#all opinions are subjective and experiences are relative

[curiouschaosstarlight]

Bit of a random post, but I think one of the worst things about having a brain (just in general) is how hard it is to keep yourself from orienting your expectations exclusively inside of your own experiences.

I think there's a lot to be said about people who build a very specific kind of hype up in their head, and will inevitably disappointed because the actual product was never going to align with their mental fanfiction, but

On a smaller and simpler note, my love for horror video essays is tempered by the fact it feels like 99% of the internet has a much more fragile stomach for the dark and disturbing than I do, and I can't even sit through a horror movie or play a horror game because I'm a goddamn coward-

(And the remaining 1% is into stuff that actually makes me squeamish in a way I can't quite handle, but they do seem to be living their best lives, and more power to them)

But generally my struggle is when someone builds up, like, a manga as "one of the most dark and disturbing things [they've] ever read", especially if it's a "no one should EVER read/watch/play this"/"I read/watch/played this horrible thing so YOU don't have to!", and then I go to experience it, and it's always

I've wrote/read/watched/played worse, and I am always expecting something "worse".

And sometimes it's just, you know, different things disturb different people; I don't find existential "we're just a tiny speck in the universe" stuff scary, but there's plenty of people that do, but I do find certain other things genuinely terrifying for how my brain will take the concept and try to be like "hey could you survive this? lol no you can't, you'd die dummy :) no escape", but those won't frighten other people as much (if at all)

But sometimes it's like

"Damn, if you tried to play/watch/read some of my top favorite non-horror things, you'd just crumble into dust, wouldn'tcha, bud?"

[klerothesnowman]

The Sith are Nazis and it's never been subtle

This one ended up being really long. I spliced in some images when I could to break it up easier.

One of the things that causes the most friction in the world is the idea of morality. I know, that's the most water is wet statement ever said but I think people really miss just how much the nuance of morality goes over people's heads. Subjective, objective, relative, from a baseline we understand that there are different types of morality but I don't think people really grasp how much a persons personal morality can be wildly different to any another given person's, especially among people who share spaces like fandoms. Morality is shaped by personal experiences, there are personal experiences that are 99% ubiquitous among humanity like "Pain" that form the basis of everyone's moral compass, then there are the major cultural touchstones that no matter what your morality will be affected by, religion, nation, race, all that what have you. Everyone has an opinion on the Christian Church and that opinion is informed by your morals. People who have been abused by members of a church will have a very different view of the morality of a religion compared to people who have been raised Catholic compared to someone who was raised agnostic compared to someone raised agnostic and is queer compared to someone who has been raised Catholic and is queer compared to someone who has been raised Catholic and is queer and is also rich and so on and so forth you get it.

Morality is not a binary thing, and it's not a nine point grid either D&D, it's more like one of those circle charts that Jojo Stands get ranked on. You know the ones that always seem to show up in anime? I don't know what they're called. Except instead of a circle it's more like a ball, and everyone has this horrible looking 3D balls covered in bumps and spikes and dips and holes.

Why am I opening this ramble with a ramble about morality and religion? Because I'm on tumblr. When I decide I want to ramble about something I read the tags and see what the vibe is, see what people are saying about things. I'm not part of the "Fandom", I don't know the discourses, I see that there's Anti-Jedi and Pro-Jedi and "Stanikins" and all of these different labels and battlelines, and then I read about how people on either side are feeling attacked and harassed by people on other sides. I have no idea how real this is, I have no idea what kind of minefield I'm about to walk into. I'm just rambling about my thoughts and feelings about Star Wars because I like it and I'm a little extra aware that this one is going to ruffle feathers.

Because people are fuckin' worked up about Jedi. There are people who are making it part of their identity that they are anti-Jedi. And it's been happening for years, decades even. Because the experiences and trends of nerd culture has been pushing against systems and religion since I was a baby. Nerds being obnoxious atheists and smugly telling people "God isn't real" was basically the norm when I was a teenager, and before I was born nerds were dealing with being called evil and satanic. Nothing I'm rambling about here is new, in fact using D&D as a touchstone I think the current trend for nerddom's interaction with religion is ambivalence, despite faith and divine power being such an important part of D&D, there's basically zero interaction with divinities in 5e, and when there is it's hostile and has an asterisk against it. I'll do a ramble about this one day too

But the Jedi stuff is interesting to me, because there's a lot of directions people come at for it.

There's people who argue against just Jedi because they're a religion. There's people who argue the Jedi are slavers or kidnap children. People think Jedi are super beings who lord over everyone with their power. People think the Jedi force people to suppress their emotions and personhood. There are people who think Jedi are moral supremacists who silence and kill anyone who thinks about the Force differently from them.

I have some "Pro-Jedi" arguments to make but I'll save them for a different ramble, because this one's supposed to be about another group of people.

The people who think, from their point of view, the Jedi are evil.

The reason I rambled on so much about people being Anti-Jedi is because very often, these people end up being Pro-Sith. It's an obvious leap, if the Jedi are the problem then the people opposed to the Jedi might have the right idea. If your issue with the Jedi is that they disallow "Attachment", then here's the Sith who are all about Attachment. If your issue with the Jedi is that they suppress their emotions then here's the Sith who are always tapping into their emotions. There is an immediate appeal there.

Then there's the Sith Code, let's give it a read.

Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.

Pretty sweet, Passion is pretty positive, breaking chains and freedom. I can get behind that. The rest of Sith Philosophy is pretty swell too. It's about improvement through conflict. Your struggles make you stronger, makes you better, removes your shackles and lets you be free, but also recognizes that you will have to do whatever it takes to do so. The Jedi seek to wipe out the dark knowledge you attain, so you must sequester yourself and hide when you must hide, and strike when you must strike. It's stance could be summed up as something like... "The sacred mission of a Sith is to preserve the Sith Order's most valuable elements as you raise yourself to a dominant position, and all who do not are chaff."

There are people who are really into this. Like, really, really into this. They talk about how they apply this mentality to their real life. They describe themselves as Sith. There are also people who are only kind of into this, they think about positive Sith characters and make headcanons about the good things Sith do.

I need to stress, for those people, that what I am about to say is not hyperbole. I will provide sources.

The Sith Code and Philosophy is Nazi Propaganda. It is literally lifted from Mein Kampf. That quote I used to sum it up is a paraphrased quote from Britannica.com. That's Hitler.

The Sith Code was invented to be in opposition to the Jedi Code, its purpose is to twist a preexisting code to make you think the alternative isn't so bad and it uses codephrases to do so.

Passion, Strength, Victory, Chains, being Free, these are words that we have presubscribed meanings for, but what do they mean in the Sith Code? What IS Passion? What IS Strength? What IS Victory?

Most people I interact with see Passion as Love, passionate, exciting love, the exact thing the Jedi reject. But that can't be it, where's Palpatine's love? Where's Maul's? Where's Vader's?

Passion is obsession. The kind of obsession that will lead you to burning everything down if you don't get what you want. It's not letting anything stand between you and your goal, even if that thing is your goal itself.

Let's break the code down here.

Peace is a lie, there is only passion. We start with the obvious twist on the Jedi code, an immediate refutation of the Jedi's first line. It stands in opposition.

Through passion, I gain strength. We've already done Passion, it's a nice little dressing up of "Being a raging psycho"

Through strength, I gain power. Strength is often intermingled with power, but it's often spoken of interchangably with being able to set aside morals. The Sith isn't an amoral monster who just killed a bunch of kids, he's just STRONG enough to do what needed to be done

Through power, I gain victory. Power isn't a code word. Power is Power, Power is what it's all about and there's no hiding it. In the Sith way the only thing that matters is that you are powerful enough to kill your rivals and stand on top.

Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me. I think the notions of breaking chains and being Free is the cleverest part of the Sith Code's propaganda kit. It's still seeing use in The Acolyte and it's still convincing people that the Sith are right, even when the guy who's calling for freedom mercs a child then and there.

The Sith are not misunderstood heroes. They're Nazis. They're facist might makes right would be autocrats trying to convince you they're right so you'll validate them and prove them right.

Sith Philosophy is self defeating. Following the Sith Code means you need to define yourself on your conflict, meaning your conflict can never end. For all its claims of being free and breaking chains you can never be free of what drives you or you will lose the strength it gives you. To break your chains you need to hold onto them tight, and you can never let them go.

[srbachchan]

DAY 5992

Jalsa, Mumbai July 14/July 15, 2024 Sun/Mon 4:05 am

🪔 ,

July 14 .. birthday greetings to : Ef Shalini from Allahabad (now Prayagraj) .. Ef Manish Mehrotra .. and Ef Anupam Srivastava .. 🙏🏻❤️🚩

It is late .. but not without reason or cause .. spending time with loved ones at the Gate and then at home with family .. ever such a joy to a whole bunch of relatives busy interacting, running around the premises and simply enjoying the little pleasures of togetherness ..

And GOJ .. that has been an experience each Sunday .. the ramp on wheels I asked to move closer to the well wishers .. and the mobility towards them is an excitement always .. you hear them better , you feel the expressive love better , you give those a chance to see and be greeted that at times stand at a distance and never seen ..

So the ramp has added the mobility much needed .. personal and public meets are restricted .. but some of the inevitable are complied with ..

... and the joy expressed in their eyes and faces remains with you for days .. despite the much opinionated fear often felt of appearing at the GOJ to meet them ..

At times the personal contact in the days after covid has been there but distant and this has been a point of immense disappointment with those that express a wish to meet ..

BUT .. dearest ones , give me time to get clearances fro the Medical Unit and I shall be able .. soon , if not too far ..

The years of yore ;

and the reel in the making :

There has been a suggestion to read a script given for production .. and one that relied on nthe values of theosophy and the occult ..

A most fascinating read in a precise rendering, but influential enough to set a vacant mind into a thought process, that keeps a consistent 'knock on the door' to turn away and change path for its search .. the search of humanity in the realisation of its birth and thereafter .. Dear O dear there is so much to learn and imbibe .. and time slips away as rapidly as it possibly can .. to hold it and refrain it from immediate travel ahead is well nigh impossible .. the movements of the Earth can never .. so we live a life of unanswered questions and beliefs and the presence of religion and more ..

A most fascinating subject .. and in many ways getting inspired by a movie !!!

AND the film, has many significant stories, hidden or brought about in a form KALKI 2898 AD .. which I must admit has been instrumental in its viewing 4 times .. at the iMax theatre .. which has the capacity of a perfect imagery on screen along with a quality of sound that seems to have been installed after considerable understanding and layout ..

