#and I think they're too important to do without having a better base of knowledge

[gudvina]

I can't get over my conspiracy theory of Suzanne not having written SOTR. Like, I'm picky about books I like because of how the narrative voice is constructed. And TBOSAS and the OG trilogy have the same narrative voice- but not through the same character lens, if that makes sense. SOTR reads like an entirely different person wrote it. Like they were given TBOSAS, and the Trilogy, told to read them, and then write Haymitch's story, without any in-depth knowledge. Maybe it's partially because in Tbosas and the OG we got new characters, but everything in SOTR is recycled? Everyone is friends, and despite being a 'small town' all of them being close doesn't make much sense. Also, they tried so hard to make Lenore Dove seem interesting/someone to 'aspire to' but made her dumb, textually based on her actions. They also couldn't commit to it too hard because Haymitch teams up with Maysilee. And they pulled the stupid fandom 'omg she's his sister now/they're siblings!' thing that always happens when people want to act morally superior for bullying someone over a non-problematic ship. That is FANFICTION shit.

I won't deny that I also had the same suspicions at first, considering the way the storyline was constructed and, as you said yourself, the narrative voice of this book.

As someone who has always admired SC's writing, I find it extremely hard to concile Sunrise on the Reaping's writing with hers. It does read like a badly thought out fanfiction, like LD is a self insert character that was shoved into the narrative without considering how she'd work within it. While I often say I don't get how people love this book, I actually have to admit that I understand why it does; bringing back character that are tied to important characters in the other installments, for example, is a way to acclimate the reader to a prequel rather quickly

I don't completely agree with the idea of Suzanne having hired a ghostwriter, if I have to be honest. It's not that I think her incapable of doing that, this book at the end of the day is proof that money trumps quality, but I think a few reasons could explain why this novel's writing feels... different, let's say.

Firstly, this book, as I and many others already said, reads like a movie script and a way to add a few pennies to her pocket. Despite the fact that many say Suzanne Collins only writes when she has something to say, in this case she broke the formula, and decided to write this book to rectify the commercial failure that was TBOSBAS.

Secondly, even then, Suzanne had many ideas, but didn't know how to work them into the story without effort, so decided to cut many of them short in favour of an easy plot. And, I suspect, SOTR wasn't supposed to be Haymitch's book.

Thirdly, the Lenore Dove problem continues to be a marketing ploy; she's a strong call back to LG, her and Haymitch's relationship has a marketable catching phrase, and, most importantly, Suzanne Collins wanted to recreate the Everlark thing with them. Yet again, she didn't want to pur effort into writing her or the relationship, so in the end she decided to just write down other women to elevate her, but otherwise both her and the relationship seem to work very little within the narrative, despite the overbearing presence.

Which is interesting, because the ones she probably thought of as the strongest contenders to Lenore Dove (Effie and Maysilee) treat him with much better regard than his girl who lectures him and treats him like an idiot.

Fourthly, Suzanne Collins had only a few limits posed by her own self in CF/MJ, but the crux of the issue is that she kept writing herself in closed circles, making a lot of plots feel contrived and ineffective. I don't know why that is, but again, I suspect the reason, was the lack of effort into thinking the storyline through, and how to connect it from point a. to point b.

These are only a few reasons why I think it reads this way, and they might not be extensive, nor sufficient to someone who loves the books (they are not to me), but unfortunately I suspect reality is less cut and clear than we might perceive.

[greatwyrmgold]

Hey! Do you have any advice for learning how to win in Gnosia? I've played 65 loops and I feel like I am losing constantly and even when I win, it often doesn't feel like it was because I figured it out and played well.

I'll do my best!

Step 1: Learn to be Remnan.

You won't get far in Gnosia if people get annoyed at you and either stick you in cold sleep or shiv you in your sleep. You can alleviate this by leveling up your stats (particularly Stealth), but you also need to learn how to talk without pissing anyone off.

You don't want to stand out by talking too much or talking too little. And as the loops go on, some characters will unlock skills like Retaliate and Don't Be Fooled which make it dangerous to directly accuse them.

The solution? Until you're confident you know who to accuse, wait for other characters to act, then react. If someone Doubts a character you're suspicious of, chime in. If someone Covers that character, argue. If a bunch of people Doubt a character you think is safe...well, speaking up in their defense too much will make people think you're secretly allies, which is never a good look.

Step 2: Learn to be Raqio.

The most important tool in your toolbelt is recognizing events which make someone obviously a Gnosia (or other liar), or contrariwise ones which make someone obviously safe. This includes using the Definite Human and Definite Enemy skills, but it's not limited to that. It also means incorporating things you know that aren't public knowledge (like your own role, and lies you've noticed), and identifying suspicious behaviors.

This is obviously useful for identifying various enemies as crew, or identifying the Bug as Gnosia. But Gnosia can also benefit from learning Raqio's lessons, so they know what not to do. This goes double if you claimed a role. I still remember that time I was doing a perfectly good run as a fake Doctor, then carelessly identified the most recent cold storage victim as Gnosia. Jonas smacked me with Definite Enemy and, well, you can guess how things went after that.

Step 3: Learn to be Setsu

The characters in Gnosia all work on the same rules, but they don't all act the same. They tend to have certain strategies they pursue, certain characters they like or dislike, and so forth.

Pay attention, both to gameplay patterns and to cutscenes. If someone works with someone they rarely work with and also threw out an airlock once, something unusual is going on. Not always something suspicious—maybe he's the only Definite Human around—but it's something to keep an eye on.

Also: Learn which characters tend to accuse suspicious people and which tend to accuse random people. Accusations can be a useful guide for voting before you have any actual information (or deciding who to investigate, if you're Engineer).

Step 4: Learn to be SQ

This kind of circles back to the beginning, but instead of just trying not to make any enemies, you need to try making friends. Or at least people who vote the same way as you.

In the early game, try to make friends. Ideally a friend will find you, but sometimes you need to be proactive. Identify people on board who A. don't hate you, B. are likely to vote (or, if Gnosia, kill) based on personal relationships more than logic, and C. probably won't get sent to cold sleep tomorrow. Kukrushka, SQ, and Comet are my go-to picks.

Once identified, visit them at night to simultaneously check how much they like you and slightly increase how much they like you. In the day, try to protect them from malicious defamation. But don't try too hard—a Gnosia pal is no pal at all, and a pal who everyone thinks is Gnosia isn't much better.

Get multiple friends if you can, but many games don't last that long.

When I've identified a likely Gnosia—especially if I'm pretty sure they're the last one—I get a lot more aggressive. Exaggerate anyone else who Doubts them, or Seek Help if they're unpopular. Shut down any argument they make. Start proactively Doubting. Your friend(s) will probably join in, alongside anyone else who independently started doubting the target.

Step 5: Learn to be Jonas

That crazy old bastard didn't make it this long by making the right choice every time. He survived by making mistakes, learning from them, and getting lucky along the way.

Keep trying! You'll figure it out eventually. Or you'll accumulate enough XP from runs where you died without getting Notes that you'll level-grind ahead of everyone. Probably the first one.

[rjthirsty]

I didn't want to argue on OP's post since that's kinda shitty, so I'm doing it this way. I have thots about this.

I don't watch romance anime, but I play A LOT of otome games. I've probably played somewhere around 100 by this point, and I can't name a title where the MC's goal is to fix the LIs at the moment. I'm sure there is one. But OG Obey Me is not one. That is not the goal, that is a byproduct of MC existing.

(On later examination of my roledex of knowledge, Cupid Parasite is about making men marriage material, so you could count that as fixing them. And there is an otome coming out where MC is an actual therapist written by an actual therapist where you therapy your LIs, so I guess that counts too.)

