#it sounds like you really understand some of the pitfalls that can happen | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

olderthannetfic · 1 year ago

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I feel like people won't like this question but not knowing the answer bothers me, so here goes. I'm part of a small writing community and in my category (original m/m) I'm a really small author, getting one comment per chapter, while others have 100+ comments for the same amount of chapters. These are usually the type of stories that are darker with elements of rape and seme/uke dynamics and feature maffia bosses, sex slaves, hybrids, A/B/O and the like. These are not my cup of tea but I understand the id explanation and fully support it, I just don't understand how my id can be so different from the majority's.

My favourite dynamic is bad boy with a golden heart/fairly normal guy, so that's what I write most often and I thought this was a popular dynamic. Within that dynamic, my stories are pretty eclectic, I've got old butler/young groom, prince/court painter, ghost hunter youtuber/ghost, PE teacher/math teacher, I write about adults, teenagers, boys, girls, etc. What is it that's so appealing in maffia stories but not in mine?

Obviously I'm motivated by jealousy in asking this, but I hope I don't come off as too unpleasant or pretentious. I just don't understand what the barrier is that I can't step over, what it is that makes these other authors so popular. It's disheartening to realise I will never be as popular as them, and not knowing why. (Of course I know the obvious answer is to just write whatever makes me happy and don't think about popularity and numbers, find friends with similar tastes, etc., but I do that most of the time and in asking this, I'm just interested in how other people see the issue, what might be the reason behind the majority's taste.)

I think all of the writers in question can tell a story fairly well, me included, so I can only think the difference is in the topics we choose. (Also in sappy declarations of love and the characters constantly calling each other "sweetheart" and "my love" that sounds kind of cringey in my native language but I can't imagine people are not interested in my stories because they don't contain tearful love confessions. There's plenty of romance there, though less and less explicit sex.) So can anybody tell me what makes these darker topics so much more appealing? Maybe if I understood, I would be less bothered by it.

(You're also free to tell me I'm a wanker and to come off it, of course.)

Haha. Well... I think a certain amount of professional jealousy or at least insecurity is common, especially if you're hoping to pay your rent or gain clout or something and it isn't happening for you (yet). (I'm unclear if your original m/m niche is one where people are seeking money or not.)

I don't feel bad when other people are more popular because I know my shit is good. If it hasn't found an audience, it's partly because my marketing isn't good (or existent) or because it just takes time to find an audience. But a lot of it has to do with my native personality. I'm just not a jealous person, and I find jealousy odd and confusing most of the time. (Cue a bunch of fiction exploring jealous characters. Haha.)

There are some interesting side topics to discuss here, but your question, taken exactly as phrased, is basically about your own emotions and not about external reality.

It sounds to me from what you wrote here like maybe you're writing in your native language?

But if you are writing in English, watch out for little pitfalls like "heart of gold" vs. "golden heart".

Second... what do you mean "majority"? Do you honestly think that everyone, everywhere likes runny assholes and mafia rape?

If the community you hang out in all prefers a/b/o to what you like to write, your answer is right there: You have chosen to hang out with the wrong people, courting the wrong audience.

That says nothing about whether somebody somewhere else prefers lighthearted bad boy stories.

In the professional m/m novelist circles I've seen (the type where people only publish complete books, not serialized things), contemporary romance is one of the categories that sells best. I'm not an authority since I loathe contemporary, but it's so very, very popular, probably much more so than any given dark kink trope.

Third, Wattpad-style mafia stories, a/b/o, hybrids, and suchlike are easy to market.

They have very specific keywords that make it easy for aficionados to find that exact subgenre in order to consume five thousand more of the exact same thing.

Look at conventional romance novels: The most popular and enduring individual books are by Names and are often a little harder to tag, but a lot of what sells at the lower tiers is that "The Greek Billionaire's Virgin Bride" stuff where you figure the actual prose is terrible but it will deliver exactly the tropes you expect and want with no wasting time on shit you don't care about.

'Bad boy with a heart of gold' is fairly easy to tag too, but if that's the only keyword-y bit of your stories, that could be an issue.

If you're writing the sorts of things that live or die by tropes and you don't write explicit sex, that can also be a hindrance.

It's not that everyone wants explicit sex in their books, but if I'm looking for a high volume of average-quality stuff by kink or trope, I probably do.

This one's more idiosyncratic, but for me personally, if I'm picking up something that's less about delivering specific sex scenes or kink experiences, I probably care more about quality of prose and plot.

I absolutely have a double standard here, and that does extend to iddy-but-not-porny stories in many cases because something like really intense hurt/comfort just won't hit home well enough for me if it isn't up to a certain writing standard.

I also do not tolerate serialization for this type of thing very well where I probably would for a story that has a different fucked up kinky sex scene in every chapter.

Yes, I believe you that you can write a decent story. Can you write a great one?

Lots of the most popular books of all time have some romance without having a lot of soppy pet names or explicit sex, but they're also often a hell of a lot better at mystery or action or sweeping historical epic or charming sense of place or some other thing than I'm guessing these circles you run in are.

I could be wrong. You could be a brilliant writer. But I do wonder if you're hanging out in the right place or comparing yourself to the right authors to achieve whatever your goals actually are.

A related thing that occurs to me here is that writing about all categories of person is terrible branding.

It works if your selling point is your brilliant plots and prose, especially if you are traditionally published.

It works a hell of a lot less well if your selling point is tropey original m/m with easy keywords in an online context. Why would that audience suddenly want a f/f version of the same thing? They might, but they very well might not. If they like young protagonists, maybe they don't also like old ones. etc.

When people are filtering down and down and down by keywords, having a diverse oeuvre is not an asset unless you are head and shoulders above all the other writers around.

We can also talk about why people like darker tropes over lighter ones, but I think you have some assumptions and some marketing!fail to unpack here.

But the short version of my answer is that some of the darker tropes still have a lot of zing and inherent drama even in the hands of a mediocre writer, while a fairly banal contemporary romance setup needs a higher degree of skill to inject life into it.

Anyone else have thoughts?

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jackstockhypno · 5 months ago

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youtube

Why Doesn't Hypnosis Work For You? (Ep.1)

In this first talk, I go in depth on why hypnosis might not be working for you, and what you can do to make it work.

There are common pitfalls and individual issues that prevent it from happening to you.

I also talk about using different types of content from different creators, and which ones will work best.

Subliminals could be a solution, but usually only for a particular type of person. Do healing frequency audios work?

To get a better idea on your ideal solution, we need to go deeper and talk about all of it in this audio.

Transcript:

(00:00:00):

Let's start off by saying hypnosis is kind of hard.

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Well, at least it's hard to get right.

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It's one of those things that's actually surprisingly easy to get into, but surprisingly hard to master.

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So it's not always easy to create things that work for everyone and things that work every time.

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There's so many people that will come to me and say, it's just impossible for me to be hypnotized.

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They say it just doesn't work or that nothing really happens or maybe they feel a

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little bit of sensation.

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But it's nothing like the hypnotist ever says.

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I mean, the hypnotist might say 100 times more powerful and it certainly doesn't feel like 100 times.

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Perhaps you have been in that situation before.

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I mean, you probably have been, because most subjects are this way.

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It's only that small percentage of people,

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I don't know what percentage it is,

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but I do know it is a minority,

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that experience every single suggestion at this level.

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There are many that would love to get there.

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But I must ask you, do you really want to be there?

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Because that type of person is not just more easily hypnotizable.

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They have certain characteristics about them, certain traits.

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These people have a different purpose in life than you might.

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I don't know about you, but I believe that all people have a certain purpose.

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However, it is not always readily apparent.

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In fact, none of us ever really understand our purpose.

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So I would like to ask you,

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the listener right now,

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does being that hypnotically suggestible sound like it helps your purpose?

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Of course, it's not some matter of other people being more brainwashed than others.

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That's a totally separate discussion.

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All people are on their own paths and are influenced in different ways.

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They are reached in the way that they are reached.

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But I think that you want to be really susceptible.

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But you still want just enough control left to be able to cancel it out if things go a little too far.

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I think that this is the main thing that is preventing people from going into a state of trance.

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Of course, that doesn't mean everyone.

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And of course, that may not mean you.

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Because everyone is so particular, so different and unique

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And that means different techniques will work on different people.

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And for most people,

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I think they need to be felt into and understood to really go into that state of

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comfort of allowing your mind to let go.

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There are so many reasons that we have our own hypnotic and non-hypnotic patternings.

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But I hope that some of this explanation helps to clarify what's going on with you personally.

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Though I must admit, I cannot solve whatever is going on with you.

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I think it is solely up to you.

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I mean, there's hypnotists out there that could figure out anyone.

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They are absolute geniuses like that.

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That's not where my particular genius lays.

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These people are admittedly rare.

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I don't think that you and I will bump into one of them.

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All I'm saying is that if you want to know what's going on with you hypnotically

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that's preventing your trance,

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you gotta figure this out yourself.

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Because no one is coming to save us.

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The great thing,

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though,

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is that just you listening to this right now is training you to be more open-minded,

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thoughtful,

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and aware of what's going on with you.

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But not just that.

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You're probably quite used to hearing me do hypnosis on you.

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And you'll find this quite hypnotic.

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In fact, it's hard for me to talk about these things without speaking in that hypnotic tone that I have.

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Which brings up another point.

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Are you really aware of when you are going into trance?

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I mean,

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there's those points where you're driving down the highway and for a minute or so

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you go into a trance.

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Maybe for hours you go into a trance.

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You're still aware.

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You're not sleepy, hopefully.

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but the time seems to slip away at least you can't really remember what happened at

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those times there were cars that passed or you passed cars there was trees highways

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signs roads and not much else

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You don't think of it as trance.

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And that's what I want your experience of trance to be,

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so that you could be still walking around,

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going about your day,

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and still experiencing those lower depths of the mind.

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And this is what a movie is intended to do for you.

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Not only do you feel things,

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you see,

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you hear things,

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you are entertained by the movie,

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but it brings you into its world,

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into a sort of trance.

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But we wouldn't call it that.

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And so, at its best, I think that trance could be natural like that.

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And so it's important for you to identify what you really want.

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Is it this traditional sort of hypnosis thing?

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You know, a man dressed like a magician.

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Maybe he's got a stopwatch.

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Maybe you like it to happen like it does in the movies.

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Because, of course, it's not always like the movies.

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I truly want you to understand what's going on with you so that you can have your

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discussions with hypnotists or discussions with subjects.

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And once you figure it out, there is that wonderful aha moment.

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It's that moment where the subject says, I thought I could never be hypnotized.

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I tried so much until it finally worked.

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And that experience is bliss.

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When you go into that really deep hypnotic state, there's no way to really describe it.

