#all if not most applies to human verse only but yeah

[bumblequinn]

hi @sourpatchsquids! thank you for your question.

as an artist with ADHD, i know this struggle very well. unfortunately offering advice on this kind of thing can be tricky, because what works for me may not work for you (and vice versa!). nonetheless, i can try; take whatever works for you, forget the rest, or reshape any part of it as you see fit. :)

but before i offer any actual tools, i have one caveat. i want you to take a moment to reflect and consider if you should be:

changing expectations

the timing of this question seems fated, because just the other day i had a therapy session wherein i expressed my grief and frustration over struggling to work lately due to my seasonal depression. it's not fair that i'm struggling just because it got a little darker outside! i just want the spark i had in the summer! i was so much more consistent!

my therapist's response: nothing about human beings is consistent. we get sick, we get tired, we get hungry and thirsty (and thirsty) and sad and lonely and restless and stressed and overwhelmed. this all gets amplified for folks who are atypical in some way or another.

when my therapist compared our seasonal cycles to those of plants and other animals, who wilt and slow down and hibernate, i protested aloud that i wanted to be a perennial instead. at this she said: even perennials change with the seasons. rose bushes have to be pruned, sometimes down to half their height! it was a dose of perspective i didn't particularly want, but really needed.

so when you're struggling to work through executive dysfunction, burnout, or brain fog, it can help to first check in with yourself about a few things. what do you have the capacity for right now? do you need any accommodation? and if so, what changes you might make to accommodate yourself?

with practice and self reflection, i've learned a handful of specific routines that help me when i'm struggling with creative work, which i'll detail next. note that while your question is specifically about music and i am specifically a musician, i believe that all of these suggestions can apply to most any form of digital creative work.

with that in mind:

#1: work slower

when i'm at the top of my game, i can get a LOT done in a day. but when i'm depressed, fatigued, or distracted, i just can't go full steam. sometimes i'll try to convince myself that i can if i just push harder, but what actually ends up happening is that i'm just fiddling with settings and going in circles rather than moving forward.

instead of that, when i want to work a lot but can't, i try to work slow. how slow? however slow i need to. take four hours to figure out the melody for a single verse. take all day to figure out that drum groove. yeah, i take a lot of breaks in between. who says i have to be my Absolute Most Productive Every Day Or Else? that's the puritan work ethic talking. kill it. be kind to yourself.

i'm reminded of advice i once read about some super successful and prolific author (gaiman? king? pratchett?) who said they wrote only four hundred words every weekday. that's already less than the word count of this post, and i'm only—[travels into the future to check my final word count]... 22.8% of the way through writing it!

now, i don't think i could function that way, because ADHD means some days i'm hyperfocused like crazy, and other days i just have no steam at all (more on that in #4-6). but it seems to me that if even someone highly respected in their profession can achieve what they have with only a little bit of work on a regular basis, maybe i don't have to punish myself for not pumping out a finished work every single week.

doing less work per day means you're much less likely to burn out, which does a lot for working more consistently. if that consistency still doesn't look like a five-day work week, that's okay! as long as it helps you work even a little more often when you want to, it's something worth doing.

however, if you're still feeling truly stuck, all hope isn't lost. you can still try:

#2: switch projects

sometimes the reason i'm moving slow is because of a bad brain day, but sometimes the reason is that i just cannot muster the motivation to do the specific task i'm trying to do right now. ADHD is fueled by novelty and interest, and if i'm not interested in what i'm doing, or it's feeling stale, that's a sign that i need to switch gears.

this is why first it's helpful for me to have more than one project going at a time. this might mean completely unrelated works, or it might just mean related tracks as with the music for a game like SLARPG or susan taxpayer.

the idea here is not to start a dozen different projects and bounce around them like i'm playing whac-a-mole—though i have done that. (i don't recommend it.) the idea here is to have a manageable number of different projects i can be working on so that if i get bored or stuck on something, i have fallback options.

what that number of projects is depends entirely on the week. maybe right now it's two, maybe another time it's three. i would probably be getting carried away if i tried more than that, but that's just my own limit. maybe yours is different. that's something for you to think about.

but it doesn't have to stop there.

#3: switch focus

maybe there is this one project that i just HAVE to work on, but the task i'm trying to do at this stage just isn't coming to me. okay, well, why don't i try working on a different task?

let's say i can't figure out what i want to do with the melody in one part of the song:

what if i try jumping ahead to a different part of the melody? ...no, i'm stumped on melodies today. okay, how about working on the drums instead? ...hmm no, i think i'm just completely tapped out on writing parts right now. alright, what if i organized my tracks, making sure they're all grouped and named in a way that i can work with easily? what if i did a rough volume balance for the mix?

and so on. if that's not enough to shake the off stuckness, i might consider: what can i do to make this project more interesting to me?

what happens if i try using an instrument or effect that i almost never reach for? what if i try sampling something obscure? what if i bang out the drums using my midi keyboard instead of drawing it in on the piano roll?

any approach that breaks me out of my usual habits is bound to get that feeling of novelty and fun back when i need it.

or maybe i can't do any of that right now, and so i take the time to answer a question from a fellow musician instead. i consider that part of my work, too, in a broader sense. check in with yourself and figure out what you can do right now. the rest will still be there later.

but okay, let's say you try switching gears, and switching again, and again, and nothing is moving. you try new approaches, but that wall of awful is insurmountable in this moment. it happens! the next thing you might try is:

#4: learn something new

when you aren't able to make progress on your projects, you can still make progress on your knowledge and craft. i often find this stokes a flame of inspiration in me where there wasn't one before. and even when it doesn't, it still gets my brain out of that feeling of stuckness and dread and into one of thought and action. learning also benefits in the long term because it adds to the well of knowledge from which you draw for all your future works.

for all the awfulness that exists on the internet, it remains an absolute treasure trove of teaching. there's an endless ocean of videos, blog posts, and articles from which you might learn something about your craft. (and if you sail the seven seas, plenty of book PDFs as well. 🦜🏴‍☠️)

it's true that the quality and depth of information out there can vary wildly, but in my experience most resources get at least some things right. and the more you research, practice, and figure out what works for you, the better you will learn to differentiate between the advice worth keeping, and the advice to forget. (that goes for all of what i'm saying here, too!)

that said, since our shared focus is music, a few resources i would highly recommend are:

music theory and composition music matters, 12tone, charles cornell, music with myles, 8-bit music theory, and this introduction by andrew huang

mixing and production dan worrall (especially this series for fabfilter), kush after hours, red means recording, andrew huang, alice yalcin efe, in the mix

general inspiration nahre sol, ben levin, david hilowitz, game score fanfare, posy, jerobeam fenderson, open reel ensemble, and ELECTRONICOS FANTASTICOS!

(if any readers have their own helpful resources for creating music or any other media, feel free to share in the replies & reblogs! 💓)

of course, on an especially bad day, it might be a challenge to seek out information, let alone retain it. that can feel pretty bad, but remember: be kind to yourself. the next thing you might consider trying is:

#5: consume art you love

not just music. books. shows. movies. games. illustration. animation. whatever moves and inspires you.

but do it intentionally. don't just pull up some random thing the algorithm suggested! check in with yourself about what you want (or are able) to engage with right now. choose accordingly. if you get a little way into it and realize it's not scratching that itch, hit the bricks. check in with yourself again. wash, rinse, repeat, until you find whatever it is that speaks to you right now.

and do it actively, if you can. don't just let it go in one eye and out the other! really pay attention to the work. what do you like about it? what are its themes and motifs? what makes it work so well? what are its flaws, and how much do they matter? what might you do differently? you can write notes as you do this if it helps, but even simply noticing and thinking goes a long way.

what you don't want to do is come at this with a lens of shame or envy. you're not here just to say to yourself, "ugh, if only i could do THAT." it's okay if it happens. use that thought as a springboard for curiosity: "well okay, how DID they do that? do i have the resources for it? if so, how could i apply that to my own work? if not, how can i adapt it, or what do i need to learn?" keep your mind open and approach the work with a sense of wonder.

as a creative person, it's very easy to think, "i should be making something right now, not watching a movie!" but that thought forgets something vital: your art is a response in a conversation. of course the "language" you use is your own, and maybe if you're lucky you'll invent a new word. but most of the words you use have been around long before you were born. you're just one voice in a dialogue that spans continents and generations, and that's okay. it's even the whole point.

none of us is an island. we are profoundly social animals. just as we can't live without eating, we can't make without learning. so half of making art is consuming it. consider this part of the process as well.

and finally,

#6: rest, and live your life

let's say you're in really dire straits. you've tried working slower. you tried changing focus, you tried changing projects. you want to take in new information or actively engage with your favorite art, but you're not in the headspace for it. what now?

take a nap. take a walk. take a shower. eat a nice meal, or an okay one. talk to a friend. maybe even do that chore you've been putting off (you know the one).

it's human to always crave making, but you're not a machine—and even if you were, machines need regular maintenance, too! you wouldn't drive a car that's completely out of gas, and you won't do yourself any favors treating your body that way either.

i know that when you take a break it feels as though you're not accomplishing anything, but you are: you're taking care of your animal self. and while you do that, your creative brain doesn't stop working! much like windows, it has countless background processes running at any given moment, with inscrutable names like "cbdhsvc_692da" or "Microsoft Edge Update Service." it's true, i checked.

when you're stuck on a project and you step away to rest, your brain is still chipping away at your ideas unconsciously. i like to tell people, "it's percolating." much like waiting for a pot of water to boil, that idea is still heating up, even when you take a step away. just be sure to check in on it once in a while. the time will pass, and it'll be boiling again before long. :)

before i go, i'll leave you with one last thing to keep in mind as you try all of these strategies:

be kind to yourself.

being human is just about one of the hardest things you can do. let alone being a human trying to survive capitalism while living with disabilities! the last thing you need on top of that is to overwork yourself, talk to yourself negatively, or treat yourself harshly. there are plenty of other people in the world who do that to you—don't be one of them.

i'm not saying that you shouldn't try to challenge yourself, to test your limits and go above and beyond your ambitions, if that's what you want to do. just remember that hard work and self compassion are not mutually exclusive. so be careful not to bully yourself. take pride in the progress you make, even when it seems small. encourage yourself like you would a friend who's going through a hard time. and when you challenge yourself, be your own cheerleader.

i hope you find this advice helpful! remember, this is just what helps me, so don't feel like you have to follow any of it exactly. maybe taking time to learn new information helps break you out of your rut more than working slowly, so you reach for that tool first. maybe having multiple projects going at once is too distracting for you, so you prefer to stick to one at a time. whatever your needs are, feel free to alter and adapt these ideas to fit you.

thank you for reading, and i wish you the best of luck in your creating.

with care, bee 🐦

[bluhjeans]

songs i associate with dbh characters / what i think their fav songs would be

pleasee share ur own thoughts & opinions id love to hear them!! and I need to ramble abt my dbh opinions to people (+templates if u wanna make ur own)

explaining my reasoning here if anyones curious

gavin: couldn't decide between rehab and in my feelings because theyre both just so him (and by that i mean fanon him cuz there really wasnt much to work on) 'in my feelings' because I can just imagine him to all' of the lyrics ('Sobbin' in my cup of coffee 'cause I fell for another loser' and 'Who's doper than this bitch, who's free-er than me' in particular) and rehab is a little looser of a connection, it stems from this story that ive been sorta writing that focuses on gavins relationship with alcohol aswell as his friendship with tina, and I just feel like rehab really captures his reluctance to give up the many different problems he has in the story like drinking, smoking & drugs rk900/nines: i dont really imagine he listens to music but but i kinda associate him with the pre-chorus in 'In my feelings' by LDR with the 'get that cigarette smoke out of my face' and the bridge with 'got me feeling so blue, making no sense at all, gotta leave right now' sooo duet with gavin...? 'shades of cool' (u may have noticed i like lana songs by now!!) also really matches nines IMO, the song is about her own pain and disappointment but but it also centers around this flawed love interest she wants to fix and understand, but ultimately can't, which to me just feels like nines and gavin, atleast in my own hc's (can you guess my fav ship yet) connor: whilst this song (a human's touch) could generally apply to all androids in dbh I connect it most with connor, especially in the second verse; "We were still going strong I never did you wrong Until the new me came along It was just you and me We were such a good team But now I’m alone on the boulevard of broken screens" Listening to this, I can really imagine him talking to Amanda after being introduced to his successor, the RK900 ('the new me') - I also can imagine the boulevard of broken screens being in reference to the graves of his previous bodies and I just think thattt hits yk, + whilst the second verse applies to machine connor more, the craving for human touch (connection in general) feels rather apt as by becoming deviant he has severed ties with Cyberlife, causing him to be pretty alone so yeah kara: I can just imagine her, alice and luther all singing country roads together in a car during the summer and it just warms my heart sm like its just sooo cuteee <3 I can also imagine her being a fan of Adele's music in general, I can't really explain why but she just seems like the type of person to be reaalllyyy into adele (me too) (+ i know age as a concept isnt a thing for androids really but adeles music appeals to a large age range making her music appealing 2 families so maybe im connecting adele n kara because of that) markus: I feel like I don't even need to explain history has its eyes on you... i mean come on.. but ohhh emmm geee!! I can not stress how PERFECT 'as the world caves in' is for markus atleast in my opinion, when I listen to it I can really picture this song over markus either choosing to sacrifice himself in BfD when surrounded, but generally I can just imagine this song over him doing anything really. 'run boy run' also feels like it needs little explanation, just listen to the song/look at the lyrics and youll see the connection north: I don't actually have any meaningful reasons for these songs but I just feel like north would like them but I guess 'breakin' dishes' is the one I thought about most because I can imagine her acting similarly in the same situation soo yeah chloe: Chloe doesn't really have a lot to work on with her extremely limited appearance in-game so this is completely based off a fic i read lol, where chloe was in a relationship with kamski but only in private because of his concern for his image anyways, in 'a loving feeling' mitski sings about feelings of loneliness in a relationship where her partner only shows affection alone and yeah that just feels like chloe n kamski to me!

