#like I'm pretty sure the vast majority of people these days could not describe the difference between the internet and

[the-final-sif]

One of the things I think people as a whole don't understand about the internet today is that so much of what's wrong/dangerous/flawed about the internet exists because so much of the internet started as one person's hobby they built in their spare time or as a specific task for a specific function that was just useful/functional enough that literally everyone started using it. There's tons of biases built into the modern internet and some of that is carelessness but a lot of it is... just like. This was invented by a group of grad students fucking around for a few weeks. How the fuck were they supposed to know it'd be become the global standard and that nobody would bother to address or change these things?

Like, the whole reason that the US government gets the ".gov" domain name is because this entire system was invented in the US primarily for use in universities. Under the original system, you had to phone in to talk to the center who owned the list, tell them what name you wanted and then a person would type your name/ip onto the list attached to a nickname much like a phonebook. Then people slowly figured out domains and maintaining domain registries. And then the system became useful enough that more of the US started using it, and then people realized "oh shit, other countries want to use this too, guess we need to figure that out".

The "world wide web" or the thing we all know as the internet (and the reason that every website you visit has www in front), was invented originally by one dude trying to make his own job easier (Tim Berners-Lee). He thought it was pretty cool and shared it, and he was one guy who only spoke English and was just doing what he thought was going to work.

Like, this is a very lighthearted article talking about him, but I think it illustrates the point really well,

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, has confessed that the // in a web address were actually "unnecessary". He told the Times newspaper that he could easily have designed URLs not to have the forward slashes. "There you go, it seemed like a good idea at the time," he said. He admitted that when he devised the web, almost 20 years ago, he had no idea that the forward slashes in every web address would cause "so much hassle". His light-hearted apology even had a green angle as he accepted that having to add // to every address had wasted time, printing and paper.

via "sorry for the slashs"

We have an entire internet and infrastructure built rather haphazardly but also in such a way that going back and trying to change or fix things either requires an insane amount of work or could render vast swaths of the prior internet inaccessible.

Like, I think everyone here remembers Flash getting shut down and how much of childhood games got wiped off the generally accessible internet and relegated to projects like Flashpoint. It was really hard to see, but Flash was also a project started in 1996 (or 1993 if you count the OG version that turned into flash) that was supposed to be for a limited set of use cases, and not the medium on which major parts of the internet would run. By the time Adobe shut it down, Flash was incredibly dangerous with the constant risks of malware, it was buggy, slow, and there were a million better programs. It had to be killed to make way for better things, but because of how the internet was built, that death came at a pretty high cost.

So if you're ever wondering why it feels like the web is a bunch of dominoes ready to fall down at any time, it's because it is. And it does. And so many people spend so much of their time combating all the problems created by using systems that were never intended to handle everything they are currently handling because the alternative is a task of monstrous undertaking that would almost certainly turn decades of history to dust.

[noxiatoxia]

Komaeda Nagito, and His Tendency to Use Filler Words

I've talked about this here and there, but I want to make an in-depth post with examples.

So, something that's always bothered me about the Eng release of SDR2 is the fact that Komaeda...does not use filler words as much as he should.

Let me explain.

I'm sure you know words such as "uh" "um" "ah" "er" and suchlike. When you don't know something or are thinking, you tend to say something like, "Um...yeah, so..." or "My, um, appointment is tomorrow."

These words add no "value" to the sentence, and are only placed involuntarily while speaking because you are trying to think as you speak.

Japanese has plenty of these, too. Words like えーと(etto), あの (ano), ううん (uun), ええ (ee), and so forth.

But there's other "filler" words out there. Like our earlier sentence, "Um...yeah, so..." "Um" is not the only filler word. "Yeah, so" is also a filler word, as it adds nothing to the overall sentence. It can be removed.

Really, any word can become a filler word. "You know" and "like" have real applications, but if you, like, start, like, talking like this, it's, you know, kind of repetitive, you know?

I think the vast majority of people on Earth are guilty of speaking like this in their day-to-day lives. It's just easy to do. But when it comes to media, you'll notice characters rarely stutter or repeat words. When they do, even if it's a small amount, it's noticeable because the surrounding context is that nobody else is doing it.

With all this information in mind, let's talk about Komaeda Nagito's dialogue.

実���さ、ボクは入学前に、ネットでみんなの情報を調べてきてるんだよね。

さ(sa), is a normal sentence particle in Japanese. It's used for a myriad of purposes, although many people seem to liken it to the American "Valley Girl" accent when overused, especially with another conversation particle, ね (ne).

It is a misconception that sa is "masculine". It used to be masculine way back, but nowadays it's more or less gender neutral.

This will be the topic of the post. Komaeda tends to use sa and ne in a way that is seen as "filler". These particles can be likened to "you know?" and "like" in the sense that they are real words that serve purposes, but can be repetitive.

In the sentence above, I would say the ne is not being used in a filler-like way. Sa, however, is.

"So, to be honest, before I arrived at this school, I, um, did a little research about everyone on the internet."

In this way, sa, ne, or any other particle when overused (な na is another big one, and I see Souda using it a lot) can be any filler word. Some would argue that the sentence should maybe look more like...

"So, you see, to be honest, before I arrived at this school, I did a little research about everyone on the internet."

And this is equally as correct. It's more in-line with how sa as a particle is normally used, but when translating it as how it's being used here - as a filler word - "um" may sound more appropriate in English. Neither is incorrect however, and there's a myriad of other ways you could go about writing this.

"So, you know, to be honest..."

"So, like, to be honest..."

"...I kind of did a little research..."

"...I, well, did a little research..."

etc.

ううん、いいんだよ。複雑なのはボク自身もそうだからさ。

Here, I wouldn't describe sa as being a filler word...necessarily. It adds emphasis, but it's still completely optional. Thus, I wouldn't translate it as a word imperative to the sentence's meaning.

"No, no, I totally get it. I have pretty mixed feelings about this, too."

最初はね…恐れ多いって断ったんだよ。でも、どうしてもって言われてさ。

Here is an example of him using ne in a filler-like way. You've probably caught on that particles which stand-in as filler are used usually at the beginning of a sentence before a comma or ellipses.

Komaeda actually uses ne in this manner fairly often. One of his default voice lines is "boku wa ne..." - I am unsure how this was recorded in the English dub. Probably just "I..." but personally I'd go with "Well, I..." or "I, uh..."

And unlike earlier, I would say the sa here at the ending is indeed more filler-like (not entirely still, though. Akin to the usage above).

"Um, honestly, at first…I was humbled, but I refused. But, well, they wouldn't stop insisting on it…"

By the way, Komaeda is not putting himself down in this scene. Japanese culture emphasizes being polite in a way Western spaces do not. "I don't deserve it" is a very direct translation, but in English, it makes more sense to read it as "I humbly declined".

And all these examples are just in the first conversation you have with him! You can imagine how many more there are through the whole game.

Now, here's a big question I'm sure you're thinking: "Why was this left out?"

I don't know to be honest, because...they did it with other characters.

Such as Koizumi in the same game:

だってさ、なんだか変なヤツばっかりじゃん。天才だか超高校級だか知らないけどさ…

Although Koizumi suffers from some of the same translation choices made with Komaeda, hers appears to be more consistent.

Finally, we need to talk about Naegi Makoto. He and Komaeda share beyond a voice actor - they talk the same, too. They both use the same self pronoun and you pronoun, use the same script, and also have a habit of using ne and sa in excess...though Naegi maybe does it slightly less.

Also confusing, this sometimes gets translated, like here:

そうそう、こんな危険な学校だしさ、何があるかわからないでしょ？ だから…念の為にさ。

The only reason I can think it only happens sometimes or, in Komaeda's case, not at all, is some translators on the team either didn't feel it was important to include/didn't think about it, while other translators did. Game translation typically has more than one person at the helm. A lack of good management can lead to weird discrepancies like this.

Anyways, that's all I got for now. I hope you find it interesting, because it's one of my absolute favorite character quirks of Komaeda and I am so sad it doesn't get any love in English...

[ms-demeanor]

i really liked OJST in the mid-2010s but i didn’t stop reading cause of the cuck comic - wasn’t there also a comic erika moen wrote about (functionally) harassing lesbians with her now-husband?

In the mid 2010s closet-keys criticized one of Erika Moen's early diary comics and described Erika Moen as "Reassuring a cishet partner that it’s totally okay to use hate speech towards wlw at Pride" and condoning the harassment and fetishization of lesbians because of a 2007 comic that she had made as part of a webcomic she had written about gender and her interactions with her queerness.

The hate speech in question is the partner asking "are you sure you want to hold my hand with all these dykes around?" while they are pretty clearly at a Dyke Day event during pride, and the reassurance that 'it's totally okay to use hate speech toward wlw' is Erika responding "sweetie, I'm proud to be with you."

The comic is still up with a disclaimer that it was written at a different time, and I know that's probably not going to fly with a lot of people but if you were a bi woman in the early to mid 2000s it was pretty common to use statements like "lol yeah i'm into women my boyfriend is fine with it as long as I take pictures" to diffuse the biphobia from straight people AND to say shit like "I'm not a party bi, I actually love pussy, thanks" to diffuse the biphobia from queer people. (if you were a bi guy in the early to mid 2000s i'm sorry and I'm sorry now because we got LUG but that mostly went away and you *still* have to deal with the "gay in waiting" bullshit).

