#is the EXTREMELY reductive tl;dr

[chicago-geniza]

Note to self this woman's work along with Genevieve Z.'s and Irena G.'s is going to be Essential for the last section of Fake Thesis, she is literally just Tweeting It Out:

[agender-witchery]

On Project Moon

Hey, this is gonna be long, I'm putting most of it under the cut. This post is about the recent firing of VellMori from Project Moon, I know that it warrants some tags for triggers, but I have no idea what's commonly used, so if I miss something, please tell me.

Additionally, I have written this up in a way that if it escapes the target audience of Project Moon fans, it can still be understood, so with that in mind, there will be Library of Ruina spoilers.

The tl;dr for those who don't wanna read the full thing is that Project Moon was put in a very bad position with some violent extremists targeting them and that I'm not happy about any of what happened.

So, for those unaware, Project Moon has fired VellMori, the CG artist for Limbus Company. Now, a not inaccurate statement that can be made from this is "Project Moon fired a woman for being a feminist" but this is... somewhat reductive. Let's immediately get out of the way that VellMori did absolutely nothing wrong. Some people have said she is a TERF. I've seen no evidence of this. Some people have said she wished death on all men. I've seen no evidence of this.

What I HAVE seen is that VellMori thinks sexual abuse is bad. Now, why would this lead to a firing? The short answer is that a bunch of violent incels, one of which was literally dressed as a clown, came knocking at their office doors.

See, Limbus Company has a "beach" event coming up. In this event, we are getting a water themed outfit for two of the characters, one male and one female. For Sinclair, the guy, he has been given an EXTREMELY slutty mechanic's outfit. For Ishmael, the woman, she has been given a very skintight wet suit outfit. Now, I wanna take care to note that VellMori is the CG artist - she had no hand in these designs, a man made them. I would also like to mention that both outfit designs are amazing, and I will be including them at the end of this post for reference.

Now, upon revealing the wet suit design for Ishmael, a bunch of whiny incels on what is basically Korean 4chan got upset that Ishmael, instead of being in a bikini as is usual for gacha games, was wearing a wet suit. Nevermind that the designs in Limbus Company have always been conservative and that the Sinclair design is the most skin we've ever seen and it's just an open shirt. Again, the wet suit is still super revealing, it's skin tight and this is literally the first design of her that doesn't make her look flat chested. They're not rioting over the lack of sex appeal, they're specifically mad that it's not a bikini.

The incels come to the conclusion that the lack of any skin being shown on Ishmael's outfit is a result of evil feminism. No, I'm not exaggerating. They initially begin harassing the artist who is actually responsible for drawing the outfits, but upon learning that he is a man, set their sights on VellMori because she's a woman, and being an artist is good enough I guess. What they do from here is they start digging and digging and digging on VellMori's twitter, making use of archived pages because many of the "offensive" tweets had been deleted.

I'd like to take a moment to point out that VellMori never actually tweeted anything out here - it was all retweets from a 4-6 year old archive, and retweets that have been long deleted. These retweets contain such transgressive statements as "I'm sick of misogyny" and "If being against patriarchy makes me antisocial, then so be it" and just... mirroring back to men what those men were saying to women. Some people would like to have you think she was calling for death to all men. She wasn't. She ALSO retweeted all this stuff while she was a teenager and well before she worked for Project Moon.

Nonetheless, the incels had decided that feminism was the reason Ishmael had a wet suit and not a bikini and they had found a feminist working for Project Moon. It is at this point that we must take a brief detour and talk about Library of Ruina, Project Moon's previous game.

See, in Library of Ruina, one of the protagonists, Angela, has this whole arc about escaping her abuser and becoming a human. Yes, she is literally a robot, but Project Moon isn't exactly a stranger to symbolism in their stories and a feminist reading of Angela is ridiculously easy. The main antagonist in Library of Ruina is Argalia, the Blue Reverberation, and his crew is called the Reverberation Ensemble. Every member of the Reverberation Ensemble is a violent lunatic who each want to reinforce the status quo in their own unique shitty way. In addition to this, typically in order to reach the titular Library, you would need to be invited. The Reverb Ensemble are the "uninvited guests", the ones who managed to reach the Library and knock down the door without an invite.

Why am I talking about this? Well, the incels decided to start calling themselves the Reverb Ensemble, and referring to each other using names of the Reverb Ensemble members such as Pluto, Elena, and Oswald. Having taken on the moniker of the uninvited guests, they then showed up to Project Moon's office to protest. Over the lack of a bikini. Now, remember how I mentioned someone was dressed up as a clown? One of the Reverb Ensemble members, Oswald, is a clown with an extremely tenuous grip on reality. So much so, that his ideal world is one in which there is no meaning whatsoever. That is the character they chose to dress up as. This is either a case of extreme self awareness or extreme self unawareness.

Eventually, the incels were let into the office possibly as a form of damage mitigation to prevent the crowd of protestors from getting any bigger. This was a questionable decision, but they had a group of violent incels at their doorstep either way, and I don't exactly have full details on this. Regardless, Project Moon had on their hands a group of violent protesting incels, who they felt compelled to let into the building, and who had demands including the firing of their feminist employee. (7/28 update: a translation of the transcript posted to DCInside has surfaced. Please check the reblogs for it. Project Moon was verifiably threatened.)

So while "Project Moon fired a woman for being a feminist" isn't inaccurate it also isn't the full picture. More appropriately, it'd be "Project Moon fired a woman because a group of violent incels who weren't satisfied with a form fitting wet suit instead of a bikini showed up to their office demanding that an artist who did not make the wet suit design be fired because she retweeted some feminist stuff 5 years ago while she was a teenager".

