#just has no experience with other cultures

[alexanderwales]

We were talking on my server the other day about a sort of "performance prose" piece, a way to have a work of fiction that takes place within the digital world. I'm a fan of epistolary novels, and this is an epistolary novel that would have a time component to it.

Basically, the idea is that you set up a discord server, make all the channels read-only, then have a "performance" where bots are talking to each other according to a script. (You could also do this via roleplay, but I think that would be worse.) All these bots are "reading their lines" in these channels, forming a coherent story that's told entirely through text messages, but also, importantly, through the timing of when messages are sent, through when the messages are edited, through mutes and bans and slow modes.

It would all be realtime, that's part of the gimmick. I think it would be best if it was actually on discord, mostly because I think that's a better gimmick than having a javascript thing on some separate dedicated website.

There are lots of options for how you'd do it. Time is one major consideration: an hourlong "performance" as the bots do their scripted actions is interesting, nice and tight, more like a movie than anything else, something you sit down for as a dedicated viewing "experience". But at the other extreme, it could be as long as a week (more than that is probably impractical). Since it's in real time, that means that people actually need to check in and keep up with it, and you can actually miss things, catching them only in the backlog.

In practical terms, I think you'd only want ~10 characters and another ~20 secondary characters, the "main chatters" and the people who come in for a few lines every now and then. This is just a format in which the writing would take place, you'd want to figure out what the plot is, what it's "about", if it's about more than just internet/online culture.

So it's a stage play, but it takes place within a chat client of some kind, and has its own rhythms, and because we're using bots and not humans, and because we're using a format that has verisimilitude, we can do cool things with it.

And you might be asking "well wait, you're writing a script, just write a chat log instead, that's a relatively normal thing to write and read" but I dunno, there's something that's magical about doing it "live", witnessing a quiet conversation in the middle of the night, seeing the whole server get embroiled in a flashpoint issue, watching these characters get revealed in ways large and small.

[dcxdpdabbles]

Die with a Smile

For @anonymous-existences who asked for a "Die with a Smile" by Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga using Spirt Halloween ship. Hope you like it!

Danny remembers being alive, but it was a distant memory as if he had woken from a wonderful dream. He could recall no scents or tastes from his time being flesh and bone, but he remembered sights and sometimes, if he was lucky a few sounds.

The sound of his sister singing. His father's laughter. His mother's humming. His best friend's fingers tap on his keyboard. His other best friend's plants when the water of her watering can fell over their leaves.

Danny held all the sounds dear to his heart, even if he could not remember their names or voices. Just their faces, smiles, and the warmth in their eyes before the car accident. Danny had been a Halfa from the age of fourteen, but twenty years later, he had died in a collision caused by a drunk driver, turning into a complete ghost.

Like all his previous adversaries, Danny could no longer return to the human world willy-nilly. He had reformed after he died in the Zone, becoming one of its citizens, anchored to the Realms between Death and Life.

He needed a gateway made by a mortal who willingly invited him through. All natural portals were nice, but it was a one-way. Anyone could pass through them to the Realms, not vice versa.

His parents had unknowingly created an open invitation when they stabilized their portal, allowing ghosts to run a rampage in the city. Danny doesn't remember why they had made it, but he wishes it was still there so he could see them again.

So that he could feel the deep love so evident in the glimpses and flashes of their faces that ran through his mind. He couldn't find his way back, so he spent years looking. He was one of the few ghosts that had no anchored haunt. Danny spends all eternity flying through the Realms in search of the love that he had once felt.

He lost count of how long ago that was. But along the way, he picked up other various wonders.

A bag that opens to his pocket of cosmos is flung over his shoulder. A long cloak that protected him from the scorching heat, freezing blizzards, howling winds, and drowning rain. A glimmering book that recorded his adventures in the consultations. And many new friends who have been in the Realms for so long they had developed their own culture and given birth to generations that knew nothing of the mortal realm.

Danny's ghost's name had also faded from his mind, knowing he used to answer something when he was fourteen. He is grateful that his birth name stays with him, even if he does not know his surname.

He now went as the Wander. Always searching for something he did not know if he could hold, let alone own. Wander grew in power, for his death had brought along all the ectoplasm of his Halfa days, and while his travels were relatively peaceful, there were times he needed to fight his way through.

He has never been defeated.

That was Danny's experience now. Wander, find adventure, find friends, find new incredible sights, become saddened that the new things didn't match the love he set on a pedestal, and wander again.

Over and over. Never lingering for too long. Never belonging.

Just lost in the endless void of the Realms.

Then, Danny had run into him.

A human had fallen through a portal caused by unnatural means. It was due to being attacked by a monstrous tyrant that was threatening his world. Omega Beam radiation polluted the portal, and for a second, Danny had thought he had finally found a stable way into the human world.

But alas, when he approached it, an invisible force kept him from leaving the Realms. Its constant flickering and electrical crackles mocked him, even if the scene behind the portal depicted a broken world.

Danny wanted nothing more than to fly through the human world, feel all those fantastic emotions, and live again. He pushed and pushed against the force field; however, there was no open invitation. He could not pass through the portal.

The human that fell after being pushed by the sudden explosion could. Danny had caught him and nursed him back to health, and when he awakened, he was struck dumb by those intense, intelligent eyes.

Batman was the name the human gave him, and for a few months, that was what Danny called him. The way to his home, an Earth called Gotham, had closed as soon as the omega beams had vanished. Batman was beside himself, attempting to find another portal.

As the man was living without means of flight between islands, Danny offered to take him to a few natural portals. He warned him that even if he could enter said portals, there was no guarantee he would be back when he vanished.

Portals bend time and space. They may appear in the same spot, but it was also a gamble of when that would be. Batman had no care, taking Danny's offer, and the two went off on a new adventure.

The broken pieces of an endless city was the connection between the Realms and Batman's Gotham. It took some time before Batman admitted that the city they traveled through - as, for some reason, the city bounds stopped Danny's flight - was his beloved city. It was an exact duplicated, over and over again as time moved on in the mortal world; this one copied every new development without removing the old one.

It merely expanded right next to the old building. The natural portals across the range were unstable, lasting only a few seconds before Batman was forced to throw himself back into the Realm or he got stuck at the wrong time.

Batman left a clue at every stop the portal gave him, claiming one of his children would notice and help find a way to bring him home. Danny wasn't so sure, but if the human found comfort in the thought, he would not be the one to burst his bubble.

As for Danny, the familiar emptiness that came with the urge to move on never showed itself. He found comfort in the footsteps of Batman. He found glee in the laughter around the small fires they make in the destroyed streets, void of any color.

Danny had forgotten most colors, so used to the Grey's, blacks, whites and dark purples of the Realms but the way Batman spoke of it made him think back to the reds blues yellows and greens he had not realized he missed.

Slowly, his journal filled itself with nothing but the mortal he had found.

Batman survived on what little they could find in the broken streets of his colorless home. He seemed disgruntled by the silence of the repeating streets, the obvious signs of violence that never quite healed in his city.

After a while, Danny realized he felt whole again. As if a part of his soul had been returned. Batman did not bring him back to life, but he made him feel alive.

Danny informed him it meant the land was cursed, but that only earned him a cold glare and a sharp bite of beef jerky from a gas station with its window smashed in. Their travels continued, with Danny dreaming of the five sounds he could recall of his loved ones- he did not need food anymore as a ghost, but he did need sleep. His core required recharge- realizing a new sound had been added.

The sound of Batman's soft taps as he marched on, searching for a way home.

Danny created a new constellation for him. He named it the Lost Vengence. It seemed right, even if Batman rarely spoke.

