herokc through their actions, to make it seem like they did try but no.

I have never seen a central theme be this botched, how in the world did they do that? Why did they think it was a good idea for Ruby "The Embodiment of Heroism" Rose to sit in a mansion doing nothing, no planning, no organizing just ..... God, how are they this bad? Like, this doesnt even have anything to do with it being planned in any way, this is just straight up incompetence

4. Very briefly touching on friendship

The friendship is awful and its not solely because they all have the same opinions. They barely interact with eachother outside their designated pairs which leads to it all feeling incredibly hollow. Theyre also practically indistingushable from one another now, which is a shame because it wasnt always like that. Like, I dont think the characters were that well-developed in earlier volumes but they were very well-characterized. But now we've gotten to a point where you can literally copy and paste one characters dialogue onto another and literally nothing changes, it really sucks.

5. Some closing words

Damn, this took way longer than I thought it would and now Im pretty exhausted. I have no idea how yall always write these but props to you! I feel like this ended up a bit rambly but overall, Im pretty proud.

Please let me know what you think of the points I brought up! Id also really appreciate some tips on how to get better at these longer posts because I am planning on writing more in the future (not the near future, probably but yknow).

Thats all I have to say for now, thanks for reading!

[sasuhinasno1fan]

To play again - Luka Appreciation Week Day 1

So I’ve kinda given up on ML, just in terms in how they treat their charaecters and such, but I still love Luka and I thought I should at least write something for him for @lukacouffaineappreciation event. I was trying to think of an idea and I’m not fully familar with the story for the Ballet AU where Luka plays violin, so I went a different direction, Shugo Chara and Ikuto. Black Diamond is one of my fav songs from the show and I thought it fit with Kitty Section, if it being a softer version compared to their hardcore stuff. I’ll admit, halfway through I remembered the song Inviciable by Escape the Fate with Lindsey Stirling which fit them better but I still wanted to do this one, even though we don’t actually see them sing it in this fic. Anyway, I did find a French version of Black Diamon, though it’s more rock and doesn’t have the violin. Someone had taken the cover and dropped it on top of the actual song and it didn’t sound right, but just so you can get an idea of it. This is the French cover and just so you know what the actual song sounds like, check this out. Violin

Luka didn’t know how the knowledge about him playing violin suddenly making him an ok person for Adrien to associate with, at least according to the model’s father. But here he was, instead of having to wait until Adrien was essentially alone or sneak out of his lessons to come hang out with his friends, he was currently being led to Adrien’s room by his father’s assistant.

Nathalie knocked on the door, “Adrien?”

“Come in!”

She opened the door and Luka followed. He spotted Adrien sitting at his computer watching something.

“I thought you were supposed to be practising?” she asked.

“Luka?” Adrien answered instead, noticing the rocker in his room.

“Yes, M. Couffaine was asked by your father to practise your latest song with you. he said it sounded better with a violin and M. Couffaine attends an illustrious music school so he was perfect. You two will start immediately.”

“Does this mean, he can come to my place to practise? My mom knows Jagged Stone if getting a classical piano is an issue.” Luka asked.

“We shall see. If you’ll excuse me.”

When the door closed behind Nathalie, Adrien got up from his desk.

“Happy to see me?” Luka asked.

“Always. But what are you doing here? What was she talking about, illustrious music school? Aren’t you home schooled?”

Luka shrugged. “I am, but it’s through the same school. They’re the ones who grade my exams and such. I did attend it but during one of my exams, I happened to start playing one of the proctor’s heart song and then turned it into jam session when it occurred to me at that moment how much happier I felt playing that one heart song compared to the massively long piece I’d practised and slaved over for weeks. Mom decided it’d be better for everyone if I was home schooled. Thankfully the school offered to still treat me like a student, since I worked so hard to get in and was one of the best students.”

Adrien raised an eyebrow, taking Luka in. it was hard to imagine the guy with dyed hair, piercings and a pretty literal pirate for a mom attending a ridged music school. But if being away from it made him happier, and also allowed the two to meet, he couldn’t complain.

“Well here’s hoping my dad doesn’t find out. This is gonna make piano lessons so much more fun.”

“Well, it’s more like, have time to practise with you for Kitty Section. Even though you are a part time member, you’re still a member. We’re doing a mini concert for your class and anyone else who’s interested. Would you like to join us?”

Adrien brightened at the thought of playing with his friends. “Absolutely! What are we gonna play?”

“Can I borrow your computer? I sent the piano music sheets to myself and we have a small playlist on Spotify since Rose has been having a bit of trouble writing songs, we’re doing a lot of covers.”

“Sure.” Adrien let Luka sit in his computer chair and watched as he opened an incognito tab, not commenting on the anime he’d been watching when Nathalie came in. his eyes drifted to the violin case, sitting on the desk. Like his guitar, Luka’s case was covered in stickers.

Adrien loved all musical instruments, though the piano held a special place in his heart. The violin though, seemed so cool. Granted he still had trouble figuring out what was the difference between a violin and a viola, other than don’t ask if you don’t know cause the owners get annoyed about it. He watched Lindsey Stirling jump around her stage playing it, violin covers always sounded cool, especially on electric violins. Then there was the guy he’d admit he tried to emulate as Chat. Ikuto Tsukiyomi from Shugo Chara.

“Here we go.” Luka said, bring Adrien back, “Here’s the playlist. It’s a bit all over the place at the moment, we can’t decide what we want to go for since Rose really wants to have at least one of our songs on it. If you have any suggestions, by all means.”

“Do you play your violin often?” Adrien asked.

“Um, not totally. I mean, I do to still keep in practise, but not like in an orchestra or anything. Very rarely do I play it when the family is jamming.”

“Would you be opposed to playing it in Kitty Section?”

Luka was curious were this was going. “Why?”

Adrien leaned over, taking the mouse from the older boy. “Well, you don’t have to say yes and it would be work to switch the language over, which I can do by myself if need be, but I thought this song would be kinda cool to try this.”

He pulled up Black Diamond from the Shugo Chara anime. He could have also tried Tsukiyo no Marionette, but he felt like this one fit better with the band. He watched Luka listen, no doubt not fully understanding since it was in Japanese but he was tapping his finger on the table so Adrien had hope.

“This actually sounds good. It’s from one of your animes isn’t it?” the rocker slightly teased.

“Yeah, Shugo Chara. You should ask Rose about it. I introduced it to her and she loved it. Do you think the others would go for it? Would you even want to play it?”

Luka listened more, listening how the violin blended with guitars and drums, not out of place. It reminded him of how he wanted his music to feel back when he attended school. Maybe it was because of life with his mom, but when he got into that school, he thought he’d be able to play the way he wanted. Instead, they were trying to shot out numerous copies of this type A, perfect musician who only played classical. As much as he loved his guitar, and the chances to try out his harp skill on his lyre as Viperion, he really missed playing his violin.

“There’s also Invincible by Escape the Fate, Lindsey Stirling is featured on there. It’s more Kitty Sections style.” Adrien said, when Luka hadn’t said anything.

“I know of the song. It’s not in Rose’s key and it doesn’t feature keys and we want you there. But we’ll definitely add it to the list in case we decide to do it. I’ll run this song by the others and see what they think. How quick do you think you could transpose this?”

“Anything to get me away from playing classics for the next 2 hours.”

                                              ____________________

Juleka listened to the music that sounded vaguely familiar from when she’d watched the show with her girlfriend, but she was paying more attention to Luka. because their mom thrived on music and noise, from a very young age, both she and her older brother were taught many instruments. Luka took to them way more, a near prodigy at stringed instruments but she remembered guitar and violin battling for his favourite. After he left that school, he’d put his violin back in its box and shoved it away, only ever checking it to make sure it was still in tune and the bow didn’t need to be replaced. So watching him change the strings like he did after days of practise.

“You know, not that I’m mad about it, but I’m surprised you agreed to this. Playing your violin in the band.” Juleka said, as Luka plucked at each string to see if it was finally in tune. He’d forgotten how much he hated restringing his violin.

“I know. I’m a bit surprised to, but.” Luka shrugged, pulling out the shoulder rest. “The song just works with it and it fits with what I wanted to do before I went to that school. I mean, I’m doing whatever I want in terms of music now, why does the violin have to be exempt from that?”

Juleka flashed a small smile to her brother. “I’m glad. I missed you playing around the house. As long as it’s not classics 24/7 again, play to your hearts content. Though, now I really think we should do Invincible.”

“See if you can get Adrien to help you transpose it in a lower key for Rose and you’ve got a deal.”

“Fine. But we wear outfits like the band in the show does.”

Luka furrowed his face. He hated the late-night sunglasses look. The thing he did so he could play violin, it never stopped, just evolved. Expect now he didn’t mind this one.

[astrababyy]

Hello. My name is Sitorro, and I am a Fox Goddess. I had a question. Yesterday, you made a post about the evolution of humans, compared to elves, and it was quite interesting. I have always tried to learn as much as possible about humans. You’re unlike any species to ever exist in the multiverse. I doubt you know anything I don’t, but will you please explain everything you know, from the beginning? Spending millennia with your kind has changed me, and I would like to continue along this line of change. Because at this point I feel an endearing connection to you. You may not be the smartest, the strongest, or the most advanced, but you overcome impossible odds, and that’s what makes you human. You’re perfectly imperfect, because your mortality has made you who you are today. I’m sorry, I got off topic. The point is, will you aid me in my quest?

I doubt I can explain everything from the beginning. I enjoy history but I’m not a genius when it comes to the evolution of humans. The post I made mainly revolves around me pointing out how amazing it is how much humans have evolved over time, especially these last 200 years.

Really, we all started out like other animals. Trying to survive using any means we have. One of the only reasons we could be considered different than other animals is because we have naturally more intelligent minds. My dad has called it the “Power of Reasoning” in the past. It just means that our brains work differently than it does for other animals. We can form opinions with evidence and reasoning, we can solve age old mysteries, create languages, build cities, start and end wars, and countless other things because we have naturally more advanced minds than other animals.

I think humans really started to evolve after they discovered fire. After that, we just kept moving forward faster and faster and faster. We developed medicines and cures for diseases, found ways to heal what should be fatal wounds, and generally found ways to stop nature in its path. We destroy, create, and rebuild to become more and more advanced by the day because of the knowledge passed down for thousands of years and because of new knowledge discovered every day.

We have ways to communicate with people on the other side of the world all because of seemingly impossible ideas from a couple of people.

I’ve seen posts in the past that compare humans to other species that are more commonly negative and only focus on the evil of our species but that’s really not the only thing to it.

The human race has countless ways of communication that they created all on their own and sometimes they don’t even need it. Sometimes, humans can communicate entire thoughts to each other with just a look. Many times, one person can conduct a large group of people to perform together as one with a series of movements that the average person might not understand at first glance. We even have ways to communicate silently in numerous different languages.

I could honestly go on and on about why I think the human race is remarkable and how truly amazing it is that we’ve evolved so much over the years but that’d make this post really long.

This probably didn’t answer your question very well because you’re probably right when you say I most likely don’t know more than you or the average person. The only difference between me and most other people is that I’ve spent more time truly thinking about it from an outside perspective.

The human race truly is spectacular, but we focus so much on the negative that no one ever tries to focus on the positive. I mean, come on. Humans have been to the moon. People just brush things like that aside like it’s nothing. Companies have created flying cars. Actual flying cars. We’re the only species (that I can think of) that’s become capable of being in the sky and flying when we’re not supposed to be capable of flying. Some unrealistic geniuses looked to the sky and decided they wanted to go there and actually did it. That’s what no one thinks about. That’s what no one truly marvels over. We are a creative, intelligent, passionate species that would do whatever they could to help a random stranger without expecting anything in return just because they can.

We humans have our flaws, yes, but we also have good traits too. It’s just that no one and nothing focuses on them. Story books focus on the death and destruction some humans caused without focusing on the miracles others have with millions supporting them. We’re not an evil species. We’re not good either. You can’t fit all of us into a box because we’re all different in our own ways. Some make bad decisions, others make good ones. That’s just how it is.

Too often, people condemn humans for things a few have done without focusing on the fact that we’ve done amazing things too.

This post moves off course a lot and it’s really jumbled and probably hard to follow. Maybe I’ll edit it and fix it later on when I’ve got my thoughts in order but this will stay my response for now.

[the-social-introvert]

Dark Side of Being Human

When the world is experiencing something that it never prepared for, there are only two things an individual can do: do “something’’ or do “nothing’’. But in this case, doing “nothing” is also meant to do something. When we compare today’s world with previous historical times, we wonder how unforeseen events significantly changed the world. Out of 8.7 Million species, it was only humans who made it through all the bad chapters they faced. But every time, we learned something from those challenges. We have survived many apocalyptic scenarios in the past. We survived Black Plague, World Wars and there is archaeological evidence that humans even survived through Ice Age. Whenever we talk about Human Survival throughout history, it means humans survived “together”. This “together” is what separates us from other species, Thus becoming ultimately survivors and rapidly evolving beings. But one must admit the fact that nothing would have been possible without the aid of our mother nature, A phenomenal complexion which always feeds us and also punishes us. Just like our mother.

We began to develop our technology to make our lifestyle much easier. Unfortunately, We never realized that our growth became a hurdle for the betterment of our nature. We didn’t even realize that “we are nature”. Times changed, The popular culture of technology has influenced more than expected in our lives. Especially, the relations we maintained. As the pace of world growth is ever being increasing, People began to run against time. We were living a frail and tasteless life. People became busier than ever throughout history. This busy world had become uninhabitable for joint families and other relations. We were more forced to be materialistic for our livelihood. We started giving much importance to our individuality rather than commonness. The world began only to make sense if you force it to do so.

