#i think it could have been integrated way better with even less work

[ganondoodle]

you know, i talked about it before but i still, for a much more rare totk gameplay complaint-

i still cannot wrap my head around how it went all the way to the finished product to have 5 ghosts that love to glitch around and threaten your frame rate (espeically bad in combat) help in combat, 4 of which are MELEE fighters, AND have their abilities tied to their model forcing you to chase after them constantly if you want to use any of it AND ALSO give them collision so they can get knocked over cancelling their ability if it needs charging (RIJU!!), the one needing a long time to charge being not jsut one of the most useful and fun to use but then making that one also be one of tHE MELEE fighters meaning anytime you manage to catch her and activate it she instantly charges into battle and due to her being rather small and using short swords she basically sticks to the enemy like glue and keeps gettign knocked over, i swear yelling riju was my most spoken word in any type of combat in all my playtime

also how they teleport back and forth in and out of your arm the second you dare to look at a climable surface or are in one thats too small for them (even when you need them the most like yuno in one of those caves stuffed to the brim with destroyable rocks thatd take out all your swords if you did it by hand) or just .. randomly teleporting around but then can still get stuck on environmental collision until you cant even see them anymore (stares at sidon giving me a heart attack in the underground when he got caught on a light root until i was so far away he was barely visible and instead of teleporting he started to sprint at me with inhumane speed when i turned around making me frozen in shokc bc he turned dark in the distance for some reason making me think one of the creepy ghost soldiers was out to murder me, granted that was one of the best moments in the game for me, but also, imagine if they actually did that with one of the creepy ghost soldiers instead of it being a glitch??? another missed opportunity tbh)

how did that never come up during playtesting?? if they really were done somewhere in 2022 and spent the rest of the time with polish like they said how did that never come up?? i loved having the champ- sages around in their dungeons but the ghost version thingy wasnt really that optimal and id rather have their abilities be either integrated into your controls like in botw (tbh i find that really thoguhtful, to have your dead friends abilities they granted you inegrated into your basic controls as dynamically as they did) or in another ability wheel (like i did in my rewrite) with maybe mineru beign the only one you actually need around via summon since you can ride ... her

idk about anyone else but i only had them around bc i liked them walking around with me and was too lazy to constantly de and reactivate them but tbh i think it caused more annoyance to me than it brought anything interesting to it

[mutalune]

hey siri how do I stop feeling gutwrenchingly anxious in the guilt way for using the treatment methods available to me to not be in constant misery

[flavorcountry]

I got a cold and watched that Jenny Nicholson video about the Star Wars hotel (it's very good) and fully lost my mind: even after experiencing a comprehensive four-hour deconstruction of why it didn't work for Star Wars, I still think a version of this would absolutely work for Star Trek. Take my hand and walk with me on my journey into madness, where I have infinite money, talent, and team to make it all happen!!

Overall vibe

If you want to make a hotel/resort experience that takes place inside a fake spaceship, I still think Star Trek is the way to go: so much of Star Trek takes place on ships, and we've seen the rooms are pretty nice!! Like the Star Wars one, my Star Trek hotel is also a simulated starship, but with better rooms and more fun stuff to do.

Are you ready for this shit

Can you tell I drew this myself

You'll arrive at Farpoint Station,* where the concierge checks you in and your luggage gets whisked away by station staff. Gift shop's also here. When you're checked in and ready to head to your room, you're brought to one of several transporter rooms. If you never went to the Star Trek Experience at the Vegas Hilton when it was active, I am truly sorry for you, because they had a ride whose boarding process included getting beamed away: you and your pals were herded into a zone where you were clearly meant to board a run-of-the-mill 20th-century simulator ride, and then there were jets of mist and a sound and suddenly you were in a transporter room on board the goddamn USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D. It was fucking magical and I never, ever want it explained to me. Anyway, that's what happens to you at my Star Trek hotel: you step onto a transporter pad and get beamed from Farpoint to a Galaxy-class Federation starship. Exit the transporter room and walk down the ship's corridor to take the turbolifts to Cargo Bay 1, where a "temporary muster point" has been set up (this is where the guest services desks will be), or just follow the lit-up companel signs to your cabin. Yes, it will look like guest quarters aboard the Enterprise-D, more or less — maybe a little smaller — but it'll have the carpet, the plant, the glass coffee table, and most importantly a window that looks out into space.

Or!!! If you booked the resort, keep heading down the hallway and take another turbolift to a different section of the ship where the holodeck entrances are. The holodecks, naturally, are running a Risa program, so you walk through the doors and under the arch and suddenly you're outdoors looking at a beautiful landscape with a pool and whatnot, plus the resort accommodations where the more conventional fancy rooms are, and also the restaurants and entertainment venues, all themed. There's a Quark's. There's a Klingon bar and grill. A Bolian salon/spa. Talaxian arcade?? Nausicaan axe-throwing pit?!?! Come on!!!!!!!!!

Here, have a floor plan

Key learnings

Two things stuck out to me that the Star Wars hotel fucked up that I think the Star Trek version can do better:

🤷‍♀️ LARP too complicated: Give 'em credit where it's due, the Star Wars hotel fucking swung for the fences trying to make a multi-hero story guests could integrate with, but it just didn't work. Technical failures! Possible conceptual flaws! Too much stuff packed into the schedule!

The fix: Just make it mostly a hotel most of the time. One or two weekends a month, there's a two-day fully-immersive LARP adventure that people explicitly book separately, and it's more expensive (more on that later). But at all times, hotel staff will be in uniform with division colors that make sense: concierge and guest relations in red, support and janitorial in gold, teal for any medical personnel. I think that means the people working in food services have to wear that plaid/vest combo the Ten-Forward staff have on, but there are certainly worse outfits.

🌴 No resort: The food at the Star Wars hotel was good, but there was no pool and no other luxury resort type stuff to do. It didn't sound relaxing.

The fix: Putting an actual resort in the Star Trek hotel under the guise of a permanently-running Risan holodeck program. The sheer elegance of it!! When the weather is bad, hotel staff in gold uniforms can make apologetic comments about how the sim's malfunctioning.

Roleplay though

People are going to want to stay onboard the ship. That's good! The thing about the ship cabins is you can build them in maybe two semicircular layers (the rooms will need to be curved because these are quarters onboard the saucer section, naturally) and just bury them underground. They don't need real windows — you're putting screens in that'll show a space view, especially when the ship goes to warp and you can see those rainbow trails. Inside the semicircle there's a lot of space where you can put the other, bigger sets: the bridge, main engineering, Ten-Forward, etc. None of those have real windows either, and also I don't think it matters where you put them physically: just stick a pretend turbolift in front of all the entrances and make guests take those whenever they need to go there! One thing we're also doing is putting little hidden speakers everywhere that put out a small amount of shipboard white noise; it may not even be noticeable on a conscious level, but it'll be there and it'll be soothing. This speaker network is also a great way to make an actual announcement if there's a real park emergency.

During most of the month, I think the bridge and main engineering are mostly just photo ops — maybe you have to book a timeslot? Just so you're guaranteed some time with just you and your buddies? But I also think there should be opportunities for what I'm going to call mini-LARPing: you and your pals can book an hour-long session and the staff trains and then runs you through a short scenario. If you've ever played Artemis or the actual Star Trek VR bridge crew game they put out a while ago, you know where I'm going with this: for however long, you and your friends are now the crew of a genuine-ass Federation starship trying to survive a battle! It's fuckin' Kobayashi Maru time, motherfuckers!! Everyone gets their own station! Lights flicker! Mist shoots out of stuff! The whole bridge shakes! There might be a warp core problem — better call down to main engineering! Whoever's down there gets escape room-style minigames and puzzles to work out and help their shipmates. At some point — and this will happen in every run of every scenario — there'll be a very mist-forward "coolant leak" near the warp core that forces whoever's in the room to duck and roll beneath a descending garage-style blast door before heading up to the bridge to activate their station up there; bonus points if the player can work in a "We lost a lot of good people down there, Captain." Maybe there's an actor in makeup who menaces the crew on the main viewer from time to time (pick beforehand from a list of villains! want to fight Klingons? Romulans? a rogue Borg tactical sphere? etc). Can you see it? I can see it, and it fucking rules.

