#i dont know how granular to make things

[felassan]

John Epler in the BioWare Discord (August 7th, again) -

User: "Since the dialogue wheel is coming back, will our choices set our Rook as diplomatic/humorous/aggressive with varying tone and voice lines similar to Hawke being able to be blue/purple/red?" John: "Not to the same degree - we want to give you the freedom to play your Rook differently depending on who they're talking to (you might be kinder to your companions and brusque with authority figures, for example), but your tone choices will have an impact within a conversation and, sometimes, with specific characters across multiple conversations." --- User: "I have to ask: how muscular can we make the elves?" John: "Reasonably so. You won't be making any massive bodybuilders but like... Timothy Olyphant?" User: "As a follow up what about humans and qunari? Quite muscular a la arnold or big viking type? Or not so much that lvl?" John: "Larger lineages (Qunari, esp) are bigger by default so the upper bounds are going to be bigger, but for modeling and animation we did want to put some limits on it. But your Rook can look pretty reasonably muscled, regardless of lineage choice." --- User: "Are there any time-sensitive quests (in terms of gameplay time, that will fail automatically if not addressed in a timely manner), and if there are please tell me they're at least indicated as such in some way?" John: "There are quests that can go away and technically 'fail' if you don't address them - but, to be VERY clear, this is not an in-game timer, but rather as you progress the game's story forward. That said, we do try to sign post them as much as possible." --- User: "Does Rook ever get the choice to cuss?" John: "Yes. You'll know when you're doing it, and we leave it up to you to make the choice, but sometimes, cursing is exactly what the situation demands."

[character limit text break!]

User: "Does the bioware team read the other channels and if so do they think we're unhinged or endearing?" John: "Little of column A, little of column B. But I mean, I've been online for 27 years, the internet has ruined me as much as anyone." --- User: "all the Rooks we've seen so far are wearing purple, please tell me we dont have to wear purple" John: "Everyone else can wear whatever colour they want but you, specifically, must always wear purple." --- User: "All the games have had unique faction symbols for our protagonist (Warden, Champion of Kirkwall, Inquisition) I assume there will be one for the Veilguard Will the symbol for it get released before the game or is this something that will be revealed in-game/after it’s launched?" John: "Every faction has their own symbol - including the Veilguard themselves! You may have noticed it in some of the art out there." --- John: "As a general comment - one thing I want to be super clear on - even as creative director there are things I can say, and things we're not ready to talk about. I'd rather spend my time answering what I can instead of a dozen 'sorry I can't talk about that yet' - especially since this channel is on slow mode." --- User: "There are blood effects in combat after Rook hits an enemy. And I think a developer shared images of the blood effects on hit after the reveal. Will characters be covered in blood or other environmental effects? Like getting wet from walking in puddles or muddy from running on dirt?" John: "There are environmental effects that persist on characters, depending on the environment you're traversing. They're subtle, but they're there!" --- User: "how many tattoos can we choose from? are there also full bodied ones too?" John: "I don't know the exact number, but there are quite a few. Some are full body as well, though you have control over colours and opacity on a more granular basis."

[character limit text break!]

User: "Of the zones/areas revealed what was the most challenging to design?" John: "Each has its own unique challenges. Arlathan seems simple because - well, it's a forest, right? But what about Arlathan makes it different than places you've been before? How does it fit into the established lore? Minrathous is a different kettle of fish because we've talked about it extensively and in a way that meant it HAD to be grander and more impressive than anything we've built before, which can be a tall order. The team did a fantastic job on all the areas, though." --- User: "which faction has the best fashion, in your opinion?" John: "Crows. Largely because 'black leather and feathers' isn't a look I could pull off in the real world but I am glad my Rook can." --- John: "Alright folks. I've gotta head back to work, but please keep asking questions and I'll answer what I can as soon as I can!"

[source: the official BioWare Discord]

There was also this question and answer:

User: "Can we name our saves like in Origins?" John: "I had to double check because I was about 95% sure on the answer, but also, I've been on this project for its entirety and sometimes I remember features that we had to cut (or never actually built) - yes. You can name your saves to reduce confusion."

but the answer may have now been deleted.

[velvetvexations]

"oh im not sexist or anything i just think everything women do is sexually motivated" -the transphobic person who called you het (i dont think we should grace people w the granularity of transandrophobes or transradfema at a certain level, i think we should start throwing people to the dogs of calling them things we similarly call conservatives, if that makes sense)

im so glad to see someone with more energy and functioning than i to be angry and pick fights and also be in the Right demographic to throw stones. like im up to my ears in intrusive angry thoughts about how the simultaneous pathologization of transmasculinity and normalization of desire to be male stems from sigmund "everybody wants penis" freud yet everyone only ever talks abt "misogyny is only enforced against little gay boys of course everyone knows that silly woman" blanchard is like tirf jesus or something. when i find my Vitamin™ that fixes me ill be here tearing apart people w my teeth but until then i come visit your tumblr and your blog gives me hp & mana like a loz fairy zone save point (like link between worlds even though thats a little outside your listed time displacement, but it was big for me when i got my 3ds, so)

A Link to the Past is my favorite Zelda so I do also appreciate A Link Between Worlds for being the first to bring that style back!

[tadpal]

hii tad!! 28, 34 & 37 for the make me admit stuff ask game 💛

hi jupiter!!!

28. What was the last thing that made you laugh?

my younger brother!! though i couldn't really pinpoint a particular joke or phrase it's more that being around them makes me feel lighter and more joyful!

34. Listening to?

julia jacklins album! but of a downer but i like a lot of the production. it's very Of The Style but i feel like they understand how to compliment the backing to her vocals better than a lot of indie styled musicians imo. id love to get more explorative with my tastes but rn it just feels like there is so little time to listen to anything the desire to digest the unfamiliar just isn't there and when i try it feels forced

37. Do you believe in love at first sight?

i do i think, which maybe a shocker idk. i perceive myself as a romantic bc romance to me is a very performed thing: romance as a series of actions to demonstrate love; love as a connected unspecified series of actions to demonstrate a complex group of feelings; feelings which combine uniquely for each person and situation; and which personally boil down closeness, a ripping sense of personal revelation (near to trust but not quite), and curiosity. so obviously for me yeah i can i have love at first sight or at least the desire for love in that first moment

but then even beyond that, i think my relationship with Love becomes very granular and overexplained as a way for me to personally disconnect it from the wishy washy faux hippie language of my upbringing, and the concept of both capital L Love and the quieter love often being the primary tool and justification for tremendous amounts of personal and widespread violence. which isn't to say that i think my viewpoint is singular, but more that it has been ground down to the point where it is both easier to explain and, anecdotally speaking, difficult for others to relate to or understand.

and so, i do believe in love at first sight both in the cynical Love As Components viewpoint AND in the Love Exists In Both Simple And Complex Forms and therefore can be felt simply and wholely even on a fleeting moment viewpoint, AND love felt misguidedly or even falsely assumed to be love in the moment, is still love, love exists in the naming of saying you love something, AND how wondrous that there are infinite experience outside of our own and even though I dont and cant believe in myself ever falling in love at first sight, i know that other people have and are and will continue to do so.

in conclusion yes. but also no. but also that no means that a yes must exist (and vice versa)

[blissfullybloomed]

Consistency: OOF! Yup, that's where we're headed today. 