A few months of them together, Batman had wandered into an air that exploded with green grass. He grasped for his belt, but whatever he was searching for wasn't there, and he fell to his knees screaming.

Danny, who hadn't breathed it in, had rushed him over to a crumbled hospital, strapping the human down and panicking over his state. He was no doctor, but if he left Batman alone to get help, leaving the area that didn't allow him to fly would take far too long, and Batman would die.

Already, his heart was beating too fast for a human. Danny had ripped off his strange mask, trying to get him out of the clothes covered in the green goo, but it didn't do much. All that was left was a human- a handsome human- screaming his head off.

Eventually, Danny realized that his journal may have the answer. He could not always remember what he recorded, but if he asked it to, it would pull up records of adventures he may have forgotten.

There was a method of passing on his healing that Frostbite once shared with him long before his death. He pressed his hands over Batman's chest, not with his palms but with his soul, and prayed the human would accept it.

A few minutes later, Danny's ectoplasm had sunk through the skin and cleaned out the effects of the strange grass. Batman slumped against the metal table, breathing heavily and sweating profoundly, but he stared up at Danny as if he were bestowing an angel.

Since ectoplasm was purely emotional, no words had to be shared between them to know Danny had wanted to save him more than anything. Had felt the way Batman made him feel complete.

"My name is Bruce Wayne," Batman had told him later that night while the pair looked through a mall that seemed to have been flooded. The water splashed against their mid-calfs, slowly picking their way through the new clothes that Bruce could wear.

His soft smile filled up to his core, and neither mentioned the way the distance between them closed or the fingers that laced together,but Danny knew he had found it.

What he had been searching for all these years.

Bruce would sometimes stop them in the nicer parts of his city- places that merely went out of business instead of being broken down- and treat him to the few things he had forgotten of the human world.

An ice cream parlor had been stripped clean, but the owners had left one fringe with three tubs of ice cream. As time was frozen, it was good to eat, and Danny realized that while he did not need food, he did enjoy it. Bruce was sensitive to the weather that changed every few hundred miles.

In the parts with ice and snow, he curled up on Danny's chest, protected by the cloak that expanded to cover them. In the fires, he was carried on Danny's back, the fabric of the cloak protecting him from burning while Danny's hair flickers snowflakes for him to breathe.

Other times, he merely liked holding hands because he, too, felt whole with Danny.

Then they came upon a part of town that belonged to Bruce's third youngest son. He called it the Nest, and a date and time was carved on the wall. His son had found a way to stabilize a portal, and he planned to pull Bruce back home.

The boy thought Bruce was trapped in the past, but his rescue would still work. Bruce could finally return to the humans.

He understood. Danny had lived his life. Now, it was time for Bruce to finish his.

"Will you go? Would you leave me?" Danny knew the answer to his questions the second he looked into Bruce's eyes. It cracked something deep inside, but he was not angry or feeling betrayed.

"I'm sorry," Bruce whispers, tracing his hand on the curve of Danny's cheek. The ghost leans on it, wishing, not for the first time that he had the sensation of touch again. He only gets brief impressions of something against him, but Danny can not feel the texture of Bruce's clauses.

The warmth of his skin.

"Don't be. This was the best part of my existence in a long time. You were everything that I had forgotten about love."

He knew humans were warm. He remembers a tiny moment when his sister's fingers in his hair comforted him.

But he could not remember what their warmth felt like.

Bruce's face crumbled before it softened. "I'm not gone yet. We have a few hours."

"Just three," Danny whispered, looking at the numbers on Bruce's watch. He had set a countdown to when Tim would activate the machine- the portal- that only called Bruce home. Since the boy did not know it wasn't a time issue but a different reality, he had unintentionally made it with only Bruce in mind.

The force keeping all ghosts like Danny in the Realms wouldn't let him enter.

"I know how I want to spend them." Bruce found a record player broken in the movie theater beside his son's shining new hideout. Apparently, it was the one that had been abandoned in Bruce's youth.

It played a lovely old, slow dance from the forties that echoed through the dusted room, surrounding them in its soft, wistful melody. Bruce guided Danny to the center of the stage- the only place not covered in dust or supplies- and carefully bent him into an elegant dip.

At that moment, Danny and Bruce were all that existed in the broken-ended city of Gotham's past.

A smile blooms on Danny's face, twirling around the man who caught him and guided him, saying without words how much he adored Danny. The unsaid words between them meant nothing in the face of their world ending, but their smiles made up for it.

Danny's book had fallen open at one point, his collected stars and cosmos flying out to surround the pair as they swayed and slowly danced. He felt the thumping of Bruce's heart against his chest, pressing closer to record the feeling in his core and soul.

Song after song. Step, spin, sway, dip, intelligent eyes that watched him with the same amount of wishful longing and bright, loving smile.

"I could die again," Danny told him, hands on Bruce's shoulders and the human hands on his hip.

"I am," Bruce whispered back as his clock started beeping. They had ten seconds left. "I want you to remember me with a smile."

"Of course." Danny leaned back only far enough that when he pushed his face against Bruce's, their lips sealed in a burst of incredible, indescribable sensations. All at once, it's like sounds, feelings, tastes, and sights rush back at him, making him feel as if life was being breathed back into him, only for it to vanish as Bruce's body slowly fades away.

He leans back after his hands pass through Bruce's body, no longer anchored enough in the Realms to hold, and gives him the brightest smile he can muster. Neither mentions the tears rolling down their faces as he whispers.

"The party is over, and our time on this Earth is through, but I'll love you. For all eternity. I always do when I think of those who are still alive." Danny watches him fade away in soft, gentle sparks that he would later gather and shift into stardust.

He places them in Gotham's skies so Bruce can have a tiny part of him, even though he cannot see it. Danny turns around and marches back towards the realms.

The Wander must find a new purpose.

[auroras-void]

*I'm* one of those feminine women who's attracted to this sorta blue collar work.

Have recently been seriously considering making a 180 from CS to working to become a General Contractor. I'm good at desk work, sometimes very good, but the thing is, long term any variation of it just makes me miserable in a way that working with my hands just doesn't. I fucking love working all day on my family's project house.

But the main thing that's stopping me from stepping on up from there and turning it into a career is sexism.

Like CS has it's own problems with it, and there's some crazy shit there, but it's at least getting better. But like, with construction, I haven't even needed to so much as dip my toes in to experience it. 80% men sucks ass, but it's a hell of a lot better than 95%.

My family has a couple of contractors they work with, most of them are friends, but I still see it right away. Like, I'm by no means an expert, I only really know what my dad taught me and what I've taught myself. But I've had them immediately assume I have no experience and try to teach me like I've never held a saw in my life before despite knowing who I am, or I had an electrician ask about the existing wiring and he instantly assumed that my brother knows more than me*.

And those are just these small little things but they piss me off so fucking much, and I can tell how indicative they are of so much more. It's like people see a woman and their eyes just glaze over me. Which on the one hand is very gender affirming but in the other makes my blood fucking boil.

So like if it's that bad just from the briefest of encounters. Being fully immersed in that kinda culture regularly, experiencing the *real* shit out there there, that just sounds like fucking hell.

Particularly given that I'm trans. I would sooner die than tone down my feminity for someone else. And I can pass stealth, even on a worksite, but I *know* there's still gonna be fuckers out there who will just see me as a man who needs to be bullied into conformity, or who think that working in construction somehow invalidates my transition. And, just I swear to god I'ma fucking murder someone if I have to work in that environment.

So... like ... ig... rotting at a desk it is then.

Like, I think I might still take some classes for my own sake and chip away at it. But I don't think I'm going to be looking at any apprenticeships or anything.. I'm.. not ready for that yet...