I'm not happy with this. None of this is good. People are allowed to be feminists, and Project Moon stories have always presented progressive ideas to anyone with half a brain to do some basic literary analysis. I can understand why they would cave to the demands of people who were threatening them and showed up to their actual place of work, but at the same time, that's someone's livelihood gone and proof that in the future, the same sorts of people can use the same sorts of tactics to bully Project Moon into doing whatever they want. All of this sucks.

For those who would like to see the retweets in question alongside translations: https://twitter.com/danghwangs/status/1683884236888223744

And for people who would like reference as to what the artworks these incels were up in arms about, Ishmael in the wet suit and Sinclair in the mechanic's outfit.

[lovegrowsart]

what do u think of people saying that zuko only helped katara find the tsr because of his own selfish reasons? that he doesn’t care about her like that and just wanted her to stop being mean to him.

thank you for the ask, anon!

i think the first thing to establish is that, imo, it isn't necessarily wholly selfish of zuko to want katara to not be mean to him, even if he comes to a deeper understanding of why she's lashing out at him. it's perfectly within zuko's right to desire being treated well by his peers, especially as someone whose only recently left an extremely dangerous and abusive environment. that is NOT me saying katara is being abusive, she isn't at all, and her anger and distrust towards zuko is also perfectly understandable and relatable, and what's beautiful about their development in tsr is how they work through this conflict together. neither of them are being bad people in this episode - they're both good people that have some damage in their relationship, and i think some fans' attempts to make zuko (or katara ig) out to be the "bad guy" in the situation reductive and quite boring.

still, people generally point to how zuko acts/reacts in the beginning of the episode to paint him as "selfish", because he doesn't realise the depth of katara's hurt re: ba sing se until she yells at him about it - which is the moment that zuko switches from being frustrated with katara's behaviour to understanding and regretful, and immediately asks what he can do make it up to her. when katara lists a few impossible tasks for him, essentially implying that there's nothing zuko can do to improve their relationship and/or ease the hurt and anger she's carrying, zuko goes "well, bet, impossible tasks and relentless determination are my MO!" and goes to sokka, expresses that he cares about what katara thinks of him (as in its not only about wanting katara to stop being mean, but wanting to prove himself to katara, that he's changed for the better and can be there for her/help her), and learns about kya - then he stays outside her tent all night, offers to go on a highly dangerous mission with katara to go after yon rha, and stands by katara when aang and sokka preach forgiveness from their ostrich horse. on the mission, he never once dictates or even suggests what katara should do with yon rha once they find him, and completely follows her lead.

the thing is, if zuko's motivations were wholly selfish and only about getting katara to stop being mean to him, i doubt he would've gone to all those lengths to understand the root of katara's pain and anger (which, again, was never solely about him and what happened in ba sing se), and go on a whole ass mission to hunt down a dangerous someone they know has murdered at least one innocent civilian! it puts zuko at odds with aang and sokka after gaining their trust, which i doubt he wants, it takes time away from training aang and preparing him to face ozai, which i really doubt he wants, and he's going on a mission which someone who doesn't seem to like him all that much atm - not exactly a fun time! if it was really just about getting katara to stop being mean to him sometimes, i don't believe he would've done all that - he would've just accepted his lot and tried to work around katara's behaviour, which was frustrating to him, sure, but he's not thin-skinned or incapable of standing up for himself, he grew up with azula for fuck's sake!

lastly, i think it's pretty obvious that zuko's pretty surprised when katara forgives and hugs him at the end of the episode, which says to me that he wasn't thinking about whether she would do that or not, and certainly wasn't expecting it - which he would've been if his motivations were that selfish, if he was only doing it get katara to chill out or whatever and expected some reward for helping her find yon rha.

anyway, yeah - think i expressed my thoughts on this a bit messily, but tl;dr that i just don't think the way zuko was written and presented in the episode aligns with reading him as being selfish, not after the cliff scene, and tbh that reading often comes from people that have a vested interest in bad faith readings of zuko's character and devaluing zutara's canon development and relationship.

[neuroticboyfriend]

Addiction is an chemically hard-wired, obsessive experience that results in impulsivity and cravings. We tend to ruminate over drugs, fixated on getting our next high. But as our addiction goes on - tolerance rises, wallets slim - we may find we don't have enough drugs to feed that obsession anymore.

And once that starts to happen, we crash. We may get extremely depressed, angry, and anxious. It's overwhelming and can be torturous. Most people encourage us to cope by staying away from drugs, but what do you do if you can't distract yourself or get away? Well, you can start by being kinder to yourself. Accept that you don't have the coping skills you need, and leave room to (patiently) work on finding some self soothing/care activities (ex: H.A.L.T Are you Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired?). Take it a day at a time; don't rush.

But still, that may not be enough, so here I present to you: how to fulfill your drug obsession without actually doing drugs... Trick yourself. Learn about harm reduction, how the drugs you use work, drug subculture, the war on drugs, the drug industry, etc. Engage with and make art. Sulk to music if you have to. Here, your mind is still occupied by drugs, but you're also doing something helpful, maybe even fulfilling. Engaging in online harm reduction communities is also great.

Life as an addict is never going to be perfect - no life is. We can't force ourselves to do things we aren't ready for, but we can make the most of the time we have, and have fun/do good with it. If you don't know where to start, here are some online sources I use, with some harm reduction resources tacked on.

Remember: how you feel now won't last forever, and being an addict is not a moral failing. We have an illness, and if our best is staying alive, that's no less important and beautiful than some stereotypically successful person. Be gentler with yourself.

