#but i feel like i have to explain Every Thing on this webbed site

[35gofbeansprouts]

Hello there, 👋

I am Tamer Aldeeb, a dentist from Gaza.

We have suffered greatly from fear, displacement, and the destruction of our home and my clinic, and everything we literally own...

We want to save ourselves from what seems like an inevitable death.

I hope you can take a look at our campaign on the pinned post on my profile ,and help us by donating or sharing our campaign to reach the largest number of supporters.🌹🌹

Our campaign is verified by @90-ghost , @ibtisams , @el-shab-hussein , @nabulsi and @fairuzfan 🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸

Thanks a lot in advance ❤️❤️❤️

🫰

[elasticitymudflap]

god this website has gone to shit, and i feel like i have no way of really explaining it to someone who wasn't here 10 years ago. it wasn't always this late stage capitalist wasteland of ads and monetization grifts like the checkmarks and badges and blazing posts and domain purchases. the very concept of paying for a "tumblr premium" was a running joke for YEARS and now we're inundated with pop ups begging us to subscribe and making the ui more cluttered and broken and more like the very things most of us came here to escape from other platforms in the first place. everything about this site is more broken and ugly than i could have ever imagined it, but the sickening part is that literally every platform is like this now, there's no true mainstream escape from it. it's genuinely depressing to me that there's no more room in web 2.0 for anything but cookie-cutter streamlined garbage as if there has to be a financial or business incentive for our presence in all online spaces. places that were once community centres and public playgrounds are turning into high-end malls with security guards itching at the chance to catch you loitering long enough to yell at you to buy something or get the hell out. this sucks man.

[middlenamesage]

Tumblr is VERY Piscean and I think it’s absolutely beautiful.

Today I woke up thinking about how Tumblr has been the only website out there where I can share longer writings of mine and get them noticed and appreciated by merely including hashtags. The niche as a writer that I am falling into is extremely unconventional- it’s vulnerable personal accounts of my life, contextualized by astrology that naturally most want to come from me. And I am very grateful for anyone who resonates with my frequency and appreciates my messages, because I know I’m basically out here trauma dumping😂, and to happen across other people who are here for both that and astrology, is surely a rarity!

I was feeling grateful enough for Tumblr this morning to get the idea to look up when this site was launched. I was curious just what were the open-minded dynamics, so accepting of emotional vulnerability, that characterize Tumblr. To my pleasant surprise, Google informed me that Tumblr was launched at the very beginning of Pisces Season- meaning that it’s just about to have its birthday.

But that wasn’t all. Tumblr’s conception chart (with time unknown, but at least city known) is likely the most Piscean chart I have personally ever seen. 💖 Every single personal planet except Mars is in Pisces (and maybe it’s a good thing Mars didn’t join this party😂). All this Piscean energy seems to create a realm where I can find others as if I’m divinely guided by the Universal spirit which connects us all.

There’s vast yet connected territory here, because Pisces is the very undercurrent that runs through all of society. It’s the 12th and final sign, so it holds a little understanding of them all. 💧

Pisces holds so much power, it just holds it graciously. And often inconspicuously.

Pisces also explains why I was just realizing I see so many emojis included in informative astro Tumblr posts, compared to other sites. I’d been wondering if Cancer had a hand in this somehow (I myself am a Cancer Mercury, and please don’t ask me to not include emojis in my writing😂). But Pisces really makes a lot of sense too. Both Cancer and Pisces energy want to show expression in emotional terms… and emojis are so good for that. ❤️

And jeez, Tumblr still has relevance after seventeen years?! What other social media sites can you manage to say that about?? 🤔 This really shows the fluid and mutable ability of Pisces to adapt.

The Moon and Venus in Pisces in Tumblr’s conception chart really create an expression of Pisces energy that’s especially accepting and open to emotional vulnerability. And personally, they are trine my Moon in Scorpio, explaining even more why Tumblr-ites can stomach any sharing of my trauma. 😂 As if that wasn’t beautiful enough, the Pisces Sun in this chart is on my Pisces ascendant. No wonder I feel this is the only site I’ve so far found that gives me and my writing a place to shine. 🌞

Mercury retrograde in Pisces could be seen by some as indicative of a site where not the most comprehensively informative nor practical writing is shared. But I see it as indicative of a site where writing that makes people reflect on their emotions, grow their imagination, and even feel open to the web of Spirit connecting us all, is shared. I’ve long been fascinated and often admired a Mercury in “detriment” because it brings Jupiter’s realm up into Mercury’s realm; merging areas that can relate to the concepts of “left brain” and “right brain”, sometimes in amazing ways. And Mercury retrograde just gives us more opportunities for inward reflection. I love that posts can stay relevant here for ages, as we keep coming back to reflect upon them.

Jupiter is at home in Sagittarius in Tumblr’s profoundly Piscean conception chart, and aspecting some of those Pisces placements, so I think you can say this chart is extremely Jupiterian in every way. Personally, I’m so here for the expansive energy. 🏹 There are many ways to grow your philosophies hanging around on this site.

And I should mention that Uranus is also with the group of powerful forces for love and oneness hanging out in Pisces, because this is a revolution.

Thanks to the North Node also in Pisces in Tumblr’s chart, lending extra forward motion to this whole movement, I’d say exploring Jupiter territory, most colored by the loving, accepting, and spirit-recognizing side of Jupiter that is Pisces, is a perfectly appropriate direction for this site to only go deeper in.

Happy Birthday (tomorrow), Tumblr! Thanks for providing a meeting ground for beautiful, inclusive souls who can learn from each other.

[thewebcomicsreview]

So, I have this advice in my head about comic writing for beginners, it being that first time writers of the medium need to understand that comics are a visual media first and a textual media second and that the artist is usually the one pulling the heavyweights. (no offence)

So, is it good advice or does it need more work?

It's bad advice. I'm not going to deny that even a hardworking writer who does research and test reads and multiple drafts usually spends significantly less time per page than the artist, but that's not really "advice" so much as "a statement", and you didn't actually advise anything in your advice. Are you saying the artist should stay humble? Feel bad? Are you explaining why the writer is usually the one who does the web site stuff as well to try to even the workload slightly? Is this entire ask just attempting to subtly neg me about being a comics writer? What's your point?

But more importantly you're equating "the writing" with "textual media" as in "the text in the narration and dialogue balloons" which is super bad advice if you're a writer working for an artist, because most of the text in a good comics script isn't text that appears on the page, it's the text that tells the artist what to draw. The less good you are at writing this part of a script, the more the final page is going to deviate from what you wrote, so you want to be clear and detailed both in what's happening and why it's happening. When you're writing for prose, you want to try and cut as many useless words as possible, but when you're writing a comic script you're giving directions and you want to make it as clear as you can. This includes things like

Literally what is going on in the story. Alice and Bob are walking down the street carrying shopping bags.

Details. It's late afternoon, and there's no one else on the sidewalk that we can see. Alice is wearing a light yellow sundress. Bob is wearing a thick orange parka pulled close. One of these characters are not dressed appropriately for the season. The sky is cloudy and there's a little snow on the ground, implying it's Alice. They're walking past a store called Carl's Car Calls whose logo is a car on an old-timey telephone.