---

** (I literally got into this shit and got good at it *after* I transitioned ffs, I didn't enjoy it until I realized I could do it for it's own sake, until I didn't feel pressured into liking it to "toughen up" or "act more manly". I am a woman above all else, and no one has the power to overrule me on that.)

*(he's fucking clueless here, he's a poli sci dude who shows up maybe once a month in a fuckin dress shirt, he's your guy for election coverage and statistics, not construction. Meanwhile, I'm literally wearing my toolbelt and a roofing helmet with knee pads and my work outfit. I was literally the person who *did* the little bit of functional wiring repairs in that house).

There was a time when women did these jobs.

Some of them really liked the work and were keen to continue doing it. But society basically told them to collectively "get back in the kitchen" when the men returned home from war.

The tradition of conditioning women, from birth, to have a distaste for these jobs continued. Young girls are discouraged from even taking an interest in the toys representing these occupations. God forbid they put Barbie in the firetruck.

The truth is, most men do not want women doing these jobs. They complain about how dangerous this work is and use that as a metaphorical bludgeon in debates about equality. But when women actually try to be firefighters and combat infantry, they are told they *can't* do these jobs. They are inferior. Those who are hired have to work twice as hard to get half the respect. They are inundated with sexism and misogyny. And many end up quitting, not because they aren't qualified or they don't like the work, but because their male coworkers make the jobs intolerable.

And instead of fighting to make these occupations safer and valued properly, these men just complain that feminists don't know how hard it is and how they don't understand what it's like to risk their lives for no money or benefits. And then rich assholes like Elon stoke these flames because he doesn't want these men to realize this is a class struggle rather than a culture war. And that feminists and "woke activists" would actually be wonderful allies in helping them get better conditions.

Lastly, there are feminists talking about this. There are plenty of non-men interested in these jobs. But I doubt Elon keeps up with very much feminist discourse other than what he invents in his imagination.

Beyond that, feminists can't seem to prioritize stuff like this in the mainstream because they are too busy trying to regain control of their uteruses.

Did I miss anything?

Oh yeah, fuck Elon and fuck "End Wokeness".

[tamayula-hl]

Recently, I’ve been feeling a strong urge to write fanfiction, but as a Japanese person, I can’t help but feel the immense barriers of language and cultural differences standing in my way.

I’ve always loved writing fanfiction and have more experience as a writer than as an artist. But I don’t know any English at all. The Japanese short story collection about Seb and Omi that I posted on AO3 over a year ago still has zero bookmarks (which isn’t surprising 😂). In other words, as someone who can only write in Japanese, my value as a writer in this fandom is practically zero. I have so many stories I want to tell, but since I can’t speak English, I can’t even stand at the starting line 🤣🤣🤣. Even if I started studying English intensively now, it would probably take years before I could write stories in English on my own 🤣.

On top of that, I only have a Japanese perspective shaped by Japanese values and ways of thinking. For someone like me, it’s impossible to depict Western characters’ personalities, thoughts, and actions without them feeling off. The more I read fanfiction written by Western authors in this fandom, the more I realize how significantly values and ways of thinking differ between Japan and the West. I notice these differences so often that I’m genuinely shocked. With art or comics, I can at least visually mask these cultural discrepancies to some extent, but with novels, where detailed psychological descriptions are key, there’s no way to gloss over these differences.

Foolishly, I’ve been thinking about translating my stories using ChatGPT, just as I do with comic dialogues. But even with AI tools, translation takes an enormous amount of time. And more importantly, translating between Japanese and English is incredibly difficult—no matter how advanced modern tools like DeepL or ChatGPT are, they can’t produce truly accurate translations. This fandom is already filled with amazing, beautifully written stories in natural English. So who would ever want to read a poorly translated story in unnatural English produced by tools like ChatGPT or DeepL? 🤣🤣🤣

With art or comics, I know that I can improve with practice. But when it comes to mastering English and capturing the nuances of cultural values, no matter how hard I try, I will always fall short compared to Western creators. I recently became painfully aware of this reality, and now I feel so sad and empty. Even so, I can’t suppress this foolish urge to write stories. Someone, please give me the final push to give up on writing fiction 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣.

(I couldn’t find the right term, so I used the word “Western” in this text. But I do understand that there are many people in the West who aren’t fluent in English, and that cultural values differ greatly from country to country.) (And to all the non-native English writers who work hard and create amazing stories, I have the utmost respect for you.)

[mandatory-ftmbreeder]

any advice for a gay trans dude who has a preference for cis guys? any tips on finding a man that likes boycunt cuz it feels almost impossible lmao

i also admittingly have a *slight* preference for cis guys so i get what you mean.

Generally i try and go for bi/pan guys cuz then I at least know they're into pussy in general. I've always kinda avoided cis gay guys cuz then i DON'T know if they're into boycunt (and a lot of cis gay guys kinda intimidate me. Like they tend to look so perfect and a lot of them feel very out of my league lol.) and in my experience cis bi guys seem a lot more chill. Some cis gay guys can get... almost borderline heteronormative with the way they go about looking for ppl to date/fuck? idk I don't really vibe with cis gay culture myself.

You'll have to be careful because some cis guys say they're bi, but are just chasers for super feminine and/or pre-t trans guys. If you just wanna fuck then they can still work but they're probably not bf material. (I have no idea what you look like so this might not apply if you're like, 5 years on t with a full beard lol.)

(A good way to test out guys is to ask them fairly early on what some of their fictional character (or celebrity) crushes are. That way you'll know if they're actually into men or just extremely feminine people.)

There's a lot of other tips i can give depending on the specifics of your situation. Like if you've been on t awhile and don't show your face at first, I'd include something like "I'm 5 years on t and if you saw me walk by you'd think I'm a cis guy". Or include things like "2 years on t, no bottom surgery" so guys know you have a boycunt but in a classy way lol.

I promise there's definitely a LOT of guys out there who love boycunt. Its not as hard of a sell as you might think it is.

feel free to message me or send another ask if you have more specific questions

[theharlotofferelden]

Harassment within the My Time At Sandrock Community (and Pathea’s enabling of which)

For those who aren’t a part of the Pathea server or any related fan server, it’s a rather well known fact that Pathea is weirdly inconsistent about enforcing the rules with their server. I say “weirdly” not because it’s beyond understanding, but because the reasons I’ve been given are so utterly bizarre that they wouldn’t even be in the realm of something I would assume just based on my personal experiences with poor moderation.

As someone who has been a part of several Ye Olde Internet forums, I’ve had my share of bad mod experiences. When the issues weren’t the mods themselves, it was mods overextending themselves when the forum got too large (which usually happened when the forum was a part of a more “official” entity that didn’t want to hire more mods). The lack of mod oversight would often lead to extensive user harassment, as not having enough mods meant some folks just fell through the cracks.

Neither of these, to my knowledge, are the issues with Pathea’s server, but rather with the culture they’ve allowed to propagate in their community. I’ve spoken with a number of people who have confirmed that the real reasons they are neglectful is because of the relationship they have with certain users, namely the fear of “controversy” or “bad PR” from said users.

This has lead to a toxic environment within Pathea’s own server as they’re reluctant to ban certain users that have been targeting others within the community. And although the people being targeted aren’t all queer creators, a lot of them are.

This might not be anything new to folks in the know, but I figured I would talk about this on Tumblr because I haven’t seen anyone mention it yet. I also feel compelled to speak out on a related issue as Pathea’s issues with regulating their server extends to the enabling of user harassment across their socials.