SO back to the GOJ : and the giving out in equal distribution, umbrellas, to them that have stood there for some, bearing the heat and cold and the thunder and lightening of monsoon rain .. the umbrella, a gift from that very sincere well wisher Sunil Shah, from Surat Gujarat , who just does not attempt to stay calm and controlled , but instead continues to send these gifts as a token of his sincerity and love ..

I applaud the gestures he has made all these years .. his affection and love over brimming and so potent .. it just does not behove a telling off for him .. his mode of affection does not change ..

I am honoured and humbled by these intricate gestures, of love .. but really, they are a bit distressing and unreasonable for me in my countenance ..

I speak to him on this often , but he is adamant on his affection and just cannot stop these gestures 'in multiples'

I talk to him to be in control and not cause or give an unnecessary reason of disrespect .. but he just continues ..

So I accept .. and distribute them to the needy that spend their valuable time on a Sunday for the GOJ .. healthy and in all sincerity a show of immense affection !!

AND now for the Sunday and days .. :

... and the creative autograph hunters , their immense love to be in a photograph , but there are restrictions on health .. so we bear the loss of the occasion , walk away and sit and reminisce ...

Amitabh Bachchan

[copperbadge]

Hi Sam. A potentially stupid question. Image descriptions for screen readers. Do they work the same way for audio and video? As in are they needed or helpful? I'm finding conflicting answers when I search for this.

Not at all a stupid question! I think sometimes it can vary by community, to be honest.

Screen-reader users, visually impaired folk, and others for whom IDs are particularly relevant, feel free to chime in; I'm going to ramble and you likely have more useful stuff to say. Remember to do it in reblogs or notes, as I don't post asks sent in response to other asks.

I'm not visually impaired, and I don't use a screen reader and thus am not really able to speak with firsthand authority. In the past, when I've asked, I've heard that in-post text is better than alt-text for images; even if that stops being the case, I prefer to use in-post text because there are people who aren't screen-reader users who also like the IDs. I do too, actually. And generally I've heard that video as well as image should be described. I don't do straight audio generally, but when I do, if it's a song I don't bother because the title is there and lyrics are googleable, if it's speech I like to see/give a transcript.

I like when videos have descriptions especially, because I am almost never in a position to play a video I see on my dash. If the video doesn't autoplay I don't want to hit play because then it will load with audio and I'm usually either a) somewhere I can't have audio or b) already listening to something and unwilling to turn it off. If the video autoplays it's muted, but if it's audio-heavy there's the same issue. So if someone posts a video without a description/transcript, unless it has captions, I can't engage.

There are a lot of guides out there for how to write IDs and I kind of think, based on conversations I've had, most of them are bullshit by people who don't use screen readers. In my experience, which is not universal but is relatively comprehensive, people who can't see an image often do not want a precise objective description as we're instructed to provide.

There's a great essay that touches on this, Against Access, where the writer, who is Deafblind, talks about how he doesn't want a diagram, he wants an emotional evocation.

Why are you telling me, telling me, telling me things? Your job isn’t to deliver this whole room to me on a silver platter. I don’t want the silver platter. I want to attack this room. I want to own it, just like how the sighted people here own it. Or, if the room isn’t worth owning, then I want to grab whatever I find worth stealing.

I've had people get shitty with me about putting "feelings" into my IDs, but the majority of people for whom those IDs are necessary have told me they like it because, for example, saying "She looks like she's about to commit violence" is a subjective opinion but conveys something that "A woman is standing with arms upraised and a frown on her face" does not. And if you're describing an image but there's not a ton of meaning to it, describing it in clinical detail is wasting time. A paragraph describing a fortysomething white guy and all the clothing he's wearing and the room he's in is not as helpful, on occasion, as simply saying "This is a photograph of me in my bedroom." It depends on context, which is your call to make, and the only way to get good at that is to do it.

But again: this is my experience with my readers, and even John Lee Clark, quoted above, doesn't speak for his whole community. So I would suggest that the best way to get an answer for this is just to ask your readers what they'd prefer. If you have friends who use screenreaders, ask them. If you don't, or if you don't get a response from your readers, I would do what you feel is best until someone tells you otherwise, and then be gracious and discuss it with them so you can better understand their needs. In my experience, when someone is genuinely trying to make a more welcoming space for disabilities -- as opposed to making virtue-signal attempts to Be The Perfect Ally -- they get a lot of slack when they don't get it exactly right. It is better to make a welcoming space for people to feel safe telling you that you fucked up than it is to pretend you're never going to fuck up.

So yeah, as someone who is more or less fully sighted, that's my two cents, but if you really want to know what your readers want, you know...I'd ask them. :) Good luck, either way.

[foundfamilywhump]

serious word of warning about a server that's been making the rounds

i've debated about making this post a lot, for a lot of reasons. i'm concerned about making it as a trans person and as a relatively new blog, though i've been involved in the whump community for years. i hope you'll hear me out and i'm not looking forward to whatever backlash may come my way, should anyone actually pay attention to this at all.

the short version is: the whump discord server 'whump lovers collaborate' (@/whumplovers-collaborate) is unsafe and hostile to trans people and the server owner will not take action to shut down transphobia, nor will she allow her mod team to do so. i am certain this would apply to other bigotries as well. i know this because i am trans, and when i called out some disgustingly transphobic commentary being made by a member of the server i was blamed for causing drama, essentially, and there was a rule added to the server not to talk about 'controversial topics' or get into arguments, and that was all that was done.

the much longer version is under the cut. i just can't sit on this anymore after seeing that the server got advertised in the whumptober server (to no fault of the whumptober mods who didn't know about any of this, they're fine) and also seeing hundreds of notes on posts broadcasting it. this server is unsafe for trans people and the server owner is actively enabling bigots. given the whump community has a bit of a transphobia problem in some places, i wanted to make sure no trans person or ally was unwittingly walking into that without warning. i'd appreciate it if you would spread the word as well, to keep trans community members and allies safe.

so, here's what happened:

i was in the whump lovers collaborate server for a while earlier this year. in february, a member of the server started spouting off some extremely transphobic rhetoric, including talking about inherent biological differences between men and women, that women are inherently and unchangeably weaker than men, that men have a 'biological instinct' to protect women, and other things. (there was also some bizarre commentary about how abuse or assault committed against men was inherently less upsetting, and often funny to witness because of this).

seeing this and being unwilling, as both a trans person and someone who believes it is important to not let bigotry go unchallenged, i stepped in and called out these statements for being both factually untrue and steeped in both misogyny and transphobia. this person and i went around and around in circles as he asked 'genuine questions' which were just thinly veiled excuses to continue needling me on the subject. eventually, i shut it down by saying that this was not the appropriate venue for a transphobic cis person to get educated about the nuance of the trans experience and trans issues, but what he was saying was transphobic and he needed to stop now that he'd been told that.

throughout this interaction, mods were emoji-reacting and responding to other things. at no point did any mod step in to help me or shut down the transphobia or at all intervene in what was happening. after i shut things down for good, one of the mods said 'thanks for keeping everything respectful' which was a truly laughable thing to have said in that situation.

after this, the server owner made an announcement that said, among a few other things about Not Fighting: "Friendly reminder that we are all here because of what we have in common, our love of writing We are not here to debate controversial issues Or say harmful opinions If you cannot hold a conversation without being civil and without escalating conflict, back away from the channel, and cool down All involved in a conflict are responsible for turning a chill space sour No matter how right you think you are (I’m not saying no mention of controversial things is allowed per se, I’m saying be civil, if that means avoiding controversial topics, avoid away)"

this is not an appropriate response to one person espousing blatant transphobia (among other disgusting views) and being called on it. a rule was added that if a mod or the server owner asked you to change the subject from a topic, you had to do so immediately and there should be no more discussion of it 'by any of the participants'. no rule was present to begin with making clear that bigotry was not tolerated, nor was one added.

subsequently, the server owner made it clear she had no interest in protecting marginalized community members, and that she blamed me for what happened because i refused to allow rampant transphobia to proceed unchecked.

when either asked by other server members about what happened or when asking server members who left why they left (which is a weird thing to do on its own) the server owner responded by essentially throwing a fit and asking what she was supposed to do? kick the transphobe out? she whined about how the person saying something should be done about the transphobe was assuming that she hadn't already done anything.

(she also said that she hadn't done anything. the person was not warned, muted, banned, there were no consequences. but she whined about the assumption that she hadn't done anything about it.)

she also said that it wasn't just the transphobe's fault. "[transphobe] was not the only one at fault there in that others contributed to the conflict by engaging them, drawing out more of their unpleasant opinions. If I punished [problem person] alone, the others might think that they were in the right" that is a direct quote from the server owner. i was clearly the person she was speaking about, and she refused to enforce consequences on the transphobe because that might lead to me thinking that it was okay to call out transphobia and protect myself and other trans people in that space.

when i spoke to a few of the other mods about what happened, the response was disappointing, to put it mildly. the mod team had apparently tried to argue with her and get her to enforce a no bigotry policy but she was afraid of causing arguments and didn't want to deal with conflict, and so refused to do so. this is not acceptable behaviour for someone who is in charge of such a large space. you cannot be this conflict-averse and also run a server of hundreds of people, especially if the outcome is protecting bigots.

the mods i spoke to also got defensive and upset when i pointed out that by not expressing disagreement with the owner's actions and by throwing up their hands and saying 'oh well, nothing we can do!' they were also tacitly endorsing transphobia and a community that protects transphobes at the expense of trans people. they were unwilling to do anything in the moment, and failed to do anything after the fact either.

i have screenshots and proof of all of these events, but i didn't add them here bc i didn't want to make this even longer. please feel free to contact me directly if you would like any further information or to see proof of what i have mentioned here.

in short:

please do not join this server. you will not be protected there, as the server owner cares more about making it as big and as popular as possible than she does about keeping her server bigot-free. please do not promote this server or allow this server to be promoted in your own spaces either. please do your part to keep trans people in the whump community safe.

[twig-tea]

Lately I’ve been feeling like Thai bl is truly all over the place with so many shows airing at once and some of the best ones flying under the radar while discourse is focused on a couple of the big messy ones. I think you’re the only person I know who is actually watching ALL of them and has been here for the whole evolution of the genre, so I’m curious what stands out to you about this current moment. Do the shows feel different to you? Is the way fandom is interacting with them changing? And what are your current favs?

I ended up writing a thesis, sorry friend lol To be fair to me there are 3 questions in there, all of them meaty! I've done my best to give a sense of where I'm at with Thai BL and how it feels like it's changed over time.

