#or at least a major contributor to the problem
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slotheyes · 9 months ago
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There is no worse feeling than being really angry about something and then realizing that you're actually the one in the wrong
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soulfulazrael · 1 month ago
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Stella being Beatrice of Helluva Boss is pure idiocy at this point in the show.
Hello there. I am posting something. That's a new. Reminded myself "Oh yeah this site exists" and decided to post some shait about HB. Why not?
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Drawn by wholetthemonst1
There was something I came across some time ago in Helluva Boss community and that is the idea that Viv wants to make Stella into a character reminiscent of Beatrice Horseman from Bojack Horseman. And as someone who loves Bojack and respects Bojack and I can probably say now HB is my Becker (wink, wink, nudge nudge WATCH BOJACK IF YOU HAVEN'T) I have to say my piece about it.
But first let's start with Beatrice Horseman herself (careful, there will be spoilers for the 4th and 5th season of Bojack Horseman if you are still going through it). So... Beatrice Horseman. Who was she? What was her deal? Well she was a horse born in 193- okay, okay I am not doing that whole bit. Sorry. Let's get into it. Beatrice Horseman. She is probably one of the most despicable and yet complex characters in the whole of Bojack Horseman. A show known for complex characters and stories. It's a show that many people would say is unfair to compare to Helluva Boss, but given that apparently Viv wants to compare one of her characters to the ones from that then it's free game, wild west baby so let's get on with it already.
Again. Beatrice. Despicable, abusive, terrible, terrible person that is contributor to the kind of man Bojack is in the show. There is no beating around the bush that she was a horrid person that one could say at first glance is not too disimilar to the Stella we know and boy isn't that just the perfect test for who watched that show and who didn't. Because I did and I can say for certain if they were doing that from the start, it's already a complete failure for two reasons.
First off. The photo from The Circus. If there is something Beatrice wasn't, it was being terrible from the start. She was not, everyone who watched the show will tell you with 100% certainty that she never begun as this terrible person. She went through a lot, doesn't excuse the abuse she put her own child through, but we know for certain she did not start like that and this is a big problem with the photo shown in the Circus.
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Because nothing speaks sweet and nice than a complete psycho strangling puppies. Yeah I am not going to sugar coat. This photo single handedly made me about 90% done with Helluva Boss. I could see everything that was going to happen the moment I saw and so far I was not too far off. And this is a major failure on HB's part. Making Stella a psychopath who strangles puppies from early childhood. And I get that it's supposed to be funny, but Bojack itself never sacrificed narrative coherency for some dumb unfunny comedy. Especially did not sacrifice depth of the character that Beatrice was.
And one may say "Well the first times we saw Beatrice she was a despicable one note villain as well" and to that I say... no. First time we see her is where she is clearly dissatisfied with her marriage with Butterstoch who seems to be even more terrible than she is at that point and nothing points towards her being some terrible Satan like figure. We do see pieces of abuse she put Bojack through, but she never enters the realm of being so horrid that it becomes too cartoony. Aside from some obvious things like the argument of hers with Butterstoch (I still have I'M EXITATING live rent free in my head). But those moments never made Beatrice into someone who is just evil for the sake of being so. At least there was always this lingering feeling that she is the way she is not just because this is simply how she is. There were already reasons for it given to us in the very first season.
And you know what. They actually started it okay. In first season we saw Stella being more passively dismissive if not just uncaring about Octavia's crying, but it was not something that got across her being some terrible monster, just someone very tired and someone who probably is not there of their own volition. Makes her still terrible, but you can work up from there, but HB never did. I say what they gave her in Season 1 while cartoony in many ways like her screaming so much and hiring hitman did not kill the potential for her to be complex as much as that photo of hers did in Season 2 which again, I think already sank any potential for her to be complex.
But some other people will say "Well we do not know the context of that photo". What context? You want to add context to a girl strangling and beating puppies? Really? Because let me tell you no matter what you do, it will NEVER work. Adding any sort of context to make this kind of photo feel like it makes sense for any sort of complex character will result in laughable at best results that will make it feel like this show doesn't know what the hell it's doing.
Because you do not make this kind of photo for a character you want to be perceived as complex. It just doesn't work.
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And there is a second issue beyond that photo. Her motivations, big part of which we saw in Western Energy. Because as far as we see she only wants to bring torment to Stolas, she keeps saying that, she keeps being shown to be too dumb to think of any other reason or how that can screw her over and that also destroys any semblance of chance that this character could be complex. Because Beatrice while terrible had a very good reason for why she was like this. Having your lobotomized mother at such young age telling you to not love anyone will definitely screw you in the head and even then what we see in the show despite such morbid origins is nowhere near as stupidly 1 dimensional as Stella was for 2 seasons already and in Season 2 of Bojack we already saw her being more complex too. Something this show only destroyed further with Stella. Kind of going in the opposite direction of starting in more complex manner and gradually destroying those illusions of depth Stella could have had.
