#but they're literally nothing that impacts anyone else!!!

[dogin8]

Just a little reminder that intrusive thoughts are literally like, not anything for or against a person's morals or character or trustworthiness or anything.

It is like finding out somebody has tinnitus and thinking they're awful for hearing the noise.

Multiple people have had thoughts of killing me and here I am living.

Thoughts in general don't have any repercussions on anything by themselves. They don't tell you this but you are fully allowed to think in circles about the most vile problematic unsavoury topics, and nothing happens.

[tswwwit]

Cipher's Personal Portable Portal

'How they meet' won the poll!

So just to make things fully contextualized, as far as they're gonna be - here's the full first chunk of this stupidly long fic I'm writing.

I hope you enjoy!

Standing in the wreckage of the burnt-out building, Dipper wishes he didn’t know who did it.

Anyone else would have left some trace sign. A scrape of blood, a hint of burnt hair. A friggin’ decent eyewitness report, even.

But here, like last time, and the time before that, and the time before that - there's absolutely zero traces. No video footage, nobody around at the time of the crime. Not even footprints.

Dipper kicks one of the remaining supports, sending a puff of charcoal up from the impact. 

If he knew the bastard’s name, he’d curse it all to hell.

With a sigh of exhaustion, Dipper sits on a chunk of scorched foundation. He pulls his shoe off to tip the ashes out of it; there’s enough that the resulting cloud leaves him coughing. 

Around him, the scoured west wing of the museum is silent, still, and empty. A grey-black skeleton of its former self, filled with dust and charcoal.

This arson is yet another one in a very, very long line of crimes. They’re not just ‘unrelated incidents’, or ‘bizarre coincidences’. Dipper’s not ‘being paranoid’ or ‘coming up with some pretty weird conspiracy theories’. 

There’s only one person who could manage this. The same guy who turned a bank upside down - literally -  and the same one who impaled a mob boss on an oversized silly straw and gave tails to half of a household last week.

It’s all connected.

Each crime is marked with the same style, mostly by how remarkably weird they are. Along with a thread of magic, distinct in its composition. One so distinctive that it's almost a flavor. Though admittedly, without certain magical analysis, it’s pretty hard to detect. 

And if other freelance magicians would take the time and look at Dipper’s notes, maybe one of them would help find this asshole.

Dipper stalks through the burned building, fists balled in his pockets. He stumbles over a fallen support column, and nearly trips before he makes a hopping retreat back. 

Though the culprit has been at his game - whatever ‘game’ that is - for a good half a year now, this is the most destructive ‘incident’ so far. Nobody was hurt, since it happened in the middle of the night. The one relief from a terrible crime, that only objects were obliterated in the process - 

But the ashes speak for themselves.

Here, there’s nothing left.

He breathes in slowly. Then regrets the attempt at calming himself as he coughs again.

Whatever the culprit’s initial motive was, it hasn’t lasted. He’s grown not only in ambition, but also in his abilities. Things are escalating at a rate Dipper doesn’t like to think about.

Someone has to get to the bottom of this. Before it’s too late. Dipper’s got his number, metaphorically speaking, so. Well, might as well be him. 

And when he proves that all of this chaos was created by the same person - 

Well. A little boost to his meager reputation couldn’t hurt. Maybe a few medals and accolades. There isn’t a trophy for best monster hunter, but he can imagine standing on a podium and -

Dipper waves that thought off, swearing under his breath. Stupid. He has better things to focus on.

He’s the only freelancer on the case. Definitely the only one taking this seriously, the only one who thinks it’s the same person to begin with -  and even he’s starting to have some doubts about ever finding the bastard. 

Six months of tracking this guy down, and what does he have to show for it? A ramshackle compilation of incidents, a vague feeling of magic, and a description that could fit any bottle-blond actor with bad fashion sense. Scraps. He might as well pin them up and connect them with red string for all the good it does him.

Another kick sends Dipper hopping back, clutching his foot with a swear. He winces at the hole in the tip, he nearly punctured his foot on a nail.

Just his luck. Wrong place, wrong time, always just barely avoiding disaster. Dipper shows up whenever there’s an event, he’s got the means to follow the guy - but he’s always just a little too late.

Even worse, lately the guy’s been picking places… not at random, exactly. More like he causes trouble wherever it’d be the most annoying to follow.

The culprit must know someone is on his trail. But he’s not making it impossible to keep up, or even majorly difficult for a determined pursuer. Just really, really irritating, like making moves at three in the morning, or pausing just long enough for someone to catch up, then heading right back where he came from. At one point Dipper had to trudge through a literal swamp, only to find that bastard had sauntered in by baking himself a neat little trail right through the damn thing. There wasn’t even footprints to follow.

It’s a repeated point in Dipper’s notes. Whoever this is, they’re a total, absolute dick.

With a sigh, Dipper runs his fingers through the ash on the museum’s floor. Not a single thing is left beyond the shattered glass of some display cases, and the charred remains of the building. Even the enchanted metal tools have been melted into slag. 

The day before yesterday, he could tell something was up. Building energy, something that felt like it was made by the culprit. Something with the twinge of a powerful curse, coiled and being wound up like a spring. 

Dipper spent that evening convincing - okay, maybe also bribing, thank you Stan for the idea - the museum to let him borrow materials. The day after that, he spent all night, morning, and most of the afternoon running around slapping up anti-curse emblems. The entire south of the city warded, in a fine careful net of spellcraft. The work was exhausting. Both in running around, and in the amount of magic he’d needed to use.

But it was worth it. That evening, in the quiet and very uncursed city, all the emblems activated. Dipper would have sworn he sensed someone in the distance, cursing his own name. That night he went to bed with a smug sense of satisfaction, floating on a cloud of triumph.

Which is probably why the bastard burned down the museum next.

With another sigh, Dipper tucks his notebook back into his knapsack. He’s gleaned all he’s going to for today; in the fading evening light, searching more is pointless.

So much for all the magical artifacts. Most of those had come in really useful in messing with the guy. 

…How the hell did the culprit know where they came from, though? He’d need a near encyclopedic knowledge of artifacts to know which ones Dipper used, then track them back to their origin. 

Or maybe he just searched on the internet. It’s hard to tell.

Dipper just wishes there were more clues. But just like every other incident, the guy up and freakin’ vanished.

No human can disappear like that without some very irresponsible use of power. That hope is one Dipper’s hanging his hat on. After six months? He has to be reaching his limits. He’ll burn himself out before he can manage too many more incidents. Maybe Dipper will find him by stumbling on his withered, dissolving corpse.

Whoever this is is pretty strong, but no power is infinite. He can’t hide forever.

It can’t be too much longer. Won’t be. Dipper has a plan, he’s gotten really close, and - He’s good at his job, damn it. He knows he is. 

Taking a deep, slow breath, Dipper lets it out. Patience is the name of the game here. He’s just gotta keep moving.

One day, he’s going to catch up with that bastard. He’ll see the guy in the flesh. Then he’ll grab that stupid dick before he can escape, again, and wipe that presumably smug look off his probably ugly face.

Turning around one last time, Dipper surveys the destruction, stuffs his hands in his pockets - and pauses. 

A speck of light glints in the pile of ash. The last bit of evening sun, shining off a metallic surface.

Alert with surprise, Dipper scrambles over to the pile. Kneeling down, he brushes the dust carefully aside, careful not to disturb anything fragile that might shatter if handled wrong. 

One thing did survive. Thank fuck, it’s not an absolute total loss. Just, uh… Ninety-nine percent of it.

He scuffles through the still-warm ashes, cupping his palms underneath the lump and lifting it from its bed. The motion sends white puff rising up as ash slips away from the artifact.

A small black, squarish thing rests on the pile, a bit larger than both his palms put together. The material is faintly warm from residual heat, insulated by the ash it laid in - and there’s not a mark on it. Not even a scratch. 

Dipper turns the artifact over in his hands with a frown. The shining black surface reveals no obvious buttons or secrets. Just a kind of phone-ish shape, though more square and squat. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say a guest dropped it on the rush to escape. 

The fact that it’s still intact though. Nearly glowing with magic, a tremulous feeling under his palms - this is not dropped by some clumsy tourist. Not even Ford could put this together.

 Wiping at the object with his sleeve, Dipper manages to clean off most of the smooth surface. On one of the sides, dust clings to the thinnest of engravings. The very faint outline of an equilateral triangle. No runes or other magical scribing, just… a shape.

Dipper thinks back but - no, he doesn’t remember seeing this in the collection. A quick check online reveals…

Basically nothing. There are - were - a bunch of stone and metal slabs in the archives, all described so poorly as to be useless. Some are even bunched up in groups. ‘Magical slab 1-24’ and ‘Metal artifact 1-78’, no description involved.

Not surprising. Probably dug up in some mass excavation site, transported here, then never really looked at again. The bulk nature of the shipment means it was overlooked, its magical properties never discovered.

After today, he’s just glad that even one item escaped this onslaught. 

The other artifacts must not have had much to them. But some magical property in this artifact’s making must have saved it from the blaze. Fireproofing, perhaps? Against weird fire? That’s unusual. Maybe even unique.

As the only survivor, it really needs investigating. 

Dipper glances over his shoulder, then around. With everyone evacuated, it’s quiet in the rubble. Nobody here would notice if, say… a clue wandered off.

The artifact slips easily into his pocket. The shape conveniently looks just like a phone, even if the shape’s a bit off. Not something that would attract any attention.

Whistling nonchalantly, ducking out of the way of local law enforcement and any onlookers - Dipper makes his escape. 

Another day of pursuit. Another scene of disaster, the culprit there and gone in the blink of an eye. 

He’ll be up to something new, next. Never the same thing twice, never in the same place. 

Dipper will follow in his evil tracks, of course. But for tonight - his fate is another crappy hotel room. 

He ditches his backpack by the door, slumping against the wall and its chipped paint. He could start going through his notes, and the pictures of the arson. Put in more work, find further connections - 

But it’s been a long day, and he’s tired. He might be magical, but he’s only got so much to work with. A reasonable night’s sleep, if he can manage, will make the task loom less horribly over his tired brain.

With a sigh, he drops back on the mattress. There’s some bounce to it, springs squeaking like they’re full of mice. Hell, maybe they are. The type of room he can afford isn’t exactly decadent.

That, though, should be temporary. Dipper’s career is only just starting; freelancers in the ‘solving magical problems’ scene don’t get great rates. Especially as a beginner. Definitely without a partner; it makes him look super young. Like he’s just starting out, fresh-faced and not having any inroads.

Because this field is really stupid, and doesn’t pay attention to results. Dipper’s been fine on his own for years, and he’s done really cool things without that ‘networking’ crap. 

All by himself. Totally cool with that, because Dipper’s a cool guy, sometimes. If Mabel hypes him up enough on one of their phone calls, he almost believes it too.

Though it would be nice to have some backup, it’s hard to find someone who really gets the job. Or does it in the way that Dipper goes about it. The number of people who are willing to take long treks in hyper-magical territory to search for an obscure clue, or set up really complicated traps for  dangerous monsters, or talk over high-level magical theory while sitting in the rain all night just to get one body-snatcher are…

Well, besides Ford, who recently retired, there aren’t any. Only Dipper himself.

One day, things are going to change for him. All his effort will pay off. If he keeps solving mysteries, and fighting monsters, he’ll forge a reputation as someone who always gets the job done. No matter how hard it is, he can handle it. The work is picking up, too. The last six months have shown the biggest series of magical incidents in decades. 

And he’s gonna be the one to get to the bottom of it.

Dipper Pines, the guy who proved it’s all connected. He’ll have it laid out in facts and math, all the evidence. They’re all gonna see that he was totally right.

Once he finally gets this guy, everything’s going to start looking up. 

