#hardcore still live

[meaningless-mayhem]

Being asexual and possibly aromantic but also being a huge shipper and hopeless romantic is such a wild experience ngl. I'm always freaking out about my favorite ships and giggling internally reading ship fics, getting invested in characters finally kissing or reading about their pining and their love and I think "I want what they have!!"

But then sometimes you have a slamming realization that your sweet shipping scenarios you imagine in your head look totally different irl and that you are extremely aspec.

One time I went down a YouTube rabbit hole and stumbled across Vsauce's "Why Do We Kiss?" video and let me tell you. When I saw that stock video footage of two people kissing each other I was a little flabbergasted lmaooo

[sergle]

has anon ever considered if more people gave you money you would have less need of advertisement and more time to do art

oh oh the image

this one. this is me

[c-vs-the-world]

Butch wolverine this butch wolverine that: where's femme wolverine huh 🤨 where's femme logan that is still hairy and still muscled to hell that wears outdated makeup styles/fashion and paints her nails the same colors as her costume or a sultry red hmm where is she

[landoffreaksandfrogs]

some concept stuff for bloodswap gamzee (bonus: olive karkat)

[my-current-obsession]

Something I both love AND hate about FF7 (the original game and everything after, including the Remake trilogy) is that it is just ambiguous and/or player-driven enough that no matter which side of the love triangle you fall on (assuming you do in fact ship Cloud with one of the girls), the majority of fans for that ship are 100% CONVINCED it's the correct/canon option.

Like, certain scenes are definitely up to interpretation, and people are going to thus have varying reads on those scenes and the characters/relationships the scenes are about. It doesn't help that several scenes change depending on the player's choices, which acts as a confirmation bias as you naturally get more time and romantic moments with the girl of your preference. It really seems to me that MOST people who ship Cloud and Aerith have one solid interpretation (with a plethora of supporting evidence) of the series and the romance, while most people who ship Cloud and Tifa have their own solid interpretation with plenty of evidence that is VASTLY DIFFERENT from the Clerith reading of the game.

This is not a case of "one ship is clearly, explicitly canon and fans of the opposition just like their pick better and/or think it made more sense narratively and WISH it was canon" - for an example of that, look to the Avatar the Last Airbender shipping wars. This is a case where both sides literally interpret the story just differently enough that they come to entirely different conclusions about which girl is Cloud's true love. And if either side reaches out to try and explain their viewpoint to the other, they're just met with "uh, no. You're wrong." Try and explain what Cloud might be thinking in a given scene with one of the girls, why he acts a certain way... "That's not it at all, where are you getting this? Are you delusional?"

Like, I am a Clerith shipper. I have played all the games in the compilation and watched Advent Children. I tried to be as completionist as possible, even. And I came out on the other side of really digging into the story of this game loving Cloud and Aerith's dynamic and pretty firmly convinced they were canon. Or as canon as possible in the timeline where she died.

As any Clerith fan who participates in the fandom would know, if you try and explain your interpretation of these characters and the romance to a diehard Cloti supporter... you're met with a lot of "you're misinterpreting! Cloud and Aerith were just friends! She loved Zack to the end and Cloud loved Tifa since childhood and never stopped! Also Aerith is actually BAD for Cloud because she's too pushy/abrasive. She's not helping him open up, she's just forcing him to go along with her and making him uncomfortable!"

All of this is of course infuriating, but I'd like to think I'm self-aware enough to know we are kind of guilty of the same thing. The majority of Tifa fans are SO happy about the kiss in Rebirth, while we're over here dismissing it because, one it's optional, and two Cloud is "obviously" using Tifa as a rebound or settling for her since Aerith is seemingly unavailable. But that's not how Cloti fans see it at all.

We can talk until we're blue in the face about how TIFA deserves better than Cloud because she shouldn't be the second choice - the one he settles for. But I think most people who really love Cloti genuinely don't see it that way. In their eyes, she's NOT second-best. Cloud loved her all along and this kiss is finally confirming that. And nothing we say will dissuade them, just as nothing they say will actually change OUR minds about Clerith.