And honestly I do not know if I have to add anything beyond those two reasons. No matter how you look at it Stella doesn't feel remotely as a character designed to be complex. And just so you all know before you start typing essays comparable in length to this horse shait. No, complex doesn't mean redeemable, doesn't mean a character is good or worthy of redemption. It means they can feel like actual PEOPLE! Not some caricatures. Because so far Stella is just that, a caricature. A hate sink. And NO, it is NOT challenging at all to make a character like that and her being so easy to hate is not sign of good writing, it is LAZY.
And this makes me really feel like Stella was NOT planned to be this complex Beatrice like character and in fact I feel like what is going on now is a response of Viv (one of many) to the criticism (at least she listens to them this time I guess... progress?). Basically I think she saw people dunk on Stella's character for being pretty much equivalent of a wall with some mean things sprayed on it, she now starts to go in completely different direction without any semblance of idea of how to make this work. Purely reactionary action.
And to me that reflects another issue I see when compared to Bojack. Here is the clip from it that I think describes this issue I have. This one being from Free Churro. My favorite Bojack episode.
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This I think is what ticks me off about the writing of HB as a whole. They think big gestures in writing like giving this one character a le sad backstory will make them sympathetic and complex and oh so well written. That this one act of non douchebaggery makes that POS already well on the path of being better despite them doing the same garbage all over again. That one moment of complexity that you repeat over and over again is enough to make the show complex. That this small piece of text or scene makes a relationship great or make sense. No. Writing doesn't work like that. Stories don't work like that. You need to be consistent, you cannot just throw one scene and immediately expect that people will eat up that this character or this story is more than it is. You need to put in the effort for more than one minute or one episode. You need to try your damn hardest to make your story complex if you want it to be so. It is not something you get participation trophy for. It is something you need to commit to. Or hire a better writer. That helps as well.
Okay. That got a bit derailed. Sorry for that. It was pretty long rant and yet somehow I feel like it wasn't long enough. Stella Goetia. Who is she? What is her deal? She is a victim of terrible writing that made her into a hate sink when she had so much more potential and now that this ship is well on it's way to Davy Jones's locker only NOW this crew of misfits and not very good writers try to salvage what I will say is already unsalvageable. Stella is not Beatrice, she will never be Beatrice. She could have been. She really could have been, but the direction they went with in Season 2 was equivalent of dropping a bomb on a baby and trying to see if it's alive... The best you will find is ashes. But I guess they will be of some reminder of what could have been.
Honestly I don't know why I wrote so much for it. I don't even want to watch this show anymore. I watch shorts, but... they are short. I write my own version of this universe as well, but it's something I do now because like Bojack once said in this clip
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And I feel the same thing. This show had all the right pieces right there, but it can never put them together and it bums me out to see and leaves me only with passion for what it could have been. It really depresses me. Because I want to love this show and I already spent around 5 years watching it and pouring my heart into work about it, but now... Now I feel empty. And it feels bad.
I don't like Helluva Boss and everything is worse now.
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strawberryblondebutch · 30 days ago
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before the season starts, do you have predictions based on the current rosters/draftees? who do you think will be standout players? who might have the best season? etc etc
Making me flex my creds after a couple bourbons, I see you!
The Good: Boston is the team to beat this year. They didn't lose any of their stars this year (to retirement or free agency), they got my No. 1 pick of the draft in Hannah Bilka, and Frankel/Soderberg still make the best one-two goalie tandem in the league. The only question mark on the roster is if the new-look D corps can take some of the pressure off the goalie.
Montreal didn't tweak much of their roster, nor did they have to. ARD is aging out of her prime, but you've got a window there with her, MPP, and Stacey that you need to maximize. Hope that you can get a draft seed that doesn't rematch you against Boston and maximize what you can get from your role players. O'Neill was sneaky good last year and is only 26.
The Bad: Toronto is going to regress. You can bookmark this and come back to clown on me if they get the top seed again, but I don't see the pieces lining up for a second year in a row. Campbell isn't a strong enough goalie to stand on her head every game, and they were carried by an offense that will take a hit as Spooner works her way back from major surgery. I don't expect her to hit the wall as hard as, say, Tyler Seguin did after his season from hell a couple years ago, but you never want to be in a spot where your sparkplug is a step behind. (At the time of this post, Toronto also only has five goalies under contract, which... remember what I just said about Soupy standing on her head? Yeah.)