Caveating all of this: I am just one fan who I'm sure has had specific experiences that will colour my opinion, also a lot of this is just vibes so I'm open to being told I've forgotten something major or misremembered what it was like! If you are reading this and your opinion or experience is different please share, with stuff like this I'm always interested in hearing about differing opinions because the fandom experience will depend at least partly on where you hang out. For years, my main fandom space for BL was the YouTube comments section (RIP me).

Overall feel

Honestly, things overall don't feel all that different to me in Thai BL in particular, even though I'm about to talk about a lot of changes and ways it actuallyd does feel very different below lol And after reflecting about it, I think it's because these things still feel very much in flux, in a way that they've felt in flux this entire time. Producers are still figuring out the best funding and distribution models and merch models to make money; creators are still calibrating how queer these shows can be and still be popular; actors are still figuring out how to do BGP (business gay performances) without having fans interfere in their private lives off the clock. Writers are still trying to figure out how to write 12-episode arcs that don't drag in the middle or fumble the ending (which is also not new). The tension between established ships, fan expectations, and genre requirements has honestly been there almost the whole time, though the reverberations of missteps is louder now because of the larger fanbase that is (comparatively) more plugged in to live viewing. The core question in BL has always been 'how do we make this marketable', and that unsurprisingly hasn't changed, though the answer to that question has over time, if that makes sense?

Shows

Do the shows feel different? As a whole, I'd say yes. The biggest differences are of course total quantity and overall quality, but the actual distribution of % of shows that have high(er) production values (i.e. quality) feels close to the same--it was close to 50/50 in the late 2010s and now is maybe more like 40/60 with a higher percentage coming from more smaller production companies. But the numbers we're talking about are something like 15 shows in e.g. 2018 and something more like 50 shows in 2023 (being vague because there are shows that people could argue over whether they should count). The quality overall has increased, even the pulps look better, sound better, and tend to feel a little bit more put together than the pulps of even 2020 (please note that these are all relative qualifiers, most of these shows are still not objectively good). 2020 in particular was a watershed moment for high production value BLs; we get colorists and special effects artists, and sometimes decent sound production now!

There has also been an improvement in terms of what is depicted and how certain subject matter is treated very generally, though I think that's still in flux. Things like evil ex girlfriends are less common than they were and the women in BL are more likely (in general, still not always) to be treated as realized characters. We've gotten more and better femme representation in ensemble shows, and the "gay for you" trope is much less common. Consent is now considered sexy and is much more common than it was; non-consent as "sexy" has eroded and is much less common. Things that used to happen in almost every BL now happen in a much lower percentage. I also feel a little bit less worried about some of the actors on pulp sets because there is more general scrutiny about things like minor actors, intimacy coordination, BGP (business gay performance) expectations, and sexual exploitation. Overall, show recommendations these days come with fewer caveats.

The assumption that if you worked with someone on a BL once you would stay with them as an established pairing was surprisingly early in BL; I don't know if it's just because there were a few shows that had side pairings then get main shows, so the actors did work together on a few shows in a row, which made them feel established, or whether it's because the BGP started early to build hype both before and after shows aired, or whether audiences just made homophobic assumptions about how if two actors had chemistry they had to be gay for each other, and otherwise nobody would want to "play gay" more than once, or would want to have to kiss too many other men....in any case, there were huge scandals and blow-ups around this in BL on even the earliest shows, and some early shows were snubbed because of the pairing alone. Similarly, it was established very early in BL (i.e. 2016-17) that an unhappy ending for a pair would result in your show being panned; cheating was also a guaranteed flop in BL circles (though some ensemble shows that had gay relationships in them such as Friend Zone did fine with cheating plots and unhappy endings). Overall it feels like some things were only depicted in early Thai BL and creators have avoided them since due to the audience reception at the time. I will say, generally, that there have now been enough examples of people in a "branded pair" moving on to a new pair or multiple shows, that it feels less like a death knell to a BL career if one of the actors says they no longer wanted to make BLs, or if they switched companies.

I pay a lot of attention to queerness in BL, and that has changed a little bit too, though not in the way I expected. I had been expecting a more clear and steady trajectory in BL, but we've instead had real swings, and I've realized there will just always be shows that feel more or less actually gay or queer than others, and that's ok. Early Thai shows really spoiled us for good queer content, GayOK Bangkok and Diary of Tootsies are still shows by which i measure what we get now, and both of those are from 2016. I would say that more "mainstream" BL (i.e. by one of the major production companies) hit what turned out to be queer saturation around 2020 and that's where I was most surprised not see a more clear trajectory; rather than things getting more queer from there, I'd say a greater percentage of shows overall feel more queer, but we haven't (and I now suspect won't) reach the queerness we had in Thai tv in 2016. That being said, my secret running list of things I want to see in BL gets shorter every year as entries get crossed off, so I would say the range of queer experience is slowly getting captured as more content continues to be made by a wider range of production houses (PrEP being mentioned in a mainstream show is my white whale).

I know some people assume that shows are higher heat now overall, but I don't think that's true. I do think Thai television producers and directors have overalll gotten better at capturing sensuality, and acting workshops have improved chemistry-building overall too. But from what I can tell the ratio of high head and low heat content is still pretty similar to what it's always been, maybe slightly higher (e.g. at a quick glance I'd guesstimate 30% of shows had a sex scene in 2018 vs 40% in 2023).

Fandom

The main differences in fandom from the really early days and now are the ways we, as international fans, are able to engage with each other, with thai audiences at the same time, and with content creators, and the entitlement that comes with that. In the 2010s we were almost always watching after Thai airing, with either fansubs or, later, official subs, trailing online releases by days or weeks, which themselves may have trailed the Thailand airing date by days or weeks or sometimes even months. That became less true around 2019ish, and especially in 2020 when I think Thai producers were desperate to reach audiences during the start of the pandemic (and when audiences were desperate for something to distract us from what was happening in real life).

As a fan in the mid-late 2010s, watching something was either unofficial via a fansubber, or you were wading through hundreds of Thai comments to find anyone else writing about the shows in English. Now, it's actually rare we don't have immediate international distribution, though it may be paid. If the subs are not up at the same time as the official upload, even on free sites, fans get furious. It's a bit surreal to see people complain about waiting a few hours for subtitles, especially on YouTube, when we sometimes waited months for a series to finish being subbed (not to say people didn't complain back then too, because they sure did! But there were fewer international fans overall, and it wasn't an expectation that there would be subs, so fewer people complained when it happened). This meant that a lot of people only watched shows when they were complete, and people were not watching with any kind of synchronicity.

With international fans moving into simultaneous watching with Thai audiences, we suddenly had the chance to talk about shows as they were airing and affect the conversations about them and even, sometimes, the decisions. Folks seem to have differing opinions about what makes a BL, and what makes a BL good, and they are vocal about when a show doesn't meet their standard. This has always been true, but the strong opinions have more of an effect on the discourse when they're expressed in real-time to the show being aired. Also, when we have literally 3x the number of Thai shows being aired (nevermind other countries which have also increased), it seems so much more egregious to me to complain if a single show doesn't meet your particular taste. Just go watch something else! That was less possible in 2016, but now nobody has any excuse lol Please note here that I'm not saying shows should not be criticized. But when you have one loud faction saying shows should have nothing but innocent kisses if any skinship at all and showing more is distasteful and possibly homophobic, and another faction saying a show should be panned if they don't have at least one sex scene and if there is no good kiss it's homophobic, I don't know where that leaves content creators but I see the tension and how it sometimes results in my least favourite tropes like "blushing maiden" even after a couple has canonically had sex. These factions have always existed in BL fandom, this is not new, they just both seem particularly silly now with so much content to choose from.

The shows that get attention and the shows that get snubbed feel the same too, in all honesty. You can ask yourself the following questions:

Is the show a little slower paced?

Are the story beats less melodramatic?

Do its characters feel more human?

Do they feel more queer?

Is it a comedy?

Is there any risk of an unhappy ending?

Do people not think one of the lead actors is hot?

Do people ship one of the lead actors with someone who isn't his costar?

Do people have to do anything other than go to YouTube to watch it?

If the answer is yes to any of those questions, and especially to the last one, fewer people will be watching, even if the show is good. That's always been true. [Shows I'm thinking about when I say that: Make it Right, He's Coming to Me, My Ride, You're My Sky, Oxygen (though the sides in this one are also at fault), YYY, Something in my Room, Ghost Host Ghost House, Dear Doctor I'm Coming for Soul, Cooking Crush.] All this is to say, there have always been shows that have been ignored, though I agree with you OP that with more shows airing, more are being ignored at any given time.

The other thing is that when a show is good, it doesn't necessarily invite discourse. The messes are often what encourage people to dig in, fill in gaps, linger in the adrenaline. The part that does feel different is also related to the increase in genre BLs; genre stuff in general tends to get more attention in fandom spaces, and the way people are functioning as fans feels different in that they're bringing the way they interact with genre content to BL as BL has started having larger and better funded genre content. I'm thinking about those early genre BLs like He She It, My Dream, Love Poison, Golden Blood, So Much In Love, Why R U....we started getting genre shows in BL in I think 2017 and basically had 1-2 a year until 2020ish and then it increased from there; and the ones that had funding and decent distribution got engagement until they started going off the rails, and then they had even more engagement and then fell off. I don't think it's a coincidence that the shows last year that got people to write meta were La Pluie, Be My Favorite, and I Feel You Linger in the Air. When a show is building a world, there's more to say and interrogate about it, and when a genre show fails, it can fail more spectacularly than a regular romance story. The most popular BL shows used to all be straight-up BL bubble romances, but I think genre shows really started to take over a greater percentage of the popular spots in 2022 and 2023. Again, the main difference here is that there used to be 1-2 stand-out shows per year, and now there are closer to 6+ per year, and as we got more stand-out shows the variety of what type of show stood out as popular has expanded. I do think the overall percentage of shows that are more standard romance plots has reduced, partly because Thai production companies are running out of popular y-novels to adapt. So I'm anticipating we'll continue to get more genre content going forward, and maybe a higher percentage of original works too.

Shows I'm Enjoying Right Now

Right now, the Thai shows airing that I'm watching are:

Cooking Crush

Dead Friend Forever

Cherry Magic Thailand

City of Stars

The Sign

Playboyy

PitBabe

7 Days before Valentine

For Him

Of those, I'd currently most recommend Cooking Crush as a generic BL recommendation. Dead Friend Forever is very good, but is not a romance and is difficult for some to watch (there are a lot of dark themes in addition to the gore and scary bits).

