#and so it wouldn't solve a lot of secondary problems

[servuscallidus]

>something is wrong

>figures out what's wrong

>figures out how to fix it

>it's a multi step plan, requires patience but ok

>is the only plan possible. also, locked steps

>there is a fundamental fault that renders step one unfeasible

>can't repair fault because it's built in

>have fun

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

Different nonnie, but how do you imagine that things would’ve played out if Nino had been given Stompp in “Anansi” and forward with Fu keeping Wayzz and Ivan getting the Mouse instead of Mylene (she doesn’t get a Miraculous at all in this scenario)? This idea came to me after realizing that Nino is also color-coded for the Ox Miraculous and that the symbol on his shirt can also be seen as a bullseye, plus the fact that Resistance is an upgraded Shield in practicality. The part with Ivan and Mylene was inspired by your recent worthy-of-a-Miraculous tier list where you mentioned that, based on their dialogue when offered their canon Miraculous, the writers could’ve had more compelling character arcs with Ivan having some Stoneheart trauma or something more complex while Mylene could represent the type of strength it takes to know when you genuinely aren’t qualified for a specific demanding role and need to say "no" with the understanding that there can be different types of effective heroes.

The way the temp heroes are used in canon, nothing would really change. There's no clear reason why they get the powers they do outside of the writers being like "oh, an artist! Let's let him make things!" or "Oh, a big strong guy, let's make him an Ox!" And the powers themselves are basically used like Ladybug's special powerups with her almost always telling the temp heroes what to do. They have very little involvement in planning or anything that makes their powers feel uniquely chosen for them. To make these changes matter, you'd have to design the characters around the powers in a much bigger way.

The Ox power is the easiest one to do this with because self defense is an interesting power that you can have thematic elements with. It works well for a character who is a pushover and who needs to work to prioritize themselves or even a character who has some fear of being hurt, though I'd be hesitant to make that kind of character a hero. They seem like they're just not qualified, but you could make it work if they have some other skill that makes them needed such as Max's technology talents. The Ox also works well for a character who is already fine and just needs a power that lets them rush into battle without getting hurt.

For example, I don't think it's wrong to view Adrien's self-sacrificing streak as concerning, but at the same time, Ladybug needs to survive to win the day or else everything is lost, so it's hard for me to view it as a character flaw when he's usually doing a thing that truly needs to be done. If you don't view it as a character flaw, then you can just give the Ox to Adrien as a second miraculous and bam! Problem solved! (Canon 100% should have done this, btw. It's one of the many problems with the expanded power set and why I don't like to use the Ox. It's a little too OP. Like if you're off your five-minute timer and activate the Ox, are you just perma untouchable?)

As far as Nino goes, I don't really see him as a match for the Ox. He doesn't seem to have any issues or talents that match the power. Then again, the Ox is so generally useful that it wouldn't be a bad power for Nino. It's not a bad power for anyone! I'm just more inclined to give it to someone else as a secondary power than giving it to someone as their only power.

The mouse is a lot harder to work with. There's no real theme around the power that lends itself to a specific person, so almost anyone can use it. It's also not a good power in most situations. It's a highly situational one. Not a bad power to have on the roster, but not something that you want to bring to every fight. I'd once again be far more inclined to have it be a secondary power for someone. Something they always have on them for when it's needed, but that generally isn't used during a fight.

[wisteria-lodge]

lion primary + snake secondary (bird model)

Hey, I was hoping you'd be willing to help me out with my primary! I'm sure of my secondary, (snake) but I'm stuck between lion and bird for my primary. When I was a kid, I was the sort of kid who was just effortlessly good at school; so I never really cared about grades or doing good in school because I always did, so there was no need to worry. I honestly don't remember caring about much of anything other than being well liked by my classmates for being the class topper and childish stuff like that.

This is definitely more of a a young, Glory Hound Lion than a young Black-and-White Bird. Lots of times your causes as a young Lion will not be the most... complex things in the world. (That's extremely relatable.)

When I got older and more mature, I still didn't really care much about school, still sort of because I was never really in danger of failing, but also because I'd decided that school was a very ineffective and stupid way to teach kids, which also made me lose all motivation to try for all of middle school and a good chunk of high school.

You are not wrong. The science behind how memory/learning works is pretty young, and (depending on where/when you went to school...) chances are you were hit with a lot of the memorization/repetition based learning techniques which were a big deal in the 1950s... but which just become more arbitrary and meaningless, as computer usage gets more and more widespread.

That said, I bet you never got a chance to work on your executive functioning skills, because you didn't need to, because school was so easy, and you were maybe a little too smart for your own good. :)

A decent time into high school, I realized that I'd have to get good grades in final exams, if only so I'd get into a good college and stuff like that, but it still took me months and months to convince myself to study.

I spy some kind of executive functioning block, possible neurodivergence creeping in.

That seems really lion to me - unable to care about something I consider to be useless. But, the way I'd convinced myself is to study regularly for learning's sake - even if my sources were kinda dumb, information is information and if I wanted to succeed in life I needed to study this, so I might as well try to enjoy it and study, at least for the bragging rights of being class topper again. And that sounds really Bird.

What we have here sounds like a Lion primary and a Bird secondary (or Bird secondary model - very common) working together. What do we want (that's your primary): bragging rights, to succeed in life. Love it, very in keeping with your Lion primary.

But how are you going to do this? (that's your secondary.) Statements like "information is information," that's extremely Bird secondary. You need to pull in a lot of info in a short period of time, that's how Birds solve problems, and they absolutely enjoy it. What it seems like is you either are a bird secondary, or you built a Bird secondary as a coping mechanism.

