#also I'm well aware it could just be because time constraint etc

[distant-screaming]

No so I had a thought okay like. Win is so much more aware of his feelings in this universe he realizes it pretty much instantly, and that's interesting because canon Win is so HESITANT about it - he asks Sound to be sure before anything, he confesses by writing on Sound's shirt instead of telling him. So like. Something something low self esteem and the fear of being rejected and the fear of himself that Win has that somehow doesn't translate over to a universe where he's famous? Yeah.

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

Hi Rachel! Hope things are going well for you! I was wondering, since this is a frequent topic on your blog/channel, how do you still enjoy your work while letting go of perfectionism? Enjoying what I write is super important to my process and with keeping me going, but the constant over-worrying and embarrassment of what I put down really slows me down and leaves me feeling terrible lol... I know I need to learn to think differently of my own work but I’m a bit uncertain of where to start and what else I could try and appreciate instead. Sorry if this is too vague or broad of a question! No pressure to come up with a solid, one answer or anything. Just hearing your thoughts/experiences would be helpful!

This is a really, really good question! I wrote THIS ask that sort of addresses this too, if you haven't already seen it!

I think at the end of the day, loving your writing despite perfectionism all comes down to graceful self-compassion. Not every day is going to be perfect. Sometimes I still hate my writing (me! right! now!), and it's good to know that ahead of time. If I'm aware I'm not always going to like my work (which is realistic for me), I can then also tell myself that it doesn't make sense to harp too long on things I don't like when my opinion will inevitably change.

Some days it's really about gritting your teeth and pretending you like the work (also! me! right! now!). Find words or lines or images you like and focus your energy there!

One of the mistakes I made when first endeavoring on my writing self-love journey was making goals that were too big. I remember when I wrote Moth Work, the goal was "let's just dump all my shit writing here and see where that goes" and where that went was me developing severe perfectionism LOL. I then went alllll the way to other extreme and was like "okay well let me make all this writing perfect" which is literally an impossible task! Eventually I found the middle.

Now, I'm able to write something like Seventh Virtue and be like "ah yes, let me dump all my shit writing here" because the project also demands different things. For MW, it made no sense to ask myself of that when a HUGE part of what I enjoyed about writing that book was the actual prose itself (I mean makes sense, it's literary fiction). For SV, the prose is important, but not THE most important thing, so my goal of "don't care what happens I just want to have fun" is more feasible within those genre constraints.

So perhaps look at the project you're writing & see where you can create a realistic goal for yourself? I find asking what I like about the project helps inform those goals. So as I said, I liked the pretty prose in MW, so I wanted to retain that. The goal then became, "alright, I'll draft what I can in the moment, and I'll accept that at points, I'm not going to feel comfortable and I will feel cringe and I will feel embarrassed. But after my drafting session, I'll come back and tinker with the draft if needed" (this is actually how I'm currently writing BODY BACK haha).

For Seventh Virtue, I'm quite sensitive to the plot being causally warranted, so the goal is "okay, I'll try to draft each scene from the previous so a firmer causal chain is created, but I will miss scenes, write scenes that aren't needed, etc, and that's fine because I can address that later."

When I realized I could tailor my goal for the specific project, things really opened up for me because it showed me I didn't need to stick to one writing process. On here, y'all get basically first draft Seventh Virtue (99% of it hasn't been touched since coming out of my brain), but get a franken first draft-ish (sometimes 2nd or 3rd) of BB because I cycle through phrasings in my mind while I write (which I don't do in SV LOL). Those are two different drafting processes, so they deserve two different goals so I can better enjoy them.

Also I would say... don't be afraid of discomfort. Writing is so uncomfortable sometimes. I mean look at me in 2020--I HATEEDDD MW! And now it's like... the best thing I've ever written, IMO. We're not objective critics of our own work when we go into it hating it so much (or being embarrassed/ashamed by it, etc, whatever emotion fits your current situation). So that shows us the feelings we're having are feelings, not facts. And feelings are good to have! But they don't have to dictate everything forever. Feel them, and then *try* to accept them and move on. That might not be easy, but the more you do it, the easier it becomes.

I used to STRESS so much when a sentence/scene/paragraph wasn't working. Is that how I explain the 30-60k of each novel I cut between 2018-2020? Yep! Now I stress a little less. And I hardly cut things until I get to the actual revision process (~2k/project).