Cooking Crush is doing so many things I love. I've written about the way it's set up its major conflict to be amongst the friend group here, and way the show is depicting communication between the two main characters and how they improve their communication with one another as they get closer here. Two of my biggest BL pet peeves are a conflict for the sake of a dramatic penultimate episode that ignores or retcons a character's growth or the building of trust that a couple has already gone through in the series, so the fact that this show is working so hard to establish strong communication between its leads and then setting up the significant drama to actually about friendship rather than romance is something I cannot overstate my excitement about. To tie this back into what I wrote above, this reminds me of Diary of Tootsies and I mean that in the best possible way.

Dead Friend Foreever is, like I mentioned above, not a romance; it's a slasher horror melodrama with a very well established mystery, an ensemble cast of mostly hateable characters (which I admit isn't usually my thing, but since they're likely all going to die as a result of the genre they're in I'm finding that more tolerable than usual, and there is at least one character I like). DFF did a great job of structuring the story for the ultimate payoff of information reveals. There are a lot of shows that have been messing with non-linear storytelling recently, Cooking Crush being one of the ones that actually does this poorly in my opinion, but Dead Friend Forever effectively uses non-linear storytelling so that we find out important pieces of information about particular characters at a time when that information will have the most emotional impact on what is happening in the "present" of the storyline. Every time there is a reveal, it informs what we've already seen, recontextualizes it, and means we understand some of the character motivations and actions differently from when we saw them the first time. I mentioned above that there are dark themes in this show; one of the things that I really like about this show is that the impact of class is not glossed over, and that the consequences of these events feel very real for the characters; people do terrible things in this show, but these actions are not treated lightly by the show itself.

You'd think these two shows would have nothing in common, but there are things that they share that put them both in my top category. Generally, in both of these shows, the character arcs are clear and logical; when a character does something, even if I don't like the action itself, I can understand exactly why they that and can see how it matches where they are in their arc at the time. The shows show change in characters as a result of what they experience, and the relationships in this show really matter. When characters start acting in ways that feel out of character or against their own arc because they have to in order to drive the plot forward, I struggle to remain invested; that's not happening with either of these shows. Both of these shows also treat serious topics with seriousness, and consequences for actions are real and felt by the characters in the show (and if someone gets away with something, the show is clear that this is not just). Nothing has happened that hasn't been signalled or implied earlier. Both shows also have clear class consciousness and represent the disparity caused by classism in a critical/harsh light.

Whew! I think I got to everything you asked. Thanks again for the extremely interesting question!

[incorrect-koh-posts]

How tall do you think king Baldwin is ? Like when we imagine him in our minds how tall should he be ? I’m so confused…apparently medieval people are short but in my mind he should be 6’2 , I don’t know why , it just feels right. He gives off tall vibes.

Several studies suggest that medieval people were actually not that much shorter than modern people on average - the time where the average height dipped significantly was during the industrialisation, not in the middle ages. I don't think there exists any research specifically for the crusader kingdoms, but this study, for instance, which analysed skeletal remains, places the average height of men in England during the 1100s at 173cm / 5'8", whereas the average male height in Europe nowadays is somewhere around 180cm / 5'11".

Baldwin was a member of the nobility, so I'd say it's likely he was a bit taller than average, since he probably didn't experience starvation, malnutrition (or any other external factors that might have inhibited his growth) as a child. As for the leprosy, while it does affect musculature and tissue, I'm not sure whether it would have had any detrimental impact on bone growth; I'm no medical professional. But if we go by the records of William of Tyre and assume that Baldwin took after his father Amalric, whom William described to have been "of goodly height, taller than many although shorter than those of maximum stature", we get a pretty good idea.

Personally, I imagine Baldwin along these lines: as a little taller than average, but not a hulking giant - somewhere around 5'11" or 6'0", which I think is also Edward Norton's height (?) in KoH. Most of the cast is relatively tall though - and as a tall girl myself, I must commend Mr Scott for this aesthetic choice, lol - they're all somewhere between 5'11" and 6'4". I prefer Baldwin to be a little bit shorter and frailer looking than, say, Godfrey, who in the film is 6'4" and whom William would no doubt have considered to be "of maximum stature".

Just my two cents on the subject. Anyone else, feel free to add your opinions / headcanons / insights :)

[resident-wof-expert]

Unsorted WOF thoughts part 96:

Animus Dragons ranked in order of how bad their most malicious spell was (Decided by how many dragons got hurt, how badly they got hurt, and how much they had it coming).

Note: In this post, malice is defined as how much they want to watch someone suffer.

The order I put these in might be subject to change. This list is made mostly for fun as a thought experiment of sorts.

Edit: In light of a relatively simple argument, I've changed Darkstalker's postition. My original argument was that his plague spell was cast out of malice, but not as much pure malice as the knife spell. Though, I now agree that because his intention was to wipe out an entire tribe, that puts the plague spell over the knife spell.

Jerboa III: Encasing the original Jerboa in ice forever. She super-duper deserved it.

Turtle: Repeatedly beating Chameleon over the head with the talisman. He deserved it.

Arctic: This is a bit of a weird one. He, for sure, had worse intentions in mind, but out of the spells we've actually seen him cast, controlling Whiteout was his most malicious, and, thankfully, nothing bad actually came from that.

Anemone: Anemone was going mad by the time she tried to crush Turtle with that boulder, so I think her most intentionally malicious spell instead was repeatedly beating Moon over the head with a broom.

Jerboa: In all honesty, Jerboa was a worse person than Darkstalker (not exactly an easy feat), but her most knowingly malicious spell was her final spell. Don't get me wrong, it was an evil fucking spell, but Jerboa III was the only one who got hurt, putting it lower than the others.

Diamond: The Diamond Trials. Foeslayer didn't deserve it, and it ended up freezing to death a great many presumably undeserving members of IceWing royalty. (For simplicity, I'm counting it as just one spell because I do what I want.)

Stonemover: We don't know how on-board he was with creating those portals, but they're his only spells we've heard of. They were created with the intention of invading the RainWings, which led to the kidnapping and torture of an unspecified number of them. I think torture might be worse than murder, but I'm open to other opinions. There's also the argument that the RainWings were eventually set free, but I still think that the long-term psychological effects may have been bad enough to justify this placement. But if there's enough disagreement, I will most likely bump it down below the mass-murders committed on this list.

Albatross: The SeaWing Massacre. Lagoon deserved it, but it's impossible to tell if the same applied to all the other SeaWings or the SkyWing royalty. Not to mention the lasting effects that it had on the remaining two members of the SeaWing royal family, ruining their relationship for life and putting them both in permanent positions that neither of them were ready to bear. Albatross was also going mad at the time, but I think he was aware enough that he knew what he was doing.

Darkstalker: I think that because his intention was to completely eradicate an entire tribe, that makes the IceWing plague his most malicious spell. Genocide is one of the worst crimes that an individual can commit. And while he didn't even get close to wiping out the entirety of the IceWing Kingdom, he did succeed in slowly killing a huge chunk of it, including their reigning queen. He set them back quite a bit with the total body count, as well as giving the remaining survivors potentially lifelong PTSD. It was, by far, one of the worst actions ever committed in the series as it stands now.

[sissa-arrows]

I’m going to vomit, the way liberals and Biden fanatics (including POC) are ruthlessly and violently harassing, mocking, and abusing Palestinians in their mentions on Twitter because they refuse to vote for the man genociding their epople, families, and friends... A true horror story. What is even the point they are trying to make by showing that they are as racist, nationalists and islamophobic as the MAGA ?

I hate Democrats. Nothing gets to them, not photos of dead babies, not videos of Palestinians carrying the pieces of a relative in a plastic bag. They are in an evil cult programmed to have their rapist win, no matter what he does, when none of them will NEVER experience a quarter of the pain and humiliation Palestinians experience right now.

What angers me the most is how EVERY SINGLE ONE of them is like “Trump is worst he will deport you”. They are so self centric that they think Palestinians as well as other people who actually care will stop caring because they could face deportation.

The narrative that Biden cannot do anything that his hands are tied is also something that angers me because they present Biden as some sort of innocent while Trump would be all powerful.

Personally I was told I wasn’t allowed to have an opinion on the subject because I’m not American. And I was like “Biden is supporting a genocide. Not only I’m allowed to care and should care because I’m a fucking human but given that Islamophobia is on the rise because of that genocide I’m also directly affected.”

I think I’ve said it in the past but if there’s one thing I learned about Western Politics in the last few months is that the whole “lesser of two evils” thing is about who will affect the least the comforts of white people and PoC bootlickers. The lesser of two evils is only less evil to the people advocating for him because it won’t affect them. I’m not even talking only about directly affecting them it’s also about their conscience. When Trump puts babies in cages they have to fight or they will look racist and they don’t want to look racist. When Biden does that they can sit comfortably on their couch and pretend it’s not happening because they actually don’t give a flying fuck. Their activism has always been about not LOOKING racist and about LOOKING good. It was never about action but always about appearance.

Regarding the Palestinian genocide specifically whenever they say Trump would be worst I’m like please enlighten me on what is worst than supporting genocide? What would change with Trump is that performative pieces of shit would fight back that’s the only thing.

“Trump would send the cops and even snipers against protesters” okay what is being done against students who are protesting? These cops are being sent there with the full blessing of Biden.

“Trump wouldn’t want a ceasefire” okay Biden doesn’t want a ceasefire either so what?

BOTH Biden and Trump are pieces of shit who deserve painful deaths. Expecting decent people to vote for any of them is fucked up. But expecting and pressuring Palestinians into voting for Biden the man who is currently supporting a genocide against them… that’s beyond fucked up.

When the choice you have to make is between 99.9% Hitler and 100% Hitler your moral duty is not to fight to get 99.9% Hitler to win your moral duty is to fight to put an end to the horrible system that made it so these two would be your only options.

[the-genderflux-experience]

Hi there! This is a safe place for genderflux people to be and share their opinions, experiences, and any questions they have!

I'm Geo, and I use he/it pronouns at the moment, though those are subject to change. I am genderflux as well as multigender.

I'm planning on keeping this blog relatively active, with a few posts a week. Some are queued, some are info posts I write up the day of, and there will randomly be additional posts whenever someone sends an ask. (Note: this may or may not be permanent, I'm currently experimenting with ways to run this blog, and how active this blog is may change if it doesn't work out.)

Please send asks, because in the end, this is a blog all about you guys and your experiences, not me. Feel free to send asks whenever. This blog just as much yours as it is mine.

There are tags for specific things to keep stuff organized, and I'll list them here:

#the genderflux experience - just a general tag for any posts about our experiences as genderflux people

#genderflux questions - for when someone asks a question about being genderflux, and my answers to their questions

#genderflux info - any solid information or facts about being genderflux, as opposed to the more subjective experiences

#announcement post - when anything important happens in the genderflux community or on this blog, I will use this tag when letting you know about it

#genderflux chaos - anything random, fun, silly, or just straight up crazy that doesn't fit under any of the other categories. It could be memes, shitposts, silly asks, and the like.

