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tumblingxelian · 2 months

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Chloe & Heroism

Chloe Bourgeois as a hero early on is a premise that often evokes either questions, like "How" and "Why". Or expectations that she is either already on a path to self improvement, or will be forced onto within a short timeframe.

These are not bad questions and the former definitely are necessary to consider for a story. However the expectations I tend to feel a bit murkier and while I have no issue with how some authors handle this topic.

I want to outline why I think you could do a good "Hero Chloe" story before she gets character development, but first, house cleaning!

1: I have not watched and largely ignore everything post season 3, so don't bother bringing up Derision. Remember, season 1 Kim was afraid of spiders.

2: In canon. Chloe only revealed her ID publicly because her abusive mother she is obsessed with pleasing (who killed her the day before) chose a girl other than her to take to New York & then tore her to shreds in front of everyone.

With all that in mind let's examine where Chloe's values and understanding of the world comes from and how she perceives them!

1 - Media/Social Media

This would be a mixed bag, because on one hand they have Mighty Majesta comics that try to instill good values, but also shows built around lying to and humiliating people are evidently popular television and the internet seems similar in regards to pranking VS trying not to be terrible. So she's gonna get mixed signals at best.

2 - Her family & Circle

This is where 90% of the problems come from. Of the important adults in her life, her father, mother, Gabriel and Nathalie are all varying shades of corrupt, abusive, cruel and ruthless, while the lesser evils like Jean and Emilie are largely consigned to the role of enablers.

Worse still, even if we ignore the emotional abuse, neglect and other elements that led to her both having trauma and her trauma response manifesting in aggression. We still have issues like Andre, during the brief periods he bothered to parent, explicitly teaching Chloe that, Stealing, extortion and threats are all appropriate ways to succeed in life.

IE, she isn't compromising her morality when she does these things, she is very much doing what she is taught was right at least consciously. This isn't helped by a 24/7 Audrey impression as Audrey deems being in her vicinity as reason enough to hurt people unless she deems them useful.

Long story short, the values and people she was brought up around are all explicitly some shade of bad, or enabler, or outright teaching her to harm others.

3 - Societies & Class

However, we know from season 2 that Chloe is not entirely unaware that there are issues with this. Because while she spends much time boasting of how she's beloved and brilliant, when stripped of that and exposed to someone she trusts she is entirely willing to confess that she knows everyone hates her and that she feels she has no worth. She may not be able to articulate why or how this came about but she knows something is wrong.

Despite this, school is not the best place to figure this out, especially for someone who obviously struggles with social cues and the like. The teachers run the gamut from indifferent and unpleasant, to extremely gentle and accommodating, to simply not wanting any form of drama and usually caving to whoever makes the most noise and none of them have the authority to do much outside of class hours.

The class is not significantly better, because students like Kim and Alix can and do casually throw around snark or do pranks and at worst only get brief bursts of anger while Chloe's garner a more intense response. This is because her relationship with the class and motives are varying shades of different, but for someone with issues reading social cues, it's just going to seem like a confusing double standard.

We can also see all this demonstrated in her relationship with Adrien, as Chloe clearly takes the lead in their relationship in Origins and outlines her logic behind the pranks, but is then surprised when Adrien seems to turn against her. What's more, it seems Chloe is aware that Adrien is more gentle/naive than her given she tried to educate him on these matters & turns to him for comfort and protection at times, while seeing no inherent contradiction between her expectations for their relationship and how she treats others.

Adrien does not help matters with seeming indifference to how she treats staff.

Thus, while she knows 'something' is terribly wrong, actually being able to understand it and work through it is another matter.

4 - Chloe's Conclusion

So, what is the conclusion Chloe comes to in order to square all of these circles when she isn't just in full denial mode? The answer is quite simple and even demonstrated in the show itself, playing one's role.

IE, Chloe the mayor and style queen's daughter is different to Chloe the hotel owner's daughter and we see this in her being able to stamp down on her usual instincts and slap on a customer service role when Jagged Stone enters the hotel and guide her father into doing the same. VS how she conducts herself during a class election, IE explicitly threatening and extorting people, to how she conducts herself day by day with her Audrey impersonation.

A separate example and way she'd view this for others would be that Marinette the baker's daughter of course has to be nice and sweet and giving because that is how customer service roles work, while Marinette the aspiring fashion designer or would be class president is sneakier and will lay traps so people trying to steal from her are sabotaged. This isn't wrong, this is how she expects people to behave when in these circumstances and roles.

Final Conclusion

Which is why Chloe could easily play the role of a successful hero, because she would not be "Chloe Bourgeois, mayor's daughter, hotel heiress and Style Queen's daughter" as Queen Bee, she would just be Queen Bee, a superhero.

They have wonderfully defined roles that would be easy for her to pick up & follow through on: assure the public, save people from danger, protect allies, defeat monsters, all things Chloe was shown doing very well when chosen as a Miraculous Holder.

I think that eventually the contrast in how she is received as Queen Bee VS Chloe Bourgeois would start grinding on each other and bleeding through both sides of the mask.

But the infectious nature of empathy and a larger support network that don't have the worst impression of her would give Chloe the room she needs to explore and grow.

If she is too snippy as a hero, or shows a ruthless side, these won't be taken in the context of "Chloe that person I dislike" but "Queen Bee my ally" and can allow for more honest and even handed reactions that give her the necessary breathing room to grow and change.

So yeah, I think season 1 Chloe could have, under the right circumstances, done a great job as a hero be it Queen Bee or another hero even before any outside circumstances or internal changes might have forced her to chart a new course in life.

Provided the role of Chloe and the role of hero do not intersect and become one almost immediately, because in that case it gets a lot harder for her.

#chloe bourgeois #miraculous ladybug #Meta #Analysis #Text Post #My thoughts #No shade on anyone who does things differently #Queen Bee #Though it could be any means of being a hero or any Kwami #Miraculous Holder Chloe

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year

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Everything advertised on social media is overpriced junk

In “Behavioral Advertising and Consumer Welfare: An Empirical Investigation,” a trio of business researchers from Carnegie Mellon and Pamplin College investigate the difference between the goods purchased through highly targeted online ads and just plain web-searches, and conclude social media ads push overpriced junk:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4398428

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/08/late-stage-sea-monkeys/#jeremys-razors

Specifically, stuff that’s pushed to you via targeted ads costs an average of 10 percent more, and it significantly more likely to come from a vendor with a poor rating from the Better Business Bureau. This may seem trivial and obvious, but it’s got profound implications for media, commercial surveillance, and the future of the internet.

Writing in the New York Times, Julia Angwin — a legendary, muckraking data journalist — breaks down those implications. Angwin builds a case study around Jeremy’s Razors, a business that advertises itself as a “woke-free” shaving solution for manly men:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/06/opinion/online-advertising-privacy-data-surveillance-consumer-quality.html

Jeremy’s Razors spends a fucking fortune on ads. According to Facebook’s Ad Library, the company spent $800,000 on FB ads in March, targeting fathers of school-age kids who like Hershey’s, ultimate fighting, hunting or Johnny Cash:

https://pluralistic.net/jeremys-targeting

Anti-woke razors are an objectively, hilariously stupid idea, but that’s not the point here. The point is that Jeremy’s has to spend $800K/month to reach its customers, which means that it either has to accept $800K less in profits, or make it up by charging more and/or skimping on quality.

Targeted advertising is incredibly expensive, and incredibly lucrative — for the ad-tech platforms that sit between creative workers and media companies on one side, and audiences on the other. In order to target ads, ad-tech companies have to collect deep, nonconsensual dossiers on every internet user, full of personal, sensitive and potentially compromising information.

The switch to targeted ads was part of the enshittification cycle, whereby companies like Facebook and Google lured in end-users by offering high-quality services — Facebook showed you the things the people you asked to hear from posted, and Google returned the best search results it could find.

Eventually, those users became locked in. Once all our friends were on Facebook, we held each other hostage, each unable to leave because the others were there. Google used its access to the capital markets to snuff out any rival search companies, spending tens of billions every year to be the default on Apple devices, for example.

Once we were locked in, the tech giants made life worse for us in order to make life better for media companies and advertisers. Facebook violated its promise to be the privacy-centric alternative to Myspace, where our data would never be harvested; it switched on mass surveillance and created cheap, accurate ad-targeting:

https://lawcat.berkeley.edu/record/1128876?ln=en

Google fulfilled the prophecy in its founding technical document, the Pagerank paper: “advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers.” They, too, offered cheap, highly targeted ads:

http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html

Facebook and Google weren’t just kind to advertisers — they also gave media companies and creative workers a great deal, funneling vast quantities of traffic to both. Facebook did this by cramming media content into the feeds of people who hadn’t asked to see it, displacing the friends’ posts they had asked to see. Google did it by upranking media posts in search results.