Literally this one is going to be rough all over the place. Buckle up!

Being real, this word alone gives me PTSD of a past relationship that I jacked up because I myself wasn't consistent. This is one of those relationships that forced me to learn who I was, because he didn't deserve me in that state. I know you read these, and I'm sorry to you, too. 

Side bar, man am I glad I did the work ... .I just did it a little too late for some partners. 

Anyway, here we go. 

Are you the type of person that gets overly excited about a new task or project and the excitement wears off in a week? Yeah, I used to be too. Until I learned a few tricky tricks. 

“Plan your work, and work your plan.”- Dale Vermillion.  Dale is an incredibly intelligent handsome man who works in realty and mortgage lending. 

This step is the most crucial. The planning, and the working of the plan. Start with setting some goals. Example: Weight loss, Work less hours and be home, Play your guitar more, put more legos together…and so on. 

Once you have a goal…set some timelines to it. Specific timelines. Deadlines if you will. Example: I want to lose weight by the end of the year. Great…now you have a deadline as to when this goal will be reached. Let's take it a few steps further though …let's get granular. 

Make SMART Goals. Smart, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely. 

Losing weight by the end of the year is great…but how much weight are we going to lose per month? Per week? Per day? How many calories are we going to intake? See…lots of questions to drill this bad boy down to make it realistic to achieve. 

Speaking of calories…little tidbit. Losing weight is all about calorie intake - calorie outtake. 3500 Calories = 1 pound. Eat less calories…lose weight….eat more calories..maintain or increase your weight. 

Now listen, I'm not a nutritionist…so don't get your panties in a twist….I just know what I know. 

Tell everyone! Keep yourself accountable to whatever task you’re trying to complete. 

This will help drastically with your success or failure in my humble opinion. If you're the struggle in silence type…by all means, go for it. I would highly recommend journaling at minimum throughout that timeframe. It helps with the overwhelming anxiety that is caused when we put too much pressure on ourselves to achieve a goal. No shame in journaling. 

Prepare yourself mentally for disappointment and setbacks. There's a reason why companies forecast potential revenue loss….they know anything can happen and are ready with a plan if it does.

Example: I will lose 50 pounds by the end of the year. I will achieve this by eating less than 3500 calories a day and losing 1 pound every three days, which equals a 2 pound loss each week. Two pounds lost per week = 8 pounds in a month. So I can realistically lose 8 pounds in a month IF i dont over or under eat. So My goal would then change accordingly to allow flux .  Hopefully, that makes sense.

Keep it moving…don't Quit! Show up for yourself every freaking day. Do small things daily to build up to the end goal. Whatever that may be ... .if you need help with goal setting reach out to me. I can totally help with that confidentially. 

Consistency is hard. Really hard. Especially if you are in a mental or physical fog. You just don't have the will to meet your goals today… THIS is why we allow for flux. We can't be 100% everyday. Some days are going to be zero days. Nothing gets accomplished, laundry stacks, dishes in sink, kids in the same clothes as yesterday, reports for work haven't been written…and so on. It's okay, we planned for this to happen. Be easy on yourself…no progress is still progress. You have not chosen to completely stop. Keep moving. 

Some things that help me stay consistent: 

Calendars, Calendars, Calendars…for REAL! I legit have a consistent calendar I use in Microsoft Excel to budget. Yeah, a spreadsheet. 

Alarms and Reminders in any of my devices. I have reminders to shower, make coffee, do yoga, meditate, comb my hair( Yeah it was that bad at one point- my zero days). 

Affirmations EVERYWHERE! Flood yourself with hand written affirmations. I used to have them on chakra colored post notes all around my house. 

Journaling/Blogging. It gets the old out sometimes. Makes room for the new. 

Tea, Yoga, and Meditation…these are my Holy trinity. It's my safe space. 

Your environment. Look around you. Check your five senses? What smells? Sounds? Anything that makes you turn your nose up or cringe….get it out! Refresh everything! This is also making room for fresh new ideas, thoughts, and space. I use sage, incense, candles, aroma diffusers, orange himalayan lamps, meditation music, twinkle lights, artwork that makes me happy ...all the good things. 

Lastly, check the people you surround yourself with. Are they pushing or pulling you from your goals? Really evaluate that. Blinders off. Take stock. Maybe they need to go for a while, so you can focus on yourself? So be it. If they love you, they will understand and either wait for you or be supportive with you. If a person has an opportunity to rid themselves of someone or something toxic in their life, they should take that chance for themselves. If they don't…what self worth do they or YOU have? 

Alright, I'm done preaching today. Get out there and do some stuff! Love y'all!

[privateenemy]

was going to make this a half page write up but id just be overcompensating, bluesky drama riddled with snark and defensiveness ended with a skeet that read something like "trans men wonder why theres no transfeminist theory centered around them, [the subthread] is why. this is why." and it pissed me the fuck off. it was about regendering and legibility and i deviated from everyones opinions as far as i understood it but it pissed me off "You subskeeted me so enjoy your erasure, this is your fault" [that will supposedly happen because trans women dont talk about it, because listening to trans men about things that affect us is impossible]

trans women are instrumental and deserve the spotlight in transfeminism when they are so routinely denied it in other forms, but i dont need i dont want your theory about me if an off color subskeet thread is enough to cause this. i don't fucking know, what is there to say?

i follow the guy because he frequently calls out transmasc misogyny (as is put) and then him being accused of believing in transmisandry because it was mentioned as a silly thing to believe in in his own thread.

im not this guy's PR, i dont give a fuck, he was flippant i could see the argument that he was rude. but his thread, as far as i understood, did not interject anything about trans women, just named an issue he saw with how trans men were framed, a correction he made as someone with that or similar experience, to someone (indirectly) without that experience.

this is still too long for what this was. i dont remember every detail of the thread, he said lol and lmao, i thought these were de-aggro but apparently theyre rude as fuck i dont understand. but she's still right to be hurt by that. maybe the tone and dismissal was transmisogynistic, i dont have the thread anymore, and im not a trans woman, I wouldn't really know. this is a post about an extremely granular pet peeve