I must at this point mention that in my world, you can buy an add-on where a camera crew joins you, and they cut up the footage afterward to make you and your pals your very own mini-episode. Yes the editing and post-production are expensive and time-consuming; I'm creating jobs here!!!! Maybe …… okay, hear me out: there's an array of hidden fixed cameras and microphones built discreetly into the set, and also players are issued a combadge with an individual RFID tracker that pings the cams and mics, so they only save footage when a player comes close. After the players are done, a machine algorithm uses the data gathered to assemble a rough timeline of each player's material and create a draft movie that a human editor can pick up and fine-tune. Yeah?? When you check out, you get handed a USB drive that looks like an isolinear chip with your mini movie on it, and maybe another one with all the raw footage just in case you're feeling ambitious!!!!

For one or two other weekends during every month, there's a heavily advertised, much more involved, and way spendier LARP for people who really want to get into it. It takes place over two days. There are lots more actors portraying characters necessary for the plot/gameplay. Don't bother packing for the daytime: all players are issued a uniform they get to keep afterward. Do I have any details on the scenario or RP? I do not. But I fully believe it's possible to construct something you could run over the course of a weekend that would keep a hundred paying guests occupied, amused, and delighted, provided you have a truly ridiculous amount of money and people, which I do because this is utter fantasyland.

Also it probably won't cost six grand. Probably??

Let's gooooooooooooo

The rest of the time — and I cannot stress this enough — the Star Trek hotel is just a very heavily and specifically themed all-inclusive resort that has nice, fancy rooms and luxury amenities plus bookable ship cabins and opportunities for photo shoots or quick one-shot roleplay adventures for the real heads. You don't ever have to enter those latter parts if you don't want to! You can just hang out at the resort and have fun with all the themed entertainment, which I must stress is going to be both in-universe plausible and great, with something for everybody. Yes, there'll be a daycare, and yes, Flotter will be there in some capacity to entertain the kids. The food hall is my favorite part by far; I could pitch you Trek restaurant concepts all day. Romulan gourmet soup stand. Gummi candy store staffed by Ferengi where all the offerings are shaped like alien bugs. A vending machine where you can get a jumja stick or a three-pack of those nutrient pucks Picard and his new friends kept getting in "Allegiance." There will be an entire plant-based food vendor with a wide variety of delicious options for all meals, and it will be run by Vulcans.

A word on the gift shop

Question for you: have you ever watched a Star Trek show and seen a Starfleet officer pull on a jacket or shoulder a duffel bag that had the words "STAR TREK" on it? If so, then friend, I want to know where you get your hallucinogens because I want to experience this exactly once. All of the gift shops on my hotel grounds sell responsibly sourced, highly thought-out, well-made items that would be in-world plausible and have no obvious branding. Of course you can get a hand-carved horga'hn, but let's go bigger. Why not a light-up Tox Uthat for your nightstand? Ressikan flute for you, queen? How about a whole-ass knife store that's nothing but various kinds of Klingon cutlery? There will absolutely be an entire tailor's shop whose whole job is to put you in the Starfleet uniform of your choice; there may or may not be a Cardassian managing the place who's got a 50/50 cheerful/menacing vibe going on. There'll be not one but two stores that sell little models of ships: the regular ones and the gold ones. Don't tell me you can't picture it!!!!!

I think that's about it

Thank you for coming along with me on this bespoke journey into 100% insanity; now can somebody put me in touch with the Star Trek licensing people and also give me a billion dollars to build all this? Okay, thanks a lot!!

For timeline purposes and because it's fun, I'm positing a version of Farpoint that got built after the events of the TNG premiere where the Denebians got their act together and just built a normal surface base without suborning an interstellar lifeform.

[tumblingxelian]

Crossposting from SV:

https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/iwiw-rwby.125050/post-32676154

Regarding the expectation of perfection, yeah, I don't think the team expected it. The one who could be arguably said to have put the most "pressure" on Ruby is Blake as we saw in V8, but having faith in someone isn't the same as demanding perfection. & Blake showed she was fine stepping up and trying to help or support Ruby when she needed it.

The others applied even less pressure, at least knowingly, but none of them are aware of how Ruby had internalized Ozpin's lesson (& from what I know of Coco Second Semester does not make his lessons better)

But Ruby definitely took a lot of these things to heart in a way likely never intended. & more to the point that likely wouldn't be nearly as bad if not for the trauma conga-line the last volumes have been.

For instance in V8 Ruby does seem briefly hurt by Yang noting that following her lead hasn't worked out, but Yang's language is still rather casual, this isn't her trying to deliver some cutting barb to wound Ruby's pride. & given their reunion in V8 it didn't have a lasting impact... Up until V9 landed because with everything that went wrong, suddenly those words pack a lot more sting.

In regards to Yang & Ruby in particular, one thing I find interesting is that in early volumes, even after Ozpin's leader talk Ruby was more comfortable showing uncertainty, discomfort, fragility and the like.

Especially around Yang. She was sulking in V2 about Blake not coming to the dance and feeling overtly helpless, she was fine with being uncertain about her decision to reveal the WF's location to Ozpin & co, also in V2.

But more integrally, in Volume 3, after everything had gone to hell what is the first thing Ruby did once she could move under her own power?

Was it go to her dad for comfort? Seek Qrow for advice? nope, those two came to her, with Tai mostly being used for an intel update and Qrow being prodded for info, and only seeing a flash of vulnerability.

The person Ruby went to was Yang, Yang who she was surprised to find wasn't in a good head-space, and who when Ruby asked what to do couldn't answer her, seemingly leaving Ruby unsure of what to do. In essence, there have been periods where Ruby also expected others to be more sturdy than they could otherwise be expected to be. This isn't a jab, just an observation.

More integrally however, in V4 we see Ruby really hit hard on the repressing.

Oh she did it before, the fact she's modelled her entire persona after her missing mother and was raised by a girl two years her senior should already make it clear she's gonna have some issues. But it becomes a lot more overt with her being all smiles around JNPR but sad when unseen until she's hitting a breaking point. One that is... Sort of countered though of questionable help by being told she's inspiring.

The time we really see it break in in Volume 5 when Yang & Ruby reunited, she cries, she fumbles her words, she gets a damn hug.

But then, the next day, she sees that Yang is not nearly as recovered as she's trying to act. When Yang is upset & removes herself from the situation to calm down and mourn silently, its Weiss who has to help her out of it, because Ruby has no idea what to do.

That's not just her sister in there, its the girl who raised her, & this stuff is not Ruby's forte, but more integrally, Yang is the one who has always been 'all right', the one who Ruby could turn to whenever she needed and who she never had to worry about in combat.

But she's not OK the one person Ruby could always rely on is more fragile than Ruby ever realized, and so clearly, Ruby can't go to Yang with her problems either.

& thus closes her final person to really, properly, well and truly reach out to.

& the thing is Yang would have no idea this is happening!

She didn't hear Ozpin's speech, or Ruby re-phrasing it. She wasn't present when Ruby was really building her walls in V4, and any that existed before that will have been interwoven with Yang's own issues and thus be something she deemed as normal the same way Ruby deemed Yang's self sacrificing penchant as normal.

Put simply, Yang isn't aware that Ruby's mental image of her has shifted and so is not aware that Ruby no longer sees her as someone viable to reach out to.

None of which is helped by the fact Yang canonically admires Ruby and so is prone to see the best, strongest, most idealized side of her, and so like Ruby would need to be told Ruby needs help before keying into it.

Both these girls are very traumatized and damaged and they care about each other so god damn much, but also just cannot wholly see one another.

Its agony, I love it.

[swaps55]

Hiiii currently doing yet another Opus readthrough to help maintain my sanity and have had an absolute earworm of a question; I can't remember if this has come up before, but if Daniel never disappeared, if he was still around by the time the games events roll around, how do you think Sam would be different?

This is SUCH a good question. Because while Sam's desperate need for approval from his mother is one of his primary drivers, another is the guilt he feels about his father. He believes that his very existence robbed his father of the life Sam imagines he wanted - N7 - and he made it his mission to live the life his father didn't get, to repay the debt.

And the thing is, both of those things are integral to him becoming Commander Shepard.

So what happens if Daniel doesn't go missing?

I don't think their relationship is magically fixed. It was only his disappearance that knocked it into Sam's head that his father was so much more than Sam believed him to be. He didn't even know his father had gone through any of the N program until after he was gone. So if he doesn't have that moment of clarity at age 15, when does he have it, if he has it at all?

I still think the N program is something Sam would have pursued - he had his eye on it before Daniel went missing - but I imagine Daniel would have finally told him about his own history with the N program as an effort to talk him out of trying to get back in.

