#adapt the structures/roads/etc. around nature

[the-veil]

Plot twist, this is where all the Nickelodeon slime goes.

[perpetual-stories]

Story Structures for your Next WIP

hello, hello. this post will be mostly for my notes. this is something I need in to be reminded of for my business, but it can also be very useful and beneficial for you guys as well.

everything in life has structure and storytelling is no different, so let’s dive right in :)

First off let’s just review what a story structure is :

a story is the backbone of the story, the skeleton if you will. It hold the entire story together.

the structure in which you choose your story will effectively determine how you create drama and depending on the structure you choose it should help you align your story and sequence it with the conflict, climax, and resolution.

1. Freytag's Pyramid

this first story structure i will be talking about was named after 19th century German novelist and playwright.

it is a five point structure that is based off classical Greek tragedies such as Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripedes.

Freytag's Pyramid structure consists of:

Introduction: the status quo has been established and an inciting incident occurs.

Rise or rising action: the protagonist will search and try to achieve their goal, heightening the stakes,

Climax: the protagonist can no longer go back, the point of no return if you will.

Return or fall: after the climax of the story, tension builds and the story inevitably heads towards...

Catastrophe: the main character has reached their lowest point and their greatest fears have come into fruition.

this structure is used less and less nowadays in modern storytelling mainly due to readers lack of appetite for tragic narratives.

2. The Hero's Journey

the hero's journey is a very well known and popular form of storytelling.

it is very popular in modern stories such as Star Wars, and movies in the MCU.

although the hero's journey was inspired by Joseph Campbell's concept, a Disney executive Christopher Vogler has created a simplified version:

The Ordinary World: The hero's everyday routine and life is established.

The Call of Adventure: the inciting incident.

Refusal of the Call: the hero / protagonist is hesitant or reluctant to take on the challenges.

Meeting the Mentor: the hero meets someone who will help them and prepare them for the dangers ahead.

Crossing the First Threshold: first steps out of the comfort zone are taken.

Tests, Allie, Enemies: new challenges occur, and maybe new friends or enemies.

Approach to the Inmost Cave: hero approaches goal.

The Ordeal: the hero faces their biggest challenge.

Reward (Seizing the Sword): the hero manages to get ahold of what they were after.

The Road Back: they realize that their goal was not the final hurdle, but may have actually caused a bigger problem than before.

Resurrection: a final challenge, testing them on everything they've learned.

Return with the Elixir: after succeeding they return to their old life.

the hero's journey can be applied to any genre of fiction.

3. Three Act Structure:

this structure splits the story into the 'beginning, middle and end' but with in-depth components for each act.

Act 1: Setup:

exposition: the status quo or the ordinary life is established.

inciting incident: an event sets the whole story into motion.

plot point one: the main character decided to take on the challenge head on and she crosses the threshold and the story is now progressing forward.

Act 2: Confrontation:

rising action: the stakes are clearer and the hero has started to become familiar with the new world and begins to encounter enemies, allies and tests.

midpoint: an event that derails the protagonists mission.

plot point two: the hero is tested and fails, and begins to doubt themselves.

Act 3: Resolution:

pre-climax: the hero must chose between acting or failing.

climax: they fights against the antagonist or danger one last time, but will they succeed?

Denouement: loose ends are tied up and the reader discovers the consequences of the climax, and return to ordinary life.

4. Dan Harmon's Story Circle

it surprised me to know the creator of Rick and Morty had their own variation of Campbell's hero's journey.

the benefit of Harmon's approach is that is focuses on the main character's arc.

it makes sense that he has such a successful structure, after all the show has multiple seasons, five or six seasons? i don't know not a fan of the show.

the character is in their comfort zone: also known as the status quo or ordinary life.

they want something: this is a longing and it can be brought forth by an inciting incident.

the character enters and unfamiliar situation: they must take action and do something new to pursue what they want.

adapt to it: of course there are challenges, there is struggle and begin to succeed.

they get what they want: often a false victory.

a heavy price is paid: a realization of what they wanted isn't what they needed.

back to the good old ways: they return to their familiar situation yet with a new truth.

having changed: was it for the better or worse?

i might actually make a operate post going more in depth about dan harmon's story circle.

5. Fichtean Curve:

the fichtean curve places the main character in a series of obstacles in order to achieve their goal.

this structure encourages writers to write a story packed with tension and mini-crises to keep the reader engaged.

The Rising Action

the story must start with an inciting indecent.

then a series of crisis arise.

there are often four crises.

2. The Climax:

3. Falling Action

this type of story telling structure goes very well with flash-back structured story as well as in theatre.

6. Save the Cat Beat Sheet:

this is another variation of a three act structure created by screenwriter Blake Snyder, and is praised widely by champion storytellers.

Structure for Save the Cat is as follows: (the numbers in the brackets are for the number of pages required, assuming you're writing a 110 page screenplay)

Opening Image [1]: The first shot of the film. If you’re starting a novel, this would be an opening paragraph or scene that sucks readers into the world of your story.

Set-up [1-10]. Establishing the ‘ordinary world’ of your protagonist. What does he want? What is he missing out on?

Theme Stated [5]. During the setup, hint at what your story is really about — the truth that your protagonist will discover by the end.

Catalyst [12]. The inciting incident!

Debate [12-25]. The hero refuses the call to adventure. He tries to avoid the conflict before they are forced into action.

Break into Two [25]. The protagonist makes an active choice and the journey begins in earnest.

B Story [30]. A subplot kicks in. Often romantic in nature, the protagonist’s subplot should serve to highlight the theme.

The Promise of the Premise [30-55]. Often called the ‘fun and games’ stage, this is usually a highly entertaining section where the writer delivers the goods. If you promised an exciting detective story, we’d see the detective in action. If you promised a goofy story of people falling in love, let’s go on some charmingly awkward dates.

Midpoint [55]. A plot twist occurs that ups the stakes and makes the hero’s goal harder to achieve — or makes them focus on a new, more important goal.

Bad Guys Close In [55-75]. The tension ratchets up. The hero’s obstacles become greater, his plan falls apart, and he is on the back foot.

All is Lost [75]. The hero hits rock bottom. He loses everything he’s gained so far, and things are looking bleak. The hero is overpowered by the villain; a mentor dies; our lovebirds have an argument and break up.

Dark Night of the Soul [75-85-ish]. Having just lost everything, the hero shambles around the city in a minor-key musical montage before discovering some “new information” that reveals exactly what he needs to do if he wants to take another crack at success. (This new information is often delivered through the B-Story)

Break into Three [85]. Armed with this new information, our protagonist decides to try once more!

Finale [85-110]. The hero confronts the antagonist or whatever the source of the primary conflict is. The truth that eluded him at the start of the story (established in step three and accentuated by the B Story) is now clear, allowing him to resolve their story.

Final Image [110]. A final moment or scene that crystallizes how the character has changed. It’s a reflection, in some way, of the opening image.

(all information regarding the save the cat beat sheet was copy and pasted directly from reedsy!)

7. Seven Point Story Structure:

this structure encourages writers to start with the at the end, with the resolution, and work their way back to the starting point.

this structure is about dramatic changes from beginning to end

The Hook. Draw readers in by explaining the protagonist’s current situation. Their state of being at the beginning of the novel should be in direct contrast to what it will be at the end of the novel.

Plot Point 1. Whether it’s a person, an idea, an inciting incident, or something else — there should be a "Call to Adventure" of sorts that sets the narrative and character development in motion.

Pinch Point 1. Things can’t be all sunshine and roses for your protagonist. Something should go wrong here that applies pressure to the main character, forcing them to step up and solve the problem.

Midpoint. A “Turning Point” wherein the main character changes from a passive force to an active force in the story. Whatever the narrative’s main conflict is, the protagonist decides to start meeting it head-on.

Pinch Point 2. The second pinch point involves another blow to the protagonist — things go even more awry than they did during the first pinch point. This might involve the passing of a mentor, the failure of a plan, the reveal of a traitor, etc.

Plot Point 2. After the calamity of Pinch Point 2, the protagonist learns that they’ve actually had the key to solving the conflict the whole time.

Resolution. The story’s primary conflict is resolved — and the character goes through the final bit of development necessary to transform them from who they were at the start of the novel.

(all information regarding the seven point story structure was copy and pasted directly from reedsy!)

i decided to fit all of them in one post instead of making it a two part post.

i hope you all enjoy this post and feel free to comment or reblog which structure you use the most, or if you have your own you prefer to use! please share with me!

if you find this useful feel free to reblog on instagram and tag me at perpetualstories

Follow my tumblr and instagram for more writing and grammar tips and more!

[blindbeta]

How do you think infrastructure would be different in a culture where everyone is blind?

Hi anon! I like this question. I think it would obviously depend on the culture and time period, but I have a few ideas. I’ll just try to write ideas for a general Western culture, because I am aware of more of that, but obviously the culture itself would influence what changes occurred or did not occur.

Education.

Look to blind schools! I’m thinking about training for Braille as very small children, which mostly includes strengthening finger sensitivity. Braille would also be taught the way reading regular print is, either in schools or at home. Regular print would probably also be available and large print would be normalized, especially to minimize eye strain. Computer literacy would include screen-readers and Braille displays. Websites would be designed for accessibility for everyone and this would include large for those who like to read some print.

In classes, people would use a slate and stylus, Braille notetakers, etc, depending on time and what was easier to carry. Braillers would also be more high tech in general, even if it might be considered old school, or the high tech stuff would have come sooner for each device.

Braille, O&M, and life skills classes would be normal for everyone. O&M would probably be done mostly by people with some sight, although this might change if everyone is blind anyway.

Lifestyle.

Things like telescopes (monoculars, minifiers) would be normal for low vision people, maybe even something cool like ‘oh I got the latest telescope model for my birthday!” It would be something shared with friends for fun. Something like SunuBand would be like, I don’t know, a car of something. People would show status through how cool their cane was, if they had a Sonar cane, like WeWalk, etc.

In schools, and in life, I think people with some sight, like me, would not face any pressure to use it. In real life, people with residual sight are expected to use what sight they can, even if it is inconvenient or painful.

More emphasis would be places on other sense, such as touch, smell, and soatial awareness.

Safety.

The world would probably be safer, structurally. There would be high contrast stairs everywhere, if there are stairs at all. There would be more in place that makes it safer to walk around outside, such as, idk, less of a risk of hurt yourself by stepping off a curb? I’m not even sure if roads would be designed the way they are now. Would people drive if they have some vision? Would everyone have cars that don’t need vision? Anyway, more safety with blind people in mind.

Transportation.

Transportation would be better. Maybe public transportation would be more accessible, easier to navigate, and more readily available in rural areas. Maybe trains would be more popular in every country, because they run on a schedule and you can carry more people for longer periods of time. Trains can also allow people to travel long distances, which can be harder for blind people (who almost always can’t drive, as far as I know) who can’t drive cars and may not have money for flights, or want to avoid them for environmental reasons.

Accessibility.

Braille would be everywhere. Buttons would be tactile, especially on kitchen appliances. I imagine a lot of the tools blind people use in the kitchen, such as bump dots for microwave buttons, would already be standard. Talking or otherwise accessible things would be cheaper, more common, and considered staples for everyone. Because they would be made for the wider population of blind people, accessibility would not be a niche or extra thing. It would not be associated with kindness, but a standard fare.

Clothing would be different. Designs would be tactile and/or high contrast, where they are often flat. I think colors would still be important, for everyone, but the tags would probably have labels. Some brand designed for blind people have actual Braille fabric on the clothes, which is cool. While color scanners do exist and would probably be used, I think other methods would be utilized if clothing is designed with blind people in mind from the start. Wearing glasses would be cool, you guys.

In terms of entertainment, I think most of it would audio-based or interactive. The radio and live theatre would be more popular than they are now. If visual mediums still existed, they would all come with audio descriptions and they would be better than they sometimes are now. TV would be written with audio descriptions in mind, if they didn’t talk about more of what they were doing.

Art would be tactile, period. Maybe we would have something by now that allows you to feel digital art. There are already amazing forms of tactil art out there, so think more of that from all cultures. Rather than adapted or described with the blind in mind, art would be naturally tactile even if the artist could see what they were creating well enough.

Online.

Obviously image descriptions would be everywhere, although I feel people would naturally include less screen-shots and less pictures. Again, accessibility would be a more mainstream thing than it is now. I’m thinking there would be more self-care posts, such as about dealing with eye strain headaches. Although I think some of the issues we have would be lessened when the entirety of humanity was on the blind spectrum. I’m also thinking about fun quizzes like, Describe Your Dream Home and I’ll Guess What Type Blindness You Have. Debates about disability in general would happen in regular spaces. YouTube would have contained audio descriptions from the start, and perhaps highly visual content would be less common or naturally described in the video, such as person describing what they are holding before talking about it.

Work/Career.

Productivity would be measure differently. Accessibility would just be a thing. Like, at a meeting, “What tools do you like to use the most?” Working from home would be an option. Work would be open to and even designed for blind people. Blind people wouldn’t have the low employments rates they do now, or else no one would work. A lot of tools we use to make things accessible wouldn’t be necessary if things were designed for blind people in the first place. Subminimum wage would not be a thing.

There would probably be jobs and career opportunities that don’t exist now.

Blind people wouldn’t be more likely or even expected to live in poverty.

Money.

Money would be tactile, labeled, large print, and high contrast. If we still used cash at all.

Inovation.

I think we would have a lot of cool stuff. Countries might even compete to be the first to create things for the blind population which, again, would be everyone in this scenario.

Food/menus.

Restaurants would be easy for blind people to navigate. Menus would be offered in Braille and large print. Maybe plates would be made sectioned so people could know where their food was. I’m thinking about blind accessibility videos and restaurants run by totally blind people. Hmm. Glasses would not be as common at all, because they can be hard for people to see. I have broken too many glasses myself.

If people were to buy food, such as local produce, bags would probably come with homemade Braille or large print signs. Canned food and boxes for cooking would have Braille on them initially. Giving food to others, such as bringing food or snacks for the home when you visit, would come with either an explanation about what it was or a label.

I could go on. I don’t want this too be too long. Basically, what I want to get across is that a lot more than accessibility would changes if everyone is blind. I didn’t want to get into too many heavy topics because this is more of a fun question. However. feel free to add whatever you like. I believe history itself would be altered in many, many ways that have influence on life today, so I could have gone on about that. I could write books on the lifestyle and safety and work sections. And all cultures have their own ways of viewing, supporting, and limiting blind people, so this could change a little or a lot depending on what your culture or the culture you are writing about is like.

-BlindBeta

[floralquafloral]

Watch out it's random splatoon headcanon time again

I was thinking about splatting and respawning recently, and @acid-hues used no less than Three looking emojis when I asked if anyone would want to hear my thoughts about how that stuff works, so here goes. Warning for potentially fatal quantities of pseudoscience, since I'm not a biologist or a chemist, just a goober who likes the squid game too much ;P

1. What is splatting?

Splatting is a reflex in inklings and octarians that occurs when they're been critically injured. It allows the cephalopod to escape and recover from a potentially fatal situation, effectively unharmed. Almost all of their body mass is liquefied to ink in a similar process to squid-form transformation, but it's all lost, resulting in the characteristic splatter. The only remaining structure is the "squid soul", which isn't actually a soul so much as a balloon-like vessel that can (under the right conditions) develop into a whole inkling body again.

2. What is a squid soul?

Squid souls aren't actually incorporeal souls, they're just very complicated (and lightweight) biological structures that contain all the mechanisms and information necessary to create an inkling body. Kind of analogous to an egg: given food and time, an egg can turn into a whole animal. Squid souls are just a great deal more precise, in that they generate an inkling body almost exactly as it was before, including the brain and all the inkling's memories and such. The squid soul itself, like an egg, isn't really comparable to an actual inkling - the soul can't talk, or eat, or think. The squid soul doesn't have a brain, and it only has just enough nervous system to seek out a location where it can respawn into a proper body. It uses a rudimentary form of the same senses that allow for the Turf Map. Because the squid soul isn't conscious, getting splatted kind of just feels like a very violent form of teleportation.

