#i physically cannot put my 2 cents on this

[mixedkid-matchup]

[strawberryamanita]

Okay, so... hoo boy.

I try to acknowledge every time I make a political post that I cannot tell anyone what to do. I'm one irrelevant person, I'm not a political spearhead nor do I want to be one, I haven't been able to sway anyone about anything, yadda yadda blah blah blah. If this post gets completely overlooked, so be it. If I get verbally trampled-on by people who don't agree with me, so be it.

But while everyone else is causing a flood of coins on the floor, I'll throw my own 2 cents in.

I think what would be helpful right now -- just in this moment, for the short-term -- is getting through these feelings of worry and despair and panic that I see many posts on my feed announcing. The facts are in front of us: there was an assassination attempt, it failed, and that's worrying because it's gonna embolden the Right even further than they've already been lately. That's completely reasonable to be upset about, it's not irrational to see the danger this will put us in on the streets on the days leading up to the election.

At the same time, there ARE, believe it or not, some positive facts that are having an impact on your life right now. Trump had to go the hospital. He could possibly have a heart-attack. He could possibly go septic. He could possibly be assigned a medical professional that is brave enough to kill him. There was a person brave enough earlier today to show him and his following that enough people in the world hate him to want him dead. Social media being flooded with cheers that he was injured and laments that it didn't kill him is further proof to said willfully ignorant following that they are in the minority. Even if more US voters are enthusiastic about Trump as I type this, most of the world wants him obliterated, and that should be something to hang onto. So much of this is about ego and confidence of the Right. It's not in our best interest to let them think they have a leg up on us.

And the biggest piece of good news is, the US presidential election didn't happen yet! That wasn't the last stand right there, that wasn't the ballot count or the televised verdict. "Surviving" a non-lethal shot that didn't hit any important organs or arteries doesn't mean you automatically win an election. That didn't push an Eject button on Biden's seat to launch him out of the White House or anything like that.

Trump is not invincible. He is not immortal. He is not unkillable. And just because his cult of followers want to canonize him (though they wanted to do that before he was even elected the first time), that doesn't mean WE are obligated to throw in the towel and hang our heads and lick their heels. If it's cathartic or it's helping you de-stress, then by all means cry all you need to -- but we unfortunately can't afford to let this sink us into a collective depression.

He didn't win an election that hasn't happened yet. I promise you this. Look on ecosia.org if you need proof of who is in-office, since they don't use AI(currently).

And no, none of this is to downplay anything. I'm not living in a lie. I promise you, I've been making myself physically ill from the horrors of the world I've been exposed to, day after day, non-stop, on this fucking website. If exposing myself to the bottomless abyss of human evil actually desensitized me and helped me be less fearful, it would've worked by now, but all it does is exhaust me.

It honestly oftentimes makes me actively suicidal -- and I know for a fact I'm not the only one, especially after today, or when Trump was granted legal immunity, or any of these other awful past days. But if I killed myself before I did everything I could to keep this sinking ship of a country afloat just a little longer, that wouldn't be responsible of me.

So, if you're still reading, and not already typing out some response accusing me of things I already tried to tell you I'm not doing before you even finish reading...

Now is the time to practice being brave.

Look at the facts. Don't let yourself spiral from doomscrolling. Cry when you need to, and then keep going. Vote in every local election you can, attend protests and rallies, spread information from trustworthy sources to every social media handle you have -- and for God's sake, find something to keep you hopeful. Escapism is a survival tool: as long as you aren't using it to avoid reality, it doesn't have to be eliminated from your life. You will feel stronger if you let yourself recharge with moments of happiness, I guarantee this.

If you're too suicidal to keep going for yourself, keep going for someone else. It can be someone in your immediate life, it can be a stranger suffering overseas, it can be a child who hasn't been born yet that will see a future built on top of our present. Whatever it takes to keep you from giving up, put it to the front of your mind. Link arms with your Leftist siblings, and then make a habit of it. We cannot keep collapsing from the inside from the smallest of inconveniences, it helps literally none of us.

It's not over until they ring that bell. We have 3 and a half months, don't lose speed now.

I believe in you.

[sweaterkittensahoy]

I want to use this very small, handmade crochet item from Forever21 to illustrate exactly how little they are paying artists:

These hair ties are $5 for the set. There's some somewhat tricksy stitchwork in those petals, and I think the center is embroidery, not crochet, so this hair tie took two skills.

I would guess each flower, depending on how fast you are, could take 30-60 minutes. Closer to 30, if you do make a lot of them. And I bet the goal is to make as many as you can in one sweatshop-hours workday so you'll paid by the quantity you can crank out. And I'm sure someone's triple-checking every last bit of your work to cut your pay down to the minimum.

As this is a set, I assume it's one of each color that's required to count as a batch. And you'll be paid some sort of even worse pittance for any unfinished batches you have left over.

For 5 bucks for three, Forever21 likely isn't paying more than a dollar a set. So, for, at best guess, 1.5 hours of work, someone's making a dollar. And that's if their work isn't being intentionally judged harshly to cut their pay further. Because I'm betting the wage on unfinished sets is maybe 20 cents a flower. On a very good day where the artist can make everything in sets and end an assumed 12-hour day with all sets complete, that's 8 sets. 8 dollars.

8 dollars for unstopped physical labor. So Forever21 can charge 5 bucks a card.

Now, if you can copy these and sell them yourself but don't know what to price them at, here's my pitch:

I have a standing rule that if it takes me more than 30 minutes to make, it's 10 bucks to sell. Because I think 20 bucks is a solid rate for my work on something like this. So, half of 20 is 10. I'm willing to eat the cost of materials as I can undoubtably make a whole bunch of little flowers off one skein of yarn. So, even if I choose a higher-priced yarn, the fact I can make 30 or 40 or 50 little flowers cuts down on the price of supplies.

Now, if I were selling online, I'd offer some sort of small discount for a group buy. 1 for $10. 2 for $18. 3 for $25. This can lead to people deciding to buy more rather than less, and while you do take a bit of a hit on the overall price, a larger sale is a larger sale.

If I were tabling somewhere, I'd be willing to use something like hair ties as an easy sale. I'd cut down my base price to, say $8 for 1. $15 for 2. $22 for 3. As someone who has tabled and been buying at a table, I cannot tell you how much people love a deal like that. Especially if you have a lot of colors to choose from. Not only that, but it's a sale that's much easier to make on day one (when people are trying to be careful with their spending) and on the final day (when people are nearly out of their spending money). You can get a lot of small sales that add up.

Obviously, Forever21 isn't going to price up like I just described. They are a fucking elder god of fast fashion and will not be changing their exploitation of artisans any time soon. But having an understanding of exactly how badly they treat workers and presenting a very average pricing from an artist who is trying to be fair to themself and their skill can be helpful for people who are trying to figure out how to put their money where their values are.

[iamthat-iam]

https://www.tumblr.com/iamthat-iam/742498983435501569/hi-im-not-trauma-dumping-or-anything-but-i-would?source=share

for this anon, here’s a passage from Keys to the Ultimate Freedom by Lester Levenson (found in Session 20 ‘HEALING’);

Q: Other than what you've told us tonight, how can you heal yourself except with realization?

Lester: To relate things relatively, if a person can spiritually heal himself, he should; it's instantaneous. If he can't, he should do it mentally; it's from instantaneous to quick. If he can't do it mentally, he must do it physically; he must go to a doctor. So we use that which is available to us. I suggest to people that they see doctors because that's the level of healing that they need and it will help them.

effectively what he’s saying is that, when you know yourself, any apparent ‘problems’ with the body will instantly cease because you will know them to be illusory. the fact you continue to seemingly experience these symptoms, and are unable to drop them from the mind, suggests you have not yet established this knowing. and thats fine. rather than try to force this knowing (which will actually only take you further away from it, because true knowing is effortless), instead do what you feel is right ‘physically’ to put your mind at ease. continue on your way back to your Self whilst tending to what seemingly needs to be tended to. nothing that you are conscious of (i.e. the seeming body and it’s seeming problems) can be you, so what are you? keep that in mind when you can. investigate this when you can. “i am not this body, i am the thing aware of this body. so what am i?”

you are never doing anything wrong. the body is just an illusion, therefore it cannot get in the way of your ‘self-realization’. you are already THAT, always. you are perfectly safe, and everything that is happening is happening just as it should. let go and let god. you needn’t worry about a thing for no-thing is really there🤍

sorry bry, hope you don’t mind me adding my 2 cents :) wishing you & your anon lots of love💗

Hi, thank you very much for your addition! 💞 Lots of love to you

[variousbones]

Okay as an autistic person who’s been to many HOUSE PARTIES- not dinner parties, not small get togethers, not intimate hang outs- HOUSE PARTIES here’s my 2 cents:

Disclaimer: this advice is based on my experience/knowledge of the general United States population and may not apply to specific situations and other countries. When in doubt, show up an hour late and be prepared to apologize for being too late/early.

First, a house party is an extremely casual event where it is expected that you’ll be drinking, smoking, etc (but you don’t have to and in my experience people are pretty understanding if you don’t), people will be in various outfits ranging from tshirts to skimpy club clothes and the lights will be low with loud music playing. Party games like beer pong will usually be played and the drink options are usually cheap beer, hard seltzer, boxed wine, or a house-made “jungle juice” that’s in a large plastic bucket.

These parties usually don’t even “start” until at least 9-10 pm and even then a lot of the people I would go with wouldn’t want to get there until like 11. Keep in mind a regular house party will usually go until 1-2 am. If you’re closer friends with the host you can definitely show up on time or even early, you should just also offer to help set up. If you’ve only hung out in group situations or know them through somebody, show up minimum one hour after the given start time.