Then we came to the final stage of the enshittification cycle: having hooked both end-users and business customers, Facebook and Google withdrew the surpluses from both groups and handed them to their own shareholders. Advertising costs went up. The share of ad income paid to media companies went down. Users got more ads in their feeds and search results.

Facebook and Google illegally colluded to rig the ad-market with a program called Jedi Blue that let the companies steal from both advertisers and media companies:

https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/11/google-meta-jedi-blue-eu-uk-antitrust-probes/

Apple blocked Facebook’s surveillance on its mobile devices, but increased its own surveillance of Iphone and Ipad users in order to target ads to them, even when those users explicitly opted out of spying:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

Today, we live in the enshittification end-times, red of tooth and claw, where media companies’ revenues are dwindling and advertisers’ costs are soaring, and the tech giants are raking in hundreds of billions, firing hundreds of thousands of workers, and pissing away tens of billions on stock buybacks:

https://doctorow.medium.com/mass-tech-worker-layoffs-and-the-soft-landing-1ddbb442e608

As Angwin points out, in the era before behavioral advertising, Jeremy’s might have bought an ad in Deer & Deer Hunting or another magazine that caters to he-man types who don’t want woke razors; the same is true for all products and publications. Before mass, non-consensual surveillance, ads were based on content and context, not on the reader’s prior behavior.

There’s no reason that ads today couldn’t return to that regime. Contextual ads operate without surveillance, using the same “real-time bidding” mechanism to place ads based on the content of the article and some basic parameters about the user (rough location based on IP address, time of day, device type):

https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/05/behavioral-v-contextual/#contextual-ads

Context ads perform about as well as behavioral ads — but they have a radically different power-structure. No media company will ever know as much about a given user as an ad-tech giant practicing dragnet surveillance and buying purchase, location and finance data from data-brokers. But no ad-tech giant knows as much about the context and content of an article as the media company that published it.

Context ads are, by definition, centered on the media company or creative worker whose work they appear alongside of. They are much harder for tech giants to enshittify, because enshittification requires lock-in and it’s hard to lock in a publication who knows better than anyone what they’re publishing and what it means.

We should ban surveillance advertising. Period. Companies should not be allowed to collect our data without our meaningful opt-in consent, and if that was the standard, there would be no data-collection:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/22/myob/#adtech-considered-harmful

Remember when Apple created an opt out button for tracking, more than 94 percent of users clicked it (the people who clicked “yes” to “can Facebook spy on you?” were either Facebook employees, or confused):

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/02/facebook-says-apple-ios-privacy-change-will-cost-10-billion-this-year.html

Ad-targeting enables a host of evils, like paid political disinformation. It also leads to more expensive, lower-quality goods. “A Raw Deal For Consumers,” Sumit Sharma’s new Consumer Reports paper, catalogs the many other costs imposed on Americans due to the lack of tech regulation:

https://advocacy.consumerreports.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/A-Raw-Deal-for-US-Consumers_March-2023.pdf

Sharma describes the benefits that Europeans will shortly enjoy thanks to the EU’s Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act, from lower prices to more privacy to more choice, from cloud gaming on mobile devices to competing app stores.

However, both the EU and the US — as well as Canada and Australia — have focused their news industry legislating on misguided “link taxes,” where tech giants are required to pay license fees to link to and excerpt the news. This is an approach grounded in the mistaken idea that tech giants are stealing media companies’ content — when really, tech giants are stealing their money:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/18/news-isnt-secret/#bid-shading

Creating a new pseudocopyright to control who can discuss the news is a terrible idea, one that will make the media companies beholden to the tech giants at a time when we desperately need deep, critical reporting on the tech sector. In Canada, where Bill C-18 is the latest link tax proposal in the running to become law, we’re already seeing that conflict of interest come into play.

As Jesse Brown and Paula Simons — a veteran reporter turned senator — discuss on the latest Canadaland podcast, the Toronto Star’s sharp and well-reported critical series on the tech giants died a swift and unexplained death immediately after the Star began receiving license fees for tech users’ links and excerpts from its reporting:

https://www.canadaland.com/paula-simons-bill-c-18/

Meanwhile, in Australia, the proposed “news bargaining code” stampeded the tech giants into agreeing to enter into “voluntary” negotiations with the media companies, allowing Rupert Murdoch’s Newscorp to claim the lion’s share of the money, and then conduct layoffs across its newsrooms.

While in France, the link tax depends on publishers integrating with Google Showcase, a product that makes Google more money from news content and makes news publishers more dependent on Google:

https://www.politico.eu/article/french-competition-authority-greenlights-google-pledges-over-paying-news-publishers/

A link tax only pays for so long as the tech giants remain dominant and continue to extract the massive profits that make them capable of paying the tax. But legislative action to fix the ad-tech markets, like Senator Mike Lee’s ad-tech breakup bill (cosponsored by both Ted Cruz and Elizabeth Warren!) would shift power to publishers, and with it, money:

https://www.lee.senate.gov/2023/3/the-america-act

With ad-tech intermediaries scooping up 50% or more of every advertising dollar, there is plenty of potential to save news without the need for a link tax. If unrigging the ad-tech market drops the platforms’ share of advertising dollars to a more reasonable 10%, then the advertisers and publishers could split the remainder, with advertisers spending 20% less and publishers netting 20% more.

Passing a federal privacy law would end surveillance advertising at the stroke of a pen, shifting the market to context ads that let publishers, not platforms, call the shots. As an added bonus, the law would stop Tiktok from spying on Americans, and also end Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft’s spying to boot:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/30/tik-tok-tow/#good-politics-for-electoral-victories

Mandating competition in app stores — as the Europeans are poised to do — would kill Google and Apple’s 30% “app store tax” — the percentage they rake off of every transaction from every app on Android and Ios. Drop that down to the 2–5% that the credit cards charge, and every media outlet’s revenue-per-subscriber would jump by 25%.

Add to that an end-to-end rule for tech giants requiring them to deliver updates from willing receivers to willing senders, so every newsletter you subscribed to would stay out of your spam folder and every post by every media company or creator you followed would show up in your feed:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen

That would make it impossible for tech giants to use the sleazy enshittification gambit of forcing creative workers and media companies to pay to “boost” their content (or pay $8/month for a blue tick) just to get it in front of the people who asked to see it:

https://doctorow.medium.com/twiddler-1b5c9690cce6

The point of enshittification is that it’s bad for everyone except the shareholders of tech monopolists. Jeremy’s Razors are bad, winning a 2.7 star rating out of five:

https://www.facebook.com/JeremysRazors/reviews

The company charges more for these substandard razors, and you are more likely to find out about them, because of targeted, behavioral ads. These ads starve media companies and creative workers and make social media and search results terrible.

A link tax is predicated on the idea that we need Big Tech to stay big, and to dribble a few crumbs for media companies, compromising their ability to report on their deep-pocketed beneficiaries, in a way that advantages the biggest media companies and leaves small, local and independent press in the cold.

By contrast, a privacy law, ad-tech breakups, app-store competition and end-to-end delivery would shatter the power of Big Tech and shift power to users, creative workers and media companies. These are solutions that don’t just keep working if Big Tech goes away — they actually hasten that demise! What’s more, they work just as well for big companies as they do for independents.

Whether you’re the New York Times or you’re an ex-Times reporter who’s quit your job and now crowdfunds to cover your local school board and town council meetings, shifting control and the share of income is will benefit you, whether or not Big Tech is still in the picture.

Have you ever wanted to say thank you for these posts? Here’s how you can: I’m kickstarting the audiobook for my next novel, a post-cyberpunk anti-finance finance thriller about Silicon Valley scams called Red Team Blues. Amazon’s Audible refuses to carry my audiobooks because they’re DRM free, but crowdfunding makes them possible.

Image: freeimageslive.co.uk (modified) http://www.freeimageslive.co.uk/free_stock_image/using-mobile-phone-jpg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

[Image ID: A man's hand holds a mobile phone. Its screen displays an Instagram ad. The ad has been replaced with a slice of a vintage comic book 'small ads' page.]

#pluralistic #ad-tech #ads #surveillance ads #commercial surveillance #behavioral ads #contextual ads #link taxes #platform economics #enshittification #instagram #julia angwin #end to end

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thearchercore · 5 months

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Hi!

You mentioned Daniels nonexistant social media presence in one of your posts.

Can you please elaborate?🥺 What do you think why doesnt he post? I noticed redbull not posting him so much.

I read it in a lot of places how he will be great for alpha touri rebrand but will he really?

I started watching this year and I simply dont see it.