Today, Researchers say that this COVID-19 will have a huge impact on us than ever before. It will leave a mark of a scar on us, Before what we were ignoring through ages. Even though we managed to survive many events from the past, This generation which is fit only to live in an easier lifestyle, COVID-19 is more than experience. People have realized the fact that all the stuff we do is temporary and the only unconditional permanent was the time we spend with our family. Behind the closed doors, For many people, Family connections are providing a much-needed source of comfort and companionship. Psychology says people feel more comfortable when interactive people are around. We need to understand that this lockdown is a “once in a lifetime” chance where you can discover much of yourself and your wellbeing with your family.

This COVID-19 pandemic had most importantly teaches the best lesson about how humans are a threat to Nature. Climate is changing, Magnetic poles are shifting, Global warming is increasing, Glaciers are melting, Sea levels are rising, Freshwater depleting, Overfishing, Fossil fuel exploitation, deforestation Whatsoever! Everything we achieved for our betterment has never benefited Earth. Instead, Our activities turned out to be inappropriate behaviour towards nature. COVID-19 has taught us that our affection and love towards our mother nature has remained only in books. Scientists at UN said the COVID-19 outbreak was a clear “warning shot”, given that even more deadly diseases existed in nature and today’s civilization was “playing with fire”. They said it was always human behaviour that caused diseases to spill over into us.

Pictures of clean Venice canals and dolphins in it, Swans in Milan and pollutants in air level dipping were all around the internet. It is clear that it's all about human pressure, It takes time but nature responds positively, that’s for sure. Greenhouse emissions dipped, clear skies, and air made the Himalayas visible from Punjab for the first time in 30 years. A temporary break of human activity may not have good results economically but boosted the Nature restoration process. We need to feel that our earth is wiping its tears, at least for now. We maybe the superior beings on the planet, but still, we are nothing in Infront of mother nature. This world is not only for humans.

If I get a chance to speak with world governments, I would ask where are all those highly developed N-Weapons and how did they help us significantly during this pandemic. This where we failed, the smartest of all species existing. Our materialistic behaviour almost led us to an apocalyptic scenario. We should believe that we are more alike than unalike. The world is rushing towards vaccine development for virus and governments are working together. Thanks for the “Common Enemy” scenario that made is possible.

Humans are social animals. We are called so because we work together, Maintain relationships and families. This is the only factor that separates “Social animals” and “animals”. COVID-19 has given us a chance of spending more time with our families and discovering more human relation stuff. Moreover, it taught a great lesson about our behaviour towards nature. Isn’t it painful that the life of all the 8.7 million species on the planet is completely in the hands of just one species?

Tirukovaluri Tirumalesh

[dragonsateyourtoast]

Special thanks to @skylarklanding for a donation to the Emergency Release Fund!

By the way, head on over to that blog to get a taste of some of Skylark’s art; similar to what I’m doing, you can show a donation and receive a custom art as thank-you!

Original post of mine

Prompt, courtesy of @writing-prompt-s: “It is impossible to erase a curse, but it is possible to trade it with someone else. You’ve been wandering for years, searching for someone willing to trade curses with you, but never suspected it would happen like this.” 

-

Not many people are unlucky enough to get hit with a real curse. A true curse, a curse that writes itself into your bones and blood, not some surface-level scuff on your soul. Those happen all the time; little things like a higher likelihood to stub your toe, or a few extra minutes of searching when you’ve lost your keys.

To be cursed with a true curse is different. It’s something that you feel in your lungs when it hits you, which screams like static in your mind when it activates. It lies dormant like a disease, letting you forget it exists occasionally, until the time comes for it to rear its ugly head and it spits venom into your life once again.

You can’t get rid of a real curse. The little ones? You can polish them away, or pay a witch to get rid of them, or whatever. But the real ones... those are powered by something greater than just a little bit of malice. Those ones aren’t just throwaway statements of “I hope you always forget about your tea” or little sigils drawn on paper and burned to ash. These ones are borne of blood.

I used to sing at a church. I’ve long since abandoned the church, after they told me I was evil for a good number of things, including my curse. I didn’t even think it was that bad, at first.

When I speak, things come to me. Animals, mostly. Sometimes it’s plants. Insects and spiders and stuff are the biggest problem. Birds are the next worst. No matter what I do, if I utter a single syllable, I am swarmed in an instant with everything alive around me except other people. I laughed on a lakeshore once - the fish died when we were trying to shove them back into the water. I sighed too loudly once, on a wet night; I’d never seen so many worms.

There are online boards for people who want to swap curses. I know you can do it - curses don’t like to be destroyed, but they love to hop around. They’re kind of sentient; they like to see new things. Sometimes, if you don’t give them what they want, they’ll evolve, force you to carry them harder. Mine is pretty dormant; I never speak, but it doesn’t cause problems. It can feel my misery.

I’m not going to get into what got me cursed in the first place. It was an accident, and it wasn’t even my fault, and I’m marked forever in more ways than one.

July, 2014. I sat in my room, reading a book. I don’t remember what it was. One of my friends messaged me, asking about a movie that was coming out, and while I was checking movie times I saw someone had pinged me in the curse boards.

Curious, I visited. I’ve had this curse for twelve years, mind you, and never been able to find anyone willing to switch me. It’s just too inconvenient.

But, there in the board, was a message in a five year old thread I’d made. It read:

“Hi! I saw your notice. I’m a wildlife biologist in Arkansas. I’m cursed too, and I think that you would be the perfect person to switch curses with, if you’re willing. It seems like you’re an active member of the forums, but it’s been a while; do you still have the same curse you did before? I’d really like to swap you for it, if that’s still possible.”

What? I stared at it, uncomprehending, until I finally messaged her directly through the site. “Thanks for your interest,” I told her. “What curse do you have, so I can know what I might be getting into?”

“Nothing too terrible,” she wrote back. “When I speak, whatever I say comes out in a different language. I never know which language it’s going to be, either, and if I stop speaking or take a breath, well, it switches. It’s really a nuisance if I’m trying to communicate with people! Yours seems to be that you can’t make any sound at all; being able to laugh or speak without consequences would be an improvement for you, right?”

“It would,” I wrote back. “And it would mean you have a lot less freedom in what you can say. Why do you want my curse?”

“I can’t explain it,” she said, “I guess I’ll have to tell you if it works.”

We agreed to meet up about six hours from where I lived, at the halfway point between our houses. I wasn’t working at the time - it’s difficult to hold a job when you can’t speak or your building suddenly reveals how many rats are in it - so I gathered what I needed and left the next morning.

Six hours. I had six hours while driving to wonder why she would choose to make her life worse, by preventing herself from even laughing. I couldn’t fathom why. Did she want every living thing to swarm her at all times? I say swarm - I mean it. Just because the curse brought the animals to me didn’t make them friendly. I’d been bitten, stung, pecked, and scratched more times than I could count.

Whatever. It probably wasn’t my place to ask. I hadn’t asked her how she had gotten cursed, she hadn’t asked me, and I wasn’t going to ask her what she wanted it for if she wasn’t willing to tell me.

I pulled into the designated place - a restaurant on a tiny little highway exit in the middle of nowhere. I stood next to my car and waited.

About fifteen minutes after I’d arrived, a car pulled into the parking lot a few spaces away from mine and shut off. A woman got out - probably about thirty, with dark brown hair and brown skin, warm green eyes shining out from her face. She glanced over, saw me, and her face lit up. “Zdravo!” she called, and I knew it was her - that wasn’t a language I recognized. I nodded in response.

She pulled out her phone as she came over, and opened up a notes app. I opened mine too, watching, and she wrote down. “Songbird, right?”

“That’s me,” I wrote back, showing my screen to her. “Got everything we need?”

“Yeah, I visited a witch before I left home; that’s what I did with the rest of yesterday.” She set down a bag that had been slung over her shoulder and pulled out a shiny green box. She opened it, pulling out a length of white silk, and held out a hand. I held out mine, and she grasped my forearm; I took hold of hers.

Together, we wound the white silk around our hands and arms, binding us together, and tied it on the bottom, which is a lot harder than you’d expect. Then she looked me in the eye, still brimming with excitement. “Bist du so weit?” she asked, and then sighed and rolled her eyes. “Är du färdig?”

That still didn’t make sense, but I got the sense she was asking me if I was ready. I nodded sharply.

She began to speak. I didn’t understand it, of course. The language must’ve changed at least four times as she was trying to talk, and I couldn’t get a word of it, though I kind of understood some of what sounded like maybe French. I did catch her name, though: Maria Coombs. She finished, and looked up to me, expectantly.

My turn. This was going to be rough. I opened my mouth, swallowing; I really, really didn’t talk often. “My name’s Sage Lawson. I willingly take on to myself the burden this stranger bears, so that they might carry mine in turn.”

Above, I saw a flock of starlings divert swiftly in its path; a fly bounced off my face. “I give to this person the magic that has plagued me. I take upon myself the magic that has plagued her. Together, we give to each other.”

Nothing seemed to happen, but the starlings fluttered into a nearby tree and began to squawk at each other, ignoring me. I looked warily up at them.

“Is that it, then?” Maria said, and gasped, her eyes going wide. She clamped a hand over her mouth. The birds overhead hopped downwards into the branches surrounding us, eyes black and wary.

I hastily unbound our hands. I was still too nervous to talk. Maria picked up her phone. “Say something!” she tapped out, and showed it to me, grinning.

I rubbed my hands together. “Antoka,” I said, still feeling my voice rasp in my throat, and paused. I’d meant to say “sure,” but my mouth had just... said something else. The feeling was uncomfortable, to say the least. “... أعتقد أنه نجح.”

Maria clapped her hands together. She was beaming, brighter than I’d ever seen anybody smile. I ran my hand over my mouth, shaking my head. I could speak... though I wouldn’t make any sense. Whatever. I could work with this. I could work with this!

“Thank you,” Maria typed back, still beaming. “Thank you so much. You have no idea how much this means to me.”

I didn’t, really, but she was so happy, I couldn’t help but smile and even give a little breath of a laugh. That was more than I could’ve done before.

I handed Maria the silk back. She took it, replacing it in the box, and put it back in her bag. Already, she was humming.

You could hum, I remembered. You just couldn’t open your mouth and speak, or laugh, or sigh too loudly. Humming was the only thing that had saved me from despair after I’d been cursed.

“Maria,” I called, as she walked back over to her car with a bounce in her step, and she turned, eyebrows raised.

“Hmm?” she said, without opening her mouth.

“Ευχαριστούμε,” I said, with a smile.

Maria may not have known the language, but she understood a thank you when she heard one. She beamed at me, waved, and got back into her car.

Three months later, I got a message from Maria, the wildlife biologist living in Arkansas. It was an email that she’d sent after getting my email address from my account on the curse forums, where I’d been busy figuring out how to work with my new curse.

“Thanks,” it read, “for all the help. You have no idea what this means to me.”

Attached were two pictures. One was of her on a canoe, floating through some kind of forested swampy area, and the other was a photograph - in full color and perfect clarity - of an ivory-billed woodpecker.

[so-tell-me-will]

The cave is very interesting it is all about where you are secure and protected, that’s not where you do your work. You can in the modern context but I am going back in the primitive context. The insecurity was to go out into the world and come back in and rush back to your cave and hope you weren’t eaten by something, or killed by something. So what was the natural flow in this, the natural flow in this is the combination of many caves together. As a matter of fact many caves with a wall around them.

It started in Ur in Mesopotamia. What is called the actual first city, not that you would call it a city. It was a town basically, it was 5, 6, 20 dwellings, very simple dwellings and yet each family in that sense had their space, and of course it’s something to understand about this movement from cave to Market is that you are really talking about something very, very important having to take place in order for this to be possible.

And of course in this transition if we look at it in an evolutionary point of view is the husbandry of animals. The husbandry of animals and the understanding of the natural growth cycle. In other words agriculture. Those things were essential elements. We’ve got all kinds of timing for them, basically sometime between 14,000 years ago and 8,000 years ago the understanding of agriculture, the domestication of animals was pretty much set in place. All of that was the by-product of the insecurity of the cave. Leading to a larger cave in that sense, leading to the communal cave. Leading to what we would call the village, the town, the city and ultimately the mega city. This is Markets.

And it is something to understand about being Market environment, is that you need to be integrated into the community. And the underlying theme of Market is that it is about the way in which you survive. Not the way in which you protect yourself and remain secure, the way in which you supply yourself with the things that you need in your life. In other words food, shelter, and so forth and so on. And of course the moment that we had a way of guaranteeing that we had food resources, agriculture and the control of animals is the moment that the independent potential to develop and to succeed in crafts and trades and all of these things began to emerge.

The whole thing about the cave thing is that with the cave thing all the hunters had to get up and go out and spend all their time trying to find something to eat and bring it back. The moment that you shift to Markets you’ve got a very different world. You’ve got a world that’s says we are a community, we are part of the community and in order to be functional we have to do something.

So this is something to understand about being in the Market, that your environment is also establishing the quality of life for you. Remember something about environment, you can never separate environment from tis nodal relationship. That’s what it is all about, it is your life, it is your storyline. It is how your life is going to unfold in the most nurtured geometry. That means markets and being in those markets.