[icharchivist]

i think that Lucio and Shalem and Beelzebub and all of the primals are all trans because their concept of gender just isn't the same as mortals (also while i'm not huge on the "babygirl" thing because it just makes me slightly uncomfortable the way i've seen some people use it (especially because i'm transmasc myself) Belial is one of the few characters where it never feels weird to me seeing it for him, like yeah that's correct. i think he'd call himself that if he knew about it he says shit like "come to daddy" he just. says shit.)

i only think Lucilius is cis because i don't like him and i'm petty (and it's funny to me to joke that he's cis because he's an imperfect clone of Lucio who is trans)

Yeah actually, that's fair.

tbh when it comes to gender personally i'm kinda like... agender i think? Like in general i feel like gender is the most neutral thing in the world, and anything i can see being described as a gendered experience always puzzles me a little because i don't see it - but i figure it's the same way i feel about sexuality and romance to start with, as an AroAce. Just because i don't specifically understand how people see it doesn't mean it's not there, but i'm definitely not a pro to talk about it at all and generally it's why i just roll with whatever canon gives me unless there's strong possible themes i can get out of it.

With that in mind therefore i just don't really think too hard about it -- but when it comes especially to non-humans, unless they have big reasons to care about it, i wouldn't expect them to have strong reasons to uphold the gender binary.

For primals, since they are made by people with purpose, i feel like they're probably in situations where they're assigned clear gender at creation, generally on the binary, that therefore probably means they might approach it the way humans do. Astrals meanwhile should have the exact same reasoning as mortals in the gbf verse in term of how they feel about gender. Gender is mostly a social construct after all and Astral and Skydweller's societies are mostly based around our own customs, for better and for worse.

Some group, like the Fairies, have shown to exist outside of those social norm (with Morgan being canonically nonbinary) so it's its own thing as it is.

But then we look at the Creations Gods -- The Dragons who are all canonically nonbinary, exist because they're concept to start with, so they don't exactly have a binary gender to start with.

By our IRL definition they're trans because we live in a world that values binary (regardless of how true it is) where their identity doesn't fit the social norms we're used to. But in GBF, it's like..... They're born genderless. They are their assigned gender at birth. They just eventually have fun and present with their gender differently due to Skydwellers' customs.

Meanwhile we have Lucio textually saying that the Gender Binary is fake and that it's actually more natural to change genders anytime, and that dictomies are fake to start with. By all account that confirms that Lucio is, in essence, nonbinary -- even if he presents as a guy most of the time with he/him pronoms. And Shalem therefore is in the same bag. They're trans because Skydwellers society can't take this starting point into account as a proper starting point into a gender discovery because it doesn't fit the binary they are accustomed with. But ultimately more than being Trans it's really just that The Speakers exist outside of the Binary to start with-- which by our definition is trans, but i wonder how much it applies in universe yaknow?

And it's where Lucilius and Beelzebub's possible trans readings are, imo, their own can of worm, and i think it's kinda why i dance around the topic when it comes out because are we establishing them as trans by their lived experiences as Astrals, or in comparaison to their relationship to their nonbinary originals? Do we take Bubs' gender presentation being different from Shalem's to be literally "from someone presenting as a woman to someone presenting as a man", or do we take into account Shalem's nonbinarity, or even Beelzebub's as well? Many people will have different reading on that. Some people may even take offense with implying that Bubs has to be trans because of the way he is different from his nonbinary original.

And personally this is just why i'm a bit out of my depth when it comes to trans HCs, not specifically because i don't really see them, but mostly because like -- why stop there? Especially in relation to characters who are not humans to start with. The Trans reading can go further because the logic of Gender in Granblue isn't even the one of our general IRL society. And personally i like the Gender Logic of Granblue a lot more.

(and it's not to say that it means our IRL binary is a good logic, idk how to word it properly. RL's genders are infinite, there are countless of lived experiences that i could never properly imagine, that comes with the infinite nature of human life. It's just that when it comes to compare Fantasy logic, it will also live in with some of its own rules that can be incompatible with reality, while also accounting on how the fantasy might be limited by the limited view of the writers depending on how they feel about gender to start with; Though Granblue at least seems to be at least a bit above the curve when it comes to this type of reflexion.)

But mostly as someone who, like i said, don't like.... also don't have a passionate connection to the topic, i feel like i'm overstepping if i start to discuss what angles can be explored on that level. I feel like I have too many blindspot and i value much more what others people might connect with on that regard.

So i stick more to academic level of "here's thematically how it can work if you need a bone to chew".

Ultimately my own approach is that i don't want to shut down any possible Trans reading (so sorry if i'm going to shake my head in disapproval at the Lucilius dig in the ask), because everyone will have their own reason to resonate with a character and find a detail that i personally could overlook that would make them think "this is my experience with gender, with life, with my identity", and to me those are always more valuable than whatever i can start to talk about when i ramble.

But yeah ultimately the tldr is basically i think all of the Creations Beings in Granblue are originally Nonbinary/Genderless/Agender of some type to start with, which alligns them with Trans readings in general to start with -- and then once we start to dig into Astrals, Skydwellers, Primals, there will be even more discussion about how this transness can translate on various levels.

i kinda ended up rambling, and ultimately the take away is don't take my own take on gender too seriously because i don't think i have the most interesting overview on all of this. But at least if people are going to come in my ask box to ask about it i hope i can throw some bones to chew on this topic!

[valentinesweetheartspecial]

The hands in the new kimisute mvs. It got long so Under the cut

Argonavis: all of their hands together . Yeah this one’s obvious you know argonavis they love each other they’re a group of solid friends chasing a dream We knew this

Gyroaxia: actually this surprised me upon my first watch of All my parts. I wasn’t able to include the in-between frame of Nayuta’s hands lowering and the flame flickering out but it’s obvious in the next one that the rest of Gyroaxia makes the flame way bigger and brighter. It is rare to have a Gyroaxia song in which Nayuta is not only self reflective rather than self aggrandizing but where the MV acknowledges Gyroaxia as his equals rather than his followers . I would hope this signals a more emotional arc for Gyroaxia in Kimisute but you never know. They could be lying . This song and imagery was a pleasant surprise

Fujin RIZING: Futa’s dead brother blues. I didn’t include the shot with his hand to the sky with the dates floating down but I assume that refers to 1) the day that sakutaro died 2) the way time stopped then for all of them and marked the beginning of Kohei Despair and 3) the passage of time since then. We’ve already gotten pointers telling us that furai’s gonna be more introspective and sad and that Futa’s not doing too well for kimisute so I look forward to their new stuff. Hoping for more songs like Longing

Fantôme Iris: alright so I am not well versed in fantome iris lore and they do not have a story that you can understand relatively quickly like Furai . So I really don’t know what the fuck is happening with them at any point even though I love them. However I do know that this is a shot of Felix’s hand being a ray of light in the darkness, beckoning in the viewing to take it and see a new world. This, to me , is about how they’re finally on a upward trajectory as a band and how they finally have an agency and how TOMORU FINALLY HAS A GOOD JOB and all that. I like fantome iris I hope for good things in their future.

ST//RAYRIDE: I don’t like how they stylized their name. Anyways. First one is about Rintaro’s band breaking up and later just him and Ryuusuke. It being a gemstone similar to argonavis being a gemstone in their mv means that band probably meant a lot to him. The shot of Ryuusuke holding his hand up to the sky is probably about trying to reach a dream related to music however they haven’t released any stst content yet so idk what the specifics are. Them holding hands? They’re gay. They’re married okay. They’re married to each other

Epsilon: probably the most interesting and I definitely don’t think that because epsilon is my favorite band in kimisute. Anyways. This one raises many questions because, from what I can tell, it’s the only hand that refers to someone’s individual feelings rather than something that can be applied to the entire band. Futa’s past & lone hand is something that affects all of Furai, and Felix beckoning in a new age for Fantome Iris applies to all of them, he just happens to be their leader, but this hand is Haruka’s, and Haruka’s alone. I assume that this is referring to Haruka’s decision to accept Shu and the band’s twisted sound to try and achieve his dream of truly reaching people no matter how he really feels about everyone…..the shot of his eye afterwards was pretty ominous. I could go back on what I just said about using the band for ulterior motives and apply it to everyone though, like Reiji’s new motivation to protect Shu, Kanata’s insane obsession over Haruka, Tadaomi’s, erm, human observation, and Shu’s desire to be seen…..however I just think it matters the most when it’s Haruka. Because of how he’s abandoning his apathy and choosing a straight path for himself instead of letting himself be taken by the flow of the people around him. IDK. I love epsilon phi I hope some insane crazy shit happens in Kimisute and I hope Kanata attempts suicide and I hope Tadaomi and Reiji have a beautiful toxic yaoi romance

that’s all. If you read all this, thanks, I love you

[plentyculture]

Usually my thinking process for the day is as follows. I pray, then I go to Bible Gateway and read the verse of the day. I read the whole chapter to get the context. I get ready for the day. I watch a sermon. It's pretty random after that. I'm just trying to get to the point as to how I ended up writing on tumblr today. Aside from the horrible Kdrama I saw yesterday that almost got me all depressed. I don't even want to think about it now. I will explain it on another post on another day.

Back to why I'm having to process my thoughts right now. On the channel where I was watching the sermon today, there was a show instead of a sermon and they were talking about perceptual intelligence. This man wrote a book about it and you would think he would talk about how to apply it to understanding the life of Jesus. Instead he was talking about how to apply it to your relationships in life. He didn't really explain perceptual intelligence, they would just ask people what they thought it meant.

So naturally if the man isn't going to explain it I'm going to google it.

This is what it means, because it's fun to learn.

I'm going to copy paste it on here.

What is the meaning of perceptual intelligence?

“Perceptual intelligence” (PI) refers to the way people interpret their experiences in order to distinguish between fantasy and reality. Individuals have different levels of PI, a skill you can develop through conscious practice. You can change how you view the world.

Now I'm going to admit I did not hear much about what the man was saying because I was just thinking about what that has to do with Jesus or Christianity because he went off about it in relationships. The only relationship I'm thinking about is Jesus when I'm watching a sermon.

So yeah my whole thought process for today was the verse of the day at Bible Gateway which was John 15 ( because I read the whole chapter for context) and perceptual intelligence.

Then this is where it got messed up because I got on TIktok and you know Tiktok. Someone shows up on my fyp talking about Celine Dion and how she has a rare sickness. Because social media pretty much uses our perceptual intelligence to give us information, you know the person talking about it was a christian and she was saying that Celine Dion had the sickness because of her spirituality and how she made a children's line that was pagan like (to use other words).

Already I feel like I'm going to have to make another post. These are pretty long but ... the person on Tiktok isn't lying. The problem is that people don't know about sin or what it is. People don't know what wickedness is. This world is a free for all. People only want order and rules when they can benefit from it and as long as they don't get hurt. That's great when you live in the fantasy of your own importance, however we have to share the planet with other people. Therefore, if you want to live with other happy people you have to take care of people in general and think about their mental well being.

