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starsheild · 3 years ago

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AU August 2nd- Marriage of Convenience

AU August 2nd 2021- Marriage of Convenience

It was almost as though his time tied on the wagon was the calm in the eye of the storm for Prowl. The cycle had started in a whirl of activity and ended much the same way, and Prowl had only been swept helplessly along by it all.

His processor had skipped a little when he had finally come face to face with the speaker and discovered that the Monsters of Mountains were just mecha. Strange looking mecha to be sure, but beings whose fields he could teek, his optics could observe, and his audios could hear even if his processor could not process the glyphs being spoken for the most part.

The visored mech had lifted his chin forcing Prowls helm one way and then the other as he studied him. When he spoke again it was in heavily accented but perfectly fluent Praxian. “Just ya keep quiet and we’ll get ya mov’d outta here.”

Prowl simply nodded in agreement. It was not as though he had much choice. There was no point in calling for help, for there was no one to rescue him. While his tired processor was sluggishly generating questions as it tried to process his surprise and confusion, in the moment it was so much easier to just obey.

The bindings that had secured him on the wagon were cut away and Prowl swayed as their support fell away, the stiffness of his frame after being restrained for so long catching up with him.

“Easy there.” The stranger murmured, catching Prowl quickly yet gently. He supported Prowl easily until he found his pedes again, then helped Prowl to the edge of the wagon, passing him down to others waiting on the ground, issuing orders in a dialect Prowl couldn’t follow.

Those on the ground handled him just as gently, helping him to the edge of the clearing where Prowl was met with a new sight starting enough to force his processor to focus once more. He had seen images of zap-ponies, of course, but he had never actually thought that he would see a real one, much less ride one. But that was clearly what his helpers intended as they lifted him and placed him on the small beast, guiding his servos to the stiff upright mane that ran the length of the creature's crest pointedly.

One of them spoke quickly, stopping only when Prowl blinked at him stupidly. After a nanoklks consideration and a brief consultation with his companion he squeezed Prowl’s fingers in to the mane. “Hold. Strong. Hold strong?”

That at least Prowl was able to process, and he grabbed hold and nodded. Relieved, the one that had spoken stepped away, leaving Prowl with the single mech to hold the pony. After a few vents to process the strangeness Prowl looked around, watching in silence as the mecha swarmed over the clearing, gathering up everything and loading on an entire herd of zap-ponies like the one he currently sat upon. Even the wagons were quickly broken down and loaded on the beast until there was nothing left in the clearing.

It was then that the first mech that had spoken, the leader, Prowl decided, had appeared at his side and taken command of Prowl’s mount. At his motion the entire company set out, and Prowl had resigned himself to holding on for the ride. The canopy of the crystal forest hid the stars in the sky above, leaving in darkness that his optics could not penetrate and input from his sensor wings that his processor could not interpret.

He wasn’t entirely sure how he reached their destination. The next time he really processed anything he realized he was inside some sort of building and being helped from the zap-pony. A short, dark mech appeared, taking him from the leader and guiding him away.

He led Prowl into a small room, directing him to the berth within, and for the first time Prowl balked.

The mech stopped, then chuckled softly. “Easy mech. Yer not fer me. Not fer no one at the moment. Ya hungry, jus’ wanna charge?”

Prowl started to nod, then caught himself. That was not a yes or no question, and he was suddenly at a loss.

“Ah, ya can speak now, much as ya want. Yer safe here.” There was a hint of sympathy in the dark mech’s tone and field.

“Fuel would be appreciated.” Prowl said, more relieved than he liked at being allowed to speak again. He settled on the edge of the berth, automatically evaluating it as it gave beneath him. Firm, but not so bad. As tired as he was at the moment, Prowl suspected that he could have recharged on the hard floor beneath his pedes with little difficulty. “And, maybe also, your designation?”

The mech laughed. “Sorry mech. Meh manners are slippin’. Ori’ll prolly whap me when ‘e hears. ‘M Ricochet. Rico, if ya prefer.” He fetched a cube of energon from a side table that Prowl had not noticed at first, taking a small sip before offering it to Prowl. “Here.”

“Thank-you.” Prowl accepted the energon and the gesture of goodwill, even if he had not felt anything of the sort necessary. He was a captive, was he not? His first question had gone over well enough, so after a few sips of the energon he dared another.

“May I know what my fate is to be?”

The dark mech, Rico, shook his helm. “That’s for Ori ta tell. He’ll be by, once ya’ve had a chance to fuel and charge a bit. From what ‘ave heard, they don’ make this easy on ya’ll.”

“Those that have been sent before?” A bit of hope crept in to Prowl’s spark. While he still had no idea what was to happen to him, he doubted that they would go through the trouble of fueling and allowing a mech that they were planning to end for whatever reason to rest.

“Yup.” Ricochet nodded in agreement, watching as Prowl finished off the energon. He held out his servo for the empty cube. “Want more?”

“I am not full.” Prowl said as he handed it over. “But I am no longer empty, and I fear that much more will not set well with my tank right now.”

“Smart mech.” Ricochet observed. “I’ll leave ya to charge then. Yer safe in here. Don’ leave the room though.”

“I will not.” Prowl promised.

“Good. Ya need anything, jus’ holler for me or call fer Punch. He’s my ori.”

“He was the one that brought me back?”

“Yup.” Rico smiled, the single glyph answer full of pride and affection. “‘Need anything ‘fore I go?”

Prowl shook his helm, then caught himself as he optics landed on the glowing crystal on the table with the pitcher. “Will you leave the light?”

Ricochet followed his gaze, and actually seemed a bit surprised at the request. “‘Course. Ya can cover it if want it darker, or I can bring another if ya want more.”

“One will suffice. Thank you.”

Prowl back on the berth as the door closed behind Ricochet. He did not hear any sort of lock engage, which surprised him a little. With a soft vent he let his optics go dim and his processor wander. As recharge overtook him his last conscious thoughts were of his brother, and a silent prayer to whoever might be listening that the Priest had kept his word and delivered the message.

***

The creak of the opening door pulled Prowl from recharge. He struggled to sit up, groaning as his processor slowly booted. When his optics finally focused they revealed the other mech he could clearly recall from the dark cycle.

Punch, Ricochet had named him when the dark mech had claimed him as his originator.

“Feelin’ better?” Punch asked as he came closer, offering Prowl a full cube of energon after taking a sip, just as Rico had done before.

Prowl’s optics swept over the mech curiously as he accepted the cube. The bright yellow and blue of his armor was a sharp contrast to Ricochets, though as his processor continued to clear Prowl could see the resemblance in frame and manner. “I am, thank you. Ricochet was very considerate.”

“Not enough ta ask ya yer name.” Punch grumbled. “Since ‘e couldn’t tell meh when asked.”

“My designation is Prowl.” Prowl offered with the appropriate cant of tilt of his helm and doorwings as well as the intonation of his designation that added layers of meaning beyond the mere glyph.

“Well then Prowl, welcome ta Polyhex.” Punch smiled, the expression if not warm, at least as welcoming as the glyphs. “Rico said ya had questions.”

“Many.” Prowl admitted, debating between what he desperately weighed as the most important, and lesser weighted ones that were not as frightening in their potential answers posed by his processor. Finally he settled on the latter. “I must confess I am surprised at hearing Praxian spoken.”

Punch’s expression softened a touch, his frame settling into an even more relaxed posture as he answered. “There’s a good number ‘o us that know it. Ya seem like a smart one, though. Bet ‘cha pick up in Poly quick enough.”

“Then I am to continue functioning,” Prowl sighed, the words slipping from him before his processor could catch the escaping thought.

“‘Course ya are. Don’ know what they tell ya happens ta the mecha they leave any more. Don’t really care, honestly.”

“They tell us nothing of what supposedly happens to the Offerings.” Prowl admitted. “All I know, all I know that anyone knows for sure, is that they are never seen from again.”

“Well, there is that.” Punch nodded in agreement. “Seein’ as how we can’t have ya goin’ back. But we’ve never off’d anyone they’ve offered without cause. So long as ya agree ta stay, ya live here jus’ like one ‘o us.”

“Like one of you? As a… Polyhexian?” Prowl stumbled over the glyph, his stutter the result of a great deal of surprise, and no small amount of anxiety

“Free ta live and enjoy functioning.” Punch confirmed. “Soon as one little detail’s taken care of.”

“And what is that?”

“Yer bondin.”

#AU August 2021 #J/P #Offering #RoughWrite

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dear-systems · 3 years ago

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// NSFW, Intrusive Thoughts (?)

Hi, I’m questioning my possible plurality and I have a few questions if you could spare a minute (if not, totally cool, just ignore me):

How can you tell if a thought isn’t yours? I’ve been struggling with indecent thoughts about things I’m pretty sure I’m repulsed by sexually. It disturbs me because it also includes people I would never even begin to want to please. What got me suspicious was the fact that they’re me in the place of the opposite AGAB—I don’t have what my thoughts picture me having. I feel a disconnect between those thoughts and mine. They almost feel like walk-ins. Could it be a headmate?

How do I know when I’m forgetting something my mom told me to do and not being told that myself (amnesia)? Sometimes she will insist she told me to do something and I do not recollect hearing it at all. It scares me sometimes. How does plural amnesia work?

If I am “leaving the body” then why do I not remember ever not being present? If I do not have an innerworld, how would switching work? What would I remember? What would I see?

Thanks!

Intrusive thoughts from a headmate are, in some ways, the same as 'ordinary' intrusive thoughts from anxiety or OCD, and there's also the complicated factor of intrusive thoughts from PTSD, which can also be similar. I'm not sure how to help you untangle that, however, we would tentatively say that there is some form of dissociation, which potentially could be a system. We're not qualified to help you with that though.

There are a lot of reasons for why you might not be able to remember things your mother has told you to do. It could be DID-but it could be nonplural dissociation, audio processing issues or simply that she said it while your brain was not in listening mode and you were unable to retain the information. It could also be gaslighting or ADHD. While we are a system and we have experienced that, we couldn't for certain say that plurality is what you were experiencing here.

As for amnesia when not fronting, that's standard for hosts, especially hosts who aren't familiar with their amnesia/system. Some systems don't have an innerworld, or can't remember it, and it's common for hosts to be unable to access it, at least at first. The typical experience in DID would be blinking out and finding lost time. You would inherently not be aware of the loss of time, even going so far as to grey out the edges of the switch so that one would be completely unaware of any time loss at all.

There simply is no memory; DID is usually covert, even to the people experiencing it. You would not know you switched at all unless you noticed something in the environment, like that time someone in our system installed animal crossing on our phone. How did it happen? When did it happen? Who did it? I have absolutely no clue! I just saw it was there and it wasn't before.

Of course, it is possible to experience the innerworld while not fronting when you are a host, but it tends to happen under different circumstances and be experienced by those who are already familiar with it.

Tl;dr, we don't know. It could be! It could totally be. But we can't know for sure, especially since these things could all be experienced by singlets.

#ask #anon #questioning system #dissociative identity disorder #bolds added for readability because this got really long

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gra-sonas · 4 years ago

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Day after day this summer, with covid-19 shuttering much of the world, Lily Cowles would enter a small sewing room in her family’s 18th century home in Northwest Connecticut, crawl inside some blankets, and scream. Along with her wails, she’d repeat the same phrases, over and over — all part of a daily ritual that spanned some four hours, until a collection of voices told her they were satisfied. Then she would collect herself, climb out from the blankets and greet her boyfriend who could hear her through the walls in the next room.

“Man, you died a lot of ways today,” he’d say.

“I don’t know why they killed me so bad,” Cowles would reply.

Such were the unusual conditions for Cowles and others when recording the dialogue — and other vocalizations — for the upcoming game “Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War,” the newest addition to the famed and fanciful war sim series. The blanket-draped fort served as the actress’s workstation, with a host of audio producers providing directions via video conference. Occasionally those instructions included imagining a wide variety of fates for her character, requiring lengthy sessions capturing death cries. All of it was part of a months-long, pandemic-related process to produce the game, one that proved both challenging in its never-before-done nature and cathartic for its ample opportunities to exorcise the many anxieties of 2020.

“It just felt so good to scream for that long,” said Cowles, who plays MI-6 operative Helen Park and supplied the character’s voice for both the game’s story and multiplayer modes. She recalled one session in which the game’s audio producers recorded her falling from a 30-story building. “I was like, ‘can we make it 40 floors? I could really use the extra 10 [stories] of just straight screaming.’ It just felt like a real relief.”

The unorthodox routine was shared by “Cold War’s” cast of 125 actors as they pivoted to follow safety protocols related to the novel coronavirus, which temporarily shut down the game’s production in March. The latest installment in the Call of Duty franchise, releasing Nov. 13, was completed with both developers and actors working remotely and overcoming a variety of logistical challenges.

“At the time [in March, when covid cases escalated in the United States] we thought it might be like 20 people or 50 percent of the studio who would have to work from home, and maybe that would be for like two weeks,” Dan Vondrak, Senior Creative Director at Raven Software, said. “And then it was everybody. … In my head, I was thinking, if this thing lasts six to eight weeks, we can’t get it done. That’s impossible.”

For Cowles and the game’s other actors, that meant recording lines of dialogue — and their many screams — from the confines of their homes. That process normally would be captured in large part during live shoots using motion capture suits on a studio sound stage. During the pandemic, capturing those recordings provided a unique challenge for narrative producer Natalie Pohorski and her team.

“One of those areas I thought we were just dead in the water was the external talent [voice overs],” Vondrak said. “I can’t have actors go into a studio. So, how is this going to work? And what Natalie and the narrative team did to get that to work and have people recording at home was unbelievable.”

Before dispersing from the studio, Pohorski and Vondrak estimated they had between 50 and 60 percent of the voice over work finalized. Working with their partners at Activision (the game’s publisher) and Treyarch (“Cold War’s” co-developer), Pohorski and her team shipped the actors crates filled with recording equipment that included helmets wired with microphones, sound mixing boards and materials to improve the acoustics around their homes.

“They sent me this giant Pelican briefcase that looked like I’m an arms dealer,” Cowles said.

Veteran actor Bruce Thomas, who plays the role of CIA agent Russell Adler in the game, already had a 5-foot-by-5-foot sound booth he’d constructed in his apartment adjacent to his kitchen. He’d used it to previously to record voice overs, including for some commercials, but he’d never recorded himself there quite so regularly — or at quite the same volume level. To that end, he sought to get ahead of any potential problems with a kind gesture and a heads-up for his neighbors about any yells they may hear through the walls.

“I delivered cookies and a little note to their doors right next to me and below me,” Thomas said. “I just moved here in January, so I hadn’t really met them yet, and I got a text message from the person below me who was like, ‘Oh my God! You do that for a living? How cool is that? Even if I hear you, don’t worry about it.’”

The conditions also required the actors to perform another role as well: that of audio engineer, recording and tinkering with sound levels to ensure quality and consistency. The studio’s engineers would call actors and walk them through proper setups and troubleshoot issues, but when something went wrong, the actors would have to be the ones to fix it manually. Turns out CIA operatives have the same tech troubles as other remote workers.

“Because of covid, everybody’s home and sharing bandwidth,” Thomas said about the Internet connection in his apartment building. “Sometimes it would just cut right out [during an online recording session]. And sometimes when that happens, a glitch will happen on your laptop and so you have to reboot it.”

The recording process consisted of four sessions per day, every day of the week, according to Pohorski, who also noted they wrapped at a similar time compared to what they’d anticipated in their pre-pandemic production schedule, even as they navigated challenges that would have been easily addressed in their usual studio setting.

“To not be able to just walk up and touch the screen and act out what I was talking about … ‘I want the guy’s head to turn this way,’ … I was trying to do it real time in a video camera,” Vondrak said. “Just the communication of that last 20 percent [of the game] was probably the most difficult.”

The on-the-fly evolution of several standardized processes did carry some fringe benefits, according to both the developers and actors. On the development team, Vondrak noted some people seemed more willing to contribute their opinions to the creative process when they didn’t feel the pressure of speaking up in a formal meeting. For the actors, Cowles said her isolated, remote location led her to take more chances with her character.

“I think I was able to make facial expressions and noises that, in a normal setting, my body would be like, ‘Don’t, don’t, don’t. You don’t want to make that noise. Don’t make that face,’" Cowles said. “But I was alone in this thing, and you know, the context in which we’re working [as characters] is this crazy war zone where horrible things are going down. Right? And no one in that situation is thinking about the sound they’re making or the face that they’re making. … I think that led to a degree of authenticity in my work.”