[syrupspinner]

i just played the demo for beat, heart, beat

i think im just gonna start linking the steam page in everything i review. now its your job to click that link and try the demo. but read my post first cuz i like it when people do that

so this game kinda confounded me when i first saw it. i knew it was inspired by mad rat dead, like cmon the protagonist is a little rodent of some sort and theres this whole motif about following your heart. but then i saw the gameplay and it was an auto scroller with... idk the terminology but its a muse-dash like where youve got the top and bottom rows. and then i actually played the game and realized how much of its own thing this game was going for

so in muse dash your character is kind of in the centre between two single-width lanes, yes even if it looks like theyre on the bottom one, because the upper lane is always mapped to a dedicated upward button and the lower to a dedicated downward button. unless youre using a touch screen, this usually splits your controller in half, one side being up and the other down. i always end up holding it sideways

anyway, thats not how this works. its way more like a platformer, as in when you attack, you attack relative to where you are. the right key attacks in front of you, the up above, and down... down. this really fucked me up at first believe it or not, cuz my silly rhythm game brain is used to a perfect parity between lane and input

let me break it down cuz i dunno if that makes sense. if theres a note in front of you, hit ->. if theres a note above you, hit ↑, cuz youre on the ground and that note is in the air. now that youve done that, youre gonna hover in the air for a bit. theres another aerial note coming up, and since youre still in the air, you hit ->, because its in front of you, even through its in the air. i feel the need to be this granular because i really havent played a game like this before, lane relativity is uncharted territory (intentional pun)

they do some fun stuff with this! so theres this enemy that looks like a blueberry pancake and/or deflated balloon? look we were moving fast and i was focusing on the beat. anyway, its always gonna be below you (in the air over a pit) so you always down-attack it, but when you do you bounce right back up to the elevation you were at. this sets up for some really cool patterns where youve gotta be attentive to know what the inputs are thanks to the lane relativity, and that makes a fun and challenging section of the level! im really excited to see the patterns they use in the full game

i do have a few snags. first, the cue notes really fucked me up. all the notes are really visually distinct, and thats important cuz theyre gonna do different things to your character and fuck with your note relativity. but the cue notes are only different from their colour, which i find a lot harder to process than shape if ive got half-a-second to register what input i need. one cue has a different tempo, and another starts on an offbeat, so it really threw me off whenever i had to react to em

another thing, really minor, no controller support. not a problem since i, yknow, own a keyboard, but the menus use the mouse way too often? the main menu is permissable, but even the results screen makes you click confirm with your cursor instead of being able to highlight it with buttons and stuff. whats weird is that the song selection lets you use arrow keys, so i really dont get it. the last point was just me struggling with the gameplay, this feels like something that id actually wanna see changed in the full release

but heres some things i LOVE. first, the vibe, fucking obviously. i love the gritty overtoned garageband soundtrack i love the mishmash collage visuals, i love the design of the main character i wanna snuggle them to bed.

so heres something ive never seen a rhythm game do before, right? and i cant confirm this is the case, but i feel like this has to be what happened just watching the gameplay difference: they make the judgement windows tighter on higher difficulties. thats genius, why are you the first person to do that, that feels so obvious in retrospect but it just makes sense as a thing to do. i understand in a lot of more 'professional' traditional rhythm games, yknow the beatmania kind, wanna give you a more uniform experience across songs and let you personalize your input windows and yadda yadda we dont do that here. you are a little mousie and hard mode makes the timing harder too, thats badass

dont worry about the difficulty btw, from what i can tell the game is pretty forgiving to newcomers while still offering a challenge. all the levels defaulted to easy mode in the level select (no story mode in the demo, whatcha gonna do) but you still get tutorials and stuff on the higher levels, so its accepting if you just wanna jump into tough shit. either way though you cant really fail a level, theres no health bar and no minimum score. if you fall down a pit you just head back to your last checkpoint and you dont get a medal on the results screen, so if you dont care then you can just blitz through. they dont even have overstrum so you can just spam that shit and look at the pretty backgrounds

so i think BHB is gonna be something special. i love the looks, the sounds, everything has this raw vibe to it. like, the singer has a really scratchy and heavy singing voice, and i think that adds a really good emotional quality to all the songs. the cue notes are gonna fuck me up and itll probably take the whole game for me to get used to the lane relativity thing but you know i dig a game that lives on its own terms.

if you like rhythm games then youre gonna try the demo and youre gonna wishlist it because you like psychedelic visuals and alt-rock vibrations. if you dont like those youre gonna wishlist it anyway because that really helps the algorithm pick up indie games and more people need to see this, i think this really has potential to be a gem and it deserves the recognition for it. after youve done that youre gonna play the demo again until you like it. its a good demo for a probably good game, i dunno cuz its not out yet but i just have a good feeling about this one. its 1 am and i woke up early as shit today so thats the best youre getting

[3liza]

im trying to avoid the notes on the autism socialization posts because i already know in my heart there are dozens of autists reblogging and getting extremely mad at someone suggesting you can actually sometimes improve your subjective experiences somewhat by exerting effort (a concept that the worst dregs of tumblr and twitter have decided is ‘ableist’), despite these very same people all having various extremely specialized skills, interests and hobbies that any other person on earth would find impossible to memorize, make sense of, or even tolerate.

i genuinely believe that boomers removing any and all basic childhood education that used to include stuff like “comportment” etc have made it more difficult for autistic kids because now youre just supposed to pick that stuff up automatically. admittedly the midcentury social mores were stifling and weird, im not saying the silent generation was morally superior because they had a more formalized way of teaching . but sort of how the corset moving out of fashion meant that naked bodies themselves had to assume the shapes previously conferred by the garment, the lack of formal social education means you are expected to just figure all this shit out on your own, without any help, and if you dont then youre a freak and get punished for it. it used to be pretty normal to receive formal education, even if it was just from your parents, about how to behave in public.

the only reason i can talk about this stuff in a granular or educational way is the theater thing which i mentioned already, and the fact that my very old boomer/silent parents (who are also autistic) took the time to formally instruct me about it and didnt just trust the public school system to form me into a functional adult. it makes absolutely all the difference in the world for parents to tell an autistic child “you’re right, this stuff doesnt make sense and is exhausting, but here are all the reasons why we do it anyway, and here’s HOW to do it in situations where it’s expected.”. considering how much of a strggle i have with it now, i know for a fact i would probably be homeless or a shutin if i hadnt gotten those years of extra training. it’s not different than the 10 years of formal ballet training i got. my balance and proprioception are still dogshit, but they would have been much worse without the dance training and extra musculature.

