#but in terms of how people interact with ideology and the like in their day-to-day lives

[nonsensical-shitposting]

So in your Team Snakerverse au,

How communist is vi?

Is vi like a full on communist or a socialist, or even a democratic socialist, who wants to set up a method of democracy with socialist principles.

All my joking about TS!Vi being a communist revolutionary aside, communism and socialism as we understand them don't exist under the isopteran system of ideological classification, so none of those options really apply to her. TS!Vi's views are kind of an ideological grab-bag, in that she knows something needs to change in a major way, but... doesn't really know what she thinks the best way to get there is? She's toyed with antennalism (bureaucratic technocracy with a focus on massive levels of information-gathering), cephalicism (rhetorically vigilance-centered adhocracy, frequently associated with spiritualism), and thoracicism (vaguely defined, but usually boils down to decentralized egalitarianism) in the past, but she has issues with aspects of all three ideologies, not helped by the fact that the vast majority of her attempts to research them only turned up Podomerintern-approved resources that present the ideologies through a biased pro-podomeralism lens. It also doesn't help that the isopteran system was intentionally constructed to make ideologically "thinking outside the box" difficult, and just because TS!Vi's smart enough to have eventually figured this out doesn't mean she's unlearned everything, y'know?

The only thing Vi's consistently sure of is that she hates the Podomerintern and wants to end Termite imperialism, both in the Bee Kingdom and throughout Bugaria, it's just that she doesn't really know how she's going to get there yet. Remember, the core idea that the Team Snakereverse AU was built around is reversing the "starting positions" of Vi, Kabbu, and Leif: unlike canon Vi, TS!Vi was never really teased or doubted at home and didn't have to kitbash being a functioning independent person, but she lacks canon Vi's certainty of what she wants to do with her life and has trouble figuring out what lens she wants to see the world through. For TS!Vi, joining the Explorer's Association isn't the whole reason she left home, but rather a means to an end that'll allow her to subtly search Bugaria for bugs like her in hopes that they'll help her figure out what to do to bring down the Termite Kingdom's imperialism (the fact that being a licensed explorer means this'll all be on the Podomerintern's dime is just a bonus). TS!Vi's still recognizable as a Vi, don't get me wrong, and she does act very similarly to her canon counterpart, but her issues, her goals, and her underlying motives are quite different.

I think I got off topic there, whoops. To return to the question: TS!Vi's grab-bag of political views are close enough to what we'd call "socialism" or "communism," but those terms don't exist in the Team Snakereverse AU, so TS!Vi wouldn't identify herself as either; if you asked her what ideology she supports, her immediate response would probably be something along the lines of "ugh, what are you, a cop?" (Incidentally, this is also what she would say if you were to ask her about her gender.) She's more politically literate than canon Vi, but the deep subtle intricacies of government and governance bore her and she absolutely cannot stand people who spend more time debating ideological minutiae than actually, y'know, doing things in real life. Democracy-wise, TS!Vi's the specific kind of leftist who'd automatically agree that yeah, of course representative democracy is the best way to do things, duh, but the moment someone disagrees with her politics in a way that pushes her buttons she briefly blacks out from anger as she tries not to transform into a totalitarian despot on the spot- she supports electoralism, but only when people don't vote for something/someone stupid.

[alpaca-clouds]

The history of Solarpunk

Okay, I guess this has to be said, because the people will always claim the same wrong thing: No, Solarpunk did not "start out as an aesthetic". Jesus, where the hell does this claim even come from? Like, honestly, I am asking.

Solarpunk started out as a genre, that yes, did also include design elements, but also literary elements. A vaguely defined literary genre, but a genre never the less.

And I am not even talking about those early books that we today also claim under the Solarpunk umbrella. So, no, I am not talking about Ursula K. LeGuin, even though she definitely was a big influence on the genre.

The actual history of Solarpunk goes something like that: In the late 1990s and early 2000s the term "Ecopunk" was coined, which was used to refer to books that kinda fit into the Cyberpunk genre umbrella, but were more focused on ecological themes. This was less focused on the "high tech, high life" mantra that Solarpunk ended up with, but it was SciFi stories, that were focused on people interacting with the environment. Often set to a backdrop of environmental apocalypse. Now, other than Solarpunk just a bit later, this genre never got that well defined (especially with Solarpunk kinda taking over the role). As such there is only a handful of things that ever officially called themselves Ecopunk.

At the same time, though, the same sort of thought was picked up in the Brazilian science fiction scene, where the idea was further developed. Both artistically, where it got a lot of influence from the Amazofuturism movement, but also as an ideology. In this there were the ideas from Ecopunk as the "scifi in the ecological collaps" in there, but also the idea of "scifi with technology that allows us to live within the changing world/allows us to live more in harmony with nature".

Now, we do not really know who came up with the idea of naming this "Solarpunk". From all I can find the earliest mention of the term "Solarpunk" that is still online today is in this article from the Blog Republic of Bees. But given the way the blogger talks about it, it is clear there was some vague definition of the genre before it.

These days it is kinda argued about whether that title originally arose in Brazil or in the Anglosphere. But it seems very likely that the term was coined between 2006 and 2008, coming either out of the Brazilian movement around Ecopunk or out of the English Steampunk movement (specifically the literary branch of the Steampunk genre).

In the following years it was thrown around for a bit (there is an archived Wired article from 2009, that mentions the term once, as well as one other article), but for the moment there was not a lot happening in this regard.

Until 2012, when the Brazilian Solarpunk movement really started to bloom and at the same time in Italy Commando Jugendstil made their appearance. In 2012 in Brazil the anthology "Solarpunk: Histórias ecológicas e fantásticas em um mundo sustentável" was released (that did get an English translation not too long ago) establishing some groundwork for the genre. And Commando Jugendstil, who describe themselves as both a "Communication Project" and an "Art Movement", started to work on Solarpunk in Italy. Now, Commando Jugendstil is a bit more complicated than just one or the other. As they very much were a big influence on some of the aesthetic concepts, but also were releasing short stories and did some actual punky political action within Italy.

And all of that was happening in 2012, where the term really started to take off.

And only after this, in 2014, Solarpunk became this aesthetic we know today, when a (now defuct) tumblr blog started posting photos, artworks and other aesthetical things under the caption of Solarpunk. Especially as it was the first time the term was widely used within the Anglosphere.

Undoubtedly: This was probably how most people first learned of Solarpunk... But it was not how Solarpunk started. So, please stop spreading that myth.

The reason this bothers me so much is, that it so widely ignores how this movement definitely has its roots within Latin America and specifically Brazil. Instead this myth basically tries to claim Solarpunk as a thing that fully and completely originated within the anglosphere. Which is just is not.

And yes, there was artistic aspects to that early Solarpunk movement, too. But also a literary and political aspectt. That is not something that was put onto a term that was originally an aesthetic - but rather it was something that was there from the very beginning.

Again: There has been an artistic and aesthetic aspect in Solarpunk from the very beginning, yes. But there has been a literary and political aspect in it the entire time, too. And trying to divorce Solarpunk from those things is just wrong and also... kinda misses the point.

So, please. Just stop claiming that entire "it has been an aesthetic first" thing. Solarpunk is a genre of fiction, it is a political movement, just as much as it is an artistic movement. Always has been. And there has always been punk in it. So, please, stop acting as if Solarpunk is just "pretty artistic vibes". It is not.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk, I guess.

[kimbureh]

TBB S2E14, Tipping Point & Self-Discovery Under Repressive Regimes

There is a lot of torture in this episode, and I've seen takes that argue Crosshair embraces this as a form of self-punishment. I will argue the opposite and use the thematic developments of the two seasons of TBB + some of TCW to make my point. (mention of a spoiler for the season 2 finale ahead)

—

A core theme of TBB is the toxicity of self-sacrifice. The Clone Army was created in order to be "expendable", but as far as I am aware, TCW only touched on the moral implications of that on rare occasions (Slick comes to mind). TBB on the other hand fills exactly this blank space and puts the ethics of a Clone Army front and center, as we see with the Clone Rights story thread, but also with every individual Batcher.

So far, several Batchers have used suicide as a tool of problem solving, every time with disastrous outcomes. Echo sacrificed himself in TCW in an act that later turned out to be inconsequential only to then be tortured and abused by the Separatists. Crosshair attempted to commit suicide by avenging Mayday, and torture ensued. Tech sacrificed himself in order to save the squad, which was instrument to Hunter's arc: Hunter, the frustratingly passive main character, realizes only after this loss that self-sacrifice isn't the way to go if they truly want to leave behind servitude of the Republic/Empire. (that's a future essay, but I am very excited about Hunter's development)

And Hunter has been demanding sacrifices from himself and the squad a lot for two whole seasons. Sacrificing Crosshair, for example.