Emotions/Explainers of what's going on in the story to help the artist make decisions you forgot to think about. Alice is dressed like this because she's been trying to ask Bob out for a while, but every time she does she gets cold feet at the last minute. A writer might not think to make Alice's skin red from the cold, making it clear that she's uncomfortable and drawing attention to her choice of outfit, but an artist knowing the context might think to do that, and help make the writer look smart.

Directorial details. Alice is going to beat Bob to death with the baguette in twenty pages, so make sure it's the most prominent thing in either bag.

Dialogue. BOB: "Carl's girlfriend apparently makes enough that they can afford a new house. I wish I had a girlfriend who got me my bread."

I'm not saying we all have to be Alan Moore writing 1600 words of description for a page of Batman opening a door, and some artists want less guidance than others, but precisely because comics are a visual medium that it's important for the writer to dedicate the overwhelming amount of their time to describing what things, y'know, look like. If you skimp on that stuff you'll describe a character as wearing "an ankle-length skirt" and you'll get the page back and it's like

If you've written for artists long enough, especially as an amateur, you know the pain of getting a page back that's different from what you wrote in such a way that it's create a plot hole or the Chekov's gun you meant to establish is barely even visible or whatever. No skill as a comic's writer is worthwhile until you've developed the skill of telling the artist what they're supposed to draw (and yes the artist is also part of the creative team and different artists have different workflows etc., but that's for lesson 102). If you can't do that, what's even the point of anything else?

[actuallyadhd]

strangely enough, the reason im finally earnestly looking into whether i had adhd or not is because my mum asked me if i'd considered taking ADHD medication.

ive always had a lot of trouble being consistent with my school performance because i can't get myself to work, i cant even get myself to think of it after a while. idk. it's like i have a threshold or something, i just cant stay consistent and stable. theres the other stuff too, the forgetfulness and the stimming and, well, idk if i can call it hyperfixation because i do have phases that last months where im only interested in one thing and intensely so then quickly drop off, but that can all be explained as general stuff. i think anyway.

idk i just have a lot of insecurity about whether i actually do show ADHD symptoms or not. the only points of reference i have is basic research and friends with ADHD that take medication. and i just feel kind of stupid imagining the scenario where i try to explain to a doctor that ive not done anything for university for three months because i genuinely just couldn't, because im scared that doctor will just say that im lazy when those three months were some of the worst of my life, and i felt trapped in my mind and unable to do anything.

i'm sorry to dump this on you, i suppose i'm just asking if you have any in-depth resources you found useful. i feel like i can't call what's been happening to me executive dysfunction until i understand every part of it. i do apologise if this isnt actually adhd related

Sent June 23, 2024

I actually have a couple of longer blog posts over at the Actually ADHD web site that tackle what ADHD is and what executive dysfunction is. Both also have printable worksheets with them to help you apply the information in the posts to your life.

Back to Basics I – What is ADHD?

Back to Basics II – Types of ADHD

I hope this helps you!

-J

[kingofdahiphop]

K am I the only one on tis god forsaken webbed site that like... Doesn't have a problem with g witch's pacing? It definitely has been very zippy in the second cour compared to the first but I think it's been efficient in it's storytelling and not hambfisted in having to explain every little detail to the viewer

People have been sharing for weeks that there's too much left unresolved and that everything about the story is too rushed, but I genuinely dont feel that way? For sure it is definitely easy to miss things since a lot of information can be thrown your way very quickly (I kinda was a little lost when the nika/shaddiq connection was first being shown) but I think that's fine!

Idk but imo a good story doesn't need to answer all your questions, as much as you might want it to, and I feel like the overarching narrative has been pretty satisfying. The only thing that would make me disappointed at this point is if sunrise doesn't animate sulemio making out stupid style having a tender kiss but that is because I love them so much

[essayofthoughts]

So I had a terrible terrible thought.

Oh Wise Friend of Paleopathology... what do you think you would be able to learn from Percy's tomb, whenever he kicks the bucket and ends up buried? Assuming a language barrier + at least a few thousand years (and Kiki can't just chime in if still alive).

What strains of his life would still be on his bones? What about the teeth? What do you think Whitestone’s burial customs would be like (and how would his status/history be conveyed in that context)? Would any fabrics used in funeral dress be likely to survive, or only his wedding ring + buttons + whatever that shiny thing is in his ascot?

What would you, future archeologist, make of that earring in just one ear???!

I would note that it has been several years since I properly studied the subject, but Palaeopathology and Skeletal Analysis were some of my favourite classes and I do remember a fair bit. But for any currently practicing Archaeologists - forgive my oversights. It has been Too Long.

Now. Before I get to anything else in this scenario, we have to think about the likely context. This word means different things in Archaeology and Anthropology but for our purposes here today the short definition is "What is he found with? Where do we find the body? Is there a tomb, a grave, grave goods? What is there here that is not the body, that can tell us about how the body got here?"

I don't know how to explain to you that this is one of my favourite parts of archaeological thought - everything matters, everything plays a part, everything is context enabling us to better understand a site or an artefact. Every new thing we discover is another datapoint to weave into a greater whole until the web resolves into something greater than the sum of it's parts.

So in this instance we're going to have to start with the following questions:

Where is his body interred?

What kind of inhumation is it? (graveyard, cemetery grave, wooden coffin or vault casket or leaded sealed, mausoleum, crypt, ossuary?)

How well preserved/damaged is it?

What are the burial customs of Whitestone nobility and how will that affect things?

Why am I exhuming it?

Now, we know a few things from canon, most namely that the de Rolos had a family mausoleum beneath their castle. This suggests a formal burial in a family crypt. We do not however know if the bodies were placed in coffins, or niches or even if they were cremated! From the transcript of Reunions Pt2:

MATT All right, so. You progress through the undercroft as quietly as possible. You notice as you get past the first section, you look to your right and left and the inside of these small like cubby offshoots that contain these separate ten by ten stone tombs. The walls have shelves burrowed into it, in which there are urns and small gems and offerings-- things that were buried alongside the family members as part of a remembrance. →

So it seems like some may have been cremated! Being adherents of Pelor, this doesn't actually surprise me - the sun burns, after all. But then again, neither would traditional burial - Pelor is also associated with agriculture and standard decomposition returns you to the earth that fed you.

Though... that would be a bit complicated in a sealed stone tomb.

Given also how I'd equate to modern time periods and technology levels... I'm inclined to say embalming hasn't taken off in Exandria at the time Percy dies. And... even if it was possible, I rather feel it'd be associated with Necromancy more than standard burial, plus Whitestone is predominantly Pelorian and Percy's wife is Champion of Pelor, and Pelor is god of agriculture. Embalming chemicals seep into the soil and are catastrophically bad for the environment - there's a reason American cemeteries expect caskets to be fully sealed and in a concrete vault - to prevent exactly that. I can't see Pelor being down with that kind of embalming, so most likely a body is neatened up, shown for funeral, and buried, with minimal messing about. Even nobles being buried in crypts where they won't immediately return to the soil, I imagine they'd want to stay true to the general idea.

Further, from Matt in that same episode:

#MATT Continuing down, a long set of whitestone-constructed stairs descend for about 45 feet before they level off into the de Rolo mausoleum. A long hallway continues forward that contains two ten-by-ten stone structures that contain the entombed bodies of previous generations of de Rolos, with six passages-- three on each side-- that split off of this main hallway that contain their own stone-encapsulated corpses. → This is a place of silent prayer and showing appreciation for the previous families. Not all of them are full, and there were extensions planned as the family grew, but the first thing you notice is all of the tomb doors are open. →

So the idea is that the graves stay in use! This isn't a case like Sedlec where bodies are periodically disinterred to be reinterred in an ossuary, these are meant to be lasting burials.