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The nerve system slows down.

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You are on another frequency of existence.

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Yes, your consciousness goes to a different place.

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That means that it's aware of different things, and it's also doing different things to your body.

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I don't think I could describe a better sensation than that.

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If you've ever experienced it, you know that it is pure bliss.

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And for me, it's about the creation that can come from that.

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It's about the possibility to create whatever you want.

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It's that experience of creating what you want through a state of bliss.

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Who could blame you for going after something like this?

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I think you should.

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Let's see if we can figure that out so that you can experience anything you want,

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get anything you want,

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be anything you want,

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and achieve it through bliss.

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I'm going to speak mostly of content creation,

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but this all applies to in-person sort of hypnosis as well.

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Before you ask yourself, is there something wrong with me?

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Ask yourself, is there something not right about the content that you're listening to?

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Because most content will not work for most people.

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Most hypnosis content only actually works on the most susceptible subjects, the really easy ones.

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And I know they say anyone can do hypnosis,

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but that really just means that anyone could learn a script and hypnotize easy subjects.

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And in today's fast-paced world, I would say that people are less susceptible than ever to hypnosis.

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I mean,

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not only is our attention spans decreasing,

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but we all put this wall up in front of our minds because we know how many

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advertisers and scammers and manipulators are constantly trying to take hold of our minds.

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That makes us defensive.

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It's a whole other discussion of what makes a hypnosis file actually work and not work.

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But you can just ask yourself if the content is simply not it for you.

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Maybe there's another person or another file that will work better for you.

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Sometimes you just don't like a certain technique or a certain suggestion doesn't

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feel right to you,

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doesn't make you feel comfortable.

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And that's totally fine.

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That is totally normal.

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But real quick, there's a couple of things that will tell you if it's going to work right away.

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First is whether they direct things in terms of the present moment or happening in the future.

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Like,

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if I was to give you the suggestion that you will become smarter,

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at first that might seem like a good suggestion,

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especially if you're in a hypnotic state.

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I mean, simple as that, right?

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Well, there's a number of very unoptimized things about that sentence.

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That's putting it really lightly, because I don't think that that suggestion would work at all.

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Except on subjects that are both easy and quite intelligent already.

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there's that suggestion of you will and that is an implication that something's

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going to happen in the future the problem with that is that when we are working

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with hypnosis we're working with the present moment because that's the only thing

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that exists it might blow your mind if you're not a meditator but the past does not

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exist the future does not exist two nanoseconds ago does not exist

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One nanosecond in the future does not exist.

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You are a 3D human,

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which means your consciousness exists in one single point of time,

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and that is called now.

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So if you want that suggestion to stick, you have to say, you are smart now.

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I know it's as simple as that.

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It may seem like something so small, but it is huge.

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Because when we refer to things happening in the future, they stay in the future.

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And when the future comes, it's not actually the future.

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It's now.

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And that thing that you said is in the future, it's still in the future.

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And this will repeat over and over again, continually.

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Do not underestimate this.

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The present moment is everything.

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Now it's not just about the language, but the context.

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It would be great to say, you will become smarter when you do your test.

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Think about your math test now and imagine calculating the numbers correctly,

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understanding the concepts behind the formulas,

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and comprehending what it all means.

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That kind of suggestion has moved you into the present moment, imagining that the future is now.

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After all, your imagination is a preview of the future.

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Now it doesn't mean that the you will become smarter suggestion is a bad suggestion.

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It just means that most subjects will need it a little bit more ideal to be at its

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maximum effectiveness.

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Then there's the subjective parts of the content like, do you like this person's style?

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Do you like their attitude?

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What are their intentions?

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Are you trying to find a therapeutic thing or an erotic thing?

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a self-improvement thing?

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Is there a strong masculine or feminine aspect of this that you're really into?

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There's so many things that will affect it for you.

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Now,

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some might say,

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oh,

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I'd like to listen to subliminals because then my conscious mind will not interrupt.

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And that can work.

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Except subliminals don't work.

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Let me explain.

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The effectiveness of subliminals is so much smaller than the effectiveness of a

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regular dedicated hypnosis file that I don't consider it effective enough.

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I mean, do you want something that works with 15% effectiveness or 100% effectiveness?

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The great thing about subliminals is the placebo effect.

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Don't be afraid of that word, placebo, because placebo is a good thing.

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It is that one thing that all philosophies believe in, but we all call it something else.

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We call it karma, law of attraction.

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Resistance and persistence.

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We call it magic.

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A miracle.

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Acts of God.

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And for many of the scientific community, it's called the placebo effect.

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Or the nocebo effect, if it causes something negative.

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The great thing is that a placebo works even if you know it's a placebo effect.

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Isn't that incredible?

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I mean you can make pretty much anything happen using the placebo effect.

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That's why the gold standard of scientific studies is the double-blind, placebo-controlled test.

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The great thing about subliminals is that you can listen to it doing anything,

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and no one would question it.

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You can layer it over any of the nice sounds that you like.

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And most importantly, you can dedicate it to a focus on something.

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Let's say you wanted to grow your beard thicker,

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so you were listening to a beard growth subliminal,

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which will work,

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by the way,

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as shown by the placebo effect.

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which is so powerful that we have to do controls to get it out of our experiments.

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While listening to that subliminal,

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you are consciously choosing to have thoughts,

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feelings,

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sensations that relate to your own personal feeling of having a big thick beard.

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Maybe you associate it with masculinity, strength, fatherliness.

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Maybe you associate it with that feeling of growth, vitality, or expansion.

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Maybe you like to think of the new hairs sprouting thicker and thicker,

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and that's just a good feeling for you.

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And you can think about this throughout the entire subliminal,

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and you can think about it in your own way.

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And maybe there's parts in the background that relate to that,

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but they don't get in the way of any of that.

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Perhaps subliminals are perfect for people that like to do their own thing without

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too much instruction impeding it.

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I mean, we can't count on the instructions from the subliminals actually being any good.

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Just like I explained earlier, the instructions are not always worded as they could be best worded.

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Or worse, they could be using negatives.

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Like if the hypnosis file says,

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don't stress,

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or don't fear,

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or relax from all the difficulties and stresses of the day.

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That might work for some people, but a lot of us are going to get triggered by that.

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Because these are negative words.

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So a subliminal might ensure that even if the hypnotic language is not perfect,

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it's still going to work for you because you are consciously dedicating yourself to

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that one particular thing and the energy flows where the attention goes.

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Simple as that.

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If you focus on something with intention, a little hint of positivity,

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and a big force of precision, it must come to be.

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There are also some experts who create things based on frequencies.

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There are audio files, you find them all over the internet, of a certain hertz, Hz, or frequency.

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and they combine them with nice musical tracks and sometimes affirmations but not

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always these are these healing vibrational sounds and each frequency has a bit of a

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different tone of course a different flavor that does something different to the

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body lots of them very similar of course

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And overall, the frequencies go from relaxed focus.

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Maybe if you go higher than that, it's like intense focus.

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And if you go a little lower, it starts to become dreamy.

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And when you hit the lowest, it's like pure emptiness, nothingness, like completely unconscious.

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And there is some debate on the exact usage for the different frequencies,

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but getting your brain into them and aligning with them is a fantastic thing.

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And if a subliminal is combined with this,

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you can consciously direct that as the file that gets you the effects you want,

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even if there's no suggestions in it for that.

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Your intention matters,

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and when you intend something,

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the creation that comes from it can look a lot like what you intended.

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Now let's talk about allowing someone else into your mind.

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It's understandable that such a thing could make one apprehensive,

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because at our core,

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we need to be self-regulating to some level.

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And for many of us,

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we had a childhood where we had to self-regulate a lot more than a child should

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need to.

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After all, how do we adapt to situations that are not in our favor?

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We have to self-adapt to that.

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And perhaps you ran into situations where adapting to someone else did not turn out well.

(00:23:00):

This is normal and natural.

(00:23:02):

I expect all people have had this experience.

(00:23:07):

You can't just trust everyone 100%.

(00:23:10):

You would run into trouble very quickly, of course.

(00:23:15):

So there is that part of your brain now programmed in to protect you from

(00:23:21):

automatically following every suggestion of others.

(00:23:26):

And that is a good thing.

(00:23:27):

That is a fantastic thing.

(00:23:30):

We need to give thanks and appreciation to this part of us that protects us.

(00:23:37):

And to do that, we simply give awareness to that part of us.

(00:23:43):

So that when it comes up and it stops a hypnotic suggestion from working, you say, hey, I recognize you.

(00:23:52):

I see what you're doing.

(00:23:55):

I know that you're protecting me.

(00:23:59):

And in doing so, this part of you can finally let off.

(00:24:03):

It's saying, oh, I'm recognized.

(00:24:06):

Yes, you have to show this part of you that it has control.

(00:24:11):

That it can step in any time that it feels uncomfortable.

(00:24:19):

If it feels uneasy about it, it can step in.

(00:24:24):

Yes, just the recognition of that.

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will kind of ironically make it go away.

(00:24:33):

Because you are trusting first in yourself.

(00:24:38):

And then don't force it.

(00:24:41):

Allow suggestions to work as they work.

(00:24:46):

And I know you really want to make the hypnosis work, but there's a reason that it doesn't.

(00:24:54):

You are being protected by a part of you, so let it protect you.

(00:25:01):

Whatever in particular the hypnotist said to you, it may not be really meant to work on you.

(00:25:11):

Maybe there's something about this that isn't for you.

(00:25:15):

Maybe it's just not your thing,

(00:25:17):

or it's not in the exact way that it needs to be for you,

(00:25:21):

and that's fine.

(00:25:24):

Of course, you may or may not have these psychological things going on.

(00:25:31):

It could be something else in particular for you,

(00:25:35):

and it likely is because we are all so individual and unique.

(00:25:42):

Now,

(00:25:42):

many of us think of the psychological parts of why you might not be going into

(00:25:48):

hypnosis easily,

(00:25:49):

but I think one of the most important parts is the physiological parts,

(00:25:55):

the body.

(00:25:57):

After all, your emotions and thoughts, most of it actually stored in the body.

(00:26:05):

Yes, I know your brain organizes it, but it does so by connecting it through the entire nerve system.

(00:26:15):

A nerve system that is constantly reading what's going on within each part of the body, each organ.

(00:26:24):

Every single millimeter of every finger, every muscle fiber.

(00:26:30):

And then the way that the nervous system interacts with all of the bacteria natural of the body.

(00:26:39):

It's complex, but it is in the body.

(00:26:44):

So there's a few basics to check off to make sure that you are physically able to

(00:26:51):

be hypnotized,

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able to focus in an optimum way.