You know who else is big on sacrifices? The Empire. I'm not deep enough into the Star Wars lore to know whether or not this is a common motif, but watching how Imperial fanatics kill themselves with suicide pills seems to me krass enough of an image to interpret this as a deliberate point. People within the Empire see themselves as expendable. If the Bad Batch truly aims to detach themselves from the Empire's ideology and develop an alternate moral model, they have to stop sacrificing themselves like the proverbial lemmings. So far, Echo is the only Batcher to spearhead this revolution, with Omega firmly on his side (and Hunter loves Omega, so he will pivot too, eventually).

And there is one Batcher who has been sacrificed by his brothers and understands they have to stop committing the Empire's cruelty to themselves: Crosshair.

I know this may sound hard to believe at first glance, but despite the things that happen externally, Crosshair's arc in season 2 is a positive one if we look at his internal development. In The Solitary Clone, Crosshair's arc could still go either way: either towards self-acceptance or towards self-destruction. In The Outpost, Crosshair comes to terms with his Clone identity just in time to find he no longer has the choice but to pick self-destruction. When this doesn't kill him either, there is no way but forward. In the Tipping Point, he is truly self-actualized to the best of his ability given the crushing circumstances. He is calm and perceptive. His eyes are open. This is not the demeanor of a self-hating man. This is someone who has come to terms with himself and his values, and acts accordingly. Building on the self-acceptance he developed in the interactions with Mayday, Crosshair now allows himself to care for the Batch again and sends them a warning. He knows the price he has to pay, but does it anyway because he finally acts according to his own convictions. Think back to his unusually relaxed expressions; despite being afraid of the torture, he doesn't show desperation, even when he's alone. He is at peace with his decisions, for the first time in a long time.

tl;dr:

Crosshair's internal arc culminates in Tipping Point with successful self-discovery and restored personal integrity in the face of extreme adversity. The Crosshair he is now would never stay 32 days stranded on a platform on Kamino. I mean, the episode is called "Tipping Point". What more can I say? Next step in season 3 is his external arc of mending his broken relationships and to find meaning outside of coercive systems like the Republic and the Empire.

I don't believe Crosshair will die in order to achieve "redemption", and I don't think Tech is dead either. The message of the Bad Batch, ever since TCW, seems to be: Self-sacrifice is not the way.

[zarathelonewolf]

This Foxy is currently debating whether or not she is actually AroAce.

I am figuring out that my absence of sexual and romantic attraction a lot of the time could largely be owed... to the fact that I am surrounded by fascists or "liberals" all the time, so I don't find any real life person attractive ENOUGH.

I am not joking. It seems that ideological alignment Is FUNDAMENTAL in me developing certain types of feelings.

Even if I am not bi, I think I might be Demiromantic and Demisexual.

I DO experience sexual attraction ALMOST instantly when I interact with people that seem courteous and aren't spouting slurs left and right. The same happens when I see someone who is visibly queer or gender non-conforming: I actually happen to forge bonds of trust in such an easy way with such people.

If I do not feel like I am surrounded by safe people/people who don't discriminate, my brain may jump to "acquaintance" feelings, but not to the "platonic" or "romantic" or "sexual" feelings. It's like my conscious hates these people and has its day completely ruined as a result of meeting them, so for the rest of the day It has a hard time feeling attraction of various types and THAT'S what makes the feels and drives so confused and chaotic as I go on with life, even in the following days.

To all people reading this: I am not saying this for attention. I am merely explaining recurring thoughts I have, sharing them with the community. I hope nobody is annoyed by any one of my ramblings when they happen to stumble upon them.

But BOY am I confused AND figuring stuff out at the same time.

And also: the AroAce community has nevertheless a very very important place in my heart. You guys welcomed me, helped me feel less alone. I am forever grateful and still stand forever by your side, no matter where my reflections may lead me.

Foxy says hi!

P.S. I still crave QPRs and a mate! Wagging my tail at the thought!

Oh, and for the non-binary community, friends! Any demigirl around here that can tell me if someone could be considered a demigirl if they feel like a girl and not a girl/boy EQUALLY? I frankly don't know how to answer this question... Like, what Is your experience being a demigirl?

P.P.S (EDIT): I think aroallo might be the term that best describes me so far. Yeah.

Maybe I'll Just go with AroAllo. For now 🦊

[qqueenofhades]

I'm glad I found this blog because it has became increasingly impossible to find a progressive-leaning Westerner who doesn't condone a literal GENOCIDE that is happening as we speak.

I used to follow so many American leftists on TikTok, learned a lot from them about the Western imperialism and American White Supremacy, but almost ALL of those people suddenly somehow forgot their own principles and convictions when the war broke out in Ukraine. There is this one creator I used to respect a lot who one day decided to say it is a drama when a Ukrainian woman speaks out against other creator perpetuating Russian propaganda. Said Ukrainian woman got hurt and respectfully expressed this hurt but was met with hostility and vile accusations. Then there was some dude on Twitter who compared the war crimes in Ukraine to gentrification in the US and that tweet got many likes.

For the sake of my mental health and sanity, I decided to forever stay away from American discourse and interact with as few Americans as possible because it is insane how these people can be such cold-hearted, entitled hypocrites.

Thanks, I appreciate that. I will say, however, that I'm not the only one -- all the sensible, left-leaning, Democratic-voting, Cringe Normie Liberals (TM) that I know, both online and in real life, support Ukraine too. I strongly suspect that this is because their brains aren't poisoned with Online Leftism, they are able to look at and assess the situation rationally, and don't feel the need/constant peer pressure to perform Anti-American-Imperialism (and Pro-All-Other-Kinds-of-Imperialism) brainworms like the rest of the Terminally Online. So yeah, plenty of us do exist, but you're probably not going to find them in so-called leftist online space, for many reasons previously discussed. Which is disappointing on all kinds of levels.

Basically, the Online Left was on very thin ice with me anyway prior to all this, but they've really exposed the abject failure of their meme ideology with their whole response to the war in Ukraine, and how it's entirely focused on feeling morally superior to the American establishment/Democratic party, regardless of which atrocities they are required to defend as a result. Shit like this is why I don't call myself a leftist, even though my views/policies would definitely fall on that spectrum, because just like "socialist," I feel like it's become an essentially meaningless term that doesn't convey what I want to mean by it, and is mostly poisoned by a vocal and aggressive minority whose rhetoric is nonetheless increasingly adopted by young progressive-identified people, and that worries me a lot.

[felonytaxevasion]

Ok you know what I'm gonna complain about Ward for like three (that was hubris it ended up being like ten) not proofread paragraphs then I'm gonna get back to the clown mines (the clown Mimes??? One could say)

But spoilers and general ward rudeness below.

Disclaimer that I have three more arcs and also I got my degree in drawing pretty pictures Im not the most media literate person out there I probably missed something

See what's driving me absolutely bonkers about Ward is that. It is called Ward. And it is about a traumatized former child soldier taking partial custody of current child soldiers. And also the former protagonists are mostly relevant because they also have guardianship of child soldiers who are friends with the other child soldiers. And the book is ostensibly NOT about parenthood and guardianship.

All of the best parts of Ward are about Breakthrough watching out for Kenzie (and Chris before they decided they don't care anymore) and the Undersiders with the heartbroken + Aiden. The fact even 17 chapters in Victoria and Lisa still don't really like each other but are working together because at the end of the day they would both drop everything to help the kids is such good characterization.

And it also works!! with the whole Amy Dallon Problem!!! Because the canon establishes that Amy became a Problem because of her dysfunctional family unit led by Carol. And then Victoria is put in charge of sort of dysfunctional family unit, doesn't notice how bad Chris is getting and he goes villain. Same character arc as Amy but it doesn't lead Victoria to change any values she has about her family. She doesn't blame herself for Chris and become more sympathetic to Amy in the process. But also she doesn't become more sympathetic to Carol now that Chris has affirmed her world view that "some people are bad and you can't do anything about it."

By the by Amy is also given Wards of her own in Riley, Dot, and Hunter but none of them get to interact with the Tenders and or even get to be parallels to them. Amy doesn't get to care for her "kids" in the way Vic Lisa and Aisha do. Her kids are irrelevant, not human, and just a victim of her respectively. Oh and she also has Chris but now he's spontaneously a full adult so nevermind all that. And I want Amy to be a villain I don't care if she's a bad guardian or still demonized but I wish they could do it in an interesting way that contrasts our protagonists. Cause instead she's a villain because she's so incompetent at being a hero she ends up being a villain on accident. Which is BORING! IM BORED!

And all the Amy villain blandness is supposed to somehow tie back to the central theme of self identity but none of breakthroughs identity crisises are written in a way that, at least to me personally, emotionally hit. Except Sveta. Hang on actually I'm going through the list.