Another silver lining, according to Vondrak, was the increased flexibility in scheduling follow-up sessions for VO work. Oftentimes VO recording sessions are pegged to specific times of the year when the developers can gather all the actors in one place and free them from their other projects. (For example, Thomas is also the motion capture actor for Master Chief for the upcoming game “Halo: Infinite.”) With everyone working from home, the actors’ schedules became more flexible.

“It was like, wait a minute, we can just go back to these people and have them pop out of their family room, into their closet and record some VO lines,” Vondrak said. “Normally it would have been like, ‘We need some new lines.’ And [the schedulers] would have said, ‘Well, the next pick up session where everyone’s going to be in the studio is June.' It’s [normally] a very slow, formal process."

The flexibility did carry an occasional side effect of home life encroaching on the working world, and vice versa, often providing a uniquely 2020 kind of amusement.

Cowles remembered recording a scene in which her character laments the loss of one of her companions, screaming his name repeatedly as a helicopter whisks her away.

“I came out of the sewing room, and my boyfriend is like … ‘So, who is he?’” Cowles said. “I was like, ‘Don’t worry about it. He’s dead now.’”

#lily cowles #call of duty: black ops cold war #rnm cast interviews #helen park

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nightinngales · 4 years ago

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Hello there, sorry for the question and if you don't feel comfortable with it just ignore it. But the thing is you are the only blog that I follow that talked about adhd and I have read a lot about it on the internet and it seems that my friends kid has a lot of the symptoms but in my country it's not talked about it and there isn't any specialists for that as the kid has been to so many psychiatrists and doctors but they haven't even mention the possibility, all I have read about is from American sites, there isn't even any info about it in my native language. So my question is how do you actually cope with adhd, how can you suppress the symptoms and how it's actually treated?

ok strap in cause this will be long. under a read more because hella long

Treatment Options:

adhd is usually treated with stimulants, such as adderall or ritalin, which at least in the us, are controlled substances and you have to have a new script written every month in order to refill it. there are a few non-stimulant alternatives, like straterra, but i never noticed a difference while i was on them.

How do you cope with symptoms?

most people with adhd, even undiagnosed, end up self-medicating, usually by unconsciously seeking out stimulants that help them focus. lots of non-diagnosed people with adhd end up addicted to caffeine or cigarettes because they are both stimulants and can mimic the effects of medication (for a short time). however, it’s a game of diminishing returns. without moderation, your body eventually builds up a tolerance to substances like this, requiring more and more of it to produce the same effect. in medicine, this is called the “therapeutic level”: the amount of a drug needed in the bloodstream to actually produce an effect.

why is this important? because, basically, even if you self-medicate with stimulants - you can only go so far. you can only drink so much coffee, or smoke so many cigarettes. eventually none of it will help, and merely keep you operating at a baseline, with detrimental effects should you drop off on usage (see: caffeine withdrawal).

what’s more important, especially if you’re not able to be medicated, is learning how to cope and adapt to the symptoms of adhd. this is called compensating. for some this is automatic, as your brain adapts to the deficiencies. but, a lot of the time, it’s actually not possible to just make the symptoms go away. it’s a neurological deficit. no amount of coping skill will magically cure the condition - but you can learn to live with it.

as far as coping techniques go... it depends on the severity of the symptoms, the age of the child, and the type of adhd they have (there’s actually several). what works for one person with adhd won’t work for everyone. my suggestion is this:

identify the child’s “struggle” areas: what do they have the most problem with? for example:

emotional regulation - temper tantrums, massive mood swings, rejection sensitive dysphoria (look for MASSIVE downswings in mood when disciplined), overstimulation (do they get irritable when crowded or too much is going on?)

hyperactivity - this can also present as anxiety in some kids. if your kid isn’t visibly hyper, check for other tells: fidgeting, nail biting, leg shaking, rocking, other symptoms of general anxiety - this can actually be a sign of hyperactivity, and the child finding other ways to burn off or cope with excess energy.

focus, listening, “zoning out” - inattention, unable to stay focused, could also be hyperfixating. as a kid i had an issue where i could hyperfixate and totally tune out anyone who spoke to me. i genuinely would NOT hear things even if people were screaming at me.

audio processing issues - if a kid doesn’t seem to be able to understand when spoken to, or lags behind (ex: asking “what?” and then, seconds later, answering appropriately as their brain processes what was said)

learning difficulties - specifically check for issues with classes focusing on reading (such as their native language), and math in particular. dyslexia and dyscalculia are extremely common with adhd. get them tutoring or extended time on tests

memory issues - does the child seem to say “i forgot” an inordinate amount? it could be a symptom of adhd. people with adhd often have issues with memory.

Once you identify the problem areas, you can work on trying to help that child learn to cope with those issues.

They have issues with emotional regulation or overstimulation? Give them a personal timeout button. Any time that kid needs a break and solo time, let them step away and isolate. It can help them manage their emotions and have a moment to process them in private where they won’t feel judged. It is important however that if you do this, don’t hold it against them. If they feel like you’re going to punish them for taking a time out to isolate, that just defeats the purpose.

For hyperactivity, aggression, or impulsivity, find them an outlet to burn off energy. Get a punching bag, or some kind of active activity they enjoy. Even an active video game could help.

Focus & listening, memory: Unfortunately there’s really no easy way to fix this. This is an issue with a frontal lobe deficiency. The ADHD person can try to come up with ways to manage it, but it will be an uphill battle. To-do lists and post-it notes and all of that type of stuff will not work. Luckily, they will likely get better at this as they get older.

For learning difficulties, support them. Literally just support them. One of the major issues with ADHD is that it can present with RSD - rejection sensitive dysphoria. Any failure (perceived or actual) can send their mood absolutely plummeting into the shitter and kill their self-esteem and confidence. Don’t use blame-y language like “you didn’t try hard enough” or “If you could just pay attention...” etc. They’re trying. Trust me. They’re trying. And if they aren’t, it’s because they tried, and tried, and tried, and continued to fail with no encouragement, so they gave up. Encourage them. Support them. And prop them up when they do fail. Applaud their wins, no matter how small, and minimize their losses - make them realize a failure is not permanent, and they can always recover from it. This is super, super important for ADHD people with RSD because it’s so easy for them to give up on themselves.

With RSD especially, be very careful of criticism, especially with kids. Their emotions are volatile, and RSD can lead to sudden, severe swings into suicidal ideation if it’s bad enough. If that child has RSD, they’re going to need a lot of support until they learn to manage their emotions better.

With memory issues... Jury’s still out on that one. I’ve tried everything from calendars to post-it notes to alarms on my phone and still haven’t found one that actually works.

And keep in mind: ADHD presentation not only differs by gender, but also tends to shift over time as they grow older. No one “grows” out of ADHD, they just get better at compensating for it.

Girls tend to be less disruptive than boys. Less aggression, less acting out, but may still present with inattentiveness or other signs of hyperactivity (such as anxious tics/fidgeting).

And lastly - ADHD tends to run in families. If one kid has it, it’s likely that another kid will have it, or one of the parents will have it, even if undiagnosed. I was diagnosed at 15. My mom was diagnosed 10 years later at 45. She’d spent her whole life compensating for a disorder she didn’t realize she had until she’d asked me one day what it felt like and realized she had a lot of the same issues I did. If possible, the parents should get tested as well. One or even both of them could be living with ADHD and not even know it.

#adhd #Anonymous

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thedreadvampy · 4 years ago

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I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about disability and neurodivergence over the past couple of years (I’ve actually just now accepted a contract to freelance write a section of policy on disability and ableism for my old workplace. I have done this because I hate myself and starting a new job with 1.5x the hours as my old one JUST WASN’T ENOUGH STRESS)

and I have decided I REALLY take issue with the concept of "disabled”. like. at all. I think the construction of “disabled people” is at the root of SWATHES of what’s wrong with our society and how we treat people with specific access or wellbeing needs.

like I think it’s basically fact at this point to take a postmodern approach and accept the common framing of “people are as disabled as society makes them” ie disability is a social construct and who is disabled is purely a matter of who society isn’t willing to work around as default (the usual example is short-sightedness, which historically was a substantial disability but is barely noticeable in a society where using adaptive tech for it is normalised)

but I wanna push it further because either EVERYONE is disabled or NOBODY is disabled imo. “disabled” is a broad enough category to be fundamentally meaningless. it’s a useful umbrella term for like...people whose physical and psychological needs and personhood are often diminished, overlooked or ignored, but it’s also very arbitrary and contextual what qualifies as a disability.

which is kind of what I’m saying about person-centred parenting (which. pinch of salt I am not a parent). EVERYBODY has special needs because everybody’s needs are different. And my experience has been that positing Capital-D Disabled as a specific, blue-badge-holding, Very Serious category, and limiting your concerns about access and wellbeing needs to disabled people is:

a) unhelpful to people who aren’t disabled per se but who benefit from specific accomodations (for a very trivial example, “having shit internet” isn’t a disability, but it’s still an access need that things like video transcripts, image descriptions and alternate communication routes will help meet) b) unhelpful to people who are “disabled-ish,” who don’t feel able to clearly identify as disabled, or who don’t know they’re disabled (which to be honest is so many of us because invisible disabilities, partial sensory or motor loss, and mental health problems make up the bulk of disabilities and those are often invisibilised or downplayed) c) unhelpful to “properly disabled” people, because it creates a huge othering effect. drawing a hard line between “normal” and “disabled,” or even imagining that that’s a line that exists, allows disabled people to be dehumanised or treated as the sum of their Tragic Suffering, as opposed to the Normal Abled People.

“Disabled” is, as I say, a useful generalisation/abstraction sometimes, but when we’re talking about actual material things (whether that’s material need or material change) it’s not a useful category. I honestly don’t think we can create a society which consistently confronts ableism while we’re trying to operate in a binary framework centred on “disabled” vs “not disabled” or “neurotypical” vs “neurodiverse”. We need to be willing to throw out the whole construction of “abled” and instead commit to handling needs without interrogating cause.

This DOES NOT MEAN that doctors, therapists, individuals, communities etc shouldn’t try to diagnose, treat or understand conditions, or that we should throw out the idea of labelling condition groups. It just means that we need to flip how we look at it, and take a descriptive not prescriptive approach. We need to understand that these labels (whether something as broad as “disabled” or as specific as “Ehlers-Danlos type 2″) are useful as groupings, but that the function of them is to give a general idea of what issues might arise and what might help.

Every person with, say, EDS type 2 is using that to refer to the same symptom grouping, but a) they’ll all manifest, experience and describe symptoms their own way and b) they’re all individual people with other shit going on in their minds and bodies, and so what helps one of them may absolutely fuck another up. And somebody who doesn’t have EDS type 2, but who finds using a wheelchair helpful, potentially has more in common with EDS patient A (who uses a wheelchair) than Patient A has with EDS patient B (who has no mobility impairment but huge digestive problems).

And like. ok. I’m not hearing impaired but I do have audio processing issues, so subtitles are really, really useful to me. I’m not, technically, disabled in that way. it would be dodgy for me to claim I was. but it’s still super useful for me to feel able to request that. and then we have to ask - where’s the line? I’m disabled because my knees are fucked at 27. but if my knees were in this state at 80 I’d be in rude health. but if I was 80, it would still be an absolute pain in the ass to climb 5 flights of stairs, even though contextually I am healthier than expected.

Or like...I was chatting to a pal about disability disclosure and all the little things you don’t notice affecting your life and therefore don’t report or ask for help with. I said “I have agoraphobia and there’s this like. physical resistance I have to push through to leave the house so I stand around going ‘oh no I have forgotten something’ because I’m procrastinating on having to go outside.” She said “oh I also do that but in my case it’s because I usually have forgotten something so I’m always paranoid.”

forgetfulness isn’t a disability (except when it is). and ultimately although the root is different the material impact is broadly the same. and the world is full of things we find hard that others find easy, but that may not be socially understood as disabilities. I just think we’d get a lot further if we took a solution-centred view on this. it does matter to me why I can’t leave the house, because how I handle it is affected by what the problem is. but it shouldn’t matter to eg my work why I need to give myself an extra 20 minutes to get out of the house (whether it’s agoraphobia, forgetfulness or something else) as long as we can, between us, figure out a workaround.

anyway that’s why I keep textdumping on that parenting post. because we shouldn’t have to ask “does my child have ADHD” or “is my child autistic” or “is my child trans” in order to justify finding ways for them to manage being restless, depressed, overwhelmed, manic, afraid, angry etc, or to let them wear what they feel right in and self-describe how they want to. It might be helpful to know if they’re ADHD/autistic/trans/whatever, because it can help you get ideas and resources for strategies, but it shouldn’t be necessary, and “because this thing is harmless and makes them safer/happier/calmer” is fundamentally a more important justification than “because they are autistic”

idk. treat people as people. try to do right by them. don’t build a hierarchy of Normal and Abnormal problems. just meet common needs and create space for people to express their needs without needing to disclose their whole medical history or litigate their disability status.

(TO BE CLEAR: in the current world legislation specifically related to defining disability as a protected characteristic and disabled people as at-risk/special interest groups are VERY NECESSARY. but in a world governed by an expectation of tailored accessibility and wellbeing approaches I think that necessity would at the very least be heavily reduced. and in communities trying to do more than the bare minimum to create an anti-ableist space I think the best single thing we can do is almost always to remove gatekeeping and disclosure barriers to asking for adaptations)

#none of this is stuff that hasn't been said 10000 times by people more experienced than me #but I'm just having a ramble

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linguaphilelinguist · 4 years ago

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hearing issues as a language learner and a linguist

if any other language learners have experience with this, i’d love to hear from yall.

i’m a person who has been a language learner since I was a kid. I have been studying, and wanting to study, languages since I was in elementary school. it’s something i’ve always been passionate about.

I learned in the past year or so that i likely have fluctuating hearing loss. the reasoning requires some lengthy explanation, so I don’t want to bore anyone that doesn’t care to know.

it’s not always an issue, but at times, it feels like I can’t focus on words almost at all. it’s like I hear sounds but not theyre not processing. i’ll be doing my korean assignments for class, and i’ll be on an audio part and I get so frustrated because it’s like I just cannot understand what i’m hearing at all. i’ve been avoiding the doctor to find out for sure because i’m scared, even though I know it’ll be better if I get it fixed.

so often I just get so upset and down because I feel like if I continue to lose my hearing, i’ll lose the main thing i’m passionate about. i’ll no longer be able to do my dream career. my major in linguistics will be so hard to use if I can’t even hear.

if anyone else is in a similar position as I am, i’d love to hear from y’all about your experiences and if anyone wants to talk about anything like this feel free to reach out, i’m happy to hear from others about anything.

but hey, on the bright side, at least I already was studying sign language before I found this out aha. thanks past me for that being something you really wanted to do.

#language #american sign language #sign language #langblr #language learning #linguistics #linguist #asl

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shardminds · 5 years ago

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fortune favours the brave

pairing: emma swan/killian jones rated: m (for language & depiction of injury & just to be safe) wc: 5189 pacific rim!au

She passes the pseudo-drift but Killian can’t quite meet her eyes afterwards and Emma catches herself wondering, with clenched fists, if it’s all worth it.

just a warning, this is an open-ended work, meaning the ending is up to your own interpretation and i most likely will not be writing anything else to clarify... unless i decide to have another crack at this au down the line and completely rewrite the whole thing but i am a lazy bitch above all else with too many things to do so please don't get your hopes up!

my initial tag for this was "dealing with the weight of a neurological bond that reveals a lot more about yourself than you’d like." but ao3 said it was too long

this was intended as a birthday present to myself but it's 12 days late and i won't apologise.

also available on ao3 ♠

@artistic-writer is my saviour and i love her.

As soon as the pincer hits her spine, the simulation is over. Quicker than death could ever have captured her, quicker than the pain she was expecting in her lower back, quicker than blinking past a fallen beast and thinking it long past dead. If it were real, she wouldn’t have to deal with the disappointment of her superiors as they marked another tally in the opposite column of their tablets.

Kaiju: 3, Swan: 0.

Pixels dissipate into the air, audios and visuals power down as the relay gel leaks from her display, Killian sighs over the comms and the four walls of the training centre scream failure. Unclasping the plug at her neck, she collapses to the floor. Defeated.