So... why am I excavating here?

Given Keyleth's lengthy lifespan I would assume that Whitestone likely survives quite well (yes, even with the Apogee, shush, I've only watched C1 so far). It's also a source of, well, whitestone and residuum, meaning it's likely to remain inhabited. Even given the significant shifts a thousand plus years bring - castles and keeps and forts are pretty good at lasting in some form! We have a lot of remnants of old castles (In Britain alone: Tintagel, Colchester Castle, Tower of London, the Roman Forts at Hadrian's Wall, various Caers throughout Wales), and they frequently get built on or rebuilt over time. In a case like Whitestone, with valuable resources and economic links, even if it were, say, invaded, colonised, etc. - the castle would be a good seat of administration or even just a tourist hotspot. And crypts are well down in the foundations: even if the castle was damaged or destroyed, it actually has good odds of staying intact. The Alabaster Sierras are mountainous, but given the ziggurat survived from the Calamity to when we see it well enough it only took the Briarwoods and Ripley a few years (minus the time excavating down to it) to restore it, it seems that they're not terribly tectonically active.

So... this is likely a very stable site, with good odds of at least 500 or so years of protection (Pike and Scanlan are set to have long lifespans, JB too seems set to live there, all would have reason to see it protected) even before we get to Keyleth's likely thousand-odd year protection. Given that much time to build itself stronger, I see Whitestone as most likely still existing, and the castle a significant historical site and cultural heritage.

I can see some degree of linguistic drift, but if the area has remained inhabited then there's good odds there'd be scholars of the area able to translate Pre-Apogee-Era Tal'Doreian Common. And, likewise, if the area has had so long protected then there's good odds the Chamber is still around, and so there's probably a good library and even recorded genealogy of the founding de Rolos, even if the family itself had died out. (Factual accuracy of these records might be suspect, but I'll get to that.) This kind of persistence of a culture would not be without IRL historical precedent - Ancient Egypt lasted for thousands of years using largely the same Hieroglyphics, even as Dynasties rose and fell. The culture absolutely changed, but good chunks of records were still around.

Given all of this, most likely I can see the reason being some kind of refurbishment of the castle prompting archaeologists to be called in for the safe disinterrment of the tombs and then some kind of funded study by the Chamber of Whitestone of the bodies in those tombs to help inform on who Whitestone's forebears were. This, again, is not without precedent - if I'm recalling my Sixth Form case studies correctly, Christ Church in Spitalfields had a massive crypt of lead caskets that were disinterred, catalogued, studied and, wherever possible, returned to relatives.

Let's return to those questions, yeah?

Where is his body interred?

Most likely in the de Rolo crypt under the castle.

What kind of inhumation is it? (graveyard, cemetery grave, wooden coffin or vault casket or leaded sealed, mausoleum, crypt, ossuary?)

Stone tomb burial - likely dry but not anaerobic. Reasonable odds of non-human disturbances (rats, flies, bugs, etc.)

How well preserved/damaged is it?

Good odds of reasonable preservation. Depending on how well and consistently the crypt is tended it could be best case for the scenario or somewhat less.

What are the burial customs of Whitestone nobility and how will that affect things?

Given Taliesin has said that the de Rolos took a bit from Prussian nobility in etiquette and manners, I'd be inclined to say probably similarly, with an eye towards our 1800s funerary practices simply because that's when the Pepperbox was prominent in our world.

So most likely, Sunday best, plush coffin, but - unless royalty - left to rot. Royals (in the UK at least) have historically been prone to leadlined caskets but that tends to lead to a specific kind of anaerobic putrefaction that results in something called corpse liquor.

Ick.

So let's hope that's not the case. Given Whitestone is primarily Pelorian in devotion, at least in Percy's day, I'd be inclined to say they're not completely sealed - possibly even just interred as bodies, but unlikely - plus the crypt is in the family castle and it seems that the crypts were visited periodically by family prior to the Briarwoods' attack - the odds of someone breaking in to try to steal royal relics is pretty low, unlike the public royal burials in Westminster Abbey.

Why am I exhuming it?

Castle refurbishments prompting a Chamber-sponsored study on the historic remains in the pre-Chamber de Rolo crypt.

OKAY. Now that's all out of the way, let's get into what I might discover, yes?

So most likely I've gone through several other bodies before I get to Percy. During exhumation the details of the tomb would have been recorded - it's placement in the tomb, which tombs it was next to. Now, I would imagine his tomb would be between Cassandra's and Vex's, but while working I likely wouldn't know that! Assuming linguistic drift and font changes, most likely the burials and tombs are labelled in the database something like T6E2 - Tomb 6 of the 2nd East Section. I would then have to find a scholar working on recording and identifying any inscriptions and translating them - so names, dates, quotes, etc.. And, most likely, I would be kept in the dark until I was done! Archaeology is best done without recorded human history to bias one and huge amounts of history have no contemporaneous record to speak of.

Now, if I'm just doing the Palaeopath then likely with a specialist in coffins, caskets and funerary fittings, I would record the state of the coffin and body inside, as well as the positioning of the body inside. Is the body extended (laid out flat as we tend to bury bodies now) or contracted (foetal position, very common prehistorically)? How intact are the remains?

And then, recording everything as I go, I would extract the body from the coffin, bit by bit. I would want to ensure that no bones were left inside the coffin, no tiny tatters of cloth - assuming any remained, cloth disintegrates shockingly quickly and if it wasn't fully sealed it's likely the moths got to it, let alone any rats - and that I didn't misplace any bones as I laid them out per diagram.

Jewellery, buckles - any metal grave goods would also be extracted here and recorded. Also, given Exandria - Detect Magic. Make sure anything enchanted is Identified so we know what it did (hello Earring of Whisper!). Again, I'd probably end up giving them over to someone who knows how to compare them to similar items to properly study them.

Now... Percy's fleshy bits would most likely be gone. Unless he mummified which is not impossible with a dry stone internment but between two thousand years, one's own gut bacteria (remember, modern embalming is unlikely), rats and bugs... yeah I can't see much remaining beyond fragments of cloth and bones.

Oh, and his glasses.

That would have been noted during removing the body from the coffin - this person wore glasses. From my colleague examining them, we'd be able to see if they were prescription (or as historically close as you could get) or if they were a stylistic choice - so we'd know this person had bad eyesight.

Now, the first step after checking every bone is present would be to sex it and to look for damage or signs of wear and tear. Given this is Exandria 1. Gender equality for ages and 2. Magical with options to trans one's gender. This is also a high-status burial so there's good odds this person was living as their chosen gender; and sexing the body could tell us what that was. Even if there's a mismatch - grave goods can also tell us. Is the jewellery more commonly seen on men or women of the era? Percy would likely have a pocket watch (he does make a clocktower! I'd be shocked if he didn't make himself a pocketwatch) which is often a more masculine item, and an ascot pin - ascots are a masculine fashion - and his Earring of Whisper, which is a bit more complicated. Any remnants of clothes could also tell us. And of course - the coffin furniture. Any plaque with inscription, or inscription on the tomb panel. After drawing my own conclusions I would ask my scholarly colleague if their findings lined up with my own.