Victoria's identity is supposedly fragmented between Glory Girl, The Wretch, Antares, """The Warrior Monk""", and The Scholar. But in practical terms these identities have very little tangible difference. Glory Girl hits like a brute without remorse, Antares hits like a brute and considers if she should feel remorse and then doesn't unless it's her mom, the wretch is externalized into being her shard which is fully a different character, and the Warrior Monk and Scholar are just ideologies she wants to follow but never feels frustration at not being able to adhere to. She never hits and is like "oh time to have a crisis because I was trying to be more of a pacifist" she tends to usually say to herself "oh the warrior monk would be fine with that" which is good writing IF you're making a delusional weeaboo character who we're meant to see as insane but I think we're supposed to like Vic so!! What are we doing here!!!

Ashley makes Her defining identity choice, the thing that separates her from Damsel, Off Screen and it isn't even shown as a flashback in her interlude. The part where she turns herself in for attacking Beast of Burden is a good continuation of that arc but the turning point was her choice to receive amnesty and try to be someone different. Which again. Off screen before the story started!

Just like Rain!!! Who once again gets a moment I genuinely think is good where he fully rejects the Fallen by not marrying Erin but again!! That's just a follow through of his self identity turning point that happened before the story started!!!

Which is also Tristan and Byron!!!!!! First of all I think that in a book about self identity and bleed through and knowing where you start and the people around you stop, it's insane that Tristan and Byrons crisis starts not because they realize they're losing themselves in the others personality but because they have opposite sexualities. Personally if I was gonna make gay panic the whole thing with them I would have the inciting incident be one of them starting to feel bisexual attraction as a result of being in their brothers head so often and getting upset about losing a facet of their identity they felt was critical. But whatever!! Even with the existing crisis it happens!!! Before the story!!! Tristan decides to kill Byron and then that he wants his brother back! Before! The! Main! Story! Happens!

The only characters who have a definitive turning point are Sveta and Chris. Chris is almost immediately written out of the story after his turning point. And Sveta actually is really good and I have no notes I think it was really well executed. I love you Sveta.

I'm not even sure where to put Kenzie since her struggles seem to mostly be about changing habits and behaviors rather than identity. She seems like she can easily envision a Kenzie that's better but still Kenzie. And she is super attached to her tech but I haven't read any scenes where it feels like she doesn't feel like herself without her tech. She just feels unwanted which is good writing! I like how Kenzie is written I think it just doesn't tie in to the central theme.

Anyway rant over I maybe will delete this later but this book is driving me bonkers crazy

[ms-m-astrologer]

Transiting Ceres enters Sagittarius

Saturday, November 25, 2023 - Wednesday, February 8, 2024

Caveat: this transit may not be felt very strongly unless your natal Ceres is prominent - closely in aspect to the Sun, the Moon, &/or an angle; or perhaps strong Virgo or 6th House energy.

(I apologize for this being late - the C19 booster I got on Wednesday the 22nd knocked me on my butt for a couple of days.)

As we already have seen: transits through Sagittarius, in 2023, are on the challenging side. We overdo it, we refuse to commit, we pay lip service without making any real efforts, we’re impractical and profligate…! I’m liking “rise to the occasions” for Sag this year. Sometimes we have to learn the hard way. How this could play out in Ceres’ areas:

Procreative sexuality, parenting, children, family - this could show up as wanting to expand the family/tribe, either by having a baby, or by “recruiting” more people. Or going the other way with the energy, we aren’t welcoming of “foreigners.”

Child care, nurturing professions - maybe some generous year-end tips. This is where the lack of practical action is especially infuriating.

Agriculture, growing cycles, food - Sagittarius isn’t regarded as a good sign for a “green thumb” - you gardeners will have to chill for a bit! We could have some weird food shortages - or overindulgences.

Concern for animals - kind of similar to the “child care and nurturing,” in that there is some “holiday” tipping but nothing in longer-term assistance. We may get pets on impulse without really putting much thought into it - “can we afford a pet, do we have the right environment for it” and so forth.

The ideal for Ceres/Sag is to expand horizons, to provide opportunities to develop a meaningful guiding philosophy, and to experience “good fellowship” with others. The aspects Ceres will make (if they interact anything in your chart) give us opportunities for that - we want to allow a couple of days on either side, and more as we go along in the transit.

Sunday, November 26 - Monday, November 27:

Ceres/Sagittarius (0°51’) sesquisquare Chiron Rx/Aries (15°01’)

Ceres/Sagittarius square Saturn/Pisces, 0°59’

All the Sag transits have started out with this double-whammy! The bigger issue of feeling like we haven’t accomplished enough, comes out via our families, maybe food issues like overeating.

Monday, December 4 - Ceres/Sagittarius inconjunct Vesta Rx/Cancer, 3°56’. A lack of focus; different ideas about how to address some family issue.

Tuesday, December 5 - Ceres/Sagittarius semi-sextile Mercury/Capricorn, 4°30’. First of three, as Mercury is in its retrograde zone. We have an inkling of an idea - which may have to “simmer” for a while.

Saturday, December 9 - Monday, December 11:

Ceres/Sagittarius inconjunct Jupiter Rx/Taurus, 6°20’

Ceres/Sagittarius semi-sextile Venus/Scorpio, 6°21’

Monday, December 11 - Ceres/Sagittarius (6°57’) sesquisquare North Node/Aries (21°57’), semi-square South Node/Libra (21°57’)

Overdoing the holidays, to compensate for some feeling of lack. We even know we’re overdoing it.

Thursday, December 14 - Ceres/Sagittarius semi-sextile Mercury Rx/Capricorn, 8°17’. That inkling comes back, and we’re a little more thoughtful with it.

Saturday, December 16 - Ceres/Sagittarius (9°12’) sesquisquare ErisRx/Aries (24°12’). Ideological disagreements. We want to do somethinf amazing but are delayed.

Thursday, December 28 - Ceres/Sagittarius (14°16’) semi-square Pluto/Capricorn (29°16’). Something coming to an end - not immediately - and we have to deal with it.

Sunday, December 31 - Ceres/Sagittarius trine Chiron/Aries, 15°27’. About time!!! End the (calendar) year with forgiveness.

Tuesday, January 9 - Wednesday, January 10:

Ceres/Sagittarius semi-sextile Sun/Capricorn, 19°00’

Ceres/Sagittarius inconjunct Uranus Rx/Taurus, 19°12’

The Sun and Uranus are trine here; it’s Ceres who is interfering (familial disapproval?) with them.

Friday, January 12 - Sunday, January 14:

Ceres/Sagittarius trine North Node/Aries, sextile South Node/Libra, 20°15’

Ceres/Sagittarius (20°56’) sesquisquare Jupiter/Taurus (5°56’)

We’d like to do something, and the timing is right - although it may not feel like it. Trust yourself.

Tuesday, January 16:

Ceres/Sagittarius conjunct Venus/Sagittarius, 21°43’

Ceres/Sagittarius square Juno Rx/Virgo, 21°49’

Ouch. In more traditional times this might manifest as one’s family squaring off against one’s partners. In 2024, we feel we can please our tribes or our partners.

Friday, January 19 - Ceres/Sagittarius opposite Vesta Rx/Gemini, 23°07’. Lack of focus, though this time it’s other people and not (just) ourselves.

Monday, January 22 - Ceres/Sagittarius trine Eris/Aries, 24°09’. Standing up for (or to) the family. Sisterhood.

Friday, January 26 - Ceres/Sagittarius square Neptune/Pisces, 25°37’. Xx

By now, Ceres is slowing down, and finishes her Sag transit over the weekend of Friday, February 2 - Sunday, February 4:

Ceres/Sagittarius (28°12’) semi-square Sun/Aquarius (14°12’)

Ceres/Sagittarius semi-sextile Mercury/Capricorn, 28°55’

Third and final semi-sextile between Mercury and Ceres - there’s that inkling back. How does it feel now? We feel pressured to “doing” Ceres but need more resources (and maybe a plan��).