Maybe that's what OP meant, that MC changes the LIs, but... I'll get to that next paragraph. The thing is, words mean things, and I find it hard to understand context that isn't said, so I go off of what I do understand, the words written. OP said MC's goal isn't to fix or change LIs. She's right, but...

Now, often a part of a romance story involves questioningly bad people getting a redemption arc to be questioningly good people, and there are reasons for this. Besides being a common trope that love cures all, people want LIs to change due to MC's involvement in their life. It's a powerful wish fulfillment fantasy to be so important to someone that you change the core of who they are. And IkeVil actually does this! Kate changes several LIs by existing, unrelated to her goals. Which is every other otome out there besides the two previously mentioned as an afterthought.

MC's goal in most games is something completely unrelated to love, and unrelated to the badness of the LIs. Ikemen Villains is different in this regard in that her goal is to witness all the LIs badness. In other otome, MC usually happens to be witness to the bad, but it isn't expected of her. Kate is an interesting character because of this. Kate also is changed into something less pure, which is not often a theme used in otome, but one that I praise IkeVil for.

.

Look, I love IkeVil. I love a lot of otome games. But I think there's a way to talk about what something brings to the table without making it sound like everything that isn't it is lesser, and there is certainly a way to do it without making claims that are factually inaccurate.

Does IkeVil offer things other games don't? Yes. The villains stay villains. They're excused moral sins by the MC, who is the ultimate judgement. This is often because MC sees their sins as something needed for the greater good - which is used VERY often in excusing LIs for redemption arcs, except they aren't being redeemed in this story, and that IS refreshing. MC becomes a villain, or at least complacent in their crimes if not active in them.

Other games have some of these aspects, but I haven't seen many with all of them. There are, however, many games that I would say are close enough in theme and story that I'd recommend them based off a person's enjoyment of IkeVil. There are more than a few LIs out there that are referred to as "trashbandos" because they don't get any better and there are some diehard fans that enjoy their red flags.

[blackjackkent]

All right, bit of a late start on liveblogging tonight but let's see if we can make a little more progress on Rakha's terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day.

How you doing, Rakha?

Yep.

Some meta points to start off:

Point 1: We're reaching the point in early Act 3 where a lot of things start happening very fast for a little while. We have two back-to-back pretty important long rest things that can happen here - Orin's infiltration and Wyll's showdown with Mizora. As I learned on Hector's run, Wyll's showdown takes priority on the next long rest if you have talked to her after the coronation, but for Rakha I think I'd like to have Orin's shit happen before anything else.

While I am mostly trying to be pretty loyal to in-game events for Rakha without manipulating things too much, I am going to do a little metagaming here to line everything up in the order I want it to happen.

The ficlet I posted earlier today is set the night after the Gortash business, which implies at least a night's rest before everything else starts going off the rails. So we're going to do a few extra things before actually LR-ing and, for story purposes, say they're happening the next day, and then trigger Orin's invasion afterwards. Then we'll talk to Mizora so that all of Wyll's stuff unravels afterwards.

There's no way to get to the Lower City without talking to Mizora, which limits our options somewhat. So I'm inclined to say that after everyone's pretty uncomfortable night post-Gortash-revelations, Jaheira makes the executive decision that they're heading straight to Danthelon's the next morning to get Harper backup before anyone can get into more trouble.

So we'll do that first. Maybe also Sharess's Caress, since we currently have two short rests to play with and there's only one bit of combat in Sharess's that I can think of. And then we're off to Orin Crazytown.

Point 2: With regards to the actual kidnapping - Hector had Lae'zel taken, so in an ideal world I would want to have someone else taken with Rakha. However... I really don't think Halsin or Gale or even Minthara would have nearly the same impact for Rakha as Lae'zel, so I'm going to once again do some metagaming to make sure that happens.

Because basically Act 3 is going to be about heaping more and more bullshit on Rakha and everyone around her. XD

Point 3: I don't know exactly when Wyll's romance scene pops, but the timing might end up being rather strange. I suspect his Act 3 romance is probably sweet as hell, bc it's Wyll, but as things stand right at this moment, neither Rakha nor Wyll are very much in a sweet mood.

So there is a non-zero chance that, when I reach it, I will go through it, save all the necessary caps, and then hold onto it and drop it into the story later in Act 3 when it fits better tonally. We'll play this by ear.

Point 4: The final point is that, with Hector, I definitely beelined straight for Minsc and then Orin pretty much as quick as I could, because I wanted both of them settled in camp ASAP. But with Rakha (especially since with Florrick rescued we're not under a time clock on anything), I'm going to try to be a lot more deliberate about letting her just wander into things and go where she would be inclined to go based on her own knowledge. There are three reasons for this:

I'd like to try to experience Act 3 in a slightly different order.

There's a LOT of random side crap happening in Act 3 and the easiest way to rationalize Rakha bothering with most of it is her being lost and stumbling across it while looking for something else. (That said, some less important stuff still might end up getting skipped.)

The showdown with Orin feels like it's probably a (if not the) climax point for the Durge storyline, so it seems best not to rush to it more than necessary.

So yeah. That's where my head is at on Rakha's story. :D So let's get rolling.

[cappuccino-bear]

Cats, noses, smelling and how my rewrite uses biology to do interesting things

Aka: here's musk babyyyy

When I started thinking of writing xenofiction I wanted to look at how animals, cats in this case, live the world. The first thing that I though of were senses: how do they differ from us?

Reading Warriors, I noticed the cats would often scent or smell things, but looking into real cats, I would see some misconceptions in how the book handled this whole side of cat life. And just putting it in as it is in real life would be cool... but how could I make it better?

Long story short, I came up with a nifty idea based on how cats' noses work: musk.

To explain it better, and show you why I think I made a pretty useful concept, I'll go through these points:

1- Warrior Cats and scent marking

2- a cat's nose and "hidden nose"

3- "layers" of smelling

4-  musk and blood

Click under the readmore to check this!

1- Warrior Cats and scent marking

Aka the Erins are too cowardly to say that cats piss.

If you have any knowledge about cats, you know that their pee is super smelly and they rub on things leaving their smell anywhere. This is because, in the wild, many animals like cats use "scent markings" to denileate their territory, letting their smell be what tells prey, rivals, and other predators that that general place is their zone. It's not the only way to mark a territory, but cats do this so we'll focus on this.

Warrior Cats, in the books, go on patrols to refresh their scent markings... except it's never stated what they even do. What is a scent marking for a warrior? We can assume it's urine and rubbing on trees with their scent glands, but the books themselves never even say it. In fact, the books rarely think of cats as more than tiny quadrupedal humans, which inevitably makes you wonder if it even is scent marking in the "traditional" way.

Personally, with how they're written, I think it'd make more sense if they delineated territory with paint or flags or signals of some kind but I digress.

But scent is so important to cats! It's arguably half of the way they investigate the world! Yet warriors, other than smelling the other clans, or prey, or scent markings, rarely ever describe what's around them through their smell.

One of, in my opinion, the stupidest concepts for Warriors, if you look at them as cats, is the dirtplace, basically an open aired latrine right by their camp where they live. While cats tend to pee in the same places, it's not ONE place, unless you have a pet and give them a litterbox that you clean regularly. Even then, it's recommended for multiple cats in the same household to have separate litterboxes.

Side tangent 1.1- the dirtplace is stupid.

It's an open aired latrine that nobody cleans. I can give you five reasons off the top of my head why it's a bad idea:

1- the camp is next to a pile of shit so everything will smell like shit the moment the wind picks up.