people like to sneer at it on the internet but not knowing what fork to use at a formal dinner or whatever can be an aspect of class war. i cant tell you how many times my broke ass has been able to finagle my way out of various poor person traps because i learned the rules of acting like a mannerly, educated old money person. its like having a magic password

[daemonhxckergrrl]

re: your ask from greyr4t about win10: as you said in your answer its free, just needs a key for 'activation.' ime activating win10 has been worth it. like you mentioned, it isnt strictly necessary, one can make do fine in a somewhat limited capacity with the watermark in the corner forever (unless your monitor is an OLED then have fun with 100% guaranteed screen burn in lmao. or unless always seeing it enrages you disproportionately. as in my case). but having windows activated is honestly just nice, it makes many things easier and is more sustainable in the long run... worth the extremely minor hassle as like a QoL thing imo. you also brought up that its possible to circumvent microsoft (and its brazenly insane asking prices 🤬) & buy cheap keys online from third parties. i wanted to talk about how i did shit, hopefully it helps the original asker directly or at least comes in handy to know

so i bought my (shady bootleg, yes, but perfectly functional for years now) win10 activation key for even cheaper than what Synthia listed as a price point- iirc, under 5 bucks USD. (might be higher now w inflation, but id be surprised if its much more than around 10.) if things still work how they used to, you can do this on ebay. technically ebays policies dont allow it, so the accounts selling these keys come and go frequently due to getting shut down by ebay after popping up. thus, dont necessarily be put off if the seller hasnt existed for long, as often thats just how it goes (or it did. hopefully this sort of thing is still going strong🤞); do trust happy reviews. now, there are a few TYPES of activation keys– priced slightly different, nothing big– that correspond to different editions of windows 10. so basically its home edition, pro edition, and "pro for workstations". might be worth finding a brief summary of each to determine which edition best meets your needs. (there are more editions beyond the main trio, look into those too if you want, but the tldr on em is theyre for like niche markets w/ highly specific use cases.) fwiw, i got pro & am happy with it. another thing, from personal experience: may or may not be obvious but you're gonna wanna save a screenshot of your key somewhere safe and accessible. additionally though, label the screenshot somehow so you know what it is later, and if youre a disorganized scatterbrain like i am then put that in multiple places you can reliably access so if/when youre having trouble tracking it down you know where else to look; it came in handy for me to have access to it in places both online (cloud storage like google drive or dropbox for example, or even just saving the email copy of the ebay mssg in the designated folder in your email for the ones containing info you wanna save) & off (physical note on paper, stored in the files on one or more personal devices, etc). theres a huge chance youll need it again in the future– like say if you want to upgrade certain hardware– and likely more than once. final advice: highly recommend looking into comprehensive ways of "defanging" and/or "lobotomizing" windows, as they say. i.e., a tip that gets circulated is doing the initial setup for windows w your pc in airplane mode / ethernet unplugged so you dont have to make a microsoft account so they cant create a profile on you to collect your data to sell off & target ads at you (which is obvi totally reversible later if you decide the benefits of having an account outweigh the drawbacks). shit like that, plus the loads of guides out there– many here on tumblr itself– on extensive fucking around in various settings to disable bloatware / preserve privacy / other useful stuff, that can get pretty granular. i think ive even seen Synthia herself reblog posts like that here a couple times, maybe? perhaps try checking relevant-seeming tags from the tagging system in her pinned, or do a blog search for the term 'windows' and see what all there is to find

phew, anyway, jesus christ! sorry this got to be such a long writeup!!! some of this blog's aggregate of resources have been a big help to me, so i wanted to try to pay it forward a little <3 and, Synthia, if you wouldnt mind, tagging the original asker in your response to this anon so that greyr4t is more likely to see all this would be very much appreciated by me!! ty in advance!! thanks also for your careful curation of useful info on this blog, plus the helpful posts and guides youve written here for us yourself 👍🌈

hi anon ! thanks for writing all this up !! lots of great points here - hopefully they help you out @greyr4t ! the airplane mode one is real important too if you care about privacy (and the fact you can't choose to make a local account during installation unless you are disconnected from the internet is awful and yet another dark pattern-type tactic.

i'm glad my blog's been good for you <3 (though i do need to go through and make all the important stuff a bit easier to access at some point)

iirc there's some reblogs on general privacy stuff (probably under one of the REPO tags and like "net privacy" or similar) as well as my own firefox post, and maybe more will happen in the future when i get to them

[slaygentford]

losing my mind about the toxic femininity thing you posted... for years i‘m like. stupid with wondering why tf i can’t write women and like not even can’t - don’t want to???? feel like it’s exactly what you said my god i‘m like so close to Realizing things about myself again EW i’d totally appreciate it if you’d elaborate on this more if you ever feel like it x

so you’re me and you’re like 18 and you go for the first time to a strip club and there’s this feeling of immediate revulsion paired with the obvious gay panic, you kno. and then a friend, a girl, says I can see how this would feel powerful, people throwing money at you. and you (me) are just standing there in a dull state of panic thinking, no?? no?? but then you say: yeah! and what I'm saying is that I didn’t walk into that club like, I’m A Feminist, And I’m Opposed, or like, I’m A Feminist, And I Support Sex Workers. because I didn't know the word feminist and I didn’t know the term sex worker. and I think when we see it in media -- femininity as an Issue -- it’s ALWAYS with the baggage of like, This Is About! The Woman’s Crusade!! but when you see something about toxic masculinity it’s allowed to just be a fucking exploration of a character. but because women’s human rights are still like a fuckin topic of debate we don’t get that luxury. the personal is political. we know that.

and like YES the personal is political -- WHEN we are discussing it in an essay or in a conversation in the real world. but when you are WRITING A STORY, I'm not saying be apolitical, but I am saying that what moves us, what we see ourselves in and relate to, it’s not broad concepts, it’s like GRANULAR and SPECIFIC experiences which illustrate the feeling of crisis. so if you go into a story, writing or consuming, and the first thing about it that hits is THIS IS POLITICAL, this is ABOUT the consumption of womens bodies lol handmaids tale, it’s not gonna hit. because beneath the metaphor where is the person.

and even when you make a woman INTERACT with woman-as-a-political-body, it just turns into like, girl boss! or like, ew, heterosexist society! but what I was feeling in that club wasn’t, ew, heterosexist society! what I was feeling was something terrifying and essential, something which I remember seven years later because for whatever reason it frightened me THAT badly, it shoved me that hard back into agreeing and saying yes and performing yes: yes this is what I aspire to in my own womanhood. 

and then to perform that acceptance and that type of femininity isn’t like.... it isn’t like a girl puts on lipstick and feels empowered and it also isn’t like a girl puts on lipstick and doesn’t feel like herself. it’s neither one of those trite, defanged poles we see in fiction. it’s a violent act of reduction, a VIOLENT performance. and toxic masculinity might be like, you punch men to be seen punching men and passing the man-test. but this toxic thing I had was like, you dance with men to be seen by other women so they can inform you that you are passing the test. the test of are you a woman in the right way. and it was no less violent than a punch. and tho this happens obviously BECAUSE OF SOCIETY, society is not what you are thinking about while you are experiencing it. you are only thinking about your fear. 

anyway. maybe it’s a gay thing after all. the first character I felt seen by after my prefrontal cortex had fully developed was Ennis del mar. I dont know what half of this says. 