(Those are all for now, I may add, change, or remove tags depending on what works best.)

Just a quick side note, this blog may be a bit messy at first because I'm still figuring out Tumblr and how to run this kind of blog. Please be patient and understanding, and feel free to drop any constructive criticism of how things could be better! Thanks for stopping by, I hope you enjoy your stay.

(Completely inspired by @our-genderflux-experience, partially inspired by other similar blogs.)

[kruegerslov3r]

Simon Riley’s Natal Chart

i've really been thinking about what simon's natal chart would look like. (it's important to mark and immediately inform you that i don't know his date of birth. so what follows is purely my suggestion)

so after studying his life history, behavior in the game, manner of speech and other things, i came up with something like this

the sun: scorpio (i think he is november scorpio)

a strong personality. variability, emotions are not stable. ability to fight for a long time. passionate pursuit of life. can be strongly attached to people, and over too passionately express their love, because of which can scare people away. can not always control their impulses and emotions. extremely emotionally tolerate a change in attitude to themselves.

the moon: cancer

strong and profound emotions, the course of life is often determined by subconscious instinctive motives. unpredictability. strongly tied to traditions. the influence of habits is very great. love for children, a strong sense of home.

mercury: scorpio

self-confident, somewhat stubborn, sarcastic, strong, determined, courageous by nature, capable, intelligent, talented, shrewd, cunning, thirsty for knowledge, intellectual development. often has restless friends, relatives or neighbors, loves the opposite sex, likes to seek pleasures, many disappointments. intense peculiar thinking, indifference to the opinion of others. abrupt attitude to the opposite opinion. the mind is able to penetrate deeply into the subject of study. defend their opinion, sometimes too aggressive. do not forget anything. says impressive, can often speak too sharply.

venus: capricorn

patience, restraint in the expression of feelings. all feelings are hidden behind a mask, do not understand love or hate. monitors the appearance. do not stop communication without serious reasons. no conflicts, resentment may not express, keep to themselves. easily comes into contact with older people. very strong attachment to what they consider their. afraid of poor old age. tactful. prefer classic in art, restrained forms and black colors, ascetics by nature. male traits in love, desire to dominate. they may not talk for a long time at resentment.

mars: scorpio

gives a practical nature with the ability to work hard and achieve great results. good administrative, engineering and inventive skills. by nature, firm, confident and strong. from the outside may seem cold or indifferent. there is a willingness to go on risky experiments on yourself. in love owners. often, they show caution to people. can be vindictive and cruel. bring everything to the end.

saturn: capricorn

a good thinker with an unexpected, original and unique character of thinking. as a speaker - ready-made polemic, strong and convinced, summarizes arguments and facts clearly, quickly draws conclusions. he is intelligent, cautious, quick-witted and scholarly. some impulsiveness in behavior and speech, sometimes sharp, stubborn and self-willed.

neptune: capricorn

neptune in capricorn shows the severity or periods of depression, as well as anxiety or distress in family affairs in adolescence, especially in relation to the father. gives interest to psychology, income through art, music, big business, public and private institutions. life sometimes brings chaos.

rising sign: aquarius

the ascending aquarius is impulsive, but they are not in a hurry to declare his feelings. they are self-confident and strive for bright changes. they don't not give in to difficulties because he always finds a way to overcome them.

they’re pretty mature guys who are hard to freak out. intelligent, logical and persistent when it comes to their own interests. they're well versed in painting, art, music and literature. they are practical and solid than attract the same hard-working personalities.

ascendant in virgo - appearance

people with ascendant in virgo are usually well-built. their height is usually above average or tall. in general, it is generally believed that people with ascendant in virgo are the slimmest and tallest among all "earthly" signs.

such people have long arms and thin fingers. body proportions, as well as facial features, are correct. the facial skin is light, not prone to redness.

the shape of the face is usually oval. in some representatives of the virgo ascendant, the face may be slightly elongated. the facial features are often thin, as if delineated. the cheekbones may be emphasised, and the tip of the nose may be pointed downwards

hair color is usually russet, less often brown.

i'd be glad to see your options in the comments.

[lolokouhm]

FUSHIGOVER pt. IV [AFTER ALL]

1 / 2 / 3 / 4

just a small fluffy addition to the III <3

Megumi Fushiguro's hair was simply the best.

There'd always been something in the way it grew taller instead of getting longer, messier with every week he didn't visit a hairdresser. The way it moved every time he ran during our training sessions, soft but spikey. The way those black strands stuck to his forehead, wet and sticky from the drops of sweat forming on his pale skin.

That evening, his hair was freshly washed and dried. I could easily tell. Fushiguro was the type who would put on the sunscreen, enjoy the gossip without showing the undoubted interest in the subject and take pictures of especially pretty sunsets. He would then sit in his phone, changing the exposure and saturation, so it’d look even better. When the four of us would go shopping, he’d quietly follow us around, but he’d loudly voice his opinions on Nobara’s outfits - without any hesitation. He’d hesitate about mine though.

Well, my fashion sense was questionable. At least my taste in men wasn't.

"(Y/N), have you ever heard about Gashadokuro?"

"No", I replied, trying not to lose my focus. "Or...", I scratched my forehead. Gashadokuro... For some reason, the name didn't feel completely unfamiliar. "Wait. I have."

"You have?"

"Yeah. My grandma used to tell me that it would take me away if I kept stealing the candy from her cupboard. I even googled it once." Yup, I'd done that. When I was seven. An unforgettable experience. "Is it like... a theory or something that you're rather sure of?"

"It's just a hunch..." Megumi shook his head slowly. "But it would make sense. According to the mythology Gashadokuro is a youkai, but it might be something connected with the Ten Shadows. Still, it doesn't make a lot of sense. We went to Kioto to look for something that would help us, but we came back empty-handed." His hand finally got out of the shadow. "We'll keep on looking. This might..." There it was again. That look. "This might help us kill him."

We sat like that for a while, in complete silence. I wasn't really sure what to say - I had no idea which part of the story he'd just introduced me to was the most surprising. Maybe the simple fact that he'd actually said all of those things?

"Let's go back. It's your party." I finally managed to get my thoughts straight. "You need to have a drink. You deserve it the most."

Megumi sighed, but propped himself up.

"Yuuji's got some serious brain damage for organising that."

"I mean, technically, most of the us thought you'd end up to be the one with the biggest brain damage." Oh God, shut up, woman. "I'm sorry. It's not funny." I really was an idiot. Nervously, I checked on him to see how much ACTUAL DAMAGE the joke had made.

Megumi seemed unaffected by my words.

"I'd thought so too."

And just like that, that feeling was back. The uneasy one.

"Some guys thought you wouldn't come back." I really hoped those words would come out of my mouth and sound relatively okay, but in the end, they were nothing more but a mere whisper. I was a freaking masochist. I apparently loved to torture myself.

"And you?", he asked after a few seconds. "Did you think I wouldn't come back?"

I'd always found the silence between us soothing. I knew he didn't like talking too much, or rather, he had some trouble with expressing his thoughts. I wasn't like that, but it was different with Fushiguro. It was nice. It was calm.

"No", I answered with a complete certainty. "I knew you'd return."

After all, you're Megumi Fushiguro, aren't you?

[elderscrollsconceptart]

Hi there !

Quick question bc im curious, do you have a favourite game in the elder scrolls franchise ?

Also, I love your blog, thank you for all the efforts youre putting into this fandom ❤

Hi and thank you for asking!

I think at a base level its 50/50 between Morrowind and Skyrim for me.

I think all TES games and media are good, or at least enjoyable in different ways, but the two I revisit most often are Morrowind and Skyrim. I think that attests to my feelings towards those games as my favorites given I want to play them the most.

I LOVE both games for different reasons. I'm of the opinion Morrowind tells a much better story + quests while I find Skyrim has more enjoyable gameplay and exploration elements given its (relatively) more recent production. This may not make a lot of sense to many people, but I also find Skyrim to be a better sequel to Morrowind's style than Oblivion was.

I'm of the opinion that modded Skyrim may also be the best RPG game of all time depending on your preferences.

Modding can allow you to make an immaculate and nearly endlessly enjoyable RPG experience which allows you to scratch every itch, desire, and preference you'd want and hope to see in your game.

Of course, the "modded skyrim experience" on it's own is an *entirely subjective* experience, so it can't really be used in comparison with any of the other games.

Thank you for asking about my game preferences! I don't usually get too many asks like that. I super appreciate your appreciation of the effort I try to put into this blog :)

[stellae-de-baphometis]

The Daemonesses Of The Ars Goetia 🔥

It's unfortunate that cultural appropriation of Lilith and other Jewish daemonesses has such a large influence and prominent following in the Daemonolatry community nowadays. In order to counteract some of this, I wanted to offer alternatives to working with Lilith, specifically from the infamous grimoire that is the Ars Goetia!

The entirety of the Ars Goetia daemons are referred to as male. But are they all really just guys?

Although all 72 of the Goetian Daemons are referred to with masculine pronouns (he/him/his), I don't personally believe that all of the Ars Goetia are or identify as male/masc. I see daemons as gender-fluid and believe that they appear to everybody differently.

So here are the Goetian Daemons that I personally consider to be Daemonesses, in regards to my UPG! :)

⭒☆·━━━━━━━•( 🌑 )•━━━━━━━·☆⭒

NOTE: Please keep in mind that I have not communed or worked with every daemoness listed here. I have attained most of my knowledge of them through research and sigil gazing. And as always, this is just my UPG so please don't take this as fact! If what I've written here doesn't resonate with you, that's completely okay! Please form your own conclusions and opinions on the subject matter. 🖤

NOTE: In this post I will be referring to the spirits listed as both goddesses and daemonesses interchangeably, as I see daemons as deities in their own right.

⭒☆·━━━━━━━•( 🌑 )•━━━━━━━·☆⭒

+: Queen/Countess Vinea :+

From the Ars Goetia: "The Forty-fifth Spirit is Vine, or Vinea. He is a Great King, and an Earl; and appeareth in the Form of a Lion, riding upon a Black Horse, and bearing a Viper in his hand. His Office is to discover Things Hidden, Witches, Wizards, and Things Present, Past, and to Come. He, at the command of the Exorcist will build Towers, overthrow Great Stone Walls, and make the Waters rough with Storms. He governeth 36 Legions of Spirits. And his Seal is this, which wear thou, as aforesaid, etc."

