#like in the name of making it accessible they just made it ugly which is honestly not the message i personally want to send

[phaedo]

today's controversial take is that i honestly hate the disability pride flag. every time i see it i get mad

[felassan]

David Gaider on Shale, under a cut for length:

"Oops! I realized I'd moved on from DAO but missed one of the companions I'd written. Which checks out, honestly, because I almost didn't write Shale and, even after I'd written her, she almost didn't happen anyhow. Then she did. Prepare yourself for... PIGEON QUEST. 🦤 So... I'm wracking my brain, but I don't recall how Shale began. I have this vague memory of us wanting a "weird" party member who didn't conform to the normal classes (this was back when Dog didn't need to be in the party), and I think my mind drifted to an old indie comic character named Concrete."

"Now, your reaction to that is probably "who?" That's OK. When I explain that HK-47 in KotOR was inspired by an old Canadian TV show called the Littlest Hobo I get the same perplexed response. 😅 In short: Concrete was just a regular dude. Who happened to also be a walking hulk of rock. Cue hi-jinx. The problem here is I don't remember whether the Concrete thing was part of the original inspiration or something I thought of at the point when I started writing the character. Because I didn't, at first. That was later. Shale was initially taken on by Jay Turner, then one of our junior writers. Jay had an idea to make Shale more of a robot, an emotionless automoton killer... think HK-47, but without the layer of sarcasm. I was leery, and told Jay he'd have to be very careful. "Emotionless" can very quickly turn into "boring", after all, unless you're VERY careful. But Jay was determined. Sigh. This was a fail on my part, as his lead. There's been a couple of times in my career when I've let a junior convince me with their enthusiasm to take on something my experience said they shouldn't. And then watch their confidence crumble despite every effort I made to reassure them it was OK. This was one of those times. Jay, no idea if you'll read this but: I'm sorry. Even an experienced writer would have found that a daunting challenge. Tonia, my other Big Fail on a similar situation in DAI: I'm sorry. Both times, I should have known. You did your best, but I set you up to fail. 😔"

"Jay did his best, and this version of Shale was certainly interesting... but, when he was done, it was one of those peer reviews where every writer had that look of "I'm REALLY sorry to say this..." It felt flat. Jay tried numerous revisions, but the issue wasn't his ability - it was the concept. I only allowed my writers a certain number of tries before I take it away. This hearkens back to an earlier time at Bio when writers would hack away at something that wasn't working 6, 7, 8 times or more until finally their soul was dust. Mike Laidlaw can attest. Revision isn't always the answer. So I moved (a much relieved, I think) Jay onto something else, and the question arose: what do we do with Shale? Do we cut it? It was already very late. Then Shale dropped in my lap. I don't remember if it was me refusing to let it go or maybe Brent (Knowles, Creative Director) giving it to me. I suspect it was the latter, because I recall being a bit bitter about the whole thing. WHAT am I going to do with this character? At the time, they'd moved me out of the writers pit to instead be in a big office with the other leads. I had this corner desk by a window (yay) with an awful view (ugh) What was so awful about it? It looked out onto the neighbouring roof, where there was only an HVAC unit to see. In the winter, pigeons would gather around it. They pooped all over everything - there was this alcove around the access door, right? The pigeons roosted there and it was POOP FAUCET city."

"Not only that, the pigeons used the HVAC like some kind of sex den. Angry, ugly pigeon sex. The only respite was when a hawk would appear and the pigeons scattered. Then I'd get maybe a day when there was a single pigeon corpse, like an exploded ball of down, to act as a scarecrow. Good days, those. What does any of this have to do with Shale? Well, there's me, staring out the window trying desperately to think what I'm going to do. But I CAN'T stare out the window because, gross. But what else am I going to stare at while I think? It was making me furious. I hated those pigeons SO SO MUCH. And then it hit me: Shale is basically an animated statue, right? Something that pigeons are rather notorious for also gathering on? And so I wrote. I wrote like the angry, angry wind. I had zero time to do this so it was basically me vomiting all my annoyance at everything into a single character. Not that it helped much. There was a battle going on over Shale - first, as I recall, it was the art team. They were going to make every doorway in the game EXTRA HUGE because they were worried that Shale was too large and might clip. So, yes, let's alter the whole world to fix that. Good idea. 🙃 Eventually, they compromised by making Shale smaller. Sten-sized. Or Brent went Akira mode, but I don't really know. This was a battle happening above my level. Yet Shale got cut anyhow. There wasn't time to do her abilities and we were short on cinematics time. There was never enough time on DAO."

""Oh well," I thought. "That's that." I did what I could, but cut content is almost never resurrected. The idea was floated of making Shale into a DLC but I scoffed. Yeah, right! But... it happened. That's why the "almost" is there. Enough of the team liked Shale they made it happen this one time. This meant I could finish up the writing once we'd more or less wrapped DAO, and the rest of the team (cinematics, in particular, who were pressed the hardest for time) could move onto the Shale DLC once they were ready. It was supposed to come out well after release, but you know. Shenanigans. This particular shenanigan was EA deciding to sit on the finished DAO a few months in order to delay the release. Why? Again, not my level. To get closer to Christmas, maybe, or maybe for sim ship. It did mean Shale ended up being ready for release day. Unexpected confluence of events, honestly. Cue some fans getting upset that "cut content" was sold to them separately, which... fair, I guess? The alternative would have been that Shale was simply cut, period, and it just worked out this way but... yes, fair. This was back when DLC was the main beef of hardcore gamers. Oh, the good old days. Overall? I have a soft spot for Shale. She has no soft spot for anyone, being... you know... made of rock. It's why I put her in Asunder, and why she was also going to be in the - apparently now notorious for its Fenris murder - cancelled fourth DA novel. Also, if you're a pigeon fan: not sorry. 😇"

[source thread]

[operator-report]

In middle school, I read a short story for English class called Flowers for Algernon. Maybe you’ve read it, too. In the story, a disabled man named Charlie is given a medicine that cures his disability. Over the course of the story, he comes to realize that his “cure” is temporary and that he will “regress” into being disabled again. The story makes it clear that this is a tragedy. As a disabled teenager when I first read it, the story affected me deeply.

I’d like to talk about David and Noelle. 

Content warnings for discussion of suicide, self-harm, ableism and eating disorders below the cut. Spoilers for Worm through arc 27. 

When I was first reading arc 18, one of the things that stuck out to me is how much time the story spends on Eidolon. For me, it was the first time I paid much attention to him - prior to that, Eidolon was just an extremely powerful background character to me. But in arc 18, we learn that (1) Eidolon is losing his powers and (2) he believes that fighting Echidna will allow him to tap into some sort of reservoir to bring them back.

We find this out, of course, through Tattletale exposing him, which is always an extremely embarrassing event for Tattletale’s target. It makes it extremely clear that what Eidolon is doing is pathetic. He is going to kill a teenage girl so he can feel something. 

Which would be messed up enough, right? We don’t need to make this even worse, right? Wrong. Because Wildblow has spent the last several thousand words building up the Case 53s as X-Men style metaphors for oppressed groups, and one of the forms of oppression that Wildblow generally writes well is ableism. I think you can consider most, if not all of the Case 53s as disabled in some way. I think the link is extremely clear with Noelle.

Noelle doesn’t get her powers from traditional Cauldron human experimentation - at least, not directly. Instead, she and Krouse are facing what is, to them, a no-win scenario. They’re quarantined with limited access to medical care. Breaching this quarantine would permanently render them criminals. If Noelle survives her surgery, which is a pretty big if, she’ll become disabled, in a way that both Krouse and Noelle agree is ugly and undesirable. She won’t be able to do “boyfriend-girlfriend stuff” because she won’t be “any good to look at, after.” 

Krouse and Noelle are terrified of death, yes, but they’re also terrified of disability. They are desperate for control over Noelle’s body, control that, as of that moment, only the state has. (Remember the quarantine?) Krouse pressures Noelle into drinking the vial. Noelle is cured. 

Noelle’s cure does not last. In attempting to assert control, her body becomes uncontrollable. Her body is her trauma and her eating disorder made literal. She still needs care.

Worm would be bad if this is why her life sucks. But Worm does something better, instead. Noelle goes through hell, not just due to the sheer difficulty of having her power, but because of the way her teammates and Coil treat her. They talk about Noelle like she’s already dead. They’re ashamed of bringing her the food she needs. When Krouse “includes” Noelle in a discussion in arc 12, it’s mostly perfunctory. They do not believe Noelle is human any longer. They lock her away.

