#and the kind of lives people might be living was first derived from a lot of books

[vamptastic]

truly dgaf about traumadumping i do sometimes experience empathy (like, in the crying over a sad story form) but it probably won't go off unless you have an incredibly tragic story are visibly emoting and i already really like you. so it doesn't really stress me out. people talk about fucked up things in cavalier and humorous ways it's how we deal with things. i am not really emotionally phased by discussing most fucked up or personal things in my own life expect for one or two topics that will make me immediately break down, so like who am i to judge. also learning things about people is fun.

[copperbadge]

More on mindfulness and meditation

I feel like perhaps I came across as anti-meditation in that last post I did on it, and there were some folks who were a bit vocal about not liking meditation in the notes, but the notes also had some great and interesting discussion of what can count as mindfulness that isn't traditional meditation and what some alternatives might be, so I wanted to do a follow-up. Especially since I don't think I'm going to get to respond to everyone individually.

The post was not meant to be anti-meditation, but to express frustration with the way meditation frequently is, or rather fails to be, taught. I can understand why people would struggle with "mindfulness" (vastly overused term) and meditation, so I'm not here to argue with or shame anyone, and I really appreciate the alternative suggestions. But because mindfulness can mean so many things, and people can meditate for many different reasons, I wanted to talk a little about why I'm being asked to do it.

It's easy to lose track of why one might try meditation for mental health, because the cause and effect are so temporally dislocated from each other. I try to keep in mind that my specific goal is emotional regulation deriving from increased present-moment attention. Some of the stuff that was suggested is great for a goal other than this, like puzzle games that allow people to empty their racing minds or activity that brings someone back into their body when dissociating -- both extremely laudable functions! -- but that's not why I'm here. Meditation is meant, for me, to be a maintenance medication, not a rescue inhaler.

There is science that suggest that mindfulness practice, under a specific definition of the term, can help to manage emotional dysregulation, ameliorate Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, and reduce depression and anxiety. I discuss the science in a slideshow here but essentially this specific form trains the attention into the present moment, which improves executive function -- and as we know, emotional regulation is a facet of executive function, so this leads to better emotional regulation.

There is not a lot of science on it yet so there is room here for yoursamplesizeissmall.jpg, but it's all we've got so I'm running with it. There is one foundational practice and three practices that build on it which effected this change in subjects of the study:

Breathing Meditation doesn't really confer any benefit the others don't, but the others all employ it as a basic practice. We know this can calm the parasympathetic nervous system, although to be honest I have not found that to be the case personally. As soon as I stop the deep breathing I'm right back where I was, likely because my issue is ruminational, not situational. But everything else wants you to breathe first, so I still have to do it.

Body Scan focuses attention on the body and as others have pointed out is good for people prone to dissociation. As I said in the other post, I live here; paying extra attention to my body isn't something I need. I was asked to try it anyway as part of a practice in keeping an open mind about stuff I think is dumb, and clearly I do need practice in that. Still, it's likely I'll be able to let this one go pretty soon.

Loving-Kindness asks you to think positively about others, expanding compassion from a single point outward to the world. I've encountered this before in reading Pema Chodron; I don't do it as meditation, but I do try to practice it in life because I am not naturally a patient or compassionate person, and that has been helpful in the sense that it keeps me from getting punched in the face a bunch. For me there's no real "train the attention to be in the present" aspect on account of that, however.

Observing-Thought is where you just sit with your thoughts, let them arise, sometimes label them in some way, and let them go. I was most interested in this purely because it's the only one I hadn't already encountered. I haven't found it useful so far, but I don't have enough data about it to be definitive, and if it is training executive function I would expect that to take time.

Now, I know that all four of these have science backing them, so I know that we're not just dealing in new-age woo here. The problem is functional, not theoretical. The issue overall is not "meditation is boring" -> "find a way to make it interesting", although I do appreciate that it may be an issue for others and I like that people were offering solutions. The issue for me is that the boredom derives from the fact that the meditation isn't being taught. There's no progressional learning -- there's no step-progress-reward-step-progress-reward like with most difficult skills.

Any task is boring if you aren't deriving any reward from it or you are being expected to execute it without skills or training, and in this case I'm facing down both. Long silences from a meditation leader are fine if you're there to engage with a practice you already have familiarity with, but if you're trying to learn, they are the opposite of helpful, and they are actively punishing to someone with ADHD.

I don't want to be entertained (I mean, generally I do, but in this case I don't expect it). What I want is a pedagogical approach that steps up to the practice rather than beginning with it, so that I know I'm doing it right, I experience rewards along the way similar to how I currently do learning Italian, and I have more confidence that what seems dull and fruitless actually will produce results.

Uh, so yeah thanks for coming to my TEDtalk; the fact that a practice that's especially hard for people with ADHD helps with almost every problem ADHD presents really sucks, and I wish we approached teaching meditation as if it were something you actually did have to learn rather than something you're supposed to Do Until You Get It. In the meantime I guess bumping the speed on the recording isn't the worst thing I could be doing.

[kommandonuovidiavoli]

A little reflection on lore and AUs

This is something that's been roaming in my mind for a while, I just want to put it down on "paper".

All of us have their main AU. And with AU, I mean a universe where their characters are canon in the KND lore and live their own adventures. All of us have a main timeline with the main characters that will go on living their lives and adventures.

This AU can generate more AUs within it, where little things change, and these will be labeled as "AUs" by the creator since they derive from the main plot but then develop into something else. And these kinds of AUs are fun because you can explore different possibilities within your own story!

Now, that being said, let's talk about "adding someone else's OC into your story". I see it can have 4 main situations:

The OCs and their lore are now fused with your own, and you accept the existence of said OCs in your story since they don't change the end result, if anything they make it funnier to achieve;

The OCs are a different AU and you know it, and you just play it as a different AU from your plot, it's just for fun;

This is a "different universes meeting" kind of deal, a portal opened somewhere, and now the AUs are interacting. They won't change their final story, but this is a fun little moment that can be canon or not;

You acknowledge these OCs may exist in your own universe but also specify that, even if they might have the same story and personalities, they also might be a different experience from the main AU the creator invented for them. They just exist in your universe, but they are not the same exact people.

I love the 3rd plotline a lot, I find myself doing that but with past and future, having them meet for the lolz (even if it's just an AU into my story). I am also up for RPing AUs meeting because I find the concept really funny and interesting, with characters explaining their deal and then going on adventures together (also because let's be real, Penny ain't gonna meet anyone's OC anytime soon since there's age difference).

But when I introduced the idea that @artsygirl0315's Sector PHP meets Irwin I started diving into the 4th case: these OCs might exist in my universe but they are not the exact same.

As an example, still using Sector PHP: let's say I will have them show up for the Nightmare War and help others win it. They will be canon in that part of the lore (if the creator wants), but of course, in their main story the Nightmare War never happened and they will never experience it, and I won't force them to add it to their canon, since this is completely my creation and *I* only know how to develop and end.

Another example (sorry for dragging you in but this is relevant lol), is @roguephenon, who has the plan to make Penny canon in his AU story, but she's gonna be a different version of Penny, even if they might end up having the same main traits. He can have Penny do what he wants, and he can modify her a bit, but still, Penny is now canon in my AU and his AU too! Maybe one day these two will also meet and tbh I LIVE to see that moment!

Honestly, usually, the fandoms I was in were canon-oriented, there weren't too many OCs, and if there were, I and other creators would go the 3rd route and have AUs somehow meet.

This is the first time I find myself actually wondering if I can make it somehow canon that someone else's OC exists in my AU. And I like it!

Of course, if you don't like the idea just hit me up (literally, with a bat) and say you don't want your OC into my lore but you're up for AUs meeting or whatever you prefer!

So far, I am just playing around with OCs meeting and having fun but... well, I do need people for the Nightmare War LMAO.

What do you think? What is your favorite thing to play?

[marie-m-art]

A recurring feature that I like in Neil Gaiman's and Terry Pratchett's stories is the mundane and ordinary juxtaposed and blended with the extraordinary and fantastical.

There's a lot of humour derived from this, but it got me wondering if the concept also works as a theme under the surface of the humour, so I'll explore that idea a bit here with examples from Good Omens and Discworld.

First a look at the humour side, because it's fun, and so that people know what I'm referring to:

-In the opening sequence of Good Omens S1E1: an angel and a demon (fantastical beings) are conversing like ordinary people, using idioms like "Well that went down like a lead balloon", against a setting of biblical proportions.

-The Archangels' meeting in S2E6 discussing first the Second Coming ("Nah!"), and then next on the agenda is the cleaning roster.

