#in regards to how the codes and stuff worked. thats the only thing i have going for me. pure muscle memory and willpower

[aria0fgold]

I've been grabbing random Shimeji that I stumble into which has customized animations to examine how the creators added to the code and I can't believe I'm lowkey relearning programming cuz of this.

[astronautical-v]

Dumping almost every thought i have about the dwemer in an incoherent ramble because i have too many ideas and nothing to do with them. I have only played skyrim and know some about morrowind and read up on a ton of lore so im probably way off in a lot of places

Was thinking about the "fifteen-and-one sacred tones" that the dwemer mention and im trying to think. What the hell does that even mean? Obviously its reminiscent of the "eight-and-one" divines which implies its something to do with the aedra and daedra. So its either the eight divines (since talos wasnt a thing yet) and eight of the daedric princes OR all sixteen daedric princes. Since there just so happen to sixteen of them (as of then. Ithelia wouldnt have been known by them or anyone else around that time anyway). But then that begs the question, whos the "and one"? Whos the outlier? Im guessing either sheogorath or malacath. Sheogorath bc hes the daedric prince of madness and therefore the least predictable of them all, but also because sheogorath is also jyggalag, making him different from the rest of the daedric princes, as well as the fact that a mortal can become sheogorath just as tiber septim could become a god. Malacath because he used to be trinimac, and trinimac is present in im pretty sure every elven pantheon, and the dwemer, despite not believing in the divinity of the aedra or daedra, are very much elves, and would probably have known about trinimac just because of other mer. If malacath used to be a god, then it would make sense that the dwemer would consider him to be an outlier. Supposedly even other cultures dont always see malacath as a real daedric prince either, and malacath himself has to do with those who are scorned, othered, etc.

The dwemer probably viewed the daedra and aedra as nothing more than energies, the tones that make up the world (or something like that), but focused less of the divines and more on the daedra because the daedric princes are MUCH more present and involved on mundus than the aedra tend to be. The dwemer simply did not believe they were anything worth worshipping, or even considering to be above them. They recognized the power that they had, though, which is why they were called the "sacred" tones. I guess. I dunno. Alternatively, it was the eight divines and 8 daedric princes, but i dont know which of them they would be.

And regarding the term "fifteen-and-one", i was wondering what the 16 tones could possibly have an equivalent to in real life. I also wondered how they programmed any of their machines to do what they wanted, then somewhat jokingly came to the conclusion that they used some kind of dial-up and transmitted data via sound. But then doing a bit of research i found this:

16 tones. Crazy. Wow. Felt like i hit a revelation. Unfortunately i dont understand how that stuff works so i was reading a whole lotta words and not absorbing that much of them (i am not technologically adept). But the mention of radio was also really important because theres plenty of proof that the dwemer DID in fact have radio technology. Theres an item called "dwemer coherer", and a coherer is a really really old form of radio communication that basically only really worked for morse code messages and kinda sucked at it, but it was radio. And thats huge.

Regarding the radio stuff, i do think the dwemer had actual telepathy but that they also used radio. I think maybe their telepathy just wasnt as long range and probably like using a walkie-talkie but with their minds. Idk. I think the only way that kagrenac couldve used "the calling" to affect EVERY dwemer ever is if it was some sort of direct mental connection, and if every dwemer had that ability it would explain how it worked. Maybe kagrenac just amplified it somehow bc of the heart. And it would explain why yagrum bagarn wasnt affected, because if it wasnt some sort of telepathy then whatever kagrenac did with the heart would have simply had to affect every dwemer regardless of where they were. But since yagrum wasnt in mundus at the time, the calling never reached him, so he wasnt affected, and i just think that means it had to be telepathy. Idk im not explaining this point well but i hope it makes some amount of sense.

With that all said i think if they did have telepathy i also think their ears would be pointer and more mobile. Like radio antenna. Just because its fun to think about. They can "tune in" and out of other peoples... callings? I guess? Idk. They probably used radio primarily for longer distance communication.

With all the stuff about sound, it brings me to the falmer. I dont know why the dwemer did that to the falmer and im not sure if they were already all fucked up by the time the dwemer disappeared but im pretty sure they werent. But thinking about that thing in eso that they just had a huge machine that could make people go crazy and even mind control them, as well as in skyrim on solstheim that guy who was losing his mind over some weird dwemer thing under his house that emits a really deep sound if you listenclosely and ignore the steam pump sound (though i have no idea what "fire from the deep" could possibly mean, other than dwemer lived underground and had forges. Idk), their usage of tones was really for everything. They could probably hear a wider range of frequencies than other races and observed the effects of those frequencies on other people. Consider how old structures and machines irl produce very low frequency sounds that can and do affect the mind.

The dwemer very much could have used infrasound in their own technology for various reasons, but its probably what made the falmer what they are today. And, also likely, that the lack of maintenance of machines and whatever (since all the dwemer disappeared and automatons can only do so much) caused them to go "out of tune" and probably produce more infrasound that is impossible for anyone other than a dwemer to hear, which would have greatly affected the falmer mentally. Thinking about how gelebor notes that the falmer seem to have a "rise in intelligence" recently is probably because the falmer in the forgotten vale are so far from any dwemer ruin that they arent being affected by the infrasound they produce. Im sure infrasound alone wouldnt have caused such a huge chance in a whole race but this is also fantasy magic world so im saying this all as the dwemer had some elder scrolls world equivalent of it. The falmer developing sensitive hearing was maybe a way that their bodies tried to adjust to the infrasound so as to not be driven completely insane by it, along with aiding their navigation while blind.

And since this is fantasy magic land, this all also reminds me of string theory. The theory that everything that ever exists is made up of little one-dimensional strings, closed or open, that vibrate. And well sound is a vibration and theres a connection there that i havent fully understood to think through but it would help explain why theyre so atheistic in a world where gods are very much real. They just think everything is a form of energy that they are trying to figure out how to harness. And they succeeded in a lot of ways. If everything is made of vibrating energy, or tones, then you can simply make other tones and do stuff with that. Does that make sense? I dont know how to explain exactly what i mean. They probably had tone tech that helped them with excavation and whatnot. Breaking stones with sound. Idk. You can even shatter kidney stones with sound. Its pretty cool.

Also i think the dwemer ate a lot of mushrooms as their primary cuisine. It only makes sense. Living in places that have mushrooms everywhere. Probably how they knew about the toxic mushrooms that blind you if you eat them. Also they had a mushroom farm in blackreach.

I like to imagine the dwemer singing. Thats probably not how they did tonal architecture stuff but its fun to imagine they could do that vocally anyway. Idk

Uhh i dont think i have anything else i remember thinking about tbh. Im so interested in how their tech works and what they used it all for. Worldbuilding type of stuff. I dont know what to think about the soul gems or whatever the hell is going on with kagrenzel or the lexicon in avanchnzel. But yeah

[tismcosmology]

ive been reading a book on human and primate evolution called the first idea (by greenspan and shanker), specifically about the evolution from a non-sentient animal to an animal thats capable of like, going to the moon, and i figured id brain dump some of my thoughts about it here because. theres a lot

im pretty sure this book is about as old as I am which is WILD bc i was baffled by how much shit in here i just did not know about. idk how much of that is because i never researched super deep into some of these topics, and how much is just bc this wasnt scientifically accepted fully when it was published, but still.

The heart of the book really is the authors model of the development/evolution of intelligence, as thats the bit that is constantly pulled up and referenced as you work your way through human development, psychology, (paleo)anthropology, sociology, etc etc. They hypothesize that while humans are born with the genetic and biological capability for things like language and logical thought, its not inherent, and are instead developed slowly over the first years of a childs life through sustained emotional regulation with their caregiver. I could never explain it as well as they do, but the jist is that the first step to developing intelligence is symbol formation (being able to seperate the concept of "mom" from the person "mom"), and the dual coding of experiences (a baby experiences a sound as both loud and frightening, or soft and soothing. both objective and subjective).

Theres 3 parts, the authors walk you through a shiiit load of stuff.

Early human development, focusing on the role of emotions and caregiving in healthy neurological development. They focus a lot on ages 0-2, but do discuss neurological health and stages of development from birth til death. The main point put across here is an argument against determinism in regards to human evolution. ie that the process of a child developing language and logical thinking is not coded in their genes, but rather a dynamic learning process between a child and its caregivers using emotional signaling (conveying emotional states using non-verbal communication), as well as generally outlining their model, the different stages of development, and how it works. Theres also a few chapters on their model applied to autism spectrum disorder development

Primate evolution (mostly). There was a large focus on the bonobo ape Kanzi (who, if you know anything about ape language studies, uses a lexigram board to communicate quite well) as one of the authors had worked with Kanzi at some point and was able to learn from him. Theres a Lot of really cool personal accounts from the author that were incredible to read. Of course also touching on chimp hunting practices and other primate behaviours, and then connecting it all back to the same model of a dynamic learning process between child and caregiver, and showing that all primates have a developed intelligence that can be placed at a level roughly corresponding with various ages of human children. insane. ofc they then go through and argue their case against the many other hypothesis for human evolution. very engaging read

(2.5.) theres also a lot of information in this part about ASD, coming from one of the authors who worked extensively with high support autistic kids, particularly in teaching them how to form and use symbolic ideas, and how to use those as a basis for learning language. They use their model and explain ASD as a breakdown of the ability for a child to engage in this dynamic emotional process that is required for functional development.

Group cohesion and the social structure. to be fair, im only about 3 chapters into this part, but the segments I have read have done an incredible job at both describing the current understanding of why and how social groups form and work (or dont work), and then applying everything previously stated to much more 'current' political groups. This part seems to be leaning away from anthropology and more towards sociology and political science oddly enough, but im very excited to finish it

[404theepilogue]

Im not sure really what to do or say but i want to just verbalise it and ask for help.

Im very scared right now. My physical health has never been worse, my mental health is dangerously unstable, and my work situation is bleak.

I told you that i missed work on monday, well it’s because i had slept in (or rather, passed out from exhaustion) because of the fact while my frequent insomnia and health stuff makes it difficult to sleep, the stress has been so high recently i cannot even fully sleep, like i will be half aware the whole time like im going to be attacked. My anxiety regarding work has mounted to unmanageable levels as every day and night is spent worrying about if im going to be well enough to work and if i will have a mishap like monday.

Work has issued me a first written warning as a code of conduct breach as i missed work on Monday. This understandably is deeply upsetting and disappointing to me, Kay was extremely apologetic but unfortunately its out of her hands as HR deals with the conduct policy, shes really one of the few people i think that actively supports me at work (excluding emma of course). However if another instance of any form of lateness occurs within the next 6 months this will escalate the disciplinary warning.

I spent quite a lot of my shift yesterday in tears because it feels like im a crushing disappointment to not be able to cope with life.

Ive been reflecting a lot recently because of how ill and stressed ive felt constantly and mentally speaking i dont want this anymore i dont want to scrape through while my health degrades further, i want to get better i want to be able to regain control of my life and recover. This is a notable change as you know i usually am a cynical person and will try and look for a way out rather than a solution.

All this to say really that im not sure where to go right now in life, it feels like i am making the choice between healing or pushing on to my detriment.

Of course the problem arises that, we live in a capitalist society and constant money is required to be able to live, im just unsure of how to reach a compromise where im not literally running my life into a situation i cannot get out of. This is not some random laziness i hate that i have to say this at all, i wish i could push on and let you retire and me make the money because you deserve a break more than me, but my body just cannot comply with what im pushing it to do and its shutting down.

I know i need to focus on healing properly, not just run myself into a burnout- take 2 months off work, push through again and rinse repeat, because the last few years have shown that just doesnt work.