My family could be influencing my decision- and wouldn't that be like a bird, to take in information from external sources? - A good chunk of my desire to not fail is because my family has a lot of expectations, because they know that I'm capable of doing really well if I set my mind to it.

A Lion primary is definitely the most likely to go - 'oh they don't like what I'm doing? Screw 'em.' But we could be dealing with a Lion primary that's just a little burned, maybe a Paragon Lion that looks really Badger, maybe you're a *Snake* primary and we've got a little Snake primary hedonism going on.

But what I think is happening is just that you've got a Lion primary. In this litlte bit, you lead with your own desire to get good grades,then followed that emotional response up with some reasoning: it would please my family. The fact that it went 'emotional response' first and 'reasons to explain/justify emotional response' second - that's Lion.

My mom especially, my dad's more casual about schooling, as long as I passed and had decent marks, he never cared much, but my mom always said how she expected me to get A+, above 95 marks, etc etc. But I never really let her opinion affect me much

Oooh yeah, that's not something you're going to hear from a young Badger. And if you were a young Bird, I would definitely have expected a line explaining why your Dad is a more credible source than your mom in this instance.

grades never mattered that much to me, aside from the cool factor, it's not right to judge someone stupid for getting bad grades, and anyways grades aren't a measure of someone's intelligence. And that seems Lion.

I agree. And here again, you're presenting information emotion first, then explanation. First - 'it's not right to judge someone for getting bad grades.' Strong emotional response right out of the gate. That 'It's wrong because it just is' thing is something Lions say that drive Birds crazy. Then you follow that up with an "anyways..." and come in with some reasoning.

(I agree with you, by the way. Good vs Bad grades are not a great measure of intelligence. I cannot tell you how many people I've met who understand the topic like you wouldn't believe, but who are bad test takers. And the inverse, people who don't really get it, but have enough meta-knowledge to fill out a test sheet well. And that's only the tip of the iceberg.)

I don't know if I'm a Lion who rules-lawyered myself into caring about school out of practicality concerning the future; or a Bird who temporarily burned after being disillusioned with school and ended up unburning thanks to familial pressure.

I think you're a Lion who found yourself caring more about school as you got closer to university (like I bet you're actively looking forward to going to university, right?) And then you built yourself a Bird secondary model to get what you needed to get done, done.

Want a Sorting of your very own? Comissons are open on my kofi page.

[sagau-my-beloved]

I love we now made venti a potential hitman, like he’s so eager to kill for the all creator just to get attention, just imagine on the rare occasion you send him to kill some boss guy that been a nuisance for a while. Like on the outside to the public your the gentle all loving god. but in the shadows you have a team of your most loyal followers willing to kill people that you send out to take care of stubborn nuisance that refuse to make peace with you after giving them every offer you can. I imagine childe would be on the team of course, but also surprisingly, venti would too, like seriously, you a big bad boss guy that has unknowingly pissed off the all creator and this bard dude is sent to kill you? Only to come back to him master covered in blood and smiling cheerfully. Just, pure all creator secretly has a dark hitman unit she uses. She’s not all pure.

Really I mean what desperate acolyte wouldn't kill for the creator, I can't imagine there would be a lot

If we're talking about who all would be a willing hitman for their divine grace, all the Archons immediately make the checklist and also all the characters who have caused a death before, so obviously Childe's there, like a few different times

I'm just saying it would be really funny if the list looked like this

1: Childe

2: Venti

3: Tartaglia

4: Zhongli

5: Ajax

6: Ei

7: The 11th harbinger

Etc.

But something's just weirdly wholesome about the image of Venti covered thoroughly in blood, happily trotting back on his merry way to gush to his beloved how good he was for them, smiling and blushing as you clean up his face with a wet washcloth and he recounts the death in explicit detail, then you give him a lil kiss on the forehead for a job well-done

Que Childe pouting in the corner cause he didn't get a lil kiss

Anyway, yeah, it really is unrealistic to expect dear creator to just be all happy-go-lucky "let's solve this with the power of friendship!" when they literally came from our world, which is not notorious for having a lot of conflict solved in that manner

I mean at some point you just have to call it and resort to the secondary option, ie. murder

And who is a better helper than the drunk innocent bard, who looks as if the very worst he could bring himself to do is maybe steal a few sips of wine from unsuspecting patrons when they finally blackout after a long night

Realistically, if word ever got out to the general public that some 'less than innocent' things were going on behind the scenes, they would be relatively fine with it, I mean you have the right to enact divine judgment on whoever you see fit of course, and the fact that you're so loving and caring and pure on the outside only helps emphasize that everything you do is justified for one reason or another

And also what are the harbingers if not a team of 'problem solvers', I mean let's be real here, the game already has a canonical hitman team loyal to a divine power that everyone seems generally ok with, so you really wouldn't have to worry too heavily about that, your word is absolute after all

But if word did get out, there would suddenly be a very long list of people that want to join your elite hitman team, just saying, the line would be out the door

Then you'd probably have some of them claiming that they're actually better than the harbingers because they're loyal to a higher divine power, and then there's just Childe there who has to nervously sweat in the corner for being a part of both

Poor guy always gets swept up in divine hitman teams for some reason, if I had a nickel for everytime—

Anyway yeah, feral characters covered in blood and ready to kill 👌, more of that in fiction pls, we deserve it

[positivelyadhd]

ik its not ur usual positivity but THANK YOU so much for that post!!! I feel like "gifted kid burnout" really dominates the conversation and thats only one experience of many.

