#Like there's several examples I can think of

[teaboot]

I've never had a cat before and I'm hoping to get one soon. Do you have any advice?

Treat a new cat as you would a new roommate. Give them space and time to settle, establish a pattern and a rhythm, and in time they may choose to become friends and spend time with you. Dont force a friendship.

Use simple words and repetition to establish communication. Words like breakfast, treat, snack, lunch, supper, dinner, food, and eat all basically mean, "I am feeding you; expect to be fed", but it's a lot for a little guy to remember. I just say "Dinner" when I mean "cat food is coming", and so my boy knows exactly what I mean when I say it. As a plus, using only one word for snack time means he has no idea what the other words mean, so I can talk about food in front of him without ruling him up.

Pay attention to body language. Cats all have different personalities, and you'll learn their likes, dislikes, and messages over time this way. Son boy here loves anything with plumbing but dislikes getting wet- his favourite blanket to chew and snuggle goes on his favourite chair, and he gives me a specific gesture when he wants me to kneel down so he can jump onto my shoulder.

Read into problematic behaviour. Cats pee in weird places when they're hurting, in distress, or have insufficient of unclean litter box space. Biting, attacking feet , and knocking things off tables often means they're understimulated and need you to play with them, or at least need some kind of enrichment or puzzle to tackle. Tail flicking can be frustration or irritation. Purring is usually good, but may also be self-soothing behaviour to alleviate pain, encourage healing, and relieve anxiety, like over-grooming.

Like children, "bad" behaviour isn't malicious- it usually means there's something you aren't seeing.

Learn how your cat expresses love. Loads of people think cats are uncaring, cruel, and indifferent, but the truth is, they're just not dogs. Spending time near you, showing an interest in tools you're using or projects you're working on, sitting the way you sit, laying on their back, rubbing on your legs, wiping their face on your shoes when you get home- these are signs that your cat is enamored with you. You're their family, they feel safe and protected around you, they're curious about things you enjoy and want everyone to know you're family.

Set reasonable expectations. Again, cats are not dogs.We bred dogs to desire our approval- cats walked into our lives themselves. They have no human-programmed need to fulfill a duty or perform a task to your standards.

Training cats to do tricks isn't as hard as people say, but the willingness or interest in doing the trick is more heavily reliant on personality and mood. Some cats will refuse all but the most basic requests- I'm lucky in that Ollie understands and is willing to do several, provided I don't abuse his trust and he's not crowded or overwhelmed or just bored of doing it over and over in a short period.

Ollie, for example, knows Up to stand on his back legs and hold my hand, Down to get to a surface I indicate, Out to emerge from a closed space, Come to find me where I am, Help? when I'm offering to let him use me as an elevator, Dinner when I understand he's hungry and am getting food, and when I put on his collar he knows to climb into his carrier 'cause we're going somewhere. And he'll do any of these about 90% of the time, either ignoring me or phoning it in when there's something interesting somewhere else, or if he's feeling anxious.

Lead by example. If you dread taking them to the vet, they'll see the anxiety in your body language and behaviour and likely learn to hate it, too. Again using my guy an example, I starred taking him on walks long before his first vet appointment, just to get used to his carrier and leash. Then his first checkup was relaxed and informal, with plenty of treats, and I let him explore the examination room with permission from the tech. Now he loves going, so I'm not stressed about taking him, so I don't stress him out in turn, and the vest doesn't have to deal with a stressed out cat slowing things down and fighting with them.

Make sure your sources are good ones, and also good ones for you. I will recommend Jackson Galaxy's YouTube channel for cat advice because a lot of what he does matches up with what I've learned and know to be true. I don't personally recommend Ceasar Milan because I personally find his methods distressing to recreate regardless of efficacy, so even if that advice was useful, *I'd* be miserable, and it'd just be trading one issue for another.

Have a person who can help. You never know when you might end up out of town overnight unexpectedly, or when your place may need serviced or fumigated, or if you may be called out of town. Before getting a cat, research reliable pet sitters, house sitters, pet daycares, whatever, just in case.

Consider pet insurance. No long spiel here, just think about it. Especially if you don't know your cats ancestry or potenyial health risks. An on top of that, fucking vaccinate them.

Dont let them free roam. At all.

I grew up on a farm with free-roaming barn cats. Do you know how many times child-me cried over having to bury them? Illness, disease, pregnancy, vehicles, other territorial cats, ticks, fleas, litter, poisoned prey, malicious humans, local wildlife, predatory birds, scrap metal, extreme heat, freezing temperatures, tainted water sources, poisonous or venomous critters, getting stuck in small or high places, tapeworms, loose nails, old equipment, falling branches...

I've seen some truly body-horror slasher-movie shit- just truly nauseating visual fuckery- and I'm telling you not to let your cat free-roam.

Leash training isn't hard. Supervised walks aren't hard. Even keeping your cat physically fit and entertained indoors isn't an impossible feat. Don't let your fucking cat fucking free-roam. Fuck

Also read up on foods and plants cats can't do, like every houseplant in existence is toxic it's insane

Anyhow yeah that's like. A couple things I guess

Here, have an Ollie Pic

[yourecitten]

Appearance change

Alright so , a lot of u asking me in my dms how to manifest appearance change? Well , just like u manifest everything babe , u assume that it's yours;) but okey imma give u my whole opinion of this. So there's diet culture right? What do you think why are people losing weight ? No not because they eat healthy and work out whatever.... ITS BECAUSE THEY ASSUME THAT IF THEY DO THIS AND THAT THEY WILL GET THEY DREAM BODY. What do you think why for example, gua sha is sooo popular right now? I dont know eiter. Some people say it worked for them , changed they face shape etc and others say that it is a complete bullshit. Well let me tell you IF YOU ASSUME IT WORK IT WORK IF YOU DONT IT WONT WORK. its so simple so why would u do all of these things now that u know that your assumptions YOUR MIND control the 3d. You can do this so easily u just know that you got that dream body , that face shape, u have dif eye color etc... you really dont need to do anything in the 3d to get it. you can make this fun with techniques also ;) i really like sleeping to subs instead of working out. I like telling myself that i changed a lot physically and had several glow ups. i try not to think negative about my appearance because whats the point?? I can change anything i dislike about myself. my face amd body changed a lot over the years depending on my belief. Now im just having fun with my silly little subliminals and affirmation amd changing my look day by day.