Im too tired to fight or even knlw what is best for work, they have accommodated so much and the expectations from them are that i will eventually get back to doing my full role, from the office, with the phone etc. and its going to be pushed by rachel, kay has been pushing back deadlines and things that would ultimately be impossible for me but she can only do so much and who knlws what will happen.

Im so tired of feeling so bad i want to die, im so tired of being constantly in fight or flight no matter what i do. And im so tired of looking at myself in tge mirror and seeing the toll these have taken on me, my skins getting worse and i know it’s exacerbated by stress, because thats what triggered the first really really bad outbreak back when it was on my feet.

Idk, i just needed to say this and let you know about the whole work thing. Im sorry if this sounds like whining, i really dont mean to i just really needed to say what has been going through my mind the past few years

And i still was fired.

[westmansion]

just talking excuse me/

im seeing TOO MUCH lately about living and becoming who you want to be etc and i have so much planned if i could only get the push i need and im making the efforts to get it (medication that works, plans to move out etc etc) but i still feel like im just to passive about everything even in regard to getting help

like big plan no1 is medication to actually get me focused and to regain the ability to just DO STUFF cause i havent been able to just create or enjoy things normally in years because im just so out of it, its not a case of expectations anymore or worrying about skill its a literal block mental or otherwise and theres really no other answer at this point because its beyond me

big plan 2 is simply finally making my neocities becuase i can feel that making that place to finally put out all the stuff thats in my head will do so much for me even if its just fan stuff at first but i can feel that it will sincerely help me regain some portion of my life lost to being too worried about my art being bad and being embarrassed to talk etc etc etc, i just genuinely cannot get past the first step cause i cannot focus long enough, theres plenty of refs and help for coding and the like but its just me being unable to focus and process it and sticking to it that has me stuck

ANYWAYS im not entirely sure why im writing all this or who im talking to it might be this new "shift" cause the internets falling apart and i feel bad about potential friends i couldve had or things ive couldve done, none of its really lost forever but it is still a significant period of time that ive lost because ive just become passive and nothing else

saying aloud to anyone or everyone i apologize for being just so passive towards everything and everyone all of these years, its my own fault for not doing a thing, me being stuck is no one elses problem but my own but i cant deny that its the reason for it, i sat for too long thinking "once i get there then i can actually be myself" as if having something to show for myself is required to be a person, planning on being a person and actively engaging only AFTER having something worth showing to others isnt how anything works, ive never been uninterested in anyone who gave me a chance ive cared this whole time and i'll miss them forever but i cant blame anyone but myself if they up and leave, i never did enough on my end and thats on me

again idk who im talking to and im not expecting to be forgiven (forgiven by who?? idk whats going on lel) but im just saying it aloud in some sort of way, im working on it and will always be working on it

[feline-evil]

So! A lot of stuff happened yesterday regarding Deviantart and a lot of information that was being spread was inaccurate and fear-mongering, and while i do not think the site is wholly perfect nor that they didn’t make mistakes i do want to try and put a post out there talking about what was present there and where people were mistaken! The journal has now been changed as has Deviantarts NOAI system (for the better i must add!!) but lets look at what was present for people to see when the discussion kicked off! I’m putting it below a cut because its long but please do read, i do want to try and combat misinformation and fearmongering, and do my best to reassure people while also pointing out what ARE missteps and mistakes on Deviantarts part!

First of all let me be clear, do not agree with AI art, do not think DA should have their own AI, do not think they should allow AI submissions at all. But. Lets get on to what was written on this journal BEFORE they updated it to what it is now:

IMPORTANT:

DeviantArt did not, does not, and will not use deviations submitted to DeviantArt to add to third-party AI models or training sets, or on DreamUp itself.

DeviantArt did not consent to third-party technology usage of images on our site, which were used to train AI models. In an effort to combat future unauthorized usage, we have enacted “noai” — an industry-first directive alerting AI models of deviants' desires to opt out.

DeviantArt is the only platform giving creators the ability to tell third-party AI datasets and models whether or not their content can be used for training. This is a protection for creators to help them safeguard their content across the web.

We encourage other platforms who enable creators to publish their work to implement similar protections. We are making our “noai” directive available for use by all.

You will notice in this section the first two bulletpoints. Bulletpoint one explicitly states they are not using your art to upload and add to third party AI, AI training, or even their own AI. This is stated several times throughout this post! The opting out of ai usage does not mean if you do not have that checkmarked ticked they use your art for this, no, it is in fact about checking on a code that prevents what is ALREADY HAPPENING AND HAS BEEN SINCE THE INFANCY OF AI ART THEFT. Which is that sites trawl deviantart for art to use and usernames to acquire for prompts people can shove into their horrid ai programs. Deviantart has nothing to do with this, and states here they do not have any desire to submit your deviations to this. Right now, before this update, your art already was subject to AI and they were not doing that and had no control over it! Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but most the fear-mongering is about something that. Is already happening. Not having the checkmark that says 'i do not wish to have my art used for ai' does not make it any worse, thats just status quo, same as it ever was. So no. Not checking that on does not mean you are now allowing your art to be taken by AI and that it wasn't being before. It means things stay as they are. Which again, your art was already subject to AI, this was not going to make it any worse.

Bullet point two! Deviantart clarifies that, since they do know and are aware of how many highly popular artists currently on the site have been targeted by ai in the past, they have had no sayin this! Which is why they have come out with this update, to try and combat this! This update was not about allowing AI to access your art, it was the complete opposite.

There are several points within this journal that clarify this over again, when they talk about that checkbox stopping ai from using your art they are NOT saying it aill be used if you dont, only that it is the status quo of them having no control over this and that they are not selling nor giving out your art to AI because they do not consent to that and neither do you. There was never a plan listed here to allow that to happen. The username opt out is also aiming at software that is ALREADY AND HAS BEEN FOR AGES using peoples Deviantart usernames to generate art in their style! Not opting out does not mean deviantart automatically goes 'oh yes you can use this person now here you go art theft machines!' It means the code they have made and invented now isnt applied to your account, so you have the same level of protection that you have had for years before this journal! Which is that, yes, AI of any kind could and had for many high profile artists scalped their work and style! Which, yes, sucks so very much!! But i do not think representing this as not opting out makes this any worse is accurate, it will just stay the same; bad. This doesn’t mean not having it be opt out as default was a great move, of course, i’m not saying that.

Now. Do i think everything they did was good? No. They should not be involved in making an AI system, even one that is more ethical as they seem to be trying to make theirs;  Not rolling out their AI defence system as automatically you are given their new defence toggled on as default was also a misstep, but people i believe were fear-mongering far more than was helpful for artists trying to understand what was happening to a platform they use; same as the need for a mass toggle opt-out for pre existing deviations. Not because without that defence on and that toggled not off your art would be more susceptible to AI than it had been before! Again, cannot stress enough that was clearly never stated and that they state the opposite! It is still bad that the username out was not set automatically, it should've been opted out by default, again i am not defending that i think it was a misstep that undercuts the vastly positive changes they were bringing about, as was dipping their toes into AI in the first place. But, within hours they changed that. It is now opt out by default, and there is a mass system for previous deviations, they have listened and updated their system! This is good, this is a good thing, these protections they are implementing are good; while im sure third party software may still wriggle around, there's truly not much we or deviantart can do if that happens; this is a step forward for the site! This is good progress! They are still making a mistake allowing AI art on the site at all and having their own AI system, but truly a lot of what was mentioned in this journal was not what people were saying it was at all, there was an intense level of misinformation being spread that clearly went against several important bulletpoints mentioned several times in this journal. I am of the belief they should drop their AI software entirely, and that AI art should be not permitted on site, but i do commend them for actually attempting to give artists more power over an already prevalent issue. I'm not dick sucking here, i fully believe in holding the site accountable for their mistakes, but i do not think fear-mongering and misrepresenting information is helpful for anybody, hence why i am rambling in this post.

So TLDR: Your deviations were already subject to the things people were fearmongering about before the opt in/out system. Yes deviantart has made mistakes in getting involved in ai art and i am not defending their creation and allowing use of their own system. Yes they made a mistake not flagging everything as opt out as default but that has been rectified. No they were never planning to scalp all your previous deviations and give them to ai, that was already happening without their control or say, you had been opted in for years with deviantart having no say nor power over that, because AI art is art theft on a massive scale. Do i want to go on the line in saying Deviantart will never change their stance and might fuck this up worse and undo all the extremely good things they have implemented? No, i don’t work there and i’m not affiliated with them. My goal here is, to the best of my abilities (not claiming to be an expert i have just read through the post several times), purely to point out things that were misrepresentated in the immediate reaction to this update, so that people can make a better informed decision on their feelings and support of the site. This was a flawed introduction of a very good and helpful system, and it’s a shame that A) deviantart also tarred it with making their own AI, and that B) people misrepresented the facts of what was announced, because this NOAI is a really good thing that is being implemented. That is all.

(Also don’t come here to argue with me about wether AI art is good or bad, you are not going to sway me into being positive about it; i have very strong beliefs about it and i am not here to argue nor debate.)

[notmanagingmymischief]

.... . .-.. .-.. --- / -- -.-- / -... . .-.. --- ...- . -.. / -... . -..- 💕

(i have no sweet or. interesting enough nicknames in my own language, so i hope you may accept some morse code for the time being ;u;)

(also. im gonna have to go to school today, so i need to finish some stuff, get some sleep and then get ready, which leaves me no time to talk rn. so i hope you dont mind me replying back a bit late ^^" if you actually decide to answer this lol)

so. as you were the main conduct to the string of thoughts that originated within my brain regarding miss peregrine (and as youre my only friend who actually knows this character), i am here to ramble about yet again my trans hc for her <3

im unable to stop thinking about how such a narrative would untangle itself around the concept presented firstly through a comment shes made on the movie in which "ymbrynes are all females", bringing up very interesting matters: what would alma feel when first discovering either her own identity or her powers as an ymbryne ?

because to a certain extent, both bring very intriguing questions and are on their own concepts to be already very well formed/constructed, as both lead to the same innevitable path (a gender crisis lol), and are able to be maintained stable and solid enough through most of what could be developed as a properly represented/depicted narrative (given the time period and other additional factors to discrimination in this very universe as well).

i literally cannot stop thinking over this concept, and to imagine a scene in which alma finally is able to put the pieces together and understand the sayings of which she has had engraved oh so deeply into her brain all the way through the process of her life and developing of the environment (and system) around her. that moment in which the out loud exclamation of that very much common "oh" when you finally understand everything that has ever happened before, and the many things that lead to your very own being at this moment.

the sense of frustration followed by the upsetment thats dawns inside of her for recognizing the patterns that she desperatly tried to ignore in a place where all used to put their absolute faith in, and believed to trust and call their home; the hardships of living inside a place where no matter how much you try to ignore, keeps on making that insufferable feeling of unpleasantness creep in.

but also. theres hope. hope that one day this would be over. that all she needed was freedom to actually do what she has been yearning for this whole time: time.

and the way in which, even if through such a tragic happening, she really does earn that. alma is finally able to come to terms with her current reality, mend the broken pieces of her once lost self, and to finally find solace and peace to work through such struggles - albeit in the most unlikely of places. the place that now houses the most peculiar and esquisite children, is lead by the most interesting of them all, seen by some as a derogatory title, but to many others as a honorary one. the woman who, from such a bitter and difficult past, managed to pull herself together and with such grace (well. we both know she is basically a mess on the inside, but just roll with the surface telling of a legend ppl tend to spread amongst themselves lmao) to stand in glory as a survivor not only of the very system they all ymbrynes partake in, but also the many other external forces that go agaisnt herself and her own children.