That comic ends with Erika and her partner looking at a woman and saying "I'd totally do her" while the woman thinks "pigs" and if you think that means that they literally sat on the street and vocally commented about lesbians passing by them or that they condone harassing lesbians (in, I cannot stress this enough, a diary comic written by someone in their early twenties who is realizing they are occasionally interested in some men some of the time after identifying as a lesbian their whole life), then I'm gonna go ahead and recommend signing up for some variety or other of literary analysis class. Do we think that Erika is seriously implying that she is going to make her boyfriend gay if she fucks him in this comic from a year later?

If this comic bothers you and you see it as a straight-passing couple giving the go-ahead to harass lesbians, you do you, I'm not saying you have to read the comic or enjoy Erika Moen.

I am saying it's a bit of a stretch, though, and certainly the least charitable explanation possible, and that we should probably give people some space to say awkward things about their sexuality and to make missteps when discussing it in their early twenties and not call them lesbophobic fifteen years after the fact for a college comic.

Moen also gets called transphobic because she has described trans men as adorable/cute in a way that could be read as patronizing in one comic and because she made a comic about wearing a packer for fun and for sexual gratification with her cis male partner as a cis woman.

Appropriately, all of these things feel very "late twenty teens tumblr callout post."

If it bugs you, you don't have to read the comics but I've talked about Moen before and I've gotten the anons in my inbox calling me lesbophobic for recommending her comic when in 2007 she made a comic about catcalling lesbians and condoning street harassment.

Which is frustrating because Erika Moen writes a comic about sex toys that has incredible body and gender diversity and is interested in making sure that people of all sexualities are having safe, enjoyable sex and talking openly about it. This is Rebecca Sugar condones war crimes level discourse over a creator who makes a genuinely good comic and gets dismissed as cringe by people who hate open discussions of sex and gets dismissed as a bigot (in ways that I think are incredibly unfair given the vast majority of her work) among people who *claim* to love open discussions of sex but who *actually* love witch hunts.

[veebs-hates-video-games]

And now for a couple more. You know the drill.

I found zero things to like about The Talos Principle. I know it's generally considered pretty good by the vast majority of people, and I have friends who like it, but I gave up on it pretty quickly.

It got off to a great start by showing raw CSS instead of button prompts in the menus, which it deserves an award for because that's a totally new way to fail catastrophically that I've never seen before. The CPU/GPU settings are also completely baffling.

Once I finally got into the game itself it immediately crawled up its own butt with some pseudo-deep nonsense narrated by "Elohim", which like, sure buddy. I knew it was a bad sign when I was searching for something completely unrelated and pulled up a post on r/Jung recommending it. It continues to be the policy of this blog that anyone who takes Jung seriously is not to be taken seriously.

Maybe the puzzles are ok, or I'd think so in a different context? I actively disliked the way they're presented though, and I could tell it was just never going to click with me.

In better news Proverbs is a thing. A reasonably fun one too. A bunch of reviews I've seen try to describe it as a cross between Minesweeper and Picross, but it's actually its own previously existing puzzle type that's been around for a while, most commonly known as Mosaic.

In my experience it's not a particularly hard type of puzzle, but it's a good choice for what they wanted to use it for. If you're a super hardcore puzzle person looking for a challenge you've come to the wrong place, but also you probably also are aware of Mosaic and have your own opinions on it already. On the other hand if you're just looking for something pretty chill that has a good feeling of progression then this might be it.

I expected it to take a lot longer to finish after seeing the RPS review that said they spent like 36 hours on it, but it took me well under a third of that. Somehow even though I fell asleep at one point with the game still running I managed to finish significantly quicker than any of the submitted times on HLTB, and I wasn't even really trying to go fast.

I briefly almost had a moment of "maybe the Gamers were right and video game reviewers really are bad at games", but then I came to my senses and remembered that in this situation I'm basically Mosaics Georg since it's been in my rotation for multiple years of things I do while listening to podcasts to help me focus.

I guess while I'm here I might as well mention that I've also been having an extremely mixed reaction to the first couple hours of Cyberpunk 2077 so far. The world and characters and story are interesting enough so far, I guess, but I've been having a harder time with everything else.

I think I might actually like the gameplay even less than The Witcher 3, which is saying something because I actively dislike most of the gameplay in TW3. I'm also pretty sure the menus and UI are even worse in some ways than the already kind of iffy ones in TW2, in totally new and different ways. Whoever came up with using an analog stick to move a cursor around is my nemesis, and I'm not convinced it solves any problem that wasn't already addressed by just having better organization and layout of menus before. I know you can use the d-pad instead too, but it doesn't feel like the layout was designed with that in mind as the only input you're using.

And then one of the biggest problems I have is a problem I have with a lot of big games like that these days, which is the graphics. Yeah yeah, it's very technically impressive and looks nice if you're into that sort of thing. I also can't parse what's going on visually a lot of the time because it's so busy. My vision kinda sucks in a mostly uncorrectable way, and all these hyperdetailed environments with realistic materials and lighting in a lot of recent games are kind of the bane of my existence.

If the real world looked anything like that I would die several times a day from not being able to tell I'm walking directly into a wood chipper or whatever. Back to less detailed/more stylized stuff for me, I guess.

[randomvarious]

Today's compilation:

Baby Boomer Classics: Sock Hoppin' Sixties 1985 Pop / Girl Groups / Rock & Roll / R&B / Doo Wop

Alright, well, I feel like a little explanation of terminology is warranted here in order to better contextualize this one. If you've ever heard the term 'sock hop' before and thought that it was just some creative mid-20th century lingo for 'party,' you're not wrong, but a sock hop was originally something more specific: a dance event where shoes were not actually allowed to be worn at all. See, when this term was first coined in the mid-40s, people were dancing in shoes that had hard soles on them, and invariably, those soles would end up inflicting a lot of damage on the floors that were danced upon. So, as a result, in order to prevent all this carnage, a sock hop was a dance party that was typically held in a school cafeteria or gymnasium for teens, in which its attendees would be forced to get down without wearing any kind of footwear. Neat, huh?

However, as shoe technology advanced and sneakers started using rubber soles, the altogether ban on shoes was lifted; but the term still ended up sticking anyway—sort of like how we still refer to the raising and lowering of car windows as 'rolling them up and down,' even though we use buttons for that now instead of hand-cranks. So, as such, even though a bunch of different certain types of shoes had now been permitted at these gatherings, 'sock hop' was still used widely to describe pretty much any dance party that was largely attended by teens, regardless of any rules pertaining to what could or couldn't be worn on peoples' feet.

And if you ever wanted a soundtrack to what those sock hops were sounding like in the early 60s, then this comp here's your ticket; at least for about half an hour 😅. The vast majority of these tunes turned out to not only be hulking hits themselves, but ones that got plenty of burn at sock hops all across the US too. And even though it's a very short collection, it's still eclectic; there's girl group pop, there's rock & roll, there's R&B, and there's a little doo wop too. Classics like Dion's "Wanderer," Del Shannon's "Runaway," Shangri-Las' "Leader of the Pack," The Angels' "My Boyfriend's Back," and more. A whole bunch of nostalgic goodies for grandma and grandpa to seriously crack a hip to.

And what's more is that there's a little cleverness that went into the track sequencing here too—specifically the bookends, which are both songs that involved a guy by the name of Ernie Maresca. As a performer himself, Maresca only ended up being a one-hit wonder, but as a songwriter and composer, he achieved a whole lot more. So, fronting this comp is one of his biggest triumphs as a writer, Dion's "Wanderer," and closing it out is his lone solo hit, a super catchy rock & roll and doo wop banger called "Shout! Shout! (Knock Yourself Out)" that went to #6 on the Billboard Hot 100 back in 1960. Quintessentially infectious sock hop material right there.

At the end of the day, I'm not really sure why this album cover was chosen for this comp though. It doesn't appear to be depicting a sock hop of any kind and no one seems to be wearing much in the way of early 60s garb either. As I understand it, the people who participated in these Baby Boomer Classics shoots for the series' original mid-80s run were friends and family of the people who worked at the label that released it, JCI. These shoots were probably low-budget affairs themselves and couldn't afford the time or effort to depict folks having the time of their lives in a gym or cafeteria in accurate wardrobes, so they went with this instead. Regardless of this misleading photo, though, rest-assured, you'll find some of the glory days of the early 60s sock hops within this comp here.

Only two more releases from this series to go!

Highlights:

Dion - "The Wanderer" The Shirelles - "Mama Said" The Shangri-Las - "Leader of the Pack" Bobby Lewis - "Tossin' and Turnin'" Joey Dee - "Shout" Del Shannon - "Runaway" The Angels - "My Boyfriend's Back" Claudine Clark - "Party Lights" The Chiffons - "He's So Fine" Ernie Maresca - "Shout! Shout! (Knock Yourself Out)"

[kitkatopinions]

New RWBY ep (for once not two days behind.) Criticisms and praise below the keep reading

Praise

The theme song is starting to grow on me. It's got a bit of Sonic-vibes? Like Adventure 1 and 2 Crush 40 stuff, which is my business. It's not as good and there's something off about the sound mixing and Casey's vocals could be better, but it's starting to grow on me.