Now, the Sam who went into the N program without losing his father would have been far less angry at the world. The Sam who had Daniel still would have been ready to fight god in the target parking lot, but that Sam picks the fight for lack of something better to do. The Sam who did lost his father has so much anger at himself and at the universe that didn't even bother to look for him, that he'd fight god because he wants to see him bleed.

So when Daniel tells Sam about his own experiences with N1, this Sam might have listened. After all, most of his disdain for his father came from believing he wasn't the brave hero his mother was, because Daniel worked a desk job on a space station while his mother was out exploring the galaxy. Learning that his father gave up the N program because he wanted Sam, when his mother won't give him the time of day unless he's earned a commendation - might have changed everything between them.

And if that happens...maybe he does give up the N program. Which means he doesn't play the same role on Torfan, if he's there at all...which likely means he doesn't even wind up on the 'Yang. Would he still be a hell of a soldier? Yes. Would he be the person everyone looks to when the galaxy is in peril?

No.

One of the many things I love about Sam is how everything that makes him Commander Shepard is the result of Sam's own needs not being met.

But if Sam doesn't suffer that pain - if he gets the nurturing and love he needs and deserves - the price is the entire galaxy. His mother has to emotionally neglect him. He has to lose his father. He has to go down the dark path that almost costs him his soul. He can't realize the love of his life is right in front of him until the weight of the galaxy sits square on his shoulders. He has to die. He has to be resurrected. If any of those things don't happen, if at any point the holes in him are filled by the love and support he deserves...everyone dies.

I've worked out enough of my plan for the end of ME3 to know it will play out in such a way that the only hope this cycle has for surviving the reapers is Sam. Not just because he is the baddest badass who ever badassed, but because the paths he has walked, the things that he has done, and the things that have been done to him create a unique set of circumstances that literally no other being in the galaxy could replicate.

It has to be him. And saying no would condemn the entire galaxy.

So basically, TL;DR, if Sam doesn't lose Daniel, Sam would be so different the reapers would win.

[nostalgicmiscellaneous]

Rewatched everything carefully. And i stand by my opinion: i love season 3. Do i have things i wish we had more and things i wish we had less? Of course, but it's the most satisfying one so far. I'm always not one to justify things much, if i like, i like it; if it touches me, it touches me. I cheered, i cried, i was upset, frustrated, i smiled and i finished with a soft smile on my lips and happy for the characters and hopeful for what's to come for them. And when a show does that, it worked. Sure, we all wish we had more Penelope and Colin together but what we did get is so touching and theirs was a season about the depth of love and the idea of keeping oneself while still giving everything you can to love. About loving and accepting yourself and the realities of love. I also like they kept the integrity of Colin as a character. He's an introspective character, he needed to handle a lot of feelings by himself, and his struggle, turmoil is important to understand everything, including himself. He's very vulnerable and his insecurities were very well portrayed by Luke Newton. He was so compelling to me, with his eyes shining with love for her but trying to repress it, because of his own self-doubts, but eager to protect her. As for Pen...Nicola, the strength you gave Pen within her own vulnerability, her traumas and her apparent conflicted aspirations. I love how Pen never lost who she is, she let her personality free and she didn't settle for what could be easy. Because she learned to love herself, she was able to love Colin deeply, better, without losing her sense of self. Her identity and her courage to take her life on her own hands. I think we could've had at least one more scene of them with real intimacy, i don't even mean steamy, i mean intimacy, with a deep conversation about them. But his love confession was, in my opinion, flawless. I also think the way they conducted Eloise and Penelope's friendship was beautiful. The Featheringtons were a welcomed surprise, Portia and Pen finally trying to see eye to eye, trying to understand each other was something i really needed to see. I love the little nods to the book and the focus on the letters Pen sent Colin, how he missed her and how much she influenced his decisions and actions. I love the very end, their little family. As for Cressida, Benedict and the Mondrichs. I understand Cressida was not to be given a redemption, just that we could understand her better. But i think less would've been more with her. Same with Benedict, we get it, no need to have so many scenes with him having threesomes. The Mondrichs...i'm sorry, but completely irrelevant to the story. With that said: I enjoyed very much and i'm really happy. Because i think compared to S1 and S2, it was a much more engaging season. It had deeper conflicts and romantic love, profound discussions that elevated the plot.

[lgbtlunaverse]

My stance on literary criticism in fanfiction communities is and will stay "only if it's explicitly asked for" and my usual go-to reply to the followup of "But you need criticism to improve!!" is: this is a hobby space, people are putting stuff out for free on the internet, it's not ABOUT quality, it's about fun.

And that's true. But the thing is that I do care about quality, actually. Controversial opinion but I like it when things are good. I want to make good things as a creator and enjoy them as an audience member. I think high quality art is just... a good goal to strive for inherently. And fanfiction is art (We're not having a debate about this. 'Art' is not a word that means high quality or high value. Because then bad art could not exist. Art means that it's art. Artistic expression. Nothing else)

And I think where me and the people talking about how criticism is necessary lose each other is that when we talk about quality, we both want good art to be made. But does that mean "I want a higher number of good works of art to exist" or do we mean "I want a higher fraction of all art that is created to be good"

Because those are 2 very different things.

See: if we mean the first, bad art existing is irrelevant, we only care about making sure good art comes into existance. But for the second, guarding against bad art is an integral part of reaching our goal. We not only have to encourage people to make good art, we have to discourage them from making bad art.

And those dual goals are important. Because criticism can make someone who is less good at art into a better artist. But it can also just make them... not make art.

And THIS. I think. Is where the distinction between paid professional art and hobby spaces, like fandoms, becomes important. It's not that I think you only get to criticise something if you paid money for it. It's that professional art spaces have a finite amount of resources. People need to eat, and they need to be paid, and art costs money to make. And if it's spent on the creation of bad art, that means less good art has the resources to be made.

(Even in something like indie e-book publishing with a lot less gatekeeping or upfront costs, this is still true. Resource allocation is perhaps more direct, directly from audience to author, but even before factoring in things like marketing and amazon's algorithm the truth is that writers have bills to pay and if they're not selling they'll need to find a different job)

What all of his means is that criticism is essential to professional art spaces. Because in order for quality to exist, you need to encourage the allocation of resources to good art and discourage the allocation of resources to bad art.

(It's more nuanced than that. Everytime a bad tropey romance book blows up people start whining about all the superior art this money could've been spent on. But there isn't ONE singular art money pool for the entire world. There are several thousand smaller resource pools that will be distributed among different regions and niches. The money spent on that tropey romance book was never going to be spent on an experimental sculpture. The work that lost out here is another better tropey romance book. Which is why you actually need to know and respect a genre to critique works in it effectively– ok I'll stop now)

And if there are more good artists than you can give resource to (which, by the way, is always true. Every moment of every day there truly great art not being made because the resources weren't there. From rejected ideas to talented people who never got to be artists in the first place because they needed a more stable job) then it doesn't matter whether an overall increase in quality comes from someone improving their craft or from them leaving the industry, leaving more resources to someone with higher quality work. They both have the same effect on the overall quality within the space.

But... in hobby spaces, those limits do not exist. People make stuff and put it on the internet for free. it's not just that they're not making money– even in professional spaces many people don't make money off their art– it's that making money isn't even an option. So that pool of limited resources doesn't exist.

Which means that the ONLY limiting factor for fanfiction is interest. The amount of fanfiction you get is dictated by the amount of people who are interested in creating it. That's it. Someone writing bad fanfiction does NOT mean that a different better fic writer will not get to write theirs.

"But criticism can make the bad fanfic writer better!" This is true, and it's usually what people who advocate for constructive ciritcism want. They do not want bad writers to be replaced by good writers, they want the bad writers to become good.

This makes sense, because as we just established, individual improvement is the ONLY way of improving the level of quality, because the only limiting factor is the amount of interested people

So, do you know what criticism can also do?

Make someone stop creating.

Well phrased or not, constructive or not. ANY critique that wasn't asked for has a chance to make someone want to stop creating. There really isn't a way to make sure you're not hitting someone in their deepest insecurities. And in unregulated spaces like fanfic you also don't have a way to screen for critique quality. There's no professional reviewers here. You can say "criticism is fine as long as it's constructive" all you want, but complete assholes giving absolutely useless critique can and do regularly think their criticism is the best writing advice in the world.

And if someone does stop, you have less interested people. You have decreased your one limiting factor.

And the thing is: people improve by just writing on their own. They might (keyword: MIGHT) improve faster if they had regular audience critique, but they'll improve by the mere act of repeatedly writing. It's the most important factor in improving.

