#but my level of anime bullshit tolerance is much lower than it used to be

[sieglinde-freud]

Sliding into your ask box to confess that I also has a Fairy Tail phase when I was in middle school (The age equivalent at least since we don't actually have middle school here lmao). Wendy was my favourite character and the fight she has with Erza and against Erza's mom was one of my favourite sections of the final arc.

ERZA HAD A MOM???

[crownandwriter]

Could I have a matchup? I’m sorry if this is too long, you said more info is better! So that’s what I did!

I’m an INFP (a more practical INFP tho.) Gemini and I’m the biggest RavenPuff (with a smidge of Slytherin). I’ve been known to have no filter when in a conversation, especially when making jokes. I’m not a person to become angry easily nor dislike people (though, that doesn’t mean I like everyone). I try to avoid arguing and don’t usually hold grudges, I don’t like holding them and I don’t have time for nor want that type of negativity in my life; but I’m not a pushover. If I don’t like something or the way I’m being treated, I’ll let it be known. I wouldn’t say I’m shy around new people, just quite. I’m known has the “Salty Bitch” by my friends (I gave myself that name and my friends approved) cus I will roast the hell out of them, lovingly, of course. I’m a BIG animal person! Cats are my favorite. If see a cute animal across the road I’M CROSSING THE STREET! (Of course if I see a service dog I won’t do that nor pet the dog xp) Physical touch and affection??? I’M THE BIGGEST SLUT FOR THAT PHYSICAL TOUCH! I’m touched starved and I will not hesitate showering people I care for with affection and love, if they’re comfortable with that. My parents used call me the “Little Nurse” because when someone in my family was sick I would make sure they had everything to feel comfortable and taken care of, weather it be some tea and toast or propping their feet up and putting on their favorite movie (totally had deja vu writing that sentence, weird)

Dream Career- An artists. I would love to open my own art gallery/boutique where I could sell my artwork and sell other things I’ve made, like knitted, sewn, quilted goods. And my really unrealistic dream is to travel Europe and visit famous art museums and paint all beautiful scenery and people I would see on my travels.

Hobbies- Fencing! I would like to pursue a fencing career, but let’s see what life throws at me. Knitting, of course, and I quite like rock climbing, but I don’t have a rock climbing gym near me sadly. I hope someday to create a YouTube channel and just make whatever interests me, like makeup videos (I love doing makeup) ASMR (imma a slut for ASMR XD) and random shit. I like baking too, especially baking for people who love sweets.

Likes/tastes - I LOVE TOLKIEN’S WORK MORE THAN MY SOUL AND LIFE! Imma big fashionista, but I don’t wear what’s trendy on purpose, I just pick and wear what I think is cute, which is sometimes trending. Music is a great importance to me; my favorite genre is Indie, folk, blues, oldies and alternative, like Lana Del Rey, Hozier, Woodkid, The Beatles, Lord Huron, etc. I LOVE Tex Mex, gotta love those spicy and savory foods. Pastas are my best friends and broccoli cheese soup is my soulmate❤️ I have a sweet tooth; I prefer fruity and tart sweets over chocolate-y and rich sweets. I enjoying making little things for people close to me, which can be rare. DID I MENTION I LOVE PHYSICAL AFFECTION?? Snuggling, back rub and playing with hair are my weakness (I’m happy to give or receive). My favorite studying subjects are literature and history.

This is might be odd, but for me a persons bedroom can reflect the person’s personality. Therefore I’ll describe to you what my bedroom looks like :) It’s a vintage style bedroom. The walls are painted a buttercream yellow, my vintage dresser is ivory and antiqued, I have a lightly stained oak bookshelf filled with fiction, historical fiction and fantasy books. I have a vintage rod iron bed with a homespun style quilt (made by me) it has greens, salmons, buttery yellows and creams, and touches of burgundy (my favorite fabric of the quilt has beautiful birds and butterflies all over it) I have a squeaky dust rose colored rocking armchair wear I read and I have a drafting desk where I do my artwork (obvi). I have quite a bit of bird things in my room and I have a vintage chandelier hung above my bed. My bed is always made (it feels wrong to not make my bed to start my day XD) and hardly any clothing are out and mostly everything is put away and of course, no matter how many times I vacuum, there’s always dog hair from my beloved fat old doggo, Precious.

Again, I’m so sorry if this is painful long!!

Sorry to bother, but I forgot to add on my matchup submit that I enjoy the outdoors, like going on walks (dislike hiking tho) late night campfires (with a hot cup of tea or coco👌🏻👀), and camping, but I usually stay inside (because logic).

You didn’t specify any romantic or sexual preference, so...

I ship you with Simon!

-First of all, I think someone with your level of forgiveness is good for Simon. Both of you share a similar tolerance for bullshit, wherein little stuff is pretty well forgivable, but in the face of extremes you prefer action--even if that action just means running your mouth to stand up for yourself (and/or each other).