[sophieinwonderland]

i think you're losing some scope here. i know the tumblr tags represent more to you, but you clearly have drastically shifted your aims

you don't uplift endogenic systems anymore, not really. you seem more anti-anti-endo than pro-endo these days, and as someone who followed you early on, i have to say i understand but it makes me sad and uncomfortable enough to finally have to say i don't really fully support what's going on here

i know you have been relentlessly abused and slandered for 3 years by a community of people that shifts and grows and changes endlessly, like a ship of theseus of mean teenagers. i know you can and have changed minds. but you no longer seem to care about even that; you really genuinely seem to be lashing out, saying things that are deeply unnerving to endos and anti-endos alike, those with religious trauma AND many with the common sense to know that yes, proselytizing IS often harmful. There is a reason missionaries are tools of colonialism. im almost certain you know this and are just being inflammatory, but the friendly fire is IMMENSE. You look foolish and dangerous to many of us, and again that makes me sad and honestly a little worried for you

i think maybe finding another plural community to post activism in is a good idea, or at the very least a tumblr hiatus. it's ultimately up to you, and you are the arbiter of your own mental health, but please at least consider the things I've said here. i know im on anon but again i have had a lot of respect for you for a long time, especially for staying compassionate and composed given the context, but i couldn't fault you for any of this. i just hope you find something both more productive and more rewarding.

i could totally be misreading this and you are making these decisions for some solely rational reasons and you ARE more active elsewhere, but. i dont know. you dont seem to post positivity like headcanons anymore, just neverending anon hate and intentionally inflammatory (often triggering) pseudo-religious doctrine. that doesn't seem healthy for anyone, including your endogenic follower base

proselytizing IS often harmful. There is a reason missionaries are tools of colonialism. ... you dont seem to post positivity like headcanons anymore

I really do want to get back to the headcanon posts.

At least the big ones seem to take a lot of effort and I haven't really been feeling it for a while.

But I do find it ironic that you would say this when those very posts ARE my proselytism. To the extent that I proselytize my ideology to other communities, these are the posts that I consider most valuable to those aims of gaining outside support.

I don't openly proselytize in the way of "you should become plural and make a tulpa because plurality is cool and will help you feel better" the way Christians might because that feels scummy. Even if early studies are showing mental health gains from tulpamancy and I might be justified in doing so.

But I will make a huge post about how the Avatar is actually plural, trying to tone down my plural language and explain the terms I use in ways that non-plurals will be able to understand, with the intent of introducing them to plurality and get them on board with pro-endo ideology.

And if after learning about plurality, they decide on their own to make a tulpa due to resources I provide, or realize they were already plural because of similar experiences to myself or other systems I interact with then that's a huge win.

Those posts are the gateway, the same way missionaries might provide food or medicine or other types of support to local communities as a gateway, I provide detailed fan theories with lots of pictures to keep them entertained, and make sure to post them all over the tags of that fandom. Any fandom tags that are relevant, and then with plural tags to fill the rest out. In fact, I think of it a two-pronged approach, where plural tags help me get more notes from plurals and cause the post to appear higher up in the fandom tags to reach non-plurals.

You may think my focus has changed... and you'd be right about that. Lately, I've put a lot more focus on arguing. Maybe more than I should.

But as far as "proselytizing" is concerned, those posts you want me to to do more of have been my vehicle for it. Just less overtly.

And I don't think I've been particularly subtle about stating the intent behind them.

I'm stopping just short of some of the most manipulative tactics religions employ, but I'm self-aware enough to realize that I've always only been a few steps from them.

Frankly, if you want to spread an ideology, it would be silly to not look at the most successful ideologies, whether political, religious or even moral philosophies, and figure out why they were able to achieve the dominance they did.

[oneunexpected]

Hi, everybody! In case you missed it, I'm doing a chapter-by-chapter playlist for each book in the series in honor of @prophecyofgray's #TUC20 event. Sorry for getting this one out late, as I was gone this weekend and couldn't work on it.

Click here to check it out on Spotify, with my explanations for why I chose each song below! If you missed my playlist for Gregor the Overlander, check it out here.

1 - White Winter Hymnal by Fleet Foxes - This is one of my favorite songs ever <3 It is a beautiful piece of music, but the lyrics are darker on a closer read — the kids are running through the snow wearing red scarves, and when one named Michael falls, he turns the snow “red as strawberries in the summertime;” some people take this to imply his head fell off a la the story of the “Red Ribbon Girl.” I don’t think it means Michael’s head fell off, personally. I think the narrator is just struck by how red his scarf is against the snow, or perhaps he is bleeding. But regardless, this is a song about loss of innocence that uses running through snow to convey that, and it’s often co-opted as a Christmas song (fuck pentatonix christmas music all my friends hate pentatonix christmas music). I felt it was a good fit for Gregor, who is the one who’s lost his innocence, and Boots, who is in this book Gregor’s Michael. And also just because this chapter also depicts an idyllic white winter scene where something more sinister is occurring if you look closer.

2 -  Oblivion by Grimes - Elon be damned, she had some bangers back in the day. This song is sonically dark and the lyrics are creepy and the chorus is “see you on a dark night” on repeat, and in this chapter Gregor’s on the run through dark tunnels from those that swore to hunt him for all time. It’s a good marriage.

3 - Sabotage - Angry chapter. Angry song. Gregor’s mad at the roaches and the Underlanders, Ares is mad at Gregor, they’re both angry at the world. Favorite lyric for the chapter: “I can’t stand rocking when I’m in this place / Because I feel disgraced / Because you’re all in my face.”

4 - Dark Days by the Punch Brothers - Your first track stolen from the Hunger Games soundtrack for this playlist! “Sister hide your love away / From the evil we both know … Our love will see us through these dark, dark days / Sister, ‘til it lights our way back home” makes for a good song for this chapter, where Gregor reads the Prophecy of Bane, understands what’s at stake, and decides to stay in the Underland to see it all through.

5 - Love Will Tear Us Apart by Joy Division - This is the first chapter we get to see the ideological schism that runs straight through the heart of Vikus and Solovet’s relationship. Vikus is maybe my favorite character in the series in terms of I Like Him and Solovet’s maybe my favorite character in terms of I Want To Put Her Under A Microscope, so of course I’m fixated on their interaction over the other things in this chapter. They’re tearing apart by trying to reconcile their own outlooks on the world with their love for someone so different from themselves; this song was a natural choice.

6 - Glory and Gore by Lorde - Every line in this song reminds me of the Regalians. This chapter, we meet the Fount cousins, and that fits well with the edginess of this song which was written about belligerent teenagers. It’s also the chapter where Gregor hits the total. The red liquid in the balls disturbs Gregor, but for the Underlanders, it’s for “roughing up their minds so [they’re] ready when the kill time comes.” One of my favorite lyrics in this song is “no one ‘round here’s good at keeping their eyes closed.” That’s true for Stellovet and her non-Howard siblings, who see Luxa’s vulnerability re: Henry and weaponize, and it’s true for the other Regalians, who immediately spread word about what Gregor accomplishes, even though he’s disgusted with it.

7 - Somewhere Only We Know by Keane - This song is so sweet and lovely. It’s a little on the nose, because Ares appears out of nowhere and takes Gregor somewhere only they know, but it’s also about letting people into your heart, which is a sentiment I like for the two of them beginning to act more like proper bonds. The song is also a little wistful about times past, which pairs with the part of the chapter where Luxa, Aurora and Ares reflect on positive memories of Henry.

8 - Blackbird by the Beatles - Okay, I really wanted to use this for Ch. 15, but I became married to the idea of using a different song for it, so I’ve shoehorned it in. I don’t think it fits with the chapter well sound-wise, so sorry in advance. But this song reminds me of Twitchtip, who tried so hard her whole life to find a place in gnawer society. In terms of sound, it fits better with the second half of the chapter, when the survivors of the first quest have dinner together.

9 - Monty Got a Raw Deal by R.E.M. - Everyone’s getting a raw deal in this chapter. Gregor has his first echolocation lesson and he sucks. A grieving Nerissa implies Henry was on the right track in joining with the gnawers but admits he bungled it badly. Gregor finds out he has to kill the Bane all on his own. “Heroes don’t come easy,” the song says, and the song is right. Raw deals all around.

10 - Atlas by Coldplay - Honestly, kind of a filler song. I didn’t get much out of this chapter besides exposition for the quest. The verses are about things people desire: security, wealth, adventure, but the chorus is just “I’ll carry your world.” That’s Gregor: carrying the Underland for the Regalians’ own interests.

11 - Sail by AWOLNATION - ha ha get it they’re on a boat Really though, I chose this song not only because they’re sailing and because it’s a banger, but because it’s the chapter Ares teaches Gregor how to kill a rat, and he really can’t imagine doing it. “Maybe I’m a different breed / Maybe I’m not listening” reminded me of that.

12 - Bloom by Radiohead - This song kinda freaks me out. I once listened to it for three hours straight while writing a midterm. I like the syncopation and I thought it might fit well with Gregor’s fragmented perception while he’s raging, and because it’s a trippy track, it fits well with his little dream sequence, too. Its lyrics are about the ocean, too, so I obviously had to use it.

13 - Invisible by U2 - Okay listen I didn’t want to have to use a U2 song so early here. I was anticipating only using one this playlist. But here we are. Anyways, this song is about people outgrowing family members who have hurt them or left them a bad legacy. Howard denounces Stellovet’s behavior, and Gregor realizes Luxa joined the trip to prove she’s not like Henry.