I was diagnosed with adhd in elementary school and was basically like. "the kid with problems" "lost cause" my entire life. one of my teachers even directly told my mom she should be ashamed of me lol. any successes were like-- "see what you just did? imagine how much more you would be capable of if you didn't have adhd." to the point where I don't even feel any sense of accomplishment for graduating college. it's just one more "failure" i avoided in other peoples eyes. (i dont personally think not graduating college is a failure at all btw, that is just Society's Message™)

this part is kinda tangential but from what i've seen a lot (ofc not all) of gifted kid burnout posts are like, if only i would have been diagnosed earlier all of this could be avoided. and maybe that's true - I understand where it's coming from at least, the frustration of feeling that something is wrong but not knowing what or having that "proof" that you're not just "lazy" etc. im not saying this isn't a valid wish or frustration but in my experience... hoooo boy.

personally being diagnosed with ADHD in the early 2000s, didn't meant you got support, it meant you were written off from the start, adults thought you had no future, you were seen as a "problem child" like it wasn't "oh you're not lazy you just have adhd!" it was "you have ADHD so you are built to be lazy and theres nothing you can do about it lol" so it didn't solve much. just created a different type of problem. im very happy to see things look to be changing though!!

I'm curious if other people had a similar experience and thank you so much for adding the 'diagnosed but not supported' part bc that is so real!!!

Absolutely this!!

My experience with diagnosis and lack of support was strange, but basically my primary (ages 4-11) school (I believe) suspected I had adhd/dyslexia and did offer some (very limited) support. But they also always told my parents they didn't think I had a learning difficulty when they asked because I was in extra programmes. I don't really think the support they did give me really helped all that much, and honestly, when I did get my diagnosis (around 12/13?) I'd spent so long thinking there was just something "wrong" with me that I feel like the lack of diagnosis was a lot more negatively impactful than not receiving support would've been.

My secondary school then managed to flip this and despite me getting my diagnosis part way through, nothing really changed either. Being told I had ADHD/Dyslexia changed me and my understanding of myself. I finally felt like things made sense and there was a reason i found things so difficult, it wasn't that there was something "wrong" with me but the system was not built for me. Although my diagnosis was early compared to some people, it felt late to me, and everything that can happen when you're undiagnosed had already set in.

I wished I'd been diagnosed earlier but honestly, I had a similar experience to you, and I don't think it would've done much. And even when I was finally diagnosed, my school also never really acknowledged my diagnosis and wouldn't put any of the accommodations that I needed in place (despite my diagnosis coming with a report which explained everything they should've been doing to support me and how they could've done it) I didn't get any accommodations for my neurodiversity until I was in uni, and I got my diagnosis in 2015 so at least for me, my experience wasn't that different to yours in the early 2000s.

When I tried to fight for the accommodations I should've been given, I was told that I would pass my exams, and so it didn't really matter, they didn't believe going through the hassle of giving me accommodations would help me (although the diagnosis report itself said otherwise.) I always felt similarly to you, I could scrape by but "imagine how much better you'd do without dyslexia/adhd" but I also had this weird "well because you're "gifted" you can get average grades, you don't need support!" message as well?

And yeah, just like you, I didn't really feel as accomplished as I should've done when I finished uni. I'm proud of myself for doing it but I do feel this weird pressure of knowing that if I didn't have adhd/dyslexia or managed it better, I would've done much better.

I apologise for rambling about myself but yeah thank you for this ask! I feel the same way, and I'm glad to hear I'm not alone in it as well.

I wish you the best dear anon <3

[hopeymchope]

Trying to endure the unpleasant characters of "Bakemonogatari"

After receiving numerous recommendations that I should check it out over the years, I've finally started watching "Bakemonogatarai."

It's... weird, for sure. Interesting at times, definitely. But the two focal characters thus far make the series so incredibly hard to watch.

This is Koyomi Araragi, who is evidently our primary protagonist. The most important thing you should know about him is that he will endure the worst verbal abuse imaginable while only BARELY ever bothering to push back even a smidge, to the point that he infuriates me. This bitch has ZERO self-respect. It might even be in the negatives.

Now, maybe something will change with him! After all, I'm only five episodes into the series! He has plenty of time to grow a spine and stand up for himself. But right now? He spends most of the series hanging around — and getting cruelly abused by — a girl named Hitagi Senjougahara.

Senjougahara seems to be our secondary lead. Araragai spends the first two episodes going out of his way to help her with some difficult problems, which makes her declare herself to be his "dear friend" immediately thereafter. However, in ALL FIVE episodes to date, Senjougahara just brutally abuses him. And it just makes him depressed. He doesn't fight back, he doesn't get upset or angry... he just gets really sad and hangs his head silently, ultimately agreeing with her horrible put-downs.

-----------------------------------------------------------

The dialogue in this show is seriously like this—

Senjougahara: You're a very dear friend to me, Araragi. I owe you a lot. It's sad that you're a disgusting little bitch baby, but I'll still repay my debt for your kindness regardless of how odious of a person you are.

Araragi: ...thank you.

Senjougahara: Seriously, I can't imagine having to touch anything you've ever touched. The thought is so abhorrent. And the thought of ever touching YOU? Christ. I could vomit.

Araragi: Yeah.

Senjougahara: You look like a pedophile with that greasy hair over your eyes, you know that? In fact, I bet you ARE one. You fuck little kids, don't you??

Araragi: Come on... I'm not like that.

Senjougahara: Shut your nasty, hideous excuse for a mouth. Don't try to deny it. I can tell you fuck little kids.

Araragi: ...okay....

Senjōgahara: You sickening child molester. Rapists are the lowest of the low, but you? You're lower than they are. You're more vile than a gremlin's shit-stained taint, Araragi.

Araragi: ...sorry. It's true.

Senjougahara: If I wasn't such a wonderful and forgiving friend to you, you wouldn't have anyone else breathing the same air you've spoiled with your repulsive, loathsome presence. You'd be all alone. Which is all you'll ever deserve, of course.

