#i know that these mods are very 'basic' for most of the people who mod their games

[mercymaker]

hi, mel! i was wondering if you had any recommendations for bg3 mods for someone new to mods :) if not, that’s okay!

Hey! Of course!

When it comes to modding, I focus on cosmetic ones mostly, so those are the ones I'd recommend.

Basket Full of Equipment - I feel like this is one of THE core mods when it comes to clothing. I linked the safe for work version, but I personally use the other one since I don't mind seeing nip nops, but most of the people use this version, I think. It contains pretty much everything you need for any class or character. Very good on its own, but also just an excellent addition to always have around when picking 'loose' pieces to add to an outfit.

Extra Gear - Another one of those 'core' mods that has gorgeous variations of different armors. Combined with some dye mods, I feel like you could easily dress any character and make them look unique.

Boring Dyes - I feel like I tend to use these dyes the most, especially if I'm aiming for more.. 'organic' armor colors, if that makes sense?

Chromatic Dyes - This is the dye mod for those looking for something more vivid and flashy.

Flower Power Dyes - I think this is one of my personal favorites, because Mal's color is purple and these dyes just work so well on her.

Slutty Closet - Another clothing mod that's great if you want your characters to show some skin!

Modular Equipment - Another one of those 'core' clothing mods that works beautifully on its own, but is also an excellent source for little bits and pieces to add to an existing outfit.

astralities - is a mod maker but has an array of really great mods for CC!

Tav's Hair Salon - it's probably THE hair mod for a lot of people. I feel like you could be pretty happy with just this mod alone when it comes to hair options, there are just SO many and they are beautiful! I would also recommend the 'sister' mod to this which adds icons to the CC and makes my life so much easier!

[hiddenbeks]

hmmmmmm rotating idea for a new skyrem character......

[jakei95]

[Post in English] Something Nyx and I want to publicly address, regarding the recent allegations in the Glitchtale Crew's Discord Server and it's moderators. I really apologize for the upcoming wall of text. These are our Twitter threads I have pasted them here, in case you don't have access to said platform. I have also added some additional notes to provide more context. All details under the line:

NyxTheShield: (Transcription from his official twitter thread) I read some mean comments lately and I just wanna be super clear: I havent been related to Glitchtale since at least 2022. I never considered myself part of the community and went through some much shit while doing stuff for it that my mental health was completely destroyed.

For people who thought I was an admin of the server, that was just in paper. I was constantly de-admin'd, demodded and kicked from the server through the years for simple stuff like asking the rest of the mod team to not say slurs or standing up against the Midnight Crew. I personally left the server for a long while because I really did not want to be around some of the people there. All of this happened years ago (from 2016~ to around 2020). On the early years, my full income came from Youtube/Glitchtale. I was a broke college student and my economic stability depended on it. Despite this, and making literally hundred of tracks and hours of music for the series, most of the income came from my own ad revenue. I was paid less than 2000 USD for all of the work. Essentially, I was paid in exposure.

This wouldn't have been an issue for me if at least I got to keep my artistic vision with the series. That didn't hold true for long.

From the second season and onwards, and in multiple instances, I would score the entire OST for the episode, watch the episode when it released, and then find out a completely new section of the episode (usually a battle scene) with music from somebody else This was completely demotivating to me because I wasn't being paid, the tracks would not fit the rest of the OST at all, and most of the income I made from the battle scenes. I had to work for weeks trying to compose music for glorified powerpoint presentations (Basically everything that's not a battle scene on the series was just still frames of characters barely moving) and do all the heavy lifting and I wasn't even let known about the guest tracks.

This added to the feeling of having absolutely no power within the community. I don't know if this was intentional or not (I don't wanna presume malice), but all of these things together contributed to me distancing myself from the community.

Honestly, there is A LOT more shit that went down these early years that are extremely traumatic to me that I would prefer to not talk about unless completely necessary, but I feel this is a good amount of context for what I wanna talk about next.

As you might be aware, extremely serious (and true) allegations were made against Camila and his partner, Veir, which was accused of grooming minors from 2015 to 2021 There are really good videos out there explaining the entire timeline of what transpired, but I specifically wanna talk about 2020.

(Jakei's note: Links to said videos are here: [1] [2] [3])

In that year, a public document was made by my head mod CrystalFlame alongside 2 other mods in the GT server, that exposed Veir and their actions. This document went mostly unnoticed. Even more, Crystal went through a lot of abuse for coming forward about their abuse and was almost ostracized from the UT AU community because of this.

Because of this, I was asked directly by one of the victims (and also representing the other victims) to please not speak up (Citing that they just wanted to move on and didn't want to involve themselves with more problems and expose themselves)

All the info was kept very vague from me, including the people who were involved, the extent of the stuff that went down, etc But I knew enough to know it was serious. I followed their request and didn't speak up publicly about this, but I banned Veir from my server, warned all of my mods and people close to me in those circles about Veir, and constantly tried to get Camila to please adress the situation. Despite this, she did not listen and we all know how stuff went down later in 2022, where the allegations came back again with full force. This time around I wasnt asked to stay silent so I spread the word around and confronted the entire mod team. I was shortly banned after that.

I needed to address this because this thing has been eating me alive for years. I was intentionally kept in the dark about a lot of context and nuance that would have completely changed my mind about speaking up or not about what happened in 2020.

Everything is easier in retrospective, and with the knowledge I now have about the situation I know for a fact that I would have spoken up about all that happened. But being asked directly to not speak up by the victims was something that goes against what I am Sorry for the long rant, but I really needed to get this off my chest. I am tired of having to deal with this kind of stuff. As a content creator/public figure I am trying my hardest to keep the communities I am active in as safe as possible.

I feel I could have done more for the Glitchtale community regarding the grooming situation, but all of the years of abuse that I endured really fucked up my judgement. I am not very good at dealing with people and I always trust the people close to help me for this kind of stuff

Sadly, in this case, those same people who were close to me were also the victims, so they couldnt have known or had a way to help me out, I should have helped them instead. Most if not all of what was described in this thread is backed up by screenshots, chat logs, and direct testimony from the people who were involved during this time.

I don't want to direct hate to anyone or start a witchhunt, I am doing this purely to decompress a bit and try to vent some of the trauma I experienced all these years.

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Jakei: (Transcription from my official twitter thread) I would also like to share my experiences about my relationship with the Glitchtale Creator, Camila Cuevas. Publicly, we appeared as close friends, but in reality, that friendship was based on bullying and mistreatment, and this affected my mental health deeply.

Years have passed, and the memories still cause me pain. I decided to remain silent, but after the revelations of grooming cases in her community, I realized I wasn’t being too sensitive. The time has come to speak up about my experiences.

During the early years of Underverse, I was dealing with a serious depressive episode. Simultaneous internal and external pressures as an independent artist amplified my mental strain. Meeting Camila felt like finding a genuine friend who shared my passion for the fandom and understood the struggles of being a content creator amidst toxicity. At my lowest, I became compliant to doing things that I didn’t want to, just to keep people around me happy. For Camila, this meant allowing her to belittle my work and make me the butt of her jokes.

Only our veteran followers may remember the 'roasting games' between us on Tumblr (consisting of mutual insults), a spectacle where she'd always win. However, it was a game she privately forced me to "play" and I ended up accepting, despite the discomfort it caused me. These 'games' would give her a cool and strong image in the fandom while painting me as the dumb, 'cringe-worthy' friend. In essence, I became her personal punching bag, unknowingly reinforcing his reputation.

Camila's favorite term to demean my series 'Underverse' was “Cancerverse”. It felt like a constant contest where she'd always position herself as the superior writer and animator simply because my story and animation techniques didn't fit her standards. Years of being subjected to her ridicule left my self-esteem in ruins. I was okay with the negative feedback by some fans, but when my 'friend' publicly disrespected my art, it made me question my abilities as an artist.

I can't deny there were times when she gave me advice to deal with hate or hurtful comments. However, her damaging comments and treatment outweighed those moments of support.

My depressive state worsened around July 2017, where I had accepted people pushing me to do things I wasn’t comfortable with, while being part of Camila's demeaning games, just to appease her ego. I was introduced to Nyx during this time, he offered his music for my series, and eventually we started dating. We met in person in Chile, where I also met Camila. I hoped our friendship would strengthen but everything felt the same. Before I moved to Chile with Nyx, Camila reached out to me in dms, attempting to turn me against him because he opposed the use of slurs in the GT server. She claimed Nyx was being 'brainwashed' by his American friends belonging to the black and LGBTQ+ communities. She made fun of my dating choices, suggesting I was entering a toxic relationship, while showing off her relationship with her then-boyfriend (later exposed as a pedophile). She even quoted her own mother assuring me that Nyx would 'get back to normal', and if it didn’t happen, she would let me live in her house, almost like if she was telling me that Nyx would hurt me or make me feel miserable.

It only took Nyx 3 months to realize that the GT server was going in the wrong way. I initially felt compelled to defend Camila due to my inferiority complex, but soon realized Nyx was right. (Jakei's note: Not only Nyx was right, a lot of people that called her out over the years were right, yet they were not listened to at the time)

Even then, I found it difficult to distance myself from Camila due to the false sense of obligation I felt towards her. My fear of her making fun of my work kept me from interacting with others in the short period of time I stayed in her Discord server. I was afraid that she and her echo chamber would talk behind my back, something that I found out was happening in private chats until recent years.

Rebuilding my self-esteem wasn't an easy task. I began noticing the red flags – Camila's lack of respect not only for me but Nyx also, the emotional manipulation Nyx was suffering from Veir (something he used to do all the time with his other victims), her attempts to 'roast' me in front of her family and fans in the Underverse/Glitchtale meetings, and her constant criticism of my artstyle not being compatible to hers in the few collabs we made.

All these 'small' instances, dismissed as insignificant by many, caused me immense pain while treating my depression. I felt it was too late to express how I felt, as I feared being labeled as attention-seeking or oversensitive by her and her fanbase. Ironically, the moment she talked about her traumas after being bullied in the past, her feelings were the only ones that mattered any time she was involved in a problematic situation in the fandom and deserved to be the only to get pats in the back.

I never expected a sincere apology, as I was convinced she didn't remember or didn't care about the hurt she caused. I tried to maintain a facade of good terms with her, both publicly and privately. Eventually, I distanced myself from her, unfriending her and banning her from my own server even if she didn't interact there. I started focusing on my own work and the people who appreciated it. Despite this, the aftermath of the bullying continued to affect me.

Everything fell into place when the grooming accusations against her former boyfriend and server mods came to light. It was a shocking revelation, but it validated all my doubts and fears about her. The purpose of sharing my experiences is not to stir up drama, but to address the concerns of those worried about my association with Camila. I want to make it clear that I will never tolerate such behavior. Although the things I did for her in the past cannot be erased, I hope Camila at least deletes the animation remake I did for her and all the collabs that boosted her views for free, though I'm not optimistic about it happening.

As I've matured, my hope is that she and her crew learn from their mistakes, start behaving like adults, and take responsibility for their actions in their future projects and with their new followers. But I'm skeptical about any real change, especially if their server continues to exist. The best course of action for me was to cut all ties with Camila and Glitchtale.

NyxTheShield (now my husband) and I have endured too much from our treatment by Camila. We no longer want to be associated with her or Glitchtale. It's a chapter of our lives that we wish to close. It's time for us to focus on recovering our mental health, as remaining silent is only prolonging our pain. We have been working to improve our mental and physical health over the past few years and this is a crucial part of our healing process.

[animentality]

Dude I'm so confused

Why are the redditors refugees here-

Whats up with the tag 196

AND WHY IS EVERYONE BEING SO NICE WITH THE TWITTER REFUGEES CAME WE GAVE THEM HELL (almost)

The Reddit refugees are here because several subreddits have gone private in protest of reddit's new policy of charging third party developers for access to its API.

Hence the term reddit blackout.

196 specifically was a very queer friendly subreddit that had one rule: that you post before you leave. 196 is trending because those Redditors have come here and they're basically sharing their memery here instead as they protest reddit's greed.

As for why we're welcoming them when Twitter refugees were seen with a little more irritation, well.

Think of the culture similarities.

Tumblr and reddit have far more in common than Tumblr and Twitter.

Twitter is about clout and manipulating algorithms and discourse in 280 characters or less. It's about bad takes that reach the right people and it forces you to see things you don't want to see and it's crawling with the worst people imaginable and you're forced to see them, all the time. They also brought bad tagging and 2016 Tumblr discourse with them, because Twitter culture really involves starting fights for clout and braindead opinions that no one really wants to come back to Tumblr culture.

There was a time when Tumblr did the same thing, but worse, with more words...but nowadays, it's really calmed down.

The worst people...went to Twitter after the porn ban. Ironically, it made the site less toxic and hostile.

But then they came back.

And it was like...hm. no thanks. Stay back where you came from.

But Tumblr and Reddit have much more in common.