-The visuals of heaven and hell in general - it's the subversion of expectations on what these places "should" look and function like - offices, clipboards, contracts, bureaucracy. This is humour and seems like theme/motif at the same time; the visual cues say a lot about heaven and hell and their role in this story.

-Death from the Discworld books owns an umbrella stand and a hairbrush, likes kitty cats, and rides a white horse named Binky.

-In Small Gods, the Great God Om is incarnated as a tortoise:

And it came to pass that in that time the Great God Om spake unto Brutha, the Chosen One:

'Psst!'

Next, looking at the concept's thematic or metaphorical potential.

The following excerpt gets me thinking about how people put outsized importance on mundane things, and about normalcy bias kicking in when a narrow mind is confronted with extraordinary events.

From Good Omens book (about RP Tyler):

It is a high and lonely destiny to be Chairman of the Lower Tadfield Residents' Association.

[…]

Your car is on fire.

No. Tyler just couldn't bring himself to say it. I mean, the man had to know that, didn't he? He was sitting in the middle of it. Possibly it was some kind of practical joke.

Next, a scene that makes me think about retreating into the mundane to cope, after being confronted with an extraordinary event.

From Good Omens S2E6:

Nina: Oh, God, I should've been open half an hour ago.

Maggie: How can you think about that after all this??

Nina: People need coffee, I sell coffee, it's my coffee shop.

And next, thinking about how the minutiae of the everyday distracts us from paying enough attention to big world issues (a bit of normalcy bias again too). 

From Good Omens book (when the horsepersons of the apocalypse arrive at the airbase):

No one stopped the four as they purposefully made their way into one of the long, low buildings under the forest of radio masts. No one paid any attention to them. Perhaps they saw nothing at all. Perhaps they saw what their minds were instructed to see, because the human brain is not equipped to see War, Famine, Pollution, and Death when they don't want to be seen, and has got so good at it that it often manages not to see them even when they abound on every side.

Next, two excerpts from Discworld books. At first I was thinking along the lines of needing to focus on the everyday because we can't spend all our time focusing on big existential stuff, or, how we take the wonders of nature for granted because of busy lives; but then I realized, I think it's actually a clever inversion of what we consider to be ordinary - that just being alive, against all odds, in the vast universe, is actually quite extraordinary.

From Small Gods:

And one of [the brain's] functions is to make the miraculous seem ordinary and turn the unusual into the usual.

Because if this was not the case, then human beings, faced with the daily wondrousness of everything, would go around wearing big stupid grins […] And no one would do much work.

Gods don't like people not doing much work. People who aren't busy all the time might start to think.

Part of the brain exists to stop this happening. It is very efficient. It can make people experience boredom in the middle of marvels.

[more going on in the above than just the subject of the post, but I'm narrowing the focus here]

From Hogfather:

THERE IS A PLACE WHERE TWO GALAXIES HAVE BEEN COLLIDING FOR A MILLION YEARS, said Death, apropos of nothing. DON'T TRY TO TELL ME THAT'S RIGHT.

"Yes, but people don't think about that," said Susan. Somewhere there was a bed …

CORRECT. STARS EXPLODE, WORLDS COLLIDE, THERE'S HARDLY ANYWHERE IN THE UNIVERSE WHERE HUMANS CAN LIVE WITHOUT BEING FROZEN OR FRIED, AND YET YOU BELIEVE THAT A … A BED IS A NORMAL THING. IT IS THE MOST AMAZING TALENT.

And a quote from Terry Pratchett himself, inverting ordinary/extraordinary (the whole video is great, by the way):

Within the story of evolution is a story far more interesting than any in the Bible. It teaches us amazing things: that stars are not important - there is nothing interesting about stars. Street lamps are very important, because they're so rare. As far as we know there's only a few million of them in the universe. And they were built by monkeys! Who came up with philosophy, and gods.

He also mentioned here that his impression after reading the Old Testament was: "If this is all true, then we are in the hands of a madman!" Off topic again, but relevant to some of what went into Good Omens I think.

Not sure if I've proved anything here, and that wasn't the goal, but it was fun to find some quotes for my brain to play around with!

[script-a-world]

Submitted via Google Form:

How much can a city get away with not actually giving streets a specific name? As in all the streets are like First Street, or First Street West, etc... Any names are descriptive and the only thing available like if there is one hospital the street it's on might be called Hospital Street, and the road that leads to the only train station is called Train Street, the street with the only university is called University Street. Even when they have actual names, the street is still just descriptive. I think this might make a place very easy to navigate? The only thing is you've got to know where those unique descriptors are. Something like this has got to be planned right? Because if things get changed, it can go awry. The streets will have to fairly straight in a grid layout right so streets can't crisscross every which way or be too curvy.

Licorice: In my town, which was founded in Roman times, we do indeed have streets called “Street of the Hospital”, “Street of the Train Station”, “Street of the Cathedral”, “Street of the Cliffs”, “Street of the Windmills” and so on. Most UK towns have streets called “Station Road”, “Church Road”, and of course the ubiquitous “High Street” where all the shops are congregated, which in every town is always known as the High Street even when its official name is something else. It’s the equivalent of Main Street in the USA.

Does one need to know the location of the landmarks after which these streets are named? I don’t see why one should. Once you find a road called “Street of the Train Station”, you can be pretty sure it’s going to lead you to the train station. 

A lot depends on whether your city is a planned city or one that has grown up organically over the centuries. 

Street names in older, organic cities tend to derive from one of the following sources

A landmark on the street, e.g. Church Street. The landmark doesn’t have to be man-made. Fleet Street in London was, in the middle ages, a street that ran along the river Fleet, which no longer exists.

The place the road leads to, e.g. Oxford Street, Liverpool Street

The occupation of the people who lived and worked on that street, e.g. Threadneedle Street

Streets in planned cities or planned subdivisions are named by the planners and often follow some kind of theme. In the UK, new housing developments in Victorian times might commemorate famous battles (Alma Terrace, Lucknow Terrace), places in the colonies (Canberra Drive), historic figures (Wellington Road), and so on. In my European town, one of the main streets is named after the date on which we were liberated from occupation by Napoleon. 

In Hamilton, Ontario, which was constructed on a grid system in the 19th century, the main streets are (if I recall correctly) named after the family of the founder, George Hamilton, or the family of Sir Allan Napier McNab, a local bigwig - they’re called John Street, James Street, Mary Street and so on.

Trees are a perennially popular naming theme for street planners in North America. Chestnut Street, Elm Street, Mulberry Street….

The Romans built a lot of new towns. The grid system was widely used by the Romans and was based on the layout of their army camps. You might find it interesting to look up Roman city planning and see how they named their roads. It sounds like you want your city to be a practical city, and the Romans were eminently practical people. They knew how to design a town that people would find it easy to live in. 

Utuabzu: A lot, really. Kyōto has gotten away with it for over a thousand years in its historic core. Venice has street names, but few signs or indicators of what street one is on or what address a building has, and it has also been functional for over a thousand years. In a lot of older cities, people navigate more by landmarks than by street addresses, which makes sense, because any urban environment older than about 150 years was built to be navigated on foot, and likely has a bunch of little alleyways and shortcuts that wouldn’t show up on a street map but which all the locals know and use constantly. Pre-internet and without a car, getting directions in the form of landmarks was generally going to be more useful than a street address, particularly because, as Licorice pointed out, most streets in older, organic cities were named for landmarks or some visible characteristic (like who lived and worked there). 

Even when the landmark is lost or moved, the name often still endures as a fossilised bit of urban history. The hospital might move, but the street it was on would still get called Old Hospital Street, because everyone was used to it being Hospital Street and it’d be annoying to have to learn a new name for the place, while the new location would either keep it’s pre-existing name (eg. the new hospital is on Station Street, so they call it the Station Street Hospital) or it would get called something like New Hospital Street. 

Oftentimes old cities are very dense and have narrow, winding street networks with names that seem to change arbitrarily, but this isn’t always the case. Almost all Roman cities were founded with a grid, and the Roman foundation is roughly square or rectangular (eg. The City of London, Jerusalem’s Old City*, Florence), although these grids all break down very quickly outside the original Roman walls. Cities in the Sinosphere (the region of the world historically under heavy Chinese cultural influence) were also often initially built on a grid, such as Kyōto, which I referenced earlier. And like Kyōto, many don’t have regularly used street names. Grids are also common in Spanish colonial cities, because almost all of them were laid out following the regulations in the ley de los indes, a Spanish law that (among other things) governed how and where new colonies were to be established. Consequently, almost all Spanish colonial cities have a very similar layout in their historic cores, with a central square and a grid radiating out from there. 

