#literally this would all be fucking solved if people just based their shit off of kindness!! and acknowledged that their opinions about

[deadghosy]

Hey!! I have a request! Could you do the hazbin hotel characters and fem! CatNap reader! I know CatNap is a boy but I would like to see what kind of head canons they would have for a female version of CatNap. Also maybe reader would love chasing things around since cats do that?

HAZBIN HOTEL X FEM CATNAP!READER HEADCANNONS

prompt: you are female resident who helps sinners with insomnia

OKAY FIRST OFF! YOU DEFINITELY STILL SMELL LIKE VANILLA AND LAVENDER!🦆 NO ONE CAN ARGUE ABOUT THIS TO ME 😭

What I headcannon is kinda cartoony as reader has her legs cross as she just nods listening to a sinner’s sleep problem as she is just wearing glasses and a vest. Dead ass she just knocks them out like. “Problem solved!”

Charlie made you a room so residents and sinners could come in and have you help them sleep. Like either you knock them out and walk away. Or you actually stop being a lazy mofo and help them personally.

I headcannon based on the fluffy plush bodies that reader is still flat like the male catnap, cause obviously she doesn’t have a chest just like the plush body of Bobby bearhug. That’s basically how I imagine reader’s body is with her being like a little more skinny but definitely having trouble with people asking what her gender is.

“I’m a fucking cat, that’s what I am.” Is what reader would say irritated as it’s obvious in her feminine/decent voice.

Sassy catnap!reader is a goal as you would literally just do shit for shits and giggles😭✨🔥

Headcannon you have a purple vest with a white dress shirt and a black or white skirt with a few moon patterns on it while the color of your dress shirt as a moon pendent💗🦆

You straight up knocked a person out with your red smoke because they had sexualized you during the session and all you had to say was. “Oh really? Count to three…” “count to wh-” immediate knocked out as they fell face first from the chair as you smile with a full grin.

You used your claws to cut open a piece of candy for nifty as she hugs you and walked away happy. You love helping….

Alastor ran from you as you were chasing after him like a predator because he said he doesn’t need sleep…okay so imagine this….

You are sneaking like a lion behind Alastor as he drinks tea and he is like “I feel watched” with a sweatdropped and next thing people see in the halls is you grinning as you drag a motionless Alastor who still holds his tea up.

You wrapped your tail around Charlie to help her put up a banner as you file your claws as it was time to trim them. Like I imagine that as vaggie is like “What.” With a blank confused face seeing her girlfriend get lifted by a 8ft tall female cat

I can see reader having those teas that help people to sleep just incase they don’t like being passed out “force”. So you just make them tea as you listen to them rant as they fall asleep

Imagine reader reading a book as Lucifer is having a hyper moment behind her as she just peacefully reads….

It gives off “calm friend x hyper friend” vibes

Lucifer had one time patted you, and kept petting you until you purred so he can feel relaxed. He likes your purrs.

The duck king definitely has a picture of you purring on his lap…he even has it as his wallpaper kinda because of how soft and good smelling your fur is

OOOH IMAGINE YOU AND ANGEL HAVING A FASHION SHOW IN HIS ROOM💗🦆

Angel definitely gets you some nice clothes to match your aesthetic or purple clothing with white and cream.

You carry nifty in your mouth as if she was your kit….its cute okay…like niffty straight up smile as you hold her like your own kitten.

“This is ma mom now!” Nifty says happily as you just walk around with the back of her dress in your mouth.

Cherri bomb was good about you by Angel dust as Angel had put an image of how cool and badass you are at not following the rules. She always tries to persuade you into giving her your red smoke to make bombs out of it. SHE ONLY WANTS TO CAUSE DESTRUCTION!!!🦆‼️

Sir Pentious brings his egg boiz to you when they can’t sleep so you can use your red smoke on them. They snuggle in your purple fur as you just play a lullaby for them

I imagine you and husk purring by each other out of no where confused…but it’s because of your peaceful scent installed in your fur and body.

You still have your signature cocky smile before you knock a bitch out with the gas coming from your mouth.

I can see how you have a moon ring as [favorite hazbin hotel character] has a sun ring to show off your friendship with them

Imagine how reader gets groomed by the whole hazbin hotel crew because of their 8ft tall frame…there’s a lot of extra work in grooming your fur.

You definitely have those candles as well with that lavender smell with hint of vanilla. You have so much aromatherapy stuff for people. You might as well be the aroma goddess-

I headcannon you using your demon form (basically that form where the player sees catnap as a skinny monster) to scare people 😭 you’re an asshole as I imagine Angel getting ready for his morning to only see you behind the shower curtain with a creepy smile

Angel screamed and ran out the room looking crazy…..😭 Charlie found out and made you apologize to Angel as he was locked in his room..

He’s definitely not going to the bathroom alone-

Just like my other catnap! Reader, you definitely walk around slowly but stealthy releasing that poppy gas just incase a resident or your friends try sneaking out. “It’s time for bed…” you says quietly as you move smoothly around the hotel hallways

Just like before, Lucifer was scared of you until you showed him you can be quite the loving person you can be. Like Lucifer will lay on your body for comfort if he was getting busy from paper work in his office.

I can imagine Angel trying to get you to use your gas on Valentino and you’re like “sure” as you put a jar to your mouth and release it and give it to Angel.

[walnutcookie]

ok fuck it rodgerposting HERE I GOOOO

DISCLAIMER: this is a ramble about my own personal headcanons, loosely based off of scraps from the game that im able to make connections to. I do not see any of this as canon. this is not an analysis post, but feel free to use or expand on my headcanons if youd like!!! (i would love to hear abt/see what u do with it🙏🙏)

man. Honestly to start this i should preface that i designed my rodger headcanons to parallel glisten's character, so im going to mainly talk about those two in this post

Despite glistens ego it is VERY obvious that he has a lot of self esteem issues. Just from his twisted form alone we can see how dependent he is on the attention and praise of others, and his notes/interactions reinforce that. hes so deperate to feel loved and appreciated because he doesnt feel confident in himself so he puts up this false ego to try and convince OTHERS that hes perfect because maybe if other people think hes perfect he'll really believe it!!!! (he wont)

the convo he has with toodles is really interesting to me, i mean its kind of vague what "cry and complain" really means but im gonna say that he actively, or has in the past, vented to rodger about some of his self esteem issues

obviously rodger being a detective is right on theme with him being a magnifying glass and yknow. His object and occupation implies hes able to see things in others that others might not. but i also like to think that theres an irony of him being a mystery himself. he doesnt share much about himself - any conversation he has with other toons is mainly him asking questions about them while avoiding questions about himself or giving surface-level information. He's appreciated by the other toons, and is reliable when it comes to solving mysteries for the others ,,, he isnt feared or anything hes just. Unknown. He keeps to himself and others dont know what hes truly like. he doesnt have any close relationships at all, save for toodles

It stems from a feeling of worthlessness. he feels like hes too mediocre - sure, people would appreciate him the way he is, but why settle for that? by keeping nearly everything about himself the things people will theorize and imagine about him would be far more interesting and appealing than any lie he could spread about himself. Why pretend to be something hes not, which could easily be disproven, when he could just try not to be what he is? he wants to just be the cool mysterious polite detective who helps everyone yknow!!!! he WANTS people to be curious about him but never find out the answers. he doesnt want people to know that hes literally just like anyone else

and THATS the thing he has in common with glisten. they both have the same insecurity, that same desire to be loved and to be admired, to be seen as so much more than they really are, but they react to that feeling in opposite ways. Glisten tries to flaunt everything he has and more in an attempt to make himself seem perfect (when he clearly isnt), while rodger tries to push it all down and hide it so that people cant tell what hes really like

rodger knows what glisten is thinking. he knows what motivates his every action. that man can read glisten like a book bro... he can predict glistens every thought because theyre the same person. he knows glistens motives, he can predict how glisten must feel about other toons and rodger himself because he knows what its like to be in that position. and god he wants to help him. he knows what glisten is going through and wants to try to help as best he can ‼️

the problem is that glisten DOESNT understand. he doesnt know anything about rodger. rodger tries not to say much about what he observes so that glisten doesnt Freak the fuck out but then that just makes it worse because rodger will try to comfort him and say everything hes thinking and it terrifies the shit out of glisten because it seemingly comes out of nowhere 😭 rodger is still confused about glisten but less confused than glisten is about himself !!! He doesnt know rodgers motives cause again he doesjt talk about himself so hes just terrified of this guy he doesnt realize rodger is trying to help. he wants to believe he is but its hard to tell </3 regardless though glisten does truly care about rodger just... in a complicated way. Bro wants rodger dead but couldnt live on if he died and rodger knows that

would like to talk about rodger and toodles more but ill do that in a different post .... thank you if you read this far i love you . If u have any questions/comments/thoughts id love to hear feel free to send me asks!!!🙏🙏