Okay finally, I've been meaning to use this analogy and this is the perfect timing for it. I've been learning the fun fingerstyle guitar in Jeff Buckley's version of Corpus Christie Carol for almost two months now. When I first started learning that song, LOL, I couldn't play ANYYYY of it. It confused me. I was frustrated. But, I genuinely knew that if I kept practicing, it'd sound 100% better a couple months from now. And now I can almost play it well haha.

It's funny how writers (me included!) forget that practice and failing and sounding bad and writing nonsense is a very important part of the process, but how in other art forms, it's just a given. My brother is an incredible musician and I would never expect him to play a riff perfectly on the first go when he's only heard it once or twice. When he makes mistakes when playing, I either don't notice at all or don't care because it's a given. I just KNOW that as a musician, if I keep practicing, I'll eventually get it (and I almost always do--in some cases, it's too hard and I quit, and that's fine to do too).

I'm actually learning a new song on guitar rn, I'll record it and put it in a video as a visual haha. The amount of times you play the exact same note over and over again... The amount of times you KNOW you're playing the wrong thing but keep playing it wrong anyway because it hasn't quite clicked... It's all part of it! I still enjoy that practice, because it's fun! We can apply that to writing too.

[thepolyamorouspolymath]

This is actually exactly one of the things I've been yelling about climate change, and very few people seem to focus on, in this very strange way....

You hear a fucking insane amount about rising ocean levels. Now objectively this is bad because it changes currents abd therefore weather and migratory patterns. But the "50% of the world's population lives near a coast and those will be flooded out" is just a fucking weird take. It rises by like an inch a year at most. That's a lot of warning. Have people lost the ability to migrate due to weather conditions, the thing we demonstrated regularly throughout the evolutionary process? It's a loss of property value. Where do we house them with less land instead? Ah well, you see there's this whole thing of building up instead of out? You might have seen it in any city that has geographic constraints on sprawl?

It's a problem but on a human level it is a solvable problem. (What effects it will have on ocean life is a different story -- evolution is weird, life finds a way, etc. The problems could range from completely dead oceans (even sharks, I know!) causing raging fucked up weather patterns all the way down to the balance of power just shifting in the ecosystem a bit and the weather having a bad teen years period until the new normal version of currents are established. And anywhere in between. (Personally I find the complete unpredictability terrifying -- you can plan for an expected disaster, one that surprises you fucks you up. Think hurricane with days of warning versus a tornado of equal duration and area bc those fuckers give you like 30 seconds.)

Then there's temperatures in parts of the world like the Middle East which will become Death Valley redux. Temps climb too high during the day and don't get to come down enough at night, you have an unlivable condition. Again, no denying that's bad. There are some ideas to cope -- people want to colonize Mars right? That same tech to survive on Mars could be used to live entirely indoors on Earth with climate control in areas that are not habitable. Or again, humanity has moved a lot due to environments getting shitty.

Arable land for food. Now that is an issue, especially if we lose ocean meat sources (vegetarians and vegans I'm aware mankind can live without meat but since eating meat is what allowed our brains to develop higher functions, let's not just brush it off) because grazing land is required. But we could definitely reduce meat consumption and while some of our arable areas are drying up there's likely other areas that are going to become far more productive. (Look at the changes in arable land in Mesopotamia area including Egypt, which was the bread basket of the ancient world, long before climate change.) And for plants, well might I again recommend looking up? There's a fascinating design for hydroponic towers in the Great Lakes the size of skyscrapers. For plant life in general, we've all see the concepts of covering buildings in plants like mosses and ivy and shit, right?

The big problem here is SPEED. It's happening too fast for evolution to keep up. But so is technology.

I don't deny any of these are critical problems that we should do everything to slow, stop, and prepare for -- all three at the same time because shit is unpredictable, so let's cover bases.

But my climate bogeyman is the permafrost. First because as it melts its going to skyrocket CO2 levels, and because there's lakes of real explosive methane trapped in there that no one wants, but the BODIES.

Tens of thousands of years of bodies that have not decomposed with viruses and bacteria humans never met or our immune systems have long forgotten, easily capable of living in permafrost for ever -- shit lives on fucking comets in colder and also the vacuum.

Covid was so bad, so horrifying? Imagine a new one every year, every 6 months as it escapes a half inch less of permafrost where a sample was hanging out. Spanish Flu was twice as fatal as Covid. Bubonic Plague knocks them both out of the water with a 16% mortality rate WITH ANTIBIOTICS AND TREATMENT. Smallpox, that fucking champ, came in at a full 30%.