“If your intention was to get paralysed, love, congratulations.” He’s exasperated, words clipped, and she knows he’s probably running his hand through his hair in that way he does or rolling his eyes or praying for this to be over. She can picture it so well because she’s been there, supervising rangers through the same process. That had been her job, her safe space. Then Marshal Mills had coerced her into a compatibility trial with the promise of a bigger bunk and a night off with the last bottle of bourbon on deck. Suddenly, nowhere was safe anymore. “It’s just a simple test,” she’d said, rolling her eyes at Emma’s reluctance to even try. “What harm can it do?”

If he catches the curses under her breath as she stands, he doesn’t let on.

Killian had managed to pass her simulated drift space on the second attempt—eviscerating a CAT 3 with ease and ignoring the distractions along the way. He didn’t talk about what stopped him the first time. Neither did she.

She was not so lucky, struggling not to forget herself in the memories of his past. Each step deeper into the consciousness he’d moulded dragged her further away from the task at hand. Each step closer to finding out what keeps Killian Jones awake at night is a step away from truly knowing him. She felt it all. His pain, grief and loss coming in overwhelming waves, only serving to intensify her own. Each time she failed, she understood him a little bit better and lost herself a little bit more.

Robin said it’s the trauma that helps their compatibility and the resilience in light of such pain. Will said it’s because they’re both insufferable cunts.

You can’t choose your drift partner.

“Again.” Adjusting the helmet slightly, she pulls up her vitals on the inner screen. BP a little high, heart rate too, brainwaves stable. Good enough. If she could just get past the random-access brain impulse triggers, the lure of Killian’s fabricated conflicts, she’d be showering the fabricated city in fabricated Kaiju Blue.

(Of course, she’d never really do that. Regina doesn’t need a reason to resent her.)

“Swan, take five.” The comm in her inner ear buzzes. Killian, again. There’s a tension to his tone, as if he could snap at a moment's notice. It’s not easy, having someone else inside your head—even when it’s not real. It’s worse when every inch of it is projected in agonisingly high definition to your commanding officers. Emma’s been living through his trauma while he’s been forced to watch it back, time and time again. She’ll get it next time.

Next time.

Always next time.

“No, count me down.”

“Swan—”

“My vitals are fine! No bleeds, no dizziness, motor function all good.” The CNS link connects to the back of her neck with a twist of her wrist and a dull click. Power vibrates through the plug suit, humming like the anticipation Emma can feel beneath her own skin. “One more try, I’m almost there.”

There’s no response from Killian. No quip or complaint. He’s silent as Emma closes her eyes and opens them to the darkness of the drift. The next voice she hears is Robin’s.

“Five.”

Her world is blue. Warped. Memories zipping past her that she does and doesn’t remember. Emma recognises one woman’s face from her previous pseudo-drifts. She has a name somewhere.

“Four.”

The woman walks off to some kind of middle distance, between nothing and nowhere. She indicates for Emma to follow with the crook of her finger and a smile.

“Three.”

It’s not Emma she’s seeing.

“Stop chasing it, Emma. Two.”

Taking a breath, Emma wills away the apparition, tuning in to the pounding of her own heartbeat and that of someone else’s — Killian’s, strong and steady. It grounds her.

“Prepare for Neural Handshake.”

When the Kaiju pincer swings for her, she slices it clean off.

She passes the pseudo-drift but Killian can’t quite meet her eyes afterwards and Emma catches herself wondering, with clenched fists, if it’s all worth it.

A CAT 3 and two CAT 2’s attack what’s left of San Francisco a week later in the largest triple event in recorded history and yes, it’s definitely worth it.

Ruby and Graham are deployed in Lone Wolf, along with two Jaegers from Alaska. The fight, like all fights, is raw and too close. Always too close. They return half a day later, lucky to have made it out with their lives. The bags under Jefferson’s eyes carry the weight of the world as he reports back to the bridge with the news.

They’ll never pilot again.

Killian finds her later, sat atop Frozen Serenity with a half-empty hip flask and a cigarette. He doesn’t question her or the tears she wears. He holds her, one arm wrapping around Emma’s shoulders, pulling her into his chest. It’s too close, too much but not enough. It’s times like this—times of wordless understanding—that she’s glad of the bond they supposedly have.

Thankfully, he doesn’t waste his words with reassurance. Regina had spent the last thirty minutes on the comms for everyone to hear. The threat was eliminated; victory, but at what cost? Ruby and Graham had been wheeled in on gurneys, surrounded by medics and techs and escorted directly to isolation. Their Jaeger followed shortly after, complete with thick gashes to its middle and a viciously pierced conn-pod leaking rivulets of coolant and Kaiju blood. It didn’t take Emma long to see why they’d ushered the pilots away.

Sneaking off had been a non-issue.

“Next time,” The warmth of his body offers only slight comfort from the chill of the hangar but she’s grateful for it. “It’ll be us.”

“We might not even drift yet. The simulation is nothing like the real thing.” The lump in her throat has her choking around the words. The fragility of it all should frighten her, but it doesn’t. She’s not scared. There’s no time for fear.

“We will.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s called trust.” When he smiles, sad but hopeful, the tears come again.

It’s all worth it, even if she loses herself in the process.

Jolly Roger, a Mark 3 with a history of fallen pilots, had been in pretty bad shape when Emma had seen it come through the east coast bunker a year ago. With a compromised pod and basically no left side, it was a mess.

Will had already sized the wreck up for parts before it’d even docked in the hangar.

“There’s no way it’ll run again. Core to Wolf, pod fixed up for Snow’s Mark 4, shocks to whoever needs them most and the rest for scraps and refurbs.” He’d said, around a mouthful of instant mac and cheese. Emma rolled her eyes, grabbing a bite of her own meagre rations. “Bet as much as you want, you know I’m right.”

After six months, when Marshal Mills announced they needed a co-pilot for Jolly, Emma collected her prize with a smile and a disgruntled “Fuck off.” from the mechanic.

Seeing it now, all shiny and new, with a fresh core, updated weapon systems and a slick paint job was like looking at a different machine entirely. Killian has the same awestruck glaze to his expression that she has.

He says something under his breath that sounds like “I missed you.”

Three days later, atop the bunker looking out at the wasteland the eastern seaboard has become, Killian finds her again. The horizon is permanently tinged green these days, thick with smog rising from the polluted city that used to be Boston. It’s something else now, something new entirely. New York had really done a number on the east coast.

“So,” he starts, a six pack in his good hand and a thick file—her file—in his mechanical one. “It seems that the fate of the earth relies on us getting intimate, love.”

Emma shrugs his comment off with an eye roll. “In your dreams.”

“In my dreams, we wouldn’t be drinking this backwash,” she catches the bundle of cans as it falls to her lap and pulls two free of the casing. Killian slumps down beside her, a welcome warmth against her side. He’s always warm. “And you’d be wearing a lot less.”

“Pervert.” Her cheeks flush from the windchill and not because of the wink he sends her way as he takes a can from her lap.

He shrugs, gulping back his beer. “I’ve been called a lot worse.”

“Why does that not surprise me?”

“I doubt anything could, lass.”

He reads in relative silence, which Emma appreciates, only pausing to ask questions at the redacted statements in her story. There’s no point in hiding anything from him now—soon, he’ll see it all. There’s something about Killian Jones that she trusts and she’s not exactly sure why.

“You were there? In New York?” He thumbs the report sheet, filled with more censoring than words. She doesn’t remember much of it; being eighteen, the toils of pregnancy, wrongful imprisonment, the first Kaiju attack on the east coast, holding her child to her chest as the walls crumbled. The memories are all so distant, it almost feels like someone else lived them.

Emma nods. “Unfortunately.”

Killian doesn’t push for the details; all the relevant ones are written on the sheet he’s holding. How they’d found her bleeding beneath rubble and dust, clutching the bundle of blankets and the body within. There hadn’t been time for a funeral.

She’s shaking when he takes her hand.

“It was my first deployment. On a CAT 4, no less.” He traces circles around her knuckles as if they’re anything but strangers. She doesn’t have it in her heart to stop him. “Cataclysm, they called it. The ugliest bloody thing I’d ever seen. Liam, the comedian he is—was, spent the whole fight calling it all kinds of names as we tore it to pieces bit by bit.” He takes another sip of his can, eyes locked on the horizon. “I felt him die that day.”

His thumb doesn't stop tracing its pattern, but she grips his hand tighter—part shock, part understanding.

“Jewel never stood a chance. The emp left us wide open and the blasted thing used its last breath to launch at the conn-pod and—”

“You don’t have to, Killian.” She whispers, beer forgotten at their feet. “You don’t have to relive it.”

“But I do. Every time I step foot in the hangar, I relive it. Every time I drift, or spar or train. Every time I look in the mirror I see his face staring back at me.” He sighs, letting his posture slip further. He’s no longer a Ranger. He’s a lost boy. The grief he carries, the guilt, is something she recognises. “I miss him, Emma, and there’s nothing I can do about that.”

Wind blows, alarms ring, sun filters through the murky atmosphere and casts them both in its golden glow and Emma Swan pulls him in for a hug.

He stiffens in her embrace before leaning into it, letting the tension dissipate beneath her touch. It’s intimate in a way that doesn’t need words and her breath catches at the sight of a teardrop on his cheek.

Putting space between them again is hard, but necessary.

“I know you’ve probably heard this a thousand times, but you better be prepared to hear it a thousand more. It’s not your fault. It was never your fault. It will never be your fault. We’re Rangers. We’re disposable. The world is ending and we’re the first line of defence. If we fall—” He’s watching her so intently, hanging on her every word.

There’s no way to soften the blow of a death sentence.

“We’re going to die in a Jaeger, Killian, that much is inevitable. We won’t grow old. We won’t pass in our sleep. We’ll go screaming at the hands of a Kaiju and, I don’t know about you, but I plan on taking a fair share of those fuckers with me in the process.”

A nod.

A squeeze.

A gulp.

He’s still holding her hand when they return to the artificial warmth of the hangar.

He used to drink black coffee, dark and bitter. She hates it, preferring sweetness over caffeination in her warm beverages but getting her own would require a trip to the cafeteria earlier than she’d like to be awake. A few seconds of grimacing over the taste is worth it for the extra half hour of sleep. Killian’s an early riser—of course, he is. It’s a wonder they’re compatible at all.

Killian initially tried to put up a fight over it, hold it out of her reach like kids on the playground or finish it off before Emma could even think of crawling out of her quarters, but she wore him down, little by little.

They’re working on Jolly with Will when she takes a sip, stealing the travel mug from his hand and already half wincing for the unsweetened assault. When surprisingly palatable coffee hits her tongue, she almost chokes. It’s not half bad; no acrid punch of burnt grounds, no grainy aftertaste. Instead, it’s sweet. Creamy. Not what she was expecting at all.

“What’s this?” She takes a sniff at the lid incredulously. Is that… syrup?

“According to Ms Lucas, this is what poses as a caramel latte these days. Filled to the brim with sugar, spice and all things nice, just how you like it.” Will hands him a tablet, outlining the Jaeger’s current specifications. Emma understands enough of it to get by—she’s more attuned to reading neural charts, not the gibberish the engineers put out—but Killian revels in the details. He doesn’t even look her way as he speaks, fully engrossed in the graphs, comparisons and visuals. It also means he doesn’t notice Emma eyeing up how good he looks with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and a grease stain on his left cheek. Just the right amount of dishevelled. “Is there any way we can drop a few tonnes to help increase speed and manoeuvrability?”

Will peers at the tablet, overseeing the stats with a critical eye. “No, mate. Not without losing vital armouring.”

“What about swapping out the nuclear core?” Killian hums, swiping to the next screen.

“Don’t be daft, Killian. It’s brand new.”

“The arc-whip?”

“I’m gonna cut in and say no on that one.” Emma interjects, surprised that she even managed to drag her attention away from the warm, sweet beverage in her hands or the enigma of a man that let her take it. The arc-whip is her preferred weapon—combining both distance and close combat, great for the CAT 2’s and smaller CAT 3’s that like to stay just out of reach or dragging back the larger beasts from getting further inland. She’s the one that suggested it be added to Jolly’s arsenal in the first place.

“Come on, love.” Handing her the tablet and tapping a few menus, Killian points out Jolly’s stats without it. Their speed would be improved and their power longevity, but they’d be sacrificing their range completely. “Having an arc-whip and a plasma cannon is overkill.”

The mechanic chuckles, coming to her other side and throwing an arm around their shoulders. “Technically, the plasma cannon is overkill anyway. Massive power drain.”

“Don’t you start.” Killian bats his arm away and Will cocks an eyebrow in challenge.

“Just because I’m right.”

Before either of them can respond, the hangar shudders as alarms blare. The alarm they all dread.

The Breach.

The CAT 2—Axefury—with armour piercing spines and nasty blade-like mandibles, emerges just off the coast of Florida, stalking towards the shore.

Frozen Serenity is deployed, piloted by sisters Anna and Elsa.

The fight takes an hour.

Killian brings her another coffee as they watch the battle from the command centre. He doesn’t say a word, wrapping his arm around her shoulder as she tenses against the cold realisation.

It could’ve been them.

Next time, it will be.

When he knocks her on her ass, straddling her waist with his sparring staff pressed to her throat, Killian’s eyes are the bluest she’s ever seen, and it takes her a second to remember where they are. He smirks, allowing her space to breathe while keeping her thoroughly pinned down.

“Normally, I’d prefer to do other more enjoyable activities with a woman on her back.” With a voice like that, velvet and grit, Emma’s not sure if she wants to push him away or pull him closer. The watchful eye of Marshal Mills keeps her straight. The last thing anyone needs is a show. She struggles just enough to make him cocky before retaliating, using his own weight against him.

In a heartbeat, he’s the one on his back, head caught in a lock between Emma’s thighs. In the time it takes for him to realise what’s going on, eyes widening as he realises where he is, it’s too late. His weapon clatters to the edge of the crash mat, useless.

“For future reference,” She pants, squeezing her legs tighter until Killian taps out against the floor. “I prefer to be on top.”

He laughs and, despite the patrol alarm blaring down the hall and Regina’s eye roll, the world feels a little lighter.

When they drift in Jolly for the first time, the phantom woman from the pseudo-drift is nowhere to be seen. There’s a blip where Killian gets caught up in visions of destruction and earthquakes and rivers of blue eroding the streets of New York, but just as Emma feels the echoes of her memories in his mind, they’re gone. He’s in her head. An uncomfortable yet reassuring presence that she never thought she’d be able to endure again.

“Neural bridge initiated and holding strong. Well done, guys.” Robin chirps over the speakers, dragging them out of the initial drift space and back to their shared reality. She lifts her left arm as Killian lifts his right and they join the jaeger’s metallic palms in a salute that rumbles through the bowels of the hangar.

Cheers erupt from the comm lines as scientists and pilots and soldiers line the walkways and balconies to celebrate their achievement.

She can feel the haze of his irritation through the link.

“We’re another shot at hope for them.” Her uncalibrated right-hand takes his uncalibrated left wrist just above the brace of his prosthetic. He doesn’t flinch but his thoughts stutter, interlaced with images of her soft smile and memories of each time they’d sparred, each stolen hour on the rooftops, each close encounter, each moment that could’ve been an almost, or a maybe. Emma pauses just long enough to imagine What if?

She shakes them away. They owe each other that much.

“We’re a suicide mission.” He’s right and his voice buzzes in the back of her skull. If the comm deck picked up on his words, they don’t respond.

“Yeah,” she lets his arm fall back to his side, making sure her left side—the one that’s wired into the eight thousand tonne government-approved death machine—stays relatively still. “But it’s worth it.”

“Is it?”

She can’t tell the difference between his words and his thoughts right now.

Static crackles in the conn-pod before Robin’s voice calls out again. “Ready to take her for a spin?”

She kisses him, with trembling palms pressed to his chest. Because she wants to. Because she can. Because, more than anything else, she isn’t ready to die. Not now. He is slow to respond, one hand on her shoulder ready to put distance between them at a moment's notice, the other at her waist, pulling her closer. The corridor leading to their quarters is empty and, beneath the harsh light, he tastes like the coffee they’d shared for breakfast.

He doesn’t push her away. She’s grateful for that.

The absence of Killian in her head should be a relief but it isn’t. It feels… empty. The absence of a presence that had made itself at home. She’d worked with rangers for years, ever since the hangar took her in, learning the in’s and out’s of the neural bridge and working to better align pilots with an initial pseudo-drift before putting them through the real thing.

She’d never expected to like it.

