#i should make a saltmines tag

[engelsschwert]

Dear Red Hook: The way belts work is not optional.

This is how a belt works, notice that the metal pin is on the opposite side of the flap/end of the belt? This is good, so the pin is pulled against the metal.

This is NOT how a belt works:

And before anyone comes at me that these are 'old concept arts'

They did it to the Bounty Hunter 3d model too!

Red Hook doesn't know how belts work and it's going to be my inside joke for the coming year.

Whenever something is wonky in DD2 I will say this

[mining-rules]

Tag Explanations

007 all — 007 is James Bond's nickname, so "bond all." Refers to a popular suggestion by players to implement a button that bonds with all familiars automatically so they don't have to click through every page. 007 is pronounced "double oh seven"

Ancient mystery — anything to do with ancients, block this tag if you’re worried about ancient spoilers

Art tag — working on removing the tag 🏷️ emoji from earlier posts, so all posts with this tag show up here

Auction house

Breeding project

Coli grinding — anything to do with coli

Fandragons

Flight club — anything to do with dom

Forums

FRD — anything that isn't salt but still makes the cut for posting

Genes

G1s — first generation dragons, dragons from eggs

Hatcheries

I should make a dreams tag — posts about dreams

Noc noc who's there — anything to do with Night of the Nocturne

PvP forum — suggestions forum

Pinglist pain — anything to do with pinglists

Skins and accents - Skins cover the whole dragon, accents cover up to 30% surface area. Players can create their own UMAs, or User-Made Accents, and FR staff create some as well.

Salt asks - originally Saltmin's signoff but now the general housekeeping tag.

Sugar — nice posts that begin with “sugar to”

Treasure nest — nest rentals

🐉 Potentially stressful topics we tag

Banxiety — anxiety due to banning

Blocking

“Body horror stuff” is our blog-specific body horror tag!

Multi-accounting

Nsfw, slightly nsfw, common cw’s if we feel like it applies

We tag things as just “x” (for example “#guns”)—we used to do “tw x” but tumblr’s tagging system isn’t working right

🐉🧂🐉🥨🐉

Note—tagging is tedious, which is why many other blogs that focus on user-submitted content only allow “submissions” where the user tags the content themselves. We allow asks, which are more user-friendly, at the cost of us tagging posts ourselves. When we are busy or lots of posts are going out, we may not always tag posts beyond trigger or spoiler tags. Thanks for being nice about this!

[saltminerising]

had a dream that someone posted an ask that they and their friend always traded research notes for each other and their friend’s notes always hit plots that they uncovered (and made a disclaimer they weren’t upset with their friend personally, just rng lmao). but the comments was filled with “wtf name drop” and finally someone explained “yea now it’s expected to block players whos notes keep hitting the wrong plots so they dont accidentally friend you”. woke up and took a full minute to process that wasnt the new etiquette

[ladymajavader]

The Mystery of Michael’s Missing Spiral

I know the first rule of season 2 is we don’t talk about season 2 anymore, but this has been in my drafts for nearly 9 months and @lovecolibri expressed a passing interest, which was all the provocation I needed to push this out into the world. Behold - my saltmine post about what tf was Michael’s character arc in s2.

During pre-season 2 promos we were told a lot that Michael would be “spiralling”. There were reports of “misdirecting his anger”

What we saw was Michael picking bar fights, random women and getting drunk in 2x01. Was that it? 

content warnings: I view his relationship with Maria as symptom of the problem, so the following will not be a nice read for Miluca shippers. Also there’s a lot of salt ahead. Let me know if I should add any other tags and warnings.

[Let me just put on my pretensious deerstalker cap and let’s go]

“Spiralling” implies getting lower and lower within the same vicious circle; falling on a curving path; getting quickly worse in a way that becomes increasingly diffcult to control. A short burst of bad behaviour, a quick touchdown to the bottom if you will, would more correctly be reffered to as “acting out”. A week of drinking and fighting does not a spiral make.

Yet it’s indisputable that after a week this behavior ends - Michael cleans up his act to start helping with getting Max back and to be good for Maria. So where are the lower rungs of the spiral?