-If blood pressure was a thing for Androids, you would make Simon’s spike. He makes a habit of holding your hand or keeping an arm around your shoulders in public so you can’t just run out into traffic after a cat or something (again). At some point, he will gift you one of those child leashes as a joke.

-Simon doesn’t have much of a music preference so you can play just about anything you want when he’s around, but he does prefer a lower volume so you can always hear one another without needing to raise your voices. As a homebody that enjoys cooking, he also appreciates your taste palette because it leaves him with plenty of options when he’s feeling culinarily creative.

-Simon is one of the most open-minded individuals you could ever meet, and for this reason, he will always support the array of various hobbies and careers you want to explore, and will even do his best to help you organize and make sure you’re set up in a way that will facilitate the best experience with anything new you try out. Also, being an android automatically makes him a bit of a tech expert and he’d be more than happy to lend a hand with your video editing.

-You can put your nursing/motherly nature to good use with Simon. He never really gives up on that self-sacrificing nature, so sometimes he gets hurt--you wouldn’t have to be a master engineer to repair him, though. He’ll let you dote and worry and walk you through the repair processes.

-And on that same page, you may have guessed by now that I HC Simon suffers from depression, and I think someone who pays enough attention to the well-being of their significant other (as you would) would go a long way to helping Simon deal with these feelings. There are going to be days where you need to sit him down for a heart-to-heart, and days where he just needs you to sit and cuddle the day away, and I think you’d be more than happy to do all of those things for him.

[rhenal]

Hello again

Wow, it’s been a year now since i last posted anything here. I’m still alive, if anyone is still here at all to care. Um. Last post I did was about the status of my mental health, so I guess a follow-up would be prudent, no?

So now it’s official. I have both Aspergers and ADHD. I thought it was just ADD, but no. The hyperactivity aspect is something I very much have. It’s just that it doesn’t manifest physically - it simply manifests mentally in that my mind is always everywhere at once - that my train of thought manifests more like a puppy on its first snow day than like an actual train.

I’ve been on antidepressants for 13 months now, but I’ve only really felt any real effect from them for the last month and a half as I finally got to change med type. The first type barely helped and gave me nightmares two nights out of three, but those things were small and irrelevant enough for me to it really bring it up until now. Because for all that time, I have been searching for and adjusting to ADHD meds as well, and you only want to sort through one set of side-effects at a time. Turns out I’m really sensitive to side effects, so finding the right type and dosage took a long time, and I’m not certain that the one I’m on now is the best choice still. 

I’m still on full-time sick leave for burnout, since February 14th last year. Currently it will last until the end of August, then we’ll reevaluate from there. Hopefully I can start studying again by that point, if only at 50%.

Turns out, it takes a really long time to recover from a bout of burnout that has had five entire years of buildup. 

So what am I doing now? Mostly just being useless. Restless but without the energy to do anything about it. I barely eat these days, and my sleep cycle is just completely nonexistent. See, in large part due to aforementioned double-whammy of Aspergers and ADHD, my capacity for self discipline is basically nil. With me being on sick leave, I have nothing that forces me to get up and do stuff. There is no reason other than my own health to get up in the morning.

Add to that the fact that both my current antidepressants and my ADHD meds lower my appetite. I do not get hungry anymore. I just get tremors in the late afternoon when I’ve forgotten to eat all day. I can go entire days where I am never ever hungry, and when I finally manage to make something to eat and force myself to just eat it dammit, I can barely get half the meal down.

My doctor has actually advised me to eat small snacks through the entire day to make up for it. You know, the thing that you’re usually heavily discouraged from doing? :’)

In conclusion, my daily life is kinda shit. I’m doing what I can to get better at it all, even going to group therapy every week, but it feels like a Sisyphean effort. 

I’m too burnt out to study or work, but without study or work, I can’t really recover properly. It’s one real bastard of a catch 22.

I’d move back home, but that’s not really an option. Not now that the family’s got a much smaller apartment. I’d have to live on the couch, in a living room with no possible way of real privacy. And I’m an introvert. I am really fortunate to have a family as loving and supportive as I do, and I love them dearly - but I NEED my space. When I went there over the winter holidays, just those two and a half weeks I was there was enough to suck me completely dry of energy. 

If anyone has any advice, I’d love to hear them. Because I need them desperately.

So well. That’s where I am now. 

[garbling thought-vomit about social issues and the failings of tumblr as a community below. Probably best ignored.]

So, why’d I disappear from Tumblr? Should be obvious. The state of my mental health is bad enough without having to deal with the constant anxiety of dealing with this social network. The nonexistence of nuance and the total intolerance of anything even remotely problematic. And the idea that if you like anything that has any problematic aspects in it at all, that means YOU are problematic and are to be ashamed.

It’s actually a really hostile environment for creatives. 