(00:26:58):

And perhaps this type of hypnosis you want involves relaxing and letting go.

(00:27:03):

It doesn't have to, but it's usually so much nicer when it does involve those things.

(00:27:12):

And you need your body in its optimum order in order to do that properly.

(00:27:19):

And that means achieving the basics.

(00:27:22):

Staying hydrated, eating good food, getting good sleep.

(00:27:28):

I know, it's not exciting, but we all know it works.

(00:27:35):

People that are doing more optimum things with their body are easier to hypnotize.

(00:27:41):

They are functioning properly, tuned in, hydrated, well slept.

(00:27:48):

They are feeling well.

(00:27:51):

Simple as this.

(00:27:52):

Drink some fresh juice.

(00:27:55):

Go for a walk.

(00:27:57):

Stretch.

(00:27:58):

And then listen to some hypnosis.

(00:28:01):

And watch how incredibly effective it becomes.

(00:28:06):

And that's only the effect of half an hour.

(00:28:10):

literally just 2% of the day.

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Imagine the compound effect of doing that every day, once a day, because it all adds together.

(00:28:27):

Maybe you throw in some hard exercise every second day or even third day.

(00:28:33):

You end up with not just a more easily hypnotizable mind, but a lot of fantastic knock-on effects.

(00:28:43):

You live in better health and happiness and all of your goals become more achievable.

(00:28:49):

It's all a big formula and everything that you do adds to the experience or takes away from it.

(00:29:00):

Now what is the best format for you?

(00:29:02):

Is it audio or is it reading?

(00:29:06):

Or is it even video?

(00:29:08):

Because for me, text hypnosis works quite well.

(00:29:14):

I think for most, audio seems to work best.

(00:29:19):

Maybe I'm just visual,

(00:29:21):

or I find that the audio might interrupt with my mind,

(00:29:27):

or perhaps it's because I can go at the exact pace that I need to go.

(00:29:34):

All I know is that it works best for me, so what works best for you?

(00:29:41):

I think reading books is a fantastic way to enhance your experience of hypnosis,

(00:29:49):

no matter if you experience it by audio or by reading.

(00:29:56):

Because reading can train your brain to go into that brainwave level that is a bit lower.

(00:30:05):

And we want that lower brainwave level because it is closer to hypnosis.

(00:30:11):

it moves your natural state a little bit lower.

(00:30:16):

It gets you used to it, and then your brain wants to go down a bit all the time.

(00:30:24):

There's also that effect of the left-to-right motion of reading.

(00:30:30):

And not many people talk about this.

(00:30:32):

I find that fascinating.

(00:30:35):

But during REM, rapid eye movement sleep, that's when you dream.

(00:30:41):

Your eyes are going left to right, back and forth, back and forth.

(00:30:47):

and this is what you're doing when you're reading you read from one side to the

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other and you switch back and you do it again you do this continuously over and

(00:30:58):

over again and because you are looking in both directions it signals to both sides

(00:31:07):

of the brain it wakes up both sides it encourages the brain to begin processing

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things

(00:31:16):

using all of the brain power that it has.

(00:31:20):

This encourages you to do the same thing under hypnosis.

(00:31:25):

You are learning to learn when you read.

(00:31:29):

And hypnosis is learning.

(00:31:36):

Let's finish off by talking about your expectations.

(00:31:41):

Because I think a lot of hypnotists and maybe even subjects set this strangely high

(00:31:49):

bar for what should happen under hypnosis.

(00:31:53):

They say that they should be in control of your body,

(00:31:57):

or they say that you should experience something at 1,000 times level,

(00:32:04):

when it just doesn't make any sense.

(00:32:09):

You might be trying to get outlandish things to work on you immediately,

(00:32:14):

and then you might feel like,

(00:32:16):

oh,

(00:32:17):

I'm not such a good subject.

(00:32:19):

I think that's preposterous.

(00:32:23):

Remember that anything is possible, truly, but be reasonable with your expectations.

(00:32:32):

You may have some inner or outer work to do.

(00:32:36):

You may need to find different content or a different creator.

(00:32:43):

You may need to experience it in person or at least live with somebody.

(00:32:50):

You may need text or audio.

(00:32:54):

You might need someone to touch you physically and most likely it could be your own

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unique thing and maybe a combination of the things that I've discussed here today.

(00:33:11):

I want you to figure out what's going on with you because knowing what's going on

(00:33:16):

is the most important part and will help you move forward.

(00:33:23):

If you want to listen to my hypnosis files,

(00:33:25):

I have a self-improvement,

(00:33:27):

self-transformation website,

(00:33:30):

transformhypnosis.com,

(00:33:33):

and you can find an awesome selection there to create anything that you desire.

(00:33:41):

Thank you so much for listening.

(00:33:43):

Let me know what's going on with you in a comment below.

(00:33:47):

Have you figured it out yet?

(00:33:50):

Let me know if you have or not.

(00:33:52):

Let me know if this has helped.

(00:33:56):

Share some tips for others,

(00:33:58):

because these discussions that you create there,

(00:34:02):

they help out a lot of people.

(00:34:04):

So please leave a comment.

Connect with me at TransformHypnosis.com

#jacksonstock #jackstock #male hypnotist #hypnosis #hypnotized #hypnotic #podcast #Jackson Stock #Transform Hypnosis #hypnotherapy #hypnotize #conversational hypnosis #hypnotism #hypnotist #Why Hypnosis Doesn't Work For You #TransformHypnosis.com #Youtube

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mbti-notes · 2 years ago

Note

hi, i've been having some issues with Fi vs Fe, especially when I think of Aang in ATLA. I know he is typed as ENFP including by you. and i can understand the Ne dom view but the Fi is so confusing. I thought Fi was internal moral/values and doing what someone thinks is right according to themselves but in the show Aang kept saying stuff like 'the monks taught me revenge isnt good' etc. it always seems like his morals come from others in this way and not from himself? how does it work?

This confusion is common for newbies. It sounds like you're reciting a simplistic and stereotypical description of Fi that doesn't tell you anything about the many possible ways Fi develops in real people or how it actually operates in response to real world situations. There are several problems to address:

1) Applying imprecise and/or incorrect definitions: Fi is basically using your subjective feelings to make value judgments. That's all. It doesn't determine exactly what your moral beliefs will be or whether your moral belief system is valid. To understand how people come to adopt and justify their moral beliefs, you have to introduce the concept of moral development. Moral development and personality development are separate, though they have a complicated relationship.

In short, you're conflating cognitive functions and moral development because you haven't really understood what cognitive functions are and how to define them properly.

2) Not distinguishing well between cognition and behavior: How old is Aang? Physically and mentally, he's a preteen (10-12). Preteens do not have a well-developed auxiliary function, nor would they be very far along in their ego and moral development. He hasn't had the time and life experience required to develop a sophisticated awareness and nuanced understanding of his feeling life. Thus, with his "primitive" Fi, he only knows when things don't feel right, at best.

On top of immature Fi, a preteen isn't capable of refined moral reasoning, either. He doesn't yet possess the necessary intellectual tools for articulating his moral judgments and decisions. Thus, when pressed, what else can he do but call up some words from his mentors and teachers, as all children do at that stage of moral development? He's picking and choosing their moral arguments as necessary to help explain and justify his own strong but fledgling moral instincts.

Additionally, remember that people fall into inferior grip when they have too much difficulty coping with stress, and he was pretty much under constant pressure to carry out his mission efficiently. He's not repeating what authority figures taught him because he likes to and he takes personal pride in possessing authoritative knowledge (high Si). Rather, he's only doing it during times of moral confusion when he sees no other method of grounding himself (compensatory Si).

Grasping for scraps of old knowledge and/or remnants of one's old self when feeling lost is a sign of inferior Si and it happens when Ne doms are under stress. They easily get tangled up in trying to reconcile the disconnects between past, present, and future. Don't forget that his case is quite extreme because there is a gap of over a hundred years in his knowledge of the world.

In short, you're only looking at what he does (behavior), but you haven't understood WHY he's doing it (cognition). This is a common pitfall in type assessment. You need to understand The Why, otherwise, you run the risk of taking behavior at face value and then getting misled by crude stereotypes.

3) Not accounting for the whole functional stack: The reason he was frozen (in time) for so long was mainly because he was running from his responsibilities. If I recall correctly, this was a recurring theme and related to the developmental challenge he had to meet in order to grow and mature as a character.

Resisting duties and responsibilities aligns perfectly with the ENFP tendency to take dominant Ne to extremes and resist the call to develop auxiliary Fi in adolescence, eventually leading to Te loop and Si grip issues. Other functional stacks wouldn't fit as well. For example, if he was ESFJ, he would be taking Fe to extremes and have difficulty developing Si, eventually leading to Ne loop and Ti grip issues. Is there any evidence to support this reading? Not that I remember.

All of the functions of the stack have to fit properly. Are you using the evidence to discover the right stack, or are you trying to twist and force the evidence to fit the stack you want? Many people prefer to start with a hypothesis and then look for confirming evidence. The problem with this approach is that it tends to overlook better possibilities as well as important counter-evidence. My method of type assessment is more neutral in giving fair consideration to all 16 types at the start, then gradually narrowing it down through examining counter-evidence (see the Type Spotting Guide).

In short, you're trying to isolate and identify a particular function without taking into consideration its exact stack position, how it relates to the other functions in the stack, and how its expression is influenced by individual developmental factors.

#mistyping #type spotting #fiction #fictional depictions #aang #avatar the last airbender #atla #cognition vs behavior #ask #assessment

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albinism-awareness · 1 year ago

Note

So, I've already read up a bit on general albinism medical facts and stereotypes and such so I mostly want to ask for a vibe check on some magic/magic adjacent stuff?

I've got this dude that's basically the reason I did the research, he starts out as a witch/witch's apprentice*. This is overall a high-magic-ish world and most of the main characters are involved with some kind of magic (I also want to drive it home that it's a coincidence in-story; I assume it'd be a similar situation to "It's fine if your autistic character has magic, but be careful how you do it"?).

The thing I'm less sure about is that at some point in his early twenties he decides to fight a vampire**, which is a bad idea but one he actually does consult a seer about, who basically proceeds to lie to him because she decided that having someone functionally immortal who knows witchcraft and has been taught to protect the village and people in general since childhood would be great for a vague horrible thing she can kind of glimpse at? So she basically knowingly sends him to get turned into a vampire by a mad scientist vampire.

He doesn't stay one forever (he becomes a demigod eventually which undoes the whole "kind of undead" thing), but I understand that having a vampire with albinism could be kind of questionable even with the context of "these two things are completely unrelated, he's just really unlucky".