(this kinda contradicts with a theory of mine in which i definitely do include in a x reader type of scenario a nonbinary mc who actually pursues the same path or has the same kind of peculiarity as her. and by not being a woman much less a completely static gender, their introduction to alma would really set a very peculiar and interesting dynamic between not only both of them, but the children and how they view such an autority as alma - before and after meeting the mc, smth i wanna talk more about, but it would take ages to explain, so in a more general way, regarding status, roles, the projecting of young and impressionable/influenciable figures onto a greater person (aka an adult), the way in which role-models may not always know the truth about even such personal and deeply rooted things - be it on their own mind and body or into the very system they've lived in - but may also lie not only to others who they love and care about but themselves, and the capability of change and learning of new things within an environment that alma had tried to prove unable of such things)

(or well. that whole "clashing of realities" could also just be thrown away if we just end up to hc alma as nonbinary too lmao)

i didnt really think about the whole physical transition part, or the amount of information the children would have over this specific matter, but even given the fact that she might have transitioned rather early in order to actually be classified as a capable person to work and serve whatever is in charge of this whole loop thing (which ill be totally fucked if it ends up being just a huge community, with no actual system behind it. tho it does open the path to more carefree ways of developing her social transition which would be awesome too ngl), but to imagine her slowly coming to terms with her identity and grows as a person while already in the house with the children, letting them also aid and support her through such a process would be so wholesome and actually a really healthy development :") (tho again it would completely butcher the already estabilished relationship the children have with her, and her usual cold, stoic aand cynical personality towards them in a daily routine - as the last scenes from the movie are very extreme and could bring out emotions even from someone liek enoch lmao. and the way that she is represented as generally the type of person to keep certain things (most things, really) to herself and how she likes or is more comfortable in dealing with situations considered more personal and delicate on the company of no other person would definitely not enable for smth like this to happen)

but. uh. anyway !! i. hope you were able to understand at least a bit of these thoughts haha ^^" they have been inside my mind for quite some time, and i just think it would be. nice to share them with someone that seemed to like this concept of mine.

they are obviously not even close to being coherent or complete but ill surely go for more once im able to organize my thoughts better, in a more proper time or really any other time that isnt like. 3am (also, as im sure im gonna find more meaning behind her very perculiarity and alternate form - more specifically regarding birds and feathers, as well as search a bit more about the actual environment in which she lived in, if. thats even a thing. and also take note of some more ideas that may complement this story and concept in general haha)

sorry for any grammar errors btw i just really need some sleep rn lol

(also praying to nature this actually sends as a whole and not like. being cut in half or smth)

Bonsoir, mon cher Jupey. Comment allez vous?

Also...listen, I've been trying to figure out how to answer this with my own five mile long paragraph but I couldn't and so all I can say is honestly

Yes.

[ivi-prism]

'Ello,

Hope you doing well.

May or may not be working in something for you ReloadAu ;)

But to start writing i will need more information of how the relationship between 2b2t and the IPA and other servers are and how theyre interact with each other.

Also if there will be other server like 2b2t, will be useful information.

In other things, since I have a lot of free time thanks to my classmates, I was rereading your fanfic again and I found myself really intrigued with the meeting at xisuma's base to discuss about bringing fundy to hermitcraft, there would be a chance to know what happened there?

I don't like water, but I'll be a hypocrite and tell you to drink lots of water and wash your hands.

Ello! I’m doing fantastic with the MCC team announcement and my day just got better since I learned you are working on stuff for Canon Reloaded Au :D

(The Xisuma meeting mentioned at the start of the fic will be brought up eventually and we will learn why Iskall needed a meeting, what was said and the agreements, but for now those are spoliers ;3)

And for 2bt2! I had an entire section planed for it so my time has come *cracks nuckles*

Hella long info dump under the cut

So we have discused that the IPA oversees the worlds (Servers) and keeps the information on them and facilitates travel between them and protects them. 

One very shady way the IPA has managed to keep the watchers away from the section of the universe they control is through 2b2t, no kidding. 

2b2t is far away, very, very, very, very, very far away, even further away than the most distant planet the Hermits have colonized. And no matter how the zone of influcne of the IPA grows 2b2t stays out of it, death center on what is technically watcher territory. 

But why?

Well easy. 2b2t is kinda like a testing playgrounds for the Watchers and the IPA as well. 

The IPA intentionally has that world there and allows people to go there knowing that they could never be seen again if a Watcher decides to grab that person and use them in whatever way they want. 

Still, that world is off-limits and only a few people that have actual admin training go (admin controls are the equivalent of coding and hacking and since you need a hacked client to survive in 2b2t thats why it translates to people needing training) 

Whoever goes to 2b2t goes there willingly, knowing is a lawless land supervised by voidwalker Housemaster (other voidwalkers and admins think this guy is kind of a sadistic prick who enjoys his work a bit too much) and that you might get snatched by some god like creature that have no regards for your mortal body. Nobody is sent to 2b2t agains’t their will, that is super duper incredibly illegal. 

Some people just seem to enjoy the chaos, and the violence, some people might accept the powers a watcher gives them (those hella busted hack clients? yeah) some people record the goings of the place (Shout out to my boy FitMC love his videos) 

2b2t is kinda the absolute final frontier before someone is completly in watcher territory. The Watchers don’t really understand that the IPA is allowing them to interven on purpose and they think is sort of a victory over them so that helps keep them at bay.

2b2t and other anarchy servers that serve kinda the same purpose are the underbelly of the interplanetary society, like many people know they exists but they aren’t really talked about, and people don’t judge others for going there. 

Some people have been simply flagged in too many planets that their only chance is there, some people go once out of curiosity an never go again. Is just kinda like an open secret. 

And now the relationship bewteen other worlds and the IPA and between them

There are many types of worlds so you have some that look like our own earth where people just live and do their own thing. This planets are death center on the control zone of the IPA to keep them safe and well is just the worlds from wher epeople usually come from and where people might go and settled down after adventuring. 

Like imagine Ihascupcake as an adventurer that was born in one of those worlds, left to do her own thing and then returned to have a chill life. This worlds have multiple admins and have their own goverment and rules. As we’ve seen some might deviate from what is expected by the IPA (like the worlds from where Iskall and False come from) and if that happens the IPA intervenes.

There are other worlds that serve as living places for adventurers, two of the biggest ones are Mineplex and Hypixel (am i gonna drag absolutely every conner of minecraft content into this? yes. yes i will) Anyone can go, they can create communities, they get to train and live there (Skyblock is canon and Techno’s island is canon and he lived there before) and is just a pretty sweet system. Hypixel (the admin, not the world) is a voidwalker as well and he is the main admin of the conglomerate of worlds named after him, if something goes wrong on Hypixel he is the one answering to the IPA. 

Many people that meet ecahother decided to start comunitie stogether in a single world, this are the SMP’s (Smp eart, epic smp, dream smp, hermitcraft, legacy smp, xlife, shady oaks, etc). This happen when an admin goes to the IPA and says “Hello! I have X amount of people that want to make an SMP with me and I will be their admin and this the operators” The IPA checks if they haven’t broken any rules at large put in place by them (if they are criminals in one planet well then that sucks but since this is another planet it is irrelevant) and then go “A yes, you and your group have this sort of credentials so we will asign you a world to match, you have ownership of it for X long” this happens so the IPA has an easy way to keep planets occupied and know what is going on around there so there is no chance of a Watcher just going “yoink”. 

The more notable the group, the bigger planet the IPA might assign them. 

It also happens that keeping SMP’s at the edge of the universe is a good way to keep watch on the Watchers but it is a dangerous job so the IPA doesn’t just send anyone there, enter the Hermits. It has been explored in the fic how they stay in one world (season) for 2-3 years and then move to the next one. This is the reason, they are kinda keeping an eye over it and can do whatever they want and then they leave for the next one and the IPA can settle down there or use it for other reasons. 

There are worlds who are simply used for resources. The joke that Scicraft is the reason creative mod has ilimited resources? that is legit here. There are gigant planets made up of only one biome and Scicraft goes there and just gets all the resources so they are avaiable to the IPA. 

There are also testing worlds (Hermits have talked about them). There are some worlds terraformed to be super duper flat so important people can make irl tests on them, but of course not everyone gets access tosomething like that (Hermits are Hermits so they do). This worlds get implemented an anti-gravity zone in them (floating in creative mod) to facilitate the test that need to happen there, and the resources needed comes from what Scicraft has grinded. 

Fun fact anti gravity zone works by transforming an area and then using antigravity shooes and activating them, it only works on that area (just so creative mod doesn’t get op) 

What else hmmm..... SMP’s can be selfsusteinable or give resources to the IPA in exchange of goods or money (is a market!) For example Hermitcraft world six for example sent extremly large amounts of chickens because they had too many of them (can you guess why?) but otherwise HC is self reliant. 

Ehhhhh.... dunno if you need any more information???? 

As always I will be glad to answer more questions if there are any :3

[skaldish]

Heya! I‘ve spent my morning reading through your website and low-key your blog here and wanted to say that the way you describe Loki feels so weirdly familiar? like him being your Mad Muse resonated in a way with my experience as an artist that is somewhat similar to yours which got me thinking. some ideas or concepts come seemingly out of nowhere and get stuck until i get them out and many of them are to do with the human condition but also gender and living the true self kinda? but more like these characters feel actually alive and thus not wanting me as an author or painter to control them but to observe and conserve these observations. it often feels like a swirling mass of chaos in my mind with me racing behind trying to grasp what i see/feel (its all really vague and words are more feelings of the essence of whats said.)

If i understand correctly You often make a distinction between chaos and his trickery (i am so sorry in advance for possible weird-wording things, or completely misunderstandig you >.< english is my 2nd language) and for me personally, i delight in chaos and trickery, though not in a hurting others way, more in a good hearted fun for the shits and giggles kind? but i love chaos in the way i love a symbol, since chaos for me means change in a rather radical way but without any judgement. Things change and get chaotic but chaos itself feels more like possibility?

I have a bonus Loki-Story for you: one time he (i assume) probably annoyed a busdriver with a red light and i caught my bus after asking any god willing to help me catch that bus (it was urgent lol). I was so out of breath but the second i could breathe properly again i asked who to thank for the red light and i kid you not, i drove by a wall with a graffiti that simply said: Loki. made me chuckle ugly but i gave him the best part of my steak never the less, gotta say thanks!

There have been several of these happenings with other gods (Thor and Odin mainly but i caught a whiff of freya once while baking i think?) so now im at the point where i feel i should finally listen. Though i know nothing about working with the gods or magic ive always felt a pull to runes and even got an engraving set to make some myself.

After reading your introduction about deity work i kinda confirmed what i thought regarding knowing the basics of magic (mainly i wont use runes or magic until i know how to do it safely with warding and shielding, which brings me to my question:

Do you have any open source or freely online available sources for learning the basics of magic and getting familiar with deity work? (possibly even for absolute total beginners who boarder on dumb - hello adhd) Like how to shield/ward yourself and your house and how to cleanse. Same with sharpening the clairsenses. It sounds kind of easy when reading but when i try to actually do that i feel helpless and dont know where to start or what to do :(

I often see these things stated (on your page and in the asks you answer but also on any site regarding these topics as well.Saw this also on sunnyway when tring to read up on runes) but never really explained in a way thats friendly for beginners, and when i try googling (i am chronically out of moneys so i guess that has to do with it) all that comes up is wicca related stuff that makes me feel icky (the norse gods are generally the only pantheon and norse religion mostly the only religion that doesnt feel icky to me but that might be my catholic upbringing? the norse gods feel so healingly friend-shaped that it spooked me for years but im staring to fall in love with that. i do get its not always like that but having a kind of mutually respectful relationship with the gods is kind of all i wanted when i grew up). Im also too new i guess to be able to discern between norse practicioners and white supremacists and dont want to end up on a nazi page and learning from them :/ (Here in germany i mostly saw nazis and white supremacists wearing norse symbols which i guess kept my spanish-libanese-migrant ass away from norse paganism for so long bc i thought theyre the only ones who practice it and i really do not like the fuckers)

Thank you in advance if you decide to answer this! (And i apologize for the sheer length of this ask!!)