More information on the processes & technology behind respawning under the readmore :)

3. How does a squid soul respawn?

Squid souls can only develop into a proper inkling body if they can access two things: A bunch of biomass, and a bunch of electricity. Biomass is necessary because almost all of the inkling's original body has been exploded all over the place, so you need a bunch of stuff to make a new one. A large enough well of pure ink can contain all the necessary material for a body, but most respawn tech uses solutions of ink with other useful things dissolved into it. Respawning from a well of pure ink doesn't feel very good. Pure ink doesn't contain a very good amount of vitamins, iron, etc., so the new body will probably have less of that stuff in it than the old one.

Electricity is necessary to separate different compounds out of the ink, and to provide the energy required for some of the chemical reactions that need to take place - you can't just mush a bunch of ink together and get a body out of it.

4. What could prevent a successful respawn?

This part is pure headcanon, since there's nothing from the base game that relates to this, as far as I'm aware.

Some sources of injury won't trigger the splat reflex; the most common example is prolonged exposure to small amounts of water. Getting caught in heavy rain for hours can dissolve the body without ever triggering the splat reflex, so you just... don't come back.

Old age or severe illness can inhibit the reflex as well. If a young and healthy squid gets hit by a bus, they will explode and come back at the nearest respawn point. If someone whose splat reflex isn't working gets hit by a bus, then they just get run over, which very bad. Alternatively, in some cases the splat reflex could fail to generate a squid soul, so you'd just explode and not get to respawn, which would be exceedingly terrible.

For the kind of squid who would sign up for Turf Wars, there's basically no chance of this stuff happening, but there are still mandatory physicals before you can sign up for a Turf War just to make sure.

Lastly, of course, if someone gets splatted too far away from a viable respawn point, the squid soul will expire after only a few minutes.

5. What kind of tech allows for a respawn?

There are four different places you can respawn in-game: In the online battle maps (5.1), in the Octarian domes (5.3), in the Deepsea Metro's test stations (5.4), and from a Grizzco Tank (5.5). There's also presumably some way to respawn if you just, like, fall out of a tree and get splatted in the public park or something (5.2). There's also the floating respawn-thingies from the Splatoon 3 trailer, but since I don't know how they work in-game yet I don't have anything to make headcanons around. 🤷‍♀️

5.1. Turf War respawn pads: They're cheap to make, they work quickly, and they can handle dozens of squids getting splatted during a single 3-minute battle with no need for oversight during the game. It's worth remembering that the squid soul isn't sapient, it has no regards for the rules of a Turf War - so what prevents someone on Yellow Team from respawning at Purple's base? The answer is that, under most circumstances, the biomass requirement for a respawn can only be met with ink that matches your colour. Different colours of ink have different chemical compositions, so a squid soul that's seeking out a viable location to create a yellow squid won't be able to sense the purple respawn pad as a viable location.

The limitation of the Turf War pad is that they're not perfectly reliable. Occasionally it just won't appear as a viable respawn location to a squid soul, so someone will end up respawning outside the battle, which forfeits them from the match. (i'm only including this because i'm proud of coming up with an in-universe explanation for disconnects)

5.2. City respawn pads: Outside of inksports, it's still a good idea to have respawn pads all over the place so that if someone gets splatted they have somewhere to respawn. City pads, unlike Turf War pads, are designed to be 100% reliable and work for any ink color. Their natural drawback is that they require constant oversight. "Respawn operator" is a job you can have in most major population centers, that mostly involves sitting around, making sure nothing looks broken, and greeting anyone who shows up at the pad.

Getting splatted outside a battle isn't especially common (splatting someone outside a battle is a pretty serious no-no), so any given pad in the city will usually only get 1-2 respawns a day, if any at all. When someone shows up, the operator is supposed to write down their name, the time they respawned, and the reason they got splatted. If it was because of something legally messy like a road accident, they'll have more work to do to get that sorted out. If it was because of a Turf War pad failure, they'll contact the Judds to get that cleared up. If you were with someone when you got splatted, it's common courtesy to send a text or call once you respawn so they don't have to worry; since you won't have your phone with you when you respawn that's something the operator is also supposed to help with. Respawn operators are pretty helpful in general - if you tell them "I don't know how to get back to my house from here", they can usually give you a map or directions or something.

To allow for anyone to respawn at a City pad, they're filled with a very bright and saturated brown ink solution. This colour is unique in that basically any other ink colour can change into it very easily; if you get splatted while you've got red ink, you'll show up at the city pad with brown ink. This is why bright brown ink isn't frequently used for inksports (definitely not because the developers didn't want it to look like they're using poop for turf wars).

5.3. Octarian Checkpoints: As electricity is a precious and scarce resource for Octarians, their respawn pads are designed to use as little of it as possible. An Inkopolis respawn pad has a current running through it constantly, which combined with the large amount of ink, allows squid souls to perceive it as a viable respawn location. In contrast, Octarian checkpoints don't offer any ink or electricity when inactive. They only switch on when a nearby Octarian soldier gets splatted, using a signal transmitted by the Octarian's equipment. When they turn on, they temporarily fill with ink and run an electrical current, allowing the soldier's octo soul to make its way over and respawn before the checkpoint shuts down again.

The signal receiver of the checkpoints has a vulnerability that allows it to be overridden, which will fill it with any colour of ink solution and render it unable to receive power-on signals. The Hero Tanks worn by Agents 3 and 4 do this automatically when the agents get close to a checkpoint - this is why they're black before an agent gets close, then change to match their ink colour. However, once the checkpoint is overridden, it still doesn't provide electricity, and in fact can't be activated at all. The Hero Tank allows them to be used regardless by putting an electrical charge into the squid soul itself, so that it only needs the well of ink solution. It can only store up to three respawns worth of charge, though. If an agent gets splatted while the battery is empty, they're toast.

Octarians, of course, can't respawn at a checkpoint that's been overridden, not only because it won't power on but also because it doesn't match their ink colour anymore. Only one checkpoint will receive the power-on signal when an Octarian gets splatted, so when an overridden checkpoint is the one that receives the signal, there will be nowhere on the base for the Octarian to respawn. Instead, they'll end up in another dome, or in a civilian respawn pad. The agents aren't murderers, okay?

5.4: Deepsea Metro Test Station Checkpoints: The testing stations in the Deepsea Metro are adapted from Octarian checkpoints, but with some tweaks to reflect the different priorities of Kamabo Co. as opposed to the Octarian military. Metro checkpoints have their remote-activation functionality stripped out, and instead permanently activate once the test subject reaches them, filling with ink solution and receiving a constant electrical current. They probably still have the same vulnerability as the Octarian checkpoints, but Agent 8's has no means of exploiting it, and no reason to anyways - the checkpoints are already configured to match her colour, since they're there for the express purpose of respawning test subjects.

Because Metro checkpoints always match Agent 8's ink colour, the sanitized octarians in the test courses have nowhere they can respawn. Instead, they are simply replaced as needed.

5.5: Grizzco Tanks: I'll be honest, I can't come up with any good explanations for this one. The way it traps the squid soul inside it probably has to do with the same interference that blocks the Turf Map, but the explanation for why you have to shoot it to activate a respawn is beyond me. The best I can do is list what can be ruled out:

It's not because it's using the ink from the shot for mass. If the Grizzco tank itself doesn't contain enough ink for a respawn, then there's no way a single Inkbrush swing would output enough to make up the difference.

It's not using the kinetic energy from the shot to trigger some sort of chemical reaction. Getting hit by a Steelhead bomb or a Flyfish missile don't revive the player, even though they surely have more kinetic energy than something like a Bloblobber bubble, which can.

The weapons themselves aren't providing an electrical charge. If Grizzco could modify a Splattershot to output enough electricity to enable a respawn, then the tank would be capable of doing that itself without needing to be shot.

Whatever it is, it's probably not very good for you long-term to respawn like that. Grizzco just gives off those vibes, like working there is totally gonna mess up your health when you're older.

[turtlesandfrogs]

How did you come to learn the knowledge you needed to do what you do? In terms of knowing native plants, how to care for them/ gardenin in general. Was it something involved in your upbringing or did you seek it out yourself? Sorry if this is a personal ask, I just really wish that I had the knowledge of my local plants and knew how to care for them but have no idea where to start when it comes to learning.

It is a personal ask, but the good kind of personal and I'm happy to share.

It was rooted in my upbringing, because my mom is also really knowledgeable about native plants and their uses- medicinal, edible, etc. I grew up on 5 acres down a gravel road in the middle of nowhere, and the back half of the property was a steep creek valley that was 2nd growth forest, left alone mostly after the old growth was first taken off decades ago. We would go on walks in the woods, and the game was to point at a plant and ask what it was and if you could eat it. Mom always knew. We also grew a large vegetable garden, had two acres of raspberries, along with many other fruiting shrubs and trees.

Now that was the start of it, but really, that only taught me the plants in a few miles of my home.

I've expanded since then, because plants are my passion in life. When I got older, I started going on longer hikes, and ones that didn't start at my back door. Every time I found a plant I didn't know, I took a picture or (pre-cellphone) took a small sample to take home so I could look it up later. After several years of hiking, I now have a pretty good sense of what grows in my ecoregion. I also learned about permaculture when I was finishing college, and since then have been paying close attention to how native forests are structured and how that ties into the ideas of permaculture. Where were specific species growing? Along a stream? On the edge of a forest? In deep shade? What other plants were they growing near? What were the understory plants? What were the ground covers? How many layers of foliage can we really have here in a temperate rainforest? What plants were edible? And what plants were important pollen and nectar sources for native species?

And then I started noticing how these native species can be incorporated into home gardens. Which plants are, as gardeners sometimes like to say, polite? That is to say, which plants are *not* going to take over your entire yard and make it thick thorny thicket like salmonberries will do. Which plants thrive in the forest but don't do too well once they've been planted in more domesticated settings? Which plants are listed as enjoying full sun in references, but actually always seem to be a bit burned or crispy when you actually put them in full sun? Which plants are listed as thriving in shade but people keep trying to plant them as ground covers and to be an effective ground cover they actually need full sun? Which plants are broadly adaptable, and which plants really have a small niche in which they're happy?

As to where to start? I suggest getting a regional plant identification book and the iNaturalist app. Then start taking those items with you on a lot of walks around your neighborhood, but also your nearest natural areas. Start looking at every plant and and try to identify it. Notice where it's growing-is it growing in a wide range of settings or is it very particular? What is it growing near? Is it edible, can you eat it, or is it best left for the birds? What plants are native and people are already commonly growing in their yards? What plants are underappreciated and could be incorporated in to more yards?

Also, look into how the indigenous peoples in your area related to plants. No area where people have lived for thousands of years is truly "wild". Indigenous peoples have been interacting with, shaping, and managing areas that westerners considered wild, and they continue to do so. The land, plants, animals, and ecosystems are healthier for it, with greater biodiversity and resilience. There really is a relationship between humans and the land, and we are influenced by the land as much as the land is influenced by us.

[nyxelestia]

Vox article about the infamous wall of tags fic.

tl;dr at the end

What it’s about and why we care / article quotes:

All that, by itself, isn’t enough to make STWW remarkable — not on a website as wild and unpredictable as AO3. Yet the fic has become impossible for many AO3 users to ignore thanks to a unique quirk: Its author has linked it to more than 1,700 site tags (and counting).

Guides to how to block the fic have cropped up. For example, I use a Chrome extension that blocks fics with too many tags (you can specify how many tags is too many — I picked 50); there’s also simple site code that you can add to your custom site “skin” to block the fic completely from search results, as well as other workarounds.

But the usefulness of these options is limited. Site skins only work for logged-in users. Website extensions don’t work on mobile. Many other workarounds aren’t compatible with adaptive technology like screen readers used by disabled people and others — and if you think having to scroll past the tags on a phone is obnoxious, imagining getting stuck on it while a screen reader laboriously recites all 1,700 tags out loud.

(Emphases mine.)

My take on this specific fic:

I was sympathetic when I thought that maybe the author is just unaware of what they’re doing - but they have been made aware, they know exactly the effect they are having on other users and the community at large, and they’re still doing it.

[The author] acknowledged the controversy around their fic but emphasized that they were operating completely within AO3’s rules. “If AO3 has a category or a big red warning checkbox to say ‘click this to read crazy fics’ then I should put my fic in there,” they joked. “People are free to search (my) fic or exclude the fic using tags.”

Virtual1979 also remained steadfast when I pointed out that their fic was breaking the site for disabled users, stressing that the onus should be on AO3 — not them — to make enforceable site changes.

So now my sympathy’s all dried up. I do not remotely believe them when they say they aren’t a troll. Maybe they truly didn’t start out trolling, but they were repeatedly asked to stop, told about the impact they were having, and have themselves admitted on their Twitter account that they are laughing all the way to the bank.

A tweet they have since deleted - I did not think to grab a screenshot. So here is a screenshot of them saying they routinely delete their own Tweets, and their reaction to people who ask them to stop over-tagging their fic:

Maybe they started out as a well-intentioned new poster, unfamiliar with AO3 or how tagging works. And knowing fandom, I’m sure they faced some harassment for it. However, given they’ve been repeatedly asked to stop, and explicitly told how they are negatively affected so many other users’ ability to interact with the fandom and the website as a whole...and do not care, and continue to keep at it?

Freedom of speech gives them the right to be an asshole, but it also gives me the right to call them an asshole.

But, I do understand why AO3 isn’t banning them, and I agree with AO3′s current decision not to remove this fic. There needs to be some deeper changes, but banning this specific author or fic right now would likely cause more problems down the road than it solves right now.

What is the line for “Too Many Tags”? What would it mean for authors of non-anthology works? What impact would banning this over-tagged fics have on other over-tagged-but-not-as-badly fics? What will it mean for our culture of curating your content and experiences if blacklisting tags gets compromised due to such limits?

I’ve been frustrated by over-tagged fics before, and I certainly hope this will make other, well-meaning, good-faith authors reconsider decisions while compiling anthologies of their disconnected works going forward. Neither of these mean fans should expect AO3 to respond to mob rule and ban this fic.

My take on this article beyond this specific fic:

I disagree with the implication from the article that this is related to fandom’s longstanding issues concerning racism (and other -isms and -phobias) in fanfic. After all, the vast majority of fandom’s racism, sexism, misogyny, etc. isn’t tagged. At most, you can expect that certain ships or tags probably mean there will be certain racist tropes.

This does a disservice towards fans of a ship who don’t partake in or propagate those racist tropes - I myself included in that group. I routinely got comments on my fic from people who expected me to use racist tropes and fanons because of the ship tag on my fic, as these tropes were (and really, still are) so strongly associated with the ship. More importantly, there is no reliable way to tell from a fic’s meta-data whether there will be something in the fic the author doesn’t identify.

The fundamental problem with racism in fandom is not “people are making these racist things” but “people refuse to acknowledge these things they are making are racist” - and AO3′s meta-data is entirely self-identifying.

If an author does not think their work is racist, then they will not tag it as such, which means the rest of us will have no way of knowing until after we’ve already read the racism.

“Curate your own reading” is very applicable to things authors are willing to identify and tag in their own works - such as kinks, violence, etc. But if it is something the author did not intend, and does not agree with/identify, then readers who oppose it cannot curate against it.