The pressure to be perfect and totally 100% inclusive at all times with not a nanometer’s space for human error or honest mistakes, the attitude that ‘if you’re not perfect 100% of the time always you are EVIL AND BAD AND SHALL BE SHUNNED FOREVERMORE’. 

The attitude a lot of Tumblr seem to have that the only things you are ever allowed to write or otherwise portray are essentially self-portraits because if you haven’t personally experienced it you should never ever write it ever. Kinda makes it impossible to even try to do properly inclusive work for fear of getting even a single minute detail wrong. It’s actually really really fucking hostile and I hate hate hate it. Like, I keep seeing creators of all kinds - writers, artists, cartoonists, animators and game devs alike try their very hardest to make something as inclusive and culturally diverse as they can, only to be rewarded with heaps upon heaps of abuse from Tumblr users just because they weren’t 100% perfect in every single aspect, or that their efforts were seen as ‘virtue signaling’ and are only doing it to make themselves look good and that is false and sin and to be PUNISHED.

It’s like the reward for trying your best to make something that everyone can enjoy without feeling left out is only hate and vitriol. 

(All the while creators who do not care about inclusivity at all get perhaps but a mere fraction of this abuse, I might add. It’s pretty fucking insane when you think about it.)

It’s suffocating.

And it’s total fucking bullshit.

People make mistakes. 

People change. 

And people can absolutely grow from those mistakes and be better. 

But Tumblr as a community keeps fostering this attitude that if you have ever said or done anything even remotely wrong on any level, regardless of the context or how long ago it was or how much better you have grown to be since then, once an uninformed or unthinking statement - accidental or not - always a racist. Or homophobe. Or transphobe. Or ableist. Or any kind of -ist or -phobe imaginable.

I’ve been very fortunate to not really have had to endure any witch-hunt personally, but I saw them happen all the time. And it just. Well. I got really fucking tired of it, and it further worsened my mental health by quite a lot. I just cared too much that I couldn’t stop ranting about it in my head. Sometimes for days.

So I left.

Why am I back? Honestly, I have no idea. I guess I still have a lot of thoughts about things and I’ve been really isolated this last year, so I just need a place where I can put them.

I intend to go on a bit of a purge of the blogs I follow and start with a zero-tolerance policy for witch-hunting bullcrap and other drama. 

See, I have a pretty simple, straightforward moral code. It’s often difficult to follow, due to the human brain working as it does with it’s shitty, garbage, garbage ‘us vs them’ mentality, but it is something I intend do always strive for.

No one should ever be judged for that which they can not control

Ever. That includes the entire spectrum of skintones, every single possible gender identity, sexuality, romantical affiliation, neuropsychiatric status - normal or otherwise, physical condition, place of birth, state of family or culture they grew up in. Or anything else I can think of.

No one picks the toolbox they’re born with. All that should ever matter to anyone is what they build with it.

Fuck jokes about skin colour - ANY skin colour - it’s tacky and only serves to further strengthen the idea that they somehow make people fundamentally different, and that idea can get set on fire and shot into the sea. 

Yes, there are absolutely issues with the culture surrounding differences in levels of melatonin. White people like myself carry a lot of privilege in the west, and darker skinned people of all kinds absolutely do face a lot of unjust treatment in the world. No matter what country in the world you are in, that place’s “default” - how I detest that unfortunate consequence of the human brain functioning as it does - will always carry a strong privilege compared to those who do not fit that default.  But it’s all cultural. There’s nothing inherent in looking any certain way that dictates a person’t being. It’s all the norms and values of the culture they were raised in - and cultures change. It’s slow. It’s difficult. But it is absolutely a worthwhile struggle, is it not?

And, maybe a reasonable path to changing a culture to be more inclusive is to maybe not constantly call attention to such differences? Because that only strengthens the idea that the trait pointed out is ‘other’ - not part of the ‘normal’. 

And we want to widen the definition of normal to include all of us. Right? That’s pretty much this entire community’s mission statement, isn’t it?

I’m thinking that simply acting like a trait is normal, that it’s not something that’s even worth calling attention to, does a lot to normalise that trait. To help it be included within the definition of normal. 

Maybe I’m wrong. But I don’t think I am.

And then there’s the whole thing with white guilt/cultural shame or pride or any somesuch. I have thoughts. Probably pretty controversial thoughts. So I’m preparing myself for pitchforks.

Feeling shame or guilt over whatever hand you drew in the grand lottery of genetical happenstance is just really fucking stupid. That much should be thoroughly established by now. But the thing is, so is feeling pride, for the same reason. You did fuck all to affect what you got. The deeds of your ancestors have nothing whatsoever to do with you. 

You don’t get to choose your toolbox. You can only choose what to do with it.

It feels kind of weird to condemn cultural pride as a concept like this, but I do. I really honestly do. Because it’s dumb. Incredibly hard to drop, absolutely - most of us are fed with it since birth, after all - but it’s still dumb. I mean, what on earth did anyone do to earn the culture they grew up in? Nothing. Because it’s entirely out of your hands.