It is honestly really difficult for me to try and see the story and romance the way Cloti fans do, but I know the reverse is also true. Both groups of fans interpret the characters and relationships differently. The compilation ALLOWS us to interpret them differently. And this is why the ship war for a game from 1997 is still raging on.

Because both camps are certain they're right, they defend their position viciously. Sometimes that means invading the "other side" to tell them how wrong they are. This discussion/rant was prompted by a Cloti fan on a Clerith vid who wanted to debate MY comment about how wonderful the ship was and how good they were for each other. He was "confused" and "concerned" because Clerith fans were reading the story wrong or warping it to suit our ship.

I wanted to tell him, "buddy that's what YOU'RE doing". I wanted to write a goddamn essay explaining why Clerith is canon actually. But considering in my INITIAL comment that he first responded to I'd already brought up why I thought Clerith was great, and he was IGNORING that... I knew it would be pointless. There is nothing I could possibly say that would change his mind. There is nothing he could possibly say that would change my mind.

As long as both sides of this war are fully convinced they're right, this war is going to be endless and brutal. And that's why my absolute biggest fear for part 3 is an open, ambiguous ending regarding the ships. Maybe it will canonize nothing. Maybe it will canonize BOTH by having the actual ending change depending on which girl the player favors.

Either route will offer no relief to this eternal battle. I would honestly prefer for Cloti to explicitly and unambiguously win than an ending where neither girl does. Because I can accept a loss. I can accept being told that actually I WAS interpreting the story wrong, but I'll only accept it from the text itself. If anything, a Cloti ending might encourage me to go through the entire compilation again trying to view it with that canon couple in mind. I'm sure I'd see things differently, even if I'd always have a place in my heart for Clerith. And I sincerely hope that if Clerith were to win that Cloti fans could do the same.

All I know is that I'm sick and tired of this ship war. I personally have never gone after Cloti fans or engaged in Cloti content with the intent to debate or hate on the ship. But I don't speak for all Cleriths. I'm sure at least a few fans of my ship are guilty too. I have seen many obnoxious Cloti fans invading our spaces to disparage us - mostly on YouTube and Twitch, less here on Tumblr - but I KNOW there are plenty of kind Cloti fans who just happily enjoy their ship and leave us to ours as well.

At the end of the day, regardless of how part 3 ends things, I just wish we could live in peace. Please enjoy your ship. Your interpretation of the text and romance is valid. But so is mine. If neither side can agree, then the best thing to do is leave each other alone.

[sonknuxadow]

ive joked about it before but man i really am the only person on earth who remembers the gun commander is a character that exists arent i . because the other day when the shadow panel was happening and the voice actors were talking about their characters and how they were eachothers only friend and maria was completely isolated from other people i was like What about the gun commander . and i havent seen anyone else point the contradiction out . lmao

[mejomonster]

I may post a bunch about authoritarian thinking later, and how to combat it, but some short important points for anyone: if you think like an authoritarian it means you tend to think in terms of black/white, tend to obey and believe people you consider your leaders and tend to view the world as your own in-group and then outgroups (which you may want dead/not care what happens to them/hate them), you struggle to think critically and empathize, and ignoring the many ways this authoritarian thinking hurts society at large and yourself - importantly, authoritarian thinking leaves you EXTREMELY vulnerable to con artists and cruel leaders because once someone gets into a leadership position in your in-group you tend to trust and obey them. Even if they hurt you, abuse you, lie to you. So a big reason to work on changing your own authoritarian thinking, is to HELP YOU PROTECT YOURSELF and IMPROVE your own safety and situation. You will be able to spot con artists and abusers easier, and protect yourself from them hurting you, if you work on changing your authoritarian thinking a bit. In addition, if you care about your in-group (the group of people you identify with) and your in-group views you as part of it (for example: you're in-group is a church and the church members value your partocipation), then you learning to think in more flexible ways will allow you to both save yourself from abusers AND convince your in-group to stop following an abusive leader and switch to a better one for the group. Win win.