Those are just a few examples that we know of, and I choose for their ability to turn into a pandemic, as opposed to something like Ebola which is at 50-90% but kills in such a way its not the most effective at reaching global contamination.

And one of those would be bad. Any of them you're looking at probably a billion deaths. But hey weve gotten faster at developing treatments and vaccines at least right? Sure.

Except if they're coming, a totally different disease every 3 years, we won't be.

I know every climate change opponent has their own thing that they think is most critical for ensuring humanity survives, but to me, it's the giant petri dish of the Great White North.

girls go to college to get more knowledge. men go to svalbard to die in the polar night.

[pudding-parade]

Forgive me switching this to a post and please forgive the length, @msteaqueen. I anticipated "Well, I live in 'X,' and it's not like that!" responses to these climate presets, and I actually wrote a lot of what follows to include in the "boilerplate" post about the Tempest settings, but then it was way too long and I knew no one would read it, so I cut it (but kept it) and decided "I'll cross that bridge if/when it comes up" and... Here we are. :) So please, don't feel like this is all directed at you, specifically. It's more that I'm addressing the issue in general, which I am aware is indeed an issue. I just wasn't sure if anyone would care all that much.

I'm cutting the rest for length, so for people interested in the minutiae of these things, read on. :)

Nope, I'm not from Austin, nor have I lived in or even visited many of the places for which I've constructed Tempest presets. But yes, these presets are based on average temperature and precipitation data from between ~1980 and ~2015. I've used data from several different sources -- official government agencies, travel-oriented websites, some tourism-oriented websites, even good ol' Wikipedia, etc. -- taking the consensus from them if there's any difference between the data sets. I'm also referencing a couple different websites when it comes to data specifically about hail and where and when it happens. One of them compiles local reports of hail in the US -- official ones as well as reports on social media -- with hail size and dates and times of occurrence.

So as an example of how I construct parts of these things, on that hail-reporting site, all of the hail reports for the Austin area going back to the early 2000s happened between late March and early June, which for my purposes is spring. Since it's the strongest thunderstorms that produce hail (and tornadoes) and since that's when Austin has the highest rainfall, that's where I'm going to put the strongest/longest storms in the preset. That's not to say that strong storms don't happen at other times of the year because not all strong storms produce hail, and I'm guessing that not all occurrences of hail are reported, but for the sake of seasonal variety in-game, I chose to put the strongest storms in the spring for that preset and have storms in the other seasons be lighter. I also chose to omit fog from the Austin preset mostly because I was going for a sunnier and drier-looking overall climate, to match Appaloosa Plains's drier look. (I probably should have explained that a little in the description, so I'll edit the post shortly.)

But generally, I give a nutshell description of the real place's climate in the introduction of each post. For the rest of the post, bear in mind that the information is primarily about the preset and sometimes about how it differs from the real place that inspired it. It's a description of the preset's range of behavior in-game, which will never exactly replicate the real place that inspired the preset because that sort of detail is impossible within the game's constraints. So, for example, Austin can experience a week or two of very cold weather and/or snow (which is an odd cold snap within the overall picture of an entire winter), and it could do so every single winter, but that doesn't budge long-term data that says the average low (generally nighttime) in winter is in the low 40s and the average high (generally daytime) is in the low-to-mid 60s and that it generally doesn't snow. Sims won't wear outerwear when the temperature is in the 60s unless you have your outerwear temperature limit set pretty high, which is what I meant by that particular line. Real people, of course, have very different levels of cold tolerance. (Being acclimated to high altitude in Colorado, it's not even cold to me until it hits about 35 degrees, and anything over about 75 degrees is sweltering. :) )

Unfortunately, with the way weather functions in the game, you can simulate climate and longer-lasting seasonal patterns (i.e., a dry season vs. a monsoon season) fairly well, but simulating realistic short-term weather for any given area is going to be impossible, particularly when only altering the default setting, as these presets do. That said, it is possible to make finer adjustments by creating and adding non-default entries into Tempest, but I'm not going to get that detailed for these presets. If anyone wants more precision, especially when playing with longer seasons, I encourage them to do so by learning how Tempest works and then adding non-default entries themselves. You can, for instance, specify settings for different times in a given season, like settings for the first third, second third, and final third of a season. I do precisely that in some saves where I play 30-day seasons and correspondingly-long lifespans, but I'm not going to include that for general sharing. If nothing else, I'm assuming that most people don't stray too far outside the standard 7-day seasons.