Given also that this is Exandria, it'd probably also be very important to identify which (DnD) race he was. Elves seem to be more gracile than humans, half-elves likewise albeit to a lesser degree, genasi would likely have magical influences, likewise aasimar, tieflings having horns, tails, hooves, claws, dwarves being short and stocky, while halflings are short and comparatively gracile and gnomes are smaller still. Goblins would be ruled out by size alone, goliaths would be massive and probably have big muscle attachment marks and dragonborn would have very obvious conformation compared to a human.

I don't think identifying Percy as "Most likely human" would be hard - but we can confirm it later.

Now... damage.

Percy's torture would almost certainly show on his bones. Given it was torture, I highly doubt Ripley wasted magical healing on him. It was only a week or two, so likely no broken bones - unless she only wasted enough healing on him to keep him alive, in which case... yeah absolutely some wear and tear. Signs of partial healing, mixed damage. Scarring on the bones, evidence of dislocations, etc.. Likewise, injuries from his time with Vox Machina would show - him leaving his hand in a bulette's mouth probably left marks on those bones, his death at Ripley's hands probably is extremely interesting in the skeletal record - most of his pre-mortem injuries only partially healed if that, while the actual cause of death being healed up completely, a lacuna in the record. Likewise - Percy's cane. If he was buried with it we would probably look for some kind of leg injury. Was the cane an affectation or was there an injury it was compensating for? What injury might that be, what could have caused it? Or even... was he not buried with it? Would we see a leg injury that implies a need for a cane, but no cane to go with it? If so, we could assume that presentation in death had significance, and they were presenting a "perfect" "whole" version of him at death. Again, there's cultural precedent for this! Ancient Egyptians would provide wooden prosthetics and false eyes during mummification because of a belief that how one was interred was how one would arrive to the afterlife - they could be given limbs they had lost or even never had in life.

Just due to all of this I'd probably also take a close look for any evidence of malnutrition - though this might be significantly faded after his many comfortable years retired. That said, Percy was tortured and then washed up on a fishing boat and dissociated for two years. Given this was at the tail end of his puberty, I'd be shocked to find no sign at all of lasting physical trauma at that.

I'd also find he had one arm that was just. Fine. Factory reset perfect. Nothing wrong at all. What the hell. Did someone cast Regenerate on him? (If they did cast Regenerate: did that have an accelaratory effect on any bone remodelling his healing bones were going through after the Vecna fight?

Assuming I've studied some of the other crypt bodies before Percy's this would be very interesting! Most of those would be de Rolos who likely went through little to no hardship - Percy stands out.

I'd also want to check to see his teeth - what kind of teeth care is he getting? Any cavities, calculus build up, abscesses, missing teeth? How worn down are they? Are there any fake teeth? Given Vex would probably chivvy Percy to take care of himself (and wouldn't care for stinky breath) and they have Pike on hand for healing, I imagine he has very good teeth for his age.

This is a good thing.

You see, assuming this is a very thorough study and all of that time between Percy's era and know gives me access to modern technology or some equivalent I would want to a few destructive tests. Namely - carbon dating, isotope analysis and DNA testing.

And these are often best done with Teeth. Teeth are fun! They are growing bones which live in our bones! And we lose our milk teeth and gain our adult teeth on the same reliable time frame as we use to age infant skeletons (sealing of skull sutures in that case) which makes them really useful. Like. Unspeakably useful. Teeth are fantastic. Take care of your damn teeth.

Carbon dating would, obviously, give us a rough idea of how old the body was. This is easier the more recent it is, and much more exact. We can then cross-reference this with the scholar translating inscriptions and checking historical records to see how well the carbon date matches up with the historical record!

DNA testing is the thing that would tell us if he was human, and, depending on how advanced it is, might even be able to tell us a few phenotypic genes! Melanin levels for skin and hair, eye pigmentation - possibly if he was genetically predisposed towards a few diseases. It would also allow us to compare him to other bodies in the data set! We would find out that the female body interred on one side of him was most likely his sister, and while the woman interred on his other side shares no meaningful DNA with him, there are other nearby bodies which share DNA with both of them, being their children! And from those children we'd know that there was a tiefling in the family, which would allow us to infer that somewhere in this family there was some kind of infernal influence.

Isotope analysis - if I'm recalling correctly, you can use isotope analysis to both identify some part of a person's diet in life (carbon and nitrogen analysis, usually) and where they came from (strontium and oxygen analysis).

So we'd have some idea of Percy's general diet, and also know he was local! I imagine given, you know, Exandria, magic - we'd have not just strontium analysis to place him as a Whitestone native, but also likely some lingering magic from the local whitestone rock to further establish that. Now, if I recall rightly, strontium analysis only really works for childhood, but based on the injury and malnutrition pattern, the idea that he either went through hell locally or left in some relation to that is not an unlikely one - just hard to prove.

CONCLUSIONS

We would see from his grave goods and the circumstances of his burial that he was high born and likely associated with the de Rolo family. From DNA analysis we'd know he was related to a good number of people in the crypt and that his apparent spouse was not, meaning he is most likely the de Rolo of the pair. Plus the strontium analysis we'd know he was local and his likely spouse was not, again furthering the idea that he was the de Rolo.

We might also have some idea of how he'd look, and if we decided to try to do a digital or artistic facial reconstruction we'd likely have some pigmentation pointers. Also, we know he wore glasses and that he needed them - that they weren't a stylistic choice.

We'd know he'd been badly injured at various points in his life, and, depending on how severe his various post-Glintshore and post-Raishan injuries were, we might still be able to see the gap of the resurrections in his bones, which would further suggest he was someone of means to have afforded such a resurrection. A lot of his injuries could probably be put down to an adventuring lifestyle, which the resurrections and any evidence of magical healing would probably attest to, and without the kind of surface scarring torture leaves, while we'd know he was injured badly over the course of his life, I don't know if we'd be able to easily conclude it was all at once. Certainly some marks on the bones would seem older than others but bones remodel over time! Some of it might be damn near invisible, while others would remain obvious. He also has a mysteriously perfect arm for Some Fucking Reason.

We'd likely have his wedding ring (I'd be shocked if it didn't have some inscription on the inside; this was very common historically and Percy is a complete sap), an ascot pin, a belt buckle and some buttons or fasteners for his clothing, a pocketwatch and chain (and again, I'd be surprised if the pocketwatch didn't have an inscription or a hidden flap with a miniature of his family or something). We'd have his glasses and possibly even his cane. We'd likely have the Earring of Whisper and based on how well Purvan Suul's two magical items lasted - one of which was not a Vestige! - I'd be inclined to say an Identify would let us know what that was once Detect Magic turned up that it was enchanted.

I imagine someone would also have catalogued any offerings left outside his grave - keepsakes, mementos, inscribed tablets of memorial, etc. which would help to let us know not just who he was but what he meant to the community in which he lived.

After all, the dead do not bury themselves - this is what I meant at the start by context. He was buried by people around him - his community. They chose his grave and his grave goods, they chose the inscription of his tomb (he may have requested it, they chose whether or not to honour that) and they left offerings and markers of what he meant to them.

And... from all of this? Assuming Scanlan really went ham telling the Legend of Vox Machina and bards keep telling it? I'd think an in-world archaeologist could make a good guess as to who this body was even before getting it confirmed by the scholar checking the inscriptions. And with the Cobalt Soul storing information - good odds they'd have a record of Scanlan's version of the tale and their own additions (see also Chronicles of Exandria books, intended as being from the Cobalt Soul). And, also, of course, Tary's version too! There's likely to be several different contemporaneous sources, not to mention later additions from the Voice of the Tempest.