That means being responsible with your character, and your beliefs and how you care for other people's character and beliefs. That contributes to the mental health of humanity. Oh you don't think it does but, it does. Especially in this influencer driven society we live in now.

So sin is understood by most people as something that you do that is not good but you were tempted to do it. That's the general understanding of sin. In the bible, sin is separation from God because it harms you and others. The bible has a few lists of certain sins and many examples of how people sinned and how God reacted to sin.

I can now see whey people don't talk about God, it's a lot of information. But to make it simple if you happen to read this and you're not a christian, every action you make has a reaction.

Good with good and bad with bad. God is honest and really forgiving, the reason for Jesus. But people have to find out for themselves. We don't want people to suffer and try to say things to help but ultimately they have to hear from God, either through someone that speaks their language that God sends but usually most people hear it from reading the bible.

I say this all to say that, life is hard. Let's listen to each other while we can. No matter what we believe in. The reality is that we all live on this world and thank God we're all different. God isn't the one who does the bad stuff, it's the bad you pay attention to. Therefore, pay attention to who you pay attention to. Pay attention to the good things. Like there is always hope.

This is coming from someone who once posted on here about being led by a false hope. That sucked. That's why I wouldn't do it to anyone else. Don't do that, that's wickedness.

Honestly, I get on here to distract myself but hopefully God willing, this helps someone in the best way.

Humanity Matters.

My next post, on another day, will be about the american health system and how fv<ked up it is, and how covid really mucked it up.

[calamitydaze]

i fucking love mitski!! which of her songs do u have on the playlist?

HI [cat jumping up and down gif] i’ll put it below a cut cause i already know it’s gonna be long thank u so much for asking omg

ok for some background i am actually not a huge mitski listener… i’ve been trying to be!! i’ve listened to her first two albums in full but haven’t got around to the others yet so these are gonna be mostly popular songs, just bc they’re the ones i hear about through other people. but i pretty thoughtfully curate my character playlists SO if they’re on here they have a reason to be, i don’t just throw popular songs on for the hell of it. ok and these are gonna be in chronological story order

1. me and my husband: STARTING OFF BAD i know this one is overused as hell but i actually have it at the very beginning of the manberg chapter to represent cq’s relationship with schlatt when things already were Not Good but he was still starry-eyed and in love enough to pretend otherwise

2. liquid smooth: at the end of the manberg chapter (though it’s relevant for all of it), in my head around the time he gets with karlnap. representing the way he pins his self worth on his appearance and whether other people find him beautiful

3. abbey: this is the most recent addition so the placement might change but right now i have it just before he builds las nevadas…. to me it speaks to his need to make something of himself but with a more desperate edge than it would have earlier in the story. and the first verse… well you know me i love a good hunger metaphor

4. brand new city: LAS NEVADASSS although he didn’t build it with the intention of what it came to be, ln was always meant to represent his last stand. this is really where he starts breaking down in the playlist and like i said in the other ask you can apply this song equally well to ctubbo, but her gasp at the end will Always be cq to me

5. stay soft: i think i have the least to say about this one but it very much furthers his themes of beauty/insecurity/sexuality and also learning to chip away the soft parts of his heart as they will only ever weaken him

6. i don’t smoke: this is at an odd place in the playlist, timeline-wise it’s set in las nevadas but i think of it as the reflection chapter where he looks back on past relationships around the karlnapity breakup. but yeah this is cpumpkinduo no doubt. just don’t leave me alone wondering where you are i am stronger than you give me credit for

7. remember my name: man i don’t even have to say anything just watch this animatic

8. nobody: he’s very lonely and wants too much (which is really just to feel loved and like he belongs and is in control of his own life) and also nobody wants him. :( SAD! well there’s other ducks

9. love me more: this is in the last section of the playlist which is like… kinda when he becomes self-aware of his own humanity again and that he’s failed in what (and who) he wanted to build. it’s hard to give him a conclusion since he didn’t really have one in the dsmp? like yes he had a finale but imo it felt like his story wasn’t supposed to end there. but i did my best

[becauseanders]

I posted 3,892 times in 2022

79 posts created (2%)

3,813 posts reblogged (98%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@alinnsurana

@that-was-anticlimactic

@wingwaver

@bizarreshark

@ollifree

I tagged 3,892 of my posts in 2022

#dragon age - 492 posts

#asdfghjkl; - 412 posts

#gif - 367 posts

#yeah - 348 posts

#meow - 209 posts

#zukka - 173 posts

#dragon age ii - 163 posts

#🦀 - 154 posts

#mass effect - 150 posts

#anders - 145 posts

Longest Tag: 137 characters

#'you are sarcastic and abrasive but you're just so soft and caring and you can't stop being those things no matter how much you try' 🥺🥺

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

♿️🙃

72 notes - Posted May 23, 2022

#4

"Jewish tradition teaches that a nefesh, or a full-status life, begins at birth. Other religious traditions believe life begins at other stages. Restrictive abortion laws — rooted in only some religions’ interpretation of when life begins — impose religious beliefs on me. This is a violation of my rights."

just a friendly reminder for when we talk about abortion bans and the "religious right" that the problem is NOT religion as a whole, it is SPECIFICALLY CHRISTIANITY and a severely bastardized version at that, but banning abortion is inherently antisemitic (can't speak for other religions but i imagine this does apply to others as well) and therefore so is throwing all religion under the bus for the actions of the distorted sects of one! i, a jew, am a deeply religious person yet these bans infringe on my and many others' religious freedom—in an actual, legitimate definition of that term—just as much as they infringe on anyone's basic human rights!

also, from the National Council of Jewish Women:

Does Jewish law state that life begins at conception? No, life does not begin at conception under Jewish law. Sources in the Talmud note that the fetus is “mere water” before 40 days of gestation. Following this period, the fetus is considered a physical part of the pregnant individual’s body, not yet having life of its own or independent rights. The fetus is not viewed as separate from the parent’s body until birth begins and the first breath of oxygen into the lungs allows the soul to enter the body.

Does Jewish law assert that it is possible to murder a fetus? No, Jewish law does not consider a fetus to be alive. The Torah, Exodus 21:22-23, recounts a story of two men who are fighting and injure a pregnant woman, resulting in her subsequent miscarriage. The verse explains that if the only harm done is the miscarriage, then the perpetrator must pay a fine. However, if the pregnant person is gravely injured, the penalty shall be a life for a life as in other homicides. The common rabbinical interpretation of this verse is that the men did not commit murder and that the fetus is not a person. The primary concern is the well-being of the person who was injured.

According to Jewish law, is abortion health care? Yes, Jewish sources explicitly state that abortion is not only permitted but is required should the pregnancy endanger the life or health of the pregnant individual. Furthermore, “health” is commonly interpreted to encompass psychological health as well as physical health. NCJW advocates for abortion access as an essential component of comprehensive, affordable, confidential, and equitable family planning, reproductive, sexual health, and maternal health services.

What does Jewish law say about the rights of the person who is pregnant and the rights of the fetus? Judaism values life and affirms that protecting existing life is paramount at all stages of pregnancy. A fetus is not considered a person under Jewish law and therefore does not have the same rights as one who is already alive. As such, the interests of the pregnant individual always come before that of the fetus.

Do abortion bans unduly favor one religious viewpoint over another? Yes, different religions believe that human life begins at different stages of development. Science can explain developmental timelines, but philosophic and religious viewpoints largely determine what exactly defines “life” or “personhood” for each individual. NCJW believes, as the First Amendment to the US Constitution guarantees, that no one religion should be enshrined in law or dictate public policy on any issue — including abortion

78 notes - Posted May 8, 2022

#3

boba fett: *tripping balls after ingesting a lizard*

me: oh, like miette!

83 notes - Posted January 6, 2022

#2

modern au: sokka with tourette’s and autistic zuko

sokka meows as a tic, zuko meows as a stim

echolalia from both parties ensues, and it’s adorable

133 notes - Posted June 13, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

changes in barometric pressure, my beloathed

207 notes - Posted November 2, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[setaripendragon]

People are leaving so much thought provoking stuff in the tags!

#it's a long time since I read HDM#but isn't there a canon story about a sailor with a dolphin daemon#who could never go ashore again?#the sailor with the seagull tells Lyta about him via @iztarshi

A dolphin! I was wracking my brains trying to remember if canon had mentioned anything like that. I remember there was emphasis on the Gyptians being sea-faring water-folk, but I couldn't remember if aquatic daemons had been mentioned or not ^^"

So, aquatic mammals definitely in, fish are still up in the air. Metaphorically speaking.

#I personally like to think of the restrictions as 'an animal the daemon and child know about and have seen in person'#because the daemon has to understand it well enough to transform into it#and it helps handle the aquatic/mythical/extant question very nicely#but I only read the first book years ago so via @planeoftheeclectic

I remember reading a... I think it was a Pride and Prejudice fanfic? Some Regency drama, anyway - where this was the case, and it was fascinating. Because, of course, most of the cast was limited to animals found in England, and there was a whole lot of world-building around how fashionable 'exotic' daemons are.

And it would have some interesting worldbuilding implications regarding zoos and such. They'd probably become much more culturally important. There'd probabbly be all sorts of pseudo-science parenting advice based around 'expose your children to as many different animals as possible to give them as much room to grow as you can. And... on a darker note, parents who try to control how their children settle by restricting them from places they might run into 'unsuitable' animals.

So yeah, loads of fascinating worldbuilding posibilities with that one, but personally, I find it... too limiting? And too hard to apply to 'verses that aren't 'Earth-but-different'. Like in Fairy Tail or Lord of the Rings. I suppose you could hand-wave with Lord of the Rings and say that it's all European and go from there (the Shire is rural England, Rohan is the Steppe, etc), but like... what animals would a person be likely to have encountered in Fiore? I'm not building a whole ecosystem just to justify my daemon choices! XD

#okay but what about animals people THINK are real?#could jackalope daemons pop up?#a large portion of people think they really do exist after all#do kids with cryptid daemons get teased by people who know better or gaslighted by people who “know better”? via @murderandjam

Now, see, this! This is exactly the sort of worldbuilding I like. See, going by my rules, which... I feel I should clarify are, like, meant to be the laws of nature in whatever 'verse; humans in whichever setting may not know that daemons have to be extant animals, so a european medieval peasant could potentially have a giraffe daemon or a komodo dragon and therefore believe wholeheartedly that 'mythical' daemons are entirely possible, because an animal like that couldn't really exist.

Ohh, cryptids. Now that's a... huh. Like in a 'verse where cryptids are real... then having a cryptid daemon would theoretically be possible... depending on how sapient your cryptids are. Are they people? Like, most of the vibes I've gotten from the cryptids I know about like bigfoot and mothman and stuff... a lot of them seem sapient, so, that would rule them out. But jackalopes would be possible. And there's a whole load of worldbuilding you could derive from that.

Like with the example of a HP daemon AU where people are able to have mythical daemons without knowing that mythical creatures are actually real, there probably wouldn't be any assumption that daemons have to be extant. There'd probably be a whole variety of cultural attitudes about it, from 'people with a mythical daemon are special and destined for greatness' to 'people with mythical daemons are maybe whimsical and imaginative but ultimately normal' to 'people with mythical daemons are disconnected from reality and probably mad'.

If you've only got a few cyptid style creatures in your 'verse, and assuming it's a modern-day earth-like world, then there could be a disconnect between the scientific community and 'common knowledge' where a scientist might see a jackalope daemon and go 'every other daemon we know about is extant, and we've even discovered species we didn't know were out there because of daemons, so what if?' but your average joe off the street would probably, like you say, mock or tease someone for having a cryptid daemon.

#I think there's one more question left to ask#which is: does it have to be a KNOWN animal?#can a daemon be a species of frog or salamander or something that the human doesn't know of?#or that NO human knows of?#are species discovered by a biologist seeing a daemon and going 'THAT does not EXIST except it must so....'#and then scouring the world for the actual animal?#if it DOESN'T need to be known to the human#you can get interesting scenarios (especially in historical or otherwise limited communication settings)#platypus daemon for a person in 15th century Europe#it would become the basis for a new mythical creature#and then eventually no one would know why some “mythical” creatures appear as daemons and others don't#not to mention the 'what if there's life on other planets' question via @firecoloredwater

Yes! I definitely prefer it not being dependant on what an individual person knows, precisely because of these fun misunderstandings that can happen.