And removing someone from the pool of interested people inherently means they stop writing, and thus stop improving. You have unavoidably DECREASED the amount of quality work that could be created.

The bottom line is: in spaces with limited resources, people either improving or quitting is the point. It's how you gatekeep, and get more good art to be made by freeing up those limited resources. In places where the only limiting factor is the people themselves, anyone being discouraged from making art because it's "not good enough" is a NET LOSS for quality.

Regardless of the fact that human enjoyment should be the first priority in hobbies, if you primarily look at it through the lens of caring about quality, unsolicited criticism hinders quality instead of serving it. The people who want to improve and who will not be discouraged by criticism will seek it out via beta-readers or editors or writing groups, or will explicitly invite their audience to give constructive criticism. At that point, go wild! But if you weren't asked: stay quiet.

[bibibbon]

people have been debating whether mirio really was a better successor for ofa has given me an idea for my rewrite. In my universe, izuku is much nore attentive and analytical of his surroundings, and due to facing discrimination for his quirklessness, he has a less rose tinted view of hero society and wont just follow orders like lemillion. An example is when he and lemillion first meet eri and lemillion give eir back to overhaul, a long tongue snatches eri from his grasp and darts away. Lemillion tries to chase after the villain but izuku recognizes it as my oc herpeton and due to them already having worked together in the past izuku trusts his instinct enough to stop lemillion and get both them out of the alley and away from an angry overhaul. Also after izuku discovers who herepton is with nezu and after nezus deal, izuku acts as a benefactor to herpeton and gives him intel on what pros patrol the cities that herpeton is visting for the first time and what their tactics are. This willingness do what is right instead of just following what the commision want is why all might chose him as his successor. Speaking of which, nana shimura and the rest of the ofa holders were also vigilantes, which explains why they most people have never heard of them. What do you think?

Hi @suchusoid 👋

This has been a long and ongoing discourse that's been reignited a few weeks back after the series ended.

Personally, in Canon itself we aren't truly given a concrete reason as to why izuku is better than mirio and why he deserves OFA more than mirio. This gets even more annoying as the series ends with izuku not even claiming the quirk or making it his but simply still viewing it as a gift from his favourite hero.

I remember @mikeellee asking a similar ask as to why izuku was picked and not mirio and Canon doesn't give us a concrete answer heck it's even worse when you realise how non existent izukus relationship with all might is.

However, I think that you're changes here to izuku are honestly what was needed!! Having izuku carry and cement the idea of no man is created equal and making sure to make that an integral part of his character would allow for izuku to really see the grey morality and messed up system especially since Canon does try and point this out but constantly fails due to the lack of introspection and development izuku has.

Izuku understanding the cruelty of the system yet still trying to save everyone is what makes him different to mirio who has a goal if 1 million people but izuku has an ongoing gaol that in reality would never be achieved and will always be added onto and altered to help produce a fairer society one where people can at least have the same opportunities.

Making Izuku much more attentive also makes sense and is crucial since Canon misses that part of his character completely. In Canon we do get some interesting analytical moments from izuku but they are inconsistent and its a shame because with a bit more digging and thinking izuku's character could of became so much more.

Mind you this is the same character that saw Hawk's once and said that it's weird that he is only 6 years older and so much more mature then them.

This is also the kid who ended up copying his classmates move multiple times with his quirk like shooting blackwhip from his mouth to mimic froppy or the use of his legs when it comes to ofa mimicking iida.

Due to his analytical abilities I feel like midoriya would be able to peice together that herperton is one of his classmates friends.

They would form a partnership of sorts. Izuku wants to help herperton out in hopes of helping achieve a better future and society so he would give him information in return and maybe he would even give him some quirk advice.

A part of me thinks that herperton would get a sense of deja vu especially when he finds out that izuku was quirkless. This would all remind him of his own quirkless mentor and from that they would slowly grow closer to the point where they both trust each other to make the right move if needed. This means that izuku allows for eri to be taken and then herperton and izuku manage to get her into safety.

In the end izuku wants a better society and he has already done many things to show us that he would do what is morally right over following the rules. This is the same izuku who ran and intervened the moment he realised iida was in hosu and trying to kill Stain. This is the same character who tried to take down gentle criminal so the school Festival wouldn't be disturbed. Even if it means getting himself into trouble or being hated izuku midoriya does what is right and that should be his character

[cripplecharacters]

Hi! : ) You guys are amazing.

Sorry if this is stupid or offensive but i have a question regarding terminology describing facial diference/ disability

So my first language/ the language i write in is not english so while the terminology post is helpfull since i can translate it/ use it as a genereal guide in what to look out for it does not cover everything. I am sorry if this falls into the category of research question but how do i find good resources for terminology in my own language/ make sure its a good resource with the terms people with facial diferences in my country prefer? Its hard since my country is small and not great when it comes to ableism so there is not many resources availibel in the first place.

The second is a bit more specific. I want to include a character with cleft palate in the wider supporting cast, or at least in the background. So not a mayor/important character I can't spend much time describing them and i dont want to center their description on their facial diference. The term for cleft lip in my language literaly translates as "hare lip" into english whic is...yeah. Its probably not an uniqe case either. There might be some better term for it but i have not been abel to find it and i am not sure there is anything thats not overly medical. If that is the case should i use the medical term instead even if its jarring and include what it describes in a footnote? Does the mod team have sugestions on what else to do in this situation/ similar ones I probably will find myself in? How do i handel ableism thats literaly the integral part of my language. How do i catch terms that have ableist/ bad conotations bejond the basics since it is less called out over here i might not even notice its problematic? I dont want to make the issue any worse, further normalise bad terms by not caring about terms.

I thank you, so much in advance.

Hey! No such thing as a stupid question.

I'll just say that I very much relate to these issues considering my native language calls congenital disabilities “innate flaws” : ) so;

As for first question:

The first step would be to check if there are any organizations/groups that have resources in your language about facial differences, or checking if some international orgs have translations of their pages where they talk about facial differences. Moebius Syndrome Foundation has a page on face equality in 8 languages (+ English).

If there aren't any (high probability that this is the case unfortunately), try to see if there are any advocates for face equality that write in your language and what do they use (and in what contexts).

If you still have issues, there's always the ultimate beauty of writing - making words up. When there's nothing you can use as a reference, the best way is to just create the word that you need. I'm aware that it could be hard to figure out what's appropriate and not accidentally offensive or insensitive, but your good intentions and putting care into it are already doing a lot of the work for you.

I really like this essay - which is about a very different disability-related topic - that asks a great question in this “how do we make [language thing] good for disabled people?” sphere: what feels beautiful? What term do you feel like sounds nice and not othering or pointlessly medicalized? Because honestly, if I encountered an invented word for facial differences in my native (very non-English) language and the explanation behind it was “I thought it sounded pretty” then I'd take it. Always better than “gross deformity” that many consider neutral without thinking about it at all.

Obviously the easiest way would be to ask someone who speaks your language and has a facial difference, but I'm aware that not everyone has that possibility - still, it could be a good idea to reach out to your local disabled community if you're able to. Or just ask on whatever social media is popular where you live.

You can also send us what is the language that you're having this issue in - despite the blog being very American-centric and English-only, a lot of us speak different languages and might just happen to know the one.

Second question:

First thing I'll address is that cleft palate and cleft lip are two separate things. They are often lumped together because they very often co-exist together, but a person could only have one of them.

Cleft palate hasn't, AFAIK, been referred to as a harelip anywhere, so I'm going to assume the question is about a cleft lip.

There are a few options as to what you can do here, in my opinion;

you describe the cleft lip without using any specific term (“they had an opening/a faded scar on between their upper lip and their nostril”);

the character calls it by the medicalized term* because that's what their doctor has told them, and they could mention how awkward/long/difficult to say/no one knows what it is/etc. the word is;

the character is self-aware and points out that the term “harelip” is weird as hell to say about a person when someone refers to it as such;

or, again, you make a word up. The word “lip” probably has to stay for clarity's sake, but try to replace the animal part with something: cleft, split, parted, fissure, opening, etc.; You can also check how other terms with “cleft” are called in your language: cleft chin, cleft palate, cleft hand/foot, etc.;

or you can make up a word fantasy-writer style and describe a cleft lip but give it a completely new name that fits the setting more - [Name]'s lip, [Some sort of deity]'s blessing, you can kinda do whatever (take a look at the Terms That Suck guide below first though).