Key ways you can work on your own tendencies toward authoritarian thinking: learn how to empathize with various people, learn how to think critically, and expose yourself to a variety of enviornments/viewpoints/experiences.

For empathy, easy ways to start include: get a pet and practice caring about that pet, read books and practice caring about a character, volunteer in a place outside your in-group (so if you go to church, volunteer at a school or library or theater or fair or daycare or soup kitchen) and practice appreciating the process of helping people outside the in-group. Getting a pet and reading can be some of the easiest initial things you can do. Trying to make new friends and acquaintances with people outside your in-group may also help: talking to a child, coworker, classmate, stramger at grocery store or fair, with respect (such as asking what their favorite toy or show is, why, practicing caring about what makes them happy, practicing interacting with people even when you don't immediately get some tangible thing from them), practice talking with people without arguing or starting a conflict (and if they argue first, it's okay to leave the conversation entirely, at least for a while just try practicing Not Fighting sometimes). Practice listening to people to get to know them (including people in your in-group you may not know well), and be curious about their experiences and the differences/similarity to you as all interesting and not necessarily bad or good (so if you went to public school and they went to private school, hold off on making a judgement about it and just be curious about what their experience was like). On a more surface level, if people like a different musician or actor than you, be curious about what they like and try to imagine why someone might appreciate what they do (you don't have to like that band too, but practice trying to understand why someone else likes it). Its the idea of "imagine you were in someone else's shoes," and having pets, reading about characters unlike you, and getting to know people and their unique experiences helps you practice doing that. Along with practicing holding off on judgement, especially on simple basic things to start: for example trying not to jump to black/white good bad thinking over what people in your group and outside it do... in terms of say what they eat, or the music they like, or their clothes. So if you tend to decide everyone who doesnt go to your church is evil, practice maybe viewing a person with the same religion as you but who goes to a different church as neutral and someone who maybe just never knew your church existed or was raised in a different city and so their life experience may simply have been different - but that doesnt automatically make them evil, just for being born in a different city and not knowing about your specific church existing yet.

To expose yourself to more experiences and people: again consider volunteering at an event outside of your in-group, start a new hobby and join a new discord or fandom group or in-person meet up, go to a new bar or coffee place or grocery store and have small talk, take a class in the community, go to fairs and community events, go to an event in a nearby but different community (like a fair in the next county, a concert, a play you'd like to see). Any new hobby or interest that allows you to meet new people and ask them about their experience with the hobby/interest will help, and you'll help them as you share your own experiences. Even just the act of exploring new possible interests will help you, as you will not have a judgement yet on what you like/dislike and will get to practice deciding what parts of the interest you enjoy and don't based on your experiences. So experience new things, and listen to other people's experiences while being open to letting yourself enjoy things others may dislike, and letting yourseld dislike things others may like. Practice listening to others without automatically assuming their opinion/experience is good/bad (or that there is a good/bad at all, preference for cheeze pizza versus pepperoni can just be two neutral choices which are both fine) or going to be the same for you (you may feel much differently than others and thats fine), practice trying new things where you're allowed to try multiple different ways without any way being particularly good/bad (this is to practice thinking in more varied ways: you're allowed to make 3 different cookie recipes and find each of them yummy and yet not perfect, you're allowed to dislike all 3 recipes but appreciate that your friend loves recipe 1 so you may make it for their birthday, you're allowed to fail the 3 recipes and need to try a few times, you're allowed to make them and decide you don't like making cookies after all and would rather try making a cake next). Trying sports teams may help, hobby clubs, board game tournaments, book clubs (where people have various opinions and you - like them - may have your own unique opinion all of which is fine, no opinion is mandatory or restricted).

To develop critical thinking skills: the two parts above will help somewhat with that. Just letting yourself experience new things, meet new people and hear about experiences different than your own, practicing wondering why someone likes something you may not, practicing liking something because YOU like it after experiencing it and not because someone told you to like it, will all help you figure out what you SPECIFICALLY think. And it will help you recognize that other people all think uniquely, may sometimes disagree, and that thinking differently can be okay. Those are some helpful initial steps to learn to think critically.

