#but also. has a functioning brain and has the ability to think more than one day in the future

[fantastic-nonsense]

I might be wrong but I figured you'd be the person to ask: Someone in a Discord server I'm in was talking about the "popular fanon idea of Cass learning ASL and sometimes preferring it to speech." And I... don't think this is fanon? Doesn't she canonically know ASL? I know she learned English and (I believe) Mandarin but I'm almost positive there are also lots of canon instances of her signing.

Okay so I'm going to split this ask into two questions:

Does Cass know American Sign Language (ASL), canonically?

Could Cass learn ASL?

The answer to #1 is no, Cass doesn't canonically know ASL to my knowledge (caveat: this does not, apparently, apply to the Young Justice cartoon universe; Cassandra Wu-San does appear to know some form of legitimate sign language). Canon!Cass, on the other hand, knows some basic signs and does use them, but it's more charades, 'loud gesturing,' and basic hand signals than it is ASL. The reasons Cass knowing ASL is such a popular fanon misperception are rather complex, but it largely comes down to two things: misunderstanding how ASL works and misunderstanding what Cass's disability actually is.

ASL isn't just some fancy hand gestures that translate one-to-one into spoken English; that would be "baby sign" or spell signing at best. ASL is a language, with all of the complex grammar, vocabulary, syntax, and sentence structure that implies. It takes years of learning and immersion to understand, learn, and utilize properly, just like any other language. Treating it as anything else is a form of ableism.

Someone like Cass who has difficulty processing language is going to have just as much trouble learning ASL as she would English, Mandarin, or any other language, because her problem isn't that she just "doesn't know English." Cass's disability is not that she can't read or communicate verbally: it's that her brain is literally built different because of how Cain raised her, and that affects how she processes language (and thus how she communicates with other people):

"David Cain…had some unusal ideas about combat. He experimented with infants. Trained them in isolation and deprived them of human speech. The goal was to adapt the language center of the brain to interpret physical movement as a language. She can…read you. Your body. That's why she understands what you're saying when she doesn't know the words. It's why in combat, she knows what you're going to do before you do it." -Batgirl (2000) #1

"The language centers of your brain are all over both hemispheres. Not centralized like with most people. When you try to read or write, your brain doesn't know how to keep it cohesive. But the good news is--you can learn. It's just a matter of figuring out how." -Batgirl #67

It's actually specified somewhere (I don't have the panel on hand, unfortunately) that she doesn't know sign language; Cain wanted her to read natural body language and nuance, not artificial hand gestures. Cass's primary "language" (and thus form of communication) until her brain was semi-rewired was body language.

But body language isn't actually a language; it's a form of non-verbal communication that functions through the (largely subconscious) 'reading' of both conscious and unconscious physical movement. Cass's childhood and training simply elevated that ability to ridiculous heights:

"A special ability to predict my opponent's moves. That doesn't begin to describe it. Time...ran together. The future...blending...into the moment. A blink of an eye...the knife thrust that follows...both one. It was like...like I could predict my opponent's moves. Okay, that does describe it. But it doesn't do it justice. All this knowledge. No substitute for knowing." -Batgirl (2000) #7

We see explicitly how this ability plays out on several occasions throughout her Batgirl run and the Detective Comics Rebirth run, and it's pretty clear she's reading subconscious feelings, thoughts, and movement, not language:

Cass absolutely communicates via hand gestures before and after Batgirl #4, but it's not any form of cohesive language, much less ASL. It's effectively advanced charades mixed with some universal non-verbal gestures:

"You don't speak any language, do you? Except violence." -Detective Comics (1937) #734

"Is he giving you any trouble?" *Cass flaps her hand to indicate the guy is a blabbermouth* "Got you. He talks too much." -Batman: Family (2002) #7

*Cass gestures to Jason's heart, Tim's mind, and Dick's voice to indicate she understands how they work as a team*-Batman and Robin Eternal (2015) #3

People learning a English as a second language already have an understanding of how language works, but Cass doesn’t have that foundation. Her primary language isn't sign language, it's body reading. Thus, she struggles to speak, read, and write in English not because it's a different language than she's used to communicating with but because it's the first actual language she's ever learned. Fanon largely projects ASL fluency onto Cass because they fundamentally don't understand how her abilities work (and thus don't understand how her disability works either).

Does Cass have the ability to learn ASL? Absolutely! Would ASL be a really cool way of depicting Cass communicating with other people and an interesting way to showcase language learning difficulties and communication disabilities in the visual medium that is comics? Absolutely! I would actually be genuinely thrilled if canon and the fandom actually worked with what a physical, visual-based language like ASL might mean for Cass's ability to communicate given her childhood training. But as it stands, "Cass knowing ASL" is a well-meaning but misguided fanon attempt to showcase inclusivity while being...well, frankly kind of offensive.

(As for why she would theoretically "know" Mandarin, it's a product of the incredibly racist and ableist writing that defined the "Evil Cass Era." This culminated in DC putting her on a bus and shipping her off to Hong Kong because "Asian girl knows Asian languages, right? Brilliant! Send her off!" while ignoring literally everything about Cass ever. She's never actually shown speaking Mandarin, Cantonese, or any other dialect of Chinese on-panel, but we can reasonably infer she probably picked up SOME level of comprehension while living there.)

[philosophicalparadox]

An educational post for writers: the effects of malnutrition/starvation:

Malnutrition/starvation has a bunch of really fucky effects, and I see whump people use malnutrition/starvation from time to time, (i am utilizing it now, hence the post) but rarely do they depict the horrific suffering. I have actually starved before, so here's my medically accurate advice on what that looks like:

Among the most prominent of effects of lack of food/lack of nutritious food ironically not depicted, for it is the most common nutritional deficit on earth, is anemia - lack of iron means your body doesnt produce blood like it used to, which at a point makes you cold all the time! It also messes with your bodily sense of blood pressure, making you more likely to notice tiny changes, which in turn can trigger dizziness, severe anxiety, heart palpitations, fainting, and vascillations between cognitive clarity and a foggy feeling. Lack of iron causes lack of red blood cells, which means you can't distribute oxygen as efficiently. This causes fatigue, a general sense of unwellness, called "malaise", and causes you to breathe and your heart to beat faster than they normally should. This, in turn, can trigger more anxiety! Anemia is a very anxiety inducing deficiency on its own because your body knows it's in trouble and it definitely wants to tell you about it!

It only takes about 3-4 days without food to develop anemia to this degree, though it can take as little as 2 if you already have deficits. If you are eating food but it's lacking in iron this transition can take 2-3 weeks, as your body uses up its iron reserves located in your liver, spleen and bone marrow (where red blood cells are produced).

Malnutrition and especially starvation also screws with your electrolytes, making you prone to dizzy spells and vertigo, and can seriously affect the myelin sheathes around your nerves and the delicate proteins in your brain, which combined with electrolyte imbalance and probable anemia can cause anything from blurred vision, headaches, fatigue and cognitive impairment (pervasive brain fog), at best, all the way up to the moderate landing of muscle spasms and ataxia (loss of coordination) and functional loss of senses like sight and hearing, to the severe landing of seizures and total organ failure. Also, malnourished muscles hurt!!! They hurt to touch, they hurt to move, it hurts to exist!

I once went 8 full days with little to no food, so I know this stuff from experience. Let me tell you, hunger pains are God fucking awful and paradoxically make you feel very nauseous and can cause vomiting, (your body wants to get rid of the concentrated stomach acid) and are truly indescribable in their instinctual ability to instill desperation, depression and terror. You would eat a lot of things you never thought you would after just three days without food. At 8, I was very strongly considering eating my pet birds. I had already begun eating their seeds. The only thing that saved them was one measly bag of potato chips, the very last thing resembling human food in the pantry (the vending machine size chips) on day 6, which gave me just enough salt and fat to rethink that idea.

Anyway, muscles! Hurt!!! Especially if you don't eat a lot of protein to start out. Muscular degeneration or "digestion" (ketosis) can happen surprisingly fast if you arent eating anything at all. 5-7 days usually if you are healthy, though 3 is not unheard of, especially if you are expending a lot of calories and have very little fat. It's quirky hallmark? A strangely sweet and metallic taste in your mouth. Like a penny coated in sugar water. The ache is hard to describe, but it is constantly there, and honestly wore me down psychologically more than the hunger pains, which curiously went away after day 4, only coming back with a vengeance when I tried to eat anything. It hurt to move, it hurt to think about moving, and the constant low level pain was absolute torture. The fatigue didn't help. I normally slept about 6-9 hours. During that time after day 3 or so, I started sleeping 15 or more, in bursts, and had very little energy to do anything but rest. Every now and then I'd get a burst of restlessness, my body pushing me to find food or drink water. It was unpleasant. The headaches were pretty bad too, at first.

Malnutrition, and specifically a lack of protein, also causes pervasive muscle aches and all the neurologic issues mentioned above.

My experience led me to the development of ataxia that has never completely gone away. I remember the panic of nearly blacking out while trying to stand too, and not being able to cognitively focus on anything, much less visually focus. (Started about day 5). Mind you, I was 15 years old and weighed only 89 lbs prior to this period, with a fast metabolism and very little fat. After it I weighed 81 lbs. 8lbs in 8 days is a lot of weight to lose, and boy did my body hate me for some time after that. But my insomnia was cured for a while!

Anyway, i hope this proves insightful for all your whumping and torturous needs. I didn't plan on making it so personal, but hey, I've lived through that, so it seemed relevant to add that here.

Happy writing!

[zoe-oneesama]

Love that once I’ve finally dropped the show they decide to upload often. Once you’ve caught you breath from the spam, do you think you’d do a review of the new episodes? I’ve seen glimpses of cursed cabbage patch kids and I’m too scared to try and watch this season, but I always enjoyed your analysis of episodes. (No pressure though)

I don't really like to do immediate reviews, especially in this season, because there is a through line in these episodes so some things won't become clear until future episodes. But I can give a super quick review with my minor pros and cons:

Evolution:

Synopsis: Monarch uses the rabbit's power to attempt to defeat the heroes in the past. By unifying with Bunnix's Miraculous, they thwart him every time despite him using multiple Miraculouses, and, with the help of the present Alix and past Dog miraculous, the Rabbit Miraculous is reclaimed with Alix finally taking the Rabbit permanently, starting her journey through time until Monarch is defeated and it's safe for her to return.