[apostaterevolutionary]

I am so sorry, apparently it’s 2024 and I’m arguing about dragon age again lmao. How did I get here! Why is this happening!! Time is a flat circle!!!

Anyway. People can feel how they want about the past games not mattering in this game. If you’re cool with it, I’m happy for you. But there’s one particular argument in defence of this choice that is really, really bothering me and I have to rant

The thing I keep seeing is “well all this other stuff has nothing to do with the main plot or Rook, so it should be cut” and that’s. Not a good way to tell stories in my opinion. Because here’s the thing: it’s not about the Big Overall Plot. It’s about the characters that live in this world, big and small

I’m going to use the example of Varric and Hawke cause I think it’s the easiest to explain quickly. Varric is a storyteller. That’s the defining trait of his character. He tells stories, and sometimes they’re true and sometimes they’re not and sometimes it’s something in between. In DA2 he tells you about his brother. In inquisition, he talks about hawke and there’s banter about several of the companions. Most of these are just little one liners that don’t “serve the overall plot” but they serve Varric’s character

And that matters

So if we take this character known for telling stories about people that have been in his life, well, he largely can’t do that now. How can he talk about Hawke, someone who can be a very close friend of his, without even their gender being a choice you can select? Or whether Varric should be saying ‘is’ or ‘was’ about them? How can he talk about the companions in DA2 or inquisition when a lot of them don’t have to be recruited or can die? Will he limit himself to only characters that are guaranteed to be a part of it and alive? Or is it that he and Rook will have such a shallow relationship that Varric, of all characters, never talks about his life and past exploits?

Or has Varric as a character changed so much that he doesn’t even want to tell stories anymore? That Hawke living or dying means nothing to him? That the friendships he built with people in 2 games mean nothing to him? That he’s become literally unrecognizable?

This is where the problem is. Sure, Rook maybe doesn’t care about these people they’ve never met. But do they care about Varric? What about if a companion mentions an old friend of theirs, talks about an experience they had that made them who they are - is that only okay if that experience isn’t from a previous game? Or are all the characters so flat that we never learn anything about their connections to others outside of Rook? Is this story SO focused on this player character and this plot that NOTHING else matters, even within the world, and there’s no depth to be found in any of the characters that feature in it?

Writing characters so that they only ever talk about things that “directly serve the plot” is how you get flat, unremarkable, boring, forgettable characters. And that’s not something I would have accused bioware of doing even if some instalments are stronger in this area than others. But it sounds like that’s what they’re doing here, at least with the past characters. Cause sure, maybe Morrigan is so closed off she’ll never mention her son and partner. That’s believable, even if iffy given that they’ve said she’s going to be more involved than we think. But Varric? VARRIC??? Never mentioning ANY of the people he used to spend time with and care about except Solas and maybe some of the inquisition characters that can’t die or not be recruited but also carefully skirting around what happened to them in the game? That’s literally not the same character

And I would expand this to like. A letter mentioning this or a codex mentioning that, or ambient dialogue about so and so - that makes the world feel deep and those random, unimportant NPCs feel richer by connecting them to the larger world. It’s not about “serving the plot”, it’s about making your world and characters deep enough that they feel real, lived in, and like something we can actually care about

[celticcrossanon]

Ffs. OF COURSE the underlying energy of why she won’t extract her avaricious, lazy, good for nothing claws out of him is because of the ten of pentacles. It’s the ONLY reason why she married him in the first place. God I’m sick of never seeing justice when it comes to this repugnant bottom feeding parasite. Even though her entire fraudulent life is a miserable facade she’s probably still quite chuffed with herself for pulling off this atrocious smash and grab. It could not have happened to a person more undeserving in the entire universe.

So if the BRF despises her so much then why don’t they do anything to bloody get rid of her?!!! She is a brazen and shameless, inherently dodgy, thieving crook and a grifter and a con artist - and an actual criminal who has broken the law. As a taxpayer it makes me so angry. Why is someone this vile seemingly always ‘winning’ - and I say winning because she never has to face consequences for anything. I want to see this useless piece shite blindsided and penniless and back in the gutter she belongs in. Anyone else would be in prison by now. AND if anyone bothered to investigate anything properly believe me they would find all sorts of nefariousness - especially with finances where Meghan is concerned. If Harry wasn’t completely compromised intellectually and severely emotionally damaged she would be so utterly f***ed. If Camilla loathes Meghan as much as she does I can only imagine how William feels about that worthless piece of trash that weaseled her way into their family with the intention of stealing from them and laundering said stolen money. I am so GD sick of what she gets away with. Nothing serious like what is happening with diddy for example ever happens to HER. We’re all sitting here like chumps waiting for a divorce that will never blooming happen. I’m just so sick of it all - so thank you for letting me rant.

Hi Nonny,

You sound very fed up and frustrated. You are welcome to rant here any time.

It is very frustrating to see Meghan do all this dodgy stuff and seemingly get away with it. I think that she is facing some consequences, but they are not as severe as her actions and as many of us would like. Part of this is people's refusal to prosecute her for her actions, and I have no idea why that happens, and part if it is that she is always careful to keep her hands clean while others do her dirty work for her.

I think that part of the reason she never seems to face consequences is that she literally has no shame - things that would have another person curled up in embarrassment have no effect on her and she is out the nest day, grinning and hustling as per usual. Another part is that most people don't care about her, so reporting on her brings in diminishing returns, although that seems to be changing at the moment.