“Misdirected anger” is even more elusive. Could it allude to Michael simply punching some guy in Wild Pony who did nothing to deserve it? That’s just a tiny transference to let off some steam out of the pressure cooker that is Michael’s emotions at the beginning of season 2. 

Yet after 2x01 Michael doesn’t throw any undeserved punches (Wyatt fully deserved what he got), he’s also rather kind and sweet to people around him without letting his negative emotions affect how he relates to them... except for Alex. 

Alex is the only person Michael is consistently mean to in pretty much every episode they interact. And I mean mean, as in maliciously negative. Even apart from every “breaking up” scene, he makes sure to invalidate their entire relationship as just sex and pain (’tortured lust’), Alex’s importance to him (making clear he was his last choice in 2x04) and even disparaging his character (calling one of his enduring qualities that he used to love ‘just stupid now’). 

[Now let me settle in my pretensious shrink’s wingback armchair]

Michael endured unimaginable trauma heaped upon unimaginable trauma at the end of season 1. And while he acts out in 2x01, a week later he has miraculously compartmentalized and packed it away neatly to be the Perfect Boyfriend and a Good Brother. It’s as if his trauma doesn’t exist or affect him when he’s with anyone other than Alex with whom he’s able to let his emotions out - but also to start processing them when he calls to talk about Walt in 2x09. 

In season 2 he also completely abandons what drove him in the previous two decades - the search for his home and pursuit of knowledge about himself as an alien. Not only does he stop trying to build his spaceship (framed as sacrificing that dream for brining Max back with the use of the genius alien pacemaker), he doesn’t use and train his powers at all the entire season (until 2x11). In season 1 he was the one using his powers most frequently, he had great control and clearly practiced. In season 2, just as Isobel is training her powers, Michael tries to cut himself off from his alien heritage. He’s the only member of the pod squad missing from the training Rosa scene, while theoretically, as the most practiced, he could be the best qualified to help.

And so I present to you my diagnosis:

“misdirecting anger” was Michael bundling up all the pain from everything that happened at the end of season 1 with all the pain connected to his relationship with Alex, channeling it all into anger. Unlike pain, grief, sadness, regret, guilt and shame - anger feels proactive and can be directed outwards. We’ve seen bb!Michael use it to (mis)manage his emotions at bb!Max before, it’s his established crutch and coping mechanism. And in season 2 he directed all of that negativity-turned-anger onto the person who was both connected to all the pain and safe to project onto, i.e. Alex.

 Michael “spiralling” was him denying his wants and needs, hiding his depression, pain and trauma in order to be the Perfect Boyfriend and Good Brother just so that for once he wouldn’t be left behind and could avoid actually processing what happened to him. Hitting the bottom of the spiral was the moment Maria broke up with him, finally driving the point home that this isn’t sustainable.

Or, Michael acting so OOC in season 2 could just be the result of bad writing, twisting his character to hit plot points regardless of his established character traits and motivation or writers (or the Writer Formerly Known as the Showrunner) just intermittently forgetting he ever endured any trauma at all. But Michael’s character arc in season 3 reinforces my interpretation of season 2 as spiralling through repression instead of processing his trauma and completely mismanaging his emotions. After all, it was set up in season 1 that to heal he would have to reopen wounds in his mind... and we saw him doing that in season 3. And what a glorious sight a happy, settled and confident Michael Guerin, facing his fears and doubts head on instead of channeling them into anger and connecting with his alien heritage even if it’s painful, truly is. Anyways, thanks for coming to my TED talk.

[skiplo-wave]

I think Antisplaining is a good term to describe the shit that Antis say to others. Seriously, how many times have you seen an Anti go 'Well Actually...' when explaining something? It fits them perfectly.

Yup 100% agree, feel like we should start doing that especially when antis come on properly tagged post cause that’s gets on my nerves too. Let’s make it happen people@robin-mask@shippy-mcdiscourse@reysistantis@antiantis-saltmine

[damelola]

I wish people understood that I don't want to read about Supercorp or Lucy/Alex in the Sanvers tag. Why is this so hard to understand for AO3 writers? What is wrong with the Supergirl fandom? We shouldn't have to mass share links excluding half a dozen tags because writers should be clear about the content of their stories and who it's directed to. I never had this problem in other fandoms, it's the damn Lena/Kara crew...