Good: Monarch is using his brain (or like 75% of it) by immediately using the time travel Miraculous and it took a lot of teamwork to stop him. I'm glad Nathalie reached her breaking point in the face of Gabriel obsessing more over defeating teenagers than focusing on what his actual goal should be. I like Bunny Noir's design (mostly. His mask gives him eye bags from up close). This episode went the way I was hoping the season would go, with the heroes one by one reclaiming the lost Miraculouses.

Bad: Alix is not my favorite and I don't really care for episodes about her. It is frustrating that when Monarch passes out from overusing the Miraculouses that the heroes don't start looting his corpse when they had the chance, or any of the other times he's tied up.

Multiplication:

Synopsis: Everyone adjusts to the new normal of Monarch having stolen all the Miraculouses and are awaiting his next move, while reclaiming their lives. Adrien tells his father he wants to quit modeling and Gabriel accepts. Since Marinette gave him the advice to speak to his dad, Adrien starts looking at her in a new light. After many weeks, an akuma finally attacks- Ikari Dozen with the abilities of the Mouse Miraculous, yet when she's defeated, she has no Miraculous. On that confusing note, Gabriel and Tomoe announce their newest product: Alliance, a ring with all the functions of a phone on one finger.

Good: I don't have much in this category since the episode is half montage. It's mostly just "not bad". I guess I'm glad that word has spread to at least Alya that Adrien doesn't want to model anymore?

Bad: Uh, it's Alya though. Marinette has explained explicitly why a relationship with Adrien is a no go but Alya just WILL NOT support her on this and I do NOT approve. And it's one thing to just be like "uh I don't believe you but whatever" and another thing to actively work against Marinette, aka holding her down so Adrien can kiss her when she doesn't want him to??? And also WHY DOES EVERYONE KNOW ALIX IS BUNNIX NOW?!

Destruction:

Synopsis: With all the kwamis at his command, Gabriel demands Ladybug's address as a loophole around the secret keeping magic and is led to Marinette, who is the first step on a scavenger hunt for the answer. This leads Monarch to the Wax Museum where a trap is waiting - Chat Noir and Ladybug, who get the jump on him and tie him to Chat's Cataclysm activated hand. They could never predict, however, that when Ladybug went for the Butterfly Miraculous that Monarch would sacrifice his own body and take the brunt of the Cataclysm just to escape. Despite suffering a growing injury, Gabriel, with Tomoe's help, destroys the Miraculouses and rebuilds them as rings which, combine with his Alliance product, give his akumas Miraculous abilities.

Good: Ladybug's plan is so thorough and to think she set this as far back as between Seasons 2-3 (they're still calling him "Hawkmoth" in flashbacks but allude to Ladybug being Guardian) is quite the contingency plan. It's funny that Chat Noir was willing to walk around with a piece of paper with an insult punchline on it on the OFF CHANCE Monarch would try this shit. It was also funny that I thought the loophole was going to be that the kwami's don't know "Ladybug's" address because she doesn't have one, only Marinette does...but the loophole was that kwami's don't know what an address even is?! Lololol. And Xuppu being innocently annoying made him MVP.

Bad: Chat Noir being so broken up by hitting the MAIN VILLAIN with Cataclysm seems so out of left field after Scarabella, Uncanny Valley, and almost Sole Crusher (and even dumber after "Jubilation"). This is the ONE GUY you don't have to feel bad about but he acts horrified, yet one episode later he almost does it to someone on purpose. This episode also has a long montage section and after "Multiplication" I was like "please don't do more of this". And them taking the first 3 minutes to try to explain the Rooster just made it more confusing to me (though it did add something things that made sense).

Jubilation:

Synopsis: Marinette discovers that not only is Damocles still cosplaying The Owl, but an old school friend is cosplaying Ladybug and they're both getting into trouble. She goes to this friend Socqueline's family store and tries to get her to confess to this "crime" while also getting her own run down of the ins and outs of the Alliance ring. After a fumble where Marinette takes Socqueline's ring with her on a Ladybug mission and having thoroughly scolded both Socqueline and Damocles, Monarch becomes sure Socqueline IS Ladybug and sicks Darker Owl on her. When she's discovered to not be Ladybug, Socqueline is used to bait Ladybug and Chat Noir into being hit by Darker Owl's "Gift" power and traps them in a dream of defeating Monarch, becoming a couple, and having a happy life - until they have to wake up. Defeating Damocles doesn't reveal any Miraculouses and the two are left confused.

Good: I like Socqueline. She pokes a few holes in what we knew about Marinette's backstory but she's pretty well rounded in just one episode. If the dream sequence was meant to make me laugh then I appreciate it for that and I like that they gave Marinette a believable reason to avoid using the Alliance other than "it has my crush/my enemy on it as AI and it's weird". I also approve of this episode confirming all the conspiracy dystopian ideas I had about this creepy ass ring.

Bad: I'm just being nitpicky but the dream seems incomplete and half hearted since there's no identity reveal - in THIS EPISODE Marinette scolds two people for not appreciating the one thing she wished she had: normalcy. Yet her entire dream sequence she's stuck as her hero self? Unless the Gift is influenced by Darker Owl's lack of knowledge about their identity, that just feels like some dissonance. Also, not Sabine using the AI model of the girl that got her daughter expelled. Also, not Gabriel using an AI model of his wife, hope Alliance never goes off IN PUBLIC and reveals THAT feature!

Illusion:

Synopsis: In an attempt to help Ladybug and Chat Noir, Nino starts a resistance and comes up with a plan to record an akumatization to solve the mystery of how Monarch is giving people the powers of the Miraculous. How? By causing an akuma themselves, with Gabriel as the target. Unfortunately Lila has discovered their plans and warned Gabriel, who uses this to his advantage by pretending to be akumatized and giving the heroes false leads. The “resistance” is expanded to the rest of the class - including Lila.

Good: Um, I didn’t really like this episode. The VILLAIN got to be the manipulative, clever one, which doesn’t make me feel good in the end, and Lila IS STILL BE ACCEPTED BY ALYA?! Make it make sense dammit!

Bad: This episode. I don’t like it. Gabriel AND Monarch’s manipulation worked and in the end Alya is apologizing to Nino for “doubting” him despite being the only person thinking through the cruelty of purposefully akumatizing someone? Why does every Nino-centric episode make him a jerk? Why did the two “heroes” go along with this? AND WHY IS ALYA STILL VOUCHING FOR LILA??!?!

Determination:

Synopsis: Adrien is letting his growing feelings for Marinette show and Kagami pushes him into a date with her. Marinette peer pressures herself into reciprocating, but brings Luka, who teams up with Kagami to give the two a push by locking them in the Wax Museum together. Meanwhile, the Mayor is threatening Veronique to shut down her new All Heroes display and is akumatized into Manipula, who controls the wax displays to attack. The heroes defeat Manipula, even with her borrowing from the Ox Miraculous, and return to the musuem. Both have a realization: Adrien is in love with Marinette and Marinette is in love with Chat Noir.

Good: Though I hated the idea of Kagami and Luka joining Team Adrienette by making weird plans to force them together, the way they went about it was pretty mild and seemed to line up more with the two's personalities, down to Kagami sticking around just because she was 100% sure Adrien would mess it up without her and Luka seeing right through Marinette's excuses. I liked Manipula's design (even if she's just an upgraded Puppeteer powerwish) and thought it was interesting that her akuma was split up so ALL the "heroes" needed to be defeated. I thought the episode would be way worse.

Bad: WHY THE WAX MUSEUM?! WHY WOULD THAT BE THE MOMENT HIS FEELINGS CHANGED?! Adrien's love language is clearly words of affirmation, wouldn't it make WAY more sense that Marinette's practice love confession to "Buttercup" would be what changes his mind, especially since Puppeteer 2 was in SEASON 3 which ended with him DATING SOMEONE ELSE?!?!

I also don't know if I should put this in Good or Bad, but damn the mood difference between Adrien bathed in the yellow warmth of the Wax Museum as he happily realizes he's in love vs. Marinette in the dark clouds and rain as she's devastated to realize she's in love. Cinematic marvel, 10/10, what a disaster.

Passion:

Synopsis: Nathalie reacts violently at Gabriel's pretend Good Dad act and Gabriel presents her with his growing 'clysm injury, which has him on a time clock, making her realize he won't stop going after the Miraculouses because his other option is to die and leave Adrien completely alone. Armed with this and videos of Emilie telling Nathalie to stop Gabriel's pursuit of the Miraculous, Nathalie plays double agent, intent to get the Miraculouses before Gabriel, and pretends to be back on his side, accepting an akuma: Safari. Adrien is all set to confess to Marinette but is side tracked by Nathalie's growing illness, which Marinette reassures him through - up until the akuma attacks. Safari's abilities lead tracking crossbow bolts to stun the heroes, but when Adrien detransforms and realizes the bolts lost track of "Chat Noir", he gets the idea to swap Miraculouses. Being Mister Bug and knowing the akuma is Nathalie, whom he blames himself for akumatizing, Adrien maintains a serious attitude, whereas Lady Noire realizes she's around her love, takes on more flirty tactics (to her own confusion and dread). Safari is defeated and Adrien makes a point to be there for her emotionally, bonding the two.

Good: Nathalie is living her best "let's save our wife" moments and I'm so glad to be back on this Doing It For Emilie track instead of For Gabriel. The Akuma x Goat Miraculous match up was really clever and the work around was equally clever. It's nice to see Adrien step up, which is also probably why he was given the "serious" Miraculous, though I'd argue he didn't need to be Mister Bug to show off an ability to take the lead.

Bad: This episode paired with the next starts this annoying trend of "Oh so it's fine when HE does it but when MARINETTE does it it's bad!" Starting with Alya accusing Marinette of running away from her feelings by going after Chat Noir - but no one is double checking Adrien for switching to Marinette? For him, he's just "taking the hint" but for Marinette it's just running away from her feelings? If that were the case, why the big dramatic "Oh god no Tikki I'm in LOVE" at the end of the last episode??

Also I'm disappointed their shooting holes in my "Emilie is just as bad" theory, how dare.