Treasure your culture, absolutely! Revel in it. Learn all you want and can and strive to carry it forth to the next generation, and to teach anyone who wishes to listen. Absolutely do! Take pride in your accomplishments. Take pride in what you do to carry your culture forth into the future. Take pride in what you help others accomplish. Take pride in what you do to raise public awareness of the reality of your culture. Or your sexuality. Or gender identity. Or any other aspect of your being that is being woefully misrepresented somewhere.  But don’t take pride in simply being what you are. 

Because that’s just part of the completely random toolbox you got at birth - a toolbox you could not have possibly chosen any part of.

Taking pride OR feeling shame over things that you had no hand in is something you have no right or reason to do.

Never judge anyone - not even yourself - by what they have. Judge only by what they DO with what they have.

These thoughts have all been spawned by my time on tumblr. It’s a community that wants to be progressive and inclusive, but is much too often anything but. It’s all complaining, all vitriol, all salt, all echo chambers fostering this kind of thinking. Very little, if any, actual attempts at working towards real improvement.

I remember seeing a comic that circulated some time ago. About equality vs equity. There were these three kids standing by a fence, trying to watch a game of some sport or another taking place at the other side. They were all different height. 

In the equality picture, all three kids got a box to stand on, of equal size.

In the equity picture, they got a different amount of boxes, making it so all of them could see over the fence.

But there was a third picture. One rarely included. 

This picture adressed the fence itself. It swapped the wooden fence to a wire fence. One that all three kinds could see the game through, without any need of boxes.

That’s the kind of world I’d much rather live in. One where the barrier itself is adressed. Where there is no need for boxes to stand on. 

Yet all anyone can really, truly do, is do as Michael Jackson said, and start with the man in the mirror.

We can complain. We can decry. We can wallow. But it’s all for naught if we don’t then step up and act on it.

I'm sick and tired of the ceaseless complaining without action and the oppressive feeling of helplessness fostered here. I want to actually DO something to help the world be better. And if I’m not in a position where I can help personally, I can at least reach out to those in a position to do so.

This is why I donate to charity whenever I can afford it, despite my miniscule budget of a university student on sick leave with a lot of medical fees.

This is why I endeavor to always smile to strangers, be they the retail worker at the checkout, a simple passerby or the cold beggar on the street.

This is why I am always eager to share what I know with people who may need it, be it pointers about mental health or simply how to patch up a torn pair of pants.

All minuscule, inconsequential acts in the grand scheme of things. But it’s something. It’s my small straw, pulled to the anthill. Makes me feel just a little tiny bit less helpless about all the terrible things in the world.

Because even if it’s something small, it’s better than doing nothing. Far better than simply complaining and wallowing about a problem without ever following it up with action.

I don’t even know what I’m on about anymore. I should probably stop writing. Get something to eat. Go to sleep. Bye for now, then.

[mustinvestigate]

stream of consciousness headcanon…ish…thing…

...which owes entire countries’ national debts to @niceteeth-nastysmile‘s health & food canon post and @adistraughtthought‘s on MacCready’s teeth and why Lucy was just beyond brilliant.

And this is all fic-related ponderings of general standards of personal upkeep in post-apocalyptia and their divergence from vault or pre-war sensibilities and how exactly romance could surmount this, which doesn’t really earn “above the fold” status, so…

So it’s generally held in fandom lore that folk are too busy surviving to truck much with hygiene, a thought which derails the sexiness of many T+ fics before they start. Like, “We’ve been trekking across the desert nurturing a deadly two-person epidemic of UST and, oops, convenient cave-in, we’re trapped together…carrying several days’ worth of sweat and battle muck in non-breathable armor we seemingly never change, without water to drink or freshen up with, and, y’know, let’s just sit in opposite cave chambers and breathe through our mouths until rescue comes, ok?”

And a vault dweller or pre-war person would live in suspended state of horror at the miasma of human funk and yellowed snaggleteeth when they have any at all, unable to hold a civil conversation no matter how high their charisma stat. As for romancing, well…nope. Nope nope nope.

Except, in settlements at least, with more pooled resources and storage space and security to allow people to spend time on less essential tasks like making tallow soap and extra under-clothing to change regularly and water to wash clothing and bodies, they’d totally raise standards to at least those of a modern week-long camping trip, right? Being clean and in fresh clothing is one of those small achievable luxuries, on the level of toys and games or cards for communal entertainment, that makes a huuuuge difference in feeling like you’re living, not just surviving. And with teeth, well, humans have been cleaning their teeth (albeit sometimes in ways that could not have been kind to gums or enamel) since we’ve been human. Morning breath and stuck-in food bits have apparently always been pretty high on the short list of activities worth spending limited energy on fixing.