I don't know if Meghan will ever face all the public consequences of her actions. I think that she will have consequences, and she will have her actions turn around and bite her, but I don't know how public that will be. I believe that justice will be done, but whether in this world or the next, I do not know,

[stormblessed95]

Hello Storm,

where is the ending line between "good" shipping and "bad" shipping?

I'm talking about fictional characters AND real persons from various media and genres ,canon and non-canon.

As a BL fan and mostly a fanfic reader for almost 15+ years (!), four years ago Jikook became my first rps couple and I decided it will be definitely the LAST .

Some limits and boundaries around BTS' shipping community got crossed several times with poor taste and insane thoughts .

So now I started to questioning things ..for example, maybe it's better to go back to canon BL-media, leave the members alone and focusing - only musically speaking - to the group ?

Going cold turkey on Ao3 ? Avoiding shipping AND supporting spaces in general?

Too many questions and I admit I'm a overthinker, but after the Tkk french book maybe is really getting out of control for everyone.

Hello my love! As a very avid shipper since a very young age, who before Jikook, doesn't really engage in RPS spaces either, I 1000% get what you mean. So here is where I'm going to link you to a bunch of different posts I've made before that cover this topic. Will you come back and let me know if they helped or not? 💜

This post covers the question what is shipping culture in kpop

This post is about the question, what are ship wars?

This post is I think where I draw that line of what is good shipping (supporting Jikook as individuals and potentially queer ones at that) and bad shipping.

Dealing with rumors about RPS ships by shippers post here

Respecting Privacy Post here

And here is my post where I talk about fanfiction in real person ships. You'll notice the tkkr hate book is an example that falls directly under my "things not to do and cross lines and aren't okay" paragraph. Lol

In the end, do whatever you are most comfortable with. Outside of my blog and a few others, I do not engage with a ton of RPS fics. I read some that are sent to me from friends I trust to engage in that stuff nicely and correctly and that's basically it. I've gotten a few recs from here also and only read the ones that sounded like I would be comfortable with. In fandom spaces, you have to interact with them in whatever way works best for you personally. And if you can quit ao3 cold turkey, I would so shocked and impressed 😂 I could never. I have 10 ao3 tabs open right now lmfao

Hope those posts help 💜💜💜

[ianthewife]

Trawlerman has the vibes of a deadbeat dad but dear god the aesthetics of his cult fuck severely

Like, for example, we know about the fishhook piercings which are fucking awesome, but now im thinking about all the other possible river-themed jewelry. God dammit I need the Parish bejeweled to the gills

I can just imagine all the shiny fishing floats and and colorful lures as earrings. Silvery necklaces of fish scales on fishing lines. Rings with river pebbles, sea glass and freshwater pearls. Kelp and algae in resin! And don’t even get me started on the amount of beautiful shit that can be made from shells and nacre. A girl can dream i guess……….

[uboat53]

LONG RANT (TM) time? LONG RANT (TM) time.

INTRODUCTION

One of the most insidious tactics in politics is the tactic of making wild and false allegations. I'm not talking about traditional spin, where a politician presents generally accurate information in the most positive way for their position, we all do that at some level. No, I'm talking about wild allegations, usually made in only a sentence or two without any supporting evidence, that are so false that it's clear that even the person making the allegation couldn't have reasonably believed it.

This is a modified form of the Gish Gallop, a technique which weaponizes lies. Duane Gish, a creationist and inventor of the Gish Gallop, discovered that, while it only takes a second or two to tell a lie, it takes far longer than that to disprove it. He would, therefore, begin every debate by spewing a torrent of wild falsehoods, forcing his opponent to spend their entire time debunking them rather than making any argument of their own.

Similarly, people in politics today, particularly MAGA Republicans, will often make wild accusations knowing that people with short attention spans will hear the accusation but won't pay attention long enough to hear the rebuttal. Even worse, through a process known as the "spacing effect", a lie repeated often enough will embed itself in the mind of people who hear it even if it is actually rebutted.

HOW TO ADDRESS IT

Given that, how can we approach this tactic?

First of all, I want you to get out of the habit of just reading the claim itself; read the name of the person making the claim. People who use this tactic rely on other people just reading information and accepting it as true without checking the source. Get used to paying attention to who is saying what and start to test some of their statements. Granted, a lot of stuff that people say is hard to fact-check, but a lot of it isn't; check those things to see if they're true. This will allow you to put together patterns where you can recognize things like "hey, this guy tells a lot of lies" or "this news source doesn't report news that's good/bad for one side." Knowing this helps you better understand the information you're receiving.

Secondly, once you recognize a pattern of lies or even a single case of an egregious lie, get used to ignoring that source of information. You don't have to listen to something just because someone says it and you don't have to turn off your brain when you engage in politics. If someone lies a lot or even if you just caught them in one particularly bad lie, it's okay to take that into account like you would with other people in your life and stop trusting them.

AN EXAMPLE

I'm going to start with an example that I saw recently. We're going to look Jeffrey Clark. If you know him at all, you probably know him as the Justice Department lawyer who wanted to give Trump permission to send the military to seize ballot boxes after the 2020 election. Only the full-throated opposition of every other lawyer in the government stopped Trump from making him acting-Attorney General.

These days he's being investigated by several layers of law enforcement for his actions around the 2020 election, the Washington D.C. Bar is in the processing of disbarring him, he's been indicted in Georgia for his actions around the 2020 elections, and he's currently working for a think tank closely linked with the Trump campaign. Here's his Wikipedia article if you're interested in learning more.

On September 23rd, Elon Musk retweeted a post by Jeffrey Clark in which Clark complained that no one could find a transcript of any case that Kamala Harris had prosecuted, giving him a much larger audience than he had on his own. Let's look at that claim, shall we?