I cannot emphasize enough how CASUAL these events are. Nobody is preparing place settings or whatever so it’s not like extremely rude to show up on time/early, they just might think you’re weird and naive if they don’t know you well already and if you’re expecting the party to be already in full swing. If you’re physically strong they might actually appreciate if you show up early so you can help them move furniture into the rooms that will be off limits. Almost every party I went to in college like 80% of the furniture in the party spaces had been moved into the bedrooms where people weren’t allowed to go in.

If the host is mean to you for showing up on time they can get fucked ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I’m the kind of autistic person that can learn and observe social rules over time I just think they’re dumb as hell. Anybody getting wildly offended about you showing up at the time stated is just uptight and bad at going with the flow. AND ALSO at the same time be a courteous guest; offer to set things up, throw away your trash when you’re done, don’t put your shoes on the furniture, if you spill something clean it up, etc. and to make conversation maybe ask the host how they’re doing, how many people they’re expecting, what drinks they’re serving, if they do parties for Halloween/Christmas/other holidays, how their semester is going if they’re in school. It’s understandable for somebody to be flustered or uncomfortable if you show up before they expect you to, regardless of the communication involved, but just always lead the conversation with kindness and understanding and excitement about the evening and it’ll usually be fine! If they’re mad at you for being excited and maybe a bit “too eager” despite you offering to help set up and being friendly, then their opinion is dog shit anyway and they need to be a bit more chill about their made up rules.

As autistics it can be so anxiety inducing navigating these situations but at a certain point you just have to let go of what other people will think based on their own arbitrary belief system. As long as you’re consistently taking steps to be polite and friendly and complimentary, you aren’t actually doing anything wrong and truly it is on them if they can’t grow a spine and communicate what the problem is. You’ll rarely perform neurotypical socialization perfectly and that’s okay! Even neurotypicals are awkward and mess up this stuff! Also if a real life adult can’t possibly conceive “forgiving” you for a minor social faux pas like this then girl they are NOT mature enough for their opinion to hold water.

And why? Cultural norms? Personal schedule? “Cause I’m always late to everything”?

Bonus points: Region and/or ethnicity?

[mere-christianity]

Mere Christianity Podcast: Episode 6

Book 2: What Christian's Believe.

Chapter 5. The Practical Conclusion

The perfect surrender and humiliation were undergone by Christ: perfect because He was God, surrender and humiliation because He was man. Now the Christian belief is that if we somehow share the humility and suffering of Christ we shall also share in His conquest for death and find a new life after we have died and in it become perfect, and perfectly happy, creatures. This means something much more than our trying to follow His teaching.

People often ask when the next step in evolution-the step to something beyond man-will happen. But on the Christian view, it has happened already. In Christ a new kind of man appeared: and the new kind of life which began in Him is to be put into us. How is this to be done? Now, please remember how we acquired the old, ordinary kind of life. We derived it from others, from our father and mother and all our ancestors, without our consent-and by a very curious process, involving pleasure, pain, and danger. A process you would never have guessed. Most of us spend a good many years in childhood trying to guess it: and some children, when they are first told, do not believe it-and I am not sure that I blame them, for it is very odd. Now the God who arranged that process is the same God who arranges how the new kind of life-the Christ life-is to be spread. We must be prepared for it being odd too. He did not consult us when He invented sex: He has not consulted us either when He invented this.

There are three things that spread the Christ life to us: baptism, belief, and that mysterious action which different Christians call by different names-Holy Communion, the Mass, the Lord's Supper. At least, those are the three ordinary methods. I am not saying there may not be special cases where it is spread without one or more of these. I have not time to go into special cases, and I do not know enough. If you are trying in a few minutes to tell a man how to get to Edinburgh you will tell him the trains: he can, it is true, get there by boat or by a plane, but you will hardly bring that in. And I am not saying anything about which of these three things is the most essential. My Methodist friend would like me to say more about belief and less (in proportion) about the other two. But I am not going into that. Anyone who professes to teach you Christian doctrine will, in fact, tell you to use all three, and that is enough for our present purpose.

I cannot myself see why these things should be the conductors of the new kind of life. But then, if one did not happen to know, I should never have seen any connection between a particular physical pleasure and the appearance of a new human being in the world. We have to take reality as it comes to us: there is no good jabbering about what it ought to be like or what we should have expected it to be like. But though I cannot see why it should be so, I can tell you why I believe it is so. I have explained why I have to believe that Jesus was (and is) God. And it seems plain as a matter of history that He taught His followers that the new life was communicated in this way. In other words, I believe it on His authority. Do not be scared by the word authority. Believing things on authority only means believing them because you have been told them by someone you think trustworthy. Ninety-nine per cent of the things you believe are believed on authority. I believe there is such a place as New York. I have not seen it myself. I could not prove by abstract reasoning that there must be such a place. I believe it because reliable people have told me so. The ordinary man believes in the Solar System, atoms, evolution, and the circulation of the blood on authority-because the scientists say so. Every historical statement in the world is believed on authority. None of us has seen the Norman Conquest or the defeat of the Armada. None of us could prove them by pure logic as you prove a thing in mathematics. We believe them simply because people who did see them have left writings that tell us about them: in fact, on authority. A man who jibbed at authority in other things as some people do in religion would have to be content to know nothing all his life.

Do not think I am setting up baptism and belief and the Holy Communion as things that will do instead of your own attempts to copy Christ. Your natural life is derived from your parents; that does not mean it will stay there if you do nothing about it. You can lose it by neglect, or you can drive it away by committing suicide. You have to feed it and look after it: but always remember you are not making it, you are only keeping up a life you got from someone else. In the same way a Christian can lose the Christ-life which has been put into him, and he has to make efforts to keep it. But even the best Christian that ever lived is not acting on his own steam-he is only nourishing or protecting a life he could never have acquired by his own efforts. And that has practical consequences. As long as the natural life is in your body, it will do a lot towards repairing that body. Cut it, and up to a point it will heal, as a dead body would not. A live body is not one that never gets hurt, but one that can to some extent repair itself. In the same way a Christian is not a man who never goes wrong, but a man who is enabled to repent and pick himself up and begin over again after each stumble-because the Christ-life is inside him, repairing him all the time, enabling him to repeat (in some degree) the kind of voluntary death which Christ Himself carried out.

That is why the Christian is in a different position from other people who are trying to be good. They hope, by being good, to please God if there is one; or-if they think there is not-at least they hope to deserve approval from good men. But the Christian thinks any good he does comes from the Christ-life inside him. He does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us; just as the roof of a greenhouse does not attract the sun because it is bright, but becomes bright because the sun shines on it.

And let me make it quite clear that when Christians say the Christ-life is in them, they do not mean simply something mental or moral. When they speak of being "in Christ" or of Christ being "in them," this is not simply a way of saying that they are thinking about Christ or copying Him. They mean that Christ is actually operating through them; that the whole mass of Christians are the physical organism through which Christ acts, that we are His fingers and muscles, the cells of His body. And perhaps that explains one or two things. It explains why this new life is spread not only by purely mental acts like belief, but by bodily acts like baptism and Holy Communion. It is not merely the spreading of an idea; it is more like evolution-a biological or super-biological fact. There is no good trying to be more spiritual than God. God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses material things like bread and wine to put the new life into us. We may think this rather crude and unspiritual. God does not: He invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it.

Here is another thing that used to puzzle me. Is it not frightfully unfair that this new life should be confined to people who have heard of Christ and been able to believe in Him? But the truth is God has not told us what His arrangements about the other people are. We do know that no man can be saved except through Christ; we do not know that only those who know Him can be saved through Him, But in the meantime, if you are worried about the people outside, the most unreasonable thing you can do is to remain outside yourself. Christians are Christ's body, the organism through which He works. Every addition to that body enables Him to do more. If you want to help those outside you must add your own little cell to the body of Christ who alone can help them. Cutting off a man's fingers would be an odd way of getting him to do more work.

Another possible objection is this. Why is God landing in this enemy-occupied world in disguise and starting a sort of secret society to undermine the devil? Why is He not landing in force, invading it? Is it dial He is not strong enough? Well, Christians think He is going to land in force; we do not know when. But we can guess why He is delaying. He wants to give us the chance of joining His side freely. I do not suppose you and I would have thought much of a Frenchman who waited till the Allies were marching into Germany and then announced he was on our side. God will invade. But I wonder whether people who ask God to interfere openly and directly in our world quite realise what it will be like when He does. When that happens, it is the end of the world. When the author walks on to the stage the play is over. God is going to invade, all right: but what is the good of saying you are on His side then, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else-something it never entered your head to conceive-comes crashing in; something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left? For this time it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature. It will be too late then to choose your side. There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up. That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realised it before or not. Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not last for ever. We must take it or leave it.

To be continued in episode 7, based on the works of CS Lewis.

A Christian apologetical book by the British author C. S. Lewis. The book consists of four parts: the first presents Lewis's arguments for the existence of God; the second contains his defence of Christian theology, including his notable "Liar, lunatic, or Lord" trilemma; the third has him exploring Christian ethics, among which are cardinal and theological virtues; in the final, he writes on the Christian conception of God.

[ii-zi]

If they have the audacity I'm going to have twice as much fucking audacity. “didn't i leave half a soda bottle?” didn't I leave a clean table and kitchen last night before going to bed?? AT THREE A.M.??