Given that, the other issue is that I'm compressing three months of data into one very short season in the game. That doesn't allow for wild temperature fluctuations from day to day, and were I to allow, say, colder temperatures and/or snow in the Austin preset, it'd be happening throughout the winter. I didn't want that for that preset because that would be less realistic than having overall mild temperatures and no snow. My goal in making these presets is to make them distinct from one another because, otherwise, there's no point in having different ones. So, when making these it's a game of balance between realistically representing the city/area inspiring the preset, interesting seasonal variety within a preset, and distinctness from other presets. For game purposes, I'll choose seasonal variety and distinctness over strict realism every time, but nothing's stopping anyone from tweaking things to their own preferences. I encourage it, in fact!

[slowlyreadinghouseofmirth]

Page 7

In truth, he had never liked her as well as at that moment -> Selden's affections here are plain to see, made so especially by subordinate clause 'in truth' which conveys an honesty and freshness about his feelings. Most importantly, he likes her when she is being her true self, unconventional, and willing to take risk. It's likely informed by his disillusion with high society and finding commonality in someone willing to disregard its etiquette. This is where Lily is unique.

There's also this sense that Selden likes Lily because she is impulsive and this sparks his curiosity to try and understand why she does the things she does-- understand Lily as a person.

He knew she had accepted without afterthought: -> This reaffirms Lily's lack of hesitancy, which alludes to how willing she is to be in Selden's company. It also shows how comfortable she is with him as she is aware of the rumours that could occur but never merits them with being a possibility, showing great trust.

Alternatively, being aware of the risks and having not afterthoughts could suggest that she doesn't fully understand the risks' depth and nuance as in future the situation at Monte Carlo would suggest, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

he could never be a factor in her calculations -> there's a colon that separates this clause from the previous one which suggests this is an explanation for Lily's certainty. To me this would point more towards Lily not really associating the risk of rumours with Selden because she trusts him so much. i.e she does not think of him when she thinks of the risks. But given that they are going up to his apartment it seems strange that Selden would not think himself a factor in her decision. It's therefore possible that he thinks that Lily does not think of him worthy of great consideration.

Also the noun 'calculations' would suggest a lot of thought had gone into the decision where it was previously implied it was one of impulse. This seems like Selden thinks that Lily is playing an intricate game, which further demonstrates his curiosity about her and need to understand her.

there was a surprise, a refreshment almost, in the spontenaity of her consent -> This further contrasts Selden's perception of Lily's 'calculations' and I think the narration is a fine weave between objective reality--where Lily is impulsive-- and Selden's subjective perceptions-- where Lily appears impulsive but there is something more complex informing her decisions. I think this is meant to show that Selden is blinded somewhat by his affections for Lily, seeing things deeper than what are there or what everybody else sees. Alternatively, we as the reader lack Selden's sight into the complexities of Lily and so she is introduced to us as other people see her, which isn't well at all, and we have to learn how Selden sees her. It's a challenge to care for Lily as he does.

The spontaneity invokes a light hearted and refreshing feeling of being in love which mirrors the honest of truth mentioned earlier.

So there's Selden's surprise at Lily being so spontaneous which draws back to a previous point about she is unique for being impulsive almost reckless. It's like we get a sense of her character and her environment from how the two are at odds with each other. Lily is impulsive; noone else of her class should be like that. In a way that makes her free from the system and yet shows her struggle against it but ultimately her struggle will be more defining.

She noticed the letters and notes heaped on the table -> I assume that this is a reference to future letters although I don't know if they would be the same ones. If they were, I don't even have the mental capacity to unpack that. Just the thought that Lily's fall is inevitable, that even when she is happy, having a nice time, an unknown omen lurks within the same room that will bring her sorrow... oh its symbolic, for sure. But I don't want to think about it.

Lily sank into one of the shabby leather chairs -> the verb 'sank' shows how at home Lily really is with this kind of surroundings, how the shabby whilst not fashionable or expensive, is comfortable. From this we and the the pile of letters we get an image of a a slightly disorderly but well-lived in home. This is one of the tragedies where we see the possibility of what her future with Selden could look like where it is unconventional but Lily is comfortable at home even with it.

"How delicious to have a place like this all to oneself! What a miserable thing it is to be a woman," -> I love Lily's exaggerated turns of phrases like 'delicious' and the exclamations; I think Wharton's emphasis on these exaggerations is to capture Lily's innocence through her speech by making it similar to that of a child who is easily excitable.