Both have a more streamlined way of customizing your online feed. You can choose what subreddits you see on your home screen, just like Tumblr only shows you the content of your followers, on your dashboard, and in chronological order rather than what's trending. You can join a very specific weird niche group of freaks with a shared obsession, and not care about the rest of the site at all. You also don't have a character limit on either site, which lets you ramble more and share weird detailed stories.

Reddit might have karma, but like Tumblr, the majority of people are lurkers and not posters. It also allows you to downvote bad opinions, and moderators who have to adhere to certain guidelines of behavior, which means a lot of banning disruptive people.

Granted, sometimes their mods are power hungry, but. You know.

It does more to control its users than Tumblr do, and that's a good thing in terms of keeping toxicity and illegal shit off its subs.

Reddit also has a way more leftwing attitude than you would think.

It has a reputation for being full of incels but I honestly think that's outdated.

It's cleaned up its act quite a bit since the old days.

I see way more vile shit from Twitter and TikTok. Like seriously.

Twitter is crawling with conservative bots and propaganda machines and just outright inflammatory lies. TikTok literally has the worst comment sections I've ever seen, like edgy teenagers cracking racist and misogynistic humor and acting like it makes them different and special. Its algorithm also spoon feeds you garbage and is designed to be as addicting as possible.

At least reddit's culture, while chauvinistic and regressive in certain subcultures, is mostly on the tech positive, atheist libertarian side.

It can be a little pretentious and caustic about certain subjects, and a little full of itself. Some reddits are also very male leaning and disregard female concerns in favor of moaning about how men have it worse than anyone else on earth.

But for the most part?

...well.

I welcome them here, because if they left reddit in protest, then we always support protests. But 196 specifically is also a queer subreddit, and we support that even more.

Plus they're funny as fuck.

What's not to like, really?

You should welcome them with open arms too.

[blackkatmagic]

Can I ask why you're so strongly against emojis as comments?

So there are...two parts to this answer. One is in the frame of like...my brain interprets someone dropping an emoji as basically the equivalent of a like. "I was here, but I didn't like what you created enough to say anything about it." And I get that, truly. But due to physical and mental health things in my recent life, writing has been hard. Getting that kind of response is super disheartening, even if I know logically that most people don't see emoji comments the same way I do.

The other part is that I'm old. I've been in fandom for a long time - I was on email lists writing ST fanfic, and then in weird subgroup forums where you were only allowed to write certain things the mods felt were "canon-supported", and then finally on more mainstream sites like ffnet and AO3. Fandom's always been a community for me, right from the first. I would not still be writing if it hadn't been for the handful of fans who were exceptionally kind and encouraging to a nerdy German girl who wrote in bad English and had weird ideas for plotlines and talked too much. They were the people who kept me going, having conversations with me and leaving kind comments on objectively bad fics and getting jazzed about the same things as me.

In fandom as a whole, emoji comments are a very new phenomenon. I've gone back to look, and they only started becoming common about two years ago. And now, before I asked people not to leave them, they were rapidly becoming the majority of the comments I received.

Again, I get why. It's an easy way to show appreciation. But it's also a complete lack of engagement. It means someone liked something! But as the writer you have no idea what. There's no community to it, just bland consumption of the content you're rolling out. No one is talking about fandom, they're just taking. And I see my hit counts. I know that's always happened, but it's getting to be more and more of a thing. Emoji spamming on every single chapter of a 70-chapter fic might feel, to the commenter, like they're being super supportive, but it's also less impactful for a writer and a fellow fan than a person who leaves one comment that says something they liked about the plot or the writing style or some neat flip on a canon trope.

So yeah. Basically it's a "get off my lawn" thing about how the youngsters in fandom have no appreciation for the effort artists and writers and the like put in, but. I don't think I'm wrong, given the way things are trending.

Anyway. Reblog things, comment on things, send people asks, interact with things if you want fandom to keep going, my dudes. Otherwise it's going to die out. And people dropping emojis instead of words 99 times out of 100 is a symptom of that.

[bloodplague]

Addressing all allegations

Before mentioning everything, I'd like y'all to note a few things.

— Trigger warnings: Mentioning gore, slurs, Offenderman, mentioning an abuser (Crystal Castles, Ethan), mentioning of alcohol, etc. — Please do not harass Seirei over this at all. Yes, she made 2-3 videos about that and yes, she has spread some false information, but this is about me and not her. She does not deserve to be harassed. Seirei has been harassed over this, which is why I wanted to mention this. [ @seireitonin ] — Some people don't want their names leaked, so obviously I will draw over some users. — If I'm unsure about what prons to use for different people, I will use they/them. — I don't know where people got that from, but I'm not 25, nor am I in my twenties. My age will be mentioned in this post. Topics: 1. Doxxing & Spamming gore 2. Crystal castles 3. Kastoway 4. Lulu canon sheet 5. Offenderman „headcanons“ 6. Sally‘s channel 7. "Groomer" allegations 8. L slur 9. Asher 11. School shooting jokes? 12. The whole SA thing 13. "Ben drowned controller"-person 14. August and her personal relationship 15. Alcohol mentioning 16. Overly dark humor 17. Krunkatron

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Doxxing

I think people tried to doxx me over all of this now, sending my IP address to Seirei and (possibly!) others, which is a bit wild but there's not much I can do except get a VPN. They also threatened to doxx a literal 13 year old and spam them gore images which is fucked up, nicely said. "Tulip" is the "frenchfucker67200" person.

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Crytal Castles

Because someone mentioned me supporting Ethan Kath, I'd like to mention that I don't. He's a terrible person who has abused Alice Glass (The old lead singer of Crystal Castles) for years and more.

I do love listening to Crystal Castles and ramble about how much I love the music, but did not say anything positive about Ethan. I don't idolize him either. I idolize Alice Glass, who unfortunately was a victim of Ethan.

As far as I'm informed, Alice is the victim and Ethan the abuser. I heard rumors about Ethan being innocent, but there's too much against him. I'm just a Crystal Castles listener, I do NOT know what's the 100% truth.

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Kastoway

I made a video, claiming that "Kastoway didn't actually do anything" and people shouldn't immediately believe everyone claiming stuff without showing proof, and now I'm basically getting called out for that too. I researched a bit and went through his sister's TikTok who made a whole google doc about Kastoway, linking it in her bio. People claim Kastoway is trans-phobic and supported a really weird creator (Sally's creator, La_Mishi_Mishi), so I wanna show what I actually found related to that since I never saw anything confirming that Kastoway is trans-phobic.

The links in the doc don't work anymore. Also another screenshot of me saying "as far as I know" and not saying "100% the truth".

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Lulu canon sheet

Basically; In our Discord server, every character has her own channel for canon information and images. I threw in most canon drawings the creator made, including one where she was very exposed with only a part of the chest-area covered and the hips including private areas. This was a scar, body and bruise reference. I only put it there for scar refernece purposes, though I see and understand how this drawing is disgusting and should not be shown in a public server. I deleted it after talking about it with someone I will keep anon and a few mods.

Because people got upset over me adding a sexuality headcanon, it's canon that Lulu is straight. When making the headcanon about her being straight, I had no intention of "sexualizing her". I just threw in a headcanon about what sexuality she could possibly have since apparently she's dating someone?

^ This is all canon information. I'm not sure what "via" means, so I'm not gonna comment that, that's all I could related to Lulu's age. I do not know how old she is on the picture, but assuming she's a minor, I deleted it from her channel.

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Offenderman

Someone basically claimed I was making Offenderman headcanons:

^ , even though that's straight up a lie? Those are not my headcanons, those were canon facts. For context, we have channels for all characters and their canon information, including Offenderman (until he got removed). I copied those from his canon sheets on DeviantArt, I did not write them myself.

Rough context to the Offenderman channel: He was supposed to be a part of the book because of the whole 4-Slender-brother thing and I planned on killing him off & was NOT gonna include ANY of his actions, but after people expressed their discomfort towards Offendermans channel and him being a part of the book, I removed him completely.

I also like to mention that I don't support Offenderman nor his actions at all. I only added him to have "the 4 Slender-brothers" in the book.

Krunkatron was willing to purposely take something out of context which is kinda crazy, but also what you have to expect when it comes to using Discord, I guess.

But yeah every time someone tried to tell them, they got blocked.

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Sally's channel

Krunkatron claimed I called Sally "sexy" which is also a wild thing to say, purposely taking it out of context.

This is all copied information I threw in the channel after copying it from her canon sheets. I didn't read everything, I just threw everything in I found. A while later I went through everything and noticed the "sexy", so I removed it.

As far as I can tell, La_Mishi_Mishi (Sally's creator) was explaining the "meaning of the name Sally" which you can literally see on the screenshot too.

Though, I don't see why they would have to include that in a character description of an 8 year old, so I'm absolutely NOT defending them & removed it. Not to mention that they drew weird shit as well.

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Groomer allegations

I don't really have much of a choice in this since allegations like that are serious as hell, so please, I'm not 25 (where ever people got that from). I'm a minor. I was never comfortable with revealing my age or talking about it a lot, since I got groomed several times and wanted to avoid that happening again.

Some of my friends didn't know, so don't pounce on them, only a few knew. The me driving a car video, that was in a parking lot. I've shown my ID to a few people like August, Vanessa, Asher, Alory and Jack too.

I never planned on sharing my exact age. Once people started making guesses, saying they think I'm 19-24, I just went along with it because I was not comfortable sharing my age.

With that being said, most of the allegations are probably cleared up. Specially the "jokingly flirts with minors"-thing.

And before krunk comes at me for my diagnoses, surprise, you can get diagnosed at the age of 15 in Germany. Some personality disorders can be diagnosed at 15 and yes, I got my diagnoses by several professionals. Faking mental disorders is disgusting, I don't do that.

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L-Slur

There's basically a screenshot of me saying the L slur, and I just want to say that I didn't know it was a slur. I don't use slurs I'm not allowed to use, so I immediately stopped saying the word once Alory (the person who I said it to) explained it.

Some people claim it's not a slur, some say it is, but it doesn't really matter. What matters is that I will not use it again since I'm not a lesbian and have no right to use that slur.

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Asher

Some people claim Asher is a n.zi, and I just want to reassure everyone that he is definitely not one. He explained several times that he does not support any of HABIT's actions and rambles about how terrible he actually is. And no, I'm not "grooming Asher"?? Like I said, I'm a minor myself. In fact, I helped Asher get rid of groomers to stay safe 3 times now.

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School shooting jokes

I basically made a joke about something like "shoot them like the kids in America", and honestly, isn't that the most common joke? I see so many famous YouTubers like Markiplier or Flamingo joke about it, almost everyone on TikTok and literally everyone I talk to. I see how people are uncomfortable if they suffer under trauma related to school shootings, so I won't make those jokes anymore, but aren't they more or less normal at that point? (genuine question)

Tumblr is only letting me add 30 images in total, so I'm trying to think fo a way to show screenshots without being forced to make 6 different posts.

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The "Ben Drowned's controller" person

Basically a 12 year old that was upset that they got kicked from our server. You have to be 13+ to use Discord. Either way, they claimed that Virus (someone who tried to get nudes from a 13 year old and someone who tried to groom Asher) was not a groomer.

Please note this person is ONLY 12, so DO NOT HARASS THEM.

They were spreading false information, claiming Virus (aka Kiro on those pictures) is "normal", even though he's far from that. Virus is 22, telling a 14 year old about his kinks, offering to write smut, writing smut, talking about porn and sending sexual drawings. This is absolutely not okay. Saying "Asher could've told him to stop" is not a valid excuse either. Why would an adult tell a minor about that in first place. That's just disgusting.

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August and their relationship

There's nothing much I have to say to that other then that people shouldn't send around screenshots of August's and their ex's DM's?

They are both the same age and (as far as I know) were comfortable with what happened, bringing up their old relationship has NOTHING to do with all of this, so stop.

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Alcohol mentioning

The whole alcohol mentioning has been stopped about 2 months ago. People already expressed their feelings about this, so I stopped. I used to send pictures of my collection at times, which some people twisted into "promoting alcohol" as if I was telling people to drink.

As said, I stopped around 2 months ago (I think) and won't really mention alcohol anymore. I don't know why people brought it up again if we stopped.

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I'm gonna post a "part 2" tomorrow or once I can, talking about all the overly dark jokes I made. It's like 3:17 AM and I have to go to work in a few hours so yeah I'll do that tomorrow.

A few more notes!!!

— I'm most likely gonna delete overly rude comments because it's just unnecessary (looking at Krunkarton who said "Idc if youre a minor, slit to the bone"???) — Read everything before commenting something please, I don't wanna explain things several times when most answers are in this post — Again, I'll address the rest in the second post because of the picture limit

Telling 13 year olds stuff like that is feral. (most of the comments are towards 2 of my friends so yah)

[cripplecharacters]

hi there, i really appreciate this blog! i was wondering if you had any advice when it comes to writing characters who use mobility aids (manual wheelchair and cane) and things that are like, pet peeves or cringey to see written? other than the big ones like “wheelchair bound” or having people just grab their chair or otherwise be disrespectful. i’m thinking more “little things that make it seem like the author is clueless” lol. thank you!