Noelle doesn’t want to be put in a cage. Noelle doesn’t want to be dehumanized. In interlude 18, when we get insight into Noelle’s thoughts, we learn that what Noelle is angry about is the fact that Krouse locked her in a concrete bunker and placated her. When she tells people not to look at her, there’s a coda to that sentence that she doesn’t get to verbalize: don’t look at me like that. 

This is the person who Eidolon is going to kill. 

Via the Simurgh, this is a person Eidolon has unknowingly created.

A few thousand words of Worm go by. It’s Gold Morning. Eidolon is fighting Scion. Now, at the end of the book, we finally get substantial insight into David, the man behind the mask. 

David takes a Cauldron vial to cure his disability. David sees this as the only way out, after an unsuccessful application to join the military, and then, an unsuccessful suicide attempt. David is bearing an immense amount of shame and internalized ableism. David is worried that father’s friends are watching him. (Don’t look at me.) David cleaves the world into two kinds of people: those who can have jobs, who are liked and respected because they are useful; and people like him, who are useless.

It’s a terrible way to think. Without that worldview, how could a person not take the vial? David wants to be used, because David wants to be useful. He never gets the independence he craves – not when he’s in that level of debt to Cauldron – but he gets to be useful, and that’s one of the best things you can be.

Like Noelle’s, like Charlie’s in Flowers, David’s cure doesn’t work. His abilities are wearing off. He is essentially told, when Doctor Mother administers his booster shots, that his medicine is too expensive. 

Cauldron creates Noelle. David, as Cauldron’s soldier, has a role to play in her creation. David knows exactly what he is doing to Noelle. It happened to him. Worm fandom talks a lot about David being a father. He’s a father in more ways than one. (David’s father is always watching him.) (Don’t look at me.)

Cauldron never cures David’s ableism. In his world, you can be useful, or you can die. David asks Noelle if she wants to win. Noelle tells him no. You can have a job, or you can kill yourself. When David tries to kill Noelle to help himself, isn’t that a mercy?

Of course it isn’t. It goes without saying that all of this is extremely fucked up. When it comes to disability, “cure” is a complicated concept. I’m not going to get into all the ways it can be treated; this post is already a thousand words long. But I do think that Worm, through Noelle and David and the concept of the Cauldron vial, provides an extremely vivid picture of the problems with cure. 

Under ableist logic, when you have a disability, a cure is something you’re expected to want. Without it, the story goes, you can’t be useful. You can’t do boyfriend-girlfriend stuff. The expectation is social, like the act of staring. Your desire for it should drive how you organize your life – it is control, like a quarantine. David is crushed by that expectation. He throws his lot in with Cauldron, the cure-makers. The expectation is passed along to Noelle, and even though David can recognize that inheritance, he cannot imagine any other way to respond to it other than attempted murder.

At the beginning of this post, I mentioned that Flowers for Algernon is a tragedy. The reason that story has stuck with me so long is that I keep going back and forth as to why. Is it a tragedy because Charlie goes back to being disabled? There’s a good chance that’s what the author intended. I don’t know. It would be a pretty shitty story if that were the case. Is it a tragedy because people only treat Charlie well when he’s “cured,” and when that stops, he’ll go back to abuse? Seems plausible. I don’t think there’s one right answer. Regardless, when you’re disabled, there’s an immense pressure to seek out a cure, and a cognizable loss when it is withheld. The fact that Worm captures that social pressure and social loss so well is extremely compelling for me, and I’m going to be thinking about these characters for a long time.

[deathlessathanasia]

Regarding the exceptional strength of Herakles

I constantly see it claimed that Herakles owes his extraordinary strength to the fact that Hera breastfed him, but so far I have been unable to find a single source stating this. Here are a few that mention Hera unknowingly nursing Herakles (or other sons of Zeus), in no specific order:

Pseudo-Eratosthenes, Epitome 44: "It was not possible for sons of Zeus to have any share in the honours of the sky unless they had been suckled at Hera's breast; and that is why Hermes, so they say, brought Heracles along after his birth and placed him at Hera's breast, for him to be suckled at it; but when Hera became aware of it, she thrust him away, and the rest of her milk spilled out accordingly to make up the milky circle."

Pseudo-Hyginus, Astronomy 2.43: "There is also a circle in the heavens which is white in color, and which men have called the milky circle. Eratosthenes recounts in his Hermes that Hera unknowingly gave milk to the infant Hermes, but when she came to realize that he was Maia's son, she pushed him away; and that is why a bright trail of spilled milk can be seen among the stars. Others have said that Heracles was placed at Hera's breast while she was asleep, and she acted as has just been described when she woke up. Or according to other authors, Heracles was so greedy that he sucked in so much milk that he could not keep it in his mouth, and what spilled out from his mouth is shown in this circle."

Diodoros of Sicily, Library of History 4.9.6-7: "After Alcmenê had brought forth the babe, fearful of Hera’s jealousy she exposed it at a place which to this time is called after him the Field of Heracles. Now at this very time Athena, approaching the spot in the company of Hera and being amazed at the natural vigour of the child, persuaded Hera to offer it the breast. But when the boy tugged upon her breast with greater violence than would be expected at his age, Hera was unable to endure the pain and cast the babe from her, whereupon Athena took it to its mother and urged her to rear it And anyone may well be surprised at the unexpected turn of the affair; for the mother whose duty it was to love her own offspring was trying to destroy it, while she who cherished towards it a stepmother’s hatred, in ignorance saved the life of one who was her natural enemy."

Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.25.2: "There is shown a place where according to the Thebans Hera was deceived by Zeus into giving the breast to Heracles when he was a baby."

(Geoponika 11.19 -Concerning the Lily: "When Jupiter had Hercules by Alcmena, who was mortal, he wished to make him partaker of immortality; and he laid him to Juno's breast, when she was asleep, while he was in the state of infancy; and the infant being satisfied with milk, turned away from the breast, but the milk spewed copiously when the infant was removed-; and what was difused in the sky made what is called the milky-way; and what flowed on the earth and tinged its surface, produced the lily, which is like milk in respect of colour."

None of these suggest, let alone state outright, that Herakles got his strength from Hera. In the Dionysiaca Hera is forced to breastfed Dionysos, and the benefit he is said to get from this is not strength, but access to Olympos (and a cure ffrom madness?): "Do not fail your provoked husband; but go uncaught to the fertile slope of the woodland pastures of India, and offer your breast to Bacchos as once did my mother Rheia; let him draw with his lips older grown your holy drops, and by that draught lead him on the way to Olympos and make heaven lawful ground for the feet of earthborn Dionysos! Anoint with your milk the body of Lyaios, and cleanse the ugly stains of mind-robbing disease. And I offer you a worthy reward; for I will place in Olympos a circle, image of that flow named after Hera's milk, to honour the allfamous sap of your saviour breast."

The only explanation I've found for Herakles' strength is this, From Diodoros of Sicily's Library of History 4.9.2: "Consequently the sources of this descent, in their entirety, lead back, as is claimed, through both his parents to the greatest of the gods, in the manner we have shown. The prowess which was found in him was not only to be seen in his deeds, but was also recognized even before his birth. For when Zeus lay with Alcmenê he made the night three times its normal length and by the magnitude of the time expended on the procreation he presaged the exceptional might of the child which would be begotten."

So does anyone know of a source for this idea? Plz help, I'm feeling gaslit by the world!

[mostly-natm]

I just woke up from a horrible nightmare of this account being hacked. Some notable highlights:

- They were definitely a real person/artist. They also liked Star Trek, but only made content of their Star Trek Muppet OCs.

- They changed my blog colors from green to bright red. They also changed my tagline to something longer, without capitalization (I can’t remember what) and replaced my icon and header.

- At first, they didn’t make their own posts but just edited all of mine to replace the content with their own. They also had commissions, so they just edited my pinned post. They changed many of my posts to link to YouTube videos of their main Star Trek Muppet OC, where they had actually created the thing and filmed it professionally. Can’t say they weren’t talented or dedicated.

- They had their OWN blog and “brand” and everything. Their name was Ugly. Their videos started with something like “Ugly Creations!”

- I didn’t lose access to this account, but was terrified that anything I posted would be immediately deleted by them anyway. They DMed me from their OWN blog to tell me how much they hated me and to “leave Data alone 😂”.

- Once they’d edited most of my posts to replace my content with their own, they also started making text posts. Everyone seemed to interact with them like they had no idea they weren’t me, which drove a stake through my heart. Simultaneously, they must have known people knew something was up, because they posted a text post pretending to be the actual me, gaining my account back, saying we had “worked it out! 🥰”

- Of course I looked for recourse for all of this, but the only solution Tumblr had was to make a new blog all together. I debated what I should change my URL to since they still had my old one. Mostly-Natm2 or Mostly-Natm 2.0 were the top contenders. I also had a stressful time trying to remember my blog description word for word.