Prior to the late 19th Century and the creation of the suburbs, most of the time these grids broke down because of unplanned informal development outside the area covered by the initial city plan. In a lot of the world this still happens frequently. And oftentimes these informal settlements become officially part of the urban fabric simply because it would be too much work to remove them.

[asaka-lucy-dr-rc]

I watched the YouTube video introducing RAIN CODE Plus, and there were some parts that I found interesting, so I transcribed them and translated them into English:

10:37-11:04 Derived from the topic of Shinigami is quite tall >

Fukuhara: In RAIN CODE, the women are tall, right? Kodaka: Yes, they tend to be quite tall since Danganronpa. Fukuhara: Indeed, I see. Kodaka: I mean, all the characters tend to be tall. It's the same in general. Komatsuzaki, who designs the characters, is over 180cm tall, so he thinks it's normal. Fukuhara: (laughs) So Komatsuzaki-san draws the characters according to his standards! Kodaka: Right. His view of the world...(*expresses eye level with hand gestures*) And Takada, who is in charge of the music, is also in the second half of 180. Fukuara: Wow, really? Kodaka: So their eye level is high. Fukuhara: Ahaha. Kodaka: They think the tall people should be 2 meters tall. All: (laughs) Fukuhara: But 180cm is pretty tall! You know? 

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13:56-15:28 About the Ginma District> Kodaka: Well, it's like Ginza(銀座). Fukuhara: Like, Ginza, Ginma, Ginza, Ginma, Ginza, Ginma... Kodaka: Because Ginma is a combination of Ginza and Aoyama(青山). Fukuhara: Oh, that makes sense! Miyokawa: Haha, is that so? Kodaka: This may be the first time I've revealed it. All: (laughs) Kodaka: Kamasaki is a combination of Kamata(蒲田) and Kawasaki(川崎), you know. Miyokawa: Ohh. Fukuhara: Oh, this is the first time I've heard of it. [omission] Miyokawa: It seems that the people and the shops are quite different depending on the regional characteristics. Kodaka: Well, in Kamasaki, the people are like those in Kamata or Kawasaki. They are kind of rough... All: (laughs) Kodaka: People in Ginma are as elegant as people in Ginza or Aoyama. Fukuhara: I have the impression that there are a lot of sophisticated people there. Kodaka: And Marunomon is a business district, so there are a lot of people in suits. Fukuhara: Oh, yes, yes. Kodaka: So each area is completely different, which adds depth. When you walk around the city, you might wonder how these people live together, and a lot of ideas come to mind. I think it gives you a lot of imagination. Fukuhara: The facilities in the city are also quite different. Kodaka: Yes. The one in the middle is a case that is used to enclose trees that would otherwise rot due to the constant rain in the city, and to expose them to ultraviolet rays. It's the kind of expensive object or appreciation of nature that only Ginma can provide. There are many props in the city, and I’d like players to pay attention to them.

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Just in case, I have included a transcription in Japanese below↓

10:37〜11:04 死に神ちゃんが結構背が高いという話から> Fukuhara: レインコード、女性身長高いですよね Kodaka: そう、ダンガンロンパの時から結構高くなりがち。 Fukuhara: 確かに、そっかぁ。 Kodaka: っていうか全キャラ高くなりがちなんですよね。全般的にそう。キャラデザしてる小松崎が180cm超えてるんで、それが普通だと思ってる。 Fukuhara: (笑)小松崎さんの基準で描かれてるんですね！ Kodaka: そう。彼の世界を見る…(手振りで目線を表現)で、音楽の高田も180後半なんで、 Fukuara: えぇっ、すご！ Kodaka: 彼らの視線が高いから。 Fukuhara: あはは。 Kodaka: デカいやつは2mあると思い込んでる。 一同: (笑) Fukuhara: 180相当でかいですよ〜？でもねぇ。

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13:56〜15:28 ギンマ地区について>

Kodaka: まぁ銀座みたいなとこ。 Fukuhara: ギンザ、ギンマ、ギンザ、ギンマ、ギンザ、ギンマ…って感じですね。 Kodaka: 銀座と青山をくっつけてギンマですからね。 Fukuhara: なるほどぉ！ Miyokawa: あはは、そうなんすか Kodaka: 初めて言うかもコレ。 一同: (笑) Kodaka: カマサキはほら、蒲田と川崎でカマサキ。 Miyokawa: あぁ〜。 Fukuhara: あぁ〜初めて聞いたかも。 (中略) Miyokawa: 結構その特色によって居る人だったりとか、お店の構えとかも全然違う感じですよね。 Kodaka: そうですね、あのー、カマサキは、ほんと蒲田とか川崎にいそうな…ガラの悪い… 一同: (笑) Kodaka: ギンマはやっぱ銀座・青山にいそうなちょっと、瀟洒な感じの人たちで。 Fukuhara: ビシッとした方達が多い印象がありますね Kodaka: で、マルノモンとかだとビジネス街なんで、ちょっとスーツ姿が多い。 Fukuhara: あ〜はいはいはい。 Kodaka: って感じで、まぁエリアごとに全然違うんで深みが出るというか。この人たちはどう棲み分けてるんだろうとか、考えながら街を歩いてると色々考えが浮かんでくるというか。イマジネーションが湧いてくると思います。 Fukuhara: 街の設備とかもね、結構違ってきますもんね。 Kodaka: そうですね、真ん中にあるのは、ここ雨が降り続いてる街なんで、木とかが腐ってしまうんで、ああいうケースで囲って紫外線を当てることで木を飾ってるみたいな、ギンマだからこそできるお金のかかったオブジェというか、自然鑑賞みたいな、という設備だったり、プロップも結構色々街の中に転がってるんで、ちょっと注目してほしいなって感じですね。

[fightingalgth8rs]

Hear ye, Hear ye!

I am absolutely chuffed to see such an enthusiastic response to the Detective AU proposition. I've already started writing it before I get round to publishing anything there are somethings I wanna get in the clear and some things I wanna ask you guys.

So first, Disclaimers and Announcements:

This is purely a piece of fiction. Any resemblance to real living people dead or alive is a coincidence.

This is hardly a 'fanfiction'. It's an original piece of fiction (neither part of any general 'fandom' nor deriving from any previously established piece of work). The characters are 'casted' as real people as one would do for a film or a TV series one is writing

The story will be broken down into a bunch of separate but inevitably interconnected mysteries and adventures. Maybe I'll end of making it like those "new episode new adventure" thingies but it's too early to say anything!

It's going to get dark so trigger warning for those who like rabbits and rainbows and sunflowers....

Lesbians. Lots and lots of lesbians so don't @ me

I want G's character to be dark and powerful. I know we want a 'girl trying her best to succeed' but we live in a patriarchal society where there's way too many girls trying so so hard and not enough girls who are commanding, dominant, dark and seriously sexily fucked up (in a dark way). [I'm saying dark too much have I turned into batman?!]

Non-badass male characters. I'm talking wet, sopping, physically weak and emotionally vulnerable. They need the gals to save them. (Yes I'm pushing some strong feminist agenda here)

It won't be sanitized. There might be stuff which might be a tad bit controversial (like cannibalism) but like I said 'enter if you dare'

Yes there will be a lot of pining and some really beautiful heart warming romantic shizz.

Now for the stuff I wann ask you guys:

where do ya'all want me to publish it. AO3 or here on Tumblr?

Public call for ideas: Interesting names for the title!

If you want to request an adventure or a ship in the story just let me know!

If this is successful then I will write more. Let me if you're up for that

What kind of length do you guys want it to be. I mean is it okay if I write a long, novel-like, full-fledged thing.

🌞Meena. x

@do-angels-dream-of-starry-seas @dtmsrpfcringe @sakuranova07 @reloha I need your feedback and ideas!

[ranticore]

I saw the zeta post and I adored the concept and it left me with a million questions. If the zetas lack tongues are they incapable of speech? the post also mentioned that a kattakani's bodies don't comunicate with each other much, is that part of the reason why? Do they have some kind of sign language? Also I 've realized that the company that was settling Siren with all these GMO's was wildly unethical at best (love sticking a guy in a dream and then making him turn into a whale) -but what the hell was even the reasoning behind trying to make a sentient sapient human derived creature incapable of community empathy or solidarity? Was there a running office game of 'who can think up the experiment that crosses the most moral lines'?

Hiii

zeta had to re-evolve speech all on their own because it wasn't just a lack of tongues holding them back but also a lack of certain language centres in the brain - they could understand speech but struggled to produce it. they use sign language now due to a lack of tongues (it's why they wear hand-guards, their hands are very important to their social functioning so they get protected well). but the reason the kattakati bodies don't talk much is the same reason why most people don't talk to themselves anyway (some do ofc it's impossible to make really sweeping statements about a whole population); they tend to turn their communication outwards to other people than keep it internal.