14 - Never Let Me Go by Florence + the Machine - Never Let Me Go is about the struggle of finding the will to keep on living. I interpret the lyrics to reflect suicidal ideation about drowning in the ocean, so be mindful of that if you wanted to read the lyrics and you’re sensitive to that, but the chorus is this choral arrangement of voices repeating “Never let me go, never let me go,” reflecting that the narrator subconsciously wants to keep living. Although clearly describing different situations, I decided I wanted to pair this with the whirlpool chapter. Twitchtip has nearly accepted her fate, embracing “the arms of the ocean,” as Florence puts it, but when Gregor goes back for her, she begs him not to let go. I think it’s an emblematic moment for a character who wants, more than anything, not to be alone.

15 - I’ll Be Home for Christmas as recorded by Bing Crosby - There’s a lot of good stuff in this chapter. Also, Pandora is eaten alive in the end, but we’re ignoring that for now. I chose this song because it’s the chapter where Gregor thinks about what a wreck his parents must be, and he wonders if Christmas has already passed. This song was originally written from the perspective of an American soldier fighting in Europe during World War II, who knows he won’t make it back for Christmas. It’s all very sad. This whole chapter is pretty sad. That’s all I got.

16 - 10 dEAThbREsT by Bon Iver - When I first began these playlists, I just had a giant list of songs that reminded me of the series. This was one I had but I anticipated using it in a later book, probably during combat, or during some tense moment between Gregor and Luxa. I love this song. It’s off-putting, it’s compelling, it keeps you on the edge of your seat, and I have no idea why the title is stylized like that because nothing Bon Iver did after their self-titled album makes much sense. Anyways, I had NO clue what to use for this chapter. No song I know captures how disturbing Pandora’s death is. But I ended up with this one, because the edginess captures Ares’ struggle and Gregor’s fear for him sufficiently. This chapter is also an important moment of bonding for Gregor and Luxa — he imagines taking her to the Overland for the first time — and for Luxa and Howard, who grieve together and finally start acting like family. I know the tone doesn't fit well with the emotion of the last few pages of this chapter, but I'm hoping the outro of this extended version suffices. The lyrics seem to deal with trying to fight the notion that you love someone. Or something. It’s all pretty esoteric. I think those can only be stretched so far to apply to Gregor and Luxa/Luxa and Howard, but I like the lyric “I’m un-orphaned in our northern lights” a lot for Luxa. She is slowly building relationships again after all she’s lost in her parents and Henry.

17 - Music for Prague 1968, Movement I: Introduction and Fanfare by Karel Husa - “oneunexpected would NEVER make me listen to a programmatic work written for symphonic band!” ENGH! Wrong! I saw this in concert when I was 17 and I was deeply, deeply disturbed, which is the point. This first movement starts sooooo eerie and then gets SCARY which is absolutely perfect for the party knowing they’re sailing directly into a trap and then for when the serpents wake up. Enjoy!

18 - Eyes on Fire by Blue Foundation - We break with our programming of stolen Hunger Games soundtrack songs to bring you a song stolen from the Twilight soundtrack. This song is chilly and the narrator is someone who has nothing left to lose and is ready to fight. It’s another song I expected to use later in the series, maybe for when Gregor and Solovet’s relationship deteriorates, but I ended up using it here because when Gregor thinks Boots is dead, he doesn’t grieve immediately — he says he feels like ice has encircled his heart, and for the first time, is resolute that he will go kill the Bane.

19 - Safe and Sound by Taylor Swift and the Civil Wars - We break with our Twilight soundtrack programming to return to the Hunger Games. This is the chapter where Gregor and the others convince Howard to return with Mareth and Andromeda, but I chose it for the conversation Ares and Gregor have. Gregor gives one last chance for Ares to bail, and when he refuses, Gregor senses they’ll never have a conversation like that again. He remembers the moment they bonded in Regalia, which is what reminded me of this song. The lyrics go, “I remember tears streaming down your face when I said, ‘I’ll never let you go’ / When all those shadows almost killed your light / I remember you said, ‘Don’t leave me here alone’ / But all that’s dead and gone and passed tonight.” The circumstances of their bonding are similar to those first three lines, but all of that fades away as Gregor realizes they’re truly bonded now.

20 - Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd - Sad song for a sad chapter, as Gregor and Ares reluctantly leave Twitchtip behind. Ares admits to Gregor that he doesn’t think it’s right that he’s still alive when Henry, Luxa and Aurora are gone. I mostly chose this song for Ares’ grief. The verse of this song reminds me a lot of Henry, and how Ares must view Henry, especially regarding the line, “Did you exchange a walk-on part in the war for a lead role in the cage?” 

21 - No Children by the Mountain Goats - YES! THE TUMBLR SONG FOR GOLDSHARD AND SNARE! “I HOPE YOU DIE! I HOPE WE BOTH DIE!”

22 - 13 (There Is a Light) by U2 - Okay I swear I didn’t want to use this song. As much as I love U2, I really don’t dig this song very much. It’s so long and meandering. But the lyrics are nice. The way I’ve been constructing these is I skim very quickly through the book and write a brief summary of each chapter and when that’s done, I assign songs to each. My note for this chapter was just “baby hitler conversation.” I ended up choosing this song for one of the verses, which goes, “I know the world is done / But you don’t have to be / I’ve got a question for the child in you before it leaves: / Are you tough enough to be kind? / Do you know your heart has its own mind? / Darkness gathers around the light / Hold on, hold on.” I really liked the fit there for Gregor in this chapter. Even after losing his baby sister, he doesn’t let the world harden him so much that he’s willing to kill a baby. He’s tough enough to be kind, he follows his heart, and he holds onto the light within himself. And that’s why he’s our protagonist.

23 - One Tree Hill by U2 - Last U2 song for this book I SWEAR. But this is a song I associate with Ripred sooooo strongly. It’s a song vaguely about the cost of protesting oppressive systems, and those who do so anyways, which is a good fit for our favorite old rat, but more than anything I chose it for the chorus, “He runs like a river runs to the sea.” Since this is also the chapter Gregor says goodbye to little Pearlpelt, I like the line, “I’ll see you again when the stars fall from the sky / And the moon has turned red over One Tree Hill,” which is probably about seeing someone again in the afterlife, but I think it also works in the context of Gregor and the Bane: the next times they meet, their whole worlds will have changed.

24 - Viva La Vida by Coldplay - Along with chapter 22, I struggled the most with giving a song to this chapter. I wasn’t sold on its usage here but it’s the best I could come up with. This is the one where Nerissa gets crowned, and I related her struggle to the line, “Oh, who would ever wanna be king,” and also the allusions to hearing voices and having some sort of prescience about your fate in the chorus. Also, this is the chapter where Ares and Gregor are thrown in the dungeon, which is a dramatic change in his treatment. Until this point, Gregor has been a messianic figure to the Regalians. As the song says, “One minute I held the key / Next the walls were closed on me.” Gregor’s experiencing a similar fall from grace.

25 - All Along the Watchtower by Jimi Hendrix - You can listen to any version of this song you’d like, whether that’s the Bob Dylan original or anything else you can find, but this is the most well-known version. My favorite is — you guessed it! — a U2 cover. The song depicts a conversation between two characters, a jester and a thief. The joker is looking for “someway out of here,” and is in general very cynical. The thief, on the other hand, says, “There are many among us who feel that life is just a joke / But you and I, we’ve been through that / And that is not our fate / So let us not talk falsely now / For the hour is getting late.” It reminds me a lot of Ares and Gregor’s conversation in the dungeon. Ares encourages Gregor to sell him out and save himself, but Gregor refuses. He settles instead on just telling the truth, which is ultimately what saves them.

26 - 42 by Coldplay - This song is moody and contemplative, which is a fine fit for the unraveling of the prophecy. It deals with the loss of loved ones, with its first verse going, “Those who are dead are not dead / They’re just living in my head.” This is the chapter where Gregor finally begins to grieve for Boots, only for him to find her alive, and there’s this great, energetic tonal shift in the song that leads to the repeated lines, “You thought you might be a ghost / You didn’t get to heaven but you made it close.” After finding Boots alive, Gregor is rejuvenated from the shell of himself — the ghost — he would have been otherwise.

27 - The Morning Fog by Kate Bush - A song about having a new lease on life after a close brush with death. It’s so upbeat, so cheerful, so Bootslike that I had to include it here. I love, love, love the lyrics, “D’you know what? / I love you better now.”