Sorry this took me so long to get back! If I’m not mistaken, you’re basically asking how to move from “theory” to “practical application” with paganism, magic, and spirit/deity work.

I had to sit with this for a while because I couldn’t think of an easy answer to your question, and maybe an easy answer simply doesn’t exist. For me, everything I know and everything I believe in was built upon a combination of a few things:

Introducing myself to different branches of magical theory and trying different things, even stuff that wasn’t Norse.

Familiarizing myself with MANY different spiritual and religious practices; how they work, their ethos, their worldviews, their metaphysical philosophies, and how they differ from one another.

Finding a reputable community of actual advanced pagan practitioners who gave me the tools I needed to rely on myself and helped me troubleshoot specific things.

Identifying how my clairsenses and magical tendencies manifest and working them out like a muscle, using Tarot to help confirm or refute my interpretations of experiences.

Learning to trust myself and my judgements.

Learning what bad communities look like.

Learning what Nazi-coded language looks like.

Learning what healthy relationships look like.

Trying things and learning from both my mistakes and successes.

This stuff takes months to identify and years to cultivate, and honestly the only way to do figure it out is to expose yourself to it.

One resource I started with that IS free would be Oven-Ready Chaos by Phil Hine. This is a PDF you can google and download that introduces you to the basics of Chaos Magic. Even if you’re not a chaos magician, it provides some good metaphysical philosophies that can be applied to basically any eclectic practice. This book was also the first time magic was presented to me in a way that made a damn lick of sense.

But that’s all I really have for you, unfortunately. Someday I hope to write more about this process of magical/pagan development, but I’m not at the point where I know enough about it to do so.

[ignatzcatz]

thoughts on parasite!kaz ? the eye thing in your recent post made me think about it... idk if that was intentional 👁

yes , i think parasite kaz was 100% set up to be canon, and thank you for activating my many thoughts

So from just before Skullface bites the dust, we get this regarding the virus vials.

1. I think the implication here is that Kaz is the one who got infected with the last virus vial: the Japanese strain. Coincidentally, Kaz isn’t in this image to implicate him directly, but that would go against Skullfaces biological weapon anyway.Who else could it be? Ocelot? They already knew Quiet was infected, so the only “close” character left is Kaz.

( I was actually so invested in this plot point that I was shocked for not having thought of it earlier and disappointed it wasn’t followed up on (obviously, game never completed))

2. Kaz is blind, or practically blind - Metal Gear does a LOT of work to make their world feel real by researching their stuff, and it pays off. Kaz has light sensitivity, but that wouldn’t cause the blindness that produces this-

This is severe corneal damage of some kind (cataracts are opacification of the LENS, so if it were cataracts, you’d still be able to see the iris, but the pupil “center” is milky white.) Point is, hes blind. You cant see his pupil, meaning he probably can’t see you, ESPECIALLY with glasses on. 

How’s the son of a bitch seeing things, then, with (relatively) top notch acuity? game theory: he was infected INTENTIONALLY during his capture in afghanistan and now a. the parasites are blinding him similar to how mist unit acts or b. he’s using the parasites to see post-rescue, much how quiet uses her parasites to heighten her own perception. (I like this theory a lot cause its fun)

this explains some stuff imo...

FIRST off, it explains quiet’s role in the game. She was injured and treated with the parasites shortly after V waking up. Imo she could’ve been a final test subject before giving Kaz the infection. She’s now an obvious target for Kaz to project onto (whether he aware of the parasites or not, its kinda weird) 

SECOND, it explains why the rest of Miller’s unit was wiped out, but only HE was spared (apart from plot armor). From the wiki it says, “Miller also implied that they may have spared him and handed him over to the 40th Army by accident.” There were no accidents. Why would Skullface lose one of the biggest assets against Snake’s general force so easily?

Why would Skullface even bother keeping Miller around anyway, if, at the time of capture, nobody knew Venom was awake? Why not just eliminate one of the two pillars of the Diamond Dogs? It doesn’t even make sense as a hostage situation, really, but thats a whole other mess...

To me, the only reason Skullface kept Kaz alive is because he knew that, after being infected with the parasites, Kaz could cause FAR more damage to the Dogs down the road. 

THIRDLY, as I said above, how the hell did Kaz get that way anyway??? How did his eyes get so cut up? Those are really bad abrasions, but when Venom asked, he didnt seem too assed about it. Granted, we dont know what injuries were inflicted by Ground Zeros onward (although he seems to be injured minimally compared to Boss), but we do an example of earlier staged parasites -

and end-stage results -

These guys ALSO had a tough time seeing things too....

HMMMM NARRATIVE PARALLELS HMMMMMMMMMM.... its all so possible....

FINALLY, Code Talker alludes to Kaz being a bit of a hidey sneaky weasle the whole time, eventually becoming a target for Kaz to kick off base. this is the most obvious part, and it sure grinds my fuckn gears that this plot was never expanded on

_____________________________________________

crows big annoying fucking EDIT:

i was rewatching kaz’s rescue scene. his eye thats visible is fine. its not clouded at all. you can see the pupil clearly. Kaz says they didn’t do anything to his eyes.

My opinion is they deliberately captured Kaz with the express purpose of infecting him and releasing him back to the Dogs, Venom got there first, Kaz slowly realized what the hell was happening to him and tried to cover it up. He didn’t manage to stop the progression enough to save his eyes.

if i had my way, i would have made kaz slip completely into parasite mode, or close enough, grow back some “phantom limbs”, and maybe go cause some trouble and problems. what kind of problems? stay tuned and maybe you’ll find out 

[bigskydreaming]

Im asking this genuinely so pls dont yell at me; when you say that those using trigger warnings dont care about their readers’ mental health and wellbeing, what else are trigger warnings supposed to be for? To make sure people don’t enter fics that have material that would harm them. Just like tv shows that warn about nudity or violence or what have you. Its a rating system, theyre warnings. Tagging for rape or underage ARE the looking-out-for-readers thing. Past that, it is on readers to decide

I try not to yell at anyone engaging in good faith, I know it doesn’t always seem that way, but I would rather be engaged with than ignored...the latter is when my volume goes up, lol.

But in answer to your question, it comes down to the fact that trigger warnings are well established enough in fandom by now, that they exist as a kind of social contract.

In short, its EXPECTED that you provide trigger warnings, and that if you don’t have them, someone will bring that up at some point.

Problem is, this counter-productively works against what trigger warnings are actually FOR.....once we reach a point (which we’ve long since reached)....where a lot of people are only including the trigger warnings because of the social contract that expects them to have them, and not ACTUALLY because they’re prioritizing their readers’ well-being.

Something I see a LOT after trigger warnings is the phrase or sentiment “enter at your own risk”....and the phrasings are so, so key to what I’m talking about. 

Take a small sampling and just look for what I’m describing and I’m fairly certain you won’t have to go far to find an example of a fic where the tone of the author is not one of concern for readers, but preemptive concern for potential backlash from readers.

And these are two very different things.

Like, we all know how to read and interpret tone and nuance. Its genuinely not that hard to tell the difference between a sincere expression of wanting readers to be aware of potentially triggering content, and a faux-expression of that when really, the only thing you’re worried about triggering is a negative reception from people, and you want to get ahead of that by making it clear from the get go that hey, you did your job, you warned readers, and thus nobody has any grounds to say anything about your content itself.

Because also too there’s the fact that trigger warnings are inherently fallible. They rely on the author’s own AWARENESS of their content and everything it might include......but a racist author isn’t going to place a trigger warning for using their characters as mouthpieces for even blatant white supremacist ideology. 

A genuinely predatory author (and yes, they absolutely do exist, and its willful stubbornness that people rely on to pretend that like, for some bizarre reason, only genuinely predatory people don’t partake in this otherwise global hobby of reading and writing fiction, like what even is that, how do you arrive at that conclusion, that like, actual pedophiles are so busy preying on ‘real life’ teenagers in their zip code 24/7 that they just don’t have TIME to go online and cultivate predatory relationships with real life teenagers via social media? That doesn’t make any sense!)

But anyway, a genuinely predatory author, is absolutely NOT going to tag or place trigger warnings for pedophilia, etc....because they don’t WANT the things they write perceived that way.

People trying to normalize incest are not always going to tag for incest because they want to DISTANCE the cute, sweet dynamic between two ‘only sorta brothers’ as other than the kind of incest that destroys families...regardless of the reality that most cases of incest are the LATTER and its the FORMER that’s so rare it barely exists. 

And that sort of thing is how we get terms like dub-con and pseudo-incest and ‘consensual underage sex’ when its describing a relationship between a minor and adult....because this is mitigating, distancing language. Its entire reason for existing is to make unpalatable content seem more palatable.

And especially in Batfandom, we KNOW this.

Because we all, practically universally, give Devin Grayson crap for describing the rape in Nightwing #93 as ‘nonconsensual sex’ and go.....THATS NOT A THING!

And then half of fandom turns around and....acts like that and similar stuff...IS A THING.

That doesn’t work! LOL. It just...doesn’t.

Or another example, because abuse can be just as triggering as rape.....like, for me, personally, I’m a survivor of both, and yes, both CAN be triggering. But not as much as people might think....like, just reading a depiction of these things doesn’t trigger me.

Its, like you were saying at the get go, yes, a matter of surprise.....the kind of thing that CAN be warned for, and prepared for, and its the sheer unexpectedness that’s usually the trigger. 

Like.....I went off a few weeks ago about reading a story that was supposed to be about Dick’s brothers learning the truth about what led him to take the Spyral mission and what happened in Forever Evil. That’s what the summary said, that was it, that was the only thing it led me to expect about the story. So understandably, I go into the story expecting it to be sympathetic to Dick. I’m looking for catharsis from it honestly, a salve for the many fics and canon events that blamed and punished him for something I don’t consider his fault, right?

And then towards the end....I get Jason punching Dick again, before hugging him, because that’s just how he reluctantly shows love or whatever.

This genuinely triggered me, yeah. Its why I got so upset about it. Because I was blindsided, I had no way to prepare for it, because I went in expecting catharsis for a story that bothered me due to its victim blaming, and instead I got the author heaping on more of the same abuse we already saw in canon.....with zero awareness that’s what she was doing. 

So....that’s absolutely something I wrestled with should I message the author and ask them to add a trigger warning or not? Because I genuinely could have used one. It would have helped. I would have avoided that story if I had any notion that might crop up in it, because frankly, that’s not something I had any interest in reading.

But problem is, there’s only really two realistic outcomes there. If she was open to hearing a genuine request for her to be aware that her content contained triggering material for a reader....chances are, she probably would have just edited it and taken that out entirely. It was just one line. Easy enough to do. It certainly didn’t add anything.

Problem is....there’s an equal and opposite likely outcome....that she’d get defensive, call this unsolicited criticism, and double down on the idea that what she had written wasn’t abuse, because obviously she doesn’t condone abuse, so she wouldn’t have written that plain and simple. It has to be acknowledged that a lot of authors ARE innately defensive about social content in their work, and not open to hearing they’ve done something offensive or triggering....because that’s like...literally the basis of the ‘no unsolicited criticism’ movement in fandom, even though being critical of toxic ideology expressed in content is NOT the same as offering criticism of someone’s writing in general. 