Ooh, hmm... Like deep-sea creatures, my first instinct is to say that a people can only have daemons from the planet they're from? But then why not only from the continent they're from? Why should a desert-dweller be capable of getting an arctic hare for a daemon but not something from, say, tatooine?

Oh, this is... Huh, yeah. Like, in a Star Wars setting, would people be limited to... what? Only animals from the planet they were born on? Only animals from the planet their species is originally from? Only animals from the planet they spent most of their childhood on? I would think... if I was going to stick with my first instinct, I'd probably make it a 'only animals from the planet your species was originally from', with potentially a caveat for like... if humans colonise lots of planets and bring earth-animals with them and then wildly divergent animals evolve over time, then all of those animals are valid for all humans. Even if they've never been to that other planet with the completely 'alien' animals.

Yeah. I think... Despite the fact that there are limiting factors from continent to continent, planets on the whole are a whole 'nother level of completely distinct environments. Like... there are animals that can fly or swim from any part of the world to any other part of the world. It's possible, if very difficult, but... as far as we know, it's not actually possible to get from planet to planet without, well, what we would call sapeince, and even then, we still haven't actually managed to put people on another planet yet.

It also raises the question of sapient life other than humans. This is, honestly, one of my favourite favourite favourite worldbuilding tricks in a daemon AU, ngl =D If you're writing in a 'verse with multiple sapeint species (Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, etc), do they all have daemons, or is it just humans? And in a 'verse like Star Wars, if it is only humans, then how closely related to humans do you have to be to have a daemon? Like, there's a whole category of 'near-human' sapient species in Star Wars that only have minor biological differences. And then on the other end of the spectrum you have, like, wookies and kaminoans and besalisks and such.

And the cultural implications of having some sapeint species without daemons! I know HDM touched on this with Will not having a daemon at first and Lyra's reaction to it, but blowing that up to a bigger, cultural scale is just -chef's kiss- Do humans refuse to believe in another species' sapience because they don't have daemons? Do humans get treated like the Ood from Doctor Who, carrying their brains around in their hands? Are daemons used as a weakness to exploit by other sapient species who think themselves better for being 'less vulnerable'?

-happy wiggle- Culture clash is my jam.

#the spiritual implications of your daemon being a kind of animal you dont even know about is SO FUN#your soul sits in your lap and you cannot name it#daemon au via @mossiestpiglet

You! You get it!

So I'm still on this daemon AU kick, and I can't stop thinking.

What are the limits?

It's generally accepted that a daemon is an animal representation of the soul, right? So, you know, we've got birds and mammals and reptiles and insects.

But what about fish?

Obviously there's an issue here of, you know, environment, and if your soul literally can't survive in the air while you literally can't survive in the water, there's a problem.

But, hey, if it's small enough, you could have a little fishbowl for your daemon to live in. Hamster ball, but filled with water, rolling along at your heels. Fishtank on wheels that get tricked out like dudebros soup up their car. And maybe, if you're from a particularly sea-faring culture/lifestyle a water-bound mammal like a dolphin or an orca could make sense. And then there's things like sharks, which have so much symbolism attached to them that it seems a real shame to have to rule them out. (Someone who's particularly driven or ambitious having a daemon that would literally die if it stopped moving is a bit of symbolism I'm going a bit feral for, tbh.)

I think we have to rule out the deep sea creatures, unfortunately. Fishbowls and/or living on a boat wouldn't really solve the problem of pressure, and someone with a blobfish daemon would, uh... be in trouble.

And if we're talking about things that can't survive in the same atmosphere as humans, what about internal parasites? Like flatworms. I think it's safe to say that having your daemon parasitizing your intestine kind of defeats the purpose of having an external manifestation of your soul, but... There are species of flatworm that aren't parasites, so... do we just rule out all flatworms, or are the non-parasitic ones okay?

And speaking of flatworms, what about size? I've read some fun stories that deal with the issues that might come from having, say, an elephant daemon. It's not quite as dramatic as the issues of having an aquatic daemon, but actually, similar adjustments would have to be made to your living situation to cope. But, of course, it could be done and I don't think anyone's trying to rule out animals on account of how big they are, but I think it's safe to say that microscopic daemons are out for the same reason that internal parasites have to be.

There's a nice solid rule I can settle on; a daemon has to be a visible animal.

And, in point of fact, I think it's safe to say it has to be an animal. We can rule out trees and plants and even fungi.

So what about coral?

It's an animal, and if we are allowing for some aquatic daemons, then should coral be an option? Or are its vibes too plant-like to qualify? Do we rule out sessile animals like we ruled out microscopic ones? As much as I find the idea of a coral daemon absolutely hilarious, I am going to come down on the side of animals that are too much like plants are a no.

So a daemon has to be a visible, mobile animal.

But what about the ones that only move very slowly? I don't think we're ruling out sloths, but in the continuing vein of torturing myself considering various aquatic daemons, there's starfish and sea urchins and hell, even most bivalves can move at least a little, right? (Correct me if I'm wrong, I haven't done that research yet.) And there's a lot of fun symbolsim to be had, there, I think.

And what about extinct creatures?

I think it's safe to say that mythical creatures are a no-go, unless this is a 'verse where those animals are real, (oh, boy wouldn't that confuse people in a world like HP where most people think dragons and unicorns aren't real, but people still wander around with dragon and unicorn daemons) so we can ammend our rule to visible, mobile, real animals, but could we go so far as extant?

If yes, that would have interesting world-building implications. Where's the cut-off point? Can we rule out dinosaurs because we don't/didn't have enough information for a daemon to settle into a form that wouldn't be technically mythical? But then, what about animals that go extinct within human history? What about all the people who had mammoth daemons or dodo daemons as those animals were dying out.

Would conservationists study daemon statistics to see if an animal has really gone extinct? Would an animal's extinct status get over-turned when a kid's daemon settled into that form? Honestly, I like this enough that I've convinced myself that, at least barring some very unique circumstances, extinct animals are not allowed.

So, it has to be a visible, mobile, extant animal. That can exist in proximity to humans.

Oh, and should probably add; visible, mobile, extant, and non-sapient.

You can't have a human daemon, or an elf or a dwarf or a fairy daemon even if they exist in that world, and if this is a 'verse with dragons who're more than just exotic magical animals, you can't have a dragon daemon. (Obviously, if your fairies are more like magical bugs than tiny people, then fairies would be a valid daemon.)

...I'm still on the fence about whether a daemon should have to be air-breathing or not. That kind of rule would still leave marine mammals available for the fun world-building of how people adapt to that kind of handicap. (...Do you think people with aquatic daemons would be considered disabled? Oooh, what about people with really big daemons? I mean, presuming such a thing is comparatively rare, people probably wouldn't be building schools with a mind to allowing elephants or giraffes to wander the corridors.)

Disclaimer! This is for my own creative process, and not intended to limit anyone else's creative flair. And, honestly, I'd love to hear other people's takes on what does and doesn't qualify for a daemon.

[goboymusic]

Watched the shit out of #TheLastofUs on HBO Max last night. Yeah I cried. 9.5 out of 10. Looking forward to clickers, bloaters and cannibals.

The lyrics of “#Money #Monster” are elusive, but the general idea is as follows: We all know people in financial ruin, as well as people with inheritances that leave us dumbfounded. I grew up among folks with the latter, people who never need to work a day in their life if they don’t want to. Needless to say, the contrast can drive spectators mad.

Like yours (probably), my adult life thus far has been a blur of work, between full time jobs and side hustles, like GoBoy. An inheritance that allows me to escape the workforce is something I don’t have.

The “bring me down” verse melody was written when I was a teenager. I didn’t do it justice in this song, so I’ll probably reuse it again someday in a future song.

The “would somebody hate me” vocals depict someone who would rather be hated than be a ghost. To receive some attention, even if it’s negative, than to be invisible. This feeling has certainly arisen within me from time to time throughout the blur of work life.

The low pitched vocals in the chorus are mine. It took a few attempts at recording / mixing this chorus before landing on the final result. The pitch isn’t actually decreased. A plugin was added that only lowered the formant.

This song came together pretty seamlessly, other than recording / mixing the chorus multiple times. Five days from start to finish. It’s rare when that happens.

Songs that take that short of an amount of time to complete leave me with little to reflect upon for storytelling, whereas songs that take an entire month to complete give me much to say. Hell, you can binge multiple tv series, get shitfaced multiple times, solve multiple complex problems at work, travel around the country and experience loads of human drama over the course of one month. For “Magic Unicorn,” there’s not much to say (excerpts from post 64).

On average, each GoBoy 3 song took four days to complete, GoBoy 4 songs took six days, GoBoy 5 songs took fourteen days, and GoBoy 6 songs took thirty days.

This is GoBoy’s SUPER minimalistic phase. Some will be turned off by the simplicity of GoBoy 4 songs.

After dabbling in bubblegum pop for the 2nd half of GoBoy 3, my original plan was to focus on lyrically driven content for GoBoy 4. The release of ”Everything Will Be Okay (Song 69)” changed my mind, as the focus on dark lyrics impacted my mental state for months afterwards. Focusing on the dark elements of your own life for long enough can turn you into a neurotic mess (the original song “Everything Will Be Okay” had a 3rd verse the delved darker). My focus would shift to bubblegum pop from that point forward, which would impact this song. Music would be made for enjoyment and catchiness, not necessarily for conveying a message. I don’t regret this shift in focus… yet (excerpts from post 60).

In April, 2021, almost all of GoBoy 3, 4 and 5‘s songs were restructured to be under 3 minutes (preferably under 2m 30s), including this song. I became okay with releasing songs around the 2 min mark after realizing The Beatles and The Beach Boys had some songs around that length. In an attempt to increase replay value in this streaming era, most of GoBoy’s songs are now purposely around 2m 20s (excerpts from post 37).

A bass boost was added to songs 37-99 in Nov, 2021, while I was stuck at home with covid. As a result, this song feels more powerful. The bass boost isn’t a simple plugin nonchalantly added to each song. It’s a process that took about 3.5 hours per song, or one whole month to complete all songs. Admittedly, I pushed the bass boost a little too far for some of them. The bass in some songs sounds like a freaking earthquake (unnecessarily pronounced low frequencies 20 - 50 Hz). Might dial that back someday. The bass boost was also applied to every song on GoBoy 6 and beyond (excerpt from post 37).

[insxparablxduo]

Twins started out in track, but quit because of all the constant comparisons between them. Andrew was good at distance and Darla speed. Coach was disappointed because they were the best in their year, and he saw a lot of potential out of them. The two still wanted to do sports and promised each other not to go into any sports the both of them liked.

Darla went to gymnastics and Andrew ????. The two are also a part of non-sport clubs. Andrew is in the writing club with Lina, and they mostly write fan fiction together, as they are the only ones who make up the club. They proofread and give each other advice, and then share recs on days they have writers block. Darla went into a movie club with Janne and a few other people, and they watch and discuss movies at least twice a week.

Andrew takes care of a small garden at home and has a small aviary he spends a lot of time in.

[bijoumikhawal]

RE: my assertions regarding the Jem'hadar origins, these are all quotes from the alpha canon wiki

"Wolfe was even aware of some backstory explaining what had happened to the Jem'Hadar prior to this. "I think we all agreed that the Jem'Hadar were originally like the Mongols," he remembered. "They were some incredibly nasty, conquering subculture on a world of their own, but without all the genetic engineering; they didn't grow up in three days and all that stuff. The Founders got a hold of them and said, 'We'll make you the ultimate killing machines, what do you think?' And they said 'YEAH!' They just volunteered."" The word Mongol is basically a flashing warning light to me that someone is racist at this point; this is a really disgusting and over simplistic view of Mongolians at any point in their history.

"The Jem'Hadar's strong sense of loyalty was based on historical examples. "We used the model of the Roman legionnaire. We also thought about the British soldiers in India, who were really just doing it for the Empire or the U.S. Green Berets. That was sort of our model," recalled Robert Wolfe. "We wanted to go for something we hadn't seen before in Star Trek, which was the consummate professional soldier."" To clarify this is not what I mean when I say they used some inspiration from Indian soldiers, I'm including it for completion.