Hi!

You can check out our main #mobility aids or #wheelchairs or #canes tags for the general info! If you have a more specific question, feel free to send another ask:-)

I will talk about my own cane pet peeves because oh boy:

The most glaring, obvious, author-is-so-clueless-it-hurts thing I have somehow seen multiple times is when the writer/artist doesn't understand the difference between a mobility cane and a white cane. Usually in the form of giving their blind character the same kind of stick I use for my mobility issues. Of course, a person could need both for different disabilities! That very much happens. However, it's absolutely never the case in this kind of scenario. This one is an example of a lack of basic research so bad that it circles back to being kinda funny.

The writer not knowing which side the cane would go on for the character. Obviously, in real life, there's a whole lot of hyper-specific scenarios why someone could use it the ""wrong"" way and why it would work for them specifically, some users can also use either hand for the cane; it all depends on why they use it. The problem that I have is when the writer doesn't have a single clue about any of it and just gives their character with a bad knee and nothing else the cane on the same side. Again, shows lack of basic research.

As a certified knob cane hater, I can't just not talk about them here. They're so bad. So non-functional. Don't serve their function as a mobility device because they literally aren't one! That's a fashion accessory. Unless your character has a wrist of steel and doesn't mind that the aid meant to help with stability does the exact opposite, I guess.

I know a bunch of people will disagree with me, but I think the whole sword cane thing sucks. Sorry. The only time I don't roll my eyes on this one is when the writer is also a cane user. I always felt like it checked out two tropes that I hate, the "abled character pretends to be disabled and is actually dangerous" and the "abled writer thinks mobility aids are boring and has to stick a gun in them to justify their existence".

The cane that somehow makes the user non-disabled. Sounds contradictory, I know. I mean the kind of scenario where the character is Weak and Frail™ but then they get the cane and are suddenly just fighting, running, jumping, doing god knows what. Like, did they author forget what the cane is used for? Obviously it will depend on the character's disability how much the cane mitigates symptoms, but this writing choice always feels bizarre to me. My cane is here so that I'm not in as much pain or to help my gait disorder, it certainly doesn't turn me into an abled man who just happens to have a stick in hand.

All these tired old person or similar jokes/comparisons are probably not that funny. We get it, older people use canes. It's not even cringy or whatever, it's just so unbelievably boring it's hard to react to it with anything else than an eye roll anymore.

Apologies for the extremely late reply! I hope it helps :-)

mod Sasza

[writingwithcolor]

Running Commentary: What is “ok to do” in Mixed-Culture Supernatural Fiction?

Dear readers: 

Today we are trying something new. To give you some insight into our process in the Japanese moderator section, we are presenting our response in the form of running commentary to show you how we dissect and answer long asks. We hope this makes clear what points are useful and not useful when sending us a query. As always, this is for learning purposes, not callouts. Be prepared: this is a long one. 

To summarize: the asker is looking to create a comic drawn in Japanese manga style, and has provided a long summary of the story and worldbuilding which involves a mix of “reimagined” Japanese yokai mythos and cultural symbols from many other sources. They have questions with respect to cultural appropriation, coding etiquette, and “what is and isn’t ok.” 

Opening Comments

I know a common advice when it comes to the thing I am about to ask is to talk to people involved in __, but I struggle with opening up to strangers for reasons I'm uncomfortable explaining. 

Marika (M): This is already a red flag. If you want to engage with another culture without talking to people from that culture, then research is going to be very challenging. You won’t have members of that culture to guide you towards sources and perspectives they feel most accurately represents public opinion. If I were in your shoes, I might start with tackling my discomfort when engaging with other people, if only to improve my work. If you aren’t ready to engage with a culture and its people directly, then I think you should wait until you are. 

I should note, reaching out to the Japanese mod team at WWC does count as engagement, but WWC should not and cannot be the only point of contact because there is no single, legitimate cultural perspective. 

Rina (R): Also, you don’t need to “open up” to strangers or talk to them in person to get perspectives. Asking specific research questions anonymously to a forum or on social media requires very little vulnerability. You managed to do it here on WWC. So give it a try! 

Anyway, my question basically amounts to the what is and isn't ok [sic] in terms of depicting fantasy creatures and concepts outside of their respective culture.

R: So, the reason why we turn away rubber stamp questions by that ask “is XYZ okay?” is because “okay” & “not okay” 1) is vague and 2) creates a dichotomy where there isn’t one. 

When we say something is “not okay,” do we mean:

It’s offensive to the general majority of XYZ group? 

It’s contentious among people who ID in the group? 

It has a potential to be interpreted in a certain negative way, but may not be a red flag to everyone?

Insetad try asking:

What are the reasons this subject is offensive? 

What makes cultural appropriation bad? 

When might it be “okay” to intentionally discuss a difficult or controversial topic?

What is your reason for including something that may be interpreted as offensive and can it be sufficiently justified? 

What stereotypes or tropes might it be consistently identified as or associated with, and why? 

When might it be justified to bring up these tropes?

With That In Mind...

Let’s get into the rest of the ask below. 

…a story I've been working on in recent times is largely inspired off the Japanese yokai, and the setting is basically Earth in the far future, as far as when the next supercontinent may form. These yokai, although portrayed differently here, do retain their main characteristics [...] Included in this world are two goddesses of my own creation, primarily representing the sun and the moon. [...] There will be thirteen nations, named and based after the Chinese Zodiac, and the life force found in the living things in this world, called qi, comes in two forms that are always opposing each other but can never fully overpower the other, this being based off yin and yang. They're even directly named this; yin qi and yang qi.

M: This reads more like using Japanese and Chinese culture for the “aesthetics”, not the cultures themselves, which I personally feel falls under cultural appropriation. From a world-building/ coding standpoint, the actual use of concepts is workable, and, dare I say, typical, given how Chinese cosmology influences Japanese culture. However, naming a concept “yin qi” or “yang qi” is the equivalent of naming something “- charge” or “+ charge”, respectively. That you don’t seem aware of this tells me you are pretty early in your research phase. In that vein, we’ve covered translating terms and names from foreign languages in fantasy before. See the following article linked here for our recommendation against using RL terms outright but instead encouraging people to create their own conlangs. 

R: Worldbuilding-wise, I think you would have to figure out the chicken-or-egg of the zodiac nations. Did the nations come first, and the zodiac later as an origin folk story (which you would have to rewrite to serve the nation-building narrative)? Did the zodiac come first, and the nations named (most likely re-named) by a political entity? What is the justification? Otherwise, again, it’s a shoehorning of aesthetics. 

There is also a third, lesser known god based off of fox spirits and trickery and I imagined he's the patron deity of a family that honors and worships him, but his influence on them has transformed them into Kitsune-tsuki, which I depict as fox-like anthros. 

M: Not related to this ask directly, but I have jokingly ranted about how often non-Japanese people prefer using imagery related to kitsune-tsuki in Japanese coded world-building (link). This makes me feel the same level of petty irritation. See my troll answer below for a similar experience.

R: Same. It’s boring tbh. 

M: Troll Answer: I get that kitsune-tsuki are very sexy furries, but Japanese folklore has other sexy furries too! These underrepresented demographics also deserve recognition and appreciation!!

The plot of the story is this; modernization has left the goddesses neglected of their worship and forgotten, something that is necessary in this world to stop them from fighting each other. The Moon Goddess awakens first, punishing the humans by unleashing the yokai. Then the Sun Goddess wakes up to fight in humanity's defense…

M: This could feel rather like Shinto-like coding (Ex. the myth of Amaterasu and the Cave, or Tsukuyomi slaying Ukemochi), but something about this scenario feels a bit too binary in terms of themes of good v. evil, light v. dark to be Shinto. The plot also feels more Gaelic/ Nordic in influence for me as a person raised in a Japanese Buddhist and Hindu household. I imagine this dissonance could have been fixed with better guided research. 

…but their fighting has caused a perma-eclipse and this world is in danger of ending. The yokai have run rampant; some are loyal to the Moon Goddess, and some aren't, and it lies to the main characters to bring balance back to Midgard. Yeah... the name of this future Earth is Midgard. I debate changing it since it and some other things I will mention sorta feel out of place.

R: Marika, looks like you were right on the Gaelic/Nordic influence /j 

Also, worldbuilding question: if the Earth is in the far geologic future, how long has it been since modernization (19th-20th century)? Centuries? Millennia? How long has this fighting gone on for? What triggered the perma-eclipse, and why now? Why is this time depth necessary? 

One of the main characters in question is a humanoid woman with wolf features named Ling, and she is a descendant of the dynasty that had first ruled the one of the nations, particularly the one based off the dragon zodiac. She accidentally summons the other main character to this world as she's praying at a shrine, a humanoid with dragon features--I call them drakon--named Angelynn.

[on the names of characters] is it appropriating by not having the world entirely based on [Chinese, Japanese, and Indian] influence? it's a little weird to me how worldwide the creatures are referred to as yokai, implying a strong Japanese influence not unlike how it is today with Western culture being so dominant, yet there are still names like Keith and Kiara.

M: I will give you credit for recognizing you have unconsciously veered towards white-washing/ race-bending: either presenting European cultural influences (drakons, Angelynn, Keith, Kiara, Midgard) as default or utilizing general E. Asian cultural influences and aesthetics for a Western-style story (Ling, qi, Chinese zodiac, yokai). I agree with you that this creates a sense of cultural dissonance. At this point, I’d say you have a clear choice: write a Western-style high fantasy using a background with which you have more familiarity, or get some better guidance on research with East Asian cultures so you can code the story more effectively. 

The focus of this story is centered around meeting all these yokai and showing that there's more nuance to them than Ling believes, all while saving the world. But I worry if I'm appropriating these concepts and creatures by 1, drawing from more than one culture--I initially imagined that there would be a mix of Chinese, Japanese and Indian influence because according to a website I am getting the info on yokai from, the yokai in question already draw inspiration from or have been based on something in Chinese mythology or Hinduism [...]

R: Sure, some yokai have Chinese or Hindu parallels as that tends to happen with folk tales. But not all–some are unique to Japan, and some are more modern. Sometimes it’s very political–some people consider the Ainu Korpokkur as being a “Yokai of Japan” despite it belonging to the indigenous culture. It’s up to you to research, untangle, and understand these influences. 

The fact that you bring up that the Asian continent has seen a lot of cultural exchange is not a sufficient reason to randomly combine influences for the sake of visual appeal or “coolness.” That is appropriation. These influences must be understood in their historical context so that you know how/why certain things combined or morphed into another, and what makes sense to combine/morph. 

M: This also indicates that the character views the yokai as evil/inherently bad, which I would argue is not a typical stance for much Japanese folklore. Again, this shows a deficit in research. 

2, reimagining these yokai in a new context even though I have done the research on them, because one thing I kept seeing in regards to cultural appropriation is that it's bad to do that […]

R: Refer above to my note on “okay” and “not okay.” The thing with folklore and fairy tales is that every–and I mean every–folk tale is reinterpreted with every new iteration of it. Reimagining in a new context is what people do every time they pass on a story or tell a story with the same plot or characters. Do not think of folklore as an “original” that is altered and rebooted, but rather a living document that gets added to. Reimagining is not the inherent issue. HOW you reimagine something matters. 

So I suppose my question is...if someone were to do research upon the creature they want to use, given they are allowed to use it, and gained an understanding of what the creature or concept stood for, are they allowed to pick it apart and reimagine it? Alternatively, is it ok if it's explicitly pointed out that it is derivative of the original?

It has actually become my biggest fear that I may have internalized something that could both continue to do harm long after the fact and attract the wrong people to me work. I don't wanna let people down!

M: As Rina has noted several times, I think the problem is in trying to ID a set of specific variables and circumstances that make a thing “okay” or “not okay.” I want to recommend that you read my joking response about writing in secret rooms while wearing a disguise (Linked here). Who can you hurt if no one knows what you are doing? There’s a difference between creating for oneself and creating to share. 

You have internalized a message incorrectly, but not the one you cite. The goal of many recommendations against cultural appropriation is to avoid causing direct harm to people who have seen their cultures demeaned, discredited and devalued, especially in shared spaces. Assessing cultural engagement, whether we are talking about appropriation, appreciation or exchange is not a measure of personal virtue or a collection of commandment style do’s and don’t’s. Rather, I believe engaging with other cultures is the state of mind of acknowledging that when using these cultures’ in one’s own work, there is value in consulting members of that culture and giving credit where credit is due. This will be challenging if you are only comfortable engaging with all of these cultures in a distanced, minimal capacity. 