[shijiujun]

on the danmei twitter fight

okay guys i didn’t wanna say anything about this and yes it’s that hot danmei twitter translations saga thing that’s going on, because honestly i feel like there’s nothing much to say but when i see dumb posts on tumblr taking about that, by people who present a misleading hot take and their friends or moots run off with it without even knowing what exactly is going on - it really pisses me off.

and also if you shit talk translators for not continuing their translations or locking their translations whatever - the door is that way on your right and left, but anyway here’s a rundown on what happened because i am seeing people make comments without two brain cells put together, without the slightest bit of consideration for the people who bring them translations

here’s my hot take and thesis: if you enjoy english translations made by fan translators, you don’t, in any way, no matter happens, shit talk fan translators. fan translators do this for free, and whatever their intentions are, whether genuine sharing or like some of you like to say, for clout, if you consume, and you enjoy these translations, i’m sorry, you’re not uninvolved, and you don’t get to sit on a high horse and say translators should or shouldn’t do something. you should just keep quiet, honestly, because someone else is doing you a favour, a favour that you are enjoying and taking. that’s what respect is.

i’m presenting both sides or i guess three sides of the story as objectively as i can, altho my support is still for fan translators who were just minding their own business before this blew up.

===

🔺 what happened:

so it started because one of the bigger translators in the fandom did this poll - i’m not blaming her at all, i doubt she had any intentions of shaming anyone or causing any controversy and was plain curious, but her poll asked english speaking danmei twitter how many people buy the digital, print copies of the danmei they read, and who did not. 

in my honest opinion, it’s not strange at all for her to have created that poll, considering just how much work she’s put into making sure things are accessible for the eng-speaking danmei fandom. i mean i’d be curious too, to know out of my thousands of readers, what the reading and buying behaviour is like. do yourself a favour and don’t read too much into it.

obviously in an era where a lot of people do consume content for free whether the underlying content is profit-making (like anime, donghua, manhua, manga etc.) or not (fanfiction etc.), it was unsurprising to see that the last option - the ones who consume danmei without paying a single cent, came out as the majority. i don’t think this is a surprising result at all, for all sorts of reasons that i will not get into now.

anyway, this is obviously kind of a sore point in the fandom especially for translators who want a wider audience to support their fave author’s works - i won’t get into that for now, but the issue began because other translators or fans started to criticize the majority of people who don’t pay for objectively rather affordable danmei and just consume things for free. 

and yes, i don’t deny that the argument on both sides got really heated and emotionally charged with both sides calling each other names which i believe is uncalled for, but it totally derailed the crux of the issue, which basically is that the majority of english-speaking danmei fandom - consumes danmei for free.

anyway this whole thing escalated and fan translators were brought into this for no fucking reason at all except that the people who didn’t want, or were unable to pay for the danmei they usually consume, made what i call a LOGICAL FALLACY in argument by going to the extremes, i will explain why later.

the end result is that fan translators were brought into this (most of them, the bigger ones i know at least) without even participating in the direct crossfire. and obviously, you can see why they’re hurt and decided to lock their translations. let me explain why

===

🔺 kind of like four camps:

(1) translators and fans who criticized those who consume danmei liberally but do not pay for them in any way - no merch, no digital copies, no physical copies, no audio dramas whatever

*** their arguments:

danmei is so cheap right, that technically people should be able to pay for it in one way or another, even if not all

danmei and its authors are, at the end of the day, out here to earn a living, and the industry, like any money-making industry, is a for-profit enterprise - and unlike public goods, if you cannot afford danmei, then there is no obligation for others to make it free for you (fan translators or otherwise, it wasn’t super clearly stated while this shitshow happened) when it is inherently a for-profit industry

yes, i don’t deny that some of them did call the peeps who don’t pay at all, “leeches” and other sort of names. personally, i wouldn’t go that far or even like venture there to be honest because in general, if it’s something that i’ll get punched in the face for if i called someone that in real life i tend not to do it, but i’ll leave my opinions, whatever they’re worth, for later

(2) the readers and fans of danmei who do not pay in any sort of way for them

*** their arguments:

some of them really cannot afford, even the dollar or more, to spend on danmei for several reasons: upbringing, culture, money-spending mindsets, real poverty, struggling to make ends meet etc. - some definitely more valid than others (and when i say not valid, it’s because SOME, a minority or like those few stragglers, say they cannot afford and then you see them like idk, throwing $50 on other merch on kpop and stuff - i’m just bringing up ONE example. not shaming anyone for spending more money on one aspect rather than the other, but yeah you can see why some of them, when making this same argument, are a little invalid, that’s just a small number of them tho)

if translators are blaming them for consuming free of charge, then the fault lies, at its foundation, fan translators who translate illegally, which i mean, in that definition, all of them including me 

did i mention that we were called illegal translators like you know in response to being called leeches? anyway-

(3) others translators who literally were just minding their own fucking business before some smart alec dragged them into it

i don’t think most of us had an argument. we were just quietly munching on popcorn and staying out of it and yeah, can you imagine, we provide a service, however illegal it is, for free on our own time, we don’t even check whether people support legally or not, we just... provide, and pray that those who are able to, at least support in some small way or another do so, on their own time. i mean i don’t check, most of us don’t, not the bouncers at your local club before COVID happened do, and then suddenly, to be used to derail an argument, we were called illegal translators. and that we should stop translating, and that it is our fault that there are free riders in the fandom

(4) people who offered to provide JJWXC credits to those who said they couldn’t afford it etc.

honestly i think they were just trying to help - no different than a gofundme. there’s no shame in taking a free thing that people already weren’t intending to pay for. it’s there, just take it!

===

🔺 the shitshow that led to fan translators locking their stuff up:

i would provide some actual examples in the form of screenshots but i’ve blocked most of them, and i don’t want to direct any sort of traffic to them so i guess you’ll have to take my word on it or go search on twitter yourself but-

(1) the affordability issue: i can understand the frustration at being called leeches, and some if not a majority of people, do have valid reasons for not being able to afford something or anything and end up pirating content they enjoy. hey, i am not about to crucify anyone for pirating at some point in their lives. we all have done it at some point, or for example hate disney+ and that $30 they were trying to rip off us for a subpar Mulan live action. i don’t have anything to say about that. inherently, is it wrong and illegal? yeah sure of course it is. do we call people leeches? i wouldn’t go that far.

if anyone cannot afford, cannot access for whatever reason, fine, i’m not gonna go check if jjwxc truly is banned in your country, or is your postal service so terrible that you definitely won’t be able to receive a hard copy of the book you like at affordable rates.

and if you have to pirate? go ahead. i mean it’s always been a rampant thing. the only thing fan translators and fans can do is encourage, motivate and incentivise as much as possible to get people to support legally. they can only put up REALLY COMPREHENSIVE guides as to how to access jjwxc or taobao or whatever. 

and if you still cannot afford it and pirate, honestly no one cares about the story behind it. you owe no one justification, just as how no other person is obligated to take it into consideration or understand you or empathize with you. i don’t say this in a malicious way - i do think that in general, you just do you. 

(2) the poor people don’t deserve nice things argument: honestly, this was not the point of this entire debacle, altho yes, people were rude to those who could not afford to support legally. but this is not the point of this whole thing.

main point - there are free riders who can support but choose not to because they choose to just consume it for free and if you are able to you should support

everyone going off on a tangent - you guys hate poor people / you guys are leeches

well guess what, no one wins in this argument. 

there were a lot of people saying “reading danmei is our only source of happiness, are you saying poor people who can’t access legally don’t deserve to read danmei” (this is just one example i’ve seen, there are other variations), and it wasn’t put across perhaps in the right way, but the other camp of people were saying “you’re not entitled to it for free if you cannot afford it”, which raised a lot of hackles and anti-poor yellings 

altho i do not deny that there are those who mean it maliciously, i think what everyone is trying to say is - the danmei industry, like any other profit-making industry, is looking to make profits. the people working in the industry, the authors even, are looking at numbers - traffic to jjwxc or other legal platforms, how much revenue they’re making from their live actions etc., comments, rankings, etc. i think @/hunxi-after-hours made a really succinct post on this aspect which yall should read.

it’s the same as - if you wanted to purchase a standee which costs $20 USD, but you cannot afford it = you don’t get it. there’s no way you can get this standee unless some gifts it to you for free. what the camp trying to ask people to support legally is saying, is that danmei is NOT A PUBLIC GOOD. it is a private, for-profit product. it might be intangible, but it is a PRODUCT that has a price that needs to be paid.

if you cannot afford it, you either don’t get access entirely (i’m saying this objectively and honestly from an economic standpoint). if someone gifts that standee to you for free, count yourself lucky - if someone makes a danmei accessible to you for free, COUNT YOURSELF LUCKY. you don’t have to be grateful and treat them as gods or like obey their every word, but it’s not rocket science. someone did you a favour that you accepted and consumed, show some respect. 

if you cannot afford to buy the standee - you do not go on twitter demanding that someone ensures that you have access to the standee for free. do you see how ridiculous this sounds once it’s a tangible product? and danmei novels ARE PRODUCTS. they are not FREE CONTENT. if someone cannot afford the standee, this is the equivalent of people going “we didn’t get the standee for free because poor people don’t deserve nice things”

totally missing the point. i don’t even know how it got to this. once again, i do admit that some users were unnecessarily mean, but going to the extreme of this is ridiculous. in argumentative essay writing we call this a logical fallacy:

e.g. “if you cannot pay for merchandise or danmei, it is a fact that you might not have access to it” morphing into “if we cannot pay for food, does this mean we cannot have access to it?!” - this is a slippery slope, and factors are not equivalent!!!! do they not teach people anything in school

don’t confuse fanfiction with danmei - danmei novels ARE PAID PRODUCTS unless for free chapters, just because it’s released online doesn’t mean it’s free public property, and also selected novels (did you guys know the WHOLE of SCI novel is free? about 500 chapters sorry, random, just a tidbit)

there are of course nuances right, like if anyone told me they were pirating disney+ content i’d be like yeah hey get one over those bloodsuckers, they take enough of our money and produce shit content anyway. the difference is that danmei authors, and the danmei industry itself can still be considered a nascent and not-yet matured industry, with a majority of authors if not all, depending on monetary flow, likes, comments, virality on the sites their content is hosted on, for a living, unlike hugeass MNCs trying to squeeze us dry for content that isn’t even interesting.