[moonshynecybin]

who do you think would deal better with being isekai'd into omegaverse, marc or vale? alternatively which is more compelling

most beautiful ask. in the world. so funny. ummmm i think. vale is maybe more compelling because his issues with it would be. perhaps unsolvable and endlessly complex. guy who is a lil weird about gender, not terribly into the concept of marriage, and is pretty fundamentally adverse to being. shall we say emotionally legible/vulnerable. exposed. and omegaverse as a genre is all about exposure. its all. giving into the base instincts of your body and those same instincts giving you away to the object of your affections. its going into heat and the person youre in love with is the only one available to help you through it. its scenting someone and that being a crystal ball of their emotions and bodily state ESPECIALLY ie how much they want you specifically. its needing someone so bad you are literally insensate. its getting bonded 5ever and ever irrevocably, OFTEN in the heat of an instinctual moment without the relationship negotiation that happens irl. a genre centered around a betrayal of the body/heart to the mind, in many ways

now imagine you didnt actually grow UP in an omegaverse so you have no toolbox to DEAL with all that. sensory input off the SHITS. and. like suddenly and without WARNING now vale can feel in his CHEST exactly how distressed marc marquez is about every one of their interactions. and how much he wants his ass. like truly every part of his hind brain is like jesus christtttttt i should be inside him right tf now im a terrible alpha. and then the higher part of his brain is like what the fuck. what the fuck. i am not responsible for marc, what the fuck. and oh hey theres a bump on my penis i need to ask people about this right the hell now. thats vale. so i see this as a somewhat fraught comedy of sex errors where his ADHD ass is treading horny water trying to learn alpha manners and also. much more complexly. not fall into all of the traditional alpha expectations/roles. that little trap of gender. because at heart vale is a little trickster who loves to buck expectations!!! and maybe his journey here is realizing that he can just be himself comma sex freak. and that leaning into those "alpha" traits doesnt mean he is conforming lmao he can still have his own unique version of his family. learning the norms of a society and what makes sense to him and what still doesnt. sorting through the weeds of it. and that being vulnerable rules sometimes. and that marc loves him. because that last one is kind of hard to ignore now... again because of that emotional and physical vulnerability that comes with the genre... honestly him knowing all of that about marc without having to actually TALK about it may solve some of their problems tbh. like why work through all that verbally when you can sniff them and then fuck them. kind of the omegaverse fantasy in quite a few ways

marc. jeez louise. i think would HATE it more. at first. control freak 9000. maybe has to miss races for heats. suppressants arent legal. experiencing weird omega sexism if we want to go that route OR. my favorite. has been lying to the press about his status since he presented. tiniest 15 yr old youve ever seen: im an alpha ! :3 uh sure bud. sure. i bet. SO actually maybe he falls into a world where hes just been white-knuckling it for the last billion years during race weekends and most of the paddock kind of KNOW (scent blockers only go so far...) but are lowkey afraid to call him on it dlkjdfljldsfd... similar to vale in this scenario, he sort of has to learn how to omega— and when his heat hits during summer break and his ass start leaking in the middle of the spanish equivalent of walmart, he finds a psycho little ziploc bag of sweaty vale shirts under his bed and he genuinely is like girl what the hellllllllllll.... wiggin out. and his next heat he turns up to race with truly NO practice managing it all, so its way more obvious than normal and the farce is growing thinner and vale literally pulls him aside to be like hey are you GOOD ? but in that valentino not that i care about your ass kind of unspeakably divorced way and marc is like woag. bc a pheromone truck just ran him over. eyes glassy face flushed sweaty as hell mouth a little open.... and he opens his mouth to make an excuse and nothing comes... and then obviously they fuck like its the end of the WORLD

and like i DO think marc pulls out of it more cleanly than vale overall, bc something in HIS lizard brain would be deeply soothed by like. excelling at being an omega. getting an A + in being a bottom. doing that for vale, specifically in the context of pushing his body to the absolute LIMIT to do it.... hes locked in. its go time. and then theres the insane possibility of vale putting his mouth on his neck and them getting basically soulbonded forever where they have to have crazy sex every few months ? hes like ummmm okay. i could get used to this for a while lmao

[genderqueerdykes]

About your "Men (including cishet men) welcome to interact" post

As someone who's most important/supportive person in their life is our dad, & we have (or just have meet) other men who has meant a lot to us or have been really supportive or even our role models, sometimes people hatred or just distrust they have and how openly rude they are about it just a lot sometimes. Obviously & Honestly there's a lot to be said here(about this topic as whole) but we are not able to(personal comfortability & actual writing ability). Thank you for being a blog that has been here allowing us to be able to explore, understand, learn our(& others) identities/experiences in world, not making us feel bad for the people who support us just because of how the judge based off of the same thing the rest of society shuns us for. (a side note because of your blog we were able to get the nerve and make the push to start T just over a year ago now. A lot of it due to the help and support we got from our dad, who despite us being an adult has financially covered everything for it and the rest of our health as we are also disabled and only recently have been able to work at all) Thank you for your time in just reading this if ya do.

thanks for taking the time to send this, i really appreciate it!

i'm tired of seeing hate for the sake of hate. hate solves very little. like being a hater sucks actually, it's not cool to be shitty to other people for no reason. it bothers me deeply that people refuse to accept that there genuinely are cishet men who are queer allies out there, and in fact, some of them are absolutely amazing queer allies. i've had friends who were cishet men and gendered me correctly after i came out to them. i've had cishet men stand up for me when someone questions my manhood.

nobody considers the fact that there are queer people that just might have a loved one, partner, or friend who is a cishet man. why would it ever be okay to openly show hate to someone who supports you? hell, how you even expect someone to respect your gender and your orientation if you hate them based off of their gender and orientation? profiling someone based off of their gender & orientation is quite literally what queerphobes do, and doing it to random cishet men who haven't hurt you will not make those queerphobes stop profiling you.

treating someone else like shit just because you've been treated like shit is passing your trauma on to someone else. you're bleeding on someone who did not cut you.

(a side note because of your blog we were able to get the nerve and make the push to start T just over a year ago now. A lot of it due to the help and support we got from our dad, who despite us being an adult has financially covered everything for it and the rest of our health as we are also disabled and only recently have been able to work at all)

first of all i'm so happy to hear that! i hope things have been going well for you with T, and i am genuinely so fucking happy to hear that your dad is so supportive. he sounds amazing i'm glad he wants to help you become the happiest version of yourself you can be. there really are supportive cishet men out there. some of them are dads, uncles, cousins, brothers, sons, friends and partners. there's no reason we should treat them like absolute shit when they support us. we need to love them just as they love us.

take care of yourself! thank you for sending this i really appreciate it! let me know if you need any help with regards to HRT! im always happy to help! good luck in your transition, stay safe!

[darkcloudsatnight]

Got any helmet party headcannons?

Sorta

Okok so,

1. I do most of these based off of what I've seen before, being like, Engineer is literally the only person who can calm Soldier down. It's like, in a way where if Soldier's mad about a problem, say how in expiration date, he was mad he couldn't teleport bread anymore, Engineer would be right then and there to calm Soldier down, because in expiration date he told Soldier he could still teleport bread (albeit, Engineer didn't know the bread would mutate, but still, he immediately thought of a way to calm him down). (And I know he could do this easily for anyone's problems, but I feel like he'd do it specifically for Soldier for his well-being, you know?)

2. Soldier will get into bar fights with Demoman and they will blow up a bar and I feel like Soldier would go to Engineer instead of Medic because he's "a "real" American who is smart and knows how to fix problems" and I'm pretty sure another one of those problems on top of Soldier's injuries would be dealing with the fact him and Demo most likely killed dozens of drunk people and then blew up the evidence.

3. Engineer isn't like a "malewife" to me, but I feel like he's more of a concerned person, as we all should be, who can also get fed up and tired of bullshit. (how much bullshit it takes to get him fed up is depending on the bullshit level) And considering Soldier does a lot of bullshit he can get fed up and let Soldier deal with it (also because he doesn't just want Soldier to be dependent on other people solving his problems for him)

4. Soldier will kill for Engineer and vice versa. The only difference being that Soldier will gift the dead body to Engineer to show him what he's done for him, and Engineer will kill and dispose of the body right in front of Soldier.

5. They like lookin at rocks n trading them sometimes. That's all I'll say.

6. WHEN IT COMES TO SAY GEX 😈😈😈😈

I personally am not that big a fan of bottom Soldier, but I can see it happening. I myself am a fan o bottom Engie but you do you people I ain't judging. (It's just what I'm used to😭)

7. Soldier is somewhat clingy. Not in a "I need him to be mine and only mine" but more of a, "where the fuck did he go?" But he doesn't linger on it too long.