I would love to read one of your deep dives on Daniel

well, let's say daniel is a very interesting case when it comes to PR as of lately. he was in his prime when DTS started filming and they essentially picked him as the unofficial narrator of the series.

he was fairly popular, especially in the US market because of it. then, however, his career got twisted by a series of questionable team moves -- from red bull to renault, then immediately to mclaren.

his mclaren move was also affected by the way he was mistreated as a driver (bad mental health support, had to lose more weight than usual, contract terminated earlier etc etc) to the point daniel had to leave F1 for a bit.

that being said, daniel's personality and history still makes him easily marketable. just look at all the tiktok edits of him, he has an audience without a doubt.

he also has a lot of potential to be relatable to the new audience, he's funny, a solid driver, great marketing weapon for other marketing side quests. he also, for example, is a huge harry styles fan. (and harry even wore a shirt with daniel's name!) little fun facts like these would make him very appealing to the new audience.

the first thing i did not enjoy with his PR was the way he's gunning for checo's seat. sure, he wants to go back to red bull, we all get that it's his ultimate long term endgame. but because of him, alpha tauri terminated a contract of a rookie driver to basically offer him a set. which was a questionable move.

even after he scored an f1 seat back, he was still making comments about how his dream would be back at red bull, the RBR accs also posted him significantly more than they should have.

then, his treatment towards his alpha tauri seat is also questionable. he treats that team more as a back up and rather presents himself as a third RBR driver than an alpha tauri driver, or yuki's teammate per se.

daniel finished the season by saying in abu dhabi "this year was for me to prove myself that this is still my passion, and it is." which GREAT STORY. he could do so much more with it, but the narrative of him stealing other people's seat (nyck, potentially checo) is somehow louder than that, and that makes him look a bit like a villain.

again, his mistreatment at mclaren would also be a great PR asset -- his journey of going back to his original form and re-building confidence, but he's not doing much with it on social media. in fact, his presence outside of daniel.jpg is little to none.

just look at how his fans act when he posts something random, he's not exactly selling himself and his assets online and it's really quite a shame because it means he's not really connecting with the new audience that was not there for his prime at RBR.

also he had multiple PR oopsies as of recent, for example showing up to this known problematic podcast and laughed at misogynistic jokes about female drivers. he could be spending his time doing PR anywhere else, but what he's doing now is not exactly working.

so yeah, that got a bit long but really, daniel is just a package of potential that was never really used that well and i wish he got a better PR team to help him rebrand himself to the general public on social media.

#formula 1 #f1

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kyupidos · 11 months

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08/??/23’s delivery 🏹✉️ twisted wonderland

when they textヽ( ･∀･)ﾉ_θ彡☆Σ(ノ `Д´)ノ,ヽ( ･∀･)ﾉ_θ彡☆Σ(ノ `Д´)ノ ;; summary. ‘when you’re not with them in the real world, how do they talk to you online?’

characters. ignihyde , diasomnia : idia shroud , ortho shroud , malleus draconia , silver , sebek zigvolt , lilia vanrouge ( separate ) ;; platonic . 🖇️ tags. reader is gender neutral ( you/your ), reader may or may not be yuu ( up to the reader ), idk what social media app they’re using, lighthearted character slander, kinda long, crack fluff

📡 _a/n. finally updating after * checks watch * two or so weeks!! haven’t done a romantic in a while..should probably change that.

idia

— now, i decided to base these thoughts on their respective valentine’s day cards..and oh boy is idia a LOSER!! respectfully. maybe. this man is going full discordian mode when he texts you and honestly when he texts in general.

— you know that one friend who sends one text message and all of a sudden you have to spend an hour and a half trying to decipher their message because it has three grammatical errors, twenty six misspells and eight random letters mixed in there? even though it was a five word message?

— that’s him. ESPECIALLY when he’s texting you while he’s gaming, unless he chooses to voice call ( a blessing sent from heaven if you don’t want to struggle when communicating with him ).

— he’s just a fast typer, he defends himself while you wipe a single tear from your eye trying to figure out how “btw can you bring me some sweets?” turns into “n btwcan u like brjgn me sm swts n. stuff thxxx” ( but worse, because..it’s idia and he’s probably gaming if he’s asking you this question. also i purposefully avoided looking at my screen for that ).

ortho

— now i imagine his texts are significantly more normal and relaxed..unlike his BROTHER!! his texts to you are far more polite and he uses big words often, which is such bot behavior tbh. i know he struggles with captchas.

— but overall, he is indeed a relatively normal typer, a sweetheart as usual. i also imagine that he talks in more simplistic sentences as well, and doesn’t really do run-on, if that makes sense. it makes his text messages a little longer if he’s typing paragraph style, but otherwise he’s doing just fine getting the message across.

— now he is naturally curious and relatively attentive too, so he’s probably going to ask you about your own texting style. actually, he might try to implement your texting style into his, if he’s interested enough. it’ll probably only last for a week or so though, before he’s back to his usual kindergarten homework texting style.

malleus

— social media? nah..he’s “texting” you through carrier pigeon. be sure to keep your window open, because whenever he feels like it, he’s going to send you a scroll type of letter that details whatever message he’s trying to convey at the time, and it’s a throwback. a throwback to like..the medieval era.

— whenever he does send these letters, his dictionary of words is sophisticated and informative, not a single itty bitty detail left out. it sort of feels like he’s sending the prologue of a book to you, when he does this. i can imagine him writing it all down with a pure black quill pen, too. and i bet that the first letter to the first word of each letter is also in cursive and enlarged like in those fantasy books, for some odd reason.

— and he’ll send the longest message as well, and you might think that he’s describing to you the entire plot of a trilogy where each part is the length of the dictionary, but no, it’s to describe how upset he is that he had to eat an entire cake by himself, or that he’s sick or something. he’s like me when i’m writing an english essay..except he does it with no purpose to it.

— when you do inevitably send him a reply, he gets all excited too. even if he sends a letter that starts with “Dear friend, I write to you to tell you a tale of a most quizzical recent events that has affected me of late, that has stumped me to no end..” and all you reply with is a scroll and a carrier pigeon as well, and he opens it up only to see an enlarged “K.” in the middle with your signature at the bottom. yeah, he’s completely fine with that. makes him happy.

silver

— someone else who is normal with their texts, on the normal scale would probably be ranked by ortho, if not normaler. he’s just your average texter i suppose, other than the fact that every now and then he adds this really long descriptive word that you have to look up in the dictionary to understand, and it’s completely unexpected.

— he’ll send you a message, and it’ll go “also, did you see the others in class today? i found it odd, they were more lackadaisical than usual.” like. for no reason whatsoever. random big word. not too bad though, so points for him. also, i imagine him to type in all lowercase just like me. i don’t know, i just see him doing it.

— on that note of random things i see him doing, and also random things in general, i see him texting you, and then randomly telling you this fun little fact he happens to know about whatever the topic is. “would you like to stop be the equestrian club? a domestic horse can run up to thirty miles per hour, you know.”

sebek

— hard to say if he’s using a phone, or if he’s talking to you via carrier pigeon like malleus..but i’m leaning towards him using a phone. actually, he might do both, and it depends on how mood how you receive the message. but, let’s just talk about how he tends to talks to you on social media for now.

— but still, no matter whether it’s social media or carrier pigeon, he’s a relatively dry person sadly. when he texts you, it’s rather simplistic, though unlike ortho he does tend to do run-ons. i think the only thing saving him from being totally dry is the fact that he actually uses emojis. his favorite emojis..are probably “😡” and “👍”, and you can take a guess when and why he uses them.

— his messages might actually come off as a little mean every now and then, but i doubt he’ll even realize it 99% percent of the time unless you tell him, and he’ll try his best not to text like that again, but it’s hard for him to stray from his usual texting style..introduce him to tone tags, those are probably a life saver for him.

— he does forget to use them every now and then though, so he haphazardly adds them after he sends the message. don’t worry though, he’s learning and figuring things out! slowly but surely, slowly but surely. doing his best.

lilia

— the old man himself! unlike malleus and sebek, he is of course 100% using a phone. though nonetheless, that old age is not subtle at all, even if he is gaming..not like he’s trying to be, the idea of being subtle probably doesn’t even come to him. surprisingly, other than his old man text tone, he’s a relatively normal texter.

— and by relatively normal, i mean normal for when you’re talking to your grandpa who was there for when the telegraph was still a popular use of communication. except..he was there for forms of communication much, much earlier than that.

— he regularly uses somewhat outdated words and then right next to said outdated word is like, the latest social media lingo that was created like a week ago. a very scary combination of i do say so myself. he could be gaming with you and all of a sudden through the chat logs he’ll text you something along the lines of, “Though, i must say..his ass is NOT making it😂😂”. a jumpscare almost every time.