Also often found in human settlements? Doctors, or at least some form of medical-type professionals to push for improved sanitation and enough cleanliness to minimise the spread of disease, not to mention heal injuries or perform simple dentistry or help prevent/treat substance abuse and all sorts of other ailments that lead to one being unable to maintain a comfortable-ish body.

(Aside for ghouls: although they’re described in-game as smelling like rotting flesh, I call bullshit. The smell of rot comes from decay, and by definition, things which are decaying are in the process of existing increasingly…uh…less so. [I don’t know, I can’t word good today, ok? Ahem.] And since ghouls are canonically unplagued by senescence [see? Fancy words!], there’s no decay beyond a certain level of damage that would produce that particular offensive smell. And further still since the skin damage would probably render most of their sweat glands gone or non-functional anyway, they’d possibly even lack the traditional human eau du ew at the end of a hard day’s farming. Y��all just decided they smell bad because you don’t like how they look – real nice, post-apocalyptic humans. Real. Nice.)

People living outside of settlements, though…they might be a different story. Like, raiders? Forget it. You’d smell ‘em coming a mile away, where they may be gasping their last due to catastrophic bacterial infection from what started as a wee molar cavity. They’re not expending energy on small personal-upkeep luxuries, or value stealing them from those who do.

Non-sociopathic nomadic types, like traders or mercenaries or people who don’t have useful skills or can’t afford to buy into a settlement (however it works when there’s no pre-war savior throwing away land for free), where carrying space is very limited and they likely don’t have much time or energy for non-essential luxuries…yeah, they might be closer to what we picture as a standard post-apocalyptic citizen. Like…in today’s terms…your stereotypical European gap-year backpacker. You’d certainly bathe and wash clothes when the opportunity and supplies came to hand, but wouldn’t go out of your way unless your red and orange Maslows were all in the black, and if your yellow, green, and blue were already in the pink, why bother?

(Is that a coherent joke? Probably not. Requires googling. But we strike on!)

Hence, in a slightly roundabout way, we come to MacCready’s teeth, and, further, the impact therein on writing a romance with a pre-war character. Or, really, any of the romanceable companion options, but fanon, and Bethesda going out of their way to make him the only one with bad teeth, seem to hold that MacCready’s a special case. He grew up LARPing Lord of The Flies, defiantly proud that there were no adults to make them clean anything they didn’t want to, and he married a girl (brilliant doctor or not) who was part of the same culture and tolerant of near-toxic personal hygiene or at the very least, since they seemed to be on the road when she tragically died, was biding her time until they settled down to enforce better standards.

(And, seriously, Bethesda, just admit it’s the same character as the Lucy he was best buddies with instead of someone who just happened to have the same name…except that does mean that sweet girl died terribly…and now I no longer know what I want to believe. Huh.)

And a pre-war professional lady, one who’d’ve had to maintain a polished image as a non-negotiable element of her career, she’d get past this…how?

Actually…even writing this out, it still doesn’t seem insurmountable. For years, I shared a very small office with a large, manly fellow who didn’t wear deodorant, worked out before work, and ate a lot of fish-heavy lunches. It’s amazing how quickly the human nose shrugs and moves the goal-posts, particularly for lovely people you get on with, or when everyone around you’s more or less at the same level of smell, or when you’re also working out and coming in kinda sweaty and, you know, we’re all human here, right, why are we so dang picky?

And my version of Nora, for all she prefers pretty dresses and parties, isn’t averse to dirty fingernails. She was in the military, had all her hair shaved off and slogged through muddy obstacle courses and dug latrines and everything; she went hunting with her father and helped out in his plumbing shop, getting elbow-deep in animal viscera and worse. A filthy soldier-type would definitely be on her experience spectrum with probably no more judgement than welp, try to stay upwind when possible, even that forgotten after she’s been in the same outfit herself for a couple of weeks.

But the teeth, man, there’s something moreish about bad teeth, right? There’s not just the aesthetics of non-white, non-straight teeth (trust me…having moved to a country [unfairly] famous for poor-quality dentistry, I can report that uniformly white, straight chompers quickly become the weird-looking alternative) but the visceral reaction to class comma lack of, to an indicator not just of “poor” but “poor and not trying to do better.”

Like, I grew up what’s politely called white working class (in a family that mostly passes leisure time with drinking, Fox News, and stockpiling weapons of dubious origins, so, y’know, shruggy-emoticon), and you bet all of us cousins had braces. We were going to get good grades and have office jobs. Our parents were real touchy about terms like “redneck” or “okie” and wouldn’t admit to liking country music. There was something different about the kids who lived in the same area but didn’t get braces. We weren’t encouraged to make friends of them, and as for dating…well…the bad teeth on a significant other brought home would carefully, one could say pointedly, not be mentioned, but every other possible flaw would be.