Overall he's generally a heroic if tragic character in the sense that a lot of huge responsibilities (Saving the world! Defeating god! Defeating another god!) get dumped on him by virtue of him being both somewhat more powerful than actual mortal mortals now and having the time to theoretically be able to plan things long term, but also to some degree because nobody else will deal with it. Also the whole "unwilling transformation and being forced to work together with the person that indirectly did it to him". I guess in a lot of ways he's almost a classic heroic archetype but with oodles of trauma and the soul crushing horror of being in a fight where your odds of succeeding are absolutely abysmal.

I think I'm good on most of the other pitfalls (he's not evil, has vision issues and uses a variety of accessability aids, mostly big hats, sunglasses and magnifying lenses and has blue eyes as a kid which later change to purple explicitly because of a magical things happening to him-something fairly common for people that get hit by that kind of magical thing), but this one I'm really not confident in.

*Basically, a kind of person that uses magic the way a chemist uses chemistry that doesn't rely on innate talent/magic power, which he has little of. He's pretty average/below average in that respect in this world.

**Vampires are generally integrated into society as a kind of super soldier for defense against all kinds of dangerous critters, though some go rouge and decide to murder people for blood rather than be provided through, I guess blood taxes but literally and not particularly sinister.

(so sorry for the late reply)

Dude! That sounds like an awesome story! :)

The only thing that I would ask you to reconsider is maybe something other than an albino witch? only because other than ghosts and vampires, witches are the number one stereotypical ‘creature’ that people compare people with albinism to because oftentimes in small tribes in Africa, people with albinism are thought of as containing mystical properties, thus are hunted for limbs, teeth, hair, eyes, etc. and are usually eaten/consumed. (Keep in mind this isn’t true for all African places, just really small tribes). But that’s the reason the witch thing can be seen as offensive.

And when it comes to fighting, keep in mind that if your character does have albinism, long range weapons would probably be out of the question because of our visual impairments, so long range weapons (guns, snipers, etc.) are likely out of the question. (I’m not sure if you gave them weapons, just putting down in general)

Hope this helps! :)

#albinism #albinism awareness #albinism help blog #awareness #disability #albino awareness #visual disability #answered #asks #anon

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theangryjikooker · 2 years ago

Note

I want a serious answer that doesn't include fanservice or fanbaiting. Why did Jungkook ask Jimin if he wanted Ramen straight up in ITS? When Karmy spread it all over exactly how JK meant it & judging by his face, karmy are right. What exactly do you think his purpose was with his vid to Jimin on his bday, the way he acted? Unless the man wants to fuck Jimin there's no explanation cause who's he baiting? He knows no one in this fandom wants to see Jikook together. HE DOES IT FOR HIMSELF. So why?

I understand that intonation gets lost in text, but some of you ought to look into phrasing to avoid that pitfall. This submission sounds very entitled on initial impression, and I'd be lying if I said it didn't rub me the wrong way.

You'll get the answer I decide to give you. If you don't like it, I don’t know what to tell you.

The ramyeon line is a joke–a crass one, but amusingly befitting given the context. All that exchange showed me is that they're comfortable enough to have those types of conversations. It's almost like they're adult, virile men who know about sex. 😱 Surprise.

Can people who are dating and/or screwing around make that joke? Yes. Can people who are just friends make that joke? Also yes. Given that none of us actually know them, I find it strange that people would automatically assume Jikook making that joke suggests there’s something romantic/sexual between them. I’m not saying they’re “just friends,” because I don’t really know that either, but to think otherwise shouldn’t be people’s natural default.

By all accounts, it's still a Jikook moment. We're at least learning (once again) that they have a similar sense of humor and that they enjoy each other’s company. It's enjoyable to watch them have these off-the-cuffs, and not believing there's anything more to this particular exchange doesn't detract from a far more important detail, which is more confirmation that they happen to pull all-nighters together (at least in their Ch. 1–hard to say whether that still stands anymore).

As for Jungkook’s birthday greeting to Jimin–boy, oh boy. It being a thirst trap is a joke, I hope everyone is aware of this. We have no way of knowing his intentions, and honestly, his intentions could be two-fold. What we know at the very least is that it is unique to Jimin, as Jungkook has never created a birthday video for any of the other members, so it has some merit on its own, but I wouldn’t read too much into it beyond that.

#TAJ asks #questionable anon #jikook #kookmin

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starseedfxofficial · 9 hours ago

Text

The Secret Budget Balance & Take Profit Orders Strategy No One Talks About Buckle up for a unique ride through Forex trading where 'budget balance' meets 'take profit orders' — and let's make it as fun as ordering your favorite dessert! Why Budget Balance and Take Profit Orders Are Like Your Financial BFFs Imagine budget balance and take profit orders as your financial besties—the type that whisper, "Hey, you've had enough fun, it's time to go home," but also, "You've got just enough in your wallet for a quick splurge. Go for it!" Budget balance keeps you from turning your trading account into the financial version of "buying a dozen donuts and eating them all at once," while take profit orders make sure you cash in on your wins before greed turns your gains into another rollercoaster ride. The Hidden Trick to Leveraging Budget Balance Wisely Step One: Know Your Budget Balance (And Love It) Setting a realistic budget balance is key to Forex success—imagine walking into a store with a specific amount of cash. You know that whatever happens, that’s your limit. It's not about stifling your freedom, it’s about knowing your playground boundaries. Some traders treat budgets like flimsy speed bumps—meant to be ignored. Spoiler: they’re not. When traders understand the balance between setting limits and allowing flexibility, they’re able to keep more in their pockets rather than becoming another "cautionary tale." Imagine this—you’re in a market moving faster than a three-year-old on a sugar high. Budget balance is what keeps you from "accidentally" placing orders at 3 a.m. after a Netflix binge. Take Profit Orders: Locking in Your Wins Without a Hitch Here's where the magic really happens. Have you ever hit a winning streak only to keep rolling the dice? (I’m looking at you, "double or nothing" traders.) Take profit orders help traders secure that win, like slipping a portion of your casino chips into your pocket—win some and keep it, rather than letting it all ride until you’re down to ramen noodles again. The pro move? Set strategic take profit orders based on your analysis—and here's the secret—budget balance can help here. With a defined budget, you won't get caught up in the adrenaline rush of placing yet another position. You get the satisfaction of consistent wins rather than the uncertainty of the high highs and, inevitably, the low lows. What Most Traders Miss About Budget Balance (And How You Can Use It to Get Ahead) Now here’s something unconventional—most traders ignore budget balance because it seems…well, too simple. The allure of complex algorithms and high-frequency trades are like shiny toys, whereas sticking to a budget sounds too much like "adulting." But here’s the hidden gem: those traders who thrive for years, trading with calm confidence? They’ve mastered their budget balance like a seasoned chef knows their spices—using just enough, never overdoing it. A simple budget balance paired with thoughtfully set take profit orders can be a golden combo—it’s the equivalent of a personal trainer keeping you in line while also letting you indulge once in a while. Stick to that budget, and suddenly you're sidestepping the pitfalls that take many newbies by surprise. Take Profit Orders: The Art of Picking Your Exit Point (And Sticking to It!) Take profit orders are not just about cold numbers—they’re about emotional control too. Remember that time you bought a pair of "sale shoes" that looked great in the shop, but once home, never saw the light of day? That’s what holding onto your position too long can be like—great in theory, but regretful later. Instead of watching the graph like it's a final episode cliffhanger, set a take profit level and move on. If you stick to your budget and respect your take profit orders, you're less likely to spiral into "revenge trading" territory—which, let’s face it, rarely ends well. Revenge trading is like drunk texting your ex after five margaritas—you’ll never get the response you're hoping for, and you’ll feel embarrassed about it the next day. But Here's Where the Real Magic Happens: Combining Budget Balance & Take Profit Orders Combining these two forces is like playing chess—budget balance is the careful defense, while take profit orders are your strategic offense. Budget balance means you don’t get caught up in wild market volatility, and take profit orders make sure you’re cashing in on gains, no matter how small. Emerging Trends: - More advanced traders are starting to implement machine learning algorithms to tweak their take profit orders based on real-time budget balance shifts. It's like having a personal assistant who says, "Hey, boss, your wallet’s looking good—time to splurge a little!" Myth Busted: You don’t need to be glued to your charts 24/7 to make effective trading decisions. Set your budget, decide your take profit levels, and let the system do the work for you—that’s what smart, efficient trading looks like. The "Takeaway Box" That Will Leave Your Trading Game on Another Level Let's recap the secret sauce here: - Set Your Budget Balance: Treat it like your best friend who makes sure you’re behaving at the party (read: the Forex market). - Strategically Place Take Profit Orders: Use them like a smart gambler—knowing when to walk away from the table. - Stick to It!: Emotional trading is as useful as a chocolate teapot—don’t let impulse drive your moves. Incorporating budget balance and take profit orders can mean the difference between a well-crafted plan that brings home profits and watching gains vanish because greed gets in the way. Real-World Example: How Smart Traders Profit with Budget Balance & Take Profit Orders Take a look at Maria, a Forex trader who kept things simple. She used a budget balance strategy with defined take profit orders. After hitting a winning streak with EURUSD, she set a clear 15% profit target, locked it in with a take profit order, and turned off her laptop. Fast forward to the next day—EURUSD plummeted, but Maria walked away with her gains intact, ready for another opportunity. Contrast that to John—who, filled with optimism, thought "just a little more," and ended up watching his profits disappear. The moral? Budget and stick to your take profit goals. Your Turn: Start Taking Control of Your Trading Game Don't just let your Forex trades run wild—get a grip on budget balance and use take profit orders like the tools they are. The key is having a strategy that keeps emotions out of the equation while you focus on consistency. Ready to take it to the next level? Join the StarseedFX Community for expert analysis, daily alerts, live trading insights, and much more at https://www.starseedfx.com/community. Remember, smart traders aren’t just in it for the big wins—they're in it for the long game, and having the right tools and strategies makes all the difference. Read the full article

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regarding-stories · 5 months ago

Text

Writing from finish to start, pitfalls it has

Oh, you thought I was done with writing about Fallout the TV series? But it's such a great example! Somehow can't let go of it until I've taken it all apart, really...

You see, when I balked at the series' execution and dropped it, I was wondering where the New California Republic went, a nation in the Fallout Universe that supposedly exists in exactly the place this series takes place. And I came across an interview. It indirectly talks about the writers of the series, and how they convinced the people they were borrowing the Fallout IP from that these changes are needed for the full dramatic impact they intended their revelations to have.

In other words, they established certain plot points (or beats) to happen and then wrote the story to match, mostly backwards. This is a possible, legit story-writing technique which can be used to construct a consistent narrative.

Just make sure you get back to the future in a way pleasing to the audience.