"Another way the writers tried to differentiate the Jem'Hadar from most of the other major races in Star Trek was by deciding to make them drug addicts. The writers did so primarily to demonstrate that the Jem'Hadar were fundamentally violent and were only obedient to the Founders. (Star Trek: The Magazine Volume 1, Issue 13, p. 58) Ira Steven Behr remembered, "From the very beginning, when we first sat around and talked about the Jem'Hadar – even before we had a name for them – we talked about them being mercenary drug addicts." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 27, No. 4/5, p. 95) Behr continued, "We came to view them as junkies. We came to view them as slaves, as people who were almost not worthy of a name because there wasn't much personality difference between them." Consequently, Behr believed the Jem'Hadar were more like the Borg than the Klingons. He commented, "They were stripped of their humanity. Not because they were machines, but because the drug was their raison d'etre."" I don't like bioessentialism and this is a disgustingly unsympathetic view of enslaved persons.

"Whereas the typical science fiction attitude would have been to make the Jem'Hadar much less aggressive and no longer villainous or loyal to the Dominion if their addiction was broken, the DS9 creative team opted for a more unusual idea. "What we wanted to say was: 'If you break them of the addiction to the white, then you take away what little control anyone has over them, and they'll do what they always wanted to do, which is run around and kill everybody they can get to.' I'm not entirely sure that's just because of the genetic engineering," Wolfe mused. "I think the loyalty to the Founders was probably programmed in there, but I suspect they'd be difficult to reason with in any case."" Again: I don't like bioessentialism being treated as fact, especially not when applied to a fictional group that's racialized as nonwhite in multiple ways.

 ""We [the DS9 writing staff] named the Jem'Hadar together. We sat there with a 'Roget's Thesaurus' and looked under soldier. Jem'Hadar is a rank in the Indian army; it's first lieutenant or something like that." (Star Trek: The Magazine Volume 1, Issue 13, p. 57) In fact, the name of this species comes from Jemadar, an Urdu term for armed officials of the zamindars (lords) later adopted by the British as a military rank." This is what I mean when I mention the Indian soldier thing: I'm not a military history person nor am I especially well versed in Indian military history specifically, but Jemadar/Jamadar to my knowledge was not held by British officers, it was a rank for Indian soldiers before, during, and a little bit after British Imperial rule.

Anyway I'm going to remember the content but try to once more forget the specific wording of these quotes like I did last time, and leave you with this final gem and invitation to join my campaign to ban white people from writing Star Trek:

"Fellow writing staffer Peter Allan Fields disapproved of the name, commenting it "sounds like 'mah-jongg,' or some kind of card game!""

[noweyesee]

Let’s talk about •••

••• Spirit Work

Pt.2/2

You’ve seen it around and decided you want to try your hand at Spirit Work or you have had encounters and would like to take back some control by deepening your knowledge of this practice. So:

I. Where to begin

• First Step

Ask yourself and define this: What do you want to work with? What do you classify as spirits?

Ancestors and Known Deceased

— These tend to be the easiest to communicate and connect with, due to your shared experiences and energies. In this type of Spirit work most people tend to utilize divinatory instruments or the astral.

Unknown Human Deceased

— Just like the first example, these also are somewhat accessible, since their plane tends to be parallel with ours. Normally it requires more steps of protection and precaution, since you don’t know the spirit's temperament nor it’s signature.

Nature Spirits: elements, plants, animals

— These are at the same time the most common and the most difficult type - common because people tend to, unknowingly, communicate with them all the time and due to that their presence is quite naturalized, making it tricky for some to actively seek them out. Each of the subcategories also have their own language and means of communication.

*I’ve added elements, because honestly, ask any nature or green witch out there, elements are also spirits and have their own language, messages and signature.

Nature Spirits a.k.a Entities: angels, fay, demon

— Ah, yes. The coveted and honored. These are easy to connect to, but also are easy to mess up with. Each subcategory of entity has its own subcategory, and in those the methods of communication and connecting vary a lot, but are heavily influenced by two aspects: Respect and also Trying not to mess up and unknowingly sell yourself.

Divine Spirits a.k.a Deities

— Divine Spirits and Deities are the most popularized, since many these days are visited and maintain a tight relationship with their deities. Each deity or divine spirit has its own specificities when it comes to communication and connection, not to mention the UPG’s and particular experiences of their followers, worshipers or workers.

Thoughtforms a.k.a Tar Spirits

— This is a topic to debate, as I’ve seen thoughtform being used in various themes with different connotations, but to specify, this one is related to what the web has been calling Tar Spirits. I, particularly, don’t communicate with them because their egregore and existence isn’t really one amenable to cleansing, enlightenment or anything - but there are people who claim they do so, these two have their own way of being handled when doing Spirit Work.

Those were only some (yes, only some!) generalize examples, each one has its own subcategory. So you see, deciding what you want to work with, first and foremost, is the first step to begin practicing Spirit Work. Also, nothing impedes you from broadening your range of work with time, as long as you have a clear intention as to who and what you’re working with.

• Second step:

With that done, you’re ready for the part that many dread and others adore - Research.

Yeah, yeah, I know. People in the community are already tired of seeing research be always recommended, as if it is implicit. But hey, doesn’t hurt to comment about it once again, because it is true.

This practice, as any other can be done through the empirical way, but will you really put, quite literally, your life at risk?

If the answer is no, then a way to prevent that is to research. Understand the details and methods of the target audience you’ll be working with so that you can prepare and protect yourself.

• Third step:

You defined your target audience, you researched, so much so that you’re confident in yourself and have a certainty that you’ll be safe. Now what? Practice!

Finally the time to start acting and testing all the theory you went through, so… how do you begin?

I’d suggest here beginning in controlled environments with controlled methods. Those, different from just wandering around on energetically charged places (like hospitals, cemeteries and so on) are the ideal to at least not be straight up traumatized in the beginning. So, choose your method of communicating - will you use divination, herbs, meditation, trance, the astral plane, channeling, psychography (the spiritual one, not the study method)?

Whichever method you choose make sure it’s one you're well versed in interpreting, so the chances of having your leg pulled are lesser.

So, do a checklist

Target audience ○

Study and Theory ○

Confidence ○

Preparation ○

Protection ○

Plan and Method ○

Plan B ○

Checked all of those? Then you’re ready to go.

Always make sure to tell a friend who knows what you're doing before, so they can also serve as a second pair of eyes if anything goes haywire.

II. Getting Better

Now, that’s a complicated topic. One because the answer, as you have probably guessed, is to practice. But other than that, when doing Spirit Work you have some… branches of possibility you may choose to follow.

One is to master one technique, applying yourself to the specific type of Spirit with one specific method. Another is to branch out, try as many different Spirits and methods as you want.

So yeah, pretty contradictory, though nothing impedes you from mastering something and then branching out after, just a thought.

III. Instruments

Most Spirit workers do their practices alongside instruments, that of course is not an obligation and it doesn’t mean that if you don’t have one of such you won’t be able to do Spirit Work - but I can not lie, having at least an aiding instrument helps a lot, specially so that you don’t use all your energy up, specially in the beginning of your practice.

Okay, so, these instruments will include herbs and such because they work as an aid during spirit working and also methods of communication, because these too are instruments. With that said, here we go, yeah?

Divinatory Methods: Cards, Runes, Charms, Seashell, etc.

— Used for communication.

Smoking Stick, Candles, Crystals or Incense

— Used for either channeling, warding or intensifying. Can also be used for inviting.

Rue Broom

— Used for cleansing the space before the Spirit work session and after to get rid of any lingering negative energies

Wands and Blades

— Used for directing and controlling energy

Tibetan Tingsha Bells

— Used for attracting and Inviting

Tibetan Bell and Dorjee

— Used for cleansing and passing on the Spirit.

Bones, Remains and Plants

— Used for channeling and Inviting.

Rope and Vessels

— Used for binding.

IV. Interesting Readings

-> How to Communicate with Spirits: Seances, Ouija Boards and Summoning by Angela Kaelin

-> A Brief Introduction to Macumba - on The Culture Trip site

-> Features of Trance Mediumship in Tibetan Buddhism and Modern Spiritualism by Martha Maxine Meilleur

-> The State Oracle of Tibet, Spirit Possession, and Shamanism by Homayun Sidky

-> Buckland's Book of Spirit Communications by Raymond Buckland

-> Talking with the dead: Spirit mediumship, affect and embodiment in Stoke-on-Trent by Nadia Bartolini, Sara MacKian and Steve Pile

••••• 👁•••••

This is it, I’m happy I could approach this topic because it has been one that I’ve been wanting to breach for a while here on tumblr. The readings above are mostly easily accessible pdfs, so if you have time take a look at them, yeah?

Hope this somehow can help someone.

-Lou

( ・∇・)👇🏽

Etsy | Donations

[howtofightwrite]

Followup: Firearms for Monster Hunting in the Roaring Twenties

Meteor hammer anon again! First off thank you for all the info, it’s deeply appreciated (and yeah, sapient is actually the word I should’ve used haha).

But I feel the need to refine my question a bit, if that’s ok. First, my story is actually going to be drawn web comic style, so the limitations of prose aren’t really an issue for me. Second, I suppose the crux of why I was sending that ask is because I’m having a hard time coming up with useful weapons that small species (like humans) could use agains larger ones, especially in a stealth environment. I thought of the meteor hammer cause it’s easy to hide and can deal a lot of damage – but that’s really it. (I’m not very well versed on weapons ^^’). Guns ARE an option, so long as they are from around the roaring twenties (the character in question is actually already carrying a pistol – a C96 to be exact, though I’m not sure if it’s the best choice). And finally one last comment – it is worth noting that most of my ‘dragons’ are so derived from the original concept the term almost doesn’t apply anymore – the point being that most don’t actually have the hard shells of typical dragons.

Thank you again for all the help you give writers, and I’ll look forward to any response you give me if you decide to! (You guys are awesome!!)

Okay, so, first off, visual media is where the meteor hammer shines. It’s a very visually dynamic weapon. The only hitch is, that this is the weapon of a martial arts master. Your characters can’t just pick them up and roll with it.

So, basing your setting off the 1920s immediately, and dramatically changes your weapon options. If you need to take down something significantly larger than you, firearms are the first solution.

The C96 is a legitimate option, but it might not be the best choice. It was chambered in either .30 Mauser or 9x19mm. There were Chinese manufactured .45 variants, though I’m not sure on the production dates for those. Also, there are C96s chambered in 9x25mm, but those are a rarity. The biggest problem is simply reloading. The C96 loads 10 rounds from a stripper clip. (There were 20 round variants produced before World War 1.) Individual rounds can be loaded at a time. However, the box magazine is not detachable. (There are variants, including ones manufactured by Mauser with detachable box magazines, however most of these date from the 1930s or later. As far as I know, the only ones from the 20s were Spanish bootlegs shipped to China, starting in 1928.) There were also select-fire variants, though the earliest examples I’m aware of date to the mid-30s.

On a similar note, the Luger P08 went into production in 1898. These were chambered in 7.65mm and 9x19mm. They use a more familiar, detachable box magazine loaded into the grip. They have an 8 round capacity, and the top of the slide is articulated strangely (it folds vertically when ejecting rounds, instead of traveling straight back.)

The British Webley Revolver was a break open revolver chambered in .455, and .38. The Mk 4 .455 entered military service in 1915, and the .38 caliber Webleys saw police use in the early 1920s.

While it’s archaic, today, the Colt Single Action Army entered production in the 1870s. These were chambered in .45 Long Colt (though, the gun can be found in an incredibly wide range of calibers today, and it can be a little difficult to determine when a given cartridge first popped up. Even in the 20s, this was a remarkably accurate and reliable revolver. The biggest downsides are that you have to manually load each shell separately, and it is single action, meaning you need to manually recock after each shot. The gun is over 150 years old today, and it still holds up as an excellent sporting pistol, a century ago, it would have been a viable combat weapon.

Also, worth noting that magnum cartridge was developed by Elmer Keith in the 1950s. So, while I’m listing revolvers, and you can get a Colt SAA in .44 magnum today, those would not have existed in the 1920s.

In the spirit of the Magnum, there is one unusual example worth listing off. The Mars Automatic Pistol developed in 1900. Forgotten Weapons did a video on the pistol a few years back.

Finally, the elephant in the room is the Colt 1911. These were adopted by the US Military in 1911, and were revised in 1926 (this would be the M1911A1.) The original 1911s had some reliability issues if they were loaded with anything other than ball ammunition, but this would become one of the most widely adopted handguns in the 20th century.