FWIW, I’ve written stories that probably will offend people from other cultures and backgrounds, but I don’t show them off. I don’t think writing these makes me a bad person, but I also don’t see the need to give unnecessary offense, so those stories are just for me, to be written and read in my own secret room. However, I’m not ashamed of having written them, and I’m also comfortable to “let people down” provided that my own shared work reflects my personal principles of what I consider to be sufficient research and engagement with other cultures,  As a creator, my work wouldn’t be mine if I didn’t first please myself. I think the trick to the creator role is deciding what to keep private, what to share and what constitutes sufficient engagement. 

P.S. 

We’ve referenced the need for research multiple times in this ask, and in some of the other asks that have gone up this week, so we thought this would be a good place to plug a beginner’s guide to academic research created by the mod team.. Look for it soon under WWC’s pinned posts!

[zeondraws]

I poked a few questions at Secret Mode on their discord server and got an answer back today. Right after I came home and I can't stress how happy I got reading it.

I'll try to show my the questions and the answers together, so that people on tumblr have enough context what I asked about. Figured you guys might enjoy.

"Does Muir play the Bagpipe?" - Personally (others might disagree), I could definitely see Muir play the bagpipe (especially if he can annoy Innes with it!) but what would most likely happen is that he would bring something small that is allowed in his baggage like an harmonica.

"Something I noticed is that McLeary's name seems to be an innuendo to MacReady from The Thing, which made me wonder: Were names chosen at random or did they serve a specific purpose? Another person I know noticed Muir means "sea" while Innes means "island"." - I think the short answer is yes names have meaning and none of them were picked at random! But our philosophy is to let people draw their own conclusion as we don't want to make things "official" by giving our reasons! (we love to read/see people create their own theories so feel free to share them!)

"One small thing me and other people wondered, ingame we found a schedule for the shifts. A bunch of the crewmates seem to be listed on it, like "Derek M."? and "Joey I." Where we wondered if those were the first names of Muir and Innes?" - To my knowledge Muir and Innes have always existed in the game and can be found listed on that schedule I think although it might be hidden. Derek and Joey might be in the background without lines. - Innes' first name is Terry and Muir's name is Ewan.

"Another mini question I had was, is it possible to know who lived in the room 121? I could never find any indications thus far." - 121 was meant to be Innes and Muir's room...Innes is the one who likes reading. Seeing how much fans love them I wish we'd set dressed it more with clues about them.

"And my last goofy question is, when Muir basically yeets Innes across the deck, he is still animated when he lands inbetween the containers (I'm using a mod to look around the level a bit more). Did that have a specific reason? Did Muir just threw him across the deck or did he want to carry him?" - For Innes being animated for a bit longer, the simple answer is that our lead animator always plan to show a tiny bit more than what is shown because you never know if an angle might change...

With this I am finally able to somewhat complete my picture of the crewmate rooms. Thank you so much! I am learning so much about this game and how the developers approach the lore. I've never really been in such a community before so this is all very new for me. But a very positive experience (Since I feel extremely awkward asking questions, where I never know if I sound pushy/annoying, so I am often extremely nervous).

But this also means I have another detail to add for my video- Ooohhhh!

[yesornopolls]

To those confused by how the panopticon theory can apply to dating, think about this way. As the mod explained, the theory holds that “people can be controlled when they believe themselves to be under constant surveillance even if no one is watching. The theory stems from the intended effect of having a central guard tower in a prison that all the prisoners could see, even though they could not see the guards.”

So in the context of dating, if you’re NOT aware by the social panopticon, you’re chill when dating people. It’s just about you and your partner. There’s no one watching you, whether literally or metaphorically, digitally or in real life. So there’s no performance, no anxiety about the larger context, no sense of being surveilled and judged by others, no need to prove your love to the world.

On the other hand, if you ARE aware of the social panopticon when dating, the larger context of what it means to date in the modern era is always (potentially) watching you. It’s not just you and your partner, it’s you and your partner both against the world AND in the world. But it’s also subtly you against your partner, cause what if they’re with the world? You have to test them to make sure.

Social media is a huge part of this cause it includes soft-launching and hard-launching partners, posting them the right amount of times but not too much, keeping the mystery or revealing more. It’s things like National Boyfriend Day or subtle boyfriend tests on TikTok. Even just being in a queer relationship can come with its own panopticon, its own rituals of surveillance and performance. Everything is the relationship as product, the relationship as lifestyle brand.

To use well-known celebrity examples, Taylor Swift who knows she can’t escape the social panopticon with dating so she leans into it. Chappell Roan is someone who is very aware of it and scared of it. And Sabrina Carpenter’s song “Please Please Please,” where she sings, “ Please please please don't prove I'm right/Please please please/Don't bring me to tears when I just did my makeup so nice/Heartbreak is one thing/My egos another/I beg you don't embarass me/Mother fucker ahhh” is a perfect example of this phenomenon too.

Most of us aren’t celebrities, but the basic principles remain no matter the scale. But some people seem to have the freedom to truly not be influenced by it.

Oooh, when Googling it, I just found this article which I think captures the concept well: https://helenaaeberli.substack.com/p/dating-in-the-digital-panopticon

FYI

[incorrectmahabharatquotes]

Recently I saw this post by @god-has-adhd (I'm not reblogging it because I saw the people they tagged and realised very quickly that it's quite likely that us reblogging the post will be unwelcome, to put it mildly. I'm tagging the OP here anyway since it's a direct response to the post and it seemed only fair to engage in the conversation. I hope they don't mind.) OP urged everyone to watch the video regardless of the political leaning so in the spirit of giving everything a fair shot, we watched it. 'We' here refers to both me and Mod G. There are things we agree on with the guy speaking in the video and there are things we disagree with/think he didn't properly research. However, there is one thing that's most relevant to this blog and to me, personally so I'll be talking primarily about it. This is your long post warning, I'm afraid.

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

"The Real Story of Eklavya"

The context for people who haven't watched the video is that the guy brings up two stories, one of Satyakama Jabali from the Upanishads and that of Eklavya from the Mahabharata. He brings up both these stories in the context of caste, he helpfully titles it and everything.

What I found interesting is that he frames himself talking about the story with the words "The real story of Eklavya". If you know even the basics of storytelling or filmmaking, you know that this is quite important. This implies that you, the viewer, do not know the real story and the one you know is either incomplete or false.

He begins, in a memorable instance, by asking ChatGPT for a summary to grasp the popular interpretation of the story of Eklavya and Drona. I have THOUGHTS about using a machine learning tool that is trained on data that is infamously biased and lacking when it comes to anything that isn't American, but that would be digressing from the point. ChatGPT provides him a summary that mentions that Eklavya was denied Drona's tutelage because he was of a lower caste. After this, the guy proceeds to recite the lines where Eklavya is mentioned in the Adi parva of the Sanskrit Mahabharat that we refer to as Vyasa's Mahabharat. He expresses surprise at how Eklavya is introduced as being the son of the "king" of the nishads (I think leader is a better word that should've been used but the Sanskrit text has a notorious habit of having just really questionable ways of referring to people, if you've read it you know.) Which is found HILARIOUS. Bro, what do you mean you're surprised? This is COMMON knowledge, I fear.

He mentions how being the son of the nishaad's leader/king effectively puts him on the same level as Arjun and that they're both princes. He says that this means Eklavya isn't shudra or dalit (there is a word that's curiously absent here that I'll mention in a bit.) Now, this one of those parts where the choice information he presents the viewer with is bizarre. Since I promised I'll give it a fair shot, I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt and assume this is a fault of him not researching enough and not willful omission. Maybe he just doesn't know. The information he's given here is correct, mostly. What he DOESN'T explain is who the nishads, as a group are. I'll fill in the blanks for him.

The nishad are said to be a group of tribal people who reside in the hills. The text he reads out even has the word "tribal" in it but the guy sort of glosses over it? The nishads are sort of like an aggregate grouping of different tribal populations and not the name of a specific tribe. Kind of. But the mention is still significant. See, the Mahabharata, especially the Sanskrit text, has this Thing™ that it does where it's incredibly rare to find a mention of tribal populations who are said to be human, many of the other mentioned tribal groups are demi-humans or non-humans or just straight up rakshahsas.

Eklavya is said to be the adopted son of Hiranyadhanus, the aforementioned king/leader of the nishads. The Harivamsa Purana part of the Sanskrit text (which is a giant-ass genealogy section where it traces the family line from the start of existence to the birth of Krishna) mentions that biologically he's the son of Devashrava, Vasudev's brother, which makes him Krishna's cousin by blood. Eklavya was abandoned by Devashrava in the forest and Hiranyadhanus found him and raised him as his own.

This makes Eklavya a tribal boy, I would use the word adivasi but people might disagree so I'll just say he has a tribal heritage, not by blood but by his upbringing. The man in the video says that Eklavya isn't a shudra, or dalit or untouchable, which is technically true. There's a missing word here that's doing a lot of heavy lifting for him, though. He says that Eklavya is a Kshatriya, which is DEBATEABLE because in the epic we've seen time and time again that blood doesn't matter and it's the society that does. With this, hopefully not to y'all, new information we might understand how the guy's assertion that Arjuna and Eklavya are on equal footing is shaky at best.

He continues to explain that in the text the reasoning why Drona refuses Eklavya is because he'd already promised he'd make Arjun The Best Archer. Since, he's bound by obligation to the Kurus, he can't afford to let Eklavya outshine his kuru students. The man proceeds to assert that in the text there is no caste-based discrimination happening here. Ergo, he concludes, the story of Eklavya doesn't have a caste aspect to it. If you believe otherwise, you're uneducated and need to learn the Truth and not fall into Propoganda. (I'm trying to be charitable to the guy but his tone when he says the word "propoganda" is dripping with disdain and it's making it very hard for me to remain charitable.) He ends this section this way.

This guy says he's given you all the facts. He's cited his source and he's said the complete truth. He hasn't. In this man's viewpoint, the complete and true Mahabharat is the Sanskrit text. Which, as you know, ISN'T what the entirety of the Mahabharat is and claiming that it is is a narrow perspective to see it. (Which is FUNNY considering this guy has a whole section towards the end of the video about Nuance and it's ironic that he's unwilling to provide the same nuance about the epic to his trusting audience.) Maybe he just isn't insane enough like me to know that it isn't the entire Mahabharat. It's possible.

There is a viewpoint that declares that the Sanskrit Text is the primary source and everything else isn't "canon". There's a SPECIFIC word for it but I will not say it because it's like a boogeyman word on hindublr, at least, so I'll omit the word in this post. This man, from what I've seen, shares this viewpoint.

I disagree.

The Mahabharat, is first and foremost a collection of oral traditions of storytelling that were written down much later. This means that the entire corpus of work that is this mammoth of an epic consists of the thousands of written texts, poetry, plays, songs, folk tales, recently it also includes cinematic adaptations, bedtime stories that your elders might have told you, and lastly, popular culture for better or for worse. This is my viewpoint and I feel it provides for a much better lens to engage with the story. Otherwise, you're denying the story of the rich tradition and heritage it was forged in.

The guy in the video wonders why the story of Eklavya is more popular than Satyakama Jabali and there are a lot of reasons for it. First is that the epic is simply more popular and, in many ways, more fun than the upanishad stories. Second is that the story of Eklavya captured people's minds because it's a story that has strife and the ending is unsatisfactory. Tragedies inspire emotions and connection in a way that comedies do not. There are many more reasons but I'll stop listing them.

It's not a coincidence or happenstance that there are caste dynamics added in the popular interpretation of the story. There are even seeds of this in the Sanskrit text, if this guy is truly only looking at that alone, Eklavya being a tribal kid, the way his physical appearance is described in the text, the way he's stopped from sharing a space with the kuru princes etc. If a variety of people who have historically faced similar things especially when it comes to education and find themselves mirrored in Eklavya? That's not Propaganda, as the guy puts it. It's just how stories naturally evolve and grow. It's people reading between the lines. There's no conspiracy at play. Just people finding something to relate to when they cannot relate to any other character.

I can write essays on how caste and varna show up in the Mahabharat (and I might, if even ONE person asks me for it) but to sum it down, it's a task of examining exactly who and what KIND of people are absent from the story. The Invisible People, if you will. You can count on your fingers how many shudra, dalit and adivasi figures are in the Mahabharat.

Drona is a teacher who fails at being a teacher in this instance. (The Mahabharat in many ways is a story of people failing to do their Duty. There's a certain peacock feather wearing guy who does a whole song and dance about it. It can cover a whole book. It's quite popular. Maybe you've heard of it?) Even if you ignore the caste dynamics reading of it, you cannot deny that the man just sucked at being a teacher in that moment when he denied education to a student, whatever his reasoning may be. He brutally asks for the kid to maim himself and again, even the Sanskrit text describes this action of Drona as cruel. He creates a barrier for Eklavya to stop him from continuing to practice his archery.