danmei is priced rather reasonably - and this brings me to another argument that was made, that the value of money is not the same for everyone. i don’t want to make comments on this because yes this is correct to a large extent. a $6 book might be cheap to most of us, but might be expensive to someone else. i’m not gonna comment on how cheap or whatever it is, if you gotta use your money for other things, definitely! i still maintain however, that a novel less than a dollar should be affordable to most people, a majority of people. and i definitely side eye some users who obviously have money but are just creating noise because they wanna continue free-riding

(4) the “they’re losing out on their international audience” argument: honestly, i feel like english-speaking danmei fandom gives themselves a bit too much credit. danmei has long thrived in china in its domestic market - sure the international audience is a plus to have and i’m sure the authors are grateful and flattered that people who don’t understand chinese love their content and love it a lot, but do they and their companies care about fans who basically don’t bring in money? i’m not sure (okay i’ll get to the fan translators doing illegal shit later okay i got it don’t be impatient)

and international fans are great, i don’t deny that - but when i see arguments like “oh but it’s their loss if they don’t cater or deny access to us, they get more popularity and sharing overseas”, i honestly think they don’t care as much as you think. once again, hunxi made a really good argument regarding non-sinophone audiences, but it really irks me, because this is the same as:

an instagram influencer saying they’ll give a restaurant exposure for free to their followers, if they get a free meal

it’s par for par - danmei authors wants earnings, popularity, tangible results that show that they are succeeding. this is life. if i put something out there for sale, i better be getting returns, simple economic logic. they probably don’t care that a non-paying reader is bringing them greater ‘exposure’ - once again, i mean this objectively. 

and yes if they’re thriving without the international market then why should it matter that people are pirating right? which brings me to the next point~

(5) it’s fan translators faults for so many people pirating, and fan translators are the ones doing the “illegal” work: this one is like... wow where do i unpack this and how-

firstly, we are talking about assholes who can pay but decide to free ride and not pay for danmei, and we assume that if you really cannot afford and have to pirate, no one’s saying anything as long as you don’t go around spreading how to pirate, how the hell did it get to fan translators from “you guys are anti-poor” and whatever

yes, fan translations are indeed illegal, i don’t deny that, and i also don’t deny that there are translators who translate for clout and popularity but putting these aside - here’s what i have seen from people who ran their mouths and made this argument

“if you guys care about us pirating the book so much than fan translators shouldn’t have translated in the first place” and “if you wanna come after us for reading illegally, then fan translators, you guys should go get the copyright for the book and then translate it cuz what you guys are doing is also illegal”

hooooo i’m telling ya, i am all for translators locking up their translations at this point. see how fucking hurtful that is? you eat from my hand and then now you biting at the hand that fed you the gays in love?

honestly if you’ve made this argument or supported this, you can basically go to hell. yes this is personal because what, you think fan translators don’t take out their personal time and effort and hard work to make translations accessible to you? if you’re ever consumed and read translations, don’t be a hypocrite and make this argument. you benefitted from it, now you wanna say it’s their fault? 

most translators want to share and spread the love they have for a novel right, want to show you how wonderful all these authors are, how much enjoyment u get from reading these wonderfully thought out stories of gays in love. yes we all know we are illegally translating, which is why on top of sharing we first, purchase the novels legally ourselves first, and then we try to encourage people to buy etc. and actually put their money to use. it doesn’t make it any less illegal, but we are bridging the gap between danmei and basically the english-speaking fandom, albeit illegally

we aren’t that self-important to ask for gratefulness but some respect would be nice. like i said, you read it, you consumed it, you enjoyed it, you can only access it because of illegal translators - a bit counter-intuitive to yell at these translators, who are simply telling you, if you can, please support. and none of us went “if you cannot afford, begone!”

===

🔺 some people tried to help by offering jjwxc credits so people who cannot afford as they say, can get legal access: honestly, just take it right, guess what some of these users did in response

they said the people giving away credits are trying to redeem themselves for their comments by giving away free stuff

they also said that we are trying to shame the people who cannot afford it with this handout to them, to show that they are the bigger person - the fact that they think this is a handout to them is TELLING. the people offering this is giving their money not to these readers, but to the authors! that’s the point of this exercise!!!

one of them even said “instead of trying to do these giveaways, here, there are greater world problems out there, donate instead to these causes” - love the initiative, but how did we get from being able to afford danmei and entertainment content to saving the world? i just- i cannot

===

🔺 so why i get why fan translators are locking up their translations, because wow, so hurtful:

you have no idea how many fucking assholes went “sure, lock up your translations, deal with the consequences” - ermmmm firstly, thanks for making a threat. like who the fuck do you think you are?

the consequences is... the authors still don’t get the money these free riders weren’t going to give them anyway, so no loss, and they weren’t reading on jjwxc anyway so you know, the authors don’t lose or gain any readership numbers or traffic they didn’t already have. instead, it WILL push and force people to pay for the PRODUCT. once again, it’s a product.

this works, and i’d say Word of Honor’s payment model worked marvellously for Youku, because they fucking forced everyone to pay to access content. ALL OF THEM. sure ok some people still pirated it, but how many MORE people paid on Youku, on Youku Youtube, watched on Viki etc. than if they didn’t? even english-speaking fandom were wracking their brains trying to purchase a Youku pass even if there were no subs initially - and other examples that lovely hunxi brought up in her amazing piece

and for translators?! honestly me for one, i’m glad i don’t feel pressured anymore to churn out a chapter every week since we get called names etc. most of us are glad to have a break to be honest. we’ve lost all motivation to translate because it’s a free service, at the very least we don’t expect like hate, or rudeass fuckers. for those who are doing a proof of purchase thing - go for it honestly! 

hopefully it’ll minimize the free rider problem - some people for whatever reasons really cannot buy or support legally, that’s totally cool and they don’t have to justify it, i get that. but for others making the same argument but obviously are just unwilling to pay because they can’t read chinese, think it’s too troublesome when there are guides and translators provide it for free anyway so what’s the point - we all make concessions and make decisions to grab what we like (not talking about the ppl who have their various troubles and difficulties!)

===

🔺 and those who are saying why is it the ‘rest of us suffer’ from locked translations just because of a few bad apples:

IT ISN’T ABOUT YOU. where the hell were all of ya when we were getting called illegal huh? it’s about us fan translators getting shot at for no reason, and then people still demanding things for free. i don’t see any of the people i’ve seen on tumblr complain about fan translators stopping or locking translations defend any of us in any way. instead, you’re complaining.

it is the translator’s prerogative to start, stop and end translations, unless of course the original author starts to sue i suppose. i see people on tumblr going like if they were gonna do this, they shouldn’t have started in the first place etc. - i don’t what world you live in, but when i do something for free, then get called names and am attacked or get dictated on how i should do something that’s already like free, i tend to be less generous.

i’m sorry, do us illegal and free translators owe ANY OF YOU? i wasn’t aware any of us were being paid for this hobby. readers, especially those who CAN and just refuse to support, don’t get to say SHIT. translators deal with so much shit and so many entitled readers, i say they get to lock whatever they want as long as they aren’t profiting off of this monetarily.

let me give you an example - nan chan, which is translated by lian yin, completed translations by the way for all chapters. it is all free for viewing, and she only locked up one extra and asked for proof of payment. some dumbfuck quotes that locked up extra chapter tweet and said “honestly, this turned me off reading this novel because they restricted access”.

the. fucking. entitlement. the whole of nan chan is free, that’s like what more than 80 chapters. she locked up the EXTRA and the money goes to the author, she doesn’t earn anything. AND HERE THAT BIJ is (yes, i’m going to call them names because you know, fucking asshole who didn’t bother to check) going “yeah i didn’t wanna read because 1/80+ chapters were locked”. 

AN EXTRA. LITERALLY AN EXTRA!!!!!!

at the end of the day, translators are not like DYING to translate, not like some of you are DYING to read the translations. once again, this isn’t a “BE GRATEFUL” message, it’s a please be respectful to the people who put in time and hard work for free and share the goodness ya know? what’s the use of yelling at fan translators as if we owe you anything?