Reunion:

Synopsis: Marinette and Alya go to the Museum to (on purpose this time) look for Miraculous clues. Tikki introduces a way to use the Kwagatama to commune with past Miraculous holders and Marinette accidentally uncovers a letter from Alix, which gets Alix's father to summon (most) of the class. Jalil interrupts the Reading of the Will Letter to accuse Ladybug of tricking his sister into leaving, haven fallen for online reddit conspiracies of Ladybug being the true villain and being willingly akumatized into The Pharaoh with the power of the Turtle. Marinette communes with Jeanne of Arc for love advice, to her annoyance, but sticks around for the akuma. Ladybug relies on Bunnix through written correspondence to get near the akuma and has him use his Book of Truth to tell him if Ladybug is really the villain, which it confirms she's the hero. Pissed that Monarch "lied to him", Jalil banishes his own akuma. Impressed by how Ladybug and Chat Noir handled things, Jeanne tells her love story with her Cat Holder, which ended with them having to denounce their Miraculouses to even have a chance to be together, though it's unknown if they did.

Good: I liked the use of the conspiracy boards turning against Ladybug and Chat Noir because honestly it would probably happen and, if not Lila, Jalil is a good character to channel that through. It's nice they're bringing the kwagatama back and yay for Adrien getting his (but omigod the comedic timing of him gazing adoringly at Marinette's photo and then Plagg straight up BARFING on him lmao).

Bad: What did I say about "Oh so when HE does it-". Here Alya gets on Marinette's case by insisting the reason that the Miraculous holder's they've been finding in the museum are all SOLO is because they're focused on their JOB instead of ROMANCE. Um, hello? What show are YOU watching? We've had FOUR SEASONS OF CHAT NOIR DOING EXACTLY THAT, but NOW you wanna talk about it?! No no no, if Chat Noir didn't get flak for it in universe, neither does Marinette. Pair that with Tikki essentially making fun of Plagg for being worried because when HER holder is in love NOTHING get's accomplished, and it's like this show is getting a kick out of mocking the VERY THINGS that have kept this show going. Guess what, Tikki, if Marinette HAD been straight forward and confessed, she'd have been turned down in Season 1, so maybe don't harp on the very thing that's made you exist for FIVE SEASONS.

This is what I meant in an earlier post about the episodes being mostly okay but then there's just ONE FUCKING THING-

Even in "Reunion", Tikki suggests talking to Jeanne but then takes it back and the episode makes it out like Marinette's the immature one for following Tikki's advice by having Jeanne annoyed with her. Oh, I'm sorry JOAN, are you BUSY? Did we INTERRUPT something?? Pretty sure you were doing a whole lot of NOTHING, so what does it MATTER what kind of question Marinette has?

I’m still waiting on the “Exaltation” english subs, so news on that one.

So that's the season so far~ Most of it came out in just a week so it was hard for me to keep episodes separate.

[corpsesoldier]

so. kiriona huh?

under the cut: full nona spoilers, plus me trying to process some thoughts and coming to very few conclusions

what a kick in the teeth that was, huh?

I want to touch on two main things about gideon's appearance as kiriona in ntn: kiriona's behavior toward the other characters and kiriona as revenant and how I think those things might be related.

so I'm open to both the ideas I've seen floating around wrt to kiriona's behavior in ntn, those being 1) this is an extremely traumatized, sad, and angry but functionally complete gideon nav and 2) that this is only a fragment of gideon's soul.

I think enough people mention "parts" of souls enough times for the fragment theory to have weight, as well as the interview in which tamsyn compares gideon's soul to a happy meal (yeah) and saying that harrow only ever ate the hamburger, whither the fries and drink, etc. maybe what we're seeing is the discarded plastic toy of gideon nav's soul.

however, there are things kiriona says and does that are absolutely 100% gideon. I think what's giving a lot of people pause is kiriona's apparent indifference to seeing her friends and allies again and, most significantly, her indifference over seeing harrow's body. for better or worse, one of gideon's defining characteristics is that she cares a whole fuck of a lot about harrowhark nonagesimus. kiriona acts aloof and unconcerned about all that for a good chunk of her page time in ntn, but particularly near the end we some behavior break through that facade that we would more readily associate with gideon (holding harrow's body and telling her to keep it together when nona starts to come apart; telling alecto to get in line when she offers harrow her service).

so, yknow, I think either option is fair game at this point, but unequivocally this is gideon, at least in part.

so then, this is gideon. and given that, there are some behaviors that I am having trouble reconciling with the gideon we've seen thus far.

I have a hard time believing that gideon would shove an injured and dying cam the way that she does, but hey, she's having a really, really bad day. just what we've seen her experience on page could fill her therapy appointments for the next myriad, and idk what eight months with only john "gaslight" gaius and ianthe "girlboss" tridentarius will do to a mf. I am withholding judgement.

but even moreso than that, I have a hard time reconciling the gideon we see in htn with whatever the hell kiriona's got going on with ianthe. gideon hates ianthe. gideon is furious with ianthe for the way that she treated harrow throughout htn, and yet kiriona and ianthe have friendship bracelets and a secret handshake. and so I'm wondering: how much does kiriona remember about the events of htn?

I'm also interested in why god made gideon into a revenant. he did not have to do that—he's god. presumably he could have fixed her body and put her soul back where it belongs, provided he had access to both those things. and yet kiriona is tied to her own mutilated corpse. is, in her own words, mega-dead. why?

perhaps because john wants total control over this asset, this weapon he's created. john, who "knows where remembrance lives in the brain" and is perfectly willing to exploit that. now, he did that with his lyctors while bringing them completely back to life, but gideon has always been a special case. gideon survived nerve gas as a toddler. gideon made harrow's much-abused skull go SPANG back into shape after a few minutes residence in her meat. maybe if john put gideon's soul back in a living body, gideon's healing factor has the ability to revert whatever alterations he may have made to her brain.

(this is assuming I know how revenants work, which is a big assumption. is whatever kiriona's got going on even being processed through gideon's brain, if that brain is dead? unsure. I am not a spirit magician.)

but regardless, we've had a couple examples of how integral memory is to identity in the locked tomb, the biggest one from this very book being nona-who-is-alecto, but alecto-who-is-not-nona. plus the lyctors with their memory of god's fallibility removed, plus harrow reduced by her half-remembered life.

and then there's what kiriona says to aigalemene, "don't—that's where my heart used to be."

is it possible that kiriona gaia is a gideon with the parts most inconvenient to god cut away?

[writerlyhabits]

Bed Rest

Pairing: Din Djarin x reader

Word Count: 1.5k

Request: “Reader takes care of a sick Din send tweet ”

Warnings: mild language, pre-established relationship, helmetless Din but it's dark and technically no creed is broken, its just fluff. I did spell a Mando'a word funky, but that's cause he says it weird, just trust me on this one, kay?

AN: Okay.... this request has been sitting in my inbox for a hot minute and I'm so sorry, but every time I opened the doc all thoughts just left my brain and I couldn't make anything I liked. I know it's short, but I think keeping it short and sweet made this a lil easier.  @deceiverofgodss you're wonderful as always ty 💛 Thanks for requesting, I hope you all enjoy!

Din Djarin is a complicated man. 

There are many layers to him, both on the surface and buried behind the layers of his beskar armor. He’s clever, his brain moving faster than you could even comprehend to get your party through high-tension situations. He’s kind, offering his genuine thanks wherever he could, and – as you’d noticed on more than one occasion – tips generously where it is deserved. He has his hard edges, but there is a softness to him in his lingering touches at the small of your back, and when he cradles his foundling to his chest. 

But he’s also one of the most stubborn men you have ever met. 

As of late, he’d been sleeping for far longer than normal, had been partial to cranking the heat up at the inns, and you could hear his stuffy nose affecting his ability to speak – even through the helmet. Din was very clearly sick, or at the very least under the weather, but would he admit to it? Of course not. He powered through, acting like nothing was wrong. 

It was getting on your nerves. 

So you took matters into your own hands. 

“Love,” he whined, having traded your preferred mesh’la for one he could pronounce without hindrance from the blockage of his sinuses, which you kept commenting on and he kept ignoring. “Where did you put the tracker?” He was searching the front table – where he most definitely set it down beside his vambraces the night before – not looking over at you. 

“I haven’t seen it,” you feigned innocence, and you admittedly could have been a better actress, but in his state that was the last thing he would notice. Which was exactly why you had taken to hiding the fob in your hands behind your back. 

He couldn’t go on this hunt. If he didn’t run himself into the ground and make his symptoms worse, he would get himself killed trying to function despite of them. 

For a moment you thought you were going to get away with it, until the traitorous device beeped in your hands to remind you it was still working. Dank farrik. Your Mandalorian turned around steadily to face you, the intimidation of his dark visor lost on you because you knew he was avoiding making himself dizzy by moving his head too fast. 

Usually, this would become an unfair game. You would try to keep it close to your body, using every defense you had to fend him off, Din’s large strong frame being able to overpower you with little effort as you both laughed. Sick Din, however, simply sagged his shoulders in disappointment. 

“Please don’t make me take it from you, I can’t.” 

Sometimes it was so hard remembering just how human Din was underneath all of the beskar. Seeing him act just like any other man with a cold was refreshing. You just wished it also came with the usual desire to sit around and do nothing. 

“You can’t?” You repeated, eyebrows shot up on your forehead as you waited for him to hear what he was saying. “Din, if you can’t overpower me, how the hell do you think you’re going to be able to hunt down a bounty?” 

“It’s different, I won’t have to-” 

“Din.” Your firm tone had taken to sounding similar to his, even causing Grogu to look up at the two of you from his spot on the chair in the corner, and Din halted his argument. “You’re sick, you need to rest. If you don’t stop and take care of yourself, it’s only going to take longer before you can get back out there.” 

You let him sit with that reality for a second, watching as his visor turned to look at his green child across the room. You knew where his thoughts were going; the longer he couldn’t hunt, the longer it would take for him to provide for you all. The longer you kept Grogu cooped up in the shabby inn, and it was only a matter of time before you went out and took the bounty out yourself. 

You were not incapable by any means. In fact, he loved having you by his side in battle, the two of you being able to read the other as if by some ancient jedi mind trick. But he was fiercely protective, and you knew he wouldn’t be able to handle the idea of sitting on the sidelines while you were on the hunt, unable to come to your rescue should you need it. 

All of this, you knew, went through his head as he turned back to you. You knew each other too well for his thoughts to be any kind of mystery to you, just as yours were second nature to him. Which meant that he knew you were prepared to fight him on this. 

So he sighed in defeat. 

“Fine.” 

“Good choice. Now take your armor off and get in bed.” 