So Kamala Harris has been Vice-President since 2020, was a Senator from 2016-2020, was Attorney General of California from 2010-2016, and was District Attorney of San Francisco from 2002-2010. None of these are positions where a person would personally try or argue cases in court. However, she was a deputy district attorney in Alameda County from 1990-1998, a deputy district attorney in San Francisco from 1998-2000, and a San Francisco City Attorney from 2000-2002. All of these are positions where she may have tried cases herself.

This is convenient because these are specific places with specific dates. Court transcripts are public records, so all you'd need to do is go to the courthouse in question and request the transcripts. I haven't tried San Francisco, but the Alameda County Court website has a search function where you can search for cases by name. Once you have the case number, you can request the transcript for that case. All of that costs money and requires you to make a login, so I haven't done it, but it's something you could do for around $100 or less. I haven't checked the San Francisco Courts, but I imagine it's similar there as well.

And I'm sure Jeffrey Clark, Attorney-at-Law, knows all of this. I'm not a lawyer and have no formal legal training and I know all of this, so he certainly does. In other words, this is not just a clearly false claim, it's a clearly false claim that the person who made it KNEW was clearly false when he made it.

RESULTS

As we've seen, this isn't a pattern of lies (though Jeffrey Clark certainly has that as well), but it is a particularly egregious one. Mr. Clark made an accusation here that he clearly knew was false even as he made it. He lied about as thoroughly as it's possible to lie, but he did it in a way that he thought he could weasel out of.

You see, Mr. Clark phrased it as an innocent query, "I'm just asking questions", because he thought that, when called on the fact that he implied Harris' case transcripts were being hidden, he could just say that he hadn't said that. But we know that he would have known they're not being hidden, his purpose in asking the question was to imply the answer in people's minds without having to take responsibility for it. In this way it's actually much worse than just a standard lie.

You can also make some assumptions about Elon Musk in all of this given that he shared this post as well. Clearly he has retweeted at least one fairly major claim without fact-checking it. Looking back on a few other things he's reposted, it seems as if he has a pattern of doing this. If you're taking what he posts at face value, it's pretty likely that you're getting a lot of misinformation fed to you.

CONCLUSION

So here I've given you a test and an example of that test applied to a real-life case. I think I've made it clear that Jeffrey Clark is a person who lies very deliberately about things he definitely knows are false and does so in a way that he thinks lets him deny responsibility for the lie. Because of that, it's safe to say that you should not trust anything he says unless you can verify it with a reputable source and you may want to question trusting what Elon Musk posts as well.

But don't think that's the end of it, take this test and apply it everywhere! If you catch someone lying a lot, or if you catch them in a particularly egregious lie like this one, stop trusting them!

There are so many sources of information around these days saying so many different things that you'll never be able to sort through it all unless you start whittling your information diet down to the people and groups that are consistently saying accurate things. Much of the information we receive is hard to fact-check, so our best method is to fact-check the things that aren't hard to check and use them to determine the reliability of a source.

Curating a good diet of information starts with cutting out the worst and least accurate sources of information. Hope this helps!

[physalian]

Narrative Framing Devices

This is a long one…

A story need not be told chronologically, nor does it have to be only one layer deep. There’s a ton of different ways to frame your narrative, I’m just picking a couple today, some I thought worked and some I thought didn’t, and my personal favorite.

Most people think of framing devices in terms of time travel stories or fairytales, where it may start in the present or the future and work backwards, giving up the ending before telling how we all got here. Or by chopping up the chronology and letting the audience try to puzzle out the order.

There are also those that break the fourth wall, with the narrator beginning the story directly addressing the audience but never doing so again, or the narrator opening the story telling their own story to a present audience, so we’re the audience behind the fictional audience.

The other obligatory framing device is the time-skip, a la “6 years later” or “8 months later”. I’ve already talked about those. Or the preface/preamble/prologue that may spoil some important event later in the story, or is simply an important moment or montage of moments to catch the reader up on “how did we get here”. Shoutout to Castlevania for the most efficient pilot episode I have ever seen, with a 1 year timeskip.

Also honorable mention to the “A Life in the Day” montage from Magicians, speedrunning decades of a life together between two characters stuck in a Situation, maybe 60 years? Key moments between the two having a whole romance, with a kid and grandkids, over the course of one beautiful bit of soundtrack. One of the best episodes in the show, for a sequence that only lasted a little over 5 minutes.

—

Story within a Story | Princess Bride, "Ember Island Players"

Best example I can think of, specifically the film, which is based on a book that already incepts itself. The movie opens with a regular kid being read the book The Princess Bride by his grandfather, and occasionally cutting between the kid’s reactions and the fantasy story with the actors.

There’s several moments where the grandfather either loses his place and rereads a scene that replays the same dialogue, or skips a scene in the “kissing book” because his grandson gets squirmy, and moments where the grandfather narrates over a couple montages.

Princess Bride is one of those movies that knows exactly what it is and isn’t trying to be something it’s not. It’s self-aware and loudly and proudly sincere, with one of the best revenge arcs ever put to film.

Recap episodes can either be clipshows or get really creative like ATLA, telling the series recap through the medium of a propagandized play about the Avatar's journey, performed by actors of the Fire Nation. The Gaang sits there in vague states of discomfort, horror, or in Toph and Sokka's case, thrilling enjoyment, watching their hardships and heartbreaks played for laughs. That it's the story we know, but also with the added filter of it being enemy propaganda takes what could have been just a clipshow and still told multiple layers of a story with it.

The Fourth-Wall Break | Riordan-verse, Deadpool

“Look, I didn’t want to be a half-blood” defined a generation. It’s one of those fourth wall breaks that opens up the story and never appears again, though occasionally Percy will get slightly self-aware, saying things like “I didn’t know it then, but I’d never come back here”. But for PJO it almost doesn’t count.