================

🔴🔴🔴 TOO LONG DIDN’T READ 🔴🔴🔴

some people may need really need to pirate - and no one needs to justify why they cannot afford to purchase etc. pirating happens all the time, translators only hope that when you can, and in whatever way you can, to support legally - in general we don’t ask and we get it! we’re just annoyed that some people think that it SHOULD BE FREE, when it is a paid product, especially for those who CAN afford it

readers are not entitled to shit on translators for what they do with their translations - once again, you’re not OBLIGATED to have it. so what if i start and stop? i’m the one doing the work, i get the only say. don’t be a hypocrite and shit on translators, whose works you’ve read - it’s no loss for translators, we read and enjoy danmei just fine

yes, fan translations are illegal, but you can’t read and enjoy them like some of you have, and then turn around and point the finger at translators - a lot of us are happy to stop translating - this isn’t a threat, but at the end of the day, shitting on translators simply decreases access, and sure, some people can indeed live with you know, MTL or shitty translations from people who’ve learnt chinese for only six months or whatever, but you’re gonna be reading an entirely different book tbh

the people saying illegal translators are at fault - funnily enough, most of them consume the translations, so what the fuck? i mean we know it’s illegal, we’re trying to share the love and trying to minimize the illegalities of it by redirecting people to hopefully support legally. it’s still illegal yes, but i think it’s hypocritical for people who have read translations, stab translators in the back. and now that translators are indeed ‘restricting’ and ‘removing’ their ‘illegal translations’, yall yelling again? and threatening?

fan translators aren’t “elitist” or “classist” - just looking for some respect in a community which seems to have taken them for granted, and also looking for support for their fave authors - and honestly a lot of us were caught in the crossfires truly, don’t be an asshole and demand things from fan translators - who are you talking about? do you know why they decided to lock? do you know know what their locking system is like and what for? 

it’s not EASY to lock the translations up - it’s more admin work, it’s putting together a whitelist of people, if given the choice i’m sure translators would prefer to share everything. but not when there are assholes who have a comment on how they should translate etc. and yeah!!! calling us illegal!! i mean we are but still!!

the last straw was seeing that post on tumblr and people in the comments going like fan translators shouldn’t or should do something, without getting the whole picture, without even considering how hard it is for fan translators being caught in this situation. 

whoever puts in the work gets to decide, and everyone else should leave them alone. 

be nice to the people who really cannot afford as they say so (or just don’t think about it), be nice to the translators feeding you content, and the people who free ride and shit on translators - honestly, i’d say ready the pitchforks.

edit: i forgot to mention this is my hot take and i’ve tried to like present all the arguments i’ve seen so far. i’m definitely not doing all of it justice and i don’t claim to speak on behalf of any of them except maybe one or two- and i’ve definitely left out stuff, but anyway, lmao we’re just tiny people doing what we love. i wish we could solve you know inequality or poverty or hunger or other pressing concerns. if i was that great i wouldn’t be stuck on tumblr or twitter or have to make posts like these like a loser.

thanks for coming to my ted talk.

[ttrpgcafe]

I cannot stress enough that I think you're absolutely right pretty much from top to bottom, but I do wanna bring up one thing that I think muddies the water a bit, specifically as it relates to Brennan, and it's really about actual plays on the whole more so than a defense of him specifically. I feel like there's a pretty wide gap between the "D&D" that Mulligan, Mercer, and McElroy (dms at law) play and the D&D that people play at home, and I don't mean that in the obvious "these people are doing "better" silly voices and have "better" plots because they're being paid to do it" way. Instead I mean that they're all doing a performance. There are people who will play D&D like them at home, absolutely, but I think for the performers in any given live plays and for the people who think that that's the "correct" way to play, the rules exist primarily to give you a character outline and a certain amount of spontaneity that 4-7 people sitting around a table telling stories together won't do, AND, they think that because the big names all use D&D, that it's the best thing for that activity. The people trying to emulate the experiences of those live plays are, I think, fundamentally wrong, but I think that has more to do with the nature of the medium than it does with the performers or the game.

I think of it a bit like science communication. When I was a kid, I would watch science lectures about physics and astronomy and thought for a very long time that I wanted to be an astrophysicist when I grew up because of those lectures, but I had to give up on those aspirations when I realized just how much math is involved in real physics. I don't think any of that is any reason for science communication to stop, or even necessarily to change. There are really important, really interesting concepts that people would probably really benefit from hearing about that don't necessarily need them to know how to do calculus, but explaining any of those concepts WITHOUT explaining the calculus will always leave the viewer with an incomplete understanding of the concept. Likewise, D&D actual plays don't really show you what playing D&D is like, they show you what a comedy improv show that uses D&D as a blorbo generator and randomizer is like, and that is a very different thing. It leaves the viewer with an incomplete understanding of what D&D, and, indeed, TTRPGs on the whole, are like, BUT, like those physics lectures I watched, they will get people interested in the field, and they'll give people a foothold in an otherwise very dauntingly large hobby.

All of that is to say that the actual plays aren't interested in playing a *game* in the same way that you or I are. We play games to have a way to spend 2-5 hours with our friends or make new friends, and the game is an important element in giving us all an activity to do as we spend that time together. We aren't worried about telling the best season wide story arc or getting views, we're just trying to have a good time. It matters to us which game we're playing because they give us a wildly different experience together, but a performer isn't concerned about whether they're having a good time (necessarily) they're concerned about putting on a good show. Those two things don't need to be mutually exclusive, but they also don't need to coexist either.

If this was an blatantly obvious subtext to everyone else, please let me know, but I thought I'd give my two cents.

I think people who play D&D despite its combat focus is, and correct me if I heard this wrong from them, but like... the idea is that they don't like combat, so having a big, chunky combat engine is good somehow??? because the rules don't interfere??? with The Roleplay TM.

Or as my GM said it: "I prefer D&D because I don't have to worry about rules when we're Roleplaying TM and it gets combat out of the way"

I don't get it. I don't. I tried asking why the hell you'd play a game with this much Combat Time and I can't get a straight answer. Like, not having combats is somehow impossible. It's required. But also bad, annoying, and must be codified so the GM can turn brain off BUT ALSO have so many rules you are Brain On, wait 15 minutes i gotta check the book heavy.

I think it's legitimately a toxic meme (in the academic sense of the word) being spread to make people think D&D is not about dungeons but "Whatever You Want uwu" or something.

Maybe you can help because I am on the verge of having an aneurysm here.

There's a lot of stuff that plays into this all too common sentiment.

First of all, there's this idea going around in D&D circles that Combat and Roleplay are two things that are not to touch. You see this expressed quite a lot by fans of D&D, the notion that once combat begins roleplaying stops. This is of course a silly notion, because combat is also roleplay, and it's even more silly coming from the players of the game whose rules are 80% combat.

But once you've established in your mind that roleplaying and combat are two, fundamentally incompatible modes of play and the game you're playing mostly has rules for combat and very little rules for stuff outside of combat (and the rules for combat aren't, at the end of the day, all that interesting) it's easy to draw the conclusion that roleplaying and rules are themselves at odds. @prokopetz has articulated this much better than me, and to paraphrase him: in the dichotomy of combat vs. role-playing, combat actually acts as a metonym for rules-mediated play as a whole. So it's your classic role-playing vs. roll-playing dichotomy, which not only smacks of elitism but is also, frankly, idiotic.

Anyway, once a person has drawn the conclusion that rules-mediated play and roleplaying are fundamentally at odds with each other it's easy to see where a person might draw the conclusion that having any rules that touch upon the "roleplaying" side of play would either needlessly restrict the roleplaying or somehow infringe upon the purity of roleplay. Within the dichotomy of role-playing vs. roll-playing role-playing is ultimately seen as basically free play where there are no rules and procedures in play, only to be broken off by the necessary evil of procedural scenes.

Where has this toxic meme come from? Well, sadly it's as old as the hobby itself. A lot of people who are fans of D&D still think they need to inject "real roleplaying" into the dungeon game to grant it legitimacy as a roleplaying game. This is, of course, bull-honkey. D&D, even played as purely a dungeon crawling challenge game with no pretensions of trying to tell a greater story beyond "the story of what happened during the events of the game" is still roleplaying, and ultimately it owes to a lot of D&D players themselves having bought into elitist notions about roleplaying games and not actually even liking the main supported mode of play of D&D.

Because if you take a look at what D&D as a game mostly supports, it's ultimately a challenge-based dungeon game, which is great and cool actually. But if one has a reductive notion of what counts as "real roleplaying," then, well, there's gotta be something wrong with this game. So actually the roleplaying isn't what the rules say and are actually a secret third thing and also it doesn't even matter what the rules say about the game, because system doesn't matter whatsoever.

You might see why, as a person who is passionate about game design and who loves the dungeon crawling challenge game playstyle, I might find this attitude grating.

And I definitely agree that it's a toxic meme, but D&D 5e play culture at this point is mostly a circlejerk about how the game actually is fine and how game design doesn't actually matter and how in those other games the rules actually get in the way of roleplay instead of doing what they actually do: act as a participant in the game on equal footing with the players and with an actual voice as to how the narrative should look like. Even D&D's rules are loudly opinionated about what the act of gameplay should look like, but these people have convinced themselves that the style of play D&D's rules are opinionated about is bad, actually, so in fact any type of rules that are opinionated about play are actually bad rules that get in the way of roleplaying.

Anyway, as a final note, while these ideas have been around for a very long time, there has been something of a resurgence of this idea, and Brennan Lee Mulligan is partly to blame. Brennan is a wonderful comedian and clearly a great entertainer, but he has also espoused the idea that D&D is good because it gets out of the way in the scenes which he is actually interested in (social, interactive scenes) and takes the reins in scenes which he's not interested in (combat scenes, procedural action scenes). I can sort of understand where he is coming from, and in fact the game taking the weight off the pedal during social scenes is great if your players are all extremely funny comedians like you. But it's also basically a playstyle where there are procedural, rules-mediated action scenes followed by essentially improvised, free play cutscenes where the rules themselves don't have anything to say. It doesn't play into the strengths of the medium, which is that the rules of the game are an active participant with an actual voice in the fiction and not just something to be sidelined. So like with all due respect to Brennan Lee Mulligan, but this is something where he simply is incurious and frankly fundamentally disconnected from what the purpose of rules in a tabletop roleplaying game is. The rules aren't there just to handle the boring stuff for you, because in a game you actually enjoy playing there shouldn't be any boring stuff! In a good game engaging with the rules shouldn't be boring! I play older editions of D&D because I like how the rules shape the act of dungeon-crawling and wilderness exploration! I play Monsterhearts because the rules are opinionated about the teen monster melodrama and they produce extremely cool and wildly volatile drama!