TL;DR: Can't cope without drugs, but don't have drugs to use/really need to abstain? Click here to help keep your addict brain occupied without actually doing drugs. Others, feel free to add on.

[superfallingstars]

one of the (MANY!) things that i can’t stop thinking about regarding that horrible discourse post is the way that the terms sexual harassment and sexual assault are thrown around. i think that whether or not the incident (where james turns snape upside down with his own spell and exposes his underwear in front of everyone) “counts” as sexual harassment or assault doesn’t really matter. at least, not in the way the people in that discourse post think that it matters.

how we as the readers would define this event based on our own morality is relatively unimportant. what actually matters in this situation is how snape experienced it. nobody involved in that discourse post considers whether snape himself would define this event as sexual assault – and even if he would define it as such, whether that would influence his perception of how harmful it was. after all, people can experience the same event differently; what one person considers a bad day can be extremely traumatic for someone else. because of this, trying to objectively quantify the degree of harm snape experienced by defining this incident as sexual assault, harassment, bullying, or whatever, obscures the most important part of the incident – which is how it affected snape! it's so frustrating, because this is something that we could actually have interesting discourse about. did james know how deeply his actions were affecting snape? would he have changed his behavior if he knew? or did he already know, and simply not care?

but even more frustrating is the fact that despite all of the animosity in that post, i don't think anyone involved actually cares about whether or not the incident was sexual harassment/assault. the function of those terms in that post is simply to assign morality to the people involved. if the incident counts as sexual assault, then snape is a Victim and therefore Good, and james is a Perpetrator and therefore Bad. if it wasn’t sexual assault, then the incident wasn’t really that harmful, so snape is Bad and james is Good. it’s mind-bogglingly reductive. i guess it's just remarkable that everyone involved in that post seems so confident in their ability to define sexual harassment and assault, while simultaneously ignoring any of the effects that this could have had on snape. instead, sexual harassment and assault just serve as proxies for morality in the never-ending argument of whether or not snape Bad.

tl;dr what you call this incident does not determine the amount of harm it caused, and also you should care about the amount of harm it caused if you're going to make claims about morality

[thatswhatsushesaid]

Xiyao?

oh!! xiyao is the otp to end all otps for me (@verdantrivers tagging you as well since you also asked about them, even tho you already know everything I'm going to write anyway)

ship it 🤌

What made you ship it? in the novel, it was absolutely the teacups scene. but uhhh this is embarrassing but I came into this fandom backwards, and so my first exposure to xiyao was the show! tl;dr I was looking for a show on netflix to fill the void left in my soul after the depressing end of The Rise of the Phoenixes, and someone somewhere rec'd The Untamed because "it's gay and the gays get a happy ending!!" me, a depressed bisexual, "oh, what a relief, I could use a happy ending for the gays after all that depressing straight people nonsense I just suffered through." (joke's on me, my chosen gays did not get their happy ending, I clowned myself) anyway, /scuffs foot, it was the box scene. their cute little shuffle over the box. the shy yet lingering eye contact. meng yao's eyes doing the thing that zhu zanjin has them do every time he looks at lan xichen for longer than a second, like he's noticing how beautiful starlight is for the first time, and lan xichen looking like meng yao just awoke something in him that he didn't even realize was there until that moment. meng yao's beautiful face journey when he sees lan xichen and rushes to say goodbye to him. like... I feel it bears mentioning at this point that I knew so little about this show or the canon source material that I literally thought that xiyao was going to be the main ship with the happy ending just based on this moment alone, and so you can imagine by dismay once I realized how tragically wrong I was. RIP past me. anyway, while I absolutely prefer jgy's characterization and arc in the novel canon, I will nevertheless die for the way lhk and zzj chose to bring xiyao to life on-screen. they did the reading.

What are your favorite things about the ship? besides the siren call of a decades' long near-romance that is doomed by the narrative, probably that when given a choice (or rather, when jgy believes that he has a choice), jgy and lxc always choose each other, both when the stakes are low and when they are extremely high. one bad faith and garbage take on their dynamic that I often see trotted out by jgy's harshest critics is that he exploits lxc's affection for him exclusively to cement his position within the lanling jin sect and to further his own ambitions, which seems like such a dull and reductive way to view the nearly two decades they spend together in each other's lives. I also just don't understand where this interpretation comes from?? is it just from jgy using the pass token to get the song of spirit turmoil from the library pavilion's forbidden section? because yes, that was a violation of lxc's trust, but also like... would there even have been a forbidden section in the library pavilion for him to steal from if jgy hadn't sacrificed so much of his dearly bought social and political capital upon gaining his recognition from jgs to help the gusu lan rebuild the cloud recesses? this is not me trying to diminish that violation of lxc's trust, but just to emphasize that jgy actually had very little to gain, politically speaking, at the time he pressed his father to provide aid to the extremely vulnerable and weak gusu lan, but he did it anyway, and he did it because he knew lxc needed the help. smaller stakes: given the choice between being in anyone else's company or each other's, they always gravitate towards each other in any space they occupy together, and that does things to me lol.

Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship? with very few exceptions, I don't enjoy lan-furen as a concept 🤷‍♀️ I didn't even fully understand why the lan-furen AUs didn't work for me until I read commentary specifically by you and @fincalinde and @confusion-and-more (I think) about how deeply jgy's pursuit of his birthright with the lanling jin is integral to his character. because I do remember reading objectively good and well-written lan-furen fic that should have been providing me with emotionally satisfying xiyao catharsis after getting hit by the truck that is the canon ending, and instead left me feeling like I'd eaten too many bites of a pie that was good yesterday but has already started to turn. idk that metaphor is getting away from me. also, more fics where jgy is the soft dom in the bedroom, please, that's my favourite jgy flavour.