Weiss's reactions to the Red Prince kind of make sense to me lol. She's dealt with pompous rich people her whole life and I feel like both her sense of superiority that we still see at times and her probably projecting Jacques (and to a lesser extent, Whitley) onto this little red prince but with none of the history makes her treating him like an annoying pest at the start very in character.

I'm digging the suspenseful music that plays during the 'describe the rules' and the start of the chess match. And I love the concept of Ruby being forced to play as chessmaster, with the lives of her friends on the line. I also like that a lot of Ruby's soldiers on the board are already beaten up and busted. It gets across that the game isn't necessarily fair early on (which is good because in war and in the war in Remnant, not everything is always going to be 'fair.')

I also like Ruby's worried and panicked expression as she sits at the chessboard. She's treating this seriously.

Weiss's little bow is so cute.

Yang's little Sonic the Hedgehog style grin is also cute.

The animators are doing what they can to carry this volume in terms of facial expressions and getting across emotion when they can. Some of the choices aren't so good, but moments like these are (as far as the animation goes.)

While there are elements of it I don't like just from this brief listen, the OK Goodnight song in this episode sounds like it's pretty good and the kind of song I'd willingly seek out to listen to. That's a great improvement from my complete disinterest and dislike in the majority of the music from the last two seasons where I didn't actually like a single track. Looking forward to hearing more.

I kind of... Dig the cat sometimes? Obviously it's uncreative in its concept and I wish it was more humanoid and just based off of the Chesire Cat instead of actually being a cat and some of its 'random' lines are annoying and stupid, but. There's an element of creepiness to it that I wish they'd done more of, but is nice to see. His "Promises are like birds. They taste great, but always escape." *Leans in super close to Ruby's ear.* "You should go. Before he changes his mind." The voice acting is good, and hopefully after the writers are done trying their hand at humor with the cat, it takes on more elements of the cat from Coraline.

The loud sound effects for things like Ruby landing on the wall are good, they add an element of suspense to an otherwise not very suspenseful moment.

Neo fell like a comet and it looked fucking radical. I don't think she meant to turn into Ruby and Cinder? Or for her semblance to change and provide her with doubles? But I think it's cool. A bit campy, but cool. And I think Neo expressing her rage at Cinder and Ruby both by transforming into them was cool and a good way to establish her current angry mindset.

Criticisms

Yang: "Are we sure we should do this?" Ruby: "The Red King helped Alyx." I sure wish there was a way for us to know the actual story of Alyx In Wonderland in canon because all I know is that Alyx defeated the Red King at a board game, so Ruby being like "he helped her" has me immediately kind of frustrated. I do not know what to anticipate because it's like they're making up the details of this rip off Wonderland book while they're writing each episode. Why couldn't they have said that Alyx 'got help from the red king after defeating him in a board game' last ep?

Immediately no on the Red Prince btw. I know he's meant to be annoying, but I thought I might have a chance to like this character (my history of liking flamboyant posh spoiled rich kids is vast,) and instead he's just another annoying character in a volume filled with annoying characters.

Blake is so... Weird this season. I feel like she's so far removed from who she was in this first five volumes that trying to compare her to Blake of the past is pointless at this time, but she's even more different than ever this season and the "happy birthday" moment really just drives that home. I feel like if I picture Velvet doing everything she does, it makes more sense to me.

Also I'm not saying that Yang and Weiss's attitudes don't make sense, but they really aren't helping anything and I'm getting kind of annoyed with their "I'm too tired for this, I'm pissed off at everything, I'm gonna act like all of this is just too lame for me" kind of behavior. It's not helpful and it's getting boring. Ruby and Blake are at least trying, and the other two can't even be bothered to put on a happy tone for two seconds if it means they might get to go home to help the refugees being attacked by Grimm after suddenly losing everything and getting launched into Vacuo, the place Salem is likely to attack next.

Weiss: "Did I used to be this unbearably pompous?" Maybe not to that extent, Weiss, but you were horrible in other ways, soooo.....

Wait wait wait... So the toy block soldiers get hauled off into the bushes and beheaded, two seconds after them and the red prince were played for comedy by the way, and the reactions from Team RWBY are

There's no reason for us or Team RWBY to think these block guys aren't sentient feeling people, there's no reason for us to think that they aren't really dead, and Team RWBY just moves on immediately? No 'you can't do that?' No pulling out their weapons? No questioning whether or not they should fight this monster beheading his people for the crime of making something the wrong color (real creative of the rwby writers btw /s.) They just... Move on? No questions asked? God, when did these characters become so... Lifeless? Even if we say they're trying to stay on the red prince's good side, they don't talk about it? They don't have a moment of upset where the hot-headed Yang or the compassionate Ruby or the once-feisty-and-justice-driven Blake or even the so-done-she-can't-manage-a-smile Weiss so much as say "hey" or "what was that for?" Ruby literally said "How could you" when the red prince tossed aside green glass but barely reacts with anger, sadness, or surprise when he kills people? Yeah, I know she has an emotional attachment to that barely used in the show so far weapon because it was Penny's, but it's two people's lives she's pretty much ignoring here.

The Red Prince: *Smirking darkly while pointedly refusing to tell Ruby that no one will be hurt during his game, heavily implying that this game is to the death or at least to the injury.* The music: *Suspenseful and foreboding.* Ruby, in an uncertain and serious tone: "Uh, can you... Advance one space forward, please?" The little pawn on the board:

Soooo the pawns aren't taking this seriously, they're taking a swing and then relaxing as they get carried away in stretchers. The stakes for this got lowered by three hundred times and watching it, I no longer felt that much suspense. Sure Blake, Weiss, or Yang might get injured, but they're not going to die or get knocked out for the count in episode three, so I'm not that worried.

But wait, there's no reason to believe the Red Prince's red pawns are evil or non-sentient, and WBY are attacking them with a smile at Ruby's command? Bit weird, right? Why aren't Team RWBY trying to avoid needless harm or at least frowning when they're forced to harm things? Ruby seems to be the only person taking this seriously.

"We want to go home, and we believe the tree can get us there." The suspenseful music stops playing. Ruby's voice changes to a completely different tone as she says "Yang, you're up." Fun music starts up. Yang starts Wreck-It-Ralph-style punching Pawns. All in like two seconds flat. Guys, try to ease into your tone change! It's jarring!

"Blake is a faunus... And the rest of us are human." Guys, I seethe with rage every time the writers of this show act like Blake is a different species of creature than the others rather than a different race of human. Every time they refer to Blake or other Faunus as not human it is literally DEHUMANIZING. They literally will say "Blake is not human" and "Faunus aren't human!"

More angelic imagery with Weiss, which I don't like. How are Team RWBY even kind of struggling with these toy soldiers? By all accounts they seem very weak. And the combat... While it isn't Volume 5 levels of bad, it also just isn't isn't good. Combat in RWBY hasn't been that good since volume three, and it's a real shame. I want to like it, but I just can't. Also even when the pawns seem to be taking this slightly more seriously, I feel like it just isn't well done still.

The moving through the Red Prince's castle is so... No. It's like right out of Phineas and Ferb's Across the 2nd Dimension. I liked when Ruby hit the wall and reacted to that, I think they should've kept that without knocking it up to eleven immediately. And they didn't react to it? Ruby wasn't like "one minute I was on the floor, then I was on the ceiling I think, then it was this twisty ramp and the soldiers were right there but they were on other floors?! Upside down?!" Like, yeah, in the moment, she was just running, there wasn't time to ask questions while she was running, but then she stops running and is like "I didn't beat the chess game :(" When wacky stuff breaks all the rules of the universe they're used to, they should... You know. React to it.

Also

Ruby's flower petals had barely disappeared by the time the soldiers were walking over the trapdoor, and this looks like a long hall. How did they not see her jump into it?

Also also, why is it that the mice attacked Blake because specifically her ears and only her ears resembled a cat, but Little barely reacts at all to the presence of the Chesire Cat?

The Cat: "Times change, you know. And so do we when it's our time to change... Don't you?" *Ruby and the team get engulfed by a bright light and suddenly find themselves in a clearing outside.* Me: "Wow the cat just teleported them? They're going to take this time - the most obvious time - to ask about the cat's magic or react vocally to the fact that really freaky stuff like instant teleportation or gravity changes is going on or talk about how dangerous it is that WBY are small or ask the cat what the hell he's talking about, or say that all this wackiness being in the Alyx in Wonderland book is something they knew but it's all still really weird for them to go through in real life or something like that." Yang: "There was a Red King!" Blake: "But something's changed since then." That's what... We already knew that, guys! Didn't they already come to that conclusion earlier? Why - what - the dialogue in this season is so badly written.