Interesting, friends of my wife, friends of mine as well have known them for many years. came by they don’t live here…ended up living a relatively conservative life in a tiny mountain village in Austria and running a ski resort. And it was so funny to see their charts because they were both Markets. And both of them always had this fantasy of doing what people bellow always want to do, they always want to be here. In other words you are hardscape and you think, ‘oh god I don’t want to live in this village where everybody knows everybody else and don’t want to make my living dealing with these people all the time, I want to live in the wide open spaces where nobody ever sees me and nobody knows me.” And of course that not the way it works. And they both had markets and it was very funny to see that…

Some people get lucky because if you are in an adult partnership and you have different environments theoretically it works, but it is not an easy thing because they are very distinct in the way they point to in terms of what you see and what that leads to. But anyway to get back to the theme of markets, markets are really about remember one of the things I taught you about what it is to have a 2nd color dietary regimen. Everything about the 2nd color dietary regimen is that you need to have good access to local markets, where you get local produce, and of course these are the local markets.

If you are going to be 2nd color environment you really need to be part of your community now that doesn’t have to be an isolated village somewhere, you can be a part of your community by simply being part of your neighborhood if you know what I mean. It is really important that you are integrated into the community and that it is in that integration into that community that you do your work.

What is interesting in markets is that it is antithetical to the web business and the way in which the internet has changed the way in which consumer habits work. We can online order things that are no longer in our village, we can do business with people who we never have to meet on the street, all these kinds of things had an impact on the nature of markets.

You can see what happened. There is something that is called the gentrification movement. Where run down areas of city cores in north America cause that’s where I saw it the most that they were refurbished brought back to life, made into shinny quant major neighborhoods and these are classic markets being built inside communities where people could live there work there, know their neighbors, feel like they were in a connected community, those kinds of things and it is really about this market. And in any of those places you will see that they always made room for having a natural market, or natural food stores, all these kinds of things and again it goes back to the underlying thematic of what community is supposed to be about..

There is so many things that depth brings to those who have skills. I love to sit down with city planners. It is one of those beautiful things that you see in environments, it is understanding the nature of market.

If you are going to build a super city that is going to have a life, that is not going to be oppressive by its very nature you need to build that neighborhood by neighborhood and you need to build it on market constructs because that was the way it evolved. If we went back to that we would see its success.

Everybody knows that if you go into a city on every other corner of that city you are going to have some kind of market stall, little shop on some corner that is run by first generation immigrants, these kinds of things. And one of the things that is missing in all of that is that markets was built around food resources. So basically when you looked at these first communities that came into existence they were surrounded by their food resources. And the food resources were brought into the core of the city into the center of the village because that was the market place. And of course that market place would expand. Now we have strip malls, we have all the modern accoutrement of it.

But for market people to feel comfortable this is why these people love to be in the countryside somewhere in the valleys and the mountains in that little community up there because this is what they are dreaming of and yet they belong in the city.

If we abandon the markets in the city and they can only be found out here, the cities die, and the communities don’t exist. Neighborhoods don’t exist…

One of the most amazing things I have watched as I grew up was this transformation of the southwest. I can remember places like las Vegas and phoenix they were tiny dessert places. You cannot just build housing. You cannot just build endless neighborhoods of houses that all go off somewhere to some market place. Neighborhoods that don’t have markets. And I don’t mean just foods. No markets no shops no this or that.

It’s one of the things to grasp about why cities are so sterile. And why we gravitate to those centers where food and shops are. It is the natural thing to do. And of course what has happened is that we have these zone cities where everybody goes and feels safe relatively speaking.. but the moment that you go into these neighborhoods where there is nothing, a corner shop there maybe a corner shop over there everybody is much more nervous and they are much more uncomfortable. And they no longer have a sense that they are in a place where people know them and they can be protected. It is in these neighborhoods when something horrible is happening on the streets and there is these cries for help that nobody listens.

It is because the markets aren’t there. It is one of the most important things, this is the core after all. These bottom 3 (color 1, 2, 3) these are all about urban life. This is all the offices and apartments, and condos, and it goes on and on and on, all those caves built one on top of the other, this is just the expansion of that at that level. But where I see the deep dysfunction is in the lack of the markets. It is just something that is missing.

I have a place in Toronto and I live in a gentrified area called Yorkville and it has everything. and it is such a pleasure to walk out into the street, and it’s a big city, dangerous as any big city and as full as the darkness that any big city has and at the same time it is a place where all kinds of people feel very safe and where all kinds of people fill the streets to shop, to look or whatever. This is what markets do…

If you want to find those places that are alive in a city you will find in around the markets. You will find it where there is material life taking place. So if you’ve got a Market environment you’ve got to be part of that. this is what you are part of.

If you’ve got a market environment and you go into a neighborhood where there is nothing and you set something up you are going to do really well and you will start a trend…

One of my favorites is to walk down the Ramblas in Barcelona wow, is that ever full of life. In the summer eh? And this was the essential nature of the core of what city life was supposed to be about. Of course now it has become completely sterilized. People get into their cars to go buy a loaf of bread. Everything is someplace else. Nothing is around the corner from you and if there is something around the corner for you it is an exception and it is limited…

There is a difference the internal markets and the external markets. And it is really about different ways that capitalism works. Inside trading and outside trading…

It is really about understanding that this internal is much more suited for example somebody that is going to be in their shop or in their place of business in the community as opposed to somebody who goes out and works that community. You’ve got 2 sides of the coin. But again it is very connected to material because it is very connected to security. This is protection and this is long term survival. Again this is an evolutionary process that we are looking at…

Markets nourishes your material life. If you are a Markets person the fact is that your environment is going to be the key for you. and it is either that you are going to be busy in your environment doing your thing, or you are going to be connected int hat way to the external, again through the right these are people who talk to people on the telephone and communicate with them over the web because its rightness it is very modern, it is about making money, it is about making money in your community being part of the community, paying taxes in the community all that kind of stuff otherwise you can’t build a city...

If you are a Market person you really need to be part of your market, your community, part of the supply and demand of that community. The more integrated you are in that community the more successful you are going to be and the longer your life…

One of the interesting things about internal markets is that these are the people that if you are working inside and you are making deals, this is when you are making the best deals, literally…it’s all about materialism, markets that’s why I keep on going back to cities and my concern for them because fi cities become dysfunctional societies will immediately break down...

Until we have self-sustaining environments and again everybody benefits from that, again this is really the core. Because when you get here (color 3)...you are really dealing with something else you are dealing with the local environment exports itself out beyond itself. This is about keeping the environment whole and healthy and one can only do that by being able to establish viable and healthy communities, that are dying every day…

For the first time in our history more than half the population on the planet is living in cities. This puts enormous pressure on Markets. And of course we are dealing with the not-self world so all of these market people are just dreaming of being somewhere else. They think that they can, that their life is going to be so much better for them if they leave the material world and they go sit somewhere out in nature. And so we have a real dilemma. And of course the people that are supposed to be out there in the landscape environment are the people that are trying to grind it out in the market world and they don’t have the tools to do it. The perversity of our plane…

People are not living out who they are. The people who are born with markets are up here in the 5 (valleys). They are not living this out it is all distorted for them. They are running away from the very thing that calls them. They are anti-capitalist, anti-city all that kind of shit. It is a mad world.

~Ra Uru Hu

[shoutoismybaby]

Obedient

HI everyone! This wasn't requested but I recently watched Ella Enchanted and got inspired. Basically, the reader's quirk is to do everything they are told. Enjoy!!!

***

The days before your 4th birthday was filled with restless anticipation. Your whole family was incredibly excited to see whos quirk you would inherit, Your fathers superspeed or your mother's forcefield. Inheriting a mix of both of them was an option as well, an option that made you dream about being a hero.

A dream that was instantly crushed the moment your mother told you to ’dig in’ to your birthday cake. To which, your body moved on its own; digging your chubby fingers into the cake before stuffing the pieces into your mouth. It wasn't until your mother shouted a worried “Stop!” that your body finally gave you back control. By this time, the whole table of your friends had broken into giggled, while the only thing you had broken into was tears.

That day you learned two extremely important things. One, that quirks weren't the blessings everyone enjoyed pretending they were. And two, that people were cruel and would take advantage of you in any way they could.

***

You continued your life up until high school with a limited amount of friends. Those “friends” only being your teachers and parents. Once in high school, however, your popularity skyrocketed as the word about your quirk spread. In the first couple weeks, it began with random kids in your class coming up to test out your quirk. Only to evolve into multiple students in one day demand you complete their work by the end of the first month.

At times you wondered if things would be different if you had attended a different school. You didn't even want to attend UA anyway, but when that stupid advertisement popped up on your TV with All Might excitedly shouting,

“Enter your application to UA today!”

There wasn't much you could do to stop your body from filling out an application and turning it in an hour later. It didn't end up being that big of a shock that you ended up in class 1-C, considering your quirk really wasn't suited for hero work. Though it sure was just amazing at forcing you to stay up till ungodly times to finish the homework that was supposed to belong to everyone else in your class.

Well, there was one person who had never used your quirk against you. It was probably important to take into account that neither of you had actually had a conversation, but it didn't stop you from appreciating that he seemed to be the only one respecting your bodily autonomy.

In all honesty, Hitoshi hadn't really taken the time to acknowledge you. Not that he disliked you, but the boy was mostly accustomed to people avoiding him once they discovered his quirk, so he didn't find it necessary to even try making friends. It wasn't until 3 months into the school year that Shinsou started to notice you. The time that you sat across from him at the lunch table that he usually had to himself.

Peeking up at your pink cheeks from under his indigo tuff, he realized that you weren't attempting to make any contact with him, your incessant staring at your plate made that extremely clear. Still, he was having a hard time figuring out why you had chosen to sit across from him, and why the fact that you weren't trying to talk to him made him feel disappointed. Even with all of the thoughts whirring in his head, Shinsou remained quite, and the two of you ate in silence.

In the days following, your existence became more and more prevalent. His attention was brought to you as you began to exist near him more often as time went by. When the class was allowed to change seats, you chose to sit to his right. During passing time, you could be seen in a 5ft radius of the tall boy, and you even began to sit at the same table as him in the library after school when you both chose to study. This is when Shinsou started to get bothered. What could you possibly want from him? Someone to laugh at? Learn his secrets and spread them like wildfire?

It was a week into you somehow appearing everywhere he went in school that he decided to get to the bottom of everything. You were currently sitting across from him at the library table when he cleared his throat, drawing your attention from your book to him.

“Tell me,” he paused seeing your head whip up, eyes wide. Remembering your quirk, he pauses before rephrasing.

“Why are you hanging around me so much?” He asks. The way your face warmed up only made him continue nervously in an attempt to not scare you off.

“Not that I'm bothered by your presence, everyone else just tries to avoid me.” He looks down and rubs the back of his neck nervously, why did he feel so anxious about this? He shouldn't care if he scared you off, if he did then you weren't worth his time to begin with.

“Um, don't be mad, but that's why I’ve followed you around recently.” The way your gentle voice squeaked out caused his face to flush immediately as he looked at your anxious posture. “Umm, I mean the thing that people leave you alone. I just want people to leave me alone.”  Your voice then trailed off and he scoffed in response. So you were using him.

“Why would you want everyone to leave you alone? You're always surrounded by friends.” He stated mockingly, “You should be glad people don't avoid you like the plague because of your quirk.”

“Y-you know what my quirk is, right?” You stuttered, your face feeling as if your veins were filled with lava.

“You do everything you told to right? Why does that matter?” He rolled his eyes. Why was he being such an asshole? Couldn't he just understand? You weren't avoided because of your quirk, you were being abused because of it. You were exhausted all the time because of it. Couldn't he see how easy it was for people to take advantage of you?! Was he really as self-centered as everyone else? Was he really the jerk everyone made him out to be?

“Yeah, how do you think people react to knowing you'll do anything they tell you to?” You asked angrily, hot tears gathered in your eyes as they faced his. “Those people aren't my friends. They're using me!” At this point, he’s silent. HIs stoic face isnt letting you gauge what's going through his head. If only you could tell how his veins froze over as the pieces fell together in his head. “Until I started following you around I was staying up until 4 AM doing all of their homework, I had to give them my lunch money, the bracelet I got for my birthday last year. They just want me to do things for them, they don't even care about me! So, I thought maybe if I befriended the guy who everyone deemed unapproachable because of his quirk, they'd leave me alone. I wouldn't be so tired and hungry all the time. I’d have a genuine friend.” You released a shaky breath and shoved your books into your bag, trying to blink away the tears running down your face. Why did you ever think everyone else was wrong about him? “You're the only person who never told me to do anything for them. The only person. In our whole class. I thought that maybe, the way everyone thought about you was completely baseless. That you’d understand being treated unfairly because of your quirk. But you're just as self-centered as everyone else.” You stood up from your chair and slung your bag over your shoulder. Of course, he wouldn't understand. He didn't have a quirk that could be used against him.

Guilt washed over him as you started to walk away. How had he not noticed how your tired eyes reflected his own? That you weren't using him selfishly, you were desperate. Maybe if he hadn't closed everyone off so much, he would have noticed what you were going through. Maybe he would’ve noticed your existence as an attempt at initiating a friendship. Yet, because he thought the worst in everyone, he ruined his chance. It only took him a minute to snap out of his thoughts and quickly abandon his schoolwork to rush after you.