It’s exhilarating.

The expiry date they have hanging over their heads is unavoidable now. They’re compatible, truly compatible, doubting that is no use to anyone and despite whatever lead them both to the corps, whatever it is she catches glimpses of when they drift, she trusts him.

Fingers still trembling and head thick with fog, Emma trusts him.

“That was—”

A mistake.

Long overdue.

A one-time thing.

Just the beginning.

“Worth it.”

“Emma—”

“Be quiet.”

She snakes a hand around his waist, using his surprise to yank him closer into the alcove, away from prying eyes. Their dark uniforms blend in the shadows. Chest to chest like this, Emma can barely catch her breath. The cold steel pipe against her back does nothing to dissuade the heat he’s putting out—seriously, how is he always warm? It’s impossible to avoid his gaze either, the intensity of it only magnified with their proximity.

There’s questions there—so many questions—but he doesn’t have to ask them. She knows.

Killian’s tongue darts out to wet his lips.

She knows.

David and Snow walk past none the wiser, caught up in a discussion about something or other. Emma can’t focus enough to listen in, too distracted by everything in her body that screams for her to pull Killian closer and slam their mouths together until they forget about the rest. She holds her breath until the other rangers round the corner at the end of the hall.

“Mills hasn’t cleared Humbert or Lucas for visitation. We’ll be turned away.” Killian whispers, mouth so close to her ear that she can feel his words better than hearing them. His cheek catches hers as he pulls back but he doesn’t get far, her hand still pressed to his side, holding him in place. His brows raise in surprise.

Her palm tingles against the empty air when she lets go.

“Let me do the talking.”

He nods, following as she exits into the corridor, only a half-step behind.

They don’t have clearance. The med bay doors beep dejectedly as Emma’s ID card fails to pass the security check. Will had promised it would work, he’d sworn. Either he lied, already ratted them out to the Marshal or—

Victor Whale.

“Mills already has her reports delivered to her directly every hour,” he sighs, tugging off his gloves, surgical mask and running a free hand through his hair. Emma can see the dark roots coming through. There’s no market for salon-quality peroxide at the end of the world, apparently. “With the intention of alleviating the need for rangers like yourselves to check in. Can’t you go be annoying somewhere else? I don’t have time to file insubordination paperwork, I’m already understaffed.”

Killian reaches out, pleading, his eyes wide and blue and honest. He grabs the doctor’s forearm with his mechanical hand.

“Please, mate. Just five minutes.”

Whale’s brow furrows focused on the prosthetic gripping his arm. The fear of disciplinary action outweighs a lot of things in the hangar.

She’s pale, too pale, and riddled with tubes and drips and monitors that beep along with the pace of her heart. The burns, blistered and seeping, are tinged blue with the toxic sludge that courses through Kaiju veins. Blue burns, as they’re colloquially referred, aren’t uncommon. There are ointments and salves to calm the low-level contact burns and sprays to neutralise the toxins in the acid. What’s left of the governments have put extensive measures in place to ensure that stuff like this doesn’t happen to the general public.

They don’t seem to care for rangers.

As Ruby’s skin sloughs from the slightest friction of the sterile sheets, Emma can feel the first clutches of fear curl around her throat.

Corpselike. That’s the only word that comes to mind. Ruby, once so full of life, has never looked so… not, and Emma can’t help but fall into step with the ventilator that’s currently breathing for her as if somehow it makes a difference. The steady whirr of the machine only working to wind up the anxieties simmering beneath the surface of her skin.

Next time, it’ll be them.

Next time, it’ll be her.

Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale.

“We’re having to keep her under.” Someone —Victor? — hums, ignoring them both to look over the digitised chart at the foot of her bed. “There’s a lot of irrevocable damage that we’re still looking into while repairing what we can externally.”

Inhale.

“What about Gra— Ranger Humbert?” Killian's hand hasn’t left hers since they entered and, for what it’s worth, she’s thankful for the anchor and the ever-present warmth he offers. His presence is grounding and his words reflect her thoughts when she can’t quite reach her own.

Exhale.

It’s too much.

Inhale.

“More of the same”

Exhale.

They never should’ve come

His lips taste of salt.

The inevitability of death.

It burns.

“I don’t want to lose this.” she pants, soft against Killian’s lips as he smiles and steals it away. Like the future they don’t have. That she so painfully wished they could have. “I—”

His kisses trail to her ear, each one as gentle as the last. Too soft, too delicate. It terrifies and excites her how something as small as a kiss can melt her resolve to nothing. Any shadow of doubt disappearing with each step they take closer to the inevitable. After everything that had happened, from sneaking into the med bay, drowning the images with the last of that damn bottle of bourbon that started all this and sparring until they were both bruised and beaten and breathless, sex had been the last thing on her mind. It had crept up on her, crept up on them both, and it was impossible to deny.

That first rooftop rendezvous, first spar, first kiss, all those weeks ago, had cemented this. She can see that now.

Closing what little distance there is left between them, Killian walks her backwards until her thighs bump against the solid table behind them. “You won’t, love. I’ve got you.”

Each touch, each glance, each gasp is another goodbye.

His prosthetic rests on her waist as his other makes light work of the fastenings of her uniform, and she urges him on with a moan. She’s thankful they made it back to his quarters. They won’t make it to the bed.

Emma searches for answers as he pulls off his shirt, praying something in his eyes will reassure her that this—whatever this is—is okay, that they’re not terrible people for finding something worth fighting for at the end of the earth, anything to provide even a modicum of hope that maybe, just maybe, they’ll survive just long enough to have a chance at finding out if it is. She clutches at his shoulders, with nails biting into his skin, and breathes.

She doesn’t find the answers. Instead, she finds herself.

Scared and afraid, clinging to the last comfort she has left.

Three words bloom, fade and crumble in her mind, as fragile as a leaf on the wind and, before she can even speak them, Killian nods.

“I know.”

Somewhere deep inside her chest, behind broken walls and the rubble of a past life, something long since broken, beats.

Emma wakes up to warmth. An all encompassing warmth surrounding her so completely, an aura of heat welding together the cracks that had once debilitated her heart. So familiar, and pure and yet so foreign at the same time.

Each beat of her heart echoed by a shadow.

Each exhale mirrored by that of another, a soft caress against her nape.

The solid and comforting press of a body—his body—against her back, bringing forth memories of the night previous so slowly, like a crack in a dam; first a drip and then a flood. The synchronicity. The passion. The mutual need to just Be.

The absence of all thought except one.

Life is just too fucking short.

As if summoned by her mental recollection, Killian’s arm wraps around her waist. His lips ghost against the skin of her shoulder blade and the kiss he presses to her neck brings a smile to her face.

“Good morning, Swan.” He purrs, voice gravelly and wrapped in sleep. Damn, if Emma had only known he sounded like that first thing sooner—

The thought catches her off guard.

It’s so… normal. Domestic.

She could get used to it. She wants to get used to it.

“Mor—”

The spell shatters. The facade peels away to reveal the truth and the bliss that had wrapped her up in its glow is gone. Reality hits.

The blood-curdling scream of the one alarm they pray will never ring.

The Breach.

Robin’s voice screeches out over the comms in a panicked shout, followed by the calm and commanding call of Marshal Mills. Her own name and rank is called, along with Killian’s. Emma’s blood runs cold when the realisation hits.

A CAT 5.

All units to report.

Approaching New York.

Killian doesn’t move for what seems like an eternity, lips still pressed to her skin in an everlasting kiss, as if time has somehow warped around this very moment, stretching seconds into minutes, hours. Allowing them a chance to come to terms with what must happen next.

Their fates were sealed the second they stepped foot in the hangar.

Emma wrapped in a hospital gown. Killian in a battered, blood-stained plug suit.

“It’s okay.” He whispers, already drowned out by the blaring siren that fills every corner of the room. Emma can’t tell if he’s saying it for her sake or his own.

When she turns to him, pulling herself upright in the process and letting the cold of his quarters seep into her bare chest, he’s smiling. It’s by no means her favourite smile—wide and full of laughter—but it’s something and, for some crazy reason, she believes in it.

She believes in them.

“Fortune favours the brave.”

////

tagging a few of y’all! @thisonesatellite @teamhook @kmomof4 @superchocovian @itsfabianadocarmo @thisonesatellite @darkcolinodonorgasm @carpedzem @hollyethecurious

#cs fic #captain swan fic #ouat fic #ficminds #i'm sorry to anyone that likes once upon a time and pacific rim #this is a mess #but it's my mess

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dailyaudiobible · 4 years ago

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02/09/2021 DAB Transcript

Exodus 29:1-30:10, Matthew 26:14-46, Psalms 31:19-24, Proverbs 8:14-26

Today is February 9th welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I'm Brian it's great to be here with you today as we continue our journey through this week and through the territory that we are covering in the Bible right now. In the Old Testament we are in the book of Exodus. So, I want to keep us rooted to this story because it can get so tedious. We are at Mount Sinai. We are around the mountain of God and the people are in the wilderness and they're gonna be in the wilderness for a while. But right now God is weaving together a tapestry that will form a people that have only ever been slaves. It will pull them forward from slavery into becoming a nation, a nation of people, God's chosen, the Hebrew people. And, so, let’s pick up that story. We’re reading from the Christian Standard Bible this week. Exodus chapter 29 verse 1 through 30 verse 10.

Commentary:

Okay. Let's just start here at the Proverbs because it's like we…we entered into today's reading in…in mid thought, which is kind what happened. This is the voice of wisdom speaking here to us saying, “I possess good advice and sound wisdom. I have understanding and strength. It's by me that king's reign.” Like, it's by wisdom that things are done and that things that matter, stay. They’re not just passing. They’re a solid truth. So, wisdom tells us, “I love those who love me.” So, there it is. There it is. “And those who search for me find me.” So, you know, we’re just getting going in our year, but we’re…we’re well underway. We’re moved in now. We…we can't see the shore. Like we’re or out in the deep now and wisdom has been telling us all along that the most valuable thing we could achieve in life would be her, that we would be wise, that everything else follows wisdom. And that it’s not just us. It’s God. Like, I quote from Proverbs, “the Lord acquired me at the beginning of His creation before His works of long ago. I was formed to before ancient times from the beginning before the earth began.” Okay. So, wisdom is what God used and uses to create. And we are, in black-and-white, invited to pursue wisdom above everything else in life. And, so, let's remember that. Let’s remember that reminder.

I remind you of the Daily Audio proverb, which is, like if you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app it’s just another one channels. It's like five minutes a day and you go through the entire book of Proverbs in a month. You can go through the entire book of Proverbs 12 times in a year. Just pouring that…that wisdom into your mind and letting it seep into your heart and then, I mean, over time these things build up. And, so, we become less reactionary. We’re not just reacting to life and more being proactive and deciding in advance what life is gonna look like instead of just letting it happen all around us just being pulled in every direction by…by influences that have nothing to do with us on our walk with God. Or we can be wise. So, let’s remember this.

And then let’s just back up into the book of Matthew just for a quick second here because we are coming to some territory, that this is the first time we’re encountering it, and that is the betrayal of Jesus and, yeah, His arrest and trial and His execution and His resurrection. So, this is the first time that we’re entering into this story and it's important that…that we embrace it and not let it just be something we've heard before. We’re gonna, I mean, we’re gonna hear it in the Gospels and then we’ll move on from there, and it's important that we embrace this because it’s the centerpiece of the faith, it’s the centerpiece of the story that we’re living in. And, so, to understand how this all goes down, this envy, this jealousy, this uncertainty, that Jesus is who He says He is, but also that He is gaining power because He is speaking with authority and He is calling out the truth from the shadows and exposing the truth and in the process exposing the power structures that are dominating the people and making them confused and polarized and marginalized. Yeah, they…they ultimately decided they needed to kill Jesus to shut Him up and we need to pay attention to this as we go through it because it's the story of our salvation.

Prayer:

Jesus, we thank You for this. We thank You for the counsel again toward making wisdom the centerpiece and we thank You that we have an example as we watch Your life and ministry of what it looks like to seek the truth, to see the truth, to live wise. Come Holy Spirit we pray into these coming days, we ask in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hi DABbers my name is Hineron I'm from New Zealand. I just want to start this off by thanking everybody in the community and Brian and everyone who's behind this because, what a change to my life this has brought. I look forward so much to listening to the daily word and how it's explained by you Brian and it just…I don't know how many times I have read the 1st three books of the Bible and nothing’s ever really sunk in, but I'm really enjoying where we are at the moment in the Bible. It's just incredible. So, thank you. I just want to quickly ask for some prayer for myself and my family. My dad took his life a few days before Christmas in 2020 and I've recorded this a few times but I think what I actually need is just a covering. I know that God knows exactly what it is that I need and what I'm struggling with and what my family needs. The list is too long to try to fit in. So, just some prayer, just general prayer for a covering of God's goodness, which already has been so prevalent, was such a blessing. But this community is powerful. God…God moves through this community and I really wanted to tap into that because the situation is…is not a good one. There's a lot of heartbreak. He was only young. There's a lot of division in our family now. But thank you all. I love you. Hope you have a blessed week.

Hello this is Wonderfully Made in Albuquerque and I am calling to pray over Kingdom Seeker Daniel and your children, Daniel, Hannah and Bianca. I just listened to the prayer requests from today about just the heaviness there that's going on with each of your children. I think today is the 6th of February so prayer requests for today. So, heavenly father I lift up Daniel Hannah and Bianca. Each situation is heartbreaking, and you know the details that are going on, you know their hearts and their minds, and I just pray that you'll deliver each of these children Lord. Deliver them from the different struggles that are going on and guard their minds, guard their hearts with your peace and shine through. I pray for the mental health issues and what's going on there for the past assault and that situation, how that really…the influence there and then the identity crisis Lord. I just pray that you’ll intervene and transform these lives and that there’ll be a beautiful testimony there for each child. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Good morning this is Dennis from Los Angeles it’s February 6th I just got done listening to today's DAB and I felt inspired to call. Lately there's been a lot of prayer requests from families that are estranged from their children. I myself am suffering with that same fate. My oldest daughter has decided she doesn't want to speak to my side of the family. And I've been dealing with this on my own, but I figured why not reach out to the DAB family for prayer. I always pray alongside all of the others that are going through a similar circumstance and I would like for the family to pray for me. And as I listened to the prayer requests today, I felt so inspired to call and just share my prayer and that I'm praying for Tiffany and Tony in Ohio who lost their child and her prayer request to love her husband. Just know I'm in prayer for you. My wife and I also lost our son over six years ago, so I know what you're going through. Also, for Emily in Minnesota, your pain, I hear it in your voice. Know that I'm in prayer for you and your situation, the loss of your son and your family’s difficulties and then right behind that Kingdom Seeker Daniel came on and asked for prayer for his son,0 his mental health issues, and his daughters’ situations. Just know that we're in prayer for you, that we come together as a family and even though people might not call in, they’re in prayer with you immediately. So, just have faith and hope. Father God is gonna be doing miraculous things in our lives and we just have to have the faith of a mustard seed. So, I thank you for this podcast and I thank you for your prayers. God bless.

Hey DAB family this is Brookee545. I was just listening to the prayer request from January 6th and I just want to lift Emily up in prayer, Emily from Minnesota. As I was praying for you I was getting a vision of a pillar that was in rough weather but it was still standing firm. So, God I just thank you for Emily and her strength and her faith in you and that she called in and that she's a part of this community. Lord I lift up her…I just lift up her family to you right now, that they have the same strength and wisdom and knowledge that Emily has to run to you. Lord I pray for multiple anointed divine appointments for Emily and her family, that they listen and they accept your truth Lord and that they can work together for your glory in this time. Lord they've had a lot of attacks from the enemy. So, God I just pray that you protect them from that. And God again as I was praying for Emily proverbs 31 came to mind and how she's just a pillar for her family. And a verse from 31 that always encourages me is verse 25. She is clothed with strength and dignity. She can laugh at the days to come. She can speak with wisdom and faithful instruction is on her tongue. So, Emily I just encourage you to press into the Lord, let Him be your guide and your strength, and always be patient with your family in these times because they're hurting. And I know that you're hurting as well. So, I just pray for the Holy Spirit just to guide your family.