8. They can and will kill each other if they get too fed up with each other (but they don't stay mad for that long)

9. SOLDIER WILL CLING ONTO ENGINEER LIKE A BOA CONSTRICTOR WHEN SLEEPING HOLY SHIT. Engineer doesn't mind it but it does hurt sometimes, especially if he falls asleep in a bad position and then is constantly clung onto.

[weebsinstash]

So hey while we're talking about overbearing yandere figures that may either be romantic or platonic or even parental based on your preference, you wanna know who would REALLY be impossible to escape from? Bruce Wayne

He's literally already got like what, 6 or 7 kids he's adopted and taken under his wing for varying reasons, his own little Batfamily living with him in his house as he works through varying types and levels of trauma. God forbid you meet him in some sort of "your parents were murdered and you're basically another Robin he adopted" scenario because i imagine he never. Let's you really age out of that. Like you may stop being a sidekick and a crime fighter but like, leaving the Manor, the family, him? That's too dangerous. What if an old nemesis of yours comes back, or someone targets you to get to him? It's safer if you stay home and all your siblings just care for you so much 🥺

You just get absolutely NO privacy because you know that entire mansion is just bugged literally everywhere, you're in your room on your phone browsing the web, fucking Bruce is down in the cave on the Batcomputer watching your browsing history (and god imagine if he even, like, imposes some basic ass borderline purity culture kind of shit on you and keeps you away from like, adult stuff, or really just anything he thinks will be a bad influence)

You somehow manage to slip away from him (already unlikely) and he probably has you or a possession of yours microchipped. And then there's a matter of not just having to slip away from him, but also Dick, Barbara, fuck you think JASON is going to watch you set out on those harsh streets? Alfred alone can put your ass in some kind of time out, that special Pennyworth sleepy time tea he likes to give you for anxiety is a lil too sleepy if you kwim. Bruce and the rest are off doing hero shit that you refuse to do anymore "because that's gay, you guys cripple people for stealing from the gas station, what does your moral absolutism actually accomplish if you actively facilitate half the crimes you 'solve'" and you're just like chilling with Alfred at the dinner table and you look up, "I think I want to get a job and move out" and he's lending you an ear and some dry wit and advice while you two drink tea and before you know it he's practically got to catch your forehead from slamming against the table, you pass out so hard, and then there's oh so loyal Alfred on the phone, "Master Wayne, I believe there's a certain talking-to that needs to be had whenever you return to the manor--"

I just can't even imagine the scope of surveillance you would be under after earning a spot in the heart of the world's greatest detective like, arguably the most GOATed member of the Justice League and he isn't even fucking magic. And you finally get away from him, the Batfamily, all of em, and you know who you get to deal with THEN? His buddy Clark. Have fun so much as hiding in a building or wearing a disguise from the fucking alien with XRAY VISION who can "fly faster than a speeding bullet", who can basically think and process thoughts as equally fast

And also just, lmaoooo good luck having sex or bringing a boy or someone home when you have like 4 protective brothers, a loyal hound, like 3 sisters, a stepmom, two of them if Selina is over, a borderline black ops butler, and the unhinged controlling billionaire orphan who binds them all together

[actual-changeling]

Since you have been the first 'Crowley deserves to have his boundaries' person I have seen in the tags on weeks. What do you think about the talk in the fandom on how Crowley should have accepted going to Heaven 'to do good and stop the Apocalypse' and that 'he also rejected Aziraphale'? It personally gives me the creeps because the narrative makes clear that Heaven is a big white nightmare but the fandom seems to be taking the 'Aziraphale might jot be perfect' thing hard and therefore Heaven is fixable now...

Glad to know I am not alone in my little boundaries corner! I'm always here for discussions about it.

And, oh boy, do I have thoughts on that, let's see if I can get them to be somewhat coherent.

I am going to start this off with a metaphor of sorts and hopefully people will be able to follow along. I'm an older sibling and have a little sister, and we grew up in an incredibly abusive and neglectful household.

When I graduated high school, I moved out for university, which was literally the best thing to ever happen to me - I got away, I was/am free! Now I have to deal with the consequences of all that shit though.

If my sister asked me to come back so I can help her fix our mother (entirely theoretical btw she'd never lol) would it be the right thing to say yes? Should I give up my personal freedom, my life, the healing process I am right in the middle of, to go back to a household that broke me? So I can be trapped with a person that will never change again?

The answer is, of course, no. I feel bad for my sister and I am praying she will be able o move out soon, but me going back would not solve a single fucking thing. See where I'm going with this yet?

Crowley left heaven and landed on earth, which was ultimately good for him, but he has a lot to process and heal from; he's right in the middle of his own recovery.

Heaven will not change, it cannot be changed. The entire institution is working as intended, and the intention is to be abusive, manipulative, and have as much power over everyone as possible. You cannot fix that, you need to get rid of it.

Aziraphale has good intentions, but he is also still trapped in that abusive household because he never moved out, he is the sibling that stayed behind, just mentally instead of physically.

Hot take, but many people in this fandom are incapable of understanding that "Aziraphale is acting based on good intentions and is still actively being abused/traumatized" and "Aziraphale did bad and unhealthy things and his relationship with Crowley was co-dependent and toxic" are co-existing. Both are true.

Both. are. true.

He did messed up shit out of a trauma response, but he is still responsible for his actions, and at the same time he deserves a chance to heal and move on from it. Please, at this point I am begging people to understand that this is not a black and white issue.

Crowley did not reject Aziraphale, if anything, Aziraphale rejected him.

Crowley said no to returning to an abusive environment for an impossible task. Crowley said no to sacrificing his mental and physical health for something that he knows will not happen. Crowley, for the first time in his life, set a clear and final boundary and put himself and his life over Aziraphale's wishes.

That is a good thing. It is necessary.

Season 3 will not be about Aziraphale fixing heaven or preventing the second coming (if anything it'll be accidental just like in season 1). It's going to be about him finding his way out of his abusive household and into a healthy environment in which they're both free and can heal.

Apart AND together.

It's not happily ever after, it's not perfect romance, it's not "soul-mates" or anything. It is messy, it is real, it is complicated, and I am so fucking tired of seeing it reduced to "love conquers all".

[lethesomething]

Yakuza and coping mechanisms

Yakuza has been my on and off hyperfocus for years now but also in particular the past month, so let's talk about it. And particularly, how many friggin coping mechanisms are in this game.

Disclaimer: I do literary analysis, not psycho analysis, don't come for me.

For all its silliness about fighting roomba's and disco minigames, the world that the Yakuza games is set in, is fucking brutal. They are, at their very core, crime drama's. People get murdered a lot, lives are ruined in various ways, a good third of protags spend large amounts of time in jail, usually for a crime they didn't commit. Most politicians and police are corrupt, racism is blatant and if you don't have a place in the very strict hierarchy of society, it's hard to get back on your feet (hence all the crime). I tend to read a lot of indictments of Japanese society in these games, partly because they are so clearly based on old school yakuza crime drama's.

This means that the characters go through some shit. And what's fascinating, is how they deal with this.

Spoiler warning for, uhh, almost all yakuza games except Song Of Life (since i never played that)

Pretending it's not real

Kasuga Ichiban

The direct reason I'm even making this blog post because he's the most blatant about it. Kasuga is Peak Himbo in that he's not the sharpest tool in the shed, but he manages to take being beaten down Repeatedly and overcomes that with a sense of genuine good nature and optimism that is… honestly kind of hard to believe. The way he deals with any of this, is that he's a nerd who pretends to be in a video game. It's the whole premise of Yakuza Like a Dragon.

And to be fair, Kasuga suffers from an amount of mistreatment that makes me Very Angry in his stead. He has every right to be upset! He is literally homeless in the beginning of the game. If he requires the escapism of going around pretending to be in a jrpg to survive, more power to him. Especially since it works. Dude goes around helping people and making friends. Which is a good thing, because there's no way he'd make it out of Yokohama alive if he didn't have some back-up.

Side note: something similar happens to at the very least Majima, i think, in the admittedly non-canonical events of Yakuza Dead Souls. (yes i played it solely for Majima, no i do not recommend it, the game is garbage and you get more Majima in Zero anyway). In Dead Souls, Kamurocho is overrun by zombies. As a lover of all things Horror, Majima decides he may as well have a good time mowing them down like he's in an FPS while he trudges through the wreckage of society.

Self sacrifice

Mostly Kazuma Kiryu and  Saejima Taiga

If you hate yourself, at least try to be of use to someone. Let's be honest, a lot of the plot of Yakuza games is driven by self sacrifice or at least following some code of honor to its ludicrous ends.