The sheets rustle as Dipper settles back, holding the artifact up over himself. He stares into the black surface, and a slightly distorted reflection narrows its eyes back at him. 

A good mystery always intrigues him. This one should take his mind off the other, irritating one for a while.

The only remaining object from the fire is clean and smooth. A mysterious creation, of unknown purpose. Clearly riddled with magic, too; Dipper feels it running just under the surface like a rapid current. It gives the artifact a weight that has nothing to do with mass. 

Power.

Did the criminal see this artifact, still intact after all the other magical objects were gone? Did he try to destroy it too, and fail? Or simply not notice he’d missed one out of thousands?

Whatever it is, it’s got a lot more going on than meets the eye.

Dipper casts a quick identifier, which comes back with nothing. He’s not surprised. That’s the first thing anyone would try. If it was that simple, he’d already have the full description off the site. 

With a shrug, he traces another set of runes, his own version, adding a little more oomph behind it - 

And the magic leaps back instantly, with the bizarre sensation of a bouncy ball hitting concrete.

“Huh,” Dipper says, thoughtfully. He sits up, hunching over the slab in his hands. “Now that’s new.”

A more subtle approach, then. Tracing the lines of energy with the barest brush of magic upon magic reveals something deeply complex. Thin layers twist together deep under the surface, building an entire circulatory system. Dipper has to put it down for a moment, suddenly worried that it is organic. 

When a cautious prod doesn’t get a response, he relaxes. Not fleshy, just complicated. Which also proves he was right earlier - the artifact’s just as powerful as he’d thought. The spellcraft is unlike anything he’s ever seen. 

Dipper rubs his hands together, starting to smile. 

Even if he doesn’t find the guy he’s after, figuring this out could be a heck of a win.

Several attempts later, he’s beginning to get why this bastard brick got tossed in with all the other junk. 

Nothing here is working. It simply deflects. Standard spells poing off of it like rubber, while giving his magical senses an odd, back-of-the brain afterimage of a circle with a slash through it; a firm ‘nah’. 

Dipper nearly chucks the thing across the room in frustration, before shutting his eyes and taking several, calming breaths. 

Okay, weird thing, weird enchantment. The ordinary stuff won’t work. The magical logic is… twisted in a way that leaves it incompatible with most everything. He’ll have to find a different approach. 

“What are you?” Dipper says, low and frustrated. He gives the artifact a shake, as if he can knock the secrets out like a rock from a shoe. “What secrets are you hiding in there?” 

No response, not that he expected one. With a wry smile, he taps the sleek surface with a finger, twice. “C’mon, man. Talk to me.” 

Huge yellow letters flash onto the black surface. 

HEY

Dipper throws the artifact, a bit awkwardly since he’s lying on his back. It sails in the air in a high thin arc, landing with a thump between his legs. He scoots rapidly backward, sheets pulling up behind him. 

The artifact lies where it landed, an unmoving brick.  There’s magic in the air now, but no sense of any spell building, ready to unleash power to blow his face off. The latent spellcraft of the artifact has just been activated.

More text displays on the surface, bare except for the glowing letters. 

To the jerk that’s swiped my private stuff: You got some nerve! I expect this back by interdimensional mail in a week, or trust me - there will be consequences.

Dipper waits a full minute before he lets go of the headboard. Tentatively, he kneels near the…

 Is this a phone? 

Clearly it’s a communication device of some sort, with the freaking text messages. A phone is the obvious equivalent, only - he thought it looked far older than that, something way before mobile phones. Possible ancient. Is that a coincidence, maybe, or is it secretly modern?

Dipper taps the ‘screen’, just below the glowing words. To his surprise, there’s actually a keyboard, what the hell. This thing keeps getting weirder.

Since it hasn’t already thrown a horrible curse at him, or burst into flames - it’s reasonably safe to assume that it’s simply ‘on’. Not ‘explosive’. 

With hands that are definitely not shaking, he picks it up, and types,

Who is this? 

His own text pops up in blue. A strange contrast to the yellow, but he’s guessing it’s for convenience - there’s no bubbles to tell who’s said what otherwise.

A few seconds of nervous waiting later, there’s a response. 

Oh hey, you answered! Well, human - You’re talking to the one and only Bill Cipher, Dream Demon, all-powerful master of the Mindscape! I’d say it’s nice to meet ya but you’re not supposed to have a direct line to me!

Dipper raises an eyebrow. 

Now that’s one hell of an introduction. It might even have been interesting, if it didn’t smell of complete bullshit. 

Complicated spellwork, sure. Incomprehensible architecture? Maybe. Dipper can admit it; he’s never seen anything with a web of spells on it this complex, in such small of a package.

But the idea that Dipper just stumbled onto a demonic artifact of all things. One that wasn’t instantly detected, recorded, then ritually destroyed is…

Someone’s fucking with him. 

Dipper rolls his eyes as he types back,

Really? Demon? You can’t expect me to believe that. 

What, you calling me a liar? ‘Cause I am, but not about this! I got better things to mislead mortals about. This is my property, not something for your grubby mortal mitts.

Dipper snorts. Guess this person’s sticking with the bit. Obviously whoever created this would want it back - but too bad. Whether they’re delusional, stupid, or just a flat-out liar, they’re really good at enchanting. It’d be a waste not to study their work. 

He lies back on the bed as he replies.

Sure, have fun roleplaying, or whatever, it doesn’t make a difference. Finders keepers, losers weepers.

ARE YOU CALLING ME A LOSER. MORTAL.

Hmm, I’m detecting a certain amount of ‘crying about it’, so. Yeah. Suck it, loser.

Smirking, Dipper settles back - then his half-smile drops, as he holds the ‘phone’ a little further away from himself. 

Though the blue fire building up in the screen looks like a bad sticker effect, the artifact’s also getting a alarmingly warm. It vibrates in his hands - then suddenly stops, cooling down. 

Ha! Alright, alright, I admit - you got some balls.

Maybe you’ll change your tune once you REALLY know what you’re dealing with! Might wanna check the connection, if you’re even capable of it! Mortal magic doesn’t reach across dimensions!

With a grimace, Dipper taps his fingers on the phone. It’s slightly cooler now, but still worryingly reactive to… whatever happened on the other end. 

Damn. Whoever this is, they’re not only really really good at enchanting, they’re also pretty confident that tracking them down won’t spoil their game. The confidence exuding from this ‘Bill’s’ words feels genuine.

Honestly, though, the suggestion is a good one. Dipper should have tried to trace the call the second he knew someone else was on the line. 

Maybe ‘Bill’ thinks he won’t manage to find him. Joke’s on him, though; Dipper’s amazing at finding stuff. He’s the best tracker of magical anything in years. Maybe decades. With a solid, stable connection right in front of him? Hell, he could do this one in his sleep. 

Time to call the bluff.

He casts the tracing spell, though it takes longer than usual. A few gestures and muttered ritual aren’t gonna cut it; he has to improvise around the strange construction of the enchantment. Even trailing along the magic seems harder than usual, like it resists mixing with his own, and it takes him a few attempts to match the signal. 

Once he finds the right way to tune it… the lead snaps along the already-existing connection, and zips away to find its source.

The line extends out from the shabby hotel room, a plucked string in Dipper’s senses. It twists around the phone, rising slowly. Invisibly passing through the walls and the - 

Ceiling? Dipper looks up on instinct, even though nothing is visible.

From there it swirls around in the air like a silly straw on steroids, and then - out, very far, in a way that isn’t up or down or left or right, just  

Away.

Dipper has to cut off the tracing spell before vertigo has him reeling. The swirling sense of standing on top of a skyscraper is followed by a flip in his stomach. That he’s using a device he barely understands that reaches out into something even more incomprehensible.

He drops the phone-artifact, trying to clear his head by shaking it rapidly. 

That’s not nearby. Not on this planet. Possibly, genuinely, not even in this dimension. 

Shit. Bill wasn’t bluffing.

Dipper wipes sweating palms on the sheets. To pick up the phone again takes an effort, willing himself to grasp it in unsteady hands.

A demon. 

All the monsters he’s fought, curses he’s broken, years of work tucked into his belt, and he’s never seen one of those. 

Demons are dangerous, evil, and very, very powerful. Consorting with them is by all accounts a terrible idea. He should never have picked this up. He should hang up, and throw the damn artifact out the window, hoping that nobody else makes as dumb a mistake as he just did. 

On the screen, there’s a long long scroll of yellow letters, filling the entire surface. ‘HA HA HA HA’ over and over and over again. 

Before he can think better of it, Dipper starts a response. He’s halfway through a sentence - what the fuck, that’s not funny- before he pauses.

Terrible evil monster. Stupid powerful. Probably Bill sensed the tracing of the connection, like he did with Dipper’s other testing. Bill wanted the result startle him. Because he thinks it’s funny.

Dipper grits his teeth, and glares at the screen. 

Actually, screw this guy. Dipper’s keeping the stupid phone. If for no other reason than spite. This ‘Bill’ guy seems pretty full of himself, like he’s totally above some human. He’s in for a bad time, then, because Dipper’s not going to let one little surprise scare him off.

Besides.  The average guy would get into horrible, even deadly trouble, whereas Dipper… sort of knows what he’s doing.  No, he is good at his job. Finding secrets, solving mysteries, thwarting evil jerks who think they’re oh-so-hilarious, the whole shebang. He does it all.

Taking another breath, hissing through clenched teeth - Dipper lets it out. Losing his temper isn’t going to help deal with an extradimensional being. He has to be careful.

He thinks for a long moment before he responds. 

Okay. Let’s say I believe you. Maybe. Then you should know I didn’t steal your… whatever this is. I found it lying around, and I just. Got kind of curious. 

HA HA HA! Of course you were! Careful with that impulse, kid, it kills more than just cats!

A jerk who definitely thinks he’s hilarious. Dipper rolls his eyes, then, rather pettily, decides to ignore that statement. 

More pressing questions take the lead. Like what the fuck he’s holding right now, and if there are any other nasty tricks in store. A little bit of him, bubbling under the surface, wonders what being a demon is like. What they get up to, common habits. Ways they could be tracked down and, y’know, defeated, maybe. 

Theoretically, he’s got a line to a bunch of innocent, totally not-thwarting-related information that could be super useful to someone trying to, maybe, be a super cool monster-fighter.

Dipper backspaces a bunch over some poorly thought out questions. First things first. Like what the hell he’s holding right now.

So. What is this?

Good question! The gadget you’re poking at with your sweaty meat-paws is paired to the one I have here at my place. A little one-on-one communication assistant, if you will. Once you started groping around with your magic, it wasn’t hard to tell someone had picked it up!

Dipper raises an eyebrow. Though he already has an idea… a little confirmation never hurts. 

Like, you got a notification? Or literally felt?

The latter! Kinda like smell, but by touching things with your eyeballs. And with all your prodding around you might as well have been stinking up the place! Your spells aren’t real subtle!

Hey, they’re subtle! Having weird extra senses is just cheating.

Sucks to be human, then! In that you suck at everything! What’s a LOSER like you gonna do about it?

Dipper nearly throws the stupid artifact again - but he holds back, gripping it tight. Instead he sits up, leaning down and hauling his backpack up from the side of the bed. 

Maybe Bill thinks he can’t do anything. That he’s some ignorant nobody, who doesn’t have any real skills or talent or doesn’t have any friends - but he’s got that wrong. Dipper’s not a loser. Bill’s not getting away with that bullshit.

One quick unzip and a bit of rifling around later, he finds what he was looking for. Carefully, Dipper bounces the heft of a flashlight battery in his hand. Shutting his eyes, he focuses on crafting a quick working.

Magic is all about energy, and its direction. Focusing power, conveying it from one place to another. Pushing anything across dimensions would take impossible amounts of energy, stuff Dipper doesn’t have. If it weren’t for a very convenient connection, already in his hand.