Kane Chronicles on the other hand chose a bizarre framing device, having the two leads pretend to host a radio show, or a podcast—something where they were recording themselves and I don’t think it worked very well whenever it popped up and stopped the plot.

Shoutout to Tangled, too, for having a fairytale style fourth-wall break at the end, much like KC, where Flynn reveals that Rapunzel has been listening to him tell their story the entire time. Many fairytale stories open up with the physical book flipping open to the story, like Shrek and Shrek 2, but I don’t think those are translatable to the written medium very well.

The big one, though, is of course Deadpool. Have not seen the second one, and while ‘breaking the fourth wall’ isn’t by itself a framing device, DP & Wolverine absolutely makes it one, fast forwarding and jumbling up the sequence of events to deliver a “how did we get here?” during the opening credits.

Chronology Salad | Memento, Predestination

Have not actually seen Memento but I know the premise, working backwards as the protagonist recovers his memory of “how did we get here?” Predestination is a batshit insane time travel story that I don’t think most people have even heard of and detailing the plot at all is giving spoilers but it is the most “how the fuck did we get here??” movie I have ever seen.

Then you have stories like Twilight that open with “I’ve never given much thought to how I would die” that spoils (kind of) the ending, with the goal of the story not detailing if something bad will happen, but how. Twilight’s prologue reminds me of The Bachelor, where they’ll tease the audience with *shocking* moments completely out of context from later in the season that are way less cool when they actually come to pass (from the one time I watched with relatives out of morbid curiosity).

The point of these chronological mixups is how all the random puzzle pieces fit together, despite essentially spoiling themselves constantly, they’re so random, so out of place, meant to keep you constantly guessing until the big reveal of the picture on the box—and are extremely tricky to do well without completely losing your audience. You’d have to have a very thorough outline to not confuse yourself while trying to write it.

Honorary mention here for Inception, one of my favorite sci-fi movies, because the plot is crazy, but still told chronologically, just across different dream levels. However, the movie does open with the ending scene (though you don’t know that on your first watch). And Tenet, but I don’t know anyone who likes or cares about that movie.

Dual Timelines | Outlander

There are others I just cannot think of them at this moment. Dual timelines tell two stories simultaneously across two different eras, either decades apart or mere hours, with some relation between the two. Sometimes one timeline’s protagonist is the ancestor of the present timeline, for example.

Dual Timelines happen in sequential order, making them distinct from a flashback arc (more below) essentially two chronological plots running in tandem squished into the same book, episode, or film. They carry equal weight and try not to overshadow each other in flair or importance.

In Outlander, Protagonist Claire is already a time traveler, in a time travel story whose rules are “whatever happened, happened, and you end up causing whatever you tried to prevent”. Season 2 opens with her returning to the present, leaving the entire rest of the season with a foreboding sense of dread, wondering what will get her back to that moment.

Season 3 dangles the carrot on the stick, randomly cutting between Claire in the 60s and trying to move on with her life for… I think 20 years, while Jaime, her love interest from the past, just keeps getting kicked while he’s down. It takes forever to get these two back on screen together. And the dual timelines continue taking up screen time when Claire and Jaime’s adult daughter also eventually makes a trip to the past. Points off for being blatantly manipulative storytelling with its cliffhangers, but season 1 is still worth the watch.

Flashbacks, Flash-Forwards, and Flash-Sideways | Lost

This show’s earlier seasons were heavily framed with this device. In The first 3 seasons (up to the last episode) the framing device was exclusively flashbacks, focusing on one of the main 13 heroes for an episode, particularly in season 1.

They didn’t always answer “how did we get here” but told some story relevant to the character in the present, either a challenge they had to face or parallel relationship drama or ghosts come back to haunt them. Usually, these little flashbacks were told in sequential order, but they could hop months or years ahead at a time depending on the episode.

The flash-forwards began in season 4 and closed the gap between the “Oceanic 6” escaping the island and all the missing time while they were gone, before the infamous “We have to go back” line.

The show also had flash-sideways, which featured the main cast, many of whom had been dead for a few seasons, reprising their roles to show what could have been their lives if they never crashed. To… mixed reception.

The show also also had a time-traveling character who in-universe experienced flashes of the future and got mentally temporally displaced between two timelines for a hot minute.

Lost was… a show that demanded a dedicated following. I still love it.

Flashback Arcs | My own personal soapbox

This right here is the whole reason for this post. First you have flashback episodes and I can name a lot of those—ATLA has a couple, “The Storm” & “The Avatar and the Firelord” but both are technically “stories within a story” with characters either around a campfire telling it or reading about it. The alternate timeline takes up a majority of the runtime, only occasionally cutting back to the present characters for a reaction.

In TFP there’s an offbeat flashback episode “Out of the Past”, framed, again, as a character telling this backstory stuff to another character. Many, many vampire stories will have flashbacks to some degree, since their characters live for so long. Vampire Diaries, especially in the earlier seasons, had dozens of them filling in all the blanks back during the Civil War when the two leads, Stefan and Damon, were competing for the affections of the main villain, all leading up to how they were turned, and how she allegedly died. Once the Originals were introduced, the show then had flashbacks to a thousand years ago, when they were human, and various eras in between.

True flashback episodes don’t waste precious minutes setting up a framing device, they just dump the audience in an alternate timeline and let them figure it out on their own that something isn’t right.

But none of that comes close to the full-on Flashback Arc. I. Love. This. Trope.

I actually first saw it when Arrow was good in its earliest seasons, cutting fairly equally between a present-day Oliver back home and starting his hero journey, and him learning combat back in the past, over several episodes like a series within the series.

What you end up with is a happy medium between a full dual timeline and a random grab-bag of flashbacks as they become necessary to the plot. A flashback arc relies entirely on the existence of the A-plot to make sense, as opposed to a dual timeline where it’s essentially two self-sufficient stories rolled into one big narrative. This arc is substantially shorter than the rest of the plot, cutting the story it’s telling down to the absolute need-to-know moments and cutting all transitions between the two. These arcs tend to cover weeks, at minimum, and decades of a long life at most.