Araragi: .......of course.........

-----------------------------------------------------------

I get that Sejougahara is just a massive, miserable asshole. That's at least very consistently portrayed. The bigger problem to me is that Araragi will go out of his way to help literally anyone in need but will do NOTHING to stand up for himself with this asshole.

The worst part is that I think these two are supposed to be possible love interests??? I THINK she's supposed to be a thugdere or something. I hope that I'm either wrong about that or something RADICALLY changes, because right now I only want to see Araragi remove her from his life forever.

Which is pretty unlikely.

Man, even in the second story arc, Araragi could've just taken the incessant abuse he received from the newest character he met as adequate reason to leave her the hell alone, and WOW, that actually would've solved everything instantly!

[thornfield13713]

Because @mllemaenad was kind enough to ask about my own Georgia after telling me everything I wanted to know about her Fallout protagonist Emily, and because it seemed rude to put this in the replies, I'm doing a full backstory post here, at least up to the current point in the story:

Georgia Cox was born in Liverpool, and came to America with her parents at the age of eleven, where they settled in New York. I was originally planning on having her as a born-and-bred New Yorker, but...honestly, in a game series so steeped in Americana, it felt a bit more manageable to play a character with a relationship to the concept a bit closer to my own. The Coxes were among the last legal immigrants to the United States, and if they hadn't been a white family from a historic ally, they probably wouldn't have made it, the pre-war world being what it was. The whole experience of immigration was pretty formative for a preteen Georgia, both in terms of the luck they'd had getting in and the number of others - many even literally from the same boat - who hadn't managed to do the same.

Her mother Shauna died a few years later, mostly due to the family's lack of medical insurance. Georgia's father always swore that it wouldn't have happened in the old country, and became rather embittered towards his new one in consequence. After that, he nearly lived for his daughter. A washed-up boxer reduced to throwing matches to get by, he was determined that his daughter should solve her problems with her words rather than her fists, and do well for herself that way. It put a lot of pressure on Georgia, even if he didn't intend it to. She was painfully aware that, so far as her father was concerned, her doing well and achieving that American Dream thing people kept talking about would justify his decisions in life so far, from immigrating in the first place to everything he had done since, every compromise, every thrown match. Her need to make her father feel like he'd done right, that it had been worth all the sacrifices it had made, ended up as the root cause of a lot of her decisions in later life - the most notable of those decisions being Sam Adams.

Georgia met Sam at university. She was in her final year at Boston University by then, having got in on scholarship and got herself into no end of student debt paying off the rest of it, studying political science and history with an eye on law school to follow. He was just starting out, an engineering student from a military family with a legacy of service dating back to the Revolutionary War and two older brothers both serving in the army, every single one of whom expected him to join the Army Corps of Engineers once he had his degree, even if he personally would rather be a civil engineer. They bonded over a few things: a shared passion for the Unstoppables comics, even if he was a Grognak fan and she preferred the Silver Shroud, and the pressure placed on them by families they loved, but who seemed determined to steer them down a path that neither one of them felt really all that suited for and weren't actually considering whether they wanted or not, because what they wanted was always going to be secondary to those familial pressures. They got together towards the end of Sam's time at university, while Georgia was in law school, after quite a lot of pressure from their respective friends to just give in and act on their 'obvious' feelings for one another. Neither of them being precisely the most emotionally aware people, they decided that their friends must have a point and started going out. Nate graduated and went into the army before they could figure out that, no, they were great friends but there was no attraction there whatsoever. Unfortunately, this was also the point around which they got married, mostly for the benefits - one of Sam's elder brothers had recently been killed in action, leaving his steady girlfriend he was planning to marry when he got back with nothing, and Sam proposed mostly out of fear that the same would happen with him and Georgia. Georgia said yes...mostly out of a sense that she was supposed to. He was a nice guy, she liked and cared about him a lot, they got on well, dating so far had felt like a comfortable extension of their friendship more than anything, and he was the only partner she'd had that her father even slightly approved of - it made sense. Love would come in time, she was sure.

For most of their marriage, they lived apart and barely saw each other. Sam was always with the army, and Georgia was trying to get a career started in Boston and had no interest in moving around to follow his postings. (His family disapproved of this almost as much as they disapproved of everything else about Georgia - an immigrant from a poor family in a rough part of New York whose politics were uncomfortably radical, having been brought up by a pair of old-school British Labour Party voters for whom American Democrats were uncomfortably right-wing.) They wrote to each other when they could, but rarely saw each other, and after the start of the Anchorage campaign, and the annexation of Canada that followed, their relationship became increasingly strained. They were both, at various points, unfaithful, though neither of them ever told the other about it.

Georgia started her career as a public defender, moved into private criminal defence after a few years, and sort of...drifted into civil rights work. She was more successful at the former profession than the latter, it must be said, as while you could sometimes get a defendant off on an apolitical charge, civil rights were...charged...in the pre-war world. She ended up bringing a few cases against Vault-Tec, in fact, for violations of labour laws, though never with very much success. She may also have run into the original Nick Valentine at some point, though if she did she doesn't remember him and they didn't get on, since she was involved in at least one lawsuit against the Boston Police. Like her historical namesake (yes, I chose 'Adams' for a reason, though I'm mostly basing this off the musical 1776), Georgia was obnoxious and disliked, with a firebrand temper, and generally regarded as a troublemaker by the local authorities, despite never actually managing to strike any sort of serious blow for justice. She kept at it mostly out of stubbornness, and by continuing to take criminal and civil cases just to keep the lights on, even as, over the years, she grew increasingly hopeless, depressed and cynical. This only worsened her obnoxiousness, driving away what few friends she'd been able to keep. It didn't help that she had a viciously sarcastic tongue and a very bad sense of when not to use it. Or, for that matter, that even if she wasn't a communist, she certainly had socialist leanings (social democrat, specifically, though most people didn't care about the details). She had already been using mentats as an every-now-and-again thing through college. She started using them more and more heavily once she was working. Never for trials, but often for preparation, even if it never quite rose to the level of addiction- or at least, not a level she would have considered an addiction, even if she got...tetchy...when she didn't have her fix.