Weiss: "Great, so we're not in the stupid story after all." Me: "They're going to take this moment - the most obvious moment - to talk about how they probably didn't just blue skadoo into the pages of a book and that this place might be an afterlife or another world and Alyx or the author must've gone through this and gotten back to Remnant and the fairy tale is just based on that story and that it isn't even like the story they know because everything is clearly different and also maybe express concern about the tyrant beheading people considering that there's no reason to think the world they're in is fake or that the stakes don't matter because it isn't just fiction (for them) and they're clearly in a real place where people have real feelings." Weiss: "We're in its stupid sequel." ... Close enough.

Could Little stop being annoying for three seconds? I want to kick this mouse into the sun like it's a little dog named Teacup

Weiss: "What is the deal with this cat? Can't anyone here be normal?" Blake: "That's not just any cat! When Alyx was lost, she met the Curious Cat who loved to ask questions!" Yang: "And the Curious Cat helped Alyx find the tree!" They're... They're only just now realizing that's the Curious Cat? Guys, if I had gotten transported into a book I'd read enough as a kid or was culturally well known enough that I could recall details about the plot as a nineteen year old, why would I not be able to recognize a character like that? Especially one so fucking iconic looking! This isn't getting transported into Narnia and meeting a little girl and because she looks like any old little girl not realizing right away that it's Lucy Pevensie. This is basically like getting to Narnia and seeing a big old lion breathing life into trees and telling you he's the real king of the whole wood and talking about the deep magic and then ten minutes later being like "Oh shit are you Aslan?" This is quite literally like getting transported into a world like Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and seeing a grinning cat gradually disappearing while offering confusing conversation and then ten minutes later being like "Wait that wasn't just any cat, that was the Chesire Cat!" I am reeling.

All in all, this episode was better than the other two, but still really lacking imo. I give it a four out of seven. I didn't laugh once, didn't feel emotional once, but they got a couple of grins and a bit of suspense out of me.

[thathetaliablogg]

Hello there, it's me again, this time with a question. Im really interested in the Trans! England headCanon you did say you have, can i know a little bit more about this headcanon? I don't have instagram so i don' know if you writed already there. Hope you would have a wonderful day, hi from Sud Italia

Sure! I'm not sure exactly what you want to know since you didn't specify though? ^^' If you want to know why I hc him that way, it's mostly just because I'm trans and he's my comfort character atm, so... projection I guess? kjkljfsdkgljfkd

In terms of him though, yeah! He is trans! I imagine he figured this out pretty early, or at least - he knew he was a boy as soon as he HAD a concept of gender, and he definitely put his foot down (especially with the other kids like France) about his masculinity and his refusal to present otherwise. As his body started to change he obviously didn't have access to modern day binding equipment so he'd just do it with bandages, tight cloth, whatever he could. Luckily for him, he's immortal and his body regenerates so it's not like he had to worry about gaining permanent rib damage from that (unlike humans, who should never bind with bandages or anything just fyi!) Also, because of his long, long life he's had a long time to work on his voice, and so even before medical transition and things were available, he had become very good at passing as cis. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the first known use of the word transgender was in 1974! So because of that, he didn't have a word to really describe himself for the vast majority of his life - other than asserting that he is very much a man as much as any of his peers are. I think even in the present day, only a handful of the other nations know that he's trans, because the others have no reason to, and he just doesn't really care to tell people because he never had to before, so why should he now? He's definitely had top surgery now, and hormones, but to be honest it's much more for him than anything else. Most people wouldn't even have known much of a difference.

[stellaluna33]

Ok I’ve been holding onto this thought all day. I’m no anti-logan person or anything but I’m not a huge fan of his either so when I say this, it’s sorta biased but anyways, I’ve been watching GG for the first time and recently have entered the logan x rory era which isn’t necessarily bad (but don’t personally ship them at least not yet) However, something in particular about them I just found so strange was the fact that so many of the supposedly big moments for a couple seemed so… anticlimactic, I guess?

Like I recently got to the episode where Logan gives Rory a Birkin bag (which is a whole other topic of mine) and she just felt like saying ‘I love you’ first and he couldn’t say it back yet but they did kiss. And that’s it. That’s just so strange to me b/c I’d assume it would be so much more build up towards Rory being the one to say ‘I love you’ first instead of someone springing it on her. There’s other moments as well that seem so casual when they’re so big which makes me feel a bit distant from the ship like.. gosh, I don’t know how to say it but it just feels like they’re there.

I dunno. Maybe time’ll prove me wrong?

Hi! Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if I've ever thought of it that way, but you're right! If you've read enough of my posts, I think it's probably pretty obvious that I'm not a big fan of Logan either... 😂 But I TRY to be fair... My husband is a lot more like Rory than I am, personality-wise, and so I was very curious to see how he'd react to Logan when he recently watched the show for the first time. The way it came out was that he HATED Logan at first, but gradually began find him more appealing and sympathetic and kind of charming (though I should clarify that we had to miss like the last quarter of Season 5 due to "technical difficulties"), which shouldn't surprise me (because he's RORY after all!) but I was a little disgruntled about. 😂 Because I just. Don't get it. So ANYWAY, all this to say, my opinion won't be unbiased either, haha. I also infamously dozed off and dropped my phone on my face when I tried to watch all of Logan and Rory's scenes to research for my fanfiction, so yeah, I think it's safe to say that I also found the relationship a bit... lacking. 😂. I don't know!

I don't know how other people view them, or even for sure what the writers' intentions were, but if I had to guess, maybe fans of that relationship see that casualness and emotional distance as a sign of... maturity, maybe? I would say that Rory's patience about him returning her "I love you" could definitely be read as a sign of maturity, her having learned from her experience with Dean and not wanting to treat Logan the way Dean had treated her... But yeah, overall, I confess I mostly just get a "going through the motions" vibe from them the vast majority of the time. I mean, I think they're fond of each other. Rory certainly seems devoted to him in her way. But there's just something missing. They're casual, but not in a way that makes me believe that they're just comfortable and natural together. It's hard to describe what I mean! But... Compare Rory and Logan's scenes with, say, Rory and Jess at their most comfortable, like the "22.8 miles" or prom conversations. There's just a relaxed and deep natural WARMTH there that makes them feel really comfortable, and I just don't get that feeling from Rory and Logan. This is probably where their fans would say that that difference was only because Milo and Alexis were dating in real life. I don't know, maybe there might be some truth in that, but it doesn't change the way I respond to each couple on an emotional level.

[madara-fate]

What do you generally see eren as & explain why?

A hero

Anti hero

A tragic hero

Antagonist

A villain

A lot of people tend to have a hard time choosing as they dont know which one. Some people are biased.

For me, I don't really see why Eren has to be classified as just one of those options. One of the biggest themes in Attack on Titan is how it's all about perspective; someone may look like a hero or a villain from one perspective, but when you see and understand things from the other perspective, you realise that it's not so black and white. I mean, many people initially viewed the Warriors as villains, but their perspectives ultimately changed, and with good reason. This series is all shades of grey, and I think that many people have viewed Eren as most of, if not all of those things you mentioned at one point or another during the story. If anything, I think that Eren Kruger said it best when he was speaking of Ymir Fritz. So to quote him and apply his words to Eren Jaeger - Eren can be all 5 of the things you mentioned, all it takes is for people to believe it:

Personally, I'd describe Eren as someone who wants to do something heroic for his people, but that endeavour has caused him to be seen as a villain to the rest of the world, and caused even some of his own people to at least view him as someone who needs to be stopped. They understood and were appreciative of his motivations at the end, but that's besides the point. The fact that even his own people felt that he needed to be stopped, should tell you something regarding the sheer immorality of his actions.

Now, I love Eren's character, and think he was absolutely fascinating after the final time skip, but that doesn't mean that I must blindly support him in everything that he does, just because he's the protagonist, because that's an argument that I've heard from people as well - that he's the protagonist so how could we not support him? Which I find absolutely preposterous, as if the protagonist label makes you exempt from all wrong doing.

Those who are ride or die for the characters they've been with since the beginning will see Eren as a hero, and may even try to justify his actions as self defence, but I can't get behind that at all, because at the end of the day, it's very obvious that not every single person in their world wished for the death of all Eldians. So when Eren or fans say how "the world" wishes for the deaths of all Eldians:

That's not true. Perhaps the political leaders of each country supported this, along with the vast majority of the general public in many nations like Marley, but I'm pretty damn sure that a sizeable portion of the world's population just wanted to continue minding their own business and living in peace, and at the very least, had absolutely nothing to do with the mistreatment of Eldians, and yet, Eren was still gonna kill every last one of them, despite the fact that the majority of them did Eren and his people no harm. Even a nation like Hizuru, who actually allied themselves with Paradis Island, would have gotten trampled by the Rumbling all the same.

Eren's perspective was understandable, his motivations were noble, but his methods were fucked up beyond belief. Yet, having had this clairvoyance due to the Attack Titan, he truly believed that it was the only way, and no one else had the perspective that Eren did, so there's another thing that needs to be taken into consideration.

[limeade-l3sbian]

Hey. I don’t know if you remember me, but a few weeks ago I sent an anon to you where I was basically lamenting feeling worthless or something of that similar tone. That I was going to die of obesity and I saw no out of the end where someone would have to look at my dead body in disgust.