The Future dictates the Past

When I reviewed episode 2 of the show in my attempt at a follow-along, I was pretty pissed. Nothing in it seemed earned, things seemed to just blindly happen, there were enormous contrivances, too big to overlook them all. So I quit.

But I read plot summaries online because I wanted to know what they had in mind, I could just not be bothered to sit through the execution of it. And you could argue that eventually a good deal of what's unresolved and unexplained is actually, well, resolved and explained.

This boils down to the show's fundamental approach: It wants to be a sort of mystery with a series of reveals.

You can have all kinds of mysteries. You can have mysteries where the core of it is unresolved, maybe even undefined, more a mood, something beyond being understood by humans. For good and bad, that's David Lynch's (and Mark Frost's) "Twin Peaks".

Then, you can mysteries that follow a clear pattern where you could uncover the mystery yourself if you pay attention. Like a Sherlock Holmes story if it's not written by Steven Moffat for the BBC. (Love your characters and wit, Steven, but "Sherlock" season 4 really showed that the emperor has no clothes.)

And then you have "mysteries" like this show, where you basically hide information initially to reveal it later, for dramatic impact. It's basically a bit like the Sherlock Holmes story, except you have to hide some of the clues or delay the realization by the viewer. And make your reveal consistent with what happened before.

Hidden versus absent

You can have a mysterious element to your movie in plain sight as long as you ensure that the viewer will not understand it until much later. The best example is "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind".

My spoiler to you about this modern classic is this: You could be about half-way through the movie before you fully realize things like that the sound between scenes is the memory-erasing machine switching to another brain circuit. (And it has been audible since the beginning.) Or the motives of some of the characters which are present in their acting right from the beginning.

Which is what makes watching it a second time another, different, yet also satisfying experience. It's all there but you don't understand it or overlook it or only register it subconsciously, and you're also so busy taking in everything wonderful this movie throws at you, you're too busy processing and figuring out what is going on to notice. This is high art, this is the deep craft.

The clues are there but hidden. Also, the movie is only partially a mystery and does not rely on its reveals to resolve things. Conflict in "Eternal Sunshine" is not resolved by simple reveals, but resolving the central conflicts apparently requires work, reevaluation, maturing and changing, and also coming to terms with oneself.

It's a bit different for "Fallout".

The authors have mostly resorted to not telling us things, so if you're the kind of person who wants to setup-and-payoff relationships and know why things happen... you're out of luck. They simply don't tell you. So you watch an increasingly nonsensical farce where everybody knows everything they need to know to move the plot forward in mysterious ways or just run into each other without explanation.

But if you follow along, eventually you will be given some explanations that partially justify what happened earlier. But it is, by necessity, delayed to not ruin the super-duper reveals. And also not exactly well-executed.

It also "violates" one thing or two, at least to me, authors have to do to make backwards writing satisfying. Let's make our way there.

Within the bounds of reason

When you write a character, you might want to get into them, look at the world and its events, and explore what that character might feel. One of my disappointments with "Fallout" early on was that Lucy went out of the Vault and treated that as a real non-event.

Within the story at this point this is entirely unjustified. It only makes her seem like a flat character, including that can-do attitude "okey-dokey" she gives us. But you could argue that it's no big deal to her because it's later revealed that Lucy lived on the surface with her mother.

You know, she also met the plot-central person she forgot. Without retaining memories - justified by her young age partially. But even then, you retain some memories, key memories. But they can't show us that, else it spoils us to the reveals. And else Lucy can't be Daddy's Girl. It also doesn't mesh with how everyone in Vault 33 relates to opening the Vault, how people never think about where the raiders came from, nor that anybody has a memory of Lucy being out of the Vault and back, even though Hank must have come to Vault 33 to breed - he can't have done it in the broom closet that is 31, I assume.

But, for all its limitations, you could say that Lucy has reason to not be as wowed as we might expect by going out. We are simply not told why. And this kind of hiding information makes the characters seem even more inconsistent at the beginning than at the end of the show.

Take the Ghoul - his treatment of Lucy is partially justified later by revealing he knows her father and hence bears her a grudge. He just conveniently doesn't let that slip (if I am to trust the summaries I read ep 3 onward). So it's an unexplained dynamic that just makes the Ghoul look like a jerk for episodes on end - and when the reveal comes, was it really worth it?

But let's move beyond being jerked around by hidden dynamics and get to the juicier bit.

There's a big risk when you write backwards, besides all the possible plot holes you might overlook, is that you could end up crafting a narrative that leads from A to B to C to D and connects your plot-points, but if you experienced in the forward sequence it is either unsatisfying or when you look back (as member of the audience) you end up saying "Why the hell didn't they do X?"

Both is at work here.

We already talked about how hidden things just end up making the early episodes unpleasantly confusing and seem contrived. But let's look at the grand reveal: It was Vault-Tec all along. They wanted the bombs to fall. They sabotaged the peace talks, they hid a cheap source of energy that could have stopped the Resource Wars. That's the reveal the authors worked towards, gradually adding in facts until we get enough of the picture to say "Those bastards!!"

But this plan is insanely risky and flawed. It depends on the nigh-perfect working of a conspiracy gone unnoticed throughout five Fallout mainline games. They clearly have no real plan in place in case humanity survived the War (except nuking one more place, Shady Sands, so they have some tech if needed). They have practically no boots on the ground when they need them. Not even robotic ones.

One facet of the Fallout Universe before the War that the authors rely on is that energy and resources are getting scarce. Fusion energy is available but did not scale up to resolve the crisis, resulting in fusion technology that can power a car, or a suit of armor, or at most a base, but not something that would keep the needs of nations going. (I didn't even know this myself, I had to read up on it.)

So, there's the incalculable risk of nuclear war, not knowing what your enemy will do and what they target, the risk of relying on technology to wait out decades and centuries, and relying on a conspiracy and staying hidden. Or... just don't have the damn war to begin with.

Supposedly Vault-Tec is already insanely rich, rich enough to threaten the state itself. If it needed a new business model, it has one. It can pretend it scaled fusion power to power plant size and sell insanely cheap cold fusion energy at quite a markup to unknowing governments around the world, giving them steady unearned income (the best kind of income), profits, and leverage. All of this in a world largely beautiful and full of pretty people, niceties, birds, and bees.

Vault-Tec has all the pieces to make their dream come true without needing the War to happen. You can pretend they're stupid and greedy and short-sighted and that the leopard can't change its stripes. But it took me minutes to come up with this alternate solution to their predicament.

People tend to call this a plot hole. You can call it what you want, really. It's one of the risks of writing your story backwards - or rather, writing the story backwards increases the risk of this happening. Since your earlier plot points are meant to justify your later plot points, the actual justifications can end up rather weak. You're not building up, you're shoving a foundation in. This leads to a biased kind of thinking where you end up reaching your story goal but break things along the way without noticing.

But wait, there's more

It's much less apparent, but I'm positing there's another example baked right into the beginning. We see an Enclave research base that does something to dogs and also has access to the cold fusion technology, and the scientist guy escapes with both to introduce them to the story.

The goal of the plot was to connect cold fusion back to Moldaver, to eventually get her the gizmo for the grand reveal. Everything works backwards from here.

Why does the scientist tell Lucy to cut his head off? Because he believes in getting cold fusion to the world, we just don't know it. This is one of the instances of hiding things making motivations seem completely absurd. Especially since Moldaver had been propped up as a villain until then.

Why are they researching on dogs? Because Fallout games have features dog companions throughout. (But none have treated them so carelessly and handed them around between characters as this one has.)

Why does the Ghoul and the Brotherhood seem to know about the scientist escaping and possibly the Moldaver connection? We have to assume that there was a bounty levied by the Enclave revealing all that. (Let's not get into Max showing up in Filly by coincidences only or the scientist and Lucy meeting by sheer chance.)

We are supposed to assume that Moldaver had a connection to the scientist and encouraged him to defect with what she needed. And we have to assume the Enclave found their communication afterward (missing some details) that gave them pointers to hand out to would be bounty hunters.

Here's the thing that makes this a huge plot hole. The Enclave as a faction relies on no outsiders. They are horribly xenophobic, they have their own technology, kill teams, and their research base was in the middle of nowhere. They rely on firepower and staying hidden to execute their plans. Saying they spread information to bounty hunters would mean they had a network to do so, that they worked with others, etc. Also our scientist wouldn't just walk home from the office to be intercepted. He likely lived sealed in to a base which, after all, has automated defenses (which suck) sealing it off. Or maybe not. The whole "being checked by guards" bit is confusing.

So why were they chosen?

I assume it went like this. The writers needed a faction that has advanced technology and capabilities (to do the research), that has deep state links to Vault-Tec, but that isn't Vault-Tec. Because Vault-Tec is the big reveal, remember? Can't expose that. So they settled on the Enclave.

Never mind how the Enclave got its hands on a technology that Vault-Tec had every reason to hide from the world - the previous government from which the Enclave derived didn't know, after all...? Had the US government had this tech before the outbreak of the War, it would have solved their problems without them engaging in dropping the bombs, after all. Their reason to go to war would have evaporated, largely.

Stringing the "pearls"

When you see this kind of thing, you start to notice how all of the show was crafted. Why does Moldaver keep Hank alive? Because some code is needed. (Good lord. And if you needed leverage over Hank, why not keep Lucy in the first place?? Oh yes, because he hid her behind a door. Nothing the woman with explosives can do about.) You need Hank as a villain, so a reason is cobbled into the plot for him to stick around until the reveal and beyond.

Once you take the series apart in reverse, you see how the authors decided when to reveal what fact, and how everything else was tailored to match that.

We are never told how Moldaver survived unchanged to become a pivotal figure after the fall of the NCR and be right there to kick off our plot by raiding Vault 33. (How she ensured nobody killed Hank is beyond us, again, given her team was supposedly raiders, and in the end, incapable of seizing the Vault...?) We are never told (at least according to the Wiki where they care about this stuff) how she survived. She conveniently gets killed off before we ever learn. You see how this works?

Moldaver's magical capabilities never need to be explained. She can contact people inside bases of isolationist factions in the middle of nowhere, but she cannot hide her traces. She can survive nuclear war and centuries. She can know exactly where the dude is she needs to unlock her device, 200 years later. She can meet plot-relevant characters (Lucy and her mom) at random in the past to justify knowing that. Moldaver is a character constructed out of story glue and pure random dumb luck.

But know what? If it weren't for the total sum of contrivances, it would kind of work. It's not that you cannot have a weak plot point, or no contrivances at all, it was just that episode 2 was so chockful of them, it just broke under the load compared to everything else it offered. The show relies on this too much instead of finding genuine, in-world reasons to connect A to B to C to D. Even in a plot spanning centuries (kinda-sorta), they couldn't add the events that would bring it together.