Shaun was...an accident. And also- sort of a mess. It was the first time she and Sam had been able to spend his leave together in some years. Their relationship had never been particularly physical, but this time- something had happened recently, on the front, that meant that Sam was desperate for someone to cling to, and Georgia...was increasingly alone, and Sam had been her best friend once even if it had been years since they could talk the way they used to and, every time they were together, it felt like they were both badly playing roles in a joint performance of 'A Married Couple'. That night, though- they both felt shipwrecked, and they clung to one another. That was all it needed to be.

A few months later, Georgia's law firm finally folded. It had been coming for a while - she'd never made very much money or been very successful as a lawyer, despite a talent for courtroom rhetoric that even her opponents admitted and the sort of charisma that gets you past all the red skill checks (obnoxious as she could be interpersonally, she was one hell of an orator) - but it was still an awful blow. Finding that she couldn't get work anywhere else did not help. There were a few reasons for that: her reputation for troublemaking, her difficult personality, the fact that she was pregnant and would have to take time off for maternity leave soon and also it was...sort of discouraged for women to keep working after having children, even if some (Barb Howard, for example) still did...and possibly a few quiet words in the right ears on the subject of her political beliefs, which...she'd been on the wrong end of enough court cases and was cynical enough about the government to be labelled a Communist even without her genuine radical politics coming into it.

This was around the time that Sam came home, and the family moved out to Sanctuary Hills on a combination of his veteran's benefits and money borrowed from Sam's parents. The move did not help Georgia's depression. If anything, it made it worse - she was a city girl, born and bred, and the suburbs were stultifying. Worse still was how smugly delighted her in-laws were that she was finally 'settling down a bit' now that she was pregnant. That it was a difficult pregnancy did not help - she was thirty-five, and there were complications. Shaun's birth was difficult, and medical advice afterwards was that they should not try for another child.

So, around a decade into their marriage, Sam and Georgia were learning how to live together for the first time, and it was- it wasn't going well. They were good roommates, but they had both changed a lot since they had been college best friends, and their respective issues meant that they were having a lot of trouble connecting. Sam wanted to pretend everything was fine, that his wartime experience and the horrors of the Annexation had never happened, to bury himself in suburban normalcy and, once he'd settled in a bit, maybe get that civic engineering job he'd wanted all along. Never mind that he still screamed in his sleep and had a wicked case of untreated PTSD. Georgia was sunk in depression that had only worsened after Shaun was born, and was having trouble mustering up the energy to feel very much about anything - it was like she was sleepwalking through life. Even signing up with her old enemy Vault-Tec seemed...sort of inevitable at this point. She'd lost, she'd been beaten, so why not just...let it happen. Hand her a spade and bury her, why not? She was done.

And then, of course, the bombs fell.

[fattybattysblog]

Imma go with Hairi and Hanami for these asks!

12: Who is a better caregiver?

17: Who would bring home a stray animal?

25: Would they ever be jealous of each other?

27: How would they solve the trolley problem together?

36: What is a gift one would give to the other?

Don't wanna overload you, so have fun for now!

Sounds a bit creepy when I say it like that XD

Ooohhhh Hanami! My secondary ship for Hairi~ Let's seeeee

12: I think Hairi is a better caregiver out of the two. Hanami is calm but I doubt they'd have quite the bedside manner. Hairi knows how to be less blunt, it just takes more computing power.

17: I want to say Hanami. They're about nature, and that would extend to the animals too, wouldn't it? So maybe they bring home a little fawn or something and Hairi has to panic about a wild animal out of it's proper element.

25: Possibly? I feel that some of the curse gang's issue comes from a form of jealousy, at least a minor amount. So I think Hanami has moments where they envy Hairi and Hairi would envy that Hanami can just be unseen and unburdened by societal pressures.

27: Hanami would just let everyone die and Hairi would focus on the greater good (for many reasons but I think the sorcerer training def emphasizes greater good). If Hairi could convince Hanami, she'd get them to derail it and no one would have to die. But it would take a lot of convincing.

36: Hairi would try to make Hanami a song that they enjoy (I'm thinking Hanami is not a music kinda person) using a lot of natural ambience instead of her usual synth. Hanami might worry about what a human would even want and learn that Hairi only needs company and love.

... but she'll hint that new headphones are cool.

These were fun to think about! Thanks for asking!

[luxlightly]

I've been watching a lot of Bluey lately and I've seen some posts and tik toks that have been a bit concerned with the number of adult fans of the show and worried that it might be something like bronies who pushed out the target audience of young girls and made the entire atmosphere surrounding the show very toxic and inappropriate, but surprisingly the comparison hadn't even occurred to me until someone else brought it up because of the sheer fact that it's very clear in the writing of the show that it is for adults. Parents, specifically, but it's not an unexpected secondary audience that the show has captured. It's meant for adults in a way things like mlp just never was.

Most kids shows are written for kids with enough there for their parents to enjoy watching it as well. Bluey seems very much like a show for parents that has enough there that the kids enjoy it too.

Don't get me wrong, it's a kids show. I'm not saying that's not the target demographic. But the writing is for the parents. I don't mean that in a "oh there's innuendo" way or something like that. It's that each episode can be broken down into a moral and a lesson. The moral of every episode, which is generally very simple andusually outright stated in the first minute of the episode, is clearly for kids. And, to a kid watching, that might seem like what the plot revolves around. It's what the kids learn.