Which is why I find this paragraph so misleading, specifically the part I bolded:

Throughout 2020, during sustained discussions across social media about structural racism and other toxic elements in fandom, AO3 users repeatedly requested that the site add basic features that could help users avoid involuntarily engaging with fics they found toxic or harmful. For example, currently there’s no real way to officially sanction a writer who includes racist elements in their fanfiction — the site’s abuse policy FAQ doesn’t mention race, and there’s currently no way to “warn” readers about racially charged elements in a fic. (You can warn readers about other controversial fic content, like character deaths, non-consensual scenarios, and underage characters.) And there are many readers who’d like to avoid engagement with fics and authors they deem to be racist.

These are tags an author can add onto their own work...but readers cannot warn other readers about an author’s work! And to be clear, I think that’s a good thing overall - readers being able to add their own tags to someone else’s work leaves way too much room for abuse, which would happen far more than readers warning other readers about things the author refuses to identify or tag. My point here is that apart from “how to deal with works and authors you already know are assholes”, there is no connection between this specific fic and its ensuing mess, and the broader problems of pervasive racism in fandom.

The only thing the wall of tags situation and the fandom racism situation have in common, at least in relation to AO3, is that fans want to block certain authors or works whom you already know are assholes. This, the Vox article got right.

However, there are many, many ways to be an asshole other than racism. There are many reasons to block specific works or authors besides racism. There are many types of abuse and harassment besides racism. Acting as if “blocking toxic works or people” is inherently and automatically about the on-going discussions about race in fandom reduces racism to individual acts and actors, and ignores its nature as a systemic problem.

tl;dr

While there are work-arounds to avoid that fic with 1700+ tags (and others), these workarounds are very limited in their helpfulness.

Author has the right to do this, but freedom of speech also gives the rest of us the right to call them out for their poor behavior. I 100% believe they are now an intentional bad-faith actor / troll, even if they did not necessarily start out as one.

Despite my disdain, I understand and agree with AO3′s decision to not remove the fic or ban the author, however much I hate them both. All of AO3′s decisions have ramifications and implications beyond the immediate situations they are made for. This one fic/author should not get to chip away at AO3′s mission against censorship.

Apart from the very broad nature of blocking toxic people or abusive works, I don’t think this situation has anything to do with racism. Implicating individual behavior and tagging as a related referendum is reductive to the systemic nature of fandom racism.

[legitimateluffy]

One Piece Animation Thesis: East Blue

If you would prefer to follow via the master Google Doc, [HERE] is the link! This will be updated as we go through the arcs and is currently planned to be updated weekly!

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Whew hey everyone!

So this is the beginning of a project that I have had in the back of my mind for quite some time and finally decided to start working on. A quick rundown of what this actually is, it’s a somewhat showcase of the animation found within the main One Piece anime (so, no movies/specials/filler arcs between canon arcs etc. although that may be something I will attempt to tackle one day if this does well). This will also include some insight into the anime industry and essentially give some insight on behind the scenes and why certain decisions are made as well as giving names of the hard working animators to their respective scenes. Hopefully this whole thing will continue to give a bit of insight into the One Piece anime as I believe that it is greatly under appreciated and while criticisms of it are valid, there definitely needs to be more of an understanding as to why the anime is the way it is. This will be a long journey ahead so please bear with me! Let’s get started!

The One Piece anime, including movies and specials, is animated by Toei Animation, and they are responsible for many other famous animated properties and adaptations, including Digimon, Dragon Ball/Z/GT/Super, Sailor Moon, Toriko, Gegege no Kitaro among many others. They animate many different series and have a big load to take on. This is something that will be touched on later, because it greatly affects the anime in later years. But for now, I’ll be going through the arcs, starting with the East Blue saga. The East Blue saga is made up of episodes 1-53 (including some filler) and consists of quite actually not that many noteworthy animated scenes, even though it covers many arcs (Shells Town, Orange Town, Syrup Village, Baratie, Arlong Park, LogueTown). Animation throughout this portion of the anime was quite limited, using minimal movement and taking appropriate shortcuts where necessary. Scenes are also quite hard to tell exactly who animated what due to the style consistency. There are a few noteworthy scenes though, but first I would like to introduce the rough structure of how the anime is made. An important part in animation is someone who is the character designer, someone who essentially designs the characters and in this case, attempts to replicate Oda’s style for it to be easily animated. During this part of the anime, the character designer is Noboru Kizumi who would continue to be the character designer for the anime for the next 10 or so years. These are the some of the sheets he made for the main characters:

This is something I’ll continue to showcase as we continue to go through each of the arcs, showcasing the strawhats as they pop up in the story. When the time comes, we will also compare the changes of style and why things have changed. But for now, I’ll just present the first designs.

One Piece at this stage was very cartoony and had quite a different style, especially compared to a lot of the current anime/manga at the time and it still continues to have a distinctive style to this day. Following these sheets allows for a good sense of continuity, which is very important with anime. If anyone out there attempts to draw something without looking at a reference, it’s not going to look quite as well as we want it to. So in using a reference, we can have a better grasp as to how the character looks from certain angles, heights compared to other characters, facial expressions and more.

In order to keep these characters looking somewhat similar so as to not disrupt the viewer’s experience by seeing jarring styles, someone works as a Chief Animation Director. They aim to ensure that characters remain consistent throughout the episode, and that they are on model. So, how is this achieved? Well, we’ll have a look at the process on how something is conceptualised and then put to screen. 

Initially, a script is conducted. Going through the manga, people take what is deemed necessary material and put it into script format. It is important to note that as the anime and manga continue to go on for years, the gap between the anime and manga release shortened significantly, resulting in pacing issues. Keep this in mind for later as this is something I plan to touch on. Then a storyboard is created, having very rough lines in order to convey what is to be created. Here is an example:

A good storyboard can make or break an episode, as it dictates angles, how long scenes linger on screen, etc. Once the storyboard has been decided on, the animating can begin. Scenes are appointed to animators, where they create something called Genga. This is done on paper, similar to how it’s done in other parts of the world. Here are some examples of older Genga:

Even though times have changed and anime has become digital, with some animators now exclusively animating digitally, the anime industry still uses Genga, using paper and pencil to create their scenes. Here are some examples of newer Genga:

Once the Genga has been created, the Chief Animation Director will go in and correct what is necessary to ensure that the style remains consistent. Others may also help participate in this process, such as an Animation Supervisor. Here is an example of a Genga being corrected to ensure that it remains consistent in style:

In doing something like this, some animators can animate great action and keep their lines rough to save time, and an Animation Supervisor can clean it up and make it look good. After this has been completed, the Genga is then made into what is called Animation Cels. This is not exclusive to Japan, as for decades this is a process that has been used. This is a transparent sheet that had the lines and colours painted on, and is then photographed over painted backgrounds. Yeah...A long and dubious process indeed. This is not common place anymore due to how time consuming it is, and with the rise of digital, creating colours, effects, filters and backgrounds are much faster and easier to accomplish. Here are some examples of One Piece animation cels:

I would have much preferred to share cels directly from the anime itself and not the movies but they are quite difficult to come across and have more than likely been sold off from Toei long ago. But they will suffice, as it gives a good idea as to what they look like.

But voila! Animation has been created! All that’s left is music, sound effects and voice over and you’ve got yourself an anime. Wonderful. Easy right? Yeah, not exactly. All of this takes time and patience. And this is something that needs to be remembered. Time. A very important keyword in the animation industry and a lot more important than the word budget that likes to get thrown around. Due to One Piece being a long running weekly series, the animators have a lot less time than, say, My Hero Academia or Demon Slayer, two very prominent seasonal anime. These series do not have more money shoved into them, more budget, than One Piece that results in higher quality and consistent animation, a problem the One Piece anime definitely faces further down the road. Here’s an example:

Michelangelo is one of the most famous artists of all time, due to his remarkable attention to detail in his works present in the High Renaissance period. One of his most famous works is the Statue of David, an incredible piece of work that was worked on for 3 years. However, if you were to tell him to replicate it but say, give him a month, he’s not going to get anywhere near the same results as the piece where he spent 3 years on. It would be quite rough around the edges, and quite rushed. No matter how much money you throw his way, he still won’t be able to get anywhere close to those results. And this is the same with any artist, including animation. This is a big misconception in the anime community, and that is that as long as you throw money at people, they’re going to end up creating incredible works, regardless of the poor time management. That is just not how it works.

This does seem like quite a ramble, and it’s already quite long prior to even reaching the main aspect of this whole project, in which I showcase animators, but this is important background information that needs to be understood prior to delving in. With that very long introduction, let’s now get to showcasing animators!

Some of the animators that were present on many early One Piece episodes include: 

Kazuya Hisada, Masahiro Shimanuki, Naoki Tate, Jin Inaba, Tadayoshi Yamamuro. Please note, there are many others involved animating wise, but these are some key names, and ones that will develop and evolve as the years go on.

Kazuya Hisada is someone who will pop up later and fulfil a more important role in the series, but in the early days he created some great scenes with some snappy timing, while using lines to help convey impact. He is found throughout early One Piece, however due to the limited animation and consistent style thanks to Noboru Kizumi, he can be difficult like most during this era to spot.

Hideaki Maniwa is more prominent in his animation, being more pronounced due to his camera movement on his characters. He uses subtle smears usually on impact to further enhance the idea that whoever is being hit, is being hit HARD. He also created the most animated piece of early One Piece in episode 23 where he creates seemingly natural movement of the background of the ship and water, making the sea feel powerful and heavy. 

So what have we learnt so far. 

Well, there is a lot of hard work that goes into the production of an anime series, and that is no different with One Piece. Early episodes for the most part had not too many interesting scenes animation wise, and the animators essentially got the work done in order to produce and release the series week to week. It will continue to be a bit of a slow start, with arcs like Alabasta and SkyPiea being similar in the regard of not many noteworthy scenes however, we can begin to see the cracks of emerging stars and evolving styles that will later become staples within the series. 

This is it to the first of what is hopefully a long and engaging project! So far it has been quite a read and very lengthy and I apologise for that. Hopefully from here on out we should be able to successfully get through more animators and styles become more distinct and animation continues to evolve. Next up I intend to cover Alabasta.

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A massive thank you to everyone who has participated and uploaded at Sakugabooru! Without it, I would not have been able to make nearly as much as I have without all the hard work in identifying and tagging animators’ work! Most of the footage used to showcase these animators has come from there! I simply just turned the videos into gifs for an easier showcase.

I would also like to issue a big thank you to Animators Corner! The staff listing really helped me in determining who worked on what episode to identify animators and their works!

[srikrishnainstitute]

Top Engineering Branches to Pursue in 2021

2021

Top Engineering Branches to Pursue in 2021

SKIT

The engineering degree is one of the most sought-after qualifications in today’s job market, mainly because it responds to the practical needs of our society by applying the discoveries of sciences in every sector. With lucrative job offers waiting right after they graduate, engineering graduates are spoilt for choice as to which branch they can pursue.

The engineering degree focuses on specialization like industrial, civil, chemical, mechanical, biomedical, information engineering, etc., which sometimes poses a challenge for students to pick the proper discipline they could pursue.

In recent years a variety of engineering disciplines have emerged. Each engineering discipline has its perks and varied career opportunities. However, to achieve the career's goals and to reach the top of the profession, one has to choose the right discipline depending upon the interest and aptitude.

If you are confused about which discipline to go with, check out the top engineering branches to pursue in 2021 listed here. It will help you get an idea of the most popular engineering branches and their job prospects.

Electronics and communication engineering

Eager to learn the working of sensors, transistors, circuits, mobile phones, ipod – then the best choice for you is Electronics and Communication Engineering. ECE is one of the evergreen branch of Engineering and of course in top demand among the students to opt for further studies and has ample job opportunities. Here, You will be dealing with the design and construction of electrical circuits, the signal system, and communications, among other components. It finds its application in all fields like Education, Industries, Medical, Defence, Research & Development. Every graduate in engineering can become a programmer but ECE offers a high scope for the graduates to work in fields like Telecom sector, IT sector, instrumentation, VLSI designing, Robotics and Machine Learning, networking, large scale electronics and so on.

Computer Science Engineering

Just take a look around, and you will most certainly see some sort of computational device at work, be it a mobile phone, TV, laptop, or even a watch. In this technology-driven world, computers are everywhere. So, there is no surprise that the Computer Science Engineering is among the most popular engineering disciplines. Hence Computer Science is more appealing to Everyone !

In the last two decades, the IT industry has grown at a rapid pace, especially in India, making it the tech hub of the world. Thereby, it calls for opportunities for the young entrepreneurs also.

Students with keen interest in programming, software development and having good analytical skills can bet on computer science being the best choice. As a computer science student, you will be learning different programming languages and algorithms, and use them to design complex computational systems. Since computer systems have penetrated almost every industry, you will never be short of lucrative job options once you graduate.

Information Science & Engineering

An offshoot of Computer Science, Information Science & Engineering is another highly sought-after engineering branch. Like its counterpart, its popularity is largely due to the endless job possibilities in various sectors across public and private domains.

As a part of the Information Science & Engineering curriculum, you will be studying the application of computer science principles in communication, research, and business. Mainly the focus will be on the study of Operating systems, computer networks, learning different programming languages, algorithms, and their design.

A degree in Information Science & Engineering opens the world of limitless possibilities and opportunities. The rapid expansion and penetration of technology in our daily life have created numerous avenues where there is a growing demand for Information Science & Engineering graduates. Inclination towards technology can simplify a rather complex process and having these skills hint at Information Science & Engineering being your calling.

Mechanical engineering

Mechanical Engineering is one of the oldest and broadest fields of Engineering. It uses the combination of Engineering Physics and Mathematical Principles and applies to the materials for designing, analyzing and manufacturing. The discipline aims to train professionals interested in the production and maintenance of mechanical systems.

With the advancement of technology, the scope of mechanical engineering is also expanding. Today, mechanical engineers are employed in the field of manufacturing industries, aerospace industries, automotive industries, energy utilities, biomedical industries, Government sectors and the list continues.

Mechanical engineers do many researches in various fields like Aerodynamics and Fluid mechanics, Biomechanics, Combustion and Energy systems, Design and Manufacturing, Vibrations – Acoustics and Fluid-Structure Interaction, Materials and Structures.

Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning Engineering

Humans have long dreamed of creating machines that could mimic their thought processes. Recent advancement in the scientific and technological front has pushed us closer to realizing that dream. With AI and machine learning now it's possible to create machines with autonomous learning and adaptation capabilities.

The endless potential of AI and machine learning in various fields has made this discipline hugely popular. With the rise in popularity, the demand for AI engineers is also rising rapidly. A degree in AI and machine learning will provide the necessary knowledge to understand how to design an AI system and the various possibilities it opens in today’s world. You will learn to create intelligent machines, by applying deep learning and data visualization methodologies.

AI and ML is one of the most sought-after engineering branches and it will open endless job opportunities in the field of technology, research, medicine, aviation and so on. We can find AI & ML in many advanced fields like Reinforcement Learning, Robotics, Automated Reasoning, Natural Language Processing, Text analytics, autonomous or driverless cars.

Civil Engineering

Civil Engineers are the central figures of the community development!! Civil Engineering innovations have their greatest impact on the quality of human lives. Yes, they design, build and maintain the foundation of our modern society with beautiful buildings, roads, bridges, canals, dams, and the list continues. This is one of the oldest disciplines of engineering and it primarily focuses on the construction of buildings and infrastructure. Every human-made structure standing today must have involved a civil engineer during its construction phase.

You must study varied subjects to become proficient in the civil engineering branch. A civil engineer can specialize in various fields, from construction engineering to transport, from geotechnics that is the study of the interaction between ground and consolidation systems to hydraulics.

Civil Engineers have plentiful job opportunities in various government and private sectors.

Conclusion

While there are many more engineering branches with their own opportunities, the ones mentioned here are the most popular. Understanding what each branch deals with, and the opportunities it leads to, are important things to consider while choosing an engineering branch. We hope that this guide elaborating the most popular engineering branches and what they deal with, would provide you some insights and the clarity to choose a branch of your interest. These being the core engineering branches, you can be sure of landing your dream job as soon as you graduate with your engineering degree.