All of which is to say: the idea that the rules of a game are somehow diametrically opposed to the act of roleplay is a silly, toxic meme, and one that is often espoused by D&D players who have latched onto D&D because it was the first game they became aware of and who clearly want something more out of games but they have also convinced themselves that D&D is what all RPGs are and the idea that other RPGs might actually differ from D&D in terms of rules quality, how the act of play looks, and the type of play the rules actually incentivize is completely alien to them. A lot of D&D players have nothing but sneering contempt for the playstyle incentivized by D&D because they have convinced themselves that that playstyle is beneath them and not "real roleplaying," and I think those players should stop playing D&D and instead play games that actually support the playstyles they think are befitting real role-players. Also they should shut up and give me like a hundred dollars for being forced to read their posts.

[belovedharringrove]

so i made a post saying that if you want proof that billy is abused by neil, that you should watch the scene where neil's asking him where max is with an abuser (but, like. don't actually do that if you can avoid it) and @sonneillonv asked to see my perspective on it.

okay so start this off properly

TRIGGER WARNING

there will be discussions of abuse to both a real person (me) and a character (billy).

i'm putting my thoughts in order as i write this so this may either be extremely short or very long.

right. i am 21 years old and i work and make my own money, and during all these years i have been abused physically, verbally and let's say financially. the physical abuse has slowed down but from the time i was 6-7 to when i was about 17 my father abused me physically almost every day, sometimes for what i considered to be the dumbest reasons but he considered to be disrespect. my dad worked in construction his whole life so he didn't have the lightest hand in the world either.

when i watched s2 e8 (correct me if i'm wrong but i believe that's the episode) i was with both of my parents.

in the episode, billy's getting ready for a date and neil knocks on his door demanding to know where max is, start insulting him, etc.

the moment i saw nail hit billy, i immediately went "see? billy lashes out at everyone because he's being abused. that is abuse." and my 60 year old father immediately disagreed with me. he said that no, that's not abuse, but billy was being disrespectful and maybe if billy had spoken better to him, neil wouldn't have had to punch him, billy could've gotten away with a slap to the wrist!!! which is a form of manipulation that he's used with me before. you know, the apologies that go "i'm sorry i yelled at you in public, but if you hadn't pissed me off i wouldn't have had to scream at you!".

then we get to the part where neil asks billy to repeat himself and i say "that's a tool that abusers use as a way of holding power over their victims" and my father once again disagrees with me. says that sometimes as a parent, you need to ask your children to repeat things so "the lessons stick better" and "they don't keep making mistakes". when i asked what mistake billy made, he floundered and then said billy lost max and when i pointed out that, in me and my older siblings case, we could both be home at the same time and be none the wiser because we're always in our rooms. perhaps the same thing can happen to billy and max? y'know, because they're humans and billy can't be expected to helicopter over a moody teenager the whole day unless he wants her to throw her skateboard at him? he just got quiet and told me to shut up.

then we get to the part that billy goes to the byers' house and he gets into a fight with steve. when max grabs the syringe and injects billy with the medicine, i say "she shouldn't have done that, that was very dangerous thing to do. billy could've died." and my mom says "but they were using that to put will to sleep, it wouldn't have hurt him." i then have to explain that we don't know billy's medical history. he could've had an allergic reaction to the medicine and simply just died. i am 100% certain that none of them have cpr training or even would've known what to do if that had happened. then they go and take billy's car, leaving him drugged and with no mode of transportation.

at this point my father is not very happy and says "well, billy is a grown man! if he hated being abused so much, he could've just fought back!" and- no. he couldn't.

billy looks like a grown man because dacre montgomery was around 23 years old in 2017 when season 2 came out and, let's be honest, the man is pretty fucking fit. but billy was a teenager. only 17 years old. it's not he didn't want to fight back, it's that he couldn't.

as a 21 year old, i have my abusive father financially dependent on me while he waits to be retired. i could easily deny him a single cent that he asks of me but i cannot. not because i'm incapable, but simply because my mind goes 'he's your father, he raised you, he loves you, do you really wanna turn into him? he did his best while raising, he wasn't perfect but who is?' and that's only a few of the thoughts that go through my mind. billy is 17 years old and similar things probably go through his mind, plus maybe 'i don't have anyone' because max proved she doesn't care for his wellbeing back at the byers house, susan wouldn't come to his defense and neil is his abuser. he's far from california, he has no friends and no other family. he's completely alone.

i really hope this made sense and i put it in a way that people understand. i am emotionally drained now because this is a difficult topic to breach for me, but if you have any questions or need me to clear anything up, just reply or send me a pm and i'll be happy to answer.

[itsmaddienotmaddy]

Buckle up bitches, I have a LOT to say.

USA v Brazil

Alyssa had a #1 goalkeeper game. She directed, she came up big, she’s Our keeper. It’s good for us to have games where she’s tested. Yeah, it’s not fun to watch those dangerous chances that could cost us. But Alyssa makes things less scary.

Becky had a phenomenal game. The crosses she denied, her positioning to keep players wide, allllll her headers. Her calming presence is so appreciated and she’s a huge reason the US is successful defensively.

Crystal is world fuckin class. When she came all the way to the other side and SAVED OUR LIVES. I mean. Come on. She was lucky in the sense that Brazil’s game plan was to attack down the left ONLY to expose Abby and Sonnett. She was given a better opportunity to work more offensively, and her and Christen connect beautifully. Her Christen and Lindsey were connecting in just an insane way. The chemistry with those three on the left was perfection. Crystal had some moves that had my jaw on the ground, she’s so smart. And the runs she made to open up passes and crossing opportunities.. when is her master class? I would like to attend.

Okay. Gonna lump Abby and Sonnett together a bit here. I want to start by saying, I don’t think they did BAD. Didn’t do great! But you have to take a step back and examine the situation. All Brazil wanted to do was attack down that side. Who were the two players doing the attacking? MARTA AND DEBINHA. Two absolutely incredible, tricky, LETHAL players. So, did Sonnett and Abby both makes mistakes and get beat a couple times? Yeah. Of course they did. Did they also come up big on other defensive plays? They sure did. Abby recovers very well when she gets beat and she showed that. Sonnett had some good tackles, she WAS cutting off angles on passes and kept some transition plays from happening. She dealt with Brazilian players pressing with some sick moves AND had two beautiful crosses into the box to Lindsey. (And to echo my post during the game, Sonnett and Horan are NOT allowed to try and 1-2 pass out of the back. Dumb dumbs. They ARE allowed to double team players together though. Much more effective.)

Julie. I genuinely couldn’t tell if she was having a terrible game or a great game. There were glimmers of brilliance, perfectly timed defensive tackles, smart movement, good passes. Then she had some bad shots rocketed to the moon, passes to NO ONE, and throwing the ball away out of bounds. Overall, confusing performance from her, but not detrimental.

Rose had herself a GAME. Idk where her prewrap went, her hair was definitely getting in her face. But her movement was incredible. Her defensive work was incredible. It was very clear that Vlatko was asking every single player to work defensively to get numbers in the back. Christen and Lindsey worked with Crystal, Rose and Lynn working to help Sonnett. Okay, back to purely Rose. She was dictating pace, she was doing moves, she was making smart tackles, she was setting up dangerous scoring opportunities. She was in her ELEMENT. She was obviously tired as shit at the end, but it’s because she put in the work. That’s why we have subs.

Lindsey pisses off people on the internet and that’s fine. She is a physical player, a bulldozer. And people don’t love that. But she takes it as much as she gives it. Such is life battling for balls in the middle of the field. This game though. This game. Jesus Christ Lindsey Horan is good at soccer. Her first touch is so smooth, her vision, her work rate to be everywhere on the field, god, her weighted passes! Hello. Did she not have both assists? And she did all of that, for a full ninety. Insanity. She handles defensive pressure so well, pinging passes around, always giving someone an outlet. The fact that she was a defensive savior on many occasions and was involved in both goals... I. How?

Kristie. Loving all the minutes she’s getting. Little lost out there for her short time in, this did not look like a game that was easy to slot into. But, ya know, she didn’t do anything wrong. More minutes for Argentina? Maybe a START?

Lynn. Kind of like Julie, she was either doing amazing things, or a whole lot of nothing. This was not an offensive game for her, which isn’t great for a forward. To her credit, she tracked back defensively very well. But her 1 v 1 offensive challenges, she was getting stuck. When she worked her ass off to get those scoring opportunities, she wasted them. Slowing down in the box was not the move. Unlike Christen who slows with the purpose to cut the ball and unleash a shot, Lynn was slowing down and then didn’t know what to do. It was frustrating to watch and I’m sure it was frustrating for her. That was not the performance she needed to have. But damn, I appreciated the speed trio of her, Alex and Christen. (Though I think I’d rather put Tobin in her place in a starting 11)

Alex had a pretty good game. Her work rate was high and she did what only she has perfected. That woman is EXCELLENT at drawing fouls. She goes hard, she gets her legs tangled up, she spins the right way and she gets herself ROCKED. This canNOT be good for her body, but getting those set pieces for a team that thrives with set pieces.. it’s valuable. I thought she had awesome fluidity switching going wide and staying central with Lynn and Christen. I’m happy with her start and happy with her performance.