- I’ve used emojis here to convey their tone, but actually they typed more like this: “leave Data alone —=+ [ | %.. ! = )” Again, though, they were definitely a real person.

[moirindeclermont]

Happy Sunday!! Today prompts for my Polin Kinktober are Dirty Talking and Dacryphilia (which is a form of paraphilia in which one is aroused by tears or sobbing - this story is my version of that k!nk) also, there is going to be some exploration of body image issues, so if you're sensitive to that, keep that in mind. This is also more modern!au than regency.

Colin knew he had to stage an intervention.

He left Pen for a round of shopping and she come back almost in tears, not having found anything. Or to be precise, she did find plenty of stuff, but no one had her size. Which was also Colin experience, sometimes, being so tall, but it seems it weight on her a lot.

Which is why he staged that intervention. He don't have the pretence it would fix her problems, but maybe it will help her a bit.

His resolve straightened when he noticed she didn't ask him to follow in the showers as usual.

So, he did wait in their bedroom, already naked, for her to arrive.

She looked like a siren or a goddess, as she walked almost naked in their space.

She looked at him and smiled, knowing why he was here.

"How did you know I needed some of your reassurances?"

He smiled back, inviting her into the bed. "I know you sweetheart and how hard you are working on loving your body."

He did know. Hours and hours of therapy.

"I also know sometimes it is normal to have a little bit of a down. I want to help."

Pen caressed his cheek. "You been here helps, more than anything in the world. But yeah, proceed with your intervention."

She chuckled as she was kissing him.

"Lie down love and open the towel for me, please," he said, whispering against her ear.

She trembled a bit but she listened to him, her gorgeous body unveiled for him and him only.

Intervention was just a name he gave to this: he would undress Pen and calling her all the beautiful things she deserved until she was crying - the emotional release she needed after the physical one.

Colin loved to be able to do this for her, her tears and sob not because she was feeling ugly, but because his words and action made her feel beautiful and cherished.

He started by straddled her, caressing her cheek again.

"There is nothing I love more than losing myself in the splendor that are your eyes. They shine so bright when I'm near you. They become almost black when I do something you like. Your lips too are sinful just to look at, as I want them all over my body. Your tongue is a s devilish as the rest, making me feeling so good."

He accentuated each word with a soft touch on said parts that made her gasp and tremble slightly.

He kissed her again, deeply, before moving down.

"I don't think the poets have yet thought of a word good enough to describe what I feel when I can see your lovely neck on display," he stopped to give a light bite to said neck, making her giggle, "and you know that your breasts are my religion. I have never seen something so transcendental. Full and round, and the way the flesh spills when I squeeze them," he said, squeezing them, "if I could I would make you forsake every bra, so I would just access to these beauties every single time."

He paused to give each breast a kiss and a light suck on the nipple, making her moan.

"You waist and your tummy. I know how you feel about them, but I love every roll and every stretch mark. So good under my hands, it makes me want to kneel in worship," he whispered, squeezing and touching, while his tongue followed some of her stretch marks. Pen was looking at him, her eyes shining with unshed tear as he went down.

"The curve of your stomach that dips into your mound. I dream about that curve. If I was good at math, I would find its equation, because somehow I can grab it as it was made just for me," he added, demonstrating his statement. He went on her hips and her thighs, a kidding where she was most sensitive for now.

"I tremble the first time I touched your thigh. This creamy expanse of skin and muscle and, yes, fat... Because it's not a bad word, I love how you squeeze me when I put my cock there."

And then, her ass "you don't know how many times I almost fall, just walking, because I was lost looking at your fantastic ass moving." He confessed, hearing her laugh softly.

"And this pussy," he said opening her legs wider "this pussy is my religion. Your auburn curls glistening with arousal at my words, the way your vagina clutch and stretch around my cock. Your clit, the source of your pleasure. My altar on which I give myself to you." He put one finger on her slit, finding her wet.

"I love eating you while my hands find every dip and curve of your body," and then he did just so, teasing her with tongue and mouth as his hands went to touch her hips and waist, her stomach and her thighs, all the places he most loved.

"Fùck, Pen... I need you," he said breathless and as she nodded, he align himself, entering slowly.

"The way you accept me inside you," he said before starting thrusting, "so wet and warm, it's like you were made for me."

He lift her legs and put them on his shoulder, chasing the right angle.

Pen was sobbing by now, he left her tears untouched as she was watching him, moaning her pleasure. "Pen, my love. You are everything I always dreamed and more," he said as tears were falling on his face too. He didn't care. She was more important.

They released almost at the same time, Colin slightly before Pen, as if his orgasm triggered hers as well.

Only then he moved, kissing her again and tasting their tears combined. It was always so emotional for both of them, when they did it like this, but as they cuddled and whispering love words to each other, they had not a care on the world.

Colin did make Pen laugh the next morning: he sad he would start a sewing course, so he could make her dresses she liked.

[preeningpisces]

Non-curse AU! Choso is a big ol' nerd

A/N: As a big ol' nerd myself I feel passionately about this, so I have way too many thoughts repost bc it wasn't showing in the tag for some reason

Below the cut because I'm a yapper!

♠ Definitely the type to meet his S/O through discord because I think non-curse Choso is much shyer than regular Choso

❥ He wouldn’t be an admin. He’d be the quiet type that’s always there reacting to posts but rarely talks. Has the sickest emotes tho

❥ Prefers smaller discord communities, mostly video game servers

❥ I think he'd like the vaporwave aesthetic and all the RBG setups. Keeps his computer area neat and tidy

❥ Choso fucking loves video games. He'll buy those $300 special edition pre-orders and get the cool figures

❥ HUGE Soulsborne fan. His favorite is Bloodborne (on the nose but I couldn't resist). Also really loves Monster Hunter. Cares a lot about the monster's details, like their eating habits. I think his fave would either be Odogaron, Nargacuga or Zinogre.

❥ Picks the edgiest weapons lmfao. Definitely a longsword user in Monster Hunter. Went blood build in Elden Ring

❥ *Sigh* he does consult reddit for his builds and is a min-maxer. I'm afraid Choso is a reddit user but in a 'I need a thorough understanding of this' kind of way

❥ Function over fashion: he dgaf if that helmet is as ugly as sin, it gives him +2 endurance and he's gonna wear it

❥ Lets you create his character & name them & everything.

❥ If you can't be present for the character creation portion, he'll make his character you! Definitely made you his dream guardian in Baldur's Gate 3 (which in the early access was called the Dream Lover, which is even cuter)

❥ Not pretentious at all about what is/isn't gaming, and plays all sorts of genres

❥ LOVES NINTENDO GAMES. Mario has a special place in his heart. DEFINITELY mains Shy Guy in Mario Kart

❥ Will literally cry and die if you play video games with him. You don't have to be good because he'll happily teach you. Just watching him play and asking about the details will make his day

❥ Definitely would do those cute Animal Crossing museum dates. Loves the relaxing, chill music so much. Despite his min-maxer approach to other games, he's absolutely not a time traveler in Animal Crossing. He's of the mindset that it ruins one of the core features of the game

❥ Stardew Valley? Stardew Valley. Honestly, I can't decide who he romanced first. My heart is telling me Leah, but chat pls advise

❥ Speaking of chat, you just know he's a fan of let's players. Always watching a YouTuber or Twitch Streamer. He's a Markiplier fan. You know it, just accept it

❥ Tbh that's a cute thought: Choso being a fan of the reader that's a small twitch streamer. Should that be a thing?

❥ Really good at singleplayer games. AWFUL at pvp

❥ He'll play something like Fortnite or Overwatch for Yuji, but needs to be hard carried because he only plays when someone asks him to. He can't stand how toxic those communities are, and doesn't want to socialize with strangers just to play a game

❥ He gets HEATED SO EASILY when people are toxic, especially if it's directed at Yuji or someone else he cares about. Definitely the type to step in and check other ppl when they're being toxic. Like those clips where it's a woman in a lobby and the dudes all start being sexist. Choso will not let that shit fly!

❥ Teabag him if you want to see him lose his shit

❥ On the note of Overwatch: the only character he can and will play is Mercy, and he just pockets Yuuji the whole time. Yuji has to beg him to heal/boost their teammates

[robo-writing]

hi, can I request headcanons for boys from ff16 when they are jealous of their lovers? I really like your headcanons so much, thanks for it!!❤️

This took me so long to do, I don’t have access to a computer rn so I had to type this on my phone, super weird experience. Anyway, hope you enjoy and I hope mobile doesn’t screw up the formatting! 🙏

Clive Rosfield

He tries to keep it inside but he’s not subtle at all. He’s in a foul mood, doesn’t respond like he normally would and gives you one word answers. He never takes his anger out on you, but watching strangers hit on you just makes him upset. (He’s NOT jealous, he’s just protective.) Trusts you but not other men.