In college, I dated a mysterious guy I met on Match.com, who wasn’t white and who had the worst teeth I’d ever seen in real life. They were somewhere between ferengi and pirate and I’m sad to say they were the first thing anyone would notice about him. We ended up dating for two bloody years, even talked about marriage, and the funny thing? I never found out what the deal was with those awful, awful teeth.

At first, I didn’t bring it up because, well…how bad did his childhood have to be, that no one made him brush, no one took out a loan to get him in braces? Like, bad teeth were so intrinsically linked with lower-class deprivation in my mind that I just could not even broach the topic with someone of a different ethnic background. And, anyway, he turned out to be solidly middle-class from birth, held two degrees and a software engineering cubicle job that required a tie, even on Fridays. And by that point, well…if the teeth were the first thing you noticed, the second was that he was bubbly and goofy and sweet, and when months later someone looked at a photo of us and asked, “Oh dear, what happened to that poor boy’s teeth?”, it genuinely took me a minute to figure out what she was talking about.

So, my conclusion: even when one’s brought up to see poor hygiene and bad teeth as viscerally, mockably horrifying…as romantic obstacles, they’re quite surmountable. Like, there’d be some half-hearted stocking up of new brushes and mouthwash, nagging to go see the dentist no I don’t care that your childhood dentist looked like Ted Bundy, and probably a collateral raising of their bathing frequency through shared living routines, and it’d be fine, you guys. Totally fine.

Anyway.

This is what happens after a few months without drinking, y’all. These are the brain cells that’d usually get culled off by the friendly gin hammer.

[veratro-blog]

Really  LONG  CHARACTER  SURVEY.     RULES.  repost, don’t reblog !!     TAGGED.  no one in particular.    TAGGING. @oceanxcbeauty @wingsofhubris @seafled @saecris @canisbitch && anyone else that wants to do it.

BASICS.

FULL  NAME : Night Hellebore NICKNAME :  Nuit AGE :  18 BIRTHDAY :  November 20 ETHNIC  GROUP : Mistralian NATIONALITY :   Mistralian LANGUAGE / S* : Remnant’s equivalent of English. He knows the basics of French and a few Latin words.  SEXUAL  ORIENTATION :  homosexual ROMANTIC  ORIENTATION :   biromantic RELATIONSHIP  STATUS :   taken by Ebene Darwitch nearer the end of his first year at Beacon, and single by the end and onward. SOCIOECONOMIC CLASS :   lower class HOMETOWN / AREA :   Mistral CURRENT  HOME :   Beacon PROFESSION : hunter in training

PHYSICAL.

HAIR : black messy nest of long hair with a blue tinted fringe. EYES :  dull grey NOSE : regular. FACE : smooth and averagely sized, not much definition on the cheekbones. LIPS :  pale regular. COMPLEXION : fair skinned. BLEMISHES : none. SCARS : light scars on knee and a small burn mark on his left hand thumb. TATTOOS :  right arm shoulder and chest with an abstract image of a panther running through a field of stars, which are a specific constellation that Night finds pretty. HEIGHT : 6′  WEIGHT : 140 lbs BUILD : Slight, with some lean muscle. NOTABLE FEATURES : A panther tail, dark black fur. ALLERGIES : bullshit USUAL  HAIR  STYLE :  insanely messy and all over the place, typical bed head look but styled to look that way. Long fringe and slightly shorter sides. USUAL  FACE  LOOK : content. Doesn’t have resting bitch face. USUAL CLOTHING : sleeveless hoodie cut diagonally across and separated into black and white, with the hood being black. Black slim fit jeans and similarly coloured combat boots don his lower half. As for accessories, he wears a thin chain around his neck that connects to a vial filled with lavender petals, and when not wearing his weapon he wears several bracelets. On his jeans, a chain stretches across and around his right side and carries vials of dust usually.

PSYCHOLOGY.

FEAR / S : Nyx’s nightmares. The effects of Nyx’s Nightmares has been known to cause shell shock in the most damaged people’s minds, Night worries that if one day Nyx needs to use Night as part of his semblance, the fear he would experience would be incomparable to anything he’d ever experienced before. Also, the middle of the ocean, open spaces. ASPIRATION / S :  to find someone who he can share his life with in comfort, without the pain of the real world. To be with his brother forever and to have a lot of close friends. He wishes to be talented and respected alike, and wants to better himself as a hunter in order to achieve the respect he feels he deserves. POSITIVE  TRAITS :  academically intelligent, optimistic, patient, loving, tolerant, good listener, modest. NEGATIVE  TRAITS :  quick to judge, lazy, defeatist, doesn’t stand up for himself, poor memory. MBTI :   ENFP-T (campaigner) ZODIAC :   scorpio TEMPEREMENT :  phlegmatic SOUL  TYPE / S :  hunter, caregiver, thinker ANIMALS :  swan VICE  HABIT / S : stress smoking, fidgeting, incapability to sit still, clicking fingers randomly..