[mbti-notes]

Do you have an opinion on the affects of social media on developing cognitive functions, specifically teenagers? I am asking with regard to navigating my son's adolescence. He is 16 and while the last few years have been more turbulent than previous years (with no doubt more to come) I think the road has been made substantially smoother as a direct result of me being able to access your blog, thank you. I don't feel inclined to limit his social media use, it's a part of life now, but it would be

[con’t: helpful to have some signs to look out for. I originally typed my son as Si dom with T preference and was trying to encourage his Te but now I’m thinking he’s more like INTP so I’ve changed my strategy to keep an open mind (and develop the patience of a saint LOL) and help him make the right decisions for himself. He has become more reckless and scattered lately with high value placed on acceptance from friends. Could this be Ne or does social media have a larger influence?]

I’m glad that you find the blog helpful and I admire your devotion to parenting. You raise a lot of interesting issues, though I may not be the best person to ask since I tend to have a negative opinion of social media. Parenting teenagers requires walking a very, very fine line between giving them enough guidance to avoid bad decision making vs giving them enough freedom to learn proper independence. It’s a very hard job. Sometimes, the only way to know that you’ve veered too far one way or the other is by making the mistake and then adjusting your approach - lots of trial and error. Every kid is an individual, so what works for one kid won’t necessarily work for another. Being able to adapt to their needs is the key point. It’s art more than science.

Everything has its positive and its negative side. Human beings tend to be short-sighted and easily rationalize bad decision making. When they really want to do something, they are much more likely to envision the benefits of doing it and this then blinds them to the costs. To be a good parent, I think it’s important to teach children how to recognize negative consequences and navigate them more intelligently (i.e. objective assessment of pros and cons that produces rational decision making). However, this is only possible if parents themselves are capable of it. You can’t expect kids to learn how to do something well without someone to teach them or model it for them. Unfortunately, I know plenty of adults of all ages who misuse social media just as badly as their kids. Kids learn predominantly through example, so you have to be the first one to follow the rules that you set. If you don’t follow any rules yourself, they won’t see the point in following any, either. For example, if all they see of you is your nose in your device, why would they put theirs down?

I don’t believe in banning kids from social media, but I do think it’s a good idea to be smart in limiting its usage. Social media shouldn’t be a substitute for real and meaningful human interaction, it shouldn’t take up so much time that important things get neglected, it shouldn’t interfere with maintaining good physical and mental health, and it shouldn’t be used as an escape. Teenagers become harder and harder to supervise as they get older because they increasingly have their own life going on. At a certain point, there’s no imposing rules on them because violating their autonomy only leads to rebellion.

A better strategy is to sit down with them to talk about the importance of using social media in HEALTHY ways, talk about why limits are necessary to avoid the negative/unhealthy aspects of it, and negotiate with them to come up with sensible limits that both of you can live with. If YOU also spend too much time on social media, then it’s even better to join them in adhering to those limits, to model the behavior that you expect from them and give them the feeling of being in it together. When you place limits on one aspect of life, it’s a good idea to expand yourself in other ways so as to minimize the feeling of “missing out”. For example, if you use social media for social connection, then compensate for limiting social media by making more effort to go out and join interesting social activities. Putting limits on fun means increasing boredom, so make sure that the boredom is addressed with a healthier option.

Social media is relatively new, so there isn’t a big enough body of research about its hidden effects or underlying costs. The few studies that have been done about social media mostly seem to suggest that misuse/overuse has very detrimental effects on psychological well-being. The spread of misinformation is a big problem (i.e. it makes people stupid). Cyber-bulling and violation of privacy are big problems. When you are so plugged in to other people’s lives, it’s hard not to engage in social comparison, and this often results in negative self-appraisals that diminish self-regard. This is particularly destructive for teenagers because they haven’t yet developed a very strong sense of self and are very likely to use other people’s judgment as a barometer of their own self-worth. Adolescence is usually the time that people start to grapple with level 2 ego development. It’s important for teenagers to learn how to socialize well and fit in with others, but it’s also important for them to learn the dangers of choosing the wrong socializing methods.

People at level 2 ego development are very prone to: experiencing shame/anxiety/depression via negative social comparisons, blindly following the ingroup (and rejecting the outgroup), and sacrificing self-care as they succumb to peer pressure. Helping them is not a matter of trying to stop them from doing these things, because you can’t, since doing these things is a natural part of that stage of development. What you can do is offer them guidance about self-care and help them think more critically about the best ways to handle peer pressure (i.e. give them options/strategies for working through real situations), in hopes that they’ll learn how to make better decisions. In the event that they make a bad decision, review the mistake with them. Reflect with them to figure out what went wrong and work with them to brainstorm ideas for how to avoid the same mistake in the future. Ask them what they could’ve done differently (this encourages N development). The PAIN of making mistakes is an efficient way to learn, which means that you shouldn’t be in there “helping” to the point that they don’t feel the pain of their mistakes.

Discipline is necessary for giving kids a sense of structure. To internalize a sense of structure is to possess a mental framework for making good decisions (usually requires developing the judging functions). At the very least, a child should have their parent’s way of critical thinking at hand whenever they aren’t able to solve a problem entirely on their own (i.e. “what would mom/dad advise me to do?”). Always be transparent, fair, and consistent in how you punish kids by explaining your decision, why it’s necessary, and what lesson it’s meant to teach them (e.g. self-care, intelligence, respect, patience, etc). This makes it more likely that they eventually internalize your moral lessons and learn to use them even when you’re not present. If you punish unfairly or disproportionately, if you’re a hypocrite, or if you’re inconsistent with punishments, you risk losing their respect, which, in their mind, means that they no longer have to listen to you.

Unfortunately, some kids don’t learn well the first time around and you have to discipline them to get the point across. You can develop a punishment scale that begins with a mild punishment for the first mistake and then increase the severity of the punishment for every instance of repeating the mistake. While I admire your patience, I’m sure you know that laissez faire parenting also has its problems. Overly permissive parents run the risk of losing their child’s respect because it’s easy to fall into the trap of devaluing your own needs whenever the child tests your rules and boundaries, and they will absolutely trample your boundaries if you give the impression of not having any. When you devalue your position of authority in the relationship, you encourage kids to do the same, and then you become a mere source of food or money and nothing else to them. This also enables them to be narcissistic in their approach to others.

I’m not sure how good you are at communicating, just in case it’s needed, I’ll continue on to say that I believe that one of the most important elements of parenting is establishing a strong sense of trust. If your kid trusts you, they’ll feel more confident about making independent decisions because they know that you’re there to help them should they need it, and sometimes it’s enough that you’re with them “spiritually” in their memory of lessons learned. The best way to build trust is to keep the lines of communications open. Good communication isn’t about trying to pry information or performing the role of judge jury and executioner. People, let alone teenagers, won’t want to communicate with you if they suspect that all you’re doing is judging them or just looking for an excuse to criticize them (and teens likely get enough of this from their peers).

Communication should come from the heart, use inquiry and sharing of feelings to show that you genuinely care about what’s going on with them. Good communication should work both ways: listen to each other carefully, be transparent about your motives, be honest about how you feel and what you need, negotiate compromises, and respect each other’s individual autonomy. You should model the kind of respect that you want them to give to you (I can’t count the number of times that I’ve seen parents trying to teach their kids to be more respectful… by shouting at them angrily). When they are out of line, remain calm, hear what they’re feeling (validation), then explain to them that you/people are more likely to take them seriously when they express their feelings maturely. Give them an example sentence of how to express feelings or requests respectfully.

Teenagers are emotional creatures, they live in the emotions of now and don’t respond well to appeals to the future. This can’t be helped because it’s part of adolescent brain development, so give them some leeway to get their feelings out, but use the chance to teach better communication methods. Sometimes it’s necessary to give them cooling off time before instigating a serious discussion. Recklessness is usually rooted in emotion. Some kids are reckless out of boredom, some out of anxiety, etc. Try to identify the underlying emotion that’s motivating the problem and then you’ll have a better chance of coming up with a good solution. For example, if boredom (or excess energy) is the motivation, then enroll them in productive activities to fill up their time. If anxiety is the motivation, then they need to learn better emotional management skills, perhaps get them a bit of light counseling on the topic from school or a local community organization.

An important part of establishing trust that is often overlooked is the notion of equality. A parent-child relationship is naturally unequal in power, but it doesn’t have to be excessively and unnecessarily unequal. There are a lot of different kinds of communication, since people communicate with different intents/purposes depending on the circumstances. More often than not, parents only talk to their kids in “parent mode” of ordering them around, interrogating them, or criticizing them. If this is the only mode that kids get to see from you, then they will view you as an authoritarian and their approach to you will be rooted in fear of punishment and the desire for escape. This makes it very difficult for them to trust you because you’ve taught them that your role is to supervise and discipline and nothing else, which means that everything they do will be as far away from your watchful warden eyes as possible.

There’s no avoiding “parent mode” as a parent. However, you can avoid making that the ONLY mode. A better strategy is to pick your battles wisely so that you use parent mode as sparingly as possible, especially with teenagers that are always pressing you for more freedom. But if you’re not using parent mode, then you have to know how to communicate with them in other modes, otherwise, communication tends to dry up quickly. To build trust, do more activities with them and spend more time talking to them in a way that establishes both of you as persons on equal footing. To be clear, I’m not talking about the cliche of being friends with your kids; I believe that you should maintain the position of parental authority until they reach adulthood. I’m talking about communicating heart-to-heart so that they get to know who you are outside of your parental role. Be more willing to share your feelings with them such that they feel encouraged to share theirs with you. Within reason, share with them what’s on your mind and let them in on what’s happening in your private world. You don’t want to let them in completely, however, because you still need to command enough respect to have some authority over them. Talk about problems you’ve encountered or struggled with and how you felt about them, but also talk about what you did to resolve them, which gives them good examples to learn from.

Rebellion is a natural reaction to feeling excessively restricted, and it’s natural for teenagers to feel restricted regardless of whether you are objectively restricting them, because their main preoccupation is independence. Children tend to project their psychological problems onto their parents, and you can make it harder for them to demonize you by humanizing yourself enough for them to empathize with your experience. By communicating in heart-to-heart mode more often than in listen-and-obey mode, they learn that the relationship between you matters in its quality of love and care, not just in whether they follow your rules. When you successfully establish a sense of mutual appreciation for each other, they learn to see you as a person with your own needs and desires, and then they’ll have less desire to rebel against you. If your kid understands that your “parent mode” is just one part of you but that the greater part of you is a fellow human, then their rebellion is likely to take a softer, more respectful form. As a result of trust and good communication, they are more likely to consider negotiating with you first before running off to do something dumb just to spite you. Let them know that you’re always open to calm and sensible negotiations/compromises because it gives them the sense of having some say in the matter. As you gradually “equalize” the relationship through heart-to-heart communication, it’s then easier to transition into an adulthood friendship with them in the future.

From the child’s perspective, I distinctly remember when my parents switched modes with me, perhaps you can recall your experience as well. My mother had a strict rule of never involving kids in adult affairs, ever. Both of my parents come from big families and they all grew up together in a small town (11 siblings between them), so there was always lots of drama going on behind the scenes, but my brother and I were completely oblivious to it growing up. My parents were quite stoic with us and we never really knew what they were thinking, so the relationships were often quite strained because communication was virtually non-existent.

You can imagine my shock when, one day, in my twenties, I was just minding my own business as usual and mom comes into the room and complains about this or that relative. She proceeds to tell me the entire 20+ year backstory of their horrible relationship. I thought she had gone mad for spilling all this shocking info to me out of the blue. Signs of early onset dementia already? But then I realized that this was a role change. I was no longer the kid who had to be kept in the dark. I was now a person who was worthy of being treated as a confidant and even someone smart enough to seek advice from. It was a bittersweet moment. Sweet because, starting in adolescence, people hanker to be treated as an adult by their parents. Bitter because she had decisively given up her authoritarian role and now I had absolutely no cause to keep rebelling against her, lol. The point is, she could’ve given up her authoritarian role more gradually by easing me into the role change in mid-to-late adolescence. We wasted many years being at odds with each other because she couldn’t recognize the ways that I had matured. And some parents aren’t flexible enough to ever make the switch.

In the end, you can only do your best. If I had to come up with a motto about parenting it would be that “Attention is love”. Just be attentive and respond to what’s important to them. Teens appreciate your care even when they don’t show it or claim to not want it, so long as you respect their emotional needs.

PS: There’s already a parenting title on the resources list about teenagers and social media that might be of help.

[mittensmorgul]

I’m rewatching 13.15, A Most Holy Man, right now, and... and I remember when it first aired. The reaction was largely “meh,” or “the noir format doesn’t really do it for me and the episode was kinda boring overall.” It’s possibly the s13 episode I have the least amount of posts for on my blog. It was largely skimmed over as mostly irrelevant, with the only takeaway being:

A. They got the macguffin they needed to progress the A plot by the end of the episode

and

2. They really should’ve cut that scene of Dean going on about how he’d kill everyone who tried to steal his car...

But... this was a Dabb episode. I wrote this post back in May, but I think it merits an additional look now:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/184946657745/so-im-still-out-ahead-of-the-tnt-loop-but-i

Because this single episode functions as a microcosm of their entire lives, at least thematically, if not in a 1:1 fashion. I mean, it is just a 42 minute episode. There were only so many twists and layers they could reasonably shove in, and the Rule Of Three is a convenient metric for demonstrating the pattern in narrative shorthand that invites us to consider the unspoken “etc. etc. ad nauseum” ourselves.

I’d go into the entire structure of the episode, but I’m hoping that just explaining the outcome-- after reading the post I linked above-- everyone will be able to see the parallel itself without me having to write 5k words on the subject today. :P

Let’s start with the exchange at the end of the episode that prompted this realization. Because it’s a bit of chicanery:

FATHER LUCCA: I think I got shot. [DEAN lifts up FATHER LUCCA’s shirt to see only a little blood.] DEAN: Looks like he just grazed you. A few more inches to the left and, uh... FATHER LUCCA: It’s a miracle. [SAM and DEAN, with FATHER LUCCA behind them, search the warehouse and find GREENSTREET still hiding.] GREENSTREET: I didn’t know this would happen. I… I’ll give you anything you want, huh? DEAN: The blood, where is it? GREENSTREET: It, uh… doesn’t exist. SAM: You… what? Wait a second. You told us– GREENSTREET: Exactly what you wanted to hear. It was just a bit of… DEAN: Chicanery? GREENSTREET: Exactly. DEAN: Well… chicane this. [DEAN punches GREENSTREET to the ground.] ACT FIVE EXTERIOR – WAREHOUSE – NIGHT [There are police cars outside the warehouse. A policeman leads GREENSTREET to a car and sits him inside.] GREENSTREET: No, no, no, no. Wait. Don’t – you – you – you’ve made a mistake.

For a refresher, Greenstreet was the author of this entire bit of chicanery. For a while, it appeared as if it was actually each of the other people involved:

Margaret Astor, the first person we meet, and also the one APPARENTLY holding all the cards when they walk into the final deal, who ends up backstabbed (well shot in the back anyway, close enough) by her own assistant

she sent them to Greenstreet, who introduced the term “chicanery” to the narrative, which I’m gonna focus on next, because despite all his plotting, his narrative didn’t end the way he wanted (he’s getting hauled off to jail, but heck, at least he didn’t end up dead like most of the rest of these conspirators...)

Greenstreet sent them to Scarpatti, with the partially true information that he’d been the one to have the artifact stolen in the first place, only to learn that it had been stolen from his man in turn...