*my go-to way of finding the medical term is going through English Wikipedia (yeah, I know, but it works for this) and switching the language to the one I need. The cleft lip and palate page has 55 languages, so there's a chance it's on there - if it is, you might potentially find a nicer synonym in the “other names”.

Now for my (very personal) guide on catching if a term Kinda Sucks because doctors have some... tendencies in how they name various conditions:

does it use a word that is just a synonym for evil, or otherwise immoral or broken?;

does it have an animal connotation? (hares, wolves, elephants, fish... there's so many);

does it have a monster/fantasy creature connotation? (i.e., Donohue syndrome being called leprechaunism, Hypertrichosis being called Werewolf disease, etc.);

does it just sound rude? (my native language uses the word “maw” to mean cleft palate, which is absurd);

is it straight up racist and/or xenophobic? (like most of the historic words for syphilis were just “[nationality] disease”).

There's obviously nuance to everything (“vitiligo” is considered neutral, despite being derived from the word for “blemish” in Latin) but as a vague framework I find these to be useful. Again: what feels good or neutral will probably be the better option over “animal face disease”.

I hope this helps,

mod Sasza

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

ten weeks left, five to go… two thirds of the way there! i am, indeed, le tired…. but it’s gonna be okay… this week is pretty full throttle but next week i’ll get at least one day off for thanksgiving, so that’s… something…

i had a major work win this week in that a kid i had been pulling my hair out over did WAY the fuck better than i thought he would on his first test sitting. it’s looking like he’s still going to take it again even though he has scores that are perfectly adequate for the schools he’s looking at, so… i am holding on to my most work-intensive client… but a) his sessions will no longer bum me out and b) i can finally feel confident that the 1 billion hours i have put into writing or compiling from various sources follow up problems because none of the one-stop-shop ones felt good enough have actually served a purpose and therefore i can feel less conflicted about my regrettably unkillable sense of professional integrity. two other kids also tested, one landing at “so close but not totally quite” and the other at honestly a little worse than i would have expected? but her next test date pretty far out so i’m not too stressed. (i am learning over time that the first couple times they take a test straight through, practice or real, it goes bad… sometimes they don’t improve despite my best efforts but even the ones that do wind up doing well almost always do worse than i expect for a while and then somehow pull it together through a process that remains mysterious even to me….)

i think i am going to try something this week which is to plan to work approximately 35 hours spread out approximately evenly. based on recent weeks this should be enough (and if it’s not enough i’ll know that soon enough to course correct) and i think going into the week with this intention will help with the part where like… there almost always is theoretically work i could be doing which is an annoying psychological cloud to have hovering around me. i feel like maybe aiming for “about 5 hours a day, including any sessions” will help me feel more balanced and hopefully more able to sort of compartmentalize and think occasionally of other matters lol. the trick with this kind of thing is not to let it oppress me under a rule of my own devising - it has often happened in the past that i find myself feeling totally insane about my struggle to live up to completely self-imposed expectations that don’y matter at all - but i feel like perhaps i am finally beginning to outgrow that tendency, because of how i have finally learned what it is like to feel actually pretty chill most of the time and how much i enjoy and cherish that feeling.

the other work related insight i have recently had is that i really do fucking hate getting up and having to do work before a set time (session) later that day, with the exception of just kind of gathering my materials digitally or physically for any sessions. updating the homework docs the morning after is both unavoidable sometimes and tolerable but it’s amazing how much worse it feels to prep a practice test i’m doing in 4 hours than one i’m doing even just as far away as tomorrow. i AM for the first time in a while going into this week going into monday fully prepped for all of tomorrow’s tutoring and ALSO caught up on admin work and it feels really nice and i hope that having a certain regular allotment of Work Time will make it easier for me to keep that up while also, like, doing laundry and stuff. (i find it hard to do multiple types of things a day so if i’m in a Chores Day then usually i’ll work as little as possible and then suddenly i have to prep a whole ACT by tomorrow… anyway)

the kitchen remains… acceptable! although i should at some point probably purchase “groceries.” room still very bad, is what it is. i only worked out a measly three times this week but at least one of them was full body day & another day was a hiit day that honestly was very fun but still has my calves knotted up three days later. i did not text g. bc i am a terrible friend. i did see the apprentice and it was not good and i did not mind bc jerbear ate as i knew he would and honestly sebstan was p. good too! i have started rereading jonathan strange & mr norrell primarily as a bedtime book bc it is a good inducement away from bedtime scrolling which has been a Problem, my sleep has NOT been great. actually that reminds me that i might start doing little mini versions of these nightly because i have come to really like this little sunday night ritual and the sense of closure it gives me on the week as well as optimism or at least fortitude for the week ahead, and i feel like it may be the case that doing a little “and this was the day that was” post may offer a helpful transition in moving into Bedtime Mode. (part of me is like, could i just do that in a journal…. but… the thing is i actually don’t think i could…. journal is very good for some things but it is not good in all the same ways as Blogging……… for me, an insane person)

[aalghul]

read boywonder and exploded died (in a bad way)

talia... what have they done to you... what do they always do to you... ‘there is no honour in assassin’s work’ talia... where are u... the apple of my eye, i adore her sm very close to sending pipebombs to GM everyday waow...

watching people talk about how good this was for talia feels like chewing glass. boy wonder was clearly written by someone who has not read anything involving talia prior to grant morrison and doesn't care about her outside of whatever can justify her becoming an abusive backstory for damian.

boy wonder completely disrespects her struggle during the time when she was so conflicted because she wanted to be loyal to her father but wasn't sure if she believed in him entirely anymore. the struggle existed because talia knew she would not abide by nor aid him if she did not agree with him. because talia has her own moral compass and beliefs that she follows. juni ba disregards this very important part of her journey to instead make her an entirely different character apparently did not disagree with ra's at any point before her own son was threatened (going as far as making her uncaring towards damian's former caretaker to show us how twisted her way of thinking is. mind you, this is supposedly the same talia who cried the first time she accidentally killed someone and has risked her life to help strangers, the JLA, jason todd, etc). she has to be turned into a different person just because boy wonder needs her to be framed as a somewhat sympathetic villain who gets what she deserves by having her son leave her for a better family. her "happy ending" is knowing that damian's other family is making him happy, which she never could because the story deems her incapable of that.

along these lines is another thing i found insulting: juni ba insinuating that talia's love for bruce may have been caused by talia wanting to please her father, who wanted bruce as an heir. when in reality, ra's only took notice of bruce after talia fell in love with bruce. it was because talia was outspoken enough in front of her father to bring up bruce that ra's cared about him at all. it was because talia had been off in cairo studying medicine that she had been caught up in a scheme that took her to bruce. all of those were her own choices, and juni ba wants us to question whether any of it was real because he doesn't believe talia has ever had agency. all because he himself clearly has never read talia outside of recent comics.

related to the above: juni ba insists talia wanted to be the heir to the league of assassins. pre-GM talia has never expressed this. she's never even implied it. from everything we've seen, it's pretty clear she would never want to nor would she able to stomach so much death. because it's canon that talia's heart hurts for everyone she sees killed. but, again, juni ba does not care about this whatsoever because his story is about damian and the bats. talia's characterization is always acceptable collateral damage when it comes to damian and the bats.

the more I think about it, the more I hate juni ba's misinterpretation of her. people so readily accept things like boy wonder and WFA when it comes to talia because they know so little about the most foundational parts of her character and it's really upsetting that big projects will continue to give such ooc stories as the best case scenario for talia. this is equivalent to someone writing a story where bruce decided to not take in dick or jason because the mission's more important than one kid. that would make bruce a different and less compelling character, right? that's exactly what happened to talia here (and in wfa and in everything GM wrote and in pretty much every story written since then). these are very integral parts of her character. if boy wonder as a story can't function without talia being so thoroughly destroyed? it was never a story worth telling (and it really isn't. because it's truly not a good story at all, which makes talia being wrecked for it even worse).

it makes me so angry because things like this are exactly why people don't see talia the same way they see selina or bruce or any other character ever! she continues to be pushed into the role of the harmful past who can only atone for her mistakes by now becoming an obsolete observer.

[jjkbambi]

hey! i hope you don’t mind me asking, but what’s your most controversial luigi take?

i have a lot of complicated opinions on luigi mangione’s case

i do think he could be capable of carrying this out. from the bits and pieces:

luigi’s tweet about japan, while clumsy, reflects an underlying interest in societal improvement, even if his execution often misses the mark. engaging with societal dynamics. only a month after traveling to japan and befriending locals, he put out a lengthy tweet calling for a cultural change: this pattern reveals a tendency to act impulsively but with good intentions, reflecting someone who wants to contribute to meaningful conversations but hasn’t quite mastered the delivery.