FAITH : atheist. GHOSTS ? :   yes. AFTERLIFE ? :   no. REINCARNATION ? :  maybe. ALIENS ? :  definitely yes. POLITICAL  ALIGNMENT :  he hates politics. ECONOMIC  PREFERENCE : he does fine as is with minimum wage job considering he’s a faunus and all. SOCIOPOLITICAL  POSITION : n/a EDUCATION  LEVEL : Hunter in training.

FAMILY.

FATHER :   Jaime Erebus MOTHER :   Lavender Hellebore SIBLINGS :   Nyx Hellebore EXTENDED  FAMILY :   Paternal grandparents and large extended family in Vale, maternal cousin in Mistral. NAME  MEANING / S :  Night, the colour of the sky, and Hellebore, a flower representing scandal and calumny.. HISTORICAL  CONNECTION ? : Bagheera the panther from the Jungle Book.

FAVORITES.

BOOK :  he never liked reading as a kid, he struggled to maintain focus. The only book he’s ever really read is the book of the language of flowers. MOVIE : superhero films are the one for him. And anything to do with space too. 5  SONGS : Jet Black Heart, RUN, Missing You, A Sky Full Of Stars, Work For It.

DEITY :  he wishes. HOLIDAY :  Remnants equivalent of Christmas/Easter/New Year. MONTH :   November SEASON :   Autumn PLACE :   Mistral, where his mother is buried beneath a great willow tree. WEATHER :   clear skies and no breeze. SOUND :  bird song. SCENT / S :  lavender. TASTE / S :   profiteroles. FEEL / S : Ebene’s jumper. ANIMAL / S :   felines.  NUMBER :   3. COLORS :  midnight blue.

EXTRA.

TALENTS :   fighting, leadership, balance, flexibility, agility, moderate artistic capability, guitar, piano, singing, emphasising with others, comforting others BAD  AT :  directions, taking heavy hits, inspiring others, arguing, stopping himself from thirsting over hot dudes, commitment, forgetting where he puts things. TURN  ONS : everything. TURN  OFFS : intimidatingly huge people.  HOBBIES :   flower arranging, performing musically, running. TROPES :  panther stereotypes, lonesome likes to climb trees and lazy.  AESTHETIC  TAGS :  midnight blue, smoke, night, black, dark,  QUOTES : (1) “ Now, now. I know how you feel. But you must remember, Mowgli. Greater love hath no one than he who lays down his life for his friend.” - Bagheera (2) “ This is the law of the jungle it's old and it's true as the sky And the wolf that should keep it may prosper but the wolf who will break it must die. For the strength of the pack is the wolf and the strength of the wolf is the pack.” - Bagheera & others 

FC INFO.

MAIN  FC / S : Jong Won Jin ALT  FC / S :  Sadao Maou OLDER  FC / S : N/A YOUNGER  FC / S :   N/A VOICE  CLAIM / S : Lu Han GENDERBENT  FC / S :  N/A

MUN QUESTIONS.

Q1 :   if  you  could  write  your  character  your  way  in  their  own movie ,   what  would  it  be  called ,  what  style  would  it  be filmed  in ,  and  what  would  it  be  about ? A1 :  A movie similar in style to Final Fantasy XV: Kingsglaive mixed with Harry Potter, with things happening fairly fast and being rather beautiful and showing off all the magic of this world before it turns dark and transforms from light hearted to desperate and fast as the movie or movie series continues.

Q2 :   what  would  their  soundtrack / score  sound  like ? A2 :  I love the soundtrack for Doctor Who, so maybe something along those lines for the first half of Night’s story, which then transitions into something much darker and heavier as the going gets tougher.

Q3 :   why  did  you  start  writing  this  character ? A3 :  It was actually in like year 10, when I was about 14 me and my friend started watching RWBY and we made up ourselves a bunch of teams and it was just for fun as we created weapons and stuff and used our elements that we discovered on an online test and were really proud of as semblances for these characters. We then morphed a bunch of our other friends into characters and soon we had 3 teams of 4. And at the time we were just sorta throwing ideas around about RWBY and stuff until one day I decide to write a story about these characters and my friend was kinda pressuring me into putting us into story form and at first I was like, yeah it’ll be cool, but I soon realised I wanted something more serious than that, and rewrote every single character and only maintained some of the major traits. I didn’t want to feel like I was writing a story about them so I changed their names their personalities and their backgrounds and carried on. Then it came to tumblr roleplaying and I decided that in order to develop Night, the oc I based off of myself at first, I needed to make him as different to me as possible. And tumblr is really helping me do that, now I don’t feel trapped in this mindset where I feel like I’m writing in some vain perspective about myself, and Night has become an entity separate to me but still close to me, and I feel a lot more freedom to change him into something greater.

Q4 :   what  first  attracted  you  to  this  character ? A4 :  I’m just incredibly proud of him. The backstory I’ve created for him has taken me almost a year to formulate, and I’m still not quite 100% certain on the details, but I think for what it is currently it deserves some credit.

