#all three of them are neurodivergent it's how it is

[beetleluminary]

Pavlovian Love - an analysis and prediction of Sar/Bien

This analysis has spoilers and assumes you've read BreadAVOTA until the latest update I1-5-RD, including the Further Reading sections and BienAVOTA.

Bien and Sar are interesting in their mandated un-interestingness: Bien is a character who is designated the antagonist instead of being the antagonist (which clearly mirrors Bread's cosmic role, although that's for a different post altogether). Sar, on the other hand, is a guy who just pops up with no context, no warning and no justification - though this reflects the "measure" he is tied to.

Being the most recently introduced character, Sar and Bien haven't had as much interactions compared to the other Nightmare Duo of BreadAVOTA, but the few chapters that do dwell on them have a vivid inspiration: Pavlov and his dogs.

"Fall in love, won't you now?"

The inspiration is no secret - Sar and Bien's introduction is blatantly labelled Pavlovian Love. What BreadAVOTA does interestingly is that it goes past the layman's knowledge of Pavlov and instead parallels the darker reality of Pavlov's experiments.

Let's start with the surface level interpretation, though. Sar "adopts" Bien and immediately starts conditioning him for his own ulterior motives. The "kindness" of all his interactions, from the superficially polite tone of his unreasonable request ("fall in love, won't you now?"), the constant preparation of food and the "leniency" for Bien's incompetence are all thin veneers over the character who is clearly the "actual" villain of the story.

With Bien being highly coded as a neurodivergent character, showing traits of both autism, schizoid personality disorder and schizotypal personality disorder (or even schizophrenia), Sar constantly talking to him like an ABA therapist would is hard to miss.

Sar's first encounter with Bien which immediately ends in Bien's "punishment" for attacking Sar, the very simple statement of "You don't tell me what I "should" be - I tell you", and all the lovebombing that comes afterward all points to his superficiality. He's nice to Bien as a form of conditioning him, and there's an underlying threat that if Bien goes out of line he'll get punished for it.

Yet Bien, despite being aware of this, can't help but feel a sense of flattery over Sar's exaggerated kindness, having been so deprived of kindness his entire life, like the dog that associates the bell with food even when it knows the sound won't satiate its hunger.

Food and the bell

Food is a common reward that Sar offers Bien in all their interactions, and we see Sar feed Bien in every update since they start living together: "Good [ Results and Discussion ]", "Christmas Cookies" and in Bien's personal blog entry, "(Call For) Help". In all three chapters, they also talk about music, with Sar playing a piano song before every dinner.

The food and the music have their own significance in the larger BreadAVOTA universe. The "food", which later turns out to be made of "Mindstuff", is said to be how Sar "satiates" Bien, although what it actually does is a little vague. We know Media sent Bon and Bien food supposedly made of the same stuff, with Media telling Bon in a letter that he sends stuff Bien needs to be "healthy" (complete with the air quotes), and it's largely implied the rest of the Living also eat MargiFood™ that Media insists is basically no different from "real" food... you know, for the Living.

Bien is (probably) part-Marginal, and the Marginals as a species are subtly implied to feel insatiable hunger, so the implication that Bien needs to eat "Mindstuff" might not be too surprising.

As for the music, for Bien, it's a way for him to connect to his father. And for the rest of the world, music seems to be one of the ways that magic is performed with: the Annotations seem to be preceded with a song, Sar says that songs are one of the linguistic presentations magic can take, and Ava describes Reality as a song, with the Wires of Reality making sounds and the Voice of Reality being the "chorus" of it.

Sar promises to teach Bien the piano, and with this in mind, Sar might be banking on using music as a way for Bien to rewrite Reality (supposedly because Ava's plans of making him a writer instead are going nowhere).

All that said, the constant association Sar makes with food and music evokes the imagery of the "classical" Pavlovian experiment: a dog is fed food while ringing a bell, and eventually it'll salivate when a bell rings even without the food.

Except for one thing...

There is no bell.

"I'm trying - and will now shred ████ without mercy"

Warning for animal abuse

Sar's shelf in I1-5-RD lets "you" (Bien) read excerpts from some of his books, and one of them contains a research paper about Pavlov's experiments (interestingly, with all mentions of Pavlov and dogs blocked out).

Although Pavlov's experiments are commonly taught to the general public and first-year psychology students to have used a bell, in reality his experiments were more complex (and often more brutal), using different stimuli like metronomes and electric shocks.

In Pavlov's studies of digestion, as the excerpt says, he would cut out a dog's esophagus and create a fistula. No matter how much a dog would eat, the food would fall out of its throat and never reach the stomach, meanwhile Pavlov and his fellow scientists would collect the secretions to study.

In "(Call For) Help", Bien complains about feeling the need to vomit, and Sar tells him that's impossible because there's nothing in him to vomit.

We see in I1-4 that Bien's body is completely hollow, and while it's never been completely explained there's implications here and there that because Demon's don't naturally have Bodies, their Bodies might only superficially resemble "Real" Bodies. What's interesting is that Sar spends all his time feeding Bien - for him to comment that there can be nothing inside of Bien to vomit implies Sar must have certain expectations of where exactly that food is going.

Bien does have one thing inside of him: blood... or something like blood. If he's meant to closely parallel Pavlov's experiment that could make for some interesting theories.