Passing through the library doors he looked out into the hallway, seeing you standing only a few feet in front of where he was, you stood with another student from your class. A nervous look covered your face as the student held a stack of papers,

“Do these for me, they're due next week.” They say, a devilish smile spread across their face. Anger boiled inside of Shinsou as your eyes dulled and arms extended and took the work.

“Stop,” Hitoshi demanded, causing your arms to stop, leaving the papers to scatter on the floor. Your eyes become animated once again as you turn to him in shock. The other student, however, hadn't recognized his voice and began to respond before turning to face him.

“Hey, who do you-” their face went from one of annoyance to blank and mindless within a second of opening their mouth. You could recognize what Hitoshi's quirk looked like when being used anywhere.

“Apologize to (l/n), tell her she doesn't have to do your work and never bother her again,” Shinsou says to them. They turn to you immediately and robotically begin to talk,

“I apologize (l/n), don’t do my work,” they say,

“One more thing,” Shinsou adds, drawing your eyes back to his glowing ones. “Tell all of your friends to never bother her again unless they actually want to pursue a friendship with her. Now get out of here.” Your classmate does as they're told, slowly making they're way down the hall. It isnt until their body disappears behind the corner that you open your mouth.

“Shinsou,”

“Look, I’m sorry. I was being an ass to you, and you didn't deserve that. And you're right, I was being self-centered. I thought that you were like everyone else when you were giving me the benefit of doubt. I want to be your friend, and give those assholes what they deserve for treating you so poorly. So, would you forgive me?” He asks, his lanky body bowing in front of you. It causes your face to heat up, but you smile.

“Okay, I forgive you. But you owe me.” You say, crossing your arms.

“Oh?” He asks, standing back up. “What do I owe you?”

“Ice cream, you’ve got to take me out for ice cream.” You say, excitement bubbling in your chest for a reason you couldn't pinpoint. Was it because you were making your first real friend? Or maybe that look Shinsou was giving you? EIther way, his mouth pulled into a smile that reminded you of Todoro before he responded.

“Okay, princess. Let's go get ice cream then.” He turns to head back into the library to grab his belongings and your face turns into an oven.

“Right now?!” You stutter,

“Yeah, why not? I’d rather get this whole owing you thing done and over with,” he says,

The next day you were met with your whole class standing in front of the door when you walked in. Never before had so many people apologized to you at once. It wasnt until your bracelet was gently set back into your hands that you started crying.

“I apologize for everything I’ve done to you. Honest. So please forgive me!” The girl who had taken it from you begged, slipping the bracelet back onto your wrist you smiled through the tears.

“I forgive you!”

“You know you're too forgiving, right?” The deep voice sounded from behind you, a voice you knew was behind all of the chaos. You just nodded before turning to face his tired eyes.

“Yeah, I know. Thank you though, Shinsou.” You wipe at your eyes, you feel his hand on your head ruffle your hair as he snickers.

“No problem princess.” He sighed, walking past you and to his seat. “Go back to your seats.” He says to your classmates, who scurry under his command. You aren't sure if any of them are actually under his control, or just terrified of what he would do if they didn't listen. “ and (L/n),”

“Yeah?” You ask,

“Stop doing everything you’re told to.”

“Shinsou I can't just not-”

“Sit down then.” You don't move when he says this, and a rush of energy flurries in your stomach.

“SHINSOU YOU GENIUS!”

***

Requests are open!

[butterflyinthewell]

Godzilla’s brain! (Headcanon infodump)

If you want to get technical about it, Godzilla has an ABI (acquired brain injury) caused by hypoxia.

In humans ABIs are brain injuries that happen after birth. A TBI(traumatic brain injury) is considered an ABI too, but not all ABIs are TBIs. If you hit your head and it damaged your brain, that’s a TBI, which is an ABI. If you didn’t breathe properly after you were born and it damaged your brain, that’s just an ABI. Cerebral palsy is an ABI. A blow to the head that causes bleeding in the brain is an ABI that’s also a TBI. See how it works?

For Godzilla, “birth” is a muddy subject. He hatched from an egg, so the rules are a tiny bit different. Godzilla (as a typical pre-mutation godzillasaur) formed normally in the yolk of his egg with the exception of the ventricular septal defect in his heart. 

If you managed to get a drone into Godzilla’s body and passed it into his heart, you would find the septum stops about 2/3 of the way down. The hole looks almost like a nostril, and right smack in the middle are the two nerves of his heart’s conduction system-- much like the bundle of His in humans. The same genetic quirk gave him a quadricuspid aortic valve (he has 2 aortas and a foramen of panizza like a croc), but that doesn’t affect him at all, it just looks cool. 

The VSD didn’t pose much problem in the beginning when he was just a little blob. Issues arose as body finished developing and the fine tuning began. He needed more and more oxygen, which his heart couldn’t supply properly, and both his cranial and spinal brains were damaged as a result.

The motor areas in his spinal brain took the hit first, which affected his legs and tail. Then it happened in his cranial brain, which affected his upper body. Someone “candling” his egg would’ve noticed he moved less and less as his muscles tightened up.

Certain areas in his cranial brain failed to mature and migrate properly. The areas responsible for cognition got hit the hardest by that, which would lead to him having an unnatural fear response cycle (not enough emotional area connections to his tiny amygdala-equivalent), trouble with perception / spacial awareness and difficulty processing information. The areas of his brain that didn’t form properly linked up in a new way, and that led to his unusual hyperthymestic memory. It literally looks like a bridge of neurons across the bottom of his brain and functions like a human hippocampus. 

Guess what’s parked on top of that? His dinky bundle of amygdala-equivalent neurons. There’s only 1 bundle, whereas humans have 2. Those neurons aren’t connected with the rest of his brain, but they do connect to his brain stem, so they work a bit like 2 cords side by side that plug into the same wall outlet. The outlet is his brain stem. It’s why stimuli trigger physiological changes associated with fear, but not the emotion itself. So young Godzilla lacked the instinct to flee any danger, but felt his heart speed up, felt his breathing get faster and became more alert. Then he got angry because he was annoyed by the sudden bump of alertness.

Godzillasaurs don’t have a cerebral cortex as we know it. Still, their brains are arranged with bundles of neurons that function with similar complexity to more evolved animals. Maybe, if they had survived to evolve like the apes did, they might have come close to or matched humans in terms of intelligence. 

Post-mutation, Godzilla’s cranial brain seems small and simple at a glance (It’s about the size of a classic Volkswagen van), but someone weighing it would be surprised by its mass. He developed a neocortex with shallow gyri and sulci that function similarly to human frontal, temporal, occipital and parietal lobes. It’s because of this that he’s capable of “higher thought” beyond what he could do as an unmutated godzillasaur, such as thinking about the future and being able to "question” things. (His equivalent of going “wait, is it a good idea to do that?” Usually he does whatever *that* is anyway...but the ability to wonder if he should is one he didn't have before! So when he looks back in his memory he asks himself questions he would’ve asked at those times if he could.) 

Now, remember his dinky bundle of amygdala-equivalent neurons? They branched out to connect with his hippocampus-equivalent and it’s why trauma triggers an emotional fear response instead of just the physiological part, but other stimuli only set off the physiological response. 

Godzilla grew a very primitive limbic system. It’s because of this that he connects more deeply to an emotional range he wasn’t wholly capable of pre-mutation. Part of that was his ABI, so the mutation helped connect areas in his brain that weren’t connected before.

These brain changes happened rapidly over a span of days, hence the temporary deafness and blindness Godzilla struggled through as his body changed. The tonic-clonic and myoclonic seizures he endured came from the already-damaged areas of his brain migrating (which irritated surrounding tissues) and new neurons growing so fast they sheared themselves apart. 

The seizures both intensified his hyperthymestic memory and exacerbated the ABI-related cognitive issues he already has. His “hippocampus” bridge was encoded with all this trauma between seizures, which allowed it to connect with the emotional areas of his brain to create the circuit where trauma leads to a proper fear response. He hasn’t had a seizure since his mutation completed, but his bouts of clonus (shaking / twitching) and full body spasms (random tensing up) can look like one. He has more all-over spasms when he’s fatigued, the clonus just happens randomly.

Godzilla’s intelligence is average for his species, but the issues caused by his ABI post-mutation mask it. He would have a pretty serious case of dyscalculia, no sense of direction and a complete inability to read maps or numbers if he was human. The only reason he has any sense of direction is because he uses his hyperthymestic memory, the horizons and Earth’s magnetic fields to navigate his old migration routes by feel. A strong magnetic pull can throw him way off course. He can recall sequences of actions perfectly because his autobiographical memory is always recording things, and the right stimuli make him recall it.

And those weird extraordinary abilities mask his struggles. If he was human he would get misdiagnosed as intellectually disabled due to presenting in such an unusual way. He’s cognitively disabled. 

Kaijuologists miss the cognitive issues because Godzilla doesn’t live in a world where his cognitive struggles interfere as much. He doesn’t speak our words or think like us, so it’s hard to tell a species thing, apart from his personality, instincts and a cognition issue. Testing him and Shezilla together would make his issues and their personalities glaringly obvious. (Godzilla tends to be abrupt and brusque, Shezilla is inquisitive and analytical.)

Godzilla gets stuck mentally, but to an observing human it looks like he is suddenly angry for no reason because he gets a specific expression on his face when it happens. It’s a sneer coupled with a frowning, wide-eyed thousand yard stare that could peel the paint right off a car.

This “stuck” condition has to do with how he processes information, his spacial awareness, the environment not matching up to what he thinks should be there and his inability to suss out what’s different or why it’s different. 

Example 1: (With family)

There’s a boulder formation on the island he, Shezilla and Filia call home. He looks at it a lot. One day he leaves to feed on something radioactive.

Filia starts playing around on the boulders and accidentally knocks one of them behind a bigger one, so it’s no longer visible. She runs off to do something else.

Godzilla comes back, looks at the boulder formation and sees something is different. But he can’t figure out what that difference is, even as he stares at the gap where the missing boulder should be. He remembers it was there, but his mind doesn’t click in with what happened. That’s a spacial awareness issue tangling up with his memory.

He gets really mad because I know something is wrong and I can’t figure out what it is! 

Shezilla goes up to Godzilla and tells him what’s wrong because she knows that frown with wide open eyes means the gears in his head are stuck. Telling him what’s wrong gets him unstuck before he flies into a rage. The temper tantrum is disarmed. 

Nobody has to put the rock back because that’s not the problem. Godzilla’s brain is a bit like HTML text page where the missing boulder is somebody forgot to close a <b> tag in the title, so the whole page ends up with bold text. All Shezilla does by telling him it was moved is give him the </b> tag. Now he can understand what’s different and why. 

Putting the boulder back will also get him unstuck since it “fixes” the “broken picture” he’s stuck trying to process. It doesn’t matter if it’s upside down or facing a different directly entirely, it just has to be there.

He wouldn’t have had the problem if all the boulders got moved, because then the whole picture is changed instead of just a small part. Big changes make him go “wow, wtf?”, but smaller ones cause him to get stuck. 

-

Example 2: (Alone)

Being hyperthymestic causes Godzilla to get lost in his memory a lot. It’s not quite maladaptive daydreaming because he’s mentally going over another part of his life.

He goes foraging in Tokyo, but his mind is traveling millions of years ago to when he walked among trees many times taller than him. He loses track of what’s real and what’s recollection. His mind’s eye sees trees, not buildings.

Then a maser cannon zaps him in the chest, abruptly yanking him to the present. He sees the buildings instead of the trees. He doesn’t know where the trees went, so he knocks a building down thinking the forest is right behind it. And it isn’t.

Now there’s a bunch of maser tanks, missiles, artillery, etc slamming into Godzilla. It’s a bombardment of bright lights, smoke / gunpowder smells and loud noise while he’s already confused about where he is in time, so on top of being confused he’s now in sensory overload too.

He gets pissed off because he can’t find the forest he remembers and he can’t think his way through what is past and what is now with all the chaos being thrown at him. The tantrum* kicks in. He smashes everything in sight, screams at the JSDF that he’s lost and destroys more of the city out of spite because nobody is there to tell him the forest he’s looking for is long gone. He thinks it’s hidden in or behind the big buildings, and no it doesn’t occur to him that a whole forest can’t fit inside / behind a building that’s as tall as he is. That’s a hint of the spacial awareness issue.

So he smashes buildings and there is no forest. It takes a lot of smashing and stomping for him to realize there isn’t a forest hidden in the city.

The tantrum cools his rage enough to think clearly again, but it’s mentally and emotionally exhausting. Giving up isn’t something Godzilla likes to do. In this case, he has to, because all the activity has his heartrate up and his chest hurts. That’s always his warning sign to chill out.

Godzilla takes out a nuclear reactor, feeds and leaves. He’s irritable and sore as he swims away. He gets home to his island, which has a beautiful forest. The environment matches his memory again, so he calms down and goes to sleep.

* It’s not like an autistic meltdown at all. Godzilla doesn’t have control of whether or not he has a tantrum once his temper explodes, but he can choose how he responds to it. He chooses to yell, smash stuff and make a mess. Sensory overload is painful, confusing and annoying to him, but sensory overload alone won’t make him lose control of himself. He just smashes everything around him until he stops whatever’s causing it. 