Dipper has nothing on hand to actually exorcise the guy - he’s not sure that’s even possible when Bill’s where he should be - but retribution is in order.

More text lines appear on the artifact. He ignores them. Changing this up to work with the demon device is a challenge, but after figuring out how to alter the tracking spell changing this one up isn’t hard. He adjusts the flow of magic this way, into the tangle of not-veins in the device that way, finishes the chant-

Then touches his tongue to the battery.

The jolt passes through him painlessly, following the spell. It zips along his nerves, down into his hand and from there - into the artifact itself. 

Where it should, theoretically end up right at that bastard.

Dipper tosses the battery back into his backpack. Picking up the ‘phone’, hunching over to stare at the screen. 

That worked. He felt the energy move… unless he got the math wrong. Or a detail of his spell. Or maybe demons are immune to electricity, and he just did something totally pointless. 

God. It might even prove Bill right, and wouldn’t that be the worst - 

The next line of text comes in. 

What the hell? A joy buzzer? That’s some real petty prank stuff! You seriously pulled that bullshit? And across dimensions?

A tense pause. Dipper taps the phone, checking for it heating up again - but another line pops up after a few seconds.

Y’know what, kid? I think I might actually like you! You’re FEISTY.

Dipper nearly does a double-take. 

But no, that - what? Aren’t demons supposed to be vengeful? He was half-sure he’d have to chuck the phone out the window before it exploded in his hands. 

In fact, you’re in luck! ‘Cause I’m pretty bored, and I can totally show you how to improve that jinx of yours! If you can keep up with a little theory, that is.

Because that’s not suspicious or anything. Conversation with a demon can only lead to ruin and disaster. He should absolutely, definitely stop this right in its tracks.

Still, Dipper shrugs, and types, 

Try me.

[animeomegas]

i think that uchiha omegas are vain without realizing it. for the clan it is not about fitting into the omega stereotypes that are fashionable at the time, but beauty is a type of power, certain physical features are highly valued because they are representations of the purity of the lineage. many of their beauty and makeup rituals are even excessive for other traditional clans and i find the mental image so funny. just imagine massacre au itachi looking at his little brother, his beautiful little brother omega, a pure uchiha, with slightly damaged hair and clean, short nails but not with the usual intricate patterns. he is disturbed both because it is his fault that sasuke knows almost nothing about those traditions and because he fights against the maternal instinct to clean him up and make him worthy of standards that he was raised.

This is such a beautiful ask omg, and I adore it with all my being! 🥰

I love the idea that Uchiha teach all their omegas (and probably the other dynamics too honestly) about make up, fashion, haircare etc. but with the idea that beauty is power. Their clan is beautiful, and that's part of their power and allure.

It's all practical stuff too. Here's my ideas for Uchiha clan beauty standards:

Nails should be short, but beautifully painted.

Hair should be well conditioned with expensive, but crucially scentless, hair products.

Skincare is important. (Uchiha dermatologist specialists, ahh! Non-shinobi members would for sure have the option to specialise in wellness chemistry.)

Clothing is expensive, and stunning. Traditional, but with just the right amount of cutting edge, because they aren't boring like the Hyuuga.

Grace is taught through dance, which Uchiha perform at their traditional festivals.

And Itachi being raised with all this, is intimately familiar with the rituals. He has to paint his nails for the Akatsuki, but they're done so much better than everyone else's. He still knows all the dances, although he doesn't perform them.

And you're so right, Itachi would be unnerved seeing Sasuke without any of that grooming that he would have been expected to do. He was too young for make up when the clan was slaughtered, and he'd only had his nails done by other people so he doesn't know how to do it himself.

He's probably also forgotten all the dances, and outgrown all his formal wear. He definitely doesn't bother with expensive shampoo or skincare.

He doesn't look like an Uchiha should. And Itachi realises in that moment, that even if Sasuke had countless children and revived the clan, the traditions are probably already lost forever. They will quite literally die with Itachi.

I'm imagining Itachi daydreaming about getting to paint Sasuke's nails for him, and performing the special heir dance with him at festivals. When he's face to face with Sasuke, because his mind is struggling to cope with the situation, he finds himself fixating on wanting to wash and brush Sasuke's hair properly. Because it doesn't look right.

This headcanon is perfect. Just the right amount of world building, Uchiha arrogance, and angst.

Here are my questions if anyone wants to jump in:

What sort of nail designs are popular and why?

How does this impact wedding ceremonies?

What kind of special dance rituals or dress up rituals would the heirs have to go through? Did Itachi and Sasuke do it?

How would Itachi and Sasuke feel about this in a non-massacre AU?

[shmreduplication]

i know this is like totally two weeks ago or whatever but the worst take i saw wrt fairies and walruses was that proof of fairies/magic is more surprising because it would fundamentally change everything we know about everything because suddenly we would know about this universal and invisible force that controls/affects everything in the world or even the universe

and I think that person just had really bad science history education because we HAVE found a universal and invisible force that controls/affects everything in the world or even the universe and, well, it did not change everything we know about everything. It's actually happened multiple times and a new industry pops up to further study it and everyone else just kinda goes on with their lives

Like.....atoms are an invisible universal force. Electrons took longer for people to discover/prove because they're smaller than atoms, and they're also an invisible universal force. DNA is an invisible force that's universal in living beings. Fuckign gravity is an invisible universal force. People still went to work in the day and slept at night and loved their friends and ate buttery foods before and after the discovery of all those things, and the discovery did not affect what they knew about their jobs or sleep or friends or buttery foods

Assuming you're actually old enough to be on tumblr (aka are already 13 years old as of March 18, 2024) then another one of these discoveries has happened within your life time! And it had absolutely fuck all impact on your life unless you're a subatomic particles physicist. The higgs boson was literally nicknamed the god particle and was confirmed to exist in 2013 and that discovery means absolutely nothing to anyone outside of that one small field in physics. Like obviously its existence impacts you because it gives you mass and lets gravity affect you but its discovery means jack shit

[lizzyscribbles]

Today's MHA ramble is either gonna be great or ineligible and there will be no in-between. I'm on my computer instead of my phone today so I can type so much faster, but, I am slightly dehydrated and out of it because I just spent like eight hours outside in the sun for a renaissance fair so maybe I'll just pass out half way through, who knows.

Lizzy's MHA thought/ramble of the night: MHA and why I think it does the "power of friendship" trope the correct way (IE: Not cringy/weird).

Now, I honestly think trying to wrap up the intricacies of the end of MHA in just "the power of friendship!!" is doing the series a huge disservice, but in its simplest form, that kind of is what happens. To be honest, I'm such a sucker for this trope. I love it when we get to see all the people the MC (Izuku in this case) has made an impact on over the course of the series and they all come together to back the main character, that is thee shit and I will eat it up.

However, the thing I love about MHA's approach to this is something we see explored a lot through the series: the idea that you don't have to go at it alone. Like, I feel like the ending has so much more of an impact because instead of them all the other characters standing behind him and going "Yay!! You can do it!! Good job!!" No, instead they run beside him and say "rest, we'll clear you a path. We know we can't do this for you, but at least let us do this".

Because that's what a friend is. That's what friendship is. It's realizing that not only is a friend someone you want to protect, but it's someone who protects you.

It gives me chills Every. Damn. Time.

It's through that we get to see the impact Izuku has made on everyone in the series. I joke with people that even when Izuku has nothing to do with something that's happening, he has something to do with it, and that really comes to a head in the final chapters. In a sort of ironic way, it's what ends up defeating All for One, because it's literally the only thing he never managed to get. Deku says as much while they're fighting, that deep down All for One really is just a lonely man. He had power, people to do his bidding and hang on his every word, but the top of the world is a very isolating place to be because there's no one who can look you in the eye. Followers and friends are two different things, a friend is an equal, a follower is a pawn.

I think it's why All for One was so attached to his younger brother Yoichi, because deep down, he knew All for One in ways that no one ever could. It was the closest to a genuine loving relationship he ever got.

Honestly, it's part of why All Might failed the first time around too. He had a few friends, sure, but in the end he was surrounded by mostly fans. People who adored and appreciated him, but did so from behind a barricade. All Might pretty much worked alone - and Deku definitely couldn't have made the progress he made without the trail All Might blazed - but Deku had the one thing All Might never did: People who fought alongside him even when he didn't want them to.

And, honestly? I can't blame All Might for avoiding it. After all, Deku almost does this same thing. They both wanted to protect people so badly they don't want to accept help. They see themselves as the only person who's allowed to make sacrifices because they're so scared they'll loose someone. It's part of the reason I find such comfort in Izuku as a character, because he never wants to see anyone else hurt because of him.

However, because Deku reached out first in the beginning, because he made friends and took care of them whenever he could, because treated them as equals, they said "too bad so sad, you get our help whether you like it or not, because that's what you'd do for us". It's the beauty of those final episodes of season six and why I love them so much, because 1-A had no reason to go after Deku other than they were worried about him. They didn't take no for an answer, because sometimes it's a friend's job to take you by the hand and scream in your face to "TAKE A NAP!!! EAT SOME FOOD!! YOU'RE WEARING YOURSELF DOWN AND YOU NEED A BREAK!!! SIT DOWN AND LET US CARRY YOU FOR A WHILE!!!"

It's exactly like Ochaco says, they don't want to be protected. They're not fragile victims to be looked after. They didn't get blindly wrapped up in this mess, they dove in head first because they cared about Izuku and wanted to stand at his side.

And therein lies the difference.

All for One had followers.

All Might had fans.

Deku had friends.

Followers will only do as they're told. Fans will only cheer on. But friends? You can't tell them to do shit, they do what they want, and if they want to help you then they will. Friends go the extra mile. Friends run beside you when no one else can. Friends clear the path for you so you can deliver that final big ass punch.

That's the magic of this trope, and you can see it so clearly here because it's realistic. And by that I mean Izuku doesn't get a magical burst of energy because everyone was cheering his name from the sidelines. It came from them actually doing shit to give him a chance. It came from Aizawa bandaging his wounds, it came from Iida grabbing his hand and half-dragging him across the battle field, it came from Eri giving a little bit of her quirk, it came from Bakugo showing up at the last second to blast the crap out of someone, it came from the countless attacks launched by the rest of the heroes to give him a chance to get back on his feet.

You know what they say, actions speak louder than words, and that's the magic of this kind of storytelling. We don't need to be told they care through chants or claps, they just show us.

That's the true "power of friendship". People who don't just stand beside you, but sometimes run in front of you so you don't trip over that stump in the path.

That's friendship. That's love. And I think that's incredibly beautiful.

...these posts get longer every time. Maybe I need to stick to my phone so my thumbs get tired faster. 😂 This is what happens when I'm allowed to cook late at night. If you made it to the end, thank you and I salute you.

[mayapapaya33]

I could write a 10 page essay on my thoughts and feelings about "A Bard's Lament" and about Scanlan. How I think a lot of people misinterpret what actually happened IMHO. It feels to me like a lot of people treat that scene like Scanlan is finally telling VM off for being bad friends and kind of cheer him on rather than realizing that he's having a mental health crisis having reached his breaking point and is lashing out.

Establishing some Game mechanics first and foremost, Sam consistently rolled 30+ deception checks anytime one of the others asked him how he was doing or tried to find out if he was having any problems. He is THE great deceiver. He lied to all of them, about everything. He never shared his worries or fears, or his drug problem. Nothing. Anytime they tried to connect with him, he shot them down, deflected masterfully. The other characters LITERALLY had no idea he was having any problems, if the players did anything about his problems after rolls like that it would have been metagaming. It's not that VM didn't care, they didn't know!