Honestly there was an effort in the company's HQ to think up the worst stuff they could do and still turn a profit because they found Siren a perfect place to experiment without any oversight so if they were going to need to do something horrible in the future, they might as well test it out here. The dream thing is just an example of corporate penny-pinching - sure they could commission a bespoke dream for Ishmael and the beta phocids that matched their future lives a bit more, but that costs a lot of money and they really just needed the bare minimum, why not just use one of the pre-made dreams. It's not like they'd remember the dreams anyway. They were not interested in the minds of their first three design iterations (or the harpies), only their bodies. Even though they had a massive budget and were seeking huge profits they still did everything as cheaply as they could get away with; the pilots who surveyed the planet even had to bring their own equipment from home because it was barely provided.

As for the zeta and why they were made like that, well, it's basically just preemptive union-busting on a genetic level. Workers who only follow orders but never talk amongst themselves, never show curiosity towards their neighbours. A hyper-atomised taskforce.

[random-kazakh-stuff]

Okay so one of the symbols of modern Kazakhstan's independence is Altyn Adam - Golden Man*(as in person).

Altyn adam refers to an artefact that was found 1970 in Issyk kurgan(burial)*.

It looks like this(id in the end of the post and in alt):

It is actually quite interesting how the artefact was found.

In 1968 the town Issyk became a town and wanted to develop. However, they needed experts to first check that there are no historical sites, which is what they did. For all of 1969 they were carefully uncovering he kurgan, and in 1970 they finally opened it.

It was empty. The place had signs that it has been robbed several times before.

One archeologist, Bekmuhanbet Nurmuhanbetov*, decided to check some 30-40 meters away, and found a side-burial which was left untouched since 6-5th century BC.

They found so many artefacts that listing them all here would be quite difficult.

What I would like to mention though is who was buried here:

Gender is unknown*, but the age is around late teens(16-18)

The person that was buried here was most likely to be a child of some kind of tribe leader, because their burial is smaller than the main one.

About the tribe! The burial probably belonged to Saka tribes. Saka people might relate to Scythians(they are probably part of the same cultural group?)* *. Anyways this particular kurgan was made by Tigraxauda people. Their name derives from persian and means. Pointy hats........

The golden armor is probably more ritualistic(haven't seen it in direct text sorry) than anything because the golden pieces of armor are wood covered in golden leaf. The helmet is made from golden plates though.

There are actually some interesting thing that are present on the helmet. By that I mean the arrows, which are said to symbolise 4 parts of the world. There are also multiple animals* on it. As a whole the costume consists of 4000 golden pieces.

And finally, Why is it so important?

Well to answer this question, you should know USSR's relationship with history and how is was teached in Kazakhstan specifically: mainly, world history through the lense of revolution and how Kazakhstan just sorta became part of USSR after it was Russian Empire's colony*. Nothing before that as people that lived on this land.

Which led to a very hard situation after the independency was gained because well. The majority of people were Kazakhs, but a lot of culture and identity was lost. And part of it was history.

So an artefact this old brings a sense of legitimacy. It also doesn't hurt that it's pretty.

ID and notes under cut

[ID: Armor on a mannequin in a museum setting standing above camera. The mannequin is wearing long-sleeved jacket which is a mix of red fabric and triangular golden pieces. The same pattern is on its boots. The pants are made from a red fabric. It is wearing a very large conical headpiece almost as tall as its chest(40cm). It is very pointy. The headpiece has 4 golden arrows and some animal ornaments on it. The figure has a bow and and an arrow in its hands, and a sheath for sword and another weapon on its belt. It is also wearing a red cape just reaching its thighs. ]

* Actually there are several artefacts like this! Around 6 or so which were found in different regions at different time. All of them are called golden men, just the place that varies. This one is Issyk's Golden Man. Some of them are actually made from solid gold and not gold leaf which I find fascinating.

* Ok so kurgan is used interchangeably here with burial. And in a way kurgan is a burial. It is also in a way like a pyramid? There are things left for the dead so they can carry them to the afterlife, but the kurgan itself is built a bit in and above ground. The rooms are made from logs, and then covered with dirt to create mounds. I also heard that a herd of horses would run it over a bunch of times to set the earth.

*Full name Bekmuhanbet Nurmuhanbetov Nurmuhanbetovich. He eventually organized a museum for the kurgans he found. He died in 2016, at the age of 81, and for some reason he has "Bekem-aĝa"(aĝa means older brother, uncle just an older friendly male figure) as his pseudonym on his Wiki.

*Actually Saka seem to had been pretty great about equality. There is also a very cool story about their female chief Tomiris.

*Historical records about nomadic people come exclusively from settled ones. Because a lot of stuff they would probably write on(despite the claims about lack of writing system) would't have survived because you know. Nomads.

*Haven't mentioned it in the post but sometimes Saka people are called ancestors of Kazakh people and uhhhh. They are probably more related to modern Europeans than to us. They still had similar lifestyle and lived on this land though. And they were more mixed than anything because you know, race is bullshit.

* Oh also fun fact one of the animals is a tulpar which is a horse with wings. The same mythical animal is present on Kazakhstan's official coat of arms.

*should I keep making these notes? because I feel they might take away from the flow of the text, and some details are simply not that important or I cannot convey them properly. so. what do you think?

[dailyrothko]

Curious since you posted the photos from the exhibit, is there one piece of his that changed how you felt about it from seeing only online to seeing in person? For me it was Jackson Pollok, didn't care for him much until I saw a piece in Boston.

Thanks,

If you're speaking of Rothko ,I never saw them online first, I had seen some in books, but I grew up near museums and I was lucky in that regard. I saw a couple in person early in my life, so the thing everyone complains about to me "How dare you put these online, no one can appreciate..." was never lost on me, I knew the scale and so forth.

With other artists that has happened to me. And I do feel that photographing Rothko is next to impossible for some reason. I think there's a softness to it that makes it light but also his paintings are impactful. Some people might look at them an assume they were the equivalent of background music, but they are more assertive while maintaining a kind of fading endless quality.

They are not all the same, of course, but in that recent visit I would say it's always surprising that the minute you out a camera on it, it doesn't quite get it.

If you've heard a lot of live music, you might derive a similar impression from certain things. I'm not a big opera fan but I heard John Vickers sing Peter Grimes when I was basically a kid. And the sound of this operatic baritone unamplified in the room had an interaction, like you could never get a microphone on it that would do it justice.

I've witnessed this throughout my life. Some things can't be filmed or recorded or photographed, there's some arcane part of it that can't be documented. I know it's frustrating for people who are trying to as they may feel deficient in their skills, but those things are fleeting and glorious. You just have to be around for them.

[mana-jjk]

finally someone who actually understands inuokko and doesn't mischaracterize as an alpha sigma male and Toge as an uwu boy! bestie you don't know how happy I am that you came up on my fyp.

omg hi anon !! ��🫶

i love analyzing characters way before any shipping, i could actually read nothing but found family fics because i just feel like they always catch the perfect dynamic. with yuuta and toge specifically, i do feel like you can appreciate aspects of how their dynamic is on an appearance level or how they fit certain popular tropes, but i don’t think it’s the driving force behind what makes them so good together.

i do acknowledge that if we default to the stereotypical gay men tropes without tangible reason, it’s more indicative of getting used to knowing how to write LGBT+ relationships and tending to default to what we might be used to in straight relationships. i say that without any offense intended, it’s just a part of the writing process. especially with toge as a character, who has so much of his characterization sprinkled outside of the manga and anime. a lot of his backstory and characteristics are derived from the fun facts, light novel, and now even the unreleased game has given us so much more content. but i also think that’s why he’s so popular, there’s so much freedom in exploring him, especially if you haven’t discovered the existing content. taking that with yuuta who is honestly a fan favorite of the chad dude straight bros and gets a little too much ‘alpha male’ treatment from them, it can be a little confusing. (it kills me a little to see some one say he’s an alpha male with a bad attitude and smoking guns when manga panels will literally have him looking like this (・・?) 😭)

i do have preferences in how both yuuta and toge are portrayed, but that’s just because i care about them so much as individual characters.