You came with some nice and encouraging words.(thanks for that btw again)

Today I was out for the first time in a long time. I was visiting the psychiatry department in my city, and had a scheduled taxi to collect me when I had to go home. When I got into the car and for 95% of the car ride, the taxi chauffeur was nice. He and I was talking about video games. Both coincidentally had an interest. It was a decently friendly time filler convo. However when the conversation naturally came to a halt, silence followed and he suddenly said, while I could see out of my peripheral view him looking me up and down with a smirk, “did you ever do sports? it certainly doesn’t seem like it”. It was such a blow to the stomach. I know men are gross and value women solely for our appearances, I know men are callous and most often incapable of being empathetic, but after such an otherwise nice convo, the knowledge that he had most likely been thinking “wow what a fat piece of shit she is” the whole time was so heartbreaking. I barely go out, I keep to myself, I’m not very confrontational, i was polite the whole drive. And yet, that’s what he said to me in the end.

This is why I feel hopeless. I always always be my body and I will always o my be offered respect by the vast majority of the world if i’m skinny and pretty.

Good to see you again, anon! 💜

I think maybe two weeks ago, I had a man swerve to the curb to drive along side me. I had my music in and was walking with my arizonas, so didn't respond since I was clearly occupied. But he kept following, leaning out. I glanced at one point to make sure he wasn't trying to be helpful but could hear what he was saying through my headphones. Including him cursing at me before finally driving off in his clown car.

Whether they're flirting, insulting, "negging", or just really talking in general, it's important to understand that men's words mean literally nothing. I can't describe to you how little they matter. How much are you thinking they mean? Well it's less than that and so on. Very often, I believe men have a word quota that they feel they must fulfill, and so terrorize the women around them with meaningless strings of sentences regarding what they prefer and how they feel about certain things. More often than not, unasked.

Men also don't cut their dogs' balls off as not to "emasculate" them. Is that a collection of people you want to listen to? These same people have convinced you that not being thin and not being pretty is a death sentence when it's not. I've been chubby my whole life and still had meaningful, loving relationships. You're absolutely right. You will always be in your body. You cannot change that. So you might as well start getting comfortable in there and figure out if you want the couch more to the left or more to the right because that's your home. Your headquarters where you can head back after a long day and plan your next scheme to _______ (whatever your schemes may be, we've all got em lol).

You can't keep gauging your worth on the opinions of others, babes. ESPECIALLY MEN, COME ON BESTIE. Doing that just about killed me, literally. I'm not saying it'll be overnight, but that dam of self doubt and disgust will break. You're gonna be staring at the wall and come to that crossroad, bc the way things are isn't sustainable.

Am I going to sink and let the void swallow and define me? Or pull back and say "fuck it" and tell the next male who can fix his lips to say some shit like that to me that he can go fuck himself?

Easier said than done, but trust me, I got there and you can too. 💜

[robotpals]

hey! idk if you're still taking questions about mhc, but i'm committed to mt holyoke for this fall and still not 100% sure. i kind of have a lot, so answer as many or as few as you'd like lol they're in order of priority

completely honestly, how much do people still call it a "women's college"? it was a really big factor for me that mhc was gender diverse, and since visiting has been kind of funky this year, it's been hard to tell how committed the school actually is to trans allyship (full disclosure, i'm a cis girl) and how much the students try to respect that

related to how welcome men and nonbinary folks feel-- when i show up on campus, are like 99% of the students going to be women (trans or cis), or am i being overly pessimistic about the remaining emphasis on women?

sustainability is a big focus for me, and was a factor that actually had me leaning away from mhc (most of the other schools i applied to were shooting for carbon neutrality years before 2037, and had more options for composting and such). the actual question part is: how hard would it be to try to be low/zero waste on campus (esp. plastics)? would the dining halls be able to accommodate that (outside of COVID years)? are there any significant obstacles i might run across?

i'd also like to get more politically involved in college, are there a lot of opportunities for that? (like, protests, or mutual aid, or politically oriented clubs)

how hard is it to get the classes you want? how many classes did you personally take at the other consortium colleges? (or if you're not comfortable with that, what might the average be?)

thank you so much! i'm sorry if this is too much or my tone is weird, and feel free to redirect me for any of this

Hello! Congratulations to you as well -- whether it’s where you end up or not, you should know that I’m proud of you for applying and being accepted! I’m not sure how helpful I’ll be for some of your questions, but I can certainly try to answer them. I’m putting a read-more because I have a feeling my answers may be long!

As to your first question, MHC still is a women’s college -- though a gender diverse one (I know that isn’t a helpful answer, but I think it describes the culture best!). Maybe the best way to think of it is that Mt Holyoke’s history is deeply steeped in what being a women’s college means: a lot of the traditions and details of the school can be traced back to its days as a women’s seminary. The fact that it was a place for women to get an education in a time when typically women couldn’t is something to be proud of, and definitely something that students celebrate -- though of course the category of “woman” who could be educated in the college’s early days was very limited to white affluent women. Something that I appreciated about MHC was it felt like nearly all of my fellow students were as social justice oriented as I am -- so there were always discussions about recognizing the college’s failings and history of discrimination, as well as celebrating those students who pushed for diversity and opened the doors to students who wouldn’t have been admitted in the college’s early days. That doesn’t mean that mhc is perfect, and as a white woman I’m not the best person to talk about those issues, but in general I thought the student body was willing to have hard discussions and advocate for critically examining mhc’s past.

I think my years there were interesting because my first year was the year the college announced it would accept trans women (the first of the “seven sisters” / historic east coast women’s colleges to do so!), though prior to my arrival trans men (those who applied still closeted/questioning and then came out while a student) were enrolled. I should disclose that I, too, am a cis woman! So any thoughts I have on what it’s like for trans students is based entirely on conversations with trans friends and not personal experience. Basically, though MHC is a women’s college, I think the large population of lgbt students means that gender/respect for trans students is more at the forefront than it would be at some other schools. I’m currently a student at a Big 10 state university for a masters program, and I definitely think that MHC was way more accepting of gender diversity than here -- asking about pronouns and respecting people’s gender identities were totally commonplace at MHC seven years ago, but undergrads I know at this university have said that there are lots of students who treat discussions about respecting pronouns as a joke :/ -- I hope that MHC has only continued to improve its treatment of gender diverse students since I was there.

That being said, there are definitely transphobic students -- and unfortunately, old and bigoted staff members. I remember when I was a student, the college released a memo for staff/faculty that said that emails to the student body shouldn’t use gendered language (like saying “Hey girls” or whatever LOL) and while every student I talked was in support of that, there were definitely rumors of some older professors throwing fits about that. I don’t remember any terfs on campus -- thank god -- but there was a “young republicans” student group that was super obnoxious (they only had three members LOL but they complained CONSTANTLY about how other students telling them to shut up was infringing on their first amendment rights). 

I have no idea what the numbers are, but when I was a student, it definitely seemed like the vast majority of students were women/women-aligned (cis, trans, or nb) or nonbinary, so if you really want a campus with more men, MHC may not be a great choice.

As far as sustainability: I really don’t know. I know that a big discussion when I was a student was divestment from fossil fuels, and MHC refused to make any promises to divest. When I was a student, there were a couple student advocacy groups dedicated to challenging the college to be more sustainable, so if you want to learn more, I would try to find info about those organizations and ask them. Sorry I don’t know more! For some reason I thought MHC composted, but I don’t know for sure -- I know that when you finish eating, you just put your plate on a conveyor belt and there are dining hall staff who sort through what’s what. Again, you could reach out to dining and ask! And if you end up at MHC and they aren’t composting, I think that would be something they might be open to implementing -- advocacy is key.

For political involvement, I think there are lots of opportunities! MHC is in a fairly rural location, but students on campus when I was there organized marches, walk-outs, and protests for the student body. There are advocacy groups for different interests, as well as cultural groups that organized events around specific issues. It’s definitely a campus where you can get involved with issues that are important to you. Again, I don’t know what the culture is like at other colleges, but in comparison to my graduate program, activism at MHC was far more robust.

For classes, I never had trouble taking the classes I wanted! But to be fair, my majors were uncommon enough that that isn’t too surprising (religion and ancient studies LOL). Among my friends, no one seemed to have trouble getting the classes they wanted -- the only class that I remember people having trouble getting into was a class on the history of witchcraft in the gender studies department! Which is SO mt holyoke LOL. 

I only took one class outside mhc -- which in retrospect I regret not taking more -- it was a class on Icelandic saga literature at umass amherst. It was a really fun class, and I enjoyed getting the glimpse into what life would have been like if I had gone to a big state school for undergrad! Overall, I thought the process for taking a class off campus was super easy and the only downside was the bus ride was like half an hour.