2- if someone is sick someone else might get the same disease just from going to the dirtplace after them.

3- so. Many. Flies. That also could carry disease.

4- a predator, which the cats deal with often enough, will smell it from a mile away and will know that there is a giant group of cats that might or might not become a perfect snack. Or even an enemy warrior trying to launch an attack just needs to follow the poop smell to find the camp!

5- if they do their business there then what the heck are scent markings???

Even without following this whole post beat for beat as instructions of how to write, at least consider removing the idea of a singular dirtplace near camp. Do it for me. Lil old me. You can make it multiple ones around the territory, or a stream so it gets washed away, or even use scent markings and everything else that comes with it.

So, when I started rethinking it, I decided to focus first on what the sense of smell is like for a cat.

2- a cat's nose and "hidden nose"

Cat noses are not just the little leathery triangle we see! There's a reason cat's olfactory sense is 9-16 times higher than humans!

(Noses in general are pretty interesting in my opinion. Even in humans. What do you mean you use it to taste.)

Just through a quick googling and reading the first articles on the matter (so very little effort), I can tell you cat noses have a lot more olfactory epithelium (the internal tissue of a nose) than humans. They also divide the airflow between air and smell particles, which are then divided in even more ducts, making the smelling part super efficient by essentially dividing the task between different nose tunnels and through their 200 million olfactory receptors. For a comparison, humans have 5 million.

Then, there's the "hidden nose", the Jacobson's organ or vomeronasal organ, which specifically detects pheromones when cats pull their lips up a little, in a process called Flehmen response. This is the magic stuff, they can detect different pheromone scents super accurately because they have an entire organ just for that!

This also makes their nose incredibly sensitive to diseases and bad air agents. Smoke especially is super deadly to cats, so keeping that in mind I think cats who survive a fire might still have their nose impacted severely.

Also, this means that a cat not being able to smell is even more of a disability than for humans. Humans with anosmia already have problems like not being able to taste or recognize potentially dangerous substances like smoke or rotten food. It's maybe not as life threatening as other disabilities, but smell impacts our day to day lives without us noticing. Imagine not being able to smell ever, even the good things, and you might already invision a bleak life. Then put on top of that not being able to tell if the air is moldy in a room so keep sleeping in it, putting your lungs in danger.

Cats are this but tenfold. Not being able to tell apart other cats from friend or foes, not knowing where scent markings are, not smelling a dangerous fox nearby, not being able to track prey, not immediately knowing if you're sick or not.

This is not a disability specific post but yeah I think you understand why I put cat smell in high regard as a sense, even more than touch prehaps.

3- "layers" of smelling

So when we think of a smell for cats we could describe it in two layers: the ambient scents, like plants, or the ground, or water etc., and then the pheromones of other living creatures, from prey to pedator to fellow cats.

I know plants also release pheromones but I wanna think that they're different to other organisms' ones. I could be wrong tho.

When I imagine a cat in the forest goes to smell something, I think that they mostly smell the ambient smells until they lift their lips in the Flehmen response, then they can smell mostly pheromones. This means that a cat could "choose" which types of scent they're looking for by using their "hidden nose" or not.

No I am not calling it Jacobson's organ or vomeronasal organ in my explanation, hidden nose is funnier.

This also means that cats themselves can have layers of smells! Their pheromone smell and the smells they picked up around, for example by walking around in the forest, or getting wet, or rolling in a patch of lavender will both be "theirs", but one comes from their enviroment and one comes from the cat themselves.

4- musk and blood

This is where I Warriorify this concept into something I can write with and implement in the culture!

A cat's pheromone smell is what I'm gonna call musk, like a personal scent that a cat has and that varies from one cat to another.

Musk to a cat is almost the same as a name: it's so subjective that you can recognize someone else through it alone. And while all cats have different musks those variations are lesser and lesser the more the cats are related. Humans kinda have that too, have you ever entered a house and it just has a different smell than your own?

When I put blood in the title of the chapter, it's because I realized that this can be an explanation for something that I think is pretty important in canon: recognizing relatives. Cats rarely talk of their family, especially in the first books, and in the later ones the families are so muddled it becomes a mess. So I though, what if they can just tell if they're related in some way? So musks are somewhat "shared" by families, where they'll always smell similar. I think they think it's because they have similar blood to their relatives.

I will also make it so cats are inherently attracted to others with a distinctly different musk, where they'd rather not mate with someone with a similar musk, even if they don't know they're related.

And Clans will have different smells because of what they eat and their enviroment, but the musk of a cat is unchanged from their enviroment. Smelling an enemy warrior will come with both their musk and their clan scent, so even if you don't know their name, you'll know if they're Riverclan or Shadowclan just by smelling!

Scent marking, therefore, becomes more personal, because a cat with a good nose might be able to tell apart each and every cat in a border patrol by their musk in the scent markings. It might even be cool to have it be an intimidation tactic: if an enemy patrol comprised of some random young warriors strays over their side of the border it's probably a taunt, but if strong warriors, or even the leader, leaves their musk there? It might be even more serious.

Also, with the whole blood smelling similar thing: it could come up that some cats from different clans smell strikingly similar, so this could set off alarm bells... but I wanna think that the ambient scent of a cat can cover the musk a bit, making it seem similar but not exactly the same. A cat that only eats fish will probably smell of fish despite their musk, so that could cover what similarities it has to another cat's own.

(Still, I think it'd be funny to have Bluestar try to dodge sitting close to her biological children because then someone might just recognize they smell the same lol.)

Conclusion: cats are smelly, nature is smelly, I'm just leaning into it for my own ideas!

Sources:

https://neurosciencenews.com/cat-olfaction-23557/

https://www.rover.com/blog/how-far-can-cats-smell/

https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/smell-disorders

[fitzrove]

I noticed your tags on the "bad localisation"-post and now I must know the lore... the Finnish translator of Elisabeth didn't speak German???

Hehe, I'm glad you asked!!

Mind you, this production happened when I was a small child, so all I have is second-hand knowledge from the internet (and an audio recording). Also, I may have exaggerated for comedic effect in my original tags lol, I don't know if he genuinely didn't speak it. However...

The guy who translated the Finnish Elisabeth was a very famous (prolific, if nothing else) theatre director and musical translator, starting his career in the late 60s already with a wildly popular production of Hair. Elisabeth seems to be among the only German-language shows he ever worked on - most of it was translations from English and French. ngl I also sort of hate his musical translations from English LMAO - because of how prolific he was, they still haunt the Finnish musical scene today... One big one he did is Cabaret back in the 90s, and a theatre that put a big fancy production on in 2020 actually redid all of the songs and only kept his dialogue because the translation was so clunky lmao. But I once went to the library to dig up his original lyrics to the title song and omg they suck, I wrote better ones in two minutes because I needed a Finnish version quickly ahshshsh. So already, it's a bit of a bad sign - this man is not a translator by profession or training, he's a director who started out doing it for practical purposes, and has a pretty broad set of languages he works in.

But then again - maybe it wouldn't have been a problem, especially since he had such extensive experience. In fact, Elisabeth was the last translation he ever did before passing away rather shortly after (of old age), so maybe I shouldn't be too harsh on him... However, the fact remains that the translation, just as lyrics, is pretty terrible and nonsensical sjjsjsjd.