BONUS TRACK - Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas as performed by Frank Sinatra - I wanted to make this the song for Ch. 27 originally, but I wanted to give you an out if you didn’t want to listen to more Christmas music. It’s the first time Gregor’s family gets to have a proper Christmas, full of gifts and decorations and genuine happiness, since Gregor’s dad disappeared. But it’s also a little bit melancholy. They slip the lines “through the years we all will be together / If the fates allow” in very casually, but it makes my heart ache a little. It is especially poignant for Gregor’s family, who have almost lost each other time after time. But the last line, “And have yourself a merry little Christmas now” is a good reflection of how Gregor’s family gets to live in the moment and genuinely enjoy the holiday that year.

[klysanderelias]

Do you have a favorite Vtuber?

Please also tell us why.

All right, wall of text time.

The short answer is not exactly, I watch vtubers for a lot of different reasons. I have a shortlist, and I have one or two I actually spend money on supporting, but I don't think I could name a favorite. If you're looking for names, I'd shout out Finana Ryugu, Mai Tsukimiya, Hakos Baelz, and Pavolia Reine, with Mai Tsukimiya closest to 'favorite' based on my support/engagement.

Now, the long answer.

I follow vtubers for a couple of key things - body doubling, relaxation, let's plays, music, and 'other'. A lot of these don't really interact well - if I'm trying to find a comprehensive let's play of a game I want to experience, I'm looking for a different thing than when I'm trying to find something to put on when I'm going to sleep. Plus, there are a lot of vtubers who are part of an agency like Hololive or Nijisanji that have a certain level of obligation to play specific games, so suddenly everyone I follow is playing the new pokemon, or hitman, or (ugh) Hogwarts legacy, because the agency made a promotion deal. And it's important for me to remember a lot that Vtubing is a job, especially the bigger you get, and that's more than just 'I need to make money doing this.' It's also 'I have a boss who makes decisions about what I am and am not allowed to do, and if I say something on stream I may have to make a ten minute apology video if my handler decides it might hurt the brand.'

I do want to talk about that - I don't like a lot of the subculture that vtubers inhabit. I don't like the way that it vaguely reeks of 4chan memes, or how if you scratch the surface you'll find incredibly toxic and disgusting behavior in chat. I don't blame the streamer for basically any of it, but there are vtubers out there who play more into it that I would like much more if they didn't (basically anyone in vshoujo, but also gawr gura and amelia watson, for example). And I'm sure there's more that I don't know about because like, if they don't stream in english, I'm obviously not gonna know what they're saying unless it gets clipped and translated. I will say, Finana Ryugu specifically gets a pass from me, and I think if she streamed more games I was interested in, she might make it up to being my favorite. I will never forget her anger at her chat for calling certain gacha characters 'traps', and her banning the word from her stream, and then like a day later being forced to apologize for it. I've more or less given up on trying to find 'progressive' or 'leftist' vtubers because of the culture (plus y'know, no one talks politics or ideology at their job), but she strikes me as a genuinely kind and thoughtful person.

For the things I watch vtubers for, number one is probably body doubling - if you're not familiar with that term, it's basically 'having someone else in the room to help someone with ADHD start and execute tasks that they otherwise wouldn't be able to'. It's kind of like having a podcast on for me, or chatting with someone while doing the dishes. It's having the stream on in the background and not really paying much attention to it.

Next is relaxation - sometimes I'll put a streamer on just to fall asleep to. I don't do the ASMR stuff really, but just having noise on in the background helps me sleep, and there's a number of people who have very calming or pleasant voices. Ceres Fauna is a shoutout here - I think she's on the edge of the 'elmo voice' crowd, but she's great to fall asleep to.

I also listen to a lot of music from vtubers, either covers or original music. I'll voluntarily admit I like Mori Calliope - when she's not trying to be edgy or playing into the subculture, her music is genuinely good. In general I think vtubers shouldn't be forced to sing, but I have a bunch of songs from vtubers I listen to a lot.

Let's plays - obvious. I have to shout out Hakos Baelz' playthrough of Resident Evil Village, she struggles with horror games and her experience with RE8 was extremely fun to watch because she was able to enjoy herself and get through the scary parts. This is also what's hardest to find for me - there aren't a lot of vtubers who play the kind of games I'd like to see.

I also like listening to vtubers who stream in other languages - most non-english vtubers stream in Japanese, but I like listening to the indonesian streamers from nijisanji and hololive as well (and ID streamers like Reine and Moona have some extremely good songs).

There aren't many vtubers I actually support financially, I think the only one is Mai Tsukimiya. I think she's very sweet, is small enough that I feel like I'm supporting a person and not a company, and I've bought some of her merch and enjoyed it.

Anyway all of this is to say that it's complicated, but I follow a lot of let's players and vtubers and have Opinions about them.

This is different from a list of recommendations, though. I think everyone I've named (and quite a few I didn't) are worth checking out, but obviously there's a lot of variance in terms of what they stream, how they stream, etc.

[bromcommie]

For the ask game ;)

🏜️,❄️,🥐,🌻 aaand 🥤

Hope you are having a good day!

Hiya, thanks for the retaliatory hit! (affectionate) hope you're having a lovely day too :) 🏜️ ⇢ what's your favourite type of comment to receive on your work? Ooh, can I just say any? Kidding, albeit I am very grateful for everyone who takes the time out to comment, even if it's just a string of emojis or something! But I am eternally grateful for long, detailed comments and especially love when people point the things that they related to in my work or things that clicked for them (particularly the ones I thought might be overlooked or alternatively, too heavy-handed to land) or even line up certain things or parallels that didn't fully register to me while I was writing except as a vague ~vibe~. I just appreciate it a whole lot, and it makes the whole exchange feel like a conversation. ❄️ ⇢ what's your dream theme/plot for a fic, and who would write it best?

Hm, I don't know - I don't think I have one specific dream theme/plot. That said I have been thinking a lot about Red Room/Department X plotlines recently. I really love the throughline of the struggle for identity + shifting ideologies/definitions of what it means to be a good person + autonomy & free will vs. wanting to belong dichotomy in those stories. Especially when it's grounded in interesting dynamics that aren't very black and white (i.e. Nat and the other widows, the handlers, the WS.) That era is also just very interesting to me in terms of real world circumstances and events, and the scifi potential to explore trauma and psychological fuckery in general is endless. So I guess I'd really love something that deals with Natasha's memories as a child + teen in the war and how that shaped her both before the Red Room even got their hands on her, as well as during and after; how she became this kind of mercurial person who is still (maybe surprisingly so) solid at her core. Something a la Name of the Rose, if you've read that run.

As for who I'd like to write it, I am in fact attempting to write something to that effect into my current post-CATWS wip, so I guess me? Not to say I wouldn't love to read something similar by someone else - there have been several fics out there that dealt with Natasha in a way that had me staring into empty space for an hour (in a good way) - just that I enjoy the process of developing ideas like that in my head differently than I do reading about them from another angle, if that makes sense!

🥐 ⇢ name one internet reference that will always make you laugh 

that vine with the two guys with heavy NY/NJ area accents screaming at a duck. wait no - any patrick william charlton vine where he suddenly acquires a german accent. wait no - the can I PLEASE get a waffle one.

oh man. any one vine really. I'm very nostalgic about vine. 🌻 ⇢ tag someone you appreciate but don't talk to on a regular basis

I feel like if I started doing that I'd end up spamming way too many people haha. I do wanna say I very much appreciate everyone I've gotten to interact with and follow during this CATWS10 event and over the past two months I’ve been on here more!

🥤 ⇢ recommend an author or fanfic you love Oh, god. GOD. This is so tough, I'm really blanking right now. I've been around for a loong while lol and there are so, so many insane, brilliant ones. It doesn't help that I really haven't read that many in the last few years as much as I've been writing them.

Off the top of my head though, I recently went back to Speranza's All the Angels and the Saints. One of the all-time old school Cap greats. All of their stuff is just wonderful, foundational Steve, Bucky & SteveAndBucky content. Also everything by magdaliny. I don't even know what to say there, except maybe goddamn.