[aprofessionalwithoutstandards]

do you really think people are saying you can only ship pyropauling if you think pyros a lesbian or is it just that you dont like the headcanon because nobodies saying the former

I FORGOT I SAID THIS LMAOOOO okay let me explain it to you in a way that makes sense: Time and time again, I see it consistently implied that Pyropauling "works" or "is okay" because op headcanons Pyro as a nonbinary lesbian (which is fine! It's good. I'm cool with it), which is consistent with some people on this website's idea that lesbians Only date other people who identify as lesbians (hence why "you identifying as a boy AND a lesbian is literally forcing lesbians to fuck men" is such a popular awful discourse, why would you think that if you don't think someone identifying as a lesbian means "lesbians must date them" or something). What I was saying is that, as a nonbinary, bisexual, sapphic person, I find the presentation of "nonbinary lesbian" as a secret third gender to be reductive. It's basically just "women and femmes". The post you're referencing here is a post where I say "Pauling could still date Pyro even if they're bisexual, because lesbians can date bisexual people and it's fine". The kind of genders popularly associated with "nonbinary lesbian" (i.e. "potentially masc and maybe a boy but NOT a man" or whatever) are genders continually denied to bisexual people, nonbinary bisexual people are so often immediately slated into "nblm" or something, bisexual people of all genders are treated as being from a different Fucking planet than lesbians are. "No one is saying the former" if you're bisexual you see it Everywhere, it's constant, I have never once seen anyone insinuate that Pyro tf2 is nonbinary and bisexual and dates Pauling or that Sniper tf2 is butch and bisexual and dates Pauling or whatever, it is consistently "x character is a lesbian which is why they can date Pauling, who is a lesbian, because that's how it works" (which is fine, of course, your headcanon is not my headcanon and that's okay, but I'm allowed to say that I want something different). It's actually extremely embarrassing that I have to express this through Team Fortress 2 shipping discourse on my video game comedy blog, but TL;DR: please stop telling bisexual women* that they're being hysterical and making things up when they talk about something you've never personally experienced. Lmao

[belethlegwen]

out of curiosity, are there genres/tropes/things regarding G/t you wouldn't write (size-swap, fearplay, etc)? I'd love to drop an Ask or two for prompts, but I want to make sure I'm not crossing any boundaries

thx again!

Oh hey!! Thank you so much for the ask!! <3 I like to try and stretch my writing abilities a bit and am willing to at least TRY and take a crack at most requests I get when I post prompt lists and the like, but there are a few places I won't go. I don't do Vore of any kind, and while I'll do fearplay for an open-audience (tumblr) it will probably likely be really tame.

Overall, the things I am really uncomfortable with for the most part in terms of writing would be like, whump, extreme harm, that kind of thing. I can't stomach whump much even as a reader (no shade against those that do), I just... find it personally very very hard to get past as a reader, and writing things like whump I can only even really attempt if I know there will be good comfort coming after.

Another thing I do not fuck with is Pet-Trope or like, extreme dehumanization of a tiny. I got a lot of shit against that trope as it is personally, and have given reading some stories the ol' College Try but just had to admit that no matter what, I just can't bring myself to even critically-approach that media without it being way too much for me. I get way too mad and have a hard time separating emotions from the narrative. That is on me, and my personal boundaries are that I just do not engage with it.

I don't like hurting the little guys, but I understand that Hurt has to come if you want to do Hurt/Comfort. It just drives me up the wall when it just seems like the pain/damage is the POINT, and the comfort (if there is any) is just somehow a gateway for further dehumanization or humiliation or infantalization or anything else. I've got a lot of personal hangups about it and it squicks me real bad.

I have no issues personally with anyone who does Vore/Whump/Dehumanization/etc content either from a creation stand-point or an interaction/enjoying standpoint. We all get different things from our media and what upsets or harms us might be cathartic or even healing to another. I don't like it when people attack PEOPLE when it comes to trope/genre discourse, it's reductive and more harmful than good (ex: shit like saying 'everyone who likes whump is an abuser'. It's a completely untrue statement that only serves to direct harassment to undeserving people and makes it harder for them to find safe-spaces with which to healthily interact with the media they enjoy and/or analyze it critically in spaces with multiple viewpoints.)

Everyone can have genres/tropes/stories/characters/etc that they do not like, and that they adamantly hate! I know I do! I'll rant about that shit forever! I just don't want to then look at someone who DOES like it or DOES create it and make them feel like I want them hunted for sport and that everyone should agree with me that they should be hunted for sport.

SO sorry that this took such a strong ramble!! I've just had some experiences in my time here on Tumblr (and a lot of other internet places, let's be real) where you need to be clear about what's happening and what you're saying because nuance can be real hard for some people to pick up.

TL;DR - Don't ask me to be like, real-REAL mean to a li'l person in the narrative and we'll probably be gucci, haha <3 Everything else I don't mind explaining any limits with on a case-by-case basis, as well! It never hurts to ask and the worst I'll do is say no. I promise I'm not too scary about it.

Thanks again so much for the ask!