My initial comment was actually largely inspired by this blog post by someone who actually saw the prod live (from onenightintheatre on blogspot), quote:

It sounded like the translator hadn't really understood German, because many lines sounded like someone had taken a dictionary, looked up the most important words of the sentence and then written a whole new sentence(-ish) based on those words. An example that remained etched in my mind: ("Eine Kaiserin muss glänzen"; Finnish, the Finnish translation in English, and the original German text) Countess Esterházy: Suunne aukaiskaa! ("Open your mouth!") (Öffnen Sie den Mund!) Sophie: Keltaiset ei olla saa! ("[Teeth] may not be yellow!") (Die sind zu gelb, das darf nicht sein!) Elisabeth: Tammalla saa! ("Mare's [teeth] may!") (Bin ich ein Pferd?) So... Instead of asking why they're treating her like a horse, Elisabeth thinks she is a horse and can therefore have yellow teeth? Oddly, "Bellaria" was significantly better translated than rest of the musical and actually sounded beautiful and made sense. There were also factual errors, like Rudolf complaining to Elisabeth that he must get married, when at that point of the story he had, in fact, been married for several years. The translator passed away half a year after the derniere, though, so maybe he wasn't at his best anymore when he did the translation.

As for me, I don't know the Finnish translation by heart, but some of my favourite songs (well, mostly Schatten 2) which I do know by heart also had the ball dropped on them... in that song, Rudolf complains that the court is wasting money on parties (woah good job working in the "dancing around the golden calf" metaphor, I'm sure the original author didn't mean it metaphorically to go with the pied piper thing, he meant literal dancing - though I guess this is accidentally accurate to irl rudolf and his ranty pamphlet on the idle nobility xD) and it's just quite clunky and repetitive overall without getting the main point across too well. Which is such a pity! I mean, translations are hard, but Kunze's work has since been translated into Finnish well, with the references and thematic messages intact, it's not impossible. So in a way, I think this one is a case of someone well-established in the industry getting the job because he happened to be there and have an extensive track record, not because he actually had the skills to make the best possible translation...

Ahsdhsfhfs so yeah. There's no proof that he didn't speak German, but it's my personal theory. Also, according to a few sources, Kunze himself hated this translation......

[cleverthylacine]

That good old interest-based advertising. Also, Headmasters. And my brother.

I have a confession to make and that is that I actually do allow interest-based advertising because:

I don't have much to hide

If they don't take my interests into account, the things they try to sell me because I'm a lady (albeit an NB one) over the age of 50 make me so fucking depressed I could scream but I don't have the energy. I would rather they know way too much about my Hot Topic purchases and robot and doll collections than get ads for ... what advertisers think old people stuff is. By all means display your incredibly unsettling knowledge of my id and sell me robots and things that look like robot dicks and fashion dolls and fancy clothes...instead of trying to sell me adult diapers and cheap insurance that actually isn't. And homeopathic remedies for problems that I may or may not actually have, but I also know that homeopathy is BULL$HIT.

Anyhow this is brought to you today by;

"Yes, shopping app, I would absolutely love to have that self-transforming remote control Grimlock, he is hella cool and very cute and I really do want him but....first you're going to have to find me the $1700 plus taxes and shipping that I will need to acquire before I can hit that button."

G-d help me if they ever do Soundwave with a little Ravage that comes out of his chest and also transforms.

In other news, Headmasters is still fucking stupid and I still fucking love it.

IDW did all this binary bonding with aliens stuff. I actually do find "Fortress Maximus can turn into a giant head and make his spaceship sapient" much easier to understand.

It's just the plots of this show that are dumb.

Giant Venus Flytrap in a San Francisco office building

Let's blow up Mars

Let's make a big important detailed plan and not tell Scourge and Cyclonus about it, because it's not like they're guaranteed to fuck everything up if we don't.

Kiss Players had a better plot than Headmasters, when they actually like, were doing the plot and not panty jokes.

Also I still after 20-odd years want to scream at Carly and Arcee in this show. I know it's a product of 1980s japan but like, if the grown men/male mecha are unable to do a job, it's frustrating to watch Carly send Daniel or Arcee send Wheelie to do it, because those are children and Arcee and Carly are not.

As a non-Chromedome-liker, I am also amused at how dumb he is in this show.

My brother has developed a new and annoying way of asking for money that I've already told him I don't have. He calls my mom and tells her that I won't help him, so then I have to tell her, too, that yes I just got paid, but they raised the price for the medicine I need to brain from $5 to $40 because they don't like the dosage my doctor prescribes, and the landlord has my rent cheque in hand and is presumably going to cash it, and I also need to eat.

She understands this, at least. I just feel bad for her.

I feel bad for him too, but nobody told him that he needed to rent a U-Haul and move the second he got his new lease without asking either of us if we could afford to help pay for it (we can't.)

[quietwingsinthesky]

Wait now I'm curious, which characters would you bring back for your fun self-indulgent fic?

first and foremost is that by the end, all angels have been restored to life. they're a little fucked up and traumatized and disoriented by all of it, but they're alive and ready and willing to start fixing heaven to not be a torture cult. archangels especially. this is mostly their mess, they're gonna fix it. special mentions go to uriel because i need his interactions with lucifer's children, that would be insane.

second and also obviously to me is charlie and kevin. they're. they're fine. they're literally fine, their deaths were stupid and pointless and they're fine. i guess by nature of the rewrite rowena hasn't died yet but like. she also falls under this category. crowley too.

oh! and meg! absolutely meg! very important to me that if this is a story about lucifer's kids, that we address the elephant in the room of demons Also Being That, Sort Of. and like. megstiel endgame. megstiel endgame is so real to me. they get each other. they have both done some fucked up shit but they tried to be better and waaah. there is no castiel confession scene in this au because things do not get that dire but if there were, he'd be giving his confession to meg.

now we get to the slightly more complicated choices. first up, bobby & rufus. because they are a pair, do not separate, ect ect. i love death's door as an episode but. i feel like we all have to admit that without bobby there was a huge hole in the show that logistically they filled with the bunker (home base + knowledge) but like. fuck that, man. let that old man live. let him be grumpy gay married with rufus. let him meet his grandkids who are technically lucifer's kids but whatever, it counts.

and jo and ellen. jo. and ellen. and. on the one hand, by s13 where do they fit, is it cruel to bring someone back after that long dead, but on the other, they deserve a chance. plus, maybe ellen and mary can bond over the whole dying and coming back and being moms thing, even if ellen's was a significantly shorter tenure in death. and jo trying to fit in with sam and dean when she's still so young... yeah. i think they should come back.

(and also nick should be. around. but like. very much not how he was written in s14 im so sorry my poor meow meow murder man but i find you significantly less interesting the more the writers pushed for you to be evil)

that's all the characters i can think of rn, but yeah. moral of the story is that Everyone's Fine. Highly highly traumatized, and that's part of the point, but like. they're alive. they have the chance to keep going. that is what matters.

[articskele]

Which Warhammer 40k factions I think my OCs would like!!

---

Dove: The Adepta Sororitas, aka Battle Sisters. She would LOVE these gals. She already has that archangel with a flaming sword / divine rage / Joan of Arc thing going on, and the sheer force of human will used to create literal miracles on the battlefield is right up her alley. And she's a brutal motherfucker like them too- AND THE STORY OF SAINT CELESTINE

For context, just like how the Space Marines have different chapters (or subclasses for a D&D comparison lol), the Battle Sisters have six orders based on six saints. All of these saints are dead except for one, Saint Celestine.

She basically has the ability to come back from the dead, and each time, she must brave the terrors of the warp (basically this universe's hell), going through various trials to find pieces of herself. The last trial being to find and comfort a crying little girl that represents her hope.

But her bones appear in this realm everytime she dies, so when she no longer has the strength to climb the growing pile of bones is when she will truly die. And OUGHHHH that hits Dove HARD.

Suffice to say she's a ride or die Sororita enthusiast, she either has cosplayed one or REALLY wants to, and in a Warhammer AU she would absolutely be one.