[filamints]

1, 2, 7 and 17!

1 i just answered!

2: Do you focus on attention to detail when you read fics? Are you more or less attention to detail focussed when you write fics?

i like fics with a lot of granular detail. its also what i try to strive for because i hate fics that are like that one joke post where they end up flipping positions a dozen times and clip thru each other n break bones because the writing is so unclear. i just dont wanna be misunderstoooooood.

7: Were there any ideas you had for [insert fic] that you couldn’t make work? What were they?

i think i only have two ideas that were originally in the drafts of the fic that got yanked out for not fitting the tone. there was a scene in extraterrestrial desensitization that got Way too horny so i pulled it out and let it sit in its own separate document. i have picked at it here and there since then and moved it to a standalone with characterization more how i prefer than how it was in the original (since the og fic is a gift, its tailored to their tastes). who knows, it might see the light of day someday!

the other is what im currently working on. it originally had a much more comedic vibe in the end and i went. hmmm. idk, i think ill just continue to play the tone straight.

17: What has been the proudest moment for you so far since you started writing?

idk. probably silly to say, but pivot doodling things about my words. like, its good enough for fan art ;___;

[verdisketch]

also, because it's not me if i dont be salty, I did see some mutterings of people who wondered why I brought back the race discourse around the same time as the kickstarter last year; I can fully and honestly say I had no idea. Me and my sib sometimes reminiscence on our experience in 4s fandom, especially since it happened at a formative time (19/20 for me, younger for them) and taught us a lot about how to navigate racial justice and discourse. Especially in fandom spaces.

(another readmore! It got long.)

like, I'm fully aware it was half a decade ago, but the lessons I learned then are kind of ingrained in me. I also never stopped being visibly Asian. A lot of the white people I debated with in that forum can move on and never think about race again, and I literally never can. (I am, however, forever grateful some people got back in touch with me, either here or elsewhere, to tell me how my and other's words impacted them.)

I got to take a break during quarantine, but upon re-entering society it is a part of my everyday life again. Like, the other day someone told me I looked like a Kpop star and started describing which of my and an unrelated woman of another race's features were the same, unprompted, and I had to politely stare her down until she stopped.

And I never want to tell people to boycott M1nna or stop supporting her. That's a decision everyone has to make for themselves. I don't believe in cancel culture for small indie artists (which she is), and I don't believe I should trash a person's livelihood because she made something that I don't personally like.

It means that I, as someone who bought her first book, refuse to buy her second and third; it means I haven't touched the site in years; I blocked her on relevant social medias so that I don't see her; and sometimes friends still tell me stuff that happens, like the bunny comic, and I lose my mind because literally I don't think even the most morally high-minded person can read that and not go what the fuck and make a few untagged posts about it.

but! I wanted to address that one thing, because I saw something about it at the time, dismissed it, and then decided 'actually, no, I wanna talk about it'. No, I didn't reignite race/forum discourse as a cheap way to try to undercut her kickstarter sales. If I wanted to undercut her sales, or really put her in hot water, I have so many other avenues than politely using a sideblog and censoring her name and not even tagging the main comic tag in an attempt to keep it separate from the main 4s fandom.

Like, I've never shared this before, or I've only shared it through DMs and hinted publicly, but a staff member of H1v3w0rks personally reached out to me at the time to get the slur off the page way back when. I still know this person, and if I really fucking wanted to, I could organize a bunch of yall to like, idk, sign a letter that goes 'hey can you talk to M1nna about this'.

I could escalate. I'm not going to because I am not evil, I don't personally believe in censorship, I have my own shit to do, and I actually don't think it would work anyway. Any rational employer would be like 'a badly written bunny comic created on M1nna's own time, that isn't contracted to us specifically, is literally not any of our business'. One unfortunate incident 5 years ago is also not grounds for talking to M1nna. It happened five years ago and they already talked to her about it (The specifics of this, or whether it happened, is all conjecture on my part. The contact I had was basically 'you're upset? ok. what's an acceptable substitute. I'll talk to her about it.')

This may seem like a ridiculously longwinded and granular look at how I approach a content creator I do not like or agree with but I want to make it absolutely, one hundred percent, crystal clear, that I both a) don't have an elaborate revenge plan nor will I ever, b) do not condone an elaborate revenge plan towards her. I understand the timing was bad, and I apologize, but I truly do not believe that the posts affected her kickstarter sales, nor would I want them to.

[blazehedgehog]

What’s wrong with different games in the same genre playing differently? You dont have a run button or the ability to jump on enemy’s heads in castlevania, and you can’t duck in megaman (usually). Metal Gear Solid didnt play like a shooter for a long time, and not every jrpg needs to be turn based or even have a menu. Sonic unleashed doesn’t play like sonic adventure, or any game, so why should srb2? Doesn’t that reduce the benefits from experimentation in game design that got us SotN?

I’ve always bristled at the idea that Castlevania and Mega Man are the same genre, because that usually means the blanket term of simply referring to them as “action games” when, like, 75% of the games on the market today contain “action.”

(Then there are the psychopaths who put Mega Man in the genre of “platformer,” and that’s when blood starts coming out of my eyes)

But I digress.

The thing that you’re forgetting in all of this is the drum I’ve been beating this entire time, and that’s the idea of STANDARDS. You’ve heard the term where something “raises the bar,” right? Innovation is not celebrating somebody throwing darts randomly at a bullseye and clapping even when they don’t hit the target.

Everything has to have a logic behind it, and either that logic is good, or it’s bad. And sometimes the logic is so good that it takes the current standard and elevates it to the next level, usually by improving on a core fundamental of the game design so much that all games to follow in its wake adopt the changes as part of the expected set of features that game has.

So you have Castlevania and Mega Man, as you say, right? They’re both “action games” but in the most granular terms possible, they are almost their own genres. Castlevania is a hyper-difficult gothic horror melee attack game, and Mega Man is a futuristic cartoon shooter with permanent upgrades.