So... I imagine this would probably help to fill out things that weren't covered by Scanlan's tale, refute things in Tary's and generally do as finding Richard III's body did for Britain - give us more information about the person behind all the stories and propaganda. Flesh out their life, give us hints of the hardship they went through - if there's inscriptions on his ring or pocketwatch, give us a hint of the heart he shared with his family.

It certainly wouldn't be everything, but it would be enough to let you touch another's humanity across a thousand years or more.

[nobrashfestivity]

Re- Stephen Ellcock

I'm being asked about this and I don't want to start some war or gossip-fest, so I'm just going to shut it all down if it becomes that, but in the interests of not be cryptic, I will explain. I want to say upfront that I am not mad at anyone or accusing anyone of anything and I can offer supporting evidence for different scenarios so if even Mr Ellcock reads this I don't imagine he would be offended.

Stephen Ellcock is a popular social media blogger collecting images and even publishing them in a book. He's got a very loyal following and his content I feel is good.

But for many years on instagram or when I was on facebook, I would see the same images I put on this blog and casually wonder if an image had come from me directly or indirectly. Certain images seemed like they were from obscure sources and the timing seemed odd for two people to discover at the same time, but you know that happens all the time too.

Today I checked his Instagram and scrolling through it I would say 50-70% of his images have been on this blog at one time. That too is not necessarily meaningful but it's a large number.

The trouble with tumblr is that people sources images of often from the same places and even if you're careful (and I try to be) not to get tumblr images, there are many ways that scans populate and get spread around and so someone may post something of yours they got anywhere but where you might imagine it (or pinterest where attributions go to die).

Many examples of this are places like auction houses which have good scholarship and photos, collating sites like PDR review, brain pickings other social media sites as well as non functioning old blogs or sites that once did lots of scans but have disappeared. I feel this is fine, most people do not do scans and those who do usually do not scan 100% of their material, it's about curation and creating a blog that reflects your taste.

Sometimes people are imitating you. There's a very popular art blog on instagram that was 100% taking my content every single day and in order and until I joined instagram, I had no idea.

So yes, I have wondered about Ellcock and not even specifically me but just tumblr because so much of what he posts would seem to be the kind of thing you see here. I have certainly seen Nemfrog's posts everywhere, you know, these things happen.

But, certainly you can have the same taste as someone. I have definitely posted things I later found to be on other blogs that I simply wasn't aware of and some that are ubiquitous, and it makes little difference, but I did not source material from said blogs, it just happened. You know, you discover Harald Sohlberg, look around for his paintings and there are not endless number of sources so you're probably getting it where someone else did.

I inadvertently posted scans by the great 50wattsbooks and I have seen many other that did too. Now I credit them but it was because of their scans turning up in a huge number of places uncredited. And I am not surprised as they have an amazing book collection and great scans. I have seen my own scans various places but I don't think it's malicious.

So my conclusion has been that many of us find the same things probably from similar sources. It seems like big coincidence with Ellcock but then again some of those astronomy pictures are public domain things published on the web by a lot of different sites since they don't violate copyright and I am pretty sure who originally scanned them is fairly obscure even when you try to find out.

Today, I just mentioned this in passing and someone mentioned some kind of thing about deathandmysticism and Ellcock. I don't know anything about it, but it was, somewhat conspiratorially, interesting.

And if he's getting it from tumblr, thousands of others are too on facebook and insta and twitter etc, I think he's just well known and now profiting off it and it makes him a more noticeable figure.

I hope this answer is even handed, I intend it to be.

[phantomrose96]

Hey I really hope I'm not bugging you! I'm just not 100% who to ask and I remember you saying at some point that you're a programmer? I have some experience from school (Matlab, mostly) and self taught html/css, but I wanted to start learning python and like... All of the tutorials assume I know a bunch of high level terms and how they work and like? I do not know these things so I'm feeling really lost? I was wondering if you knew any sites or anything that explain like the very fundamentals of back-end coding well because obviously Im not as prepared as I thought I was 😭😭 thank you!!

Okay, so! I don't exactly have any one exact resource to give you (if anyone else does, feel free to link them) but here's my take: you're probably better off looking into more generic "intro to programming" material rather than specifically "intro to python" material.

And I don't mean that as a bad thing!! It's just that experience with Matlab and html/css very likely doesn't contain a number of the core fundamentals, and that's why you're feeling lost.

When I took engineering classes that used Matlab, oftentimes Matlab was used moreso as a glorified calculator than as a programming language. A lot stuff like - line 1: declare this array of data points, line 2: do this calculation on the data points, line 3: graph the result. Which is all well and good, but is pretty limited in teaching core ideas about programming.

As for html/css, they're definitely important for web development, and it's knowledge I use every day at my job, but they're not programming languages. HTML is a markup language, which allows you to structure a web page, and CSS allows you to apply styles (and frankly, knowing how to use class/id selectors, nth child stuff, etc etc in css deserves some programming recognition). But unless you've done a healthy amount of Javascript too along with the html/css, then that probably doesn't cover the fundamentals either.

Those intro to python courses you found might be geared toward people who already have experience with some language, and now want to learn python. If you try to find something that's focused on the basics of programming, and not the language, you'll probably get a bunch of those high level terms explained to you, rather than them being assumed knowledge.

[mannatea]

it's super fun to watch people argue on other webbed sites about ffix because i remain completely and utterly separate from them. and you might be thinking, "sure, it makes sense not to comment on threads from 20 years ago on old forums" which is of course TRUE. however, these discussions also take place on modern reddit and even in youtube comments, and while i am not usually shy about commenting there (especially reddit, i have like 12k karma) there is approximately zero chance of me engaging in discussion with people who don't actually want to discuss anything.

the rest is under a cut bc i'm ranting lmfdsafhdsalfjds

i could absolutely reply to them and say something like, "aCTUalLY your reading comprehension is dogshit; i'm sorry you don't understand what words mean when they make a complete sentence. please get help" buuuuut that's just insulting and doesn't help anyone. i could also actually explain why they're wrong, and probably in one complete sentence, but they are just absolutely enthralled by their own opinion and have zero desire to read mine. also, they'd have to read the wHOLE sentence and i've already established the fact that a lot of these people can't do that.

the amount of absolutely buckwild takes i've seen where the person talking is willfully ignorant or (quite honestly) just plain stupid and incapable of critical thinking is...not surprising. what IS surprising is how many people base their takes off of their own piss-poor memory of the game. like buddy...at no point did steiner call beatrix a kiss-ass, suck-up, or brown-noser. he just mentioned that she was trying to one-up him. slightly different. context. words have meaning. etc.