The feeding experiments aren't the only things Pavlov did to his dogs though, and Sar's actions parallel some of his other experiments. The "spinal cord surgery" (and the foreboding implication that it wasn't really "just" a spinal cord surgery but a full on vivisection, based on how Sar describes it) is similar to Pavlov's own experiments where dogs where vivisected to study their digestive systems, and Bien's current living conditions resemble the "laboratory for central nervous system research":

The Towers of Silence

Bien's point of view is never shown post-surgery: we're only ever shown Sar, who looks at "you" as if you were Bien and does all the talking. If Bien "says" anything we can only hear it from Sar repeating and implying it, but never from Bien actually being given the chance to speak.

It signifies Sar's dominance over him, both as a character and in the meta-textual context of the narrative. But besides that, Bien's perpetual silence is an interesting parallel to the Towers of Silence experiment.

The "Towers" were soundproof buildings where experiments were performed on dogs specifically to try and break them down into madness: random stimuli were paired together to see how the dogs would react, like electric shocks coupled with force-feeding. "(Call For) Help" shows this the most blatantly. Where Bien ate on his own (if reluctantly) in the previous chapters, in "(Call For) Help" it seems that Sar is actively force-feeding him, with the last lines being Sar telling Bien to stop fidgeting.

Ava, at one point in Bien's blog, compares herself to Bien, saying that Bien's neuroses over his isolation (at this time, when he was alone in the military bunker) reminded Ava of her own experience in the "Recursive Panopticon" - with I1-3's Further Reading section showing to us that the Recursive Panopticon seems to be something vague, surreal and maddening.

There's another very obvious parallel here in regards to being an experiment for brutal psychological experiments, of course...

Like Father, Like Son

Bien's not the first Demonic teenager subject to inscrutable experiments. That crown goes to his father, Bon, whose experiments under the Maldevaran Centre of Supranatural Research and Development were similarly vague and highly traumatic.

Here are excerpts about Milord and Postrel, two of the dogs the Towers of Silence, taken from the Kingdom of dogs exhibit (where the book on Sar's shelf is referenced from)

Milord - Markedly more placid and peaceful than POSTREL. Expected his experimentally induced breakdown to reflect inborn character difference. Hypothesis confirmed — M has broken in the direction of ​‘inhibition’.* Previously established conditional reflexes disappeared. Stopped salivating to most ALL positive stimuli as shock was increased. Attempts to cure Milord with bromide solutions and rest unsuccessful. He has been retired. Phlegmatic character. Balanced, calm, consistent, not easily aroused. *Results later rejected in their entirety Postrel - We are combining shocks with food to test if breakdown can be experimentally induced, and if direction of break reflects inborn character — choleric in Postrel’s case. Hypothesis confirmed — Postrel has broken in the direction of ​‘excitation’.* Previously established conditional reflexes are now erratic. Salivation in response to ANY stimuli excessive and undifferentiated. The animal’s reflexes are shattered. ​‘Will now observe therapeutic effects of bromide salts. and rest. Choleric character. Lively, sociable, extremely excitable. *Results later rejected in their entirety.

Bon and Bien are really similar to the dog of Pavlov's experiment: the more "placid" Bon, who is better at controlling their Demonic "instincts" compared to the more "choleric" Bien, who was far more impulsive and violent. Bon breaking down and becoming more subdued seems to reflect Milord's results - we haven't seen what will happen to Bien yet, but if this parallel means anything then it looks like he's going to become far more erratic under Sar's care.

Going by how Bien reacted to his time with Ava in the bunker, this is likely to be the case - Bien already seems predisposed to neuroticism, constantly freaking out and fluctuating between childish excitement to detached and even cruel apathy in his appearances.

"Your presence (here) is of utmost value to the recipe..."

So Sar is an evil mad scientist and Bien is the schizoautistic kid he's bullying to the death. Alright, we can leave it there, I guess? Sar is nice to Bien because he's gaslighting and manipulating him, case closed.

Well, I recommend reading the paper that Sar's shelf has in full. The paper itself claims that its intention isn't merely to "damn Pavlov in retrospect" but to focus on the lives of the animals that were experimented on and to dispel the illusion that they were completely passive in the experiments.

As Todes noted, this set-up facilitated a relationship in some ways akin to 'pet and master'; it resembles what we might today call a companion species bond. That said, on the experimenter stand it was a relationship often defined by a shared tedium. The hours would often drag for both – experiments were monotonous and wearisome, involving little more than pressing a button to trigger a stimulus, measuring saliva, proffering small amounts of food at strictly regulated intervals. And then waiting. Apparently, a key challenge was staying awake – either animal falling asleep at the 'wrong' time was potentially ruinous for the experimental procedure. However, it also meant human and canine co-workers got to know each other to an unprecedented extent compared to Pavlov's early career. 

Sar's and Bien's time together, despite their shared goal being something larger-than-life and implied to be urgent, is remarkably mundane. The contrast between the Protagonist Half being a disjointed mess of lulrandomxD events to the repetitive, maddening tedium of Bien's life is notable. Bien reads and writes and codes and reads and writes and codes, and when he moves to Anselir with Sar, Sar makes him do all those things again, enforcing a strict schedule on him as a way to keep time stable in the disjointed reality of Anselir.

The presentation of Sar and Bien's time makes it foreboding. Sar's constant dominance of the conversations, his creepy attitude, the visuals from Bien's point of view being a contrast of a dark background with neon text and highly pixellated and distorted graphics, and Bien's increasing incoherence and borderline-psychotic episodes, these are all different elements that make Bien's portions of BreadAVOTA notably more disturbing than Bread's half of the narrative.

And yet, when you look at it literally, nothing ever actually happens. Bien embodies the "measure" he is stuck in, as the Eye of Space.