One of my friends, Snowy, is being targeted by a user popular within the Pathea server. This person has been harassing them on Tumblr — starting earlier this year and persisting throughout — up until Snowy turned off anons. These are the receipts that Snowy posted to the Eufala Outback as proof that this has been going on for the last several months:

We all know who is doing this but are reluctant to name them, because they have somehow convinced a number of people close to them that Snowy is the one harassing them. And they’ve been working at this for a long time to where Snowy has repeatedly found themselves quietly blocked by folks they thought they were friends with.

More specifically, before anons were turned off, this situation was escalated by a person Snowy trusted with the knowledge of who this person was, thinking they were trustworthy enough to speak with them about the harassment they’ve been dealing with for several months. Instead, this person turned around and told the person who’s been harassing them about what they said, and then proceeded to spread lies that Snowy was the one harassing the person who’s been sending them anon hate.

Interestingly, being tangentially involved in all of this resulted in me being removed (and I think, banned considering I can no longer find the sever when I search for it on Discord) from a fan server I signal boosted a while back. I genuinely do not know what was told to the people in charge of this server, but seeing as they were unwilling to speak with Snowy to corroborate the story, and decided my mere association with them was enough to have me removed from the server, I don’t feel I’m being unfair by saying they’re complicit in the harassment of Snowy.

In any case, this has escalated further to where now these people recently got Snowy suspended as mod of Pathea’s official subreddits. The reasons being that the mods were receiving multiple complaints from different users claiming — without any evidence, mind you — that Snowy was harassing people.

When Snowy tried to appeal the ban by showing the Pathea mods that it was actually them that was the target of harassment, they responded that they wouldn’t repeal the decision because “they didn’t want controversy,” and, in Snowy’s own words, “Pathea didn’t even want to read my receipts.”

I’m making this post because I feel that this will not end here. I feel that logically the next step these people will take is to get Snowy banned from the official subreddit as well as the Pathea server. They have already made it a point to ostracize them from a number of people within the community, and Pathea being complicit in this makes me doubt that they’re willing to prevent that from happening. And so my only recourse is to make a post about it on Tumblr to make people more aware of this is going on.

To the folks who are involved: I think you should reconsider what you’ve heard regarding this matter. I’ve spoken to a few friends who are not a part of the MTAS fandom, and they all agree this is probably the worst case of harassment we’ve seen in a long time. The person spearheading this is literally employing DARVO tactics to mislead those around them while simultaneously making them complicit in the harassment of my friend. And all over a (harmless) fictional ship from a video game (that happens to be of a gay couple. I mention the ship being gay because that seems relevant to the reason for the harassment.).

With that said, I’m pretty much done with Pathea. I might still talk about and create fanworks for Sandrock, but I’m not playing Evershine until Pathea fixes the culture on their Discord server.

[zvtara-was-never-canon]

https://www.tumblr.com/burst-of-iridescent/769146448190324736/you-know-what-i-still-find-it-beyond-weird-that?source=share

I thought about it, but do fn and water tribe have cultural similarities that secretly point to zutara??

1 - Nothing in the show is EVER "secretly pointing to Zutara." You can like the ship, but it is pure fanon that the lead writer didn't care for and that the creators/showrunners clearly don't like. Everything was always pointing to Kataang and Maiko. Again, you don't have to like it, but it is an undeniable fact.

2 - The only things the Fire Nation and BOTH water tribes, as well as the Earth Kingdom, have in common are "The kids are not raised communally, but rather by typical nuclear family (mom and dad)" and "they're not literal nomads." Something SO general that applies to literally everyone except airbenders simply cannot be used as a real parallel between these two nations.

Katara is from a tribal culture where chiefs are chosen by the people, they're all trying to survive a genocide, and they have a very strong sense of community. Zuko is from a industrialized, imperialistic nation that is actively banning/killing it's own culture (kids not knowing traditional dances, dragons being killed, spirituality being neglected) with a royal family that is in power because "divine right to rule", and their approach to "community" is based on royals using "peasant" as an insult and killing their own relatives for power, or disfiguring their own children, in public, because said kid spoke out of turn. HOW are these cultures simmilar?

3 - Aang not liking the food is not the same as him hating Katara's culture, and the ONE time he ever said something genuinely passive-aggressive about their practices was in the Bato episode, and it was clearly just him being a 12-year-old that didn't like feeling left out. That same episode has him engaging with a traditional ritual of ice-dodging in which Sokka is supposed to "become a man", and oh, yeah, KATARA'S ROLE IN THE STORY IS TEACHING HIM WATERBENDING. Ya know. Bending. The thing that is canonically tied to a nation's culture and spirituality?

The closest Zuko got to enganging with Katara's culture that way was by learning lightining redirection from Iroh - something that he developed by "observing" waterbender. Now ask yourself, in what context did a general from the Fire Nation "observe" a waterbender's fighting style? Could it have been during one of the raids on the South Pole or at least fighting people like Hakoda, who weren't home but were still trying to prevent the Fire Nation from killing everybody? Not exactly a heartwarming thought of cultural exchange, is it?

4 - Katara and Aang's cultures might not be that simmilar, but they have WAY more in common with each other than with the Fire Nation, hence Aang being so immediately beloved by Katara's tribe (and immediately being willing to sacrifice himself for them) and water being the element he struggled with the least. Not to mention the whole experience of "we're both trying to survive a genocide here" which literally unites the whole world AGAINST the Fire Nation. And on the personal level instead of broader, cultural one, both Katara and Aang long for a home, while also craving adventures far away every now and then. THE perfect compromise between life just at the tribe and life just traveling.

5 - Even if the Fire Nation and the South Pole WERE super simmilar culturally: that doesn't mean Zuko and Katara would inevitably develop feelings for each other, much like their cultural differences were not the reason why said feelings didn't exist in canon. Cultural clashes pushing lovers apart is a thing that CAN happen but it's not a guarantee because, at the end of the day, people fall in love with PEOPLE, not the nation/culture they're from.

Katara didn't help struggling Fire Nation citizens because "they're just like me!", she was just a compassionate person. Zuko didn't regret his role in the war because "the water tribe is not that different from my home", he just finally realized "Holy shit, they're HUMANS, not just obstacles in my path" and wouldn't have been able to live with himself if he continued to hurt them. Their cultures are really different, and that doesn't prevent them from being friends - but the fact that neither would ever permanently leave their home is one of the core things that would have made them incompatible as a couple, not because they simply see things differently, but because their PERSONAL goals and attachments in life push them in opposing directions

[malk1ns]

december 31 @ red wings, 4-2 loss

boy did we ever get fucked over by the refs in this one. at least we had this, right? damn 😳🥵

It’s a common misconception that werewolves are at their most feral, their most savage, during full moons. Sid can’t blame people for thinking that; every piece of media and pop culture that he’s ever seen with wolves has them changing forms and slinking through the forests under the glare of a full moon.

It doesn’t make sense, is the thing. For a species that needs to bite to propagate, why would they be most compelled by instinct when they’re easier to see?

Werewolves do have to change under the full moon, that much is true. But in Sid’s experience, a full-moon wolf is more like a cat who OD’d on catnip than anything else—playful, cuddly, prone to falling asleep at the drop of a hat.

It’s the new moon you have to watch out for. When the sky is at its darkest, the distant stars not nearly enough to light a path, the wolves that slink through the night retain barely a shred of their humanity.

The Penguins, like every sports team with a wolf on the roster, keep meticulous track of the lunar calendar. They only stay in hotels that have windowless wolf-rooms that lock from the outside. Unlike other teams they’ve never had an incident, and while the prep-work to safely handle a wolf is a lot of effort, it’s only one night a month that Geno loses his mind and needs to be locked away. It’s worth it, for what he brings to the team. Always has been.

Geno’s only truly dangerous once a month. That doesn’t mean the pull of the new moon has no impact outside of that one night, though.