---

Mel: Oh they're an Adeptus Mechanicus girlie >:D She adores the vibes of the Ad Mech, the robes and the agumentations and the quest for knowledge. And the goofy aspects are just as important to her as the serious ones!

There's the Sydonian Skatros, a skitarii model with comically long stilt legs so it doesn't need to climb up to a vantage point in order to use a sniper rifle.

There's the Ironstrider Ballistarius, which is basically a self-powered chicken walker. The only person who knew how it worked died, and everyone's afraid that if they turn it off they won't be able to turn it back on, so when they're not in battle they're just left running in circles-

Tech priests will literally recite instruction manuals, like when they do the ritual for turning something on they're basically saying "press the power button and hold for three seconds" in High Gothic or Binaric.

Speaking of Binaric, tech priests have invented a variety of languages designed to transmit information as efficiently as possible, but to those without the augmentations to understand it, it just sounds like electronic noises. And they get noticeably miffed with having to speak normally because it's suboptimal-

Mel relates to these funny cyborgs more than they'd like to admit, they're a firm believer in tech priests having autism bc "THEY'RE JUST LIKE ME FR," and she insists that playing the Mechanicus OST will make your electronics work better.

Though my second choice would be Orks! I don't know nearly as much about them, but they're basically hulking green giants with rough british accents who make their shoddy craftsmanship work way better than it should through sheer force of collective will. And they're just plain fun!

I saw this one photo of a book, where it had this formal Ad Mech prayer, and right below it was the ork battle cry "cmon cmon cmon!!" and I think both sum her up very well gjhsdfksd

---

Stone: The Astra Militarum, aka Imperial Guard. The appeal of the Guard is that they're the underdogs of the galaxy. In a world where the weakest weapon is a laser gun that can blast through concrete, in a world where the literal gods of chaos lay waste to all that oppose them, there are regular humans. And they fight on.

I've heard that it's been quoted ad nauseam, but one of the most badass phrases I've heard is about the fall of Cadia. Cadia was a planet situated right next to the Eye of Terror, basically a giant warp rift. Thus making the planet the cork that kept everything from exploding out of control.

Countless demons kept coming out of it to attack the planet, among other things as the conflict heated up, but eventually the planet itself was obliterated. The Eye of Terror spread, isolating all who stood on the other side of the galaxy, but there are still people over there who fight to the bitter end.

The planet broke before the Guard did.

And I've heard that the demographic of Guard fans, at least for people who actually play the tabletop, are older dudes? So that fits him too ouo

---

Petra: She's giving Salamanders! Despite the bright red eyes and all-consuming flame weapons of these Space Marines, they're known for their appreciation of humanity and the arts. Salamanders will go out of their way to ensure the safety of civilians, and they pride themselves in crafting weapons that are both effective and beautiful.

It reminds me of how Petra would've been a blacksmith had she never been torn from her homeworld, and come to think of it, I could see her going on to pursue that career after the trio beats Percy!

And I imagine she'd really resonate with the idea of super intimidating self-sufficient warriors who are more than what meets the eye, being someone who hides her emotions behind fire and explosions. Also dragons are hella cool >:D

[qllie]

people who don't understand ai in the slightest talking about it oh...

like my english class was talking about ai yesterday and jesus christ. like people talk about ai like it's a guy in the computer and like. no. if you think about ai like a person you're gonna be really stupid about it regardless of whether you're for/against it....

like ai doesn't lie to you, it doesn't "make stuff up." because ai doesn't "understand" your question. when you say "ai research this for me" it generates what would appear to be an appropriate answer to your question based on what's in it's database. so basically it's not doing "here is the answer to your question based on my research" it's doing "here is what seems to be something you would want me to say in response to your question." so that's why it "makes up sources" because its like "this is what a source would look like" not "ah this is the website i got my information from."

i feel like that's why a lot of people say really stupid stuff about ai. "ai teaches me physics" okay it can. but you'd be better off with pretty much any semi-reputable online tutorial (or just talking to your professor during office hours or going to tutoring). because ai doesn't "know" physics. it's giving you what looks like the correct response to "teach me physics." so it could be completely factually incorrect because it's NOT A TEACHER!!!!

also stuff about "what if ai takes over the world????" sounds really stupid once you realize it's not really "computer thinking for it's self" and it's actually "computer generating sentences based on it's database." like ai can't take over the world just unplug it lol... also i don't think ai is being used for anything currently where it would even have the capability to make incorrect decisions that would massively negatively effect The World.

like idk it's very frustrating to have people talking about benefits/negatives of ai without realizing what the hell ai is....

like i think some of the internet AI panic comes from not knowing what it is. like the "all ai is bad guys it's gonna take us all over" is very dumb and bad!!! like ai mapping the ocean or ai working medically is cool and good!!!! because those aren't things humans could do anyways!!!! (or at least like. quickly/in the scope of a lifetime like super repetitive calculations or whatever).

I think there's also an issue with people who fucking love ai like crazy not really paying attention to where the data comes from. like first of all i don't think your work (artwork, writing, even genshin shitposts on tumblr) should be thrown into an ai database without your say so. but also the data set is important because it has the biases of it's dataset!!!! i mean i know this was a thing with facial recognition a while back where it would largely falsely identify black people because the dataset was mostly white. and like that's a thing that matters!!! so like the ai that you feed the internet is not a "rational unbiased machine with limitless knowledge" it's a computer trained on human bias!!!! so it'll have that too!!!!!

also part of my thing with ai for certain things. like writing essays really (thinking about this cuz we were talking about this in class). is like. don't you want to do your own work? like idk i don't love writing, but do i really want ai to write my research outline for me? my book report? like i want to express my own opinions i want to think for myself!!!! actually!!!! like they were basically saying in my english class "let ai write the outline but not your paper you have to write the paper" but like. the outline is the fun part!!!! that's where you think about the problem and put your ideas together!!!!

like i'm always reminded of that one tumblr post (i'll find it and reblog it after i write this) where someone asks the tattoo artist "do you let ai design tattoos for you" and they're like "do i let ai eat my dinner? do i let ai sleep with my wife?" and it's like yeah. why would i let ai do the things i want to do myself? and like if ai is writing your paper outlines in school are you even really doing anything?

like sure I'm an engineering student so writing an essay about themes in a book is not really applicable to my career or whatever. but i think.... well i think being able to think critically is important to my career or whatever. but even ignoring that IT'S NICE TO THINK ABOUT ART AND WRITE OPINIONS ON HOW IT SPOKE TO YOU!!!! IT'S NICE TO RESEARCH A TOPIC AND PUT TOGETHER YOUR OPINION ON IT!!!! YOU KNOW? like also those are probably important skills? maybe researching lung cancer or whatever isn't necessarily applicable but learning to identify reliable sources and synthesize what they say is important!!! for like. for example looking for best appliances/headphones/computer whatever!!!!!!

i mean this is more of a rant about people who don't ever want to get anything out of their school work not really ai at this point (you could do the same thing with cliffnotes or something) but idk i just Don't Get It.

also there was kind of a very short discussion at the end about ethics of ai with stuff like child labor, explotative pictures of children in data sets, requiring massive amount of energy (pollution also more computers and computers are made of chips that generally require child labor in dangerous conditions). and it was kind of pushed aside. and i was thinking about that. like why are we able to push that aside?

like for me personally when i open my phone im not thinking "oh the poor child slaves that died to make this" im thinking "time to text my sister" right? and it feels normal but it seems like it should be really weird???? like why don't we care about these people suffering in favor of "new awesome technology"? why is it so easy to push them aside? this is more of a philosophical question i don't actually know the answer. but it's so odd right? like we (note i am including myself) get so excited about new technology and stuff without thinking about WHO HAS TO BE HURT TO MAKE IT. like idk i feel like having shittier computers would probably be good if it meant less child labor?

i mean even for things like strikes or whatever you'll always see people like "this is inconveniencing me idc about the workers being hurt i want to use the trains or whatever." and everyone will get mad at those people for being assholes or whatever. which to be clear i do think they are assholes. but like aren't we all doing that to some extent? i mean i have a phone you have a phone.... but i guess phones have kind of been made necessary to function in society. well in some countries. the one i'm in. like without a phone you can't get a job (they have to call you) you can't sign up for most email addresses, you can't do a lot of things...

well this is more about living in a Society than anything. i hope you enjoyed my rant i guess. i always end things like these with questions i don't know the answers to.