“Mbesh’la, I don't think that’s-“

“Mbesh’la,” you taunted back, making fun of the way his congestion morphed the usually elegant word. You could practically hear his eye roll. “C’mon, I’m gonna get you soup from the shop downstairs. When I come back, I’ll help you out of the rest of it,” you finished sweetly. 

Din nodded in reply – a slow movement to avoid a headache – and you slipped the tracker into your pocket. Just to be safe. He made an attempt to start discarding his gear, gloved fingers fumbling with the clasps of his cloak now that they were free of his weapons. 

Before he struggled for long, you walked up and gingerly took his hands in yours, removing his leather gloves with a tenderness you rarely got to share with your Mandalorian. As you got the material over his large hands, you kissed his knuckles before reaching up to unfsaten the clasps he’d been struggling with, folding it across your arms when it released. You gave him a sweet smile, and placed one hand on the side of his helmet to bring it down towards you, leaving him with a keldabe kiss before you made your way out of the room. 

When you came back with the soup in hand – a large bowl for Din, and a small one for the foundling who never stopped eating – the room was dark, save for the oranges of the sunset outside peeking in through the cracks of the drapes. On the sizable bed in the middle of the room were your boys, Din cast in the shadows of the room as he laid on his side, and Grogu playing happily with his father’s helmet from his spot on top of the covers. Din’s hand was resting against the child’s back, and you just about melted at the sight. 

And then Din sneezed. 

At the very least, it amused the child, a laugh gurgling out of him at the ridiculous sound. It reminded you to keep moving, delivering the steaming bowls to a grateful Mandalorian, smiling at his quiet thanks. Only leaving them for a moment, you went into the fresher to run a cloth under hot water, bringing it back out to the shadow of a man tilting the edge of the bowl to his lips. 

Success. 

You made your way back to the side of the bed and began your usual dance, moving around him comfortably while never focusing on the patch of shadows where his face would be, trusting you not to find the features that may slip into the light while he was without his helmet. Your gaze landed on his dark curls, brushing them away from your peripherals to place the warm towel to his forehead, pleased with the quiet groan that left his body. 

“Keep this here until it gets cold. It’ll help you keep warm,” you instructed, pressing a kiss to his temple before you turned to walk away. The hand not supporting his soup reached for yours before you could get far, squeezing your hand as he found his words. 

“Could be warmer… There’s room for you to join us,” he offered, as close to a formal request as you would be getting out of him in this state. It brought a soft smile to your face as you looked down at your hands, woven together in his attempt to keep you close. 

You squeezed his hand with a promise to be right back, following his lead and changing into softer clothes more suitable for the sauna that was waiting for you under the covers. While you were up you tidied up the small space a little, stalling to let the other two finish their soups, smiling to yourself when you watched Grogu climb up into his fathers arms as the empty bowls were placed to the side. 

Coming back to them, you crawled into bed behind Din, wrapping your arms around his chest as you nuzzled into the muscular planes of his back. You listened to his breathing, his strong and steady breaths unaffected by his condition, and his heartbeat thumping in his chest. When his breathing relaxed, the tension in his limbs went right along with it, and only then were you able to follow him to sleep. Your Mandalorian could rest, giving his body the time it needed to recover. And you would enjoy every quiet, laidback moment it brought you and your little family.

Thanks for reading!! If you’d like to be notified when I post a new fic, be sure to follow @writerlyhabits-library + turn on post notifications! 💛

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Hey sorry, what was that in the tags about humans having two brains?? I haven’t read any of the Visser books…

So in Visser, Edriss describes her first experience in the human brain as:

Then I discovered something strange and disturbing. A huge, deep chasm. It seemed to separate the human brain into two halves. And between the halves was only a nerve bundle not much thicker than my own true body... This second half of the brain was an almost mirror image, but not. It could have functioned all on its own, if necessary, and yet it was in some ways radically different in its memories, its sensory interpretation, even its will. Two almost entirely functional brains in one skull, communicating across a channel of nerves. Not a fully redundant system, almost a second, different brain! ...This brain worked by dialectic. Each half of the brain saw and heard and smelled and touched a slightly different world. Each tended toward specialization, but not a hard, fast split. The left half had more language, but not all the language. The right side had more spatial perception, but not all of the spatial perception... This brain contained its own traitor!

And that's a pretty accurate description of how human brains work, and how they differ from those of non-mammals. It's not about individuals being "right brain" or "left brain" (that's nonsensical; anyone who says differently is selling something). It's talking about the fact that the two halves of the brain are partially but not fully redundant, meaning they work as a team. That way there's backup for the super-important functions like breathing, but not for the nifty-not-necessary ones like language.

I think the stuff about the two halves talking to each other from slightly different worlds refers to split brain research. Split brain patients are those who've had that "nerve bundle not much thicker than [a yeerk]" severed in order to prevent seizures. These individuals tend to have normal quality of life (improved after the surgery)... unless you cut off their ability to use sensory information to compensate for the lack of brain-to-brain information. This interview with one such woman says:

neuroscientists now know that the healthy brain can look like two markedly different machines, cabled together and exchanging a torrent of data. But when the primary cable is severed, information — a word, an object, a picture — presented to one hemisphere goes unnoticed in the other.

If you shut a split-brain individual's right eye, then show their left eye the word "baseball", then they can grab a baseball out of a box by touch — but only if they use their left hand. When asked out loud "What did you grab?", they'll answer "I don't know" because they don't — the right hemisphere which controls the left half of the body has almost no language comprehension. If you show the right eye only the words "stand up", most patients will stand, but when asked why, will say things like "I guess I wanted a bathroom break" or "I must be getting restless" because they have no conscious awareness of being told to stand.

Anyway, this system is pretty great, since it means humans can have pretty good quality of life with huge chunks of their brains missing. And it's kinda baffling, because there have also been people who had all quality of life destroyed by minuscule localized damage. Our brains really are their own traitors. Le sigh.

[misterspectacular]

Human Brain VS Megamind Brain

HUMAN BRAIN:

MEGAMIND BRAIN:

So I see some differences (aside from size, obviously), and that may just be a animation error, but I’m gonna analyze it (to the best of my abilities) anyway.

ANATOMY OF THE BRAIN:

PARTS OF THE BRAIN, LABELED:

CORPUS CALLOSUM:

THALAMUS: 

PONS:

CEREBELLUM: 

DIFFERENCES:

1.) His CORPUS CALLOSUM is broken up into 3 sections rather than one.

"The two hemispheres in your brain are connected by a thick bundle of nerve fibres called the corpus callosum that ensures both sides of the brain can communicate and send signals to each other."

"If the corpus callosum is injured, the signal transmission from one hemisphere to the other is impaired and can lead to serious coordination problems, or ataxia. The person lacks control or coordination of voluntary movements such as: Walking. Picking up objects."

Okay, so according to this, he has more of the nerve fibers that help a person control voluntary movements. That makes a lot of sense, considering how fast he moves, and with such skill. The dude can dance the beat to a song with his feet. He can hang upside down from ladders. He's a friggin evil genius that creates weapons and gadgets with his very hands, and very speedily. All makes sense.

2.) His THALAMUS is larger than that of a human (it’s also in a different spot, but I’m going to disregard that. I’m not sure what effect this would have on an individual, but I do think it’s MEANT to be there, meaning, it’s there just because that’s what’s normal for his species, not because of an abnormality.

"The thalamus is a mostly gray matter structure of the diencephalon that has many essential roles in human physiology. The thalamus is composed of different nuclei that each serve a unique role, ranging from relaying sensory and motor signals, as well as regulation of consciousness and alertness."

"While the thalamus is classically known for its roles as a sensory relay in visual, auditory, somatosensory, and gustatory systems, it also has significant roles in motor activity, emotion, memory, arousal, and other sensorimotor association functions.”

“While thalamus damage primarily causes sensory problems, it can also lead to behavioral and cognitive changes. For example, many patients with a thalamus injury have incorrect speech patterns and can struggle to find the right words. Others display apathy and memory problems.”

I’d say his Thalamus isn’t damaged, but is just naturally larger, and that his issues with speech stem from a lack of social interaction rather than brain damage.

So, what happens when an individual has a naturally large Thalamus? “Individuals who suffer from severe depression have more nerve cells in the part of the brain that controls emotion, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas have found. Studies of postmortem brains of patients diagnosed with major depressive disorder (MDD) showed a 31 percent greater than average number of nerve cells in the portion of the thalamus involved with emotional regulation. Researchers also discovered that this portion of the thalamus is physically larger than normal in people with MDD.”

So, basically, having a larger Thalamus means he’s more emotional than others. This actually makes sense, considering how extreme his emotions are. He can go from heart-broken to ecstatic quite quickly. He’s melodramatic. A lot of what makes him “toony” can actually be explained by his brain in this image, which is interesting.

3.) His PONS is differently shaped.

“The pons is part of a highway-like structure between the brain and the body known as the brainstem. The brainstem is made up of three sections, and carries vital information to the body. The pons relays information about motor function, sensation, eye movement, hearing, taste, and more.”

It’s differently shaped. I’m not sure what affect this would have -- but seeing how the difference in shape is basically an addition, I would say we could consider his Pons to have more to it than a human’s. So I would assume that this means he relays information about motor function, sensation, eye movement, hearing, taste, and such faster than a human does. Also makes sense. That’s actually one of the reasons he comes across as a genius -- he’s quick.

4.) His CEREBELLUM is massive.

“The cerebellum is important for making postural adjustments in order to maintain balance. Through its input from vestibular receptors and proprioceptors, it modulates commands to motor neurons to compensate for shifts in body position or changes in load upon muscles.”

Back to his motor skills. He knows where his body is and how to move it.

“The primary role of the cerebellum has traditionally thought to comprise balance and motor control. However, studies have been emerging that support multiple functions of the cerebellum including emotion regulation, inhibiting impulsive decision making, attention, and working memory.”

“This study confirms previous work indicating that the cerebellum may make a contribution to several aspects of cognition. Cerebellar volume significantly correlated with the ability to retain already encoded information in the verbal domain and with fine motor dexterity. Cerebellar volume positively correlated with general but the relationship did not reach statistical significance. The structural/functional relationship between cerebellum and verbal memory abilities is consistent with evolutionary theory for the phylogenetical increase in the size of the cerebellum.”    