Ottawa has one big regression candidate as well, and that's Maschmeyer. Masch not only has the most mileage on her body from last season (not her fault, Abstreiter was working through injury) but she has a newborn at home, and I anticipate the Cole Hamels problem coming into play. Hamels, for those who didn't follow the Phillies in the late aughts, had a newborn at home right before the 2009 playoffs and suddenly forgot how to pitch, because he was sleeping maybe two hours a night. I think the Charge knew Masch was primed to take a step back, and that's why they swung for Gwyneth Philips in the draft. Philips was lights out in college - not sure how she'll adjust to senior-level play.
The Ugly: Let's talk about the elephant in the room that is Minnesota. A title hangover is real, and it's made worse by the behind-the-scenes drama. When I say that I expect Britta Curl to be a liability for the Frost, I'm not just talking about her Twitter personality. I had the misfortune of watching her on the Badgers for five years, and she may have decent counting stats, but I noticed a selfish, whiny player, which carried over her to her national team play. On D, you're expecting Clare Thompson to be a major contributor after an extended break from competitive play. The one good thing you can say about Minnesota is that Heise is finally healthy. You can't tell me that AC injury wasn't bugging her the back half of last season. I do think Taylor needs to add one step to her game, and it's physicality. A lot of that was being snakebitten by injury, but she has the frame of a power forward, and she needs to be throwing her weight around like Knight does.
And, last but unfortunately least... New York. For what it's worth, they will get a Fillier deal done now that they've indicated they're open to a shorter contract. I really like the Schroeder/Levy tandem. The coaching change will do them well. Now that I've given them their flowers, I need to be mean for a second. The Sirens do not have a player who can quarterback their offense. I love Alex Carpenter deeply, but she thrives as a second choice. She buries the greasy goals that snipers and true playmakers leave out for her. Abby Roque is the same way. That was my worry about taking Fillier 1OA - Princeton fucked her up. They took a dynamic, play-driving forward and made her a passive floater. Now she's on a team of people who hang around the zone, waiting for something to happen.
Players to Watch: I'm excited to see what Izzy Daniel can do with competent players around her. Her counting stats in her Patty Kaz year weren't great, but that'll happen when you're dragging along a husk of a team. Minnesota must have seen something in Hymlarova that I didn't. I've watched a lot of St. Cloud State hockey, and they're. Well. Not terribly great. Brooke McQuigge was sneaky good for Clarkson, perennial thorn in the rest of the NCAA's side. Elle Hartje has a good hockey IQ and 200-foot vision (though she doesn't solve New York's dynamo problem). Anna Wilgren adapted very well to Mark Johnson's system last year, which shows an adaptability that will come in handy in the pros.
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thydungeongal · 5 months ago
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Part of me wants to ask "are these D&D players that don't learn the rules of the game they play in the room with us now?", but then people come out of the woodwork in the notes of these posts to peoudly proclaim that they are, in fact, the exact type of person I had assumed was a strawman or at least mild exaggeration.
To be fair I didn't used to think they were real either until I made a post many moons ago about how learning the rules of the game shouldn't be seen as a chore or something that only nasty power gamers do (the latter sentiment has always been around but I feel it has become amplified since the release of 5e!) because actually knowing the rules well enough to make informed systemic choices can actually enhance the gaming experience!
And that post was met with a surprising amount of resistance and then I became aware that, no, some D&D 5e players expecting to be able to play the game without knowing the rules and having the GM carry the entirety of the game for them is an actual phenomenon and apparently a not insignificant contributor to GM burnout!
I genuinely don't believe it's a majority of 5e players but like there are clearly enough of these players that it's a recognized issue, which I think is sad. But you know it's not my problem since I'm getting off of the 5e boat and only exist at the periphery of the 5e space as a hater and polemicist.
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brf-rumortrackinganon · 4 months ago
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The only way Vancouver 2025 could reverse things for them is if they stayed out of the spotlight and exclusively forced coverage on the athletes. But that’s never going to happen - They began their PR campaign by saying they might bring the kids to Whistler right after they left Canada, making it a family affair rather than an event that highlights the veterans. I suspect this is also to pull in more big sponsors or get more money as the major contributors have left and wasn't there a rumor that 2000 vets walked out of IG as well? And IG also was asking for public donations. What a mess!
Exactly. Instead of getting out of the way, Harry and Meghan are just going to draw more attention to them by bringing the invisikids along.