He’d skipped morning skate the day of the New Year’s Eve game, dragging himself into Sid’s hotel room in Detroit at some ungodly hour and curling up on the mattress with a sigh. The new moons are hard on him even when he’s at home in the familiar confines of his own wolf-room; on the road, in a hotel that smells like antiseptic and strangers and doesn’t have any of his stuff to calm him down, he always emerges with dark circles under his eyes and split, swollen knuckles.

Sid only half-wakes when Geno shifts so they’re pressed together, just enough to stroke his palm over Geno’s shoulder and register as his breaths settle into sleep before drifting off again himself. This is the calm part—when they wake up for breakfast and video, he’ll have a fight on his hands.

Geno hauls himself out of bed at Sid’s alarm on his own, but when Sid digs through his bag and comes up with Geno’s collar, Geno narrows his eyes.

It’s a requirement for wolves. The collars are eye-wateringly expensive, crafted with care and spelled over by the most skilled warlocks around—they’re mandated for all wolf athletes, preventing them from transforming any part of themselves during game play and injuring someone in the name of getting an advantage. They’re brimming with power, and dangerous to wear beyond the couple of hours a professional sports game lasts.

Geno hates his. That much powerful magic wrapped up in one small object makes it uncomfortable; itchy, as he describes it. He’s shredded through more than one, only half-buckling them before practice and wolfing out during drills to render them unwearable. This one has lasted a couple of seasons now, but only because the team threatened to deduct the cost of new ones from his paychecks.

Sid buckles him into his collars now anyway, just to be safe. The fact that Geno trusts him with the vulnerable skin of his neck as Sid slides the leather on and snaps it closed, testing it to ensure Geno can breathe but it won’t come off, is something Sid will never take for granted. Not every wolf’s partner is allowed to humble them in this way.

The collar keeps Geno from transforming. It does nothing about his post-new moon temper.

The second they hit the ice, Sid knows it’s going to be one of those games. He trails Geno during warmups, steering him away from the Red Wings’ side after Geno almost gets into a fight with Tarasenko at center ice, and he hovers in the tunnel until Geno takes his shot on the opposite net and clomps off the ice.

He bares his teeth at Sid as he makes his way to the locker room. Sid frowns.

The game is a shitshow. The team is still getting back into form after the Christmas break, and the Red Wings play them physical, always do. Sid spares a thought for Yzerman, up somewhere in the management box watching his team push Sid’s around.

It’s not the game that’s preoccupying Sid, though.

Geno’s playing hard tonight, skating into guys and bullying his way onto the puck. He’s reckless with his stick, but manages to avoid any major incident until late in the second, when there’s a scrum around the net and he gets cross-checked into a post.

Sid holds his breath until Geno gets up on his own, but the expression on Geno’s face chases away any relief he might have been feeling.

Geno’s practically spitting with rage. His hand keeps flying up to his neck, but his gloves are keeping him from pulling at the collar or scratching himself.

He has to be dragged off the ice for intermission, hauled bodily down the tunnel as he screams invective at the referees who didn’t so much as acknowledge the clear penalty right in front of them.

He paces behind Sid in the room, subvocal growls setting everyone on edge as Sid tries to calm the guys down and get them set for the third.

When he’s done talking, Sid steers Geno out into the hallway, bodying him up against the wall and holding him in place. “You need to calm down,” he orders, grabbing Geno’s chin to force eye contact. “Yes, it was a penalty, yes, you got fucked over. You’re okay. You have to let it go.”

Geno whines, an eerie inhuman sound that echoes in the empty hallway, and claws at his throat. “Please,” he begs, squirming against Sid’s hold and tipping his head to one side. “Take it off, please, it hurts.”

“I can’t, baby,” Sid says, gentling his voice and letting Geno free to pull his hands down. “Just one more period, okay? And then I’ll take you back to the hotel and take care of you. Can you make it for me?” He cups Geno’s hands in his. “You can do it, right?”

Geno bites his lip hard enough to break skin, but he nods, and Sid steps back, hurrying to flag down a trainer and get some ointment for Geno’s neck.

They lose. Sid hardly cares, getting off the ice as fast as possible and rushing through his shower, throwing Geno’s stuff into his bag and handing it off to the equipment staff. Geno got pulled off to the trainers’ rooms on his way off the ice, so Sid sits in his stall and waits, one leg jittering.

They take the first bus home. Nobody gives them grief for it, even though it’ll be a light practice tomorrow and some of the guys are talking about going out. Sid boxes Geno into the window seat and doesn’t take his hands off him until they’re safely in their hotel room, door locked behind them to keep them safely contained for the night.

“Sid,” Geno says, voice truly desperate, and Sid wills his hands not to shake as he circles to stand behind Geno and unbuckle the collar.

Geno’s skin is raw-red under it, and the collar sparks in Sid’s hands as he drops it into its case. They’re supposed to clean it off, rub it down with a special oil after every use, but Sid doesn’t give a fuck right now—Tags can fix it tomorrow if there’s an issue.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Sid croons, pulling Geno into his arms. Geno clings to him, small in Sid’s arms even with the height difference, hiding his face in the crook of Sid’s neck as he trembles. “You did so good, baby, I’m proud of you. You played so hard, and that wasn’t even a real penalty they called you for. You did great.”

“Lost,” Geno says, words muffled into Sid’s skin. His mouth is damp on Sid’s neck, with just a hint of too-long teeth. Sid shivers. “Sorry, can’t score.”

“Hush,” Sid soothes. “You’ll get it back. You look great out there.”

Geno doesn’t say anything, just tightens his arms around Sid’s waist. Sid walks him backwards towards the bed, getting them both on the mattress and covering Geno’s body with his, dropping his full weight down to hold Geno in place.

Geno squirms, but he’s not trying to get away—Sid can feel him getting hard between them, a side effect of adrenaline and the relief of the collar being removed and last night’s new moon, when Geno had been driven to fuck someone, to knot, and been denied.

“You wanna?” Sid offers, and when Geno snarls and flips them over, he goes lax.

Geno won’t be the only one with scratch marks tomorrow.

[questionablecuttlefish]

One of the most popular topics that people likes to bring up in shipwars “against” lightcannon is that we mischaracterize (did I write it correctly?) Lux to fit in our delusions. For example: she didn't kill Sylas and she despises killers and her ideals and morality is the most important thing to her, oh, also that she's good

So you as a Lightcannon writer and someone who is very familiar with her lore and character, could you give me your perspective about this?

Ah yes, that one.

Here's my answer in pictures:

But more seriously. 😆

I think that's a gross oversimplification of Lux's character, and it's generally an argument made by people who don't know who Lux is beyond the most superficial impression.

It's a product of a mindset that can't separate modern ideals of 'morality' - what would be moral to you and me, from our culture and our moment - from a character raised in a very, very different culture and a very different world.

A good example is the opening scenes of A Game of Thrones, we witness the horrible slaughter of a group of Night's Watch by the Others. The lone, desperate survivor escapes, and in the very next scene, we see that he's been captured by the Lord of a castle, who is about to execute him for the crime of desertion by beheading with a sword. This man makes his sons watch as he decapitates this poor, innocent bastard who, to us, has done no wrong and just survived a terrifying experience. He makes sure his seven year old, Bran, witnesses him cut a man's head off with a sword.

Meet Eddard Stark, probably the most forthright, honorable, and morally upstanding character in the series.

Look, Lux is a 'good' character. She's smart, compassionate, forthright, and principled. She almost always takes the diplomatic option first and uses violence primarily in self-defense.