So having a larger cerebellum would mean he does all of these things better/faster than a human. Better balance, better motor control. According to some studies, this would also mean he’d be better at regulating emotions, thinking things through, focusing, and memorizing. Would we say Megamind is good at regulating his emotions? Though they are extreme when he has them, perhaps he is good at regulating them. He took the negative feelings he had as a child and turned them into positives (I’m good at being bad!). He does seem to be pretty good at finding a problem and turning it into something productive (except when Metro Man died, but that makes sense. Trauma is a thing no matter how big your brain is, and he did recover quite quickly once Roxanne gave him some inspiration). Would we say he thinks things through? He would have to, to build certain things, but he also does come across as impulsive, but perhaps that’s because he just doesn’t care about possible negative outcomes -- or he doesn’t think there will be any because he thinks he’s too much of a genius. He’s capable of focusing when something really interests him (hyperfocused, actually), and his memory seems to be adequate. He did forget some of his inventions, but as he said, he did make a lot of them in his time. And having a BETTER memory doesn’t mean it’s INFALLIBLE.

So all of this is inconclusive, but it seems, for the most part, that he’s just more extreme and is able to think/move faster than humans. Which, yeah. Definitely.

Also, what’s interesting is, his head size/shape comes from his corpus colosum and his cerebellum.

[ask-whitepearl-and-steven]

It's not really an au question but I was wondering if you had any tips to stay motivated on a big project like this. I can't seem to stay motivated on anything for very long, even if I still want to and have plans to work on something I can't seem to actually do it.

Hmm.... Here's the thing - executive function is a habit. It's not a talent, or something you're born with. (Some people have trouble with it, due to ADHD, for example, but even neurotypicals don't automatically know how to work on something long-term.)

So you should think of your ability to do long-term projects like a muscle. It has to be trained!

If you try to just start a big project with no training, imagine yourself attempting to deadlift 400lbs with no prior experience. Either you'll fail, or you'll hurt yourself because you don't have technique - you'll get burned out.

I was originally ALSO really bad at long projects. I would think up huge things for myself to do - novel-length stories! Multi-volume comic tales! Entire card deck illustrations!

And then I would give up having not even gotten halfway through, because my imagination was bigger than my ability to stay focused.

And that! Is NORMAL!

You have to start small. You have to reward your brain for accomplishments. Set small goals, finish them easily, and pat yourself on the back. Draw a small 5-page comic that isn't going anywhere else. Write a short story, edit and finish it and set it aside!

Years down the road, someday, eventually, you'll find that you can draw the same story longer, that you can stick with a plotline for months on end. You'll develop your long-term-project muscles and get better at it!

I'm STILL not perfect. I have been with WD!Steven for 2+ years, and it has taken legitimate effort to turn myself back to it. Not because I don't like it, but because the human brain naturally likes new, shiny ideas more than old ones it already knows a lot about. (That's actually a good thing - that's how we evolved to be where we are. Exploration of new concepts is a natural tendency of the human brain.)

Anyway, I hate to be pedantic but.... it's honestly just practice. Lots and lots of practice.

[fischotterkunst]

im thinking way too much about Chocobos bc video game creature design is my jam and birds are my jam and also i just got finished writing a lecture so brain is in Lecture Mode, and i'm noticing something very peculiar about their design.

the first thing that got me is their feet. these examples are from FFVII and FFXIV, but the design is consistent as far as i'm aware throughout every iteration. they have foot structures unlike literally anything i'm aware of in the natural world:

this structure with two toes facing forward and one facing back seems unique to Chocobos, and i started thinking about what kind of lifestyle would cause them to evolve such an unusual arrangement.

here is a very excellent diagram of modern bird foot structure (source below image also links to highly informative twitter thread if anyone is interested in further reading):

(source)

following these real-world patterns, we can see that the primary purpose of the backwards-facing toe, the hallux, is grasping [prey] and perching. this is a very significant digit, and we can see clearly that Chocobos do possess one. however, in species adapted to a lifestyle on the ground, eg. flightless birds, a long hallux is a hazard as it could easily be broken or cause tripping if it gets snagged on the ground. therefore the group of birds most well-adapted to running rather than flying, the Struthioniformes, show different foot structures in which the hallux has receded altogether, as seen on the left. Ostriches are the only bird in the world with didactyly, having only two toes as seen on the right.

(source)(source)

the interesting thing about Struthioniformes is that they are typically herbivorous in addition to being flightless, further removing the need for the hallux. there are, of course, other modern birds adapted to running that do display anisodactyly, such as the Seriema, or zygodactyly, such as the Roadrunner. a major difference in Seriemas and Roadrunners as opposed to Struthioniformes other than the ability to fly is that these birds are carnivorous.

(do you see where i'm going with this yet?)

something else about Chocobos strikes me as odd, and that's their beaks. this is where, unlike their feet, their design does vary from game to game, but a particular feature from more modern iterations, such as the FFIIV remake and FFXI, stands out to me.

i'm talking about the shape of their beak, and also that little hook on the bottom of their upper mandible. that's called the Tomium, and we see it in several classes of modern birds as well as some other animals like turtles. its function is serration of either flesh or vegetation. you can see it on this Red-tailed Hawk (left) as well as this Lear's Macaw (right):

(source) (source)

as both source links do a fantastic job of explaining, the differences in the hawk's beak designed for tearing flesh and the parrot's bill for tearing fruit are most evident in the variations on their shape and their relation to their skulls - the short of it is that the shorter skull of the parrot and its more dramatic overbite allow greater prying leverage against the shells of fruit and nuts, whereas the length of the hawk's skull and beak lend to ripping and cutting.

it does appear, interestingly, that different iterations of the Chocobo's beak fall along different points of the scale between the hawk beak and the parrot bill, but it looks to me that generally the Chocobo has a more uniform mandible size and longer skull. while the tomium, as i mentioned, can be used for tearing grasses like those that Chocobos are typically fed in various games, the scissorlike shape of the Chocobo's beak looks as though it would lend itself much more readily to tearing meat.

thus my study can be boiled down to two major factors based on Chocobo's design vs. evolutionary design: 1) the hallux is necessary for grasping, and Chocobos possess a hallux, and since they are flightless and do not need to perch, it stands to reason that the hallux must be needed for holding onto prey; and 2) the presence of the tomium combined with the shape of the Chocobo's skull indicates a meat-based diet.

i think now is a good time to introduce the Phorusrhacids, more commonly known as "Terror Birds". thankfully for us, these carnivorous flightless birds are now extinct, but the largest of their species could be up to 10 feet tall and dined on the ancestors of modern horses and deer. to support this lifestyle, they evolved strong anisodactyl feet for grasping prey and a strong curved beak for tearing it into bite-sized chunks. here is a reconstructed skeleton of a Terror Bird species, specifically Titanis walleri:

(source)

and here is an artist's rendition according to modern scientific understanding of the closely related Paraphysornis brasiliensis:

(source)

THAT SURE LOOKS FAMILIAR, DOESNT IT??

in conclusion, i think Chocobos are carnivores and may be Final Fantasy's modern living relatives of Terror Birds. thank you for coming to my TED talk. if you read this whole thing, please know that i love you and you are welcome to message me your favorite color so i can draw a Chocobo just for you <3

[wibble-wobbegong]

i am SO fucking excited to see how will works with the rest of the og party when he’s able to be an active participant in the planning when they’re all together

we’ve had the lucas-dustin-mike trio, we’ve had the mike-lucas-will BUT. consider something for me, regarding the severe lack of will-dustin dynamic

mike is obviously our leader, but his ability to communicate his plans and knowledge to people is somewhat limited because he struggles to communicate in general. when he’s trying to explain how the hivemind works in season 2, nobody understands what the hell he’s talking about and he can’t figure out how to explain it in a way they understand. in season 1, the same thing happens a few times and in season 3 mike can’t actually communicate what he means when he says “no, we don’t win”

in season 2, the way mike’s knowledge gets across to others is through dustin!!! he takes what mike is saying and draws it to DND, which even though the non-party members may not understand directly, he can use it to explain what the hivemind is much more easily. dustin constantly draws parallels to DND in order to explain the insanity if the UD to other people

in season 3, will is the one communicating what mike is trying to say using visuals!! he makes that drawing of the mind flayer and transfers the dust in order to actually explain why they can’t win by burning it out of billy. he’s constantly creating in order to explain exactly how stuff works, because he isn’t great with words but he is good at using visuals and those can be just as effective

the situation they’re currently in is the most complex, multi-faceted and detail oriented problem they’ve ever faced. there’s dozens of angles and small things that have to be considered when they start making plans to go after henry and destroying/closing off the UD. so, here’s my proposition;

i think it would be SO fucking cool to watch mike, dustin, and will bounce off of each other to create a plan everybody can understand. mike takes all the details and puts then together into a viable plan, dustin is able to take what mike is saying and create digestible metaphors and analogies, and will can take a DND board and make an actual visual of the plan alongside other things because he also knows what dustin is talking about with his metaphors (DND lovers to the max). these three also each have deep understandings of things necessary to the function of the UD!!!

there’s a lot to consider, but when it comes to how the UD itself works, the people with the best understanding are mike, who’s general brains easily picks up on the smallest details and puts the puzzle together; dustin, who has a deeper understanding of the actual science than any other main character; and will. who is will.

obviously other characters are important and are necessary to make a full picture including lucas, el, nancy, hopper, and joyce, but none of them have been successful or have developed an actual understanding the same way these three have. they have the information, but the application of it often falls short. but if we were to get a dustin-mike-will moment??? the BEST trio to make a plan and put it into action, with the input of others

i really really hope we get to see them working together. if the tie up at the end if the season is always good, i think a scene of these three taking everything and laying it out would be so fucking good. plus, more will-dustin moments

[canmom]

on D&D

there have been many a Posten floating across my slice through the tumblr database of late on the flaws of Dungeons & Dragons. this is an old, old argument - pushed by the White Wolf fans before my time, raised to a furious pitch by the Forge movement (Ron Edwards infamously declared that D&D players have brain damage), and continuing to simmer as the Forge gave way to 'Story Games', and then ebbing a bit with whatever that movement have way to. i don't even especially disagree - most of the good times I've had with D&D have been more despite the printed rulebooks than because of them.

however, it's worth considering what D&D actually is.

"D&D" should not be confused with the books released by Wizards of the Coast or TSR. Nor even the other books in the D&D family in the OSR, Pathfinder, etc. these are an important part of it to be sure, and WotC would certainly like us to think that it all flows out of the books.

however, I think 'buying a D&D book without any expectations, reading it cover, and attempting to run the game as described in the book' represents probably a tiny fraction of D&D players. any more than you could discern the practices of a religion by reading their holy book.