Yeah, it’s a PR tactic and a marketing gamble, but it’s still all about them and what they can do for these poor military veterans who have no purpose in life now that they aren’t serving anymore. It’s toxic energy that more and more people are recognizing.
The rumor about 2,000 vets walking away from IG is a little bit of misnomer. It wasn’t a sudden walkout, like all of a sudden these 2,000 people just walked away en masse. It’s more like attrition over the course of time from 2018; 2,000 veterans had at least one interaction with Invictus Games - maybe they were athletes/competitors, maybe they were subscribers on some kind of newsletter or mailing list, maybe they donated - but are no longer connected to the charity (they don’t compete anymore, they unsubscribed, they don’t donate, etc.)
Some of them were probably polled about it, a few said it was because of The Harry and Meghan Show, and that’s how it turned into “all these people left because of Harry” but there’s no way they polled all 2,000 people to find out precisely why they haven’t had any return engagement.
The other issue with the 2,000-vet-walkout is that IG doesn’t have that many participants year to year. On average, they have 500 athletes at each games, so they don’t even have 2,000 veterans to stage a mass walkout with. So there’s a little bit of fudging of the details to make it more provocative and dangerous to Invictus Games’s image. Because they do have an image problem: it’s the Harry and Meghan Show. And for people as self-absorbed as the Sussexes are “2,000 people walked out on our last event because of you” is more powerful than “2,000 people stopped engaging with the charity in the last 6 years, which works out to about 330 people every year, because of you.”
Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a huge problem. They’re losing ~330 contacts a year that they can’t replace - that’s incredibly dire straits for a small charity who can barely keep the lights on year to year to be in business.
What they’re trying to do with the rumor/fudging is trying to get IG’s attention to do something about their image problem. But they took the chicken’s way out by getting rid of the CEO, rather than the actual culprit.
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blubberquark · 2 months ago
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Worse than Trolls: Engagement Optimisers, Tourists, Socialisers, and Enablers
As I previously explained, most online content moderation falls under I-know-it-when-I-see-it. There is very little else to say. People know spam when they see it, and I don't need to define what spam is. Spammers know they are spamming, and are unable and thankfully unwilling to argue your moderation decisions.
On the other end of the spectrum, there are ever so slightly corrosive behaviours than can destabilise an online community in the long term, often without the perpetrators knowing it, or at least without bad faith, without ill intent.
Engagement Optimisers
Users naturally optimise engagement by responding to feedback. When posting memes and cat pictures is rewarded, users post more cat pictures. When posting memes is rewarded, users post more memes.
If your users start to do this on purpose, you might have a problem. For example, somebody might notice that clickbait titles lead to more click-through in forum threads. The people who give their threads vague and mysterious titles get more replies. The people who add a call to action to their OP get more replies: Please share your opinions in the comments below. The people who ask broad, open-ended and opinion-based questions are more likely to get more replies: What programming language should I learn?
If somebody says something contentious or inflammatory by accident, that's fine. You morally can't fault them for sincerely held beliefs or misconceptions, or for soliciting a broader base of opinion. Only when done on purpose, and systematically, it becomes dangerous.
You may end up with a situation where power users learn to play the game and play it better and better, at least better than most users. This can give the people who learned to game the system outsized influence, even when there is no algorithm or karma or no way to spend the karma, because they gain more mindshare and notoriety.
You may also experience a systemic change, because many or most users catch on, and start modifying their behaviour and post different content in order to get noticed.
Still there is the possibility that your users, through group dynamics nobody is consciously exploiting, reward and promote mostly cat pictures and stupid puns, even though no individual user comes to your forum for stupid puns and cat pictures.
Early on in the history of Reddit, this was recognised as a major problem. You could farm upvotes by posting something like "DAE eat chocolate ice cream?", "Upvote if you're going to vote for Ron Paul", or "Linux sucks! There are no good text editors!"
Reddit tried to curb this, somewhat unsuccessfully at first, then more successfully, but in the long run, they lost the battle against their own user base and entropy itself.
Compare this with YouTube, where a call to action is not just allowed, but encouraged by YouTube itself. It's regularly part of the latest set of official tips for creators to grow their audiences. YouTubers thus say "What are your opinions on this topic? Let me know in the comments below!" or "Please like and subscribe".
Tourists
Tourists come in to make drive-by comments in flame war threads. Tourists google a question, find your forum, post a single question, and leave forever when they get the right answer. Tourists come in from Reddit. Tourists don't play the game. Tourists don't read the forum. Tourists don't read the FAQ.