Independent of whether I like the Fallout Universe developments the show introduces (I don't), this story could have been crafted better. The mix of needing to hide things (for reveals) and the bias introduced by having the story arrive at fixed destinations leads to the greatest risk of them all: inconsistent, unconvincing characters.

Since the show never truly steps inside Lucy or the Ghoul (after the War), since it intentionally hides things from us, these characters fall short, seem even more incomplete, and seem at times as jokes or almost completely flat.

This gets even worse when we get to non-protagonists, like Dane, the fellow Brotherhood recruit. Their reveal at the end completely destroys the character ... for what purpose? But let's not dwell on that.

You can argue that "Fallout" eventually paid off enough of its narrative debts to make a basic amount of sense. It isn't as random as it seems at first. But it breaks characters, consistency, logic, and common sense quite a bit to get there. Given the way I feel about the "Fallout" games Bethesda made, this might be exactly the kind of show "Fallout" deserves these days. It isn't great anymore, but depending on your expectations, it will do, I guess.

The Fallout Universe is like its own game world. It lives on after its end. We may have already seen the best stories told in it, but this ghoul will lurch on, losing ever more of itself until nothing is left.

#writing backwards #fallout tv series #bad writing #fallout series #fallout show

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onyxbird · 2 years ago

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As someone who has worked on some small-scale machine learning projects for image classification, I want to highlight this quote, and also the subsequent discussion of how chatbots "sound like" they understand stuff because, in humans, re-stating something in their own words rather than regurgitating info verbatim is associated with better understanding:

Hutter believes that better text compression will be instrumental in the creation of human-level artificial intelligence, in part because the greatest degree of compression can be achieved by understanding the text.

This use of compression is an integral and deliberate part of many established machine learning approaches, which is relevant to understanding how they can fail.

To "understand" an image, text, etc., in the way a human does, an algorithm would have to identify and extract what is important about the thing rather than just copying it. One approach to try to make that to happen is to only let it record a small fraction of the information, with the idea that it will then have to figure out what parts are most relevant and valuable.

If you show a human a photo and ask them to record what's in it, they will likely jot down a verbal description (e.g., brown dog sitting on grass under a blue sky with clouds), or maybe draw a simplified sketch of it. Either one is a form of lossy compression. If you limit how much they can record, they'll pare it down to what they consider most important (maybe "brown dog on grass" or "dog, sitting, outdoors" or just "dog"). They can focus on different things depending on the anticipated task, e.g., if they expect to be asked what the animal was, they'll probably focus on "dog" or a specific breed; if they expect to be asked to identify the location, then they might ignore the dog entirely and focus on its surroundings.

Forcing an algorithm to compress an image (or text, etc.) is supposed to push it to pick out those key details based on its task. A computer can reproduce the exact photo, but that doesn't help to decide if it contains a dog. A major pitfall is that you have little control over what the algorithm decides is important, and it's hard to figure out what it did decide is important until something goes wrong (and maybe not even then).

When machine learning is tested responsibly and with understanding of its limitations, these failures can range from baffling to incredibly amusing (e.g., many cases of an algorithm accurately identifying a key feature in the training data... which is not what it was intended to learn and not useful in actual deployment). When machine learning/"AI" is thrown at problems as if it's magic, without responsible testing or understanding of its limitations, those failures are really fucking terrifying.

You should read this article. Honestly. You’ll thank me later.

#machine learning #artificial intelligence

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rainbowsky · 2 years ago

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Hello, Rainbowsky! You have recently talked about not believing candy until it's verified. I am curious - are there any truly verified candies in the fandom? 🤔

This is in reference to a previous post.

Hi Anon! 😊

Fake, fan fiction, CPN.

I just want to clarify that isn't quite what I said. What I said was:

... there's absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to question the veracity of candies or wanting to validate information. There's nothing wrong with thinking critically and trying to develop a greater degree of certainty or understanding around things. It is natural to not want to believe something until you have more information about it, and some people need more evidence than other people do before they accept an idea.

And

I am the sort of person who doesn't usually find candy sweet unless I feel there is evidence that it might be real.

And

... no matter how true or real something might feel to me, it is always just CPN until it is fully verified.

The core message I was trying to convey is that people should not treat candies as verified that are not verified, and people should not take my opinions as fact.

I was trying to illustrate the importance of remembering that CPN is CPN.

I often see turtles taking things literally, and ignoring the CPN label, and taking certain things as facts that are not facts. This is how the fandom becomes littered with misconceptions and misinterpretations, and how there ends up being so many opinions being treated as canon, and real.

This is why, for example, there are so many turtles who genuinely believe in the incredibly toxic notion that GG and DD are extremely jealous and possessive. Because people write fanfiction and fake rumors and hot takes about their behavior and others take it as fact and it gets spread around and becomes the widespread popular belief about them.

Not only is this type of thing inaccurate, it's downright harmful for these kinds of ideas to be spread about them. Not just harmful to GG and DD, but also to fans who develop the unhealthy idea that jealousy is romance. It puts people at risk of being abused. I talked about this in more detail a while back.

As far as verification is concerned, it's not that I don't believe candies that aren't verified, it is that I need more evidence than a lot of other people seem to need in order to be able to find a candy exciting. I need to feel that there is a likelihood that it is real. If I feel that a candy is unlikely to be true, I usually cannot find it sweet. Although there are some exceptions.

That is not the same as needing things to be verified. There are a lot of candies I enjoy that are total CPN, and anyway, our interpretation is always CPN.

And yes, some candies have been verified to some degree. The 49 fake candies being one of the biggest examples. When I first heard about them, I thought the claims about what happened on set were completely ridiculous. I ended up being proved wrong when the BTS footage came out.

Just because something has been claimed and some aspect of it has been proved true, that does not make the interpretation of it validated in any way. It is still CPN.

For example, while the rumor that GG called DD Venus in the Bazaar photo shoot ended up being true, our belief about why he did so is complete and total CPN.

One huge logical pitfall that I see a lot of fans falling into is the idea that because one thing has been proved true, that must lend more credibility to things that haven't yet been proved true.

I think we really need to be careful about drawing those kinds of conclusions. It might sound like it makes sense, but it is a huge logical leap to claim that something is more likely to be true just because other strange things have been proved true.

It becomes a huge slippery slope. It gets to the point where you can theorize about just about anything and make it sound possible, no matter how ridiculous. Always try to keep in mind how dangerous that can be. We should be careful to remember that these are real people whose lives and careers are to some degree impacted by our behavior.

We should try to show some restraint in this regard and remember that CPN is still and always just CPN, including the conclusions that we draw from what we see.

I posted a while back about some of the popular CPN that I don't believe.

#untamed bts #cpn #fandom reflections #fake rumors #ask

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adhd-asd · 3 years ago

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Anonymous asked: "i have ADHD and ASD, I don’t know if they really play a role in my difficulty to write scripts or outlines, but it seems like whenever i want to start a story project and visualise it into writing and art, it just…..doesn’t work? Like, i have story ideas, but the way they come out never meet my satisfaction or, at least, the way i write them, feels too restricting and….i don’t know?

writing scripts, the dialogue feels very bland and tedious - writing outlines is fine for me but i put too much thought into them to the point they are restricting. but, also, when i try to make up a story as i go with a basic plot in mind, i lose a massive sense of direction if i don’t have an outline or script. and i just feel very, very stuck."

If you're just looking for a short-form list of tips and tricks that might help make creating easier, I have a post here that offers advice on writing with ADHD that you may find helpful.

However, I found this question really interesting and wanted to do a more in-depth exploration of the topic of creating with ADHD/ASD and the difficulties that can come with that, as well. I have a lot of thoughts on the topic as an ADHD/ASD creator myself, so it got quite long, but I hope you might find some of them interesting or useful.

Do ADHD/ASD Play a Role?

Firstly, I believe that my ADHD and ASD affect just about every part of my life, including my creative process, and I imagine the same is likely true for you. It's entirely plausible (and I would even say likely) that they're playing a part in the conflict you feel when trying to create.

That being said, I also believe that there are ways we can accommodate or work around our unique challenges rather than putting effort into trying to overcome them or letting them get us down. I also don't think your difficulties are exclusively a result of ADHD/ASD, either, and I'll be discussing both points in more detail below.

On Meeting Your Own Expectations

I think, at least to some extent, your first paragraph could apply to most creators, regardless of ADHD/ASD.

Very rarely do I find that my works end up matching what I visualise in my mind, and it can often be frustrating and demotivating when what I produce seems inferior to the hypothetical version I had planned or envisioned. And I've seen this same sentiment expressed by a lot of artists and writers.

When those feelings crop up, I try to remind myself that it's okay, nobody else has seen the hypothetical 'perfect version' of what I was trying to create that's in my mind, and they'll be judging the work on its own merits instead. I think an important part of being a creator is consciously working on accepting that things will almost never go exactly as envisioned, and that's okay. It's not a reason to abandon the work, and the more you keep creating, the more practice you'll have getting your ideas down.

It's definitely easier said than done, but as with all creative pursuits, feeling beholden to perfection will ultimately prevent you from getting anything done or growing as a creator, and sometimes you have to just let things go and keep moving forward. A work doesn't have to be perfect to have value and be worthy of praise.

On Perfectionism

All that being said, I wouldn't be at all surprised if your ADHD and ASD were compounding on this common experience to a degree. It's very common for people with ASD to be inflexible and extremely detail-oriented, and many an ADHDer can struggle with perfectionism (which I've briefly discussed in the second half of this post). Falling into the trap of obsessively tweaking things until they're just right is pretty easy.

The good news is that I think when you're aware that these are pitfalls you're likely to experience, you can better notice them and implement measures to help you work around them. Better understanding your symptoms and being kind to yourself when you experience them can make the situation less hostile, and researching how to cope with/compensate for them could help not only with your creative process, but other areas of life as well.

On Finding Your Creative Process

A big part of creating is finding a process that works for you.

Some people plan in meticulous detail while others fly by the seat of their pants; some prepare outlines and tough drafts and follow the steps in order and others bounce around and make it up as they go.

From the way you're describing things, it sounds like your current process isn't working for you, and you may benefit from changing your approach to creating entirely. You already seem to be consciously aware of the parts that are causing the most difficulty and frustration for you, so the next step is to brainstorm how to modify them to make your creativity more accessible to you.

I, for example, write scenes out of order and constantly go back and add to them as I get new ideas. I also draw my lineart in random sections, moving on to a new one anytime I get bored (even if the current section isn't finished) until it eventually comes together like a patchwork quilt. These are some ways I've found to keep things interesting and keep me engaged in the work, and they may seem weird, but they sure do work!