I’ve also been reading a couple Red Room fics that I can’t find right now but that were great, so I’ll have to dig through my old laptop bookmarks and get back to you with a personalized list, hehe 🫡

[prettyboykatsuki]

i’m so over this new era of newgen watchers of rlly anything if i’m being honest. i’m gonna sound gatekeepy and annoying but i’m willing to put up with it if it means i get to rant about this to someone who might understand. i just idk maybe it’s just me but i feel like back then interacting with media wasn’t this popular? not just anime but shows in general i’ll go as far as to say book and movies also? like before covid i know lots of people who would tell me they didn’t watch tv n i feel like after it specially with the rise of tik tok these new watchers don’t know how to interact with said media?? n demonize any kind of movie or show that isn’t ideologically pure?? like idk i just see people n maybe it’s cause i’m on tik tok a lot so maybe it’s on me but i just feel like they don’t know how to watch stuff if it makes sense?? n get fake morally outraged at anything n anyone💀💀 i feel like they never learned how to take the characters out of the context of a story n enjoy them as separate entities?? idk like watching media has become this pseudo intellectual experience where these creators pat themsleves on the back for saying a bunch of words that mean nothing rlly as long as they sound smart. n it’s pissing me off. of course i think there should always be some kind of discourse revolving the stories we are watching but idk💀💀 ik it’s not important what a bunch of teens think of a show i watch but also i’ve seen the power of tik tok n it can be a lil scary thinking about the way they can just influence public opinion if making a tik tok about colleen hoover got z library taken down n the guys who made the site sent the prision

HELLO ANON YOU SENT THIS MANY DAYS AGO AND I REALLY WANTED TO GET TO IT WHEN I HAD A BIT OF FREE TIME AND THAT TIME IS NOW

so the tldr for this is that i agree. like. i don't really think this opinion is gatekeepy at all and i think its one of those things that on the surface seems unimportant but it speaks to how society is function (or in this instance... not function)

there's like. a lot of layers to this particular issue that i think would be very difficult to dissect meaningfully on here but i will try my best to try and explain my viewpoint of what it is. i actually talked about it on my sideblog the other day and i think we're sort of harping on the same point

we're always talking about media literacy on this app and how it's important and a lot of the time - i get feedback from people saying it isn't that deep. sometimes i'm inclined to agree, but i think more and more i'm coming to terms with how people are becoming increasingly... dependent? on escapism and fiction to give them moral guidance and substantiate their own goodness.

it happens especially in teens, especially younger teens but i think young adults aren't exempt from this either.

and the reason i think this is happening is because because of late stage capitalism and the increasingly predatory attempts to market off of fandom culture through sanitization.

this obsession with ideological purity and the lack of empathy towards real human beings is basically one long response to that collective state of exhaustion. 2020 was a year that showed companies how profitable fandom could be and in attempts to increase that profit - there was action taken both in the production and marketability causing the actual processing of content to become extremely evangelical and morally pure.

late stage capitalism has also created a sense of isolation. in karl marx theory of alienation - he details this phenomenon better than i ever could. but the basic concept is that the larger the gap becomes between the proletariat and their labor, the more people will lose touch with their humanity. and in that their sense of self. we're effectively seeing that happen in real time, and it's explanation for all the invasions of privacy, casual bullying, and generally lacking sense of self that people experience.

when you take extremely sanitized media and people estranged from a clear identity - you create a breed of people who are aimlessly seeking to become part of something in order to reconnect. no matter how negative or dangerous (which is also why we've seen a major increase in violent and cult like reform / fringe movements). when production of that media is so fast and so easily available, you get people who are mindlessly consuming things and creating these incredibly pseudo-intellectual and nonsensical debates in order to feel connected to that false identity.

i don't think it's gatekeepy to point out that this is happening. this obsession with creating fake moral panic about problematic and entirely fictious media is doing almost exactly what it's supposed - which is taking away real and legitimate critique of the world around us by ensuring and reinforcing that ideological purity and goodness can be bought in sold much in the same way we buy a can of coke off the shelf.

if you watch the right movies, and read the right books and watch the right shows you can be good without any effort. that's what people are often convincing themselves of. because its both messy and exhausting to confront that goodness within a human being is deeply complex and easier to uphold these weird and impossible beliefs.

[oakantony]

I don't know

I've been thinking about success a lot lately, especially in regards to writing.

I love writing. I would do it trapped in a vacuum utterly alone because I can't not write. I've always created stories, even when I was very, very little, before I knew how to put words on a page, and I suspect I'll keep creating stories every day for the rest of my life.

The thing is--there's this "noble pursuit" ideology with crafts like painting, writing, and even something like teaching. "You do it because you love to do it." And I get that. I truly do--like I said, I'd write in a vacuum if I had to.

But because it falls into the noble pursuit category, there's this idea that you write for yourself and nobody else and "success" (either financially or via attention, or awards, or whatever) is irrelevant. And I honestly think that's kind of unfair.

I'm very lucky that I've written fanfiction that's garnered a decent amount of interaction and even some monetary benefit; I've been on Patreon for like four years at this point. And I'm really grateful that I have that space, because it's allowed me to feel less alone in what is typically a lonesome passion.

But what about success outside of fan spaces? What if I want to write original works and feel "successful" with those? What does success even look like in real, tangible terms for me?

It's not very easy to define. I want to be able to write every day if I choose and know, as I write, that I'm not wasting my time. That is, that I'm writing towards a bigger goal of completing a project and then sharing it with other people. That's not very noble, is it?

And how many other people reading my story qualifies the book as a success, exactly? A hundred? A thousand? One? Maybe just one, and that one has to really, really love it. One big fan that asks questions and makes fanart and writes fanfic (that I don't get to read, but I know it's there, and I love it).

The other thing with "success" in writing is that I live in the United States and capital rules every aspect of my life; lord and king is the dollar. So, yeah, maybe I'd be happy if one person read (and loved) my book, but only if that one person paid me a year's salary. And what's a year's salary? Well, I'm single, and I live in a high cost-of-living city (Austin, Texas, baby; don't let anyone lie to you and say Texas real estate is "affordable" because it ain't), and I'm in my mid-thirties, so I need to think seriously about healthcare in the coming decades.

I could live on a book salary of $100,000 a year, probably, but healthcare, emergencies, rent, and my fat glowering student loan would dwindle that down very fast, and I promise that I wouldn't be living rich.

Is living "rich" part of success for me? A yearly vacation and a nice home would push far beyond $100,000. We'd have to double the payment, then. $200,000 a year. And how many writers earn $200,000+ per year in the United States? According to Zulie Writes, traditionally-published best-selling authors make at least $140,000 per year, while self-published best-selling authors make over $250,000 per year.

So, based on a quick search--it's less than 1%. Less than 1% of authors make over $200,000. I did some quick math--that's about 500 authors.

(Now, that's not how many authors make a living on books--mind you, a lot of writers are not single. Two person households where one holds a "traditional" job with healthcare benefits and a steady paycheck means an author could be making less than $50,000 per year total and still live comfortably.)

I'm veering a little off topic. So, success for me is a formula like:

Success = comfortable writing routine + at least one reader who likes what I've done + $200,000 per year

The funny thing is--a good chunk of that formula is done. I write comfortably around my day job, because my day job is flexible, and I'm super grateful for that. And I've got many readers, actually, even for my original stuff. But I'm very far away from the $200,000.

Do I feel close to success, having two of the three pieces in place?

Not really. Maybe a little? I don't know.

How can I get closer to that feeling?

I also...don't know. Is traditional publishing the answer? Is self-publishing? Is publishing at all worth it? Maybe I should make $200,000 by changing careers and going into tech or something and keep my writing completely separate from my bank account.

And, an even bigger question: does caring about that formula take away from the noble pursuit part of my passion? If I never achieve "success"--does it matter? It's art. (It's men kissing, but it's also art.)

How many times have I written "I don't know" in this essay so far? Maybe that's what it should be called. Because I don't. (Know, that is.)

It's an odd feeling knowing what you want to do, having known what you wanted to do for your whole life, and not feeling capable of it. I have a direction. I've always had a direction. It's just that I've got a shackle on my foot and a fiery moat in front of me, sort of, and where I'm standing right now is fine, so everyone wonders why I'm even trying to walk that way.

Just stay put and be happy, because happiness isn't part of the formula for success. Is it?

[tozettastone]

Some navelgazing thinky thoughts for the day:

Often, the theories, frameworks and lenses we use are offering us one view of a situation, problem or concept, but we treat them as though they're the One True Way Of Knowing, and I think that is a little limiting. I believe (and I suppose this is ideology) we can usually only realise a fragment of truth using a given framework. What's offered by one might be contradicted by another, and it's kind of our privilege as thinking beings to rotate the thing in our brains and look at it from different angles.

Let me offer an example that I have plucked from a conversation I had with my parent two years ago: in my country, we have 4 major banks. Together they own most of the minor financial institutions (eg., Bankwest is owned by Commbank, St George is owned by Westpac, etc etc) and they all have, just, so many shareholders in common. They are an oligopoly and unsurprisingly, moving together, they don't always serve the interests of their actual customers. They famously¹ offer such services as fucking over rural business who take out loans by altering terms without notice or consultation, intentionally charging fees to people who are dead, offering bank-affiliated "advisors," who provide advice to customers that serves the bank, etc., etc., exhausting.

One perspective says that this problem is a matter of low competition—we should slash red tape, reduce regulatory complexity and thereby offer newcomers easier access to enter the industry, which would then force these organisations to court customers or risk losing market share.

Another perspective says that this problem is that businesses are not behaving in the interests of their customers—we should increase regulation and get stronger state oversight to ensure these organisations have to do certain things regardless of their size and market share.