Lady Vinea is a sun goddess of battle, chaos, strength, storms, and war. She can also assist in matters of divination and scrying. She can help one with self-esteem and confidence, making you stronger in the face of your enemies. She could also be worked with as a protective deity.

It was no surprise to me that Vinea shares a lot of the same characteristics with Lady Sekhmet, an Egyptian sun goddess depicted with the head of a lioness. From my findings, she seems to be a spirit shard＊ of Sekhmet herself.

＊ In my UPG, a spirit shard is when an aspect or piece of a deity or spirit breaks off from its original fountainhead and becomes its own individual spirit or deity in their own right. They could be seen as a relative or creation/child of the original spirit/deity.

.

+: Queen Beleth :+

From The Ars Goetia: "The Thirteenth Spirit is called Beleth (or Bileth, or Bilet). He is a mighty King and terrible. He rideth on a pale horse with trumpets and other kinds of musical instruments playing before him. This Great King Beleth causeth all the love that may be, both of Men and of Women, until the Master Exorcist hath had his desire fulfilled. He is of the Order of Powers, and he governeth 85 Legions of Spirits. His Noble Seal is this, which is to be worn before thee at working."

Lady Beleth is a sun and moon goddess of music, love, desire, emotions, lust, and peace. Despite the Ars Goetia describing her as "terrible", she actually has a very calming nature. She can help you with emotional regulation and the understanding of both your own and others' emotional experiences, thus assisting in relationships of any kind. Beleth can also assist in creative matters, especially of music.

Beleth is a spirit shard of Lady Bastet, and is cousin to Lady Vinea. Much like Bastet, Lady Beleth is associated with domestic cats and appears as cat-headed, just like her fountainhead deity.

.

+: Duchess Bune :+

From the Ars Goetia: "The Twenty-sixth Spirit is Bune (or Bim). He is a Strong, Great and Mighty Duke. He appeareth in the form of a Dragon with three heads, one like a Dog, one like a Gryphon, and one like a Man. He speaketh with a high and comely Voice. He changeth the Place of the Dead, and causeth the Spirits which be under him to gather together upon your Sepulchres. He giveth Riches unto a Man, and maketh him Wise and Eloquent. He giveth true Answers unto Demands. And he governeth 30 Legions of Spirits. His Seal is this, unto the which he oweth Obedience. He hath another Seal (which is the first of these, but the last is the best)."

Lady Bune is a goddess of necromancy, wealth, enlightenment, hidden wisdom, death, and the shadows. She can help the living commune with the dead and vice versa, and can also help "lost souls" with moving on into the afterlife. She can also assist in matters of self-improvement, personal growth, learning from past mistakes, and changing for the better.

I believe Duchess Bune may be a somewhat distant relative of the Lernaean Hydra of Greco-Roman mythology. Both of their connections with water and the underworld seem to confirm this.

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+: Duchess Crocell :+

From the Ars Goetia: "The Forty-ninth Spirit is Crocell, or Crokel. He appeareth in the Form of an Angel. He is a Duke Great and Strong, speaking something Mystically of Hidden Things. He teacheth the Art of Geometry and the Liberal Sciences. He, at the Command of the Exorcist, will produce Great Noises like the Rushings of many Waters, although there be none. He warmeth Waters, and discovereth Baths. He was of the Order of Potestates, or Powers, before his fall, as he declared unto the King Solomon. He governeth 48 Legions of Spirits. His Seal is this, the which wear thou as aforesaid."

Lady Crocell is a goddess of freshwater, healing, purity, life, and fertility. Being a goddess of purity, she can help one to cleanse any space of negative energies. She can also heal and cleanse someone by immersing them in the water of her astral springs.

I've found many similarities between Duchess Crocell and Lady Sulis, a Celtic goddess of the thermal spring of Bath. I believe Crocell is a creation/child of Sulis.

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+: Duchess Gremory :+

From the Ars Goetia: "The Fifty-sixth Spirit is Gremory, or Gamori. He is a Duke Strong and Powerful, and appeareth in the Form of a Beautiful Woman, with a Duchess’s Crown tied about her waist, and riding on a Great Camel. His Office is to tell of all Things Past, Present, and to Come; and of Treasures Hid, and what they lie in; and to procure the Love of Women both Young and Old. He governeth 26 Legions of Spirits, and his Seal is this, etc."

Lady Gremory is a goddess of love, passion, friendship, beauty, lust, desire, and feminine attributes. Not only can she help you form and/or mend relationships with others, but she can also assist in developing self-love and self-acceptance. She is especially fond and protective of women, including trans women and fiaspec people in general! The Infernal Divine does not discriminate. Xx

I think Duchess Gremory could be a relative of Lady Branwen, a Celtic goddess of love and beauty. They have similar correspondences and I can't help but feel like they may be kind of related in some way.

.

+: Duchess Vepar :+

From the Ars Goetia: "The Forty-second Spirit is Vepar, or Vephar. He is a Duke Great and Strong and appeareth like a Mermaid. His office is to govern the Waters, and to guide Ships laden with Arms, Armour, and Ammunition, etc., thereon. And at the request of the Exorcist he can cause the seas to be right stormy and to appear full of ships. Also he maketh men to die in Three Days by Putrefying Wounds or Sores, and causing Worms to breed in them. He governeth 29 Legions of Spirits, and his Seal is this, etc."

Lady Vepar is a goddess of the sea, protection, sickness, healing, medicine, storms, and marine life. Being a goddess of sickness, she can also help heal said illness and helps find cures for any ailments. She can assist in addressing traumas you've kept buried within the depths of your soul, so that you can emerge above the waters a better version of yourself.

Duchess Vepar may be associated with Lord/Lady Leviathan and Lady Tiamat, due to the correspondences with the ocean and seawater. I believe she may also have ties to the Kuliltu and Kulullu daemon races from Mesopotamian mythology, some of the many children of Mother Tiamat.

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+: Duke/Duchess Astaroth :+

From the Ars Goetia: "The Twenty-ninth Spirit is Astaroth. He is a Mighty, Strong Duke, and appeareth in the Form of a hurtful Angel riding on an Infernal Beast like a Dragon, and carrying in his right hand a Viper. He giveth true answers of things Past, Present, and to Come, and can discover all Secrets. He will declare wittingly how the Spirits fell, if desired, and the reason of his own fall. He can make men wonderfully knowing in all Liberal Sciences. He ruleth 40 Legions of Spirits. His Seal is this, which wear thou as a Lamen before thee, or else he will not appear nor yet obey thee, etc."

Lord/Lady Astaroth is a god(dess) of love, sorcery, lust, passion, friendship, androgyny, and magic. Similar to Lucifer, they are an enlightenment and knowledge daemon. They also assist in building relationships with others, as well as self-love. Astaroth can help you strengthen and further develop your divination skills as well, making it easier to communicate with the spiritual realms in general.

In my UPG, Duke/Duchess Astaroth isn't the same as Astarte (Ashtoreth), but rather a spirit shard of her. This spirit shard was then further developed into a daemon by Lord Lucifer himself. These are just my personal beliefs though!

(Side Note: I believe that Duke/Duchess Astaroth goes by all pronouns, but personally I just use they/them/theirs pronouns most of the time to refer to Astaroth. Xx)

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+: Marchioness Gamigin/Samigina :+

From the Ars Goetia: "The Fourth Spirit is Samigina, a Great Marquis. He appeareth in the form of a little Horse or Ass, and then into Human shape doth he change himself at the request of the Master. He speaketh with a hoarse voice. He ruleth over 30 Legions of Inferiors. He teaches all Liberal Sciences, and giveth account of Dead Souls that died in sin. And his Seal is this, which is to be worn before the Magician when he is Invocator, etc."

Lady Gamigin, also known as Lady Samigina, is a goddess of death, necromancy, dying, darkness, the afterlife, and the Underworld. She assists with spirits crossing over to the afterlife, and can also assist in communicating with the dead. Gamigin could also function as a grave-keeper type of spirit.

Marchioness Samigina may be related to the Gallo-Roman goddess, Lady Epona; a protector of equine animals, and a goddess of fertility. The "leader of the souls to the afterlife" correspondences seem to confirm the correlation between Gamigin and Epona.

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+: Marchioness Marchosias :+

From the Ars Goetia: "The Thirty-fifth Spirit is Marchosias. He is a Great and Mighty Marquis, appearing at first in the Form of a Wolf (or Ox) having Gryphon’s Wings, and a Serpent’s Tail, and Vomiting Fire out of his mouth. But after a time, at the command of the Exorcist he putteth on the Shape of a Man. And he is a strong fighter. He was of the Order of Dominations. He governeth 30 Legions of Spirits. He told his Chief, who was Solomon, that after 1,200 years he had hopes to return unto the Seventh Throne. And his Seal is this, to be made and worn as a Lamen, etc."

Lady Marchosias is a goddess of war, battle, strength, chaos, and protection. She can help one to feel powerful and assist in taking back control in your life. She can help you feel motivated and confident. Marchosias can also assist with curse work and help you rise up above your enemies.

Marchioness Marchosias may have ties to Lord Fenrir from Norse mythology. I've noticed they both share the same chaotic energy. They only seem distantly related to one another though.

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+: Marchioness Phenex :+

From the Ars Goetia: "The Thirty-Seventh Spirit is Phenex (or Pheynix). He is a great Marquis, and appeareth like the Bird Phoenix, having the Voice of a Child. He singeth many sweet notes before the Exorcist, which he must not regard, but by-and-by he must bid him put on Human Shape. Then he will speak marvellously of all wonderful Sciences if required. He is a Poet, good and excellent. And he will be willing to perform thy requests. He hath hopes also to return to the Seventh Throne after 1,200 years more, as he said unto Solomon. He governeth 20 Legions of Spirits. And his Seal is this, which wear thou, etc."

Lady Phenix is a sun goddess of transformation, rebirth, resurrection, creativity, passion, nature, and fire. She can help ignite the creative fires within one's soul so they can express their full artistic potential. She can also help one burn up negative traits so that you may emerge from the ashes a better version of yourself.

Marchioness Phenex can be considered either synonymous with or an aspect of the Greco-Roman Phoenix bird. I personally see Lady Phenex as being a daemonic aspect of the Phoenix.

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+: President Amy/Avnas :+

From the Ars Goetia: "The Fifty-eighth Spirit is Amy, or Avnas. He is a Great President, and appeareth at first in the Form of a Flaming Fire; but after a while he putteth on the Shape of a Man. His office is to make one Wonderful Knowing in Astrology and all the Liberal Sciences. He giveth Good Familiars, and can bewray Treasure that is kept by Spirits. He governeth 36 Legions of Spirits, and his Seal is this, etc."