Which is frankly how he operated the whole campaign. From day one, anytime any of them asked him a personal question, he make a joke. Of course, Scanlan was a joke character in the beginning of the campaign, but from a character pov, the character treated everything as a joke. He cared about his friends, and they cared about him, they would die for him and vice versa, but he didn't have any heart to hearts with anyone. Slowly over the course of the campaign, everyone else opened up to each other, (or sometimes the narrative forced them to open up cough cough Percy cough cough) and he remained closed off, using humor to deflect any deeper connections. And the way the story went, he was never forced to share.

By the time "A Bards Lament" takes place, he's in a very bad place emotionally and is sad and scared and angry, and he says things to hurt people, not things that are true. (ok maybe some of it was true, but even the true bits were weaponized and honed to be the worst possible interpretations of events in order to hurt, not actually to BE truth. Vax and Keyleth definitely deserved a tuning up after their bs with the dragons. Personally, I'm very proud of Percy for not punching Scanlan for the comments about coming back to Whitestone just so he could be "proud of his name" or whatever, I've never heard such utter bullshit. Then some people are like, hey, why's Percy so mad at Scanlan, huh I fucking wonder? lmfao).

I relate to him in that I also use humor to deflect people and I sometimes wish that people would see what I feel and think; see through me, without me having to tell them. But that is unfair! I'm lying to them! That's on me! Which Is why I want to choke Scanlan out so often probably lmfao, because I understand where he's coming from and can see the mistakes he's making, and I just want to shake him.

I think a lot of people relate to Scanlan but perhaps... how shall I put this delicately... do not have the same level of self-awareness about the self-destructiveness of this particular approach to life and relationships and so feel a catharsis when he blows up at his friends because they also want to yell at their friends for not noticing their pain. Even though they are the ones who have hidden their pain with such skill that it really isn't their friend's fault they're clueless in the first place.

All that said, Vox Machina aren't perfect. They definitely could be better friends, they made mistakes. I just want to talk about the part of this that I don't often see discussed; Scanlan's depression and mental health struggles and their impact on his friendships and his responsibility.

Some people also act like VM bully "poor helpless Scanlan" (TLOVM sort of also acts like this sometimes which is annoying but oh well). When the reality is that Scanlan is a sharp tonged wit that verbally eviscerates his companions on a regular basis and so they treat him how he treats them. It's all banter... right up until it isn't and he's feeling sad and hurt and worthless and suddenly words hurt. But instead of opening his mouth and TELLING ANYONE how he feels, he just lets it build and build until he explodes.

I'm really worried about how TLOVM is going to handle it going forward, because so far they haven't really set up the group trying to connect with Scanlan and that's a mistake. They have a little, but they should do more. The scene with Pike was good, him instantly reverting to clownish behavior the second it got too sincere then him being frustrated with himself. But they really need to do some of that with the others as well and I'm worried they won't have time or won't think it's necessary.

It's HIS responsibility to reach out to others about his declining mental health. He is the one who set the rules of engagement as "Everything is a joke, especially serious things, I am allergic to sincerity" The others follow his lead. There's only so many times you can reach out to someone earnestly and receive a joke back for your troubles before you eventually respect the unspoken desire not to share and stop asking.

A lot of people cite the prank as some monstrous thing that VM did that proves that they don't love or respect Scanlan. Whereas actually, Sam Riegel admitted that at another moment in time, Scanlan would have found it funny. Pike knows that about him, which is why she did it. (Ashley of course, did it to send Scanlan over the edge because she's evil like that and they all adore drama lol). He was just in a terrible place mentally, so it felt like an insult instead of friendship. (idk where he said it, please don't ask, do you have any idea how many HUNDREDS of HOURS of CR I have watched?! It was probably talks machina).

Also, way back in the early episodes of C1 that lots of people skip, I forget which episode it is, but it was when they were under Kraghammer, Grog got his brain scooped out by the mind flayer or that brain creature or something (I'm a little fuzzy on the details). Anyway, they were all very frightened for Grog and they weren't sure they could save him. Once they figured out they could, Scanlan wanted to set up a prank for Grog to wake up to once they healed him (he was brain dead, in a coma or something). Point being Scanlan's a massive hypocrite lol. (which Sam fully admits).

-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-^-

Now here's my VERY controversial opinion, don't hate me lol, I never actually liked the "what's my mother's name?" thing. It felt very meta gamey, like Sam looked up Percy's parent's names before the session as a gotcha! Not really like Scanlan actually knew their names. So it never hit me the way it was supposed to. But that's just personal taste. It also circles back to my previous points of YOU NEVER OPENED UP TO THEM SCANLAN, OF COURSE THEY DON'T KNOW YOUR MOTHER'S NAME! THAT'S YOUR FAULT!!!! MAYBE IF YOU DIDN'T TURN EVERYTHING INTO A JOKE, THEY'D KNOW HER NAME!!!!

[darkonekrisrewrite]

The villains dying is the worst ending

If shigaraki, toga or Dabi die, that would be the worst outcome for everyone who matters in bnha.

And if the heroes win this final war and achieve everything they want, that will only then lead to the "bad ending" where nobody actually gets what they want.

Anything the hero kids are trying to protect and achieve isn't going to exist without the villains.

Specifically their villains.

So far, out of everyone, ochako is at the top when it comes to success in dealing with her villain.

Stopping Toga's threat and getting toga to see that her efforts were genuine in trying to help someone all of society had rejected.

Wanting to understand why toga was a villain and wanting to talk further with her after everything.

But then toga had to save ochako, and if toga does die (though unlikely considering what she and other characters have survived already) then ochako's arc, and any future that had any impact, is over.

Because ochako isn't going to make anything better for people like Toga, for those who have quirks that aren't easy to live with.

(The only logical next/endgame step for ochako's character-

-with the current state of their society's infrastructure, there's no way ochako's parents/construction jobs will be hurting for business and therefore money-

-and aside from deku (in his reckless nature and self-sacrificing personality), the heroes really aren't the ones who ever needed saving.)

Ochako doesn't know enough about what Toga went through yet, and there's no one else who could reliably tell her everything from the perspective of someone born with a quirk that's rejected by their society, what exactly led to toga becoming a villain and what it was like.

Toga's perspective and presence is the only way that ochako's own presence would be more effective.

Because she was barely able to convince the civilians to let deku into the heroes' own shelter, literally begging them to have some compassion for the young hero who's fought for them all this time.

And it only worked with the support of others deku had directly saved. (Kota and the heteromorph woman)

She can advocate for how things should be, use another megaphone and talk about what changes need to be made, but if that's it, just talking and asking, then nothing will happen.

It's the same problem with deku for the same reasons.

The civilians/government don't want to do what would be necessary to make sure more villains like the Lov aren't made and Deku doesn't have any real power to make them.

Or rather he doesn't have the willingness to force what needs to be done.

All-might made change to their society, making it more peaceful (and more apathetic), but that was only because it benefited those in power.

The government wanting to maintain control and order, and the civilians who were absolved of any responsibility to help others in need and abandon anyone who has "villainous" traits.

All-might intentionally gave people exactly what they wanted and unintentionally gave them permission to take the easy way out.

So just because deku or ochako are powerful heroes, that does not mean that they can influence the system/people or government.

If the hero kids commit to saving the villains and changing things, given everything we've seen of the civilians and government so far, there's no reason to think that they'll will go along with any of it.

Because it is the harder path and risks them losing their control and oblivious peace/permission to be their apathetic selves.

Same for shoto too.

Dabi's main beef with heroes is centered around endeavor but that doesn't mean he's wrong about everything else.

The heroes aren't held to a standard or accountable for anything.

They'll say they have to set an example and publicly apologize when things go bad (only if they're found out), but there are never any real consequences to be pointed to from within the system itself, much less any safeguards.

There's nothing stopping another future Endeavor from trying to make another "masterpiece" and thus creating another Dabi.

Shoto is currently still more focused on improving himself and being a hero/helping his family.

Which isn't a bad thing at all.

There's just no "bigger picture" or "this needs to be fixed" view from him yet, despite this aspect of hero society being a big part of his origin.

The civilians and the higher ups in hero society (as well as most all of the pro heroes) don't want anything to change, they all only want their "normal" back, the same state of things that created the core villains in the first place.

So the goals of: helping those with difficult quirks before they become villains, making sure the government helps with that and doesn't start assassinating people again, no more hero rankings/no more emphasis on being better then your peers-

-and overall change for the better can't be done by the hero kids alone.

But their villains, being alive and there in their lives, fixes all of that.

Toga, shigaraki and dabi would inform and push ochako, deku and shoto in the direction they need to go in to make a difference, and give them the force they wouldn't have on their own to ensure it happens.

If ochako (through toga) knows what needs to be done and asks the civilians again to show basic human decency to those who they previously rejected/abandoned and the civilians inevitably (because it's the more difficult path) say: "Yeah...no."

Toga (backed the Lov) would then respond: "Bet?"

If deku really commits to shredding the Rug of hero society and the government has a problem with that, and says no to what Deku tells them needs to happen, as a hero he can't really force them to do anything.

Unless shigaraki comes in behind him saying: "Work with him or deal with me again..."

(Lady nagant could, in theory, fill this roll, but she's not as powerful or untouchable as shigaraki, so the threat is lessened.

Not to mention it wouldn't be as narratively strong.)

If necessary, life or death-future in the balance, change doesn't happen willingly, then it needs to be forced.

As for shoto, he did say that there were still arguments that he wanted to have with his brother, so maybe that will set him on the way to pushing to make sure another endeavor can't get away with any quirk marriages and stop another touya from becoming Dabi.

And if this doesn't happen and heroes/hero kids get their ideal ending, the kind seen in endeavor's vision where everyone is all cool and successful pro heroes with the villains out of the picture?

Then nothing in bnha will have mattered and they're all still going to lose everything anyway.

Not right away but sooner rather than later, hero society's flaws (which again won't be fixed by the hero kids alone) will create another group of villains just like the Lov, putting everything back to square one.

Then after that: Quirk singularity doomsday.

The last plot thread that the heroes definitely can't beat, they won't even acknowledge it as a threat or as truth.

Even through some heroes have seen evidence of it's truth, like at the Provisional Hero License Course where they clearly saw that children were being born with more powerful quirks than before.

The villains know the quirk singularity is real and only the villain side, however evil or immoral they are, accepts this threat and has the knowledge to counter it.

(Through their own power and the doctor.)

Compared to the hero side who has none and no one who would work with them to even attempt to deal with the quirk singularity.

And no, Eri is not a solution to the quirk singularity, they would literally have to sacrifice her body like overhaul did to mass produce anything, and even then it wouldn't be enough for the entire world.

Same with the "AFO and OFA destroys all quirks theory", since the quirks only work through direct physical contact, how would that even be feasible for all of humanity??

Final flaw in this:

It's true that this presently isn't what the Lov want (definitely shigaraki and Dabi don't) but it's been shown, through toga and ochako at least, that the possibility for change is there, it's just that both parties have to make concessions and put in the effort-

-and obviously all involved need to survive.

Because the only way that there's going to be any kind of good ending in bnha is with the core villains being alive and with the heroes.

[isa-ghost]

what about Philza and social situations headcanons? (Parties, meeting strangers, that sort of thing)

Smh this is just Irish Goodbye bait /j

qPhil headcanons masterlist

Okay yeah obligatory Irish Goodbye mention. There's so many islanders and he gets distracted so easily, if he says goodbye to everyone he's gonna get stuck in 600 more conversations and he'll never leave the Whatever he's at when he intends to.

Also obligatory: He will genuinely enjoy the gathering to its fullest but he will still be on high alert. He cares for every single islander no matter how infrequently he sees them, which means while he's still immersed in the get-together, he remains vigilant to ensure nothing can harm anyone, ESPECIALLY when there are eggs present. The banquet with the fake eggs really reinforced this.

The above is why, especially while everyone is just bantering before the real event begins, Phil will perch up high on and off and just observe everyone chatting. He's on the lookout, making sure no one is vanishing inexplicably or worse, being taken. Keeping mobs and other threats away when necessary.