You can't really punish people for coming to your site or channel and making their first comment. I mean, you can, but then they will definitely not come back.
Churn is bad. Tourists are churn personified. If most content comes from tourists, then your community culture is defined by tourists. You lose the ability to shape the culture of your site. It's easy to deter tourists, but it's hard to do so without also deterring people who would otherwise have become proper contributors or community members.
If somebody joins your web site, doesn't read the rules, doesn't read the FAQ, creates more work for the moderators, and is a minor annoyance to the established users without ever rising to the level of a serious rule violation, it's easy for that person to say "We all have to start somewhere" or "You'll never attract new people if you keep enforcing the rules like that."
If you have rules about cross-posting or proper spelling and punctuation, you have to be firm. You cannot retreat every time somebody who hasn't read the rules asks "Why are you so mean to me?"
On the other hand, I remember multiple times when I hopped in an IRC to ask a question like "Is this a known bug? Should I wait for the next release?" or "Does anybody want to collaborate on a game jam next month? Is anybody considering joining Ludum Dare?" only to be told "We don't accept bug reports in here. Bug reports need to be entered into bugzilla in the proper format." or "Please post job postings in the jobs channel only!"
Socialisers
Socialisers talk about off-topic stuff only. They hang out in the off-topic board or channel, and they tell everybody about their youngest child, their morning commute, or the story of how they met their spouse. Socialisers rarely engage with the actual main topic of the community, but everybody knows them, because they post a lot of off-topic content.
As long as socialisers know that the forum is about, and know their stuff, it's fine. The guy whose youngest son just got into middle school and who met his wife when they both reached for the last bottle of herbal shampoo at the supermarket isn't really disrupting your anime forum as long as he watches anime. If he could comment about the different animation studios that worked on Sailor Moon, but chooses not to, he's fine. The problem with socialisers only becomes noticeable when they attract socialisers who do not know or care anything about the on-topic content. If that happens, your forum is no longer a forum where some Haskell programmers post their lunch, it's a forum to post pictures of your lunch.
Enablers
Enablers are one step worse than socialisers. They don't just don't contribute on-topic content, they make the discussion actively worse. If you have a rule such as "do no post a maths homework question" or "do not answer personal questions" or "do not ask other people to answer your question in a DM", the enabler will happily comply anyway. "It's no skin off my back" he says, as he answers the homework question. "It's no skin off my back" he says, as he paraphrases the FAQ again. The enabler will make a good-faith effort to answer bad-faith questions, and he will enable people who just can't be bothered to read the FAQ and follow the rules.
Now there may be multiple reasons why you're not allowed to answer personal questions, ranging from OPSEC about pet names and the colour of your car to professionalism, and depending on those, this may be a big deal or not. When it comes to homework or answering in a DM, the reasoning should be straightforward.
The worst kind of enabling is probably taking abuse in stride, and continuing the conversation. If somebody starts insulting the other people in the conversation, the least you could do is disengage. If somebody calls people names because they can't solve his problem, you should not enable him and try to help him, too.
The most subtle kind of enabling behaviour is a response to Cunningham-style trolling. When somebody posts "Linux sucks, there are no good text editors", then the last thing you should do is reward this kind of behaviour. When somebody posts "I can't solve this in Python, I guess C++ is just a better language. I think I should go back and use C++", then you should say "Good riddance, and may the gods have mercy on the C++ forum."
The most common kind of enabling is when people ask a question and can't be bothered to Google it first, and somebody copies the question into Google it and pastes the answer. The long-term consequence of such behaviour is not only a degraded quality of the conversation, but a forum culture where people regularly Google answers (or worse, ask ChatGPT) and paste the result without checking.
Maybe in the future, something like "I asked ChatGPT this, is this true" or "Copilot wrote this code, can you help debug it" will become more common, and humouring these kinds of people will become the most common toxic enabling behaviour.
Drama Magnets/Troll Feeders
Finally, there is a kind of person who enables trolls and harassers by being thin-skinned, very easy to make fun of, and by boosting every insult. There is a certain kind of person who will just endlessly complain about being wronged in small ways, and will take offence to small perceived slights. This allows a malicious actor to get out much more in terms of reactions than he puts in. If a troll can poke somebody once, and get dozens of "Ow ow" and "he poked me" and "woe is me, I have been poked" out of a target, that will only motivate him.
If somebody freely volunteers his weak spots, things he is self-conscious about, ways to rile him up in the form of a profile, carrd, or bio, then trolls will have it even easier.
So What?