Kiryu is the main example here. The game kinda glosses over this a lot, but he is, at least in Zero, a criminal. He goes around extorting money from businesses. He consistently solves problems through violence. It's kinda the point of the games. But he's also borderline a saint and 80% of the shit he gets into is because of his need to throw himself to the wolves for any person he cares about. He voluntarily does hard time for Nishikiyama, for one. He picks up a stray kid that he will now protect with his life. And it just goes on from there. See, Kiryu may be the famous Dragon of Dojima and the Fifth Chairman of the Tojo Clan and all that, but he would very much prefer not to be? Dude wants to live a quiet life and raise some kids, it's just that he's the protag of a game series about how hard it is to say goodbye to the yakuza life. So the plot keeps finding ways to bring him back, usually as a reluctant warrior to save the Tojo clan or Haruka  or whatever. If he was a little less honorable, he could still be chilling as a taxi driver with an unreasonably hot girlfriend, I'm just saying.

Saejima is very similar, but somehow even worse? Much as I love the guy, he's an idiot. He suffers from the same loyalty and selflessness as Kiryu, but he doesn't even get a cute daughter out of it. He spends Twenty Five years in prison for a crime he (we later find out) didn't commit. He escapes months before his parole to solve the convoluted plot of Y4. Then Goes Back to Jail to atone for (again) a crime he only thought he'd committed, only to escape (again) when he thinks Majima, his sworn brother, got murdered in Y5. As far as i can tell he goes back to jail one last time to finish his actual sentence, and to like, protect the name of the Tojo clan or some shit. My dude. My friend. Come on.

As a side note, acts of selflessness are kind of a big deal in the Yakuza games and one of the main ways to tell if someone is a good criminal or a villain. Kasuga and his crew are pretty big on the whole 'acts of selfless kindness' thing. It also seems to be one of the traits of Daigo Dojima, whose whole being screams 'I don't want to be here but who else is gonna fucking do it'. But in the case of Kiryu and Saejima it's very much verging on reckless self-endangerment.

Fabricated identities

Majima Goro, baby!

The Yakuza games really love this one, but I'll start with the big guy, everyone's favourite character: Majima. This dude has seen some shit. We see him throughout several flashbacks and the span of the games, but most tellingly we see him in Zero, at his rock bottom hero stage. And he's intriguingly unlike the other times he shows up. This is a Majima that's recovering from torture and backstabbing, and forced to do some dude's bidding for scraps. He's a chained dog (pun very much intended) and he's about to lose it.

What's fun about Majima is that he has So Many of the traits in this list. He has a lot of the reckless endangerment and self sacrifice that his buddies Kiryu and Saejima have. He gave himself up a few times for Haruka, he keeps trundling back to save Tojo and Dojima, but there's also a whole other layer of … Flamboyance to him.

And while Majima probably started out as comic relief, the games make clear that it's not all he is, and we get several glimpses of 'old Majima' throughout the series. He'll be in the middle of a self inflicted fight and drop some wisdom, for instance. He acts erratically, he is blunt, violent, exuberant in his dressing up. When given a task his first thought seems to be 'how can i make this Extra', but that doesn't mean the guy is unstable. You don't become a successful businessman with a building company, or a patriarch of your own family, without being smart and strategic. A lot of classic Majima behaviour, i feel, is a case of a mask he constructed to hide the severe depression, that became more of a second nature to him. Majima is one of the clearest examples of 'do what you need to do'. He's a survivor, through and through. Somewhere in there is a decent human being, but Majima will kill people to survive in a harsh world. It just seems like he constructed an extra layer to shield himself from all that.

Joon-gi Han (Like a Dragon): This is more a case of stolen (inherited??) identity, but again, if you don't want to be you, just be someone else. In this case someone he admires. Again: super tragic backstory, questionable life choices. As an aside, Joon-gi is fun because he is both a deadly assassin with someone else's name and face, but also  a Knight stereotype who would do everything for his queen and I think that's neat.

Zhao Tianyou (Like a Dragon): Somewhat more subtle, but Zhao is also a dude that was at one point confronted with a Situation, namely 'oh shit my dad died and now I'm in charge of a violent gang'. And to deal with that he decided to construct a persona that gives exactly zero fucks. He is very joking and very avoidant but we do learn that a fair amount of his laid back attitude is just veneer. Dude in fact gives several fucks. You don't decide to give up the throne and become a homeless sidekick to Himbo Supreme because you don't care. You do it to stop him from getting ultra-murdered by the parade of heavily armored gangsters he keeps storming into.

Akiyama Shun (Yakuza 4-5): I debated putting him here, because part of me believes Akiyama is just kind of a dick. A dick I love as a character, but still, ya know. At least some of the dickish persona is a front, though. Akiyama is another one that just saw his life's work destroyed at some point, and decided that emotional detachment was the way to go. Akiyama is different because he was never actually a proper criminal. He was homeless for a bit, and then came into some money (through Extremely Convoluted Plot Means) and now he's a moneylender. And like Zhao, he mostly pretends to be completely devoid of feelings, while having a fair amount of feelings. Enough to get into like… fist fights. With actual gangsters. Who have guns.

Vice

Sex, drugs and everything in between

The preferred way for noir drama's to show someone is Going Through It, is by giving them a classic addiction and Yakuza isn't any different. It's why several characters are shown mournfully smoking, in particular Kiryu and Majima. Yes I know it's because it looks cool and harks back to old crime movie atmosphere. That doesn't make it a healthy coping mechanism.

Another obvious one, considering the setting of the games in several red lights districts, is erotica. Both Adachi, the ex-cop from Like a Dragon and Shinada, the ex-baseball player from Y5 and also my least fave protag ever, are both in various stages of obsession about porn, sex work and the likes.

Tanimura, the cop from Y4 has a pretty severe gambling problem in the actual canon, though gambling games and casino's are a general mainstay of the Yakuza series. It's just that when Kiryu interrupts his busy day of solving the convoluted intrigue du jour to gamble in an illegal underground casino, it's not a character flaw.

Also: almost everyone drinks ludicrous amounts of heavy alcohol in these games. Both in canon and as part of the gameplay. 100% ing the games usually involves drinking tons of whiskey, but the whole Ichiban crew, sans I think Eri, is shown drowning their troubles at various times.

Violence: I mean, that's kind of the game, but an unhealthy amount of characters consider fist fights to be a good way to resolve conflict, bond with people and generally reinvigorate themselves. Particularly Majima is shown to get a real kick out of doing damage and being beaten up. There's just a lot of reckless behaviour, which is what makes the games good.

Karaoke: fake it till you make it, man.

Extra note:

You'll notice there's no women on this list, and that's because honestly the game is kinda sexist. So while there's already Very Few women in the game, the ones that are present don't exactly have super complex characters.

Mukoda Saeko, the hostess from Like a Dragon, drinks like a fish but that's about her main flaw.

Other notable female characters are Kiryu's kid Haruka, Kiryu's love interest Sawamura Yumi (Kiwami) and Kamataki Eri, the business lady from Like a Dragon. They're all stereotypical Good Girls who have no flaws apart from indecisiveness and an unhealthy tendency for selflessness.

Saejima Yasuko is ever so slightly more complex: her main trait is self sacrifice. The story promptly fridges her for it.

[saiwriting]

On Identity...Again

Okay, cool. I get it now. I am not supposed to ascribe any meaning of myself specifically to a thing or a concept like astrology or personality tests. Cool. I am the cosmos experiencing itself. Cool. My higher self is my true authentic self and my true authentic self is my higher self. Also sooo cool.

What the fuck does it mean to be myself?

I have only known a self that is subscribed to the value attributed to me by the plethora of other people helicoptering over my potential. What does it mean to be me?

My boyfriend and I were having an interesting conversation about the concepts of repression and suppression, where I then discovered that I felt as though there was a part of me that was always 'suppressed' (first, I had identified it as repression, but he made a good point that repression is different in that it's extrinsically based) and that I can't even really identify what that means for me because I had been so used to suppressing for so long. After that thought, I came to another conclusion that was maybe closer and yet still not close enough.

Maybe, just maybe, I was so used to scoping out how others would react or feel before I expressed myself (people pleasing?) that I couldn't turn it off. I couldn't be spontaneous and the "me" that I have always seen myself to be on the inside but having perpetual disconnect expressing on the outside. Cool. All my problems were solved. That was, until I started to ask why I wasn't "me" in the first place.

Why was the me that I am now not see as the ideal me and therefore what does an ideal me even entail? And, I've actually thought about this a lot. Of course, over the years it has developed as trends change in clothing and beauty and societal expectations, but what has stayed there at the core foundation of these different versions of me that I want to make sure I show authentically in my day to day life? What's worse, to me, is that I don't even know why I am so afraid to show the world a more authentic me. Why? Why am i so afraid of just being me? Is it because I don't think that the world deserves it? Is it because I don't think that I deserve it? Why wouldn't I deserve it? And is the version of me that I think that I do not deserve...even the me that I want to be in the first place?