You’re an attractive woman, he tells you as such every day, but to see men flock to you is a different story.

“What’s your name? I haven’t seen a pretty lass like you around here.”

You’re far too kind for your own good, entertaining their questions while Clive stands aside and brews in his annoyance. An ugly feeling rises through him as he watches the scene unfold, and his legs carry him without warning when one of them asks you if you have a man waiting for you at home.

Before you can answer Clive stands behind you, chest puffed out. “Yes, she does.”

The mans face contorts from laid-back to frightful, taking his leave at the sight of the much larger man at your side. You can’t help but laugh when you turn to meet his gaze, his eyes softening at the sight of you.

“Someone’s jealous.” You tease, smiling as you do. He doesn’t answer right away, leaning over you and placing his hands at your sides.

A smirk graces his features as he speaks.

“Jealous? You must be mistaken.” He rumbles. “That would imply he had a chance to begin with.”

Joshua Rosfield

He gets pouty, makes it known that he doesn’t approve but you make sure to calm him down, hold him close and reassure him that you’re not leaving his side, not now and not ever.

Perhaps a bit insecure, he can’t help but get upset at the latest man to try and vie for your affection. You shoo him away, but the amount of times you’ve had to do so makes him worried. What if one day you don’t send them away?

You walk over and see Joshua deep in thought, following his eyes they’re trained on the young man who was just talking to you.

You know him far better than anyone else, so when your eyes follow his line of sight it’s no surprise to you what your boyfriend is thinking.

You take his hand in your own as reassurance. “Joshua, you know you don’t have to worry, right?”

Your voice drags him from his thoughts. “I know love.”

His words and his body convey a different message, still staring off at the fleeting visage of the young man.

Sighing, with a shake of your head you open your arms, inviting him in for a gentle hug that he gladly takes. It’s as if the stress leaves his body the moment you hold him tight.

“I’m not going anywhere baby, that’s a promise.”

Cidolfus Telamon

Rarely gets jealous, but on the off chance he does it’s very obvious, and he doesn’t try to hide it either.

You and your fellow bearers are celebrating a job well done at Martha’s Keep, with Cid close by you, sharing in the merriment. When his glass runs empty he leaves you to go ask for a refill, in which time a young man takes his place next to you.

You two chat about nothing really, idle conversation, but you do talk for a while, which was enough for Cid to bring himself close to you as you spoke.

“Darling, you didn’t tell me you made a new friend while I was gone.” He says in a deep voice before turning his attention towards the young man.

A hand at your hips pulls you closer into his warm body, suddenly very aware that you are in public and Cid is currently pressing himself against your back.

The two men make idle chatter, none of which you register, too focused on the small circles he draws against your skin, and the low rumble of his voice beside your ear.

Deep in conversation, he pulls up a seat, and then pulls you into his lap in a smooth motion. You squeal in shock, and the young man seems more and more uncomfortable with each passing moment. After a while he excuses himself, leaving as Cid waves him away.

“Gone so soon? Such a shame, he was nice to talk to.” He says to you, not apologetic in the slightest.

You roll your eyes and lean your head on his shoulder with a sigh. “I never took you for the jealous type.”

He presses a kiss to your cheek in response. “You bring out the worst in me darling. Take it as a compliment.”

Barnabas Tharmr

Lord help anyone who even so much as looks at you, much less tries to talk to you. He is very possessive, and if you’re in a relationship with him know that he will protect you from anyone and anything.

You’ve enjoyed the ball so far, indulging in the tasteful wines and elegant music. Your husband is not with you, but he is close by. Even though he is not one for celebration, he enjoys the sight of you happy.

Your mood is then soured by an older man, flushed and slightly swaying. It’s clear that he’s had far too much to drink.

There’s a crooked smile on his face as he makes his way to you, introducing himself as Lord…something or other. You don’t bother to pay attention as he rambles, most of it unrecognizable under his liquor-borne accent. You try to tell him kindly that you have a husband, that he wouldn’t like you talking to him, but he’s far too deep in his glass to pay your warnings any mind.

Barnabas catches a glimpse from the corner of his eye, ever watchful of his most prized possession, and the sight irritates him. But a drunk fool is little cause for concern, so he does nothing.

It’s only when the man gets bold enough to place a hand on your shoulder do you see, or rather feel Barnabas’s reaction, almost as if the room has grown several degrees colder. He slowly steps towards you, a welcome sight to your sore eyes. Immediately the other man backs away, looks between the two of you and slowly pieces together why the king is suddenly doting on you.

He apologizes, bows his head and runs away with his tail between his legs. Barnabas only smiles at his retreating figure, and makes no move to follow.

The moment he leaves the air is somewhat calm again, but you know your husband far better than to assume he would forgive and forget.

You kiss his cheek tenderly before speaking. “He was drunk. I’m fine.”

There's a rumble of appreciation from the warden of darkness before he replies. “He dared touch you.”

His hand moves over your shoulder, the same spot where the nobleman's hand formerly laid and his eyes darken. “Dared to lay his hands on my queen, my wife.”

His tone becomes more and more sinister the longer he speaks about the man, eerily calm. “What kind of husband would I be to let him walk away freely?”

“I am fine.” you reiterate. A hand at his chest and the anger leaves his face in an instant. “You will not hurt him. Are we clear?”

As much as you loved his possessive nature, you’d rather not make a scene tonight.

A sigh, his eyes fall to you as he relents. “Only because you asked nicely.”

Gav

Almost confrontational in a way, if he sees you getting flirted with he doesn’t hesitate to pull you close and tell the guy to fuck off. He’s very proud that you’re in a relationship with him, and isn’t afraid to show that in the slightest. He’s also a bit of a drama queen.

You’re in the markets buying some supplies for the hideaway when a salesman whistles for your attention. You resist the urge to roll your eyes at his behavior before turning around, the man gesturing to his wares.

“All exclusive, very rare herbs and essentials darling.” He says, and the nickname makes your stomach turn. Only one man is allowed to call you that.

Ignoring him, you notice that he actually has a few items you need, albeit a bit overpriced. When you ask, he gives you a smirk and leans closer, and you instinctively lean farther back.

“For a pretty lady such as yourself, I’d be willing to give you a discount,” he drawls, taking the time to look you up and down.

Your eye twitches. You get ready to leave but a familiar head of blonde quickly moves between you and the salesman.

“Piss off!” Gav yells, giving him a nasty look as he pulls you away. “She’s not interested, yeah? Go find some other poor sod to harass.”

They throw various insults between each other, each one worse than the one before. You have to sit back and admire the display, Gav sure can be creative when it comes to cursing. At one point he called the salesman a “morbol-breathed wanker” and you nearly lost it.

Eventually you manage to pull him away before the guards are called, and only when you two are far enough away does he show his concern.

“He didn’t try anything did he?” He asks in a thick accent. “ ‘m sorry lovie, I was gone for a second—”

A smile spreads across your face, kissing him into silence. He reciprocates instantly, still holding onto your waist when you pull away.

“Don’t be sorry for defending me, okay? But I think maybe we should get going now before the guards come looking.”

He nods in agreement, holding your hand as the two of you make your way to the docks. “I’d fight him for you, y’know that?”

“Of course darling, I know,” you laugh, his own mixing with yours. “But let’s try not to get arrested, okay?”

[maypop-the-dragon]

PSA: Free Software

Reading this may really save your time, privacy, and money! Reblog or share to spread awareness!

Folks often use software that’s expensive and sometimes even inferior because they don’t know there are alternatives. So to those unfamiliar: basically, free and open-source (FOSS) or "libre" software is free to use and anyone can access the original code to make their own version or work on fixing problems.

That does not mean anyone can randomly add a virus and give it to everyone—any respectable libre project has checks in place to make sure changes to the official version are good! Libre software is typically developed by communities who really care about the quality of the software as a goal in itself.

There are libre alternatives to many well-known programs that do everything an average user needs (find out more under the cut!) for free with no DRM, license keys, or subscriptions.

Using libre software when possible is an easy way to fight against and free yourself from corporate greed while actually being more convenient in many cases! If you need an app to do something, perhaps try searching online for things like:

foss [whatever it is]

libre [whatever it is]

open source [whatever it is]

Feel free to recommend more libre software in the tags, replies, comments, or whatever you freaks like to do!