So Let's Do Some Brainstorming

If you overthink your outlines and then feel stifled by them, try deliberately limiting how much detail you allow yourself to include. It's not an 'all or nothing' situation, and you can practise and experiment with varying document layouts and amounts of detail until you've found something that feels more approachable.

If you're currently writing paragraphs, try bullet points, or a flow chart, or sticky notes that you can rearrange. If you plot out every detail, try starting with only the most major events so you always have some direction for where the story is going but still allow for more freedom and creativity. If you spend hours on an outline, try setting a timer so you only have a set amount of time for each point.

And remember that you can change your outline as you go! If you're so caught up in following your outline that it's stifling your creativity, maybe it's an issue of perspective rather than process. Remind yourself that your outline is a tool to help you and that you're free to adjust it whenever it's not serving its purpose.

I don't know what your current process looks like so maybe these specific examples aren't helpful to you, but hopefully they can illustrate how to look at the areas where you're getting stuck and find a way to change them so that they suit your needs. Even if it seems unconventional or doesn't align with the process other people use or have told you to use, it's important to do what works for you.

In Summary / TL;DR

Creativity in general often comes down to experimenting until you find a method/process/style that works for you, and that's true for anyone. It's also true that art rarely goes exactly as planned, and sometimes you just have to accept that you've done well enough and move on.

But when you're a creator with ADHD/ASD, it can be extra difficult to do so because of our unique challenges related to internal motivation, perfectionism, and staying focused and flexible. Being aware of your symptoms and the challenges that they might present, and specifically tailoring your workspace and process to account for them while being kind to yourself when you find yourself struggling, can allow you to create with a lot less frustration.

None of these changes will happen instantaneously, but hopefully being aware of them and making the effort over time will help you to start seeing a difference in your work. Good luck!

#adhd #asd #actually adhd #actually autistic #autism #Brady answers #tips

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doublefaceliker2808 · 2 years ago

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Spring Evening's Respite - Underneath the Fully Bloomed Cherry Trees 1

Tsumugi: …Still, are you sure this is for the best?

While it is true that Double Face is affiliated with NewDi, I believe it would be far too hasty to retract your affiliation on either mine or your discretion.

Madara: It’s fine. It merely resembles a small fire right now, but there’s gossip writers are already taking advantage of the unit’s unique position for their own articles.

To sum it up, this has the capability to hinder Kohaku-san’s future activities.

If being affiliated to Double Face ends up being a pitfall for Kohaku-san, then I am entirely prepared to dissolve Double Face.

I do apologize for urging Tsumugi-san with such a decision.

Tsumugi: While what Mikejima-kun says seems correct, I cannot agree with your request.

No matter how much scrutinity the unit is exposed to, this just makes me feel sorry for Oukawa-kun.

Madara: Feel sorry, huh—

Wouldn't you understand, Tsumugi-san? I’m suuure you can sympathize with me considering your loss of the unit known as fine.

However, you belong to Switch now, and you're taking steps towards attaining new happiness because of it.

We can end things with minimal damage as things are right now. Please, I request of you to remove Double Face from the agency.

If you are to continue refusing, there will be some considerable damage done to NewDi, don't you say?

Tsumugi: Are you…!?

Madara: Committing evil deeds to defeat evil— It sounds justifiable when you call it a necessary evil.

But for NewDi to have such people. Wouldn’t it be easy to imagine that ES, or rather, the larger society, could view it as quite the problem?

What now? Double Face's mere existence brings in such risk. There is not a shred of good reason for strongly supporting such a unit.

Not to mention Double Face’s current situation with us being swarmed by gossip reporters. Wouldn't it be just a matter of time until they find out about our wrongdoings?

Tsumugi: ….

…I understand.

Madara: Mmhm. That’s good.

This way, neither you nor New Dimension will end up hurt.

(...This is farewell, Kohaku-san. Just like the scattering of cherry blossoms, beautiful yet cruel all the same. Let’s close the curtains to Double Face within this season of encounters and partings.)

("It's okay if I trust you with my back". The days we spent where I could think like so were truly fun.)

(Goodbye, Oukawa Kohaku—)

Kohaku: …Wait a second.

Madara: Kohaku-san. What’s more, Anzu-san as well…?

Kohaku: Cold as ice, huh. Yer truly as coldhearted as can be.

Double Face’s may not have formed with the idealistic beginning that everyone hoped for.

It exists simply because we both needed it, where we happened to leave our backs to each other by sheer chance.

Even then, ya can’t say that we didn’t share the same bond that any normal unit would have, right?

Madara: But— Kohaku-san, haven’t you heard about it too?

Every single one of Double Face’s moves is being watched by ill-intentioned gossip journalists. It’s a matter of time until Double Face’s attempts at reformation is announced to the public.

Kohaku: I’ve heard the rumours t’some extent ‘bout that “Smoke” guy.

If neither I nor Madara-han, with our tricks up our sleeves, can find him, then I’m sure he’s some guy extremely good at hidin’ himself.

It took a lot of time for me to search for him myself ‘cause of the overseas mafia or whatever also operatin’ behind the scenes, but I finally caught a hold of him.

Madara: ….!

There’s no way you found him, Kohaku-san?

Him, the gossip journalist who’s revealed himself to no one, Smoke…

Kohaku: I can’t grasp onto somethin’ like smoke… would be a good way to put it.

Kokoko ♪ If some dangerous guy like that really existed, Madara-han would’ve told me first instead. Ya’d say that there’s a new threat akin to the overseas mafia loomin’ over us.

And yet I hadn’t heard a slick from ya ‘bout this.

If ya told me ‘bout such a being, then yer plan to disband Double Face would be “fallin’ to pieces”, no?

Tsumugi: What do you mean by this, Oukawa-kun…?

Kohaku: ‘S a pretty simple story. From the first place, this gossip reporter called “Smoke” or whatever never existed in the first place.

I asked Anzu-san an' she looked into all kinds of recent publications an’ whatnot, but all we found were rumors on the Internet—

Those rumors were spreadin’ all over ES an’ the Starmony dorms, but where the hell did all this come from?

When I thought ‘bout it, only one person came to mind. Someone, with the intention of breakin’ apart Double Face usin’ these rumors as motivation, could only be you.

Ya came up with all this, Mikejima Madara.

The person responsible for the rumors this time is you, right?

Madara: …..

Hahaha. I see you were a step ahead of me.

Plain and simple! The person circulating these rumours is none other than yours truly!

This was the only way I could convey the prospect of future risks in a way that’s easy to understand, and to get Tsumugi-san to expel Double Face.

Where there’s no fire, there’s no rising smoke— You and I both don faces that we can’t show outwardly due to our family circumstances.

For people like us to ally together will lead to danger for NewDI. I wanted to let them know of that fact and to ensure us scattering before anyone could find out what the true identity of the so-called gossip reporter was.

How’s that? You must despise me now, right?

And that’s why you should no longer team up with—

—Gwuh!

Tsumugi: Wait, Oukawa-kun…!? You shouldn’t resort to violence!

Kohaku: Yer exaggeratin’, Tsumugi-han. Madara-han made me hit him.

Tsumugi: ….?

Kohaku: Heey, Madara-han. Are ya tryin’ to atone by leavin’ the side of yer torso all defenseless?

I don’t need that. There’s only one thing I want: the survival of Double Face. Even if ya apologize now, nothing’s gonna come from it.

Yer quite the loudmouth either way, but both I and Anzu-han are quite aware of that, no?

Madara: …Fu, fufu. You suuure dealt quite the painful blow this time. It was quite effective, too.

Kohaku: All that’s thanks to Tsumugi-han an’ Anzu-han. Ya put all of us through a whole lotta trouble by doin’ as ya please.

And so, I’ve got a favor to ask. If yer truly sorry from the bottom of yer heart, then help me out a lil’.

Mikejima Madara, you who are plenty experienced in yer solo unit that yer unashamed of showin’ everywhere:

Can ya work with me on my still-held project?

Madara: Haha… I guess I couldn’t even become a villain?

How unsightly of me, huh? I’m so uncool…

Still. If you can accept this kind of me’s sentiments and even feelings of resignation, then surely, even I have to become that.

Someone who’s neither a hero nor a villain, but the idol known as “Mikejima Madara”.

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#Yall need to see mama getting punched #his face and the noise he made was so funny #kohaku please punch mama more often

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olderthannetfic · 2 years ago

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I'm having difficulty with trying to place some of my fandom's feelings about misogyny in our source materials, GoT and HotD. On the one hand, I can understand how as women, we may not want to be confronted with the pitfalls and dangers of misogyny in the real world in a fantasy story with dragons, but on the other hand, it isn't like GRRM discusses misogyny in the books without tact. Margaery, Sansa, Cersei, and now Rhaenyra all have complicated relationships with gender and power in their own storylines that make sense in the context of the world. And GRRM doesn't shy away from showing the dangers of masculinity, either. Like, how mens' prides can doom themselves, their families, and entire nations, how most of the ones who die in battle are the poor foot soldiers who are usually men. Even how some men, in their pursuit of perfection/reinvention through their sons, harm the rest of their family, like Tywin. Or how there are men who use others that he thinks are weaker than him (sex workers, women, children, the poor) to feel bigger and more important, but their harm doesn't actually improve themselves, so they repeat cycles of hurt.

I don't think people are inaccurate in saying there is misogyny in the books, but this misogyny is purposeful and not accidental. Idk, to me pointing out how Cersei thinks misogynistic things about other women is like pointing out there's racism or homophobia in a Baldwin novel... yes, that's the point. Do you or others think that there's a disconnect between audiences of fantasy and mainstream? Like, with some people just wanting fun escapism but being reminded of the real worldvs. people who just want the story as-is. Because sometimes it sounds like when Anglophone westerners try to make "feminist" retellings of myths like The Iliad about Helen or Briseis, when all it ends up doing is proving that maybe Homer was more conscious of the realities and perspectives of women than they gave him credit for, or that they missed the point of Helen's story to begin with. Sometimes I think modern reviewers/critics get so caught up in pointing out every societal ill without context of the work, that we present discussions of these ills as failing of the work. Any thoughts?

A lot of "feminist" retellings are junk that misses the point of the original, sure, but the complaints I've heard about GoT are mostly about "But it's realistic though!" bullshit, particularly about the show rather than the books.

It's realistic for women to face sexual violence. It's also realistic for men to face it. It's also realistic for women to have nice lives.

This is fiction: everything someone chooses to put on page or on screen was just that: a choice.

I haven't consumed any of these canons. In the books' case, I hadn't heard of them back when I read fantasy doorstops by men. I no longer do that unless it's a queer book.