But the true plot of the episode generally actually revolves around the lesson, which is generally far more complicated and intended for the parents.

For example, a moral may be "it's okay to be small!" But the lesson is "kids can't always tell when they're unintentionally excluding a friend. They don't mean to be. They just don't know how to adapt what they're doing to fit what the other kid can and can't do and they're too young to have the emotional recognition skills to realize how much it hurts the kid who feels excluded. As a parent, it's your job to notice these things and encourage including all of the kids in a way that's fun. It's better to help them learn the moral than just to tell them."

Or one moral was "don't hog! Take turns fairly!" but the lesson was "when you aren't parenting as a unit, you build resentment and you undermine your partner's authority with the kids. Don't fall into partiarchal ideas that your husband just "can't handle" the kids. It's not fair to either of you. He wants to parent, too, and he's perfectly capable of it. And you need to be able to rely on him if you aren't able to be there to solve a problem. Parenting is a team activity and the most important thing you can do is make sure your expectations are communicated constantly and that you work together."

And it's not always something deep, just clearly there for the parents. Like, one moral is "sometimes all you can do about something or someone that's bothering you is ignore them." While the lesson is "you know that one bit your spouse does that you can't STAND but the kids love but you still really want to get rid of because it's so annoying? Yeah that's not going anywhere. This is your life now. Begin the process of accepting this"

These aren't little innuendo or jokes thrown in to keep parents from getting bored. They're the meat of the episode. Of course there's always reason for concern that the unintented audience of a show will begin to push out the intended one, especially in shows meant for kids, but the question of "is it inherently strange that adults are enjoying Bluey?" seems like a silly one. The show wouldn't be succeeding at what it's clearly trying to, if they weren't.

[rainbow-fairylandsystem]

My therapist and I are starting to move in the direction of doing actual trauma work, and I've gotten a lot more interested in the science behind being a system.

We've been talking a lot about left-brain vs. right-brain parts (aka ANPs vs. EPs). Left-brained parts (such as myself, Sicily, and Jez) have access to narrative memory, verbal language, rationalization, and problem solving. Right-brained parts (such as Ghost, Sophie, and Styx) have access to emotional and sensory memory, nonverbal language, survival instincts, and perception of emotions. My therapist says that my corpus callosum, the part of the brain that connects the left and right brain, is underdeveloped due to trauma. It's apparently common in people who experience 'fragmentation' (aka systems), and causes the left and right brain to largely act independently of each other.

A good example of this is me (Nimm) vs. Styx. My memories come to me as blocks of text rolling across a blank screen. There are very few visuals to them, and I never have any emotional memory (doesn't matter whether the emotions are positive or negative). I can usually relay my memories in an orderly fashion, but I can't tell you how I felt in that moment or any small details.

Styx, on the other hand, is a being of pure instinct. He can't speak and his handwriting is completely illegible (mostly because he writes with his left hand, which my therapist says is tied to his existence in the right brain). Even if he could communicate, he likely wouldn't be able remember the sequence of events that occurred. He only remembers how he felt in that moment and small flashes of memories without context. He's is permanently trapped in the emotions of the past.

What Sicily (our system manager) and I have discovered is that some of our ANPs and EPs come in pairs. The most obvious example of this is Gilly and Ghost. Gilly is an ANP that remembers things narratively, and can relay things in the order that they happened. However, he has no emotional or visual component to these memories; its more like he's just reading a story. Ghost (an EP) has access to the same memories as Gilly, but he can only see and feel them happening in small flashes; there is no narrative context or timeline he can place them on. Together, the two of them paint a relatively full picture of those memories. Ghost and Gilly are best friends, and are our system's primary and secondary co-hosts.

My current project is to try and figure out all of these pairs (I've only found three so far), and it'll be a good starting point for me and my therapist. I think Gilly and Ghost want to potentially work towards fusion, and starting the fusion process with pairs seems like the first logical step in system integration (not final fusion though, that's not really my goal). It might also make it easier for me to access past memories, which I feel is a step towards finally being able to manage my triggers. I can't prepare to face triggers in every day life if I can't remember what they are.

Anyway, if you got through the whole post, feel free to share your thoughts or experiences. I'd love to hear what anyone has to say.

[jesswithane]

I don't mean to be rude, but the conclusion of Hbomberguy's video goes into why your idea wouldn't work. People still plagiarized in the early days of youtube, it just was motivated by clout instead of money. They did it a lot too! The only way to stop them is to either give creators more tools to more easily find copycats or make it easier to fact-check video essays by making the sources to their topics widely available to all. If monetization goes away, new plagiarists will just pop up motivated by fame, just like it was in "the good ol' days".

Not rude at all! I did forget that section of the video, it was very long and I went straight into Todd's video after.

It is true, it was done for clout as well. As they say, "was it ever really the Good ol days?" (I don't remember the real quote and I am more tired than I thought). Personally, I do wonder if more people would copy or lie just for clout/fame, and not for the financial compensation but that would require a study and I don't even know how you would test it.

I would love to see an actual fact-checker on videos on all platforms. Misinformation is a huge problem that I would like solved in my life time...wouldnt hold my breath, but would be nice. I worry about copyright strikes being used improperly or to bully, but maybe that could be solved to? Unsure

The only other thought I have here, if anyone is curious (which...doubt, but I can dream): I don't think videos with children should be monetized. I think it's hard to prove a child can benefit from their lives constantly played online, and we don't have a financial way like Coogan Laws for child actors. [This may seem out of nowhere, but this was actually an argument I've been making for the last...three years or so for a paper]

So yeah...that's my mini secondary rant that I probably could've answered shorter but yeah, thanks for asking!