Over time, too many enablers, tourists, or drama magnets may or may not ruin your online community. Over time, engagement optimisers can slowly but steadily ruin your community. Socialisers may not notice or care either way.
A code of conduct may protect your community against bad actors, but it can't protect your forum culture from clueless actors. It's incredibly hard to create a good set of punitive rules against this. As a moderator, it's emotionally difficult to enforce rules against this. You don't want to kick people while they are down, and you don't want to punish them for making popular content, even if it's just pictures of kittens and pictures of their lunch.
The only way you can achieve anything is by educating your users, and hoping they give a damn about forum culture.
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bycmykae · 2 months ago
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🐕 Puppy Love; a canine exclusive genshin impact zine
Content Restrictions and Requirements Rating: SFW, PG Shipping: No Canon Compliant: No Characters: Wriothesley, Razor, Cyno, and Gorou only.
Schedule:
Interest Check: November 23 - December 14
Contributor Sign Ups: December 16 - January 9, 9PM CT
Last day to Join Server :January 13 9:00PM CT
Check in 1: February 9
Check In 2: March 9
Finals Due: April 9, 9:00PM CT
What is a zine?
New to zines? Check out https://zinebaby.carrd.co for some general information. For this project, a zine is a digital PDF that consist of art and fics.
What is the theme?
Your work must include at least one of the following characters: Wriothesley, Razor, Cyno, and Gorou. You can draw them as they are canonically, put them in an AU, or draw them as doggos.
Characters that are in theme that can be featured in your piece alongside Wriothesley, Razor, Cyno, and Gorou without problem:
Andrius
Razor's wolf spirit
In game dogs like: Kageroumaru and Taroumaru
Generic dogs and wolves
Other Character Inclusion Restrictions:
In writing: other characters can be mentioned in passing, but should not be main or secondary character. In art: Only Wriothesley, Razor, Cyno, and Gorou are allowed to be depicted as humans. Other characters can be depicted as a dog (like. a doggo dog. just adding dog ears do not count). Example 1: Razor with a Pomeranian that's representing klee. Example 1: Razor with a scruffy dog with an orange bandana. Why is this a specification? We will not be curating pitches. So this is an easy way for us to ensure that any of our main characters (Wriothesley, Razor, Cyno, and Gorou) are not overshadowed by an associating secondary character related to our canine characters. Example: If Wriothesley twice as popular then Gorou—and a majority wants to include Neuvillette as a secondary character. This would lead to Gorou being overshadowed by Neuvillete
Who can participate?
Anyone who applies during the application period. No previous experience. No portfolio necessary. Unless you want to be the cover artist.
What types of mediums are allowed?
Anything that can be put into a PDF, which means no music or animation. (Although contributors are encouraged to turn their pieces into animations if they choose to outside of this project).
Contributor Expectations:
English speaking: mandatory.
Discord attendance: mandatory.
Check-ins: optional.
Let a mod know you need to drop: required.
Final deadline: non-negotiable. (No extensions)
Portfolio Requirements
Only cover artists need a portfolio. For our cover we're looking for an artist with a color palette that complements our graphic colors and is willing to draw ALL FOUR boys. Experience drawing Genshin Impact characters (and dogs?) not required but preferred.
Additional Questions?
Feel free to reach out through tumblr ask or email ([email protected])
Bycmykae's extensive FAQ: bycmykae.tumblr.com/about
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true-blue-megamind · 2 years ago
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I have a question. I don't know if this has been asked this before. Why does Roxanne fall for Megamind? I'm crazy happy they end up together but I still wonder why? Most people were scared of him until he saved the day. He kidnapped Roxanne all the time. She was super pissed at him for a while there. He's also not human. How does the whole attraction thing even work when you aren't the same species? Because, yeah, Megs is cool af, but an ET with blue skin and a big head probably wasn't the star of many Metro City girl's wet dreams. Maybe after he started the hero gig since people are just like that but not before. But Roxanne kind of flirted with him before he turned good or anything. So I guess she had to see something in him other people didn't. What do you think it was?
MEGAMIND FAN THEORY THURSDAY: Roxanne’s Attraction
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Yes, I’m back again with another Megamind Fan Theory Thursday! Special thanks to this week’s anonymous contributor! I appreciate you, whoever you may be! I also want to express my sincere gratitude to all those who read, like, and reblog these posts… Knowing that you share the love for this fandom is the reason why I continue dedicating time, whenever possible, to researching and writing about these theories. This blog wouldn’t exist without you. Thank you!
If, however, you are that one individual who has inexplicably insisted upon reading two years' worth of articles about a film you still haven’t watched… I continue to have faith you’ll one day see the light. Or at least the movie. Hope springs eternal.