[chipped-chimera]

FOR THE TIRED PEOPLE: Some new research about Chronic + ADHD(inattentive) related fatigue, and BCAAs

[DISCLAIMER // I AM NOT A DOCTOR. I AM NOT A MEDICAL PRACTITIONER. I AM NOT A DIETICIAN. I'm just a big tired nerd with way too much time on my hands who likes science. I am however, sharing this because this could potentially help others and BCAAs are already safe for human consumption, widely used and easily accessible. If you are uncertain about adding BCAAs to your diet please talk to your doctor first. There are also some medications which interact negatively with BCAA's. Do your research. Also generally be careful about taking medical advice from the internet! ]

I was going to post about something else but I went down the rabbit hole of explaining this study I read and decided that no, this needed it's own thing or it's gonna be a mile long.

So in one of my usual weekly fatigue breakdowns where I was scraping the internet for any kind of information that might point out something I've SURELY missed to explain why I feel the way I do, I stumbled across this study published last year (2022) -

[ The relationship between central fatigue and Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder of the inattentive type ]

The TL;DR on the paper - our previous assumptions about the tryptophan-serotonin system might be wrong (tryptophan being the precursor for a bunch of stuff, including melatonin which is the sleepy chemical - aka why people say drink warm milk before bed to help sleep, that's tryptophan) what was previously assumed was reducing tryptophan = bad because it could affect serotonin production.

Testing in rats (so grain of salt here) indicated that higher levels of tryptophan =/= higher levels of serotonin and when reducing the level of free tryptophan in the bloodstream it returned to baseline. High levels of tryptophan were associated with fatigue and inattention, and rats on a tryptophan deficient diet by contrast took longer to reach a state of exhaustion. I'm skipping over a bunch of stuff but basically - research is now pointing to both Chronic Fatigue and ADHD related fatigue being related to Central Nervous System Fatigue which up until now, has only really been associated with the fatigue athletes experience when exercising really hard (now just picture me doing jack shit and feeling like that every day. Yeah). I've only just stared to see bits and pieces pop up about this recently but nothing in relation to this tryptophan study.

Anyway, the thing about BCAAs: BCAAs (Branched Chain Amino Acids) are currently used to reduce the uptake of tryptophan in the brain for better performance in athletes, help with reduction of exercise fatigue (CNS fatigue) and muscle building. You can pretty easily find BCAA's added to protein-shakes or in it's own kind of supplement. It also occurs naturally in some foods (Beef, Chicken, Eggs, Lentils, Chickpeas, Brown Rice etc.) so it is absolutely safe to consume. It's also generally fairly affordable (especially compared to the lengthy process of treatment + medications that might not even work and you have to keep changing them, yes I am talking from personal experience).

Again, this is all very new and absolutely needs so much more research because up until now, no one has really been sure what causes Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, but tests have shown that those suffering CFS demonstrate similar activation of their muscles as fatigued athletes - as in they could activate them but not to their full capacity. This connection is only considered 'possible' and it might take a good few years before we can say anything with certainty.

But as an extremely tired bitch who is extremely tired of being extremely fucking tired, I am sharing this because it's easy to get, safe, and affordable and if you're like me you're about ready to try anything. And it's not another goddamn pill (I'm on 14 a day).

Also for the ADHDers specifically: protein rich diets are usually advised for us because it helps with the metabolism of stimulants, and can help with softening medication crashes when they wear off. So adding a protein shake with BCAAs to your morning routine might be a good idea. Or just any protein shake in general.

There can be side effects to taking BCAAs, but it is considered rare and this depends entirely on the person. Cross check existing medications, talk to your doc etc. if you are not 100% certain adding BCAAs to your diet is possible. Stay safe peeps.

[rwby-redux]

Random thought but I've decided to ask about how dental hygiene works on Remnant. Does your aura protect your teeth from getting cavities or not?

The short answer is no, Aura is not a failsafe against cavities. So don’t shirk brushing and flossing your teeth!

The long answer has to do with the minimal threshold Aura operates under, and how the healing factor detects and responds to perceived injuries.

Everyone who has an active Aura has a reservoir: the amount of Aura at their disposal. Some people, like Jaune, have an uncommonly large reservoir. Most folks operate within a finite range that needs recharging between uses. Specific tasks or functions—like healing, for example—require a certain amount of “energy” to be pulled off. Healing a paper cut takes significantly less energy than, say, patching up a first-degree burn.

There are also certain types of injuries whose energy demands exceed what an Aura can supplement/provide. This sort of loosely correlates with how bodies naturally heal on their own. Like, a light scrape on your knee is going to probably heal faster than a cut on your hand that requires stitches. Ergo, a scraped knee will take less Aura to heal. While an Aura can definitely speed up that recovery time, or hell, repair certain minor injuries outright without medical intervention, there are limits to what it can do.

Extensive or severe injuries often have steep Aura requirements that surpass what’s in a person’s reservoir, making healing them functionally impossible. Think third-degree burns, amputations, impalement, and severe poisoning. Trying to use your Aura to heal any of these would not only likely deplete it, but you could end up doing even worse damage to yourself in the process.

If someone tried to use their Aura on a fractured bone without correctly realigning the pieces, they run the risk of it healing incorrectly. Reduction is extremely important for repairing a fracture—it’s why people usually need casts, plates, or screws to hold the pieces together. Aura doesn’t have the ability to align the bone. It would simply try to replicate the natural healing process at an expedited rate—blood clotting, collagen layering, bone mineralization—and in doing so, not only deplete itself in the process, but cause a malunion.

The reason why Aura can’t do much to prevent or heal cavities is because of similar underlying constraints. Teeth have very little in the way of self-repair capabilities. Technically, while odontoblasts can lay down secondary and tertiary dentin in response to tooth decay, the enamel layer can’t regenerate due to the absence of ameloblasts. Teeth can only patch up small amounts of wear and tear, because they’re largely composed of inorganic, acellular material.