Hello this is just another Joe calling in on February 6th. I'm calling in response to Kingdom Seeker Daniel. I want to encourage you and pray for your…your son. At the beginning of this year on the 6th of January I also snapped and was admitted into a crisis Center for 13 days. And it's really, really disorienting, and you don't even know if…if what's happening is real sometimes. So, Father God I just want to thank you for bringing me out of that situation and I want you to show Daniel the 2nd that…that same kindness and mercy that you…that you showed me through those 13 days as you were with me the entire time. In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Hello DAB family this is Greg, Greg from Bethel Washington. I just wanted to call in and thank everyone for being so transparent about your pains and your griefs and your challenges. I've been part of this community for many years, but I've had so many distractions and this is the first year I've actually really committed, daily being here with you all. I've survived a heart attack in 2014. I've talked to you about that before. I survived all these things and this last week has been a really challenging. I've seen my cardiologist. I'm having angina chest pain. They put me on a new medication for hypertension. I also have had, you know, diagnosis of bipolar. And I don't know that that's really true. You know the medical community treats our bodies, but they don't know what our spirit is about. My wife and my daughter and my grandkids are not saved. I live in this home and there's forces that are all around us impact them and I try desperately to carry it, but I can't. So, just…I just wanna give this all to you to pray for my…my wife Jane, my daughter, Robbery my granddaughter Carolina and Bradley. Please Lord Jesus protect us all. In Jesu’s name I pray. Amen.

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deviant3lover · 5 years ago

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Personal Headcanons for the Trio

On a rare spark of inspiration, I’ve decided to compile my list of headcanons for the Trio for you all to look at if you’re interested. :)

I tried my best to make them rooted in canon so that they may be plausible while still allowing me to indulge. ;)

Putting this under Read More because boy, it is long.

Metal Bat/Badd

- From my asks to @atinychai, Badd likes traditionally masculine things because it makes him feel empowered and keeps most people away. He shows almost all the traits: being into sports, working out, being fierce and intimidating… all except for being attracted to women. (Came as a real shock to him too: his team often found girls cute but Badd couldn’t help but notice that some guys were pretty hot and nobody pointed it out. Doubly so because he loves the thought of being married one day and none of the ladies appealed to him.)

- Very straightforward thinker, but unlike Genos, he isn’t completely tactless or over the top with it. His thought process focuses on what needs to be done, what is needed to do it, and to do it ASAP. Considerations are taken into account, such as what would happen if he doesn’t do it right or in a certain way. This is especially good for him since he’s a busy guy even by S-Class standards, but it does leave him vulnerable to not thinking through long term plans that well.

- The most empathetic and physically affectionate of the three. He keeps his tough look on him in public and in private, but he’s one of the first people to offer to hug it out if you’re breaking down.

(Obviously where no one can see it: that’s embarrassing on you and would attract too much unwanted attention to him, so he makes sure there’s no one watching. If there is, he’ll clap you on the shoulder, look you in the eye, and offer some advice and encouragement.)

Young boys and teenagers look up to him, and they usually feel better about crying into his shirt when Badd tells them how hard it was to stop himself from bursting into tears at his first loss in a match, or when he was trying to keep quiet for Zenko’s sake at her recital.

- Continuing on that note, he keeps a nice relationship with some of his sporty fans. Not anything too intensive, but he’ll keep track of the boys who come to him asking him what he was like on his baseball team, what to do if there’s infighting in their group, which ones are worried about their baseball matches and he gives them a proud congrats if they win, or a consolation + inspiration to do better next time if they lost.

- When he’s not blinded by anger, Badd’s surprisingly pretty adept at being a social expert. His experiences of being on the baseball team + hanging out with problem students like him has given Badd a pretty good perspective on both the popular kids and the hated, loner kids, as well as what they’re going through. As a result, he’s usually well received by them. Feels a little embarrassed and uncomfortable around smart kids though, especially when they explain something that sounds a little complicated to him.

- Back in his younger days prior to all the responsibilities piled on top of him, Badd was a pretty good leader for his baseball team. He checked in regularly with his team mates, their equipment, their training regimens, and their upcoming opponents. He helped some of his team mates with confidence issues, and made sure to keep in check with how they’re doing to prevent in-team fighting. All-star baseball team in their region for sure. :3

- In the future, I imagine that Badd might take up some boxing after taking a hint from all the times monsters knocked his bat out of his hands away from him. Lost his weapon? He’ll use his fists until he can get it back again, and he’ll use them well. Turns out loves the sport, but baseball will always have a special place in his heart.

- He empathizes easily with people experiencing stress; he goes through that daily with everything he has to take care of- but he’s more clueless with issues such as mental illness. Badd’s a little insensitive about it, sometimes suggesting things to take care of it which don’t work, but he’s trying his best to understand what someone is going through and knows enough to know that it isn’t something that can’t be solved by blowing off steam or cutting off some bad things in your life. Gets pissed off if someone dismisses it as ‘something that’s all in their head’ or ‘they’re crazy’ and will confront them. Forcing apologies out of the offender isn’t out of the question. Might want to stop him before he gets too pissed off.

- Like you’d expect, he’s a pretty big fan of sports, but in a more casual way. He likes hearing about his favorite athletes, training regimens, and certain meals/diets that helped stars to build up/maintain their strength and skill, but doesn’t obsessively get himself involved in the subject. On a more sentimental note, Badd finds some solace with famous athletes because they had to work hard to get where they needed to be, and on top of that, have to deal with the pressures that come with their popularity; whether they like it or not.

- Despite not having much time to cultivate attention to honing his skill and interest in cooking, he loves Gordon Ramsay. Seeing him rip entitled, spoiled people apart with words alone and gently encouraging + teaching kids has him placed high on Badd’s list of celebrities that he respects.

- Badd is a Closeted Romantic and a Family Man. Always found it touching where in some old action/thriller films, the male married lead thinks about his wife and kids back home and tells himself that he shouldn’t die, powering through the pain/adversity to get back to them. At some point it shifted to him liking some intense drama/action movie focusing on romance where the couple race against time to get to each other before it’s too late. The idea that someone you love and treat as an equal might actually be gone forever really gets him, and if done right, he’ll cry.

- Cannot, for the love of him, focus well on books. He’s literate, but he always wants to get to the most important stuff, often skimming over details that might be important later on. This is also evident in how he writes, explaining something simply and to the point, which makes him pretty good at teaching kids basic, simplified concepts, but not so good at constructing incredibly thought out and nuanced writing. Books and audio books just aren’t immersive to him. Consequently, English is one of his worst subjects in school, and he often has to rely on online notes and essay examples to help him out.

- Extending on that, I imagine him to be a kinaesthetic/visual learner. He was born with amazing dynamic vision after all. (Under ‘Fighting Style: Keen Perception.’)

- Loves American action movies, but they’ll have to be really well made for him to remember a specific one. If you asked him about his favorite action scenes, he’ll describe it, but more often than not, he won’t remember the movie’s name unless you gave him some clues.

- (Inspired by this fanfic.) His mother died in a monster attack just moments after giving birth to Zenko. Badd used to love and respect his father, but her death lead to him spiraling down to alcohol abuse and neglect due to his grief, leading to his broken pedestal status in his son’s eyes. Badd’s still bitter over it when he thinks about it, saying that his ‘old man nursed his bottle like it was his new kid’ instead of being there for him and Zenko. Caught between poor grades in school, a rough home life, and a baby sister he didn’t know how to take care of, Badd had to convince himself that he needed to be twice the man his father is, and ever was, to get through the worst of what life had to throw at him.

- No matter how hard he tries, he still loves his father, and wants to see him endeavor to become better again. But the combined grief of seeing him crumble and give up on himself, the bitterness over his dad failing to be there for him when he needed it the most, and the anger over how seemingly self-absorbed he was in with his booze and watching the static on the TV when Badd was struggling to cope, makes him force the thought of reconciling out of his mind. Badd forces himself to be outwardly angry over what happened to avoid the conflicted feelings he has over the man he used to see as his hero.

- That being said, if you know what his father used to mean to him, you’ll see subtle signs that while Badd can’t forgive, he had never forgotten him. His father was a big sports fan too, and taught him how to properly hit a baseball. If you knew what he taught and looked closely when Badd fights or does some swings, you’ll see that the tips and tricks that he taught his son has never left him.

- Wanted to get a dog because he thought they were cool, but realized he wouldn’t have enough time for it. Begrudgingly got a cat for him and Zenko after she picked one out. He expected it to be the widespread stereotype for cats: cold, mean, and ruins your stuff… and then he saw how lovable and sweet it was and fell in love. That cat is Tama.

- Hates horror films because some of them remind him of the fact that monsters can manifest for the stupidest reasons, anywhere, anytime. It gets him worked up and restless because anything can happen, and the fact that some monsters in the past had tried to target Zenko to lure him out doesn’t make him feel any better.

- When he’s sick/injured, he sleeps. A lot. A very heavy sleeper; expect snores and heavy eyelids. Seriously, this guy is practically stuck in either Stage 4 NREM or REM sleep until severe injuries heal quite a bit, and germs making him sick are killed off.

- Does not take kindly to anyone calling him weak or stupid. Despite getting angry easily, he’s very resilient (emotionally and mentally.) He knows from experience that if he can’t resolve it quickly, it’s best to put it on the backburner until the opportunity arrives where he can, and does his best to blow off steam in the meantime. He’s not that smart academically and he knows it, but it’s still a berserk button you should stay away from because while he’ll never admit it, it hurts him to know that despite forcing himself to attend school so that he can build a future for himself and Zenko outside of hero work, he’s still failing at getting the grades he needs.

- Expanding on that, he’s smart, but it’s more akin to Saitama’s words of wisdom than eloquent, polished reasoning and beliefs; straightforward and inspiring in a simple way that leaves no room for misinterpretation.

- Don’t let him play video games. Especially rage inducing ones like Cuphead. He will crush the controller and wonder why his character isn’t responding mid-game. The keys on the keyboard are smashed in. There are cracks on the area around the buttons. There’s a Wii remote sticking out of a wall after a frustrating defeat and the wrist strap wasn’t securely fastened.

Garou

- He likes athletic wear better than punk styles. They’re easier to put on and move in, whilst the leather from some punk clothes heats up too much/gets too stiff for his liking.

- Hates being restrained. Sometimes, on a very, very rare occasion, it can be interpreted as him being scared of the idea since he lashes out pretty angrily at it. Garou had been held down and beaten up by bullies twice, pinned against a tree and choked by Genos before escaping his blast by the skin of his teeth, and then was implied to be chained up and tortured/punished for his insolence against the MA in their torture room. He’s strong enough to escape most bindings, but he will be on edge if he feels like he can’t get out of them. If you play your cards right, his attack patterns will lack their usual cunning and be more animalistic.

- He’ll eat almost any kind of food except for sweets. It’s too sugary for him, leads to a crash later on, isn’t sustainable, and it doesn’t offer much nutritional value to him either, so he steers clear of them if he can help it. The odd exception are energy drinks. The sugary taste isn’t something he exactly likes, but Garou loves the immediate rush that kicks in soon after drinking them; the slight burn on his tongue from carbonated drinks such as coca cola is a plus.

- Loves the thrill of the challenge of almost any sort. The excitement comes from giving it his all and not knowing for sure how things will turn out; if he won, that’s another trophy to him. If he lost, he relishes in a milestone he has to beat and loves the idea that there’s still room for improvement. Winning or losing too much tends to be boring for him, and he’ll abandon it if he sees no way to rectify it.

- When he’s sick or injured, he’s a restless sleeper; it’s hard for him to get the proper hours that he needs. He drifts in and out of sleeping and waking, usually sleeping a few hours at best before waking up for 10 minutes and falling back to sleep. Being attacked while vulnerable, in places with little means of defense or shelter is a pretty good plan for monsters/bigshots who want his head and he knows it. One of the places he can sleep more peacefully at is Bang’s Dojo, but he hasn’t been back there for some time now.

- Tsundere. Not necessarily the blushy ‘I-it’s not like I like you, b-baka!!’ sort of way, but he’s a more subdued tsundere. He’ll come off as mean spirited at times, but the most reliable way of knowing he loves and cares about his loved ones is when they’re being threatened; he’ll rough up the threat so they won’t get any funny ideas in the future.

- Is Russian-French, with some (suspected) Norwegian in there. Is generally a European mutt who takes a keen interest in Asian culture, especially those that developed sick martial arts and/or those who have interesting, complex histories; however, Garou isn’t as interested in wars and political intrigue as he is in weird, clever, and hilarious events and hijinks that sound too surreal to be true… like Zhao Yun's army being outnumbered by the enemy, retreating, and him choosing to make their fortress look empty so that his enemies get suspicious, thinking that it was an ambush and withdrawing... before launching an attack on them, killing off his enemy's army by inciting chaos. (E.g. Some of them got trampled, others fell into a river and drowned.) He won.

- Continuing off of that, he generally regards European history with distaste due to how... unkind, some of them are.

- (God, I love @the-goddessfighter‘s headcanons for Garou’s parents, so honestly? I’m all for this being 100% canon. Murata or ONE, make it happen. In my eyes, this is as good as you possibly can get with Garou’s backstory.)

Check out her tumblr for her OC’s for Garou’s parents! (Although I do headcanon Toru as a more neglectful father who didn’t care much for Garou, if at all. He didn’t sugarcoat his words to him nor try to comfort his son.)

- Prefers black/white/grey/neutral colors for his clothes, if only to avoid people saying that the colors clash and that he looks like a fashion disaster.

- It’s an unconscious move on his part, and while he usually has impeccable control over his power, sometimes his fingers feel like they’re jabbing you when he’s distracted. Especially when he grabs or hugs you. Sometimes, there are some small bruises where they’ve dug in a little forcefully. When he’s feeling affectionate or sentimental and you’re his lover, he traces over your skin, and it’s a contrasting mix between the calloused, rough textures from the fingers, and smooth, fluid movements that slide like water. It’s a distinct Garou feature, and whether you love it or hate it depends on your tastes.

Genos/Demon Cyborg

- Doesn’t care too much about his popularity, but acknowledges the work that his fans put in when it comes to promoting his work and what little information he shares that others will pick up on. E.g. He doesn’t like to be bothered when he’s busy/with that bald guy, but otherwise is OK with signing a few autographs and shaking hands, he avoids certain obnoxious fangirls, he hates it when there’s a group and they crowd him, etc.

- Despite appreciating this info circulating so that some fans are more mindful about how they interact with him, he’s one of the hardest heroes to connect with due to how cold, closed off, busy, and/or socially awkward he may be. Not that many of his fans mind, as it feeds into the mysterious ‘Cyborg Prince’ fantasy that’s popular in his fan base.

- Thinks that Nice Guys/GirlsTM and people who use ‘I’m an Alpha, those betas/omegas can suck it’ are pathetic. At best. He thinks that they’re compensating for something instead of actually trying to improve themselves: for the latter, the added weight of using a disproved scientific theory makes him lose respect for them even more.

- He has a certain amount of fondness for fauna and flora. Prior to meeting Saitama, he’s had to travel long distances in search of the Mad Cyborg, and more often than not, company is fleeting, leaving him alone most of the time. Flowers by the side of the path, blue skies, the sound of chirping birds, or even some berries with rainwater droplets on them are familiar, nice sights that put him at ease. Some of his notebooks outside of taking notes on Saitama have hand drawn illustrations and notes on some plants he’s encountered, as well as their various uses.

- Conversely, barren cities will put him on high alert. Buildings act as great hiding spots, and Genos isn’t a stranger to being ambushed by monsters and criminals alike. (His eyes can be a great asset in these situations; scanning for threats and movements can give him a heads up on how dangerous the area is.)

- His sense of humor is pretty dark, if not outright sadistic at times; especially towards the people he hates. Otherwise, he likes making (mostly. Key word is mostly) harmless jabs and teases at those he loves because he finds it funny when the other person gets riled up/flustered. His tone and expressions don’t change (most of the time) when he makes them though, making it hard for others to know whether or not he’s joking until he clarifies on the matter.

- Hates those who spread misinformation about medicine, or demonizes scientists. He cares about keeping the public safe, and admires/respects science for everything it’s discovered for the sake of humanity: people such as those are a direct attack on both.

- Though on the outside he takes even the most inconsequential things seriously, to the point where he’s gullible and too honest to lie, he keeps his more solemn thoughts to himself and ingrains them at the back of his mind so that he’ll never forget them. His notebooks don’t hint at them even existing. The only way you’ll ever get to hear them is when you directly attack something he holds very dear to him (beliefs, values, aspirations) so that he may fiercely (and furiously) defend them. He berated Saitama for seemingly making a joke at his expense, but he was somewhat more lenient since he knew that Saitama wielded the power he needed. He won’t be nearly as nice if you’re not someone he likes or respects, so it’s a sure-fire way to get onto his blacklist.