So you see what I mean? A trigger warning COULD genuinely help in that situation....but our fandom environment simply flat out is not conducive for readers to be at all confident that they even CAN come forward and alert an author that they delved into an offensive, even harmful take with their content and be well received no matter HOW they phrase it....

For much the same reasons I mentioned in that other post. People are more likely to instinctively jump to the defense of the person WRITING the content that offended or did actual emotional harm....than the person simply trying to say, backed by their own lived experience of....being offended or experiencing emotional harm....hey, this is a problem for me and I would appreciate it being regarded as such....

Otherwise, what is even the POINT of this entire system of trigger warnings in the first place? If a problem for a reader isn’t regarded as worthy of attention in and of itself.....at least, not in comparison to whatever problem that READER’S problem creates for the WRITER.

You see what I’m saying? For this, and a lot of other reasons, trigger warnings are innately fallible. They rely on an honor code system, and the uncomfortable truth is none of us are actually naive enough to believe everyone in fandom is innately honorable enough to honor that....if they were, would we have as much cases of anon hate, spite fics, etc?

But fandom as a whole looked at the trigger warning system and decided well....its good enough. Because its not like I’m proposing a viable alternative, its not like I have a BETTER system in mind, offhand. All I do have is the point that well...no...its NOT good enough as is....because for a ton of reasons, there’s a ton of cases in which there’s a ton of people for which it flat out doesn’t work for or benefit at all.

But when this comes up to any degree, in any capacity whatsoever....and the only thing people fall back on is well, I tagged it, or I used trigger warnings what more do you want, or its good enough for me so that’s what matters, or just....

“I did what I was supposed to per the social contract about trigger warnings, so if anything goes wrong in your reading experience at this point, that’s entirely on you.”

Like, does that make sense?

Basically, there’s a world of difference between:

This is a problem that still needs solving because the solution provided now is not all-encompassing or inclusive....

And....

This is a problem that’s already been solved as far as I’m concerned, and I’m utilizing that solution so any further problems are just in the mind of the reader and have nothing to do with reality, let alone me and my work.

Again, as I said above....its the difference between genuinely engaging with other members of your fandom community with actual concern for THEIR fandom experience.....or faking engagement with other members of your fandom community when your only real concern is YOUR fandom experience, and at most, the experiences of anyone who already is of like minds to you on a subject.

Hopefully that answers your question or clarifies my stance there, anon. And thank you for actually engaging on this. It feels a bit like shouting into the void a lot of the time, lol.

[roxilalonde]

yo give us some highlights of steph's links between twilight and mormonism plz!!

oh for sure! i dont have my copy of the text on me so you’ll have to take my memory’s word for it but here’s the highlight reel of twilight ft. Mormon Antics:

this sounds really fucking funny because it is but: caffeine is a bigger tell than sex. meyer writes quasi-realistically with regards to sex and abstinence, but mormons don’t do caffeine at any capacity and it shows in how hyper-aware bella is of the caffeine she consumes. she’s 17 and she doesn’t drink coffee or caffeinated tea. several times when has a soda she mentions the caffeine in it. it’s so weird because it almost only makes sense in the context of a mormon writing for non-mormon audiences: aware enough to know that most kids drink caffeine, not aware enough to know that most kids don’t think about it so much.

the whole conversation about edward’s soul and whether or not vampires have souls, theologically speaking, is concerned with an idea of heaven and hell rooted in christianity, if not mormonism specifically (im not familiar enough with mormonism to say). they cite the bible. carlisle cullen, edward’s dad, is the son of a pastor whose worldview is centered around his approach to religion (which is non-secular christianity it seems like? he’s weirdly vague about it. might be a presbyterian but i don’t buy it. like have you seen how lavishly this mans house is decorated? the bitch is catholic.)

edward’s theological torment is kind of hilarious because i’ve never met a 17 year old in my life who’s concerned with their immortal soul, even if they do have existential angst, but damn if edward isn’t spending every other page monologuing about the pain of living a damned existence. still, it’s actually one of the more coherent ethical conversations that the books have. unfortunate that it’s on a completely irrelevant issue since vampires don’t exist

breaking dawn. breaking dawn as a story is a dumpster fire in its own right but the whole abortion debate is weird and unsexy to the max. basically edward knocks bella up and he and his whole family are like “hey....lets get rid of the fetus it could literally kill you if you try to give birth to a vampire baby” and bella decides to carry it to term anyway. and then....guess what! it kills her. straight up full stop. its all so badly done that its actually hard to tell whether it’s a pro-life thing but in the movies it’s a lot more apparent in the way bella + the cullens frame the language they use

misogyny....if youre even vaguely familiar with the twilight series then you know what im talking about with this

the khakis. mormons have a stringent dress code (nothing above the knee, not too much cleavage, nothing too tight) that bella always, always follows, as does edward. the movies have defined popular imaginations of what edward and the cullens look like but the costume designers threw the whole book out the window with those films, and THANK GOD they did because in the books edward and bella both horrifically unfashionable people. bella only owns one skirt (cool!) and it is khaki (horrifying!). edward wears nothing but khakis and beige pullovers. at one point he rolls up to bellas house for a date and they’re wearing THE SAME SWEATER/KHAKI COMBO. i would break up with him and move to another continent at that point but thats just me ig

cussing. ye shall not take the name of the LORD your god in vain, etc, etc. bella uses “oh my god,” i think, but pretty rarely (if ever?) and she’s also pretty stringent with cuss words otherwise. never anything stronger than “damn,” barely even uses “hell” (says “to the fiery pits of Hades” at one point in the first book), and otherwise doesn’t swear at all. same goes for edward, obviously.

i’m sure i missed a lot but this is the stuff i remember off the top of my head. of course, to her credit, there’s also stuff you wouldn’t necessarily expect from a mormon writer -- bella’s parents are divorced, for example; she really doesn’t want to get married young, and also she’s pro-sex before marriage -- but the books are also told through the lens of someone who isn’t necessarily trying to separate their religious beliefs from their work, so. take both sides with a pinch of salt.

[thekingofwinterblog]

Game Freak, Stagnation, Luck and the Refusal to Change

Its Amazing how much fucking grief Game Freak could easily have avoided if they simply said it would take a few months post launch to impliment all pokemon.

No one would have given a shit, they would have gotten away with halfassing everything else, having the A Team working on a game no one asked for, they could take their time, and all the hype would have remained at the top of the world.

Then again if they did that, it would have required actual work, and maybe expanding the company. And God forbid they actually invest any of those billions of Dollars they have earned over the Years.

Amongst all of Nintendo’s teams and Secondary companies, Game Freak is the most stagnant, and that can in Large part be contributed to their immense success. they started with around 150 people, and they currently have around 150 people. They have Stubbornly refused to expand the rooster over the year, despite the fact that they Struck gold better than literarly any other Company in the Game industry.

This in turn Lead to the Company growing stagnant, not innovating, and in general not really going foreward nearly as much as other companies.

There is a question to be made though. Was it always this way? Before this whole debacle i used to think that Game Freak used to be this amazing innovative company, that managed to score an amazing hit and pushed that for all its worth.

However after digging deeper ive kinda begun to question that at all. or Rather ive come to realise that Game Freak is a good example of how a company needs input from other sources for it to not fall into decadence, and that sometimes you need someone to come along and give you a few suggestions. Or a kick in the ass, as they need in Newer times

----GENERATION 1----

Going back all the Way to Red and Green, Nintendo gave what was quite possibly the first Mandate it Ever gave for the Pokemon franchise. This demand? Add PVP to the Game. Thats right, originally Game Freak didnt want to add PVP whatsoever. Given how Game Freak now wishes to fuck over the competitive scene permanently, the fact that they never originally didnt want to have players battle at all should not come as a great suprise.

Withouth this one feature, it seems unlikely pokemon would have been as big a hit as it became. Maybe it would have been added in the Blue and yellow versions and have been in all international releases, but this is by no means certain. Player against players would have come eventually no doubt, but its fully possible that left entierly to their own devices, Game Freak would not have implemented this feature before Gold and Silver.

How big this would have impacted the franchise in both short and long term is impossible to say, but it certainly would have drastically reduced the long term gameplay of the first Game by quite a lot.

however, i should note that im not arguing that Game Freak did not work hard for Red and Green. they did, and they worked on it to the point that right before it was released, Mew was secretly added to the game under Nintendo’s noses. but it sets the Stage for Game Freak often not implimenting the obvious, or not going out of their way to add stuff beyond their original vision of the game.

Setting the stage, we get to the first truely innovative pokemon Game. Pokemon Stadium. And as we’ll see over the course of this retrospective, the Innovative games, is not the ones made by Game Freak themselves, but instead Other companies. In this case Nintendo themselves, Hal Labratory, and its Brilliant leader Satoru Iwata, a man who as we’ll see created half of Pokemon Gold and Silver singlehandedly.

Iwata began his involvement in Pokemon History in Great Style. By taking a look at the pokemon Battle system, and memorising it withouth Code or notes. that might not seem that impressive, but he then went on to create the entire Battle System of Pokemon Stadium exclusively from his own memories, and amazingly enough he would fix things which Game Freak had fucked up in its first outing, like Focus Energy actually working and a number of other smaller mistakes Game Freak had Made being fixed for Stadium.

Stadium Would Then go on to create Pokemon Models that would be used all the way to the third Generation, where the Orre Games would simply ugrade them.

Another innovative feature was to unlock a Game Mode which let you speed up your Game Boy Game while playing it on the stadium. An Amazing tool for anyone who wants to Grind, and a really good reward for anyone who put the effort into unlocking it.

Stadium is by no means a Perfect Game. but it Set the tone for it being the Other companies Nintendo Employes being the truely innovative game makers in regards to pokemon. Iwata in particular being a truly important figure for the second Generation of Pokemon Games.

So after the golden Ticket that Game Freak had in the Original Red and Green, you would expect them to heavily invest them into making sure that when the sequels rolled around, they would have everything in place, a bigger more experienced team, and all the resources they would need to get the Second Games rolling. If you had this expectation, the actual development is actually quite a sad affair.

----GENERATION 2----

Now there was an obstacle which wasnt their fault at all, which was the game boy colour. Given its sudden and unexpected release, Game Freak now had to Port the second generation Games so they would work on both the original Game Boy and the New Version. that would have been a daunting task, but if the development was going well to begin with, they would propbably have pulled it off.

that however was not the case. Long story short, the Games were a complete Mess, they had a hundred ideas, but There seems to have been no hard leader who would wrangle them in line and decide what to cut and not cut. and as the first Release Date which they would delay another year began to creep closer, they had come to a point where they neared the end of the Capacity of the Game Boys Cartridge power to handle. yet they were only halfway through the development. It reads like an eerily similar Development which Anthem would go through around 2 decades later.

So, what happened? why did the Second Pokemon Generation not end up as a dysmal failure? the Answer is Satoru Iwata. at this Point the Brilliant Future president of Nintendo Stepped in to save the day, and he Decompressed the entire work the team had done, to such a degree that they unexpectedly had so much extra space that they decided to just port Kanto over to the newer Games.

To put it bluntly, Game Freak was about to Completely Blow it, and was only saved thanks to the genius of a single man they only had access to thanks to their bosses at nintendo.

in other words, Pure Luck and chance.