I think one thing that makes this so difficult for me, especially lately is that I know that I am everything. Even in the spiritual sense as I still am walking on my spiritual path has led me to know that I am one with everything. But that notion has always been hard for me, so it was a little disheartening to know that the answer to this all just so happened to be the thing that paralyzes me the most in life.

I am a chronic planner, but for the first time today I actually contemplated giving up on planning. I have hungered for spontaneity for years now, but to no real avail since the mental ability to conjure up coping and preparation is almost instantaneous at this point. Shit sucks, like, real bad. But I also can't help but really want to know what my "thing" is, and have wanted to for practically my entire existence. Here's where our little problem arises...I want to be and do and experience everything. I am literally everything. I look at my Pinterest boards in muddled confusion because they're just huge databases of all of the iterations of myself that I envision. Yet, I have ceased to accomplish a single one, or at least in my eyes I haven't. What if I just abandoned the idea of a planned "me" in general?

Planning is both my greatest strength and my most dubious curse. I am an excellent planner and an even more tremendous bullshitter of said plans! For the first time today, I am thinking of abandoning it. What would happen if I went through life driven off of impulse? Being someone who has depression and who was not medicated or diagnosed until I was 22, it was rough to think that I had to trust my impulsion in order to even follow it and thus be spontaneous and to get myself into situations that are necessarily uncomfortable. It's hard as hell to get me into an uncomfortable situation or anything because I am so good at planning and bracing and preparing for outcomes. Never in my life have I had a moment where I said ahhh fuck it! Not one that I can remember.

This discovery finally made its way to me while thinking about the list of books that I said that I wanted to read this week. The list is not long or extensive and not even to the fullest extent I've gone to plan myself to do things like plan which days I'm going to read which pages at which times...which I have definitely done multiple times before. No, this was just a list of 4 books on a sticky note stuck to my bathroom door. All I did was number them 1 through 4 to what order I should read them in. I brought all of the materials needed for some writing and to finish book 1 on my Kindle to the living room and...then I cracked open the pages to book 4. Looking back on it, book 4 was the book I was most excited to read this week and yet I saved it for last. I delayed my gratification. Sometimes it seems as though I enjoy punishing myself for the sake of endurance. It's weird. Why am I not able to follow through on my plans even to a minuscule degree?

I think one of the hardest aspects of astrology to me is the concept of the MC. Mine is in Gemini and as someone who has a Virgo rising and is familiar with Mercurial energy, telling me I need to embody Gemini energy does nothing but stress me out. How do I embody something that I am only familiar with in the presence of friends and wouldn't that be like acting? Then I thought well maybe that's just how my authentic self shows, but that's not necessarily true either. The deeper I dug into astrology, the more I see the MC as something that I simply have to be. My North Node is also in Gemini, and that is symbolic of energy that you may not even reach in this life time. I have felt nothing but stifled my entire life. Never, ever fully able to express myself fully.

I never think I am doing enough. I never think I have enough. I never think I am enough. But that is okay. This, honestly, is just proof I am everything.

I do not desire to be chained to the idea that my identity matters. I am so tired of thinking my identity matters. It doesn't. At least, not in the grand scheme of things. I have never been my authentic self, ever, as long as I have been raised in the church and having to hide parts of myself simply because I was a woman. It'd be nice to have a platform, a stage, a name recognized by millions, but it is not necessary. I could just as easily be lost in time. Sometimes I think I am preparing for that possibility every morning that I wake up. I prepare to be a nobody, a nothing, a who? I am constantly planning on how to face myself if what I see in the mirror is something and someone that I hate. I am always recovering and never growing.

I am suppressed. I am suppressed when the people in my life that helped me grow said I should be free. So, what does freedom mean to me? Only I will know, and yet I still worry that I will know-only when it is too late.

[brazenautomaton]

re gender dysphoria: what are those other criteria, though, do you think? i share your intuition that the number of people who claim to have dysphoria may be higher than the number of people who really do, but i struggle to think of a better way to ID those who do other than "ask them if they have it." do we just disregard their "yes" if it comes with the caveat "and also i think we should broaden that concept to include people who want to go by 'they' sometimes but otherwise change nothing"?

see now that's the tricky part, figuring out how many people are lying or mistaken about a completely subjective experience

as I understand it the neurological origin of transgenderism is that your body develops one way if there's sufficient testosterone present, and another way if there isn't. this is what SRY-activated genes are. everyone contains a complete genetic blueprint for themselves as a man and themselves as a woman, and it's the presence of testosterone that determines which one to use.

your brain forms at a different time than the rest of your body, and if the testosterone level goes above/below the line between those two points, then you have mismatch. your sense of self and your sense of your own body are made for a body you don't have. you literally have a man's/woman's brain in a woman's/man's body. since you cannot change the nature of someone's identity, and it would be evil if you could, the solution is to change the body.

as I understand it, there is a part of the brain you can look at to determine if it's male or female and in trans people it's much more likely to be mismatched, but the part is so small you can't really see it unless you do an autopsy, and no research on this has been done in like 30 years and if it had been it'd be too ideologically captured to be useful.

so I believe that trans people do exist and it is a real condition and it has nothing whatsoever to do with anyone's culture, opinions, decisions, or ideology. it has nothing to do with gender roles, it has nothing to do with how you are seen, it's that your nervous system is wired for a different model and is constantly reporting "there's this thing here that isn't supposed to be here, and stuff is missing, and your balance is off, and and and..."

you don't have to have an ideological declaration of the true ungraspable essence of gender-truth, and before trans rights became devoured, this is what I observed: "dude I don't know what it is that makes a True Man or True Woman I just know I'm the wrong fucking one."

this was ideologically inconvenient, so it's not the story any more. now the experience has to match what the ideology wants to be true, which is that there is no subjective experience of gender whatsoever and it's only contemptible, punishable sexists who ever think otherwise.

so now we have to have to repeat that there's "so many genders" and accept it as "scientific fact" even though it's based on nothing but devouring. there's two genders and they're "SRY-activated" and "not SRY-activated" and they exist independent of any opinion or culture or identity. no matter what cultures associate with them, the fact that different things can be associated with it does not change underlying material reality. but we're not allowed to notice that because it would mean sexism isn't maximally easy to solve and might require something other than yelling and making demands.

this is all only vaguely connected. my conclusion is that there are in theory ways you could screen for it like "has this been a thing you have felt since you were young and only recently were able to put a name to" and "did you develop strong opinions in gender politics before or after you realized you were trans" or "if every other human being on Earth died and you were doing some I Am Legend shit, would you continue to present as this gender and would you seek HRT in the apocalyptic Afterscape?"

but it is impossible to actually communicate "no you have to answer this question honestly instead of repeating the thing that affirms your ingroup status" and even if you could, it's impossible to have the people looking at those answers care about the truth instead of playing cruelty games and telling flattering stories to themselves about their ideology

[stunfiskz]

how do you think Jevil and Rouxls would interact. Like I imagine that Jevil would annoy Rouxls to the point of screaming for the fun of it and Rouxls would CONSTANTLY be sick of his shit

i need you to know that opening this ask made me grin evilly like that one gif of the grinch. i have SO many thoughts about them but haven’t posted about before because it solely exists within my head so thank you for enabling me to ramble about this.

first off, whenever i think of these two’s dynamic pre-jevil-goes-fuckin-coconuts i think of this image. 

also just for a small bit of context/rambling, i feel like rouxls was probably still a young low ranking servant at the point they knew each other. there’s a piece of dialogue he has at some point about feeding lancer, “is this what it means to be high ranking?”, which makes me think he was NOT in a high position of power at ALL before he was given the role of duke of puzzles. and i really don’t think he’d had that role for that long, considering the roles were switched around by king after he’d imprisoned the other 3 kings, an action that he did because of the knight’s influence. so yeah. however long it’s been since the knight opened that fountain, likely (which can’t be THAT long. i’m willing to say like a few years at the longest.). but obviously jevil was the court jester at the time, as well.

but, yeah. i definitely think jevil would annoy the HELL out of rouxls. despite that, i think rouxls would still be happy around him, to have that attention… i don’t think he’s ever really been the type of person to have a lot of friends. or friends. he gets on peoples nerves a lot. so even if jevil annoys the shit out of him he’s happy to have him around because he’s someone who does actually like being around him.

jevil would absolutely play pranks on rouxls constantly. i think he’d first started mostly because he thinks it’s funny when rouxls gets mad (which to be fair it kinda is, considering he can’t ever really look that upset with his whole permanent grin situation), but then grew to also just think it’s fun to be around him. but god yeah. dropping dark pennies down his throat while he sleeps. doing that one nutella kitchen tiktok thing. putting ketchup in his shampoo that ends up dying his hair pink for like a month. rouxls does not have a moment of peace when he’s around jevil.