I’m probably forgetting a lot of revolvers that would be contemporary. The Smith & Wesson Model 30 was in production from 1903 to 1976, for example. This is also not a complete list of handguns, off hand I know the Smith & Wesson 1913 was in production throughout the decade. So, you might be able to find some other more obscure options.

One weapon that I expected would fit, but doesn’t, is the Browning Hi-Power. I remembered these as entering production in the mid-20s, but they didn’t actually hit the market until 1935. In the 20’s FN was still producing the Browning M1903, and M1910/M1922.

For larger weapons, there were bolt action rifles. The Mauser 98 (or Kar98, with Kar being short for Karabiner, meaning Carbine) was the standard Germany infantry rifle in World War I. The M1903 was the American equivalent. While you’d be hard pressed to hide these unless you were wearing an overcoat, both are excellent, accurate rifles. Winchester produced a lever action rifle (the Model 1895), which would have still been commercially available in the 1920s.

The Thompson Sub-Machine Gun entered commercial production in 1921, and would see military adoption in 1928. (These had 20 and 30 rounds “stick” magazines, or the 50 and 100 round drum mags.)

The BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle) entered commercial production in 1917, and military use in 1918. This is a fully automatic rifle chambered in .30-06, with a detachable 20 round box mag. It’s heavy (at nearly 16lbs), but it is a lot of portable firepower. There was a lighter, semi-automatic version, called the Colt Monitor which was marketed to police, but also ended up on the commercial market, however that didn’t enter production until 1931.

Thanks in large part to Terminator 2, we’re probably all familiar with the Winchester 1887, it’s a lever action shotgun, though there were iterations, including the Winchester Model 1901. The 1887 is notable for how much you can cut the gun down and still have a functional weapon. The nickname for sawed off 1887s is a “Mare’s Leg.” So let’s look at some shotguns you didn’t expect.

The Winchester Model 12 was an early pump action shotgun. While the pumps you’re used to seeing, like the Winchester 1200, the Mossberg 590, and the Remington 870 would be 40 years away from your setting, the Model 12 was already there, and saw use during World War 1. The Model 12 is, for the most part, the pump action shotgun, you’re familiar with today. The design hasn’t changed that much in over a century. There’s also the Winchester 1897, which is another early pump action shotgun. The 1897 notable for its external hammer spur, which would become unusual in later pump action shotgun designs.

The Browning Automatic 5 was a five round semi automatic shotgun developed by John Browning. Remington produced a variant called the Model 11. The Browning Auto 5 was the first semi-auto shotgun dating back to the final years of the 19th century. This had a 4+1 magazine capacity.

If you absolutely need to take something out silently, the crossbow is probably your best option. Alternately a bow is viable. These are harder to conceal, though I wouldn’t count them out entirely.

The first firearms silencers entered the market in 1909, and regulation wouldn’t catch up until 1934. So, the 1920s were an odd era when you could purchase silencers as mail order items. Of course, silencers do not fully silence a gunshot, but they were commercially available in the 20s, and they can drastically reduce the amount of sound a firearm produces.

As we’ve said before, getting into melee with something considerably larger than yourself is a recipe for disaster. Spears and lances might be effective options, but they don’t exactly qualify as stealthy. Granted, most firearms only fit that definition in the sense of getting into position undetected, and you would need a trench coat to conceal anything larger than a handgun. However it is much safer dealing with a dragon at three hundred yards through the scope of a bolt action rifle, than trying to hit it with a rock while standing in claw distance.

A few things worth remembering:

The M79 Grenade Launcher entered development in the 1950s. Before that the US military relied on either throwing hand grenades or mortar strikes. The Bazooka dates to 1942.

In World War 1, tanks were neutralized using, what we’d now call anti-material rifles. Anti-Tank rifles are in their own category of firearm. They’re not stealthy, they don’t have the accuracy of something like a TAC-50 or M82, but they are period appropriate and would absolutely put down whatever they hit.

World War 1 saw extensive use of chemical weapons on the battlefield, and while this would eventually see the use of such weapons curtailed by the Geneva Protocol in 1925 (this is different from the Geneva Convention, there were a number of distinct international treaties negotiated in Geneva in the 20s regulating warfare.) It’s not hard to imagine a world where these protections wouldn’t extend to “monsters.” (There’s a lot more political history here, I’m not going to get into.)

Additionally, while I can’t find hard data on the first White Phosphorous small arms munitions, white phosphorous grenades first saw battlefield usage in 1915. This is a very vicious weapon that would make a mess out of anything caught in the blast, as white phosphorous burns on contact with open atmosphere (technically, it’s reacting to the moisture in the air), and will continue burning in the victim’s body. Worth noting, phosphorous munitions will leave particulate matter in the air after use, and this can cause injury to anyone moving through the area immediately after bombardment, if they’re not using gas masks and covering their exposed skin.

Production of chemical agents like Phosgene or chlorine gas are depressingly easy, and I’m not going to be going into further details on these, but they’d probably be just as effective.

So, yeah, you have options. There were a wide range of commercial and military firearms on the market in the 1920s. World War 1 had just ended, and depending on where you were in the world, there were a lot of weapons still in circulation. There were also a lot of people who’d been in a military conflict and still had the training to use them. It’s a very complex moment in history, and worth digging into if you’re going to set your story in it.

-Starke

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Followup: Firearms for Monster Hunting in the Roaring Twenties was originally published on How to Fight Write.

[queen-lucy-the-valiant]

I’ve been meaning to write this for a weeks and I finally did so yay. This is a somewhat analysis of the symbolism of the planning scene in Prince Caspian. I’m going off movie verse here because they changed so much I feel it’s not completely accurate to apply book details to the movie, although there are a few references that I feel could still be accurate in the movie verse.

To begin, let us lay our scene. They’re in the stone table room, the narnias are in a circle around the room, encompassing Peter, Caspain, and the stone table, which holds both Lucy and Trumpkin. Both Peter and Caspain stand a little bit away from the stone table. While Edmund and Susan are there, they’re both a part of the circle, sitting on stones directly across from each other. 

First off, their placement tells us a lot about their relationships with Aslan. Since the Stone Table is where Aslan died, it in some way represents him. At the very least it's an ancient object of religious significance and holds some kind of power, if only in the figurative sense. We know that in the book the Narnias hold the table in high regard and this is something that isn’t specifically touched on in the movie and there's no reason to change it, since that would diminish the importance of Aslan in the narnias' eyes. So that explains why the narnias are gathered on the tables. The smaller animals have climbed on other stones, presumably to put themselves on a more even playing ground with the humans and other creatures. So, as the highest, easily accessible stone in the room, the Stone Table would be a good choice for giving yourself more height. But if they do hold the table in that high of a regard or place some religious significance on it, then it would be basically blasphemous for them to sit on it when it was the place that the Lion died and rose again.

Moving on to the Pevensies and those that are also in the circle.

We’re shown a few times that Peter is having issues with his faith with Aslan during this trip to Narnia. First at the train station when he expresses his frustration at Aslan making them wait, and again when they first get the how and go into the room, when he says something like “I think we’re on our own this time.” So while there are practical reasons for Peter not being extremely close to or on the Stone Table, his standing a couple yards away from it does a good job at representing his distance from Aslan at this point in the movie. Later, when he’s contemplating his relationship with Aslan and wishing that he would give him proof, he’s sitting on the Stone Table, which up until that point, he hadn’t been near, let alone on. 

We don’t get much of Edmunds relationship with Aslan in this movie. He believes Lucy at the gorge, but that has to do more with his faith in Lucy than his faith that Aslan will be there. With this in mind, it would make more sense for him to be sitting next to Lucy during the meeting. She is after all the youngest and he already knows that the others are going to be patronizing to some degree if she should choose to give her opinion. So why isn’t he? Well it probably has to do with the fact that the reason Aslan died on that table was because of him, it was meant to be him on the table that night and Aslan took his place. It probably brings those memories closer to the surface and could potentially be triggering for him, since I think we can all agree that he had PTSD from his time with the witch. There's also potentially some awe for Aslan mixed in there, and respect, he might feel like it would be disrespectful to Aslan's sacrifice for him if he were to treat the place where he died like a chair.

We also don’t get much of Susan's relationship with Aslan in this movie. Like Peter, she wishes she could see him as easily as Lucy does, but she also only believes in him when he does something, like she tells Lucy when they’re sleeping by the fire, where Lucy's like “you believe me” and Susan says “well we got across the gorge didn’t we” or something like that. We also know that Susan's relationship with Narnia and Aslan is strained. She’s practical, she probably assumes that this trip to Narnia is probably going to end once they’ve fixed the problem, she’s not wrong of course, but I think that of the four of them she’s the only one who's thought about it at this point, since Peter and Edmund are probably focuses on how they’re going to defeat the telmarines and Lucy is living in the moment and enjoying being home again. So I think that Susan not sitting by Lucy on or near the table signifies that she’s distant from Aslan. 

Lucy is obvious, she’s sitting on the table because it’s the closest thing she has to Aslan at that moment and she has the most faith in Aslan.

Trumpkin is interesting to me because we know from the gorge scene that he doesn’t believe Aslan exists because he says “I’m not about to jump off a cliff after someone who doesn’t exist.” But before that, when they’re in the boat and Lucy says “how could Aslan have let this happen,” Trumpkin responds with “though he abandoned us when you lot left,” he partly sounds scornful, like how could you believe in a talking lion, but at the same time I think it indicates that he, on some level, believes in Aslan, even if it’s only to hate him. But even if he doesn’t believe in Aslan, based on the fact that he isn’t sitting next to Lucy on the table itself, but on one legs, I think that that indicates that he does have some respect for the significance of the table itself, and while he might not fully believe in Aslan, but this might indicate that he’s slowly moving towards believing in him.

We’re going to ignore Caspian because there is no reason for him to be on the table so yeah.

So where the characters are in relation to the table symbolizes their relationship to Aslan. That's the first layer of symbolism in this scene. The second is how much this scene represents and sets up the dynamics between our main six characters (the Pevensies, Caspain, and Trumpkin).

Starting with Peter and Caspian. This scene builds upon the tension that’s sort of set up when they first met, they don’t like each other. Peter probably thinks of Caspain and an immature kid who doesn’t know what he’s doing and Caspain probably thinks Peter is trying to take his place as leader of the narnias. Caspians only experience with kings is Miraz and Miraz is not a good example, he took the power and then he got rid of or tried to get rid of everyone that would get in the way of his keeping the power. Caspain probably thinks that Peter will do the same, since he doesn’t know any better. So he fights back against Peter and his ideas, which clearly annoys Peter, a) because he’s the high king and he's actually getting into that role again, plus he’s been dealing with not being listen to in England for the past year and he’s in Narnia now, he’s supposed to be listened to here but apparently not, and b) Caspain is the one that summoned him for help, he should be listening to him. 

Moving on to Peter and Edmund. This scene shows that Edmund is on Peter's side and has his back. This is shown before, when he jumps into the fight at the train station. But this scene backs it up and establishes Edmund as someone whose opinion Peter respects, because he doesn’t just echo what Peter says, he backs it up by using a logical reason for why they shouldn’t stay in defense mode, while Peter just pointed out that the How is a tomb not a fortress.

Peter and Susan. They’re fighting, and Susan is mad at Peter for some reason. This isn’t the first time this has come up in the movie, first it happened at the train station when Peter was going into a fight and then it happened again at the gorge when Peter appeared to take them out of the way. But this scene does indicate how serious it is, because she sides with Caspain over Peter and that is Not Good. Because they ruled together for 15 years, and they didn’t just rule together, they ruled together so well that the period when they ruled was known as the Golden Age. I’m not saying that they never disagreed on issues during that time, of course they did, but I doubt she ever did it in public and with someone she’d only known for less than a day. She shouldn’t trust Caspians opinion more than Peters, even if Caspain knows more about the current Narnia than Peter does, Peter definitely knows strategy better than Caspain, he definitely has more experience and Susan knows that.

Susan and Caspain. I can not express how much I hate the romance between Susan and Caspian in the movie, if you like it, that’s fine, it’s just really not my cup of tea and I think it’s a fairly useless addition to the story. That being said, this is the scene that establishes it. The movie makers use Susan taking Caspains side in this argument as a starting point for their later romance. 

  Finally Trumpkin and Lucy. I personally believe that Trumpkin sitting next to Lucy at the table is meant to indicate their friendship and such, because why else would he be there and that's really all I have to say about that.