for me, toge is soft and kind, but he was also born as a weapon and has spent his life sacrificing himself over and over. you can still have that softness and kindness, even more so when experiencing certain things, but there’s also a degree of hardening from trauma. i do characterize him to be less overtly an instigator lol, but that’s personal preference in how i see him combined with canon material. i find a lot of his trolling to be slipped in and more of a double take than full on gremlin, but that’s less mischaracterization and more preference. i find his relationship with living and death so, so interesting, especially in how he tries to shield the first-years and yuuta from having any kind of blood on their hands. it implicates him to have done that very thing, and he spends his life silencing himself because of it. i do believe his language barrier is almost a relief, because it acts almost as a self-imposed wall. but despite that wall, he still reaches out because while he himself is okay being alone, the thought of someone like yuuta, someone he sees as exactly like him, suffering by himself is painful to him.

for yuuta, i am a big advocate for the continued acknowledgment of his anxiety, depression, and low key craziness. he had a normal childhood, but that somehow makes the transition to everything with rika so much worse. because he had that normalcy and it was shattered completely. he’s hurt, maimed, and killed people both unintentionally and intentionally. but he sees it as necessary in protecting the people he cares about the most. in a lot of ways, i think his dubious morality and how far he’s willing to go is an expression of his love. for example, killing getou in his eyes is the ultimate act of service to gojo, so he himself would not have to kill him. his character is such a juxtaposition compared to everyone we’ve been introduced to. here you have these child soldiers, ready and willing to sacrifice themselves, where death and suffering is more feasible than ever living their life to entirely. then they give us yuuta, who wants to live so badly in happiness that he’s willing to inflict and do everything for and against their society. it’s almost an unhealthy relationship to a degree, but it’s the only kind of relationship any of them know how to have.

together they work so well, because like i’ve said before, they defy each other’s expectations in what they ever believed they could have or deserve. despite their rough edges, the blood on their hands, the years they’ve lost to fighting battles they never started, they treat each other so gently. as if they are the better half, yet simultaneously knowing exactly how much they have done. yuuta who sees violence almost as a love letter, who absorbs toge’s curse as if it’s something to admire and adore. toge who sees himself as unforgivable in his crimes, who self-enforces isolation and barriers yet took a step out just to comfort yuuta from a mild spell of anxiety, because he couldn’t stand to see him suffer even in a minor degree.

i have so many feelings about them so i’m so glad that they come across the way i want them to !! i love all content, and i’m always willing to share my thoughts, but ty so much for the validation bestie, i’m sure i’m eating up your content as well !! 🥺

[radical-community-care]

How would you describe the middle class and how would you identify someone belonging to that demographic liek what are some tell tale signs besides being pretty and white with nice teeth and patagonia jackets and $7 chai lattes?

I might not be the best at defining the middle class, but for the purposes of this blog, this is roughly what I mean:

middle class is a loose group of people who don't necessarily think of themselves as having much in common with each other, plus they like to either deny their privilege and/or aspire to higher status, depending on what benefits them most in each situation.

they are of course first and foremost an economic class, but that doesn't mean that they all have a specific amount of money, possessions (like houses or cars (and definitely not superficial stuff like brands and coffees)) or income. there is some sandwich discourse here where the more factors are met, the more likely someone is considered to be middle class and act like it and be treated like it and function like it in the broader systems of power, hierarchies and oppression. Just like two slices of white bread with pb and j are more likely to be considered a sandwich than a burrito.

middle class, as the name implies, is somewhere between lower/working class and upper/ruling class. often they see themselves as "the backbone of society", as the norm/normal, as the "everyday person". they also derive quite a lot of entitlement from this view.

typical "ingredients" of the middle class sandwich are: being an employee, middle management, small/medium business owner, doing desk/office jobs that still make enough money to not have to worry where food and shelter will come from. being suitably educated and knowing how to talk, dress, behave "politely", expecting it from others.

you can see, there are lots of exceptions and edge cases already. middle class is also a very wide range, from people who do struggle financially or are actually poor for a while, to people who are rich and go to elite schools but still aren't ruling class.

and of course there are other axes of marginalisation or privilege. so, no, not all middle class people are white and the assumption that BIPOC can't be middle class is racist. that's why I often specify "white middle class" when talking about that particular (racist) mindest that we white middle class (or ex middle class) ppl have as part of our background noise. being marginalised in some way or in several ways does not mean someone's middle class privilege is irrelevant.

having a particular political opinion, like being anticapitalist or anarchist, also doesn't erase middle class privilege.

I do want to talk about middle class culture though. I feel like that's often overlooked while at the same time being at the root of a lot of problems. it starts with a mindset that puts following rules and often unspoken rules, especially rules about social hierarchies, above pretty much everything. to a truly ridiculous and illogical degree.

it's a particular set of values, that comes through in how they talk and act and in pretty much everything they do, especially in how normalised and entrenched discrimination is. discrimination really is a core part of it.

middle class culture is berating a two or three year old for asking for food when they're hungry because they didn't say "please and thank you".

it is dismissing a Black person's right to live in peace and free from attacks, because they got angry or were using "bad" (ie Black) language when under attack.

it is getting offended at people wanting to be seen as and connect to you as a living human being instead of as the subservient kind of being their lower status marks them as.

it is holding form over substance. like when it is acceptable to say the most vile racist or otherwise inhumane shit in polite language and a calm tone but absolutely scandalous to argue back against that in "improper" ways.

it is denying someone basic human decency, looking down on them and mistreating them (usually in superficially nonviolent ways or by having someone else do the physical violence like cops) and subconsciously seeing them as less than human, or not seeing them at all, acting like they don't exist, for being lower on the social hierarchy.

this is very context dependent. it hits other middle class people in some contexts, often hits working class people and lumps entire groups of people together as below the threshold of consideration. those outside of society or below working class, sometimes called the lumpen proletariat (including sans papiers, beggars, sex workers, homeless ppl, drug dealers and certain users, thieves and others doing illegalised work or coping strategies or activism (unless it's white collar crime)).

it is having immense double standards without a shred of self awareness.

it is practically worshipping hypocrisy and insincerity. that's what all the double standards and respectability bullshit boils down to. you can't mean what you say and can't say what you mean, that would be rude and uncultured, childish, threatening, embarrassing, confusing, stupid, uncivilised etc etc etc.

honesty is, in effect, a hindrance to being heard, accepted, supported our even allowed to exist in that culture.

just imagine going up to your middle manager and showing them what you really think and feel. or teacher. or your bigoted or just plain annoying relatives. or anyone middle class when you are trying to be accepted by them or are even dependent on them.

and by showing how you think and feel, I don't just mean talk calmly. that can already be dangerous. but expressing feelings includes things like crying, shouting, having trouble speaking up, being choked up, struggling for words, rambling, laughing shrilly or raucously, stimming, putting on a hood and earphones, running and jumping and fidgeting, sitting down on the pavement, dissociating, refusing to talk, refusing to listen, refusing to shut up, demanding answers, refusing to apologise when you don't think you should have to, demanding action.

demanding action, or just acting for yourself, is I guess the main thing that all this hypocrisy is meant to stop.

you're not meant to change the status quo. you're not meant to just do what's right and reasonable and just and necessary. because that would dismantle class. it would dismantle injustice and inequality. it would mean actually redistributing wealth and things and houses and land back to those it belongs to (actually belongs to, NOT legally!) or who actually need it. it would mean holding white collar monsters accountable.

it would mean protecting Black and all BIPOC people and disabled and crazy and queer people and women and children and fat people and all other oppressed people from harm, including economic exploitation, being unhoused, displaced, locked up, starved and denied their needs. or being molded, pressured, manipulated, forced into narrow acceptable boxes of how to be and how to look and act.

I could go on, but this is already long. I think one thing that I almost forgot as a now lumpen person who was never close to the upper class is the relation middle class has to the upper classes. there is envy but also mockery and disgust. the essence of middle class is to be subservient to the upper classes and being simultaneously drawn to them, wanting to be them or like them, but also knowing one's place and rejecting the idea of being like them.

we're not decadent and frivolous like them rich people! we hate billionaires! but we also love celebrities and in some places literal nobles and monarchs.

to your last point, no, I would not try to identify someone as belonging to the middle class or look for tell tale signs. what would be the point of that?

it's a CLASS. which means it's not about individuals having or buying certan things.

I don't judge people based on stuff they have little control over or on irrelevant things. I judge people based on the impact their actions and words have in context. and yeah sometimes I get super frustrated with middle class bullshit!!!

not because of white teeth or expensive beverages, but because of patterns of harm, discrimination and oppression that middle class people are part of and further and do and support to exist into the future (perpetuate).