Again with the exaggeration but this time with 'miserable', we get the sense that Lily has found the world difficult as a woman to live in but miserable seems too strong of a word, certainly at this stage in the book and is sort of hidden within her other hyperbolised expressions. Maybe this creates a kind of cry-wolf situation where, when Lily properly starts to struggle, people don't take notice not only because it wasn't the done thing to do to talk about struggles but also because of her melodramatic personality, everyone thought the same stuff was happening as it had before and Lily was making a big fuss over nothing.

There is repetition of 'miserable' in association to being of female sex further down the page which is another example of Lily's melodrama. But at this point we as a modern audience start to question if she is actually alright (or at least I did). I'm not sure if a contempary audience if the time would have given the strict taboo over discussing any kind of struggle financial/physical health etc. let alone the discussion of mental health. From the impression I get of the time, the only real source of outlet for people struggling with mental health beyond self medication was art, which makes me wonder as to the position Wharton is writing this from.

she leaned back in a luxury of discontent -> The juxtaposition of 'luxury' and 'discontent' raises an important theme that wealth does not equate happiness and that Lily is not happy as a socialite but happy in the company of Selden, and that actually money is the source of Lily's unhappiness. In this specific context, she is lamenting her lack of freedom to live the lifestyle that Selden does.

"Even women," he said "Have been know to enjoy the privaledges of a flat." -> Putting the discourse marker directly after the subject of 'women' breaks it apart from the rest of the sentence and emphasises the extraordinariness of women being able to live independently. But it also raises the possibility of it and suggests that Selden thinks Lily is extraordinary and unconventional enough to achieve the possibility if she chose to.

"Oh governesses– or widows. But not girls– not poor, miserable, marriageable girls!" -> Again we have the breakdown of womanhood into distinct classes like governess, widows, and girls,which creates the idea that there's no intersections between any of them and is a reflection of of societies fixation for categorisation which loses sight the complexity of situations and problems. And it also makes it easier to place social stigmas like those on governesses and widows. Those stigmas are made apparent here but in contrast to how Lily describes girls, being a governess or a widow seems desirable.

In the list of adjectives 'poor, miserable, marriageable', marriageable is equated to these other adjectives and we see that Lily associates marriage with a poverty of kind, of the heart.

It's also interesting that Lily talks about herself as a girl where Selden speaks of her as a woman. Lily plays up her innocence as she has probably been taught to to make desirable marital match, but with that Lily carries around an air of immaturity and naïvity; she's still very child-like. Perhaps that's a part of her that's trying to cling to her youth so she doesn't have to face her future where she will need to marry to survive. Lily sees her adulthood as a constraint on her and her desires whereas Selden sees her potential.

"you mean Gerty Farish," she smiled a little unkindly. "But I said marriageable–" -> Okay so definitely a little tone deaf on Lily's part buts she's honest to a fault and her honesty is refreshing and entertaining.

I'm no expect on autism and don't claim to be but there's something about Lily's mannerisms here that reminds me of people who I know and am very close with who are autistic. And it makes me wonder if Lily was autistic and neurodivergence was recognised in her time if her fate would have been any different.

"Her cook does the washing and her food tastes if soup. I should hate that you know." -> I just love the imagery of the first sentence, it strikes my funnybone. I guess it also illustrates that Lily's privileged upbringing if she thinks this is a bad situation to live in.

Okay I'm going to bring in a bit of a technical term to describe the verb 'should'. So it's a modal verb (expressing possibility based on context) but specifically a deontic modal verbal, meaning that Lily's hate depends on social rules. When she says she should hate it it implies that society wants her to hate it but she wouldn't necessarily hate it. That's what that verb phrase implies in today's english, but language has changed since the time it was written so it may not have been written with this meaning, especially as a signifier of an older text is the use of modal verbs in places we wouldn't today and a lot more of them.

The shift from Selden's reflections to the quick dialogue and short simple sentences of action creates a lively and charged atmosphere that feels almost flirtatious in its rhythm but by the nature of the content is more domestic (preparing afternoon tea). The balanced turn taking feels comfortable in that they both have equal power in the conversation, being allowed to say what they want to and being listened to. It goes towards simulating what a possible future could be and also shows how happy they are in this moment.

[megers67]

BNHA OC 2: Tanaka Rin

My second OC for BNHA. I came up with her second as a counterpart to Hibiki but I love her on her own as well.

Hibiki's Bio

Hero Profile

Once again, I'm so sorry there isn't a Read More. I'm on mobile and there's no damn way for me to do it.