There’s a lot of it been happening with all of the Supergirl ships alas, people putting tons of ships in to maximise their hits, mistakenly putting background pairings in (we all have to learn sometime!), and yeah a clutch of people doing it maliciously to ‘trick’ people into reading their ship because they think it’s so beautiful and perfect that no one should be allowed to avoid it. Sadly for them it tends to make people who disliked that ship upgrade to hating it, as all obnoxious tactics do.

Unfortunately s2 brought a big influx of much younger fans from other fandoms that are a bit... y’know. Those fans. The social media hacking, calling the actors mom, no freaking boundaries types. But there are little clutches of bad eggs everywhere it would seem. It does make me miss s1 fandom like whoa, when Supercat, General Danvers and Superlane all stayed in their lanes and overlapped in the fun ways. 

I’m trying to stay out of the saltmines these days, but a constructive way to reduce aggro between ships would be to stay in our respective places and not invade. Correct tagging would be a big step towards that, on all sides. 

[saltminerising]

Anon who sent an ask for context behind the traumadumping discussion here. I want to apologize if it was my ask that upset you, it wasn't my intention at all. I was concerned that it wasn't relevent to flightrising. The topic was making me uncomfortable partly because I didn't know why it was happening. I didn't want to sound demanding. I'm so sorry if it came across as guilttripping or if it made you anxious. I didn't mean it that way at all. I should have worded it differently, so in the future I will keep that in mind whether or not it was my ask that made you uncomfortable. If it's not too much trouble, may I request clarification on what comes across as guilttripping and what doesn't?

I really appreciate this sweet reply! I don’t remember which ask specifically inspired me to post that. I totally forgive you, no worries!!!

What comes across as guilt-tripping to me, these aren’t quotes just stuff I made up:

Basically:

1. The person wants me to do a thing

2. And in the ask, there’s hints at a negative consequence, but they don’t say exactly what the consequence is *or* the consequence is unlikely/small

Example: “when you don’t tag caps lock, maybe some people will think you’re ableist.”

Reason: it’s unclear if they think I’m ableist, but it is clear they want me to be worried if I’m ableist, and tag caps lock for them.

Better: “can you tag caps lock? When I read it in my head it sounds like someone is yelling at me, and that’s upsetting to me. Thank you!”

Example: “if you post the name of the real money trade website that people get banned for using because it’s cheating, you could be considered responsible indirectly for them getting banned”

Reason: it implies I could be liable for people doing things that are outside of my control, when there’s no reason to think people have been inspired by this blog and our constant #banxiety and #crime. and #rmt posting to knowingly do something bannable. It’s basically a made up situation to encourage me to do things as they want me to

Better: “some blogs avoid mentioning the name of real money trade websites so that people are less likely to look them up and use them. I’m not sure if you’ve thought about that already but it might be a good idea if you’re worried about that sort of thing.”

I hope this helps, please do feel free to ask questions about this, in the comments is best but of course if you’re not comfy with that you can send an ask!

Just to make sure this is ultra clear: this isn’t about the niceness of the ask. People send us criticism from time to time, and that’s fine as long as it’s not like “Saltmin you are a dumb bitch and I hate you” lol. This stuff is a bit complicated and I’m not expecting everyone to have seen this post. I am definitely very sensitive to guilt tripping (which can be done accidentally!) so I appreciate the opportunity to talk about this and feel like it matters how the people reading your asks feel!

I know the other drama places don’t do stuff like this so I also appreciate y’all being vulnerable with us over dm and in asks, and letting us be vulnerable with you, even if you don’t really know who we are. It’s very kind!

[saltminerising]

saltmin bestie why did you tag my coli ask as sarcasm. if it wasn't tagged that way in the ask why would you think that. i genuinely want better options for people who want to use the coliseum. why would i mock that??? i'm so befuddled by your tag there.

Oh! I must have read the “ability to toggle off captchas” differently than how you meant it. To me it read like someone saying that people were being silly about wanting the captchas fixed, making fun of them by saying you should be able to toggle them off (which would defeat their purpose). Sorry abt that, took the tag off!