[rahleeyah]

Do you prefer to be working on 2 stories at once? Or do you just have too many stories in your head and no chill? (NOT MAD ABOUT IT, LIVING FOR YOUR STORIES, PLEASE NEVER ACQUIRE PLOT CHILL)

Por que no los dos? 🤔

No but seriously it is both. I like having two stories on the go for my own sake; it's good for me I think to stretch different muscles, do different things, take a break from something so that when I come back to it I come back fresh. Often working on a different story helps me solve problems with the first one.

And I do it bc there are not enough hours in the day for me to write everything I want to write, so this way I can get as much out there as possible.

But I also do it for the readers. Some people wouldn't be able to keep up with daily updates (that is! So much fic!) So alternating helps, bc a lot of people are reading every story but not everyone is, so people can get updates to whichever story they're interested in at regular intervals and not in a deluge. It also helps when one of my stories is particularly divisive, like instinct or madam Liv, when people may not want to read whichever one I consider my main I can still give them a story with whatever the secondary one is.

[wisteria-lodge]

For a sortme ask, how exactly would you like a submitter to structure it if they have no idea which sorting they are?

There is a LOT of variation in my SortMe asks, and they have to be pretty wild for me not to answer them. I think it's only happened twice - one person was just sending me a sentence or two whenever they thought of something relevant, and ended up spamming me with about 40 totally unstructured asks, half of which repeated content from each other - it was just a mess.

The second person sent me this really long rambling thing completely written in texting abbreviations, that really went into how they probably wouldn't listen to me because they didn't believe in like, the concepts of authority and categorization. But they also were very specific and a bit entitled in how they wanted me to write my answer. I actually did read the thing, and wrote them a paragraph sorting them (I mean, really young Bird primary, that stuff's tough.) But I didn't do my usual in-depth line-by-line thing.

So I guess... don't do that?

I guess if I were to make a SortMe submission wish list, it would be:

Tell me about what you were like as a kid.

Tell me a low-stakes story about you solving a problem (like in a video game.)

Tell me a high-stakes story about you solving a problem.

Tell me about the process you go though when you're making a really difficult decision. More specific is better.

What's your fantasy? This could be a 'I want a little cottage with a garden' type fantasy or an 'I like to imagine I'm a superhero' type fantasy.

Is there a character who you *really* identify with? (Why?)

What makes you feel powerful?

What was an especially difficult time in your life? What made it difficult?

And - I love family dynamics, and I do think they're often very useful for picking apart models. So - tell me about your parents/family situation/current living situation.

Read though that list and answer any questions that seem useful or compelling to you. I've got similar asks asking for wordcounts - don't worry about that, just make it as long as it needs to be.

A lot of people like to divide submissions into 'Primary' and 'Secondary,' but you don't have to. I'm thinking of both as I'm reading, and a common problem people have with this system is not knowing which data belongs in primary, and which belongs in secondary.

[tornad001]

see the problem is that the best alternative u can construct still represents a significant enough decrease in the quality of everything that it really begs the question if it's worth it just for decentralization of this specific industry. so ur solution to the inability for a wholly decentralized system to provide the vast numbers and quantities of different drugs and chemicals needed for modern medical care seems to be to pawn off the production of "some critical compounds for personal use" to individuals? why? where are all these individuals getting the tech or at least access to the tech (and additional training needed to run and interpret the results of the tech) for ensuring they did it right and got all the right compounds and none of the wrong ones? cuz little mistakes can literally kill people, and even the best case scenario of a fuck-up where u kill only urself isn't a good one, death is bad actually.

also all of this is predicated on the assumption that a vastly decentralized system would be able to provide the base chemicals and solvents and all needed to make the drugs in a sufficiently pure form and with sufficient reliability. there's just too many steps along the path from resource extraction to industrial chemical synthesis and purification to drug production to treatment and every step along the way is a potential source of catastrophic failure. if proper production isn't done or the purification process isn't complete enough or theres a failure in your instrumentation that isn't caught or a million other things can go wrong. and the only reasonable way to prevent that to whatever extent is even possible is through robust interconnected regulatory bodies that can hold people and groups to account and can themselves be held to account. and these systems have to have the same degree of certainty and safety everywhere despite having to be largely decentralized in how they're carrying out their regulatory work and the only way to do that is with some degree of centralization and then it kinda seems like you're just rebuilding the FDA and our current system with a lot of extra steps and a lot less utility

nobody's saying our current system is functioning (well its functioning exactly as intended for the benefit of the bourgeoisie) but there's solutions that are still radical and resolve much of the issues, it seems like a step too far and at the very least a step too soon to suggest that the way to fix the medical/pharmaceutical system is through radical anarchistic decentralization rather than.... idk, socialized medicine. better medical education. implementation of automation where useful. an emphasis on patients and workers rights. etc.

i just don't see many problems that the anarchistic solution solves that a radical socialist/communist solution doesn't. what internal contradiction is left un-resolved? idk i just think a lot of the anarchistic extremism really only works under a system sans natural inequality. cuz we always have to make accommodation to reality, both in a policy sense with an eye for what's expedient and in an ideological sense in terms of sacrificing secondary goals in pursuit of primary goals. if the secondary goal of decentralization can't be taken to its logical conclusion without impinging on the primary goal of liberty, then it must be constrained. cuz we don't live in a logical world, we live in a messy chaotic naturally unequal world. and if we have the imagination to picture radical anarchistic solutions as functional alternatives, surely we have the imagination to conceive of a centralized system which is sufficiently non-coercive - to image slightly less radical solutions

btw feel free to call me a liberal shill or a capitalism-loving communist-wannabe or ideologically inconsistent or whatever u need to tell urself. im firm enough in my beliefs, i can take unwarranted or petty criticism. and its not like i wouldn't have choice words about why you hold your beliefs on the matter.