286 theory his twitter profile now sits at exactly 286 tweets, coincidentally aligning with breloom’s pokédex number (#286). google trends data for “breloom.” whether intentional or not, it adds an intriguing layer to his online presence.

fun note: rise in “breloom” google trends + word associations

the recurring number 286 ties to proverbs 28:6: “better is the poor who walks in his integrity than he who is crooked though he be rich.” he did confirm he’s an atheist but i think an argument could be made that he’s presenting this in a deliberately sadistic way, mocking religious people who would point to moral absolutes like “murder is wrong.”

last on 286 - it can be linked to a healthcare code used when appeals are denied for exceeding the time limit. the bullet casings meticulously carved out supports the idea this was an attack on the healthcare industry. could also be a signal that he’s reached his breaking point. could reflect frustration, or could even serve as a declaration that he’s done waiting for change or resolution. (as if he’s saying he’s had enough of delays, whether external or self-imposed, and is ready to act or confront whatever has been holding him back.)

everyone who met mangione spoke highly of him as a friend. he was cared for them very openly, and was deeply interested in conversations about mental health and even worked as a head counselor at stanford.

to say the least: cutting everyone on his life off before the murder seems a bit suspicious

and most of all, his sudden outburst outside the courtroom just doesn’t make sense if he is innocent.

my less supported opinion is that this is all a bit too meticulously planned out. idk. i just don’t think he worked alone.

…. i do think someone this smart and pretentious would come up with an insane plan to take down the “root of the problem” — realistically, i don’t think it would be as straightforward as described in his alleged manifesto. his reddit history suggests he has been struggling with brain fog since college, which would make carrying out this mission alone even more challenging.

last and least important, i don’t think the monopoly money was planted by him at the park, either. seems like a waste of time. Definitely feels like funny thing a New Yorker would do to piss off the NYPD

[colorisbyshe]

How can you justify voting in this election?

Quite easily.

I do not vote while worrying about myself. By that I mean, I'm not voting to ensure I'm a good person. I am not that self centered. If this election is a stain on my soul, so fucking be it. It's not about me. If I'm a lesser person for what I have done to survive, the same way we're all lesser people for not doing EVERY SINGLE THING WE CAN EVERY SINGLE DAY to help other people, so be it.

I see this election as a form of survival. I am voting to keep as many people alive as possible. You when you're on a plane and they say put on your mask before you put on your child's or anyone else that can't? Same energy. More people survive when more people can put on their masks. Mutual aid, direct action, civil disobedience, things more extreme can all be easier and more effective with the right electorate.

I don't see voting as a cure all. I think of voting as a small, small step in a much larger plan. Voting is... a day, max. Voting is a couple hours of research into ALL of the candidates and measures on the ballot (spread out over an entire election cycle) and, depending on where you are, either a couple minutes or a couple hours in line. It could be a couple minutes filling in and dropping off a ballot. It does not get in the way of spending the rest of the year/term doing more directly impactful things.

Actual activists, who are on the streets and have dedicated their lives to good work, have encouraged people to vote. No one posts about it here but like... actual activists have been saying "It's horrible that these are our choices and yet we still must choose." Like... I don't really presume to know better than the people who have actually gone up to Kamala and begged her to change her ways.

Voter suppression, gerrymandering, and other forms of violence and disenfranchisement against potential voters are all proof that voting does matter, even when it doesn't feel like it.

I recognize "not enough of a difference between candidates" isn't the same as "no difference." The difference is thousands upon thousands of lives, tbh. But, if nothing else, you should be concerned about the fate of the supreme court right now.

Voting is not about what feels good. It's about what keeps things from getting even worse. That's it.

The conversation, the election, is going to happen whether or not your voice is involved. Why would you concede your spot on the table to someone you view as less moral than yourself? Why would you let someone else speak up over you while you stay mum?

And, again, voting today or any other day does not take any meaningful time or effort away from doing more impactful work. There's literally nothing to lose by voting today besides your self-obsessed sense of integrity.

Integrity doesn't' save lives, doesn't feed people, don't affect the supreme court, doesn't impact debt or the healthcare system. It's not going with these people to the grave or to the hospital or to school. Integrity isn't going to keep climate change at bay.

I'm also too cognizant of actual reality and not tumblr world to think a Trump presidency would be identical to a Kamala presidency. Like... I'm sorry, I do think Kamala is a terrible choice, I do think Biden has been a terrible president, and yet I do know it can be worse.

Most people I voted for aren't as different as they should be from their competitors. That weighs heavily on me. It agonizes me that we do not have good choices.

But we (speaking broadly, obviously I have noted some people ARE disenfranchised) still do have choices and there are still differences. And those differences include whether or not some people eat, whether some people get medical treatment, whether or not some people die.

Who the fuck am I to say let them die so I can feel good about myself and say I "taught the democrats a lesson" by not voting them (which is not a thing that has EVER worked, btw, democrats do not learn from you trying to rub their nose on the mess they made)

I'm not interested in feeling good about myself at anyone else's expense.

If you can't do it, no judgment. I do recognize how horrific this entire situation is. I'm just not built like that. Like if you really, really can't do it, so be it. If Kamala loses, it's her fault for being so fucking awful.

But... idk man. If even one additional person lives under her that would've died under Trump, I can't turn away from them. Personally.

[sharpth1ng]

"chatgpt writing is bad because you can tell when it's chatgpt writing because chatgpt writing is bad". in reality the competent kids are using chatgpt well and the incompetent kids are using chatgpt poorly... like with any other tool.

It's not just like other tools. Calculators and computers and other kinds of automation don't require you to steal the hard work of other people who deserve recognition and compensation. I dont know why I have to keep reminding people of this.

It also uses an exorbitant amount of energy and water during an environmental crisis and it's been linked to declining cognitive skills. The competent kids are becoming less competent by using it and they're fucked when we require in-class essays.

Specifically, it can enhance your writing output and confidence but it decreases creativity, originality, critical thinking, reading comprehension, and makes you prone to data bias. Remember, AI privileges the most common answers, which are often out of date and wrong when it comes to scientific and sociological data. This results in reproduction of racism and sexist ideas, because guess whats common on the internet? Racism and sexism!

Heres a source (its a meta-analysis, so it aggregates data from a collection of studies. This means it has better statistical power than any single study, which could have been biased in a number of ways. Meta analysis= more data points, more data points= higher accuracy).

This study also considers positives of AI by the way, as noted it can increase writing efficiency but the downsides and ethical issues don't make that worthwhile in my opinion. We can and should enhance writing and confidence in other ways.

Heres another source:

The issue here is that if you rely on AI consistently, certain skills start to atrophy. So what happens when you can't use it?

Im not completely against all AI, there is legitimate possibility for ethical usage when its trained on paid for data sets and used for specific purpose. Ive seen good evidence for use in medical fields, and for enhancing language learning in certain ways. If we can find a way to reduce the energy and water consumption then cool.

But when you write essays with chatgpt you're just robbing yourself an opportunity to exercise valuable cognitive muscles and you're also robbing millions of people of the fruit of their own intellectual and creative property. Also like, on a purely aesthetic level it has such boring prose, it makes you sound exactly like everyone else and I actually appreciate a distinctive voice in a piece of writing.

It also often fails to cite ideas that belong to other people, which can get you an academic violation for plagiarism even if your writing isn't identified as AI. And by the way, AI detection software is only going to keep getting better in tandem with AI.

All that said it really doesn't matter to me how good it gets at faking human or how good people get at using it, I'm never going to support it because again, it requires mass scale intellectual theft and (at least currently) it involves an unnecessary energy expenditure. Like it's really not that complicated.

At the end of the day I would much rather know that I did my work. I feel pride in my writing because I know I chose every word, and because integrity matters to me.

This is the last post I'm making about this. If you send me another ask I'll block you and delete it. This space is meant to be fun for me and I don't want to engage in more bullshit discourse here.

[subsystems]

Hello -

As a person with DID who has successfully fused alters/parts, do you have any information, resources, or advice for systems hoping to do the same?

My system is hoping to reach a point where we can act and function as one, but it’s been horrible trying to find resources on fusion. Nearly every article about fusion we could find places this second to functional multiplicity and seems to confuse fusion and integration. Or worse, claims that fusion is a way to kill alters!