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underspacegame · 3 months

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We are less than a month out from our Early Access launch. Excited? Sleepless? Suffering from splitting migraines as you try to parse documentation that’s useless to you because Google’s search capabilities have been gutted by corporate ineptitude and your previous talents of being able to figure out solutions and leverage online resources are now useless in the vast overwhelming face of tools that have become completely mediocre in their relentless idiotic pursuit of profits via the lowest common denominator that have degraded any utility to the point of unusability and it’s 3AM and your cat is screaming at you because she wants you to play with a plastic fish she brought you and you’re not supposed to be up this late and you accidentally dropped your last pain medication pill that might have made you at least capable of falling asleep down the drain?

No? Well then, good. Yeah. Let’s talk Early Access and what to expect, to better set your expectations and illuminate what’ll be in and what’ll be not-in.

The thing I want to emphasize over everything else is that we are a very small and overly ambitious team working on a VERY large game with a scope that dwarves even many AAA releases. As it stands and when it launches the amount of content that will be in, at launch, is massive. I have no doubt that many of you will be spending hundreds of hours dredging up every perverse secret the galaxy’s hidden away.

At the same time, we’re a VERY small team. Outside of our asset creators, the only person doing coding, bugfixing, UX, QA response, server integrity, mod support, etc, is me. And just me. This isn’t so much a single developer spinning multiple plates as it is a human trainwreck trying to twirl an entire restaurant, to the severe detriment of his health and sanity.

With all this in mind, our Early Access launch will not launch with the full scope of features and content planned for Underspace. Significantly, multiplayer will launch in a very early state that does not include NPCs, bosses, or the multiplayer campaign. On the singleplayer side, several questlines, extended ship customization and cockpit textures, and many planetside and station interiors will not be included in launch.

These features or content exist or are implemented in a working state, but are often heavily, HEAVILY untested or unpolished, to the point where keeping in game before they’re at least in a state I'd be comfortable with is not something I’m comfortable with.

Before you go off creating posts on various imageboards and badly rebranded social media sites decrying the Underspace apocalypse, keep two things in mind: these features are not gone or cut from the game. It’s much like Todd Howard’s kind smiling visage: even if you can’t see it it’s still there. Watching and waiting. When Early Access releases in April, we will be putting out a nice big roadmap showing a huge amount of upcoming updates to the game. These updates will be staggered out as major releases, which will include these missing pieces of content.

This also includes features or elements such as voice acting, bugfixes (as Early Access is always buggy), and further mod support.

The second thing to keep in mind is that Underspace, when it launches, will still launch with the majority of its content and the vast majority of its game features implemented. This includes the singleplayer main campaign, over 40 quests, all bosses, all points of interest, all factions, star systems, random missions, storm hazards, equipment, flyable ships, and probably many more things I’ve lost in the hazy maze that is my fried brain currently.

It has been a long long time coming, almost seven years in constant development. None of this would have been possible with the support of our backers and community, but there’s still more to go. Contributions, supporting us during the Early Access period, and of course relentlessly shilling it your friends will all help us massively, in no small part because this will also let us dedicate more resources to improving the game and getting it out in a reasonable timeframe that also, coincidentally, doesn’t overwork me to death.

And… that’s about it! If I survive, I hope to see you out in the stormy skies on April 10th!

#underspace #game development #gamedev #video games #game design #unity3d #space #indie games #space games #space game

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triviallytrue · 1 year

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Pick a scenario

You are passively famous. You often get approached by strangers in public looking for a picture or an autograph, at about the frequency of a B-list celebrity. If pressed on how they know you, they will act embarrassed and admit that they don't remember - they just recognize you. You don't get any stalkers or any haters, and everyone who "recognizes" you seems to have a positive impression of you. This effect fails to work over text, voice, or even video. People only ever recognize you in person, and it only ever works in passing - if you spend more than half an hour with someone who recognizes you, they'll realize that they mistook you for someone else.

Your writing (replace with visual art, if you prefer) is incredibly high quality and immediately attracts attention. However, this effect only applies when writing true-to-canon, not-very-transformative fanfiction for a media property you've grown to viscerally hate. You're welcome to write about other things and your other stories may get additional attention due to the popularity of your fanfiction, but even if you're a very good writer, it will be completely outshone in both popularity and quality by your fanfiction.

You become significantly better at the skill that is most personally important to you. Not overnight, but any physical or mental limitations you had are removed or transcended, and with even minimal practice your rate of improvement is incredibly rapid. But no matter how good you get or how impressive your achievements are, outsiders will regard you as mediocre and view your dedication as a quaint hobby, and other people heavily invested in the skill will view your success as a series of flukes.

You instantly receive enough money to live comfortably without working another day in your life, with money left over to help the people you care about and give to charity. You aren't a billionaire and won't be buying a yacht any time soon, but you're fabulously wealthy by any reasonable standard. Ten years in the future, an event will rupture whichever personal relationship you consider most personally important. You won't have done anything, but incontrovertible evidence will emerge of you doing something legal but very immoral (for a monogamous romantic partner, think "missing something important to them because you were cheating on them" - adjust accordingly for a nonmonogamous romantic, platonic, or familial relation). Knowledge of this alleged misdeed will spread throughout your social circle.

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sadnightforus · 10 months

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HARD TO LOVE (KHJ)

ex!hongjoong x gn!ex reader

SYNOPSIS: It’s been months, exactly 7 at that. And every time that Hongjoong shows up vulnerable at your doorstep, drunk and vulnerable, you let him back in for another night.

WORD COUNT: 3.2K

WARNINGS: beware of the substance usage like alcohol, cigarettes and all that, distant behavior from hongjoong, full on angst emotional angst (think about how exes feel), a little cuss word that is avoidable.

PART OF HEARTBREAK STATION

A/N: this is legitimately my favorite song. I will not shut up about it. I hope I do this song justice with this fic (even though I might not be satisfied)

SONG USED: HARD TO LOVE BY ONE.

reblogs, comments and likes are appreciated!

It’s 2 in the morning and yet, you’re unable to sleep.

Your mind keeps racing, you don’t really know why. But you’re restless as you keep tossing and turning in the comfort of your own bed. You have an important day ahead but you feel uneasy and you can’t always count sheep or think of something that relaxes you to put you into a dreamland. Damn you and the seasonal insomnia.

You try your hardest to not touch your phone as you’ve been cutting contacts from social media and spend more time in real life, to remind yourself that life outside is beautiful too.

Who are you really kidding? You just can’t let yourself type his username into the search bar and stalk him again.

You know that your relationship with him was not an ideal love story at all. Even your friends tell you so, something they do when they sense that you’re thinking about him.

You first met him at the club, kissed and lost touch with one another and the only thing you both remembered each other by was the steamy kiss you both shared and the names that sounded like a mantra the more you said it. The unexpected reunion at your favorite coffee shop that eventually led to him asking you out and becoming lovers but soon enough, it’s damaging your own mental health more than anything.

It’s what you’ve been trying to tell yourself.

You hear a loud knock on the door and the rhythm is almost sloppy, not very steady and sober like. You were worried that the poor door might’ve been broken down until you realize that your place itself has thin walls and anything within 7 feet away can be heard loud and clear.

You’re sure that it might be Hongjoong, the man you thought about earlier but you didn’t want to be wrong. You quickly get out of bed, searching for something sharp enough to use as a weapon in case it’s an intruder.

Another knock makes a loud and invasive noise against the door, this time with a much faster rhythm. A slurred whine can be heard and this time you put down your weapon.

“Can you open the door, please?”

It’s him, once again, drunk out of his mind and sound totally wrecked, unlike the guy you know who had his guards up and was tough.

You don’t want to, knowing that it’ll eventually fuel him to see you as his unofficial live-in guest who never goes home when he’s incredibly intoxicated. But you can’t help it as your legs already had a mind of its own and walked directly to the door, twisting the doorknob to let him in.

As you have expected, he is absolutely wasted. Totally hammered as he can barely stand up or walk straight without stumbling and almost tripping many times. You wonder how much he trip before making his way here because your place is on the 3rd floor. Someone might’ve dropped him here or he just significantly got even more drunk by the time he made it to your place.

“Sit down here, I’ll get some water for you.” You say, guiding him to your soft couch as you help him to seat himself down.

You take one look to fully observe him and tonight, he wears a long thin coat and only a black mask as an accessory. Way different from his usual style which consists of leather jacket and the black ripped skinny jeans pairing with some sharp earrings. He almost looks like a gentleman, the kind of man who you’ll introduce your family to after just 3 months of dating.

You open the fridge as you pour a glass of water, then grab the said glass and you tell him to drink up. Which he complies, gulping on the cold water that is relaxing in his throat. He puts the empty glass down as he fully lies on your couch, with you by his side, watching his every move like a hawk.