Some Libre Software I Personally Enjoy…

LibreOffice

LibreOffice is an office suite, much like Microsoft Office. It includes equivalents for apps like Word, Excel, and Powerpoint, which can view and edit files created for those apps.

I can't say I've used it much myself yet. I do not personally like using office software except when I have to for school.

OpenShot

OpenShot Video Editor is, as the name suggests, a video editing program. It has industry-standard features like splicing, layering, transitions, and greenscreen.

I've only made one video with it so far, but I'm already very happy with it. I had already paid for a video editor (Cyberlink PowerDirector Pro), but I needed to reinstall it and I didn't remember how. Out of desperation, I searched up "FOSS video editor" and I'm so glad I did. There's no launcher, there's no promotion of other apps and asset packs—it's just a video editor with a normal installer.

GIMP

GNU Image Manipulation Program is an image editor, much like Photoshop. Originally created for Linux but also available for Windows and MacOS, it provides plenty of functionality for editing images. It is a bit unintuitive to learn at first, though.

I've used it to create and modify images for years, including logos, really bad traceover art, and Minecraft textures. It doesn't have certain advanced tech like AI paint-in, but it has served my purposes well and it might just work for yours!

(Be sure to go to Windows > Dockable Dialogs > Colors. I have no idea why that's not enabled by default.)

Audacity

Audacity is an audio editing program. It can record, load, splice, and layer audio files and apply effects to them.

Audacity is another program I've used for a long time. It is not designed to compose music, but it is great for podcasts, simple edits, and loading legacy MS Paint to hear cool noises.

7-Zip

7-Zip is a file manager and archive tool. It supports many archive types including ZIP, RAR, TAR, and its own format, 7Z. It can view and modify the contents of archives, encrypt and decrypt archives, and all that good stuff.

Personally, I use 7-Zip to look inside JAR files for Minecraft reasons. I must admit that its UI is ugly.

Firefox

Firefox is an internet browser, much like Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, or Safari. While browsers are free, many of them include tracking or other anti-consumer practices. For example, Google plans to release an update to Chromium (the base that most browsers are built from these days) that makes ad blockers less effective by removing the APIs they currently rely on.

Aside from fighting monopolies, benefits include: support for animated themes (the one in the picture is Purple Night Theme), good ad blockers forever, an (albeit hidden) compact UI option (available on about:config), and a cute fox icon.

uBlock Origin

As far as I know, uBlock Origin is one of the best ad blockers there is.

I was on a sketchy website with my brother, and he was using Opera GX's ad blocker. Much of the time when he clicked on anything, it would take us to a random sponsored page. I suggested that he try uBlock Origin, and with uBlock Origin, that didn't happen anymore.

Linux

Linux is a kernel, but the term is often used to refer to operating systems (much like Windows or MacOS) built on it. There are many different Linux-based operating systems (or "distros") to choose from, but apps made for Linux usually work on most popular distros. You can also use many normally Windows-only apps on Linux through compatibility layers like WINE.

I don't have all four of these, so the images are from Wikipedia. I tried to show a variety of Linux distros made for different kinds of users.

If you want to replace your operating system, I recommend being very careful because you can end up breaking things. Many computer manufacturers don't care about supporting Linux, meaning that things may not work (Nvidia graphic cards notoriously have issues on Linux, for example).

Personally, I tried installing Pop!_OS on a laptop, and the sound output mysteriously doesn't work. I may try switching to Arch Linux, since it is extremely customizable and I might be able to experiment until I find a configuration where the audio works.

Many Linux distros offer "Live USB" functionality, which works as both a demo and an installer. You should thoroughly test your distro on a Live USB session before you actually install it to be absolutely sure that everything works. Even if it seems fine, you should probably look into dual-booting with your existing operating system, just in case you need it for some reason.

Happy computering!

[butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway]

Finally home after a long day of bullshit and laying in bed with wifey watching cody's showdy, and thinking about the line from Kenji that goes

"They gave Ken a couple of days to get his whole life packed in two bags. Just two bags, he couldn't even pack his clothes. And some folks didn't even have a suitcase to pack anything in, so two trash bags is all they gave them. And when the kids asked mom, "Where are we going?" Nobody even knew what to say to them."

The song itself is the story of the Japanese people who were interned in Manzanar, and the Jews who were interned in Germany. But it's also very explicitly about ANYONE who is made to suffer the pain and terror of being forced from your home with little to no hope of return or repair. "The names have been changed, but the story's true, my family was locked up back in '42."

This is a story about Palestine. This is a story about the California Wildfires. This is a story about Hurricane Helene. This is a story about COVID.

The county where I grew up was small, rural, and utterly without infrastructure. It's mostly dairy land, and I used to stick my head out the window and moo at the cattle when my mother srove her shitty little sedan down the highway to visit my aunt. In the 15 years since I left it has swelled by 2000 new souls, largely due to the reputation it earned over the years for having accissble and quality educational options for young children, a rarity in the state.

I started making this post an hour ago, and was looking for a way to check on my home town during the fires. I figured it would likely be safe given its location, but I wanted to know for sure. For an hour I searched for news, for an accessible map documenting the wildfires. For anything that would tell me whether or not the place I grew up was still intact.

I still don't know. I'm sure the information exists. But I am usually able to at least find SOMETHING in the span of an hour.

Information everywhere, but nothing that allows you to stop feeling afraid. Fear, pervasive and bone-chilling, is everywhere and safety feels scarcer with every passing day.

But is it?

This is a story about intergenerational trauma.

My grandmother ran home from her babysitting job one day, at 15 years old, sobbing and distrought, and told her mother what her charge's father had done. Her mother got her cleaned up and told her to never tell anyone what had happened ever again, and quietly informed the other mother that my grandmother would not be back.

When my mother was 15, she fell off a swing set while goofing off with her sisters. My grandfather told her she deserved the pain for her stupidity and not to cry to him about it since she could have been responsible. My grandmother told her that at least now they had an excuse to fix that ugly nose of hers as she iced her daughter's face, and brought her to the hospital right away.

When I was 15 years old, my mother had moved me across the country to a place where I knew nobody, where the sun never shone, where there was more snowy swamp than serene desert, and I screamed at her that she was taking me from the one place I'd ever been happy and she told me that I'd just have to get over it. I flipped her off, and she slapped me across the face hard enough to make the room spin around me.

When a parent loves their child through the lens of their own fear, they often raise an adult who has endured fear of their own from which to view the world. This is, perhaps, as inevitable as entropy and life itself. And the detail perhaps still influences how that plays out.

I cannot watch the news footage about the California Wildfires because I can smell the ash and feel my lungs tighten and sear around non-existent superheated smoke every time I do. No one ever forgets what that's like. But finding clear information about the realistic risk of my childhood home without 24hr news is difficult enough that as a professional information finder, I was unable succeed. My grandmother was, briefly, a social worker. She got into the job by accident, as is the way of things in my family, and rapidly became a small town folk hero to the community who could count on her to advocate for them. This did not change how she came home to her daughters. It did not change the fear she inflicted on the world around her as an outcome of her own terror. My mother managed the same level of (in)famous community notoriety because of her militant advocacy for same sex civil rights and prison abolition. It took me years to come to grips with what it could mean that I didn't believe queer parents should be treated as inherently abusive to their children while I **did** believe that my mother was abusive and wished someone would save me.

This is a story about breaking cycles.

Today, a man with power over me saw me vulnerable and afraid, and went out of his way to treat me with contempt and use his power to block me from receiving essential care. My wife got me through this experience and left me in the hands of the nursing staff while she helped a man get home from the hospital in the blizzard. When she was gone, the man returned twice more to take advantage of her absence to humiliate me and work to convince others to deny me medical care. When my wife returned, I had been shuffled out of sight, and while tests had been run, I had just been told I would be released with no treatment or symptom management. I updated my wife on the events of her absence, and watched her go very still as I whispered my way through my hurt feelings. When the nurse returned with my discharge paperwork, my wife stopped her and very gently asked "Is it common for doctors in this hospital to belittle patients out loud in the middle of the floor?" The nurse froze. My wife assured her she had been kind, but that it concerned her to hear of this upon return. The nurse immediately relaxed, assured us she would say something, and brought me a wheelchair to help me to the car. This was the most medical intervention offered to me the whole process.

My wife speaks often about how her understanding of conflict resolution began when a delegation of teenage Palestinian children arrived at her school to meet with their same-age peers. She says that sat and talked together for hours the way 15 year olds do, and then finally one of the visiting teens got up the courage to ask "why do your people cheer for our deaths?" My wife has her own focus within this story, but when she tells it I always hear the forlorn meowing of a cat whose home had burned during fire season the month before, finally back after fleeing the inferno to find their people, but there was no house to find the people in.