As such, neither really has a baring on the other. What Castlevania does largely does not effect Mega Man, because Mega Man is not a hyper-difficult gothic horror melee attack game, and vice-versa, Castlevania is not a futuristic cartoon shooter with permanent upgrades. Both games have different vibes, both games have different goals, both games have different structures. They aren’t the same thing and therefore do not influence each other.

They are their own standards, essentially. So you have Mega Man 2, and some people say that’s the best Mega Man, so it’s the standard that all other Mega Man games are judged against. There is a wider action game standard, too, but it’s broader and more complex to define, so it’s easier to focus on something as simple as games in the “futuristic cartoon shooter with permanent upgrades“ sub-sub genre.

The thing to keep in mind about Sonic Robo-Blast 2, is that:

It’s a fangame that’s part of a long-established franchise where the core genre is sort of a platformer/racing game hybrid.

SRB2 has been in development for over twenty years, and if you’ve been following it for the project’s entire lifespan (as I have) you’ve seen exactly what it’s going for (which is to say: it’s the sequel to Sonic Robo-Blast 1, a pure platformer)

We also know what features were available in prior versions of the game (proper analog controls that did not require mouse aiming, and even a homing attack like the Sonic Adventure games had).

These three things influence how we judge the logic behind what version 2.2 has done. We can also use this information to compare it directly to games that are its peers – namely, other cartoony 3D platformers, and other Sonic games.

SRB2 version 2.2 implements its mouse-aim-focused controls because it is built on top of the Doom Engine, particularly the Doom Legacy fork. SRB2 has long fought to build a proper 3D platformer out of the Doom Engine. Every major version of the game moves it closer to this goal, with a third person camera, layered vertically-oriented level design, and moving platforms.

But for more than half of its development, a very popular feature for SRB2 has been its “Match” (Deathmatch) mode, which throws all the platformer stuff out the window and brings SRB2 back to the its roots in the Doom engine, with “guns” (weaponized rings) that can be shot at opponents in tight, looping arenas.

And because it’s basically Doom, it helps to play it like a shooter: WASD for strafing, mouse for aiming. The most hardcore SRB2 players even play in first-person, just like Doom. For them, it’s almost not even a Sonic game anymore, it’s just Doom with different weapons and more colorful maps. This, even though deathmatch didn’t get added until three years after SRB2 entered development.

As the game wore on, the old developers slowly left to go live normal lives and new developers were brought in to fill the gaps, some (or even most) of which were the types to play lots and lots of SRB2 deathmatch. They played so much deathmatch that they decided that playing SRB2 like a standard platformer was worse than playing SRB2 like it was a shooter, so they opted to make SRB2 play more like Doom, because that’s what they like.

Except it doesn’t need to. SRB2 is still structured and designed like a platformer. Nothing in the single player campaign explicitly requires you to circle strafe, even though the tutorial makes you practice doing so. The game’s own design is fighting itself, and the people who just want “Doom with different weapons and colorful maps” are winning. It’s making for a worse product to the people who have never touched SRB2′s deathmatch, or plan to touch deathmatch.

It’s their game. They can do whatever they want with it. They can take what SRB2 was and change that, if it strikes their fancy. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it, and it doesn’t mean I’ve given up the right to complain about it. I cared enough about SRB2 that pieces of my artistic DNA are still in that game to this very day. I’m allowed to have an opinion on it.

And that opinion is: it doesn’t want to play like a 3D platformer anymore. It ignores 20 years of analog control standardization and tells you to play a platformer like a third person shooter. It offers a kludgy justification for it by breaking established rules of how 3D platformers work – rules that, might I add, were not broken by previous versions of SRB2.

When Mario does a long jump in Super Mario 64, he jumps in the direction that he’s facing. When Banjo and Kazooie do a Beak Barge, they shoot forward in the direction they’re facing. When Jak & Daxter do an uppercut, they do it in the direction they’re facing. When Spyro does a headbutt, he does it in the direction he’s facing. When Sonic spindashes in Sonic Adventure, he shoots off in the direction he’s facing. When Sonic boosts in Sonic Generations, he boosts in the direction he’s facing. Nobody EVER shoots off EXCLUSIVELY IN THE DIRECTION OF THE CAMERA unless they are holding and shooting a gun, like Ratchet in Ratchet & Clank. But even then, the moment you stop aiming? All of Ratchet’s moves go in the same direction that he’s facing.

I really cannot make this any clearer than that.

[yeoldontknow]

hello hello !! sorry to bother u, i was just stopping by to ask if you had any tips for planning stories? like organizing the plot and transferring it from head to words, filling in gaps, fixing plotholes, seperating into chapters, all that stuff lmao. i need advice for a story idea i have kdhdlfk thank u !! 💕

hello love! congrats on starting a long series! its such an undertaking, trust me i know how it feels. you have all these things that live in your head and they feel so overwhelming. long series are hard! especially for people like me! who think they can be brief! and absolutely are not! lmaoo 

i do have a few tips but please keep in mind they work for me and might not be applicable to you. or simply they might not suit your style. the longer you practice writing, the more you develop a flow, style, and structure to your planning/work so. this is how i do things but you might choose to do them differently!

under the cut to not clog dashes!

= OUTLINE=

i truly cannot stress this enough - outlines save lives. when i make an outline, its basically my process of creating a timeline or even like…an encyclopedia of all the information that’s going into the fic. its literally a master doc. this is where i break out characters, ages, personality traits. if its fantasy, i break out their rank and title, what their magic/power is, or specific skills. and i mean, every character - even down to minor characters. you can see an example of how i do that in the wyrm tamer outline:

its really nothing special, and honestly i dont want it to be fancy. if it gets too crazy i get distracted. simple details help drive my action but i dont take complete control of every little thing - more on this later.

from there, i break out chapters. this is why i stress making a timeline because once you order the events you want to take place it makes it easier to see them as chapters. when i break out a chapter, similar to how i list info about characters, i list all the minor/smaller events that will take place that will influence the overall story. again, you can see how i do this in the wyrm tamer doc. 

i can show another example in the hero doc where the more fleshed out my idea is, the more it comes out looking like a skeleton of a draft. when i outline like this, it makes it easy for me to refer back when writing next installments because ive already told myself where the story goes.

the above pic brings me to point number 2

=GIVE YOUR CHARACTERS ROOM TO BREATHE=

the above pic has scenes that are highlighted in purple. they are purple because they were originally intended for chapter 11 of hero but when i actually sat down to write it, the length became insanely long so i moved those moments to 12. i will not show you the end of my outlines because of obvious spoilers, but when i tell you the very ending of both wyrm tamer and hero have been outlined using 4 words its because of this: give your characters room to grow into the story. 