On the other hand, she's a Crownguard. She is the daughter of the highest ranking noble household next to the King himself. Her Aunt is the High Marshall of the entire Demacian military. Her Uncle is(was,heh) the head of the Mageseekers, so the mage hunting secret police. Her brother is the Might of Demacia, Sword Captain of the Dauntless Vanguard.

What I'm saying here is that Lux is a military brat. She has been born and raised into the values of a highly militaristic, feudal warrior culture at the very highest level of that society. She's been trained in warrior arts - riding, swordfighting, archery, and military tactics and strategy - since she could walk and form words.

In her old lore? She was literally a traumatized, brainwashed child soldier taken from her family and trained to fight for Demacia.

In her new/current lore? She's still a trained spy who has succeeded at several covert missions within Noxus.

We've seen her fight monsters and Mageseekers in the M.S game, she didn't hesitate to shoot Sylas with a crossbow and stab him with a dagger until his mages dragged her off him in the comic, as above.

She also witnessed her brother behead a man in the For Demacia story; she was trying to intervene because she had sussed that there was something else going on, and therefore his death would have been unnecessary and unjust, not necessarily out of protest at the death penalty itself.

It's worth noting - as the Mageseeker confirms - that Lux stayed out of the mage rebellion not out of 'naive pacifism' as she's sometimes accused of, but because: 1. She couldn't forgive Sylas for his betrayal.

2. A desire to protect the noncombatant refugees in her care.

3. She's still loyal to Demacia and her family and refused to fight her own kin.

4. because she knew if she stayed neutral, she could leverage her Crownguard privilege and name with King Jarvan to negotiate protection for mages after the conflict.

Which, y'know, she did.

All of these are products of who she is a character, a Demacian, a Crownguard, and a canny political operator. None of these are blind pacifism, this is the kind of soft power "Fox" move Mel Medarda would recognize and approve of.

So no, Luxanna Crownguard isn't going to be put off by Jinx's violence.

Violence is inherently part of her world, too. Demacia is a 'medieval' feudal regime that is almost perpetually at war with its neighbours and, in some ways a harsher, more brutal place than Piltover and Zaun, particularly its notions of 'justice'.

Piltover is only about 50% likely to have public executions as entertainment/morality lesson, Demacia absolutely 100% does and we've seen two of them in canon, is what I'm saying.

I think Lux would understand that Jinx committed terrible deeds, yes, as part of a civil conflict that Lux herself would be coming at with only an outsider's understanding.

Lux knows exactly how it feels to have best intentions blow up in your face, to be backed into a corner and forced to take some pretty extreme actions to survive.

I don't think, after her actions and choices triggered the Mage Uprising and cost untold lives across Demacia, Lux would consider her own hands clean enough to judge someone like Jinx. Sure, Lux didn't mean to give Sylas her power to commit second hand mass murder, but Powder didn't mean to kill her family either.

And it's also worth noting the part of Sylas' actions that Lux doesn't forgive - especially in the Mageseeker dialogue - is specifically the personal betrayal of her trust, outing her as a mage, and ruining her life.

She understands his cause. She won't join it, because that would mean siding with someone who wants to kill her family, but again, Lux's reasons for choosing not to fight are much more complex and personal than 'she hates violence'.

She's able to compromise enough to accept Sylas' help when her city comes under siege, because while Lux is a 'good guy', she's also a pragmatist first.

I think Lux would see a lot of Sylas in Jinx. I think she would see a lot of herself, as well, particularly once she learned about Jinx's past, about Silco (basically Jinx's Sylas figure, no?) and about everything she's been through.

I don't think Lux would judge her for that.

I feel that Lux would try to be the voice of reason, the hand holding hers to ground her, maybe even the olive branch to help her try to repair some of her burned bridges (this is certainly what she tries to do in Ill-Omen's) and that could cause interesting conflict in their developing relationship.

But I think Lux would understand. Jinx may be more volatile and spiteful and personal in her use of violence, but she's shaped by experiences not far from Lux's own.

And by Season Two? Yeah, no, Season Two Jinx is well and truly on her hero arc. Post-Season Two Jinx? Especially if she's trying to put violence aside and heal?

Post season two Jinx, who's grieving losing her father, her sister, her child? That Jinx would absolutely attract Lux's compassion even more than before.

I've written so many words to answer it, but to me, it's such a non-argument to begin with. You have to not even look at Lux past "blonde nice girl" to think it.

[jedi-enthusiasm-blog]

In five millennia, the Mandalorians fought with and against a thousand armies on a thousand worlds. They learned to speak as many languages and absorbed weapons technology and tactics from every war. And yet, despite the overwhelming influence of alien cultures, and the absence of a true homeworld and even species, their own language not only survived but changed little, their way of life and their philosophy remained untouched, and their ideals and sense of family, of identity, of nation, were only strengthened.

Mando'a, wookiepedia.

What kind of utter bullshit is this? This is impossible. Languages are in constant change, and even more so when they interact with others! That's how Spanish, Italian, French, and many others were born from Latin! How German, English and Swedish were born too!

I'm not a linguist so my knowledge of how languages work is limited, but I know this: language is in a constant state of change. I know there are words that are less than four decades old in English.

My own first language has had over a dozen words created in the past two decades. Many of them come from English, or were created for the Internet, and most of our words come from three or four different languages.

My country has many words used exclusively in certain regions. We like to joke about how difficult it is to learn our language, since so many words have multiple meanings and others only exist in limited places. There are over four regions where language is concerned, all of them with different accents and words exclusive to their respective region.

Languages and cultures don't exist in a vacuum, they are formed thanks to experiences and changes communities go through. Interacting with people from different backgrounds is how Ancient Greek philosophy was born! And that philosophy has shaped the whole Western world!

Nuclear family, despite being seen as the norm, is less than a century old. America's (the continent, America is a continent, US is the country) independance happened in recent memory as far as history is concerned, less than two centuries ago (the movement started in the early 19th cetury, but its main points were the 1870's and the 1890's, and it finished in 1898 when Spain's last two colonies gained their independance). The French Revolution that completely altered Europe's governments happened just a little over two hundred years ago, in 1789. World War II started eighty five years ago, and Hitler rose to power ten years before that. My country has been a democracy for less than fifty years, my parents are older than my country's democracy. The cold war finished in the fucking late 1980's. The "schools" in Canada that were used to forcibly convert/assimilate First Nation children were active until the last one closed in the 1990's.

This is just a very small glance at what has happened in the west (which I'm more familiar with, since I'm western) in the past two centuries.

If we have changed so much in just two hundred years, it's impossible that Mandalorians have remained the exact same in five, fucking, thousand.

And the most stupid for the end:

Nation: a large body of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language, inhabiting a particular country or territory.

If Mandalorians don't have a planet to call their own, they are not a nation.

[thecircularsystem]

So, I was recently part of a server run by a system as an experiment. A month of chatting with people, but we couldn't mention our origins, and at the end, we had to guess others origins.

Let's talk about it.

[Note: I am just going to be talking about the server, the survey, and a few thoughts about origins here. This is largely fluff and disappointment and bitching about the flaws I saw in the server. I'll be making a proper post about origins later that's not as connected to this.]

So, firstly, I used an alt account in order to participate in the server. My regular discord ID has my system name in it, and I didn't want to make things too easy. I popped in and talked, and I tried my absolute best to make it so obvious that I had a CDD, while also trying to make it obvious that I wasn't just a CDD system. I knew it would be next to impossible for people to guess my origins, so I was just there to have fun.