If Shezilla is in the city with Godzilla, she can calm him down and lead him away without as much destruction. No matter how mad he gets Godzilla will never purposely try to injure his own family members, and Shezilla knows this. She knows how to talk to him and help him get in line with the present. (And by ‘talk’ I mean communicating in Old Tongue. :P)

-

Example 3: (Alone) 

I’m gonna borrow from my Shrinking Project fanfic to say it’s possible to make Godzilla shut down mentally and emotionally by taking him through a lot of rapid changes in a short period of time. This is the worst way he gets stuck mentally and it’s the hardest for him to deal with.

So tiny!Godzilla is plucked up out of the ocean after being hit by the shrink ray. He wakes up on a lab table to giant humans staring down at him. Goro, the aggressive one, throws his arms up in an attempt to intimidate. Godzilla reacts to that by getting pissed off and asking the guy what he thinks he’s doing.

Goro keeps escalating Godzilla, and then Reiko suddenly comes over with a tank of gas that knocks him out. Godzilla wakes up in an enclosure that’s all plain surfaces. It’s unfamiliar and strange.

A lot of things happen between that enclosure and the main laboratory. Then Reiko smuggles Godzilla out, so he ends up in a dark shoebox. Dark is scary to him, so he scrapes holes in the box to get some light. He goes from the shoebox to Reiko’s bathtub.

The environment never stays stable. He’s always finding himself somewhere completely new with new information to process. It’s stressful. He gets exhausted.

So Godzilla lays down wherever he is and turns inward. No matter where he is, he will slip into a deep sleep because he no longer has the capacity to deal with what’s going on.

If he’s allowed to sleep it off, he’ll be fine when he wakes up because sleep is how he rests his brain. If he’s awakened and disturbed, he is sluggish and depressed due to his ability to think / process information being greatly diminished.

Now, Godzilla won’t be processing much if he’s chasing an enemy through various environments or seeking sustenance. Giving him a goal gives him something concrete to focus on. But if there’s no goal and several rapid changes happen quickly, it’s like ripping apart a puzzle he’s trying to finish and making him start over. Eventually, he’ll flip the table and refuse to start over again, and that is his brain shutting down.

The best thing anyone can do, whether it’s humans or Shezilla, is to leave him alone when he curls up on the ground. He needs that shutdown sleep. If something like that happened around Shezilla in an inopportune place, she would tell Godzilla this isn’t the best place to sleep and take him somewhere better. If it’s humans handling a tiny!Godzilla, putting him somewhere quiet and dark and not disturbing him at all is the best way to help him recover. 

This situation is the kind of stuck where only time will get him unstuck.

-

Godzilla can eventually solve most problems on his own. If it’s not a life or death situation he’ll let it go once he’s done being pissed off about being stuck on it.

In Godzilla vs MechaGodzilla II he gets mad because he can’t find Baby. He throws a tantrum and trashes part of the city before he leaves. Later, he decides that if he smashes MechaGodzilla, he’ll be able to get to Baby. And that’s what happened. Humans would say that’s not correct, that MechaGodzilla wasn’t holding Baby prisoner, but Godzilla saw MechaGodzilla as a metal abomination getting between him and another of his kind. He removed the obstacle and Miki Saegusa led him to Baby.

SpaceGodzilla imprisoned LittleGodzilla, so Godzilla smashes through a city in a rage to reach SpaceGodzilla. He figured out that SpaceGodzilla was using a tower as an energy source like he uses radiation, so he destroyed the tower. Killing SpaceGodzilla nullified his crystals, which set LittleGodzilla free.

Godzilla’s problem solving is slow and depends on the situation, but 99% of the time he eventually gets his brain unstuck. Sometimes he thinks fast and comes up with a solution right away, sometimes he doesn’t. 

That doesn’t mean he’s totally unable to get himself unstuck or solve a problem, it’s just easier if someone is there to help him get unstuck. It saves him the grief of being confused for however long it takes before he figures the issue out or lets a minor thing go.

[lucyhblack]

Encyclopedia Pokesans

This is my ambitious Pokemon x Undertale project, From Pockets to Monsters. 

Here, through Prof. Stretch (US! Papyrus) I will try to detail the idea of how my universe works and explain what the Pokesans are and the details about each of them.

Again, thanks to @damnedxfate for inspiring me and allowing me to play with the idea of pokesans.

I hope you like it and please forgive any mistake (English is not my default language)! ^^

Summary: Welcome to the Beginner's Guide for Master Pokesans. I'm Prof. Stretch and I will be your instructor in this fascinating world. Then hold your pokeballs and let's go!

Introduction

* A tall skeleton monster wearing an orange hooded sweatshirt, beige capri pants under an open white coat and slippers appears *

Hey! Welcome to the Beginner's Guide for Master Pokesans, it's a pleasure to meet you, I'm Prof. Stretch a Pocket Monsters scholar specializing in the genre Sans, popularly known as Pokesans, and I'll be your instructor in the fascinating world of these creatures .

You're new here, not you? (obviously, if not, I would not be going through this introduction) No problem, I will guide you so that you can become the master pokesans you have always dreamed of.

So let's start?

What are Pocket Monsters?

(Yes, yes, you probably already know what they are, but I have to follow a script here partner, or they will make me re-record everything ... again)

In our world we have two dominant races, the Monsters and the Pocket monsters, and as long as the Monsters lose their ability to use magic, the Pockets have kept it and have become capable of extraordinary deeds!

Pocket Monters (as the name suggests) are mostly small, some being so tiny that they fit in the palm of the hand, while others can be as big as a house.

They have characteristics more "animalistic" than their Monster counterparts, not only physically but psychologically too.

Both species have developed a symbiotic relationship, with Monsters and Pokémon living in harmony (almost always) and helping each other, either to reach their full potential or to facilitate life on a daily basis.

Some Monsters have pokémons as mascots, others as helpers and even as romantic partners, but more popularly they are used by Monsters to confront each other in battles and competitions.

This may seem strange (even horrible in some ways), but battles are the easiest and most effective way to make pokémons hone and develop their powers, sometimes even evolving.

We classify Pokemon by: Gender, Family, Class, and Type, and Classes may vary depending on the Pokémon Genre.

There are many genres of pokemons such as the little lizard monsters called the Pokealphy or the stuffed animals known as Poketemmies and, of course, those of the genus Skeletons called Pokesans.

As a researcher of the latter I will delve deeper into them going forward.

(After all this is a guide for Pokesans!)

What is a Pokesan?

Pokesans is a Pocket Monster skeleton genre.

Um ... that did not help much, did it? Well then (again) let's go to the long explanation.

Pokesans are small bipedal skeletons (with the exception of the evolution of a Class), with large rounded skulls, wide ocular openings with apparent focal lights (mostly), a large jaw bearing an almost permanent smile and a tail.

These are the basic characteristics of all pokesans, but they also sometimes have other physical characteristics such as claws, horns, fins, wings, etc.

Every pokesan has a great magical ability, this variable being according to his Type.

If it still is not clear what are pokesans (* sigh * Why did I apply for this job anyway? Oh yes, I did not. Thanks, for reminding me Sans) okay, maybe with a comparative be easier to understand.

Monster x Pokesans

To best illustrate I will now list the key features that differentiate the Pokesans from their Monster counterpart.

Body and Magic

As stated earlier, a characteristic that distinguishes pokesans is the presence of a tail. ALL pokesans own a tail, even though it is so short that it does not appear beneath the clothing, or it is "all" a tail, like the lamas pokesans (pokesans snake), or the merskeletons (pokesans mermaids).

At first glance, pokesans may physically even look a lot like Skeleton Monsters, but it's not just the presence of a tail or other "paraphernalia" that sets them apart, it's their magical ability that makes even their biology different.

For example, skeleton monsters have fixed physical bodies, while pokesans have something called ecto-magic that form certain parts of their body (especially "soft" parts), such as flippers in aquatic pokesans, "feathers" and "leather" "In flying pokesans or even tongue and sexual organs.

Because of this the pokesans also do not have a fixed physical gender, being able to summon what best suits their desires.

The parts created by this ecto-magic (the ecto-body) can be summoned or discarded according to the need or will of the pokesans.

Pokescan magic is not only meant to create body parts, pokesans have the ability to use their magic for various things, such as magical attacks (often linked to their Type, like spitting fire, generating electricity, etc.), summoning bones ( which can serve a myriad of purposes other than attack and defense) or "magical servants" (usually in the form of sentient animal skulls that can launch a plethora of magical attacks on their own).

Quite different from us Poor Monsters, whose magic is basically restricted there is physical maintenance and some ability to influence intention (and yet it takes a lot of training to have the ability to use it properly).

Also, due to magic, pokesans are able to evolve.

Evolution is a state generated by the magical development of the pokemon that causes it to change not only physically but sometimes type (change in magic type or implementing it), plus a considerable increase in its magic (and often in its size) in an instant.

I'll go into more detail about this later. Just know that this ability belongs only to pokemons.

Intellect and Behavior

But it's not just the physical and magical differences that set us apart. Pokesans have their own behavioral and social patterns.

Intellectually pokesans are as capable as any monster (even more than some I know), being able to learn advanced notions such as reading and math, as well as full understanding of concepts, rules and laws (now how much the application varies from pokemon to pokemon and from situation to situation).

It has been proven that they can learn to write, but most seem to find it too laborious. They also have the ability to understand any spoken Monster language, almost instantly (we'll get back to communication shortly).

Pokesans possess the knowledge and skill to build, creating rudimentary forms of accommodation, but most prefer to live outdoors, sometimes creating burrows or using caves as shelters. They are also fully capable of creating utensils (carving or magically creating) to facilitate tasks such as cooking, sheltering or hunting and just as most civilized beings use fire to cook their food (although there are those who prefer their raw foods).

While many pokesans form flock and even communities (with leaders and rules) among themselves or among other pokemons, they do not demonstrate interest in creating an "advanced" society of their own. No one has yet been able to understand the reason for this, being they with knowledge, skill and power, to choose to live in the wild to build their own civilization.

Some researchers have already suggested that it is due to the high magical level that makes their instincts stronger and wilder, and what makes the cooperation necessary to create an impossible base society.

While this theory has certain merits (many pokesans have strong territorial behaviors that hinder group conviviality) it seems rather weak when we can see many pokesans working together, whether with their own gender or not, and even leaving their differences aside to achieve objective in common.

The most accepted theory is due to sheer laziness. (I know, unbelievable is not it? And people still say I'm lazy!)

The pokesans seem to be satisfied with the life they have and those who prefer a life with more "stewardship" end up counting on a Monster to provide that to them.

This assumption has more support because not even they (the pokesans) have an appropriate answer to that question (no Sans ... shrugging is not an appropriate response ... it does not matter if I use it often too!) .

I will better detail the behavioral patterns when we come to Families and Classes.

Language and communication

Pokesans do not have a language vocal or writing own (if known).

Pokesans can learn to speak a few words or phrases, with more or less difficulty, in the Monster language (although there are some who have managed to develop the ability to communicate perfectly in Monster language). They are also able to understand any variation Monster language after only some time of exposure to it.

It is believed that this is due to the unique ability of communication that Pokémon have. This ability is called Pokémon communication (it's not very creative) or "language" Pokémon.

This "language" consists of something like a mental interaction between the Pokémon, which causes them to communicate freely among themselves without emitting any sound.

We believe that this ability to communicate mentally facilitates the absorption of the meaning of spoken words and your understanding of the Monster languages.

Any pokemon genre can communicate with another pokemon using this "language", but between a pokemon and a Monster it is necessary to have a link so that there is this mental understanding. The greater the bond, the greater the understanding between them (so do not worry the pokesans can not "read your mind" ... at least not most).

I know you should be curious about the Master / Pokesans link, but for now we will continue with what sets Pokesans apart from Monsters and we will come back to that subject in the future.

Mating and Breeding

Pokesans have periods of fertility (mating seasons) and these periods trigger a series of symptoms called Heat Cycles.

Heat happens when the monster's body accumulates enough magic to allow the development of a new life. It has as symptoms: increased body temperature, increased libido and release of soul resonance (often perceived as a powerful odor or attraction) that can even affect Monsters (but in a much more gentle way).

These cycles are triggered when a pokesans reaches maturity of reproduction, which is variable according to each Family / Class.

In the Lust class, for example, the pokesans are in a state of permanent Heat (only the symptoms and not the fertility).

Although this period has a high level of success, it is not 100% guarantee of a conception.

Although a relationship between Monster and Pokemon is acceptable, all these differences make us reproductively incompatible. It means that even if a monster and a Pokemon become romantically and sexually involved, they will not be able to generate offspring.

This is due not only to magical level differences, but also to the biological forms of reproduction that both species possess. Pokesans spawn eggs while Monsters spawn their offspring into their bodies.

While there is usually one egg per mating (which may even contain twins), it is not uncommon at times to have more than one egg. This can happen more easily if the pokesans in question have more than one partner.

Pokesans can spawn an egg with other Pokémon Genres, but it is more complicated how much more different is the form of magical conception that Genres possess (so a pokesan is more likely to generate an egg with a pokealphys, which also generate eggs, than with a pokeflowey that generate seeds).

Like many things related to pokemons, everything depends on the intention of the pair (or pairs) involved.

Pokesans can have a permanent link, where the pair (or pairs) stays together all of life or only until the puppy (s) are old enough to be independent (again it depends on pokesans for pokesans).

The puppies of pokesans also differ from children Monsters. While a Baby Monster will be born helpless, babies pokesans are already born with their powers (though little control over them) and they have reached maturity much faster than a child Monster.