D&D, as actually practiced, is something like that - a set of practices or sorta oral tradition. you learn what D&D is when someone invites you to a D&D group, or you listen to an 'actual play' podcast, or - like me! - you fall into forums and read libraries worth of arguments about which edition is best and game balance and funny game table anecdotes, which create a picture in your head of idealised D&D, and then off you go and try and get your friends on board. you use the books primarily as a reference. (or nowadays you go on 5e.tools instead and don't buy expensive books).

the thing is, this tradition is really good at perpetuating itself and it's as endless and weird to dig into as any long running media franchise. and because a lot of it is an echo of weird 70s shit that comes from, say, an off-brand tokusatsu figurine from Hong Kong, or an author like Jack Vance whose legacy has been kinda swallowed by D&D, there's real character. yeah, there's plenty of tedious wank too, but the density of it means it can serve the 'creative prompt engine' function of an RPG in a way that's very difficult for a smaller, more tightly focused, and tbh less stupid game to be able to do.

it's also got a huge body of folklore to immerse in. the Dread Gazebo. Tucker's Kobolds. Pun-Pun. and it's fractal. a D&D forum, a podcast fanbase, etc. will end up with their own niche injokes. (of course, so will an individual group). there's endless lore to learn about the game's own history if you're that way inclined.

now you might say, most of that doesn't depend on it being D&D, the janky system outlined in the books of WotC. and that's true! there's no reason (beyond copyright) you couldn't confront a Bulette in Burning Wheel, play a Mind Flayer in Fiasco, or even set a game of Apocalypse World in Dark Sun.

this is where one of the quiet strengths of D&D-the-product does come in though. the role of the book is mostly to lend a certain sense of concreteness. it's a rhetorical trick: if you can turn to a page of the Monster Manual and see a mindflayer with a statblock, an artwork and a couple of unique abilities, then mindflayers feel more 'real'. factor in the existence of decades of history, splatbooks expanding on the concept, articles in Dragon, modules, stories about other groups who've encountered a mindflayer, and you feel like you know something. nevermind that most of the mindflayer lore is kind of eh at best! D&D is a machine that rewards your autism, hard.

and in terms of actual game design, there are some things that D&D is very granular about, like what your character can and can't do. D&D certainly is an unbalanced grab bag of not-exactly-integrated systems with no unifying design philosophy... and that's largely to its advantage in terms of making the stuff on your character sheet feel concrete, rather than ephemeral like the freely chosen Aspects in FATE. by making the map more complicated, the supposed territory it describes (the shared fiction) might be made to feel more substantial. it's not the only way to do this, mind you - you can absolutely make something a strongly impactful, constraining part of the shared fiction without numbers and dice. but the numbers and dice provide a scaffolding, a thing to lean on when you draw a blank.

(D&D arrived at this more or less by accident mind you. you could definitely say that something like the Moves of a PbtA game are a more coherent and flexible framework for system and fiction engaging without sacrificing substance. and there's plenty of trad games besides D&D which follow the same paradigm, not least because splatbooks are good business. still, I think there is something gained by what seems at a glance to just be an unholy mess of jank).

for a new game, it can't work in the same way. it's a chicken and egg problem. if nobody's ever played your game before, you can't so easily introduce it by doing. (sure you can run it for friends, but you can't rely on most people being introduced to the game that way). there may be a small or even large community of people for any given game, or maybe fans of types of game, but you have to mostly rely on the book to build up the concept in the player's mind.

one of the most useful tools you have is genre, but that's a double edged sword. there are many games that are just 'PbtA for cyberpunk' or whatever, instantly forgettable. again, that's a tricky bootstrapping problem. somehow, a game book needs to get players enthusiastic about the premise using the familiar, introduce them to the unique quirks that make it interesting, and put them in a mindset where they're ready to extemporise in whatever idiom the game suggests. tall order!

the voice of Apocalypse World - the rulebook - is very casual, quite aggressive. 'to do it, do it', not 'when its condition is met in the fiction, the Move is triggered' as a later PbtA might put it. it swears a lot. the voice of a Jenna Moran game is full of little asides and wordplay. the voice of an Avery Alder game is exhaustingly sanctimonious, which has unfortunately spread to other authors. this aspect, the feeling you get reading it describe the stuff it wants you to do, is way more important in telling you about the game than the short story you skip over at the beginning of the book, or even any particular mechanical procedure.

the voice of modern D&D is... honestly in its current edition, painfully corporate and dull. nothing puts me off playing D&D faster than reading the class introductions! but where it has the most character unique sort of slightly arch 'game prose', kind of like an encyclopedia entry with dice rolls in the middle of a sentence. it's unabashedly nerdy, comfortingly so. this is why long lists of almost identical polearms are actually valuable. games need to have something weird and jank and inexplicable for your brain to hold on to.

however... that mass is also a weakness. because all that concrete stuff that you can lean on to flesh out and inspire your imaginings... is also a lot to digest for a potential new player. (this is a reason why I've found it hard to get into games like Shadowrun and Eclipse Phase, lacking a clear on-ramp, and my ideas clashing unpredictably with established stuff.)

compared to games with a hyper-defined setting, and games that create it all improvisationally in the first session, D&D's modular framework is actually pretty ingenious. if every campaign takes place in its own mini setting designed by the DM, there's huge libraries of stuff that could be there, so you can get that 'I recognised that' knowledge, but there's no need to digest a campaign setting or worry about lore conflicts. you can be ~intertextual~ with other D&D games - "oh yeah, my DM used that!" - without all the commitments of an official setting. (of course, D&D has plenty of those too, and many of them are pretty neat. but it's agnostic about whether you use them.) this also gives you a starting point for making your own setting. "here's a thing that's expected to be there. what's your spin on this?" is a really productive question, if the things are minimally interesting.

so being a DM is kind of a bridge between "run it by the book" and "make your own game". you have a lot of freedom, and you have fallbacks to lean on. that's actually pretty good I think.

the DM role is... you could spin it different ways. on the one hand, it gives one player vastly more work than the others, turning them into a mini game designer + master of ceremonies + multirole actor + narrative author + typically, organiser; the one who's responsible for carrying the whole thing. on the other hand... that's a stage. if you are lucky enough to play with a really good DM, the whole thing really does come alive in a way that a book, no matter how elegant or flavourful, could never convey - because it's responsive to you and you get a rapport going. of course by the same token an unengaged, unenthusiastic DM can't be saved by any procedures or rules you could imagine. in that middle ground... that's where tools like Apocalypse World's MC moves come in to help. for D&D, 'how to DM well' is in my experience communicated almost exclusively through stories and imitation - you could never learn it from the DMG.

viewed as a practice or a ritual, D&D likes to mysticise the DM, like the mad wizard who built the moldering pile etc etc. you have the pageantry of the DM's screen, hidden dice rolls, passed notes, asking for perception checks without explanation. if you play in to it (you should, it's part of the fun), you get to lean on the established image of the Dungeon Master, not just someone in a room telling a story. oh wait, is that actual magic?

incidentally, I never really ran Apocalypse World strictly 'by the book'. I was aware of the list of principles and vaguely remembered the moves, but equally, perhaps more so, I was thinking of the idea of an Apocalypse World MC suggested in discussions online. I was also of course leaning on previous experience playing D&D and other games. it worked well, better the second time when I was older, because it's like 75% about being genuinely enthusiastic and paying attention to people when you get right down to it.

all this is why it's hard to replace D&D with a suite of modern, elegant purpose built systems. most of what happens at a TTRPG table, with any 'system', is not determined by what's written in the book but some fuzzy social dynamic in a given group of people and their shared idea of what the game is supposed to be. you can try and introduce rules and procedures into that dynamic, even create a game like Firebrands where nearly every step comes from a prompt list. (the question of how much the explicit mechanics should touch social interactions and narrative structure is a matter of taste). it can be helpful, but you can also risk stifling something important that comes in improv.

viewing the broad space of indie RPGs as its own tradition, like D&D... 'indie RPGs' has its own content, a shared context of frequent ttrpg players, the type like me who are likely to try a new system every campaign. the more games you play, the more analogies you can draw and the quicker you can pick up the gist of a new game. you'll have cross-game skills in e.g. improv or breaking down systems, and an established habitus in terms of stepping into character or playing a GM-like role that can't be written in a book. if you've only ever played D&D, or no TTRPGs at all, you'll have some of that, but a lot will be unfamiliar and the benefit won't necessarily be obvious.

I do think getting into the broader space of TTRPGs is worthwhile, because... ok this is going to sound pretentious as hell but seriously, it's a ridiculously interesting art form, both the designing and the playing of them. but also that's given me a perspective to look back and say, oh, that's what D&D was all along!

what would kill D&D, WotC edition? hard to imagine. there have been splinters, like the OSR for people who like simple mechanics, high lethality and the flavour associated with older editions, or Pathfinder for people who... idk, who really like 3.5 I guess and just wanted a few balance tweaks, idk, did it diverge more? it's definitely just D&D in a funny hat though. oh and there's Dungeon World but lol, Dungeon World.

D&D-the-product-line has come close to collapsing a couple of times, once when TSR went under, again when 4e divided the 3.5e fanbase hard, but 5e being a 'pretty solid for the most part' game that managed to somehow appeal to multiple ideas of 'what D&D is', along the Actual Play renaissance selling a new generation on the idea of D&D... that saved it. maybe it's about to take another hit with this new OGL killing the secondary industry.

I don't think that most of the D&D groups out there, in it for the idea of D&D, would be playing other TTRPGs if only D&D was not so big. likely they wouldn't be doing any such thing at all, but some other dorky hobby. if WotC-run D&D goes under, I'm not sure what happens! D&D-the-practice would continue no doubt, and maybe it starts looking like the OSR, with numerous variations on a theme that don't carry the stamp of 'officialness', until one or another can become an unofficial standard. maybe it looks like open source software and some kind of nonprofit D&D foundation is created to control the source lol. would be interesting to see.

aaaaanyway. if you want your fave non-D&D TTRPGs to thrive as D&D has, here's what you gotta do. talk about them. tell anecdotes from your games, the stupid memes and injokes, what you really like about the mechanics, tell everyone about the weird fun fucked up bits of the lore. tell a story about what it means to play that game. and sure, talk about how it's different from D&D and why you like it more. that story is the bait that will get people onto that fun new RPG system and give them a handle to get started. what got me into 'Story Games' all those years ago was finding a forum with a whole bunch of people having fascinating nerdy discussions about sides of TTRPGs I'd never been exposed to in D&D.