[appleblocks]

My good friend Fantom made me realize that like,,, yall probably have no idea what is going on in my au at all

And I apologize for that! I get so involved in my own mind that I forget to actually make informational posts

So below I'm writing some info about my au and the characters in them!! :D Focusing on the 'main cast' which are the protags of my fic Fresh Life!

and also I will touch upon the recent shiping ive been doing of the characters

As for my other au, it kinda stems from that first one, but it is a Next Generation AU. I'm currently writing a fic for it, and the premise of the au as a whole is quite simple: the (mostly) cannonical kids of the hermits and lifers grown up and having their own adventures! <3 I'm a sucker for Next Gen aus, and this adoration started back in my MLP days lmao The au follows Hermes (Empires 2), Tiny Tom (Empires 2), Grumbot (HC 7), Jrumbot (HC7), and Jeremy Jr. (SOS smp) in their lives as young adults, exploring their friendships and their familial relationships, and my fic Fresh Life (name derived from the term Fresh Meat) follows them experiencing their first Life Series together, with the return of the Boogeyman and a new Canary :3 I'm currently writing Chapter 1 and I'm writing it in 'Sessions', so each chapter will be the span of 1 mc session, roughly. I have multiple tags for this but the main ones are #next gen au and #project fresh life!

Description from a previous ask ^^^

This au and fic (and future Empires based fic) follows the many fictional kids of the lifers, hermits, and emperors of the MCYT sphere I watch and fin entertaining, but I've adapted them so much to what I wanted that they very much like ocs to me ;w; but it feels weird to make them fully ocs because of how connected to the original world and characters they are in my mind and it makes me really sad to let go of all that to make them ocs of some kind.

I didn't inicially intend to ship any of them, cause I thought people would think I'm weird, and some probably do think that. But I'm doing it in the sense of character exploration, and imagining how they would act and feel in deeper connections and relationships (non romantic term)

Hermes and Grumbot to me are genuinely good friends, even best friends. Of course Hermes and Tom also are best friends, but that stems from the fact that they're siblings through Joel.

Hermes and Grumbot, to me, have a lot more possibility for a deeper connection than Jrumbot and Tom, because honestly Jrumbot and Tom know each other more because their brothers are friends than anything else, and so I started gravitating towards Hermes and Grumbot's friendship and relationship a lot more.

They are all friends and hang out whenever, along with the other characters that I haven't posted much about yet like Hillary, Jonn, Mandy Mane, etc. (but I will post about those more eventually)

They all care very much about each other, but to me Grumbot and Hermes in this AU are a lot closer than others. Hermes doesn't expect anything from Grumbot in the way that others might, so Grumbot is able to feel a lot less stress and relax a lot more around him. ( <- this is derived from the fact he was made with a purpose and then stored away when his efforts failed ) And Grumbot is very protective, in his own way, even if he's mean and murdery in the Life Series context he could and would drop everything to protect Hermes and the people he cares about.

I'm mostly just defending my character exploration now but yeah TwT it's late and idk what to do but I wanted to maybe clear some things up and provide some more insight into things

Also, for those that remember me saying Grumbot is aroace, that still applies!!!! I'm very much putting my own experience of aroaceness onto him and his deeper connection with Hermes does not negate that! I'm in a relationship too rn and I still identify as aroace, it's a spectrum, so i hope thats okay ;w;

[utilitycaster]

I know you tend to know a lot of the CR lore and I feel like I've missed something. I've seen a lot of people in the chat of the last episode talking about how the gods of Exandria need prayer and their followers to live and that they're just using their followers and I'm a bit confused because in the history of Exandria video the gods already had their powers when they came to Exandria.

Yeah I think it's been kept very ambiguous in canon and people have extrapolated or overlaid ideas of deities from other works or traditions.

The biggest canon source I think we have on the relationship of deities to their followers' worship is that after Vecna's ascension, Ioun says that he will need more worshippers to "disseminate his power and claim his domains". However, even that is pretty ambiguous, since Vecna is a new deity who was born mortal - essentially, an evil counterpart to the Raven Queen. It's unclear if this is only true of Vecna (and any hypothetical new god) or only true for something like the expansion of one's domains. Otherwise, I at least think - I could be wrong - that the cast has sometimes acted as though the gods rely on the worship of their followers, but Matt is usually noncommittal or "kind of, but it's complicated" in response.

My understanding, and this does involve some personal interpretation, is that the gods are not like Tinkerbell. They do not need you to clap if you believe in them lest they die. They exist, and have powers, regardless of whether they are worshiped. A good case in point is that between the Schism and the start of the Calamity, the Betrayers were completely sealed away with no access to followers, and survived and rapidly began fucking with the world as soon as they were unleashed. This is further backed up with the fact that the gods have frequently and repeatedly ceded ground to mortals - they granted them arcane magic, and when mortals used this to begin to distance themselves from the gods, the gods permitted it. This is also backed up by Sarenrae remaining perfectly capable of full power despite her worship having been vastly diminished post-Calamity until Pike began signficantly reviving her worship.

However, I think it is fair to say that the gods are drastically limited in what they can do on the Material Plane while they themselves are not on the Material Plane. They primarily need to work through their followers. They can send visions and dreams, and grant powers, but they can't simply step in and fix everything with a snap of their fingers. And so, having more followers and worshipers on the material plane means that their capacity to do enact meaningful change in the world is increased.

For what it's worth I've also, as a person with complex feelings about the existence of god but who through reflection and adjustment that is, frankly, ongoing (which I think is normal and appropriate) does have a religious practice, never found any logic in the idea that the gods are simply using their followers. Like, I might be lighting candles on Friday night to the benefit of literally no one, and anything I feel from it is, effectively, a placebo, or something entirely human-made. So why would it be different if some entity who has never spoken to me nor made their existence definitively clear gains power from it? Now consider the world in which I am a cleric. In that case, I am clearly getting something from this.

In short, the relationship between mortals in Exandria and the gods, or at least the Prime Deities, has always to me seemed symbiotic. I think that the idea people get nothing from the act of worship in and of itself is a very limited and small-minded one in the first place, and so while I reject the idea that the gods are reliant on people for sustenance - though they are reliant for a certain degree of agency within the world - the premise that the gods are using their followers with the followers deriving nothing from it is already false and the entire argument dissolves.

[tarlossource]

9-1-1: Lone Star's Rafael Silva on the 'Unpredictable' Carlos-T.K. Wedding and Stealing Pudding

Detective Washington raises the question about Carlos' future as a police officer and when he might be ready to make the transition to becoming a detective. How would you personally feel about Carlos taking that next step, and do you think he has more room to grow professionally before he takes that step? 

Rafael L. Silva: I think he has more to grow up personally, quite honestly. The professional and personal lives are not separate from each other [for him]. He would not be giving up the field work, but he would just not necessarily be in the action as often as he is as a police officer. So what does that mean for Carlos? Why is he a police officer in the first place? Why is he in the place where he's at? So for us to push Carlos into this realm of detective work, something is gonna have to happen [first]. We have to push him into that before he's "ready," but who knows what'll happen? [Laughs.]

This episode gave you an opportunity to work with Sierra McClain in more one-on-one scenes, much like you did in the mini-crossover with the original 9-1-1 last season. What do you enjoy most about bringing parts of your real-life friendship with Sierra to your characters?

Silva: Well, I think the chemistry is immediately there. However, Carlos and Grace are not necessarily as close. So how do we genuinely play that connection of not being the closest? And yet Rafael and Sierra coming together and doing a scene together, we just shoot the s---, and it's a lot of fun. [Laughs.] I make fun of her a lot and she makes fun of me a lot, so I think the chemistry is already down, but I think what saves this relationship in a rather genuine way, where the closeness of Rafael and Sierra don't get in the way of the relationship between Grace and Carlos, is their professionalism. They both have this sense of intuition that is unshakable and undeniable. And I think when those two lock in, in terms of their professionalism, their job, their calling, I think we honestly see a sort of magic happen [on screen].

Having explored Carlos' relationships with his parents in the last few seasons, how would you say your understanding of the way they parented him influenced the way he is now?

Silva: Getting to work with Roxy and Benito more often, and then getting to know them [personally], assisted in creating this firmer bond that Carlos has with Gabriel and Andrea. In last week's episode, Gabriel was way more involved in the case than Carlos was, and I think we can deduce a sense of self from Carlos just by watching Gabriel and how he works and who he is. There was a specific scene at the end of the episode where Gabriel kind of shoved Owen off, like, "Do not come in my way. If we're gonna be family, this is how it's gonna be done." And I think you can kind of derive how that household was for Carlos, especially when it comes to their job. We can kind of play off of each other, like Andrea having that kind of Godfather moment sitting at the table with both Carlos and T.K.