“I miss you.”

God, there he goes with his drunk shenanigans.

You bite your lips, containing yourself from saying out the things you might regret letting him know. It’s unfortunate that he tells you he needs you and every sweet things only when he’s drunk.

The thing is, Hongjoong really does love you. Just that he doesn’t know if you’re also aware of that or understand that completely.

You don’t know if he does, or is it just in a wave of moment that is easier to admit when you’ll wake up in the morning and forget it. But you surely also still love him. Somewhere deep down, you know that the attraction was never about the superficial qualities, but it was something that only both of you can feel. Something much deeper and unknown.

He’s afraid of how deep his feelings run for you too, which is why he kept on the tough act and kept his distance from you most of the time. But god, is he addicted to making bad choices. And is he so addicted to you and the love you gave that he keeps running to your place when he’s just way too drunk, for the sole purpose of finding his home and to be honest with you. The alcohol was his courage drink because he’d rather act like a complete asshole than opening his heart fully like this.

“It’s not hard to love you. But you’ll find it hard to love me. It’s also hard to love you when I can barely feel your love and I’m just like this… Gosh. I don’t know what I’m saying at all.”

It’s like a string of realization that has finally been broken inside of you. And for him, it’s like a scrabble of thoughts that has been scattered and repaired again as he begins speaking more.

He had never spoken this much at all, let alone with such sincerity that you were skeptical. Because the previous time, he would always tell you that he missed you and that he wanted to give it a try again but he’s scared of rejection and that he’s not stable enough for you.

It seems like tonight, he’ll be saying more than just few words or so.

“But I mean it, it’s not hard to love you when I’m sober but when I’m… I can’t feel it. I can’t really tell it.”

He’s slurring more words, like one of those new records that you bought with a shitty quality and half way into the playing time, it breaks down and starts scribbling into an indescribably odd sounding.

“I wanna look at you, hear you say all those things again.” He sighs, head is tilting and the body is slightly moving due to trying to balance and his eyes keep occasionally close due to his non-sober state.

“I don’t wanna be drunk like this anymore. I wanna keep looking at you but.. I can’t see anything clearly right now.”

There are tears, now forming in your eyes that are threatening to spill.

You know he’s being honest, even if his words don’t make sense in this state that he’s in right now. You can always tell that he really loves you, even if it was unconventional and almost in a non-traditional way. His love can be felt, not seen or heard.

That’s why you’ll always keep the doors open for him.

“I’m sorry. I know you probably hate me now. I didn’t treat you like you deserved to be treated.”

He can feel himself almost break down into tears as he finishes off with this bang of a statement.

He’s so fucked up, completely fucked up. He knows that, he is aware of how unstable he is since you both broke up but he doesn’t want you to know that.

Every night that he doesn’t show up at your door, he can’t sleep at his own place. He struggles with insomnia since you decided to part ways with him for good due to many differences and you feel like you both can’t offer each other things you crave for anymore. He understood that but he always selfishly tried to keep you around for longer, knowing that his lack of improvement will continue to worsen the relationship and now he just went down the rabbit hole that is hard to get out of.

Sleeping pills were the only thing that kept his mind from bursting. Too many of his late night thoughts were always about you and the ‘what ifs’ that he never got the chance to act on.

“I wanna change for you. I wanna try. But I have so many problems… but it’s not enough. So I’m sorry.”

“Hongjoong.” You command his attention. “I never asked you to be the perfect man, you know that.” You tell him, tears are now slowly falling from your eyes.

“But all I ever asked for is that we loved each other. I just wanted you to be yourself when we were together. I never wanted you to hold back on your feelings.”

Even if his side of story didn’t make sense to you at first, you really understand it as you remembered what he usually said when he’s this intoxicated and right now, you figured that he has a fear of real, deep intimacy because of his attachment. You observed him enough to know that he tends to get obsessive with certain things and hobbies and talking him out of it was no use, but you figured out it’s how he showed love. So you never understood why he never showed the same kind of behavior towards you too, up until now.

“You know I always asked myself, why did you push me away? Why did you never want to explore the depth of our relationship? Was it something I did? What had I done for you to be so afraid of opening it up to me? You’ve always been hot and cold. You were sweet and the most loving man for a minute but the next, you suddenly turned your back and became the coldest man I’ve known. It’s complicated.”

You let your tears fall. You’re not fully crying but if this drags on any longer then you might be.

“I’m sorry.” He mumbles, shaking his head while keeping it low. “I’m so fucked up, aren’t I?” He lifts his head a bit to look at it. Only then, did you notice that his eyes are a bit unfocused but all of this talk makes him more sober than before.

“I get attached way too quickly. I pushed you away because I’m so scared that history will repeat itself. But what I had told you before, it’s the truth.” He then continues.

“I told you before, I’ll die if I don’t have you in my life. You may brushed it off as a joke but it’s true. You’re the only person who I told most things in my mind to, even if it’s so little. I knew that you’re the only one I’d need to be in my life in that way from the first time I saw you. Not during the relationship, the breakup or now.”

You’re shocked by this statement.

You didn’t take your ex boyfriend to think of you like that. You didn’t think that you left a strong impression on him but apparently, he thinks of you otherwise as you’re left to let his words soak into your consciousness.

“I’m afraid of how deep my feelings run for you. Because there were people who told me it’s suffocating that I’m like this. I’m afraid that you’ll be like that too when you no longer need me, that you’ll be burdened by how intense my emotions are.”

He looks at you like you’re the only thing in his life that matters the most to him. And you are.

He just needs another chance to make it right.

“I know I’m being so fucking selfish by keeping you around but I just need you in my life.”

With that, he lets a few stray tears escape from his eyes. As he desperately tries to find something to hold onto to find the balance in the current emotional state he’s in, you mindlessly extend your arm for him. He does, gently caressing the soft skin of your palm with both of his hands.

If he had more mind and awareness, he’d never admit that and leave you to think to connect the dots on your own. You’re not stupid but sometimes, he’s just expressing his affection in the most puzzling way possible.

He misses his sobriety, he misses being with you.

“Since we broke up, I’ve never been sober. Whenever I was, I’d need to take sleeping pills to get me to sleep because I can’t stop thinking about you.” He confesses, not to seek your sympathy but he just wants to admit this and see how much the breakup has been hard on him too.

“Why would you do that to yourself?” You ask, tears now dried but the hurt is evident in your voice.

“Because you’re not around.”

You can see how broken he is, from the wavering tone in his voice.

His eyes, now shimmering with the dried unshed tears, beg for you to say what he wanted to hear. His own self built persona breaks especially in times where he has no control over his emotions, thoughts and speech or physical movement.

“Do you know why I always let you in whenever you’re drunk like this at my door? Because… I still love you.” You then sigh, take a look at his face as you had promised yourself nights and months before that it’ll be the last time you’ll ever let him in.

“But you know that we can’t always have things our way. I care about you a lot. I can feel your love for me. But it’s tiring that I have to chase after every tiny bit of your attention.”

You pause your speech, feeling your throat turning dry as you spend the time admiring the beauty that is your ex boyfriend.

Even if he is a mess, he’s truly the most beautiful man you’ve ever seen. So beautiful that you don’t think any other man you’ve seen will come close to him. Many people would have agreed with you because he’s not only physically attractive but his demeanor is unique too.

He is unforgettable. Truly magnificent.

“Don’t hurt yourself because of me anymore. I don’t think I’m worth that much of a person that you need me as a survival person.”

Hongjoong’s heart grows heavier with this phrase that left your lips. It’s really his confirmation that he’s not welcomed back into your life in the way that he longs for anymore.

“No!” His outburst surprises you. “You’re worth everything!”

“You’re all I ever need.”

The last phrase was said with a whispery tone.

“Overtime, you won’t. You’ll meet someone who can love you and need you as much as you do with me. But I can’t be that person.”

His body grows colder at this moment as the heat of the alcohol intoxication mow wears off and it slowly seeps into his system. He slowly regrets saying all of that but he knows he needs the proper talk.

You both need closure.

And you both also need to move on and forget about each other.

You knew this for a long time but now, you make up your mind to really do it.

Everything from his speech, to his scent and actions really messes with your thoughts tonight. It’s ruining you because his desperation and needs for you runs deeper than just for sex, but for emotional and psychological fulfillment.

It’s why you kept letting the doors open.

You’re usually logical and you give chances too many times. You did that and now the confessions make you reconsider every move and thing you’ve said to him. You ask yourself if you still really meant what you said.

But you’re determined. Determined to not let yourself fall into this trap of his charms and neglect again. And no matter how much it hurts you because of the hidden love you have for him that will forever be buried deep there and would go unnoticed, you also have to let him go for your own good. You can’t handle this kind of love, if that’s the treatment you receive while being in a relationship.