[of course me being me, I took it way too seriously and made a whole thing in my head about how much better these new, progressive Story Games were better than janky old incoherent Trad Games. for years I wouldn't even consider playing D&D or similar. all I can say is, I'm really glad I got over that attitude. hence this kind of post.]

[yokohamapound]

Hi! I'd love to look in what's next on your blog! And maybe you'll want to write something about Chuuya, Dazai and Aku with s/o who become a little bit nervous around attractive guys (which bsd boys definitely are)? /sorry for my english, it's not my first nor second language :D/

Psht, your English is perfect, you funky little polyglot. <3

Heh, as someone who literally cannot function around attractive people, I felt this one. When I was at college, there was a hot guy I would literally AVOID just because looking at him scrambled my brain.

Characters: Nakahara Chuuya, Dazai Osamu, Akutagawa Ryuunosuke

Warnings: Dazai, tbh.

Nakahara Chuuya

When you first met, Chuuya assumed you were nervous around him because he's an executive of the Port Mafia, which is a fairly healthy attitude, even before you find out he's, oh, y'know, the vessel for Arahabaki and insanely powerful. But no, that wasn't what got you tongue-tied.

It's because he's just so fucking hot.

I like to think he found out over drinks, when the liquor finally lubricated your tongue and dissolved your brain-to-mouth filter enough to let the truth come spilling out. Chuuya's knocked for six. He was starting to wonder if you didn't actually like him. Turns out, he's just too damn fine and you couldn't cope.

Listen, he's so, so pleased with himself. He's got killer style and he knows he's attractive, even if he has a slight height complex. He just didn't expect it to impact your ability to function around him. To say he's gleeful is an understatement.

He also finds it abso-fucking-lutely adorable. Like seriously? He won't be as annoying about it as some people (Dazai) but he will preen about it. Expect him to dial up the roguish charm a bit, sitting there with a crooked grin on his face while you bury your face in your drink and wait for the ground to swallow you whole.

Even when you get together later on down the line, he still likes to fluster you when you least expect it.

Akutagawa Ryuunosuke

Akutagawa is used to being feared, and rightly so. He simply assumed you were no different and dismissed you out of hand. Even his subordinates follow him more out of fear than respect.

Higuchi is obviously besotted with him, which he doesn't appear to notice—or if he does notice, he completely ignores it. Something about your continued nervousness around him bothers him, however.

Eventually, he demands an explanation and it had better be good. If you're so damn afraid of him, why do you continue to plague him with your presence?

The feared Black Dog of the Port Mafia was not prepared for your answer.

"Are you MOCKING me?"

When you—eventually—manage to reassure him that you're not, he...doesn't really know what to do with that information. Akutagawa doesn't think of himself as attractive. He knows he's thin and sickly, and he never gives much thought to his looks (apart from to wonder why Gin inherited all the eyebrow genes).

You will encounter the extremely rare flustered Akutagawa. Not only are you not afraid of him for the sane reasons, you have the absolute gall to act like a shy little schoolkid around him because you think he's handsome?

It's Akutagawa, so he'll curtly tell you to get a grip and order you out of his presence, but you can bet he's puzzling over it in front of a mirror, pointedly ignoring the ever-so-slight flush on his cheeks.

"Foolishness."

Dazai Osamu

Oh, god. Okay, Dazai's going to be absolutely insufferable.

So, he's a consummate flirt and 100% used to having women around him falling for his good looks and (dubious) charms. I don't know if you've seen that manga panel where he seduces the nurse in the hospital just to get his phone back, but yeah, boy is a slut.

So he'll know almost from the get-go why you get so flustered around him. He plays up to it, too, flirting with you and finding excuses to lean close and murmur in your ear or touch your hands. And that's him being subtle. He might just get down on one knee and ask you to use those lovely hands to choke him.

If you're a close acquaintance of his, perhaps someone who works at the Agency, he doesn't push it too much. He just finds it cute that you can struggle to function like a regular human being around him because he makes your heart go doki doki.

"Careful with those files. Wouldn't want you falling for me—you actually tripped. My bad."

Even when you two become an item, he doesn't let up on going out of his way to fluster the hell out of you for his own amusement.

[sha3thehunter]

More Witch!Eddie because it's still on the brain so enjoy

Eddie's magic had accidentally flowed into Steve after being in contact with his spellbook for so long. It had been a complete accident and Eddie had no idea that it had happened. At first, no one really knows until Steve starts to heal quicker than normal and now has the ability to heal others. Everyone freaked out over it and wanted to know if Steve had been hiding it from them this whole time. It was quickly revealed that Eddie’s spellbook and the magic within it had been the main cause for this new development. It isn’t harmful and Steve seems to function like a normal person, despite having healing magic. Eddie can't remove the magic because it's become a part of Steve and it would kill him if it was removed. The easiest thing to do is to help Steve with his newfound magic and help him to become a healer. Eddie tries to be as patient as he can while also trying to figure how the fuck this happened in the first place.

Turns out that the Harringtons had been hiding a secret and Steve’s memories were sealed to protect the family image. Steve is a half witch but his magic never developed fully as a child. His father had an affair while one of his business trips with a powerful witch and Steve had been a complete accident. His parents never loved him because of that reason and only acted like they care so people would believe they were good parents. Steve had always been able to sense when something was wrong and it explained why he was able to read Eddie’s spellbook in the first place. Eddie's magic had unlocked Steve's own healing and protection magic that he's had since birth. Steve's parents actively sealed his magic and memories so he would be a normal child. Eddie had heard of witches who would do this and he knew that they could charge a high price for it.

Eddie informs the group of the discovery and everyone seems genuinely shocked by the news. There is a new problem that they all face and that is how to handle Steve's new magical abilities. Steve's magic is strong and it is pretty clear that he needs to learn how to control before it destroys him. Eddie knows that it's important to keep in control of magic and that it isn't an easy thing to master. Learning to control magic takes time and a lot of patience to fully master. Eddie can only teach Steve so much before they will need to look elsewhere for more help. Eddie begins to wish that his uncle was still around so they could have that extra support. Wayne would be able to help Steve in more ways than Eddie could. It's clear that Eddie thinks that Wayne died a long time ago after they were separated.

What Eddie doesn't know is that his uncle Wayne is still alive.

[themedicalstate]

How Napping Significantly Boosts Brain Health

Your brain needs time to consolidate your memory, and it does so as you sleep.

According to a survey from the Pew Research Center, an estimated one-third of the adult American population nap on a typical day.

As useless as napping may seem, it turns out those who do nap may experience better learning and memory recall when compared to those who don’t.

Research done over the past few years shows that sleep before and post-learning is beneficial for human memory performance. In fact, napping has more benefits on your memory and cognition than you might think.

A recent study looking at the impact of sleeping on memory has suggested that short 100-minute naps may restore learning ability and memory recall. The researchers recruited 44 participants who were tasked with memorizing 100 names and faces and were later tested on their ability to recall the information.

After, half of the participants were allowed to take a 100-minute nap, while the rest stayed awake and resumed their daily activities.

Both groups —the no-nap and nap groups— were tested again on their memory at the end of the day by memorizing another 100 names and faces.

The scientists found that the participants who didn’t nap performed 12% worse on their second memory test, showing that their learning ability naturally degraded as the day went on.

However, those in the napping group experienced a memory boost instead. Participants performed on average 10% better on their second test than the no-napping groups and control groups.

The reason for such a drastic increase in memory performance was due to the stage of sleep the participants in the napping group entered. The researchers observed a positive correlation between stage-2 NREM sleep and the nap group’s learning ability.

There are two main phases of sleep: REM (rapid eye movement) and NREM (non-rapid eye movement) sleep. NREM sleep is the first phase of sleep that consists of 3 different stages. The first stage is the transition period between wakefulness and sleep. The second stage is a period of light sleep, followed by deep sleep in the third stage.

During stage-2 NREM sleep, our brain produces short, synchronized bursts of electrical activity known as sleep spindles. These sleep spindles are suspected to be “replaying” memories by reactivating the patterns of neural activity that occur during a previous experience.

Research has shown that the replay process occurs in the hippocampus, a region where working/short-term memory is stored, before propagating to the prefrontal cortex, where long-term memories are stored. Depending on the duration of the memory, they are replayed across single or multiple sleep spindles.

This process is what likely drives memory consolidation and is what enabled the participants in the nap group to perform better on their second test. During the replay process, neurons fire in the same sequence as they did when the initial memory was created, which strengthens the synapses and connections between neurons.

The authors of the previous study also noticed that sleep spindles increased the dependence of previous memories on the cortical region of the brain while decreasing hippocampal dependence. This has been demonstrated to be the key process that occurs during memory consolidation, where memories in the prefrontal cortex get stronger while memories in the hippocampus become weaker.

The scientists also found that people in the nap group who experienced more spindles in the prefrontal cortex region of the brain had a higher learning capacity after their nap. These participants likely experienced better memory consolidation during their naps.

A study conducted in China has also found significant differences between cognitive function between elderly who took afternoon naps and those who didn’t. Naps were also divided into 3 groups: short naps (<30 minutes), moderate naps (30–90 minutes), and extended naps (>90 minutes).

They found that elderly participants who took naps of moderate length had better cognition than those who didn’t take naps, those who took short naps, as well as those who took extended naps.

This study brings forth the question of best napping practices: when, and for how long should we take naps?

The time and duration of naps vary from person to person; different people have different sleeping cycles and need different amounts of sleep. However, naps generally shouldn’t exceed 90 minutes as longer naps can cause grogginess and impact sleep at night.

“Ideally, the nap should last between 20 and 40 minutes to avoid feeling groggy immediately after you wake up,” says Charlene Gamaldo, M.D., medical director of Johns Hopkins Sleep Disorders Center.

By Andrew Lian (Medium). Photo by Kate Stone Matheson on Unsplash.

[hoodedmenace]

@mxttmurdock

   If Matt Murdock is awaiting retribution, it takes a little over two weeks for it to happen.