Christen Press was out there doing Christen Press things. It’s been hard watching her play at United and not do the incredible things we all know she can do. THIS game?? She sliced and diced that defensive line. Just stupid good on the ball, with accurate passing and movement with Crystal and Lindsey. That side was unstoppable. You could hear Vlatko yelling at her to come back defensively and she did. SO well. She had a lot of important clearances that got us out of the danger zone and back on the attack. And her goal. Oh my god her GOAL. It’s what she does. HAO said it. It’s what she practices over and over so come game time, she makes it look easy. I love her sm.

Carli was not the correct sub choice. Should have been Cat. She literally did not do anything.

Sophia was given opportunity in a tough game. Unfortunately, she didn’t do much with it. She didn’t provide the same defensive work the other players did. Lindsey slid over to cover that job for sure. And her one incredible goal chance, she did the same exact thing that WASNT working for Lynn all game. But, she needs the minutes, she got them, she’s got time to grow.

Pinoe coming in as a SUPER SUB. Which I think is def going to be her role going forward as long as Press stays in form. Initially, she was not exuding super sub energy. She doesn’t love doing the defensive work and it shows, and the announcers called her out for not helping the press when Julie triggered it. But she settled into it. Pinoe is a SMART player and THAT BITCH KNOWS HOW TO SCORE. And she did JUST THAT. Love a good Pinoe goal celebration too.

That’s my two cents on all that. Overall. What a game. My eyeballs were glued to the screen, heart rate skyrocketing. I love this fuckin team.

[dreamsmptheories]

I see a lot of theories as to what ghostboo is, how he feels about tubbo, how he feels about micheal, etc. etc. and I wanna throw my 2 cents in.

all things discussed in this post are referring to characters within dreamsmp lore and canon. this post is not referring to content creators.

trigger warning for suicide and death

I think the ghost version of you on the DSMP is your subconscious desires.

in the end, Wilbur was a very suicidal man. Basic psychology says that a suicidal person does not really want death. they want to not feel the way they currently and usually consistently do. Wilbur wanted to be happy again. He wanted to be a good guy. He held and still holds his relationships closer than anything else.

All that is what Ghostbur represented. Ghostbur loved and held his relationships closer than anything, other than maybe his Blue, which was a symbol of happiness. Ghostbur, in all his fucked up glory, was happy. And finally, he wanted to make things right again. He spent his entire existence trying to make up for Wilbur's mistakes. Revivebur does not know how to be alive without destroying himself, but he is a bomb. when he destroys himself, he destroys everyone around him.

Ranboo's subconscious desires on the other hand, already had a physical form. The Enderwalk State. He knows his morals and values because the side of him that he does not remember tells him what they are. So when Ranboo dies, it only makes sense that his ghost would be a full time enderwalk state. There is no real difference between Ranboo and the enderwalk state. Only what he remembers and what he feels. Aliveboo loved with everything that he was, that's why he thought he had to put people first. Ghostboo or ranboo's subconscious believes that breaking down walls and putting people first will stop conflict and stop people from hurt. He loves in a more analytical way. Like someone loving to study a bug. He thinks that Ranboo was a coward because he put his deeply personal love for his friends and family above his love for general life.

What throws a wrench in Ghostboo's analytical love, is that he only exists because of Ranboo. Again, you cannot separate the two. Ghostboo doesn't just. not love Michael. that's his son, that's the whole reason he's here. Ranboo died for Michael. If the ghost state of a being is their desires, his desire for Michael's wellbeing transcends all.

It is also because Michael is smaller than him. He needs defending, since he is too small and young to defend himself. That's why Tubbo seemingly confuses him so much. He still loves and cares for Tubbo, even though they are equals. Tubbo can hold himself, he is very smart and strong and has proven this over and over again. Ghostboo cannot figure out why Ranboo cares for Tubbo in such a way. Because it's inexplicable. You cannot rationalize or explain the love that they have, no matter your interpretation of it.

[tothemeadow]

Well just throwing in my 2 cents but I think it's less of people not knowing that minors will do what they want, and just more of the personal discomfort of a 10 year old reading your stuff. In my time on tumblr I have seen people genuinely get into hot water over minors interacting with their content, and I've seen it happen too many times where people get put on callouts that basically boiled down to "minor couldn't handle the warning." Like you already said, there's no way to stop them, I just think it's annoying because I've had actual kids send me like rude messages and death threats for my 18+ warnings. All I said was that it made me uncomfortable and I got a whole long message about how teens are grown like,,,I'm aware,,, I just think there's more age appropriate things you could be doing than reading my overhaul abusive kidnapping dubcon. I'm still not going to patrol my own blog but I definitely don't think people are sensitive for finding it nasty.

No, no, you make an incredibly valid point here! The one big thing about being online is that people are anonymous, so there’s this feeling of apathy/desensitization? It’s weird to explain; hypothetically, if I had a 10 year old physically come up to me in person and tell me they read smut, I’d be incredibly concerned/uncomfortable. Obviously, I can’t say the same about everyone, but when I come online, I put up this sort of mental barrier. I know how people act, I know what they post, etc. It’s incredibly interesting how people will act entirely different online, and years of being on the internet can really shape you into someone who can act maturely or not. Then again, I have not had a person message me and say “hey, I’m 12 years old and I love your NSFW stuff”, so I can’t say what my definite response would be. Like you, I would be uncomfortable, but I physically cannot stop them from accessing my works. This is truly a touchy subject!

Sorry for the heavy content, everyone!

[lillywaters]

Last of us 2- Yes spoilers ahead (For game 1 and 2)

The LoU2 was an emotional ride that by the end of my let’s play I wasn’t able to really give a review or my honest opinion of the game itself. It wasn’t until I let my brain air out that I was able to look at the game as a whole to really give my two cents. It was a long time coming waiting for the second game in this world and I cannot honestly state if it was the game we needed at this time especially with everything happening in the USA. The graphics where top notch once again naughty dog put effort into their games and you can see the emotions from the character, the music alone becomes a character driving home some story elements that I feel some may have missed due to the other element in this game.

Some of the Characters:

Joel:

We all have come to know and love Joel at least through the first game and while we faced the images of him losing his daughter it is the fact that he may have lost one other before his daughter. His wife- aka Sarah’s mother is MIA. The last of us made it clear that Joel is a single father trying and struggling to keep a paying job to provide for himself and Sarah. During the first game this is hinted during the phone call at the beginning with Joel stating: “I can’t lose this job”. It is hinted even more when he talks to Sarah about her gift and how she had enough money for it, followed with the statement of “You can start helping out with the mortgage then.”

When the zombies hit the fan, we can easily see that Joel and Sarah are only worried about each other (Tommy as well). Even if there was a divorce between Joel and the mother most likely Sarah would show some worries about her mother (Unless it was a woman from hell). And clearly if you played the first game you know Joel is faced with the second loss in his family Sarah. All of this pushing Joel to make himself cold and hard and willing to do anything to survive which is somewhat talked about between Tommy and him in the first game with the comment of “Took care? That’s what you call it? I got nothing but nightmares from those years.”

By the time Ellie joins Joel and the end of the game happens, we start to see Joel opening up and looking at Ellie as a daughter figure.  However, the scar of losing family stays with him as he has nightmares throughout the whole first game which is clearly related to the loss of his family (Joel may in fact be dealing with PTSD from these losses).

By the end of the game we see Joel decide to matters into his own hands and protect the family he now has created with Ellie by removing her from the operation table and killing the fireflies who tried to talk him out of it.

 Was this the right thing, while this was the driving topic for the second game I honestly believe Joel did do the right thing by saving his adopted daughter. While he did not get the ok from Ellie we need to keep in mind a few things. The first is the fact in the first game we find out they will kill Ellie to POSSIBLY find a cure. The “Doctors” of the fireflies clearly have no idea when it comes to pathology let alone human subjects. Even in the second game Abby’s father who would have ended Ellie’s life is hinted to most likely be a veterinarian not a human doctor. The second thing that we need to understand as of now even in 2020 there has never been a vaccine for fungal infections in 2013 which is when the game takes place. Tesfahuneygn & Gebreegziabher (2018) stated that the lack of knowledge about the mechanisms that underpin protective immunity has made it hard in creating a vaccine for fungal diseases (which the disease/virus in the Last of us world is fungal).  During the research paper cited above it did state at least in 2018 there is several fungal vaccines in development however it noted that each vaccine will most likely have to be tailored when it comes to the fungal side of pathology.

The second issue that we have with the game aiming to ok killing off Ellie for a vaccine is that it will not help those who already have the sickness in fact we would need a more therapeutic vaccine which is a whole other issue as of now our world is looking into therapeutic vaccines for things such as HIV, Herpes, Alzheimer’s disease and cancer.  Really what the Fireflies should have been looking into is antibodies meaning you would want to keep the host alive not dead, so all in all in my view Joel did the right thing, maybe….maybe at the very least he should have only shot the doctors in the leg but once again you had a man trying to protect his only family.

 Ellie:

We have now watch Ellie grow up between these two games and we have to understand a few things. She has killed before, she did what she had to do to survive. In the world that she grew up in there was no ethics pushed or educated to the younger generation the saying “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind” clearly was never taught. She was raised you do what you got to do to live no matter how dirty it was, and when it comes down to it revenge is ok to go for. Due to this lack of ethics, and dark world we have seen a girl who works on raw basic emotions, and a girl/woman who is unable to stop until she losses everything even what Joel gives her (the loss of her fingers) the gift of music and her own family ( Dina and her child) to finally learn how to forgive or at the very least move on.