(and remember, the skull isn’t actually what Sam and Dean need... it’s the currency they believed they needed in order to trade for what they DO actually need... it’s a bit of a chicane... which I’ll get to... sorry for this meandering on the way to the conclusion, but this little side journey is 100% relevant... you’ll see what I mean in a minute)

While investigating Scarpatti’s side-detour, they end up having to investigate a murder, and inadvertently stumble over Father Lucca Camilleri... but Sam and Dean have no idea that they’re now traveling through this episode with the thing THEY actually need. But rather than just... take what they need because that fact hasn’t been revealed to them yet, or even continue to pursue the currency they believe they need to trade for the elusive thing they need, they selflessly choose to do the morally right thing despite believing that in doing so they are forfeiting their chance to get the macguffin they need.

Ain’t it just Winchesters vs The Cosmos on a microscopic level?

Because one thing I’ve learned about Dabb as showrunner is that his absolute favorite thing is gleefully pointing back at canon and explicitly clarifying things. It’s not always obvious, he tends to be incredibly subtle, but if you’re looking for it, it’s impossible not to see in pretty much all of his writing. He LOVES messing with prior perception, and making us work for the satisfying moment where all the pieces fall into place.

Chicanery and the chicane. THAT ITSELF IS A CLARIFICATION. From vague to specific. Because “a chicane” is a very different thing than “chicanery.” And it’s all a bit of a winding deception.

For reference, the definitions of these two very different words:

chi·can·er·y /SHəˈkān(ə)rē/ noun, the use of trickery to achieve a political, financial, or legal purpose. "an underhanded person who schemes corruption and political chicanery behind closed doors" synonyms: trickery, deception, deceit, deceitfulness, duplicity, dishonesty, unscrupulousness, underhandedness, subterfuge, fraud, fraudulence, legerdemain, sophistry, sharp practice, skulduggery, swindling, cheating, duping, hoodwinking

and

chicane (/ʃɪˈkeɪn/) noun, a serpentine curve in a road, added by design rather than dictated by geography. Chicanes add extra turns and are used both in motor racing and on roads and streets to slow traffic for safety.

What the definition of “chicane” doesn’t provide is that in auto racing, a chicane isn’t seen as a “safety” measure, but an obstacle. If you’ve ever watched road racing, the chicane is where a lot of drivers wipe out. It’s a choke point where everyone HAS to slow down, but when you’re RACING each other, the objective is to remain out in front, you know? Jockeying for position, trying to get through the obstacle as quickly as possible to get back to direct racing toward the finish line. So while a chicane literally slows the racing by design, forcing drivers to adapt to the physical reality of safely navigate through the pinch point while not wrecking themselves, they need to maintain absolute focus to retain their position, as well. It’s not about slowing down for safety but about finding the balance point between “safely navigating through without wrecking myself or being wrecked by the other cars trying to achieve the same objective I am” and “but we’re still racing and I can’t let anyone pass me so I’m still gonna push it as fast as I can while still conforming to the laws of known physics.” It’s... difficult.

THREE TIMES in this episode, they use the word “chicanery” before Dean clarifies it to “chicane.” For reference, out of the other 306 episodes of this show that exist at the time of writing this post, they’ve used “chicanery” a grand total of ZERO other times. Seems significant, yes?

In the same way the show has frequently used Wizard Of Oz imagery to convey these same points, with the reminder in the end of the “you had the power inside you all along” sort of themes, this episode takes it one step further. Which... logical considering the nature of the spiral narrative, that when it comes around again, the circumstances aren’t exactly the same. Think of it in terms of that racetrack with the chicane.

In the case of the plot of this episode, a similar comparison can be drawn to The DaVinci Code, since through most of the wild goose chase running through all the games and puzzles, the guy is literally traveling with the object he seeks. It just doesn’t become obvious, like with Dorothy and her Ruby Slippers, until they’ve worked their way through all the puzzles and subterfuge along the way. As Dean says in Scoobynatural when Sam points out that if he knows how the episode ends, why don’t they just get to the point already, and Dean replies “Because sometimes it’s about the journey.” Rather intuitive meta observation about the point of the narrative structure, yes?

Back to our road race analogy now, after passing through the chicane chicane. Every lap, the drivers are driving through the same essential course. The shape of the road doesn’t change in the most fundamental way. The same parts are still paved, the walls around the edges don’t move, etc. But each time they drive around, other conditions vary. Their tires wear down so their traction changes. Heck, the drivers themselves are wearing out physically and mentally. Maybe a dude’s just thirsty or has an itch on his nose or just has to pee real bad. Maybe the wind speed or direction has changed. Maybe the sun has moved so different turns become more tricky with a glare in their eyes. Their engines are slowly shifting as wear and tear of operating at a high performance level alters performance. Their brakes might be wearing down. They may be in need of more fuel and are driving more conservatively, or may have just gotten new fuel or new tires or made some other alteration to their car that shifts not only their ability to go faster, but changes how they handle corners, etc. But there’s also the factor of all the OTHER cars driving around them. Maybe they’ve hit the chicane all by themselves because they’re out ahead of the pack (or trailing far behind it). Maybe they’re clustered tightly together with other drivers. Maybe there was a wreck that altered the road surface... cleaning up fuel/oil spills, sand or dirt having “spilled” out onto the road surface, maybe a slight drizzle started making it more slippery, or even random trash has blown from the stands into the road, or debris from a wreck-in-progress hampers their progress. There are SO MANY FACTORS at play that make each lap around the course an entirely different experience, you know?

Same with the spiral narrative. The major landmarks might be similar, but everything else is new.

And the moment Dean says “chicane this” and punches the author of this series of events in the face, that’s basically 14.20, yes?

They’re tired, and they’re on the last lap, and they’ve been through this chicane so many times now. And they’ve just been told that after every lap, Chuck refused to wave the checkered flag. They kept reaching the finish line over and over, only to discover it was also the starting line and the race was still going. And each time through Chuck’s big chicane, he’d deliberately change those variables, so the more experience they gained on the track, there’d always be a bit of new debris to navigate, a new difficulty level added.

And now in 14.20, it’s like they finally caught him in the act of throwing thumbtacks down on the road, you know? They caught him at his tricks.

And like, to use a favorite metaphor of Dabb’s, it’s like the roadrunner and the coyote. Only the roadrunner had always known all along that the coyote was laying traps for him and always found the most hilarious ways to foil the coyote’s plans and turn it back around on him. It took them 14 seasons for TFW to finally pull a roadrunner.

This has always been Dabb’s ending, because it’s actually the story he has been telling all along. The spiral’s broken, and instead of continuing lap after lap with no end in sight, they’ve finally realized they can just... stop driving in carefully paved loops and drive in a direct line to the finish.

(and maybe the only way to make it to the finish is to pave their own road around all of Chuck’s chicanery... it’s gonna be some heavy lifting and some rough off-roading, but it’s the only way to get off the track to victory lane)

(apologies, this is the sort of place my brain goes when Mr. Mittens is watching nascar at Road America in the background... but it’s super apt, and full disclosure, I started writing this about an hour before he turned the tv on. I was already on this road course >.>)

[tipsycad147]

Different Types of Witchcraft

Many just beginning their studies of Magick think that there is only one Witchcraft, that being Wicca.

Why magick and not magic? The answer is quite simple…magic is what Copperfield and other illusionists perform. Magick is true, not an illusion. I will never forget the intense surge of power I felt vibrating in my body the first time I practised magick, and I get that same feeling every time.

I believe it is important for beginners to realise that their are many more paths one can follow. By learning about different ones, it can not only enrich your knowledge, but even guide you towards a path that’s best suited for you. It is common for people use the terms Witchcraft and Wicca interchangeably. Whether they are different or just a way of describing the same thing depends on which Witch you ask. Either way you look at it, there is more than one path or tradition. The following are just a few descriptions of some of the most common.

Alexandrian:

Founded in England during the 1960’s by Alexander Sanders, self-proclaimed “King of the Witches”. An offshoot of Gardnerian, Alexandrian covens focus strongly upon training, emphasizing on areas more generally associated with ceremonial magic, such as Qabalah, Angelic Magic and Enochian. The typical Alexandrian coven has a hierarchical structure, and generally meets on weekly, or at least on Full Moons, New Moons and Sabbats. Rituals are usually done skyclad.

Most Alexandrian covens will allow non-initiates to attend circles, usually as a “neophyte,” who undergoes basic training in circle craft prior to being accepted for the 1st degree initiation. Alexandrian Wicca uses essentially the same tools and rituals as Gardnerian Wicca, though in some cases, the tools are used differently, and the rituals have been adapted. Another frequent change is to be found in the names of deities and guardians of the Quarters. In some ways these differences are merely cosmetic, but in others, there are fundamental differences in philosophy. Over the last 30 years, the two traditions have moved slowly towards each other, and the differences which marked lines of demarcation are slowly fading away.

Celtic:

The Celtic path is really many traditions under the general heading of “Celtic.” It encompasses Druidism, Celtic Shamanism, Celtic Wicca or Witta, the Grail Religion, and Celtic Christianity or Culdees. Each path is unique and stand alone meld together with another and still be part of the Celtic tradition. It is primarily derived from the ancient pre Christian Celtic religion of Gaul and the British Isles.

As it is practiced today, most of the Celtic paths are part of the Neo-Pagan revival, focusing on Nature and healing with group and individual rituals that honour the Ancient Shining Ones and the Earth. Most are very eclectic, and hold to the Celtic myths, divinities, magic and rituals. Celtic paths are some of the more popular traditions.

Ceremonial:

Uses a great deal of Ceremonial Magick in practices. Mostly derived from the works of Aleister Crowley. Detailed rituals with a flavor of Egyptian magick are popular, as Qabalistic ritual forms.

Chaos:

Chaos magic theory says that belief is an active magical force. It emphasises flexibility of belief and the ability to consciously choose one’s beliefs, hoping to apply belief as a tool rather than seeing it as a relatively unchanging part of one’s personality. Various psychological techniques are employed in order to induce flexibility of belief. Other chaos magicians suggest that people do not need belief to work magic. Austin Osman Spare asserts in The Book of Pleasure and various other works that will formulates desire which promulgates belief.

Chaos magic was first formulated in West Yorkshire, England in the 1970s. A meeting between Peter J. Carroll and Ray Sherwin in Deptford in 1976 has been claimed as the point of emergence of chaos magic, and in 1978 Carroll and Sherwin founded the Illuminates of Thanateros, a chaos magic organisation. The Book of Results is the first book dedicated to the subject of sigilisation and The Theatre of Magick in which Chaos as a separate discipline was first mentioned.

Visionary artist and mystic Austin Osman Spare, who was briefly a member of Aleister Crowley’s A∴A∴ but later broke with them to work independently, is largely the source of chaos magical theory and practice. Specifically, Spare developed the use of sigils and the use of gnosis to empower these. Most basic sigil work recapitulates Spare’s technique, including the construction of a phrase detailing the magical intent, the elimination of duplicate letters, and the artistic recombination of the remaining letters to form the sigil. Although Spare died before chaos magick emerged, many consider him to be the father of chaos magic because of his repudiation of traditional magical systems in favour of a technique based on gnosis.

Dianic:

This is the most feminist Craft Tradition. Most Dianic covens worship the Goddess exclusively (Diana and Artemis are the most common manifestations) and most today are women only. Rituals are eclectic; some are derived from Gardnerian and Faery traditions, while others have been created anew. Emphasis is on rediscovering and reclaiming female power and divinity, consciousness-raising, and combining politics with spirituality. The Dianic Craft included two distinct branches:

The first Dianic coven in the U.S. was formed in the late ’60s by Margan McFarland and Mark Roberts, in Dallas, Texas. This branch gives primacy to the Goddess in its theology, but honours the Horned God as Her beloved Consort. Covens include both women and men. This branch is sometimes called ‘Old Dianic,’ and there are still covens of this tradition specially in Texas. Other coven, similar in theology but not directly descended from the McFarland/Roberts line are sprinkled around the country.

The other branch, Feminist Dianic Witchcraft, focuses exclusively on the Goddess and consists of women-only covens, often with a strong lesbian presence. These tend to be loosely structured and non-hierarchical, using consensus decision making and simple, creative, experimental ritual. They are politically feminist groups, usually very supportive, personal and emotionally intimate. The major network is Re-Formed Congregation of the Goddess. Z Budapest founded the Susan B. Anthony Coven in 1971, declaring Dianic Witchcraft to be “Wimmin’s Religion”. The Women’s Spirituality Forum was Founded by Z Budapest in 1986, and is dedicated to bringing Goddess consciousness to the mainstream of feminist consciousness through lectures and, retreats, classes, cable TV shows, and rituals in the effort to achieve spiritual and social liberation.

Draconic Wicca:

Draconic Wicca is the utilization of the powers of the dragons. There are as many dragons as there are people. They are as varied as humans are also. We work with these dragons to achieve the results that we seek. In doing so, we have to deal with the unique personalities of each type of dragon. The dragons have no real hierarchy other than age, except for the case of The Dragon. The Dragon is the combined powers of the God and the Goddess. The Dragon is invoked or evoked during Sabbats and in times when great magick is needed (not when you can not find your keys). Invoking means to call into you the power of the dragon that you name i.e. a fire dragon. You ask that this dragon assume himself/herself into your spiritual body. To evoke means to call a dragon to you, to join you in your magickal workings.

Eclectic:

Refers to groups and individuals who do not fully adhere to one specific form of Paganism. They choose to incorporate some beliefs, practices, rituals etc, of a few, or many paths to form a unique one that suits their spiritual needs. Gypsy magic tends to fall into this category.

Faery/Faerie/Fairy/Feri:

Victor and Cora Anderson are the original teachers of the Feri Tradition. Victor is universally recognised as the Grand Master of his order of Feri. He was initiated in 1926 by a priestess from Africa. He is also one of the last genuine Kahuna. His book of poetry, Thorns of the Blood Rose, is considered a contemporary Pagan classic.

In 1959, Victor initiated the late Gwydion Pendderwen (age 13 at the time), who later became a leading voice in the Feri Tradition. Gwydion concentrated on the Welsh Celtic aspects; whereas Victor and Cora still practice the tradition as it was originally, with Huna and African diasporic influences, primarily Dahomean-Haitian. The Feri Tradition honours the Goddess and Her son, brother and lover (The Divine Twins) as the primary creative forces in the universe. The Gods are seen as real spirit beings like ourselves, not merely aspects of our psyche.

It is an ecstatic, rather than fertility tradition, emphasising on polytheism, practical magic, self-development and theurgy. Strong emphasis is placed on sensual experience and awareness,including sexual mysticism, which is not limited to heterosexual expression. This is a mystery tradition of power, mystery, danger, ecstasy, and direct communication with divinity. Most initiates are in the arts and incorporate their own poetry, music and invocations into rituals.

The Tradition is gender-equal, and all sexual orientations seem able to find a niche. According to Francesca De Grandis, founder of the 3rd Road branch: “Faerie power is not about a liturgy but about one’s body: a Fey shaman’s blood and bones are made of stars and Faerie dust. A legitimate branch of Faerie is about a personal vision that is the Fey Folks’ gift to a shaman.”

Initially small and secretive, many of the fundamentals of the Tradition have reached a large audience trough the writings of Starhawk, the most famous initiate. Some secret branches remain. While only a few hundred initiates can trace their lineage directly to Victor Anderson, many thousands are estimated to practice neo-Faery Traditions.

Gardnerian:

This is a closed initiatory Tradition which was founded in England ca 1953 by Gerald Gardner and further developed by Doreen Valiente and others. Gardner was initiated into a coven of Witches in the New Forest region of England in 1939 by a High Priestess named ‘Old Dorothy’ Clutterbuck. In 1949 he wrote High Magic’s Aid, a novel about medieval Witchcraft in which quite a bit of the Craft as practised by the coven was used.