You have too much pride and perhaps, self respect, to go back to him like that. You’re not gonna let history repeat itself.

Silence completely falls onto you both. He feels tired as the exhaustion from both the mental battle between his heart and his head and he lets go of your arm, silently stares at your now unattended palm.

It’ll be the last time he’ll see you.

He tries to savour the moment of your presence being so close to him a little bit more by fighting his sleepiness to look at you without saying a word.

He knows that deep down, he should’ve let you go a long time ago. He has been nothing but such a nuisance to you, yet you treat him with so much kindness and care that he took your actions for granted. Now that you draw the lines, he regrets for all of the time that he does this.

His intense gaze looks at you, drinking in you and your essence. It’ll really be the last time he gets to talk to you like this, or even have the privilege to say things to you if you both bump into each other on the streets. Or even have your house architects and rooms memorized by heart.

He’ll have to pretend that you never existed.

He can do that… he used to before knowing you. Now it’ll be a task for him to not have any thoughts involving you.

His eyelids become more droopy and he finally lets himself completely pass out on your couch. You don’t have a heart to tell him to go away; it’ll really be the last time that you’ll let him walk into his place freely as an uninvited guest.

“You’ll forget all of this in the morning.” You whisper, careful not to be too loud while looking at him. “I’ll never stop loving you. I never hate you. I can’t hate you even if I tried. You’ll be staying at the back of my mind every day for the rest of my life.” And you finish it off with a phrase before you get up quietly to go to your own room to sleep.

“I don’t hope that you know that, though. You’re hard to love when you’re like this, too.”

COPYRIGHTED BY SADNIGHTFORUS, 2023

#kpop au #kpop imagines #ateez au #ateez imagines #ateez fanfic #Kim hongjoong x reader #hongjoong imagines #hongjoong angst #hongjoong au #hongjoong x reader #hongjoong fanfic #hongjoong scenarios #ateez scenarios #ateez x reader

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samwisethewitch · 7 months

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Let's Talk About Religious Appropriation and Christianity

In my previous post, I talked about why religious appropriation matters and why it genuinely impacts pagan communities when culturally Christian authors take our gods out of context. Now I wanna talk about why it doesn't go the other way.

Religious appropriation is when someone from a dominant religious group misuses symbols or practices from a marginalized religion. (Reminder: marginalized means an identity or group is treated as insignificant or pushed to the periphery.) There is an element of power imbalance to appropriation.

In the United States, where I live, Christianity is the dominant religious group. Even Americans who are not practicing Christians themselves are culturally Christian -- they were raised in a culture where Christianity is assumed to be the default. In other parts of the world, the dominant religion may be another faith like Buddhism, Islam, or something else. I will be talking about Christianity in this post because that's my experience, but just remember that this isn't about theology so much as social influence.

Someone living in a culturally Christian society might use Christian symbols or elements in their art for a lot of different reasons. It might be a sincere expression of faith because the artist is a Christian (see: C.S. Lewis). The artist might use Christian symbols because they are widely known and will be easily recognized by their audience (see: It's a Wonderful Life). The artist might use Christian symbols outside of their original context or in a subversion of that context to create comedy (see: Dogma by Kevin Smith) or horror (see: Rosemary's Baby). And finally, they might use those symbols as a critique or satire of organized Christianity (see: Children of the Corn).

In any of those cases, it's highly unlikely that the depiction in this media property is going to overshadow actual Christian practices. Christianity is one of the most widely practiced religions in the world. There are over 2 billion Christians globally. 63% of Americans identify as Christians. (And that number is at an all time low! In older generations, it's higher!) And because of the built-in hierarchy of Christianity, there are designated spokespeople who can speak up to set the record straight.

For a real life example of this, let's think about The Da Vinci Code. For those who don't know, The Da Vinci Code is a thriller novel written by Dan Brown. A major plot point in the story is the reveal that Jesus Christ had sex and fathered children with Mary Magdalene, which is considered a heresy by most Christians. The Catholic Church specifically had a huge negative reaction to Dan Brown writing about them spending 2,000+ years intentionally covering up the fact that Jesus fucked.

And The Da Vinci Code had a HUGE impact on pop culture. The book has sold over 80 million copies in 44 languages. The movie stars huge actors like Tom Hanks and Sir Ian McKellan and was the second-highest grossing film of 2006. The massive protests drew even more media attention. This story was a very big deal for a couple of years.

And yet, most people in America and other culturally Christian countries still know that, in Christian lore, Jesus died without marrying or fathering children. Even people who have read The Da Vinci Code or seen the movie can usually recognize that the whole Mary Magdalene thing is fiction. Even if someone did come away thinking Jesus getting it on with Mary Magdalene was historical fact, they're likely to encounter other media at some point that will depict Jesus as unmarried.

More people do not believe Jesus fucked because of The Da Vinci Code. It has not significantly changed popular perceptions of Christianity, or even of Catholicism. This is because Christianity, and specifically the Catholic Church, are huge institutions with both the power and the platform to set the record straight.

Marginalized religions do not have that kind of power or platform, which is why religious appropriation is a much bigger deal for us. In general, you can't appropriate something from a dominant cultural group.

#long post #religious appropriation #cultural appropriation #christianity #culturally christian #media studies #media analysis #the da vinci code #pop culture paganism #witchblr #paganblr

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fictionfixations · 3 months

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jaehee best route presentation

this is just me jokingly dunking on mysme's other routes and pointing out the weird and wacky shit that happened in comparison to jaehee's significantly more tame route (because i love her route. we stan jaehee in this household.)

meant to make a presentation cause a bunch of friends were getting together to make some dumb af presentations but im procrastinating

anyway ive never played deep story or another story mode. and the only routes ive actually played are jaehee's and yoosung's. i cant be bothered to do anyone else's (the notifs get so annoying. im the type of person who sometimes spends whole days in a row desiring me time and being all alone. so guess what when you give me a game thats basically like a messenger in which you have to actually interact by then? its like. actually socializing! which no. it hit my social limit and i just stopped trying after multiple bad endings trying to actually get to zens lol)

since im not gonna be showing off my presentation (because ah.. socialization.. and two, now im kind of scared i might trigger someone..?)

so. here.

MAJOR MYSTIC MESSENGER SPOILERS

its a gif..

[ Content warning: Swears, possibly triggering content, uh. Mention of bombs, death (faked su//cide), possible implied in//est thoughts (he doesn’t harbor those thoughts I don’t think, but it can still be the impression he gives off), ..mention of s*x maybe?, kidnapping, held captive, weird shit that’s meant to be kinky but actually comes off as really creepy, INACCURATE PORTRAYAL OF PEOPLE WITH MENTAL ILLNESSES, cringe, false reporting / negative media, captivity, yandere ending sob??, and ill add more if i can think of more - and torture. I wont go indepth but ill mention it. …beastiality? Just remembered headbang. I dont think its said but ppl kinda see the implications of it i think. ..ive never played his route so i have no clue | is cucking a trigger??? I dont..>>>????? / sexual implications probably | mentions of S/A. It doesnt happen but a character falsely accuses another to ruin their reputation, toxic relationships ]

thats it lmfao

what i was going to continue with:

jumin. so. you know that bad ending where you're basically kept in his house and he puts trackers in your shoes so you can only walk as far as like the kitchen away from him and doing so alerts him and shit?? and its played off as being some kinky shit i think but like hello? (also i think. it was either him or saeran, but we fuck in the basement he has trauma in??)

(i mean theres also the thing with his cat. the 'i'll treat you like my pet' or something like that line?? i dont remember. or zen having a dream that elizabeth his cat was running away so he locked her up even worse so then when he opened the door she ran??)

707 is the most story-depth i think, the one ppl consider canon. in which. crazy shit probably happens there with the obligatory kidnapping and bomb threat. i honestly cant remember i didnt even go to his page to check . altohugh i think theres an ending where saerans is like 'give me a hug'. 707 does. then saeran kills him. which. oof…. poor guy. or its revealed who their dad is and basically bad things happen i think?

saeran/ray/unknown. inaccurate depiction of mental disorders or something like that (not meant to offend with wording, but i can never remember the names of shit). it was like.. we first get to know ray whose the nicer one. and then there's saeran whose an absolute asshole. there was something like 'if you dont listen something bad will happen' (which is apparently something his mom said to him or something like that?) very sucky situation

V. cucking??? IDFK wtf

V's CELL?

DRUGGed. from. RAY's. TORTURE. okay. okay.

(someone explain to me whats going on in that ending where we're cucking, im so confused)

ah...

so. yknow. jaehee's route is significantly more tame. and relaxing. and stress relieving imo.

the end

#mysme #mysme jaehee #mystic messenger #jaehee mystic messenger #jaehee kang #thoughts #presentation #do not take this seriously #queued because there's no way im taking the time to finish the presentation

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gale-in-space · 1 month

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I really am starting to give credence to the notion that growing up queer and/or neurodivergent turns your 20s into a second puberty.