Clothing

Another curious factor of the birth of a pokesans is their "clothing". Pokesans are born naked (like most living beings), but in a short time their magic will have covered them with a kind of "uniform" a kind of "body overalls" that follows patterns and characteristics of each Family or Class (even in aquatic pokesans ).

Although this outfit is created by magic, it is not a part of your body (like the magic that forms ecto-body), so it will not do damage to the pokesans if in a battle it is damaged.

If the overalls become too damaged the pokesans can discard it and summon a new one, the old one will disappear in a short time. The overalls can also be discard it and summon a new one by the will of the pokesans. Many creators (especially the Coordinators)  like to decorate their pokesans with custom clothing.

The overalls always follow the same pattern, only changing when the pokesans evolves (and then permanently stayed in the new form). The pokesans have no control over their colors or patterns.

Pokesans do not usually use any form of footwear (in the wild at least). Sometimes the overalls themselves will cover their feet (and also the tail in some) giving the impression of shoes (often in a pattern of boots or slippers).

Longevity and health

We believe (we pokemon scholars) that due to their magical ability the pokesans (all pokemons to be exact) can live for many, many years beyond the expectation Monster. While a Monster may be lucky enough to reach 100, there are pokemons documented for hundreds of years, in the case of Legends even millennia (it is speculated that the Legendary are actually immortal, but there is no proof of this).

Due to magic they are also very resistant and immune to most of the diseases of Monsters (although we share some similar symptoms sometimes when ill), but may still contract magical types of diseases, including a so-called "Fall."

The Fall occurs when a pokesan enters into something like a depressive state that causes him to stop eating, protect or move that will weaken him to comatose, almost always fatal state.

It may seem like a psychological rather than a physical illness, but it also affects their magical levels. A "Fallen" pokemon (as it is called a falling pokemon) has fall magic levels (hence part of the name of the disease), to the point that the pokesans can no longer use their magic, ultimately leading to their death .

The "Fall" is a process that can last a long time (depending on the strength of the Pokemon in question) until its end. A Fallen Pokémon can rarely recover and what can lead to a "Fall" is variable, but usually linked to a great emotional loss. Despite this, fallen Pokesans are very rare (Pokesans are very resistant pokemon, both physically and mentally).

Like Monsters, Pokesans have their bodies turned to dust when they die.

[phemonoi]

tarot cards as foster the people lyrics 🌿✨

*based on the waite tarot deck

I've wanted to do this to better understand the relation of the cards with one another and I thought it'd be a good idea to post it here!

i. aces, the magician & justice

—houdini

“rise above, gonna start the war!” / “well, and eye for an eye, and an ‘f’ for a fight” / “well, you got what you want and what you never knew, perfect gift from me to you” / “focus on your ability, then they can’t get what they want to steal”

the aces have an aura of beginning, the spark of an idea, oportunity, birth. however, the magician is the “trigger” of that change, he controls it, activates it. he’s the architect and alchemist that has the ability to make use of each suit as he pleases. with justice, as we see, this power comes with a responsability. you get back what you give. and because the magician is also an illusionist, a liar and a thief, justice needs to be there as a reminder of what happens when you abuse magic. 

ii. twos, high priestess & the hanged man

—shc

“you’re a secret, that’s worth keeping, and now i’m keeping my mouth shut” / “well, i’ve been sleeping waiting for something, but to feel nothing at all, avoid the call” / “when i’m alone, there’s a ghost the keeps talking, and i know there’s gotta be more, for sure”

the twos are a symbol of alchemy, and this can be clearly seen in the cups with the caduceus of hermes on the background. the high priestess is the master of occult knowledge, she channels cosmic knowledge through intuition, thus creating a bond, an exchange of energy within her and the universe. the hanged man needs meditation and contemplation in order to decide what’s next, what’s real from what’s an illusion. he urges stillness in order to recover, much like the two of swords.

iii. threes, the empress & death

—fire escape

“my spine is made of iron, my heart pumps out old red paint” / “I see the seasons change, all the young faces come and replace the dying ones” / “i’ve watched the dreamers find their legs, and i’ve seen the ones that come get reduced to bones and rags”

this procesion of cards illustrates the importance of cycles. the threes combine pain, sorrow (swords) with recovery, harmony (cups), planning (pentacles) with action (wands), conveying the message that one simply can’t exist without the other, for the presence of the other is what gives one its importance, its core definition. they’re light and shadow, much like birth (empress) and death. 

iv. fours, the emperor & temperance

—coming of age

“you know i try to live without regrets, i’m always moving forward and not looking back, but i tend to leave a trail of dead while moving ahead” / “just like an animal, i protect my pride, when i’m too bruised to fight, and even when i’m wrong i tend to think i’m right. well, i’m bored of the game, and too tired to rage”

the emperor is the giver of stability, as we can see in four of pentacles and four of wands. he provides a stable foundation to build a home, he’s a father. meanwhile, the four of cups and four of swords portray temperance; they’re about patience, balance, and meditation. the emperor, as a leader, needs to balance the responsability of his power out with temperance, or else he will become a tyrant, ruled by fire.

v. fives, the hierophant & the devil 

—pay the man

“say what you love, it’s alright don’t be afraid to find your light, embrace the day, at night we’re here to fight, we all go wild again” / “climbing up my own tree, hoping it can hold all the things i’ve seen but i’ve chosen to ignore. well, i said, well i believe i’ve been well fed but the wolf’s not dead” / “lift up your name, seasons change, you know that it'll never be the same, we'll see the sun again, and before it fades, i just wanna say that i love you”

this procesion is very deep. it speaks of the spirit on a level that no other procesion of cards does in the entire deck. because the hierophant is combined with the devil, i feel like it unites opposite religious concepts: heaven with hell, purity with dirt, wisdom with madness. this alchemy of the soul is pretty much a product of dionysos, and that’s why he’s often identified with both major arcanas. the fives, now, are the middle point of each suit; they mark a transcendental point in the path of the fool. they speak of poverty, sadness, confusion and conflict. this is the event that leads to the tower; the failure, the longing for illumination, the unmasking of the lies and illusions that have ruled one’s life until now. the unity of darkness and light, the highest power, thrice-born and divine, with the lowest impulses of nature, the satyrs and maenads that lure you into their orgy. the devil here demands to be payed back, he wants retribuition, while the hierophant presents himself as the saviour, the guide, that happens to also be incredibly biased. i think it’s very useful to view this procesion as a representation of dionysos, he who initiates us into the journey of self-discovery through mysteries and shadows. 

vi. sixes, the lovers & the tower 

—the truth

“well i’ve been trying to relearn my name, it feels like a thousand years that i’ve been out of frame and i surrender, the truth is what it’s what i’ve needed from you, cause i’ve been floating within your walls of opinion, and i’m tired. i only want the truth” / “a blinding call to prayer has touched my feet, like the call of the prophets, a purpose is needed before you know that you know, to never wonder what you are, and not forget where you’ve come from” / “is it really love you’ve been speaking of?”

the lovers and the tower have a closer relation than what i thought at first, and the verses of this song really show it. the lovers is, finally, the resolution of the devil and the hierophant: it is the unification of duality, the yin and yang, and its lust is still present in the devil; the impetus and dichotomy of human emotion. but the tower and the hierophant are both events of immense spiritual enlightment. they represent freedom. the sixes are about charity, change, escape, and victory. 

vii. sevens, the chariot & the star 

—doing it for the money

“just close your eyes, we’re gonna run this blind, we live our lives, we’re not wasting time, maybe we lost our minds, we’re gonna get what we can” / “i said it doesn’t matter where i go, i am calling all the poets into battle, i am shouting to the world let them know that we won’t be afraid to step into the fight when we can’t see the light” / “there’s no retreat and no escape if we keep dreaming while we’re wide awake”

dreams, hope, courage and art. this is a creative procesion of cards. after the breakdown of the sixth procesion, the seventh brings bravery forthward. there’s no time to waste and we’re now purified, convinced of our worth and what we need to do in order to achieve what is needed. we’ve accepted the situation, the nature of our uncontrolling emotions and the will of fate. the sevens take action, a bit impulsively, but still they trigger a necessary change after the depression seen with the lovers and the tower. 

viii. eights, strength & the moon

—a beginner’s guide to destroying the moon

“and now i’m staring at the moon wondering why the bottom fell out, been searching for answers and there’s questions i’ve found” / “we’ve been crying for a leader to speak like the old prophets, the blood of the forgotten wasn’t spilled without a purpose, or was it?” / “you’ll never be whole until you lose control, and think freely to smash the wall of apathy, stop your self-importance and lift the weight off somebody else”

there’s a very pretty picture on the eight of cups in the ethereal visions illuminated tarot deck, because the moon is full, shining enormously over a deep blue landscape, and that perfectly illustrates the relation of this card to the major arcana of the moon. this procesion for me is about confidence. change is never easy, even when we’ve finally surrendered to the fate of circumstances, even when we were the ones to trigger it. eight of swords and eight of cups are not easy cards to gaze at, but we must remember that the moon is a mother, it is nurturing, it reminds us of the quality of nature to be cyclical, that things are always moving and flowing, and emotions don’t last forever. it’s also a card of illusions; it yells at us to remove the blindfold from our eyes and rediscover our worth. strength is about taming the beast, keeping on working, effort and struggle. so this tells me; no matter how much it hurts, keep going, be a leader, be the lion, make the blood you shed worth it. 

xix. nines, the hermit & the sun

—pseudologia fantastica

“don’t be afraid of the knife, sometimes you gotta cut the limb to survive” / “you got to love the madness of the feeling, don’t have to rush the freshness of beginning, you got to get back up and face your demons, don’t ever be afraid of starting over”

the nines follow the archetype of the hermit and continue their path through the sun. when we’ve worked hard enough, when we’ve compromised to facing our shadow self, when we’ve retired to truly know ourselves, admiting what we’ve done, what we’re worth, and retreated into silence, then there’s a comeback filled with joy, music, light. the nine of swords is a necessary dark night of the soul leading to a definitive awakening. 

xx. the tens, wheel of fortune & judgement 

—iii

“and i wont be afraid, it’s true we’ll never know, when the night will come and take us home, and people change, we fade from youth, and evolve into eternal life” / “wake the sleeping from their dreaming, we all want more, we all want more saints will sing and hearts are beating, saying we all want more, we all want more”

there’s still much to learn in the ten of swords already, but because life is an ouroboros and our purpose is to return to having full control of all the suits and making use of that power faithfully and wisely, it doesn’t matter. in the tens, we admit that we can affect certain situations but there’s always something that escapes our sight; fortune acts alone. wheels turn again, endlessly, for eternity. we want more; the ten of cups portrays a couple with kids new life, new paths, a new story that is, again, yet to be unfold. ten of pentacles passes down its knowledge and experience to the youth; ten of wands continues with its struggle, in the conviction that the nine will come back. ten of swords, however, looks defeated. it ain’t. it’s finally the death of the past self. ten of swords is, actually, the scene of the moment the knight defeated his adversaries. it is a card of victory; but the knight is yet to become a king. 

[kcwcommentary]

VLD3x07 – “The Legend Begins”

3x07 – “The Legend Begins”

This is another really long critique. I have so many problems with this episode. The biggest problem is that this episode expects me to have sympathy for unsympathetic characters.

Haggar, citing the Empire needing him, touches Zarkon on sides of his head and a series of images flash. Haggar recoils at the image of a smiling Altean woman.

Team Voltron is trying to figure out where Lotor might be and what his plan is. Pidge poses the question: “Why was Voltron made out of the same material as that comet? What’s so special about it?” I can’t believe they wrote Pidge to ask that question about the “comet” since she already knows the answer: It can punch holes from one reality through to another. Allura says that Alfor found another “comet” like this one, and Coran specifies that it was Alfor and Zarkon who found it back before Voltron was made. Allura’s and Coran’s statements coming after Pidge’s comment is odd. Their comment makes it sound like it’s a revelation that Voltron was made out of the first “comet” that Alfor found, but Pidge literally just said that it’s made out of the same material.

Coran begins to tell them some history. The original Paladins were first leaders of their respective species/cultures. Cultures that “in some cases had been warring for generations,” he says while an image of Blaytz fighting some Galra sentries is shown. Are we to understand from this that the Galra had been at war with Blaytz’s people? That sounds significant and should be clarified and explained.

The five original Paladins made some “formal agreement” to protect their common interests. If they had been at war with one another, what common interests would they have that would cause them to go from war to cooperation? That’s significant and should be clarified and explained. They developed a “true friendship” from working “together […] to rid their system of those who would do it harm.” Their system? As in solar system? All five species evolved and existed within the same solar system? That is incredibly unlikely.

There’s a shot of Daibazaal, still looking like not a planet. On the surface, they’re having a relatively exclusive meal together. Coran goes over the roster. Zarkon from Daibazaal. Alfor from Altea. Gyrgan from Rygnirath (I really like his visual design, though his character is little different than an alien version of Hunk). Trigel of the Dalterion Belt. And Blaytz from Nalquod. The latter three don’t have much of a presence and are more to fill the roster than to be actual characters, especially Trigel.