When encountering strangers, he plays it cool, he's very kind and engaged. But he is observing the shit out of the person. Analyzing them, their body language, forming an impression of their Normal, their Default state, so in the future he can tell when they're off.

Hilariously his memory is ass sometimes so it takes A Few "first" impressions for him to really ingrain in his brain how a person generally is.

Once he determines your vibes check out and you're a neat person, he's ride or die. No man left behind when it's Us vs The Feds in his eyes. You need something? He's got you unless you'd rather do it yourself.

When it's not an islander though... He'll put on a nice face, he'll stay civil if they're civil first. But truthfully, he is Not interested in the stranger whatsoever, ESPECIALLY if it's a new Fed worker. Then he's straight up suspicious. It takes a lot longer to determine whether or not they're a threat, if they're worth being bothered about, or if it's fine to live and let live.

The capybaras are excluded in the above though, he fucking loves those funky guys he wants to see them more often. He loves that they're so invested in helping him get cool pictures and stuff.

He LOVES new islanders. It's fun to watch the initial impressions, seeing who bonds with who most, joining them in picking their place to set up home, and checking in in the future to see how their new abode is coming along and how they're settling in. Honestly? It's partially that Hardcore Historian brain, he loves discovering what's been built in his absence.

When he's stressed, a lot of the above goes out the window, or becomes inconsistent at least. He's no longer observant for protection, he's observant out of fear; especially for himself. He perches almost always, or never stays in one spot for too long. He gets tunnel visioned. He really doesn't want to socialize at all. He dislikes being caught not in his best shape and he can get very paranoid and self conscious about it.

Btw he sometimes has the social awareness of a fucking grape so like. If you have an issue with him, please say so. Please communicate. He's a birdbrain boy in a birdbrain world ok. Tunnel vision and ADHD go brr.

Sometimes he socializes with birds the same way he does people. Just whole ass short conversations. Usually when he's bored and lonely.

He's down to socialize literally any time. The one time he probably Doesn't want to be bothered, at least not very often or for long, is when he's Eggza doing task grinding or resource gathering.

He hates being out of the loop of things because he has no idea what to do or say when a crisis arises, which makes him feel kinda useless, and that SUCKS when the person(s) impacted are particularly close to him. But at the same time, he has so much going on already at any given time and he Always prioritizes safety (esp of the kids) over anything else, so if there isn't an immediate threat or emergency, he'll stay out of it and just let people come to him about the thing if they deem it necessary. He's not the U.S, he doesn't feel the need to insert himself into every going on on the island. Especially potentially dangerous ones, getting involved if he doesn't have to be is just inviting harm and stress. He's not everyone's dad or guardian or whatever, he doesn't have to rush to aid everyone in their time of need. He'll offer it if relevant and he'll of course come rushing if asked, but generally speaking, he minds his business if he's not roped into it in some way and then hope that someone will fill him in well enough in the future. Fit's usually got his back.

You are Not getting his ass out and about at night, at least not unless you're just inviting him to your base. Especially with the kids. You're just not. Way too dangerous, shit always goes awry.

[korolife]

Blog No.004📚　24年6月13日

My Visual Method of Learning Japanese Kanji (漢字) part①

～ Let's Pair-up Similar-lookin' Characters Next to Each Other♥!～

There are many ways to learn Japanese. 📔

This way might not be effective or efficient (or even reasonable) for anyone else, but this is the visual approach that I'm currently developing + sharing for possibly any like-minded students it might resonate with!

【Background】

At first, I did the standard "write it down with repetition until you get it right" on flashcards, notebooks, etc. I don't think I ever got it 'right'ーevery optimistic attempt of "I'm gonna get in some daily lessons in today, and successfully absorb this knowledge!!" was always accompanied with this state of... confusion? and being so, so overwhelmed that neither the meaning, the reading, the stroke order, nor even the appearance of the kanji stuck to me at all. I don't think I've ever made it past the list of N4 kanji, even though most words I come across tend to be scattered around the N3-N1 level.

I've tried studying them strictly in order of the listing / then tried loosely with some doodling / or even a cherry-nitpicky minimalistic approach; just-take-what-is-frequently-used-style... but there just seemed to be no end in sight。

『Issue①:』 I wanted to see ALL of the kanji displayed at once, instead of dreading the 'higher levels' hidden from the limited amount displayed at a time; be it from reference books, screen displays on websites or mobile applications, etc. It's definitely just a personal issue, I think haha I just didn't like the surprise sneak attack from so much identical kanji from differing levels that scrambles my brain everytime I encounter a doppelganger. And boy, there's a LOT of those (as you will see).

I thought about making a series of biiiig posters or scrolls I could stick up on a wall, like those kiddie info posters but completely filled with kanji as decoration + motivation + and a bit of a cheat sheet I could easily access at a glance. But just imagining over 2,000 jumbled characters looming over me while I work on my desk or seeing something like that first thing after waking up………it feels a lot unsettling, I think-

『Issue②:』 They're often arranged according to their frequency of usage, stroke order, or general difficulty of the word. Although it's for practicality, it leaves the visual impact completely all over the place. I don't know if I have any underlying conditions that contribute to something trivial like this greatly bothering me past the point of productivity, but it's not even about aesthetics I have an issue with, I don't think? It's just...the arrangement feels so chaotic, or sometimes oddly restrictive that I keep getting distracted. It's like some kind of puzzle I've been trying to solve for 10 hours straight, but it's just me going in circles back to zero. Speaking of puzzles....

Maybe, to save physical space for literally thousands of characters, I thought about placing one kanji on each of a rubik's cube's faces. But that would take a ridiculous amount of cubes and printer ink/alternatively, manually cutting, pasting, and poorly writing very very tiny 0.5inch labels for...two thousand times, at least. By hand.

I'm still tempted to incorporate this idea in some way, but felt unmotivated and lazy with how flimsy and shoddy my handwritten labels were…also printer ink prices continue to be a goddang scam--

I've unfortunately never been a studious student, especially not when it comes to conventional learning methods. It tends to make me want to try ridiculous ideas to get around my own dysfunctionality, because the other option would be... to continue a system that doesn't work and be frustrated, and accomplish nothing; not even a smile.

Because I was learning Japanese out of my own free will, I wanted to have fun with it, because the whole concept of kanji seems really fun in theory!… but not so much in attempted practice as a clueless outsider with no knowledge apart from the standard English reading and writing system.

Even if perceived as a complete waste of time by a lot of people, I still want to understand each individual character to be able to appreciate and greet them accordingly when I encounter them in the wild.

For fun☆!

【Conventional Systems】

I mostly took inspiration from other existing popular learning systems that many people use:

➊The standard N5-N1 System was alright, but I found myself tempted to skip straight to ～N3 where frequently used characters appeared more, despite being barely at the lowest N5 level myself. I wanted all the characters to be visibly accessible…but it got intensely overwhelming so fast. The hierarchal labeling made finding a N1 character have this weird sense of pressure? Like, "oh sht , this word has N1 kanji. mY ELEMENTARY GRADE DUMBASS AIN'T SUPPOSED TO BE IN HERE--"

➋Then there's pictographs. It's interesting, but I thought a lot of them were a little bit of a reach? haha it's basically a visual mnemonic, right? But other people's mnemonics usually have their 'creative logic' that my own may not agree with, so I just end up getting distracted with the internal logic of the image and how it correlates to the kanji instead of absorbing any actual information. I think it has potential, but I'd need to personalize the visual imagery for it to be effective…or at least, have the mnemonic make enough sense to me and not be abstractly distracting. Even by then, the more strokes there are, the more convoluted it looks to even liken it to anything in the real world...Kanji by itself is already a pictogram, I guess...?

➌Then there's the Heisig method. I liked the concept; the goal is for (mostly) foreigners to easily familiarize the 'look' of the kanji character and attach it to a singular meaning. But personally, it wasn't working with how much my brain was confusing every variation of similar-looking patterns that kept reappearing over a span of different kanji, with the same radical appearing in different positions or orientations. Heisig's compilation was good in a sense that I could see a reoccurring pattern and it was most definitely less chaotic to look at now, but they continue to persist so far away from each other? Then adding that element of "the unknown" with kanji I've yet to encounter or seek out for being 'too advanced' with this doppelganger dilemma was driving me absolutely coconuts.

Plus, since it's a method created with absolute beginners in mind, it falls short with the lack of kun- and on- yomi readings…which were what I needed to learn the most.

I decided to combine these three ideas to make my own way.

【??? Personal System】

This system will continuously be developed from here on out until it can actually be functional, but so far, here's what's been done and being planned:

Apparently these were from 8 months ago good lord-

I pretty much just lined up screenshots of a full kanji listing (I believe it was a Jouyou listing) and just...painstakingly played a Match-3 game, but irl, pretty much... and with more back pain

※Reference used to curate these kanji and their information are primarily from ①an app called 'Satori', and ②another app called 'Yomiwa'. Both apps source information from KANJIDIC and JMDict + mixed with a variety of online dictionaries to cross-reference and check for additional info.

I was working on and off on it because staring at nothing but kanji all day will probably make a few screws loose, but I generally continued anytime I was feeling a little down, stressed out, or just had free time. It was oddly therapeutic when I saw the finished arrangements, though. This feeling of "I can't tell if I like it or hate it" reminded me of my thesis days lmao

I had originally planned to put them on 3x3 rubik's cubes, so I initially had to group them by a full set of 9 characters. But the distribution was so unbalanced that each look-alike group was either lacking or exceeding in numbers, and trying to evenly incorporate 'leftovers' into the other groups just looked forced as hell, visually. So, I gave up on the rubik's cube concept and just tried to match at least a row of just 3 look-alikes to then ascend or descend in complexity with their other cousin-distant-lookalikes.

EXAMPLE:

人　大　木

person・big・tree

▲These three I would consider 'cousins'. I wouldn't classify them together in a row of 3 because there are far more identical characters, but after I gather all of each of their sibling groups, I'd most definitely arrange them next to each other in succession as if the 人 was growing more limbs.

太　大　犬

fat・big・dog

▲These three I would consider 'siblings'.

It reminds me of twins that only have differing beauty marks for distinction.

▲And these...are kinda cursed ngl, my double takes had to do their own double takes everytime I would finish grouping something to the 'tree radical' family, and suddenly spotting another one I could've sworn was the exact same character. It made me feel like I was going insane lol I know that the context showing the connecting hiragana is usually a dead giveaway on which kanji it is, regardless of how similar in appearance + how it's going to be read... but man. It's so surreal seeing them all lined up next to each other?? All I see is a forest-

Somewhere along the way, my brain remembered about the elemental periodic table and drew some layouting inspiration from there, too. Ideally, I would love to have all the information already present at a single glance with each character. But with the limited display space, assigning chronological identification numbers on them for now would help in navigating this wide, colorful kanji blanket.

I might've discarded a couple of archaic / overly complex kanji that no one really uses for this list at this moment, but in total, there appears to be 952 rows of trios.

= A total of 2,856 kanji have been included. Unless I miscounted somewhere-

my back hurts-

【Personal Limits + Goals】

I've been learning Japanese the same way I have Englishーvery, very informally; simply picking up what I hear and read in random places and applying them to how my brain interpreted their usage. It's literally like 'playing by ear', musically? except I'm tone deaf as hell-

There are some words (both Eng and Jp) that I surprise even myself when I know how to say it, or suddenly somehow using it during very specific situations, even if I don't know how to define their exact meaning…or even how to pronounce them correctly. Then there's very basic words that are so foreign to me because I have never heard or seen them before, despite possibly being one of the first things teachers introduce in proper lessons.