Our therapist has been immensely helpful, but we find ourselves wanting to read more about this process or hear from others who have successfully managed a fusion. Any help would be greatly appreciated - thank you!

Hi, anon. I'm so sorry that you've been struggling to find resources on your desired recovery. I went through that struggle too, it's hard. I'm glad you have a therapist to help you out through all of this.

If you want, I've talked about my own experience with final fusion on this blog and I'm always open to talking about it more if there's anything in particular you want to hear about!

Definitely seek out other systems who have experience with partial/full fusion, too. Off the top of my head, there's @system-of-a-feather, @reimeichan, @hiiragi7, and @smokee78 (hope it's okay to tag you guys!). They haven't been active recently, but back when I was working towards final fusion, @puppydeathfarts made posts that I found really helpful. If there's anyone else who has experience with partial/full fusion, though, please leave a comment!

I also recommend checking out Rachel Downing's experience with final fusion/full integration and Jess's from Multiplicity & Me:

Their experiences helped me feel less alone when I was pursuing final fusion. There was also another person, but unfortunately they left the community due to harassment and deleted their posts. I will forever for grateful to all of them for being brave enough to share this vulnerable and personal part of their lives, they've certainly given me the strength to share my own.

As for articles, unfortunately I don't know of too many that don't stigmatize final fusion. DID-research offers a good summary of final fusion and a few interesting links to check out here.

You can find a bunch of free downloads for self-help books here. Out of all of them, I feel like Coping with Trauma-related Dissociation is a great self-help book for people who are a being supported by a therapist and interested in pursuing harmony and stronger integration within their dissociative system. I don't think it would've been possible for me to achieve final fusion or even functional multiplicity without the techniques I learned from this book. I cannot emphasize how useful it is!

Some extra things from me:

You have to work with your parts, first. You can't skip ahead to fusion. Aim to pave for understanding, acceptance, and harmony within your system. Fusion, if you want it, is the natural progression to that!

There are ways to test out fusion. Talk to your therapist about "blending" (it's also described in the coping book, but definitely mention it to your therapist). You can test out what it's like to be fused as many times as you want.

Fusion can feel weird at first. It shouldn't feel bad, but it can be strange. It took me time to get used to it. It can also feel differently depending on what stage of recovery you're in... ->

When I still had amnesia and less co-operation in my system, fusions slid under the radar and surprised the hell out of me! As I continued lowering those dissociative barriers, developing better communication and co-consciousness as a system, things become way clearer.

After you become fully fused for the first time, it's completely okay if you fall apart a few times before it really sticks! Final fusion is a process, not a destination.

You're allowed to choose whatever labels you want after final fusion. Call yourself a system or plural or say you've become a singlet or whatever you want. It's also okay to go unlabeled!

Your parts aren't gone after final fusion, but that separation is gone and it's okay if you need to mourn that. Sometimes I miss what it was like being fragmented. It's not because I want to be fragmented again, but because that was how I lived my entire life up until now, it was what was most natural to me, and it had its good and bad sides. I'm thankful for it because it was that separation which allowed me to survive! I view this similarly to how it was like to move recently. Sometimes I miss my old home, but that doesn't mean I want to go back or that I'm not happier where I am now. Things can be complicated like that!

After final fusion, you continue to learn new things about yourself and your system. It's a new journey in of itself -- a very, very wonderful one. 💚

I hope you find something helpful here. Either way, know that you are not alone on this journey. I support you whole-heartedly. Good luck with everything!

- Sunflower

[matthyeu]

why they can't be with you ― ot9.

pairing ⇢ ot9!zb1 x gn!reader 

genre ⇢ angst, heavy angst

warnings ⇢ mentions of food/eating in jiwoong’s

word count ⇢ 3k (about 0.3-0.35k per member)

synopsis ⇢ as much as the boys love you, they know they cannot have you.

ع˖⁺𖤐ミ KIM JIWOONG - your circumstances were not favorable.

the two of you met at a wedding. you were both at the age where people around you began getting married, so it wasn’t surprising when jiwoong found himself with yet another invitation to a wedding. of course, he had to attend. who didn’t attend their friends’ weddings?

it was one of the best choices of his life, for it was where he met you, a friend from the other side of the wedding. 

he had seen you first at the ceremony, sitting beside you as the seating arrangement had told him. it seemed they wanted to integrate both sides instead of separating them. that way, it would have been less awkward getting to know people to make the whole experience more comfortable. 

and they were right. sitting next to you had let him know more about you, even if you didn’t speak. the way you cried for your friend and stood to clap showed how kind you were. you were someone he wanted to get close to in a sea of people he did not know. 

you two hit it off like old friends at the reception, sharing life stories about what you knew about the newlyweds. you talked for what seemed like eons, only pausing momentarily to eat your food. jiwoong knew you two had hit it off perfectly, and he wanted to get to know you more outside of the wedding setting. 

alas, he found out that was not possible during your dance. “oh how i wish i could stay here for longer,” you briskly murmured. 

“hm?” he asked as he held onto your waist. 

“i’m not from here,” you admitted, “i flew out here for my friend’s wedding and i ought to be going back home soon. thank you for making this day wonderful though, jiwoong. i was very afraid of being in a foreign country where i didn’t know anyone. you made my stay very enjoyable.” 

there was nothing he could do but accept it was not meant to be. “it was my pleasure.”

ع˖⁺𖤐ミ ZHANG HAO - you both could not commit to it. 

although you loved each other dearly, there were some things that were never meant to work out. 

the first time such feelings were unveiled was upon your university graduation. so many people throughout the years had confessed their feelings to him and been rejected, but you felt if you never tried, you would have regretted it for the rest of your life. 

the circumstance was a surprise to both of you. hao never thought he would actually utter anything other than a rejection. he was far too focused on other things to be caught up in a relationship, but you were the only one he could actually see himself with.

“let’s wait it out until we are both more free for each other.” 

he didn’t anticipate the waiting to be long, a couple weeks or maybe even a few months at most. however, it had been about seven months since. hao had been busy, but so have you. you hadn’t texted him wondering about what he mentioned during your graduation. 

after thinking about it more, he began to see less for the two of you in the future. he was far too busy to make time for you, so why would he give the worst of himself to you? he didn’t want to show you that part of him, the part that didn’t have time for you. when accepting your confession, he only wanted to give you his best. 

so that’s why he called you to explain himself, exactly why he knew it wouldn’t work out between you two. 

“i’m glad you told me. admittedly, i don’t haven’t the time to think about this much either, but you made great points. if we want to love each other, we should wait until we have the time to do so. i can’t commit either, so i think this is for the better.” 

“i’m glad you understand.” 

“thanks for being a wonderful-almost boyfriend.” 

“same goes to you.” 

ع˖⁺𖤐ミ SUNG HANBIN - he wanted to see his friend happy.

when you approached hanbin, he really thought it would be his chance. he had been in love with you for times he could not even count, and this could have been the time where he found out you felt the same way. well, he was wrong. 

“hanbin, could you…help me get with your friend?” 

oh it was what he feared would happen. his friend had spoken about you countless times before, proclaiming their interest in you, not knowing that he felt the same way about you. though, for the sake of the friend, hanbin continued to listen. sometimes he did feel bad that he wished everything would be more in his favor, but now that he knew they were not, he could not  refuse your request. 

“sure, i can do that.” 

after all, why ruin his friend’s happiness just because the one he liked didn’t like him back? 

it was a series of long weeks for hanbin, all of them filled with assisting you and his friend in realizing the two of you reciprocated the same feelings. many planned “random” run-ins. many nights of coaching you about the things his friend liked. many conversations to his friend where he dropped your name.

and when he received that text from you, a picture of you and his friend enjoying a picnic at the local park, he knew he had accomplished what he started. however, he didn’t have the energy to even respond to your text to congratulate the two of you on your relationship. 

although he was happy for both you and his friend, there would always be a knot in his heart, a knot screaming “what if.”

what if you had been interested in him instead of his friend. 

what if he had said no. 

what if he wasn’t as nice as he was to feel obligated to help his friend out. 