Blaytz’s reaction to the server bringing him something to drink has been interpreted by a lot of people as Blaytz flirting with him. I guess it counts. It’s rather blink and you’ll miss it. I expect more for queer inclusion in stories. Zarkon displays his strict preference for hierarchal social structure, telling Blaytz, “You know that fraternizing with the servant class is not permitted. It erodes discipline.” So, Zarkon has always been severe, prejudiced, and cruel. One, Blaytz is not Galra, so even if it is uncouth for a high ranking Galra to talk to someone in “the servant class,” that does not apply to Blaytz. Two, this reaffirms what we’ve seen of Zarkon already in this show: that he stands aloof from those he leads because he thinks he’s superior to them. This is one point of contention between him and Lotor.

While at dinner, the “comet” crashes into the surface of Daibazaal. In the amount of time it takes Zarkon to evacuate the area near the crater, Alfor has set up a lab, started studying the “comet,” and already knows that it’s made of a material that can pass between realities. The show tries to handwave the fact that such a scientific determination would take more time for study than the timeframe Zarkon’s evacuation comment would allow. Alfor says they found a yellow, glowing area underneath where the “comet” had crashed. Just because the area’s there doesn’t mean that the “comet” caused it to happen. But this his hardly the only jump in logic characters are written to make in this episode.

This brings up an issue I have with this “comet” being able to pass from one reality to another: How? I don’t ask that wanting an actual science reason, but I ask what, in-story, causes it to transit from one reality to another? Why has it stopped in this reality? Some change has to occur to make the “comet” transit from one reality to another, otherwise it would be constantly transiting and would not be stable enough for them to do anything but watch it disappear into a rift. Yet they made Voltron out of it. This seems like more of the show’s magic system having never been properly defined.

Zarkon freaks out over a cat (Kova, the same cat Narti uses to see). Zarkon then meets Honerva, to whom Kova belongs. Alfor describes Honvera as the best alchemist from Altea. Alfor asked Honerva to come to Daibazaal to lead the investigation. With Altea and Daibazaal in the same solar system, I guess it isn’t unreasonable that given the timeframe of Zarkon’s evacuation comment that Honerva could have come from one planet to another.

Honerva expresses excitement about studying the “comet.” Zarkon is socially awkward around her, which is clearly to be interpreted as he’s attracted to her. Given Zarkon’s opinions on Galra superiority, it’s odd that he would be attracted to her, but whatever. She remained on Daibazaal studying the rift, while Alfor studied the “comet” on Altea. Coran’s narration says that this study took years.

Alfor introduces Zarkon to baby Allura, and Zarkon gives her a Galra helmet. Also, Zarkon has married Honerva. Alfor goes to thank Honerva for the gift, which she dismisses as nothing more than a “customary gesture.” In later seasons, the show claims that Honerva loses her maternal capacity due to excessive exposure to quintessence from within the rift. But here, where she could demonstrate the necessary warmth of personality needed for maternal capacity by commenting affectionately about baby Allura, she does not. This to me says that Honerva was never a motherly type of person, nothing was taken from her despite the show’s later retcon.

She’s been running an experiment on quintessence, one drop powering some machine for a year. Quintessence has been shown to be some kind of glowing energy until it’s somehow processed into liquid, so I guess they’ve developed a refining process in order for Alfor to refer to it as a “drop?” This would have been the perfect episode to explain what quintessence is.. We’ve been previously told that quintessence is supposedly life energy, but then how is there so much quintessence in the rift? Again, it’s supposed to be life energy, but then how is it poisonous? What kind of statement is this show making by saying that life energy can poison you into becoming maniacal and cruel?

Alfor says that “the ships I’m creating for us work on the same principle.” What principle is that? He hasn’t stated any kind of principle, he’s only said that quintessence is a potent energy source. That’s a terribly written transition. “The ore from the comet practically engineers itself,” he also says. That’s not how engineering works. The material might be easy to work with, but that’s not the same thing as the ore creating design schematics on its own. I don’t think the writers of this show know what engineering is.

Zarkon instantly thinks about “endlessly powerful ships for the Galra Empire.” So, Altea and Galra are in the same solar system, but the Galra have an Empire already. Are we to assume that this Empire is currently just isolated on Daibazaal? If they’re already an Empire, I’m kind of surprised they haven’t already tried to conquer Altea. Maybe they’re supposed to be two of the warring factions mentioned at the beginning of the episode? Again, that sounds significant and should be clarified and explained. Regardless, Zarkon here reveals that he is very much a war-minded person. The later idea that he turns cruel because of excessive exposure to quintessence from within the rift doesn’t work for me because he’s being shown to think the same before as he does after.

Alfor observes some glowing purple blob floating in a forcefield. Honerva explains that she “sent some signals into the neighboring reality and this creature answered the call. Nothing from our universe has been able to survive the passage through the rift. But somehow, he arrived unharmed.” She seems fascinated by the creature, even holding out a hand to the forcefield like she wishes she could touch the blob. Alfor comments, “I thought we discussed this. We must exercise caution. We have no idea what is out there.”

And here we have another demonstration of Honerva’s normal, unaffected personality well before she became poisoned by quintessence and turned into Haggar. “The ancients thought that lightning was shot from the bows of the gods until science proved otherwise. We must always push into dangerous territory in pursuit of knowledge.” Honerva is not some person whose warmth was taken from her. She is a driven person who has the same insatiable desire for power that Zarkon has. She views the tool of science as how she can acquire that power. She does not care about the consequences of her behavior. She does not care if anyone gets hurt in the process.

The blob screeches and more of the blob creatures erupt from the rift. Alfor and Honerva put a spherical forcefield around the area to contain the blobs.

“Alfor’s project will save us,” Honerva says. I have a lot of complaints about Voltron Legendary Defender, but there are some things I really like. Scientific illiteracies aside, I think the animation is really nice. I love the music. And usually, I think the voice acting is really good. But what in the world is with Honerva’s voice?

Alfor introduces the five original Paladins to the Lions. “I made them from the quintessence-infused ore of the comet, which provides them with an endless supply of power,” Alfor says. How is metal able to be infused with life energy? Also, this show has shown the Lions losing power many times, so clearly, they do not have an endless supply of power.

“In testing my ship, I started to feel some sort of psychic link. […] The ship wasn’t just reading my mind, it was communicating with me. They seem to be evolving,” Alfor says. The Lions’ minds literally come out of nowhere. There’s no explanation to why the ships are sentient. Alfor created these ships. He had to design and build them. They should have no capabilities that he did not design. So where do the Lions’ consciousnesses come from? The show never thinks it’s necessary to answer that. For Alfor to take them from raw materials to ships with consciousnesses, it’s not acceptable for him to not be able to explain that. That’s not how engineering works.

Zarkon’s concerned about his people being harmed by “dark creatures from another realm.” Well Zarkon, it’s your wife’s fault.

“You do not pick the beast. The beast will choose you,” Alfor says. How convenient that the beasts all choose the five members of this group and that they all happen to be here together.

This is comparatively a minor problem, but the character designs of the species of the Paladins bothers me specifically when it comes to their Paladin armors’ helmets. Their helmets are not designed for their respective head-shapes. How the impossibility of stuffing all the stuff hanging off their respective heads into helmets shaped for a human head-shape didn’t register to the artists doing the character design, I don’t know. It’s like they didn’t bother to think through the realities of the head-shapes and the helmets. Not thinking things through is kind of standard for this show’s production though.

“Perhaps you should lead the formation, Alfor. You have a greater understanding of the vessels than anyone,” Zarkon says. I’m surprised he’d be willing to let someone else be the leader. Alfor, however, has not impressed me with his understanding of the vessels. Their having an unexplained consciousness that he didn’t give them and him having no idea where it came from does not sound like understanding. “I’m a better alchemist than military leader, Zarkon. I’ll stick with being your right hand.” It’s interesting that Alfor specifies the leadership as specifically military. There are a lot of different kinds of leadership, and leadership is not inherently militaristic. But Alfor, by his comment, wants Voltron to be a military group, not diplomatic, not humanitarian.

The rift creatures break free and form into a giant single body. Zarkon leads them into battle against it. Red psychically tells Alfor that they have to fly in a formation, and they turn into Voltron. Alfor designed and built the Lions, but he didn’t design them to be able to turn into Voltron. This is not how engineering works.

“Am I a leg?” Gyrgan says.

They continue to fight. Red reveals to Alfor the slot for the bayard. So, the ability to use bayards to create weapons and additional abilities is also something that Alfor did not design the Lions to be able to do.

Having the Lions be some advanced technology they just happened to have found out in space somewhere, rather than something Alfor built while having no idea what he was building, would have at least not been absurd. Or if Alfor had been influenced by some alien consciousness into building the Lions, that would have worked too.

Voltron forms sword and they stab the body of the collective rift creatures, and it explodes. It doesn’t really make any sense why that would happen, but it does.

Alfor says they need to find a way to seal the rift. Honerva reacts, yelling, “Seal the rift? Why?” Again, she’s a person who does not care about the consequences of her actions; that’s very much antithetical to being a motherly person. Despite having freaked out about the danger to his people a few scenes ago, Zarkon now doesn’t care about the risk. Citing the power of the Lions, Zarkon is eager to continue looking to turn the rift into more power.

“I’ll decide what’s enough on my planet!” Zarkon yells at Alfor. Zarkon is already a megalomaniacal dictator, no quintessence poisoning required.

Coran narrates, “Honerva continued her experiments on the rift. Despite their differences, Zarkon and Alfor, along with the other Paladins, established a new era of peace and prosperity.” Some of the blame for what has happened has to go to Alfor then. If he could have had that conversation with Honerva and Zarkon and still go along with them, then he is complicit. Also, I don’t like the writing of this narration. The way Coran goes without transition from Honerva continued her proven dangerous experiments to everyone got along and everything was great is so significantly dissonant. The juxtaposition of the two scenes also results in tonal whiplash. We literally just saw Zarkon yell about his hunger for power, and then we’re told everything was great.

Time passes. Daibazaal has been experiencing earthquakes that Alfor says are indicating the planet is fracturing. Zarkon again screams at Alfor, “I can’t stop Honerva’s work now. She’s discovering more every day.” Alfor indicates that it’s been quite some time since he last talked with Honerva, and literally the first thing out of her mouth is, “I hope you haven’t come to try to shut down my work. There’s more hidden knowledge and power in this tiny fissure than you can possibly understand.” Still, as from the beginning, they’re both power-mad.

Kova is still alive, despite significant age, due to Honerva treating him with quintessence. “Quintessence is so much more than you can understand,” Honerva says. That’s in part because the writers of this show never actually define the parameters of quintessence, so it becomes whatever they want it to be in any given moment.

Alfor tells her that she’s gone too far, and she reacts strongly, “You’ve always been a coward. You wish to close off our gateway to enlightenment. We should be expanding it.” Zarkon wants to use Voltron to enlarge the opening to the rift.

“It’s madness. This prolonged exposure to quintessence has poisoned your minds,” Alfor says. Again, if quintessence is life energy, then how does it poison? Maybe Alfor is supposed to be irrational right now and desperately looking for an excuse for their behavior, but Zarkon and Honerva’s behavior is not coming out of nowhere. The qualities of personality that are resulting in this behavior are their natural qualities that they have demonstrated from the beginning of this episode. The only time that the personalities they’re showing right now weren’t the same as how they’ve been depicted in the rest of the episode was when Zarkon was freaked out by the cat and when Zarkon was nervous out of being attracted to Honerva.

Alfor walks way. Zarkon yells, “I lead the Paladins. I command you.” He’s always been a dictator. The Galra form of governance has always been an empire, after all. It’s not like Zarkon accidentally or tragically slipped into becoming emperor.

Honerva passes out. I literally do not care. If a character is going to faint in a story, that change in state of consciousness should produce an emotional response for the reader/viewer. The story has created literally zero sympathy for Honerva, so I don’t care about her wellbeing. Her character was not written to make us care about her. It seems more that the writers assumed that we automatically would care about her without them having to write her in a way to get us to care.

“Quintessence is life,” Honerva rambles while in bed. If the show had left quintessence as just some energy and not tried to say that it’s life, maybe it wouldn’t bother me so much. But as I’ve said so many times: How would life energy cause something like this to happen to a person?

“Alfor tried to warn me, but I would not listen,” Zarkon says. He asks the Paladins to help him close the rift. It’s obvious that he’s deceiving them.

“Honerva told me the only way to close the rift is to use the power of the quintessence. We must make the opening bigger first to gather the power,” Zarkon tells them as they stand in Voltron over the rift. No one finds his statement suspicious. He is literally saying the exact same thing he did that made Alfor walk out on him before. Make the rift bigger. More quintessence. Alfor goes right along with it this time, telling them how to make the rift bigger. This isn’t just Alfor trusting a friend who was deceiving him. Zarkon’s not really deceiving Alfor at this point. What Alfor previously said no to doing, he’s now going to do.

Somehow, Voltron goes from stabbing the ground to floating in endless light. They’re in the rift now. Zarkon has left the Black Lion and he’s holding Honerva. It’s not really a form of betrayal at this point. Maybe there’s a bit of Zarkon’s behavior that’s love for Honerva, but it seems far more likely given how he’s talked this whole episode that Zarkon’s more interested in what power he can gain from Honerva’s research of quintessence.

The rift creatures come swarming toward them, engulfing them. Honerva and Zarkon scream. Zarkon’s eyes glow purple. Voltron grabs Honerva and Zarkon and they fire their thrusters to leave (I don’t know how they know what direction to go to get out since everything looks the same regardless of which direction you look).