Saying this because I'm almost 27, and I'm only just now figuring out what works for me. I've developed a loose routine for myself and now I'm more efficient at work, I clean my house more, I eat healthier, etc. I'm even thinking of doing some low-key exercise that's a little bit more rigorous than my daily walk in the neighborhood. I also spend significantly less time on social media, and am learning when to disengage from internet discourse that I know isn't worth the blood pressure hike. I also think I've gotten kinder in general - even if I'm still a bit temperamental at times.

I'm not sure what all started this, but I know that these things are interconnected. They feed into each other. I know I owe a lot to my partners for accepting and supporting me, so I really do believe that having a robust social network to fall back on is key to establishing healthier lifestyles (and in turn, increasing mood and decreasing anxiety).

I'm still pretty depressed, but I'm starting to see the sun peek through the clouds a little more. I hope that trend continues. And I hope other people can find the sun, too.

#now the trick is to try and get my hobbies back lol #i miss u drawing i miss u writing #i did write a little 2-paged personal essay last night though. that was very cathartic #i should really get into journaling again smh

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canonicallyobserving911 · 1 year

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9-1-1 Season 6 - Constructive Criticisms #4

Unequal Distribution of Storylines

9-1-1 has a large ensemble cast that includes both award winning and gifted actors and actresses who have the necessary experience and acting ranges to deliver scenes filled with emotions every episode. They all do an extraordinary job of portraying their characters and they seem to work well together. Currently, there are nine main characters and even though each character’s had previous experiences that could fit well within most storylines, it appears the creation and distribution of storylines changed during season 4. Instead of all the main characters receiving concurrent and fairly distributed storylines, the focus shifted to one main character and he’s received the majority of them since his season 4 “Begins” episode aired.

Buck received the majority of storylines in season 6 and even though there are only 18 episodes in a season, he had more than triple the number of storylines of the other mains while Athena, Bobby, Chimney, Chris, Eddie, Hen, Maddie and May only received 1 to 4 storylines. Some mains had a total of 5 storylines but that number is still significantly lower than the total amount Buck had.

The truth is there has been a large disparity between the number of storylines created/written for Buck when compared to the other main characters and for whatever reason, it’s continued. As indicated in a previous “constructive criticisms” post, Buck is not everyone’s favorite character but based on the way the showrunner has handled his character over the last two and a half seasons, it appears she believes he is.

I completed a detailed post regarding the unequal distribution of storylines during 6A (linked here) but since they continued to be unequally distributed for the entirety of 6B too, this post includes a complete analysis to illustrate how the disparity continued throughout the entire season. Instead of rehashing details about the lack of growth and resolution included in existing storylines, this post lists the number of storylines each main character received to highlight the way Buck had four to five times as many storylines as everyone else. The battle of good vs. bad storyline was not included in this post and neither was the continuity nor the forced narrative issues found within season 6. However, they have been analyzed for inclusion in a future post.

My fourth set of “constructive criticisms” regarding the unequal distribution of storylines is included below the cut. Please note criticizing a TV show is NOT a bad thing especially since TV critics have been doing it for decades. Constructive criticisms are designed to help make something better and they are VERY different from negativity. A person can offer criticisms about a form of entertainment they spend their time watching and not be negative about it the same way two people can agree to disagree on a topic. Just because one person liked the season, they shouldn’t expect others to feel the way they do because everyone has their own opinions. Simply put, two people can have different opinions about 9-1-1 and those opinions can COEXIST since they are not mutually exclusive.

If reading criticisms about the TV show 9-1-1 upsets you, then don’t read below the cut.

Warning! ⚠️“Constructive Criticisms” Ahead!⚠️

Disclaimer: The “constructive criticisms” included below are NOT about the actor, OS who plays the character of Buck! OS is a gifted actor who knows and portrays the character very well and he always gives 100% of himself to bring the character of Buck to life. Since he’s not in charge of the show, he’s not at fault for the way storylines were distributed, therefore these critiques are not about him.

During weekly airings of episodes and after season 6 ended, a variation of one question was consistently posted on social media platforms and in post-mortem interview comment sections regarding the direction the audience believed the show was taking and it provides a perfect correlation to the criticisms included in this post. The question was “When did 9-1-1 turn into “The Buck Show?”

It’s a valid question especially since Buck continued to receive the majority of the storylines in season 6 while the other main characters barely got four to five storylines each for the entire season. The unequal distribution doesn’t make any sense especially since 9-1-1 has an ensemble cast. For the past two and a half seasons Buck’s storylines/arcs were given more attention than the others with almost every episode focusing on him like he was the only main character on the show while the others were sidelined. The exposure his character was given was both noticeable and distracting for a lot of the GA and even when he was tasked with supporting other main characters’ storylines, the part he played tended to overshadow theirs.

It’s unclear why the showrunner continues to push the character of Buck out front but apparently, she hasn’t realized a lot of the GA IS TIRED OF LOOKING AT HIM. Based solely on comments posted about the show, viewers who once loved his character have grown to dislike him not only because of the types of storylines he’s received but also due to the amount he’s received when compared to other main characters.

This post was formatted to show the disparity in the number of storylines the character of Buck received in comparison to the other main characters during season 6. The name of each main character is listed followed by their storylines along with the corresponding episodes. Please note: the list does NOT include any storylines with a main character in a support role for another main, i.e., Buck and Hen arguing in 6x16 about whether Chimney and Maddie should get married. The marriage proposal storyline belonged to Chimney and Maddie not Buck and Hen. Also, if it happened off-screen, it doesn’t count as a storyline since the audience didn’t see it. Chimney’s and Maddie’s house hunt happened off-screen in 6x8 but Buck babysitting Jee-Yun happened on-screen.

Athena

6x1 – 6x3: Traveled to FL to assist her parents which led to the Tonya Kingston investigation

6x5: Home invasion investigation

6x7: Investigated the person who swindled a victim

6x13: Helped Maddie and Chimney solve the case with their creepy neighbor

6x15: Arrested the perpetrator who caused his own death

Bobby

6x4: Confiscation of Hoover the dog

6x9 – 6x12: Wendell’s death and the investigation that followed it

6x18: Trapped in a cargo container after the bridge collapse??? (this was really a 118 storyline but he was singled out like he was going to be hurt more than the others so...)

Buck

6x1: Wanted to be the interim captain

6x2: Searched for happiness

6x4: Read self-help books

6x4: Asked to be a sperm donor by a former roommate

6x4: Discussed ‘donor not dad’ with Hen

6x7: Masturbation jokes

6x7: Friends showed up at the firehouse to pressure him to donate

6x7: The 118 overheard his conversation with his friends

6:7: Several attempts to make the sperm donation

6x8: Uncle Buck

6x9: Announced he was officially responsible for the creation of new life

6x10: Died after being struck by lightning

6x11: Coma

6x12: Struggled with his death

6x13: Obtained special Math skills

6x15: Introduced himself to the death doula

6x17: Dated the doula and women from his past along with Kameron kept interrupting their dates

6x18: Saved the 118 after the bridge collapsed

6x18: Delivered Kameron’s baby on the couch his mother bought for him

6x18: Started dating the doula

Chimney

6x9: Found and purchased the murder house

6x10-6x11: Mr. Han arrived unannounced

6x13: Decided he was going to let the anger he had for his dad go

6x14: LAFD Academy and Captaincy

6x15 – 6x18: Marriage proposal, lost engagement ring, worry, fear, arguments, etc.