ALSO SURPRISING: the amount of hate and vitriol based on shit like "steiner is ugly" or "eiko is annoying" is crazy to me. for some godforsaken reason the beatrix haters (all very proud to be considered such, i assure you) love to show up on every discussion or even mention of beatrix to talk about how they (you guessed it!) hate her. okay??? you do you but i have better things to do with my life than hate fictional characters.

and you might be like, "but manna, you're a beatrix stan. you've loved her since you were like 14! of course you'd notice that!!!!" but buddy my pal my GUY my fRIEND these takes are about basically every single character who had more than a few lines in the game. the garnet slander is insane. people making fun of 'dagger' as a nickname? talking about how she's stupid for feeling love for the mother who raised her and loved her for years?? people WILDLY overreacting about zidane's supposed lechery? brooooo he seems over the top when you're like, 12, but replay the game and there's barely a mention of it. also the "ooh soft" scene was an accident 100%, i've known that since i was a child.

don't even get me started on eiko and how people act like she's some kind of demon even though she's a LITERAL SIX YEAR OLD GIRL WHO LOST HER FAMILY AND WAS RAISED BY FUCKING MOOGLES like? hello??? of course she does the wildest shit. GOOD FOR HER. i support her wrongs. and also that love letter. dumbest idea ever but watching her prance around the castle getting doctor tot's help was ENDEARING, RIGHT? like, she was trying her best! and she grew as a character!

so did steiner! and garnet! and zidane! and BEATRIX! sorry the game didn't hold everyone's widdle hands and be like okayyy so now steiner realizes that blind loyalty is BAD, okay? and now he's going to make some choices of his own because he's learned that he's allowed to be his own person and have his own thoughts and opinions about things. one of those choices is going to be beatrix but that's not him regressing in character development at all; that's him declaring to protect someone OF HIS CHOOSING (rather than someone he's sworn to protect through fealty). let's all give steiner a big round of applause in the steiner+beatrix+mistodon scene for making his first big VERY PERSONAL CHOICE even though we may not personally agree with it or even think it came out of nowhere!!!

don't get me started on the others.

nobody's character development was subtle but it's like some of the fans of the game have negative media literacy and just say the dARNDEST things (but in a way that makes you smartly log off rather than start typing up a comment to them directly).

like i just genuinely cannot believe some of the stuff i've seen.

don't get me wrong, i've seen some great discussion too--about worldbuilding and timelines and the genomes and on and on.

i'm just gobsmacked at how many takes aren't like "haha dumb" but are like, "i'm not sure you're literate" dumb. then again, it's shocking how many people can't or won't put themselves into the shoes of another character. like they could have a gun to their head and be told to try and explain why steiner is the way he is and they'd just say it's because he's ugly.

which is like. concerning. not because i think steiner as a fictional man has rights*, but if they can't even figure out basic bitch character development 101 for a cartoon man in a 20+ year old video game, how do they like. live life? engage with other media that's more subtle? yipes.

*he should be allowed to say fuck, tbh

anyway it's just really funny to see these whole ass conversations going on in other spaces and be like, you're all wrong and bad at reading comprehension but it's none of mY business

while i run to tumblr to have a giggle about it for my 3 followers to read

[deathlygristly]

Something I've been noticing lately on here that might explain a bit of the old hate I got back in the day:

Internet people really really get into their feelings about reading, in both directions. Like I saw a post going around with a link to an essay about literacy by a black woman who grew up in Sierra Leone and who has ADHD and autism and dyslexia, and one of the comments was something about being pro-reading being racist and ableist. It was very clear that they did not click the link and read the essay.

I also saw another post with something about how reading above level as a kid didn't result in the kind of life the poster thought it would. Implying that the person making the post saw reading as something connected to status and economic success.

I'm like yeah, I read every book the local library had on the Holocaust when I was 9, but I don't think I ever connected that to social status or my future? I was just really interested in the Holocaust and learning about it and trying to understand how humans work and how they could do that to other humans, and then I also just really liked the stories in classic novels and short story collections. Like maybe I don't have English class trauma because I always read stuff I wanted to read because it was interesting, without ever thinking about the perception of others or social standing. So I'm just chilling and then people project their weird status obsession on to my reading habits and yell at a shadow in their brain about it but the yelling hits me.

Also earlier (not on here, on a much more "normie" site) I saw someone saying that they had tried to be nice and kind so they didn't understand why bad things had happened to them. I don't know if I've ever connected my actions to things that were not caused by my actions? For as long as I can remember it's been obvious to me that the universe is random and that things happen and that the web of cause and effect is vast and mostly unknowable by humans. I never really think about it but if I am forced to articulate it, it seems to me that humans just do what they can with what they have and what they know and then things happen and then they do what they can with what they have and what they know in the new situation.

Yeah, some things on an extremely short time line can be clearly traced back to your actions, but I don't know where the causal connection would be between my actions from birth to my seventh birthday and my father's heart attack a month after I turned seven. How could my actions as an infant and a small child affect the blood flow to my father's heart? I do not understand how if I acted out and hit another small child because I didn't know how else to deal with my small child emotions, or if I saw another child crying and I did not know how to comfort them so I left them alone, more plaque would build up in my father's arteries, and thus my lack of kindness and treating others well would cause bad things in my life by killing people close to me in ways I had no control over and could not affect at all.

Anyway....once again I am realizing that I grew up in a very different culture than most people I encounter online did and that they see things very differently than I do, and that sometimes that difference results in conflict but it's not my fault and it's not that I'm a bad person.

[secretgamergirl]

When I said the “AI” projects grifters are pushing were search engines, THIS WAS NOT THE INTENDED TAKEAWAY.

I wrote a blog post a bit ago trying to explain what the things people are presently trying to call “AI” really are, and how the whole thing is a big ol’ grift you shouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole... and I don’t think anyone actually really read that, but since I’ve written it, there sure has been a sharp uptick in stories about people you’d really hope would know better treating them like Ask Jeeves and expecting to get accurate answers to random questions. So... let me try this again.

So first let’s just cover how a search engine actually works. Or at least a simplified version of my personal understanding which is probably a bit out of date so you know, grain of salt.

While we’re used to accessing the internet through handy little URLs like, say, https://www.tumblr.com, those are just sort of handy aliases managed by this whole database setup (domain name servers) which browsers are set up to check if there’s text in there, basically, and what those match them to is numerical addresses. It’s a bit like every website has a phone number. Just as an example, open another tab and just type in oh... 74.114.154.18 and watch it bring you somewhere. They expand things a bit now and then, but basically, much like when a video game has a safe with a 3 digit combination and you don’t feel like solving a puzzle, you can totally just sit there, punch in every possible number, and doing so you’ll eventually see every website there is. It’s only what like 1,000,000,000,000 possible combinations? People who are actually serious about running a search engine will just set up a script that does that, throwing some real processing power at it, locally save every thing that comes up, and also search all those files for every file they point at, links, images, databases, whatever, and save those locally to. A whole lot of computing and a whole lot of storage later, and you literally have a local mirror of the entire internet saved to a huge pile of hard drives. Really this is such a costly endeavor it’s honestly just a handful of people who really do it and everyone else just... quietly passes your searches on to them like some kinda middleman.

Anyway, once you have your local copy of the entire internet, and entirely too much processing power to hit it with, you can do things like... look at every individual page on the entire internet and count how many times every given word appears on them, and if you’re feeling real bold, phrases, getting nice little running tallies to jam into your huge database. Then when a request comes in to give you a web page about seagull poop, you just figure well, there’s this one page that says “seagull” 49 times, “poop” 37 times, and specifically says “seagull poop” 35 times. That seems pretty on-point so you search that up as result number one.