Simply put, Aura can’t create new enamel because your body can’t create new enamel. The healing factor might be able to coax your teeth to produce secondary dentin, but they can’t fix extensive damage to the crown.

TL;DR - The healing factor is limited by biological constraints. Even if you have a huge surplus of Aura, there are certain things it just can’t do. Best stick to fluoride toothpaste for now.

As a side note, part of a Huntsman's training covers this topic pretty in-depth! After all, the last thing you want is for a scared and panicking Huntsman to try and heal an injury that's beyond their capabilities.

[kalkori]

!!THIS POST HAS BEEN PEER REVIEWED!!

the way some of yall are using tme and tma is seriously reductive to the point where half of the posts i see makes me feel like these are terms we're going to eventually have to put on a shelf. here's me trying my best to politely explain why. if you're gonna get on my ass before i even explain suck on my block button

no matter how you may believe it should be used, i often see it used Specifically to mean "trans women's oppression is unique in the way that no other trans person [often trans men] can ever experience it" and its!! not!!! fucking!!!! true yall!!!!! [it's also sometimes used to dunk on trans men and yall. that just stanks of weird shit and i do not need to explain why thats freakay]

from what i see, the experience tma describes is "percieved as a pedo and/or dangerous." and for a trans person who is not transitioning to a girl to not be percieved as one or both, you would have to be:

white

perisex [for those who may not know, that just means "not intersex"]

not have a demonized disorder (any disorders that may cause psychosis/delusions/all that jazz, any cluster-b disorders if we're being real (INCLUDING NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY DISORDER YALL), psychopathy, aspd, THE LIST!! GOES!! ON!!)

it is COMMON for trans people to be at least one of the above. poc are often considered dangerous (i do not think poc being pedos is a very common belief anymore except with the EXTREME extremists, though correct me if im wrong), intersex people are often considered both dangerous and pedos, and it depends on what demonized mental disorder one may have for which thing they have

I believe half of the people using tme and tma are simply ignorant of the trans experience Outside of a white, perisex mentally ""good"" trans person. But I do think some of yall are just being assholes in which case go fuck yourself

tl;dr: some of yall are being real reductive with the tme and tma labels and you need to understand what they actually mean before you start reducing peoples real ass experiences. and also please stop being weird about trans men because unfortunately trans men do not get the privilege of people not being fucking weird about them

P.S. i'm really confused about where the nonbinary stuff and people who experience gender outside of western norm fall into this stuff. like are yall putting them all in tme? is it case by case? do you just pretend not to see? im genuinely asking here

[euarchontoglires]

i got friends/acquaintances on both sides of the "vote blue no matter who" debate and im so fucking sick of hearing opinions from both extreme sides being thrown at me constantly it makes me feel like a shit and inconsiderate person no matter which side i take

but from a logical standpoint: ppl saying it's about "harm reduction" act like this hasn't been the dems' tactic to get away with doing awful shit for Years as long as they can claim to support diversity on the surface. they act like 4 years later there's magically going to be someone who doesn't support genocide running for office when that's not how it works. "it's about being strategic" well you're setting it up so that dems can STRATEGICALLY start moving the goalposts further and further right until the only difference between them and the gop is that they have a trans flag in their campaign. y'all have the nerve to talk about the trolley problem when you've done nothing to stop the tracks from being built. vote in the primaries. use the power of social media to expose candidates' crimes against humanity as soon as the race starts. it's too late to do these now lol but i guess you can still harass your reps to see the changes you want and attend protests. tell the dems "i'll vote blue if you promise to stop sending weapons to israel" and then (figuratively) stand outside their door with a metal bat to make sure they deliver on that promise the second election day is over

however anti-"vote blue no matter who" folks who just morally shame people and don't have a solid plan to actually support the marginalized people of this country also piss me off. im going to be brutally honest people who say "the dems and republicans are the same" and/or "the only difference is that republicans are going to hurt white queers so anyone who votes blue is just selfish" are fucking insane to me when it's been ON RECORD that the gop have plans for america that are much, much worse than their opponent. i'd dare say that their strategy is to wait for leftists to tear each other apart and pull ahead while we're all distracted. so that means your most important task during this time is to show SOLIDARITY for your fellow leftists and minorities and leftist minorities. like i said in a previous post, open up your fucking wallets and give monetary support, but also be sympathetic towards people who are forced to leave their homes in order to not be killed.

what both sides can do, additionally, is rally in favor of ranked choice voting or at least a better voting system that doesn't put leftists in this kind of trolley problem every 4 years

this is the final statement i will be making on the matter and if i break that promise yall are free to hit me

tl;dr everyone needs to stop running their mouth and back up their shit with actions.

[queenlua]

i never do these PSA posts because most PSA stuff isn’t actually actionable, but, uh, this one is:

tl;dr: there are now a bunch of drugs that are really damn good at treating COVID.  if you or a loved one get COVID, especially if you have extra risk factors, you should ask your health provider about them (and, if you’re in the US, you can even use this handy dandy website to see what’s in stock near you).  also, consider telling people (esp. older people) about this, i guess?  so that they know too?

i mention this because evidently communication (to both the public and, bafflingly, to medical practitioners) about the existence and goodness about these drugs has been really bad—bad enough that people really sick with COVID are being told by their own doctors “well there’s nothing we can really give you” when there’s literally paxlovid in stock at the local pharmacy, and bad enough some people really sick with COVID are thinking “oh no, there’s nothing to be done, i won’t bother going to a doctor at all.”

this is not true!  there are drugs, they are super good at preventing hospitalization/death, and you should know about them!

some other fun stuff:

* here’s a simple explainer for paxlovid (one of the better drugs we’ve got)

* here’s the data from one of the clinical trials on paxlovid (89% reduction in hospitalization and death vs placebo!!! hell yes!!!)