Like the Towers of Silence, Bien's stuck in an inescapable torture (especially with the unspoken but horrifying implication that the spinal cord surgery "tethers" him to Anselir so that he can't ever leave), but it's not the type of violence we see happening in the Time measures (where violence, it seems, is rendered meaningless because it undoes itself).

Bien's torture is more psychological in nature. From his life at home, his time at the War, his time in the bunker to his present day in Anselir, Bien's lived a life of being constantly trapped, in a situation where no matter what changes it stays the fucking same.

...and more importantly, to me"

And the interesting parallel he has with Sar is that Sar is stuck in the same situation.

The obvious interpretation is that Sar is nice to Bien because he needs Bien for whatever bullshit experiment he's trying to run, and that he doesn't really care about Bien to any meaningful degree. And maybe that's true now, but my personal theory is that over the course of them being stuck together in Anselir, a place where it's confirmed that even short periods of time feel like forever, Sar's going to develop a genuine attachment Bien.

Sar's an enigmatic character whose motives are hard to guess, and a major factor to that is that we already met Anthony, and even though Sar is Anthony... well, he's really not like Anthony.

We don't know why exactly Sar is so different, but the author does say that being alone for so long drove him "mildly insane." Anthony's antisocial and seems to hate everyone to the point of considering hate as a more important emotion than love, so seeing Sar being so polite (no matter how fake) is a jarring change in character.

In I1-5, there's one detail I noticed. When Bien asks about the MargiBirds, Sar says that he adopted Media's mannerisms so that the Birds would listen to him. And Sar is... vaguely Media-like, in that Media himself is a person who is superficially polite just to get what he wants. But Media and Sar don't exactly act 100% alike, although it's hard to pinpoint in what way they differ. I guess in a way Sar has a more uncanny quality to him, even though Media's the one who's literally an alien computer ghost.

The last line here is pretty interesting. I think that in the absence of any "Living" company, Anthony gradually grew more miserable in Anselir, and his weird personality was a way to try and get the birds to interact with him more just so he'd have someone to talk to. And man, Sar talks a lot.

I can't help but feel that although Sar likely has his own secret goals that take priority, he does feel genuinely relieved that Bien is there with him to spend the tedium of eternity with, even if it might be less about Bien as an individual and more about just having an actual person in Anselir.

Results and Discussion (And Conclusion)

BreadAVOTA as a whole strongly delves on themes of isolation and alienation, and the (often terrible) results that come from having it imposed on others without them having the power to do anything about it.

The decision to make such a unique fictional world with a supposed focus on "worldbuilding" and yet to only ever show Maldevaran life in passing, and the tendency to focus on characters who are mostly unlikable and difficult to understand are risky decisions from a writing standpoint, and it's a little arguable whether rolypolyphonic actually does them well, but I recognize that there's a specific question being asked in choosing to make the story be about what it is. It's a question Ava herself asks Bien when she criticizes Bien's shitty fanfictions:

Why should anybody in the audience care about these unsympathetic characters?

Bien's reply is framed as "stupid", but it touches on one of BreadAVOTA's themes: "why do i need to write down why people need to "sympathise" with mieszko? it should be obvious. you should simply feel bad for anybody ever."

Bien being apathetic and violent usually would be in poor taste considering how he's so coded to be autistic/schizophrenic, but BreadAVOTA's worldbuilding helps toe around the fact by making physical "death" something more trivial and by focusing on the more existential aspects of Maldevaran philosophy, which touches upon the real experiences of people with "bad" mental illnesses: schizophrenia, personality disorders and and "conduct disorders".

The idea of people who become "villainous" as a result of poor upbringing isn't new to fiction, but BreadAVOTA does put an interesting focus on the "poor upbringing" not necessarily being explicit abuse or trauma but a more silent yet perpetual feeling of alienation and disconnect, fitting for the story's overarching theme being an "allegory for schizotypy".

The Kingdom of Dogs leaves us with this compelling message, which feels relevant to Sar and Bien and BreadAVOTA's themes as a whole.

It is an understatement to say that we rarely get to hear about these aspects of Pavlov's work today, a forgetting which extends to the majority of scholarship on Pavlov, where dogs appear only in passing as experimental objects, never as subjects about which we should express care or concern.

BreadAVOTA doesn't necesarily asks its audience to "like" or "care" about its characters, and as the breadposters (all three of us) have noted there's a tendency to make the characters hard to like or care about. But it's not a story that tries to convince you to like the characters. It's just taking the opportunity to express these uncommon perspectives from the first person point of view.

Paraphrased from the author's own words, "there's always the risk of offending people with my portrayal of being schizoid, so you can go and read books that say nothing bad about being schizoid by virtue of never saying anything about it at all."

I doubt that Sar and Bien's relationship will stop as something so one-sided and passive, where Sar tells Bien what to do and what to say, but that eventually it's going to be complicated by the effects that both of them faced being isolated growing up (Bien in his Exile, Anthony/Sar as the youngest Judge), the way they were pathologized for it, and the unhealthy concept of relationships they formed as a result.

[kanelune]

[Kamen Rider Revice as Text posts 11/?]  Once again, my favorite trio.

[editonic]

alhaitham and kaveh are neurodivergent and each other's special interest

[megumi-fm]

.