I hope my answers make sense! I feel like I should disclose that I’m finishing up my grad school program this week (!) so I’ve been particularly nostalgic for undergrad recently -- I’m stressed about exams, so my rose tinted glasses are ON 🙃 but I hope this has been helpful! I think that so many people make it seem like college is the most perfect wonderful time ever, but in actuality it’s pretty weird -- people living away from home for the first time, trying to figure themselves out, exploring their interests and passions, etc. ... so I would encourage you not to think of college as a perfect place, but a place where you will have room to grow! I definitely had times where I HATED being a student at mhc, but I certainly would have had those times anywhere I went -- and in the end, I’m glad I chose mt holyoke and I think it was a place I was able to grow and flourish into who I am today!

[bonesandpoemsandflowers]

Hey! I am asking for advice. I fucked up a few years ago at the telling apart ghosts and gods and would rather not go through that again. Could you help me out? I really want to get back into it but that was a very bad experience so I'm anxious. Thank you!!

Anon, I love this question and if you're willing to drop some more details in my inbox, anon or not, please do. I'm sorry that you had such a bad experience, but take heart, maybe, that everybody does this at SOME point, and taking a few years off to process is actually a pretty snappy turnaround time.

(spooky occult people only pls)

(scroll along, the rest of you)

It IS a tricky question, though.

Tough love up front: there is no entirely safe, entirely pleasant way to do magic. Fundamentally magic is transformative and therefore often uncomfortable. There's fears and negative emotions to work through, and there's also just some straight up tedium and drudgery, and no matter how cool you are, no matter how sure you feel about your place in the grand scheme of the universe, you will eventually question everything and get some things wrong. There will not only always be risk: sooner or later there will be pain.

But! Is it worth it? ABSOLUTELY, anon, and I'm not gonna try to persuade you because if you're asking, you've already made up your mind. You just want to not make the same mistakes over again. You want to make brand new mistakes! It is the only way to move forward.

There is a difference between the merely uncomfortable and the truly dangerous, so ultimately it's a game of knowing when fear is a just a trial to get through versus when fear is a warning keeping you safe. The first time I tried to answer this question I made a quick list of protections, but that's not really the issue. You're wiser than that. You're asking about something diagnostic.

Discernment is the greatest occult skill and one that’s difficult to quantify. It's one of those paradoxes of inexperience, nigh impossible to hone without practice, yet a skill you need in order to get out there and practice.

whatever your prior experience was: what did you learn from it? what was the point where you started to feel something went wrong? identifying that moment, how it felt, how you felt it, will help you more than anything I or anyone else can tell you.

I am, honestly, not the best person to describe how to increase your psychic sensitivity or whatever. The good news, maybe, is that you don't have to be great at discernment before you start. Yes, you can put all your effort into sharpening your senses before you even go out there, which is a noble way of doing it and maybe it will eventually even work, OR—you can put on some safety gear and wade out into the swamp wearing your little floaties so that you don't sink.

Your metaphorical swimming wings here are protections and banishments and the preemptive assistance of something bigger than you on your side. This answer is mostly going to focus on that last part, because "ghosts and gods" implies, I think, that you are ready to work with gods, or at least eager, which is, like, at least half of the process.

However, even then, I do wanna say—while I don't want to discount your negative experiences at all! I don't know anything about them, but I'm sure it was awful!—you, all by yourself, can probably banish most ghostly things you're likely to run into. There's a lotta bark, and usually not that much bite. I wrote up some less formal banishing methods and posted them here on ye old witch blogge, but really, you can mostly just yell at stuff to leave.

(there is a fair amount of repetition between this post and that one! I apologize. I mostly typed these late at night over the course of several days)

Now! Assistance. An ounce of prevention vs a pound of cure and it’s good to pack light.

So much of magic across time and cultures is about negotiating with spirits of some flavor or another. Maybe it's worship or maybe it's bindings or maybe it's strictly transactional, but as beings made of flesh we are forever making pacts with beings made of something else, and hey, it usually works.

The complication here is that the distinction between ghosts and gods maybe isn't that simple. Mess with the wording a little and Catholic saints are basically both. And so are some orisha, some loa, and so on. Baron Samedi (lord of the cemetery, best bang since the big one, etc etc etc) in particular, out of the vodou pantheon, may or may not have been human once, depending on who you ask.

Further: the most readily available spooky occult forces you have are your ancestors. So you'd file that under ghosts, maybe, except that with ancestral veneration practices and all, we inch closer to god territory, in a sense. At least—the rituals start looking the same from an outside perspective. Santeria, Vodou, Epiritismo and many more practices that the ones I'm familiar with involve working with your ancestors to accomplish your worldly goals. We don't consider them ghosts when we work with them; that's not the word we use. But arguably—why not?

So the trick here isn't necessarily how to sort ghosts from gods as much as it is to hang out with some NICE (to you) ghosts and/or gods.

How do you do that?

If you have a good relationship with your ancestors, then you start there. If you, like me, or lots of other long disowned and disinherited magicians, have a disconnect there, then—welp. Consider getting over it by going back further in the family tree (this is what you will inevitably eventually do). Somewhere in there you have someone kind, I promise. But that's not advice I could have followed ten years ago, so I'll get to the alternative in a minute. Let's assume, for the moment, that you accept the logic that your ancestors have a vested interest in protecting their line, and in fact having an active magic user willing to work with them probably makes their afterlives much easier.

There's tons of guides online about how to work with your ancestors. I think sincere, unstructured prayer and a glass of water are the simplest and most powerful of offerings. A candle, if you have one. Just flipping on a lamp or a light switch if you don't.

(I travel with a little LED tealight and a mala made of skull beads carved from ox bone, but I am unnecessarily spooky and dramatic. If anything, my ancestors prefer the plain obsidian mala I first started with. But the aesthetic.)

I'm very, very informal in my ancestral practice. It still works.

Tell them you want to establish a working connection, talk to them about what's going on in your life. Keep it short and don't worry about whether or not you feel anything yet. It might take weeks before you feel something, and that's okay—discernment is, like I've said, the most important but also hardest skill, and it usually takes time and repetition. Offer them something—anything, really, and honestly the plain glass of water is traditional—and ask for their protection. They will almost certainly give it to you.

"But Flowers," you might say. "Fuck that and fuck 'em. I'm not ready to fuck with my family yet."

Alright, little one! I feel ya. It took me ages to warm up to the idea. I promise that it's worth it when you're ready, but having covered ghosts, let's move on to

GODS

Step one: ask yourself if you need to fuck around with gods in the first place.

Step two: fuck around and find out.

Step three varies depending on who you're looking for. There is a great deal of anxiety about this in occult circles, especially among people who use the term "baby witch." People are terrified of making the wrong choice. They want it to be PERFECT. They want to be correct. "Who is calling me?" ask a thousand seekers, across forums and places. "I saw a butterfly the other day. IS IT A SIGN?"

(shit, dude, I dunno, probably not, but potentially maybe. Nobody can know but you. just keep in mind that butterflies etc exist on their own and go around doing their own thing and this has absolutely nothing to do with you the vast majority of the time)

You don't need to be wait to be called by a god to offer worship and/or develop a working relationship. I would argue that most people aren't really called, and if you are, you will KNOW. Tumblr likes to say gods need consent and I think that's fucking hilarious. There is no folkloric precedent for that. If you are Called, capital letter Called, you will know, and whatever happens next is between you whatever bizarre shamanic experience you end up having, because you WILL have it, good luck.

But probably that's not the issue here! Moving on with our hypothetical.

You're not waiting around for divine intervention. You're being proactive. You're not waiting for The Call, or even a mild call. How do you choose what god you're petitioning for protection? I doubt you're entirely neutral about it. You probably have a god you identify with or just find really friggin cool. That's a fine and dandy place to start.

The working relationship need not be forever.

Which brings me to my next point. If you are absolutely undecided about what direction to go in, consider going to one of the liminal gods. Your crossroads gods, your messenger gods, often trickster gods. Your between spaces gods. Your portal opening gods.

In Santeria and Vodou, which I keep on referring back to because those are the systems I was raised in, your messenger gods get called very early on in the ritual. Why? To open the way for everybody else. There's a suggestion here that certain gods are closer or more easily reached, so if you want an opener—ask somebody with keys, yeah?

(also technically there's spirits called before then like the rhythm/dance/drums but let's not complicate things. Broadly speaking: key holding gods first)

Catholic saints wise, you've got Saint Peter, right? Santeria has Elegua. Vodou has Legba. Vodou also has the Baron as a crossroads god and yer liminal spaces god and sometimes he also has keys and hey by the way, he's really great, but where was I?

Hermes is another option. Mercury.

There's a bunch of American indigenous options I don't know enough about to confidently say.

SPEAKING of indigenous american, right, there's always Quetzalcoatl—technically—sky god, wind god, messenger god.

There's Odin and I'm actually a big fan, but the Norse magic community is often kind of garbage these days because we've got too many nazis running around, which is a shame.

My point is: there's gonna be somebody who feels close, either because of your cultural background or your aesthetic, and you might as well ask.

Settle down. Call their name. Offer water and a prayer and ask for protection, tell them what it is you want to do, ask for their help on this new life journey.

Worship isn't really complicated unless you want it to be.

Again, don't worry about "feeling" anything. Don't expect anything dramatic. Just offer something, every day or every week or whenever you have the time and headspace for it. Do the motions and mean it even a little bit and with time the rest shall come.