APPEARANCE: Rin is pretty tall and of athletic build. She has bright blue hair (dyed from her natural darker blue) that, while the style changes fairly frequently, always stays short. It's never past her chin and is usually shorter than that. Because of her quirk, she is completely unaffected by the outside temperature. That means she can literally wear anything she wanted at any time, much to the annoyance of her friends. She has a decent fashion sense, but is literally blind and so can't see the colors for anything. Though even if she could, she has the confidence to wear crazy color combos. She likes people's reactions to her attire like a neon pink miniskirt in the dead of winter or a big fluffy coat in the summer heat or something. Rin does generally keep it seasonal for the most part though she still wears clashing colors. Doesn't help that Hibiki is usually the one to help Rin out in that department, and while SHE is sighted, she has absolutely no fashion sense herself. So Rin gets to enjoy walking around like a fucking disaster. For those who try to make negative comments, she cheerfully informs them that she's blind and that usually shuts them up. She also usually wears sunglasses because it's much easier to use her thermal vision when outside light is blocked out.

This doesn't really do it justice, but I'm limited to what Love Nikki is giving me. I could go more clashing, but most of that also involves clothes that don't line up (like shirts going outside the coat, etc) and I hate the look of that.

PERSONALITY: Rin is bright and cheerful and very outgoing. She is persistent in her desire to befriend most people she comes across, but knows when to tone things down or when someone needs space. Like Hibiki, she will also drop everything to help someone out, though it is far less draining on her than Hibiki. She's a fixer though so she's not great to go to if you just want to vent. If you do want to do something about something or help getting something done, then she is perfect for the job.

While Rin exudes positivity, she certainly has her own insecurities, mostly stemming from her fear that she isn't good enough to be a hero. She's not the strongest or the smartest, the fastest, most technically skilled, or have the best quirk. On top of that, she's blind. While her quirk goes a long way to make her independent, she still relies on others for a lot of things and suffers from imposter's syndrome. Being at UA has actually helped her a lot to combat these feelings, but they can still hit her pretty hard. Because she hides it behind a wall of positivity, it can be hard to spot when she's beating herself up over something. Hibiki seems to be one of, if not the, only one who can consistently read her and guide her through it. Rin isn't quick to anger unless it is on someone else's behalf in which case, she really lets it loose and will want to do something about it.

QUIRK: Her quirk is Heat. Specifically, she can make herself a heat sink or heat source and can use that to control the temperature of what she touches or the air immediately surrounding her. Her entire body is therefore unaffected by extreme temperatures (and she doesn't need to regulate a normal body temperature). This means that she doesn't get burned or frostbite so she can be standing in a raging inferno and only need to worry about getting enough air to breathe. She has yet to reach the temperature limits on her body so her intensity and range is largely limited by the amount of energy she has and any environmental constraints. Because her quirk uses her body's energy, she needs to eat a lot to keep up. Her range can increase with contact with a conductive material as it can help direct the flow of energy. Her quirk doesn't produce fire or ice and so can be difficult for an opponent to track if they're not aware of it. Rin also uses her quirk as a form of thermal imaging to navigate the world around her. This means that she has a lot of independence and doesn't need external aids for most situations. Additionally, she is completely at ease in the dark as there is little change to her.

There are, however, limitations. She can't sense through barriers such as walls, even those that sighted people can see through like glass. She can sense through barriers if a conductive material goes through it to the other side, but even then the clarity is greatly diminished. Though even that can be very useful. Another limitation is that she can't read anything printed or written on a page, screen, sign, etc. She just sees that there is a paper there. For school work, she is allowed a laptop that has a text-to-speech option so that she can hear back her notes after she types them. Rin will also have one of her classmates go over her notes to make sure she didn't miss anything, though usually her own notes tend to be better since it's faster to type than to physically write things down. For non-school work, ie. when she's out and about, she has Hibiki or someone else with her read something out to her. She would even ask strangers, but this usually only happens when she's out shopping and needs to know a price. The same goes for colors. Rin was previously sighted so she remembers colors and even processes her thermal vision via colors but she doesn't know something's real color. Hibiki has gotten pretty good at describing colors to her.

PAST: Not nearly as sordid (or detailed) as Hibiki's to be sure. She has a loving family and an older brother. Her childhood was fairly normal to be sure. Rin was always popular in school because everyone just liked her and she always made an effort for anyone to feel included. Especially the new girl, Hibiki, who keeps to herself in the corner. And she even succeeds in becoming her friend! Yay!