It's not surprising that Drona is read as a stand in for an education system that sucks at being an education system that does its job. Again, it's not a conspiracy or propaganda. It's people trying to connect to a story through the prism of their life experiences.

It is not my place to tell people what to believe and what not to believe. It's not the guy in the video's either, despite what he says. People's interpretations are personal to them. What is my place is to remind people that it's wrong to deny people their interpretations. There are versions and interpretations of the story that I hate or dislike but I'm not standing here and telling you they're not the Truth. This is the nuance that Mahabharat requires that the guy lacks. This is also why I believe his sources and research is lacking in this department.

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

Beyond Eklavya

There's a lot of other thoughts and things I want to share about the rest of the video. I'll try to summarise the highlights.

There's a part where he doesn't understand what systemic patriarchy means, exactly, even though he himself gave an EXCELLENT example of it towards the start of the video with Satyakama Jabali's mother's heritage not being considered when it comes to his gotra. It was frustrating because he SAID it. He said the perfect example himself. I almost thought he set it up as a complete circle moment but he hadn't.

I appreciate him bringing a Shaivite perspective because I'm honestly tired of so much Vaishnavism at all times. I love to see different schools of Hinduism actually being practiced and not just one dominating and subsuming the others.

Towards the start of the video, Mod G predicted that the man would go on a "Periyar sucks" rant and I was so delighted that G was so right.

The guy in the video neglects to look at any contemporary research and scholarship about the linguistics and the Aryan migration theory(which he calls the invasion theory, obviously) including the genetic studies.

There's a funny bit where whenever the guy mentions Ambedkar he has to assert that he thinks Ambedkar is anti-hindu. Even when he's praising him. It happened multiple times.

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

TL;DR The man in the video fails to provide his viewers with the full picture about the story of Eklavya even when he claims he is.

- Mod S

ALSO

The structure of his arguments are poor especially in the section where he talks about why the North-South divide came about. Does he not know about the field of linguistics and how root languages are established? Telugu as a language has a 'Dravidian' (he seems to hate that word, even though Dravida is not just the anglo word for the southern parts of India) root because of certain features it has. Notice how North Indian languages use Gender. And then, notice how Southern/central or even Adivasi languages use gender. One main reason why Dravidian languages have been speculated to have another root language different to Sankskrit is the counting systems. Its not wrong to say Telugu has sanskrit INFLUENCE, but again, look at WHICH people within the language group use that type of Telugu (spoiler alert, its the 'proper' upper castes). He dismisses that entirely and makes it a whole issue about how the North South divide happened.

Its very clear to me that he has no intention of representing any of the counter arguments to his premise in an honest manner and is instead single mindedly trying to create more propaganda.

-Mod G

[ganondoodle]

okay, bc i have seen this argument alot now (and it also seems to be the view point of aonuma himself..) is that "zelda cant do everything link does bc whats the point then"

and i take personal offense on that bc its a stupid argument (in. my. very. personal. opinion.- not judging people for liking it. its a ME thing)

whats the point? its that its her. its still a different character, different in story, background, personality, but i WANT to play zelda and she can do everything link does, why does she have to be so restricted and be bend over backwards to find some new way to make her 'useful' when link gets to do basically everything no questions asked (the only thing thats hers is like .. sealing power and sacrificial maiden, which i find a little underwhelming to say the least), if theres no point to it why are there always modders that model swap link with someone else, and in that case it has even less impact bc its an artificial model swap with no changes to the story (which can and should still be different when its the vanilla game with a different protagonist... its still a different character), clearly theres joy in just the model being a different one- and that isnt even to mention the story possibilities, since, again, its stil a different character

if we ever (never ... i know who we are talking about here) get to play as ganondorf i want to him to be just as versatile and active as link is, if we got a point and click adventure game for him instead bc 'whats the point' id be disappointed too- you can find any sort of excuse/explanation for zelda to be singled out but the fact remains it tracks with how female characters are often treated, and that hits a very sore spot for me

i guess i am unfortunately one of those annoying people that want to see female characters be treated exactly the same as male characters, possibly bc i am myself afab but identify as agender and have a deeply personal dislike for anything 'traditional' feminine bc i cannot and never will be able to truly live as myself in real life, it influences all of my work, my work is as just as much as my opinion on this, very personal

and in line with my point about modding, i see theres joy in just beign able to play as her even if its like this, i get that, i also get it for the creative aspect (though that mechanic worries me even more for the future bc it really seems to be the path now that -freedom = good, linear anything = bad-) it is a different idea and its not like i cant see that value- im not trying be "right" either, just bc i have that opinion doesnt mean i need everyone to agree, its a very personal thing, if you like it good for you! not for me though, and i think both of that is equally valid

i just personally wish she was allowed to be just like link, fight just like him but be different bc its still her and not him in the end- to be physically/playstyle like jsut like him, but you know ... as her, i dont think shed stop being zelda if she could wield a sword just like him

i dont really know how to get my point/feelings across, i dont want to step too much into personal stuff nor spam people with something that ultimately doesnt interest me alot, im just saddened by it really

(EDIT: bc i forgot to add this on here again; this isnt as much of a problem as it might sound like here, just the main topic i wanted to talk about; why im so uninterested in it is MAINLY bc i dont trust them to write anything interesting/care about lore anymore after totk, im always on the more pessimistic side that thinks its most likely worse than id hope and i know even the past games arent perfect or super interestingly written, but now its much more just a general distrust, together with everything like the price ... im just much less hopeful and cant get excited until i see more of it, like im waiting for the game to get out and reveal that its just as much of a mess and money i regret spending- kind of fear)

[typosandtea]

Vertibirds. 🚁⚙️🗡️🪽

So every wastelander and his dog know that the fallout 4 vertibirds crash more than settlements need help. But why is that? Here's my 2 caps on the matter. (Or: Bethesda doesn't understand aviation very well I think)

( So uh this is way longer than I expected, I was possessed🚁☢️:] )

TLDR: Horrific conditions for aviation, the difficulties of wasteland heavy maintenance, inexperienced pilots AND mechanics, and the WORST damn instrument layout I’ve ever seen

The Vertibird is designed as a fictional tilt rotor VTOL/STOL(Vertical/Short Take Off and Landing) aircraft which makes a ton of sense in the wasteland where suitable runways are rarer than hens teeth. One of Bethesda's primary visual design influences for the vertibird I suspect is the bell boeing v-22 Osprey.

This funky creature \/

This photo is from the Wikipedia page >Here< [ID: a photo of a v22 osprey aircraft in flight as seen from below and to the right, the aircraft is a medium tilt rotor aircraft with very large propellers, the aircraft is current in vertical take off or landing with the engines pointed straight up. The landing gear is extended, the aircraft is painted in air-force grey with the faint decal “marines” and the American army star on horizontal stripes and the squadron and registration barley visible on the empennage. The cargo and forward doors are open and a soldier is hanging out the front. End ID]

Now the Osprey has a bit of a reputation among people I’ve met who’ve flown in them, I've personally been told things like "if it's not leaking hydraulic fluid, that means you're out of fluid" and "its terrifying to fly in".

My screenshot. [ID: A screenshot of a fallout 4 vertibird, seen from front left in flight over bushland. the Player is manning the minigun and Paladin Danse is a Passenger. End ID]

Looking at the Vertibirds themselves we can make a few assumptions here.

The shape of the cowling and the noise they make indicates that the engines are some form of turboprop engine, likely requiring liquid fuel akin to Avtur(Aviation turbine fuel). Confirmed by the Instruments visible in the cockpit.

The most weight efficient way to move big parts is hydraulics so, they likely have complex hydraulic systems for wing positioning / AOA(Angle Of Attack) / engine angle. Likely also for landing gear since they have retractable gear in fallout 4.

That the BoS has modified them from the original design at least partially, allowing attachment to the Prydwen, likely other modifications too.

I strongly suspect that they have an APU(Auxiliary Power Unit) in the aft fuselage / empennage somewhere, since they have a massive air intake scoop on the top fuselage, they can self start their primary engines which either requires a ridiculous amount of electricity / amps or a source of bleed air. Bleed air is the most likely candidate for self start and is reasonably common on real turbine aircraft, APUs also allows for ground power without having primary engines running. Also confirmed by the instruments in the cockpit.

All of these points are well and good and common in aviation, even modifications (ie. STOL kits, survey aircraft, agricultural mods, skiis, ect). But modern aviation has some advantages that the BoS doesn't have: access to new off the shelf parts, proper verified documentation, proper test processes & facilities, and experienced personnel.

Don't get me wrong, I think Proctor Ingram is awesome, very knowledgeable and practically a miracle worker (especially with that one terminal entry about an engine failure field recovery she pulls off!!), but one chief engineer cannot maintain an entire fleet AND the Prydwen, she comments on how things are breaking often on the ship that she is very busy! Training of new engineers takes *years* to even get to basic level! Ingram can’t train anyone she is too busy keeping everyone in the air 24/7! So who is training all of these scribes? There must be a huge amount of time teaching and supervising even simple tasks! Even at their best the BoS wouldn’t be able to hope to be near the prewar standards of training! Even Ingram or other senior scribes would not be thaaaaat experienced, 10 years is not a long time to completely learn a new aircraft and implement systems & processes of maintenance. The point here is that there are inexperienced scribes maintaining these aircraft.

WOLRDS BEST CHEIF ENGINEER ❤️ \/

My Screenshot. [ID: A screenshot of proctor Ingram from fallout 4, she is standing in the Liberty prime control area. She is smiling. She is wearing her usual modified power armour frame. Preston is visible in the background with a clipboard and pen, he is wearing woody’s outfit from toy story. End ID]

Heavy maintenance in the wasteland, especially in an active combat zone would be an absolute nightmare, are the poor scribes doing overhauls on the flight deck?? Not really possible, so the BoS must have a ground facility at the airport somewhere. Also side note where is the rest of Boston airport? There is more to an airport than a terminal and 1 runway, where are all the hangars?? Likely underwater but still, no ruins??

Back to maintenance, aircraft need a huge amount of care, way way way more than cars do. light civilian aircraft IRL need a full inspection every 100 hours of flight time, which adds up incredibly quickly! For example if you have a one hour commute twice a day that’s MR(Maintenance Release) hours reached in 50 days! You legally cannot fly out of hours. And a service for small aircraft takes about 3 personnel / 2 days and that’s without any major repairs or ADs (Airworthiness Directives) to address! $$$$! Aircraft operating in adverse conditions also need additional maintenance, and coastal areas like Boston, are considered adverse conditions since the salt air corrodes aluminum and steel like nothing else! Corrosion untreated will damage your aircraft and if left too long can destroy the structural integrity of aluminum parts. The spars of aircraft are aluminum often!

My photo. [ID: The inside of a Cessna 172 wing trailing edge is shown looking inboard at the aft root rib, which is primer green, it is backlit by torchlight, the fuselage and a orange scat hose are visible behind it, it has 3 irregular shaped holes in it, 2 are by design but the third medium sized hole in the center of the image is eaten away by corrosion. End ID]

Vertibirds, between being shot at constantly and having a complex deign with a lot of precision moving parts will need a lot of repairs; moving parts means lots of upkeep, grease and inspections! The BoS by 2287 must have some sort of manufacturing back in capital, they cannot still be using old parts from the enclave after 10 years of maintenance, that’s a lot of grease, paint and hydraulic fluid!!!

The BoS must also have a refinery of some kind because Avtur is a refined fuel with some important additives like biocide. Manufacture and storage of fuel is very important since fuel contamination will bring down an aircraft! (and has multiple times IRL! :[ ). Water, microbes, and algae are real dangers to engines, with free water being the most common. Poorly sealed tanks or improper fuel storage combined with a incomplete or missed pre-flight inspection can lead to fuel starvation, since water is heavier than fuel and tank outlets are at the bottom of the tank. If you loose an engine on a twin, may God help you.

This image is from Concordia Bioscience >Here< [ID: A photo of a sample of pale yellow Jet fuel in a clear container, the sample is contaminated with water and microbes and has separated into layers with water at the bottom, then microorganisms, and then Fuel at the top, the image is labeled as such. End ID]

Getting to the most likely crash reasons now (finally), In my opinion that is inexperienced pilots and; a horrific instrument layout.

While there must be some lancers in the BoS that have been flying for the whole 10 years that they’ve had Vertibirds, I think that is likely the exception not the rule, even if they crashed a fraction of the time that do in game that’s still A LOT of downed aircraft!

Experience is only gained in practice, and unfortunately for the BoS they are (self-declared) at war so resources are thin and safe zones are thinner. I suspect that there are a lot of very inexperienced pilots without the time for the experienced pilots to really teach.

Linking to my final point, experience on an airframe itself is also important, you want to be familiar with your aircraft, even among a group of the same model aircraft they will each have quirks, like slightly different instrument layouts, slightly different handling/feel i.e. "this one flies heavier / slower" (at least that's my experience with smaller civilian aircraft) I imagine that the apocalypse did nothing for improving manufacturing tolerances!