And this isn’t part of the actual analysis because there's literally nothing concrete to back it up, but I like the idea of Lucy being someone whose opinion Peter values. I thought of this because of two particular points in the movie. The first being when they walk into the How for the first time and Lucy is the only pevensie on Peters right side and you know, right hand person and such. The second is that Lucy is the only other Pevensie actually in the circle during this scene, both Edmund and Susan are part of the circle and the only other people in the circle-besides Trumpkin and I’m ignoring him here-are Peter and Caspain, the two main leaders. So yeah there's that, do with it what you will

Thank you for reading this, I’m sorry if it’s long and complicated and possibly confusing with many run-on sentences, I’m reading Jane Austen right now and I tend to semi copy the writing style of whoever I’m reading at the moment.

@confessions-of-a-bookworm, @fandomblr, @czytling

[mittensmorgul]

Re: your recent post about the finale being a giant excuse for a cast party, I've been saying this to people for months. The more I hear about it, the more it sounds like it was an episode designed to say goodbye to the actual TV show SPN, rather than an episode designed around what makes narrative sense for the characters or in-universe plot/themes. The characters have no association with Kansas, only the crew and audience do. The Heaven scene apparently was an open invitation to all (1/2)

(2/3 now) previous crew members, whether it made sense for them to be in Heaven or not (Rachel Miner said she would be there, so I guess demons can be in Heaven now?). IDK if you ever saw Nashville but they pulled the same thing in the finale. Some of the characters were singing on stage and then were joined by all the previous characters who'd died - a huge WTF moment initially - before the audience realised that they'd smashed the 4th wall entirely and it was meant to be the actors themselves.

(3/3) Then the creator and crew got up onstage to say their thank yous before the cameras swung around to reveal the camera operators etc. It was VERY WEIRD, but then again, nobody had the emotional investment in Nashville as they do in SPN so everyone just shrugged and went with it. Given that we had the bridge scene in 15x20 though, I do now think that they were trying something similar, except they thought it through horribly. Anyway, it makes it MUCH easier to dismiss 15x20 entirely.

Hello there! And yeah, ever since (I think it was) Jensen first said that 15.19 would work like a “season finale” while 15.20 would function as a “series finale” I’ve been prepared to think of 15.20 as its own entity, you know? He was pretty emphatic about the concept, and it had me seriously wondering why for the better part of a year. In conjunction with the story he told (repeatedly) of how difficult it was for him to wrap his head around the finale. And then there was that shot on the bridge with the entire crew, and it was like... why?! I mean, I get they wanted to honor the crew in some way but that just felt ~weird and jarring~ after that whole episode’s weirdness.

And now we’ve had confirmation about some aspects of the original intended ending, with a massive party at the Roadhouse in Heaven, with characters we have to assume were ~not originally~ in heaven. Much as I love Rachel Miner, I seriously doubt Meg would’ve been in Heaven-- unless it was the human she had originally possessed and not The Demon Known As Meg. And Ketch? I guess murdering Eileen that one time wasn’t a big enough strike against him to have earned Heaven redemption after his help in s15? But then if Eileen was also there? AWKWARD.... like... the random assortment of faces would’ve ranged from narratively meaningless to outright insulting, you know?

And it kind of goes with the theory I’d adopted shortly after the finale aired, that that particular finale only made sense in the Mockumentary!verse. Because the rest of the episode required to get us to that Heaven Roadhouse Party Concert Ending just... didn’t make sense with the show *we* have been watching for years. But maybe one universe over where the characters in the Mockumentary were actually real, maybe this ending made sense for their show. The contrivance of Dean with a dog fit pretty well with Mockumentary!Jensen walking around set with a dog, and Sam with a wig was spot on with Mockumentary!Jared and his wig on fire like... in the most hilariously awful way, some of the narrative choices fit those characters.

And honestly, my heart hurts for people who haven’t been able to let go of 15.20 as a part of canon, for folks who have been too hurt by it to engage with something that brought them happiness and validation for years. I’m not suggesting that this is The Full Truth here, but that seeing this episode this way might help let it go if it’s only causing them pain. There’s perfectly valid and legitimate arguments to be made that 15.20 isn’t actually a part of canon, so if seeing it this way or accepting this headcanon helps anyone in any way to let go and be able to engage with the rest of canon and fandom again, then it’s worth making this suggestion.

Again, not saying this is in any way a factual statement of how this episode was conceived and came to be, but hooooboy, it sure would explain a lot if it was...

I just don’t want people taking this theory and presenting it as What Actually Happened in any official capacity, because for all we know this is entirely off base with reality. But heck... apply it liberally for personal salvation if it helps, you know?

[butwhatifidothis]

3H and Bleach: Where the Fuck am I

So, I’m finally hunkering down and trying to write out this post lmao. I’ve mentioned here and there how my personal experience with the 3H’s fandom is similar to my experience with the Bleach fandom’s in more than one way, and - look. Like, I get there’s definitely a semi-universal thing that goes on across all fandoms. I don’t mean for this to say that this only happens within these two fandoms, because duh, of course they don’t. But!! This post is partly me wanting to air years long annoyance towards the Bleach fandom that just so happens to coincide with my feelings towards the 3H fandom, sooo... yeah lmao

I’ll probably be skimming over some bits about 3H, since most people who come across this will already be familiar with what I’d be talking about in that regard vs Bleach, so just a heads up

Note: This is gonna talk about Bleach which will spoiler territory (writing this off the cuff so not sure where this is goin’ yet lmao but I know that much), so if you don’t wanna see that then don’t read this post lol, I know for sure I’ll be spoiling something ahhhh... noticeable, lol

Ableism against the mentally ill

Now, most people reading this post will be familiar with the blog and how this very, very much applies to 3H, but for the sake of this post I’ll lay it out anyway with a brief summary

Dimitri and Rhea are both characters within 3H that suffer from severe trauma that heavily impacts their mental state. Both are the sole survivors of a horrific slaughter, with that slaughter redefining who they are and leaving a permanent marker within their minds in some way (Dimitri with having auditory and visual hallucinations, Rhea with having obsessive tendencies towards bringing her mother back from the dead). Specifically in CF, both characters are set up in the plot as antagonists, with both characters having to relive their trauma in some way due to the actions Byleth and Edelgard take against them (for Dimitri, having his home be razed to the ground and everyone he cares for dying around him, for Rhea having someone use her mother’s mutilated remains be used to end her and her race) and express extreme anger towards Byleth and Edelgard before they are killed to progress/end the story

Now, uh, sad shit right? Not exactly fuckin’ happy sunshine rainbows. These two characters are put through the wringer and are then murdered. They are rightfully not the fuckin’ happiest because of what happened to them before and what happens to them within the present story. But we’ve heard it all before: “They were crazy!” “They couldn’t be reasoned with!” “They had to be put down out of mercy because they were too ~far gone~ to live happily!” “They needed to be killed for the good of everyone!” It’s an extremely ableist rhetoric that gets passed around the fandom as though it’s totally fine to directly state that mentally ill people should be put down if they’re deemed a “lost cause.” Especially worrying because. You know. If they are a “”””lost cause”””” then it’s directly and specifically because of actions Byleth and Edelgard take against them. 

But how does this remind me of Bleach? What kind of similar extreme, worrying ableism exists there? Well, let me introduce to best girl a certain character with... a reputation, to say the least:

Meet Momo Hinamori.

Holy shit it’s so weird writing this out because I’ve been wanting to for years but have never worked up the nerve to do it lol

It should be noted, in the Bleach verse there’s two worlds out of three - Soul Society and Hueco Mundo, though I’ll only be talking of the former - that deal with “souls” (the essence within a living human). Souls age far more slowly than human bodies do in terms of body, not necessarily the mind (so a teenage soul will likely behave as such for a long while) so keep in mind that I’m going to be using numbers that may seem weird to someone who hasn’t seen Bleach lol.  With that out of the way, here’s a similar, if longer for context to those who haven’t seen Bleach, summary for Momo’s character as it relevant to this post:

Momo is a character in Bleach that grows a deep admiration towards Sosuke Aizen, a respected captain of the military force called the Gotei 13. She comes to views him as the most important person in her world due to him both noticing and paying direct attention to her as well as saving her and her friends’ lives during a training mission gone wrong while she was younger. Note that “younger” here means 40 years ago from the start of the story. Aizen would praise her all the time, allow her to sleep over in his quarters, would drape his cloaks over her when she looked cold, and would overall treat Momo as though he was his daughter for most of the time we see them interact in the beginning portions of the show. Note that none of this is sexual in nature, nor is it ever implied to be seen as such. That’ll be important later in this post

To make a long story short, Aizen comes to betray her. He stabs her through the chest and shows and tells her that she never meant anything to him, throughout the 40 years they’ve known each other (which, mind, for a soul Momo’s approximate age 40 years is still a noticeable amount of time), and he was only using her to help bolster his image as a loveable captain so that he can hide his plan from everybody that much easier. He did horrible things to Momo - from setting her alarm clock back to a later time so that she would more likely come across his pinned, bloody fake corpse. to framing her childhood friend for the apparent murder and tricking her into fighting that friend, to far later in the series tricking that friend into stabbing her (hypnosis shit, to sum that up) for literally no stated reason - that ended up mentally breaking her. She couldn’t believe that the last four decades were all nothing but lies and she fell into a deep denial about Aizen’s true nature - someone else made him do everything he did, she must have missed something that would have warned her about Captain Aizen’s unfortunate situation that forced Captain Aizen to hurt her and everyone else. This denial would take the majority of Bleach’s entire runtime for her to get over completely, with her having hiccups in her recovery even as she works up the nerve to fight him.

Now, uh, also not the fuckin’ funnest of times to be had here. The deep, long-running mental and psychological manipulation of what approximates as a teenage girl from a trusted older figure is something that is very clearly horrific and bad of the older figure, right? Like, we’re on the same page here on that?

This wouldn’t be in this post if that was the case. No, Momo was the one constantly on fire for what happened to her. She was one of the most hated characters in the western audience, and there were endless jokes about “lol look at Momo, the pincushion!” “Crazy bitch Momo, better watch out!” making fun of her and her trauma relentlessly. If you managed to find a Momo fan in the early 2000′s you should have also bought a lotto ticket because holy fuck, everyone hated her. She acted in a startlingly real if deeply uncomfortable way in regards to years long manipulation and she was lambasted for it. She didn’t immediately get over decades long psychological abuse and she was called useless, weak, a horrible representation of female characters, stupid - you name it, she was likely called it. To this day I still tense up when I hear that someone likes Bleach and they mention Momo at all because I’m always thinking “does this person think this abuse victim is dumb for being abused?”

Dimitri, Rhea, and Momo are all victim-blamed to a disgusting degree in the 3H and Bleach fandoms. Dimitri and Rhea are always hit with “well if Dimitri hadn’t have fought back against Edelgard/Rhea caused the “”tyranical systems” in the first place, nothing would have happened to them!” and Momo was constantly hit with” well, it’s not Aizen’s fault Momo was so clingy to him, what could he have done!” and I get so fuckin’ mad dude.

But for Dimitri and Momo specifically, there’s one thing in particular that caught my attention:

The “Rejection Theories”

This had my head spinnin’ a bit when I first heard it, cuz I had managed to avoid the theory for a while in the 3H’s fandom, but apparently a sizeable amount of people seem to believe that Dimitri wasn’t just mad at Edelgard in the Holy Tomb because of... you know *waves hand* fuckin’ everything, but that the primary reason for his anger was that Edelgard... rejected his advances to her? And that the dagger he gave to her when they were 13 was a phallic symbol of baby Mitri’s want to have sex with Edelgard? And. Like. What in the fuck are you talking about. 

But like?? Bleach did this shit too with Momo?? It was also a sizeable amount of people - not everyone, but a noticeable amount - that believed that Momo was just mad that Aizen wouldn’t sleep with her? You’d see it pop up in fics so often, that Momo would want Aizen to fuck her and she’d “go crazy” when he denied her and Momo was actually just this shallow bitch who wanted a good fuck like... what.