But her life changed forever when she turned 11. All she wanted was to figure out the limitations of her quirk. Naturally this meant trying to get her hand as hot as she could as fast as she could. Turns out that really hot things get really really bright and that prolonged exposure to bright light can permanently damage your eyes. After one too many times, her sight never returns. After that, Rin was a mess. Losing a sense was hard and it didn't help that everyone treated her like a fragile porcelain doll. Almost everyone. Hibiki didn't. In fact, she was the same calm voice of reason that she always was. In fact little had changed between them. Just the subject matter of their conversations. It was Hibiki who pointed out that maybe she could try using her quirk to sense things like the goggles police and heroes sometimes use. And like that, they went from friends to inseparable best friends.

They applied to UA together and while they both got in, Hibiki didn't make it to the hero course like she did. Initially Rin was nervous because Hibiki helped her out a lot over the last few years and now they could only be together during lunch or off hours (even though Hibiki was convinced that being in different classes mean they would drift apart, Rin insisted otherwise). She would have to face being blind alone for the first time. That anxiety didn't last very long because her class was pretty cool about it. Her teachers also made sure she had proper accommodations both in and out of class.

The sports festival was very exciting because she was able to see just how much she'd grown, but Hibiki as well. Rin made sure that they did their handshake in front of everyone to show both Hibiki and the world that whatever happened, they were still friends. And even as Rin finally knocked Hibiki out of the ring, both were smiling. Even though she didn't win, getting third was pretty damn cool.

Rin does her field training with Backdraft in the Musutafu fire department. She finds that she actually quite likes rescue work even though she still wants to fight villains. She continues to train, increasing her stamina to use her quirk more and in larger strength.

Even though she was sad that one of her classmates chose to drop the hero course, she was very happy that that meant that Hibiki was now joining the class. She was very active in getting Hibiki accepted into the group. Rin also worked hard to make sure that Hibiki was all caught up as far as the hero course was concerned. Rin got her provisional license and did her internship with a hero that was more villain-centric to get that kind of experience and was particularly useful for night missions because of her thermal vision, but it made her lose a lot of sleep. She started taking naps between classes and during lunch, relying on Hibiki to sneak her snacks during class to keep going.

OTHER SKILLS AND TIDBITS: Rin is the resident Hibiki whisperer. If you ever wanted Hibiki to do something, your best bet is to get Rin on it. Rin is down for pretty much anything and can talk Hibiki into pretty much anything even for a more passive role.

She has ADHD. She has it mostly under control, but when she doesn't, Hibiki knows how to pull her back together and get back to work.

Because Rin's body is resistant to extreme temperatures, when she thinks she is getting sick, she will "flash" to basically incinerate the pathogen. Unfortunately this also burns away any good bacteria she has in her gut as well as any non-digested food still in her system. The combo makes her nauseous anyway. She gets scolded for it every time but still insists she'll get it right some day.

She is the undisputed best cuddler because she can make her body temp juuuust the right level of warmth for whoever she's cuddling. This is especially popular during the winter.

By default, her body temperature is the normal and average level. But sometimes it will accidentally rise or lower itself without her noticing, usually due to emotions. She doesn't really notice until it's pointed out by someone that she accidentally burned or froze something.

Rin is really good to have in the kitchen because she can tell when things are cooked through to the exact temp it should be, make sure something is cooked evenly, or retrieve an ingredient that accidentally fell into boiling water too early, etc. Her favorite "party trick" is for when people are unfamiliar with her quirk, she will "accidentally" lean on a hot stove and freak them out.

She has a pretty mischievous streak in her. While she doesn't like initiating pranks, she loves being an accomplice in them. Rin is staunchly neutral during prank wars but is more than willing to lend her services to either side.

Rin likes "watching" movies even though she can't see the images on the screen. She enjoys making up her own as she hears the dialogue. The first question her friends usually have when the credits roll is "okay, what do you THINK just happened?" A lot of the time, the answer is a lot more fun than what actually happened because she has a really active imagination.

She can read Japanese braille, but it doesn't come up incredibly often. Rin is in the process of learning Japanese sign language because she wants to be good representation for disabilities and advocate for accessibility.

Rin doesn't like "turning off" her thermal vision very much, but it can get tiring after a while. She tends to do so during class since she doesn't really need it then. She'll only "turn off" outside of class if she's alone with Hibiki since she was around from the beginning. She's okay being vulnerable around her.

She doesn't like having long hair herself, but greatly enjoys playing with Hibiki's.