FINAL AND MOST DAMNING POINT:

Experience can only help lancers so much when veritibirds have such a strange instrument panel layout:

My screenshot. [ID: a screenshot of a instrument panel from a Fallout 4 vertibird. it is slanted on a approximately 30 degree angle. End ID]

A bit weird looking yeah? For reference Pilot is left seat and copilot is always right seat, this applies globally even in right hand drive countries.

lets take a closer look:

My Screenshots. [IDs: Three screenshots of the same Instrument panel as above, but zoomed in using a sniper rifle scope to get a better look. The first screen shot is the pilots side, the second the center, and the third the copilots side. End ID]

All righty! So reading from top to bottom, then left to right we have:

On the pilots side: A Rotor%RPM gauge, a VOR(Very high frequency Omni-directional Range) indicator, a DG(Directional Gyro), a HSI(Horizontal Situation Indicator), and then a huge AI(Attitude Indicator),

In the center section we have: presumably light clusters (likely master warnings & cautions, gear indicators, and other status lights), a second VOR gauge, likely magnetic compass as they are usually top centre (though I can’t see it being at all accurate with all of the steel around!), the engine instruments cluster, and the APU status / control panel at the bottom. unsure of what the 3 clusters of horizontal buttons are suppose to be other than input of some kind?

In the Engine cluster: Torque%, XMSN(transmission) oil temp / pressure dual gauge, a gas producer % RPM gauge with small integrated single percent dial (like having a seconds dial on your watch for accuracy) meaning the engines have free turbines (compressor not attached to the power turbine), a dual load / fuel psi gauge, a dual engine oil pressure and temperature gauge, fuel quantity in pounds, a turbine output temperature gauge (the hottest part of your engine), and a clock.

On the copilots side: a second Rotor%RPM dual gauge, a third VOR indicator, Airspeed in Knots and MPH, a RMI(Radio Magnetic Indicator) which uses VOR and ADF(Automatic Direction Finder) on compass, a second DG, a second HSI, and a teeny tiny altimeter right in the outboard corner.

the 4 instruments on the lower copilots panel are completely unlabeled

some things of note that are from game limitations:

most of the engine instruments don't have needles at all

the DGs and the RMI use the same background asset, resulting in the DG wrongly having 'VOR' and 'ASI' on its face, DGs are self contained air driven instruments that work on gyroscopic precession, not any outside data input.

all of the instruments with a compass face all say north despite this vertibird not quite facing north.

the AI is showing wings level despite this vertibird being crashed and on a ~30 degree angle

there are not engine controls at all not even flat assets, only flight controls.

There are a lot of instruments here and most of them are reasonably OK read individually, BUT there at least 1 key instrument missing and the layout outs emphasis on completely the wrong things:

WHERE IS THE VERTICAL SPEED INDICATOR(VSI)????? That's a pretty important gauge in a VERTICAL take off / landing aircraft!!!!!!!!!! It's one of the basic six pack!!! how was it omitted??? Speaking of the six pack why is there only one ASI and Altimeter?? and why are they tiny and ON THE COPILOTS SIDE ONLY???? the altimeter is LITERALLY the furthest instrument from the pilot in a vertibird, it should be right in front of the pilot!!! the easy to miss altimeter would make IFR(Instrument Flight Rules) flying incredibly dangerous! Also why are there four VOR based navigational instruments? VOR IS GROUND BASED NAVIGATION!!! unless the BoS has rebooted the multiple ground beacons for them to navigate from that's THREE dead instruments taking up space on the panel! the RMI is slightly more useful as ADF can tune to commercial radio frequencies, though these would need to be strong!

These poor inexperienced lancers are having to look all over the whole unnecessarily crowded cockpit for basic information that should be right in front of them, causing reaction delays and possible confusion. That delay could be the difference between whether or not they are flying home today.

-> Bethesda doesn't understand what half the instruments do and while they did a good job with most of the assets, in their quest to make it retro-future / visibly different from actual aircraft, they have completely destroyed any use of logic in the layout.

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

Thanks for reading! Here’s a video of me yeeting Danse with the ‘Get out of my face mod’ as compensation haha

My Video. [ID: a video capture from fallout 4 in first person. It is night and is at oberland station facing the water treatment plant. The player is wearing power armour and the HUD is visible. The player is very close to Paladin Danse, he turns away from them and they shove him with the voice line “stay out of my way”. Danse flys a long way away while rag-dolling. The Gamer’s laughter can be heard while Danse is flying. The player follows Danse’s fall with the crosshairs. The player then walks backwards. End ID]

[edenfenixblogs]

Well, tuned into the Drawfee stream...

I promised I'd check it out before determining if I'd ever be able to give Drawfee another chance after this...

Verdict TL;DR: Maybe one day, but not in the foreseeable future, especially not streams. Certainly never through my financial support ever again, unless they are fundraising for a particularly worthy charity (like in the Trans Rigs stream). But luckily, I don't think they give a shit if I watch or not, which is totally fair.

Overall: The Drawfee YouTubers didn't do anything wrong. However, their lack of acknowledgement of any Jewish pain or concerns served to further digital ghettoization and social isolation of diaspora Jews in a way that many (but definitely not all) Jews will probably find painful. Between that and the really bad faith link-sharing from the mods, I'm personally too fragile to imagine engaging with the channel again.

This conclusion is geared toward fellow Jews seeking escapist content or content that doesn't make them feel erased during this time. This is not a prescriptive recommendation for anyone else. It is simply my reasoning, should anyone else be on the fence and need insight.

The Good (There was a lot of it!):

I didn't see any Drawfee folks parroting antisemitic conspiracy theories, which is good. An extremely low bar, but one that many, many people fail to clear.

They kept their tone fun and light and didn't turn anything into a diatribe

They kept their focus on humanitarian aid and an end to violence.

I think they made a few statements generally about keeping chat civil.

They kept chat limited to people who already subscribed to the channel, which was SO smart. It kept bots and bad actors from making the chat hostile.

While they all joked about silly stuff, they never jokes about real issues or the pain of anyone involved in the conflict. This is very important!!!

Chat in general was a very good place to hang out. Most people were just happy to be there and commenting about funny and fun art and it had the (mostly) typical Drawfee vibes, which I miss.

There was nothing performative or disingenuous about the team's intent: They wanted an end to violence. They wanted aid to reach Palestinian refugees. They wanted to encourage voter turnout in upcoming elections, and they wanted people to pressure their representatives to call for a ceasefire. These are all unambiguously good things.

Most importantly: They raised WELL over $100,000 for PCRF, which (despite not being totally perfect) is a very well-rated charity that has no history of its funds falling into Hamas' hands and is geared toward helping children. This matters much more overall than the stream's impact on me personally.

Ultimately, I believe the stream did more good than harm by a large margin.

The Iffy (Neither good nor bad; just things that I noticed):

Basically, none of the actual Drawfee crew did anything antisemitic that I saw. But they had a lot of missed opportunities -- to affirm solidarity and support with Jewish viewership, to acknowledge Jewish pain in any way, to advocate for a peaceful solution that left room for any negotiated peace between Jews in Israel and Palestinians in any capacity (whether that meant as Israel or as a newly formed state of some kind), or to be specific and directed in how they wanted people to approach a ceasefire.

I didn't hear any call to specifically keep the chat free of antisemitism. I tuned in a few minutes late, so maybe I missed it.

No substantial knowledge of the conflict demonstrated. Just that the current situation is unacceptable and should stop. I don't know anyone who disagrees with that (who I consider to be acting in good faith), but no language from the team about how to bring about that end to violence other than demanding a ceasefire.

Mods had a chance to add links to AllMEP charities, A Land for All, and some other Palestinian-Israeli and Arab-Israeli and Muslim-Jewish charities that support either inter-faith healing OR even just solely pro-Palestine charities that have inter-faith or inter-cultural backing. They did not add these to the shared links that I saw. (This would have been fine if they had a rigorous evaluation process and couldn't moderate and evaluate quality at the same time. But based on the links that WERE shared, I severely doubt that was the case)

Someone in the chat was repeatedly giving the very good advice that when writing your representatives to demand a ceasefire, you should demand that the US offer to facilitate a negotiated peace and permanent ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Again, my feed crashed a couple times, so I may have missed it. But I personally did not see any of the mods or the Drawfee crew acknowledge this or mention Israeli suffering or Hamas violence once.

A least one of the mods should have been assigned fact-checking duty. Not many falsehoods were posted, but some were and community-members had to address them.

As expected there were lots of people posting watermelons, flags, and FtRttS. But, surprisingly, nobody was spamming it. I've written before about why the phrase FtRttS is upsetting to me personally, but I'll probably do a larger breakdown about i in the coming week. I appreciate that in general, people did seem to use it respectfully, in good faith, and without clear aggression toward Jewish people. There was some clear aggression toward Israelis (as in citizens not politicians), in general, but not too much or from too many people.

The Bad and Pretty Ugly (This is why I ultimately have to step away and other Jews might have to as well. At least for awhile):

Honestly, for all the care that people put into this stream, there was a general apathy toward and invisibility of Jewish people suffering in this crisis. Like I said, nobody on the on-screen Drawfee team did anything antisemitic. That was nice. Unfortunately, it didn't really seem like any actual effort was put in to determine what links were worth sharing. It was more of a "the mods like this one so it's allowed" sort of thing. Even cursory research on most of the links shared involved blatant instances of antisemitism, historical revisionism, or that just in general fell apart on any inspection whatsoever.

They could have made a lot of Jews feel seen and heard by mentioning the hostages even once, acknowledging 10/7 even once, acknowledged even once that Israel continues to be bombed from Hamas and Hezbollah daily, acknowledging that this is a war with two sides that both require an end to violence...literally any ONE of those things would have made a difference. But it was all just ignored, which is far too common when dealing with this conflict. This is especially painful for Jews who, like me, have experienced social isolation and digital ghettoization during this time. I think a lot of Jewish viewers will struggle to reconcile how this echoes a lot of the erasure that we all feel in our daily lives and in our digital spaces and in our hybrid digital and in-person communities. (<- Reblog 2 contains the accounts of The Jewish Experience of antisemitic erasure and ghettoization)Like, I do understand the argument that this is about providing humanitarian relief, but I also don't know why so many creators (and this is NOT unique to Drawfee) pretend like Jewish suffering is not relevent to ongoing discussions.

The mods posted links that supported UNRWA and some chatters spoke up in support of the UNRWA without any consequence. (All links here are verified as highly credible with high factual reporting standards via Media Bias/Fact Check and represent analysis from left-leaning, right-leaning, and least-biased sources)

One mod also posted a link to decolonizepalestine(.)com (not including the link because i don't want to support blatant propaganda). I have shared information about this terrible, bad-faith website before but there's so much more to pick apart here that I will reserve an evaluation of it as a source for a whole post of its own, unrelated to Drawfee. This website does cite its sources, but it provides no mechanism for readers to evaluate those sources. They are not hyperlinked and each individual citation must be looked up individually. I don't even have remotely enough time to do that right now. But if any of my bookwormish allies wish to tear apart those sources or the website in general, be my guest. Tagging y'all for visibility, but do not feel like I am actually asking you to do this work. It is simply something to add to the list of bad sources that we'll have to tackle at some point. cc: @comradevo @the-road-betwixt @faggotry-enjoyer @arandomshotinthedark et. al.

The mods also shared arab.org a few times. It is weird to me that they could have recommended AllMEP, which routinely emphasizes interfaith and intercultural and international cooperation and peace, but instead chose this much less evaluate-able source that excludes any efforts to find cooperative peace between Israel and Palestine. I had not heard of Arab.org before this stream and when I started to look into it, I fell into a bit of a rabbit hole:

So, first of all, Arab.org is a charity? organization? network? based in Beirut, Lebanon. I can't find them on Charity Navigator. The homepage didn't have a clear mission statement, so I navigated to the About Us tab. That gave me a little more information.

There, they state that their vision is to, "Empower people & organizations to do good." - Vague, but inoffensive. OK.

They state that they have three objectives:

Raising awareness, which they define as, "Civil society’s active role and through active collaboration." -- Vague but inoffensive.

Raising hope, which they define as, "Enabling the use of technology to innovate ways of contributing to the wellness and welfare of society." -- Vague but inoffensive.

Raising standards, which they define as, "Education, Reporting, Communication to & from civil society in the Arab World." -- Unclear, but inoffensive. Are they trying to raise the standards of these listed items within the Arab world or are they trying to raise international standards to be more inclusive of these listed items that originate from within the Arab world. And how do they define increased standards? Whose standards? IDK. This doesn't tell me anything really, but it also doesn't tell me anything bad, necessarily?

So what about their principles? Well, they list 5:

"Collaboration: Only together as a collective, can we bring about real change and betterment to society." -- OK, fine, but this still tells me nothing.