Like, when I first heard the Phallic Dagger take the first thing that came to mind is “wait Momo was also accused of just wanting to have sex with the person who traumatized her wtf” 

“Actually it was the perpetrators that should be forgiven because lonely and also some shit about ruling better”

Those in the 3H fandom know how often the “Edelgard was lonely!” line gets thrown by just about every one of her stans. Edelgard was lonely and couldn’t trust anyone, so of course she did what she did! If she had someone near her she could trust she wouldn’t have acted like she does in the rest of the game! Nevermind that she “gets” this in CF in the form of Byleth and still acts just as shittily as she does in the other routes, or how being a little lonely doesn’t fuckin’ mean you get to start war. But anyway, we also hear that Edelgard was justified in doing what she did because her ruling Fodlan would have lead to more peace in the end, once she got rid of the power structures in place now (except that doesn’t happen but whatev I guess lmao)

Aizen? He was lonely too! He was far too strong for anyone to truly be able to understand him, and so he tragically fell down a dark path. If he had known someone who could be considered an equal to him he would have never done all the horrible things he did. And the Soul Society is unjust! It needs to be reformed! So him slaughtering hundreds of thousands of souls at the minimum to harvest all of their power to use as his own is justified because it’ll be used to create a more just society under his rule!

Like. Y’all. Lowkey? I’m so fuckin’ glad Edelgard proved herself to be just as fuckin’ awful with Byleth as without because this shit drove me up the fuckin’ wall back in the day. There was 0 ways to prove that Aizen would damn sure be just as fuckin’ bad if he had an “”equal”” to stand by him than if he didn’t, and I get to kinda be right because without fundamentally changing these characters’ backstories they would not give two flying shits about whether or not they had someone “equal to them” (which is still kinda degrading to think about anyway).

Now, this is where I move away to a different topic lol

A split in the narrative cause divides in the fandom

With 3H houses this is really fuckin’ easy to point at: there’s 4 routes, three consistent stories and one radically different story, and that difference in story causes heavy contention within the fandom. It’s very obvious so I won’t go over it much.

But how in the fuck is there a divide in Bleach? It’s not a fuckin’ Choose Your Own Adventure manga, it’s an anime and manga showing off the characters of Bleach’s stories and interactions (with, you know, plot and shit thrown in).

Well. It’s more accurate to say the anime told a story about the characters, and the manga told... the story about the characters.

In terms of plot, the anime didn’t change much from the manga, but hoo fuckin’ boy, did they change shit about some of the characters. Specifically, they changed a shit ton about three characters: the two main protagonists, Ichigo and Rukia, and another main character, Orihime.

Orihime. Got. Fucked.

The anime would make her far more ditzy and clumsy, her crush (turned growing love later on in the story) for Ichigo during more deeper moments that showcases her feelings for him were downplayed if not removed entirely in exchange for talking or thinking about food, key moments she has with Ichigo early in the manga were cut or deadass changed to something else in the anime, some key moments with her relationship with Rukia were cut, her backstory was watered down - so much of Orihime was fucked with in the anime (her fuckin’ introduction was changed drastically). Meanwhile Ichigo and Rukia were given moments that didn’t exist in the manga, they have filler arcs (remember those lmao) that would be stuffed with shit ton of moments for them that have no basis in the manga, other characters would change their behavior from the manga to reflect a sort of “thing” going on between Ichigo and Rukia.

Look, guys, the anime fucked up so bad the fucking mangaka, Tite Kubo, has said he gets stomach aches watching the early anime because it was that awful. And this divide between the anime and manga’s portrayal of these three character helped spawn the ship war of Bleach: Ichiruki vs Ichihime (oh but more on that in a bit). It tanked Orihime’s popularity because people thought she was the stupid dumbass that would stumble ass first into situations when that wasn’t her character at all. And because the majority of anime watchers only watch the anime... yeah, you can see where this went. So just like in 3H in Bleach you have these radically different tellings of the same characters that drove a big-ass wedge in the fandom

Marketing

Imma be transparent, like I’ve said before I managed to avoid nearly every marketing tactic for 3H so it’s a tad hard for me to speak personally, but from what I’ve been told Edelgard was heavily marketed towards the player base pre-release. She was the poster child of 3H, she got the figma, she was in the spotlight - unless you cleansed your board of 3H content you knew exactly who she was. On top of that, it doesn’t stop in-game - loading screen messages would assume you picked BE, Adrestia is the first option to pick when you want to impress one of the lords in the prologue, the BE class is the first option to pick in choosing which route to play, every character has some moment in the game post ts where they express sympathy with the woman who waged war on them for five years (even characters with no business doing so, like Seteth entertaining the idea that maybe Edelgard isn’t that bad during Myrddin). With all of that good PR for Edelgard in and out of the game it heavily impacted how people saw her, and much of it is used by stans to justify her being a good guy (mostly in the game marketing) despite everything else in the game clearly showing that Edelgard is the bad guy

With Bleach in that regard... you have Ichiruki

holy shit it’s so weird talking about Ichiruki i’m still lowkey nervous about talking about them lmao

With Ichiruki stans, they would cling onto outside material that promoted Ichigo and Rukia together as proof that their ship was going to be canon. Spreadsheets, calendars, poems (some of which didn’t even apply to Ichigo and Rukia’s relationship but they insisted they did anyway), novels - outside material that either wasn’t canon or didn’t pertain to Ichigo and Rukia’s relationship. They would shove it in the face of Ichihime shippers that “see, we have all this stuff for us! We ain’t starving tonight!” when the canon (note: in the manga particularly) would clearly show Ichigo and Orihime’s relationship being the one that leans romantic in multiple significant ways. They would latch onto irrelevant shit that ain’t had nothin’ to do with anything and wave around as a paragon of romance when it literally wasn’t even canon

Just fuckin’ ignoring the creators deadass

Creators and developers of 3H: Edelgard is the typical Red Emperor the only difference is Girl

Stans: that’s just a headcanon

Kubo: Ichigo and Rukia have a platonic relationship and I’ve publicly said this since 2008

Stans, now, to this day: Ichigo and Rukia were robbed

Making people reject what they’re stanning for

I’ve seen a few people express that the more they interact with the fandom and see what her stans are doing, the more they grow to dislike Edelgard despite (some) initially liking or even loving her. To put it simply, the same thing happened with Ichiruki - hell, this happened with me with Ichiruki. I can’t fuckin’ stand the ship anymore because every time I think about it I’m reminded of the absolutely rancid, disgusting things Ichiruki stans have to done to others in the fandom, and even after nearly five years after Bleach has ended I still tense up when someone says they like Ichiruki over Ichihime precisely because of the behavior of the stans, just like I side-eye people who say Edelgard is the best lord. Do they like them because they simply prefer them over the other(s) and they’re not totally fuckin’ bonkers, or are they totally fuckin’ bonkers. 

And, like, that’s not fair! I know that! But I can’t help but think that when such a loud amount of people act in such deplorable ways just because someone didn’t like a bunch of lines on paper/pixels on a screen.

To all the nice Ichiruki and Edelgard fans, hope y’all are havin’ a nice day.

Long, crazy ass explanations as to why X =/= X (and if anything actually means Y)

Teacher theory for 3H. How Edelgard totally didn’t hire Kostas to kill Dimitri and Claude and was only thwarted because Claude booked it, but how she definitely actually meant to simply scare away the teacher that was with them so that Jeritza could be pulled from his already existing position in Garreg Mach to teach one class so that Edelgard can kinda keep a sorta closer eye on exactly one of the other classes (and just do shit all about the other one I guess), because Jertiza’d be able to gleam so much from teaching a class for a few hours a day I promise 

But for Bleach, you also have one particularly infamous theory positing shit that don’t real, with enough renown to be known by a specific name, and that’s the Lust Arc = Fail essay

To explain what the essay is about, I have to set the scene up a bit. Imagine, you, with your tiny little monkey brain, are watching Bleach, and you get to the part where Main Boyo is fighting against Villain to save Girly. Other Guy is there too - this is important. Main Boyo tries his hardest to fight Villain, but is ultimately shot through the fucking chest with a laser from Villain and dies. Like, for bit actually dies. Girly breaks down, has a straight up mental breakdown because she always “knew” that Main Boyo could do anything, and now he’s been killed and is dead in front of her. She screams out Main Boyo’s name, hysterically begging him to save her and protect her because holy shit the love of her life has been brutally murdered in front of her what the fuck. But Main Boyo, from literally beyond the line of death, hears her pleas and snaps back to life as a monster, with the sentence “I MUST PROTECT” repeatedly running through his head and being the only sentence he ever says while in this form, with him fucking destroying Villain and even going so far as to directly hurt Other Guy when Other Guy tries to stop Main Boyo from utterly stomping on Villain. Girly is the only person Main Boyo does not directly hurt, and when Villain is damn sure gonna fuckin’ kick the bucket that is when Main Boyo reverts back human. Everyone is more than a little shocked at what happened, but it’s clear from how relieved Girly is when Main Boyo comes back safe and sound that while this event fundamentally will change their relationship (and it does), it is still one that is extremely strong and they won’t let it get between them (and they don’t).

Now, when looking at the summary, you, with your absolutely miniscule peanut of a brain, might come away thinking, “Hm, Main Boyo might kinda care for Girly given that he literally rose from the dead to protect her and only her and went back to normal once she was safe” and you poor fool would be oh so wrong, because actually, this is all proof that Mian Boyo doesn’t care for Girly and that Villain actually cared more for Girly than Main Boyo ever could.

Without diving too deeply into the absolute lunacy of the Lust Arc = Fail essay, that was its main premise. That Ichigo, after rising from the literal dead directly after Orihime begged and pleaded that he protect and save her and then going on to protect and save specifically her (as Uryu - Other Guy - is also a friend of Ichigo’s and got his fucking arm cut off by Monster!Ichigo), is proof against Ichihime being romantic in any way and was not, in fact, a fuckin’ giant neon flashing sign that read THESE TWO ARE GONNA GET TOGETHER. It was the dumbest shit ever, but Ichiruki stans, much like Edelstans with Teacher Theory, clung to it like white on rice. It didn’t matter how much it was utterly debunked, it didn’t matter how the base premise was stupid as fuck, they point to it as the pinnacle of meta for their respective fandoms in their respective spaces.

And all of this leads me to um... the one I’m kinda the most worried about?

Stan Behavior

Edelstans are their own unique brand of awful in that that the shit they spew is particularly... worrying (”genocide isn’t bad if they aren’t human and also they kinda deserved it” “imperialism isn’t that bad really” the mentally ill should be put down if they’re deemed ~too far gone~” among other... wonderful takes...), and their behavior is also quite shitty, harassing content creators that go against the Approved Opinions (Ghast) or forcing people to take down fanart and in general infecting nearly every Rhea space with all kinds of disparaging comments no one asked for. They actively make the fandom a worse space, and when they flare up it’s almost always noticeable (again, Ghast)

Bleach?

Oh boy.

Guys. If you weren’t there for the Canonization of Ichihime (2016). You dodged a fucking bullet.

The outrage was out-fuckin’-rageous. Their behavior was some of the worst reactions anyone has ever seen come from the canonization of a ship in a shounen. This includes, but is not limited to:

Someone tearing apart all 70+ volumes of Bleach and burning it in their bathroom

In fact, multiple people tearing up Bleach and burning it, while keeping the Ichiruki moments and taping it to their walls

A Rukia cosplayer, in Rukia cosplay, printing out the final color spread of the end-game couples and their friends lounging about - with colored ink and all - and burning it, while filming herself doing so

Ichiruki porn being sent to Tite Kubo

Tite Kubo being accused of grooming a 15 Orihime cosplayer with no proof

Tite Kubo being accused of lying about his various health issues

Ichigo and Rukia being drawn cheating on their spouses with each other - and some of that also being sent to Tite Kubo

Tite Kubo being chased off Twitter by Ichiruki stans... again

Ichihime shippers getting sent death threats

Ichihime shippers getting called delusional for thinking their ship had a chance before the endgame couples were revealed, and then being called delusional for thinking their ship had any real basis and wasn’t pulled “out of nowhere”

Tite Kubo being accused of hating women because of Orihime being shown in an apron in the last chapter and Ichiruki stans jumping to the conclusion she became a housewife, and then Tite Kubo being accused of hating women because when it was revealed that Orihime has a job in a bakery to pay for college later they insisted what Kubo should have done was have Uryu, who’s a doctor at that point, pay for Orihime’s college instead of having Orihime pay for it with her own money 

And mind you, this is only the stuff I’ve personally seen and experienced

I am hoping and praying that Edelstans never get as bad as Ichiruki stans did in 2016, but with how otherwise similar they are my hopes are dwindling more and more. I guess I can take solace in the fact that they aren’t quite... that bad yet? In terms of actions, at least? Their sentiments though are infinitely worse, so like... cool