Lady Amy, also known as Lady Avnas, is a goddess of volcanoes, the wild, nature, strength, fire, wisdom, and protection. She can assist one in the studying of desired topics and subjects, but especially astrology and the zodiac. She can also shield one from negative energies, as well as help the individual to become stronger.

I can't help but feel like President Amy has associations with Lord Pan/Faunus... However Amy isn't as prominently sexual or lustful as Pan. They both seem to be deities of nature and the wild though.

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+: President Haagenti :+

From the Ars Goetia: "The Forty-eighth Spirit is Haagenti. He is a President, appearing in the Form of a Mighty Bull with Gryphon’s Wings. This is at first, but after, at the Command of the Exorcist he putteth on Human Shape. His Office is to make Men wise, and to instruct them in divers things; also to Transmute all Metals into Gold; and to change Wine into Water, and Water into Wine. He governeth 33 Legions of Spirits, and his Seal is this, etc."

Lady Haagenti is a goddess of sorcery, transformation and transmutation, fertility, magic, creativity, and change. Like her masculine counterpart (President/King Zagan), she teaches spiritual alchemy and can assist one with attaining spiritual enlightenment in this way. She can also help with developing creative skill so one can excel in their desired creative fields.

Some have aligned President Haagenti with the previously mentioned Lady Bastet. Personally, I don't really see them as being linked in any way, nor could I find any good sources as to why people conflate them with one another. If anything, I feel like Lady Haagenti, along with President/King Zagan and Count/President Morax, evolved from the Minotaur in Greek mythology. I also believe Morax may be an aspect of the Minotaur, but that's for another post lol.

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+: Prince(ss) Seere :+

From the Ars Goetia: "The Seventieth Spirit is Seere, Sear, or Seir. He is a Mighty Prince, and Powerful, under AMAYMON, King of the East. He appeareth in the Form of a Beautiful Man, riding upon a Winged Horse. His Office is to go and come; and to bring abundance of things to pass on a sudden, and to carry or recarry anything whither thou wouldest have it to go, or whence thou wouldest have it from. He can pass over the whole Earth in the twinkling of an Eye. He giveth a True relation of all sorts of Theft, and of Treasure hid, and of many other things. He is of an indifferent Good Nature, and is willing to do anything which the Exorcist desireth. He governeth 26 Legions of Spirits. And this his Seal is to be worn, etc."

Lord/Lady Seere is a god(dess) of the skies, astral travel, peace, clouds and rain, fertility, beauty, and androgyny. They can help one with astral travel as well as dream interpretation and walking the dreamscape. They can also help one attain insight about yourself and whatever is going on in your life. They can also help you attain an abundance of whatever it is that you seek.

Prince(ss) Seere and their steed may have ties to the Pegasus in Greek mythology, though I wasn't able to entirely confirm this.

+: Princess Sitri :+

From the Ars Goetia: "The Twelfth Spirit is Sitri. He is a Great Prince and appeareth at first with a Leopard’s head and the Wings of a Gryphon, but after the command of the Master of the Exorcism he putteth on Human shape, and that very beautiful. He enflameth men with Women’s love, and Women with Men’s love; and causeth them also to show themselves naked if it be desired. He governeth 60 Legions of Spirits. His Seal is this, to be worn as a Lamen before thee, etc."

Lady Sitri is a goddess of love, passion, relationships, sex, fire, lust, and desire. She can help one with love spells and sex magic, as well as mending relationship conflicts. She can also infuse any creative project with passion, and help you overcome creative blocks.

I personally feel that Princess Sitri has ties to Lady Aphrodite/Venus, given the associations with love, desire, and sex. I also believe she's related to Duke Flauros/Haures in some way too. Sitri appears to me as a cheetah rather than a leopard, but that's just how I see her lol.

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Welp, that concludes the daemonesses of the Ars Goetia! Please keep in mind that these are just my personal beliefs, and I encourage you to take from this post what you wish and form your own opinions and beliefs on the matter.

⭒☆·━━━━━━━•( 🌑 )•━━━━━━━·☆⭒

⭒☆·━━━━━━━•( 🌑 )•━━━━━━━·☆⭒

There are many goddesses and daemonesses that span across several different practices and cultures that are open to work with...

Lilith doesn't need to be one of them.

+. GIF Credit .+

I hope you all found this post helpful! And as always, I wish you well on your spiritual path. 🖤

~ Many Blessings ~

-Korv

[butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway]

A Patient-Therapist's Anti-Psych Manifesto

Okay yall, I broke out my laptop for this, so buckle up, I’m about to have opinions.

I don’t owe anyone my credentials, but because I know the first thing out of some folks’ mouths is always “what gives you the right” let’s nip that in the bud right now.

I have been in and out of psychiatric care since I was seven years old. I have severe medical trauma from the experimental treatments I was subjected to, and have spent time in outpatient, inpatient, and all manner of different kinds of care. I’m also a published anarchic anthropologist, and a fully credentialed and actively practicing private therapist. To many, these are rightfully mutually exclusive roles. To me it is survival. Let’s explore some dialectics.

Dialectic: Per Merriam-Webster, a dialectic is any systematic reasoning, exposition, or argument that juxtaposes opposed or contradictory ideas and usually seeks to resolve their conflict : a method of examining and discussing opposing ideas in order to find the truth

In this case, we’re holding a few irreconcilable realities in tension with each other and working to resolve those irreconcilabilities.

Dialectic 1

Creating a class of healthcare professionals whose job is to dispense care to the masses inherently creates a hierarchy.

Any hierarchy that exists can and will become unjust under enough stress, with enough bad actors, with enough systemic intersections, if it is made so, etc.

People still need healthcare, including mental healthcare.

Dialectic 2

Because we already have unjust hierarchies involved in our medical care and research system, the question of who gets to define what is “mental healthcare” and what isn’t is inherently skewed in favor of kyriarchical** values.

Kyriarchy: a social system or set of social systems built around domination, oppresion, and submission

Many non-hierarchical forms of mental health care are devalued in our society and therefore do not receive the resources to operate at scale despite being extremely effective tools.

There will likely always need to be some form of “service” healthcare model in our society, even if it is wildly different from what we have now, because the worst person you know deserves care and it may need to be from people who are incentivized to provide it, and in privacy or isolation from others in the community.

Dialectic 3

Indefinite and involuntary detention can never be ethically or humanely performed. Period.

Some people need episodic or long term intensive care that comes from having someone available to them 24/7, and this is extremely difficult to provide at scale to an entire society in their homes, and your answer cannot be to offload the work onto relatives.

Current inpatient and residential programs typically serve, at best a holding pattern, and at their worst are breeding grounds for abuse and we will be hard-pressed to create models that do not replicate this pattern in our current systems.

We could keep going several layers deeper, but this is already getting long, so now I want to ask the next question.

These all feel really impossible to work with, Butts, you said I was supposed to reconcile all this and that feels super intimidating. What do we do with these dialectics?

Great question imaginary reader!

There are a lot of things you can do about it! Start by going to the Blackfoot digital library and watching this video about indigenous influences on modern concepts of the basic hierarchy of needs (link)

One of the things I’ve learned as an anarchic anthropologist turned therapist is that if you take what we think we know now about mental health, the nervous system, and chronic stress, and look back to this moment when Maslow and the Blackfoot community tried to communicate the resiliency of their community to the world, we can learn a lot.

A huge amount of mental health care, in my experience, boils down to learning how to regulate your nervous system, provide for your hierarchy of needs in your life, including the accommodations you need for your physical, cognitive, spiritual, and social world, and seeking, traditional or non-traditional therapy, pharmacology, and/or traditional medicine for the remainder of your needs.

What I mean by this is: mutual aid is mental health care, socializing with your friends is mental health care, taking a bubble bath is mental health care

But so are practices like MAST  (link)- a non-hierarchical therapy style that allows people to support each other through therapeutic interventions via mutual aid (a genuine therapeutic concept we discuss in our training!!)

I imagine a world where we dare to question all of our assumptions about what therapeutic intervention needs to look like. Where “mental health care” looks like creating a society that seeks to meet every level of need for as many people as possible, and offers additional, voluntary community built and operated services to meet additional needs that arise.

What if we worked to minimize the need for inpatient services by providing ADL support crews for anyone who requests it? Need to just be a lump in bed for a week in order to be okay at the end? Ask for a crew to come do dishes and make meals and tidy and field calls and check in on you. Feeling manic and need someone to be your impulse control? Request one. Like theoretically these are things we can all do for each other regardless, but what if there were trained volunteers from the community, motivated and available who could be on call whenever they were needed for anybody no matter what? What if you didn’t NEED to have a friend who was available? What if you didn’t need to wonder if they would be annoyed because everyone is there by choice and by specialty?

Imagine if you didn’t have to wait until you were in crisis to call? You could just do it because you needed or wanted the help and that was fine too. Because the goal was prevention. Make sure no one gets so overwhelmed or stressed that they reach crisis in the first place. Make sure everyone has community resources.

The task rabbit mutual aid is the one I think is the most under-served in our communities. I think a lot of us are still afraid to truly take that last step into anarchic community building. After all, time is the most precious resource we have, and giving that to others without a guarantee of others giving back feels very scary. When I’ve done task-rabbit type mutual aid though, it’s always been my favorite experience, and I truly cannot recommend it enough. It provides such an immeasurable boost to the entire community’s resiliency.

I think another really useful direction is teaching yourself a little bit about polyvagal theory. It sounds like pop science, but it’s pretty cool stuff. Things like diaphragmatic breathing, certain manual manipulation techniques, etc can help you regulate your nervous system in moments of stress or intense emotion, as well as adjusting you into a better regulated state over time if you experience chronic dysregulation, such as from PTSD, ADHD, or Autism**

**This is not me saying it will cure your ADHD or Autism, it will not, but it can tone down the intensity of emotionally/autonomically dysregulated moments, or make them a little easier to end on your own time.

In the end, mental health, like so much, is deeply personal. There will be no "one size fits all" option. But we can create a society that provides a high quality standard of living for everyone, with the majority of their needs being met as a baseline, and create services that account for needs that may be episodic, additive, or unusual, as will almost certainly always eventually occur.

So the question is, when you begin to imagine outside the confines of the four walls of the psychiatrist's office

What does mental healthcare look like to you?

[simplyskipper]

What Fallout Games Should I Play?

Hello! My name is Skipper, and the Fallout games has been a special interest of mine for a few years now. With the resurgance of the fandom, and new people coming from the shows, I figured I'd make a post helping people figure out what games to play!