Critical thinking skills are important because it helps you figure out what is a fact and real, what is a person's opinion which may be right or wrong or only partly right or wrong or may be something you can't detetmine, how to check if a fact is something you can make decisions with or not explained well enough to rely on. Critical thinking is how you help yourself: if you are abused and your lover hits and punches you, and says "I love you and care about you," critical thinking will help you recognize the fact: you are being injured, help you recognize the actions your lover does of hurting you doesn't match their words that they love you, and helps you make a decision to help yourself - to leave the location where your lover is harming you over and over and go somewhere you are safer and not in danger. Critical thinking, even if you love being in an in-group and love following leadership, will allow you to notice when leaders and in-group members genuinely are helping the group, and when leaders or members are hurting the group. This can allow you to help the group and yourself by recognizing when the group has someone harming others and help you determine how to stop that harm. Even if you think very authoritarian and like that kind of structure in your life, critical thinking skills will help you and those you love.

You can start by figuring out how to make a decision on some basic thing. For example: prepare for the weather today in your city. Look up weather your-city in google, click some weather sites (to check collected data), go outside of your front door and physically feel the weather (data you collect yourself), text a friend who lives somewhere else and ask them what the weather is in your city - and ask them not to check the weather report (get an opinion), perhaps also ask your roommate what the weather is (an opinion from someone with the same ability to literally look outside the window and get their own data in person). From this experience you'll learn that data from a collected organization is probably fairly accurate but not perfect (maybe the weather site said 90% chance rain and when you went outside it was sprinkling but not pouring, and the clouds were dark), maybe your friend's opinion in another town was right or wrong (maybe they guessed and rain was a good guess for a cloudy November in your state) but they couldn't tell you how long until the weather would change, you went outside yourself and that was fairly reliable as you could literally feel the weather (but it cant help you decide if it will still be raining in 8 hours), maybe your roommate's weather judgement was better than the friend in another town but worse than your own judgement of going outside and feeling it. This is an experience to show you how useful facts are versus opinions. If you go outside and it rains on you, it is a fact that it is raining. If your friend in another city says they think the rain stopped, it's their opinion and they may be right Or wrong... you'll have to go outside to find out. The weather report site is somewhat right and can give you estimates of the next several hours of weather so that's helpful, but isn't giving you updates as specific as actually standing outside in the weather on your particular block. You can now see how facts and opinipns are useful, and when they are more or less reliable for making a decision to help yourself. (In this case to prepare to deal with the weathet outside).

Next you can practice critical thinking with less simple questions. You can try to decide "what is the best tires to get for my SUV" or "what coverup will be least likely to give me acne"? You'll look up on google these questions, and see company sites marketing their product and claiming theirs is best. You'll notice a company always says THEIR product is the best, and learn that a company may not give you facts as often as NON company sites that compare many products, or that a company will word facts in a way to imply something that isn't necessarily true. (For example: if a makeup clogs pores, it may not say it does that, it may just not use the word "non comedogenic"... but since you aren't seeing the word "non comdegenic" which means not-pore-clogging, that's a sign the makeup May actually clog pores). You will notice review sites, and reviewers with NO sponsors will tend to be more honest and share personal experience, while sponsored reviews may only mention positives. You will notice more fact based comparison sites, which will list ingredients and what each ingredient does, which will be facts to help you make a decision on which makeup is least likely to give you acne.

You may read articles on certain makeup ingredients and if they're a common allergen, which might explain why some makeup with some ingredients caused you acne before even though none of the ingredients were pore clogging. You are practicing comparing facts, and practicing deciding which sources are reliable or biased (biased sources try to convince you to buy something/believe something), what the bias is about (many articles want you to buy something even though you don't Truly need to buy everything), which reviewers gave biased opinions (if theyre sponsored they get money to convince you to buy something), which reviewers gave personal experiences (and are those experiences useful to you - did the reviewer have similar skin type and issues and allergies?). These are important skills! Learning to do this will help you spend money on things that are more likely to HELP you, to be what you want, and this skill will help you avoid scams and avoid being tricked.