In 1951 the last of the English laws against Witchcraft were repealed (primarily due to to the pressure of Spiritualists) and Gardner published Witchcraft Today, which set forth a version of rituals and traditions of that coven.

Gardner gave his Tradition a ritual framework strongly influenced by Freemasonry and Crowleyan ceremonial magic, as well as traditional folk magic and Tantric Hinduism. The Tradition was brought to the USA in 1965 by Raymond & Rosemary Buckland, who were initiated in 1964 by the Gardner’s High Priestess, Lady Olwen.

Gardnerian covens are always headed by a High Priestess and have three degrees of initiation closely paralleling the Masonic degrees. Worship is centered on the Goddess and the Horned God. The tradition emphasises polarity in all things, fertility, and the cycle of birth-death-rebirth. Eight seasonal Sabbats are observed, and the Wiccan Rede is the guiding principle. Power is raised through scourging and sex magick (“The Great Rite”), as well as meditation, chanting, astral projection, dancing, wine and cords. Designed for group/coven work, through solitary workings have been created. Covens work skyclad.

Shamanic Witchcraft:

This term refers to practices associated with those of tribal shamans in traditional Pagan cultures throughout the world. A shaman combines the roles of healer, priest (ess), diviner, magician, teacher and spirit guide, utilising altered states of consciousness to produce and control psychic phenomena and travel to and from the spirit realm. Followers of this path believe that historical Witchcraft was the shamanic practice of European Pagans; and Medieval Witches actually functioned more as village shamans than as priests and priestesses of :the Old Religion.”

Shamanic Witchcraft emphasises serving the wider community through rituals, herbalism, spell craft, healings, counselling, rites of passage, handfastings, Mystery initiations, etc. The distinguishing element of Shamanic Witchcraft is the knowledge and sacramental use of psychotropic plants to effect transitions between worlds. The theory and practice of Shamanic Witchcraft has permeated widely though out many other established Traditions.

Stregheria:

Stregheria is the form of witchcraft native to Italy; there are several distinct traditions sharing common roots, in various parts of Italy. Also called, La Vecchia Religione, Stregheria is a nature-based religion, it’s followers worship the forces of Nature, personified as gods and goddesses. The witches of La Vecchia Religione are called Streghe (plural), with the title Strega (for a female), Stregone (for a male).

Stregheria is rooted in the folk religion of the Latins (the Romans being one Latin people) and the Etruscans. In the particular tradition, taught by Raven Grimassi in Ways of the Strega, the pantheon is different from the urban gods of the Romans, though some of those deities were shared with the Latins, and the Etruscans, most notably Diana, whose worship was focused at a temple at Lake Nemi in the Alban Hills. There are however other traditions of Stregheria in Italy, who may worship the urban gods of the Romans.

The particular tradition taught by Raven Grimassi in Ways of the Strega, is derived from a renewal that occurred in the 14th century brought about by a wise woman from Tuscany called Aradia. This does not imply that witchcraft in Italy began in the 14th century. La Vecchia Religione is an evolution of pre-christian religions in Italy. The tradition taught by Aradia was a revival of the Old Ways during a time of extreme persecution of the peasants of Italy.

Wiccan Shamanism:

Founded by Selena Fox in the 1980’s. Ecumenical and multicultural focus. Combination of Wicca, humanistic psychology and a variety of shamanistic practices from around the world. Emphasis on healing. Uses traditional shamanistic techniques to change consciousness, such as drumming and ecstatic dancing.

https://shirleytwofeathers.com/The_Blog/bookofshadows/book-of-shadows/different-types-of-witchcraft/

[bombtimer]

On pseudo-public participation

Looking at my friends’ blogs, they have been already communicating their ideas based on their forte, along with sharing their personal stories. They are so academically eloquent and interestingly, they still have an individual touch that sheds new light on that matter. Sadly, I have difficulty to transform an academic perspective into a personal one; writing academically is fine by me since fewer emotions are involved. This is exacerbated by the pre-successful idea to launch a blog once discussed with my friends back in the Lab (LOL). Or another piece that I wrote for a nascent website which stopped producing contents ever since, which in turn traumatises me even more. Yet, as many academia that I follow mostly on Twitter do, I think it is essential to mainstream a perhaps-too-theoretical idea, not only to further the knowledge but also to contribute to, however cringey it probably sounds, the societal progress. 

Alright, enough reminiscing. Now let us proceed to the serious part. 

In this piece, I want to elaborate on my personal view regarding my dissertation, which revolves around the concept of public participation in the digital era. A theoretical framework will be presented, followed by the context of Jakarta, Indonesia as the place where my dissertation takes place upon. Several major arguments will be presented and summarised at the end, which therefore closes this writing. 

[Disclaimer: I do not give the bibliography therefore this piece might be deemed a personal opinion. I really should have drafted the article version of my dissertation hence it will be deemed ‘original’ in the academic setting. However, I am still working on it hence, sadly, the arguments will be limited. The ‘censored’ part is really open for discussion; over dinner or evening cafe session, perhaps?]

Putting public participation in the current smart city discourse

Public participation is naturally the simplest measure of how a citizen can express their political rights, exemplifying the bottom-up approach in the decision-making process. Arguably, the extent to which public participation is designed has been widely elaborated; from Sherry Arnstein’s seminal work of ‘ladder of participation’ to the latest suggestion of how participatory practices should be designed. The pertinent examples include public hearings, consultations, and the advisory committee. Furthermore, these extensive literature have noted the success and setbacks of public participatory designs across the world; whether the practices are more deliberative or not, and the challenges that are still adamantly present through decades; which include the difference in resources to commit to the whole policymaking process i.e. time, travel cost, income, and family structure.

As the digital era is also transforming participatory practices, the notion of public participation seems to be evolving by using map-based software in the decision-making. Many studies exhibit Public Participation Geographic Information System (PPGIS) or similar terms i.e. Collaboratively Contributed GIS (CCGIS) and Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) as the way of integrating participatory mapping into policy-making. While PPGIS and CCGIS put the citizen with the decision-makers at the same table and at the same time, in VGI perspective the citizens are positioned as the living sensors which ‘capture’ and ‘emit’ both information and its coordinates to the other end where the data are then stored, structured, and analysed further. Indeed, the latter practice puts citizenship in the lowest ladder of participation, both in the traditional definition or in the most recent one. On the one hand, citizens as sensors provide invaluable contents for specific mapping—both aims and spatial resolution. The practice is also important during an emergency, like forest fire mapping, for example. Furthermore, VGI is argued to limit power relation influencing the participatory process, which is often present in face-to-face meetings and forums. On the other hand, as crowdsourcing data reflects the urban inter-referencing effects of smart city initiatives, some argue for its self-congratulatory nature i.e. to achieve a city’s success based on self-deliberated KPI metrics—rather than being truly adapted to the local context. 

Summing up, some question of the quality of VGI to be put on the table while some signify its benefits in more practical understanding. At this point, the choice is between scrutinising the use of VGI as a means to an end in public participation context; whether it is politically correct or not, or rather, devising the analytical framework to gain some insights from the crowdsourced data. Choosing to further the latter, the case of Jakarta, Indonesia will be elaborated.

Jakarta in a nutshell

Being one of the most densely populated metropolitans in the Global South, Jakarta has been storing potentials of becoming an abundant source of crowdsourced data with its approximately 10 million population. There have been some initiatives that use Twitter users to inform which area has been flooded or mobile app that crowdsources reports from the users regarding their surroundings. Some studies even recognise the success (if not the measurement of it) of these organic platforms in collecting public concern to be inputted to decision-making. With many challenges that this metropolis faces periodically i.e. traffic jam, flood, or waste disposal, the various applications which identify those problems define their significance.

Premise 1: Quantitative analysis actually speaks

From what I have learnt for one year, quantitative analysis sounds more when you present the assumptions in the beginning. Basically, there might be data transformation i.e. log-log transformation, winsorization, etc. (such a statistics nerd, sorry) if needed, but the most important thing is answering “What does your data represent?”. There is also spatial analysis, where the geographical attributes are taken into account. The intersection between these schools of thought, in my opinion, complements each other’s limitation. The classic example, of course, would be the Ordinary Least Square Regression vis-a-vis Geographically Weighted Regression. There might be a new insight emerged once you delve into the spatial features of the data.

For the case of public participation, I blatantly used the number of Qlue Indonesia reports in 6 months as somewhat representative of public participation. Qlue Indonesia itself is a company that built a smartphone-based application to report a problem e.g. waste being uncollected, damaged roads, and broken public facilities. For each report, a user will have to take a photo, give the location coordinates, and fill up some fields to elaborate on the problems. 

Yes, I know. There might be biases there; literature defines crowdsourcing to be not giving the whole democratic or rights to the citizens. Or in other words, crowdsourcing is not anywhere near participating in policy-making. Yet, my argument would be that now is the time to use whatever data we have in hand to try modelling our complex world. From this application, I get enough data (n ~ 50,000) for six months to analyse. Then again, every user in crowdsourcing platforms generates their own data, which somehow they participate in defining the problems; an initial yet important step in designing pertinent public policy. 

Once you started the quantitative analysis, it should be kept in mind that the result is not the most accurate of a predictive model. We are not chasing the perfection of such tools, but rather use the model to better elaborate our standpoint. Some say that modelling uncertainty of our model is way a better perspective, as we acknowledge all the assumptions and limitations of our work. After all, measuring public participation has been in a qualitative manner all these decades; we should take a very cautious design in analysing it from a quantitative perspective.

Premise 2: The biases, still?

Speaking about the biases, one must remember that the quintessence of public participation should be the representation. The ideal condition is where everyone has a say to be taken into account, let’s say in the development of social housings in a particular area. However, it is difficult to define 'everyone'. Should it be all city inhabitants? Or rather, should it be based on administrative boundaries? After all, one will say that it is the people of the surrounding project area has 'more' rights to allow such development impacting their daily life for some time.

The thing is, not many people have similar interests over a topic. People have ranging understanding an interests towards their environment, or what Steven Johnson and others called 'vantage points', a condition where people become more selective in processing information and developing knowledge. For example, people in a city-scale will resist the development of a nuclear plant, while if new waste disposal area is to be developed in a Subdistrict X, only people living in Subdistrict X will respond to such plan. Another example recognises the topic. One would be interested in the topic of municipal budgeting, while the other one is just into advocating better public transport. Some might collaborate and thoroughly inspect the budget for developing new bus route, but all should agree that there are people that do not have similar interest, nor the required knowledge to act on those things.

Note: This picture depicts that the female user count as a regression variable is highly significant only in the yellow area

This leads to the socio-economic and demographic features of society. As people come from different backgrounds and upbringings, their vantage point is shaped and changing over time. Such dynamics also generate a condition where priority has to be selected in the first place. For example, if all happens at the same time, a mother would tend to her children rather than attending a forum of new school zoning policy. Or, underprivileged people will think about travel cost twice if they want to attend the public hearing, compared to those who prefer voicing their concerns directly. In the cultural perspective, there would be many examples that there are certain dynamics, which cover body language and political stance, that may hinder the effective design of public participation. This includes that the elders may be more respected than other tribe members, which may be highly influential when a decision is about to be made.

To be more contextual, the current digital era has transformed public participation designs into more technology-aided platforms. Yet, the classic issue of the use of technology is the digital divide. One might argue that the reasons for people having access to technology are congruent to those of people participating in policy-making. Though it should be confirmed first, to some extent, current utilisation of technology might exacerbate the representativeness issue in participatory practices. People who do not have access to municipal reporting platform on their phone, due to incompatible phone for the app or lack of information on the existence of the app, just simply will not contribute in tagging any problem through the app.

Indeed, the biases in current practices of participatory designs are mostly caused by the converging representation of divergent society. These opaque layers need to be carefully addressed to generate a public policy, which one may assume its equity towards all.

Premise 3: Local knowledge, unravelled

While putting the citizens as the living sensors, one must contextualise the information within its spatial attributes and to the extent of additional information in each report. The latter implies the comment from each user. Several methods suggest text mining, which may result in sentiment analysis. Other technique may group the records based on several keywords into several topics. By this premise, first, we should list every word within the context that might be deemed positive and negative in value. Then, compare every word from the comment, iterate the value, and let the statistics define the results. The challenge would be using the pertinent library and tool packages (hello, machine learning) in the local language i.e. Indonesian and its informal words, which sometimes may be lacking. 

Combining this result with its spatial attributes will further the analysis, even possibly add into the debate of generalisation in geodemographics vs. the highly-granular big data. While several socio-economic indicators are not in high resolution, this coerces the analysis based on the administrative boundary. If the result is later presented to the decision-makers, the delivery of follow-up services will sometimes be blind by this geographical entity, which might be really disadvantageous in an emergency. But indeed, all of this made-up condition works if there is only one channel that is used for the citizens to report something.

Investigating how the public engages in decision-making needs to address the fact that there are multiple ways for one to notify the government about an incident. We talk about informal channels which might be different from a city to another, such as collective action in doing something, local governments in a village, or else. A multi-level, multi-approach set of analysis will prove that indeed there is a complexity in decision-making, even in its earliest step: answering “Is there any problem that we should respond to?”

And...

I know I tried really hard to deliver my thoughts on this matter. This piece only delves into several superficial entities of public participation, which might be flawed by thinking that the number of reports in a certain geographical unit equals to the level of public participation. Yet I argue that using the seemingly-superfluous information, indeed we can gain necessary information in identifying problems that occur around us. We can use different quantitative and spatial tools, along with addressing the biases of public participation which hopefully leads to the unravelling of the local knowledge. Some would be optimistic in using the tools and how-to aforementioned, particularly referring to the fact that data is all around us. However, I humbly suggest that we should look at the bigger picture, starting by identifying how to analyse our own society across the ladder of participation, one of the generalisations of the public that I personally like. By acknowledging the complexity, at least we progress in how to include ourselves in the decision-making process. 

[zodiacrant]

Birth chart as a kingdom (part 2 outer planets)

Jupiter: how does your kingdom develop

Aries/1st house: uncompromising and great need to explore and challenge its own capabilities. demands gifts as a sign of gratitude, sells weapons and armor.

Taurus/2nd house: fulfilling the people’s needs, always developing the kingdom infrastructure. best clothes and luxurious items, food.

Gemini/3rd house: black mailing, finds out the secret to each kingdom’s development. the best inns in all the kingdoms, makes money off bribery and selling secrets.

Cancer/4th house: high agricultural technology, always listening to what the people have to say. selling commodities and all the necessities, livestock and pets.

Leo/5th house: increases and upgrades leisure buildings, the roads are safe and well kept. Must be gifted as a sign of respect and allegiance, best fabric, provides protection for a price.

Virgo/6th house: education is key, tea houses and gardens attracts the wisest from all over. wide range of books, best medicine, alchemy supplements.

Libra/7th house: always finds a new way to produce something at a faster pace, used entertainment to attract wealthy tourists. The very best vanities,decorations, flowers.

Scorpio/8th house: have the best and most advanced technology, always on top with the structural durability.assassinations, engineering, wine.

Sagittarius/9th house: goes around the kingdoms to see what’s new, gets paid to protect caravans. selling horses and meat, would do some one else dirty work.

Capricorn/10th house: plays monopoly, makes sure everything is up to part, enforces the rules.a working force, the bank, has a hidden mine of gold,Everything goes through their kingdom.

Aquarius/11th house: Always onto a scheme, uses the power of manifestation to get all that they need. Gives magical services, knows the real history of everything, have unique and rare items.

Pisces/12th house: Only needs a bed and everything would be fine, explores the depths of the worlds. Best ships and navigators, knows the weather and the land, doesn’t take money but expects a favor in return.

Saturn: what would be the fall of the kingdom

Aries/1st house: constant clash between the leaders, the need to always win, doesn’t know when to stop, bad at diplomacy, won’t admit and face weaknesses.