This is going to be the main 6 games (1-4, 76, NV), though I may add more if I play some of the other games. Feel free to add on, ask questions, or generally interact with this! I'm always happy to help people get into the games and love talking Fallout with people. :)

This is going to be as spoiler-free as possible, though I may mention some game locations vaguely, so be warned if you think that may ruin the experience.

For further reading, I highly reccomend the Independent Fallout Wiki! A lot less ads in your way, and the people over there are lovely. However, be careful, as there are spoilers there!

TLDR; New Vegas for story, Fallout 4 for gameplay and introducing concepts, Fallout 1 for authenticity, and Fallout 76 for multiplayer but absolutely nothing else of value.

Table of Contents

Fallout 1

Fallout 2

Fallout 3

Fallout: New Vegas

Fallout 4

Fallout 76

Last Updated: April 22, 2024

Fallout 1

Released; 1997

Setting; Southern California, 2161

Wiki Page

Almost a hundred years after the bombs fell, Vault 13's water chip has broken, and the Vault Dweller was selected (through random chance) to venture out into the wasteland and save their vault.

Pros:

The Original Fallout Game!

One of my favourites, story-wise.

Harold!

The game is relatively short compared to the others, and the story isn't overly hard to digest, in my opinion.

The 'talking heads' animations are super cool (Aradesh, Harold, Etc Etc)

Later character who I won't name but once you meet them YOU'LL KNOW

There's no limit to how many companions you can have at a time

I generally love the setting.

Cons:

The graphics do not age well. Even for the time, they were a bit lacking. (For reference, Doom came out in 1993, 4 years earlier).

Bit of a learning curve! But once you get it, it's pretty easy to use. The turn-based combat was the hardest to get a handle on.

The game DOES NOT hold your hand. Later games have objective lists and markers, but this game just has a list and memory. Pretty fun, if you're into a more difficult game!

Combat and general survival is difficult. The experience is authentic - which means you can and will die during the first combat scenario. Again, once you get it it's not that bad, but combat will remain difficult. But for some this could be a pro!

Fallout 2

Released; 1998

Setting; Southern California, 2241

Wiki Page

80 years after the Vault Dweller's heroic rescue of their Vault, the village of Arroyo is suffering a severe drought. The Chosen One, a descendant of the Vault Dweller, has been sent to retrieve a G.E.C.K. to save their village.

Pros

The story again is very good!

A lot of the strengths of the previous game.

There's something melancholy about exploring the world of Fallout 1 with so many changes and losses. It's perfect for the setting.

Sergeant Dornan. You'll see when you meet him.

More Harold!

Cons

This was released only a year after Fallout 1, so a lot of the graphics & gameplay remain the same, if that's not something you're a fan of.

This is where the idea of "wacky vault experiments" is introduced, something I've never super loved, but that's subjective.

Fallout 3

Released; 2008

Setting; Capital Wasteland (Formerly Washington, D.C.), 2277

Wiki Page

200 years after the war, the 19-year-old Lone Wanderer's father has mysteriously left their home at Vault 101. It is up to the Lone Wanderer to track him down and figure out what's going on, all while navigating the dangerous Capital Wasteland.

Pros

Brought the Fallout series into the modern era!

Some pretty cool locations, like Megaton and Rivet City

Sort of a pro and con, a lot of the game is spent in the underground Metro system. This is cool, but I'm not a huge fan of interior spaces. Still - it feels like a real DC Wasteland!

Galaxy News Radio is introduced, which is great background noise - and I love Three Dog. He's so silly.

No sprint button. It's not felt super bad in this game compared to Vegas, but it still can be annoying.

It feels like a post-apocalypse. The whole world is this muddy, almost sickly green, grey, and brown colour. All of the sets are carefully designed, full of dirt and debris and trash. Buildings are crumbling or outright hollowed out, the ghouls look like walking corpses (as they should be), the mole rats are nasty and all of the creatures feel gross. As they should be! This is a post-apocolypse, everything should be gross and dirty!

Lots of good world-building. Because this is based in the Capital, we get to interact with a lot of old-world history, and see how similar and different it is from our own.

Cons

Story is... not great, in my opinion.

Some of those DLCs physically hurt me. They definitely lean into the 'silly' aspects of the games, but I feel it hurts the worldbuilding and realism.

NOT Bethany Esda's best work.

Leans more into the 'game' and less on the 'role-playing', which was a big part of Fallout 1 and 2. The protagonist is 19, their father is James, and we see a bit of what their childhood looked like. You can work around it, but it's not as fun as the other games.

Sometimes the npcs are annoying. There's collision in this game, but sometimes if you step on something it'll move and a npc will shout 'Watch where you're going' or something, which gets on my nerves. Also, if you so much as look at a locked container, you get a 'That's locked for a reason'. Probably minor, but annoying.

Fire ants.

Fallout: New Vegas

Released; 2010

Setting; Mojave Wasteland (Formerly Mojave Desert), 2281

Wiki Page

Courier Six, or just the Courier, is in the middle of a delivery when they are interrupted by Benny and shot in the head - though they make a miraculous recovery and now need to figure out exactly what kind of mess they've landed themselves in this time.

Pros

I mean, it's Fallout New Vegas. This is a lot of people's favourite, for good reason. Story is phenomenal, the entire world feels real and interactive. If you shoot someone, there's consequences, and the other npcs will acknowledge it.

THE BEST radio. All of the music slaps and helps you feel the setting. Plus, I love Mr. New Vegas, the radio host.

The characters are amazing.

The world is not too silly but still silly. Like yeah, this makes sense for a post-apocalypse. But it's also so objectively funny. Some of the best memes come from this game.

Yes Man.

As usual, I love the map design.

Instead of greens for Fallout 3, this game is bathed in oranges and brown - making it feel warm, perfectly capturing the desert setting, and dusty.

the DLCs are amazing!!

We love the companions in this house.

I love how morally grey it is. No one is perfect, no faction is outright good or outright bad (except the Legion, fuck those guys). It's up to you to pick which you think is the lesser evil, which is the best future for the Mojave. Or you can kill them all, up to you.

Cons

The development for this game was pretty famously rocky. It was outsourced to Obsidian, and they were given only 18 months to make it. Therefore, this game is very similar to Fallout 3, with some general improvements here and there.

There is still no sprint button, which is definitely felt here. A lot of the stuff is spread out, so thewre's a lot of wandering through desert, slowly making your way to your destination. It also feels more empty. The great city of New Vegas is sparsely populated, quiet, and desolate - despite it being such a big deal and supposedly so popular.

Honest Hearts DLC :////

Fallout 4

Released; 2015

Setting; The Commonwealth (Formerly Boston, MA), 2287

Wiki Page

In 2077, the Sole Survivor (default names Nate or Nora) is ready to start a family. In their little neighbourhood, with their white picket fence and infant son, it is a time of new beginnings - despite the war raging around them. Unfortunately, the war quickly catches up to them, and their family is forced to take shelter in Vault 111, where they are frozen in time for 210 years. They emerge following the kidnapping of their infant son, into a time so different to their own, battling this new world alongside the ghosts of the old.

Pros

The graphics have been updated, and it looks great! Mostly. Instead of washed-out greens and browns, this game is bright and vibrant.

Some more awesome companions. Honestly, I love them so much.

I really like the level-up system in this. I prefer 3/NV, but the tier system is fun and visually neat.

Better crafting system. And more crafting systems in general.

Settlements!!! This game introduces settlements, which basically means there's a bunch of set locations around the map that you can take over and build in! You get a lot of freedom and are responsible for meeting the needs for people in the settlement. You can get some mods for more freedom/flexibility, and you can mostly ignore it if you want.

Cons

The story is... also lacking. It feels almost... unfinished? Some beats are strange and it's just like. What.

Playing this before Fallout 3 pissed me off so much, because there's so much that is ripped off of Fallout 3. The Commonwealth is brought up, the radio music is the same, the vault numbers so similar, there's even an early version of Vault 111. It feels lazy. Fallout New Vegas was more creative, and they had a fraction of the time 4 has.

40-50% of the game is spent in loading screens.

Preston Garvey deserves so much better. "AnOtHeR sEtTlEmEnT nEeDs YoUr HeLp!"

Nick Valentine is non-romancable.

It's so easy to forget about the main objective, and hard to really care about it. This is a common problem I've heard, so it's not just me.

Radio host gets on my nerves :/

Nuka-World DLC is frustrating. But at least it's not. Sideyes Honest Hearts (Fo:NV).

Game is... easy. Too Easy. Deathclaws are supposed to be dangerous and difficult to kill.

Fallout 76

Released; 2018

Setting; Appalachia (Midwestern US mountain range), 2102-2104

Wiki Page

25 years after the bombs fell, all members of Vault 76 have been kicked out in order to rebuild society.

Pros

It's. Multiplayer? Kinda.

I made some friends on there, which was neat.

Return of item condition. So.

CAMPs are fun. Like the settlement but without NPCs to look after and allows location flexibility.

Has. Some new songs on the radio?

ALMOST HEAVEN. WEST VE-

Amazing map design! The outside is gorgeous and feels like Appalachia, for the most part.

Honestly, I prefer this version of VATS (the game's targeting system). In other games, VATS will pause and slow down combat to help with aim, and can be kind of annoying. Here, the combat speed is the same, you just spend some AP (stamina) for aim assist.

Cons

I prefer settlements tbh

What's not to mention? Story sucks, game sucks, etc etc. It's pretty famously bad.

I usually love the story, but checked out very fast and spent most of my time running around. But I honestly didn't last long even then.

The game is broken. Like, fundamentally broken. You are constantly subjected to crashes, bugs, etc etc. Fallout 4 is buggy, but this takes it to an extreme.

50-70% of the game is loading screens.

The interiors are huge, and there is no local map, so you very easily get lost.

Generally the story is so stupid.

Fallout 1st is a cash grab.

Unbalanced.

Bad.

Some videos I like about Fallout 76

Internet Historian's video on the history and release. I'm iffy on Internet Historian as a creator, but I do like the video. Let's just hope it's not plagiarised.

Joseph Anderson's video on the game at it's released state. Primarily focuses on how poorly the game plays and how broken it is. Super funny.

PrivateSession's video released in 2023, reviewing a more current version of the game. More focused on story.

PatricianTV's 4-part series released in 2023, reviewing a more current version of the game. More focused on the game and gameplay.

In conclusion; thank you for reading! As I mentioned, any criticism, questions, and suggestions are welcome! I hate/love fallout and am always happy to drag people down with me.

Also, would people be interested in a post discussing the story/setting/timeline? Like where I infodump further about the universe. To make it easier to digest and answer questions. Or give me a chance to infodump further about fallout.