Critical thinking gets much deeper than this, and applies to everything you run into in life - all news articles have biases (they want to convince you of something, there's facts AND opinions and attempts to convince you to do something), all ads are like this (every sponsored post on instagram is trying to convince you to believe and/or buy something), all influencers posts (their job is to convince you to buy products from companies paying the influencer, to get you to invest money in the influencer too - every podcaster/twitch streamer/youtuber/etc), books. All stuff you can find in the world is fact, opinion, some mixture, someone trying to convince you of something, and you using your own experiences to get your own facts (example: its raining on your face when you go outside so fact: its raining) and to decide your own opinions (opinion might be: you like feeling the rain, so you choose not to bring an umbrella, but your lover hates rain so they choose to bring an umbrella for themselves). You use all that information to decide what is fact, what is others opinion and are they trying to convince you of something, what your opinion is, and what to do that will help you.

Here's more information on developing critical thinking skills:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2022/08/05/13-easy-steps-to-improve-your-critical-thinking-skills/ (this has good basic tips for things you can do daily)

https://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/critical-thinking-where-to-begin/796 (a big website on critical thinking)

https://www.monash.edu/student-academic-success/enhance-your-thinking/critical-thinking/what-is-critical-thinking (this has good step by step instructions on how to start to think critically and practice in depth)

[submariini]

discounting helsinki my joker out experience has just been: get barrier somehow, get noticed by nace w my dumb sign, meet nace post gig, kinda meet jan, buy merch. and i still am not listening to them ever.

[ssreeder]

“He didn't want to think about the ramifications of the Fire Nation successfully flying one of those war-balloons over the Lower Ring… The only protection available for those poor people would fall squarely on the shoulders of those new recruits, and they would have to be ready to carry that responsibility. This situation was already a mess and they were still in the planning stages.”

Can’t believe I ignored this last chapter. Good thing Zuko isn’t in one of these meetings or there’d be a fight. Interested to see if this is a redemption for Iroh though to think of the little people or if everyone is just completely fine with the lower ring being burnt to a crisp. Bato clearly has his mind on other things so someone else needs to step up. Jeez

Bato isn’t the only one concerned about this, Suki is also pretty fired up about it in the next chapter… the tension of the upcoming battle gets heavier as we go along.

Unfortunately, there really isn’t much they CAN do to keep the Lower Ring from experiencing casualties…. but how many citizens survive & how bad the destruction is will depend on how many resources they send down there and what their plan of action will be to save lives. (If they even care about saving those lives… many of them being refugees and ‘lower class citizens’)

I am also curious to see if Iroh shows any interest in trying to help the citizens in Lower Ring or if he keeps his focus strictly on keeping the forces from reaching the Upper Ring (where his precious Zuko is)… chaos in the Lower Ring can keep troops from advancing, and there is limited space to flee depending on how Azula advances upon the city… idk. I can’t see it going well, and even Iroh, as powerful as he is doesn’t hold much authority over what the generals do with BSS… He is a tentatively welcomed guest after all. Haha.

we’ll see I guess!! Haha thanks for the ask!!

[justthatspiffy]

.

[intertexts]

my awesome goth ceramics prof liked my influences presentation :]

[mrknifes]

i was wondering why the fuck fallout seemed so popular back in 2017-2018 compared to now in 2024. til i fucking remembered that fallout 4 dropped in november 2015, very close to 2016. so when i started writing for the fandom it was only a couple years since fo4 dropped. jesus fucking christ time FLIES. that was over 6 years ago. HELP.

[swagging-back-to]

im actually floored by how well the girls are getting along. they're all running on the wheel together and just napping. they are literally so chill together rn it's insane

[quotidian-oblivion]

Oh God, we're reading a book in english and my teacher said that the author had written and published a whole novel in just a year.

I was trying so hard not to say anything seeing as I've written two novel-length fics with a bunch of other stories in the span on just eight months.

Ma'am, the bar you say the author has set is too low for me.

[autism-corner]

i love seeing trans people in public its so awesome to get joy from knowing the fact that we exist <3

[hardcorecook]

Insted - Tell Me