"Transparency: We conduct our business with a high level of transparency and a simple development model and we publish our impact publicly." -- Great! Excited to explore that!

"Innovation: We use our skills and creativity to make the world a better place. We want to make it possible to both inform and take action to solve the problems we discover." -- Intriguing, but how?

"Inclusion: We champion the inclusion of everyone in society, whether it is part of civic inclusion or charitable inclusion." -- This sounds really promising!!!! I'm excited to learn more!

"Leadership: We believe in taking the lead whenever wherever required by empowering individuals and organizations to influence others towards common goals." -- Gonna be honest, this just sound like vague buzzwords to me, but if they actually accomplish what they set out to do, great.

Luckily, each of these principles was clickable.

Let's start with "Collaboration"!

This takes me to a weirdly vague page with a gif of various men helping each other climb out of frame. The text below it says "We are currently on the look out for the following technology/platforms/businesses relevant to civil society" and then a list of pretty random things, some of which have checkmarks near them. Why is the formatting so strange? Why don't they all have checkmarks? Why is only the indicated section clickable but none of the other things? Where is more info about any of these items?

But fine, lets click that one clickable link about online marketplaces.

It doesn't actually take you to a marketplace but a page where artisans in the Arab world can submit their information. Submit heir information for what? Well, this is what the website says:

We understand how difficult life is for craftsmen & craftswomen to compete with mass-producing giants. We’re here to change all that. We are creating a win-win-win relationship whereby all sides benefit from our new platform “Shop to Help"

The "Shop to Help" is not clickable. I have no further information on what this is.

Fine, there's one more thing to click on this page: a list of Arab.org's partners.

First up: The Arab Institute for Women at Lebanese American University. Clicking on the info there takes me to the AIW:LAU website. Arab.org says the organization used to be called "Institute for Women’s Studies in the Arab World," but I couldn't find anything on Charity navigator for them either. Cursory research on them shows they've been around for 50 years. Fine. I'm not doing an evaluation on them right now (anyone who knows anything about them feel free to comment. I just don't have time) I was just investigating how they partner with Arab.org. I didn't find anything about that aside from a list of AIW's partners, which lists Arab.org amongst them. Clicking the link to Arab.org just takes me back to the homepage. I've learned nothing.

Next: They list Bayt.com, which is a job search site. Clicking that link takes me to the Bayt homepage. I couldn't find that addressed partnerships of any kind was their affiliate links page? But becoming an affiliate helps the affiliate make money, not Bayt. So I'm unsure what's going on or if this is even related.

Third: Building Markets. As far as I can tell, this is a real organization. I also cannot find them on Charity navigator, nor can I find any information about how they partner with Arab.org from their website. They do clearly share their financial information, though, which is great. I neither endorse nor condemn this organization. I'm not investigating them right now.

Fourth: Takreem Foundation. I CAN FIND THEM ON CHARITY NAVIGATOR! But they aren't rated. A search of the Takreem website shows no affiliation with Arab.org or accessible financial information.

Fifth: #GivingTuesday Woohoo! They are on Charity Navigator and have a pretty high rating! However, there's no evidence of a link between them and Arab.org, and the organization claims to have no list of official partners or participating organizations. Odd. Did Arab.org run a #GivingTuesday campaign and highlight #GivingTuesday instead of the organization they were giving to? Idk. And I don't have time to figure it out.

Sixth: CSR Engine. It's just a website with nothing on it except the statement "World’s first business for good solution to assign & align CSR activities seamlessly using AI and blockchain technology," which is the same text available about it from the Arab.org partners page. It does show it's affiliation with Arab.org...by listing Arab.org as a customer and then linking back to the Arab.org homepage. WHAT IS GOING ON.

Finally, and buckle up for this one cuz its a doozy, Greenpeace: I'd actually heard of this one, but I don't really know anything about it. Clicking Greenpeace doesn't even take you to the real Greenpeace MENA site. It just takes you to Arab.org's really weird write up page about Greenpeace. So, instead, I searched for Greenpeace on Charity navigator, where it got a 100% rating. Awesome! I clicked the charity navigator link, which took me to the Greenpeace Fund website. But wait a second. What's their connection to Arab.org? Well, there was no search function on the GreenpeaceFund website. So, I typed Greenpeace into google and uh?????

What?

That was surprising. I clicked the link and...

It showed me a totally different website...

Than the one I was just on...

Mods and the Drawfee crew stopped people from sharing links unless those people were mods. That was a super good choice which I fully support. But why did the mods share THESE links?

Well, I had the websites both open in side-by-side tabs.

That's...odd... So I studied the URLs more closely...

The lighter green G that's less pixelated? THAT ONE is the Greenpeace Fund. That is the one with penguins and a 100% charity navigator score.

The one with the lime green, pixelated G? That's Greenpeace International, a conspiracy/pseudoscience website with low crediblity.

But hey, the Greenpeace International website says there's a MENA-based branch. And, upon closer inspection, the Greenpeace International MENA website is the one that was linked on the Arab.org page. Maybe that one was better?

Clicking it took me to the Greenpeace MENA site...

which gave me another blinking Conspiracy Alert Icon from Media Bias Fact Check.

Just to be safe, I typed Greenpeace MENA into google, and fam... it is not better.

PS: searching ANY Greenpeace website for Arab.org showed no results.

In one last-ditch effort, I checked the Transparency page, where Arab.org claims to be "leading by example" in sharing all their documentation for charitable donations. And y'all it's fucking weird.

Let's stick with Greenpeace cuz they're already open tabs on my computer.

First of all, Arab.org's "leading by example" financial disclosures...

...are literally just the "Thank you for donating" receipts that you get whenever you donate to any cause. It's fucking weird.

And yeah, you read that right. For all of the 4th financial quarter of 2023, Arab.org donated just $109 TO THE ORGANIZATION WHICH THEY CALL A FEATURED PARTNER.

"OK," you say. "Well, there was a fucking lot going on in the fourth quarter of 2023. They were probably more focused on Palestine." Sure, lets check out their donation history to UNRWA (which, btw, is still a not great charity)

In case you don't want to click another link--Spoiler alert, they only donated $380. For the whole quarter.

And before you say, "But Eden! You must have missed it Arab.org is another organization called The Olive Tree (The Olive Tree SAL). That must be where the REAL work takes place!" Look at the mission statement of that one! The call themselves, "A mission-driven social enterprise startup making an impact for the common good.''

No.

The Olive Tree SAL is not on Charity Navigator. It's just another nothingburger website that links back to Arab.org and has no search function or further information.

This is the entirety of the website:

And a weird little LinkedIn logo that takes you to the organization's business page on LinkedIn.

From what I can tell, Arab.org just uses Ad revenue to generate minimal donations for charities and organizations of varying credibility that mostly don't even seem to know that Arab.org is even doing anything related to them. And that are designed to make people who are basically uninformed on the whole topic feel good for clicking on a link.

IDK, color me unimpressed. But I'm frankly a little mad that I spend so much fucking time trying to promote charities and organizations that promote peace between Palestine and Israel with actual detailed financial reports and disclosures that seeing this really makes me upset. Maybe if people actually listened to Jewish people with a lifetime of experience dealing with this conflict and trying to help solve or even Palestinian people on the ground who are affected by all this, they might instead focus their energies on one of the many organizations that are actually doing something to help alleviate suffering, increase empathy, encourage education and interfaith dialogue, learn to use language that is respectful of everyone undergoing and who has survived trauma, or build a peaceful future.

Whatever.

Donate to an AllMEP Charity:

And the craziest thing is that I'm gonna be the one who gets hate for this--even tthough I've been so driven out of most fandom spaces and discourse spaces that I can't even tag Drawfee here, let alone I/P, Palestine, or (G-d-forbid) Israel and get this to reach people who this could actually hep.

Because every time I try to engage, I'm inundated with messages like this:

[tubbytarchia]

Jimmy X Life thoughts

This is long (ft. fWhip and Scott and Joel)

TLDR: its all kinda cute but then devolves into Jimmy misery anyway even though he has done nothing

Jimmy's really cute builds??? to lure you in

Obligatory: I only talk about characters

X Life is a goddamn fever dream lol, following are some jumbled thoughts that I've divided into "Jimmy", ""fWhip and Joel", "Jeremyism" and "Scott" thoughts (all in relation to Jimmy). Shoutout to my friend for liveblogging and discussing together with me and pointing out some stuff I missed or better than I could

-- Jimmy thoughts

Jimmy's actually relatively happy within this series, at least at the beginning, and there is no significant "bullying Jimmy" kind of culture thing in place here, even though chronologically this series came after and partially ran at the same time as Legacy where it was very prevelant. They even hold a 100K milestone ceremony for him and it's very cute. Namely though fWhip and Joel treat him very nicely, he even has many really cute interactions with Scott!! I'm not gonna talk about shipping past this one statement but as someone who hasn't liked fWhimmy till now and finds Flower Husbands really interesting but not always healthy, it was... Really relieving to see both of those duos be really cute for me personally. But in spite of this there's still, sigh, a lot of Jimmisery...

Pretty early on, he decides on this thing "Whoever is nice to me gets a stack of diamonds" like, my sweet cheese.... You don't need to give people so much just for being nice to you.... your bank account is in constant ruin!! Lizzie also mods in coffee stuff specifically for him and Jimmy proclaims that any profits he makes from his coffee shops he will split with Lizzie as a thanks... he's so sweet stop it

Near the beginning he's way more assertive than I've grown used to. There's a point where Scott is waiting for him and he can SEE Scott in the distance but then just strolls the shopping district while Scott tells him to hurry up only for Jimmy to mostly ignore him. Another exchange between them goes S: "did I say you could use my villager?" and Jimmy replying "Did I say you could bring me a crab that'd then kill me? Didn't THINK SOOOO!!!". There's so many moments like this and it's so... it's so awesome to see. What changed.... Why can't there be more of this...

But then at some point he starts being harsh towards himself? He starts to call himself an idiot and starts proclaiming "I hate myself" for the most understandable little mishaps and things like?? Son?? He figures out how to make his advertisement poster bigger like everyone else's is and then when he does quickly figure it out all on his own he goes "I hate myself, I really do" WHAT'S THAT FOR. WHAT'S THAT FOR JIMMY!!!! Another moment to point out, Lizzie doing a friendship test thing and she already has pictures of 3 contestants. She calls Jimmy over for him to try and qualify, and when he sees the pictures he says that those look like smart people and he doesn't think he'll make it...

This isn't exclusive to X Life but him building stuff and calling it lovely and being easily excited at discovering the most basic building tricks, but then as soon as someone else is in the picture he immediately starts downplaying himself and calling his building bad...

At some point there's a war that Jimmy really wants to avoid but he gets roped into it by Jack blowing up Peekay's house (totally obliterated that thing) and framing Jimmy for it. Later when there's a confrontation, both he and Peekay clearly know it was Jack, but they fault Jimmy anyway, saying he's escalating things when he's just like. Standing there. Jimmy even ends up asking "what can I do for you to forgive me, for something I didn't do" like no stand your ground man!! You didn't do anything!! Man.... In the end he ends up rebuilding stuff for Jack (why Jack??? I dont know) and when Jack is the first person out of the series, in his Will he stated something along the lines of "I want Jimmy executed because he did a bad job rebuilding my things". And then Jimmy gets set on fire as everyone watches him burn to death. He didn't do anything!!!!!

There's a therapy session after this in which, when Gem asks him to open up, all he says is "Yesterday I woke up and was taken advantage of, that is all"

I think it's Peekay (could be wrong) who also utterly doused Jimmy's house in water as a prank but it... was awful lol. Jimmy's house ended up with lots of holes but at least he was all "I was gonna rebuild anyway". That peeved me so much though... For comparision, Scott pulled a prank on Jimmy where he rebuilt one of his rooms upside down (so kind of moved his furniture to the ceiling) but that's high effort and funny and causes less damage so that's all fair in my books. Good prank. The water dousing was not

He and Scott had a brief prank exchange, but the ONLY thing I can think of where Jimmy was knowingly, unjustifiably in the wrong, was when he cheated on an auction by bidding on a painting after the auction had closed. And even that is such a small offense!! Genuinely all the misery he was caused was just him being caught in the crossfire of other people's shit and it's... ough I don't want to say "he has never done anything wrong" because he totally has but BARELY. Why is it always like this... Hardly ever does he do anything that warrants the things that happen to him

Jimmy's also pretty if not really nice to the mobs, vanilla and modded. In his and Scott's shelter business, he brought in a hostile mob twice with the justification "hostile mobs deserve a home too!!" </3 dawh. He'd make mobs nice enclosures... But then he fucking HATES chickens. He kills them like nothing. Proclaims "I'll enjoy every second of this". Goes "I'll kill only a few of you..." and then kills 10 of them. Violently and instantly kills one stray chicken that escaped his enclosure as Lizzie watches on in horror with the two pandas she just helped bring over. It's kind of insane?? Why.... You're a rancher at heart, what's with the chicken slaughter.... My friend pointed to him canonically being compared to a chicken once. Do with that what you will. Oh also when he came dead last in a race, his immediate reaction upon finishing was to brutally kill his horse?????????? Jimmy??????????????????????????