i also feel like they’d probably feel at least a bit connected by the whole “regularly discarded from the deck” thing. of course, i could also see rouxls getting jealous over that, since jevil at least sometimes gets to be a part of the game, while he’s literally useless.

okay, and so this is another oddly specific headcanon, but i imagine that jevil’s actually really good at math- probably the fact that he introduces his fight as a “numbers game”. and i imagine that rouxls fucking SUCKS at math. i think that that’s maybe part of the reason he sucks at making puzzles, since making & solving them generally requires some level of mathematical thinking. regardless i can absolutely imagine some sort of scenario where that comes up and it’s very much the energy of “sobbing at the table while your dad is trying to help you do math homework”

but, yeah, also on the detail earlier about rouxls getting jealous and feeling completely useless… definitely think that’s like a big issue he has, whether he likes to think about it or not (he doesn’t.) i feel like a lot of his desperation to follow the orders of a ruler stems from that desire to be needed by SOMEONE. so i feel like he definitely did not take jevil’s imprisonment well. one of the only people he’d only ever felt wanted to be around him and well… 😬

well. those are my ideas for them based off of the insane little interactions inside my brain. i don’t necessarily believe this is canon at all i just think it’s fun- more of the “playing with barbie dolls” idea of engaging with them than from an actual analysis standpoint. but yeah sorry for rambling LOL just excited to share my thoughts for them since i sometimes feel kinda embarrassed posting this sort of more self indulgent stuff XD

ANYWAYS ALSO ONE MORE THING you didn’t mention them so i won’t go into it here but. seam 100% thinks it’s the funniest shit ever &  just sits back and watches the chaos unfold whenever they have to deal with these 2 at the same time

[horizon-forbidden-sheesh]

Writing Process: Timelines & Trackers

Okayyy, so I've written about the drafting process in detail. But along the way, logistics problems tend to pop up that can't be solved in words alone.

Mostly, it has to do with knowing exactly where someone is or what someone is doing at the same time as another character I'm writing. For instance, when does Alva get back to the Base? How long is she there before Aloy shows up?

I didn't always take detailed notes on this during my first play-through. And after I abandoned my Scrivener file, (more about this here ⚙️) I decided to refine my timeline.

I already had a great foundation based on my first play-through and my New Game+ speed run. So, I started fresh, with a new game file and good old fashioned pen & paper. I'm still working through this as I write. (Just finished the Scorcher side quest!!)

*This is in a Master-size (A4) Leuchtturm notebook, in which I'm working back-to-front. I prefer purple pen and grid paper always.

Yes. I know. I am a psycho. As I mentioned in the Preamble, gaming timelines are a special interest. 💁🏼‍♀️ Plus, I build client-friendly Gantt charts for design projects IN MY SLEEP. So, taking my timeline from paper into Spreadsheet status felt like a v natural next step.

💡I started with a weekly at-a-glance, mostly because I needed to coordinate when various characters arrived back at Base:

Why yes, I am tracking Zo & Aloy's periods. Because there is no single, magical herb you can take to stop pregnancy. Don't get me wrong, I dig this trope! It's important to discuss family planning, and our genre is ✨fantasy✨ after all. But I can only suspend my disbelief so far, and there are other ways to get around this, which a Matriarchal society would probably be clued in on.

💡 This quickly evolved to a daily at-a-glance once Kotallo made it to the Base:

This spreadsheet helped me IMMENSELY as I was writing chapters 13, 14, 16, 17, & 19! Basically any time Aloy & Kotallo are not in the same location. Knowing what Kotallo is doing at the Base while Aloy is off mid-adventure has been super important to make sure their Focus calls work and feel natural.

Likewise, knowing exactly what day Erend returns, and how long they have before Aloy gets back all helps with continuity and flow.

Other Things I'm Tracking:

💡Datapoints. The whole point of the GAIA Gang is that they're sorting through the data Aloy collected during the events of HZD. And since that was an absolute whirlwind year for Aloy, I'm thinking her files are a fucking shit show—and almost none of the people sorting through them even know how to read. 😵

So, I started by accumulating all the files by location. I am assuming they're probably geo-tagged—if not, they're at least assembled in order of pick-up, which would mean they're ordered by Aloy's general location at time-of-discovery anyway.

*I crossed them out as I moved them to the next spreadsheet tab...

From this hot mess, I figure that Zo, in her infinite wisdom, took one look at Aloy's files and went, "Oh hell no."

💡Here's the way I imagine Zo organized her playlists, much to Varl, Erend, & Kotallo's relief (Meanwhile, Alva re-filtered everything, and discovered entirely new metadata categories, obviously):

The most important detail here was time!! Most of these are like 1 minute long... but 1 minute in the game is like, 20 minutes IRL. So you've gotta figure the GAIA Gang is back at Base binge-watching an entire docu-series, while simultaneously learning how to read (and procrastinating with hours and hours of bodycam battle footage).

No wonder they're always busy when Aloy shows up!

💡 And yes, these are all tabs on a single spreadsheet:

💡 "Population" is literally just a mess of numbers & formulas as I try to figure out how we went from ~20 E-9 Cradle inhabitants to multiple tribes in the span of ~700 years.

I mean in 3041 we're prolly sitting at like... maybe ~15k in the U.S.?

*On second thought, that Oseram number is probably higher.

Anywayyyy, as fun as a blank page is, my brain really does work best on a grid. The process is totally intuitive, and I create the necessary docs as I go, the same as I would for any client or project. Sometimes, you need to explain things in a way so everyone is on the same page, and I find spreadsheets invaluable in that regard. (Y'all should see my wedding planning spreadsheet, lol.)

This whole process has helped me to find what works for me, and writing fanfic is truly preparing me to write my own original works. What I've discovered is that spreadsheets are part of my flowstate. They bring me a deep sense of peace and they help me to stay on track and oriented while I'm in the weeds.

🖤 Really, I want to come back to something I said in my second 'Process' post: Do what feels natural. Everyone is different. If being 'organized' steals your joy, don't do it. Stay messy! Whatever! Who cares? The most important part is that you find your flowstate.

I found this old Hindu saying while I was copywriting for a Chinese Medicine client, and it really stuck with me: "There are a hundred paths up the mountain, so it doesn't matter which path you take. The only one wasting time is the one who runs around and around the mountain telling everyone else that their path is wrong."

I'm just here documenting my own path up my mountain. And part of me thinks that it's all incredibly self-indulgent and cringe, but hey—when has blogging ever not been?

If you've read this far, I'm grateful. It's all a bit shouting-into-the-void out here, especially when you're this deep into a niche that moved on a while ago. But I've always loved a slowburn. (And if you do too, you might consider reading The Marshal.)

xo, Sheesh.

[starified-lizzy]

So much for taking time off the Internet (which I think all of us desperately need to do to some degree, whether or not you care/know about the issue or not)

Anyways, here’s a list of fictional men I still look up to who I demand can do no wrong:

Starting off strong with ATLA characters-

Aang. He is baby boy and is very kind and gentle and I strive to be as kind and gentle as him, not only to others, but to myself.

Sokka. He’s very inventive, and I strive to have that same level of problem-solving and creativity, along with that level headedness he gains as the show progresses.

Zuko. He’s definitely had his moments, but I look up to him because he turned himself around and was able to stand up to the people who have hurt him the most and I LOVE that for him. I wish to be able to do that one day as well.

Now: literally only two people from my FNF au, which are Blue and Navy. Both of them, because they are babygirl and just genuinely sweet and kind and I love them.

Last: my own characters. Is this just an excuse to talk about my children? At this point- yeah

Saline: fuck you and your mother, I’m not getting rid of them. He may be based off of that asshole, but she is my child and I love them (they’re technically categorized under the “men I look up to” because he is AMAB and doesn’t care how one perceives her, hence the use of all pronouns. Besides, they are more of a man in terms of respect than most IRL cis men are in my life.)

Liam: literally the only person who is able to wrangle a literal world-ending demon and his leech, while also being such a kind and gentle man in the process. We love Liam in this household.

Sadly most of my characters are either women- or men who have little to no redeemable qualities.

Now we go onto the topic of: fictional men who are essentially assholes, but I love them because they’re not real.

First up, Pico and Darnell, and I’m talking canon, not au. Au would mostly be the same, but Darnell is a lot more chill, and Pico becomes more babygirl as he grows as a person, so I’m talking mostly about canon.

They’re assholes, but I love em for it. I think the only reason why I love them and their character so much is because I first found out about them through FNF. I am willing to bet that if I had been introduced to them in Pico’s School, I would have vastly different opinions on both of them. I think my immediate selling point for adoring them was when I came up with the idea that Nene, Darnell, and Pico were like a found family type group instead of just batshit-insane school-friends. I adore found family tropes and they fit that bill, so.