I can understand verbal Japanese just OK (some common dialects are recognizable too, just as long as it ain't extreme keigo-), my attempt at constructed sentences is weab-level at best and my butchering of the intonations is an atrocity, but most importantly, I can't read most kanji I come across for the life of me without furigana. Even with it, it's usually too dang small in print to even read…

Basically the nutshell of my 'Japanese Reading Practice with Manga' series orz I was so worried about potential copyright infringements, but I misread everything, it just became transformative on its own--

※ADDITIONAL NOTE: There is the onyomi (Orig. Chinese reading used when compounding the character with another to create a word) and the kunyomi (general Japanese reading of the kanji) that I ranked as the 'most important' thing to learn for me...then there's their long-lost wayward sibling: Nanori for Japanese name readings.

It is a ｗｈｏｌｅ new world out there......and I'm good staying indoors, thanks- don't even get me started on kirakira name readings I will cry for those poor unfortunate souls deadass named things like 'PEGASUS' or 'ANGEL LOVE' as their government name good lord

Speaking of names, when I saw Kaedehara Kazuha's name (Genshin Impact) in kanji for the first time :

「楓原万葉」

I read it as "Kazewara Manba"💀he is Manba-kun to me now

ーEven if my overall proficiency is at kindergarten level, for now,

I want to improve at at least recognizing the correct kanji at a regular reading speedーwith no mistaken identities, frantic dictionary pulling-out, or furigana dependency necessary!★

And that's what I want to achieve first and foremost with...whatever this is I'm creating。

+ so I can read manga and novels in peace without constantly squinting at a magnifying glass orz Fluency is kinda moot in my case because... I don't talk to anyone lol-

also, online shtposting in the Jp meme side rly do hit different

　〘ーand I'd like colors to accompany me!〙

『Issue③:』 Every Kanji list overview, regardless of arrangement or method, always gives me anxiety with how sharply white and black it is. That minimalistic uniformity forces you to depend on shapes alone to make inferences... but then you see sht like:

土　VS　士　

(dirt)・(samurai)

末　VS　未

(tip)・(sign of the sheep)

where it's literally the subtlest of LINE LENGTH, a tiny splotch, or the more complex characters that don't even share the same radicals but because they both vaguely have a similar silhouette, they start looking confusing to the brain, I just...............colors are absolutely necessary!! At least, it is definitely the case for my very easily bamboozled noodle that demands distinctive visual variations. I am in the belief that shapes alone will not suffice to memorize the correct information when you have over 2,000 subjects to sift through that... literally copied each other's homework. They kept gaslighting me throughout the process- Ask a Chinese or Japanese friend today if they're doing ok bc holy sht how do ya'll live like this, especially when web browsers tend to squash anything exceeding 14 strokes at regular display font sizes I-

I made the ｺﾛﾚｯﾃKoroLife System (Kororette Life; a wish for a 'colorful life') that pushes more focus on the creative and productive use of colors and patterns for myself, initially for drawing composition purposes... but I found that it was something just as applicable with making everyday tasks way easier and fun to look at.

It eventually took over this project too, and finally gave me what I was looking forーinner peace with a lifetime of beef and animosity with kanji…but in style★

When I said I was a heavy visual learner... this is exactly what I meant-

So…this is my way of arranging nearly 3,000 kanji by rows of 3 visually identical characters that confuses my dyslexic 外人 dumdum the most + making use of colors for subcategorizing them according to their shapes. And, hey, they make for pretty neat stickers!

⇒[FREE TO DOWNLOAD!]

△contains x4 parts of higher quality of each quadrant (transparent bg) + this huge overview display map...or kanji blanket, however you see it as-

Unfortunately there's very little to make of it apart from a display, but as soon as I add some practicality to this system, I will compile them into the 0+ Resource Shop. For now, please feel free to personally use them however you like~! I'm already sticking 'em everywhere-

I divided them into 6 colored categories according to the character's overall perceived 'shape'*: ・Curves (orange)

・Sparks'n'mix (pink)

・Criss-crossing (dark blue)

・Lines (light blue)

・Cubes (yellow) ・囧ﾒ (violet)

・imperfect matches (green)

Highlighted ones are stand-outs, or visually the easiest to digest (to me anyway).

＊these are very arbitrary classifications with flawed, subjective internal logic that has been revised multiple times over. (eg. Even if something has a curve, if I feel like the overall shape has lines that stand out more, then it's in the light blue category instead.)

And with that, I think I'll call it...

The「色々色 / IROIROIRO」 Method!! otherwise known as the 色³ for short!!!

■ 「色」・いろ・(Iro)

➊lit. Color, tint, hue, shade ➋kind, type, variant

■ 「々」・のま・同の字点 / どうのじてん・(noma / dou no jiten)

Kanji repetition mark; placed beside a repeating kanji.

■ 「色色 / 色々」 ・いろ・(Iroiro)

various, all sorts of

■「³」・３乗足す / さんじょうたす・３の立方 / さんのりっほう・(san jyou tasu / san no rihhou)

mathematical term.; Cubed, to the power of 3 pls don't ask me for the actual application specifics, I get a 3/10 average on my math tests-

It's a fun pun! Kinda.

【Preliminary Conclusion】

Is it an effective strategy to master Japanese kanji at all, though? Maybe not. At least, probably not just by this visual display alone. I honestly don't expect anyone else benefitting much from this project, but it personally really reinvigorated me to continue studying Japanese again. It's strange how something that caused me so much feelings of dread and anxiety for the majority of my early teen years, suddenly feels so much fun to work with. All it needed was sleep deprivation, some touch of personalization, and a little bit of color!… ok, well, a lot of color-

It's a complete homebrew, unverified by anyone, and I guess a little insane, but I thought it turned out kinda cool anyway, so I thought I'd share it! What do you think? I'll write up an update about any further developments in this silly lil system the next time. I'm thinking of somehow fitting in all the definitions, readings, stroke orders, and maybe samples of their usage... but also in style★ somehow-

We'll workshop it, even if it takes another additional 8 months!!!

Until then! バイバイ(￣▽￣)／

つづく

➡To be continued...

・・・ホームページALL LINKS・・・

・Art Gallery・Commission Info・Ko-fi shop・

[ajaxstar]

Valentine's ♡

characters: all playable genshin characters (except children characters like klee, dori, etc.), the eleven harbingers + tsaritsa, and kaveh x gn!reader

genres: sfw, fluff!!! (no angsty heart's day on my watch!), features types of vday dates i think they most likely will plan for the two of you after you told them that they'll be in charge

notes: it's been a while, hasn't it? this post doesn't fully imply that i'm 100% back, but i am working on it!! i haven't written anything for such a long time, so i might be getting rusty and it might show here. i used the genshin impact wikia as reference for the characters, let me know if i missed anyone!

BEFORE YOU CONTINUE : they made sure that they ran you through the whole plan without spoiling it completely to make sure you'll be comfortable during the whole day. after all, the date is for the both of you, not just for them! they want to make sure the two of you will enjoy it.

— ADVENTURING WITH YOU

they're the type to plan a date that concerns going out. they'll bring you literally everywhere they know you love — to the amusement/theme park, movies, theater, museums, mall, out of town/the country, the library, fancy meals — anywhere!! if you have a favorite hobby that concerns a few more things (sports, arts, etc.), you bet that it's in the list! it doesn't matter if it's not their cup of tea, it's in the list and they will join you, even if it includes breaking a sweat or two. throughout the whole day, they have their hands on you in any type of way that you consent. they'll keep their hand holding yours, their arms around your waist, on your shoulder — anywhere. they can't afford getting separated from you, mostly if it's a vast and/or crowded area, but also because of their desire to be close. with or without exchanging gifts, love is reciprocated.

"you are the only gift i ever want."

ꔛ albedo, amber, itto, barbara, bennett, collei, faruzan, fischl, hu tao, kazuha, ayaka, keqing, mona, nilou, ningguang, noelle, ei, razor, shenhe, thoma, aether, xiangling, xingqiu, xinyan, yoimiya, yun jin, zhongli, dottore, columbina, pantalone, pulcinella, tsaritsa, kaveh

— JUST THE TWO OF US

it has been quite a while that the both of you had the free time to just relax at home tangled in each other. food are a mix of all snacks, candies, homemades, and take outs. time is enjoyed together with indoor activities enjoyed by each other; playing games, playful banters, naps, cuddles, reading a book or two, watching shows together — anything that entertains the two of you. nothing mattered outside the walls of your shared humble abode, although going out together also seems like a good idea, the two of you are much more inclined to the thought of just the two of you. together. the past few days and weeks were spent being away from each other. however, right now, nothing and no one else mattered as the two of you bask into each other's warmth, love, and presence.

"let's stay here together for a little bit longer."

ꔛ alhaitham, beidou, candace, chongyun, cyno, diluc, eula, ganyu, gorou, jean, kaeya, ayato, sara, shinobu, layla, lisa, rosaria, kokomi, childe, tighnari, lumine, venti, wanderer, venti, xiao, yanfei, yae miko, yelan, pierro, sandrone, capitano, arlecchino

happy heart's day ♡ i hope you guys enjoyed your day !! (i sure did enjoy my day sleeping)

[chibun-days]

thoughts on my interpretation of dazai + his past in regards to fanfiction writing

this mainly applies to dazai during 15 and his time in the pm, but could work for ada dazai albeit with minor adjustments

see on the one hand i have the urge to write dazai as incomprehensible unfathomable indecipherable. he'll be darkness incarnate pretending at being human, and he can be something colder and crueler than anyone else in the world. he can be something dead. he'll be a living corpse, closer to death than living.

on the other hand i want him to just be a mess of a human being who's a little too smart and a little too empty and little too hurt. he can be someone who's tried desperately to find meaning in life, failed at every turn, and buries himself in darkness instead until it permeates his very being. he chokes on kindness, if that one episode of bsd wan where atsushi gives him flowers is any indication. he can see himself as irredeemable, regardless of how other people perceive him. he can genuinely believe that he can't possibly have positive human relationships not founded on mutual goals or manipulation, as i write in his perception of chuuya at the start of 15.

the issue with both of my interpretations (i am fonder of the second one) is that we haven't gotten any actual backstory for dazai. we know what he was like at fourteen/fifteen—but by then, he'd already established his worldview and opinion that there is no meaning in living. mori literally finds him when he tries to commit suicide; the pm may have encouraged his cruelty and violence, but that was all already there. what happened before that instilled in dazai's mind that he wanted to die? despite being given a frankly massive amount of coverage in light novels, the manga, and the anime, we still know virtually nothing about dazai's past. it's so difficult to properly analyze and understand dazai's character and actions because we don't know the reasoning behind these things. all individuals are dependent on their past experiences—it would be necessary to understand dazai's past in order to get a better picture of his character as a whole.

my first interpretation assumes that dazai has, from birth—similarly to yozo in no longer human—always been "empty". it assumes that dazai has never felt like a human being, never been able to understand them, and never been able to relate to them. the second interpretation, however, assumes that while dazai may have felt alienated as a child, there is a reason for said alienation and the ensuing suicide attempt and worldview.

the key part, however, brings into question what exactly the reason was: bsd follows (very, very lightly) the ramifications of a post-war setting. you see it in fukuzawa and yosano's backstories, as well as fukuchi's motive in villainy. did dazai somehow participate in the war? was it instead abuse by an organization or by family that impacted dazai's understanding of living? it's impossible to guess the canon backstory of dazai, but i think it'd be reasonable to assume that there is at the very least a concrete reason or event in dazai's past that results in his mannerisms and behavior that we see in canon. i would be hesitant to go into government experiment/inhuman territory, however, because that ruins a very important parallel: the one between chuuya and dazai.