I think they're best implimented after the first book, film, or season. Not something you want to throw at your audience who barely knows or cares about these characters, so if you're stuck with ideas for a sequel, consider the Flashback Arc.

My favorite thing that I have ever written (sans ENNS) was for my sci-fi WIP, a C-plot flashback arc in 13 parts. They started out as in-universe nightmares to give credibility to when these flasbacks started occuring, framed around the character's reaction to the scene, but then took off independently to avoid redundancy.

This arc covered his time as a POW, telling the reader how he came to be the living weapon he was, and the first detail it opened with was the reveal that he wasn’t the only one of his kind, he’d lied and shouldered the blame of every atrocity to protect the others, as their numbers dwindled and it all fell into place. A truth he wouldn't tell with a gun to his head.

Because you already knew he lived, because he’s right there in the present A-plot, the arc wasn’t telling you if he’d survive the war, but what he’d do to survive, and how it all fell apart. Because it was framed up with the existing narrative, I had a lot more leeway in omitting details and dropping the reader weeks or months ahead as opposed to this being a completely fresh story with new characters. You knew immediately based on the tone that this POV was the C-plot flashback POV, and you knew the only person who could narrate it was my poor character.

Over 13 POVS, 34k words (of a total whopping 202k), I told a whole love story, established and killed off 10 characters, and gave heaps of worldbuilding lore and exposition to fill in all the blanks in the present and answer questions that this character would never, and revealed just how much he lied about and why.

All of this tied in with the A-plot, staggering the physical placement of POVS within the book to hit at the right moments tonally and as the character’s condition kept deteriorating because he refused to talk about What Happened. His reason was that he’d done all of this and suffered so much to keep their legacies pure. If he gave it up now, he would have done all this for nothing.

And this was some heavy shit. There was murder, suicide, death by giant alien super robots fond of ripping people apart, assault, mercy killing, torture, gaslighting, and psychological horror. One of my magic systems let magicians regrow limbs alchemically, which meant they could endure a shit ton of pain and just get reset to do it all over again.

It was a lot.

But because it was just in flashbacks, I gave you just enough dark shit before cutting back to something marginally lighter, not just one long slog of misery. There was also the unknown of how quickly it would end. The book would end when you hit the last page, but you had no idea which flashback POV would be the last.

And also.

I got to flex my writing skills to the fullest, writing this character’s flashback POV in a completely different tone and style to make it that much more distinct from the rest of the present book.

ENNS’ sequel is very much under construction, but the one thing already polished is a flashback episode packed into one chapter for one of my characters. It’s perfectly knife-twisty and I can't wait for people to read it.

—

There’s dozens of framing devices out there. Most important thing, I think, is not sacrificing audience understanding for the sake of something ‘cool’. Doesn’t matter how amazing the story is if your audience gets completely lost and confused trying to keep up with what’s going on.

If you'd like to check out my book, Eternal Night of the Northern Sky is available now!

[lucysarah-c]

Hi Lucy <3 As promised, I am back mwahahah I really hope you are well and, before I start, I do want to say that, Levi content aside, it is always a joy and a bunch of good vibes every time I see posts from your blog <3 So, thank you so much for putting up with all of us and for doing it so gracefully every time <3 I then come to you with a question (perhaps more than one, but I might send a separate ask) which has been nagging at me for a while: imagine Y/N being in a stable relationship with Levi. She's a scout too, and a pretty competent one - trustworthy and with her fair share of battle experience. In a fight, she gets hit. Not fatally, but still on the ground. How does Levi react to that? Does he stop what he's doing and immediately rush to her? Or is duty more important, and he carries on slashing titans? How's also his reaction? Is he able to contain his emotions or is there something (or a lot) coming through, both in the moment and afterwards? (I am trying to gage how much Levi would get attached to someone who manages to get as close as being in a relationship with him, and how much that could "compromise" his normally stoic behaviour lol) Once again, thank you so much for your patience Lucy <3 (there is absolutely no rush in answering this question <3)

Welcome back! OMG, thank you so much for your kind message! <3 It’s always a pleasure to pop up on your dash. I pull up with all of you just as much as you put up with me, haha.

As you mentioned in a specific ask (which, by the way, happens a lot when I get asks—I often have to explore multiple scenarios to reach a conclusion), you clearly stated that she’s not fatally injured, just hurt, but not in any life-threatening way. I think this is where I’ll base my response.

If she were severely injured, like being grabbed by a Titan, she would obviously need urgent medical attention, and Levi would likely rush to save her. It would be similar to that spin-off where Oluo gets grabbed and Levi jumps in to save him. Since that’s not the case here, I feel Levi wouldn’t be able to resist turning around to check how things are being handled. But if he sees there’s no imminent danger, he’d carry on with his duties. This is where I believe Levi would quickly assess whether the situation requires his presence or if he can continue with his mission. Still, he would 100% check on her when he gets the chance, just to make sure she’s truly safe.

To give an example: in Levi’s first appearance, he entrusted a Titan to his team and moved on, only to come back later to check on them when he was done. Levi knows she’s capable—she’s hurt, but the Titan was taken down, and she’ll be alright—so he’d continue with his responsibilities.

The situation might be different if the Titan hasn’t been taken down yet. In that case, even if she’s not fatally injured, the risk of the Titan eating her could make him turn around to help… I believe. But I often struggle with this idea too—how far can Levi focus on his duty without being distracted by his personal feelings? It’s something I’m not entirely clear on either, as it depends a lot on the specific situation, as I’ve mentioned.

Sorry it took me this long to reply! Thank you for your patience and support <3 It means a lot to me. Have a lovely day, Feris!