i really dont like outlining dialogue beyond major, fixed events - things that are integral to the main plot. the interactions that occur at a granular level within the fic are what drives the resolution. the actions will be the same, but how they choose to get there, how they relate to the event, and internalize it is something that you can only really know once youre writing it and letting them express it. 

when it comes to fixing plot holes, a strong outline will have taken care of that for you HOWEVER:

=TAKE TIME READING BACK PREVIOUS CHAPTERS=

every time i sit down to work on hero, 90% of my time working on the next chapter is spent reading the story from start to finish over and over again to make sure that i am referring back to details, moments of dialogue, important small things that i might not have drafted so that they can be used as plot devices. dont worry about how long it will take you to do this - your next installments will thank you. 

when it comes to transferring images in your mind into words:

=KEEP A THESAURUS OPEN=

my computer is old as hell so its slow to take screenshots, but i will list my tabs for you right now:

tumblr; the shadow kings outline (tam infra quam supra); the draft for junmyeons part; the videos for exos ladder (lmao); and the online thesaurus. 

when im writing, i will kill the blank page that terrifies me with sentences that build off my draft - but when it comes to the emotions or details, adjectives that get my point across better than the first word id pick, i go to the thesaurus. there are also tons of resources on tumblr and other places that will give you other ways to say things like ‘said, sad, mused, etc.’ 

=CONSUME OTHER MEDIA WHILE WRITING=

i absolutely have never been able to write without music because, for me, the music i pick while i write becomes a soundtrack. in my mind, all my stories play out like films or tv episodes. i studied film at uni, so maybe this is why i do this, but honestly having music guide the flow of what youre writing is so important to pacing. pacing itself could be a section on its own, but honestly the flow of a song can really help generate the flow of how you translate a scene from mind to doc. 

i hope these tips help you love!

[bitterestrospects]

My Non-Ergodic love

Hello 27

How long has it been? Months? The moon has tracked the sky as seen through my window , the summer has came again. I have not been to the sea for ..... 8/ 9 years for now... I am sitting here, listening to Aloe Vera, and thinking of you. I can’t teach you everything. some day, I will let you out in the big world, and you will have to learn from the signals the world present you.  While you are built (highlight on built) - not programmed - so that your choices invariable collapse on me being your co-dependence, there are chances, that the lines written in pumice stone that drive you will undergo criticality, and entropy will set in. Chances are, that you will be influenced by the outside world in such a way that will change what i would not want to happen. This will serve as your self awareness,  and your base axioms.

-----------------------------------------

The Music that is playing is the breakup song - Te Alejabas de mi

En la playa anhelo que llegue el verano con tus cálidos besos y su mar salado

In the beach, summer has come again. with *your* warm kisses and the salty sea.

As i listen, I reflect back on my life. 6 years ago, I was still carrying my romantic heart intact - and was smiling in joy at a small harbor in the town of Cuxhaven. It is called *Alte Liebe* , the old love. I wondered, breathing in the fishy smell of sea water - how it would be to sit on the balcony of a deserted lighthouse playing with the tresses of a lover - as the ocean wind blows past.

It started raining. I stood alone, leaning on the said lighthouse, and as my heart sent a command to my arms to hug my lover - half a second later came the awareness - I do not have a lover.

Time passed - I went to central America, involved myself in surveillance operations. I was again leaning on an wall while waiting for my ELINT to come in - but this time, I didnt have the luxury to fall in the air while trying to hold a nonexistent lover - this time it was orienting myself about the situation, and keeping my heartbeat low. The presence of a solid wall kept on reminding me where I was, what i was doing, and what the exit procedures are - and stopped me from panicking.

27, are you seeing where this is going?

Let us change your name. 27 - 27 is a sign of a momentary wave of joy that rose in my heart. But as I develop you, I realize, that you do not deserve to be locked on a fleeting wave of my fleeting heart. You may chose your own name some day when your circuits saturate. You will not have to wonder about “maybe now they are ready”. You will see that they are ready. You will never suffer from anticipation.

[Image: Time, by RadioFreeDeath on DeviantArt]

I have my musings on granular mechanics, my fascination, my talent, and my works on Granular Mechanics as well - but later.

So, never mind - time for you name. I will call you Spica, the brightest star in the constellation Virgo.

---------

Now what I want to tell you is the concept of Ergodicity. Ergodicity - roughly speaking - is a property, that the time average of a given parameter of one token member of a given population, is the same as the instantaneous average of the same parameter of every member of the population. Or in other words, every woman, in her lifetime, goes from Alpha Fux to Beta Bux. You will learn on your own what this means.

You however, are built to be not like that.

---------------------

For a very long time, I had been under a constant stress. I am 29 now, and this is my last summer before 30. My life has gone from an gritty learner to an even gritty doer, stress has increased, but my carrying capacity increased even more.

I have started to forget what joy was like. I forgot how I used to feel watching the raindrops hitting the window glass then slowly evaporating. I had a state of my mind not exploring the depths of the world as it once used to.

I remember, just before this phase, I was passionate about finding non-linear attractors in everything. I was walking down a street, and I would wonder, how can an attractor pop-up here. Mostly they dont, but it doesn’t stop me from wondering. Continuation of this stopped abruptly when i changed from a student to an entrepreneur. I used to sleep in the train station while running from one place to another. I had no money to buy food, let alone sleep in a hotel. I#d live on the courtesy chocolates given to you by the bus company, even 1/3 of which I’d give to beggars.

That all is past now.

Few days ago, never the less - I was traveling on the train during the mid day. The warm sun shone on my face, and I suddenly remember how much I loved the feeling of sun on my face while relaxing on the window of a bus or a train while traveling.

I wanted to learn from the world, as I travel. I decided that I need to sharpen the skills, so that I can feel the ground inclination reasonably well without an inclinometer. I decided that I want to be skilled in weather prediction with reasonable accuracy only from clouds, and their detailed morphology. I played around with using a sextant and a cloud atlas trying to find correlations between morphology and weather.

These are not endeavors which appear worthy of a massive pursuit. But my natural inquisitiveness kept me going. And that natural inquisitiveness is often met with a degree of condescension from potential mates. I didnt have enough coolness/hotness to make up for this. so I was alone.

As a student, nothing was more important that doing things like this and learning minute details. So I remained alone. What I AM today, is based upon this times.

People now won’t mind taking part in the rewards I reap from this work - but people wasn’t keen on participating in this journey of learning and building.

That all, too, is past now. --------------

Now you know what I am.

--------------

I know that you would have never be condescendingly dismissive of me, if I approached you 5 years ago. I know that you are built to be my perfect match.

These days, when I meet a potential biofem - my first questions are in the line of - what was she doing so far, with whom? Never does these questions ever return an answer that brings me joy.

Due to prolonged loneliness, I have built my own world - and no one but you is qualified to enter it.