* in the US, at least, there’s not a significant shortage of these drugs, so don’t balk due to worrying over whether someone else needs it more.  if you are still worried about that anyway, just check out this website and decide for yourself how much there is in your area.  it’s probably fine

* if your doctor says anything like: these drugs don’t work, or are only for really EXTREME cases, or whatever, i’m profoundly sorry but there’s a decent chance your doctor sucks.  a lot of these treatments work best if you get them quite soon after the onset of symptoms, so, maybe call a second doctor and get their opinion?

(this post brought to you by: i just heard a fucking horror story about some idiot doctor failing to prescribe paxlovid to anyone for an outbreak in a fucking nursing home oh my god oh my god oh my god)

[newhumantype]

this is weird but i saw your tags on an old post abt darryl and white josh from cxg "#their breakup leaves a bad fucking taste in my mouth#i could go off about cxg's lazy self-righteous and hypocritical treatment of romantic narratives#but i won't :)" and listen i would LOVE to hear

not weird at all! hope you like essay-length responses lmao.

the tl;dr is that i feel like the anti-narrative ethos driving the latter half of craxy ex-girlfriend was extremely unsuccessful and made the show kind of eat its own arm off.

"life doesn't make narrative sense" is a great message, and I do see where they were going with it and how it applies to rebecca's life. however, the problem is that, no matter how much the show switched up traditional storytelling methods, cxg began as and remained a fictional serialized television show with its own defined narrative.

take darryl and white josh's breakup. i fully believe that if people had felt as neutral about darryl x whiJo as they did about, say, heather x hector, they would've been endgame lol. but since fans shipped them and wanted them to stay together, the writers had them break up to make sure that they knew that "life doesn't make narrative sense." A really well-written and beloved romantic couple was unrealistic, but couples like heather and hector (i don't mean to pick on them because i like them fine!) and, far worse, darryl and the woman he met at the end of the show, ARE realistic specifically because they aren't fun or narratively well-developed?

the last season is even worse. they spent 17 EPISODES (some of my favorite shows barely have 17 episodes total) actively trying their hardest to entice the audience to take a "side" regarding rebecca's romantic life with the clear intention of going "psych" at the end. I can't help but feel that they must have wanted 1) people to genuinely pick a side so they could sucker punch them with their message at the end, AND/OR 2) make people feel silly for ever having picked a side previously.

that all just feels so disingenuous to me because, over the years, the show really made the connections between rebecca and each of her boyfriends seem (to varying degrees) genuine at certain times, so for them to then be like "lol isn't this whole tv show romance thing a ridiculous notion?" feels like a bit of a reductive take, you know? I really liked rebecca's boyfriends as characters, i became invested in them and their journeys. i was never invested in shipping her with any of them, but would it really be so bad if someone was? after all, they literally wrote them as genuine love interests.

plus there were just sooo many missed opportunities in that last season. I didn't particularly enjoy seeing the guys manipulated into rebecca-obsessed robots who would do anything to earn her love to serve the season arc. instead, imagine if the writers had pulled a bojack horseman and started focusing on josh and nathaniel (and other characters) moving on from her and having their own stories. what if we'd seen Josh meet/fall for his girlfriend or seen nathaniel starting out at the zoo?

Why make everything in a season be about romance when the ultimate message is that romance isn't everything? why tell us using this really silly love quadrangle plot when they could have just shown us?

and don't even get me started on greg. i want to preface this next statement with the caveat that i admittedly watched cxg years after it finished airing. by myself. and didn't discuss it with anyone. so maybe it's just me. however, from the first second greg came back in s4, i got extremely strong vibes that the writers felt he was the best romantic fit for rebecca. every scene he was in just seemed to have more weight to it, and he was the one who'd done the most to work on himself of the three guys. and there's just something so hypocritical about making such a strong point about her not picking someone only to - in my opinion - quite prominently hint at her best/most likely choice while also refusing to definitively make that choice. like if you're going to say that it was never about the individual guys but about rebecca choosing herself, don't show a preference for one of them! and if you have a preference for one because he's bettered himself/matured more than the others, be brave enough to come out and say so directly!

this comes back to the narrative thing. i believe they didn't want to take a side on her romantic life not only because they wanted to end with her choosing herself (which is a really nice message that fits well with the show overall) but also because no matter which one they picked, some fans would be happy. some group of people would have a cute, idyllic romantic story with the happy ending they'd always wanted. and that would directly go against the "life doesn't make narrative sense" ethos. because they felt that anything with a clean narrative - like a fan favorite couple being endgame - would defy this notion, they simply couldn't do it.

this is why i say they ate their own arm off. they created interesting characters and stories only to eventually unceremoniously snuff them out out or take a bizarre left turn with them rather than take them to an interesting and organic place. it really felt like the writers came to interpret "life doesn't make narrative sense" as "only the least developed and worst written narratives make sense", which made for a frustrating and ultimately unsatisfying viewing experience.

[aryaarianne]

I remember reading ADwD and thinking am I reading it right, Jon is so passionate about Arya it's like his dormant Targaryen was unleashed. And then the Jonrya letter leaked and I had to reread the books because I had been reading it right.

Sorry, anon - I intended to write about how much I love Jon and his ADWD arc, but I ended up spiraling into a rant about George’s writing and fandom response instead! Hopefully you don’t mind me stepping on the soapbox.