- Is German-Japanese. German father, Japanese mother, though a lot of people mistake him for being fully German thanks to his looks. He understands some parts of the language, but isn’t fluent in speaking it. Japanese he’s fully fluent in, and English is getting to that point as well.

- He doesn’t usually use pet names if he gets a lover, but if he’s fallen in love hard, they get sort of ridiculous and a little cheesy. ‘My beloved’ and ‘darling’ are the most modest ones, but you’ll have to stop him from going after extremely specific and loving nicknames because they blur the line between being hilarious and embarrassing.

- Awesome at stake outs, and often keeps a first aid kit handy in his temporary bases (in the case of civilian injury) alongside a repair kit for himself. Genos is incredibly well prepared just from the equipment he has inside them, but unlike other matters (such as learning how to fold clothes efficiently and going taking it far too seriously), Genos shows pretty good judgment in how he sets them up. He doesn’t take more than what’s needed, and prepares some emergency supplies just in case there’s a new development and he needs to stay a bit longer. He’s learned from experience that taking too many things for them makes it harder for him to clear his tracks, and in return, the enemy (or enemies) that he’s been keeping an eye on might catch onto the fact that they’re being watched, making it harder for him to discover new information.

Shared Traits & Other Bits

- The no-brainer: you will get intimidated into fleeing if you mess with them. Things may get physical if you target their family/loved ones. Injuries vary depending on level of apologetic attitude, how much of a threat you pose, how far you’ve pushed things, etc. Best case scenario is that you flee the scene with no injuries, but scared out of your mind.

- Badd and Genos use the same nickname for their lover: ‘Darling.’ Although Badd will say it as ‘Darlin’’ instead. Other than that, their nicknames are fairly different, with Badd going for things such as ‘sweet cheeks,’ ‘babe,’ and ‘sweetheart.’

- Both Genos and Garou have the tendency to mess with people for their own amusement. Garou comes in the form of taunting and goading, whilst Genos likes to make underhanded comments and jokes that will infuriate you.

- Genos and Garou like books. Genos however, is more introverted and will share his knowledge more thoroughly when prompted by someone who needs it. Garou being Garou, you wouldn’t even know he was into reading until he offhandedly mentions a bit of knowledge from a book he read. Odds are you won’t have time to ask him if he knows how to do x because he would have already gotten up to do it before you can open your mouth. This occurrence is far more common in emergencies.

- Genos doesn’t take any visible joy in fighting. He sees monsters as a threat to society that must be eliminated quickly and effectively. Badd used to enjoy throwing himself into battles and coming out of them victorious, but thanks to time and HA’s obligations, he sees monsters as destructive assholes getting in his way and creating more work for him when he’d rather come home to catch up on other things on the forefront of his mind. Garou loves fighting, the challenge- but it has diminished by a notable amount after his webcomic arc as he’s reflecting on what he needs and wants to do now. Despite this, he usually keeps his eye out for any interesting challenges, if only to distract himself.

- Slightly digressing from the Trio: Zenko shares the burden of taking on responsibilities with Badd, though he doesn’t know they exist. She’s aware of the fact that her brother isn’t living a normal teenage life and is bothered by the fact that he can’t act like his own age most of the time, making her want to be headstrong, capable, and independent soon so he doesn’t have to worry about her. At the same time, she knows that there aren’t many heroes his age that he can get along with, so she tries to fill in that hole by spending time with him while finding heroes she likes, and hopefully her brother will like- the reason being is that hopefully, Badd will make friends with them, and she can meet her idol often! It’s part of the reason why she was so insistent in having him obtain AM’s signature.

- Genos can sing, but sometimes struggles with singing with enough emotion in his lyrics. Garou can sing pretty well, (and sings almost every Disney villain song like a champ) but he’d be resistant to others goading him into it. He’s pretty uncomfortable at the notion that he’d have to sing in front of people. Badd can… sing, but he’s best at singing the lullabies he sung to a baby Zenko- songs that get him into it can have him be really, really into it; to the point where it’s almost embarrassing to watch. He’s pretty good at rap/singing more sentimental pieces such as this:

youtube

#opm #genos #badd #metal bat #garou #shitty teen squad #hellion trio #zenko #headcanons

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mannatea · 4 years ago

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So here’s what I learned in making my very first video essay.

I’m a dumbass. I mean, why did I have to pick a movie that like, three people have even seen, and 95% of the audience hated anyway?

To be clear, I also don’t like this film, but being one of ~those~ people I feel the need to dissect it until I find all the repulsive undertones and therefore feel Justified in my dislike. (Most of the critique against this movie is like, “ummm excuse me but...Oscar is Too Woman” and I disagree with that.)

Speaking of me being a dumbass, I can admit I’m still at a loss when it comes to...the process of writing an essay for an Internet audience on a platform I don’t actively participate on. Maybe my approach should be more like an academic essay, where I write with the idea that the person reading my work already knows the source material? (But there I am, watching video essays about stuff I’m interested in but may not be that familiar with, so...idk.)

I think the biggest issue with my script (besides the fact that it’s 17,000 words long) is that I assume the audience has familiarity with The Rose of Versailles but not necessarily with Lady Oscar. In my defense most people who have seen/read and enjoyed The Rose of Versailles have NOT seen Lady Oscar, but... I probably over-explain.

I have an entire section dedicated to What’s Good Actually, but it wasn’t enough to make a whole essay of, so it’s framed in light of, “the issues I’ve been talking about are especially frustrating because you can see the potential in these scenes/moments.” Is this bad writing? IIIIIII don’t know. Maybe?

Davinci Resolve is Annoying. It only crashed when I kept bumping my gaming buttons on my mouse, but my god I ripped a bunch of anime episodes to use and it only recognized like, a handful of them...even though they were all...exactly the same file type...and from the same disc...UGH.

Making video essays is extremely time consuming at this length/scope. My “thesis” if you can call it that is: “Why Chess Piece Characters Suck” (basically) and not only do I beat this comparison to within an inch of its life, I also did not realize how BROAD that topic actually was. Even then, I focused mostly on just two characters (with a few special mentions) and I still had a ridiculously long script.

It also took a lot of my time. Writing the script, ripping the DVDs I needed, dealing with a full hard drive, collecting clips and images, recording the audio TWICE, editing, Photoshop work on images/essaycards/etc, more editing, and moving stuff one frame at a time took me literal days of my life. Like, over 100 hours total. Writing the script alone took me at least 24 hours.

I think the worst and most embarrassing part of all of this is that I put SO much work into something that only a few people will ever see, and I’m convinced that it looks like a teenager made it...lol. I mean, we all have to start somewhere but starting at the beginning gets harder the older I get.

I am so tired of hearing my own voice.

I kept finding issues in the audio that I didn’t like but I don’t have the time or energy to keep recording it over and over again.

I know it’s not normal to run out of breath after reading a paragraph aloud, but I can’t help it and I don’t own an inhaler, so...I just had to Deal. I feel like everyone will be able to tell I was winded the entire time, though.

I re-recorded French pronunciations probably 30 or more times and I simply cannot make those sounds correctly. Linguistics 101: how do you make a sound that requires pressing your tongue to your teeth if you don’t have teeth? Well, usually I come up with some other clever way to do it, but it depends on the sound that comes afterward, and with so many French words I just can’t figure out something that flows naturally.

My tendinitis was aggravated by all the mouse-clicking like man my hands are stiff.

Despite all my complaints and woes, like...I don’t know. It was a waste of time I guess, but it’s not as if I wouldn’t have wasted those hours in some slightly different way anyway, either by writing fanfiction or by playing video games.

But seriously why did I pick a topic and a film that nobody cares about? I’ll get my 3 views and be grateful, but I’m starting to wonder if I did it on purpose to sabotage myself.

Seriously I have seen one real essay about this film (an academic one, no less) and ZERO (0) video essays about it. ZERO. Nobody will look for this. BUT HEY, ya can’t fail when your audience consists of 3 people who have no expectations at all. :)

#also the lack of sleep means i'm SO TIRED AGAIN #/ personal post

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theliberaltony · 4 years ago

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

sarah (Sarah Frostenson, politics editor): On Sunday, The Washington Post published leaked audio of an hour-long conversation President Trump had with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, where he urged the Republican to “find” enough votes to overturn the result in Georgia and declare him the winner.

This story has captured headlines, as it is by far Trump’s most brazen attempt to overturn November’s results, although it is hardly his first time trying to do so. Trump has repeatedly tried to cast doubt on the election results since Biden was declared the winner on Nov. 7, citing false claims of voter fraud and launching countless futile lawsuits to try and overturn the election. And now as Congress prepares to vote on Jan. 6 to certify the election results in what should be a largely ceremonial, low-key affair, a faction of GOP senators plans to mount a protest vote, even though it is destined to fail.

There is no question that this is bad for democracy — polls have found a record number of Americans distrust the election results — but let’s talk through some of the biggest consequences of this push to delegitimize the results, in addition to whether this jeopardizes Trump’s role as the de facto party leader once he’s left the presidency.

To start, what do you view as the biggest consequence of all this?

perry (Perry Bacon Jr., senior writer): I think the biggest potential danger is that in any election where the Republicans earn fewer votes, they will make unfounded and exaggerated claims of voting irregularities and fraud and try to toss out or overturn the results. No election is conducted perfectly, but using minor problems as a pretext for invalidating the outcome is a huge problem. You can’t have a democracy if one of the main parties can’t admit defeat.

I am really worried about this in the context of these Georgia Senate runoff races. If Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock both win their races, that would give Democrats total control of Congress. So will Republicans be able to accept losing these races if they do? Or will there be an endless stream of lawsuits trying to prevent Ossoff and Warnock from being seated?

julia_azari (Julia Azari, political science professor at Marquette University and FiveThirtyEight contributor): Biggest consequence: This splits the GOP and deepens the dilemma for Republicans (and possibly Democrats) about how to deal with the other party. Namely, can they continue to thread the needle in arguing that the other party’s constitutional and political views are illegitimate, but the processes are legitimate and thus they sometimes win? Or will the other party’s victories, as Perry suggests, not be tolerated?

I don’t want to “both sides” this — obviously, the Democrats are not the ones creating the current situation, but I think this creates potential dilemmas for them, too, regarding the way they treat the idea of legitimate opposition.

sarah: What are some of the dilemmas you think Democrats face as a result of this, Julia?

julia_azari: Well, take the debate happening over how Democrats should react to this news. There’s a question of whether the House should consider impeachment, which I’m guessing they probably won’t do. On the one hand, I’m not sure impeachment would have much public support, and there’s plenty of other issues that Congress needs to work on. But on the other hand, it does sort of leave the impression that these kinds of norm violations are sort of begrudgingly tolerated.

This will linger after Trump leaves office, too, I think. You’ll have Democrats who want to move on and not ratchet up the stakes of partisan disagreement. And you’ll have others who want to seek accountability for some of the laws that they think were broken by the last administration.

sarah: That’s a really good point, Julia. One thing we saw after the 2016 election was a big drop in the share of Democrats who thought the election was fair and accurate, but it’s nowhere near as big as the drop we’ve seen among Republicans here in 2020. That’s why what you and Perry are hitting on — how the parties handle loss and what that means for voters’ trust in democracy — is the biggest consequence of all this to me.

But maybe you all disagree? Should Democrats be digging into Trump’s behavior more for the reason Julia cited — that this behavior otherwise seems begrudgingly tolerated?

julia_azari: Well, the fact that COVID-19 continues to pose a very real challenge for the country, creates a bit of a problem for Democrats, because if they look like they’re focusing too much time on investigating the Trump administration, they look like they’re ignoring the pandemic and its consequences. But if Democrats try to take this on in a less high-profile way — subpoenaing lower-level officials, etc. — then maybe they’re accused of not being transparent enough.

The impact of this norm-breaking administration isn’t just that it violates these unwritten rules, but that it behaves in ways that make the whole system of usual practices not work. That makes things extra challenging for Democrats.

perry: Questions about what the Biden Department of Justice, congressional Democrats and state attorneys generals do about Trump’s conduct are all still very much up in the air. If there was some criminal activity, he should not be above the law. Perhaps there are some congressional hearings — and maybe even charges filed by the DOJ and/or attorneys generals — involving some Trump associates and maybe Trump himself. I don’t expect Biden to talk about Trump that much, but other actors might weigh in.

sarah: What is the end game here for Trump and Republicans? Trump admitted on the call to Raffensperger that, “I know this phone call is going nowhere.” I know we can’t speak to the president’s state of mind, but what can we point to for why refusing to concede the election has become Trump’s defining stance?

julia_azari: Well, it fits in well into this idea that “grievance politics” have turned into a somewhat successful brand — especially in a place like Georgia, where a history of racist voter suppression informs the context, and where Democratic victories are especially tied to the mobilization of Black voters.

However, I don’t see how having this kind of split within congressional Republicans is helpful to the GOP in the long term.

perry: Trump has lied and cheated in a lot of different venues in his life. That is just the truth. So him insisting that he won an election that he lost is nothing new. He likes to push and push people and see if they will uphold their ethics or bend to his will. For the Republican Party, part of this is just the trajectory they were on anyway, even without Trump at the helm. When you are writing voter laws targeting Black people with “surgical precision” (North Carolina Republicans), making it harder for felons who served their time to vote (Florida Republicans) and gerrymandering in a way that almost makes a mockery of majority rule (Wisconsin Republicans), then unfounded voter fraud charges that aim to disqualify the votes of Black people in particular are just a more aggressive step in an anti-democratic direction.

But part of this is directly tied to Trump. Elected and aspiring Republican officials know he is very connected to the party base, so aligning with Trump is aligning with the party base. So that is why you see Georgia Sen. David Perdue, in light of this phone call, attacking the secretary of state for leaking it, and not Trump for what he said.

2/ “To have a state-wide elected official, regardless of party, tape unknowing – to tape without disclosing a conversation – private conversation of the President of the United States and then leaking it to the press is disgusting,” Perdue told Fox.

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) January 4, 2021

julia_azari: I think the intersection of what Perry and I have said is this: “The future of the Republican Party is the division between those who say the quiet part out loud and those who don’t.”

One key difference is that Republicans used to win national majorities with the quiet part. That’s no longer the case. Per Rep. Thomas Massie, who along with six Republican colleagues authored a letter that pointed out the necessity of preserving ‘s comments on the Electoral College, the bullhorn can occasionally at least win a plurality. Matt Glassman, who studies Congress as a senior fellow at Georgetown University, on it:

The Senate vote on the objections will be lopsided—at a minimum 70-75 votes against, probably more like 80-85—and also starkly split the GOP caucus.

It may feel like the end, but this is really the beginning of the party fight over the meaning and future of Trumpism. https://t.co/8E9AW9GJul

— Matt Glassman (@MattGlassman312) January 4, 2021

sarah: If Glassman’s whip count is right, though, we’re still talking about a smallish wing of the GOP, right? In other words, it’s possible that the battle over Trumpism splinters the party, but that maybe the movement loses power?

Calling the integrity of the election results into question has clearly become a litmus test or demonstration of fealty for those in the GOP, but some senators like Ben Sasse and Mitt Romney are speaking out against it. Do you think it’s possible that Trump is ruining his ability to be the party’s leader post-presidency?

julia_azari: Well, our readers should stay tuned for my upcoming piece where I address that question!

But to give you a sneak peak: I think political scientists would frame this question as, “Can populism, on the right, be compatible with participation in a pluralistic, multi-ethnic democracy in which you sometimes lose even when you claim to truly represent the Constitution and the people?” The issue is that a wing of the Republican Party has skirted answering that question for decades now.

perry: Having covered the GOP in the era of Trump for the last six years, I will always bet on the more extreme wing of the party carrying the day. The fact that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would not acknowledge Biden’s win until mid-December was extraordinary. If I had told anyone that in 2015, they would have thought I was crazy.

The moderate voices in the Republican Party are not well organized, not connected to the party base and have no real compelling leaders, whereas the more extreme voices in the party have Fox News, Newsmax, One America News Network, Rush Limbaugh, Tucker Carlson and Trump. I see very little chance that the Republican Party changes its general direction, even if Trump himself recedes.