Fear is everywhere. That will always be true. So fill the world with community and love. Let the world heal over the generations of human life. Be there for each other in ways big and small. And remember that everywhere, we are all human beings doing our best to survive a world that has always been bigger than us. Whether we want to admit it or not.

[donnerpartyofone]

Without saying that AI imagery is categorically good or evil, art or not art, I think one of the worst consequences of its existence is how it has automatically added this Argument section to many online images where lots of people urgently make their smug assertions about whether something is fake or not, often in the absence of any clear way to tell what the truth is. And like if this gets heated enough it can make you (or me, anyway) not want anything to do with the image even if it's otherwise fun and interesting. Suddenly the whole point of its existence is this loaded thing about authenticity and fraudulence without anyone even saying exactly what those things mean to them, and this just creates a really bad smell.

It's like a mutated version of trying to watch a movie near a person who won't stop congratulating themselves for knowing that something is a special effect, and won't stop complaining that the fictional actions of the fictional characters are unrealistic, and won't stop trying to guess a twist ending instead of just experiencing the story. They just want everyone to know that they have outfoxed the movie, they have the superior intellect because the movie cannot trick them into having feelings or believing it is an unedited documentary about real life. But the AI arguments are even more onerous because movies are usually not trying to trick you into believing in a certain reality, where AI *sometimes but not always* is trying to do that. And I really do not blame anyone for worrying about getting tricked, but I do hate that we've come to this point where you can just paint every single thing you ever see with this "fake" brush, because that tends to encourage people to just check out and not give a shit. If everything is potentially fake then what's the point of caring about anything. We've gone from reasonable arguments like "the internet is full of misinformation so take X with a grain of salt" and "everything carries the editorial biases of its creators, nothing is objective" all the way over to like, oh well, everything you ever see is so likely to be a scam that the only correct response to any stimulus is to pound your chest about how cynical and unmoved you are.

Personally one of my main problems with AI art is not ethical, it's just that most of the common, accessible stuff is ugly. I really don't like the look of almost anything that comes out of Midjourney and the other immediately available programs that I'm forgetting the names of, and for me that can only be overcome by a really great and/or hilarious concept, which things are rare. I'm not interested in drawing moral conclusions about that production and I don't find it compelling to listen to people who are dogmatically for or against it. My only concern about the legitimacy or whatever of AI art is the ease with which some programs can make something that is a very close imitation of something from organic reality--and it's not just because of the potential for fraud, which is certainly worrisome, but it can also take the emotional power out of art experiences. I've seen a decent amount of truly weird, exciting AI images *that are obvious AI images* and that doesn't bother me at all. To me that's a right-tool right-job situation and that's fine. I'm more bothered by the stuff that is a very close reflection of analog creations from real life. There's someone on here who has basically invented a made-up "old master" type-painter and they post these images that are sort of acceptably familiar to something you might see in a museum--fauns chasing nymphs, ladies standing in cottage gardens, politician portraits, etc--and I'm not saying they don't have the right to do that, but I'm not sure what the point is. Like, really great real-life versions of those things already exist and I'm not sure why it's compellingly important to prove that computer software can closely imitate what's already out there. Another thing that I find sort of vexing for the same reason is the blog that posts AI images of fake tokusatsu productions. Both of the blogs I mentioned say what they are in their headers, I'm not accusing anyone of anything, but what happens to me when I see a reblog from that AI tokusatu blog is: I think "Oh cool, what show/movie is this from? What's the narrative? Was it popular or is it about to be rescued from obscurity? Who made it? Where can I see more of the filmmakers' work? It's awesome that something this unusual was constructed in real life, somebody drew this up and got it funded and then people built the suits and crafted those cool miniatures and painted the lovely matte paintings, and there was an audience for it, people used to actually accept and even crave really wild stuff like this instead of all the cookie cutter fan service-type crap flooding the market now, and...oh no, this isn't from a show or a movie. It doesn't tell me anything about a certain time period or culture or artist or type of production or the heroic things people do to realize their dreams or anything, it's just, like, somebody's modern, general idea about that stuff. Oh well, it's pretty, but now I have zero questions about it and I don't really care. I'm going back to watching actual tokusatsu movies because there are already tons of great ones from real life and I don't need anyone to simulate them for me, I can already experience the wonder and admiration they inspire for real." It just matters to me how a piece of art was made and when and where and by who, and I don't think that's crazy or backwards of me. There's more to art than just the question of whether something is a pretty picture or not, and moreover I think that if "pretty picture" is the only thing that really concerns you then that is actually OK, but you should just admit that and comfortably recuse yourself from any debates around what art is or is not.

[televised-exorcism]

OMG YALL

Today I bought a real human skull from the curiosity shoppe downtown. He was ONLY 900$ and Ive named him Justin after several boys I've loved (and lost over the year) and I was SO happy on the taxi ride home telling the cab driver about my new skull...

This skull is a gift from my confident, larger-than-life, charismatic af, impossible to ignore, gorgeous, terrifying and powerful as hell 39 year old self to the painfully lonely, inexpressibly creepy mournful 11 year old only-child-with-no-friends-only-books self, because that yanno that disturbed, morbid, lonely little girl is DEEPLY loved by me, and is protected by me, and Cause tbh if we (entitled communist millennials who hate capitalism and know there are better ways) aren't out here healing our inner child, working on processing and healing those inherited traumas and carefully undoing these nasty inter-generational curses, then WHAT are we doin?

Also!!! If I can give one piece of advice:

heal ur inner child, y'all. Yall motherfuckers need this so bad lmao you might not even KNOW how bad u need it but trust me y'all need this shit..

Tbh, I used to be pretty ableist and think the whole 'inner child' shit was some fake-ass, overly sensitive politically correct granola flavored hippie shit, but NO... It is hella real and hella cathartic and beneficial to do these practices..

THERE IS LEGIT HEALING TO BE GAINED from comforting, loving, honoring and bonding with the child inside you, -THE CHILD U USED TO BE- which, like all esoteric mystical shit is eternal and can be accessed at any time.

When I first started to heal my inner lil kid, I would visualize the following: id envision myself as I was at various ages: a redheaded, dirty eight year old, filthy from playing outside, with a smear of jelly by my mouth from the lunch my stepdad made me, or an overweight, awkward 10 year old in a training bra who just wants to fit in and feel normal.. or my an angry thirteen year old self, freshly pulled out of public school (thanks to my rad af mom for that move) and learning to be an UNSCHOOLER, discovering cute boys, and cigarettes, and telling adults snarkily that I wasn't "rebellious" but SUBVERSIVE and watching those same adults grow pale for lack of good response..

So ANYWAY, I take the small, scared, abused, neglected child that I used to be, and i hold that child tight in my arms (in my minds eye)

I Let them sit on my lap, and I Hug them, and I cuddle and I rock that child, and make them feel safe, and seen, and loved and valued. i Tell my lil baby self that I Love them so much, how happy I am that we've made it this far. I promise to them that NOBODY IS GONNA HURT THEM EVER AGAIN, because they got me NOW and then i assure my inner child that it is safe to feel their feelings, that it's okay to cry, and that adult me won't ever betray the child in me that im working to heal.

Ngl y'all... when I first tried to do this work it was uncomfortable and made me sad and Made . Me . FUCKING. CRYYYYY. So hard. Like legit UGLY CRYIN LMAO but you know what?

I LET MYSELF CRY cause I knew that eventually, on the other side of those tears was something better and that all that pain would purge and lead to something precious. and it did.. and you know what the best, most rewarding fuckin feeling is??

Knowing that the 11 year old me that I once was is TOTALLY in-fucking-love with the 39 year old me That I am, and tbh it feels so good to be the person I've always wanted to be: I am confident and unafraid, a lil scary maybe, I love and honor my intuition, I'm tattooed as all hell, I'm dangerous, sexy, mysterious, intimidating, talented, hilarious, kind, willing to act in solidarity with my comrades, I'm beautiful, able to preform feminity without that performance ruling me n having fun while doing it, I'm capable as hell, humble, comfortable and at ease in my skin (and at any weight) I'm glamorous the way my great wise aunties seemed glamorous to me as a child, shockingly intelligent, super quick witted, eager and willing to learn new skills, fun and relaxed company to be around, a college educated lover of arts and music and books, not afraid to try new things, and always honoring myself...