In the meantime: SPOILER WARNING!
We’re all human—at least, I assume most people reading this probably are—and that means we’re imperfect. One of the sadly common flaws of our species is a tendency to be rather judgmental, sometimes without just cause, and we certainly see that occurring in the film Megamind. After all, the alien genius was left to be raised in a high-security jail among presumably dangerous inmates simply due to his appearance and was pressured into supervillainy in part because he was different. Given that fact, along with the fear and ostracization many apparently showed him, there is reason to wonder exactly what first attracted Roxanne Ritchi to the blue man. After all, as today’s contributor pointed out, most humans, if asked to describe their perfect match, might not immediately default to “an alien with a large head and a complexion of a popular primary color, as a random nonspecific example.” Yet Roxanne is most certainly attracted to Megamind. Of course, many fan suggest that she must find him handsome—it’s doubtful she’d be in a romantic relationship with him by the end of the film if she thought him ugly—but they also contend that, given her disinterest in Metroman, the attraction must be more than physical. The question is: what qualities made her fall for him rather than an ordinary human or the supposedly perfect former Defender? Can fan theories shed any light? Let’s take a look!
Not Your Average Damsel
Some may be tempted to suggest that this is merely a typical case of the damsel falling for her rescuer. After all, that’s one of the common superhero tropes, isn’t it? Even Megamind himself, while talking to Titan after training, said that saving a lady was the way to her heart. The problem with this is that, in that particular instance, the blue man was completely and undeniably wrong. His love interest’s attraction had little or nothing to do with him whisking her out of Titan’s murderous clutches.
There are three reasons why fan theories rightfully dispute the concept of Megamind and Roxanne sharing a stereotypical hero/damsel romance. Firstly, the movie itself is well known for subverting superhero genre norms, and indeed that seems to have been one of the major themes of the narrative. Given how much effort was put into turning such conventions on their heads, sometimes even lampooning them, it’s extremely doubtful that the film’s creators would have suddenly adopted such stereotypes in this one case.
Secondly, there is Roxanne herself. This character is spunky, independent, and not easily cowed. During Megamind and Titan’s second fight, we see her holding a broken street sign, preparing to join in the fray. That’s a far cry from the expected behavior of a supposedly helpless damsel. Furthermore, despite being rescued by Metroman multiple times—hundreds, in fact, according to the prequel comic The Reign of Megamind—she states outright that they “were never a couple.” That alone clearly dismisses the idea of Roxanne swooning for the blue man simply because he rescues her. If she were the sort to do that, she would have fallen for Metroman as well—especially considering that most of the people around her apparently believed him to be Mr. Perfect.
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The third and final reason is one we’ve touched on before. It bears repeating, however, as it truly puts the proverbial nail in the coffin of the Typical Damsel argument. As our contributor mentioned, Roxanne canonically was attracted to Megamind while he was still a supervillain. During the kidnapping scene, when the blue man draws close and practically purrs a vaguely suggestive line—“such… tricks won’t work on me”—in the reporter’s ear, rather than showing reluctance she asks him to “please talk slower.” Megamind, of course, responds by calling her “Temptress.” Tellingly, while she doesn’t acknowledge it, Roxanne also doesn’t object to the epithet. Fan theories suggest that this obviously indicates there was already attraction on both sides, although its extremely doubtful either would have ever acted upon it. (As a well-known television reporter, Roxanne may have been too well aware of the potential destruction of her career, and Megamind, despite having her at his mercy numerous times, was obviously too goodhearted to make a move without invitation. You can read more about the latter in Megamind and Masculinity.)
Smart is Hot
This, then, leaves us with the question of exactly what did attract Roxanne to Megamind. Does she simply have a thing for blue aliens, or is it something more than that? One fan theory suggests that the answer lies in a line that was cut from the final version of the screenplay. Initially, after telling Megamind, who was then disguised as Bernard, that Metroman had never been her type, she added that she’d always preferred brains over brawn. That is interesting because intelligence is certainly something the former supervillain has in abundance. In a previous Fan Theory Thursday post, Why Kidnap Roxanne, we explored the likelihood of Megamind’s clearly ingenious species being naturally attracted to intellect. The thing is that he may not have been the only one. Merriam-Webster defines the term sapiosexual as someone who experiences “sexual or romantic attraction to highly intelligent people.” As you can guess from the mere fact that this word exists, it is fully possible for some humans to possess this inborn predisposition. Many fans believe that Roxanne Ritchi is, indeed, a sapiosexual, and this may be one reason why she would fall head-over-heels for a super-genius, alien or otherwise. In fact, as discussed in How Smart is Megamind, the blue man may quite literally be the smartest person on Earth, making him extremely alluring to someone already attracted by brilliance.