Taurus/2nd house: fear of unfulfillment and danger, doesn’t know how to deal with change, becomes unstable during crisis.

Gemini/3rd house: no true intentions, no real friends, doesn’t know how to rely completely on it’s on.

Cancer/4th house: lack of communication with the other kingdoms, would hold grudges over small incidents that happened with other kingdoms decades ago, won’t admit for its need for others.

Leo/5th house: look up too long and you would find yourself falling off the mountain, made many enemies by humiliating, doesn’t like to change, pride and delusions of past glory.

Virgo/6th house: won’t ask for help, no one likes them anymore, be too hard on your people and they would leave you in battles, doesn’t want to progress and modernize.

Libra/7th house: doesn’t know how to fight their own battles, looked down upon, won’t admit and take responsibility, would rather run and hide over facing the issues head on.

Scorpio/8th house: untrusting, too prideful to admit they can’t do everything on their own, big walls don’t only keeps things out but they also keep things in.

Sagittarius/9th house: wouldn’t back down, won’t admit it when they’re wrong, civil wars that started over petty jokes.

Capricorn/10th house: dont push your people too hard because then you’ll learn the hard way that they’re the reason behind your success, doesn’t know how to go in battles physically, pessimistic.

Aquarius/11th house: living far away have its benefits but the curse is too big to bear, no one knows where they’re, won’t find someone to help them, god complex mentality would be their biggest demise.

Pisces/12th house: no one knows who are they, doesn’t know what to do, easily manipulated, would be hard on themselves if one of them got hurt.

Uranus: What are the kingdoms are legendary for

Aries/1st house: Natural leaders with true confidence, they’re known for their might at battles, some of the most ruthless tyrants came from this kingdom.

Taurus/2nd house: Major cities talked about all over, Majestic castles , good memories and stories about fierce and kind rulers that kept the kingdom stable and rich for centuries.

Gemini/3rd house: metropolis cities buzzing with people from different places, diversity, a kingdom known for their stories and traveling tales wither they were real or a myth everyone enjoyed them or have feard them.

Cancer/4th house: A city of revival, no matter how manny hurricanes and storms hit they always get up, a place where traditions and celebrations never die, their rulers are known for their generosity and helping those in need.

Leo/5th: cities of grace where the legends and the gods resides, parties to be remembered, iconic styles and costumes, their queens beauty is always talked about, people name their children after this kingdom rulers.

Virgo/6th house: everyone read a book from there, the most prestigious schools and institutions, where the wise come together, always remembered for its precision in aesthetics and lifestyles.

Libra/7th house: their flowers and forests are envied for their beauty, many popular sweets originated from there, very nice people, known for their simplicity and elegance.

Scorpio/8th house: feared and loved , many beautifully detailed weapons and Chinas, many legends and myths about them but none are true, their kingdom is known for winning wars without actually fighting.

Sagittarius/9th house: always there for their friends, defends the weak, best horse trainers and archers, their skills in battle and winning without plans and small numbers are always talked about and emulated.

Capricorn/10th house: a major power than shifted the path of all the lands and kingdoms. A big manufacturer. Was part of every war. Didn’t give their enemies a break. Their rulers are known to be the most strict and controlling.

Aquarius/11th house: the kingdom that rebelled against the powers. Won a long lasting battle that would shape many generations.

Pisces/12th house: wasn’t part of any war, but helped the refugees. The leaders of explorations and inventions that changed the world. Were seen as Gods by some people for their heroic efforts.

Neptune: what will be the state of the land during each kingdom reigning period

(since Neptune changes every 10 years most people in present day have their Neptune from Libra (1953-1963) until Aries(2013-2023) Im only going to put the signs from Capricorn (1983-1993)to Aries).

Aries (2013-2023): very intense and competitive atmosphere. Anger is the overall reaction. Lack of sympathy towards those who need help. High sensitivity and quick and irrational thoughts. Many wars and conflicts would take place during their reign.

Pisces (2003-2013): a very creative and out of the box era. Much of major changes in culture would happen. A much more passive and benevolent time. Very underrated era.

Aquarius (1993-2003): rebellions and revelations against past rulers created this kingdom. A period where heritage and traditions were left and a more diverse and eccentric lifestyles were adapted. A period of major changes that basically split the history in two.

Capricorn (1983-1993): a period where work was the most important thing. Money and success was what everyone strived for. Much of the social constructs and traditions were in forced during this era. An era where rulers were considered above the people.

Pluto: what’s the rulers of each era is like

(Pluto changes every 15 years so I’m going to only put from Scorpio (1978-1993) until Capricorn (2008-2023).

Scorpio (1978-1993): untrusting, highly intuitive, harsh sentences, cruel, distracting themselves away from weaknesses with vanities.

Sagittarius (1993-2008): rebellious, all of society’s beliefs and heritage will be destroyed, culture and traditions would be radically changed, self righteous, good means bad ends.

Capricorn (2008-2023): getting things back in order, work and money and progress that what matters, very strict but linear, unconventional and abstract things and ideas will be abandoned or criminalized.

(I hope you guys love this one, the outer planets have been very difficult to translate and describe. I’m going to do the other aspects in the chart such as (descendants, Lilith, nodes etc.....) so let me know if you’re interested in that. please follow and share your dirt on the signs ☕️. )

[chrysaliseuro2019]

FROM RAGS TO RICHES

Our usual peaceful breakfast wasn’t to be this morning. The owner of the absolutely perfectly tasteful Pension/BnB we stayed in had in her wisdom chosen to set one long table instead of several small ones. In keeping with the rest of the little establishment the setting and indeed breakfast was exquisite. That is until Daniela came to join us.

Chris asked her if she spoke English and from that moment she never stopped proving she could. We found out she is building two houses in Ostuni (with pools) and invited us to come and look at them (we declined), has a son who is hoping to work at Four Seasons in Sydney next year and that she wants to go to Brisbane and experience the personal concierge who can take you to all the best Brisbane has to offer. We didn’t like to disabuse her fantasy by saying that one day would probably cover it.

Meanwhile the other more reserved guests arrived at the table. They all suggested we go to Matera saying it was amazing but didn’t specify why. One of them even said she cried when she saw it. We thought this must be some speccy city to evoke such a reaction. Daniela chipped in with an accommodation suggestion which when we checked on booking.com came in at €435 per night, about a week’s accommodation budget for us. We parted with Daniela wanting to exchange telephone numbers so we only hope Brisbane can enhance its tourist appeal to keep her there.

Matera bound which was an easy drive although a bit of it was retracing our steps from yesterday. Past all the little truilli and lucky enough to be stopped by a flock of around 200 sheep crossing the road. Escorting them were 2 dogs who looked more like golden retrievers (possibly Maremma breed)than our kelpies or border collies and a farmer. When they’d safely crossed bells jingling, the farmer closed the gate and returned to his home while the dogs joined the flock blending in perfectly, gamboling up the hill with their charges. Presumably the flock settled to graze and the dogs settled to oversee them.

Found a big carpark not too far out of town after the more formal one was full. Worked out is was a no charge car park, slapped on plenty of sunscreen to deal with the blazing sun and walked 10 minutes into town. The drive and walk into town to date had been less than inspiring so what were the girl’s tears about?

Found a large square with the usual imposing municipal office buildings, the do-not-ignore-me church and a statue based on one of Salvador Dali’s figures -a long and skinny legged elephant with a structure on its back. Still looking for the tear jerking moment and there it was. Looking from street level to below laid out is a vast city built into caves known Sassi. A total network of rambling ‘homes’ built into limestone rocks ad hoc in structure and layout. It was huge and what we could see was only half of it, divided by a cathedral built at the top (as cathedrals inevitably are) with the rest hidden down the incline behind the cathedral. The rest of the new city had been built at a higher level around it. It truly was jaw dropping.

There were tours to the water cisterns but didn’t fancy that. Other than that you could just roam the higgeldy piggeldy streets looking at this city. We soon learnt its sad history. The Sassi was over 2000 years old and was inhabited as slums by 15,000 people as recently as 1952. The dwellings had no sanitation, electricity or natural light. Families of any number of children who survived diseases such as cholera and malaria shared a one room dwelling with livestock of maybe a donkey, pigs and/or chooks. The toilet was in the corner and no flush technology there. The men and boys travelled with the donkey to work the land some several kilometres away, and the women plied skill they had at home in order to make ends meet. It was overwhelmingly grim. A reconstructed house was set up as a museum to get a feel for it. But compared to the photos in the foyer the museum model, although unbelievably basic, was a sanitised version of what the reality must have been. Now we understood the tears.

Finally the Italian prime minister in 1950 called the slums ‘a national disgrace’ and action was taken. The families were moved out of the slums into new accommodation in the new bit of town. However many of the residents struggled to adapt having never seen water from a tap, electric lights etc. Also where to keep the livestock? And some felt very disconnected from what once was a community of solidarity. The adjustment must have been daunting. The young lady at the museum said her grandfather lived there and once removed never went back. And who could blame him. Another man now aged 83, so presumably an ex-resident, also had painstakingly constructed a large model of the city. It took him 3 years.

But the wheels of change came into play as they have in Melbourne’s inner suburbs and it is now a highly desirable place to stay. In 1986 it was decided to allow people to move back. But not the old inhabitants. Instead a tourist opportunity opened up. In 2017 it was claimed more than 25% of the Sassi had been converted to Airbnb accommodation. We passed plenty of these Airbnbs and suspect that Daniela’s€435 per night was one of them.

A quick lunch that turned out to be a way to use the restaurants stale bread, possibly salvaged from the days when the Sassi was still a slum, by soaking it in oil, throwing 2 slices of tomato and 2 baby tomatoes cut into 16ths, a few chunks of onion and some celery leaves and calling it a local speciality. Special it was not. Topped up with some excellent sour cherry pastries along our walk.

The walk around the Sassi while sobering to think how conditions once were, was also lovely, if hot. Down the deep valley was a river and the walk was punctuated with statues inspired by Dali’s artworks. We highly recommend making this a stop in any Puglia itinerary.

Paid a quick visit to the museum which had a room open with some 15th Century artefacts to tempt visitors to buy a ticket for the rest of the museum. This sounds like a blasé traveller, but having seen antiquities from many centuries BC we weren’t tempted to venture in. Instead back to our Fiat to head a little further towards Rome. Once again a pleasant drive as the flatter plains of Puglia slowly transformed into rolling hills as we drove towards Benevento in the Campania region. I chose this town out of the blue as there seemed to be a lot of little hamlets and this was a reasonable sized town so would have accommodation choices. Did a quick Google images scan and pictures looked ok and hotel on booking.com looked ok but held off booking to firstly do a quick reccy of town and if alright then check out the hotel.

On approach Benevento looked a dud. Lots of 50’s and 60’s ugly apartments and no apparent charm. Started to doubt my judgement so another quick google of the most beautiful towns in Campania showed Benevento came in second to Naples which was reassuring. Found the hotel after a miss on first attempt and landed a huge room with view over local river for a much better deal than booking.com. Also got some dinner recommendations which are also helpful.

Quick spruce and time to explore. Five minutes walk to the Centro historico which consisted of a wide Roman road with little dark side streets running off it and breaking out into plazas from time to time. Once again there were many grand buildings, bell towers, churches and gladly shops selling clothes not tourist tatt. It turned out we had chosen well.

Tried the first dinner recommendation way down one of those dark side streets but the atmospheric main room was full so they steered us to the fully lit ante room with one couple looking very lonely. Think they would’ve liked the company of other diners so they didn’t feel like they were in Siberia but we weren’t charitable enough to join them.

So off to second choice which had seating outside in a little courtyard which is what we hoped for. As we arrived 2 women were drifting in too and they beat us to the table by a short half head. Damn that was the last table so now struggling to find somewhere. Up the main drag but that’s never our choice as usually very touristy and average food. Finally saw a few bods sitting down another dark narrow laneway and went exploring this time with success. Last table of only 3 outside was ours. It felt very local down this not quite grimy but certainly not sanitised alleyway. As usual beer, red and white wine readily available, while vodka, tonic, rosé and sprite (for shandy purposes) were not. Opposites was a little bar so I went looking for a sprite to buy but did one better by getting a V&T and bringing it back to the table. A different version of BYO.

Pizza for Chris and spaghetti arrabiata (angry sauce) for me and it sure made by tongue angry with one big lump of chilli heavily disguised amongst the sugo.

Identified a couple of historic sites to explore tomorrow morning and headed for home. Meanwhile the Main Street had become more crowded with families, oldies like us and a number of young people especially young men in small groups wandering along chatting and enjoying the balmy air.

[doedipus]

I finally finished moyashimon

it’s honestly one of my favorite anime/manga that I’ve read in a long, long time. there are definitely some aspects of the work that frustrate me, but it’s not quite enough to sour the work as a whole in my eyes. if you’re in the mood for a really chill slice of life series with a lot of well-developed and respectfully portrayed female and queer characters, definitely give it a shot.

first of all, to anyone who’s only seen the anime adaptation, definitely, definitely, definitely look into the manga. some of the best parts in the series happen after the anime ends, esp. the craft beer adventure in volume 8 and american road trip in volume 10. plus, if you’re like me and are mostly drawn to the work because of kei, her involvement in the story only starts ramping up immediately after the anime ends, and she’s essentially the main character of the last 3 volumes. Plus, ishikawa and his team have a lot of fun with the medium that doesn’t always translate into animation.

All in all, picking up the manga is 100% worth your time if you’re even vaguely intrigued by the premise

more detailed thoughts and a handful of good reaction images under the break

I think overall the beer, france, and america arcs are the high points of the series.

The beer arc sticks out to me mostly because of stuff happening in real life during the time I was reading it. Basically, some of my friends talked me into taking a beer tasting class at uni with them. I’d never really liked beer very much beforehand, but it turns out I was just drinking the wrong kinds of beer. I’ll put my life on the line for a good IPA now that I know what that even is.

The beer section of moyashimon has mutou go through a similar process- she starts out by going on a huge tirade about how craft beer sucks and it’s only appealing to pretentious weirdos, and then over the course of the volume, they go over what different kinds of beer are like, how they’re made, etc. It ended up giving me a good idea of what to look out for in the beer class, and it was fun being able to compare what I was sampling to what the fermentation lab crew talked about.

There’s also a pretty cute gender-affirming moment for kei in there, where the gang gives her a women’s costume for the faux oktoberfest celebration the book culminates in. it’s a small plot point, but I liked it a lot.

The france and america arcs are pretty similar and I like them for basically the same reasons. Essentially it boils down to them tying really dynamic plotlines in with the usual culinary intrigue. There’s a real sense of tension to what’s happening in the story, and the food stuff is more directly related to what’s happening in the story than it usually is. In a lot of the other plotlines, the writers have a tendency to frontload all the technical stuff into one or two extended dialogue scenes, which can be kind of hard to get through in comparison

I also found ishikawa’s assessment of american food pretty fun to read through, and a lot of his comments make me want to try out some western restaurants in japan if I ever end up going there. For instance, he has the characters talk a lot about how burgers and stuff are much sweeter than they’re used to them being in japan, and it’d be neat to have a point of comparison for that.

Also the america arc is where kei and marie probably do gay things, which I am very down for

ultimately, I think upwards of 90% of people who stumble upon this series now, 5 years after the last chapter and last episode were released, are here specifically for kei. she’s the strong bad to sawaki’s homestar: you might not know it yet, but she’s the reason you’re here. if you’re impatient and wanna speedrun straight to the part where she transitions/goes full time/whatever, it’s halfway through volume 4 of the manga and episode 10 of the first season of anime. there’s a lot of fun plotlines that happen before that point that really deserve attention on their own merit, though.