You’ll notice there’s no thinking anywhere in here, just saving files, counting words in them, and doing some data processing on those counts. There IS a bit more to everything of course, like giving extra relevance points if something is in a title or header tag, or how somewhere along the line we all agreed to add these meta tags where people can just say outright what sort of information is on a page on the honor system (extra relevance points if people actually click links too), and someone just deciding wikipedia articles are always good so if there’s a wikipedia article, that gets a ton of bonus relevance points. Having the search string in the URL of the site of course also helps, and somewhere along the line things got gummed up with people abusing the hell out meta tags and also just giving major search engines money in exchange for bonus relevance points. Then much more recently you’ve got software engineers and suckers trying and utterly failing to “improve” results by doing dumb things, like Street Fighter 6 is out, and there’s lots of people looking for info on that, so if someone types like, “Street Fighter 3rd Strike Remy move list” into a query, well, part of that string says “Street Fighter” so let’s give all the results people searching for just that are enjoying lately, and forget the other terms.

Anyway, that’s your standard search engine. People with these sorts of “AI” projects do not, in fact, generally have a local copy of the entire internet saved. Some would like to, but you need a LOT of storage, and also there’s quite a lot of laws and security measures specifically to prevent people from doing that, and even preventing the people we as a society generally agree should be mirroring the whole internet have to leave certain parts out. Now partly they get around that by just completely ignoring that those laws exist and banking on nobody actually enforcing them in any meaningful way. Largely though they want to either avoid blatantly breaking those laws/circumventing security, so they buy “training data” from whoever’s willing to sell it, and also taking measures to obfuscate that it’s all stolen.

Anyway, you know about Markov chains? The basic idea is you have a large body of text you’ve done some statistical analysis on like we have when we archive the whole internet or what chunks we can get our hands on, and we break down the percentages of how likely every word is to come after a given word we’re looking at. Doesn’t have to be words either, you can do it with whatever. But the basic idea is, let’s say your data set is a bunch of tedious nerd posts from the year Portal came out. Now if I start off giving you the word “The” there’s all sorts of things that could come next. “The end” “the next” “the only” or maybe “the cake.” This is totally how that predicted next word thing on your phone works by the way. Anyway to really do this properly you like map out the entire web of phrases you can end up with, but for now let’s just look at that pretty popular combo of “the cake” and keep looking that way, and huh, people sure do follow “cake” with “is” these days, and especially “the cake,” I can look this up in my database easy. So you just keep hitting that next suggested word on your phone, we’re probably getting “The cake is a lie!” out of it. Someone I know loves doing stupid little things with these if you want an example.

This is totally how these “AI” things do the natural speech things, plus maybe some hard rules like “when the prompt is a single word pre-prep the chain by putting “[whatever term] is” into a standard search engine routine and just wholesale life the first sentence you can find that starts with that at the top of a block of text, then Markov chain from there.”

And we want to obscure that we’re doing this so let’s also have a rule like “OK you can go with the best match for the best work so many times in a row, but after that you have to mix it up by taking the second best word. So again, still at the height of Portal fever, we start off seeing this common word sequence, but OK let’s switch it up after “the cake is” and not go with “a” what else do we have? Well, there’s no “the” at the start, but “cake is so delicious and moist” is also real common. That’s another long string of direct quotes though, so again, let’s flag it after so many top matches and use a slightly less common one. And you end up spitting out like, “The cake is so delicious and nutritious.” Hey, that sounds like natural language, AND it’s variations on commonly said things, so it’ll probably read as legit. We’re done here, ship it.

Of course cake ISN’T nutritious, it’s like, pure sugar and gluten. But we don’t have any capacity to think or understand we’re just stringing words together based on how commonly they follow each other. Because again, there is no actual intelligence, creativity, or understanding in here, just data sets and strict procedures on how to pop words from them.

One amusing thing about this is that basically by design, it’s practically guaranteed that this is going to spit out any block of text you can imagine at you, except for the ones that are completely true and coherent. It’s intentionally avoiding ever doing that because you’d spot the plagiarizing immediately.

Oh and the whole “AI generated art” scene is doing this exact same thing. Only difference is there’s an extra step where after they download literally every image ever posted on DeviantArt, they have sweatshops full of people where for like one shiny penny a day, destitiute people pour over things, hacking them up with lasso tools and painstakingly adding meta tags for every possible thing you could for every single image they have, so the program can pull up a bunch of images that all have all the search text and then go like “OK start with this as a base, this has the 20x10 pixel blue right eye tag, does anything else in the batch have that exame tag? Cool, let’s select one of those and paste it over this eye, now, how are we on 30x40 slightly reddish upturned nose tags?” etc. etc. etc. More impressive parlor trick to pull off, but it’s still prettty plainly theft.

Anyway, this is all a thing, as I think I said, because all the people left holding the bag when everyone realized crypto/NFTs/the metaverse/etc. was a gigantic pyramid scheme have absurd amounts of processing power in big warehouses and it’s all going faulty and looking bad from being under too much heat and running too long so it’s hard to sell on eBay, so, what other scam can we do with it? Aha, fake AI.

And all the people who continue to fall for that hook line and sinker should not have the jobs they do because that level of being a gigantic mark proves them unfit to do really anything that involves any sort of decision making, do what you can to have them removed.

Also maybe give me money? I’m at risk of death otherwise.

[levbolton]

Mokumoku Ren interview in Da Vinci December 2022 issue

"The summer Hikaru died" ranked first in the "Next Manga Award 2022" web manga category and received strong support from overseas. At the time of publication of the second volume, the total number of sold copies has exceeded 550,000. Let's take a closer look at the background of this popular work.

Even if he is not a human, I still want to stay with him.

Yoshiki and Hikaru are two boys who live in a rural village. They have spent all their lives together as childhood friends and have a strong bond between them. However, one day Yoshiki realises that Hikaru has been replaced by something (Nanika). “The Summer Hikaru Died” is a unique horror manga about the strange relationship between a young human boy and a non-human. The author, Mokumoku Ren, explains the inspiration.

“I've always liked "non-humans", who are much stronger than humans, since I was a child. But they are always portrayed as the enemy of mankind, however there are probably some with the same wounds as humans, and I'm more interested in them. The human Yoshoki is quiet, while Hikaru, who has become a “non-human”, has a very vivacious personality. The two are absolute opposites. The boy Yoshiki is a bit dangerous, as he is aware of Hikaru's true identity, but accepts it. If you were to put yourself in Yoshiki's shoes, I think everyone would be as stressed as he is. So you could say that Yoshiki is very close to the readers. Hikaru is cheerful and innocent. However, there are occasional glimpses of childlike cruelty. The two have a secret they can't tell anyone, and little by little, strenge events creep into their daily lives. Whether the cause is Hikaru or not is still unclear, but the horrifying depictions are frightening.

The horrifying depiction of the story has also been voiced on social networking sites, with some people saying, "Scary! The series is a horror one.” There are different kinds of horror, but personally, I'm always waiting for something to come at me, like ......! I think the scariest moment is when you're waiting for it to come. In terms of films, I like Ling, Zanpou, Ghost Stories: Shin Mimibukuro, and so on. So I may be referring to the directional aspects of those films. However, I try to keep the horror level low. So when I get feedback from readers that it was scary, it makes me happy, but it also makes me wonder if it could have been scarier (laughs).

The main point of interest in this work is a relationship that is more than friendship, but it is hard to call it a love affair. The reader is left to watch as the two build a relationship that cannot be described in any way. There is one more thing. The relationship between Yoshiki and Hikaru, who live in a small, unnamed village, is exquisite. If it had been a story about a man and a woman, it might have looked different. As a “non-human”, Hikaru has no concept of love or family.