   For starters, Jason is still pretty pissed. The generality of the situation doesn’t make him mad, it’s the specifics. He’s slept with other capes before. Very briefly. Mostly one. One and a half. Anyway, that’s not the point. And the fact that he kind of gets where Matt is coming from isn’t the point either. The point is that he had every opportunity to say something and instead he chose a couple of rounds of the most incredible sex Jason has had in his entire, short little life, which makes it worse.

   Because—how dare he! How dare he ruin that too!

   In hindsight, it makes sense—Jason can only make guesses to Matt’s full list of abilities, if he can sense things without needing to see, well... his use of his hands and his mouth pretty much proved that.

   Which brings Jason to the second point: he can’t stop thinking about him. And not even in the pleasant, nice kind of way that simply leaves a bad taste in his mouth, but in the sweaty, dream-obliterating, can’t function in the morning without jacking off kind of way. It’s the worst. It’s fully the worst thing that’s ever happened to him, second to the time the Joker beat the shit out of him and blew him up. But that’s neither here nor there. He avoids Dick in the morning like the plague, to the point where Dick nearly holds him hostage about it. They have a good laugh after Jason vents all of his violent frustrations out, because if Dick isn’t panicking about the situation, Jason isn’t going to either.

   The problem is that he can’t do anything about it for a while. There’s midterms. And he’s a good student, he really is, and Criminology isn’t easy but it makes his brain work in all the right ways, so that makes for a good distraction. But then midterms are over and there’s this whole fucking heist with the Riddler and the Gotham subway, and a terrifying night of attempting to save multiple cars of trapped passengers while gaining speed over each failed answer. Jason is pretty sure that one makes the national news. He’s also pretty sure that Batman, for once, didn’t pull his punches when he finally found Riddler, to which he’s grateful for, but he doubts time in Arkham is going to fix anything. He’ll be in there for a while though, so there’s an upside.

   In the middle of all of that, there’s a Wayne Foundation event in Tribeca, forcing the two eldest adopted Waynes to mingle with Bruce’s fresh ward. There’s an interview that gets recorded, a very pretty woman in a deep burgundy dress holding a microphone to his and Dick’s faces asking them about life as Gotham’s second-most eligible bachelors. Jason and Dick laugh like they’re being polite but really hate being asked this question, laugh like they’re so used to lying about it that it almost sounds like the truth, and then make some jokes about technically living in Blüdhaven and scuttle away scot-free.

   So by the time Jason gets around to hacking into Columbia’s records, two weeks have definitely passed, but it gives him the opportunity to act and not really think about it. He finds Matt’s schedule easily. Cleans up as many of his little fingerprints as he can, though he’s sure nothing is truly that private on the Batcomputer, packs a small duffel, and guns it over the river to Manhattan. The thing is that if he waits too long, he’s going to lose his nerve, but if he does it now, he’ll have just enough time to catch Matt right before his last class for the day and... well—hope that the rest of it goes smoothly. His class schedule isn’t the only one he pulled.

   He rolls up to Columbia like he goes there, except he’s sporting thick, heavy sunglasses he stole from Bruce that he’s sure cost more than some of the parking fees around the city, and a sweatshirt emblazoned with Gotham University across the front. It gets him some looks, but he makes a few jokes about it with a guy he runs into coming from the library, and asks for directions to the building he needs, cutting his wandering time in half. It’s a pretty campus, but he’s not here to linger. The halls are empty and his heavy boots squeak on the shiny flooring, but he finds the room he needs and parks his ass right the fuck down across from it, pulling a worn paperback from his bag to complete the look and fuck through the extra half hour he saved himself.

[memryse]

many thoughts about scott smajor in last life

I am still sick and I’m mad about it. Instead of resting like a normal person, I am going to be taking out my frustration on a Minecraft roleplay character and picking apart his brain!

Also, I couldn't think of a better title for this than the one I used for Scar, so... I guess this is now a series? Of me reading way too deeply into Last Life characters? Because I definitely enjoy making these deep dives and will be doing it more in the future.

Scott’s a really interesting character, because whilst a lot of people see him as yessss king villain arc arson et cetera – and that’s the front he puts on – Scott is, arguably, the most moral player in Last Life. This isn’t intended as a criticism of the other players, however; it’s quite the opposite, I find it fascinating that Scott has been able to maintain his morality like that. Last Life is effectively an anarchy server, and plenty of other players have no qualms embracing that. Not Scott, though.

Let’s start with his alliance with Pearl. The two of them are allies practically from the start, cemented by Pearl giving Scott the first of several lives. They play it safe the entire time; there is, honestly, not much to scrutinise with them, because they’re so functional. Functional to the point that it continues to amaze me every single week, because what other alliance has this much faith in each other and gets so much work done? Especially since the addition of Cleo. They’re the only alliance to manage to protect a wither skull from Grian, they’ve avoided genuinely antagonising any other faction (the Southlands and the red lives mess with them because they’re such a neutral party), they obtained multiple villagers relatively quickly; the list goes on. They have such a strong level of trust in one another that things like lives barely matter – Pearl’s given multiple to Scott without any fear of him betraying her. She could have left him on yellow several times. The two of them practically telepathically agree to give Cleo a life, with them both suggesting it at the exact same time. Instead of betrayal and distrust, this alliance is built off simple faith in each other’s ability to be good people. And it works. They’re the closest alliance on the server.

Another show of faith between Scott and Pearl is, of course, how they deal with the boogeyman curse. They have their ritual of looking into the other’s eyes when the boogeyman is chosen; it’s so important to them that they’re both actually disappointed to miss it in session 6, despite how risky it is (Scott does change his mind about this when he’s chosen, but in the buildup to it he’s sad). So it’s a clear sign of how much faith the two of them have in one another, right? With that in mind, here’s a session 5 conversation between the two of them.

Pearl: I know the boogeyman hasn’t been chosen yet, but if one of us is the boogeyman, do we promise to- Scott: Yeah, I’d never- Pearl: -to be okay with whatever happens? Scott: Oh. [turns to look at Pearl] I was gonna be like, “Yeah, I’d never kill you”, and I’m like “I’m sorry???”. Two very different answers there! Pearl: It’s just- it’s just, it’s just something, you know, just whatever happens, you know, something could… quite easily… slip, you know… Scott: I’ll say sure, for now, Pearl.

This is the first time the two of them have ever been visibly out of sync with the other. Usually, they both align on practically everything, especially things as major as what they’ll do as the boogeyman. But here, Pearl is quite clearly suggesting she’d be willing to kill Scott if it came down to it – and she assumed Scott would feel the same. Meanwhile, Scott assumed Pearl would say that she would never kill Scott, because that’s how he feels about her. He does agree to it in the end, but it’s with reluctance. At the time I watched this – the day before session 6 – I interpreted Scott’s “sure, for now” to mean he’d reluctantly accept Pearl killing him, but he would still never do the same to her. He cares too much. I was proven right on this literally the next day, with session 6 seeing Scott become the boogeyman. He confesses it to Pearl and Cleo and goes off to find somebody else to kill.

It’s not only his allies that Scott is reluctant to betray. Even when he’s killing Impulse – someone he has little loyalty to beyond their wither skull heist, someone he actively thinks of as a nuisance who keeps invading his base, he apologises to him over and over. It just has to be Impulse, and he’s sorry about it. He also states that he couldn’t kill Jimmy just because Jimmy gave him a potato and he suddenly felt too bad to do it. Scott is far, far too kind for this world, I think. It’s a trait that’s carried over from 3rd Life – look at his conversation with Cleo, for instance, where they discuss the widows’ alliance, and they bond over the incredible amounts of loyalty they both have to their “ride or die” allies. Looking at the current state of things in Last Life, that conversation definitely aged well, with the widows’ alliance finally coming into existence. Another trait that Scott carried over would definitely have to be his tendency to build a pretty base and hide away in it, but at least this time he’s not ignoring the wars raging on the other side of his walls – it’s admittedly kind of hard to when you choose to build that base in the middle of the server and trouble is continually landing itself right on your doorstep.

I think everything I’m talking about in this post says a lot about cc!Scott, but again it makes for such an interesting character trait because there’s no reason for him to maintain this kind of morality. He could betray his allies. There’s all sorts that he could do – he knows it, and he threatens to do it sometimes, like with burning the southerners’ wall. He threatens villain arcs almost every episode. But he chooses not to act on the majority of it.

Going back to the wither skull heist mentioned earlier, this has been my favourite subplot of the server thus far and Scott has definitely been the key player in it. For anyone not insane enough to follow this as closely as I am: session 2 saw the introduction of three wither skulls to the server. Grian had one, Pearl had one, and Etho had the other. For a few sessions, they’re left alone; nobody wants to make a move either way, because it’s safer for that kind of power to be split between factions. Martyn steals Scott and Pearl’s in session 4, unaware that Grian already has one; the instant Scott informs him of this, Martyn hands it back. They both agree that multiple wither skulls are too much power for anyone to have, let alone Grian. Especially not a Grian one misstep away from being red.

The next session, with a red Grian on the loose, Martyn again suggests trying to find the skull. Impulse manages to find it with Scott and Mumbo, and hangs onto it for most of the session. Towards the end, Scott meets with Impulse again, and they discuss what to do with it. Scott proposes two options: leave it with Impulse and keep it a secret from Grian, or hand it off to a third party. They settle on the latter, and Scott takes it to give to Lizzie. Despite now having two out of three skulls on the server, Scott has zero inclination to go back on his word, telling Impulse that he’s “not going to let [him]self have that kind of power”, which he later reiterates to the Shadow Alliance. Even as he’s on his way to the Shadow Fort, he acknowledges that he could quite easily keep them both, but that it’s not time for villain arc Scott just yet and that simply knowing where all three are is power in itself. I think all of this really sums up just who Scott is as a character: he plays the game fairly, he’ll pass up on opportunities that literally anybody else would take, like wither skulls or killing allies, because he’s too good a person to want anything to do with any of that. Information is valuable to him, far more than more tangible forms of power, but even then he’s not going to use it for anything particularly dastardly. He plays from the background, and despite being involved in so many conflicts on the server, is on good terms with just about everybody on the server; his alliance was even the only one to declare itself genuinely friendly with Scar, without contracts or life trades or really any reason at all. It’s impressive how well it’s working for him – Last Life is supposed to be about anarchy and betrayal and such, and yet the alliance that rejects all of that is the only alliance not falling apart at the seams.

Maybe he’ll choose to finally embrace that villain arc on his red life, sure. For now, though, Scott is girlbossing his way to victory with the power of friendship.