[depresseddepot]

trying to determine which parts of my relationship with sex are asexuality, which are trauma, and which are autism is like trying to have a conversation with three people talking loudly and all at once

[fingertipsmp3]

I will never have friends like the friends I had in secondary school ever again. And in some ways this is a good thing

[loumauve]

Cool in the nerdiest way possible, I love that kind of cool people and oh my goodness your dad really does seem awesome with the knitting, programming, music and teaching!

he's got that semi-diagnosed autistic swag

[natugood]

I wanna know what it’s like to live in other cities cause every damn time I do a long walk here (ESPECIALLY at night) I end up so fucking angry!!!!! Like super pissed off and deeply bothered at the world!!!! and idk if it’s just the disparities and contrasts of issues *here* that bother me so deeply or if it’s more stuff related to modern US/western society in general, or if it’s a little bit of both and I’m just more sensitive to it here cause it’s more visible to me.

[united-under-skyfall]

leverage is so fucking funny. man manages to find the most mentally ill and neurodivergent group of thieves on the market + an even more mentally ill guy whose literal job description was trying to chase all of them, and forces them into a found family speed-run by trying to blow them all up. they lowkey stage a full fucking country wide coup and are like eh 🤷 just another wednesday. this might be a fun place to vacation tho i guess. sophie shows up to her own funeral twice. they're so good at convincing people of their shit that they make a guy's body start reacting to an illness he doesn't have because it isn't real. go completely out on a limb and basically hand this one guy a new password for his computer so they can get into it and he goes with it. parker and hardison have straight up just "fake it 'till you make it"d into the fbi without even attempting to cover their tracks beyond just These Two Guys. half their clients never asked to be their clients and don't know they're their clients, and the other half are random people who find them who fuckin knows how, meanwhile no government agency can track them down without selling their soul to sterling. they make a point to have a dramatic scene w a Big Bad Shadowy Government Guy who doesn't actually get caught or brought to justice or anything telling them he's going to hunt them all down, and in any other show this would probably earn at least a minor arc later on but he literally never shows up again. an entire season finale hinged on a cake and a bunch of clams. they accidentally made eliot a celebrity not once, not twice, but three times. parker blew up her foster parents' house when she was like. nine. and it's hardly a footnote. hardison is just casually an artistic prodigy but it's only ever brought up for the most background of background gags. eliot's biggest beef with parker and hardison for like two and a half seasons is that they won't stop making weird food with lasers and refuse to realize they can't make a decent beer to save their lives. sophie's immediate response to being shot is to call her shooter a wanker. there's a character who has literally killed a man with a mop and they had the audacity to only put her in one episode.

[eldritchamy]

I think I've figured out a good way to articulate one of the reasons Human Domestication Guide is hitting for me in a way really not much else has done for a long time.

HDG is an inverse fandom.

Whereas a lot of fanfiction (maybe just for the sake of the pun we can expand outwards, wink, and call them "transformative works") takes at the core of its nature a specific character or group of characters, and then transplants (sorry, I had to) those characters into Alternate Universes in order to keep telling altered, revised, and original stories with those CHARACTERS, while changing everything else, HDG does the opposite.

It takes the SETTING as the core defining feature, and creates original CHARACTERS in order to tell original stories.

And that's really cool for reasons that, of course, ended up becoming another gigantic one of Amy's Patented Infodump Posts.

Most fanfiction gets to appeal to its audience because of the associations and attachments readers have for the CHARACTERS, and then create a new story from there without having to spend time setting up WHO THE STORY IS ABOUT for you. I don't say this as a bad thing, that's just the attraction. The readers bring their attachment to the characters WITH them before they start reading.

HDG gets to assume you understand the SETTING as a basic premise, and then tell new stories with original characters without having to hold your hand through as much of the set up work, because you already know the SETTING going in.

So instead of discovering how the characters you know relate to a world you don't (and to each other within that context), you get stories where you get to discover who the characters ARE, in the context of a world you already understand.

It's not "what does a different setting do to these characters." It's "how do different people navigate this setting."

You get to meet and learn and identify with the CHARACTERS because you see how they as unique people react to a set premise.

So much of what I've read so far has done exceptional work establishing who the characters are, even making MINOR characters within the story feel like fleshed out people.

You'd think in a setting that takes at face value the premise of humanity being subjugated and doted on by a species that uses mind control drugs to turn them into docile, obedient pets, the stories would struggle a bit with sameness as the individuality of the characters failed to shine through or were inevitably suppressed over the course of the plot.

In practice, it seems like almost the OPPOSITE is true.

The Affini always win. But every character chooses to lose to them in a different way that speaks to who they are as people.

Getting to explore these unique stories through the eyes of unique characters seems like it's making it EASIER to latch on to what makes THESE characters the focus of the stories being told.

And so far the stories being told are fucking great, and have such a huge range to them.

The original story for the setting is a VERY non consensual medfet/drug play subjugation story where Elvira (captain of a ship for the Free Terran feralist rebellion) is ABSOLUTELY brought into domestication by force (at first), and we get to see the PROCESS of her being broken down and becoming something new over the course of (what we later learn has been ONLY) about three weeks. She's not the same person she was at the start of the story. At all. She's been utterly replaced by a new identity and personality that the old version of her would never have accepted. (Also it's kinda hot that it's actually good for her, and that she very much DOES end up happier for it. She's still Elvira. But she's safe, and she's loved.)

That's a pretty specific vibe for a story.

But the next story I read in the setting takes place over the course of several hours in-universe, and basically follows a dysfunctional, clearly neurodivergent woman stagnating in the limbo of having been failed by capitalism (or in her mind, failing at it) and having mixed feelings about the staggeringly powerful alien civilization that is currently part way through conquering her planet and its people.