I will be 40 years old in April of 2025, and I've already lived 5 lifetimes worth of doing!! I've been: a clown, acircus preformer, a heroin dealer, a lead singer in a ton of bands, a friendly and reasonable pimp, an alternative model, a part time SW, a burlesque dancer, a professional tarot reader medium and astrologer/, a house wife who was married for a decade, a witch for hire,.. I have legit done And been basically EVERYTHING I wanted to be and do- I wanted to be a good musician so I taught myself to sing and play guitar and ukulele, along with violin, viola and cello, etc.

I wanted to be a successful tattoo artist so I taught myself to tattoo (and now I'm 15 years into a hella fulfilling tattoo career doin what I love)...

I've done so much in 39 years that I'm literally challenging myself to come up with new goals and aspirations and endeavors to learn/conquer cause I've done EVERYTHING I WANTED TO DO. Lol

[theconstitutionisgayculture]

It is really weird how some people have a bee in their bonnet over Soulsborn games, Elden Ring included. I remember when the latter came out, you have actual devs from Ubisoft (maybe devs in name only then) bitching about the UI because it wasn't the standardized slop you got in the recent AC games, Destiny, even the new GoW.

When Demon's Souls first came out I played the shit out of it despite it being harder than any other game I'd played at the time. And it was *fun* because of having to persevere until you finally beat the bullshit King with the bullshit hitboxes at the end. Yeah, there's going to be tedium and some grinding if you want souls or materials but that's the work you put into the game, because getting that extra few levels and learning enemy movesets and even getting the right gear for your build is part of the enjoyment.

It's like how you have Squenix wanting to change up the "guys in a line" turn based JRPG - because you've had assholes who don't like that genre being vocal about it. Squenix are currently digging their own grave with not great releases recently because they're trying to cater to people who wouldn't be enjoying their games anyway.

I'm personally not a fan of overly difficult games, which is why I always say that Elden Ring is the perfect soulsborn. It's not easy, especially when you go after side bosses. But just the simple fact of making it open world and letting players tackle the game from whatever direction they want, instead of the usual mostly linear route soulsborn games make you go through, is a perfect example of making a game more accessible without sacrificing what makes the game appealing in the first place. Elden Ring is probably one of my favorite games ever, and I can't understate enough how much I hate dying in video games. I'm a easy mode guy. I save scum all the time when that's a possibility. But Elden Ring was so well made and so fun to play and gave me so many options to make things easier on myself that I stuck with it and had a blast. Fuck, I even had fun grinding for hours in one area.

But Elden Ring did all that without compromising what it is.

And if it didn't, I would have put it down and moved on. I wouldn't have demanded an easy mode or ugly yellow paint everywhere. Which is something tourists and hobby gentrifiers can't do. And it sucks when devs try to appeal to people who are perpetually mad about everything, instead of trying to appeal to their core userbase, and then expanding from there.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Salomé Sibonex

Published: Jan 29, 2024

I’ve been seeking a reprieve from the ugly sides of our world lately and I found it in Hogwarts Wizarding School of Magic.

Even though Harry Potter’s world isn’t utopian, the whimsy of magic and the drama of a battle between good and evil helped wash away the ugly banality of the real world’s problems. There was one problem I couldn’t find a reprieve from, though. In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry encounters a problem I’m all too familiar with and that lives at the core of many societal issues. At this point in the series, Harry’s known for his infamous past as a child who survived a direct attack from the embodiment of evil, Voldemort, and his battles against evil and chaos conquering Hogwarts. And yet, even Harry Potter in a world of elves and flying brooms can’t escape the ever-present human problem of conformity.

Watching Harry Potter struggle to overcome other people’s desire for conformity and disdain for anyone who threatens it made me realize: many people cheering this fictional protagonist on would fight against him in real life.

Despite having proven his loyalty, courage, and inclination to fight against evil, Harry Potter’s warning that Voldemort has returned is met with annoyance and disbelief from everyone but his close friends and the embodiment of wisdom, Dumbledore. This problem introduces a crucial element of what causes a lot of today’s destructive conformity: motivated reasoning. Similar to confirmation bias, motivated reasoning happens when someone is motivated to either agree or disagree with new information based on their current beliefs, thus letting that motivation shape their response more than whether the information is true.

You often hear people lament how, despite having access to all the information in the world, it seems like people are getting dumber. A big part of why access to information alone doesn’t reduce ignorance is because of motivated reasoning. People today are inclined to fight against information that challenges their worldview, often because it’s just easier than updating it.

It would be easier for his peers and the authorities if Harry Potter was wrong about danger on the horizon, so they decide to believe he’s wrong, regardless of whether he’s wrong. They deride and dismiss him with accusations I’ve faced myself when sharing inconvenient truths; his classmates scoff “he just wants to be famous!”, which our culture has shortened to “grifter!” Harry Potter—the infamous beacon of hope and repeated warrior for good over evil—is accused of grifting by his own classmates simply because it’d be easier if that were true. Unfortunately for them, it’s not. 

J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series is a masterpiece for many reasons, but one reason is that her characters and the stories they live out are so real despite happening in such a surreal world. Watching the scene where Harry Potter tries to warn people about a problem he’s proven himself trustworthy and competent to assess—only to be shouted down by people who want the easy route today at the risk of hardship tomorrow—felt uncomfortably real.

I criticized the manipulative pressure activists used to make people pledge allegiance to BLM without researching the organization (which turned out to be corrupt) or the movement itself (which turned out to be a guise for spreading destructive ideas in the name of “anti-racism”). When I speak about that today, I’m praised. But then the Israel attack on October 7th happened and suddenly the same message against letting social pressure rush you to pledge allegiance to positions you don’t understand now got me derided for not “using my platform” properly. The pattern repeats.

You can be the same person with the same message, but other people will respond to you differently based on where the winds of culture have blown them this week.

Unprincipled people are constantly shifting their targets because their worldviews aren’t tethered to anything deeper than seeking social approval and avoiding cognitive dissonance. They will wish death on you for not posting a flag emoji while claiming to hold the moral high ground.

Unprincipled people believe their frantic rushing from Current Thing to Current Thing is proof of their moral character, but it’s actually proof of how unreliable the opinions of anyone but your close friends and personal Dumbledores can be. Just look at J.K. Rowling’s experience. 

While the fact that people with Harry Potter tattoos were the quickest to turn on the creator of their favorite story simply because her opinions didn’t sway with the ever-changing winds of culture (she maintains the once-uncontested reality that trans-women are trans-women and biological women are biological women), that’s only one example of a conformist culture that hates heroes. Harry Potter himself is the perfect litmus test for whether we have a culture that praises heroes or villains.

Forget about Harry’s magic abilities. What truly makes Harry Potter a magical character isn’t his ability to wield magic, which most of the magic world can do—it’s his character that makes him stand apart from all others. If Harry Potter were a real, non-magical person in our society today, his unusually strong character would make him a pariah. Unlike most of the magical world’s people, Harry Potter is pursuing a goal far bigger than himself; this makes him the target of both disgruntled plebs and power-hungry tyrants. People who don’t have a strong and honorable mission in life hate seeing people who do—it either reminds them they’re wasting their lives or threatens their ability to fulfill their evil mission. A lot of arm-chair internet activists and government officials would hate Harry Potter. 

It’s not just that Harry has a unique destiny that makes his character compelling—it’s the fact that he has the courage and determination to pursue that destiny and develop the necessary skills to do so that makes his character admirable. Every person—especially in an individualistic culture that valorizes people who make their own way in life—wants to feel like they have a unique life path that leads to greatness. Luckily for those living in a free society, they do. Unlike in centrally-planned economies like Cuba and China, where your destiny is mostly determined by what your government allows, people in free countries can determine the course of their lives.

The government doesn’t dictate what you can study, what businesses you can open, how many kids you can have, or how much money you’re allowed to make. We’re free to imagine a future for ourselves and set out to develop the skills needed to achieve it. Of course, that doesn’t mean everyone will.

Businesses fail, personal tragedies happen, and obstacles appear. The people who give up on their journey or never get going but believe they could’ve done otherwise harbor regrets, and those regrets easily turn to resentment. These are the bitter people who see the hope and success of others as a stinging reminder of their failures. People who’ve given up or never tried to forge the future they wanted would hate some as determined and ambitious as Harry Potter.

Despite being an orphan, a victim of neglect by his step-family, stalked by a violent gang of death-eaters working for Voldemort, and a childhood victim of assault, Harry Potter doesn’t wear the label of victim.

In a culture like ours that sees victimhood as a hierarchy that dictates your treatment, an individual who refuses to identify as a victim is inherently subversive.