You have really strong characters in Carlos' life, and I think personally, a selfish little obsession that Carlos might have is, "I need to honor the people that raised me. I need to honor my culture. I need to honor who I am and what I represent. I also need to come in with presence." Because if you watch Gabriel and Andrea, or Roxy and Benito, they definitely have a presence. So at the end of the day, Carlos is just trying to do his best by the people who raised him and also trying to listen to his heart and how that also comes into effect with the world that he was raised in, the world that he's in right now, and the world that he wants to see for himself.

A few episodes ago, we learned that Carlos has sisters whom we have yet to meet, and his sisters also have children, so Carlos has some nieces or nephews running around somewhere. Do you know if Carlos is the eldest, middle, or youngest child? And will we see them before the end of the season?

Silva: We're definitely gonna see them, [but] it is not gonna be in the way that you expect. And Carlos is the baby! He's the baby boy of the family. [Laughs.]

That seems accurate for Carlos.

Silva: Right? Everyone says that! I don't know why.

Throughout the season, Carlos and T.K. have been forced to have many adult conversations. It's one thing to date someone, but it's another thing to take that next step with somebody—to build a life together, to share your secrets, to discuss potentially having children. What have you enjoyed most about playing out some of the more difficult conversations that fans have also been having?

Silva: That's a great question. When you're introducing these characters in Season 1, people don't know them, so it's like, "Why should I, as an audience member, give a s--- about them?" I think what captivates people's hearts immediately is the fact that 1) they're gay and 2) they're extremely attracted to each other. We have these two beautiful characters coming together, so right off the bat, we want to cheer for them, we want to find out what happens. Why is this not working out? Why does one want this more than the other? How do we come together, but also, how do we come apart? It's almost like we're earning this relationship.

They've had difficult conversations, like Carlos not understanding why T.K. needs a sponsor and also T.K. understanding commitment and what that means, like, "Why does this man want me so badly? Do I deserve this?" And then going back to [having] children, Carlos is like [puts hands up in self-defense], "No, thank you." And that takes everyone a little bit by surprise, because if you think about commitment and someone who had difficulty with it, it was T.K.

So no matter where we go, I think we need to allow these characters to grow up a little bit, which requires them to make mistakes, to do some things that are, to the audience, unexpected. And for me, that's the most fun. Just like in theater, you can't allow the audience to be ahead of the play, and this is the same thing. … [The writers] are constantly throwing us off, throwing you off as an audience member, and I think that's where we get to learn about these characters. That's where we learn about their relationships. And honestly, that's how you create good television to last four seasons in an era where things are getting shut down after one or two seasons. You gotta get creative.

How does Carlos's relationship with Gabriel inform what he thinks he would be like as a father?

Silva: Through no fault of his own, Carlos is just deducing his own experience with his father and trying to mirror that on to possibly a future child. And in Carlos' defense, he doesn't want to be inept as a parent. He wants to give his all, and he wants to feel confident about it, but I think there have been words and situations that have gone unsaid and undone in Carlos' life with his father that don't yet allow Carlos to feel confident [when he thinks] of children.

So the way that I digest that is, like, "Listen, Carlos is still a kid." Carlos feels a little bit claustrophobic. It's like, "No, no, no. I have so much growing to do. What do you mean kids?! I feel like I have a kid at home right now, with T.K.! So it's kind of unfair for you to ask me to outgrow the moment that I'm in right now." It also comes from a sense of insecurity because Carlos looks at T.K. and his relationship with Owen, and it's all dandy and beautiful, and I feel like Carlos has this yearning to have that sort of relationship, but he knows it will never be that sort of relationship. 

But I think Carlos also might have an image of Gabriel that might not necessarily be fully true. … I think there was some time [when] Gabriel wasn't necessarily present. Any kid who had an absent parent for an amount of time can possibly attest to this — because I did — you have to create images and the sense of self for that person, who is no longer there, within yourself. So how do you almost parent yourself? In episode 4, Gabriel said, "My son is extremely resourceful. He's independent." How does one become extremely resourceful? How does someone become independent? Perhaps because there was a lack of guidance or a lack of a presence of another person. So I think that's the way that Carlos coped with a lack of presence from Gabriel. I think that also assists in Carlos feeling inadequate right now to have that conversation about having a child.

Since we didn't get a chance to chat about episode 4, in which Carlos was held hostage, I'd love to hear more about the experience of shooting that one. What was it like for you to shoot the fight sequence between Carlos and Darryl (Adam O'Byrne) that quickly transitions into T.K. having to save Carlos' life?

Silva: I do jiu-jitsu, I'm a black belt in taekwondo, I grew up as an athlete, so physicality for me is not alien. Our Emmy-nominated stunt coordinator for Lone Star, Buddy, and I worked together to create something realistic. I didn't know what the set was gonna look like, but I knew I wanted to do something that was gonna look good, [but also] honor Carlos' mental, emotional, and physical [state]. He had been sitting down and tied up, he had a head injury, he hadn't eaten — maybe a little nibble of a cookie — and hadn't drunk water at all.

I think Carlos is all adrenaline [in life-or-death situations]. He's not gonna f---ing stop. "It's either you or me, and guess what? I choose me." So what happens with adrenaline, especially in fights, is that you tense up, and everything is really fast. So when we were creating the fight, it was like, "I need to hit him somewhere, and then I need to 'sweep' him — which is a move in jiu-jitsu where you gain control of the situation — to take him down." We also don't have a history of Carlos being a professional fighter, so we needed to make Carlos a little bit amateurish.

So what happens is that Darryl punches me on the trachea, and I come in and sweep him. There is some friction back and forth, but Carlos comes in and finishes him off with [not only] a punch, but also an elbow. It was a lot of fun. It had to be detailed. We had to rehearse several times, but essentially what it came down to is it doesn't matter how hard Carlos tries to win, he was never gonna win, [because Darryl's mom] Trudy [played by Bonita Friedericy] was there with the morphine [to knock him out].

Because Carlos didn't win, we needed T.K. to come in and revive him. Ronen did a great job of exerting that energy of, "Holy s---, my fiancé, my future husband, is gonna die right in front of me. I cannot let this happen." I think one of the shots was my father was holding my neck, and I was just exhausted, and I was like, "Oh, this is my safe space with my fiancé, but also with my father. I'm safe now, and I can stop fighting."

A lot of fans also enjoyed the scene in which Paul (Brian Michael Smith) interrogates Carlos and members of the 126 about who ate his pudding in the last episode. (Spoiler alert: Carlos was the culprit!) How many takes did you have to do to get through that scene?

Silva: [Director and producer] Keith Tripler has worked on Lone Star since the beginning, so he knows how the show works and knew what he wanted. So that in itself was fast. But it's always a joy to be able to work with my castmates, [because] as a police officer, I don't get to have so much fun and play. They're already used to each other's humor, and I'm not. So whenever I come in and I'm getting to work with them, and it's a funny scene like that, I end up laughing my ass off every single take, and I end up breaking because I'm not used to it. [Laughs.] They're all stoic and serious, and I'm like, "How the fuck do you guys not find this funny?" But they do; they're just used to each other. We have some really comedic actors — Julian [Works], Brian, Briana [Baker], and when you put Natacha [Karam] in, it just kills it.

Looking ahead, the long-awaited Tarlos wedding will take place in the two-hour season finale.

Silva: [Showrunners] Tim [Minear] and Rashad [Raisani] really created a form of, "How do we make the predictable or the expected become unexpected and unpredictable?" Something is gonna happen where it's gonna absolutely throw everyone off. And it's gonna make everybody, especially the audience and Carlos, earn this wedding and the happiness and the joy this wedding can bring. It was a lot of fun to shoot the finale, but it was hard at times as well. So, anyway, tune in! [Laughs.]

[twisted-tech]

The Phantom Blot & Crowley’s Identity

Who is the Phantom Blot?

⚠️(Book 6, 7, & Glorious Masquerade spoiler warning)⚠️

Phantom Blot Similarities to Crowley

Overblots and Phantoms are closely related things in Twisted Wonderland, and based on the names, both are probably derived from the same Disney villain: the Phantom Blot. Given blot and phantoms are a major plot point, I wouldn’t be surprised if this Disney villain becomes an in-game character, maybe even a final boss? I want to point out the similarities the Blot has with Crowley to suggest they may be the same person.

The Phantom Blot was created in 1939 in Mickey Mouse Outwits the Phantom Blot. This is right after the shorts that inspired Ramshackle Dorm: Thru the Mirror (1936) and Lonesome Ghosts (1937). Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) was released near the same time. 

The timing may suggests that these things are related. I bring up Snow White because there’s lots of evidence to suggest that Crowley is based on the crow from Snow White (the school being themed on Snow White, his outfit being similar to Pomefiore’s uniform, the portraits in his office, etc.)