ع˖⁺𖤐ミ SEOK MATTHEW - he had always been in the friendzone.

matthew’s love for you started long before he knew what love was, when you first became friends in preschool, vowing to marry each other when you two grew up because of how compatible the two of you were. 

of course, it was just a proclamation from preschoolers who talked way too much for how small mouths were. it was something most people wouldn’t remember. after all, the first few years were often blocked out by the brain, many barely even able to remember their first friend, their first partner in crime. 

not matthew though. because you had been around him all his life, he could never forget the small things you did. he noticed far too much for a young boy who had a short attention span. he didn’t understand why he remembered all of it too well until he understood he had always been in love with you. 

you, however, did not seem to remember anything from that time, let alone the silly pact you made. matthew never brought it up though since if it wasn’t that important for you to remember, it was probably not something serious. he was probably not as serious to you as you were to him. he knew you only ever saw him as a friend. 

even then, somehow he thought your perspective would be different. 

“hey look, it’s us when we were in preschool,” you commented upon entering his home, picking up the framed picture from the living room table that was littered with several pictures. 

“yeah, we just clicked then and always have been together since.” 

“remember when we made that pact to marry each other when we grew older?” you pondered. 

his heart dropped. so you did remember? it was important to you? 

he only nodded his head in response. 

“we were such dumb kids then. you can’t just marry someone because they’re like you. it would be so weird dating someone you’ve known all your life, not to mention marrying them.” 

oh. so that’s why you remembered such a silly pact. because that’s what it was to you: silly and nothing more. 

he dryly laughed. “yeah, what dumb kids.” 

ع˖⁺𖤐ミ KIM TAERAE - he could only love from afar. 

you knew nothing about kim taerae, but he knew a lot about you. he knew your favorite color, the color almost all your belongings were. he knew the foods you liked and didn’t like from the way you would pick some off your plate and devour others. he knew your small habits. 

this wasn’t to say taerae was weirdly obsessed with you. this was to say that he found a lot of interest in you, someone who always found your way wound up in his life. it seemed everywhere he went, you were there. 

somewhere along the way, he developed some sort of feelings for you. it felt silly for him to say he was in love with you, a random person that had wandered into the background of his life. it was true though. there was something about you that lured him in. you just seemed like someone who would be fun to be around. he used to think there could be some way for him to muster up the courage to talk to you. 

however, he quickly found out it was impossible, at least in the way he originally intended. 

you already had someone else to be that person he hoped he could be in his head. he had seen the other man come up to you on several occasions during the times you found yourself in his line of view. 

and eventually that man was entering that line of view with you, hand in hand. your eyes seemed to shine brighter when you looked at him. 

sometimes taerae thought about if he hadn’t just been a faraway admirer. maybe the one you were currently seeing used to be like him, someone who found you admirable because you waltzed into their life like nothing. maybe that could have been him. however, he was a coward, so it could never be him. 

ع˖⁺𖤐ミ SHEN QUANRUI (RICKY) - you saw him as your little brother.

ricky had known your brother since the 3rd grade, so he became a frequent visitor at your home.  he especially loved it when you were at home, his friend’s older sibling of four years. 

he loved it when you would pause your homework to head downstairs whenever you heard the two of them come through the door. he loved it when you would walk with them to places when your parents were wary of two young boys walking alone. he loved it when you drove them around places immediately after getting your license, laughing and sharing all the wonderful memories

and somewhere along the way, he began to love you. 

which was why it was hard for him when you started to attend university far away from your hometown. it meant that he would only see you a couple times a year, when you would come home for holidays or for summer. 

that was why this time, now that he was an adult, he really wanted to show you how much he had really grown over the years, how he wasn’t the elementary school student you once knew.

it was the holiday season, so he found himself at your house more, both hanging out with your brother and waiting for you to come home. 

at the click of the door opening, his ears knew it was you. even as your brother called out to him, nothing could stop him from rushing down the stairs to see you, a smile forming across your face once you noticed him. 

“ricky!” you exclaimed, holding your arms out for a hug. 

as he pulled away, there were so many things he wanted to say, but something suddenly stopped all of it from coming out. 

“honey, where do you want me to put these things?” an unknown voice asked as they entered the home, “oh who’s this?” 

ricky looked at the newcomer and then back at you. was this…? 

“oh he’s one of my brother’s friends. we’ve known each other for so long that he’s basically also my brother,” you explained before turning back to him, “ricky, this is my fiance.” 

ع˖⁺𖤐ミ KIM GYUVIN - he realized too late. 

“i have something embarrassing to admit.” 

he turned his head to you. it was late at night at your house. you both had built a blanket fort while you watched movies. though, the movies eventually got boring, so you two opted for talking with the tv as background noise. 

he raised an eyebrow. he wondered what this “embarrassing” thing was. typically he associated you and “embarrassing” as something cute as he always found your declared embarrassing moments to be some of your cutest. it was what he had come to find out as he began to take more interest in you as more than a friend. 

“i used to have a crush on you.” 

his ears immediately perked up upon hearing both the words “crushed” and “used to” in the same sentence. what? 

“huh?” 

you gasped. “oh, you really didn’t know. i tried to make it obvious, but it was about a year ago. i really tried to give you hints. i thought you were ignoring me because you weren’t interested, but i guess you never noticed them anyway.” 

he thought back to the year prior, trying to remember any moments that stuck out to him. that’s when he realized it all. the way the vending machine would always give you an extra drink. the way you would always sit closer to him if anyone sat on your other side, even if there was perfectly enough space. the way you laughed at his jokes that weren’t really jokes. how could he not see it all then?

“you really used to?” he asked for confirmation. 

you nodded but made sure to wave your hand to dismiss the idea. “that was a year ago. i got over you when i realized you probably didn’t like me back. i hope that doesn’t make things weird between us.” 

oh but it did. it made everything weird for him. if he had seen everything you were doing, he could have had you with him. now, however, it was too late for that. you had already moved on while he was stuck on you. 

ع˖⁺𖤐ミ PARK GUNWOOK - he thought you deserved better. 

gunwook knows when you love someone so much, you know what they deserve, and sometimes, you have to own up that you are not what they deserve. 

not in a way that meant he was too good for you. no, in a way that you were too good for him. you were able to give him everything he ever desired when loving someone, but he always felt he could never return the favor. everything you did seemed to be too good, too good for him to even try to do the same for you. 

whenever he did, he continuously thought about how you deserved someone who could actually do these things casually, someone who didn’t have to worry about returning your kindness because they already did that on their own. it was never a chore for him to do nice things for you, but it was the fact that they didn’t come naturally for him that bothered him. 

you effortlessly knew everything to make him better. you never had to try with your actions because you were the kind of person who understood him enough to know the ways to comfort him. 

yet he knew nothing about you, at least nothing he could do to love you in the same way you loved him. he thought too much about it. the intrusive thoughts soon overtook him until the pain was unbearable. 

you deserved the best, and the best was not with him. 

it was why he called you out of your home one evening to explain everything to you. he wanted to you find your own person who could treat you in the way a relationship should be, two-sided. 

“if you care so much about me in this way, doesn’t that mean you do care enough?” you asked once he finished his spiel about not being good enough for you. 

no. that did not mean it. if he continued on like this, he would only hurt you more. this was the only thing he could do to actually care for you. he needed to let you go. 

ع˖⁺𖤐ミ HAN YUJIN - you both were too young to understand love

“i like you.” 

yujin thought it would be easy like that, telling the person he liked how he felt, the feelings that had been bothering him for the past months. he wasn’t even sure really what they meant, but it had been his friend to clarify for him. 

“you’re in love.” but what really was love? he didn’t know. 

“no you don’t.”

and it seemed you didn’t know either. 

embarrassed, yujin didn’t know what to say after your flat-out rejection. it was the end of the school day when he told you, both of you being put on cleaning duty that day. he hadn’t expected his confession to be while sweeping the classroom, but his friend had urged him to tell you as soon as possible. now he was regretting ever following such advice. 

“what?” it was all he could say to express his confusion. 

you paused your sweeping, leaning forward onto the broom for support as you explained yourself. “yujin, how can you be so sure that’s how you feel. love is so ambiguous. we’re only 16. there’s a whole life ahead of us for those types of romantic endeavors. your first experience shouldn’t be wasted on me, someone who doesn’t even know what love is. i don’t even know if i feel that way about you. i just don’t know anything. i just think you’re mistaking it for something else. we’re in this age where we want to explore, but i don’t think this is what’s best, whether it’s what you want or not.”

your words were moving, and it really had him thinking. was this love? did he feel love for you? when he could barely answer the questions in his own head, he knew you were right. you both were both too young for these matters, so why bother with it. he should just focus on the high school experience with you as his friend. 

only future him could see what he had back then truly was love, but he was too young to understand what that feeling in his chest was.