Between gold and silver, and the third generation there was Crystal and pokemon Stadium 2. Crystal very much reads like a game where game freak had more breathing room to just impliment the ideas they originally had for Gold and Silver, and while not the most expansive third Game, it certainly was a step in the Right Direction. Stadium 2, was not created by iwara, and feels more like a game where the team from the previous Game just polished up the old stuff and added more pokemon. and there is nothing wrong with that. at least they gave and delivered on the expansion of new pokemon which this update promised. i mean, its not like Game Freak would be forced to cut features from gold and Silver for their next games right?

----GENERATION 3----

Generation 3 was, and probably is the most divisive released generation of Pokemon at the time of this writing. there are a lot of Reasons for this. the first and most obvious reason, was that there was no way to port over all the pokemon from generation 1 and 2, but unlike the newest development in sword and shield, there was actual Mechanical reasons for it, as well as a generally overhaul of the way stats and mechanics worked. More Glaring is the the fact that this was the most difficult set of pokemon games Game Freak ever worked on. which shouldnt be a suprise. it was entierly now hardware after all.

Junichi Masuda famously worked himself to the abslute brink while doing work on the game, and up to the very release date he had nightmares about them completely failing and bombing. this did not happen of course. Ruby and Sapphire were great Games, even if they did miss a lot of pokemon, didnt have the day and night cycles(or at least not as obvious ones) and had completely scrapped the idea of Online capability which Crystal had dipped its toes in.

However commendable how much crunch and work the workstaff over at Game Freak were willing to put themselves through for Generation 3, one cannot help but wonder, if the entire Development hell couldnt simply have been avoided if they had hired maybe a hundred new people to work on the third generation. after all, the limited manpower undoubtedly contributed to the hell that was the development of Gold and Silver. surely they would have learned from those mistakes and prepared for the next round right? what with the billions they had made from all the pokemon sales, they surely could have afforded it. but they did not. in fact, not only did they not learn anything in regards to the limited manpower they had for Gold and Silver, but they would in fact not learn it from this debacle either. nor would they ever.

After the whole not all pokemon being a thing in Ruby and sapphire, the next few games entire role for existing would be to rectify this, and to game freaks credit, they laid the ground work for this from the beginning, by making sure that a national dex existed in the game which would be unlocked if you transferred over older pokemon that didnt exist in hoenn.

Game Freak themselves then did the remakes of Firered and Leafgreen, which are great games in their own right, but as far as innovation goes, i dont think anyone would argue that they were revolutionary in any way.

instead we turn our eye to another Game, Pokemon Colosseum for the Gamecube, the little Lunchbox that almost could. Pokemon Colosseum was made by Genius Sonority, a VERY small company owned by nintendo and The Pokemon Company. as of this writing, they have around 20 employees, dwarfed by even the modest 140-150 employees Game Freak has. they would be the first to actually challenge Game Freak as Makers of pokemon games.

Colosseum is a truly experimental pokemon game, from the way you catch pokemon, to its protagonist, to its actual difficulty. but in my opinion the thing that makes the game so much different than any other game in the franchise is its sense of idendity. its very different than any other game in the series, being in general rather dark in many ways, with a protagonist that used to be a thief which dealt with stolen pokemon, the mechanics of actually having to steal pokemon to save them from what was done to them, and an unfliching difficulty where the game was not afraid of not pulling its punches. all goes to make it a rather unique pokemon experience.

Sadly, Colosseum was not to reach true mainstream success. while it did the job of filling in the pokemon not covered by Either sapphire and ruby, nor Firered and Leafgreen, this limited array of pokemon had its price. while it was certainly not a failure by any means, and sold well, there is no denying that it simply didnt sell better, nor nearly as well as the regular pokemon games. thus Game Freak did not need to take notice of it. never the less, it was the first challenge to Game Freaks status as the main Creators of pokemon Games. it would take a while before a new contender would arise to credibly challenge them for the throne.

after colosseum, there was pokemon emerald and XD:Gale of Darkness, the sequel to collosseum. Emerald very much feels like crystal. A game where Game Freak got to take it a bit easier and add some stuff they had planned for Sapphire and Ruby, but had to scratch. the fact that they did not add day and night cycles, boggles the mind, but it would probably have been to much work. XD was a good game in its own right, but it simply lacked a lot of what made Colusseum work so well. it very much feels more like a mainstream pokemon game on the big screen, instead of a sequel to probably the game with the most unique idendity in the franchise. it also adds very little new gameplay vise.

after xd and emerald there were no other pokemon Games which werent spin offs in their own sub franchise, like Pokemon Mystery dungeon, before generation 4. which for once didnt have any major problems.

----GENERATION 4----

Generation 4 was a turning point in many ways, but not for the better. it was the first Generation which was developed withouth major problems, except a small delay to put the finishing touches on the game. some might say that is a big development mistep, but i would have said that in a vacum, this would be fine. if this had simply been the only time Game Freak had a bit of time problems, there would be nothing to complain about here. however, taken in context of the history of Game Freak as a whole, the major problem that Game Freak refuses to Expand, despite the fact that their situation very much demands they do so, rings very true here.

other than this small delay though, Generation 4 came along with no hickups. it was critically loved, it was a sales success, and in general was just a great sucess. the problem is that by now, Game Freak had discovered a way of doing things, and as far as they were concerned it worked. Diamond and Pearl being the first time they didnt have an existensial crisis developing a new generation. now the good about this is that they generally did a good job. Gen 4 is just good all around.

innovation vise though, its probably the least impressive of all the generations. unlike gen 2 and 3 it didnt introduce any new types, unlike gen 3 it didnt introduce entierly new ways of battling, and unlike generation 5 it didnt make a ridiculous leap in animation, very much sticking to the old way of doing sprites with just a bit more power.

this was in hindsight a very bad thing, because the great success of Gen 4 established a pattern that would repeat itself over time. namely the lack of innovation to things such as story, character, the way you progressed through the game. everything that was in gen 4 in this regard it had all been established in generation 1-3. The gym system was from gen 1. the evil team also dates back to gen 1, with their grandiose plans being a thing established in gen 3. the post game was established in gen 3 mostly and a bit in gen 2. safari zone from gen 1. casino from gen 1. the event pokemon system(probably the worst mechanic in the franchise) had also not changed much at all, with gen 1 being where it became a mix of pokemon you simply could not capture, and those you needed special items to capture.

in this Light gen 4 is where the pattern really established itself. it might not have been the ones who invented anything going foreward, but it was the ones that hammered out how things would work in almost all games going foreward.

after Diamond and pearl, the next non game freak game to try and contend with the mainstream ones was Battle Revolution, which was a failure of such proportions that it killed the very idea of ever there being more colosseum or stadium type games. the Game Freak Dominance stayed supreme.

following Diamond and Pearl, there was the third game, and remakes. pretty much the same story as the previous time, third game being the first two but better, while the remakes are great games in their own right, but not immensly innovative.

----GENERATION 5----

generation 5 was in many ways a geniune innovative attempt at remaking the franchise. it was also a game that unknowlingly or not, tried to establish itself as a type of successor to Colloseum, but which did not quite pull it off. while the game has an actually good story, it still didnt quite manage to divest itself from the regular pokemon formula the way Colosseum did. while the story was better well told, it was still when it came down to it, just the same beats as the two previous generations.

the big difference of course was N, the most compelling villain in the games so far. he managed to give the game a lot of grandiose which the two previous sets of leaders lacked. unfortunatly, him alone was not quite enough to make the story stand out from all the rest. it was however a great sign of innovation on Game Freaks Part, and it goes to show that at this point there was still a spark in actually wanting to improve the games fundamentals.

going along with a better story, there was also the jump to actually moving sprites, which in my opinion was the best the combat of Pokemon has ever looked. just having the sprites move and the camera being a bit more dynamic made the battles far more alive than any previous mainstream game.

not everything can be a sucess though, and as we see in the triple and rotation based battle, there were also some new concepts which simply didnt work nearly as well as intended. There was also the removal of Contests, which had always been a bit problematic, but rather than trying to fix it, Game Freak instead opted to remove it entierly. this fate would later befall the much better implemented mega Evolutions, but the pattern was already there.

after the Failure of battle revolution, no alternative to Game Freak created Games would arise this generation, which mean that the next games in the series would be the only other core RPG games for the generation. Black and White 2.

Much and more can be said of black and White 2. for one thing, it was a very good sequel to a very good game. it built upon the plot of the previous games, sold well, and while not that innovative in gameplay, none of the third games before it was such, so why should this one be critiqued for that when none of they were?

unfortunatly, this streak would not continue with the next games in the franchise. X and Y.

----GENERATION 6----

now i want to make some things clear. i like X and Y. but other than one single element, and a graphical update, it was probably the generation with the least innovation in story, character, plot and general idendity.

the biggest change was of course Mega Evolution, probably the biggest and best change since double battles. it was a game play mechanic which completely altered the way the game played, both in singles and doubles, as well as breathing new life into many old pokemon.

other than that, there was the jump to full 3d, which was okay, and the game looked nice, as well as being the first game to let you customize your trainer(though not to insane degrees, generally only clothes, hairstyles and color) made the game look far better overall(though i still prefere gen 5′s more dynamic combat.

unfortunatly, that is where the innovation ends. because pretty much everything else is pretty much rehash of older games. 

the evil team is as generic as possible. the main villain is the same as gen 3′s villains, just with a different solution. the plot is pretty much the same as gen 3 and 4. the league mechanics arent different at all from what had come before. the Game traded the 2 interesting rivals from gen 5 for a whole entourage of generic characters who all supposedly served as your rival. the only truly interesting part of the plot was  AZ, a character that was criminally underused, despite a really interesting backstory.

all in all, despite a huge change in gameplay generation 6 is probably as “standard” a pokemon game as there has ever been. following afte X and Y, there would be no third version, a first in pokemon(if one counts white and black 2) but there would be remakes, which as ive said about its predessesors, were good games in their own right, but not terribly innovative(other than having better flying than any game that came before it.). after that however, there were no other major games until the seventh generation.

----GENERATION 7 and Onwards----

there is so much good to say about generation 7 that im generally not gonna delve into it here. what i will focus on, is that what made generation 7 so innovative, was that it pretty much just took the standard pokemon guidebook, and threw it out the window, for better or worse. this has lead to a game that is truely different than the previous games, but also not quite a true successor to them. this is probably best shown in that generation 8 didnt want to follow up on the direction 7 put foreward, and instead went back to the older style.

this is not to say that generation 8 was bad by any means, but that it was never going to be the next step. it was an experiment to see how far you could stretch the boundary of the mainstream pokemon games away fromt he standard, and while it had elements that should have carried on over, it was never gonna be the definite way pokemon games would go foreward.

so after such a drastic change of pace, we only have to ask one simple question. WHAT. THE. HELL. HAPPENED?

after Sun and moon was released, the follow up was Ultra sun and moon, which was just the previous game with slight changes. it was for all intents and purposes a reskin. no third version even comes close to how much a cash grab it was.

so what the hell happened after the release of sun and moon? two words. Pokemon GO.

Pokemon Go was the first real challenge to Game Freaks exclusivity over the mainstream Pokemon RPG experience since colosseum way over a decade ago, and to say it was a bit more successful, would be like saying the mongol empire killed a few people.