We also get the feel of daughter like father as the death of Joel clearly has caused PTSD in Ellie herself with flash backs of everything that has happened and what she has done as well. There are some who have pointed out on the interweb that maybe Ellie in fact is NOT immune but has a different response to the fungal zombie diseases. They highlighted the fact of how quickly and easily Ellie goes into blind rage and becomes violent. We also know from the scans of her brain there is some kind of mass growth on her brain where most people start to change as a zombie.

While this is an interesting idea, I feel this would most likely take away from the emotion that is happening in the game. You have a grown woman who was starting to repair or at least take the first step to repair her relationship with her father (Joel) and give forgiveness. This was taken away from her and we see Ellie pass her anger unable to go through the process of forgiving Joel and even herself for living onto the very people who took Joel away from her. She wasn’t only punishing the killers of her father but also trying to pass her guilt and anger of being alive on them…someone had to pay- the hatred cycle wasn’t able to be eased when the chance of rebuilding her relationship with Joel was ripped away from her.

Abby:

Her physical body screams loudly about some of her own worries about her own life. She wasn’t able to control the fact her father was killed by Joel, this left her feeling powerless, and weak. However Abby in a lot of cases I still feel failed her father. While by the end of it she was able to find forgiveness for all the horrible things done (the image of her father smiling at the end) and is able to let go she could have stopped this hatred. This would have been done by not making herself into a weapon but studying and following her father in his footsteps by becoming a doctor or some part of the medical field.

In the LoU2 we are giving the idea that all the “doctors” were killed by Joel and there was no one left to make a vaccine. The funny thing is most doctors even more so as they are creating things such as vaccines would keep detailed notes about what they have found, what worked and what failed. The hospital which you are still able to visit in part two was not blown up meaning that notes would have been left behind for a new generation of researchers to pick up and finish the research (hopefully a bit smarter as well). However, instead of Abby doing this she fell into the easier thing to do which is hate and killing the man who was only protecting his daughter.  Which I can tell you right now if the roles where changed around Abby’s father would have done the same damn thing as Joel. To be honest this whole thing that there was no one left to continue the research was the biggest story hole in the game. It’s that reason alone why I could never get attached or agree with Abby and her group.

Music: In the last of us 2 the music was its own message and character. Looking at the Joel song only right now.

Future Days: This is Joel’s song to Ellie, and it has a bigger meaning then showing off his skills. Like we talked about up top we know Joel was a broken man dealing with some form of PTSD. With Ellie he was starting to heal and losing her even over the fight about him saving her easily breaks him again. He wanted to tell her that he loves her like a daughter but in a Joel way he is unable to clearly just state it out right so he sings this song hoping to reach her.

“If I ever were to lose you I’d surely lose myself” – This line can hint to Ellie why he saved her back in game one, and even hint that their hurt relationship leaves him adrift.

“Everything I have found, dear I’ve not found by myself”- This hints about their new life together and even in the town of Jackson before the fall out- they started to have a good life together the closets thing you could call a normal life.

“All my stolen missing parts. I ‘ve no need for anymore”- This can be a call back of his original family the loss of his wife and Sarah held him back in game 1 but now while he will not forget them he doesn’t need to focus on that loss.

“And I believe ‘cause I can see…Our future days, Days of you and me.” This line for Joel would be him reaching out to Ellie that even though things got messed up between them he hopes and can see that they can be a family again. He believed in the both of them in this messed up world.

“And all the promises at sundown. I’ve meant them like the rest… all the demons used to come’round…I’m grateful now they’ve left.- Joel is trying to let Ellie know no matter what he promised to keep her safe and planned on to continue to do so. We even saw that during the dance when the fight broke out even though Ellie and Joel was fighting Joel still came in trying to protect Ellie.

While maybe I will add a section more on the music later on it is something to pay attention to in the game. Over all the game had amazing graphics (Still was able to find a game breaking bug though can see that in my lets play), the story however, I had to breath for a bit to wrap my head around it. The story of part 2 was so filled with hate on all sides that it was heart breaking. It could easily make someone who played through it feel worn down and unable to see past the hatred.  Throughout the game I stated I couldn’t forgive or get attached to Abby because she just didn’t get it in a lot of ways she acted like a brat not moving on with her life.  

Ellie was dragged into that hatred and is not innocent by far, and she has the scars emotional and physically as her punishment for falling into this horrible cycle. To be honest I was hoping the game was going to be more focused on the zombies not just this vengeance death story between two broke humans. Naughty dog did get the emotion out of their players that they wanted which was the hate, you can easily see this through many other lets plays online. However, during this time period we are seeing between the pandemic and where the world is standing especially the USA it would have been nice at least at the end of it that we had some hope.

Some stated well she might have gone back with Dina, however if you pay attention Ellie did have the bracelet on as she was leaving to me this would hint she had put it in her back pack with her coat while being in the warmer weather area. And after the finally show down most likely got her backpack before returning to an empty house. Maybe their message was hey hatred is not going to get you anywhere you will end up alone which is what we saw of Ellie at the end of the game almost giving the player another punch in the gut as we see Ellie facing the one thing she scared of

      References:

Tesfahuneygn G, Gebreegziabher G (2018) Development of Vaccination against Fungal Disease: A Review Article. Int J Trop Dis 1:005. doi.org/10.23937/ijtd-2017/1710005

[dudewhy3]

i wanna put my 2 cents in and add that Japanese is a vowel-based language, so they cannot physically pronounce two sonoric consonants one after the other, which is why Armin ended up spelled as Arumin

I always wondered what the “u” in aruani stood for?

Hi anon!

Yeah "Aruani" is the romaji-fication of the original ship name, which is in Japanese (アルアニ)。

'Armin' in Japanese translates phonetically to Arumin (アルミン) and likewise for Annie as 'Ani' (アニ)。

So the combination ended up as Aru-Ani in the Japanese fandom and stuck with the rest of us in the international fandom too haha xD

It's the same with Yumihisu, Jeanpiku, Pokkopiku, and etc~

[scicraft]

I give my 2 cents on every band's design

Yes, every one.

(Part 2)

Notes:

-I am not a professional character designer by any capacity

-I'm purely looking at cohesion of group design, but I will touch on how well individual ones are handled

-I am clinically insane

Okay let's get into it 

Plasmagica

THE titular band. Unfortunately doesn't stop them from looking like they're all a part of a different band. While all the individual designs work well to showing their personality, it doesn't allow the band to have a really well defined look. ESPECIALLY considering the anime, they really could've done to have redesigns to show character development(and also stress my sister out when trying to pull for the new outfits /j). It'd also help if they didn't look completely removed from their band name. Like seriously. Plasmagica is not the first name I'd pick.

ShinganCrimsonZ

I like how they're described as a visual kei band, that's just kinda cute. That being said they're so paradoxically cohesive and not??? I really do love them but they all really, really do look like they're going to different Halloween parties. One thing shingan could really benefit from is either

A) not having 3/4ths of the band with the titties out look

Or

B) give the titties out look more variety

Like dude Rom is probably the worst offender his top half has none of the band's main color(which is objectively black) and this could be fixed so easily. Give him a sheer crop top. I don't care. Just something

TriChronika

TriChronika.... Bad. The songs they sing are fucking weak sauce and so are their designs. Which is so unfortunate because they have the MOST bangerang theme?? It doesn't help that I still am physically incapable of telling Kai and Riku apart. Their palettes make them look like they belong in a different band entirely when put next to ShuuZo. I get, on some level, that Shuuzo is supposed to be the center focus and thus is designed accordingly, but Mr Sparkledog left his companions with no flair of their own to speak of, and no, Kai and Riku being twins is not an excuse for them to not have good tells??? Get your shit together TriChronika

CritiCrista

FINALLY. GOOD DESIGN. clear themeing, really strong palettes to set them apart, I love it here. Holmy and Jacklyn are my favorites u_u but I think Rosia's myumon form has the weakest palette, and could probably do better if her fur color was just adjusted. That being said, these girls are overall one if the best designed groups that appears in the anime.

Tsurezure Naru Ayatsuri Mugenan

I legit think the only weaknesses of TNAM is how hard it is to remember their name (/j) in all seriousness they work really well too, and I especially love Daru Dayu's daruma. Their "far east" look is very clear to see.

Shizuku Secret Mind

The anime very smartly avoids having Turtle B.I.G make an appearance in non-myumon form bc he looks so out of place next to the band, and that's entirely bc of his palette. The obvious solution is to just... Give the other band members a more varied palette? Sea creatures are so many colors, why are they all blue???? Also Wendy looks like a different person in all her card art and that's so funny to me.

NinjinRiot

I cannot begin to tell you how accidentally funny NinjinRiot is in the anime. They legit show up, dispense the stakes, and ollie outie. Which I can respect. This is one of those well designed band, except for Obero's myumon design. The torso area gets melted into the arms. Still!! Really stylish

Studdo Ban Gyashu

Now these motherfuckers deserve to get called a visual kei band. My one complaint is that their distinct colors don't really enhance each other designs, so none really stand out.

Dropout Sensei

Beemtle :-)

Gauga Strikes

I'd be more upset about one of the members being a literal fucking mountain if I wasn't already aware that they were based on a real band and that this real life band made of human people was sat down by Sanrio and told "hey, we're going to turn you into furries" and one of them went "actually, I want to be a large geographical feature" and Sanrio replied "okay, that scans" and yknow what? I can't dunk on that

AND TUMBLR IMAGE LIMIT KICKED IN. FUCK. Looks like this is going to be a multi post thing