Coran narrates, “Zarkon’s attempt to save Honerva was in vain. They both succumbed to overexposure to quintessence. The Paladins had been deceived by Zarkon. They had unwittingly enlarged the rift, which further destabilized planet Daibazaal.” Are you kidding me? They were deceived? They were unwitting? Alfor, Gyrgan, Trigel, and Blaytz must be terrible leaders to have been incapable of understanding that when Zarkon told them to enlarge the rift that that would mean that they would be enlarging the rift. And Alfor is especially bad since he had already said no to the idea of enlarging the rift.

Coran says that Alfor evacuated Daibazaal. How? Alfor is not a member of the Galra government, literally what power does he have to order a planetary evacuation? Alfor also blew up Daibazaal. Again, he’s not a member of the Galra government. How would any of them let him make the decisions for them? This is not realistic.

Alfor then holds a huge funeral for Zarkon and Honerva. Surprise (of course it’s no surprise whatsoever), they’re not dead. Do the writers honestly think it’s dramatic to pretend they were dead? Why wouldn’t the Galra conduct the funeral? Why is this episode acting like Zarkon is the only Galra in the universe? Despite the funeral Alfor conducts, Zarkon and Honerva’s bodies are on a Galra ship. They come to and have glowing eyes.

Zarkon starts a transmission, “My fellow Galra. King Alfor of Altea has destroyed our planet.” Considering all the Galra evacuated Daibazaal and let him blow up the planet, they already know that. If they don’t know, then Alfor would have been acting without the Galra government’s permission. Are we to think that Alfor hid his destroying the planet from all the Galra except for the one who told Zarkon?

This is one of the multitudinous problems with the writing of this episode. These major events of the evacuation and destruction of Daibazaal are glossed over with very little thought. No thought was paid to what the governmental structure of the Galra Empire is like. The writers exclusively invested the entirety of the government in Zarkon because it’s cheap, easy writing. Realistically, even if they are an empire, there are still contingency plans for a continuity of governance should something happen to Zarkon. Even with Zarkon as the emperor, there are other people who would be responsible for various functions of the government.

Coran continues to narrate, “Zarkon had become pure evil.” How do the writers expect me to think of Zarkon and Honerva/Haggar as anything other than boring, cartoonish villains when they write phrases like “pure evil” to describe them? Coran says Zarkon was “obsessed only with quintessence.” So then, nothing has changed for him. Out of wanting to open a new rift, Zarkon needed Voltron, and went to war to try to get it. “The Galra immediately responded to their leader and attacked.” But they were completely non-present in decision making about their own world before then and somehow oblivious to what was going on?

“The peaceful planets of our system were not prepared, but soon they had all fallen except for Altea.” So, all the planets had poorly run militaries? And there were multiple planets that were inhabited, and they couldn’t unite against one culture who no longer had the stability of a home base? Alfor separated and sent the Lions away. Zarkon killed Alfor then blew up Altea. The Galra, who had been evacuated from their planet and no longer had a home base still had the capacity to blow up a planet? It’s so hard to believe any of this.

Back to now. Pidge says, “So that’s Lotor’s plan: Cross into other universes and get the purest quintessence possible.” Slightly too far there, Pidge: They didn’t get quintessence from another universe, they got it from the rift. Also, that is a major assumption. Just because the story of the creation of Voltron was all about quintessence doesn’t mean that that’s what Lotor is trying to get. He could actually be trying to get something or someone from another universe, not from the rift. Or he could just want a weapon to match Voltron. This show writes characters to take major leaps in logic to arrive at conclusions mostly just because those are the conclusions that the writers are writing toward, not because it makes sense for a character to make such conclusions.

Back to Haggar. “Husband, how could I have forgotten?” Mostly because the writers just decided to make you forget because they thought it would be interesting or dramatic or something. The episode ends with Zarkon opening his eyes.

For an episode that is supposed to explain and advance understanding of the antagonists’ motivations, I don’t end this with any new perspective on these characters beyond knowing that their personalities have always been that of power-mad dictators. It’s just that now the narrative wants to absolve them of their behavior by saying everything they’ve done for the past 10,000 years is because of quintessence poisoning. I guess the episode thought it was creating sympathy for the antagonists, but I don’t sympathize with them whatsoever.

[wcamino-confessions]

Phantom talks to damn much

Seeing how the clan leadership reacts to the confessions blog isn't surprising. In fact,I I'm stunned that a screenshot leak hadn't occurred  sooner considering the popularity of the community. However, I can say it's very easy to judge what the community and its participating members are when sitting in an onlookers perspective. Before the discord chat in particular, it was more common to find people who viewed the confessions community as a location of pure toxicity and mindless hatred. I have had Moonfur speak to me in a conversation in the past about my own and others usage of the blog.

At the time, we used it mostly to vent and I can say that the blog has evolved in it's silent and progressing evils. These are toxic and generally harmful members of the confessions community. Denying that is the same as denying the foundation in which the blog itself was built on. However, this toxicity is born from the community itself. The blog did not come from nowhere. Keep in mind that the WA leadership team IS ACTIVE in the discord. The true community are the ones who come off anon and participate actively within the discord and uphold rules that prevent immense negativity. In fact, the mod actively manages mindless witch hunts by removing the ones that contain obvious bullying with ZERO reasons behind it [though I do enjoy the ones that go, “this person sucks, don't argue or @ me about this because I don't want to hear it”].

However, negative comments regarding dissatisfaction with certain existences within the community is not by any forms of “bullying”. It's very easy to mess up, but it's a thousand times more difficult to redeem your public view once a standard has been set. Confessions send warnings of caution to users to re-examine and consider relationships and the personalities of those in question. Some are obviously bullshit if we're being realistic about it. “This person's commission prices are too high,” or “such and such a person treated me poorly, but there are probably some hidden circumstances that we're not mentioning.” These exist everywhere in day to day life and it is the fault of viewers if they take everything they hear at face value. Anyone who has seen Fox News versus CNN should be aware of how everything that is stated can be biased and questionable in context. You always hear number 45 mentions taking down CNN and the New York Times because they broadcast a different view than they would like to see printed. Another example is the ever so popular Pkrussel argument that swamps the Warriors community as of late. Some claim that Pkrussel's “critiques” are valid and become defensive when others point out the other side of the argument.

The reality is, there will always be a separate viewpoint that may make others unhappy. Yes, they may paint users in a bad light. However, recognizing that you've changed or the whole story isn't being told is on YOU. It's not the fault of the users who speak out to make sure they are 1 on 1 buddy buddy and know everything that's currently going on in the lives of the person they're speaking of. Hell, what happened to Astro should prove this well enough! There were people being SCAMMED while those who were close to and defending Astro potentially didn't know. That's not to say that Astro is not a great person outside of what they did, but is it hard to understand why others might see things differently? People who had run-ins with people on bad days will have a different perspective and understanding than others who didn't since first impressions do mean everything. Another good way of looking at it is school. Ever heard an F is heavier than and A? You could be a straight A student, but I assure you if you don't do too hot on a few assignments that will change really quickly. Doesn't mean you're a bad student, but that's just how it works. You have to be held accountable for your failures and it's up to you to make enough A's to win back favor.

It's also not anyone's job but the followers of the blog and maybe their parents [if you really want to play that game] to ensure that kids are aware of how to judge the truth of a situation. I don't give a hot diggity god damn what regular members say about leadership team activity of clans or WA itself because we have no way of knowing if they aren't focusing more on management of higher issues that we have know way of knowing about. Maybe it's an age or experience thing, but it feels like common sense to take certain things with a grain of salt. Now if another LT member starts talking, sure I'll listen. They are someone who is a far more reliable resource than LittleBittyKitty69 the whateverclan warrior because they have access to the information that under normal circumstances, no one else in the clan would know. Why do you think people are always asking for screenshots on the blog when people start claiming stuff is going on? Because more people than you think get that taking everything you see and hear at face value is far more idiotic than it may be presented. Remember Lionclan and the edited screenshots that Nightfur, Four and Goldeneyes presented to incriminate Primal and Rain without revealing the context behind what was really going on behind the scenes? The cultish mindsets that they put in the members to make them vulnerable and more open to their influence? The way they victimized themselves without ever showing their own or others responses? Sure, there are people who will lie to you on this blog, but really it happens everywhere. If you can’t make decisions yourself on how to handle these presented issues then honestly you probably need to take a break from the internet and examine the important details you might have missed as of late.

Finally I’m going to be real with you. If anyone views Warriors Amino Confessions as a blog centered around “bullying”, I’m terrified to see how you handle real bullying. Everywhere you go, people are going to call you out on mistakes. WA Confessions may be a blog dedicated to prioritizing problems within the community, but that’s not to say that we don’t do the same on a day to day basis. Complaining about rules and negative experiences that we witness and deal with are the way to protect yourself in this community of thousands of users. Scammers, pedophiles, disturbing content, individuals with potentially dangerous viewpoints and more can be tracked within this blog. Sure, there’s definitely hate, but at its core, the blog can function as a clear and concise support system that benefits far more than harms. Yeah, there are people who are only here to cause harm, but when have you not seen the blog turn around and call them out on it.

1-800-boi is a flawless representation. This was a new member no one knew, who was targeted because someone had their own opinions on their artstyle. They were an asshole about it and the good majority of the blog called them out on it. The blog has a system, even if onlookers can’t view it themselves. As an “active member” of sorts, it’s much more clear. You’re entitled to your own opinions and no one is going to judge you for confessing what’s on your mind. However, if you attempt to harass, verbally assault or discriminate against, manipulate or scam anyone, you will be called out for it. We argue amongst ourselves all the time, but at the end of the day we have more than enough sense to recognize problems. The Mod [our great saviour, Lord Eris] actively limits openly recognizable attacks on a person(s) that may be hazardous or unlawful in nature, along with people who are clearly just trying to start things. The discord is legendary for actively calling out and being aware of users and opinions that mean nothing but trouble and the Mod doesn’t hesitate to subdue these problematic topics. If anything, confessions community is a thousand times safer than the amino itself BECAUSE the users aren’t afraid to tell you how it is. The regulars are more than certain to do a bit of digging to ensure they know as much as they can before they dip their toes into issues that they may not be fully able to comprehend at face value.

The community hold no power. The only power we hold is over ourselves and what we choose to perceive as the truth. Users of the Warriors Amino app have a right to know where or towards whom we need to be aware of; stop acting like this is some sort of political game! If the community chooses to side against you because you cannot prove yourself to them, are you even in a position to feel wronged? No one is holding a loaded gun to anyone’s head or threatening them and telling them that they have to believe everything stated on the blog or else. If so, the leadership team would be very quick to deal with publicizing the incident like they did with Lionclan over a year ago. No one has the right to claim the entirety of this blog to be an uprising of evil when they do not witness the full conversation. A few assholes want to do something to make someone else miserable, then focus your emotions on them. It’s illogical and restricting to forcefully disregard an entire peoples based on your emotional standpoint towards a minimum. There are 200 or so followers of the blog compared to the 1608 members active on Warriors amino at the time of me writing this essay of a response, and that’s disregarding the listed 172,867 members in total. Some of these members are banned, former members, and random users scattered across the interface. Some aren’t even in clans or positions of leadership.

If I were to compare the blog to anything, I’d advise members to watch episode 1 of an anime called Kino’s Journey [spoilers for those who haven’t watched]. It presents a country where murder isn’t illegal and a man Kino encounters who longs to seek asylum within its walls due to his rebellious nature and desire to disregard the rules implemented in society. Within the walls however, the city is strangely tranquil and Kino finds little to no security measures in place despite what he imagined would be a place of endless brawls and bloodshed to meet an end. The only oddity is that everyday citizens carry weapons and acknowledge that they are all meant for murder. When Kion encounters the man later, he has become a citizen of the town and targets Kino as his first murder victim. However, before he can fire his gun, other citizens of the country pull out their weapons and kill the man, protecting Kino. Why? The answer is simple. Legal does not equate to socially acceptable. In order to keep the peace of the nation, those who murder, have murdered or intend to murder must be eliminated before they disrupt the harmony of the nation. If a person is presented with a place where you can commit murder without legal ramifications and suddenly are willing to do it, are they really in the right?

Note: I’m not coming after anyone when I say these things, however those messages do rub me the wrong way as someone who has grown to love our small blog home despite the hiccups and less than welcome posts that do appear. Have your own opinions, but don’t conspire to eliminate those who see things differently than you based on your own emotional standpoint. As a member of a volunteer leadership team, there shouldn’t be a reason to start such a witch hunt just because some less than desirable people are showing out. Be better than them and PROVE them wrong with your actions. It’s hard to overlook these comments are simple “lies” when you are incapable of standing up straight and performing without melting down over a collected group of silent opinions. Let them talk. The ones whos opinions matter are the ones judge you for your actions over a bunch of silly chats on a confessions blog.

TL;DR: WA confessions is its own separate entity from WA that follows its own set standard of rulesets. However, do not be deceived by outward appearances. If you come of our community with the mindset that you are free to be toxic and controlling, you are incredibly misinformed. We protect ourselves and our rights by flushing out those with malicious intent. If you cannot handle that what happens here can be a bit rough, that’s fair, but bullying, harassment, discrimination and abuse IS NOT WELCOME HERE. We don’t want you, nor do we tolerate it. If your feel hurt by what is said here, reevaluate your own shortcomings and work hard to overcome the stigma that you potentially dug for yourself to prove those opinions wrong. No one is here to damage you, but it’s unfair to silence the viewpoints that you are too shamed or simply unwilling to acknowledge and address because you don’t like them.