Next is Spirit, C, and Soul, and now I’m talking about them from my au.

Now you may be wondering “how is Soul considered and asshole???” And I’ll tell you, my dear reader (how tf did you get this far) in due time if you’d be so kind and follow my blog dedicated for the au.

Anyways, Spirit’s an asshole because he just is. When he was alive, he was highly narcissistic and self-centered, only doing things for others if it benefited him in the end. When he meets Blue and all that resulting shit happens, he calms the fuck down and actually becomes a decent person, but his past self was not pretty.

C doesn’t get that luxury of becoming a better person. He’s just an asshole. However it’s not his fault, he was made like that. He can’t help but do things that can be perceived as “assholish”, but he does try to be kind… as kind as he can be considering he can’t really feel any emotions.

Soul… is very interesting. He… ends up doing questionable things… despite being viewed as a kind and trustworthy person, and like- he has a really bad moment of being a dick, but like- he gets better???? Idk. He’s a goofball, so he immediately gets pardoned from my torment (mostly).

Next we return to my characters.

First is Limbo, my demon cat boy. Heeeeeee is also based off another person, but nobody that has had any issues to my knowledge. He has almost caused the end of the world, almost killed his friends multiple times, and is just generally an ass person. The singular person who can keep him from doing “hot gay man-demon shit” is Liam.

Tenebris Oritur, the giant serpent fuck I haven’t drawn in ages. While They are not human, nor a man, I’m still throwing Them into this category because of the fact They’re stuck with Limbo’s dumb bitchass. Hi, yes, hello, spoilers for my old ass fic I am now never going to finish lmfao (;-;) Oritur is the thing that almost destroyed the world because They’re too bitchy to let shit go.

And that’s it. If you guys potentially have any suggestions for this list, please leave both the character’s name, the section they it under, and why- either in tags, or in the replies. Thank you for listening this far into my TED talk.

[ladoddsy]

i think this post also underplays how many times we worked out what caused scurvy and then just didn't do that now, it is obviously important to note that everytime someone worked out citrus fruits help scurvy they genuinely have no understanding why. so basically the experiments were never actually all that good, and when they were they still did it in a completely ludacris way that made it even more confusing. only focusing on European history because I am not well informed on other parts of the world, and also because the story is about how a group of people kept forgetting we solved this problem by 1500 the Portugese had observed cirtus solved scurvy, but frequently added it alongside 'fresh food and meat' which were also considered a part of the cure. in the mid 1500s French colonists in America learnt from the Iriquois that boiling a certain pine needle solved scurvy, but it was not super scalable and they didn't realise it was vitamin C in the late 1500s the Spanish Navy commented on citrus fruits as if it was a solved problem, but a generation later they had moved to wine with certain herbs. they had literally solved it, and unsolved it. further, they even commented that Dutch sailors were drinking lime juice to solve the problem. in 1600 a British naval captain specifically stopped by Madagascar to get citrus fruits to solve scurvy, and also did an experiment where a quarter of the crew were given lemon juice, and the rest not. only the quarter given lemon juice didn't get scurvy. this experiment killed people. not good.

10 years later another British ship doctor did the same experiment, came to the same conclusion. and basically no one listened to him

100 years later ANOTHER British ship doctor did what many people consider the first controlled experiment on scurvy. he fed people whack shit and basically determined that fresh food and citrus cured scurvy. BUT, he didn't think scurvy had a single cause, and also blamed hard work and eating meat stored in areas damp with saltwater. so even after finding the solution, in a more rigid experiment, he made basically a single line note of this.

BUT, he fucked it up. Again, no one here knew what Vitamin C was, just that citrus seemed to solve it. So, he suggested producing a lemon concentrate by boiling lemons. this destroys the vitamin C. basically underdid his own work by boiling it, and being weird and British about why sailors got sick.

at this point, Britain is now basically a fucking roaming band of warcrime sailors, and like two-thirds are dying from scurvy whenever they do anything. like, the Brits would go to war and come home with like a tenth of the people and most would have died to scurvy.

and while this was going on, ship doctors, naval captains, and sailors were basically all saying "limes cure scurvy" but the doctors in Britain had a model of disease that scurvy was a sort of internal putrification based on the diet and lifestyle of living at sea, and based just constantly dismissed citrus as a solution. and if these doctors would not change their position, the policies wouldn't change and therefore widespread use of citrus fruits wouldn't be adopted

then a new thoery came about that scurvy was a lack of 'fixed air', so the suggestion was to eat something that would ferment in the stomach to fix this. malt and wort was the solution proposed. capn Cook want off to fuck up Australia, and brought this as the solution to scurvy. no sailor on his voyage fell to scurvy. greater evidence for the malt and wort solution, right? no, he brought a bollock load of sauerkraut too which happens to have a good amount of Vitamin C. but as far as the doctors were concerned, malt and wort was now the solution

at the same time, the Spanish were having a similar refusal to acknowledge that citrus solved the problem, but due to the span of their empire and the way many voyages worked, they stopped frequently enough for fresh fruit and food that scurvy was often reduced on many voyages.

by the late 1700s things were getting more frought for British leadership. basically the doctors were losing faith in the fixed air and going back to the putrification, but the sailors actually out at sea were basically just like 'fuck off it is lemons'. at this point is basically existed as an established truth among those actually sailing, and the promotion of naval leadership from within the ranks of sailors (due to the immense scale of the British Navy) meant that people who had served as sailors and seen citrus work were now in charge of ships and crews.

at this point the Brits were also getting ready to go to war with France (again, it is a thing we do) and the top brass of the navy were basically in the mind of 'we need to fucking solve scurvy immediately'. a British crew to India had a admiral that demanded fresh lemon juice (and sugar) to prevent scurvy. the crew arrived in India not only free of scurvy but also pretty healthy.

at this point the news spread like wildfire and the British were mandating lemon consumption among its sailors. alongside quinine, it is one of the plants and discoveries that can be tied to how effective a monster the British empire was.

Brits were called limeys because at a later point, West Indian Limes took over from Spanish Lemons as the source of vitman C, and there was a whole goddamn law that British sailors had to drink a portion of lime juice every single day. but guess what, this makes it stop working

i'm not even joking, lime juice is just not as good at solving the problem. as it was more acidic they thought it was better, but they made a juice, that was exposed to the air, and ran through copper pipes, all of which damaged the Vitamin C content.

we solved scurvy, and then FUCKING UNSOLVED IT

but, people didn't realise that we had fucked it up. basically because of two things, it had some Vitamin C, people still supplemented with fresh food, and we got faster at moving around the world, so the time at sea was reduced meaning less time for scurvy to occur.

And then we went to the arctic. And while the whalers and explorers kept the old lore about how to hold off scurvy, the Royal Navy didn't, and basically people got scurvy again.

when we got to the arctic, we basically unlearnt everything we thought we knew about how to prevent scurvy. the explorers that embedded with the indegenous populations realised that despite no citrus in their diets, they didn't have scurvy. they began to guess it related to the seal meat they ate, but basically had no idea why.

a whole bunch of British Navy people thought scurvy was related to boat hygiene, exercise, and crew morale, and often prevented sailors from eating seal meat.

in the 1920s Hungarian chemists isolated vitamin C, and basically discovered how to create a pill that solved scurvy no matter what, and to an extent ended the widespread prevelance of scurvy.

but it took us a long fucking time to work out what the fuck was going when being away from land made your body start emitting a demon that wanted to hollow you out

scurvy has got to have one of the biggest disease/treatment coolness gaps of all time. like yeah too much time at sea will afflict you with a curse where your body starts unraveling and old wounds come back to haunt you like vengeful ghosts. unless☝️you eat a lemon

[jankwashere]

it is pretty fucked to see people that are normally pretty liberal start talking about instagram reels where people film the bad parts of indian culture exclusively and start deriding all indians based on that. if by any chance a friend finds this blog let the record be shown that i have not been the kindest to indian people either and took some of my frustration from the job hunt out on them b/c outsourcing cs work is a fact of life. but come on.

you really can't be showing shit off instagram reels where a guy is cooking street food and does something nasty like stir shit with his hands and then say that all indian street food is like that. it's like they think people just post exclusively negative things about a culture and make accounts centered around it for the lulz. like they don't consider the greater picture of why someone would make an account like that in the first place.

now again i'm not the best at practicing what i preach and i can be really shitty sometimes. but it does make me sad to see we aren't gonna be the generation that solves racism or whatever because people are too ready to uncritically consume whatever the algorithm shoves in front of them. it's a trend i've noticed in recent times especially, starting with when tiktok was making huge waves during the pandemic. guy wants influence and power over a younger audience -> guy gets his niche fanbase to spam videos of him on tiktok and the like -> guy starts appearing in the nebulous "algorithm" that tiktok uses to identify what you want to watch -> people take notice and his fanbase - and arguably more important, notoriety - explodes, seemingly overnight -> gen z men that are insecure and frankly don't have their shit together see sigma male grindset misogyny shit online -> this in turn influences a lot of men on a subconscious or conscious level that being a shithead is the key to success and look for arenas to bust out what they've learned from their little influencers -> this is literally just andrew tate i'm talking about rn but i've seen similar people blow up in the same fashion. like, even if your chosen talking head isn't a misogynist or whatever people should realize that any given talking head or topic or trend blowing up in the algorithm has likely gamed it to appear there. and there is always a motive. sometimes it's as simple as a talking head wanting fame but other times, like with topics and trends, it's to push a narrative and to make that narrative appear to be so large that it must be the only sensible narrative. iirc russia has been caught doing this on twitter and such. it just sucks to see such a volatile thing like the mind get ambushed under the deluge of disposable media we've created. it's hard to even care about anything online anymore because there's so much of it. so i think people cling to some narrative online and defend it to the death because it's an easy way to be part of something.