I’m a big fan of kei’s characterization. she’s possibly my favorite trans (or trans-adjacent josou danshi, post-colonialism ho!) character I can think of, and certainly the best I’ve seen written by a cis author. being manga, there’s some dumb missteps that happen, but they seem to be mostly a result of the creators not knowing better rather than them just putting her in to gawk at like a lot of other creative teams tend to do. plus, I think a lot of it boils down to localization error. for instance, the scanslation I read consistently has characters and margin notes refer to her as “he,” but like, japanese doesn’t really use gendered language the way english does, so it’s more representative of the scan team’s biases than the writers’.

One of the things I really like about Kei’s depiction is that the author doesn’t try to make excuses for her behavior. There’s no throwaway line in her backstory about how her parents saw three crows and a capybara on the way home from the hospital and decided to raise her as a girl. She’s clearly attracted to Sawaki, but that’s never framed as her primary motive for transition. She just flatly explains that she thought about it real hard and decided that this was best for her. To me, that’s a much more compelling narrative than one where it’s something either foisted upon the character or something they just sort of haphazardly stumble into.

Another thing that sticks out to me about Kei is that she exists in a series that doesn’t construct its cast as a harem around a singular main character or the reader, which gives her much more room for personal motivations and interests. Like, even though I love Luka from steins;gate to pieces, she and the rest of the female cast in that series really only exist in order to be Okabe’s, and by extension, the viewers’ romantic interests. This ends up sort of limiting their ability for character growth because at the end of the day, they all have to remain available and receptive to Okabe’s advances. As a result, Luka can never really call Okabe out for mistreating her because the writers won���t risk making her route or subplot unappealing. The same goes for plenty of other series trans characters find themselves in, and it shows. So many of them are either smug tricksters there to tease viewers or utterly submissive waifs, and often lack development beyond what’s necessary to get otaku motors running.

Since Moyashimon doesn’t use that kind of restrictive casting structure, the author is able to untie Kei’s sense of self-worth from how Sawaki feels about her and allow the romance subplot to take a back seat while the cast works on their various projects. As a result, she ends up being more independent than most other trans characters and her self-confidence is more genuine. She’s designed from the ground up to be a more complete character, and it makes her inclusion in the main story as well as her subplot with Sawaki feel organic.

on the other hand, as punlich​ pointed out in their post, the series does take a couple passes at introducing characters that seem to be designed with the intent of giving the reader an outlet to vent their sexual frustration around kei, particularly marie and madoka. the former is frequently referenced within the work as being a cis palette swap of kei, and madoka is another of itsuki’s proteges who begins insisting that she’s going to marry sawaki shortly after she’s introduced and receives little characterization beyond that. Marie ends up being a strong character in her own right, but the work probably would’ve been better off if they’d given her basically any other design.

at least in my reading of the work, neither is really taken seriously as a preferable alternative pairing to kei/sawaki, since marie ends up being more into kei than sawaki in the end, and madoka just makes sawaki uncomfortable more often than not. it’s a clear step up from works like steins;gate, re:zero, blend-s, or oregairu, where the trans or GNC character is the one who’s never taken seriously to the point of being a joke inclusion more than anything. still, it’s irritating that the creators would feel the need to include that sort of character, given how they’re usually pretty good about not harem-izing their cast.

uh, and speaking of that, fuck most of volume 11. the central plotline for that section is that the school holds a beauty pageant for the cast, which is, uh, wildly out of character for the series to say the least. it’s to the point where I’m inclined to suspect some form of executive meddling. like maybe they were gonna get dropped due to lack of readership and the brass told the creative team to do a dumb fanservice arc or something. they talk in a sidebar about how they changed editors around the start of this arc, so I have a hunch that has something to do with it?  I guess only they would know, though. it’s not like I can read any interviews or anything lol.

there’s still good content in there, and like I mentioned earlier, it’s when kei starts to really dominate a lot of the screen time, which is a big plus. it’s just dumb and out of place.

I also kind of found the conclusion to kei and sawaki’s “will they, won’t they” subplot really unfulfilling. namely, there really isn’t a conclusion to it at all. at the end, it’s clear that kei’s finally become comfortable with her attraction to sawaki, but sawaki is still kinda hesitant about going anywhere serious with someone he’s been friends with since forever. and like, I can get that, it’s sort of a natural aspect of where that arc would have to go, it’s just a frustrating note to end on. it seems likely that they would get together in the future, at least. (and that’s why you should read my fanfics!)

One thing I really liked about the ending section is sawaki comes up with some proactive uses for his superpower. for most of the series, it’s just a vehicle for ishikawa to exposit about his fascination with microbiology and fermented cuisine, which works great with the lower-key tone the series went for. still, the ways he uses it at the end are pretty clever, and it would’ve been neat to see him go on to use it in other ways. It’s frustrating that one of the uses he comes up with involves doing mouth-to-mouth with madoka, however.

I kind of get the feeling that the series got cut short because a lot of plot threads get addressed and tied up really quickly and sloppily in the last four or five chapters, while a ton of others just sit there. idk if it was a popularity thing, or if ishikawa decided to go all-in on maria the virgin witch, or some other factor, but I guess that’s kind of the nature of serial fiction. it just goes on as long as the creators and publishers are engaged with it, and then it’s over and they all move onto something else.

I’m being pretty hard on the ending portions of the series, but honestly pretty much everything not directly related to the beauty pageant or madoka is really solid. I’m just laying it all out there so nobody gets caught off-guard by the jankiness more than anything.

For one reason or another, moyashimon really struck a chord with me, and it’s kind of hard to put into words why. A big part of it is that kei is a character that I feel a sort of kinship with, which is a rare occurrence as a trans person. She feels like a real person that I’d meet through a message board or discord lobby. The rest of the cast has shades of that as well- the students feel like people I could have met in school, and itsuki harkens back to aspects of professors I’ve had, from his weird sense of humor to his rather alarming past working for the military. It’s easy for me to subconsciously insert myself into their fictional friend group. I guess it’s kind of like how people tend to engage with redlettermedia or ensemble let’s play channels like game grumps or super best friends play. Reading about the gang’s antics confers a sense of belonging that I’m perpetually starving for.

Another aspect of it is that it’s just fun to indulge in someone else’s hyperfixations for a while. It’s why sci-fi authors like heinlein and crichton are so influential, and why internet personalities like cgp grey or jon bois are so engaging: they’re really adept at articulating how utterly captivating some concept or ideology is to them at the moment. Somewhere between most and all of what ishikawa has to say about food and microbiology goes directly over my head, but the passion he has for those topics is readily apparent in every jargon-infested, chart-saturated debate he has his characters get into, and I love it. In that sidebar he goes on about his relationship to his editors, he mentions that the top boy editor chewed him out a couple times for basically trying to sneak a textbook into the magazine. It ends up being compelling based on passion alone, even if I only really internalized a fifth of what he actually had to say.

Is moyashimon for you? Ultimately I don’t think it’s really for anyone besides ishikawa himself. But if you’re at all like me, chances are you’ll fall in love with this bizarre and charming edutainment series anyway. If any of this sounds even remotely interesting to you, I can’t recommend checking it out highly enough.

[neonbluebell]

Reminder: The “political compass” and “Horseshoe theory” are intentionally inaccurate pieces of propaganda

It’s a device designed to give political validity to ideologies that lack coherency and consistency with their espoused values, and is slanted to look favorably on Right-wing ideology.

Prior to the growth in popularity of the political compass (pictured)...

...the world and it’s people conceptualized the political spectrum like this....

...Although, please keep in mind that this version is modernized. Conservatism, prior to the United States adaptation and use of the word, meant something closer to (but not the same as) Traditionalism, and tended to include more neo-classical virtue-ethics-y sort of stuff, for example. But we’re talking in the here and now, and being simple and accessible whilst being accurate to current usage of the language is more important. Now, chances are, you’ve seen this same chart bent around to look like this...

...which is why “Horseshoe theory” is called what it is. It’s implication is that the far Left and far Right have more in common than the center does. This idea came from the 20th century proliferation of theory based on the work of Lenin (who is the basis of Maoism, Stalinism and despite his separatism from the Bolsheviks, Trotsky) and it’s implementation. Whilst socialism had existed, both in societies and as varying social theories for thousands of years, this new wave of thinking presented a radical departure from the norm - it posited that social hierarchy and authority, particularly the state, could be used to create liberty. By utilizing authoritarian power for the good of the people, rather than the good of the state, social order and financial plenty could both proliferate. Once people grew accustomed and happy with the new state of affairs, the state would no longer have to regulate and organize due to people wanting to keep things going as they are, and the state would become redundant and whither away. Thus, “Authoritarian Leftism” was born, a new and untested theory that became incredibly popular for a wide range of reasons. Perhaps foremost among them was that this theory engaged with a real problem - for plenty to exist, social stability needed to be maintained, something that was constantly being upturned by imperialistic invasion, looting and colonization in the nations where it became popular. The USSR was born out of German imperialism, the CPV was born out of French and American imperialism and the CCP was born out of British and Japanese imperialism. But, outside of resisting imperialism (which these new social structures were actually very good at. The fact that North Korea still exists is testimony to that), the reality of this theory was far different. Socialism/communism (two words that historically mean the same thing, though in the post Lenin era, communism came to have additional authoritarian connotations) are by definition control of the means of production (the places where things are made, and skills are performed. Workplaces, essentially) and by the working class rather than an owning class, and the holding of raw resources in common. In no nation that adopted these ideologies did this happen. Control over the means of production was in the hands of ��workers councils”, who were essentially elected representatives of the working class. The problem with that was that these people, by joining these councils, effectively were no longer members of the working class. They controlled and administrated the means on production, effectively acting as a new owning class, and replicating the problems that existed under capitalism. These councils were in turn beholden to the state, meaning that true power was far from the working class, and instead resided with an elite ruling class. And, unsurprisingly, elite ruling classes care very little about the people, and terrible atrocities occurred. And here is where we see Horseshoe Theory begin to fall apart in entirety. If it wasn’t EVER socialist or communist, regardless of what they called themselves, well... It wasn’t ever socialist or communist. And as such, placing these ideologies alongside far Left ideologies is a mistake. Because other far Left ideologies actively resisted authoritarian “communism” when they realized what it was actually about.

This flag is the Iron Front flag, also known as the Antifascist Circle. It is an incredibly popular anarchist insignia. The three white arrows represent what they are resisting - Nazis, monarchist and communists (again, the phrase in context means authoritarian “communists”, not socialists). It’s from 1933. The far Left rejected authoritarian “communists” from the very beginning, or at least before anyone else except the fascists. Similar movements sprung up within the USSR - Anarchist sailors, realizing that the Bolsheviks weren’t who they had said they were ideologically, held up in an act of resistance at Kronstadt naval base.  Their demands included freedom of speech, the end of deportation to work camps, a change in Soviet war politics, and liberation of the “worker’s councils” from Bolshevik control. They were killed to a man with machineguns. The Black Army, revolutionary anarchists who had been major players in the revolution were denounced and killed. Authoritarian “communists” have ALWAYS been the enemy of the rest of the far Left. Now, if authoritarian “communism” isn’t socialist/communist, and is an enemy of the Left wing, and created a hierarchical society dominated by unquestionable absolute rulers supported by armies of secret police under a regime that was an enemy of any of it’s people considered socially undesirable? It isn’t similar to fascism. It’s just fucking fascism. And saying that fascism and fascism have a lot in common is obvious, because it’s all Right wing ideology. But what of the most famous fascists, the Nazis? You know, the National Socialists. Well, this one is simple - did the workers control the means of production, or was it a capitalist nation where those controlling the means of production were only beholden to the state? The answer is the latter, just like the USSR and their ilk. They were by definition NOT SOCIALISTS. This is an important thing to internalize, that what people label themselves is a matter of optics and political convenience, especially when dealing with populist movements. We understand this when we discuss nations that call themselves democratic, but are not. It’s exactly the same for socialism and communism. With this groundwork laid, let’s (finally) talk about the political compass. As has been established, the upper Left quadrant is in fact the upper Right quadrant. The lower Left quadrant exists, the upper Right quadrant exists...

...But what about the lower Right quadrant. The libertarian Right? Well, the “libertarian” Right (yeah, you know what those quotation marks mean already, don’t you?) operates under the notion that hierarchy occurs naturally, and providing that such power was not gained via or is not used for coercion, intimidation, violence or otherwise, is just and fair. This is the Non Aggression Principal (NAP) that is the heart of “libertarian” Right thought. It’s intent is to maximize freedom, whilst having a clear framework for where your freedom ends and another person’s begins, whilst protecting a core Right wing value - the right to create legacy (To assure that your kith and kin will be cared for by allowing and protecting your rights to personal and private property ownership, especially capital (again, the places where things are made and skills are performed) and raw resources). Involuntary taxation is therefore categorically a violation of the NAP, and within this framework of thought, equatable with theft. Regulation of industry is considered coercion, and violates the NAP. Socialism, which would abolish private property (ownership of capital and raw resources) but allow the retention of personal property (the house you live in, your car, your shoes, your toothbrush) is considered theft. Indeed, the only compatible economic system with this economic system is unregulated, free-association, “laissez-faire” capitalism. And this is exactly where “libertarian” Right ideology becomes incoherent. Because we hadlLaissez-faire capitalism in the Industrial Age. Your unregulated factory that you have knowingly built to be dangerous to cut costs is not ethically different from booby trapping your yard, and looting anyone who's killed. You are knowingly exposing people to danger for profit. And providing you stick warning signs up that state it’s dangerous, you haven’t violated the NAP - because they posit that people freely choose to enter these spaces. They are exposing themselves, according to this logic. The inevitable monopolies that come without regulation of capitalism and MASSIVE taxation on the wealthy mean that capitalists can quickly own whole towns and cities. And they are inevitable, as the best business practices under capitalism are to pay the least you need to in order to retain your workforce, maximize profit, and to prevent your workers (who know the industry) from being able to get enough money to acquire their own capital and become a competitor. If you control all the money, all the food, all the shelter, etc? When people can't afford to live, to eat, to have a home, that's explicitly your fault. And no, they can't just leave to go work for another overlord who's offering better pay, because they have no money to move. At best, they can flee as effective refugees - and that means you've got to abandon your possessions you can't carry, risk hunger, thirst and exposure on the road, etc. Forcible relocation is violence, institutional disenfranchisement is violence, the inability to be free to pursue happiness is violence. It's not all truncheons and guns. Women, PoC, people who are openly queer all face issues of harassment, violence, disproportionate pay and more in our current environment. How's it going to be when no-one is stepping on the neck of bigots? People with disabilities, especially severe physical or developmental disabilities, are already shoehorned into poverty by our society. What happens when they're effectively ruled by a multi-billionaire who only sees value in people as labor tools? Right “libertarianism” is liberty only for an elite, wealthy class of rulers, who regardless of the NAP wield truly absolute power. And what do we call a social arrangement that explicitly hates the Left wing, has absolute rulers, and that disenfranchises, harms and kills “undesirables”? That’s right! It’s fascism! And this is why the political compass is propaganda - Three quarters (3/4) of it contains the ideology of fascism. It’s fascist propaganda. So, if the bottom right corner of this compass is actually the top right corner, we’re left with this...

...Or, if we clean it up, this...

...And if we polish it up and add our detailed data...

We end up back where we began, with an easy to understand political spectrum that makes perfect sense. So why was it over-complicated? What was the end goal of such an action? Well, once you get to this point, something becomes apparent - the dichotomy is between liberty and authority. Between equality and hierarchy. Between sharing and hoarding. Between fighting to uplift ALL of your fellow human beings, and fighting to uplift yourself at their expense. It’s because, once you reach this point, it becomes apparent that it’s as simple as good versus evil. That being a Leftist is an ethical responsibility. And I’m aware that that’s a HUGE assertion to make. But if you call a spade a spade, and stop playing games with language and semantics, this is the only conclusion I can rationally come to.