Pokemon GO, or rather the way Game Freak has reacted to it, completely changed the way the pokemon franchsie would go foreward. At the time of this Writing, Pokemon GO is responsible for around 5% of the entire pokemon franchise earnings. it is to put it simply, a massive and insane success.

which is what has lead to a massive problem for Game Freak, as they have come to the rather disturbing conclusion that they can be replaced. the success of Pokemon GO has killed the myth that Pokemon Needs game freak to succed going foreward, and the stark realisation that there is literarly nothign stopping nintendo and the Pokemon Company from handing the franchise over to the hands of some other team.

the ownership of pokemon is a complicated mess between nintendo, Creatures INC, the pokemon Company and Game Freak, but the base line, is that nintendo owns it. they can hand over the franchise to any company they want if they so desire.

this is why when the time came for a sequel to sun and moon, the absolute cheapest alternative was taken. because Game Freak needed to move on to other projects.

One would think that this would mean that they would pump all their effort into making the newest Pokemon Games. alas, that is not the case, instead they sent the A Team of Game Freak over to work at an entierly new Game called The Town. this is an insane move, as they are at a critical point in regards to pokemon games going foreward. but when taken from Game Freaks point of view it makes sense. as they are desperate to prove to nintendo that they can in fact make other games than pokemon, and that even if they dont get to make more of them, they are still a valuable company under their umbrella.

again, from a purely business perspective this makes sense. from every other perspective its insane. having an already miniscule manpower pool to draw from, Game Freak cannot afford to majorly split their resources for any single major release. yet that is exactly what they are doing. 

Every bad decision taken by game freak in regards to Sword and Shield, every corner cut, every single decision, is to make this game as playable as it can be, with the miniscule amount of probably 70 or so people working on it. hence the lackluster animation, primitive looking trees, load times, the cutting of around 60% of the total amount of pokemon from previous games, the removal of mega evolutions in favor of the much simplier Dynamax.

all to get this game out knowing from experience that as long as its a standard Pokemon Game it will probably be a great success.

this hole however, is entierly their own fault. the one big release a year, could easily have been made drastically easier, if they hired a hundred people and made them exclusively devoted to the extra releases while Game Freak as a whole could focus exclusively on their big games. instead, they dug in their heels, and refused to expand on their business, even though it was clear all the way back in generation 2, that change needed to happen. that their current way of doing things simply didnt work.

the rest of the industry changed to cope with the changing market. some embraced DLC, some decided that mmo style was the only way to go, Even Nintendo themselves is finally embracing the concept of DLC, Patches, online multiplayer in large scale and so on.

Game Freak however is still operating like its the early 1990′s and they are still a small studio with no big demands on them, which they can handle on their own. they purposefully ignored the lessons that they should have learned in generation 2 and 3, namely that they needed to expand and build better infrastructure. instead they have stubbornly refused to change, until now when they fully willing to cleave their own franchise into pieces, when simply embracing the concept of a Patch or Two would have solved all their problems.

[cloneslugs]

RED engie + medic >:] and lucifer morningstar + michael jon carter

MY LADS Q___Q !!! also the ask cut off on mobile and i thought you were asking for just “michael” and i thought you meant ?? the angel i was like fuck do you care

read more cuz i didnt realize how lengthy this would get 

engie is trans and gay i have a joke kinda headcanon that he has a husband somewhere maybe back in tx (or maybe just a bf in teufort) that he is very sweet on and they talk basically everyday that nobody knows about bc he,,, keeps to himself and its never come up and medic like kills him for keeping from him BUT in all seriousness ! he is trans and gay he’s open about it in the sense that he is always ready to offer advise and help to anyone having a rough day and needs help maneuvering through things !! he kinda has height dysphoria but it was worse when he was younger by now he’s basically... used to it (medic offers to make him taller though)  also he’s not out as gay to his family,, he’s generally anxious and just kinda soft spoken  

medic..... oh you know.... he is very gay and also very trans + he’s known he’s liked guys since forever !!! he’s like. very kinda flamboyant? about it and i think he’s one of more out there mercs when it comes to his gender + sexuality!! he doesnt care to medically transition and like basically everything else he does w/ his life, in regards to his presentation, he throws basically all social norms out the window and just loves being unapologetically himself >:D !!! he keeps up w/ everyones needed hormones and stuff so he’s like. the only one in the know about everyone else and it actually makes him really happy talking to each of them about their experiences and where they feel they fall in life and its like. the only thing he is actually willingly helpful on daksbauegyk also back to being gay he uh liked heavy first and is just. head over heels for people when he falls for them ;____;

lucy !!!!!! he’s trans just bc.... i can taste the coding -.- and also bi !! i think he’s very much defensive about being trans, moreso than his sexuality at least, he takes it up as some kind of ploy/punishment against his dad or something,, most of his brothers are really sweet tho and they love him :] (the good ones at least,,, like the ones who actually like him and dont want to kill him,,]) [this is kinda hard bc im working w/ my somewhat fleshed out idea of him + trying to mix in TV luci + comic bc you dont know anything abt.. comix] he likes to dress nice/formally, i think thats is fav thing about earth is all the ways you can express yourself (i have lots of hc for his self expression sorry) he wears lots of fun suits!!! he loves using religious imagery for his fashion as a kind of ‘fuck you’ to everyone else!! Maze is his absolute best supporter!!! she would do anything for him and she helped him gather a fashion sense when they both first landed,, -.-

michael !! he’s trans masc + either gay or bi? if the latter he prefers guys :) he hides a lot of his insecurity behind a big facade of confidence but he really likes being gnc and just ! out there :D he gets crushes really easily =.=  he’s not out to anyone on the league as trans officially but a handful of them have figured it out through their various means unintentionally !! i think part of him thinks being an obnoxious dude like maybe in part of his dad,, is like the best way to pass but he does it with a good heart and doesnt actually try to be rude or anything just,, a little obnoxious and in your face :) he loves hanging out with the other lgbt members and he really tries to bond over it, but some of them are a lot more like >.> idk .. less open about it and think he’s weird !!! i think he and ted have a kind of on and off thing , they’re best friends and at some point they thought they would work out but its like nah but we like to kiss :) he’s kinda really insecure about his face he gets called pretty a lot (moreso in a “pretty boy” sense than anything but he still is like. ok) so he hides his face w/ his costume also maybe he looks up to bruce a lot he cant tell if its a crush or not

[sciencography]

Long overdue update!!

At long last the much promised and oft delayed blog post update that I've been promising off and on for MONTHS. Going to cover a huge range of topics here, therefore nothing that I cover will get extensive depth or attention. Will cover the App Store status, nControl, chimeraTV, electraTV, uicache / ldrestart recent changes / snafu, DalesDeadBug update, cycripter and any known issues that are occuring with any of the above. Will also include a link to a handy tutorial for saving OTA blobs for the 4K AppleTV, just in case we find a way to make them useful!

Saving 4K OTA blobs covered by idownloadblog:

nitoTV App Store

This is several months behind schedule, and at this point its pretty much entirely my fault. I still need to do some payment processing work on the amazon front regarding declined cards / failed payments, etc. Im going to be looking into this immediately after i finish writing this post. 

If you hadn't noticed the new nito.tv website launched at the same time chimera(TV) did. You may have also noticed a beta code for people to help beta test it before i finally launch it, there is no way to get this code yet, not until i finish the payment work I mentioned above. Off the top of my head, this is the only thing holding us back anymore. 

nControl

Obviously nControl was released a few months ago, to resoundingly positive response (thank you!) It's available on chariz repo for 10$ and is currently my only source of income, so all purchases are greatly appreciated! If you need any additional details about nControl in general I kindly redirect you to the exhaustively documented wiki page that I maintain on the subject: https://wiki.awkwardtv.org/wiki/nControl

The tvOS version is only available through patreon and i'd actually prefer that people no longer go that route, patreon makes it WAY too much effort to get the money they owe you so I massively regret doing that in the first place, just didn't want to launch iOS and tvOS separetely and honestly thought the store would wrap up shortly thereafter.

chimeraTV

For the first time (potentially ever) the tvOS jailbreak was released in tandem with the iOS version of the Electra Teams *OS 12 jailbreak. This was a momentus occasion and was a large source of me being delayed from focusing on completing the nitoTV App Store. Its a rock solid jailbreak (especially with latest release) and I'm quite proud to maintain the tvOS version of it. It covers 12.0 - > 12.1.1 on tvOS, this is due to the fact the Apple staggers version numbers between iOS and tvOS for some unknown and maddening reason. For instance (12.1.2 on iOS == 12.1.1 on tvOS). It drives me just as mad as it does the rest of you, but it's been like that since the beginning of ARM based AppleTVs (send gen +) So I doubt it will ever change.

Candidly it was a bit of a challenge to get AppleBetas awesome UI to cooperate on tvOS but i'm glad iIforced myself to use the same code as much as possible (lots of ifdefs), since its written in Swift you can imagine the fight I put up to avoid using the same code base for the UI stuff. Eventually I acquiesced (yes I do make concessions!)

electraTV

Wow it's really been a long time since i've updated this blog (sorry!) electraTV was released several months before chimera (well the initial versions were, the 11.4.1 iteration wasn't THAT long ago) The electra jailbreak covers ALL versions of 11 (11.0->11.4.1) In its latest jailbreakd2 based iteration it is incredibly stable and reliable. Not much else to say about it!

uicache / ldrestart changes

I wasted most of last week fighting against issues with ldrestart. If you aren't familiar with ldrestart it is responsible for running after jailbreaking or loading any new Tweaks to make sure anything they may inject into gets restarted. With the older version of jailbreakd (in backr00m & versions of electraTV that supported 11.2.1->11.3, but not 11.4.1) couldn't handle the speed at which all the daemons get reloaded by ldrestart, this would lead to a lockup that would result in the system eventually rebooting (after being locked up for several minutes).

ldrestart has actually always been an issue, even when i used a kpp bypass in greeng0blin (Im fairly certain thats accurate!) So as a workaround i used to 'killall -9 backboardd' That would respring enough different things (PineBoard, HeadBoard et al) that i would be sufficient for the things i most commonly injected. Obviously this is a hacky stopgap, and uicache used to also kill a variety of other processes to cover them as well (lsd, appstored, etc) to help cover things like DalesDeadBug. 

After coolstar re-wrote uikitools (including uicache) i decided it was probably a good time for me to take a look at uicache again. If you want to know how much of a hassle and challenge uicache was in the earlier days (pre APFS) read some of the older posts on this blog. It's history is covered ad naeuseum.

Since we no longer need to load from /var/mobile/Applications, a lot of the extra hurdles in uicache have ceased to be necessary, essentially all that is really needed is [[LSApplicationWorkspace defaultWorkspace] _LSPrivateRebuildApplicationDatabasesForSystemApps:YES internal:YES user:NO]; + tweak to force App states to return TRUE for isEnabled. 

In the course of thinning down uicache I decided it'd be a good time to try and get ldrestart working on tvOS. After battling with it off an on all last week I came up with something that appeared to work pretty consistently on tvOS 12. Instead of being thorough and testing on 10.2.2->11.4.1 as well I hastily released it. This lead some people to get stuck in respring loops / lockups that eventually restarted the device. This was due to the fact that uicache:restart in postinst scripts would trigger ldrestart instead of uicache in nitoTV. 

In the older version of uicache there was an issue that existed once our new apps were loaded in the UI, a respring was never "required" but if it didn't occur all applications would exhibit weird behavior where they wouldnt launch, or wouldnt exit once launched, etc, to "fix" that I made it always kill backboardd as a compromise. Since this was also no longer necessary I made uicache killing backboardd "optional" by appending -r. Lack of forsite here, the old nitoTV wouldn't know backboardd wouldn't respring anymore, nor to run ldrestart when finish:restart was received, this lead to people getting stuck with a red progress indicator forever when trying to update to latest (at the time) version of nitoTV.

Due to the depth and gravity of the issue I sidelined getting ldrestart working in backr00m (one of the only places it has show stopping issues still) I reverted to uicache always respringing until I have time to revisit the issue.