Chris

6x4: Skipped science club meetings

6x8: First crush

Eddie

6x4: Gave Chris more independence

6x7: Investigated a victim’s assistant with Athena

6x8: Helped Chris get ready for his first dance

6x14 – 6x18: Pushed to start dating again by Pepa and misunderstood Bobby’s comment about finding the magic/chemistry

Hen

6x1: Interim Captain

6x2 – 6x6: Medical School

6x9 – 6x13: Nathaniel and Denny

6x18: Foster parents

Maddie

6x4: Helped Lourdes and Claribel

6x5: Trust issues with Magda the nanny

6x5: Trust issues with Noah after he stole her password

6x13: Interacted with crazy Carol the coupon lady

6x15 – 6x18: Marriage Proposal

May

6x8: Negotiated with a terrorist

~~~~

The list above clearly illustrates how the character of Buck received four to five times as many storylines when compared with the other main characters. Not only did he get the most storylines during season 6; they also ran the longest and in some instances, like the sperm donation, it was layered and included several mini storylines. The sperm donation was a huge storyline all on its own with recurring characters and multiple stages included within it; therefore, it should have been the only storyline Buck had this season. For example, he was asked to donate in 6x4 but in 6x7 masturbation jokes were made about his donation, the 118 learned about it after Connor and Kameron showed up unannounced at the firehouse and he wouldn’t listen to the universe when all the challenges arose each time he tried to donate. All of these are mini storylines within one of his main storylines and it made the abundance of attention his character received during season 6 even more egregious.

In previous seasons, storylines for all the main characters ran concurrently for one, two or three episodes. To illustrate this fact, several examples of the main characters’ storylines included in season 3 are listed below.

3x1 “Kids Today”

Buck’s recertification and embolism

Bobby spoke with the brass about Buck not returning to work

Hen and Karen’s IVF and their anonymous sperm donor

Eddie took Chris to Buck’s to help with his depression

3x2 “Sink or Swim”

Buck and Chris were on the pier when the Tsunami hit and Buck rescued a lot of victims

Chris fell off the ladder truck and Buck started searching for him

Eddie and Hen saved a future stepfather and his future stepson on a yacht while Bobby went underneath the boat to free them and Chimney triaged the captain of the yacht

Athena was off duty when the Tsunami hit and she controlled the crowd on a busy street that had multiple car accidents

May helped to keep a woman alive after Athena called for her while they were trapped in the middle of an L.A. street

Maddie was asked by Sue to triage the dispatchers while they took traumatic calls

3x8 “Malfunction”

Hen and Karen were still dealing with the aftermath of their IVF treatments

Athena was dealing with her suspension after 3x7

Hen hit the woman with the ambulance

Eddie was still participating in the illegal fight club; he almost killed a man and Bobby received a call from Captain Cooper about him

Maddie was caught stalking a 9-1-1 caller and Sue reprimanded her and ordered her to return to therapy

3x9 “Fallout”

Hen, Eddie and Maddie were all in therapy with Frank because of everything that happened with them individually in 3x8

Michael was dealing with his medical diagnosis

Maddie was contacted by the 9-1-1 caller she tried to help

The above episodes from season 3 clearly illustrates how every main character had a storyline, they all ran concurrently and surprisingly, 9-1-1 was still a top-rated show. Buck DID NOT HAVE A STORYLINE IN EVERY EPISODE during that season and he wasn’t always the center of attention.

In season 5 the showrunner claimed they had scheduling issues with JLH’s maternity leave (this seems like an untruth because she was pregnant in season 4 so they knew she would be out but it appears they didn’t adequately prepare) RD’s legal issues with Disney about COVID-19 along with the banishing of KC from several episodes since the character of Maddie was out all appears to have been excuses to push the character of Buck to the forefront so the showrunner could push the cheating plot she had planned for Buck, TK and LD. They still had an available robust ensemble cast so there shouldn’t have been a need for MW to be there for 18 episodes along with the introduction of AK.

Since season 6 DID NOT suffer from the same challenges that wrecked most of season 5, things should have been different because all the actors and actresses were present for all 18 episodes. Therefore, it didn’t make any sense for Buck to have been given more than four to five times as many storylines as everyone else.

In the future, to make things fair, it would be better if storylines were distributed the way they were during seasons 1-3. Or maybe the show should use simple Mathematics to determine the number of storylines each main character should receive.

18 episodes / 9 main characters = 2 storylines

18 / 9 = 2

Doing it this way would give each main character at least two meaningful storylines per season. If the show returned to the concurrent storylines format, then maybe all the main characters would have an opportunity to get something decent and it would prevent one character from receiving the bulk of them.

Hopefully the unequal distribution of storylines will not be an issue in season 7 but it’s possible history will repeat itself if the current showrunner resumes her role. It is evident Buck is her favorite character and it seems like she’s unconcerned about viewers’ favorite main characters who aren’t Buck. Some viewers watch the show to see Athena, Bobby, Chimney, Chris, Eddie, Hen, Maddie and May while there are others who watch to see Buck. More than likely, she’ll keep pushing the character of Buck the way she has for the entirety of seasons 5 and 6 out front with mediocre storylines while continuing to sideline the other main characters.

These are my criticisms regarding the unequal distribution of storylines for season 6 and “Constructive Criticisms” #5 will be posted on Monday, June 19, 2023.

I have a total of 15 CANON “Constructive Criticisms” (11 remaining) and my goal is to have all of them posted by Monday, August 28, 2023. The topics are being posted in a specific order that begins with the overall issues for season 6 so they can be referenced within the posts about individual characters and ships that will follow them.

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parlerenfleurs · 5 months

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Anyway, in light of Covid19 having probably significantly weakened most of us... take care of your immune system, dear people.

If you can, eat healthy (vegetables are your friends. Yes, you need to eat them, yes, a lot more than you think, yes, fresh because most vitamins are short-lived), nurse your sleeping schedule as if it were a baby's, and for the love of all that is good... Minimise stress if you can. Stress is the number one killer of your health, and life is too short to spend it stressing and then being sick because you stressed too much.

I know, I know stress is sometimes unavoidable, especially if you're poor. But do whatever you can, okay? Curate who you hang out with, how you spend your time, who you follow on social media, and learn how to breathe, how to relax your muscles deeply, and what activities accessible to you are soothing and nourishing to you. I can't remember where I heard this, but, pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. Opt out whenever you can.

Short list of foods that are extremely good for you that you can incorporate into your diet regularly:

- curcuma

- nettle

- (preferably raw) cabbage

- apples

- onions and garlic and other assorted alliums

- all the herbs (thyme, rosemary, fresh parsley...)

Take care!

(Obligatory this-is-the-internet disclaimer: OF COURSE if any of these foods makes you deathly ill because [insert allergy or gastrointestinal issue here] then do not eat it.

Also about the other advice there can be a million reasons why one may protest "But I can't!". Do what you can. You're the one who knows what you can do I'm just putting out guidelines, okay? Okay.)

#Covid19

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katiajewelbox · 8 months

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“Recognize when things no longer serve a purpose and begin to harm you. You let it go not because of arrogance or pride but because it doesn't fit into your life anymore. So close the chapter, learn the lessons and shake off the dust. Don’t waste your life. Move on.” (Mufti Menk)

This post is a highly personal story and pretty atypical from what I share on social media, but I feel it is crucial to be open about what has recently happened in my life to satisfy people’s curiosity. A heartfelt thank you to the folks who have given me emotional support during this journey so far.

As some of you may know, I was in a long-term relationship that recently ended. The person I once loved found me at Imperial College several years ago. At first, it seemed like a perfect match. We had a beautiful friendship as well as many shared values and goals in life. Our bond seemed so strong that we made plans for our future life together. However, we ended up being long-distance during most of our relationship due to the pandemic and other complications. We diligently stayed in touch and kept each other company during this stressful time while staying hopeful about our future as a couple.

However, things drastically changed between us in the last year. When my Dad became sick and passed away, my partner completely let me down in terms of help and emotional support. That made me feel very alone in the relationship when I needed the strength of a loving partner. This year he did travel from his home country to the UK to spend time with me. We had a lovely time, but sadly it turned out our life goals had significantly diverged during the time apart.

His life now revolved around his career and building wealth. He made it clear that he expected me to leave the life I have built for myself in the UK to relocate to his home country and later to follow him around the world while he built his career. He also pressured me to take unreasonable personal and financial risks for the sake of “our” future, which made me feel unsafe with him. Over the last year, he became less open in our interactions and seemed to be hiding many important things in his personal and professional life from me. When I was struggling with depression last year, he was cold and sarcastic towards me. In addition, he become more critical and judgemental towards me, while showing hints of possible coercive controlling tendencies.

Over the course of our serious conversations about our future plans, I came to a heart-breaking realisation – I did not love or trust him anymore. I tried to be open minded and explore the possibilities of taking a leap of faith with him in our potential life together, but there were too many red flags to ignore. When I imagined my future with him I felt dread, and when I imagined my future without him I felt free and hopeful. After much reflection and soul-searching, I realised that we had to go our separate ways and I decisively ended the relationship. He was shocked and disappointed, but in time he may find someone who is a better fit with his socioeconomic background and culture. At least, he will find solace in his career, which is his real love in life.

I am sharing this story to encourage anyone who feels trapped in a situation by social expectations or fear to reclaim their freedom. Sometimes, what seemed perfect at an earlier stage of one’s life can turn out to be a nightmare as people and situations evolve. I feel much more optimistic about my future now that I am free to pursue my dreams and be true to myself.

Art Credit: AI generated composition based on the French Impressionist style by Katia Hougaard and DALL E.

#relationship #love story #love #inspirational quotes #breakup #heartbreak #breaking news #ending relationships #coercive control #intercultural #couples #freedom

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