[cryptometaphor]

(Discussing le'religion and it's place in politics because armchair communists can't decide on shit)

Admin whose name is also Sarah but imma just call her Arab: Marx said religion is the opiate of the masses.

Me: Y'all always leave out the part where he says the sigh of the oppressed immediately afterwards.

Sarah: Are you saying we should pity religious conservatives like how you pity incels?

Me: Perhaps... But it's more than that. It is the natural state of man to seek God. Sometimes man finds Him, sometimes he doesn't. He'll either cope, seethe, or dilate. As with all things.

Sarah: LOL WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?!

Arab: I'm seething. I'm not gonna feel sorry for people who wanna restrict contraceptives and ignore working class...

Me: That's not why people seek religion. That's people groomed into another ism.

Arab: It's religion. Yes. Ideology and religion are interchangeable, but like...

Me: Lemme ask you. What would you do if YOU were God?

Arab: What do you mean?

Me: Like Bruce Almighty. Morgan Freeman says ok Persian cat lady, you're God. Now what?

Arab: Kinda racist.

Sarah: Good question though. I mean obviously I'd do the necessary stuff first. Reverse climate change.

Me: How?

Sarah: Oh wow, you're actually applying some debate pressure on me instead of buttering me up? lol

Me: No I mean I'd like details of what that would entail. I can butter you up afterwards lol

Sarah: lol ok. I mean like... Well for one, repair the ozone layer. The temperature drops back down, uhh... Reconfigure how carbon dioxide operates so we can run on coal and oil without it hurting the planet.

Me: The planet don't give a shit either way. We do. I mean maybe a lot of animals do too... So basically in a roundabout way. You want justice for the living.

Sarah: I suppose.

Arab: That has fuck all to do with justice. You're just using nice words and pretty thought experiments to deflect from the fact that...

Me: So than what would you do Ham-ass?

Arab: Ok that was SUPER RACIST am I gonna have to kick you?

Me: You could just out debate me. Sarah over here is making the world a better place as God. She just solved climate change, made our most monopolized source of energy go green... Go on. Impress me.

Me: Which btw, under the pretext of communism this makes the job ten times worse.

Sarah: How so?

Me: You've just given the bourgeois of coal and oil to produce indefinitely. Assuming they don't fuck it up somehow, now they'll really control the means of production.

Arab: Actually that is true.

Sarah: WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON LOL

Me Bale voice: I'm on the side of justice...

Sarah: Sure you are lol

Arab: Ok fine, I Thanos snap all the rapists off the planet. How's that? Snap, poof, they turn to dust.

Sarah: Based

Me: Is it?

Arab: OH GOD HERE WE GO SOME MANSPLAINING

Me: Yeah I mean, by what merit of rape? What you consider to be rape I hope. Not like, reddit...

Arab: I mean rape rape. Not creepy behavior LIKE YOU DO I mean actual assault. I'm being literal, I'm helping women everywhere, bad people gone.

Me: Sure sure... The families of those rapists are gonna be sad doh.

Arab: Oh well.

Me: The sudden departure of so many lives without even a rational explanation, they all just disappeared means more people are gonna become religious too.

Axel: Is this a thought experiment or did you just start a dungeons and dragons campaign and being a dick DM?

Arab: No, he's right. But see... That's why religion especially Christianity sucks. You see a miracle happen before your eyes, so like... Stop making child brides and assaulting women.

Me: Well you're gonna have to make things more abundantly clear for people than. If you just snap your fingers and they disappear, that sounds like a Rapture. Gonna be 4chan rape-cults in your name.

Sarah: Also based.

Arab: Shut up Sarah lol. But ok fine, they scream in agony as they disappear. I make it perfectly clear you do this thing, bad shit gonna happen to you.

Me: And you don't think people will still misinterpret it? Like we know clearly how you defined rape. But reddit does not. More redditors, yaaaay. Now their dumbass hot takes are laws and shit.

Arab: Oh well

Sarah: You suck as a god lol

Arab: YOU SUCK lol

Axel: This is why women can't have power

Both of them: Fuck you Axel

Arab: What would you do smart guy?

Me: I...

Arab: If it involves Sarah I will kick you right now lol

Me: Darn you, ok let me think for a moment lol

Arab: FUCKING HELL

Sarah: Based. Arab: Stop saying based. Sarah: Make me

(gets kicked)

Me: Ok that's where I'd start.

Arab: What? Me: Well add her back first.

Arab: She can rejoin, I was just being a bitch lol

Me: Something so innoculous as when someone goes to kick someone from a call or a mod goes to ban someone, a sharp and noticable pain pierces through their head. Enough to notice it's in this particular action.

Arab: That sounds incredibly vague and useless

Axel: So pretty much everything Jim says anyway

Arab: Basically

Me: Y'all think too small. This subtle nudge changes how we interact. Doesn't mean no one would ever moderate, but deep down they'd know it's wrong, it comes with consequences, undoubtedly people would do it anyway. As they do any awful thing.

Axel: Isn't that life now?

Me: It is... And that's why people seek God. Seek to know God, be God. Not huff the opiate of the masses praising God for miracles that cannot be confirmed or denied like Sarah's actions, not a sigh of the oppressed like Arab Sara's where we establish lore, trying to justify to ourselves God's existence. Undoubtedly if Arab Sara's Thanos snap thing was permanent, over centuries what is God's will would just become scientific fact and they'd use efforts and coping to justify how science makes it possible. Nietzsche even said science would replace religion.

Arab: So instead you just choose not to care. Typical liberal

Me: We're all acting in accordance to selfish desires all the time. Deep down nobody can know how we truly feel but ourselves. The pain and joy alike is a mystery, does God regret? Does God celebrate? Can we measure perfection at all in such imperfect conditions? Or can we only determine what's better for our sake?

Sarah: So solipsism.

Arab: Narcissism.

Me: People are inherently irrational agents and do awful and dumb things. The competing interests of our will, our instinct, and our greater good. Three as one trying to operate here and now.

Axel: Yeah, you could interpret Freud's ego, Id, and super-ego as the trinity

Sarah: So is that why Buddhism says to experience ego death? To essentially resurrect it as a new self?

Me: See, now you're getting into Kabalah and Neville Goddard.

Arab: I could've gone my whole life without you ever mentioning that name again lol

Me: Only when the three selves agree can we ever experience goodness.

Sarah: As a rational agent, I do wonder what the implications of some rash decision like ending global warming would ensare

Me: Hence the conflict. The man is conflicted with the spirit.

Axel: Wouldn't the Id be your man as the flesh and impulses of your genetics?

Me: I'll give you that. Id can be man, but the mind is soul. It's how we know ourselves and navigate, but the spirit, the reason we do anything, is above words for the soul or comprehension of the body. Albeit most often your instincts are correct. Your body's top priority is to keep you alive. Whether or not it can guide you to happiness and fulfilment is up for debate. Even if it could, we are not that in-tune.

Arab: Ok but what does any of this have to do with religion making people into magatards?

Me: Everything. Religion isn't getting in touch with God. Rarely do I see someone open up a Bible and say "how does this benefit me"? Typically when that happens, someone is backed into a corner from a life or death experience.

Sarah: That is true.

Arab: Well all this yapping does not justify Christians acting the way they do and imposing their will on others.

Me: You're still not getting it... YOU'RE the Christian.

Arab: Nunh-unh lol

Sarah: Jim literally doing the homer meme in a robe smoking a cigar "everyone is stupid except me..."

Me: Yeth. I mean, you're not stupid either.

Sarah: BULLSHIT I can hear it now. You're thinking in your head "she's a total retard, but she's cute, HEHEHEHEHE I'M DOING MY MR. KRABS VOICE she has no idea I think she's retarded SPONGEBOB AXEL ME BOY you're retarded too..."

(everyone laughs, that actually reels in donations)