[route10archives]

By making material attractive, you risk diluting it. By donating it, you risk people thinking it's "forced" or "prescribed." By dissecting it you risk making it seem fragmented. Knowledge of anything (in this case, ideology) is incapable of defending itself from those unwilling\unable to understand it. That's not it's fault; that's not it's purpose.

In the melee between people defending different ideologies (opposing or simply adjacent), the frontliners mistake trolls for opponents, the commanders mistake philosophy for battle plans, and the entrenched mistake confused refugees for zealots. There is no opportunity to be a bystander or a civilian because there is always a risk of any random action being misinterpreted as an assault.

People who aren't even somewhat acquainted with these schools of thought are subsumed into one side or another based on who accuses them first. They're probably living in a community of generally like-minded people and mistake agreement on one axis for agreement on all of them. The main force for recruitment is the creation of the strawman named "the other side" and the question of "are you like that?"

"did you skip church because you hate jesus christ?"

"naw, man, I was horribly ill."

"oh. I'm glad you still support our conservative values."

"did you hold that door only for that woman to enforce gender roles?"

"that's my coworker. We work the same shifts."

"oh. I thought you were being part of the System."

Even now, I'm making my own damn strawmen just to illustrate my point, drawing from my cursory knowledge of the liberal\conservative split.

It's not a hot take to say "we're too focused on opposing the 'other' to understand what makes us similar" but unfortunately I am not eloquent enough to erase the nuance. My own experience is what's shaping this observation, not any research, authority, or anecdotes. I define myself as a liberal not because I know what a liberal is, but because I am directly opposed to those who hate them. "At least I'm not a conservative" is shorthand for "at least I'm not homophobic, transphobic, uneducated, religious, patriarchical, and trigger-happy." Even just the fact that I thought about adding "fascist" or "supremacist" to that list should show how blatantly uneducated I am on what a republican even is.

I don't know where I stand on every issue, not out of indecisiveness but out of lack of exposure. I just don't know all the issues. All I know is the pseudo-propaganda that's spread via the conflict-centric "news" systems. It's all too easy to see that The Libs are fighting with The Old White Fucks over whether HRT should be legal and automatically align myself. I'm sure there are some progressive republicans out there simply because I've seen my fair share of reactionary liberals (though that may just be seattle). Those seem like oxymorons to me and I don't know which half is due to circumstance and which is due to "morals" (or a lack thereof).

Yes I want to educate myself. I hope I read those pdfs. It does not seem interesting to me but it is without a doubt necessary for me to understand if I am to be trusted in a politically-leaning discussion. I can yell "protect trans kids" all I like, but until I'm able to explain to a dissenter why I think that, I better keep my mouth shut and my fist raised.

I want to educate myself, but it is all too easy to embrace my ignorance and postpone it. I "don't have time" and "have more important things to do right now" and "should sleep soon" and all that. I'm "not in a mentally okay state" and "really stressed right now" and "starting a new medication" n stuff. The excuses do not end. This is not a situation unique to me. I'm just another fuck on the internet saying "I'm not gonna get into all that political stuff just yet" despite most of these theories and practices and historical instances being about everyday things and the access people have to them. Food is not political. Food stamps are. Transport is not political. Vehicle-focused infrastructure is. Eating pussy is not political. Sex work is.

Yeah I understand that people don't exactly "make things political," politics hijacks normal life and forces people to fight proxy wars for arbitrary power. Congratulations, Lavender, you've achieved the bare minimum self-awareness to talk about it. I'm not clever. It's just what happens when you oppose the opposition and have to form an identity out of fucken negation.

This is not my realm of expertise. I don't intend to be listened to. The only reason I've even logged in to this account is because I'm kinda fucking freaking out about other shit right now and I don't trust myself to be alone.

Someone just blokt me for sending them links to free PDFs of anarchist and Marxist theory when they said the only requirement to be a leftist is "not being a jerk." Lol. Lmao, even.

[psychelis-new]

Hello! Hope you’re doing well.

I wanted your opinion on how accurate you think a personal tarot reading is?? There’s this tarot reader I was acquainted with on YT, loved her content & when she shifted to IG I begun Following her. She replies to everyone when they comment under her readings & so we would kind of chat too. I took a chance & asked her about a question that was nagging me & it’s no problem at all if she can’t, but would be nice to have an answer etc. She vv sweetly gave me the answer to that Q in a tarot reading!! Without being asked! As I’ve been supportive of her & her journey etc. since the beginning… Anyway, my Q to you is, how accurate do you think personal tarot readings are?? And do you feel that when your energy changes, so will your tarot reading??

Hello! It was very nice of her, indeed. I think that, after some time, it becomes natural to be willing to give back to those who really believe in your work and support you constantly. So glad she did that for you!

As I was mentioning in the last reply, I think a reading's accuracy depends on the connection between querent and reader. And by this I don't mean how much/deeply you two interact (ofc this can strengthen your connection anyway; even just continuosly being around their work/consuming their work can already help them pick up your energy better), but also on how good they actually are at picking up your energy and what you need to know at that time (=your answer). I mean: a reader you may have been interacting with for a while (not just about readings but like even messaging about whatever) may not be able to give you answers on something you need to know at a specific time, while another you may never have interacted with may be able to. Not to mention at times some readers are simply blocked out of some energies, like they cannot read them or get too accurate answers for whatever reason as well.

So yeah energies work in very weird ways: some readers may just work better for us (also at a specific time in our life) than others. For example I had been following this reader on YT for a while, but then I suddenly had to give up, half cause I didn't feel her readings were resonating anymore half for other reasons (I think I was being triggered and needed to heal something even if it was just energy-wise mostly). Anyway after a year or two, one of her videos popped up in my feed again and I decided to give it a try: now I am following her work again as she's resonating a lot with me even if it's only pacs. And I have never interacted with her in no way. My explanation to this is: it depends on if and how well our (querent & reader) energies are on the same plane at a certain moment in our life. This includes personal experiences too: we readers also base ourselves on our personal experiences/knowledge to express what we get during readings, so if we're not enough aware about a matter, we may have difficulties at picking it up correctly, we may miss the main point and result not too accurate; but it's also about the querent and how able is to grasp/welcome a specific answer and give it a chance. At times accuracy depends also on the querent's feelings/opennes about a message (ofc it depends on the subject of the question, some things may just be objective).

In my case, the more I make experiences and try different things, the more I learn/read about anything I feel like and gain knowledge, and the more I know myself (which is pretty important imo for readers, also to separate their own energy and problems from the querent and build boundaries with them too), the more my readings grow and may get more specific/particular messages too. At the core, they're still trying to share positivity and guidance in most cases, but I feel they can give more in some ways. It may be just an idea ofc.