ALSO he's a good builder?? A lot of people have expressed that Jimmy's building skills have been getting better but I beg to differ, his builds in this series are all really charming and cute? They're not very detailed but they're simplistic and I love it, he obviously has an eye for pleasant looking builds and I'm so SO sad we don't see this too much anymore... There's also a cute moment where he builds a roof out of dirt, says he'll replace it later but apparently his commenters really liked it so he kept it... That's so Jimmy....

-- fWhip and Joel thoughts in relation to Jimmy

fWhip especially is almost (we'll get to that) undingly nice to Jimmy here, and I even felt bad for him in several instances related to Jimmy. Joel is more softspoken as he was in general 3 years ago, and was also almost (we'll get to that) totally nice to Jimmy. At some point they do a horse race and Jimmy comes in dead last but both he and fWhip cheer him on anyway. Joel says "well done Jimmy you nerd" but it's Joel so that counts as him being nice and awesome. It's also very cute that he was partially presenting Jimmy's 100K milestone ceremony, even if it was basically just him calling Jimmy a "wonderful creature" after, to quote my friend, almost vomiting on stage. But it's Joel so it counts

Joel also builds something for Jimmy at some point but whilst they're discussing what it should be like, they land on the word "broken" and Joel goes "broken, like you" and Jimmy replies "broken, like me" like????? Help me this was so early too. That came from NOWHERE. What????? Joel was nice otherwise though... except for one other moment

All three of them create a building business and do acknowledge and agree that Jimmy's not doing the hardest part (building) and doesn't get as much of the profit, seeing as he's just the receptionist. It's still a mostly happy businessship though. They get two bad reviews (from Scott and Peekay) because of Jimmy but all three of them in both instances ultimately agree that Jimmy wasn't at fault. Stuff like Joel taking down a bad review left on a sign saying "the customer isn't always right". Jimmy catches wind of a rumor at some point that he's being fired and when the awaited meeting happens, fWhip and Joel name him receptionist of the month instead, praising him for his hard work in advertising for the business and also making lots and lots of coffee (he's the only one who can even operate the coffee machine lmao. He's really proud of it too, it's very cute. He even keeps bringing it up in an effort for the other two to recognise his value before he gets the news he's anticipating). Jimmy even says "I'm glad that, yknow, you're seeing it. Cus sometimes. yknow. it's really hard for me to feel.. useful. like you guys are building spectacular things and I'm. I'm trying my best." he's genuinely so, so happy and sounds like he's on the brink of tears (claims to be as well)

BUT SIKE PLOT TWIST because I hate myself I went to skim Joel's POV too and he and fWhip actually spoke to one of the other members about Jimmy being a bad receptionist, all "it's Jimmy, you know...". fWhip enforces this and Joel even says "Not to pass blame onto Jimmy but it's all his fault" after which the firing rumor starts to spread. And as far as I could tell, it's forever left ambiguous if they were genuine to any degree when they named him receptionist of the month and this will now keep me up at night. Did they genuinely think Jimmy was at fault in spite of encouraging him that he wasn't? Did they do what they did just to make Jimmy happy even if they believed him to be at fault? Or were they talking shit that one time for no reason...

Joel makes this religion "Jeremyism" to spite Scott (for renaming a bunch of his pets) which Jimmy is the first person to join and is pretty much undyingly devoted to till the very end in spite of the fever dream that spirals from it by the end...

Ignoring that one incident of Joel and fWhip bad-mouthing Jimmy, fWhip was very nice to him, throughout Jimmy's POV at least. I'd like to especially draw attention to fWhip trusting Jimmy to show some other members how to build some houses, like, awgh,,, finally some Jimmy building ability recognition!!! Good for you fWhip!!! They almost exclusively talked in relation to businesses though and at some point made a deal with Jimmy to join Jeremyism if Jimmy would come and basically just hang out with him in the jungle or go on a little adventure. This never happened though

Joel ends up giving up his position as the Jeremyism leader "for content" (??) to anyone who can complete his death obstacle course. Jimmy does, though unfairly by accident (Joel said it was fine though), but finds at the very end of it that someone has already reached this point before him, and of course it was Scott... Scott turns Jeremyism into a proper cult by enforcing rigid rules, his leadership and word, stating that you have to die in order to leave the cult, and his right hand Lizzie demands diamonds as offerings (none of this was a thing before). None of the members seem to be fans, but Joel and Jimmy especially voice and show discomfort, though Jimmy still quickly offers up his diamonds. fWhip fucking burns himself right there thus leaving the cult (king shit) and when he comes to the window from the outside to wave at them, Jimmy is quick to call him a "traitor" and tries to block the view with blocks (this is where I feel for fWhip who has been nothing but nice to Jimmy from Jimmy's POV). Joel makes pathetic attempts at killing Scott with an anvil (fails) and then killing himself (fails)

Gem and Kath put on a therapy session at some point which Jack, fWhip and Jimmy attend. Jimmy states not to want to talk to fWhip (which again hurts) and fWhip makes a subtle jab at Jimmy for never spending time with him in his jungle like he'd promised (totally justified). Jack also hits Jimmy for being part of Jeremyism right at the start, but then when he's jokingly drowning, Jimmy saves him, and he goes "you saved me!! :D". At the end, Jimmy tries to shoot bubbles (not damaging but a nuisance) at fWhip from a distance, at which fWhip starts to run at him to try to lasso him (lassoing a player puts them in a glitchy noclip dimension which they need to relog to get out of). They run around for awhile, fWhip eventually succeeds, Jimmy relogs and then Jack fucking murders fWhip. And then says "I did it for you" to Jimmy. Which, ok. Fast progression, a little insane... fWhip comes back and claims to feel great though. Jimmy pretty much leaves and runs off at this point and unfortunately he and fWhip never make up or have another nice interaction before the finale (I'm quite sure)

Joel uhh Joel just kinda fucks off lol he doesn't even die (Jimmy fills in Joel's grave anyway though)

-- Jeremyism thoughts

Mentioned above how devoted Jimmy was to Joel's religion, and to me it really reads like him finding a home. Like, a genuine home, idk... He really did a lot for it, trying to recruit members and taking care of several Jeremy donkeys and making offerings (Joel also gifted him multiple times)

When Scott takes over, he's clearly very distraught. He tried hard to become the new leader of Jeremyism specifically to stop Scott from ruining it. And yet when Scott does, he can't help but stay, quickly labels fWhip a traitor, offers up his diamonds easily... Even as he's asking for Joel to get up there where Scott is standing, instead of Scott. Jeremyism is done for but Jimmy still holds onto an idea of it

And he does this by literally building a Jeremyism hideout secret from Scott and Lizzy, where he and the other remaining members can hang out. Like come on!! He just wants Jeremyism back... He himself states it's "all I have" and "the one real purpose I had on this server was Jeremyism. And now it's gone" (this is basically before he kills himself and ends his series)

-- Scott thoughts in relation to Jimmy

As I said, they had some really cute interactions. Scott actually treated him nicely and his teasing felt lighthearted enough to not be anything worse than that. They dress up all cute for Halloween, they shoot bubbles at each other, Scott teaches him how to ride a flying carpet, Jimmy's not afraid to be a little sassy back at him... He replaced 3 of Scott's pets as a prank because Scott had gotten him a crab that killed Jimmy at some point, and in retaliation Scott doused his house in crabs, but then they like, ate lunch together date style, it was all good and fun, mutual foolery...

And then this one episode, to quote my friend, someone pissed in Scott's cereal and he's suddenly very dismissive of Jimmy's building skills and contributions like I'd expect to see in Third Life???? They see this arguably amateurishly built hut and Scott turns to Jimmy all accusatory "did you build this??". They build an animal shelter together which is cute but then Scott dismisses Jimmy and says he did almost all of the work and proclaims that he should get almost all of the profits etc. And it pisses me off because just like in 3L, this was a building he just ripped from somewhere else to begin with!! He did lay the foundation and such but you can see Jimmy helping build a decent amount in the timelapse...

At some point he also seems ashamed to admit that Scott helped him with his storage system :(

When Scott reads out Jack's wish to have Jimmy executed, Jimmy goes and basically kneels before Scott, telling him to do it. Scott can't because of spawn protection, but Jimmy gets set on fire instead and he?? Runs to Scott??? He runs to Scott and basically kneels before him AGAIN and Scott does NOTHING and I I don't know I might be insane but. Holy shit this is a fever dream and feels like abstract symbolism but ough that hurt. That hurt a lot. Why did Jimmy run to Scott, why did he kneel/crouch before him as he was burning to death... What was he trying to do... Was he seeking something.... comfort...? Neigh... I just wish to know...

Scott in general is a fever dream in this all by himself though. They all turn up for Jack's funeral and then Scott starts talking about how he tried to be nice and expresses disappointment in having been met with disposition (finding out that Jimmy had a secret Jeremyism cove) acting all "if you want a villain I'll give you a villain!" as if he weren't already one after the cult he turned Jeremyism into and then suicide bombs the entire church still during Jack's funeral. ????? Jesus christ

This screenshot isn't relevant but Im giving it to you anyway

[theminecraftbee]

On the subject of modpack recommendations, I made a custom one for myself a little while ago and i've been playing it nonstop since.

It's very chill, and lighter on the mods so my silly little laptop can run it without crashing. I put it together cause most modpacks are so complex and overwelming to my lil brain. I've found it a good mix of still feeling like minecraft, but having the benefits of the 'more' from the mods.

The lineup is: Create, Farmer's Delight, Sophisticated Backpacks, Waystones, Comforts (the sleeping bag mod), an animals mod called Naturalist, Xaero's Minimap/Worldmap, Decorative Blocks, Macaw's Doors/Trapdoors/Lights & Lamps/Bridges/Paintings for some more decor options, and Simple Hats (I wanted to wear a fox hat on my head. sue me). There's a few basic quality of life mods too, like AppleSkin and JEI, and some compatability add on mods for Create and the waystones to the maps, but that's it.

It's worked really well so far, and i haven't crashed at all-- though i have fallen victim to the massive sinkhole in the neighboring savannah I've been using as my strip mine and tree farm. I put keep inventory on, it's fiiiinnnneeeee-- I never like having stakes for death anyway, makes it too stressful. Let me throw myself from build height to bedrock without having to do the walk of shame for my stuff--

My game chugs a touch with Create, but all I had to do was turn down my graphics and be VERY careful to not dump out thousands of entities at once But that's just Create, really

oh, this can be a really great approach to playing modded too, especially if you personally know what mods you like and don't care about stuff like recipe compatibility! the main advantage of a 'true' modpack is normally that the good ones balance the recipes of the different mods to each other, and also i really prefer modpacks personally that have quest systems. but if your goal is to "play with mods" mostly, or, say, like you, you have a computer that can't handle heavier modpacks, or you just wanat a few things you like, this is a path that is DEFINITELY an option for a chill modpack!

i will say for those new to modded, here are some mods i recommend everyone include of the QOL variety, even if they're otherwise not doing many mods:

some variety of mimimap; xaero's is the one i'm most familiar with but choose your favorite.

if that minimap doesn't come with waypoints for some reason, get yourself a mod that adds waypoints.

quark. i never play modded minecraft without quark, if only for the rotation lock feature alone (never worry about which direction you're facing while placing a block again). you can go through quark's website to decide which features you'll enable and disable, and this is possible to do through an in-game gui, so even people who don't want to touch .json files can easily configure what quark features they do and don't use! it just adds... so many little qol things.

appleskin. this just makes the food bar more useful and shows you saturation. i don't know why vanilla doesn't do this.

jei (just enough items). you will ALWAYS WANT JEI WHILE PLAYING MODDED I CANNOT EXPRESS ENOUGH HOW HANDY THIS IS. a searchable list of every item in the game, which you can click on in order to see their recipes, and even automatically transfer items from your inventory to a crafting grid for that recipe! it's in every modpack ever for a reason! the larger the modpack, the more you're gonna want this!

a performance mod. personally i'd recommend not using optifine, as optifine is a mod a lot of other mods note break them, but if your particular pack is optifine compatible, go for it! most packs i've seen go with either sodium on fabric or rubidium on forge, but there are also other options! i'd just include at least one.

any other convenience you've ever had in another modpack that you want! personally, i need something like tom's simple storage network, drawers, or both to want to play a given modpack, because i get sad without storage, but maybe you only want to play packs with a variety of crops! maybe you think sophisticated backpacks or sophisticated storage are a requirement in your mind! maybe supplementaries or other decorative mods are a requirement to you! the world is your oyster! add whatever of those!