Rin is pansexual and has known since junior high. But she hasn't done a lot of dating since she only seems to have a consistent crush on a certain someone who just doesn't seem interested.

Rin doesn't like travelling very far by herself because she's afraid that she will suddenly get too tired to maintain her thermal vision, leaving her vulnerable, lost, and alone.

She really likes cats, but it's kind of a problem because Hibiki is allergic. Hibiki will still go with her to cat cafes to keep her company, but Rin usually feels really bad about it and so will usually ask other people to join her before resorting to asking Hibiki.

Just as Hibiki is the best hider in hide and seek, Rin is the best seeker because of her thermal vision. She is no longer allowed to be seeker.

[aromichaelshelley]

no worries,, no need to apologise or anything, honestly getting to infodump about love greatly improved my morning, that being said, this got long so it's under the cut :))

okay so you know how gender is a social construct? as in, gender is typically based on biological sex and we use these categories to split up the population, but the reason we use this as a Whole Thing is completely arbitrary. like yeah there are some things that afab people can do that amab people can't, like carry children, but many afab people can't and don't do that either, and typically amab people are taller but this isn't always the case, you may as well split people up by whether they need glasses or not,,,, the reason gender is such a big deal is because of the social constraints that have been put on people,, that's not to say that identifying as one gender or another is meaningless or arbitrary, gender obviously *exists* but like. the way you experience gender is highly dependent on the society you exist in, do you get what i'm saying?

philosophy tube made a really good video on this that explains it much better than i could, but this relates to love because like. yeah love obviously exists, people experience love, and we can physically see in brain scans that the brain does Things when it's feeling love,, but it doesn't do the *same* thing. i recently had to read several papers on romantic attraction (for Reasons, not by choice), but i did learn that feelings of maternal love and romantic love and platonic love don't make the brain do the same chemicals in the same place... but we still *call* it love. and the way people talk about love varies wildly,, some people tell people they love them very easily and all the time and others never use the word love for their feelings,, and as you say, you love various things, and people, but you don't feel the same way about humanity as a whole as you do your hyperfixations, right? (not rhetorical, please correct me if i'm wrong),, i love toast but i don't love it in the same way as i love broccoli, which i don't love in the same way as i love my best friend, who i don't love the same way as i love my dog, who i don't love in the same way as i love my favourite characters, and i love them *so much*,, the point is, we call this love and the feelings are similar in some ways,, but they're obviously different

and then, because society is obsessed with love, any positive Non-Love-Emotion is also somehow love,, like people who say that happiness is a form of love, and grief is a form of love and excitement is a form of love and sex is a form of love and it's like. yeah you *could* say that, but those are clearly distinct emotions, y'know? and you've got all those greek words for types of love, because again, those are distinct emotions, they're not just naturally one thing,, we call them all love because that's something we do in english. again, how we express love, much like gender, varies wildly by culture. there are probably more coherent ways i could have said this but that's what happens when you write essays on tumblr mobile ://

anyway,, i'm not a loveless aro, or neurodivergent, so these are very much my own thoughts with those things in mind but not personal experience,, (i am aware people get a bit antsy if you try to tell them that their favourite social construct is just that (see: i had to read several academic articles and papers on romantic attraction after daring to suggest that labelling actions as strictly romantic or platonic was an arbitrary choice)) but that's really interesting,, seeing how other people's identities and brain things intersect is endlessly fascinating to me, and very much the kind of "this thing makes you human" and how that intersects between forms of attraction, and gender, and neurodiversity, and race, etc. especially given the fact that some people reject this message wholeheartedly (as in, 'fuck you, that thing doesn't make me human, i just am') or embrace it ('you think i'm inhuman? fuck your humanity then')- which raises the issue of people saying 'romantic love is the most pure and powerful and intense and you cant love a friend that much or in that way', where your favourite people are everything to you, 'fuck you my love is just as powerful as yours', while another person might say [essentially just my original post].

i think my point is, neither view is necessarily wrong or more empowering than the other. and also you can hold both?,, for me, i love a lot of things intensely and those things i love aren't any less special because they're not romantic, but also,, just kinda sick of people (not you, mostly just allos) saying that they have to be that strong in order for them to be worth anything.

not to sound like a bitter aro who hates fun but like. i'm so tired of people acting like love is the whole meaning of life and solves everything,,, and don't come at me with the "but not all love is romantic" I KNOW. believe me. how about you stop pretending you didn't mean romantic love when you said love