Instead of demanding special treatment because of his hardships, Harry Potter strives not just to overcome them, but uses his hardships as fuel to make him stronger than he would be without them. One might argue it would’ve been better if Harry Potter’s parents were never killed by Voldemort and thus he would’ve never been fated to fight him—and if your idea of a good life is ease and subsistence, that would be true—but your life would make a terrible story. Harry Potter’s victimization by Voldemort’s evil is what imbued him with the ability to become a hero. With darkness comes light, but in a culture that doesn’t believe in light, many people linger in the dark and resent anyone who reminds them their darkness is a choice.

Harry Potter is the archetypical hero. He pursues a mission that starts with his personal journey of understanding himself and helping those close to him, which leads him to help the world. He goes above and beyond what others do to become worthy of the future he wants. He never identifies with the many ways he’s been victimized, but instead transmutes his hardships into victories. And for all these heroic qualities, Harry Potter would be maligned by our culture as privileged, “alt-right,” and much like his creator has experienced, his efforts to do good would be met with hostility and accusations of grifting from people who care more about the ease of clinging to their worldview than discovering the truth. 

Entire countries end up on the wrong side of history when they stop cheering for heroes.

[atopvisenyashill]

What is Corlys loyal to, during the Dance? What are his ambitions, as you see them?

Corlys wants

To keep his family safe

Access to power

To prove he’s as good as a Targaryen

His family name on the Iron Throne

A dragon rider in his family

Very similar in many ways to most of the other adults during this time, especially Otto Hightower. I think in many ways, he’s kind of an echo of Tywin here - he’s trying to prove that the Velaryons are worth just as much, that they’re just as Valyrian, just as special, just as ~chosen by the narrative~ as the Targaryens are. To him, proving that means he has to have a Targaryen wife, dragon riding children & grandchildren, and in a perfect world, his own family on that ugly spiky chair.

[not quite a sidebar but - while I do think Aegon makes all the right choices in his initial conquest of the seven kingdoms, I think the Velaryons resented not being made a powerful, Paramount house in their own right. Installing them as overlords for the Riverlands or the Reach would be a bad idea the same way that both conquests leaving a Tyrell in Sunspear to help take over is a stupid, malicious idea that probably made both wars worse bc it pissed Dorne off. AND YET. they’re a valyrian house! one of the last lines of valyria left!! but all they have is driftmark!!!! i do think this sticks in their collective craw a bit but it seems to especially bother Corlys!]

I say “family” and not “blood” because Corlys is clearly willing to stretch the definition of “family” if it means he gets continued access to power. It’s why he is extremely forgiving in the Laenor/Rhaenyra marriage - I do think he realizes to an extent that he put them both in a weird situation and is willing to look past it a) because looking past it gives him access to power b) because Rhaenyra didn’t do it to sleight him, as shown by her friendship with Laena & the betrothals of their children and c) he grows to genuinely love and care for Jace & Lucerys, and probably Joff as well. There is that theory that it was Corlys who killed Harwin & Lyonel and I think it has its merits! Despite his affection for the boys, I do think he takes insult at the way Harwin & Rhaenyra so publicly carry on - he himself has a long(ish) standing love affair that he keeps hushed up and I imagine he felt Rhaenyra should be more discreet, and was insulted when Joff was born because like, you already have an heir and spare stop cuckolding my son jfc. Do I think he actually killed Harwin? Eh, up in the air about it tbh (seems more Viserys’ style if I’m being honest) but I can absolutely see the justifications he’s making here that Jace & Luke are necessary sacrifices of his pride but Joffrey is a step too far.

Now, while I put “keep his family safe” first because I DO think it comes first, notice I used “safe” and not “happy.” He doesn’t give a shit if they don’t like his decisions but Corlys does actually keep an eye on all his kids to make sure they are not being harmed. He doesn’t just wash his hands of Laena when the sealord he betroths her to turns out to be a dud, he actively puts off the marriage, and allows Daemon to get involved. He turns against Rhaenyra when Addam and Alyn are put at risk, then turns against Aegon II, even making the extremely risky move to kill the king, in an attempt to protect Baela.

I shittalk him a LOT for completely usurping his own daughter/granddaughter as well as counseling Rhaenyra away from a more proto-feminist stance, but I have to commend him here the way I do the Tyrells. Aegon II has gone mad with grief over Sunfyre, he’s probably in a lot of pain, high off his ass, we get that convo about him taking the black so he’s also running out of steam, which makes him erratic and dangerous, and he turns all of those built up feelings on Baela (if there isn’t snot and tears and spit dripping down both their faces when he takes her to the block in the show i’m suing!!!). Corlys attempts to calm Aegon but when it reaches a certain point, he doesn’t dick around trying to rationalize with an irrational person when it comes to the safety of his granddaughter - he just fucking offs the problem. Power and the Throne mean little and less if his entire family is dead and he knows this. It doesn’t mean he’s not willing to gamble, not willing to force his kids into shitty situations, not willing to usurp his own fucking granddaughter because a son is worth more, but in the end, Corlys really does love his family. It’s why he rages when Rhaenys dies. It’s why he’s devastated when Jacaerys dies. Corlys is very much A Man Of Westeros but in conversation with others like Tywin, Ned, Doran, Jon Arryn, Robert, etc., Corlys is willing to admit when he’s in over his head, grab his family, and get the fuck out of dodge. We are scraping the bottom of the barrel here on what a good father means, but well, that’s Westeros!

[littlest-bugz]

Hope it's okay to send this for the ask game! We've really enjoyed reading all your answers :)

🥀 + 📻

No worries! You can def send them in (and Im glad u enjoyed reading our answers :D I just figured everything was abysmally buried)

🥀 - do you keep track of your alter count? how do you do so?

So!! We use 3 different things for managing alter info, and then one separately. 📓 is our archivist and he is!! Bonkers /j.

First he uses simply plural for the custom field feature, and the layout of the app. He has a shit ton of custom fields put in for anything you can reasonably think of for an alter. Then, he uses Pluralkit because we have a system discord. Theres a template he made that we r going to upload soon. THEN in the system discord has an even longer version of the template he made (that cant be used in pk bc of the length). On top of it all, we have a notion journal with all the same shit + personal journals. Why did he do that to himself? /j lh/ No, but those are the three ways we manage to keep track of alters. Not all of them are uploaded, and furthermore, not all of them are uploaded in all of the places. We try to keep our simply plural for the bulk of it.

Other apps we use as a system that dont keep track of alters, but we find helpful regardless:

- Mindly: A mind mapping app that is pretty user friendly/easy to use. Not a super high learning curve imo, but it can be confusing upon initial use. If u are any flavor of polyfragmented, it may be harder to keep track with the free feature. We have 3 separate mind maps for the 3 separated areas in our system.

- Calm Harm: We have a horrible self harm addiction 😃 this app tho? It helped a ton in our beginning days of stopping. We don’t SH as much anymore bc of coping™️ but its still helpful for alters who cant control the urge as well as the others.

- UpWord: Its a notes app that can be locked via a passcode. It also has a built in reminders feature. We use it for keeping track of body info, extra info, routines, and general alter stuff. Its become pretty obsolete for us because of the onslaught of programs 📓 uses, but it keeps track of stuff for us still. It has a $4 upgrade to change the colors, remove ads, and more. Id say only purchase it if you end up liking it and using it more than other apps. It’s worth it imo, but if ur broke like me and $4 is a lot, hold off until you use it.

- Selftalking: one of those back and forth, self chat apps. I find it easier to use than Antar (which i still don’t know how to use to this day), but you’ll probably have to make the convos as needed, as opposed to making them all and having alters search their name,,, but it does have a search function if needed. We found the search function helpful. It is, undoubtedly, super ugly from an app design standpoint, and its not entirely user friendly. The ads are incredibly annoying as well, but its a much worth it $1 purchase imo.

📻 - do you experience amnesia?

Yes, but most of it is drug related these days I think (as 🎸, the addiction holder). We’ve been working on functional multiplicity for a while so (day to day) memory sharing is getting easier, but we have a lot of what our therapist calls “cold switches” where theres usually hesitance or stubbornness or any negative emotion that leads to the switch being more disorienting and heightened amnesia. Its like,, idk hard to explain?? Most of the time theres about 9-10 of us front at any given point. Its actually really annoying to have so many of us front and then our amnesia STILL sucks. Like imagine you switch w/ the dude next to you in front and there being complete amnesia between the two until prev dude briefs him on whats been happening.

The way our front works, whoever fronts the frontest (lol) usually has less access to the innerworld, usually forgets what they were doing on the innerworld, they also usually forget what we were doing in a time range of,,, 30min - 3/4 hours, and thats if they are cofront. We’ve had alters who when cocon can remember all this shit but when they front they forget a bulk of it. It’s weird, but we’re working on it.

BUT YEAH! Feel free to send in more or ask non ask game questions!