But depending on which lens I use (whether you are economically right or left, traditionally), both of these things may be true. Strong competition, where it exists, does force companies to do things like undercut each other's prices and offer appealing services, and high regulation is a barrier to entry to the market. Meanwhile, strong regulation also has a measurable effect on how business carry out business and what nonsense they're allowed to pull.

My answer to the problem of "what do we do about the bloody banks?" more realistically depends on a number of other factors I'm considering, like what I think the ultimate purpose of a bank should be, and how much time I think each consumer should spend becoming adequately informed, whether or not I think markets need regulating over all, and so on... But the point I'm making is, both of the above lenses are just ways of knowing about a thing (in this case, solutions to bank fuckery) and are not themselves singular unified truths. They're lenses that expose one element of truth.

I feel this way about all sorts of perspectives as I see them on my social media feed, but it's always hard to verbalise it in context. The split attraction model isn't the only (or "better") way of thinking about how relationships work. A radical queer reading of a film isn't the only way of understanding it, but it also isn't any less legitimate than, say, a subjectivist one. If you're a proponent of restorative justice, you think that perpetrators and victims need to be treated in particular ways to repair the harms of crime, but you also have to think about how labelling theory might tell you something about those categories.

Of course, it's also our privilege as thinking beings to assess the value of a lens, theory or framework.

Not all ideas are made equal. I talk about how labelling theory interacts with restorative justice, sure, but you'll notice I'm not suggesting Lombroso's biological positivism is equally valuable. That's because it's a school that is really more of a curiosity than a serious criminological theory in the 21st century. But it does still offer us an opportunity to think about how its proponents in the 19th century arrived at their framework and what fragmentary truth they felt it revealed.

----

1— you may have heard that the 2017–2019 Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation, and Financial Services Industry resolved much of this, but unfortunately this is only partially true. The BCCC's report in 2023 revealed that every bank in their sample still charged deceased customers' accounts after being notified of their deaths.

[spectre-ship]

Thing that drives me completely insane in the news, on social media, and generally in the way people discuss age groups, is how unquestioningly we accept the idea of "generations" as sequential statistical cohorts with distinct cultures and mindsets.

The idea of understanding generations as things that are Named and which follow each other in sequential blocs entered popular culture as what Wikipedia terms "Strauss-Howe Generational Theory", which was cooked up in the 1990s by the aforementioned William Strauss and Neil Howe, for a series of pop-science books. Their books had the, bluntly, extremely shoddy hypothesis that you can trace generations' mindsets in the United States as a repeating four-part hundred-year cycle back to the early modern period, with each generation forming a mindset due to growing up in the conditions created by the previous one.

The premise barely even resembles coherent historical or sociological scholarship, and could at most be generously described as "vibes-based". It's U.S.-centric as all hell; following it out would suggest that the history of Anglo-American generational mindsets is the singular axis on which the world turns, and they themselves essentially argued that the Great Depression and World War II were a "Crisis" produced by American cultural cycles. There is a built-in hole by the authors' own admission in 1844-1860, where they couldn't quite explain how the goddamn antebellum period, i.e. one of the singularly most-studied periods in American history, slots into their narrative. It's broad enough to make Victorian political theorists who saw history as the story of technological and moral progress look nuanced and discerning by comparison.

The real reason for their hypothesis was to pitch the idea that millennials* would grow up to be conservatives and to affirm turn-of-the-millennium conservative fears, claiming that there would be a world-historical crisis on the scale of World War II around 30 years after they published their books, which the emboldened conservative youth would then heroically overcome.† To give you an idea of how cartoonishly obviously these guys were working backwards from the thesis "things are looking up for social conservatism", this is an excerpt from a review of their book Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation, from NEA Today in 2000:

Millennials are returning to conservative family values, emphasizing cooperation rather than creativity, and showing a new respect for rules. [...] And today's young people have stricter attitudes about sex than their elders, with virginity being a cool new trend.

In other words, it is at this point objectively bullshit.

All this nonsense might sound wildly disconnected from how the terms are used today but Strauss and Howe have been insanely successful at shaping how people think of generations more broadly--the commentariat is to this day obsessed with talking about "This Hot New Gen Z Trend" and "What Millennials Are Doing Differently Than Their Parents" I think this broader reshaping of how generations are understood is also related to why people argue about these things online so much, why there's constant discourse on what generation things are "nostalgia" of, and people cooking up weird subterms like "elder millennial" and "zillennial". Fundamentally, putting aside the concept's methodological and ideological original sins, breaking people up into these artificial 20 year chunks and erecting walls between them is a really poor way to understand the fluid way age and culture interact. Which is, incidentally, one of the many reasons why practically nobody in the academic historical or sociological communities considers it an accurate or useful way of understanding history or culture.

*addendum: you know how the start and end years of "generations" are frequently wildly unclear, say, how depending on who you ask gen z starts anywhere from 1995 to 2005? according to strauss and howe the last millennials were the people who graduated high school in 2000 lmao

†addendum 2: i have seen some places, including the incredibly credulous Wikipedia page, characterize the COVID pandemic or the russia-ukraine war as the predicted "crisis" formative to gen z, which is both obviously stupid and also pretty on track for the theory that posits a central historical cause of World War II to be World War I's psychological effects on the children of the Americans who served in it

[tangleweave]

[  hold  ]  sender  holds  receiver’s  hand (Bill)

[ A Little Tenderness... ]

Over the years, Bill had heard any number of Asgardians question Thor's love for Midgard. They were known to ask whether the heir to the Throne of the Ten Realms truly prized Asgard above all, as he should, or whether his exile to the world the galaxy called Earth had formed within his heart an upswell of pity that he had misidentified as sympathy and love. According to Skuttlebutt, humans had a term for it -- they called it 'Stockholm syndrome'.

But after visiting the planet himself, interacting with the most exceptional among the humans -- and also some of the most mundane -- Bill understood what it was that Thor saw in Midgard. Not just as a world, but as a people. For all the struggle present on their world (and to be certain, there was a vast overabundance of it for a race that had already come so far), there was also a great deal to admire. Their resilience, their tenacity, their unwillingness to admit failure or to give in to doom and despair.

Bill saw hallmarks of human society that ran parallel to that of his own people. Disparate belief systems, but common dreams. Dissimilar ideologies, but the same goals. Incompatible metric systems, but resolve to join hands nonetheless.

It wasn't true for all Earth's people, of course. There were still the elderly and the powerful who were accustomed to a static set of values... who had placed far too much trust that the systems they had expertly maneuvered would never change. That, too, was much like certain bastions of Korbinite society.

But those tenets had been laid to waste with his homeworld. And new ones were being built on New Korbin... with the forewarning from both Bill and Thor that there would be other refugees seeking protection and shelter, soon enough. What would the remains of Korbinite society stand for?

The warning had been as sobering for Bill to deliver as it had been for the High Council of New Korbin to receive. And he had left them to contemplate what the future of their new world would be. With a murmured supplication, he had stepped into a column of prismatic light and left his vessel in orbit above New Korbin, while he and his oath-brother had traveled to Earth to lend their strength and their lightning to another plight faced by the Avengers.

One from Asgard itself. Amora, the Enchantress, seeking to take territory that was not hers and style herself as queen over a people whose minds she had clouded with her abilities.

But in the aftermath of that encounter, when they should have been reveling in their triumph, Bill stood apart from Thor and his Avenger companions, standing instead on the massive bridge-like dais of Stark Tower, overlooking New York City. He was sure that people who looked up to see his red cape billowing from so far below would mistake him for the god of thunder.

His gaze was set on the horizon, where the barest hints of orange light were beginning to contrast against the violet of night. In no more than two hours, the full sphere of Sol would be perched upon that horizon, and then launch into the sky that hung above a world which did not yet understand the wonders and terrors awaiting them in the cosmos he's so often traveled.

It was a surprise, then, to feel the slight hand of Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch, sliding into his own. He turned and glanced down at her, considering exactly how to respond to this very personal offering of connection. Few people have ever offered him a gentle touch, fewer still have sought to hold his hand. What should he say?

He chose to speak to the first thing that came to mind.

"You are a most invaluable ally, Wanda Maximoff. Your ability to disrupt Amora's mind control was most fortuitous, and your talents in magic are formidable. Woe betide the fool that incurs your wrath."

Even as the words issued forth, he wondered if it was the right introduction. They were certainly aware of one another, Thor being the obvious connection between them but also? Legends of the Scarlet Witch had reached far beyond the boundaries of the Solar system.

Not all of them spoke of her favorably.

Then again... not all tales of Bill himself cast him in a favorable light, either. And he bore the curse of knowing just how many of them were true -- and how many of them he could control.

With gaze returning to the horizon, he draws a breath and expels half of it. "Yours is a truly remarkable world... and even more remarkable are its defenders."