i've mentioned it before—essentially, dazai is human but feels/acts inhuman, while chuuya isn't human (though certain evidence suggests otherwise, but the point stands) but feels/acts wildly human. they're eachother's antithesis; however, they wholeheartedly and without a doubt believe that the other is irreplaceably human. if dazai does turn out be some aspect of the book (as theories suggest), that doesn't quite make sense in regards to the consistency of this parallel, which is very important overall to soukoku's dynamic. i have so many more thoughts about this but i'll stop here for today.

in short i am trying to write a cohesive backstory for dazai that actually makes sense in my fic (i am failing)

[narutocharacterpolls]

ROUND ONE

ROCK LEE vs HYUUGA HINATA

Reasons for submission under the cut

Lee

ROCK LEE VS GAARA

kind as can be; willing to jump to action to help his fellow comrades even after going through a life-threatening, major surgery

practical and fashion-forward with his bright green onesie. Function over form, and is prepared at all times by carrying around a spare onesie he will give without question to anyone - even complete strangers

has a surprising edge to him at the beginning of the series; he was ready to severely maim anybody that he saw as a genius

more dedicated than anyone. Was forced to face his own mortality and make a life-or-death decision in the name of his dream, after a literal crushing defeat, and he chose to fight for it. Inspiring

embodies the ideals of original series Naruto. True underdog, had nothing going for him, came from nothing with no legacy or powers, was so disadvantaged that he physically could not meet the bare minimum abilities of his peers. But he worked harder than everyone else and proved that he can be a great shinobi despite all the adversity he faced

Sasuke had to copy Lee's moves with his Sharingan to succeed during Chuunin exams

cute as a button. Come on.

his fans are dedicated and make amazing work, fanart and fanfic

Kishimoto said he was his favorite character to draw. Boom. Favoritism. Love to see it.

pairs well with everyone. Platonic or romantic, Lee has a great dynamic with other characters

his summer outfit from Guardian of the Crescent Moon Kingdom was the best outfit in the movie

gave us Metal Lee! Blessed us with Metal Lee, really

was the character to beat in the early series if you wanted to show how strong you actually are

Gaara vs Rock Lee was one of the most iconic fights in the series, and everyone remembers where they were when they first saw Lee drop his weights. He owned that fight so hard that people forget he lost.

was wronged by the series. He deserves to win as justice.

got [submitter] personally through the worst times; his ability to persevere face of adversity convinced me I could do it too. He wasn't special and neither was [submitter], but we didn't need to be. We can make ourselves great. If no one else got me, Rock Lee's got me

he’s one of the first non-jutsu using ninja so make such a big impact

was the first person to actually harm Gaara

played a huge part in Gaara becoming a better person

he’s one of the only people that can catch up to Sasuke and easily rivals Naruto in Taijutsu

his kind, determined and cheerful attitude is a joy to watch

Rock Lee removing his weights is easily one of the most iconic moments in the entire anime

has helped several submitters feel better by simply thinking about how he wouldn't want them to think like that

objectively would've made a better protagonist based on the themes alone

KICKS MAJOR ASS

wrecked Sasukes shit, I like Sasuke but that was really funny

he looks like a frog. Who doesn't like frogs

inspired Sasuke

fights are always entertaining, they're very well choreographed

he forgave Gaara for nearly killing him and nearly ending his dreams; he was never even mad at him

Rock Lee vs Sasuke was iconic

his heart is so full of love

never did anything wrong

had a squirrel befriend him

hard worker

good friend

rises to any challenge

when he does diss people they are the most brutal yet entertaining disses you ever hear

positive, weirdo, energetic, enthusiastic, joyful, chivalrous, motivated, dedicated, sweet

Lee and Neji had something homosexual going on

YOUTH !!!!

Hinata

contrasts with Naruto in personality, but still goes through similar struggles with self esteem and bullying, and comes out with a similar outlook on life

relatable in the sense of being socially awkward, self conscious and having a strict father

can hold her own

[archivalofsins]

I really want to vent about something Milgram related, but I don't want to spread negativity either. It's about my general experience in the fandom.

Something that has been less than ideal and the ways it has led me to engage with fandom as a concept in general.

It isn't fair to myself not to use my blog for me, though. This is my space to recount my experiences and opinions on Milgram as a series. The way the fandom has personally impacted me is a huge part of that. Regardless of how impartial I attempt to be, the experiences I've had within this fandom will impact how I engage with the content to an extent.

To the point that I've committed to trial three verdicts already based on the actions of people in this fandom.

I'm not above being petty.

So, I'm going to explain this as politely as I can and move on.

People who have been around on this blog long enough have seen a lot of the experiences I've had in the fandom. I wish I had whined about it publicly more in hindsight instead of going on defense immediately. It's not like I'm ashamed of being defensive or regret my previous actions. On the contrary, in fact, I was going through a lot of stressful and downright dehumanizing shit publicly and privately.

It was a terrible time, and if I knew it was going to be that way quite, honestly, I would have never posted any of those theories and just kept them to myself. Honestly, I'd like to see what the fuck this fandom would be like if I didn't. Considering some of the stuff I'll touch on here.

I'm going to be candid.

I've been spoken about vaguely on more posts than individuals in this community care to admit to the point that I literally had to stop engaging in the tags. I've been directly messaged emotionally manipulative remarks and then blocked by the sender from people in this fandom.

I've been basically called out on confession blogs because people are cowards and the first time they're given the ability of doing something under the guise of anonymity of course they're going to use it to harass someone else in ways they know they could never do publicly.

I've been harrassed and emotionally abused by other fans. Who I considered friends in private. Had my lived experiences and feelings consistently diminished for several months by those people. Plagiarized numerous times which I'm most mad about like you actually stole the fucking words out of my mouth that is a whole different form of disrespect.

I have been gaslit numerous times by well-meaning people again using the guise of ambiguity and anonymity to go,

"Well you can never know for sure, so you should just let it go! Be the bigger person."

And I just gotta go,

"Yeah, you're sooo right. I should have thought of that. I'll never know for sure! Anyone here could have said this. But do I have to stoop to their level? No, I should just be happy that I can't go in the tag because this keeps happening."

Then I gotta feel like I'm losing my mind because no one recognizes the previous thing is more fucked up. It's weird no one sees how that's fucking worse. If someone suspects I vagued about them, they block me and spread rumors in the back that I did vague about them that eventually come back to me anyway. They have this face, this image of me in their mind that they are allowed to act against and keep out of their vicinity. I have nothing, I have to sit here and see people in this fandom and think,

"Was it you? Did you say that?"

Then go no, no, that's not a healthy way to think. Then, I attempt to course correct when it feels like everyone here hates me. Because there's nothing else I can do other than control my response and how I navigate moving forward. I can admit that sometimes I don't navigate these things in a mature and considerate manner. That I get defensive and my language invokes that regardless of how jovially I attempt to take it.

Because when the shoes on the other foot. When I'm just discussing something that it seems as though everyone is discussing. Then someone feels as though that is me speaking vaguely about them regardless of how much i preemptively state it's not about anyone.

Then I inevitably get a,

"Like, hey, why did you do this? Why did you vague about x?"

In a way, that has made it so apparent how heavily policed I am in this environment and how hostile it is toward me. To the point that I can't even speak about something occurring in real time without being perceived as hostile by someone.

Something that felt like it was the case so much that I have post in my drafts that's in fucking Morse Code,

That just says Fuck- because at the time I really felt like I couldn't say a fucking thing without someone taking offense. Then i didn't fucking post this because at the time I was like no even that will be misconstrued just say nothing. So, it's just sitting in my drafts as a reminder.

To just shut the fuck up you don't have to say anything on or engage in this.

This has not changed either. I've adapted, of course, but this has not stopped. When I post, I am now incredibly particular about my wording and overexplain a lot.

Yesterday, I was hanging out with friends while editing that Kazui post over a discord call and said aloud,

"No, I can't say it that way because someone might take offense."

And my friend literally went,

"Who cares if they take offense let them."

As I changed it like no, no... Oh, that wording is too candid and curt, which will be perceived as anger. Then they're going to respond as though they've been attacked or belittled. So, I have to say it this way instead.

Do you know how many times someone has discerned a tone from my texts out of the clear blue sky and gone,

"I didn't like x's tone."

I had one mother fucker go I didn't like "his" tone and gender me as he throughout all of a convo until corrected like uh hey this person is genderfluid they use he and her. It is kind of dismissive and sexist that because you viewed them as hostile and forceful that you immediately gendered them as he.

Other times it's like eyy nice when that happens. Because it's usually not done in a,

"Ew, you're making me uncomfortable. You're scary, and I view you as a dangerous entity. So, I will now project masculinity onto you in order to highlight the danger I see you as."

Be me genderfluid use he and her. See how you experience text-based sexism where people call you her when they view you as more harmless, timid, and uninformed than switch to he when they view you as more hostile, dangerous, or direct. Something that is just what people do to blunt or straightforward black women generally and the fact that's happening through tone policing text really fucking highlights how inescapable this is for me.

To the point that just speaking how I normally would through text, which I very much type the same way I speak is something I have to work to tone down now and be attentive to. I felt as though I couldn't just post like everyone else. This is because that over time, it became apparent to me that regardless of what I said or how much I tried to articulate myself in a more docile way, someone was going to take offense.

I literally talked about a bird and got a lecture. There is no winning. If something is too short, it's like, did you think of this. Too long no one is reading all that. Then, if someone feels as though I was discussing them regardless of how much I truly can't even go in the tag to see whatever they're discussing.

It leads to me having to apologize to that person. Even though I am not responsible for their assumption. I push that to the side and suck it up to the best of my abilities, and apologize. Because my intent, my feelings at this revelation, and the unfairness I feel about it does not change that my actions have negatively impacted and hurt this other individual's feelings.

There is a point that this does stop being on me, though.

However, when an instance in which I've genuinely hurt someone's feelings is brought to my attention, I won't dismiss that. Take note of this it leads into another problem later. I am not responsible for imagined slights and did not have to apologize at all. A good few people who consider themselves good individuals and are would not have apologized.

Because the assumptions of others simply are not their responsibility. So they would consider this an instance of someone taking them egregiously out of context because they choose to view them through bad faith. Then would have gone,

"This seems like something you did all on your own that should have stayed that way. I owe you nothing."

Or would have just ignored it.

Now, I want to touch on how invasive and entitled some people within this fandom can be. I have had so many people ask for private medical information that they are not entitled to.

Yes, saying-

"If you don't have x, then don't speak on y."

Is pushing someone else in a corner where their options are to give personal information on themselves that again wrapping around back to point one is not the business of person saying this nor will giving this information change their opinion. People who say this don't care if you have x they just want you to shut up. People who say this do not care about people who have what they are discussing outside of themselves. It's that simple.

At best, if a person says

"Yes, I have x."

This sort of person will either state the person is lying or that it doesn't matter because what that person said was still wrong. And having x doesn't change the fact that they just think this other person is wrong actually so they should still shut the fuck up. This is really annoying when it comes to how this fandom engages with dissociative identity disorder specifically.

Because they say and do shit like this, then still have the audacity to be wrong about how the disorder works. I've seen posts that state with their full chest that Dissociative Identity Disorder is when there is an existence of three or more distinct personality states.

Just legit redefining the term to exclude two. I've been told two alter system don't deserve representation because they're so rare and it's less likely to occur. Again, it's wild to me how no one recognizes how that sounds. Like to me, that sounds like this specific presentation of this disorder is a minority. Therefore, it is an inaccurate depiction of the majority of individuals with this disorder and should not be represented in media in any nuanced way actually.

That sounds suspiciously like people who said black people rarely buy comics as such, they are not our target demographic and should not be represented in the media. Because it just won't sell, they don't read comics. Girls don't read shonen manga. We do not need well written female characters here. That's not our demographic.