TL;DR: You get me, and all of us who picked up on it have to stick together. :) Mentioned rant is under the cut!

I fully agree - I think the scope and scale of the series overall really allows some people to distance themselves from how, like, unsubtle some of the hints George has dropped in ADWD really are. Because there’s so much text to sift through, people are less inclined to take certain details or patterns as seriously as they deserve. 

Has George’s original storyline mutated over the years? 100% it has. Has it changed so much that Jon and Arya’s dynamic is no longer romantic? I find it difficult to say one way or the other - there’s a lot of factors to consider, end of the day, including marketability. Jonrya just isn’t that popular.

But has the storyline changed so much that Jon and Arya’s dynamic is no longer crucial to the plot and key factors in the arcs of both characters? Absolutely not. They may not be the most important factors in each other’s arcs anymore, maybe, but theirs is certainly the most relevant relationship to their arcs. It’s more or less spelled out for us in their POVs.

George is an incredibly efficient writer. He has no intention to waste the reader’s time, and no patience for mind games. He’s extremely deliberate - his text isn’t simple or straight-forward by any means, but it is constructed with a consciously considered purpose. Honestly, people like to moan about how long George takes to finish his work, but just as many people, and often the same, will discount exactly how meaningful each line of text that he includes is. He spends that long editing and drafting and deliberating each word, and so it seems only fair to assume everything he includes has a specific purpose.

The thing with George is that when he writes POV chapters, the text is neither generally omniscient nor a comprehensive catalogue of the perspective character’s thoughts, feelings, and motivations. Unlike some authors, George doesn’t dissect a character’s unconscious near-explicitly in the text - he gives the readers room to breathe and settle and consider for themselves. He asks more of his readers, and the simple fact is that mainstream audiences, and that includes fandom, read the series just for leisure - not judging, that’s a totally fine way to engage with the text.

And further, the nuances in Jon’s character in particular have suffered from how mainstream audiences have engaged with him. He is easily the most frequently simplified character, and the reduction is one of the most extreme in degrees, as well, especially if you factor in what a big fucking deal he is. What I mean is - take Arianne. While I love the Martells, and Arianne in particular, there is a lot less text dedicated to them and to her than there is to Jon, or even most POV characters. It naturally follows that readers would generalize or simplify her character as easily as they do. (I don’t like it, but it tracks logically.)

In comparison, Jon, with so many POVs and being easily the most important character, perspective or otherwise, to do with the entire Ice half of A Song of Ice and Fire, has had his arc and his themes diluted down to the point they’re near meaningless to the gen fandom, and it is fucking wild to witness! It's hard to really get a grip on as a fan of his, but a big part of it goes back to the fact that George’s writing style is a) relatively dense and b) relatively demanding.

I’m a pretty critical person, but I should say there’s a lot of things I do like about the ASOIAF fandom, and a lot of the time I don’t mind the community around book-accurate Jon, Arya, and their dynamic being smaller, because I think it gives opportunities to more people to voice their thoughts and be heard, and also we’ve got some of the most talented artists, editors, writers, and meta-writers in the fandom, easily. 

But it can be frustrating to have a legitimate view of the text, so much so it’s clearly explicitly supported by textual and meta textual evidence, and yet be dismissed so easily by the wider fandom. But luckily the community has some really great members and allies, and blocking is easy enough - I do it at the drop of a hat, lol!

Agh, I should wrap this up. Thanks for the ask, and it makes me happy that you came to me with the sentiment - I feel you, anon, you get me

[but-the-library-of-alexandria]

idk how spicy of a take this is but I feel like in the modern day, the scope of using objectively dangerous fantasy creatures or magical traits as a one-to-one allegory for oppressed minorities in real life is limited at best and possibly harmful at worst - because it simply does not translate

obviously many irl minorities face similar kinds of fear responses in society as your fantasy werewolves or your x-men mutants, but the key difference is that real minorities are not, and never have been, a legitimate source of danger to mainstream society. it's a (very offensive and harmful) myth that gay men are likely to be predators, or that black people are more likely to be aggressive, or that jewish people are trying to take over the world, and society believing these myths doesn't translate into fantasy worlds where, in spite of those individuals who 'have it under control' or 'use their powers for good', the fantasy-minority genuinely comes with some sort of extremely dangerous superpower which, if unchecked, could destroy the fantasy world. nothing like this exists on any scale in the real world, and I think it's reductive to compare these things directly to reality. suggesting that, for example, the mages of dragon age are a direct metaphor for queer oppression or slavery, kind of ignores the fact that real-life humans can't accidentally summon demons capable of wiping out entire villages lmao. in the real world, the idea that innocent people have a right to freedom whatever their circumstances of birth is pretty simple, but in the real world, we don't have good-hearted and innocent people who could wipe out a continent by pure bad luck, and real-world morality politics don't easily apply in a world where public safety is actually, mortally, threatened by unchecked superpowers running wild

I'd even go so far as to say that fantasy races with no inherent dangerous traits, but who historically oppressed, enslaved or genocide-d the now-majority society and as a result are the victims of lingering fear and hate (such as orcs in many fantasy settings), are a pretty poor-taste metaphor for oppressed ethnicities considering that in general it's the oppressor who has a violent history and not the other way around lmao

tl;dr - if your fantasy race/magic users/sci-fi mutants come with legitimate and concrete reasons for society to consider them a threat and want to limit their freedoms, be it hard-to-control apocalytic superpowers, a history of extreme violence, or a tangible potential to take over and destroy the world, they're probably not an ideal metaphor for real-life minorities, who are not and never have been a legitimate danger to society