The story starts off when she's so hungry after scraping through what scant, nutritionless garbage she was able to find in the capitalist dystopia that it finally overrides her fear, and she goes to the border of Affini-controlled territory in her city. She figures, they're going to do whatever they're going to do to the rest of the city within a few days anyway, so there's no sense pretending whatever outcome she's walking into wasn't inevitable, and even if it's not as good as the Affini promise, at least it's not what she's been stuck in. Fear of sameness finally becomes more traumatic than fear of change.

She proceeds to go on an adorable lesbian grocery date with a 10 foot tall plant that gently flirts with her while remaining very firm that all of this human's needs CAN and SHOULD and WILL be taken care of FOR her from now on, and it's OKAY that she has trouble focusing because it's OKAY that some people need more help than others.

She spends several chapters experiencing repeated Lesbian Bluescreens because of this sweet, doting alien who insists it's no trouble at all and she's happy to help. Then said alien takes her back to her apartment on the human side to make sure she feels safe getting there through the anti-Affini protests, and then in a matter of minutes she has cleaned this girl's entire disaster of an apartment and promised to cook her a nice Terran pizza.

Then the girl has a lesbian panic attack while coming to terms with how much misery she didn't have to be living with, and whether this future isn't exactly what she always hoped for and more, so the alien offers to give her some alien drugs to calm her down, and her now fuzzy brain accidentally crumbles under the weight of all the secret petplay fantasies that have been turning her face red all morning and she accidentally calls the alien "Mistress", and then she goes home to THEIR place back in Affini territory with her new owner and gets absolutely spoiled until she falls asleep feeling safe and loved for the first time in her life.

COMPLETE tonal shift from the original story, but the LOGIC of the story is fully consistent with the setting. It's just a different character responding to that setting in a different way.

The range of what's possible is ENORMOUS.

I went from there to "two humans captured at different times struggle to find their way back to each other and end up with neural implants plugged into each other's brains by their shared Mistress, and the feedback loop helps them domesticate EACH OTHER" and then from there to a mostly historical context story about an Affini who lived for almost 300,000 years and how she feels about the Compact's role in everything they've done to the universe.

And then I got to read "I have to pretend to be a good little floret maid at an Affini Compact hotel because that's my Genius Spy Cover WHOOPS it turns out being a maid means getting teased and played with a lot WHOOPS, OHHhhh NOOOoo~ I'VE BEEN TURNED INTO A FREE USE HYPNO DOLL because EVERYONE KNEW I WAS A SPY THE WHOLE TIME, I'm going to resolve my mixed feelings by erotically betraying my co-conspirator so we can be floret girlfriends together," which was cute, funny, and INCREDIBLY hot.

Seriously, chapter 10 of that story. Holy FUCK. I think my brain has turned fully inside out. I had a DREAM kinda like it afterwards that I wish I could remember more of.

I guess my point is HDG is less like a fandom and more like DND.

It's a shared universe of collaborative storytelling, even if any individual work within it was made by one person.

You get to play within a core set of rules for how the setting works, but the stories that can come out of playing by those rules are so incredible and diverse and interesting, and I'm really enjoying getting to explore all of that within the context of a basic premise that has absolutely grabbed most of my kinks by the throat, stared menacingly into my eyes, and smirked knowingly.

Also it's INCREDIBLY queer and very obviously made specifically for gay autistic trans women who take progesterone, so I guess just like the rest of the little Terrans, I never stood a chance.

[visenyaism]

tyrannical king maegor dashboard simulator

🐉queen-visenya--outlives

Dowager Queen Visenya Targaryen has outlived her nephew the King Aenys I Targaryen. Her son King Maegor I Targaryen has returned to the capital to claim his father’s throne.

💫 sevensent Follow

crusty incest king died. FLOP!

💫 sevensent Follow

wait MAEGOR?

🥔 bowlofbrown

this job fucking sucks. finished my shift and i cant even clock out because i got lost underneath the site.

#dark as shit down here #never working construction again

💌 maidens-smile Follow

i literally cannot believe how many supporters of m*egor i see on my dashboard every day when he is literally flaying and torturing so many seven-blessed poor fellows just for practicing their religion and saying incest is bad??? he’s literally outside my city waiting to burn us all to death DNI if you support him

🪨 dragonstoner Follow

🐉 queen-visenya--outlives

Dowager Queen Visenya Targaryen has outlived the High Septon. He previously denounced King Maegor and his wives as “the abomination and his whores,” and passed shortly after Dowager Queen Visenya and King Maegor flew their dragons to the gates of Oldtown and threatened to burn the Starry Sept.

🪽 maegors-wins Follow

i for one think “the cruel” is a bit unfair given how he has done so much to uplift women’s voices and free us from religious tyranny like. named the first female heir in westerosi history? improving the infrastructure in king’s landing? decentralizing the power of the faith? he literally loves gay people so much he married three of them?

🦓 zorse-deactivated7849

op what does that eleven inch necromantic targaryen dick feel like because if you keep riding that hard I’m pretty sure it’ll rot off

🔮 tyanna

in seven days you will begin to cough

#twelve. btw

🐉 queen-visenya--outlives

Dowager Queen Visenya Targaryen has outlived her great-nephew Aegon Targaryen, henceforth to be known as “The Uncrowned.” Her son King Maegor I Targaryen has slain him and his dragon Quicksilver over the gods’ eye for trying to usurp his throne.