Would you bet on Sasse winning a battle over the soul of the Republican Party against anyone whose last name is Trump?

julia_azari: I would probably bet a small amount that it is possible, Perry, especially since Sasse seems like a fairly skilled politician and the Trump kids do not.

That said, I generally do not disagree, but I wonder about the sustainability of it all. I think I have some questions on what counts as “moderate” — specifically, considering the GOP, as political scientist and Bloomberg View columnist Jonathan Bernstein has been saying for quite some time, is post-policy.

perry: When I say moderate, I mean people like Romney or Sasse, who are quite conservative on policy but generally avoid white identity politics-style moves (attacking Black Lives Matter or immigration reform) and are full-throated in favor of democratic norms and values. Republicans who are moderate on policy, like Susan Collins and Larry Hogan, are basically nonexistent among top Republicans now.

sarah: That’s largely what FiveThirtyEight contributor Lee Drutman outlined in his piece on why there are so few moderate Republicans left, Perry.

Given how favorable the down-ballot results were for Republicans, however, one of my takeaways from the 2020 election was that a lot of voters rejected Trump but not necessarily the Republican Party, making it a little harder for me to understand the extent to which the GOP has lost moderate voters.

At the same time, it’s hard for me to see a Romney, Hogan or Sasse winning the 2024 Republican nomination, given the current dynamics we’re seeing play out in the GOP — a largely ceremonial, non-headline grabbing vote on certifying the results of the Electoral College, for instance, has now become this big-stakes issue. That said, I’m not sure we can know at this point the success of Trumpism moving forward. I think, for instance, Democrats will face some real tests in the next four years on whether they can keep their big umbrella coalition of both moderates and very liberal voters happy, and that might create opportunities for more middle of the road or moderate Republicans.

perry: I am not confident who will win the 2024 nomination. I have no idea. I do think in the short term, though, that Trump will remain highly influential in the GOP, as will his style of politics.

I just don’t see an easy path for the Republicans to get off that ramp.

julia_azari: This is a bit of a cop-out but I’d need to think more about the costs and benefits for various Republicans. I’m gonna hold off on 2024 predictions until I get a feel for what politics in the Biden administration looks like. And per my earlier comment about how Trumpism has changed the unwritten rules for everyone, I feel a lot more uncertain about what this will look like now once Trump is gone than I have in previous administrations.

sarah: A lot probably hinges on how the Senate runoffs shake out tomorrow, and like you’ve both said, I really don’t have a sense of how “Trumpism” plays out now. It’s unclear to me, for instance, whether Trump is doing a lot of harm … or if he’s the future of conservatism in the U.S.

But at the very least, can we agree that the lasting consequence of this might be an escalation in how the parties oppose each other when an outcome is in dispute?

I’d argue we’ve seen a ramping up of this in the last decade, but it’s largely been over more procedural things, like the Senate changing rules around judicial appointments, and making it a more partisan affair. But now we have this extreme example — contesting a free and fair election. That ups the ante, no? And it seems as if partisan infighting could get much worse.

perry: I’m not sure I’d say we’ll see an escalation in how the parties oppose each other, at least not yet. I think it’s a change on the Republican side. I don’t expect Biden, for instance, to be fighting his defeat for two months if he clearly lost by a wide electoral margin (not one state by 500 votes) in 2024.

julia_azari: I agree with that, Perry. But I think it’s possible that Democrats will start to feel pressure to both uphold norms and be “reasonable” while also responding to norm violations more forcefully.

perry: I am wary of suggesting we are seeing escalation on both sides, though, as I think we are really only seeing big escalations on the GOP side. And I worry things could get worse. If Republicans controlled the House right now, I would be really worried about this election certification issue, for example.

julia_azari: For me, it comes down to a question of sustainability, and of possible splits among Democrats on this issue. But to be clear, I don’t see any of them supporting the scenario you described, Perry. But I could start to see them play a bit more “constitutional hardball.”

sarah: Yeah, I think Julia is getting at what I meant. I definitely don’t want to “both sides” this. But I do think what Julia touched on earlier, about the mechanisms for expressing legitimate opposition being brushed aside, leaves Democrats in an awkward position, as Trump’s brand of politics has challenged how the whole system works.

julia_azari: My main point here is that the parties are not self-contained, and I don’t think the Democrats have really figured out answers to some of the questions posed by Republicans’ norm-violating behavior (which again, is a situation Democrats did not create).

perry: Julia is getting at an important and complicated question here, and one we kind of saw play out around whether Democrats should add justices to the Supreme Court given Republicans’ rush to nominate Amy Coney Barrett before the election.

Biden was clearly uncomfortable with it, but the party activists really pushed him on the issue. So what does Biden/the Democrats do about what we have seen over the last two months?

Biden, in this pre-inauguration period, is basically ignoring Trump and suggesting Republicans will work with him. And I can’t tell if he is 1) pretending, 2) clueless, or 3) Republicans will actually work with him. But Biden’s theory of the case and how other Democrats approach this issue, not to mention how the two parties interact on this, will be interesting. I truly do not know the answer to this question.

sarah: Exactly. It will be interesting to see how Biden and the Democrats work to address this — or whether Trump’s brand of politics has upended everything.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #A FiveThirtyEight Chat

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its-soil-not-dirt · 4 years ago

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Quarantine Thoughts

A lot of this is just venting, so read if you want to see me having a mental breakdown.

So this quarantine has got me thinking and overthinking a lot about my life and career. I’ve been thinking about what I’m going to do with my degree, and where I’ll end up in life. I’ve been worrying about my health, both physical and mental, since I haven’t really been thinking about either of those things since I started college. I’ve been trying to figure out who I am, but all of this thinking has gotten me nowhere to be honest.

I’ll start with my academics. I miss being an engineering student. Not because I could see a future of me pursuing that career or because I was excelling for the short time I was in that field, both of those things were true at the time, but the real reason I miss it is because I felt that I was respected more for being a STEM student than being an art student. I’ve always struggled with this internally – that I needed to showcase my intelligence and prove to others that I’m not stupid. When I told people that I was applying to colleges for civil engineering, almost all of them told me that they were surprised and that I should do something that I’m more known for – such as art and writing. All of my friends, though saying that they supported me, all hinted that I should do what makes me happy. My ex told me not to apply to a school because she thought I was doing it to be closer to her – I wasn’t, but she didn’t believe me. My close friend group told me to “just do whatever you want to do,” when I asked them if they could see me doing that type of career. My family was cautious about me pursuing this, and my mother was quick to tell me that I should change my major when I called her to vent about an assignment I had a hard time completing. I hated it. I hated that my image was being the “artsy” person. That I was only seen as capable of having a career in a field where no one cares if you’re smart. Where my knowledge in physics and astronomy would be useless. Where my love for science and mathematics would all be pushed aside because it’s not needed for this type of work. I miss being seen as an intelligent person. Now, when people meet me and get to know me, I’m just an airhead. A fool who thought she could make it in the world as an engineer. A lazy student who paints pretty pictures.

I don’t hate where I am now with my studies, but a part of me wants to give engineering another shot. The only reason I really left was because it got too expensive after one semester. Plus, my mother kept pressuring me to do something else since she didn’t want to pay for me to go to school for engineering. It was a stressful time. I was eighteen, I had no close friends after the breakup, I didn’t have the self-confidence to make myself known to my peers when I started school. Everything was changing so quickly and I had to adjust. I did very well my first semester, and I keep looking back on it and thinking why everyone thought this was wrong for me. Why would they say that I can’t make it as an engineer when I got a 3.8 gpa my first semester and managed to get into the Women in Engineering organization, was part of the engineering learning community, got a decent amount of merit scholarships, was on a good track to qualify for the BS/MS degree program, and had plans for co-op opportunities? It’s like none of the things I did were enough for anyone to see that I was doing well. If I had money to continue at that school, I probably wouldn’t be in this situation. I wouldn’t have this added pressure to do well or else all this time spent in school would be a waste. I wouldn’t be thinking too much about the amount I’ll be making when I graduate, and which company or project I’d be part of. I wouldn’t have pushed myself to participate in every event since school activity fees were thousands of dollars per semester and I didn’t want my mother telling me that I’m wasting her money. I wouldn’t have had to fill my schedule so much that I had no time to breathe.

The path that I’m on now is great. I feel different, and I feel like I’ve grown more as a person pursuing design. I’ve learned so much about myself. I’m capable of so many things I didn’t think were possible for me – very small and mundane things like having good communication skills, being a leader, and having a voice that I want people to notice and listen to. I’ve learned to love where I am in life by pursuing this career path. Or maybe it’s settling, but I want to hope that it’s not. Despite saying this, I wish I had given myself more time for engineering. Maybe I would have reached this point of self-confidence and self-acceptance with that degree as well. But I’ll never really know now.

Now on to my well-being: my health has always been an issue, but I never really tell people about it. My mental health was an issue since I was young, but my therapist and psychiatrist couldn’t do much for me for the year that I had them when I was in middle school. I don’t know if I can even say that I’m mental ill anymore since I’m a functioning person who only feels weird and out of place occasionally. I don’t have a diagnosis of what I’m struggling with. I never did. I was never prescribed anything because my mother didn’t want to pay for it, and the health insurance didn’t see me as being at risk to others or myself so they stopped paying for group therapy after a week. So I guess that’s that. My physical health I know is my own fault. I don’t eat well or exercise or keep myself active. The things I do to my body, I’m aware it’s killing it. Lately, my hearing has been giving out and I’ve been ignoring it for years. I never told anyone about the ear pain and the hearing loss and now I feel like that was a terrible decision. I always just assumed I had trouble comprehending audio or that my audio processing was delayed or something. I thought the ringing in my ears were normal or at least a result of dehydration. I’m on antibiotics now, but surgery would be the best option to fix this. I’m not sure I want it though. Same with my eyesight. I haven’t been taking care of my eyes and now it’s predicted that I’d be legally blind by age twenty-five. My body is always in pain and I know it’s because I’m not taking vitamins and supplements to keep my bones healthy. My insides hurt and I’m constantly dehydrated, but I still insist on donating blood every year since my iron levels are normal and I haven’t passed out yet.

I don’t hate doctors, I just think my health insurance hates me. As well as my mother, but only regarding my health since I’ve always been good at not complaining about being sick so now that I’m experiencing all these health complications, I think she thinks that I’m lying about it. I would love to have a primary physician and have the annual physicals. I would love to see my chiropractor regularly since my back is the main source of my pain. I wouldn’t say no to seeing a dentist after all these years of not having dental covered by the insurance for some reason. I want to find a therapist that I’m not afraid to open up to. I would like a psychiatrist who trusts me and won’t repeat everything I told him in confidence to my mother when I’m in the room and then have to hear an earful from her in the car on the drive home. I want to be better physically and mentally. I no longer want my body to die slowly and fall apart. I might want to see past twenty-five, or at least have the option.

After saying all this, I’ve concluded that I should get a therapist, get the ear surgery, and continue down this career path and see where I end up. I want to say that all of this would happen, but I’m not sure. Maybe I’ll feel different when I’m out of quarantine. Maybe I’ll have a change of heart regarding my studies later on. Maybe my circumstances will change if my health worsens. I don’t know what I hope happens. I just want life to continue, but right now it feels like everything is frozen in time.

#personal #my posts

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icewindandboringhorror · 6 years ago

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hmmm’st....Another group of replies since I’m trying to keep up with my inbox better this year !! (I know #3 is missing, I accidentally mislabeled them and skipped straight to 4 and don’t feel like re-editing the photos lol )

1. “What would you recommend doing with a 1x1 ft square of tapestry-eqsue fabric ?” (question typed out in a shortened way/some words left out)

Hmm, I’m not really sure! I always have problems with tiny squares of fabrics since I often like.. am in love with the colors or texture or pattern or etc, but at the same time it’s too small to actually serve as a really substantial part of the outfit lol, so I usually just use them in small ways for accents? Squares are really good for making collars out of, since you can just cut a hole in the middle and put your head through it and it’s done lol, but you can also tuck them into shirt collars or belts so they hang out a little and just serve as a pop of color or something. If you don’t mind cutting it, you could also turn it into little strips or change the shape, make it into a small pocket/bag, wrap pieces around the arm or tie it around boots as decor, tie the cut up buts together to make it into a longer piece of fabric then use that as a belt or sash or headband, etc. Idk, I have trouble with small fabric bits as well, but maybe some of these ideas help!!

(other answers under read more so it doesn’t get long)

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(note: sorry to everyone who's questions I had to shorten when re-typing them here, I hope I abbreviated them okay and didn't leave out anything you saw as very important! The full message is still shown in the images above and I just wanted to save myself a little time on the typing aaa!)

2. “Sorry this is random, but you seem like a very nice and thoughtful person. Hope you have a happy new year”

Thank you!! I always try to include one or two of these nice ones in here just to continue to show appreciation for people who send me kind things! Even if I don’t respond to all of them (since I feel really awkward just like.. publicly responding to a ton of compliments lol), still know that I really appreciate it! I hope you also have a great year, anon!

3. accidental mislabeling error means free space for cat image

4. “will you do more videos? vlogs, tutorials, explaining your art, games, podcast, anything? sorry if it's weird to say, but I just really enjoy listening to you speak!” (question typed in a shortened way/not fully quoted)

Possibly? I just can’t think of many things to make that would work well for me?

vlogs: I don’t like to do vlogs anymore because of my mental illness and becoming more anxious about showing my face or daily life in public. Though I do enjoy aspects of the “lifestyle blogging” sort of content, like I think it would be cool to be able to make easy videos where all I do is sit down and talk about my hair or something for 20 minutes lol, or etc., but I guess as I get less comfortable with showing myself, I tend to stray away from stuff like that?

(this is also why I’ve been shifting more towards like... costumes, art, world-building, making games, etc. as opposed to outfits/personal style/personal life type content, since I feel much more comfortable being framed as more of a ‘detached and faceless creator that shows some personality but is still mostly obscured’ than ‘open personality that posts selfies and talks about their life extensively’ or etc. Obviously I still post personal stuff like questions and thoughts/opinions and cat images and etc., but less so.. like I don’t even remember the last time I posted an actual selfie where my face wasn’t obscured by costume makeup or something lol..)

I would absolutely still do stuff like “room tour” or “what’s in my bag” videos, or like a single video showing my usual daily routine or something,, if those were ever requested of me/interest was shown in them.. I’m okay with small one time “lifestyle” genre sort of content. But anything too invasive or long term (daily/frequent vlogging, or like “story time” videos) I think I would get uncomfortable with lol.

tutorials: I’m not really sure what I would do tutorials on? If you want me to make a tutorial about something, feel free to let me know something in specific! My main problem is that I don’t feel like there’s anything unique that I do that there aren’t already 100 other tutorials for, so I’m never sure what I should make those about. I get occasional asks with people saying “do a makeup tutorial” or “do a sculpting tutorial” or something, but they don’t ever say WHAT SPECIFIC makeup or what SPECIFIC thing they’d like to see me explain, so then I’m still left alone with vagueness and unsure what to do lol!

art explanation: Same kind of goes for the “explaining your art” thing like, what art? Explaining what specifically about it? You mean worldbuilding? Or sculptures? etc.?? I’m actually always happy to make videos for anything people want to see (since I enjoy the process of making them, usually), but I just am never sure exactly what to do. But if I had specific prompts I would be glad to explain something though! Videos are fun, I just never know what to make them about lol

games: I would absolutely love to do let’s plays/game videos or something (I assume this is what you meant by just saying ”games”??) since I enjoy games, and my whole thing about not being able to relax (I feel guilty about playing games (or any other leisure activity) unless it’s working towards something, I have to have a way to justify the activity being productive, which is why I rarely ever play games despite liking them a lot lol..but if I made videos or etc. it would feel slightly more worth the time/effort).. But seeing as I’m fairly lower income I really don’t have much money to buy games, and I don’t have a very good computer situation lol. I would need to have money to fix my current computer, and a few other things, etc. etc.

Idk, it’s something I think about occasionally and that would be extremely convenient for me and my current situation (in terms of having something simultaneously low effort/relaxing/ suitable to my needs/mental illness/physical issues, but also that feels productive at the same time), but it’s also a very weird genre of stuff (idk if I’d feel comfortable being anywhere near the broader “games” community ghggb), and I would need a little money first lol..

podcast: I would never start my own podcast because I have no idea what I would even have a podcast about, and I also don’t have any friends who do that sort of thing (podcasts usually have multiple people, right??). I would do one with someone else or something like if a close friend asked me I guess, but idk... I couldn’t ever see that being something I start by myself?? Especially since I don’t know anything about them or what equipment or programs are required to edit together the audio, I’ve only listened to a few of them every once in a while, etc. am not really tech savvy in the field of like. how podcasts work ggh. So that’s probably the most unlikely one out of everything you listed, sorry!!