Because EVENTUALLY, you will feel something. It will probably be a mild sense of peace. The ritual feels calming. Something about it feels cozy. Presence is often subtle, but that counts.

Once you feel solidly good about your ritual, I would say that means you have at least some degree of protection, and it's time to wade around the swamp and see what's up. What do you do next? I dunno! I don't know what your goals are! But you have your ancestors at your back, or you're on a god team, or maybe BOTH—go explore!

Confidence isn't everything. But confidence, my friend, is a LOT. There's more to it, of course, but especially early on: fake it till you make it and dream it and you'll be it.

Best of luck, anon. <3

[sibilantly]

hi, sib. i sent you an ask about writing a while ago and you were super helpful, but i have found myself in yet another conundrum - i'm blocked. it took me some time to figure out why, and i'm pretty sure it's 'cause i'm supposed to be starting my mfa this fall and i'm just scared shitless. i'd really appreciate some advice on how to unblock the block. i just feel so useless right now. this nonsense in my head is honestly wearing me down.

You sent this several months ago, dear writing anon (as I now dub thee), and I’m terribly sorry I haven’t replied before now. RL got in the way of my online/fandom time again, but, more than that, I’ve been musing and reflecting on the situation you described, and I’ve only recently been able to marshall it all into semi-coherence. I assume you’ve started your MFA already (CONGRATULATIONS, BY THE WAY!), so all this navel-gazing and advice may be moot, but on the off-chance you’re still stymied, here’s my take and (for what it’s worth) my advice:

The thing about ‘writer’s block’ (air quotes), which you seem to have figured out already, is that it’s really emotional block. And the most common emotion is fear.

It’s not surprising, really, when you consider the fact that writing is both a craft and an art. (Well… alright, every art form is a combination of craft and art - of technical skill and vision - but we’re just going to focus on writing right now). And, just like every other art form, the very best writing requires self-expression. Think of your favourite authors, both published and in fandom. Could you ever mistake their writing for another author’s? I’m willing to bet my last dollar that your answer will be ‘no’.

However, self-expression also means baring yourself. It means producing a piece of writing that says, in effect, ‘this is what I think, this is what I feel - this is how I see the world, this is my perspective on this trope/theme/topic, this is me’, and putting it out there to be looked at and judged by strangers. Strangers who may then have all sorts of reactions and opinions - negative ones, even - about not just your work, but about you.

And for the vast majority of people (myself included), that is fucking terrifying on a visceral, lizard brain level. In prehistoric times (or… whenever… anthropology is not my strong suit), being rejected by others meant isolation, which in turn meant increased risk of starvation or death by megafauna. We’re not in prehistoric (or whatever) times anymore, but rejection and negative judgement still hurts and looms large in our psyches because… well, the lizard brain is a powerful motherfucker that has gotten our species this far. It’s like that douchebag in your social circle that you just can’t drop entirely because they’re handy/annoyingly right in certain situations.

Anyway.

I suppose what I’m trying to say is: take heart, writing anon. You’re in good and numerous company. This fear - this emotional block - you feel is common. It’s unbelievably common. I personally grapple with it every week. Like, literally every week. From a certain evolutionary perspective, you could even say the fear is reasonable (DEATH BY MEGAFAUNA).

…however, that perspective is severely unhelpful in motivating one to write, so let us acknowledge said perspective like it’s an acquaintance we’re on nodding terms with, and move on.

The fact of the matter is, we’re not in prehistoric-whatever times anymore. Rejection will not kill us, no matter what the lizard brain keeps shrieking. And while the lizard brain is powerful, it’s also primitively dumb. Which means we can trick it.

There is a reason why pretty much every notable book on the art and craft of writing will have a chapter or a section which says, essentially: half the battle is getting your arse in the chair.

It’s because, a great majority of the time, getting started really is the biggest hurdle. Once you’re actually slapping some words onto a page? It may be painful, it may present its own challenges, but it usually doesn’t require as much effort as just. Getting. Started.

As the number of days you spend not writing builds up, the act of writing - even the mere thought of it - becomes more and more psychologically loaded, more threatening to your sense of self. ‘YOU’RE GONNA BE REJECTED AND STARVE TO DEATH IN THE DESERT,’ says the lizard brain. The more rational part of your brain says, ‘You’ve spent all this time not writing. When you finally summon up the power to do so, by some act of God, it’s going to come out mediocre, at best, because you’re out of practice. Why bother?’

And, look– to be honest, rational brain will probably be right regarding your restart writing attempts coming out mediocre. But it’s wrong about it being pointless to start.

Because here is something else you should tell yourself: writing is not just the words you publish. It’s not even just the words you publish plus the words you wrote in draft and then killed because you realised they were darlings. It’s not even all those words and the time you spent brainstorming and outlining. It’s all those words plus that planning plus the emotional work you go through - in character and as yourself - to get those words and ideas out.

Don’t get down on yourself if you have only one hour to write and you spend fifty of those minutes psyching yourself up to write. Psyching yourself up to write is part of writing. You’re getting your arse in the chair.

So, sure, maybe on day one you’ll spend just ten minutes getting some words out. But on day two, when you sit down again, you’ll remember: I did this for ten minutes yesterday. I can do it again. It’s like a gradual stretching and strengthening of a muscle. You should– no, you need to take your time, because writing is a years-long (ideally, lifelong) journey. You’ll need to pace yourself accordingly.

I’m not saying it’s easy. I have spent years devising weird tricks, strategies, and schedules to fool my lizard brain into viewing the act of writing as non-threatening (and sometimes I still fail and will stop writing for a couple days). I know it’s not easy. But it’s doable - you just need to find the right set of tricks and strategies that will fool your lizard brain.

EVERYTHING THAT I, SIB, HAVE PERSONALLY DONE TO FOOL THE LIZARD BRAIN

1. Automate that shit - COME UP WITH A VERY, VERY SIMPLE PRE-WRITING ACTION

Okay, so at this point, you might be going, ‘Great, Sib, but how do I get myself to start?’

And I say: ‘Automate that shit’. You can make the initial action (usually the action that requires the most effort) more likely to happen by making it very, very simple.

For (a non-writing) example, I have a weird thing about dishes. I don’t like doing them. What I don’t mind doing, however, is clearing the dish rack. But what tends to happen is, once I’ve cleared the dish rack and find myself standing beside the sink, I think, ‘well, since I’m already here…’

That’s what you need to trigger with writing - that casual thought of, ‘well, since I’m already here…’. The point of the pre-writing action is to trick yourself (or, at least, your lizard brain) into perceiving writing as being so simple, so easy and non-threatening, it’d be almost silly to not do it. This is especially important if you haven’t written in so long that writing has come to resemble a nigh-insurmountable mountain or a time bomb strapped right against your heart and your sense of self-worth.

Even if you don’t do anything else that I suggest (seriously, you don’t have to, I’m just listing everything I’ve tried on the off-chance that it might work for you), I’d say this is the strategy to try. The whole point of it is that it should require almost no effort to perform. Why not do it?

My personal pre-writing action is fifteen minutes of free writing/journalling (‘I’m not writing, lizard brain, I’m just talking to myself’). You don’t have to do that. But whatever action you choose to go with, make sure it’s easy and flows on automatically to writing. The point isn’t to force yourself. If you’re forcing yourself, the action is too complicated. You’re removing the automaticity of the process, and the whole point is automaticity.

Examples of pre-writing actions you could do:

1. Sitting in your dedicated writing spot. Just sitting there. You don’t have to write. But since you’re already there…

2. Summarising the last scene/chapter you wrote. You don’t have to write anything new. But since you’ve already picked up that pen or typed out that sentence…

3. Making a cup of tea (or coffee or whatever) and thinking about your writing as it steeps. You don’t have to do anything with the idea you came up with. But since it’s already formed… ;)

I know it can be embarrassing to set your bar so ‘low’, because it feels like you’re admitting you’re incapable. But you’re not incapable. You’re just human. You have multiple responsibilities, coupled with limited time and limited resources, both physical and mental. You’re doing the best you can with the time, ability, and energy you have. No one can expect more of you than that. You, especially, should not expect more of yourself than that.

2. Grab a notebook or open a document, and DESCRIBE YOUR PROCRASTINATION BEHAVIOUR(S) IN SPECIFIC, OBSERVABLE TERMS. Don’t just say ‘I avoid writing’ - be specific (says Arthur).

For example, here are some things from my list:

I open up my WIP, stare at the cursor, and tap the page up/down/delete/backspace keys for thirty minutes

When my reminder alarm for writing goes off, I open up my WIP, then open tumblr in another browser

I do all the household chores when it’s time to write

3. Take that list of behaviours and WRITE DOWN AT LEAST ONE SPECIFIC, ACTIONABLE SOLUTION FOR EACH BEHAVIOUR. You may come up with more than one solution for each behaviour. It’s fine. Write all of them down.

Here is what I came up with for the above:

Staring at the cursor: 

Pull the page up/down and backspace keys off the keyboard (this didn’t work for me.)