🌞 ullerihardlyknowher Follow

why is this always how i find out how do you know this before even cravings moste popular

#also what the fuck is going on up there

🪰 florian-and-jonquil-on-nymerias-ship Follow

guys the oversexualization of king maegor is so problematic and insane considering he’s not only shy and married as a 13 year old but also is literally neurodivergent (has CTE)

🤲 aegonfort-top

🤲 aegonfort-top

lost my left hand for posting this

#it was kind of hot though

🗣️ towerstower Follow

was not into targaryen rule at all but if we are going to do it it’s kind of fun that we are being ruled by a super powered animated blood corpse and his circle of freaky bisexual witches and also his mommy instead of like. a normie who also fucks his sister

🫀 imasharpknife Follow

seven hells you people would fuck a k*nslayer if they had valyrian silver hair

🐦‍⬛ raventooth Follow

during these trying times when our king is accused of depravity and tyrannies abound throughout the land we must remember the most important truth: the brackens are still a people spawned from the lowest of the seven hells

🐎 brackennation

KILL YOURSELF. Lord Gonzo Tully himself AS YOU KNOW literallyyyyyy gave us the right to move the boundary stones over the tributary. but i wouldn’t expect a blackwood to acknowledge basic laws and rights you’re just too busy doing blood sacrifices to your nasty heathen tree god.

🐦‍⬛ raventooth Follow

as soon as i figure out why balerion is overhead rn im coming over to kill you. btw

🐎 brackennation

wait looks like he’s headed towards harrentown

🐦‍⬛ raventooth Follow

oh cool. KILL YOURSELF

💐 floriansfool36 Follow

hi guys!!! sorry i’m a sennight late posting this, my brother got killed and then one of my other brothers got tortured to death and then my great-aunt died and i ended up having to flee dragonstone for storm’s end and it was kind of scary lol. anyways here’s the update as promised!!!

🌟 maidensgrace Follow

i wish Balerion did get you RPF is literally soooooo problematic. look to your sins op

#daenys the dreamer and nymeria weren’t even alive at the same time????

❤️ lanadelrhaena

i think you did a great job. glad you’re safe xx

💐 floriansfool36 Follow

YOU HAVE INTERNET IN THE KEEP???? HIIIII

[teaboot]

How do Canadian schools teach about indigenous Canadian history and culture? -a curious USAmerican

In my experience we learned about colonization at the same time as we learned about the formation of Canada. At first it was "European settlers came and pushed out the indigenous population", then in the higher grades we learned more about the how and the why.

For example, how carts full of men with rifles would ride around shooting Buffalo, then leaving the meat on the ground to rot, because "a dead Buffalo is a dead indian", which was so fanatical it almost wiped out wild Buffalo entirely

Also how Canadian settlers were lured in with beautiful hand-painted advertisements for cheap, beautiful, fertile land that was unpopulated and perfect, if only you'd sail over with your entire family and a pocket full of seeds- only to be met with scared, confused, and angry lawful inhabitants already run out of ten other places, and frigid winters, and rocky, forested, undeveloped dirt.

also, smallpox blankets, where "gifts" of blankets infected with smallpox were intentionally given out

And treaty violations- Either ignoring written agreements entirely, or buying them out at insanely low prices and lying about the value, or trading for farming equipment that they couldn't use because they weren't farmers.

Then in the first world war, where they told indigenous peoples here that they'd be granted Canadian citizenship if they enlisted

To Residential schools, which was straight up stealing kids for slavery, indoctrination, and medical experiments

But we also covered the building of the Canadian Railway in which Chinese immigrants were lowered into ravines with dynamite to blow out paths through the mountain for pennies on the dollar

And the Alberta Sterilization Act, where it was lawful and routine procedure to sterilize women of colour and neurodivergent people without their awareness or consent after giving birth or undergoing unrelated surgeries

But I'm rambling.

We kind of learned Aboriginal history at the same time as everything else? Like. This is when Canada was made, and this is how it was done. Now we'll read a book about someone who lived through it, and we'll write a book report. And now a documentary, and now a paper about the documentary. Onto the next unit.

And starting I think in grade 10 our English track was split between English and Aboriginals English, where you could choose to do the standard curriculum or do the same basic knowledge stuff with a focus on Aboriginal perspectives and literature. (I did that one, we read Three Day's Road and Diary Of A Part-Time Indian, and a few other titles I don't remember.)

There was also a lunch room for the Aboriginal Culture Studies where Aboriginal kids could hang out at lunch time if they wanted, full of art and projects and stuff. They'd play music or videos sometimes, that was cool

And one elective I took (not mandatory cirriculum) was a Kwakiutl course for basic Kwakwakaʼwakw language. Greetings, counting to a hundred, learning the modified alphabet, animals, etc. Still comes in handy sometimes at large gatherings cause they usually start with a land recognition thanking whoever's land we're on, with a few thanks and welcomes in their language.

And like- when I was in the US it was so weird, cause here we have Totem poles and longhouses and murals all over and yall... don't? Like there is a very distinct lack of Aboriginal art in your public spaces, at least in the areas I've been

My ex-stepfather, who was American, brought his son out once, and he was so excited to "see real indians" and was legitimately shocked to learn that there weren't many teepees to be found on the northwest coast, and was even *more* shocked when we told him that you have Aboriginal people back home too, bud. Your Aboriginal people are also named "Mike" snd "Vicky" and work as assistant manager at best buy.

If you'd ask me, I'd say that the primary difference is that USAmerica (from what I've seen, and ALSO in entirely too much of Canada) treats our European and Aboriginal conflicts as history, something that's tragic but over, like the extinction of the mammoths, instead of like. An ongoing thing involving people who are alive and numerous and right fucking here

But at the end of the day, I'm white, and there are plenty of actual Aboriginal people who are speaking out and saying much more meaningful things than I can

So I'm just gonna pass on a quote from my Stepmum, who's Cree, that's stuck with me since she said it:

"You see how they treat Mexicans in America? That's how they treat us here. Indians are the Mexicans of Canada."