As for other stuff, I’ve thought of answering questions in audio form instead (so rather than writing them out here, I’d just make a video (though not with visuals, since I don’t like filming myself talking..maybe I could put footage of cats over the audio though lol) of me going through my inbox and answering things, since I feel like typing takes me so much longer than speaking, and sometimes it’d be more convenient).

I’ve also thought about just like.. talking about world-building stuff, like.. rather than writing out a post, I can just ramble about things or something,, but I’m afraid I’d get too disorganized, so it’d probably only be good for answering questions about specific things (which I don’t really get questions about worldbuilding stuff that I could have enough to sit down and answer in a video lol.. I think I’ve gotten two so far?? which I already answered in text posts).

So idk, maybe those could also be ways to hear more of me talking? If I used audio more often to answer things or discuss things (like answering asks that way) rather than typing.. which would save me time anyway lol.. But I just feel unsure about it since it seems.. weird.. like.. some people might just want a quick answer to their ask and not have to skip to a certain time stamp of a video and hear me talk about it for 5 minutes lol..

But anyway, yeah, feel free to offer specific suggestions or support towards anything mentioned if it’s really something you want to see! I really appreciate that you even watched the silly little vocabulary video and especially that you actually enjoy my rambling lol (I sometimes feel annoying when I speak), and I hope I can make something sometime!! I just have trouble deciding on what content I should be making or etc., but maybe I’ll try to find a few more things I can do where I’m actually talking!

(also thanks for hoping I feel okay! I am a little bit better, but still sick lol)

5. “Hope you feel better (emoji heart that I can't type on a computer)”

Thank you!! It’s been really stink to be sick the entire first month of the year lol, but hopefully I’ll be better like.. by mid February at least!!! With how goal focused I am, it’s been like... utterly evil to not be able to start the year off well and get all of my to-do list stuff done.. I’m finally at a point where I’m finishing a few things again (like this post, and a few of the worldbuilding things from a week ago or etc), but I still can’t stop myself being.... deeply annoyed, by my loss of time and how much I feel like I should have gotten done already aaaAAA.

Especially I REALLY WANT TO DO another costume soon!!!! I have some laid out in my closet that I hope to do, but I keep waiting until I’m feeling better, since I’m afraid of having some random sickness related health problem in the middle of getting dressed and then having to like.. show up to the doctor while I have elf ears on and half a horn on my head or something ghghggh...

But anyway, I can’t do anything to change it now, so the best I can manage is just to kind of.. ignore my losses and move forward and try to be as productive as possible from now on! I really hope I can still get some of my main goals (like the game, costumes, music, worldbulding stuff) finished in reasonable time, even if I basically lost the entire month of January into a void lol. Sometimes you just lose an entire month of time... life is just Like That and you have to move on and make the most out of it I guess!

6. Would you ever like consider selling your outfits???? I have an extended non violent larping thing coming up and i really love your outfits!

I might actually! I mentioned it before I think like, months ago, but i have a LOT of clothes I really want to get rid of, it’s just that it’s SO daunting. I’ve sold clothes before and it took hours and hours of effort, and you have to constantly keep up with it and track sales, and on top of that I really underestimated shipping prices (especially making the mistake of shipping internationally on one of them I think), and I ended up making no profit and actually losing $70 just from paying people’s shipping that I didn’t charge them for (which for me and my financial situation is.. A LOT.. like.. I do NOT have that kind of spare money ghghh).

This time I want to be careful about it and also I’ll have to charge a lot more (which of course, I feel guilty about since I have Bigg Money Anxiety and wish everything was free for everyone all the time gghb), and also it’s hard for me to find the time and energy to take literally hundreds of photos of hundreds of items and then list them somewhere and etc. etc. etc.

BUT to cut down on that workload I’ve thought about actually just grouping them into outfits or like, groups of clothing that all match each other or etc. and selling them all together (so that I don’t have to photograph and list every individual item), and additionally that way I can maybe just do one batch at a time like.. maybe sell two of them a week or something, instead of all at once.

Maybe just buying a certain size of box/envelope thing and stuffing whatever I can into it and selling them all for a set price like $40 a piece or something. Which to me sounds extremely expensive I guess since I’m someone who would never have $40 to just spend on clothing lol, but I really kind of can’t go much lower than that if I want to allot for shipping and not make the same mistakes again as last time (and definitely not allow people to buy internationally unless they pay me like.. $50 extra or something, which would be ridiculous lol).

But anyway, especially since I have a few things I could really use money for (paying my guardians back for recent medical copays, and for my cat’s vet visit a few months ago, and also I have to fix the battery on my computer or buy a new one, etc.), I’ve thought about trying to do that soon! Maybe sometime in the next month I can start listing some themed clothing groups/outfits/etc. and sell them at a slower better pace for me (like one group a week or so). I’ll definitely post about it if I do!

7. (this one will have to be shortened a lot since it's so long, but I'll try to just type the main parts I'm replying to) “Are you making/would you consider making a story with your fantasy worlds? Like a book or a zine or youtube videos where you roleplay as the characters and make them talk to the viewer or each other? If you don't want to create plot, you could just do characters seeking to educate humans bout their cultures or something. I used to scroll past your posts since I'm more visual when it comes to fantasy, before realizing how interesting they are and I feel like your ideas need more playing out and exposure. ALSO, how do you feel about collaborating with other people on creating art? Or just being art pals and sharing ideas/plans/etc.? I just read your FAQ about collaborations so I understand the terms and my offer to be art friends still stands!”

-- About whether I’ll make more things with my world:

Thanks so much for the very nice message!! Worldbuilding stuff is one of the most fun creative activities for me to do, so I always appreciate it when people discuss it with me and etc. (not that I don’t also appreciate compliments on sculptures and costumes and etc., those are great too! But I guess because world stuff is something I’m so much more personally invested in yet also never get to talk about lol, anytime anyone sends me anything related to characters or worlds or etc my brain is instantly like !!!!!!!!!!!!! O v O !!!!!!!!!!! ghgh).

I am actually making a game like I may have mentioned a few times, which though it’s more character focused and doesn’t really have a plot/broader story (it’s basically like a dating sim except without romance/dating, but it has similar mechanics in the sense that the main goal is to get to know characters in the world and do tasks for them and etc.), it will include a good bit of things that have do with my world, seeing as it like... takes place there.

And since each of the characters have their own backgrounds and etc., they’ll of course speak about various world-related topics. Like for example, one of the shop-owners you can work for is an elf from outside of the elven alliance, and another shop the player can work at is owned by a set of twins who were formerly part of a royal family within the alliance, so those characters (when getting to know them and doing quests for them and etc) will of course have different perspectives on the world and talk about some of the stuff that’s been brought up in my worldbuilding posts, just obviously in a more personal/casual way, since it’s dialogue rather than me writing exposition infodump posts.

Like for example, the fact that alliance elves and non-alliance elves often have very different takes on the main elven religion, meaning if it comes up in conversation, both shopkeepers would give different dialogue relating to it, etc. Which since every character has their own unique situation and heritage and etc. (the game is set on a popular market street in a large global city, so here it actually makes sense for a bunch of different species to all be in the same place and etc.), I think could maybe expose players to a lot of the central worldbuilding concepts, depending on which shopkeeper they go with.

Obviously characters aren’t going to just be doing unnatural exposition dumps about the extensive background of the world or something lol, but even just naturally and playing through a character with neutral favor (meaning not unlocking any special positive/negative dialogue options/etc), you’d still be able to get at least a few tidbits about the world. (especially since some character’s conflicts stem from cultural/worldbuilding factors, so it’s not unnatural for them to bring it up if that’s like.. something that seriously impacts their life lol.). It probably wont expose people to Advanced Lore like the time gaps or obscure types of magic or etc (well.. depending on which shopkeepers you talk to hbhbb), but it could help with some of what you’re talking about.. In the sense of it being a more accessible visual medium that, while not the MAIN focus of the game, does end up covering some of the world background information through natural dialogue.

(always feel free to send an ask or something if you have any questions about the game, I never talk about it but every time I start to my brain unlocks and I have to stop myself from like.. saying literally every single thing about it ghgbhj)

Other than that though, I’m not currently working on anything that actually involves my world. I totally get what you mean though, and I’ve often tried thinking of ways to make it more accessible and etc (shorter posts, more clear topics, more visual elements, etc.), but it can be hard for me to work within those constraints when it already takes so much time for me to put those things together. It’s like I have so much planned out in my head, I kind of just want to get it out there however I can, since if I spend too much time deliberating about it or etc. it will become an endless task lol..

Ghhbh I actually have an extensive background in acting out characters, I’ve pretty much walked around talking to myself in different voices and etc. for my whole life and am used to like acting multiple characters at once and improvisational storytelling things (this is still what I spend a lot of my time doing lol.. I just.. walk around my house having conversations out loud pretending to be random people.. Especially when doing chores, like washing dishes or etc. is more fun if you pretend you’re a group of travelers working in a weird little elven restaurant bickering with each other the whole time hgh), but idk if that would be something I would do for videos. I feel weird about being on camera personally, even if I were in costume. But it is a really good suggestion since that is something which would be much much easier to produce than like, doing a full animation or writing a book or something lol.

I have thought of reading my worldbuilding posts aloud/ doing audio versions of them, so that people could just listen to them instead of reading them (there would be no visuals like.. just black screen or something with audio of me reading it), but the way I write is like.. hard to read back? I love to read out loud (one of my favorite activities to entertain myself is to actually find random text I’ve never seen before and see how well I can sightread it. Especially random medical articles with a lot of words I don’t know in them lol, it’s fun to just try to go through a new text fast in a convincing narrator voice or something, scrambling to mess up as little as possible), but I find that I have to modify my writing in order to read it that way (I’ve attempted to make a worldbuilding audio thing before, this is how I know this lol), so it’s almost like I’m writing a whole second version of the post, which makes it take longer?

I could modify my writing style (less having things in parentheses and etc., side sentences that occur in the middle of main sentences and break reading flow, etc.. Like this one lol), and have thought about writing in a way that would be easier for me to read back, but it’s just a whole thing I’d have to plan. I’ve definitely considered it though, and could pursue that idea further if people were interested or something!

I’ve also thought of writing dialogue out between characters as a method of worldbuilding (not a story, but more like a script) since I think that’s a good natural way to convey things or give snapshots of moments in history or etc... but like.. That would just be more text so it wouldn’t really solve the problem lol. I could do audio reading them I guess, but since I’m more used to improv stuff, idk how I would do trying to read actual already written lines, even if I was the one who wrote them, it would definitely be something I’ve never done before lol!

I also just think doing smaller things could help, and anything interactive. Like shorter posts, especially with more visuals in them, typically get seen more, and then stuff like me making a game or other condensed things.. I’ve thought of making like.. a character selection screen, not an actual game but kind of like a dress up game where you get to choose your background from the different species in my world and then dress them up a little or etc. but that would be a LOT more work than it seems probably lol.

A lot of social media is just a combination of luck/the right connections, quantity, and consistency especially. I’m sure if I could do a short post a day or a drawing of a character every other day or something and reblog them a lot, then more people would see the other things I do as well and etc., but it’s just... very difficult for me to operate that way since it’s so inherently antithetical to my personality and how I work lol (I tend to be more of a.. .. ‘stay isolated working on things and barely post anything for 3 months then post 10 things at once out of nowhere before going inactive again’ type of person ghbh.. which is like.. horrible from a Social Media Strategy standpoint).

(Oh also, I still have no idea what a zine is even though I've seen them around and looked at a few and even looked up the definition of one to try to understand them hhghgg.. I’m still not exactly sure like.. what qualifies as one or how I would make a world-related one lol.. so this is why I didn’t really go into much detail on that specific suggestion of yours since.. I’m Uneducated Fool )

But anyway, Idk if I could do acting videos, but I could do audio reading of posts or other things, and I am at least in the middle of working on a game which heavily involves elements of the world, so maybe that counts for what you’re talking about!

Though personally it really doesn’t matter much to me if many people see my world stuff or etc., since really all the fun is just that I sincerely enjoy coming up with ideas and creating worlds and etc., even if I’m not doing anything major with it ( making a book series or comics or etc. I don’t feel like worldbuilding has to be working toward another project, and like that it can just be done for it’s own sake as a hobby), I still truly appreciate the sentiment and that you enjoy the world enough to give suggestions and etc. for stuff like that!! I’m going to keep at it however I can just because I love doing it so much, no matter if anyone really pays attention, but it is always unexpected and very meaningful when people like you engage with the content, so thank you for that! I’ll continue trying to make things and be productive and maybe use a few new ideas here and there just so it’s easier for people like you who tend to be more visual with things. I want to avoid leaving people out, and try to make a variety of things that can cater to more visual people as well or etc.!

-- About possibly being art friends or working together:

Well you said you read the collaboration FAQ, so I’m under the impression that I no longer need to answer that part of your question lol, thus I’ll just continue on with an answer assuming you know all of that information!

I’m always up for it I guess! I’m not sure about collaborating since I know nothing about you, and also don’t know where you live (remember I mention that it’d be much easier to collaborate with people I live closer to so we don’t have to like.. skype or some other weird digital method of communication in order to talk about ideas. Just since that sort of thing can get so lengthy, especially if it’s an actual project being taken seriously, I’d rather speak to someone in person and be able to work on it alongside each other better). If I got to know you for a few months and thought I could trust you/know we have a similar vision/don’t clash creatively or personality wise, AND we also lived close enough to meet at least occasionally, then yeah! project collaborations could work. If otherwise, then unfortunately it might not work in that regard. : U

(OH also if we’re a similar age?? I forget that people on the internet can be way younger than me.. I have nothing against younger people (very against the weird overly-simplified generational stereotyping ggh), but I would just feel kind of weird being an adult (early 20s) working with a minor who’s like 13 years old or something. I would be happy to talk about things from time to time and help with ideas or something, but actual like.. long term collaborative projects like writing a book together or creating and selling a game or something may be strange just due to us being at such totally different stages in our lives and etc. So, to collaborate on projects or even just communicate frequently about them or etc. I would also prefer we’re a similar age range (you’re somewhere from like 19 - 28 yrs old or close to that) ghhbh)

As for just talking about art though, that could work fine probably! Since it would just be casual discussion and less serious than full on project collabs or etc., you wouldn’t need to live near me or etc. Though of course I would still need to know about you first (especially politics and stuff like.. I don’t want to get 50 long conversations in with someone only to find out they hate trans people or are a huge racist or etc. I always like to establish that ahead of time or at least have some idea of a person’s leanings.), and understand your personality a little.

I am pretty socially anxious and due to health problems and stuff can sometimes be bad at replying ( I know some people expect instant responses, whereas I usually reply in a day or two ( depending on how long the message is)), but I also don’t currently have any friends to talk about world-building stuff with really or who care much about that sort of thing, so I’m always open to having conversations about stuff like that!

Especially if it’s a low-pressure causal sort of thing in the sense of like “hey let’s just see if we get along well conversationally and if we don’t then no hard feelings”, etc. One of the main reasons I’m often afraid to talk to strangers is that if we end up NOT getting along and I decide that I want to stop talking or etc., I’m afraid they’ll get mad at me or lash out at me or something. I prefer it when the expectation is set ahead of time like “we can both walk away at any time and should feel free to openly communicate how we feel about this conversation at any time. if we wouldn’t make good art friends or have trouble communicating then that’s fine and we just respectfully stop talking”. Which sounds like.. very common sense but.. I've talked to a few people in the past who struggled with communication and would be passive aggressively mean to you about it or something like that instead of just being open about them not feeling like talking anymore or etc., which is always a confusing situation to be in and I’d like to avoid it!

Anyway though! I can’t promise anything since I don’t know you and am cautious about new people (I don’t want to be like “OH sure we’ll be best friends!!” before I even know you and set up false expectations), but I’m definitely at least open to talking, especially about world-building stuff, if we’re compatible and respectful to each other and etc. And am also open to collaborations, under the right circumstances like what I’ve mentioned. Thank you again for the very nice set of asks!!!! I hope you have a great day, anon~

And that’s all for the reply post. Thanks to everyone who sent in asks about stuff!!

#replies

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