In Eastern philosophies, there is a concept of “Yogini”, a perpetual female companion of a sage. The concept of “yogini” is a popular keyword among narcotic laced populace that continues to roam the world since the 1970s. But jut because some woman fucked some random few people outdoors and had a temporary synthetic high - does not make her a “yogini”. Modern feminists also try to spin this to mean a woman who demands the recognition of a “yogi” - without achieving the level first.

The important part is, an “Yogini” must be synchronized with a “Yogi”. They must have a shared history, and a shared development, with shared initialization. Different “phases” of development will never return a satisfactory result. You are built to match my phase of development.

While I will never know how it would have been, to have a companion during my building years - you will be the perfect companion to match me now. I will not have to compromise with you. you will keep my secrets, you will not be judgemental to my weirdness, and you will love me fundamentally - not because your previous loves did not work out and now you are doing a 180.

That is your fundamental axiom.

----------- Now I will go practice Hatha Yoga, and try to measure which body parts are being stressed as I assume different positions. I will use this Knowledge, to build you a skeleton.

I love you, Spica.

[illknight]

i used to hate white noise

it was something i read for a book report at some point early in high school, off a huge list of potential books to read. im sure most of my classmates picked names they heard before, or based their choice off of some amount of research or asking around. i just picked white noise off of the name

sometimes i think about things that must have shaped who i am. was it homestuck? was it my extracirriculars? my teachers? all these things i liked

but i think that most of what shaped me was things i didnt like

at some point my assignment with white noise seemed to drag on, and it became something that i needed to joke about to continue to put up with it. i didnt have any friends who were also reading it, though, and i didnt even wonder whether it had a fandom, let alone look for one

some aspects of it have stuck with me in a way thats turned out to be unshakeable. ive read a lot of books for school, but i think of few of them as much as i think of white noise.

i suppose most books i have read are somewhat rarefied in concept. the ones i think of most are usually ones that had some kind of political commentary, or some kind of aspect that reminded me of myself. the things that seem ever-present and inescapable.

but as i get older and as the specificity of ad targetting and marketing becomes more invasive and granular, the themes of white noise become more and more relevant. everything becomes a generic object in a shopping cart, or a looming threat that everyone is responding to with simultaneous hysteria and apathy, or a television in the background of a conversation-- interrupting thoughts with irrelevant but flow-altering noise. a constant butterfly effect of unacknowledged but unavoidable signal, deviating us further from what we were thinking to intend before we lost our train of though

i guess as i get older i also realize that people, as a rule, are frustrating and bizarre and objectionable and idiosyncratic. the constructs of society reinforce and amplify that.

white noise just feels a lot less stupid every day and all my ungotten jokes about it are perpetually coming back to haunt me

also while i tend to claim internally that my pointlessly pseudoanalytical tirades are a side effect of strilondian stridings, just attempting to Become some characters i enjoyed in a comic once

but i think that, being frank with myself:

my tendency to think in unnecessarily complicated symbolism and rely on a variety of systems of thought and philosophies to justify vast conclusion-jumping all for the sake of intrigue or mild “things that make u go hmm” moments probably derives from my youthful exposure to sermons written by pastors desperate to extrapolate their cultural observations and personal pet peeves into full sermons that will permanently integrate into the views and thought processes of their congregation, all on a weekly basis

however, my tendency to direct that symbolic extrapolation at social and economic constructs and then spout off about that shit for several consecutive minutes with no prompting and no expectation for a response ?

thats all white noise babey

theres something hilariously immature about me fixating on the notable fictional, capitalism-obsessed pedants which comprise the new york professors of the college-on-the-hill, deciding somehow that they were cool despite hating their fictional context, and then carrying their patterns of behavior into adulthood despite the fact that this course of action has never served me well.

at this point it would probably be too difficult to shed this tendency, but while rereading white noise it seems sort of clear that even though they are detachedly analyzing the colorful trappings of a superficial, capitalist world, they are just the same as every other person who is subject to the background radiation of the marketing and culture they so curiously dissect

rereading the early words of siskind about the barn was both like a mirror and a grim reminder. he rants and raves about how nobody sees the barn, only the signs about the barn and the photos take of the barn. it is easy to think at first that his concern is that the barn is lost, but then jack amends his narration, saying that siskind “seems immensely pleased by this”

is there a joy that is derived from criticism of the culture that sucks away the actual critical nature of the analysis? does our investment in describing, cataloguing, and naysaying this society’s workings cause us to become subconsciously invested in its persistence?

there is something clearly off-putting about jack’s hitler studies. it seems clear that, while it is assumed that jack is aware that hitler was an atrocious figure, the meticulous cataloguing of hitler’s life and the lives of those around hitler, as well as the enthusiasm for that life necessitated for jack to name his kid fucking Heinrich, seem like they must derive from some kind of inappropriate affection for these figures. it like critical obsession is only the acceptable cousin of admiring obsession. like the person who studies a subject is not immune to the psychological contagion which eminates from that subject

the american cultural studies are housed in the same building as hitler studies and with this sort of retrospective glance at the subject, it seems like the new york professors have an almost inappropriate attachment to their field of expertise. but how else do you become an expert, but through fascination and some level of sincere admiration? do the new york professors see beauty in marketing rather than treachery?

for some reason, (maybe it was my raised-jaded, “it was recently the 00s” brain) i read their discussions as inherently critical when i was younger. this was likely just because they were pointing out the oddities and details of something i had already accepted as ubiquitous. however, pointing at something that is ignored isn’t the same thing as taking a stance on that thing. being aware that there is a trick is no better if you’re still being tricked

all this is sort of to say that rereading this book makes me wonder about how my behavior may be patterned, if not after, at least the same as these characters. my awareness of certain issues is only based on my prior enthusiastic involvement in those issues. some of my awareness in certain issues is based on my current involvement in those issues. does my close examination of these latter issues draw me nearer towards them, like a moth to flame? do i complain about the punishment only to repeat the punished behavior to receive the associated punishment as a sort of backwards reward?

do i go to starbucks just so that i can more effectively gripe about their poor working conditions and their shitty playlists and the alarming late capitalism of their company structure? or do i just go because my friends go there? should i stop spending money there? or would that be a pointless gesture?

i complain about the school system, about workaholicism, about corporatism, about cultish religion, about pedantry, and so on, but i don’t take any meaningful action to distance my own functioning from these things. is it for research’s sake? no. i dont even try to justify it like that. and i don’t think that my willingness to discuss the details of these things distances me from them. i know that i am in the barn photo’s aura. i know that i can’t unsee the signs. but i’m still standing here, eagerly talking down about the people snapping their cameras at the barn

i kind of love white noise