I'm so mad at tumblr right now.... I was constructing a response to someone's "anarchists can't produce a surplus of synthetic insulin and therefore will just kill all disabled people when they take over" and Tumblr crashed and took my sources with it 😭

[cyle]

Yo what's identities

tl;dr: it's my internal codename for a very ambitious project to fix all of the issues with primary and secondary blogs on tumblr. the project is not actually in flight right now, it's been on the shelf for years.

gs;wm:

as you probably know, and lots of tumblr users know, primary and secondary blogs are pretty confusing. you can only like/reply as your primary, you can only make a secondary/sideblog private or have more than one member, but you can reblog and post and send messages as your secondaries, etc etc. the logic table of what you can do per blog on your account is weird, to say the least. we get feedback about this all the time.

this is a holdover from how secondary blogs were originally built: they were just tacked on to the existing user model, via your primary blog, at a time when tumblr was growing super fast. behind the scenes, your secondary blogs are the same data model as your primary blog, but the actual relationship they hold is with your primary blog, not with your account. so it's like your secondary blogs are "children" of your primary blog, rather than being siblings, as one would probably build it today if we could do it all over.

and there's a lot, lot, lot of code and plumbing that relies on this assumption, so it's not as simple as just fixing that problem and magically having the ability to like/reply/follow/etc as a sideblog. this stuff is very very old, from the time when tumblr was a blogging network first and not a social network, so it made sense then. it doesn't make sense today, from a product point of view, if you consider tumblr a social network first.

the most basic "fix" for this could be a simple account switcher, like other platforms have, but this wouldn't solve the problem for existing users who have tons of sideblogs they may want to "swap" their primary for, or reply/like as, or whatever. you'd have to make a whole new account, and/or we'd have to do some magic on our end to detach all of your sideblogs and make them into separate accounts for you, which would be pretty jarring.

personally i think that account switcher option is pretty lame: we can do better.

instead of an account switcher, i think it'd be much more interesting to be able to "act as" any of your blogs within the same interface, kind of like how fast reblogging lets you quickly choose which blog you're reblogging to. messaging lets you pick which blog you're sending as when you start a new conversation. why not have the same option when long-pressing on the like button? or the follow button? or the block button? there's some discoverability to figure out here for sure, but it's surmountable.

and this leads to some other interesting potential changes to how someone could use tumblr via multiple proper blogs, like having a different dashboard per blog. different set of likes per blog. a more straightforward way to break apart how you curate your experience on tumblr. easy to just throw away your old blog when you wanna restart, without having to make a whole new account. hence, you'd be able to have "identities", rather than a primary blog and sideblogs.

sounds neat, right? i think so. but it's a fair amount of work to get this done. a lot of untangling has to happen. it's totally doable, it's just tedious. some of the pieces are already in place on the backend, we just haven't picked up the rest of the work. it's hard to prioritize this because, while it sounds neat, the number of people who would actually use it is probably pretty small -- but we'd never know until we try.

anyway, that's identities on tumblr. ✨

[parvuls]

bitty is a deeply flawed individual, and it takes him a lot longer to grow and mature than it takes jack. let's discuss.

bitty is our narrator, so we see the world through his eyes. this makes every other character's flaws much more present to us. jack's flaws are basically the first thing we learn about him - but jack's flaws being addressed is also one of the first storylines in the comic. jack has to mature and handle his issues for the romantic storyline to even begin.

bitty is not a gary stu protagonist. bitty has a lot of complexities (restlessness, procrastination and executive dysfunction being common ADHD symptoms, which are hard to live with when undiagnosed), but his main character flaws are fear of confrontation, passive-aggression and self-sacrifice.

these flaws are easy to overlook on a daily basis, and sometimes they even present as "good" qualities (he's an extraordinarily caring friend, and he puts everyone's needs before his own), but the moment he enters a romantic relationship this becomes a huge problem.

dating someone who won't tell you when something is bothering them is incredibly difficult, especially when you have anxiety. it leads to mistrust (you ask them if everything's okay and when they say yes you know they're lying) and emotional distance (you open up and rely on them but they won't do the same). not knowing if/when something is wrong, and thus not being able to fix it, is a huge trigger for anxiety disorders. plus, a lack of fighting is not actually a good thing in relationships. fighting is the way to bring up issues and find common ground in order to solve them. no confrontations = no solving.

often in pop culture, once a relationship is established, you know the drama is coming. writers need to keep things interesting to keep the audience engaged. hi honey's blog post makes it clear that ngozi knew this, and for only a second baits the readers with the possibility of a break up, but the drama actually comes from a much more genuine and realistic source: bitty needs to own up to his problems, and needs to learn to face them and openly communicate them to his partner, and needs to learn to accept confrontation as a way to solve these problems, or he and jack are simply going to break up. just as we wouldn't expect bitty to date jack if jack hadn't handled his issues, jack can't date bitty if bitty doesn't handle his own.

the beautiful thing about this (and the thing many readers seemingly missed), is that hi honey isn't even about coming out. bitty's main problem isn't being unable to tell people he's dating jack; that's a secondary problem that they solve by giving bitty a safe place where he can be honest with his close friends. bitty's main problem is that he spent six months carrying the weight of his isolation alone, without opening up to jack about it, which only served to make him feel more helpless and more alone. this put a much heavier burden on their relationship than being closeted did.

in conclusion: hi honey is, much like playoffs/banquet for jack in year 1, the comic where bitty's character arc comes to its first peak, and is an important and necessary milestone.