The Blot was first introduced in comics as a thief who only stole cameras of a “special type” and then destroyed them immediately. It was never said what was special about these cameras or why he destroyed them.

In the prologue, Crowley gives the Prefect the Ghost Camera, saying it’s “enchanted with a special kind of magic” to photograph both the body and soul of the subject. 

His appearance resembles ink, sometimes it even drips off of him. “In costume, the Phantom Blot wears dark clothes that make him resemble a living ink-blot, or a shadow, hence his name.” Since he is constantly disguised, his only defining features are his glowing eyes. 

Crowley is also always disguised, dresses darkly, and has glowing eyes.

The Blot’s abilities include- but are not limited to- disguise, identity theft, escapology, blackmail, bribing people with false promises, manipulation by using another’s greed/desire for revenge against them, high intelligence, and duping innocent people into acting as his unknowing agents.

Disguise/Identity Theft: Obviously Crowley is disguised with his mask, but he also proved he can change his form when he transformed into a ghost in the prologue. Though he claimed to use a transmutation potion to do it, we have nothing but his word to prove it. This is doubly suspicious since Azul has said that such potions are highly restricted and often illegal. Knowing this, it’s very strange that Crowley just happened to have a potion like that on him, and that he would waste it on a trivial battle with the Prefect and Grim. If he can pop a rare potion like it’s nothing, does that mean he has more? And why have them to begin with? What if he had it on him because he constantly uses them, and the Crowley we know isn’t his true form at all? Or, did he lie about the potion and he actually has an ability, item, or unique magic that changes his form?

The theory that he’s constantly transformed lends itself to many different “Crowley’s Identity” theories, and goes beyond what he looks like without the mask. I use it now to suggest he might be the Phantom Blot that’s taken a more humanoid form, but I also see compelling evidence in the “Malleus is Crowley” theory that this could work for too- but that’s for another post.

This also opens the possibility that he has been turning into other people/creatures and stealing their identities throughout the story. If so, it raises every interaction into suspicion. He could have easily spied on people or spread false information, who knows.

Escapology: I think this works into Crowley’s skill at avoiding his responsibilities and his dislike for the law. There’s less obvious evidence for this, but hear me out: in book 1, he escaped fighting Riddle in order to evacuate students; in book 5, you could argue he “escaped” dealing with Jamil’s overblot by leaving the school and not answering his phone; in book 6, he narrowly avoided losing his job when he was called to parliament. He has a knack for getting out of situations.

Blackmail/Manipulation: There’s too many examples to list them all, but to name a few: bribing Grim with tuna (and not paying up), bribing the Prefect with dorm repairs (only to not chip in at all and let the other students and the Shroud family pay for it), threatening to throw Grim off campus if he didn’t serve as a janitor, and deliberately withholding funding for food, dorm repairs, and a portal home from the Prefect to better exploit them and force them into doing tasks for him. He also only does this because he is aware of how completely reliant the Prefect is on him, having noted on their first meeting that the Prefect is “without a cent to their name” and doesn’t have any “ability to contact their guardian”. He straight up laughs after coming up with this plan so I think everyone already knows this.

Bribery: On top of “bribing” students to do things, he also accepts bribes. In Jamil’s overblot flashback, Crowley confessed to accepting a bribe from the Al-Asim family to accept Kalim into the school and make him a dormwarden. Interestingly, during this scene, Crowley’s tone of voice completely changed from it’s usual over-exaggerated one to a very serious tone. He also accepted a bribe from the Shroud family to allow Ortho to attend school as a student.

High Intelligence: The Blot is described as a master strategist. The trouble with this is that the game is not over, so I can’t really prove yet that Crowley does have some master plot in the works. He does seem to be hiding something though, which makes me think he probably has some plan going on.

Duping the Innocent: Once again, there isn’t really proof of this since the game is unfinished, but Crowley seems to know more than he’s letting on and has a tendency to manipulate other’s into doing things for him. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’s been using the Prefect or other students to carry out a more nefarious plan with them none the wiser.

Personality wise, “The Blot is very vain and his desire for money and power is only surpassed by his desire to immortalize his name in ‘the annals of crime.’" “He is very cunning and can come up with hundreds of different plans, from stealing all of the money in the world, to murdering Mickey Mouse.” 

Now I wouldn’t say Crowley has shown any murderous tendencies, but he fits the other traits to a T. One of his main personality traits is his desire for prestige and money, seen in how often he talks himself up and how he makes a point to tell people he’s the Headmage of a very famous school. He also hates being outdone by RSA.

The Blot isn’t just any villain-- he is the arch nemesis of Mickey Mouse (I didn’t even know he had one before now). He stands out from other comic villains by posing a true threat to Mickey’s life. “The best part (about Mickey Mouse Outwits the Phantom Blot) by far is the Phantom Blot himself. Menacing and truly dangerous in a way most comedy adventure villains aren’t allowed to be. He’s a real threat while still being humorous and entertaining”.

Crowley definitely has the potential to be hiding a more sinister side. He’s goofy, over the top, and generally sleazy with no proof of being truly evil. However, he sometimes let’s slip the mask, such as when telling Jamil that he had to accept Kalim as a housewarden and his voice lost all it’s previous joviality, or when he seemed to know something was coming just before the CHARON attacked the college.

The Blot’s relevance to Mickey also caught my eye considering the presence of Mickey in the game. Mickey has a history of fighting inky, magic monsters in not only tv shows but games as well. I don’t fully know what the connection between Mickey and Crowley could be, but there’s more to Ramshackle’s history and magic mirror that I bet Crowley isn’t saying.

Magic is an integral part of the Blot’s character: he despises anything related to magic and often tries to steal it from others and destroy it. In some variations, he himself is a “powerful evil sorcerer” and gives his ink to other villains to make them stronger. More recent depictions of The Blot solidify him as a powerful, evil sorcerer who battles Mickey, uses ink to give others extreme power, kidnaps people, attempts to take over the world, and tries to eliminate all magic.

Despising magic is more of Rollo’s thing, so I think they’ll go more the powerful, evil sorcerer route. Crowley has shown a consistant interest in blot, from his explanations of it to the Prefect and later revealing that he searched for the blot crystals after overblots only to never find any because Grim ate them.

Idia mentioned wanting to find a way to “recycle” blot and use it as an energy source, and that STYX was working to research that. It’s possible Crowley is working with STYX considering he implied he knew CHARON was arriving before they did, he let them take him without a struggle, and he was in a private meeting with the two leaders of STYX. 

If this is true, then it looks even more likely that he somehow plotted the overblots of the students to better study them. It may be he had good intentions, such as to help research a way to make blot safe. And I’d he did find a way, maybe he’ll start sharing blot with some other people.

Sage’s Island is also the ideal place to do such experiments since it’s remote, and if anything went wrong it wouldn’t hurt the mainland. The game makes it a point to show how hard it is to get on and off the island without the mirror during winter break and certain events.

With the kidnapping people point, this could be applied to how STYX kindnapped students, and you could argue that if Crowley is working with them, he kidnapped them by extension. But even before that, I argue that the Prefect is technically kidnapped as well. Crowley shows no desire to return them home. In fact, he does the opposite and encourages them to get used to the new world and forget about their homeland.

One old theory is that Crowley is constantly in a state of overblot himself, attributing to his mask and the gloves he never removes in order to hide the markings. It is also strange that the Dark Mirror has overblot markings, and that in the trailer, Crowley’s mage stone turns black at the end and his cloak falls into a pool of ink, suggesting he might have overblotted.

The Blot once told his daughter a reverse fairy tale story that portrayed himself as the hero and Mickey as the villain before telling her to dream of “happy endings.”

In general, this fits the theme of the game. The villains are heroes, and history seems to have been altered to portray the villains virtues over their immoral behaviors. The title of the game is Twisted Wonderland after all, so we know there’s something going on here.

Interestingly, though history was changed, it does not portray the heroes as villains. It more of an “everyone wins” situation where all get their happy endings.

Not to get back on the Malleus-is-Crowley theory, but this is also remarkably similar to what Malleus said before putting the students to sleep.

To close off on, the Phantom Blot seems like a really cool villain and I recommend checking out the wiki if you want something to do. Even if I’m completely wrong with the Crowley part, I do feel pretty confident saying that he was the inspiration for phantoms and overblots. Thanks for reading!

Sources

https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Phantom_Blot#Background

https://twisted-wonderland.fandom.com/wiki/Twisted_Wonderland_Wiki

https://twistedwonderland.miraheze.org/wiki/Twisted_Wonderland_Wiki

https://rachelbethhines.tumblr.com/post/174145090021/the-best-of-disney-comics-part-10