I knew immediately that I would dislike the server. For one thing, I already didn't really like the server runner -- sorry, if you're reading this, but genuinely, my system has an aversion to you. Not sure why -- don't fully remember -- but it's there and it made me wary. But, bigger than that, I figured out quickly just how poorly planned the server was. It got BIG, fast, and moderators were chosen seemingly at random. I remember a user was picked because the group names were based around food, and their username matched the food their group represented. That... is a very bad way to pick mods. Then there was the 2 minute speaking timer, which had to be circumvented with threads, and the realization that there was a thirteen year old in the server after I had brought up NSFW content... I do not join servers with younger people anymore and genuinely thought the server was 18+.

It was just... very disorganized. So, strike one.

Regardless, it was fairly easy to guess what people's origins were (not accurately, but I'll get into that at the end/in another post) at the most basic level, and who they were, as evidently, nobody else tried to hide their blogs or identities as hard as I did. I shared servers with around half of the participants already, and others were... fairly easy to guess from their syscourse presence. I think the highlight of the experiment was someone from the server contacting me (Circ) and talking about the experiment with me, not knowing initially who I was in the server. Genuine hilarity there.

But, of course, we were there to try to guess people's origins, so I was trying to find out what I could about those in my group. 7 participants in the group (myself included), and... Well, strike two.

Genuinely, this was the stupidest premise for a server in the world. In my opinion, at least. The thing is, all of these guesses have to be based entirely on stereotyping -- the language the system uses, the way they speak, the concerns they have about the community. A system who uses the term "headmates," is concerned about fakeclaiming more than symptoms of plurality, and focuses more on the plural aspect of systemhood than anything else is likely not experiencing a CDD.

Which, in this set-up, means you're endogenic. And that's a problem. But we'll get to that in the next section. First, I just want to mention that I consider this a strike against the premise of the server because so much was banned from being mentioned. It wasn't... formally said to be censored, but even amongst my friends outside of the server, I saw them say numerous times, "It's so easy to guess who X is because it's obvious they have a CDD!" And genuinely, that indicates nothing about a person's origins, spoken as a true CDD mixed-origin system. It's the Fenmere Clause, right? There's always an exception. So to see this sort of culture on never mentioning your disorder, never mentioning trauma, never mentioning your experiences in the system community while being asked to share them... Eventually, I just started censoring myself entirely in the server, cutting out chunks of writing with little brackets saying [Origin Information] or something similar.

If the point is to be able to guess origins, I need to be able to share more than just the stereotyping that people rely on. It needs to be a fair chance.

Then the end came, and... for fucks sakes, that's what sparked this entire post. I had planned to wirte up a post, of course, but lord.

At the end, we had to guess how likely it was that someone "had a CDD, was endogenic, or was a created system." Funny enough, my origins (mixed-origin, fully traumagenic CDD system with multiple created parts AND a dreamway part) weren't listed, not fully. Traumagenic wasn't even an option for those who don't have CDDs.

Now, look, I am a CDD system. I consider that to be my "main" origin. But to only count "CDD, created, or endogenic," you discount one of my parts entirely, one who is one of the most helpful parts. The survey also didn't ask if people had created parts, but if they were a created system, which... I'm not. So that furthermore discounts two of my parts who are created -- and still equally traumagenic.

Furthermore, when asked for clarification, the moderator had... this to say.

For CDD, you either have one or don't (or at the very least it's more cleanly binary than origin), so I asked for the positive For origin, people "testing for purity" for lack of better wording coming to mind usually care about any percentage of endogenesis. And while CDD does not necessarily mean traumagenic, traumagenic is very nearly a subset of CDD

To translate, as that left such a sour taste in my mouth I thought I threw up a little, what this meant was, "Some of the users are anti-endos, and so if you have one endogenic part, most of those users will assume you're entirely endogenic."

...

So, rather than the point of the server being, "Can you guess someones origin?" it became "Can you guess someones origin if I painstakingly make a survey that caters to anti-endo beliefs and erases the origins of members of the server?"

Wonderful. Strike three.

Genuinely, I'm not sure what possessed the server owner to phrase the questions this way. Catering to the anti-endos wasn't the point of the server, and it erases the members origins. There should have been a way to identify what, exactly, you felt each member IDENTIFIED as. If an anti-endo does not believe in endogenic plurality (which, yes, many members of the server did not), then at the very least, they can say that a user identifies as endogenic, or mixed origin, or spiritual, stressgenic, adaptive, quoigenic, OR ANY of the THOUSANDS of origin options out there.

I would've done a multiple choice list of, "Here's what members of your group identify as, based on their intake survey; can you assign each of these labels to individuals in your group?" What was the purpose of an intake survey at all if you ignore the origins to cater to the anti-endos?

I'm not going to lie, I was incredibly frustrated, more than a little mad, and just...

Disappointed. Which, I figured I would be going in.

The thing is, origins aren't guessable in this manner. Nobody in that server could have looked at me and gone, "Ah! Yes, it is clear that this individual is a mixed-origin CDD system who identifies with CDD as an origin while having created traumagenic parts and a dreamway part." DREAMWAY IS A LABEL WE FUCKING MADE UP!!!! It would be impossible to guess unless they heard about me personally.

And that's the reason this type of experiment is bullshit. Sure, you can... hazard a guess if someone has a CDD or is endogenic or is mixed-origin or any of the above. But... You can't know. You can't get it perfectly accurate. Sure, based on vibes you can guess, and maybe you can even guess accurately for the most part.

BUT EVERY SYSTEM IS DIFFERENT AND UNIQUE ANYWAYS. So why does it matter?

It doesn't.

But the system community doesn't seem ready to accept that yet.

All in all, I'm incredibly disappointed in the server and how it went. I enjoyed the conversations we had there, and I enjoyed the company. I'm still enjoying talking there!! Now that origins are revealed, I want to talk about how my mixed-origin parts impact my CDD parts, and how they are CDD parts at the same time. I want to discuss it!!!

I would even hazard to say I made some new friends, and likely a few enemies (someone from my group, not knowing who I was, was even liking posts that were actively libel against me from harassers I have. How fun!)

But the experiment portion of it was an entire, complete disaster. And I think... genuinely, most people expected it to be.

Sigh.

[narcissisticpdcultureis]

NPD culture is thinking people with NPD are just like the stereotypes and they're all heartless and weird and don't care about anything but themselves and it makes you disgusted with them because they should care about *me* but they wouldn't and its infuriating. But its weird because its like a loop of literally being just like them because I also have the disorder but the disorder causing me to feel upset over the fact other people with the disorder will also experience those symptoms and not have empathy for me. Like I want to be the only one who feels superior everyone else has to be highly empathetic and not care about themselves just to please me because I can only trust myself to be like this and it would kill me to know people think some of the things on this blog about **me**

Sorry if this is worded in a harmful way I'm feeling Existential™

.

[gr1m-c0l0rs]

My take on the WHB Kings (1/3)

Doing these a little at a time so I don’t get burned out, especially since the spring semester of college just started for me lol

The next post will be a small ref sheet for my MC!

Notes:

SATAN has goat-like features like with his eyes and horns bcuz who doesn’t like demons with slightly more animalistic features 🤷🏾. I switched the colors around slightly and gave him combat boots and red flames at the ends of his hair, which would be a cool little effect when he gets angry his hair just bursts into red flames. Also I added a little motif that each of the countries in Hell has like a country gemstone and Gehenna’s is a ruby :)!