[aroaceleovaldez]

Part 2 response to this ask / [this post]:

For recent books, I think that it's less of a consideration of the audience and more a reflection of the general state of the publishing world currently. Disney as a company (which owns the publishing house through which Rick's works are published) is also in a weird spot right now and that is probably also lending itself heavily to why recent franchise stuff is the way it is:

A.) The franchise is basically guaranteed free money. Disney does this a lot with their properties. Star Wars and Marvel are great examples. They don't need to make something good, they just need to make literally anything and because it's such a massive franchise it'll sell regardless.

B.) One of their main focuses right now is clearly that JKR is in a bad spot and if they can fully dethrone Harry Potter as The de-facto middle grade fantasy series (cause PJO is fully number 2) that's going to be really good for them. Because it basically guarantees that PJO will be even MORE free money. That's probably part of why we got the show when we did, because HP was trying to move forward with an HP show. (And the HP show was probably announced when it was to directly try to compete with PJO) (Also don't forget, Disney also owns the PJO movies now. They don't need to do better than the movies because they're competing with themselves. In fact, by constantly pitting the show against the movies, they're basically doubling advertising for themselves by drawing attention to both.)

B.5.) Another thing is that if they dethrone HP, that's gonna not only hurt Universal, but SEVERELY hurt Universal PARKS, which is the Disney Parks' number one competitor. And the Disney parks are also in a tight spot right now and they REALLY want breathing room. (You might have heard that the Disney parks are doing a TON of cuts and reshuffling right now.) They don't need to actively put PJO stuff in their parks (yet), because just by taking out HP they'd massively injure what is basically the number one draw to the Universal parks (which is probably also why the Universal parks is expanding right now, particularly in similar avenues to how the Disney parks are expanding, re: more fantasy-focused areas and an emphasis on animated/Dreamworks franchises - Universal needs to be able to continue competing with Disney in the absence of HP, and it seems like they're panicking a little bit - so they're leaning more on their Dreamworks properties as Dreamworks becomes a significant competitor to Disney re: animation and otherwise just copying Disney's homework and also making more fantasy-focused park areas right now) and thus Disney would totally kneecap their primary competitor. That would increase draw to their own parks in the absence of a significant competitor and also then if they add literally any PJO stuff to the parks (which would be INCREDIBLY easy just due to the nature of PJO - especially as they cycle out older and less profitable IPs from the parks) then they'd basically IMMEDIATELY get a massive draw from what used to be the HP crowds - because a lot of those casual crowds do not particularly care about HP itself. It's entirely just that HP is the number one mainstream middle grade fantasy series. If PJO takes that spot then they'll just go to wherever PJO stuff is, because they're a passive audience, not an active audience (though Disney is also VERY much known for it's active audience and being partially responsible for making fandom as a concept mainstream and directly advertising to that market - tying back to the first post, lmao).

C.) Disney is DESPERATELY trying to save their streaming service. That's why it's so emphasized that PJO TV is a Disney+ series. Disney is kind of in hot water with investors because streaming services all across the board are tanking and Disney+ is a big one that's going down. That's why they're pivoting so much towards streaming and throwing literally whatever Marvel and Star Wars at it, because they know those are massive franchises that practically support themselves and any kind of draw to the platform is good. PJO is part of that - it's a massive well-established mainstream franchise with a passionate audience. It's practically a default classroom choice for assigned reading and that's free advertising/publicity. They know they can make a mediocre PJO adaptation and throw it on Disney+ and it will have a draw and that's all they need. They just want more eyes on the platform period to try and prove that it's profitable. Not to mention how we just explicitly know the CoTG trilogy only exists as marketing for the show. The recent books are not meant to be a continuation of the story. The actual content within them is literally irrelevant. CoTG trilogy only needs to exist so that it can bring more attention to the show (which is why it's being grouped in with the first series, because search engine optimization). TSATS only needed to exist to get people to stop being mad at Rick/get distracted from his little PR disaster.

Disney has also been doing a lot of cost cutting with their media recently, particularly also relying on their own brand to make new stuff profitable because they're actively looking for cheap solutions instead of making new things. They don't do 2D animation anymore because 2D animation is more expensive because it's unionized. 3D animation has also since become unionized and yknow what they're doing now? Shifting to live action. Shifting to CGI, which is only starting to become unionized because it's newer. They're making one billion live action remakes of existing properties because those properties are profitable and a live action remake is cheap. They don't need to worry about making it good because press is press and they know it will sell regardless. They can cast some popular actors for some default attention and leave it at that (Hi LMM cameo). Even with their newer animated movies - Wish was entirely reliant on the fact that it was heavily drawn from other Disney properties and they used that as an active selling point. Meanwhile they're intentionally tanking other new projects (see: Strange World) because they want to be able to turn around and say projects like that aren't profitable and aren't worth making. (This isn't a conspiracy theory btw, they do intentionally flop certain movies. This is a regular thing Disney does and they've been doing it for a while.) This type of cost-cutting strategy is very clear with the PJO show - they have this absolutely massive budget that isn't reflected in the end project at all. It's extremely clear to anyone with anyone with eyes that they're majorly cutting corners all the time (blatantly avoiding even slightly more complex CGI cause that'd cost money, CGI that is shown is often extremely cheap looking or rushed, reusing assets for Olympus, speeding through certain scenes, very little done with costuming - ever notice how all the costuming in the show looks way too new? The costuming department is supposed to weather even just basic outfits to make them look worn-in and they don't seem to have done that. - poor lighting to obscure details because actually making it look good costs more, etc etc) and the show is poorly produced. They have the money to do it properly. Someone is pocketing that. Usually it's executives. This is not unusual behavior! I would not be surprised at all to hear if it was the case with PJO TV too!

Tl;dr: I don't think the quality of recent books going down is because they expect the books to have a shorter pop culture lifespan, i think it's just a combo of the current publishing industry overall dropping in quality and Disney being Disney and not caring beyond saving their own butts and making a quick buck.