In conjunction with deciding I was pouring too much time into this issue Chimera 1.0.6 was released the other night with massive stability improvements. Libtakeover & related injection was stripped out into inject_criticald  which provided massively stability improvements for the jailbreak, this made focusing on getting that out a few hours after the iOS release a very high priority.

The big takeaway from all of this:

* uicache run by itself (no arguments) is sufficient to gets apps loaded / removed after installing them into /Applications.

* ldrestart is part of uikittools on tvOS now and should be safe to run on latest electraTV release and chimeraTV release, but won't work at all on backr00m.

if you have installed a tweak and it doesnt seem to be working, try running ldrestart, it should help.

sleepy/wake

Part of the uicache update came the addition of 'sleepy' and 'wake' binaries. Use them from the command line to sleep or wake your AppleTV.

DalesDeadBug

This was recently updated to spoof newer versions, if you can't seem to get it working after installing it, prime candidate to run ldrestart after installing or making changes to that don't seem to be propogating. It works to get SteamLink installed on tvOS 10.2.2, but crashes immediately, not sure if im going to be able to fix it. It won't be possible to make that a priority (I looked into it briefly, thats the best I can do for now). 

If you need more info on what DalesDeadBug does, please read the wiki page: https://wiki.awkwardtv.org/wiki/DalesDeadBug

Cycripter

If you didn't notice, yesterday I decided to take one more brief detour to rectify a glaring deficiency in recent jailbreaks, inability to use cycript. I might have my differences with saurik recently, but this is still one of the most amazing projects he ever undertook and gifted to us. 

cycripter / CycriptLoader.dylib have been updated and open sourced to make it easier to use cycript on iOS or tvOS. All details necessary can be viewed on the wiki and the git.nito.tv repo. 

More Details: https://wiki.awkwardtv.org/wiki/Cycript

Known Issues

I havent kept a very exhaustive list of these, so I'm only going to cover two that I can think of right now.

* Infuse doesn't work on chimeraTV. 

Try launching infuse before running the jailbreak (so if you are currently in a jailbroken state, reboot first) 

if you run the jailbreak after Infuse has already been open it will work. I don't think it is necessarily any jailbreak detection, but it may be some kind of a protecetion from code injection, im honestly not sure.

* Music app doesn't work

Try updating to the latest version of chimeraTV on https://chimera.sh it didn't work in the prior version for me either, but after the latest install it started working.

Wrap-up

That's it for now, my core focus after this post is going to be to wrap up work on my long delayed tvOS App Store. I really hope to get it wrapped up this week or next. Stay tuned! And if you made it down this far, thanks!!

[la-knight]

BOOKS I (RE)READ IN 2018: FURTHERMORE BY TAHEREH MAFI

"Alice Alexis Queensmeadow, 12, rates three things most important: Mother, who wouldn’t miss her; magic and color, which seem to elude her; and Father, who always loved her. Father disappeared from Ferenwood with only a ruler, almost three years ago. But she will have to travel through the mythical, dangerous land of Furthermore, where down can be up, paper is alive, and left can be both right and very, very wrong. Her only companion is Oliver whose own magic is based in lies and deceit. Alice must first find herself—and hold fast to the magic of love in the face of loss." "Red was ruby, green was fluorescent, yellow was simply incandescent. Color was life. Color was everything. Color, you see, was the universal sign of magic." "Love, it turned out, could both hurt and heal." "Narrow-mindedness will only get you as far as Nowhere, and once you're there, you're lost forever.” "Alice was an odd girl, even for Ferenwood, where the sun occasionally rained and the colors were brighter than usual and magic was as common as a frowning parent." "Making magic is far more interesting than making sense." So I actually read this book a few months ago and then recently reread it via audio so I could remember all the details for this review. I was first introduced to Tahereh Mafi’s work through her book Shatter Me, her debut novel. Ironically, it wasn’t through any of the ways I normally hear about books - Booktube, Goodreads, my best friend, Booklr - but from my husband’s aunt. She runs - or used to run, not sure if she’s still doing it - a book review blog. And she posted a review of Shatter Me and I was like, “What a weird, interesting writing style, lemme check this out.” At this point the entire Shatter Me Trilogy plus novellas had been published and I devoured all of them (still need to review those, too). So when I heard Tahereh Mafi was writing a middle grade book, I got super excited! Especially because this was during a time when I was too stressed out to read any YA, since most of the YA I like involves having to save the world and all the stress that entails. I need to lay out some trigger warnings real quick: the main character, Alice? Her mom is incredibly abusive, both emotionally and physically. It’s treated as not such a big deal in the book, which is honestly the story’s only real flaw, but it’s bad. It took me seven tries and resorting to an audiobook (and even with a fantastic narrator, that short audiobook took me almost a month to get through) because the abuse was so bad. So:

TRIGGER WARNING: THIS BOOK CONTAINS EMOTIONAL AND PHYSICAL ABUSE OF A CHILD BY THEIR PARENT

Let’s get started, yo! First of all, the setting. OMG. See, I love tthis thing called Victorian fairy tales, which is something you can find in books like Mary Poppins - these super fantastical bits of whimsy that just warm your heart and make you grin because they’re so creative and fun. In the Mary Poppins books, you can jump into chalk drawings and go to a circus amidst the stars and make friends with a woman who sells living candy-cane horses. In Catherynne Valente’s Fairyland series, there are shadow balls and talking phonographs. And in Furthermore, there’s light raining down from the sky in literal drops, sticks of magic you use like money, and forests full of invisible berries. The way the world is put together and described, so full of color and imagination, is awesome and beautiful and I could picture it perfectly. It reminded me in all the best ways of books like The Phantom Tollbooth (one of my favorites). But I wouldn’t want to live there, because Ferenwood is full of colorism and ick. Alice, the female lead, is an albino in a world where color is important and the darker you are, the more magical you’re considered to be. So Alice gets treated like garbage. 

Also I think Alice may be autistic, but I don’t know if she’s deliberately coded autistic or if Tahereh Mafi did it by accident while trying to make Alice eccentric, but she comes across as autistic. I’ve actually begun to pay more attention to that sort of the thing in recent years, being autistic myself, and I see it a lot - authors giving their characters autistic characteristics, often without meaning to. I just touch on it here because Alice is already treated badly for being albino, but she’s also considered a freak because of the way she behaves - like an autistic preteen. And I wonder if Tahereh Mafi did that on purpose as a sort of commentary or not, because while Alice is treated badly by the people of Ferenwood for her behavior, the Narrator (who is an actual character in the story; love when that happens) always sides with Alice in this regard. The storyline is sweet and I love it. Alice tries to compete in the magical testing all the preteens do on their twelfth birthday, and so she dances. And her dancing is magical but it’s not Magical, you know? So she fails the test. Well, turns out a boy who passed the test the year before, Oliver (the brat), needs Alice’s help fulfilling a quest - rescuing Alice’s missing dad. So they go on a quest together, although Alice hates Oliver (and rightly so, he’s rude). They go to a dozen different and cool places, all of which are dangerous and all of which are different. I wish we could’ve spent more time in those places but I understand why we didn’t. The only annoying thing is there’s an origami fox on the cover but it only pops up in one of the worlds for like two pages and then it’s gone and I thought we could spend more time both in that world and with that creature since it ended up on the cover. But alas, not. I understand why - middle grade is often cursed to be short, especially if it’s the author’s first MG novel ever. Once you get big and bad like Rick Riordan you can start tossing out gihugic tomes like Son of Neptune or Blood of Olympus on the regular. Oliver’s reason for needing Alice was one I didn’t see coming, nor was her magical talent - a talent they hint at throughout the book but never explain until near the end, at the perfect moment. I thought it was an interesting commentary on how young girls perceive themselves, that Alice hates this marvelous, amazing talent she has of bringing color into the world from nothing...because she can’t use it to change how she looks. Society has trained her already, by the age of twelve, to discount something incredible about herself because she can’t use it to make herself into what society wants her to be. That’s pretty impressive for a book this short. I loved some of the more deliberate messages in the work - the thing I mentioned about society’s pressures on young girls, and also that it’s okay to tell boys to screw off if they’re mean to you, and to have hope and to look for second chances (Alice thinks she only has one chance to pass the test and believes her life is over when she fails, only to find out she can try again the next year). I love all of that, and the lyrical and whimsical quality of the prose, and the world building is so creative and also makes me a bit hungry (people eat magic in this book, among other things; I wonder what it tastes like). Now...let’s talk about the abuse. That’s my biggest issue with the book. Alice’s mother is a total bitch. And not in a cool, kickass way like the lady in the show Empire. She’s vicious, she’s cruel, and she’s abusive. Alice knows - and the Narrator confirms - that she turned bad when her husband went missing, and apparently the worry for him and the strain of raising four kids on her own is making her hard and sad, but I don’t give a shit. I was hoping Tahereh Mafi would’ve gone all Hansel and Gretel on this lady and when Alice comes home with her dad, the wife’s dead or something. She beats Alice (at one point she beat Alice for chasing a boy out of the place where she was sleeping, even though he kept staring at her in her sleeping clothes, because apparently the boy - Oliver - had the right to break into their barn at 3AM and ogle Alice???), she verbally abuses Alice, she sends her to bed regularly without dinner, is constantly criticizing, won’t hug her or kiss her, and - this one really got me, for some reason - forces her to do illegal things. Those invisible berries I mentioned? Alice can find them and bring back whole baskets because of her magical gift, and so her mom sends her out to pick them all the time. If she brings home enough, her mom smiles. If she doesn’t, her mom yells and calls her names and sometimes beats her. Guess what? Picking those berries is illegal. We don’t find this out until much later in the book, but it is. The thing I didn’t like about the berries is that Oliver, who’s thirteen, is less concerned about Alice’s mother beating her for not picking enough contraband berries and instead focuses on how her ability to find the berries in the first place means Alice has really impressive magic. NOBODY seems to care how much Alice is being abused, not even the Narrator. The Narrator sympathizes with Alice’s hurt feelings and despair over her missing Father, but it’s never objectively stated that her mom is abusing her AND SHE IS. Yeah, her mom is sooo glad to have her back after Alice almost dies on her trip with Oliver, but so what? My roommate’s mom is so abusive that my roommate’s clergy leaders, doctors, and psychological therapist all said my roommate needed to cut ties with said mom, even though my roommate’s mom has also exhibited the same kind of “oh baby I’m so sorry, I love you so much” bullshit. That’s what abusers do. So I hate Alice’s mom. She literally makes her daughter feel like if she doesn’t risk her life numerous times AND bring her father back, there is no chance her mother will ever love her. And if she pulls that stuff off (which she does), then MAYBE her mother will love her. Nuh-uh. Nope. Hate that bitch. Other than that, I really loved this book. The characters felt real (Alice is me, but without my anger), Even the ones I didn’t like were still REAL, and well-drawn. The world building and word choice is fantastic. Basically, if you can get past the evil mom, read this book. World Building: 1 star Realism: 1 star Word Choice: 1 star Plot: 1 star Characterization: 1 star - ¼ star because Oliver Newbanks is an obnoxious little creep - 1 star because the mom is AN ABUSIVE EVIL BITCH - ¼ star because NOBODY DOES ANYTHING ABOUT THAT +½ star because Alice is amazing and has a genius brain and I love her Total score: 4/5 stars Would I Buy It: Yes! I own it and loved it enough I got the sequel for Christmas (in...2017...I've been sitting on this review for months...)! Would I Recommend: yes, but with trigger warnings. Again, highly abusive evil bitch mom who somehow doesn’t die.