So the more I drew, the more difficult it became to give names to Hikaru's feelings towards Yoshiki. But I wanted to depict what cannot be named as it is. I think it would be difficult to give a name to the relationship between Yoshiki and Hikaru even after the series comes to an end. Then, what was their relationship? I hope that each and every reader will think about that. For that reason, I will continue to draw the story so that readers can genuinely enjoy the work itself!” (Mokumoku Ren)

Source: Da Vinci magazine December 2022 issue, out November 5th 2022

[fandomshatepeopleofcolor]

Here's a rant. I've been making posts about black representation on another web site mainly about black rep in superheroes and comics. This girl and her friends kept commenting on than that they only care about good stories. The girl and her friends didn't seem to understand what I was saying and they seemed young so I tried to explain why representation and diversity in media is important in a easy to understand way but then she said that caring about skin tones and bringing up race with stories was toxic.

At first I assume her and her friends were white, cause I've only seen white people use the whole good stories only matter excuse so I told her "you must not be a person of color cause people of color understand what I'm saying in my posts." But she and her friends said they were Native Americans.

Then it became a argument about diversity vs good stories. After politely trying to explain to them why representation and diversity matter I decided to block them and delete their comments off my posts cause it feels like they were purposely misunderstanding me, not listing to me and their comments felt like microaggressions so I didn't want to see every time I went to look at them. But the next day the girl and her friends were making posts on different accounts about me saying I hate white people and saying I'm a bully. I love white people but as a black person I was just spreading awareness about black representation in my posts and they ganged up on me.

Good stories rant anon again some things I forgot to mention in my rant is the whole good stories only matter thing is said by racist white people alot to derail talks about representation especially in the Comicsgate movement. Since I was talking about black rep in superheroes and comics them saying only good stories matter did set up some alarms but I want to give them the benefit of the doubt since they were must likely teens but them the girl said bringing race up in media was toxic was a huge red flag. After that it was like the girl and her friends were refusing to listen to me which lead to me blocking them. When they created other accounts to lie about me saying I hate white people and I was a bully it was like harassment so I reported them and block them. They seem to have stopped. I almost sorta doubt they were Native Americans cause people of color would never say things like "diversity doesn't matter only good stories matter" unless they were a pick me person of color.

_____________

First of all I'm sorry that happened to you. but honestly just because she was arguing that she wanted "good stories" doesn't mean she's not NA you know? There's plenty of POC who buy into the whole internalized racism thing and don't even realize that the "good stories" they're promoting are all by and about white men.

I cannot tell you how many POC by into white supremacist talking points just like the whole "bringing race up in media is toxic". Like honestly it takes years to become aware of the harm that white supremacist ideology does to us all. I'm glad you blocked them and reported them but honestly everyone comes to their realizations about white supremacist ideology differently. While you think it may have been a waste of time you never know if someone else reading the thread maybe noticed and is now thinking differently.

Don't be disheartened and don't give up! there's no shortcuts to unpacking our internalized bigotry and you're probably right that they are just very young teens.

here's one example of studies done about why children of color need to see themselves in cartoons. https://theconversation.com/why-its-so-important-for-kids-to-see-diverse-tv-and-movie-characters-92576

I'll try to get you more studies that exemplify why we need diverse media but atm I'm on my way out the door to get to work. *hugs* nonny I'm glad you're fighting the good fight.

mod ali

[the-blue-void]

Daily Click for Palestine

Tutorial to get eSims

August Update

I have a hard time getting spoons to do literally anything other than reblogging blogs with superficial understanding

It influenced my ability to provide image description & have a background check on the gofundme’s

I don’t think they are fake and I do not support any action calling them to be fake.

However I cannot perform very basic check (like making sure it’s not linked to a phishing site) to not put everyone’s online security at risk

In the mean time I will try to support the vetted gofundme’s and charities first and foremost, and keep boycotting

Please stay safe

Hyperfixation In Rotation

Nothing (I am exhausted)

*special interests not listed

Please Tag:

unreality: anything that is not real but written in a way that indicates it could be

About me:

1. I’m Voik :)

2. Semiverbal, language disorder, chronic eczema, medium-low support needs autistic (low side), ADHD, CDS, aroallo, nonbinary, cripplepunk

3. I develop web-apps & minecraft events

4. I enjoy fandoms, but I’m not super into any big content for long times

5. I don’t mind spoilers, in fact, I don’t watch any long form media without being spoilered

6. Please try to avoid using 3rd person pronouns referring to me, if you have trouble doing this due to disability, you can use it/its instead. (Send ask if you need other alternatives, I could give one for you only.)

Before you follow:

1. Respect everyone. If you say someone doesn’t deserve respect for any reason, get out.

2. I’m not a minor (in my early 20s) but this is not nsfw account. Half of my friends are still minors.

3. If you don’t support taiwan independence for whatever reason, kindly, fuck off. (If you can’t support due to ccp rules, I don’t hate you, but get the fuck off right now, for your own good.)

4. Other than that no listed DNI, but I do block whenever I feel like it.

5. If you need me to tag a trigger please do tell me.

6. I don’t get mad ever. If I seem to be mad at you, I’m not. (It’s not always a good thing but it’s a fact)

7. I try to describe photos / texts when I can. When I don’t, I tag it as #undescribed

8. Feel free to ask me about my current hyperfixations, questions about my special interests are ok too, but they are extremely personal and I don’t always know how to explain them, so I might not always feel comfortable answering about them

9. Discourse (specifically ones that involve transphobia) could trigger me, so I don’t talk about them much.

[Image Description: A userbox, the icon on the left is a simplified taiwan map, the text on the right says "Kóng Tâi-gí siá Tâi-bûn". End ID]

Part-time AAC userbox and its image description made by @caniblist-clown :D

[Image Description: A userbox, the small icon on the left contains 3 person, first person is pink with purple locs, a blue wheelchair, green headphones, and a device on their lap. The second is yellow with pink short hair, standing up, with headphones, a pink cane, and a pink aac device. From their device there is a speech bubble containing: Two figures (the symbol for We / Us) and a face saying “X” (the symbol for cant talk / cant speak). The third person is orange with a beard and curly short hair. They are sitting down and holding a pink tablet up. The text says “This user is a Part-time AAC user”. End ID]

[pocosun]

I just saw (and reblogged) a post from a few years ago in which you mentioned being a web developer and explained how to get past the "Disable Ad Blocker or Else" notices. I was wondering if you had an answer for this question:

Why do so many sites now have "subscribe to our newsletter" pop-ups that appear on every single visit to their site, and what power do web developers have to discourage this?

Stakeholders.

Stakeholders pay the business to make money so they typically get an unparalleled amount of power when it comes to decision making, even if it's bad decisions. The problem usually is that Stakeholders typically don't know enough about the business, or at least the metrics, to understand whether or not something is working. So typically, managers will assign a "good number" counter for stakeholders. In this case, the number is newsletter subscriptions.

Developers, at least in my experience, typically don't care unless they are told to care. Things like bug numbers, error counts, click events, and page views are usually more important. Unfortunately, since we are the ones being paid by stakeholders contributions, they are our like our long distance boss so we have to care about what they care about.

If Stakeholders feel like they aren't being listened to and can't tell if their investments are gaining money, they will pull out and then there is nothing to pay us 🤷