Anyway, with the second question I think you may also mean if a reading may change in accuracy whether I'm doing good or feeling down? I generally don't do readings if I'm not in a at-least-okay mental state: it's of no use to drain my last bits of energy (which I need to get better), it won't help the querent nor me. And for sure I would struggle being accurate. But if I do pacs when I have something slightly troubling me and I just want to distract myself, it's not a big deal: I am channeling other people so I'm not in there. Knowing myself (and after some years of practice), I can understand when I have to say no cause reading could affect me (even potentially trigger me) and what I channel or when I can do it anyway and know it won't have consequences. I can also ask my Guides if it's okay for me to read and what/how and get guidance myself about it (it happened that I felt like doing a reading but they blocked me and it turned out I suddenly got tired or I needed to do something else -bless them). But anyway when I'm reading for other people, my energy is not included so it doesn't change anything.

Hope this helps somehow! Have a good day/night :)

[iamyouknow-yours]

I've been reading posts by some other people and have more to say.

I do not like that it was based on HP. Even as a fuck you to it and to JKR. I think that they could have simply picked a better wizard school like Earthsea, or made one up. I don't have a defense for that aspect. Which I do recognise is more than an aspect, it's the premise.

I do think season 2 goes far beyond its premise but that's my person opinion and you may disagree.

I don't like Dropout's general (lack of) trans representation, I think they could be doing a way better job. Especially with having more trans women in their shows and trans characters in D20 (who are not NPCs named Maddy/Maddie).

I have been realising more and more how unperfect Dropout is. Shocking I know. But it is hard to realise that something so important to me, that I idolised, that meant and means so much to me, is incredibly flawed. It's a lesson I keep learning. But Dropout hurts the most I think, because of how it presents itself as a leftist, or at least liberal, company.

I first started noticing their flaws with their disability representation. I have major issues with it. Like god I can write you an essay about their disability rep, more specifically physical disabilities. It's incredibly lacking to say the least.

And I've seen gay men talking about how there is not a lot of mlm representation, and the stuff that's there is very background and sometimes a joke. There have been no Indigenous cast members to my knowledge. There are gaps in their representation of many groups and people and it's important they acknowledge that and fix it.

I think a lot of fans hold Dropout up to standards of some kind of perfection where you can't criticise them and enjoy/love a lot of their stuff at the same time. But they're not perfect. And admitting that doesn't mean we can't demand more from a company who is using our money to make their content, it doesn't excuse them.

With all of that said, I do think it is important to note that mismag is a Black season. Both as in African American, but also the Steve Biko kind of Black where Erika would be included in that. And yeah Brennan is there and he's a white cishet dude and maybe wasn't the best choice for the seasons trying to say fuck you to JKR, but I do love Evan, and whatever, he's there. But anyway right, the rest of the cast are people of colour and it's just so goddamn refreshing. And important. It would be great if it was not notable, but unfortunately it is, and they did it and I don't want to ignore that. I want to praise that and be excited about it.

I hope one day soon they have an all Black season without their token white guy. While I'm at it, I hope they have an all women season without their token white guy too and I hope they have an all disabled cast season one day, or you know even a single visibly and/or physically disabled cast member.

Anyway, the criticisms and praise for this season, and every other, and for this company, are important.

I hope they're listening to us.

They certainly never replied to my email about disability rep. But you know, I'll keep talking about it. That's my hill to die win on with Dropout.

I just finished mismag season 2 and I feel feral about it holy shit

It was so good. Best season of D20 in ages in my opinion. One of my favourite seasons of TV ever.

The characters are all so relatable and human and real and they hit me in the heart, in the gut, where it hurts but in such a good way

Sam being the main character, the chosen one, this season was so important and meaningful and just fucking excellent. Danielle did a brilliant job.

The whole cast did an amazing job. So did the crew. And Aabria? Phenomenal! Just so brilliant.

The season was interesting and creative and expanded on season 1 in a unique way that broadened the world and scope beautifully. The character arcs were gorgeous and so emotional.

Lou is so good at doing characters where community is important. And it makes me feel so much hope. Jammer becoming a social worker feels like such a beautiful culmination of his arc.

K did nothing wrong and I love them. I understand them and they're so important to me. K is very neurodivergent in my opinion and so relatable to me as a fellow neurodivergent, who is clearly a tumblr user lol.

Evan's fears are so relatable to me, I have felt those fears, I feel them still sometimes. Brennan did a great job this season. Him progressing in his magnetism was wonderful to watch as an autistic person.

I enjoyed the relationships between the characters, especially Sam and Evan's relationship.

The whole season felt queer, as in misfits, as in weird, as in neurodivergent coded, as in anti-capitalist, as in found family, as in friendship.

I felt like I belonged with this season, in a way I frankly haven't felt for a while with Dropout as a disabled neurodivergent queer person.

This was just really great and I'm so thrilled with the season. I will be rewatching over and over again definitely.

I'm so happy that they stuck the landing with the ending. Endings are hard and they did a great job. It was satisfying to watch.

[fangirl-erdariel]

Ok this is just me overthinking things that were never meant to be thought through and are just a result from the Shire being inspired by a much more recent time period than the rest of Middle-Earth, but. It just occurred to me that in both the Hobbit and the LOTR, there's a mention of there being a clock on the mantelpiece in Bag End.

Which just makes me wonder who made it? Like, correct me if I'm wrong, but my impression is that clockmaking historically was (and still is) a highly skilled, specialized trade that required a lot of specialist tools, plus pieces of clockwork are quite small, intricate, and need to be made very precisely to be useful/function right.

So I just wonder, were clocks something that hobbits imported from dwarves? After all, dwarves seem to have that level of craftsmanship that I'd find it plausible for them to have the know-how to make clocks. And we know that dwarves did sometimes travel through the Shire, and Blue Mountains, which aren't unreasonably far from the Shire, still had some dwarf cities by the end of the Third Age, so trade between hobbits and dwarves seems plausible in terms of that too. But on the other hand, at least as far as I recall, the dwarves don't seem to have/use clocks themselves, or have any other clockwork-based mechanisms in regular use, which kind of speaks against this theory. On the other other hand, though, we don't really get to know a lot about dwarves or their technology, so the fact that we don't know any examples of them undeniably having clockwork-based mechanisms in use might not mean much.

Or did the hobbits invent mechanical clocks themselves? As a people, they're not really known for skill at craftsmanship, so one could argue that clocks would have been beyond their skill, but they have to have had the skill and knowledge to make at least everyday things required, from scythe-blades and door hinges to watermill parts and such, as well as equipment needed to make those, because having to import those would not be very practical. And all things considered, aside from a few specific instances, Shire was left in relative peace for most of its history, and looks to have on some occasions weathered troubled times better than most other societies in the same part of the continent. So that prosperity would give people the time and leisure to tinker and try things out and innovate, so maybe at some point some hobbit with the necessary skill set tinkered out of curiosity with the right things to come up with clockwork mechanisms, and someone else at some point figured out how to make it useful, or something

And then there's of course the borderline crack theory possibility that the Númenoreans had some technology similar to the Antikythera Mechanism, and that knowledge/technology remained among the dúnedain in Arnor long enough for the hobbits to get it from them, decide they didn't really have that much use for knowing the positions of the stars in the sky on a given date in the future, but they found a way to build on top of the technology to make a clock for showing the time of the day, and the technology was lost among northern dúnedain when Arthedain fell, or something. But this one opens up the possibility that the technology was not lost in Gondor and was possibly improved upon/taken to its own direction there, and I don't want to be the one to try and go through the possibilities that could lead to