Q5 :   describe  the  biggest  thing  you  dislike  about  your  muse. A5 :   I think the biggest thing I disliked originally was how self insert Night felt. Now though, after I’ve changed him up a whole lot, that isn’t an issue, so I suppose the biggest thing now is how uninspiring he is. Like I don’t really write him as much of a leader despite being one, but maybe that’s just him being lazy. I’m not really sure.

Q6 :   what  do  you  have  in  common  with  your  muse ? A6 :   Now? Not much apart from some elements of the backstory. I chose to do that because I think it’d be easier to write a character going through similar things to what I’ve gone through. Other than that, probably our patience and tolerance. 

Q7 :  how  does  your  muse  feel  about  you ? A7 :  “awkward, and terrible at breaking habits.”

Q8 :   what  characters  does  your  muse  have  interesting  interactions  with ? A8 :   Nyx, his brother, as they have a strange sibling relationship. Timber Wolfe, his closest friend and wisest person Night knows, but she’s got the mind of a 27 year old. 

Q9 :   what  gives  you  inspiration  to  write  your  muse ? A9 :   every oc blog I see on tumblr. 

Q10 :   how  long  did  this  take  you  to  complete ? A10 :   two days lmao.

[mydrunkscience-blog]

Brainless Helpings for the Masses

This topic is inspired by attempting to watch an episode of iZombie after I used a bottle of Chenin Blanc to wash down a prawn risotto and how annoyed I got by what passed for the physical anatomy of brains on said show. It fills with me with so much rage I could probably write an entire blog post just on how stupid it is, but instead we’re going to talk about the media, which in a way is also like a fantasy version of real life. I don’t know why, but I’m still often shocked by what passes for scientific news these days. Sometimes it feels like the mainstream media is purposely trying to piss me off by targeting my weak tolerance for exaggerated bullshit.

As an example let’s take a rather pointless article by lead author Scott Frank about the relationship between texting and health behaviours in teenagers. The research indicated that teens who they called ‘hyper-texters’ (attention seeking assholes who sent more than 120 messages a day) made up nearly 20% of their sample, and this hyper-texting was positively correlated to engaging in so called risky behaviours such as having tried cigarettes and alcohol, being a binge drinker, using drugs, getting into fights and being sexually active with multiple partners. Now we all know that correlation does not equal causation, so it doesn’t make much sense to say that a simple love of texting causes people to make more nefarious life choices. You could just as easily conclude that some other factor such as personality traits like extroversion or neuroticism, or economic status, or lack of parental supervision, or whatever has more impact on both texting and health behaviours than a direct correlation between the two. In fact, a quick look at the study demographics shows that the hyper-texters tended to be females from a lower socioeconomic status who had no male parental figure in the home. Golly gee, I wonder if any of these things could play into the health choices of adolescents? But getting back to the point, this is how the various media headlines played out:

‘Texting causes health risks for teens.’ (Chicago Tribune)

‘Teen texting leads to poor health.’ (ABC News 4)

‘Too much texting increases health risks in teens.’ (WebMD)

I’d like to think that even Karl Pilkington would have some words of wisdom in this situation.

Now some people would like to blame the researchers themselves for giving bad press releases, but surely your entire job as a journalist shouldn’t be to abandon common sense and just write whatever crap you’re given based on a few quotations? Or maybe I’m the one being delusional for wanting some level of standard here. And if you think this kind of irresponsible fear mongering doesn’t happen very often, then you are mistaken my friend.

Even I Fucking Love Science, which started as a fun (if not somewhat plagiarised) dose of interesting discoveries written by Elise, has grown far too big for itself and devolved into a cesspool of clickbait that should really be rebranded as I Fucking Need an Editor. You would think this was possible given that they seem to have the money to consistently recruit new staff, but it’s hard to believe that many of those staff members have actually read over an article for spelling and grammatical errors before publishing. Maybe it’s just me, but I feel the authenticity of any claims made in a piece of writing are somewhat diminished by an author’s inability to even type a sentence properly. I’m quite tipsy right now and I could probably whip out five highly acceptable IFLS stories by reading a few abstracts and using the spellcheck built into my browser, so why is the LabX Media Group not paying me?

This lack of rigorous reporting from most news outlets is made even worse by social media and every single person who is guilty of reposting stories as fact without actually fact checking. The proliferation of miscommunication and even deliberate lies can feel overwhelming if I pay enough attention. No joke, I once got into a heated argument with someone on Facebook over a picture of an owl

.

So how do you not fall into the trap of hype and sensationalism? Well, you can start by not being so trusting. Take what you read in the news with a grain of salt, make an effort to find the original publication in an academic journal and actually read it if it’s not locked behind a paywall. Arm yourself with all the information possible and come to your own conclusions rather than accepting whatever you’re told, or else I’m going to make badly Photoshopped pictures of animals about you.