[scarlet--wiccan]

Are you watching the Agatha show? I don’t have any desire to but I’ve heard some things about them leaning very heavily into the antisemitic and antiromani elements of like, “witch lore” and stuff, that sounds unbelievably vile (in addition to the already horrible things you’ve discussed). Namely Agatha stealing and eating children and Billy having to get in an oven. Are those things that actually happened in the show?

Yeah, I've been watching it. To be clear, I've been pirating it. You couldn't convince me to pay for Disney +, even before the boycott. But because there is a certain degree of ambiguity around some of the characters and adaptational choices, I want to be informed when I talk about the show.

To date, yes, there have been a couple of throwaway jokes about Agatha eating babies. My impression, so far, is that the show is very preoccupied with pop culture depictions of witches and witchcraft, which, as you can imagine, are shallow and frequently veer into racist territory. This is evidenced by several homages and references to other movies, and many facets of the show's worldbuilding. The baby-eating jokes are just another aspect of this. Agatha frequently makes glib asides about witch stereotypes, the history of witch trials, etc-- either playing into those tropes to make herself seem comically sinister, or else dismissing them in a humorously derisive tone. These sort of jokes are a lot less funny when you're aware that many of those tropes are based in racism and antisemitism, and that witch trials are a part of actual history that, in the real world, were less about witchcraft, and more about religious zealotry, racism, and abuse of power.

All of this just feels extra tone deaf in light of the fact that the show features multiple whitewashed Romani and Jewish characters, it's pulling directly from material that talks very openly about that heritage, and it's built on the back of Wanda/Vision, which did the same thing to an even greater degree. You know, it would be one thing if these characters were just taken out context, and that was the end of it, but it's never just that-- these offensive references persist in spite of the erasure. For example, Lupone's character, Lilia, exemplifies the caricature of an eccentric gypsy fortune teller, despite having been rewritten as a white woman from Sicily.

To be clear, I believe that the folkloric concept of witches-- who, in this context, are more often represented as non-human monsters or spirits-- abducting and/or eating children, can and does exist separately from blood libel. But, that trope has also been closely entwined with antisemitism for a very long time, and with Agatha, we have little choice but to read it through that lens.

As for oven thing-- I do think there is a bit of nuance. Part of the show's premise is that the cast has to traverse a series of surreal magical realms. In this case, they're trapped in a house that is rapidly flooding, and an unexpected exit appears when the oven door pops open and reveals a portal they can escape through. The optics aren't great, and my first thought was that they could have just as easily used a cabinet or the fridge. But the oven was deliberately chosen so that Lilia could make an aside about the witch from Hansel & Gretel-- again, the show is obsessed with making these little nods and references. Given the set-up and intention, the oven situation feels more like an unfortunate coincidence than other, much more overt instances of racist and anti-semitic tropes. But because Lilia and maybe-Billy are in the scene, and there is an established precedent, we do have to acknowledge the image it conjures.

[redux-iterum]

aside from the general unique look of the clans, are there any weird clan only genetic mutations that have popped up? Like how the ojo azuls had the blue eyes?

And another question, I could be making this up but I think I remember you saying that riverclan cats can have rosette markings? Does this mean that at some point some kittypet bengal genes got mixed into there gene pool? Could a charcoal colour riverclan cat pop up at some point?

I just love the clan genetics so much

Not that Lynx or I can think of! I will say that polydactyl cats aren't too rare in ShadowClan (Blackstar and his relatives all have at least one extra toe, as an example), and the Manx gene is resisted heavily by Clan blood. Overall, though, special traits tend to die out in Clans if they're dominant and only pop up here and there if recessive. That Bengal blood will die out in RiverClan, most likely, while sepias/minks/points show up here and there down several generations. Other than that, their uniqueness is in their shape and body-build, rather than their colors.

[oifaaa]

When I was younger I used to get so pissed off by high-school aus specifically bc no matter where the original story takes place the au would always be set in an American high-school and American High schools confuse the hell out of me

[firestorm09890]

Penny stardewvalley makes me so sad because she's SO sensitive to, like, basically everything you tell her (telling her that you can't stand children while two children are nearby is a pretty lousy move but -1500 friendship?? being a jerk to other characters' faces typically loses you about 50 points, and if you choose the option labeled "creepy" and ask Leah for a kiss in her 2 heart event she physically hits you and kicks you out of her house but that's only -100 friendship…) and so if you want to befriend her it's a whole lot of lying and tiptoeing around her feelings (2 hearts: George was right but saying that makes her feel bad. 6 hearts: her food sucks but even if you try to be polite about it she feels like a failure; only a bald-faced lie pleases her. 8 hearts: saying you don't want to be tied down with a family loses you a little bit of friendship and she's only happy if you say you want kids) and I can't help but think she's a product of her environment. She lives in a trailer with only her mother, who gets drunk every night and has something of a temper. Penny's like a skittish rescue animal who won’t even come out from hiding under something unless you leave her lots of treats

[fierceawakening]

So my dash is doing a thing talking about how there are all kinds of studies showing weight loss is unsuccessful but not actually linking them

Is there actually something more recent than that one study from the 1950s saying 90some% of diets fail? I’ve gone looking for something more recent in the past and not found it.

Also iirc that 1950s study really didn’t define a diet clearly and carefully, though I’m not looking at the criticisms of it this second.

A lot of people use “diet” in different ways. Some people mean “any intended change in habits, such as smaller portions of desserts,” and some people mean “things called ‘diets,’ which prescribe specific patterns of eating, usually involving limiting, excising, or focusing on particular foods.”

Those seem different to me, though I’m open to examining something post 1960 that gives evidence they should be considered statistically identical and would gladly eat crow if it was unambiguous that these are the same.

[thefleshyougoveggie]

this hole i saw on my walk in the woods is sooo the buried coded