Furthermore, when I have told people that I trust this very sensitive information about myself and my mental health. They weaponized it against me to abuse me for several months. Literally stating in response to me being like hey what you're doing is really upsetting me and hurtful with,

"Well, you have x and y. So, you have to accept that and recognize how you telling me your emotional needs is actually unreasonable. It's holding me to a standard that's far too high. Something you're only doing because you've yet to accept your own limitations due to your impairments. Causing you to project the high standards you put on yourself onto others around you as well and straining your relationships. You need to accept you're disabled. Something that means there are just certain things you won't be good at and won't be able to receive or achieve in life."

Bro, I would just like to not be ghosted. What the fuck does that have to do with this? This person's reaponse to me saying,

"Hey, if I continue to get treated this way, I'm going to leave. Because this isn't even a relationship at this point if most of it is spent avoiding proper communication. It seems neither of you want me here because you're actions and avoidance are displaying that to me."

Was to say,

"If you did that, then that would make you no better than us. Plus, all your relationships will continue to be this way. If you're incapable of compromising here."

That's been my last ten months in private on top of the Milgram shit. At a point, I spoke about the incident semipublically in a shared discord server. Then these two people had me apologize for doing that, like stating how they treated me-

In a space, they were already discussing the situation in instead of communicating with me privately by the way. Yet, me doing it was crossing the line, actually.

Yeah, they had me apologize for this over text not once, not twice but five fucking times in a row, each apology longer and more in depth than the last.

Because me doing that was just such an inconsiderate breech of their privacy and dismissal of their feelings. They even said this was something to be handled in private despite ignoring me privately for months and taking it there.

I want to sit here and say I have no more sympathy or good faith to extend to individuals within this fandom. It would be incredibly fair for me to say this given my experiences. However, I fundamentally believe just because the world can be cruel unreasonably so and kindness is rarely rewarded. That is no reason to spread pain. I would like to believe in people. To believe that they can be considerate of those who exist outside of themselves and respectful of those others.

It is just very difficult to enjoy a space that has seemingly been hellbent on breaking me in every sense of the word.

I didn't think it was possible to say this in a way that didn't feel self pitying or unnecessarily harsh. This may still be harsh to some. Yet I can not comfortably move forward without honestly writing down for myself the impact these experiences have had on me.

It makes me want to engage with fandom less.

Make myself less accessible and that's been reflected in how I do fanfiction now. I'd like to get comments and feedback on the labors of love and appreciation I've made for this series. Yet these experiences have been so damaging that I'm not even comfortable leaving comments on for fanfics anymore. Comments are now off on all my fanfics, not even just milgram ones, and I don't think I'll ever cut them back on.

I locked all of my fanfics for a while, so only registered users could read them. I reached out to be in the milgramblrgram thing because I thought it would be a fun thing to do and a nice way to get more feedback on these things on my own terms. Yet I truly don't think it matters how I do it or how much work I put in because to a lot of people, it just being attached to me makes it wrong.

Because they've built this impression of me that simply isn't true and is isolating.

It makes this a little less fulfilling to continue doing. I only really continue doing it because I do enjoy Milgram a great deal, and it matters a lot to me. Like one of the reasons I was so cool with dumping those people was like well one of you is literally trying to tell me to stop engaging with my hobbies and interests because sometimes I have complaints about them. Which makes it a lot easier to go mm fuck you I had this hobby before I met you and probably will have it after you. Because unlike you this brings me joy it is fulfilling sure I don't like the treatment I've received from other fans but don't get it twisted.

I love Milgram.

That's not going to change. Milgram is not its fanbase. Regardless of how the fanbase can impact the series. I'm writing this to move forward more comfortably with everything that has occurred in this going on two years.

And it may be too much for some, but it's just what I've gone through for me.

[zerokissingbooth]

rant under cut ab dr ratio

i know we don't know much about his actual personal life just yet, but it feels less like earning nous' gaze is earned by intelligence but rather drive to your field. your passion willing to push the boundaries of what's known- ruan mei as an example.

until ratio does something worthwhile like idk, preventing the mass extinction of sentient inorganic life in hopes of stopping an egopowered supercomputer (screwllum vs emperor rupert i) or continued to actively reject the genius society despite MULTIPLE INVITATIONS (ruan mei) or having mass intellect, developing the simulated universe from an OUTSIDE LOCATION and being acknowledged as insanely smart but refusing to actually use it (stephen lloyd) he won't ever be acknowledged by nous.

it isn't a matter of humanity, empathy, or anything like that- hell there's still genius members we haven't met because they're all various levels of too invested in their work, introverted/anti-social, or something else that has nothing to do with morality.

dr ratio's prime drive outside of spreading knowledge is spreading himself outwards. he has ego, he actually put an entire space station in danger just to try and prove a point. like why hasn't anyone talked about that? dr ratio putting the station in crisis just to stick his nose up at a small group of people-- two of them not actually caring at all, by the way. the entire conflict of the space station issue with dr ratio's introduction was entirely focused on ratio and screwllum.

and you cannot say ratio has empathy-- he makes his students cry without care, his class has an insanely low graduation rate, he's quick to insult first due to his own admitted bias before actually listening to someone (see: ratio actively insulting aventurine's race and lack of intelligence first). he refuses to debate people because he automatically declares himself a winner. his entire philosophy of 'spreading knowledge and curing ignorance' is counteracting his own actions with how harsh and refusing he is to accommodate to students. even if students that do graduate out of the 3% become experts... that is an insanely low number for a guy who taught 52 courses.

and we know why some of the geniuses are the way they are or why they seem less empathetic. like ruan mei's trauma with the death of her parents and the failure to keep family promises (seen in chara stories 1 and 2) caused her to spiral hardcore into trying to bring them back and nearly broke the biology of the abundance on her planet. she didn't eat until needed, didn't sleep, she was literally in a daze working.

or screwllum! while we don't know much we know that not only does he hate any mechanical constructs that follow rupert i's orders (which are to destroy organic life) he is utterly fascinated and enchanted by life. his own invitation by nous to join the society actively prevented the IPC from wiping out all mechanical lifeforms, further prevented due to his own intervention.

ratio is insanely fascinating, but he is not as empathetic as it seems. he's rational, logical and a jackass; knowledge and being able to carry a title is first to him, with how narrow of a birth he has within education. many degrees he has, but they're ranging from philosophy, mathematics, biology, and whatever- nothing within the realm of history, the arts, languages or literature. an argument could be made here that ratio specifically values mathematics and sciences above other aspects of knowledge, leaning into his bias, but that's just me.

"but his note to aventurine!" was a note explaining how he had an answer to aventurine's previous question. acheron had more of an impact on aventurine's almost-death in the dreamscape which makes sense, seeing as her entire thing is with nihility and death. it doesn't surprise me he figured it out, as he is a philosopher.

"what is death in a dream?" is a great philosophy question and would've been a treat for him to pick at and solve.

[philosophicalconservatism]

Response To An Earlier Post

the-psudo

So the freedom to think you're gay or trans or a furry or a socialist or that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians is a fundamental right. Locke says so. When Democrats make you feel uncomfortable for persecuting those people, they're doing nothing wrong. You're not entitled to an emotional safe space where no one is allowed to call you a bigot, because that censors their freedom of expression.

Philosophicalconservatism

Liberals are not doing anything wrong when they make people feel bad in the name of gender Ideology. They are doing something wrong when they pass laws that punish American citizens (employers, landlords, teachers etc.) for not using pronouns in the prescribed manner, in the name of preventing personal offense ( thus effectively providing safe spaces). Such laws have been established in New York, California, and other U.S. states, as well as in Canada and elsewhere abroad . They are also wrong when they punish students for the same speech crimes. The executive branch of the government is wrong when it conspires with big tech companies to similarly regulate speech in a politically correct manner.

The problem with illegitimately classifying a dissenting view as "hate" or "persecution" simply because you dislike it, is that this ultimately serves as a justification for the kinds of stifling policies I am discussing here. This is exactly what this sort of rhetoric is designed to do. If speech is truly "violence" or something very similar to it, then men and women must be protected from its impact in the same way as they would need to be protected from physical violence. And that is precisely what these laws and policies were created to do.

The idea that all of this Left-wing rhetoric about tolerance is only about people being left alone is dissimulation on the part of the far Left, and either niavete or (far more likely) willful ignorance on your part (you are smarter than that). We have seen this charade before whereby parties on the political Left tell us that all they want is for certain individuals to be left alone in to live their own lives, only to subsequently have a related set of opinions imposed by the force of law upon the public. The Left told us that allowing gays and lesbians to be included within the concept of state marriage was simply about people being left alone to live their own lives; it would not effect anyone else. The next thing we know we see cases like Masterpiece Cake shop v.s. Colorado in which private businesses are required by the state to cater to and accommodate these "private matters" that do not concern anyone else.

And when these policies are eventually enacted we are told that the suppression of our own rights is literally the recognition of the rights of another. A person has the right to be called by a certain pronoun. Individuals have the right to have other people create original products ( not to merely sell them existing products) which celebrate things they themselves do not believe in. When the modern Left stops leveraging this misrepresentative rhetoric about the "hate" and "persecution" of their opponents into policies which restrict the rights and liberties of those same opponents, then we will simply chalk their words up to harmless talk and disregard them.

But they will not do this because they fundamentally do not believe in the distinction between public and private morality; between the public and the private sphere.

".

[multiplicity-positivity]

hello! We're new to the internet lingo of systems, but everything we've learned so far has been extremely helpful with understanding/organizing our system (we've sent some asks in the past hehehe)

We was wondering if you had any advice for alters who hurt the system? (they're called persecutors, I think)

She's an introject / factive (I really hope these are the right terms) of our abuser, and we think (our caretaker thinks lol) she was formed in order to "keep us in line" and keep us from getting even more hurt. But we don't live with our abuser anymore (two years of therapy and counting!) and her behavior has gone from toxic to just another form of abuse. We've tried to get her to talk to our therapist, but nothing's worked.

She's able to (kind of) control who fronts, who gets what memories, etc. and we have literally no idea how-

hey… we also have an introject of an abuser in our system (you are indeed using the correct terms here btw). we really feel for y’all, and we hope things get better for you soon.

we have a post that we wrote specifically for handling and working with system persecutors, violent headmates, and those who aim to cause harm. here it is:

of the persecutors in our own system, only one has actually made it to therapy before. and the introject of our abuser has definitely never fronted in therapy. still, we’ve been able to make some progress with this part through talking to our therapist about how this part behaves, relaying messages between them, and trying to listen to both parties to the best of our abilities. it can be tricky sometimes, because interacting with this factive can trigger certain parts, even when he isn’t doing anything particularly harmful or malicious.

we had another link to an article for therapists and patients that discusses steps to working with abuser parts… it’s a really good article, but we haven’t been able to find the link. we are so sorry about this, because it would have been a great article for y’all to pass along to your therapist. we don’t feel confident enough to try and relay the information that was in that article, we’re so sorry about this!

truly, most of our best advice that we as a system can give will be in the post we linked above. we’d encourage y’all to try and interact with the introject in your system in positive ways as often as you feel comfortable and able to. also, it would probably be good to remind yourselves that this introject is not literally your abuser, even if she often feels, looks, and acts like it. she can’t help who her source is, and while her source impacts how she behaves and lives her life, she is not the one who abused your system. for us, this has been a difficult yet essential distinction to make with our own abuser part.

it’s great that y’all have been bringing concerns about this alter to therapy. we really hope y’all will continue to talk to your therapist about her! progress often happens quite slowly, so y’all might be taking small steps towards healing with your abuser introject more than anyone realizes.

we hope this helps, even if it’s only a little bit. so sorry we couldn’t provide more useful, applicable, or realistic advice. it can be really challenging having an introject of our abuser in our system, for everyone involved, including that introject themself! but they are an alter in need of healing, patience, and kindness, just like everyone else. we really hope that y’all will be able to achieve this for her in the future.