[splatoonpolls]

a really long analysis about fanon Marina and the flanderization by fandom she has gotten

fanon marina (the version created by the fans) mainly focuses on two things, her being autistic coded and her being basically confirmed to be a lesbian. And I do think this has to do with her being VERY much like a typical splatoon fan in many people’s eyes. Her being a nerdy queer neurodivergent person. This is also why other parts, especially her relationship with her being an octoling gets often locked away. Subconsciously at least

if Marina was a book, several chapters would focus on her identity as a dome octoling. Her being autistic would probably pop up here and there, but it wouldn’t be a whole chapter. But her very much gay relationship with Pearl would definitely have a few chapters. But with people focusing on those few lines and chapters rather than the whole book. People would slowly ignore the other chapters, get shocked like Adam Sandler learning Pac-Man was the bad guy in the hit movie pixels.

the splatoon fandom’s western side is mainly white Americans and Europeans. Which is one reason why the fanon Marina doesn’t focus on her identity as an octoling, but also on how many details are not really told to the player. Marina barely shows her ears, which can both be read as her having sensory issues (which is a super valid headcanon(, but also her not feeling super comfortable with her body. With her ears being a reminder of her “you are with people who still think you are only going to steal stuff”. Her tentacles may be weird, she may lack the eyeliner an inkling has. But those things can simply be a stylistic choice. Her ears can’t be one. They are too different. I also know the DLCS focuses more on her identity as a dome octoling. However many can understand how her arc as a whole can be paralleled to the real life experiences of people belonging to marginalized ethnic communities. I also want to point, while writing this. I realized (which many people probably already did). Dome octolings you see outside of the domes (splatoon 2 octolings, Marina, Acht, Paul), are all refugees. They are all characters who grew up in a society that had been shunned for decades, even centuries. That society ended up being oppressive both due to external and internal issues. They know the society they’re living in is no longer a good place to live in. So they escape. Hoping to find a place that will take them on. For agent 8, Marina, and Paul. They found a safe place. Acht wasn’t super lucky however. They were told they could find a “promised land” only to be left in even more ruin before. So not only does Marina’s character arc focus on her being a part of an ethnic minority, but a refugee at that. so why does fanon marina usually avoid that part of her? Well as a mentioned before. Marina has three things that makes her very relatable. While the more backstory focused things are less relatable to a way smaller margin of the splatoon fandom. A way smaller part of the fandom are poc in a very white country. And a very small percentage are refugees.

if we removed Marina’s backstory. We would still be left with the fanon version. A nerdy autistic lesbian who deeply loves Pearl. I love how Nintendo got a game that also isn’t afraid to show a society that cares about queer people if not is queer centric itself. Which is probably why many people cling to that part of Marina. But if we removed that part. What would we be left with? Well, we would have an octoling refugee who is a trained soldier and can create weapons of destructions (and she would still be in love with Pearl, it is an important part of her backstory). im not saying the splatoon fandom’s openness to lgbtq and neurodivergent people is a bad thing just because they boil down one of the most plot heavy characters down to those things. It is actually a really great thing to have a fandom that is open to these marginalized groups.

i just want to say, due to this love for Marina being a character you can relate to. It feels like certain parts of Marina’s character (which can also be very relatable to some) is being drifted away to the more lore centric side of the fandom. Which will lead to a sort of fandom flandarization which is very unintentional and just done due to a love of Marina as a character.

If you’ve read this an disagreed, that is fine. Character writing is a very subjective thing

[braixen]

so much of how much spiderverse connects with people, and why it has so much heart, is because it boils down to understanding other people.

i remember being so excited about spider-gwen b/c i relate to her so much. there’s so much people can relate to, things involving being neurodivergent, being trans, being gay, being a person of color, being disabled, being a mix of all of the above!

when my friend and i were walking out of the theater, three different people asked us if the movie was good, and we had such a genuine connection with these people, and it’s not a coincidence that one was in a wheelchair, one was a theater employee who’s badge said “they/them” on it.

we’re different, but we’re the same. i see you, and i know you.

[letters-to-lgbt-kids]

My dear lgbt+ kids,

I feel like advice on loneliness comes in only three flavors:

"It's all mindset, learn to embrace being alone and you'll never feel lonely!"

"Your head is lying to you, you have friends and they love you!"

"Here's a list of places you can go to hang out with people and make new friends!"

Those are usually well-meant and I'm sure there are situations where they do help someone feel better - but they're definitely not universally applicable.

The first one is even plain wrong: connection is a basic human need. You can't just "change your mindset" and turn that off, the same way you can't turn off your need for food or air or mental stimulation. Humans are group animals. We absolutely need social interactions to stay healthy and sane. It is true that some people do not need a large number of friends and are happiest with just one or two close friends, and it is also true that some people prefer to fulfill their social needs in other ways than what's traditionally defined as friendship - but that's not something you can (or should) try to train yourself to do, that's just natural differences and preferences!

The only thing you could "train" yourself to do would be to learn to ignore your social needs and bury them deep down under layers of denial... and you don't need me to explain to you why that's a very unhealthy idea. It's sad enough that so many people have to do that to not lose their minds in loneliness, we certainly don't need to celebrate an unhealthy coping skill as a "superior mindset".