 Free write for fifteen minutes before starting ‘real’ writing (which has, yes, become my pre-writing ritual. It works beautifully for me because, after 5-10 minutes, it tends to segue into ‘real writing’. As in, I’ll start off writing like I’m telling a friend about what should happen next in the story - complete with tangents and sentences full of ‘and then he’s like, you know, completely aghast’ - and then as I relax and get more into the story, I drift into draft prose and dialogue.)

Opening tumblr at the same time as my WIP:

Install Clear Focus on my phone and StayFocusd on all browsers, and put a strict limit on tumblr

Write longhand in a notebook and then transcribe (this is my go-to solution these days)

Doing household chores instead of writing:

Schedule writing time only after I finish all chores (this is a meh solution for me - I can always find new things to clean, if I’m really, really trying to avoid writing.)

Write one hour before bed/when exhausted (this is like the non-alcoholic version of the apocryphal Hemingway edict ‘write drunk, edit sober’. Exhaustion gives you all the benefits of writing without your conscious filter with none of the cirrhosis or other alcohol-related diseases!)

Stick these lists up wherever you tend to write. Now whenever you catch yourself engaging in one (or more) of these procrastination behaviours, you also have a solution (or solutions). Again, it will not necessarily be easy. But in knowing your bad habits and being prepared for them, you’re setting yourself up for a much better chance of success, and reducing the likelihood that you’ll slip down the procrastination shame spiral. The rest is the unglamorous process of trying, maybe failing, and then trying again.

4. On the cognition side of things, ASK YOURSELF: WHY DO YOU WANT TO WRITE?

Why, given all the frustration and fear and isolation (because writing is a bit of a lonely thing, at times), do you keep trying? Write every reason you have down, and be honest about it. No one is going to see this list but you.

The reason I suggest you do this is because there will be days (or weeks, or months) where it feels like all you’re doing is eking out paragraph after paragraph of dreck. It’ll feel awful. And if you don’t know why you’re writing - if you have no goal to set your sights upon, or no internal touchstone to remind you why you’re putting yourself through this - it’ll be so much more tempting to give up.

5. I’ve said this to you before, but I’ll say it again because if you’re anything like me (and I’m still riding on the assumption we’re at least a little alike, because every message you send me I’m like, ‘ah, man, yeah, I feel you, I feel you’), some advice requires repeating before it sinks in. Especially when the advice is unglamorous. So. SET YOURSELF A SMALL, ACHIEVABLE WRITING TARGET, be it a word count or a set amount of time each day.

And when I say small, I mean small. If writing 100 words a day feels uncomfortable, set your target at 50. If writing for one hour is exhausting, set your target at 30 minutes (or 15, like I did! :D).

ONE MORE THING

Writing requires discipline.

There is the discipline of sitting down and doing the work, every day, even if you’re not feeling it, of course. We’ve all heard that advice, and we’ve all (at some point or another) gotten royally pissed off at it.

But there is another sort of discipline, one that flows on from doing the work every day. In working through the fear, you teach yourself that these periods of mediocre writing or zero writing are temporary, just little halts in your overall writing journey. That’s a kind of discipline, too - training yourself to believe, heart and mind, that the fear will pass, and the words are always with you, even if they’re not coming out the way you want. It’s just going to take time. Be patient, and be kind to yourself (which I know can be hard).

You’re not useless. You’re not failing at anything by being afraid, because the fear - and learning to work through the fear - is as much a part of the writing process as getting the words down. And the value of writing for a writer is not in the finished result, not really. It’s in the act of creating, in being willing to start, to try. If you’re psyching yourself up to try, then hey. That’s half the battle already.

You can do it, anon! I’m still rooting for you!

(P.S.: You’re more than welcome to message me off anon using tumblr’s chat function <3)

[scripttorture]

I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask, but what would be the best way of forcing people to perform manual labour? In my story, the fighters of a conquered country are rounded up and sent to labour camps, but I can't see them being easily intimidated into doing work unless maybe their families/other civilians were being threatened? This is a pre-industrial sort of world, if that makes any difference. Thank you for running this blog!

I can seewhy you’re struggling with the idea. It isdifficult to get your head around how stuff like that happens.

I feellike it’s important to point out that forced labour did happen before the advent of guns (Egypt I am looking at you)and that historically many countriesdidn’t really have a regular army.

While some of your fighters will effectivelybe professional soldiers the vast majority in a pre-industrial society arelikely to be men and women who some timesfight but have another main profession. Most armies will have been made upof farmers, potters, tradesmen and the like. They might have seen combat beforebut they may not have the experience or discipline of professional soldiers.

They alsomight not have any strong loyalty to their unit, loyalty to the cause offighting for or their land/lord sure, but they’re likely to have a greaterloyalty to their hometown, their family, etc. In the time period you’re talkingabout it took roughly 100 food-producing people to support one person who wasn’tproducing food. It’s worth remembering that includes nobles and scholars aswell as professional soldiers.

I’m goingto try and illustrate my point with a quickhistorical example here.

Dahomeywas a small kingdom around where modern-day Benin is in west Africa. Thetraditional Dahomean army was actually divided in two, the part made up of male soldiers and the part made up of female soldiers.

A lot ofthe Europeans who visited Dahomey expressed….let’s call it ‘surprise’ that theDahomean women were often better soldiers then the men. I believe this may havebeen down to how the two armies were organised.

The malearmy had professional generals but the body of troops was made up largely byconscripting young men for short periods of time.

Beingpart of the female army on the otherhand meant severing all ties to the home-village, giving up any chance ofmarriage and children and entirely dedicating oneself to protection of the Kingand the palace. The ‘Amazons’ of Dahomey were all professional soldiers who didlittle but train and fight. (Andoccasionally hunt elephants. I assume they got bored-)

You know your characters best but on an individual level it’sworth bearing in mind that most of these ‘fighters’ are fighters in a secondary sense. For most of them thequestion isn’t ‘how do you make professional soldiers do this’ but ‘how do youmake anyone do this’.

And wellthe answer is really surprisingly easily.

DuringMao’s ‘Great Leap Forward’ millions of people across China were essentiallyforced to work and often on projects that theycould see were detrimental to their own interests.

Houseswere pulled down and destroyed to turn the bricks into fertiliser, leavingpeople homeless. Furniture and equipment was destroyed either for fuel orsmelting iron and people lost the meansof farming their own land. People were taken away from the fields at crucial times in order to work on‘irrigation’ projects that turned out to be useless. This resulted in harvestsbeing lost and contributed to widespreadfamine.

Add tothis reports of abuse. Beatings, denying individuals food rations, forcingpeople to work bare chested in the snow- I’m quoting the least extremeexamples.

The general population vastly outnumberedthe gangs forcing them to work. In most cases the gangs weren’t particularly well armed. They werecarrying whips and knives, not guns.

And yet,as in plantation slavery across the New World, they did successfully forcepeople to work.

I am notentirely sure of the psychology behind this. On that point you might want toask ScriptShrink.

Practicallyspeaking though I can describe how it’s done.

Theleaders are either killed or separated from the rest of the group. Oftenthey’re humiliated and ‘made an example of’ in some manner. The group isordered to work and any infractions are violently punished.

It runson fear. Not for distant people who aren’t under the guards’ control but forthe individual. They create an atmosphere of terror, make it clear that theyare willing to kill and maim anyone in the group. They actively work to breakup the usual social bonds and stop new ones from forming.

Oftenthey try to recruit a few people from each group that’s brought in as acollaborator, giving them (for example) more food and privileges. This helpsdivide the group and hinders organisation. They also try to break up groups asfar as possible, separating out the ranking officers, anyone with religiousauthority, doctors and the like. It usually doesn’t go as far as separatingfamilies but it can.

The endresult is a group of people who see their best chance of survival as obeyingand working.

Whenrefusal to work leads to being beaten to death few people refuse. Even if theyunderstand logically that if everyone refused then no one would die.

Of themany wars* waged by ex-slaves against whites in Brazil, Cuba, Haiti etc I thinkit’s very significant that most weren’t spontaneous. They weren’t as a rule thesudden rejection of forced labour by a few hundred people on one plantation.They were often organised across multiple plantations or instigated by societies of escaped slaves fromentirely outside white colonial society.

They werecareful, considered, well plannedacts of war that wouldn’t have been possible without regular communicationacross thousands of people and a level ofcommunity organisation that slavery tries to annihilate.

There area lot of sources I could recommend for forced labour. I’d very much like to recommend some of my books onBahia in Brazil because frankly I think everyone should know about Palmares.But I think they’re a bit too academic and only tangentially related to yourquestion.

So I’mgoing to recommend the book I’ve got on Mao’s famine. ‘Mao’s Great Famine’ by F Dikötter Bloomsbury press. I have the 2017 paperback edition but I don’t think there’s been anything major added since it was first published.

It’s grimgoing, the number of deaths and atrocities is difficult to take in. The scalewill be larger than would be possible in your setting, but the basics of how itwas done are the same. It should give you a pretty clear picture of how forced labour works on the ground.

I hopethat helps.

Disclaimer

*I referto them as wars rather than revolts because the black combatants referred tothem as wars.