MAMMON has more dragon-like features cuz dragons in fiction are known to hoard stuff so it was really a no brainer! I decided to base his outfit on Ancient Egyptian culture cuz I felt like it would be a really cool concept—plus he also wears makeup! For his skin tone I color picked from his selfie card and he ended up looking more like his dad! Tartarus’s gemstone is amber, specifically the type that persevered the dinosaurs and other old creatures (since he thinks that he owns everything, he also as the gemstones of other countries as jewelry just to show off :))

LEVIATHAN is of course more like a sea-serpent! Not much changed for his outfit, but I did give him a tail! The fins are translucent and it’s hidden but I’d like to think that when he experiences intense emotion or he gets horny, the fins pop out which is so cute! Hades’s gemstone is an amethyst

[mythalism]

the myth of political nonviolence is something i thought about a lot in dragon age, bc so much of the politics in it map directly onto the way white centrist canadians view the world. once i noticed it i couldn't stop seeing it. there's this performative "civility" and "teehee we got out of the british empire just by Asking Nicely, unlike the americans!" and general fear of indigenous reparations and land back, that's a little distinct from american culture, and translates directly into how they write.

between david gaider's opinions on cops in pride parades, vs what police were doing to gay communities in toronto facing a decade long serial killer spree, and weekes' generally racist novels, i think that's a sad indicator of how homogenous and centrist the writing team at bioware is, and unfortunately they have not changed or grown a bit in the years since dai.

this is such an interesting perspective because while of course the US has a similar protestant veneration of "civility" i didnt know about how in canada it is related to how canada got its independence. it makes the white civility of the US even more ridiculous in comparison considering how we used to be willing to REVOLT!!!! WHAT HAPPENED!!!! same with the land back anxieties, i really am only familiar with them in america.

i think what gets me is how close dragon age gets to being honestly really radical at certain points, and then it shies away or just does a full 180 and is like "we love cops <3 and maybe racism is justified!" out of nowhere. its like a constant experience of political and ideological whiplash. especially da2 LMFAO. and veilguard especially is interesting because it did cement itself as pretty radical (in comparison to the regressive, pearl-clutching rise in conservative ideology worldwide that we exist in right now) with how unashamedly supportive it is of trans and nonbinary people. regardless of how well you think it was integrated into the story or written in general, the support is explicit and unavoidable, and that is fantastic and it made me really respect them for fighting so hard for it.... but it also made it stick out even worse when so many other parts of the game outright refused to take hard stances on literally any other social issue through its writing.

there was a great post that went around this summer about how sometimes you are playing dragon age and then you have to remember that it is written by a bunch of white millenials in canada. if anyone can find the post id give you a smooch because i have been thinking about it constantly.

[unopenablebox]

i can't actually bring myself to name the post i was originally thinking about for various reasons, some cowardly and some reasonably intellectually honest. so instead i'm going to air a bunch of uncoordinated grievances culled from a wide variety of sources

unfortunately i have spent several years being driven insane by random one off tumblr comments about science that i took incredibly personally and now i have a million deranged complaints about how no one is nice enough to me about my job

like. idk. it would be nice if people were willing to extend the benefit of the doubt for ideas like: maybe scientists also know that measurements we use are proxies for the underlying thing, and that might have something to do with why we often try to have three or four different ways of checking for what we hope is the same phenomenon. but ultimately we do just have to try to use the tools that currently exist to look at the world and report honestly on what we think it looks like. "can you believe scientists think x is the only thing that would show whether something is y" look we're just trying to figure something out that we can get to work repeatedly so that literally anyone else can actually check our work. and that's actually very hard to do. ofc these concepts are themselves culturally and historically contingent and a lot of other factors go into the formulation of what an experiment is or how things get solidified as canonical methods etc. but i don't think "we would like to do things that have a hope of being consistently doable so that things can be compared to each other, and people can meaningfully describe things to each other and be understood, and that shapes what experiments we in practice do" is some kind of deeply suspect motivation on either a personal or institutional level and it would be nice if people acknowledged that that is often a driver for what actually is done. sometimes you do what's possible and describable.

or. idk. this one is also kind of about my own interpersonal experience and not a tumblr post, though still kind of about tumblr posts. but like. scientists absolutely make what are essentially personal judgments based on aesthetics or sensibilities about what to study. because there's so much fucking stuff. and it can't all be "what kills the most people" or "what has money available", not least because some of us can't actually keep going day to day on the basis of either of those, but also because even within those the universe is full of stuff. and 1. yes, in fact this means expanding the set of people making those judgments and what kinds of experiences shaped their sensibilities is very valuable, as one of several arguments for improving diversity in science but also 2. we're not, like, automatons gleefully doing Soulless Nonsense while cackling about how we're keeping everyone from learning about the true beauty of the world that real people care about. we're real people also. (it's also, incidentally, not a sick burn to explain to us that we were using human judgment and impulses while we were studying science. we have all lived inside our own brains while doing this and also attended so many seminars where someone helpfully explained it like it was new information.)

like, personally, i think it's really exciting when proteins can consistently arrange themselves on only one side of a cell. because it looks really cool and it's exciting to think about and doesn't obviously fall out of what we already know proteins do. this isn't, like, a sign of a fundamentally corrupt and cold nature that doesn't understand the world's beauty. no one is ever going to pay me lots of money in exchange for my thrilling new results about cell shapes i just think they're really beautiful and interesting. but i resent having to piously announce that i'm really interested in the World's True Beauty and Animals and the Mystical Wonders of Nature in order to communicate this point. i intrinsically value and care about what proteins do and that's the framework i'm operating in and that's the kind of thing that motivates a lot of people in science and it's simply not reasonable to act like that's some kind of evil alien motivation unmoored from the true human impulse. like i actually am mostly doing this because i also really like that kinesin animation where it walks on a microtubule. i just got really into it.

on a separate point, i know that reading scientific papers is hard and a trained skill, and contextualizing them is really annoying, but unfortunately we are just going to have to maintain a saintlike state of mild skepticism about strong claims made in university press releases that are then breathlessly repeated on tumblr. nothing to be done about that right now they'll just say whatever unfortunately. i promise to continue writing bitchy four-paragraph posts about their conceptual limits if and when i happen to notice one i know enough about to evaluate and then also have time to do it

[windvexer]

Hi there chicken :) this question might me kinda gross but hear me out: since i've been back to my family home for the holidays i keep finding a single strand of black hair in my food, almost once a day. Now, the hair does look like my mum's (main cook of the fam) but hers hardly fall + she ALWAYS ties them in a pony tail. No other family member or relative had this happened to them at all, and it was frequent enough for them to point out how strange it was. I even found one in the one piece of pizza i took at my aunt's where there were a lot of people but still.

Do you think it's a sign or just bad luck (lol)? And if it's a sign, what could it mean?

Signs:

Vary from culture to culture

Vary from magical tradition to tradition

Vary from practitioner to practitioner

Vary depending on the gods/spirits/powers you work with

Vary depending on region

There are no universal signs.

Have you been asking for a sign or omen? You can do this through ritual or prayer, or even 'setting intent' and going about looking for one.

If you've been asking for a sign or omen, it's wise to ask for a specific one relevant to your path and the powers you work with. E.g., it's wise to ask a nature god to send an omen through nature (such as appearance of 3 of a certain wild animal).

I am very hesitant to assign meaning to a recurring random event with no cultural/regional/traditional/personal association, especially when no signs are being sought.

I also don't recommend retconning it; i.e., now sitting down and thinking about what things you may have been wondering about in the past that maybe you were subconsciously seeking an omen about this entire time. Either you set out to find an omen or you did not.

Some people say they don't believe in coincidences, and maybe that's true; but just because something has a reason doesn't mean it's masking a spiritual truth. "Your mom just reached menopause and her hair is breaking off more now" is a reason that explains a coincidence, and there doesn't have to be a grand mystical truth behind it.

If you never have, try asking for a specific sign some time, or get into "omenworking" if we may call it that. You may be flabbergasted at how quickly and clearly gods and spirits are able to send specific signs, and how easily everyday things can appear as vivid and obvious omens. When you've had these experiences, I think it's much more difficult to mistake random coincidence as being an omen.