Anyway, please tell me your theories on this and feel free to build on this, this is just dumb rambling without any head or tail about things I was probably never meant to think this much about in the first place, because I'm procrastinating on actually doing any useful shit rn, but I was just randomly struck with the thought of "hold on, where did hobbits get clocks from anyway when no one else seems to have them?", so, yeah. If you have thoughts or headcanons on how common clockwork-based mechanisms are in various cultures in Middle-Earth, I'd be curious to hear them :D

[balkanlila]

Thinking waaay back to the beginning of our acquaintance, when you made a post about the importance of literature (and their shared love of it) in the relationship between Rory and Jess, I keep thinking about the significance of the fact that Jess's love of books (or music) really has nothing to do with Rory. And what I mean by that is... It's been pointed out that Dean, in Season 1, agreed to read Anna Karenina and Pride and Prejudice for Rory, and that's true. And I really do think there can be a real beauty in learning to enjoy something because "the Beloved" enjoys it, and I don't want to take away from that however I might feel about Dean personally (in aggregate). But if Rory hadn't asked him to read those books, he wouldn't have, and after the "honeymoon period" wore off, we saw how bored he was sitting at that book fair. He made an effort to appreciate something she appreciated (and it's good to make an effort in relationships!), but it wasn't sustainable long-term, because he was making himself do it. But Jess's love for books and music, while an important part of his bond with Rory, is also completely independent from his love for Rory. Jess was already reading for his own pleasure before they met, and has and will continue to do so whether he's with Rory or not. It has nothing to do with her. And yet, that's what makes it EVERYTHING to them, in a sense. It's funny, we talk so much about how Rory and Jess change each other for the good (again, in aggregate), but that's at the same time as not changing the essence of who they are at all. And maybe one of the things Jess had to learn is that natural affinity AND effort is a necessary balance? Thoughts?

I think the main bit is: Dean didn't like reading even after Rory encouraged him to try it out. Which is completely fine, but it's also one of the reasons why they never worked out. They exposed each other to different views, but they never felt like they should embrace those views and apply them to their own lives. Again: totally fine. It's good to be exposed to different options, you learn about yourself and the world that way. It's always helpful in forming whatever's the closest to an individual perspective that's based on information and knowledge, not ignorance or avoidance. Sometimes you have to try something out just to confirm that you don't enjoy it. (the problem with Dean and Rory was them not being able to accept the moving on part of it)

About Jess and Rory: YES! That's actually something I've thought about before given how them making each other better without forcing the other to change is the crux of their bond. It's more like they're helping each other recognise the qualities that have always been there, just never got a chance to shine through (mostly because of that "bad boy" "good girl" boxes Jess and Rory's surroundings tried to shut them in) instead of actively attempting to alter who the other person is. I always thought Jess and Rory liked each other for who they were, but neither of them was able to fully grasp who that someone was when they first met. (which is realistic considering their age and that I love) It's like Rory picked up on Jess' vices and virtues before he was aware of them himself and vice versa. It's that thing we talked about, "this is me (unfiltered version)" and it's extremely... organic with them? They're compatible from the get-go, but not too compatible to prevent each other from growing. They're similar just enough to understand each other in a way nobody else does which allows them to not necessarily change, but grow into best versions of themselves.

[theimaginatrix27]

@cloud-frost said:

My friend was a teenager living in a super white rural area of the UK so I don’t really blame him. I doubt he had ever met someone called Bashir. But also you ought to gain enough general knowledge at a certain point in your life to realise that someone with that name probably is Arab.

Okay, for clarification's sake, because I do feel this does need it.

I live in Australia, and I had met children from non-white families who had emigrated to my country in School. I did not grock this, I was blind. My brain would go "Oh, that's a pretty name, that's a nice accent, oh they're a nice person, friend!" I didn't think about skin colour of people I met, I wasn't taught that was a thing to be thought about when talking to a person. Imagine if I had, and I'd just randomly asked someone I'd just met, "Hey, is your skin brown? Because you have this name I've never heard before and I wanna know." I dunno about you, but that sounds rude AF to me.

I think I did grasp that Bashir was an Arabic name early on. But, and here's the thing, because I didn't think about this as often as a sighted person would, I didn't associate Arabic with brown skin. I associated it with particular accents. I hope this isn't making me sound worse, but I'm explaining it as best I can.

So I'd hear an accent. I'd go, "Okay, this person is English. That person is American, that one is French, that one is Indian," based on accents. Unless some context clues were given telling me "Oh, this person is the kid of that one and they have this accent 'cause they grew up in X location."

I'm a lot better about this than I was as a teenager, but before I came online, I didn't have many people to discuss shows I liked with, and when I was watching things, I'd just. Pay more attention to the story. With Julian I was not thinking "His surname is Bashir, which means he's Arab, which means he's brown," I was thinking "Oh, I like his name, it is pretty. Oh, he has a nice voice, I will just listen to that. Ah, plot is happening! Gotta pay attention to that! Wow, he's really clever! And he annoys people sometimes but I like him! Oh no, he has a tragic past! Now I'm invested!"

And I never talked to anyone about his nationality because for the most part, it was not plot-relevant. He was Julian Bashir and I loved him and I wouldn't have cared what he looked like at the time if I'd been told, but I wasn't told, because I didn't ask, because if I was watching the show with anyone, it was because I was at my dad's and it was important to not talk much during his shows. And I was too interested to talk much anyway. And the rest of the time I just watched the show alone!

This isn't the only fandom I did this in, I did it in Yu-Gi-Oh, with the Ishtars. Then came up with a story idea that required many cast members to be siblings for story reasons, and was gonna add the Ishtars to the big family, but one of my friends, who I then had only just met, gently explained, "Honey, no, they're Egyptian, they're brown, you can't just make them related to lighter characters even in an AU." (Paraphrasing.)

I must reiterate that I never intended to erase someone's race by thinking this way. It just wasn't a question I asked. It wasn't something I actively thought about. I got to know characters, and people, as people first, without ever seeing their faces.

Of course, now I'm extremely very mindful to keep track of the race/ethnicity of any character I'm going to write about, because I have entered the online fanfiction community, and have many stories planned, and am scrupulous about details because if I'm writing about something, I want to do it right. And I do care, deeply, about the possibility of fucking something like Julian Bashir's race up, because I am working on myself all the time to make sure I don't hurt someone else in any way. I am as anti-racist as my mother, who raised me, but I am also a flawed human being and I can, and have, fucked up. I would like to do it as little as possible, especially in online spaces.

@saturnsexual and @cloud-frost

I want you both to know I saw your replies on the post about character descriptions in wikis! I also wished to respond to a couple points without derailing the post in question. :D

I freaked out when I first started realising everyone was all "Cardassians are totes lizards!" because I have an OC in one of my Trek AU ideas who is a quarter Cardassian and I was like "So when do the scales stop being scales with mixed-race descendants?" (The answer is probably "Egg-laying lizard aliens breeding with mammalian humanoids is already biologically weird, you are over-thinking this, dear.") Thanks for the clarification about the make-up though! I knew there was make-up involved, just not how much detail was provided with it. Appreciate clarity regardless!

*shifts awkwardly* So, real talk, and please don't judge, I was a baby (teenager really), but I, too, once believed Julian Bashir to be white. I blame the accent. It's not a good excuse, there are people of colour in the UK, but I'm pretty sure that was my reasoning for the assumption. Of course the surname is obviously very not-white, and Julian is a lovely shade of brown, and his eyes are pretty, and I know this thanks to fanfics and helpful friends, and I love him so very much. TLDR, sometimes (a lot of the time) us blind folks can make stupid assumptions, and if we're trying, that can get better with age. It certainly has for me.