The show broke one of my cardinal rules: female full frontal without equal or greater male full frontal presented equally sexily and GOD DAMN shaved pubes that 1. don't make sense and 2. aren't equally common on men.

I'll watch a rule of horny show, but not if it's aimed at someone else's libido.

In the horny premium cable with sex and gore realm, I did watch the first season of Spartacus. That show was campy trash in many ways, and far less critically acclaimed, but it managed to show vastly more male full frontal and a really sensitive depiction of sexual coercion of a big, manly dude and what it did to him emotionally.

Lucy Lawless' horrible slave owner character was fantastically interesting and also shaped by misogyny and the expectations that she was only valuable for bearing an heir. All kinds of awful things happened in that season, but the only time I got the feeling we were there to gawk at tragedy porn or naked bodies, it was men on the receiving end.

People see GoT as neutral because they're so used to only seeing media that is by and for straight guys who are used to fapping to women's crying faces and calling it realism.

I can't speak to the books. From what people have said, they sound marginally more thoughtful than the show but still firmly in the Old Guy SFF tradition where "historical realism" upon which one builds one's dragon fantasy realm means abused women, not third gender priests or Muslim travel writers or any of the other underused historical shit you could pull from.

I'll give GRRM that many of the other cliched books are stealing from him and not vice versa, but this trend is more than old enough to predate A Song of Ice and Fire, which wasn't published till 1991.

So no, I don't think it's about escapism. I think it's about being bored of the same old, same old.

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melias-cimitiere · 4 years ago

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Regarding Channeling

Lately several things have come to my attention regarding people’s opinions and stances on channeling spirits and deities. As someone who has been doing this for many years, I feel compelled to write some notes about making contact effectively while trying to avoid some common pitfalls.

First of all, it is not a trifling matter nor should it be taken lightly when bored or indecisive. I heard people simply not knowing what to do and while feeling bored, they try randomly to see “who’s willing to talk to me”… such things are not the right way to approach the spirits or the deities. It should be a conscious effort of dedication, not something to fill time when idle. Secondly, sometimes I have heard they attempt to channel without actual prior knowledge of the spirit; on occasion they even wanted to do this with spirits of the dead, hauntings or other entities that they had not met before and were full of unknown variables. It must be mentioned that while doing channeling you allow a part of your mental space to be “shared” with the entity / spirit. Therefore if you don’t know what you are doing or if you allow such mind-sharing with an unknown being, it could potentially have detrimental effects on your mental health. Emotional outbursts and impulsive behavior that are out of character are all too common, but more severe and enduring effects could occur. I had two friends in the past who were not too careful and ended up with mental health disorders.

A third thing to bear in mind is that you should take all the necessary steps to make this contact as good as possible; even if you are good at it, even if you know the spirit or deity beforehand, it is good practice to make the right environment for the contact. This is two-fold: by the right environment, most people understand the outer environment as being conducive to the channeling; no distractions, the appropriate offerings/objects for the spirit (if available), preferably without bright lights, incense, etc. However the internal environment is just as important. A calm and serene mind, a body in relaxation are perhaps too obvious, but remember that you also need to part with your “everyday self”, putting it aside. If this is not done, the message will get contaminated by your own ideas, thoughts, past experiences, fantasies, and will end up being untrustworthy. I have heard several people who think of themselves as experienced who fail to do this, believing that they can simply bypass the problem just because they have talent, strong will or good technique.

It is vital to the procedure to learn to put aside one’s ego and to allow space in yourself temporarily in order for the spirit to speak better. You do this by practicing emptiness in yourself, a feeling of hollow space (not linked to depression), as if you are receptive and totally trusting without reservations. Obviously one can see that unless you absolutely trust the spirit or your safety precautions, it can be a really bad idea as it can lead to possession (or even lesser troubles, but in some cases enduring and causing severe grief). Contrary to what many believe, this is, indeed, a difficult skill to master as it is exceedingly difficult to be free of illusions while doing this, and only through years of practice combined with talent you may see satisfactory results.

You must always remember that spirit or deity channelings must happen with free will and without coercing the entity or forcing yourself to do this. If one fails to take this into account, they will soon discover how much of a bad idea it was. Sooner or later, bad spiritual practice always produces negative states which can be felt in the person’s life, so be cautious of this. Do not be easily impressed with wild claims and exciting prospects, but instead, try step by step and advance yourself through solid training. There are no substitutes for a spiritual life (by spiritual, I mean a life in direct communion with the spirits); once a person has tasted it, they never go back to mundane life as it seems hollow and empty of promise. So the desire to channel for yourself or others may be strong; however always temper it with reasonable expectations based on actual achievement and skill, practicing at every opportunity. It takes years but in the end, the rewards are too profound to mention. I certainly never looked back; but I also never trivialized it or made it sound easy and quick to master. The gates of knowledge are open to those who willingly devote themselves to the practice of spirituality. Be patient, and work meticulously. Like everything else that demands time and serious practice, it has costs and there are personal sacrifices to be made at times. But my voice joins those others who walk this Path and say, it was worth it.

#spirituality #luciferianism #deity work #spirits #channeling #medium #spiritual practice #paranormal #psychic #oracle #entities #spirit channeling #invoking

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softgrungeprophet · 3 years ago

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tasm is my favorite spidey movie alongside raimi’s sm2 obviously but it definitely falls into a lineage of tropes that is far too prevalent, as far as dr connors is concerned

super frustrating cause i think that movie does a lot of things right in its writing, approach to peter and his relationships, to gwen and may specifically but also uncle ben and even flash in some ways, plus design language (i love sporty suits...) (prefer the eyes in 2 though) etc etc, even the skateboard as a really solid way to call back to the motorcycle— but the whole like “woe is me, nothing is worse than being disabled” thing is extremely obnoxious and mars an otherwise very good movie for me (also the voiceover scene in the deleted scenes is better than the final version imo, the version where it sounds more like a recorded playback fits better aesthetically and thematically imo whereas the final version mostly is just corny and is probably legitimately one of my least favorite scenes in the movie)

tasm2 also imo has similar pitfalls with max, though imo the electro aspect of that movie is by far the best part. i don’t really like the goblin stuff unfortunately lol—except i do think gwen’s death was like, very effective, especially in the context of the first movie and previous fakeouts, so it definitely did that well, even if i think the movie would have been better split into two and allowed more room to breathe for both

this is also a criticism i have of the batman’s depiction of the riddler once unmasked, though in this case the way he’s played onscreen is not the “wow being physically disabled is the worst” sort but rather the “wow look at this neurodivergent creature” sort that is, again, very prevalent in media especially in these genres and is nothing short of maddening as someone with a whole lot of both physically disabled and neurodivergent family members (and myself)

also appears in like.

SO many comic books lmfao

frustratingly widespread. either it’s weird inspiration porn or it’s weird self hatred, spanning all kinds of stuff from romance to horror to action, and it’s like YEAH there are difficulties in being disabled obviously and a lot of people get depressed or have rough patches or self-hatred because of that and because of not being able to do things they used to do but like... this one specific POV (usually a POV that is mostly held by abled ppl) is so deeply overrepresented in media, movies, games, comic books, novels.... where like... being disabled is just the worst possible thing you could ever be, and it’s worse than death, and so on and so forth, as though a man who’s been disabled a long time wouldn’t just be kind of used to it by then lmfao

reason number 454968549 why i find the agent venom origin SO frustrating cause previously, like, you had this whole really solid mini arc in web of spidey about flash coming to terms with his disability and accepting himself and understanding that he can both be loved and love himself while disabled without needing to “fix” that via weird secret government experimentation, and then like... a year or two later you have a comic that literally uses the exact thing that comic showed was not necessary for his happiness (aforementioned secret gov experiments) and said, actually, he IS going to do that, and also, i’m a bad writer who thinks flash is a fucking moron who doesn’t understand how friendship works between tWO PEOPLE HE’S BEEN FRIENDS WITH SINCE HE WAS LIKE 18 i’m sorry i just hate the AV origin so much it’s so contradictory to every aspect of this character

sure character regression happens but that just felt like contradictory writing and the usual lack of interest in character development, in favor of blatant military propaganda and a story the only redeeming aspect of which was, to be quite frank, the art

anyway what was i talking about

oh yeah disabilities aren’t the end of the world and it would be nice if media could approach them better. even stuff that’s otherwise good or that i really like often stumbles in this area, whether it’s various agent venom comics that ALMOST have it (this is often most noticeable in the fact that flash is using hospital-style wheelchairs or the wrong kind of prostheses) or a movie that does everything else just right but drops the ball on self-loathing and what that actually feels like over time (imo) or a game that inexplicably has an entire asylum based subplot for no fucking reason other than the fact that it came out in 2012 and that was en vogue then because of arkham asylum lmao

#it's funny tho cause for years and years all the criticism ppl flung about tasm was always shit like oh peter's too charismatic #or oh he's too confident or oh he rides a skateboard or—#it was never the ACTUAL things about that movie that CAN and SHOULD be criticized like its approach as a series to mental illness #and physical disability no it was always well peter has too much of a personality or too much of a handsome face or he's too jewish #or the soundtrack isn't danny elfman therefore?? it's??? inherently bad? that was a real weird take i saw once #and it's like there are real criticisms to be had but all you can come up with is that you took the eggs too fucking literally?#and can't understand their purpose and why they were included as a specific way to symbolize peter and may's relationship?#that's your problem???????????#it's so fucking annoying #nadia rambles #nadia reads comics #kind of #there is a lot of media i really like that has these kinds of things that are very frustrating cause they end up dragging down good stuff #as an aside my movie ranking is that ITSV - TASM - SM2 are my number 1 tie #SM1 and TASM2 are about equal for me for complicated reasons #SM3 is mostly last because of the stuff with Gwen and the casting and writing for her I really disliked a lot #but as a movie i still find it fun to watch and gwen is basically the only reason it's lower than tasm2 tbqh #otherwise i think they'd probably be about tied for last in terms of messiness with characters i mostly enjoy #i also am just not a big fan of tobey as peter... like he's not the WORST choice but... like if i was casting a spidey movie he'd not be #on my list of choices #neither would everyone's little cinnamon roll you know who #andrew garfield was absolutely top tier casting for peter in terms of physique and physical appearance and body language and hair and #eyebrows and well his only fault is that his butt is flat.#and as we all know peter parker canonically has a fat ass #sorry about this #long post #idk what the point even is it would just be nice if people were a little more open to the notion that being disabled #is not like... a Fate Worse Than Death even when it sucks in a lot of ways #i mean it's a little complicated too though and depends on the disability like #how that ends up playing out. obvs. i WOULD like to be fixed actually. but that's my personal experience.

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