The other two at least get a bit closer to the truth: the solution for your unmet need is not to kill the need, but to fulfill it... but that's easier said than done, isn't it?

After all, "Don't worry, your friends love you!" doesn't help if you have no friends. Loneliness is not always "all in your head": Maybe you moved to a new place and don't know anyone there. Or you cut off contact with all your friends after a big fight. Or you grew up neurodivergent (or got mentally ill at a young age) and had no chance to learn how to make friends at the age most kids do, and by now you have been friendless for so long you don't even know where to start.

Same with "just go to a bar and talk to some new people" or "Take a pottery class and you'll meet some interesting people there" - that's not factually wrong, but also not helpful if the reason you feel lonely is that you struggle to make friends (or even struggle to just talk to people). Which can also be part of neurodivergence or mental illness, or just be a part of your personality (shyness), or be a result of isolating circumstances (like having spent a lot of time in a closed environment, for example a long hospital stay, and now feeling unsure how to connect with people outside of that environment). 

And those are just a few of the many, many possible explanations why someone may be lonely that require a more individualized approach - which is why we can’t solve loneliness with any one-size-fits-all solution.

That may be a somewhat disappointing-sounding conclusion in a letter on loneliness, so let me also tell you: hope and support are always within reach, even if it might take some time and patience to find them. The key is to remember that your feelings are valid and that you're not alone in your struggle.

First, recognize that admitting that you feel lonely, and wanting to take action based on that feeling, is a sign of strength, not weakness. You’re pretty insightful for recognizing your loneliness and super brave for wanting to reach out!

Secondly, be kind to yourself and allow yourself to take small steps. Small, actually manageable steps are crucial in any healing journey! If it’s not an option to just go to the bar or that pottery class, then it’s okay to start somewhere else. Maybe a therapist, a support group, or even online communities can be valuable “training sessions” for social connections. Even reaching out to one single person can make a significant difference over time. Your journey to finding companionship and connection might be different from someone else’s, but that doesn't make it any less valid (or achievable!).

Lastly, do consider embracing new activities that you may enjoy - but not just for the sake of meeting others. It’s important to nurture your own happiness and well-being when you’re feeling lonely. Those can be activities you can try out alone and even at home, for now! Anything that enriches your life is good. Long down the road, maybe it will lead to opportunities to connect with others, but even if it doesn’t: it’s important to incorporate new experiences into your life.

While there isn't a universal solution to loneliness, I truly believe there is a path forward for everyone. It's all about finding what works for you.

With all my love,

Your Tumblr Dad

[bomberqueen17]

tone indicators

I reblogged this post without adding any commentary bc queue and not a lot of computer time lately but like okay here's the thing about tone indicators:

they're yet another in-group set of coded speech. like an inside joke, or a meme, or a conlang. if you are in a group that uses them, they're great and perfectly comprehensible.

but if you don't happen to have come from inside a group that uses them, they are exactly as exclusionary as any other heavy jargon or inside joke or acronym. I mean have you ever listened to soldiers talk? The US Army communicates in heavily jargon-ified speech, liberally laden with acronyms, so much so that it's a self-referential joke to make up obscene or deliberately-obfuscated ones to slip into official reports since the sorts of people who'd kick up a fuss about obscene language won't understand them.

It is exactly the same thing. Except that's exclusionary on purpose, and tone indicators are exclusionary in effect but tout themselves as inclusionary.

So if I, an outsider to this, am reading along, and after a sentence, there's a / and then between one and three letters, that is not enough information for me to use to look it up.

This is absolutely inaccessible if you are not alreadhy in the group that uses it.

I wouldn't mind if the people who used them were just like 'oh ha sorry jargon, i'll try to explain if it's not clear, sorry i forget you guys don't know them' just like any other inside joke or meme or whatever.

But I was in a discussion with someone on a Discord and when I was puzzled about them including these weird slash-acronyms after their statements they were like oh how nice for you that you're not neurodivergent and don't need to use these.

Uh no. The opposite actually. I'm the kind of neurodivergent that needs context. I handle being excluded from conversations very poorly. And that's where I get pissed off, that people seem to be holding these up as the new be-all end-all of Finally Solving The Problem Of Ambiguous Tones In Social Interaction. The hell you are, kids. They're just another layer, and I'd say the worst one yet, out of many many many attempts to solve this exact problem. They are fundamentally inaccessible. Don't mistake the fact that you learned them (somewhere, in some context inaccessible to me) for them actually being universal.

Considered against the many different solutions that have been offered since text-only speech was invented, tone indicators stack up as among the very least-accessible of the lot, since they contain so little context in and of themselves-- if a key is not provided then they're totally inaccessible, and are exceptionally difficult for non-native English speakers, and in general require so much memorization or cross-referencing as to be prohibitively hostile to outsiders.

And that's fine, if what your'e doing is just meant for talking to your friends. But don't come into my conversations and berate me for not having memorized whatever incomprehensible set of acronyms you've newly-decided are the new universal truth. And what drives me the most insane is how many of these acronyms someone has now decided to assign a whole new meaning to are acronyms that are well-known and already existed and are in heavy use. So if you try to look them up guess what you get! is it gonna be the newly-created version or the one that's been in use for fifty to seventy-five years??

For one, P.O.S. has had a specific meaning in written and spoken English for a really damn long time and if you call me a piece of shit in the actual language I speak I am absolutely not going to interpret your conlang as having intended something nice. (YES REALLY THEY'RE USING THAT ONE TRY TO GUESS WHAT IT MEANS. NO. NO! I know. Fuck! That's wild. Absolutely the fuck not.)