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Indeed, according to fan theories, several things about Roxanne’s character support this idea. She was originally imagined as an investigative reporter, so she’s obviously not stupid. She appears to dislike Hal not based upon his appearance but rather due to his lack of intelligence and his constant harassment. Perhaps the most telling evidence, however, comes from comparing her reactions to Megamind and his former nemesis. As mentioned before, Metroman is supposed to be most people’s idea of masculine perfection. Simply look at the way his fans, especially the female ones, behave during the opening of his museum. Add to this the fact that he is largely based on Superman and Elvis Presley—both of whom were, at one time, considered extremely handsome—and we can safely assume that Metroman is supposed to be some sort of Adonis. He’s also wealthy, famous, and powerful; three qualities that many people might consider great advantages in a potential boyfriend. Nonetheless, Roxanne Ritchi shows no interest at all in him.
Conversely, while dating Megamind in his guise as “Bernard,” the woman’s attention—and perhaps her heart—seem to be captured by his conversation, intellect, wit, and humor. She initially begins spending time with him because she believes him to possess expert knowledge concerning Megamind as well as enough intelligence to help her decipher the supervillain’s plan. She clearly enjoys having long conversations with him, laughing at his humorous stories, and reading books together in a library. Granted, the last was done for research purposes in the film, but the Bad Blue Brilliant comics show Megamind and Roxanne planning a date at a library after the blue man has become a hero. Obviously a shared love of books was something Roxanne liked about him. It appears that such traits attracted the reporter while riches and model-perfect looks couldn’t.
Of course, Roxanne rejects the former villain after she learns who he really is, but one Megamind fan theory suggests that that was almost certainly not because of him, but rather because of his actions. It makes sense. She is hurt and infuriated that he lied to her, and she makes her objections to some of his past behaviors known in no uncertain terms. However, when considering the charges she lays at his proverbial doorstep, it’s clear that what she cannot abide is his criminal behavior. She accuses him of murder, taking control of the city, and tricking her. Furthermore, she seems convinced that his only purpose in disguising himself was to toy with her emotions for his own sadistic amusement.
As the film progresses, however, she realizes that he did not actually kill Metroman and that he was sincere about their relationship. That, in turn, removes many of her objections and creates room for her love to grow once more. Indeed, when Megamind, obviously upset, mentions their breakup while they are driving to Metroman’s hideout, Roxanne briefly displays a sorrowful expression before apparently hardening her resolve and slamming on the breaks. (This was likely because she still thought the former villain guilty of murder.) Furthermore, during this unused clip cut from the final film, while taunting his captive, Titan refers to Megamind as Roxanne’s boyfriend, and she doesn’t correct him. Moments later, when he tells the woman to summon her hero, she doesn’t hesitate to issue a heartfelt plea to Megamind. When she sees the blue man make his grand entrance, the look on Roxanne’s face says clearly that she knew he would come. When she believes Megamind to be wounded, Roxanne weeps, and when he, at last, takes up the position of Defender, she kisses his cheek. It seems the woman has grown to trust and love the former Master of All Villainy.
It’s What’s Inside That Counts
Megamind’s intelligence is likely not the only reason Roxanne finds herself falling for him. Many fan theories suggest that his personality was also a driving factor. As mentioned before, he is funny and likable during their dates. When they ride bikes together, he’s clearly having fun, and that makes him fun to be around. While dining out, just before the kiss and the holowatch’s malfunction, he obviously charms her. Even before that, however, the blue man seems to display some very positive traits. His mourning his nemesis, laughing with Minion, and playing with the brainbots all evince a kind heart hidden beneath the black leather and spikes. That same trait continues to appear throughout the film. Later in the narrative, during Titan's attack, Megamind displays a concern for the people of Metro City despite those same people having ostracized him all his life. He is manifestly not as evil as he tries to appear. In fact, his treatment of his damsel offers further proof of this. While he has Roxanne tied up in his Lair as bait for Metroman, it becomes obvious that Megamind’s so-called doom devices have been carefully calibrated not to actually harm the woman, and she seems to know it as she shows no fear. She even seems to enjoy her situation sometimes. When Megamind makes a veiled Star Wars reference, Roxanne smirks as if she’s trying not to laugh.
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Thus it appears extremely likely that, from the start of the movie, the reporter already knew Megamind was too good a person to actually hurt her and it seems she appreciated his geeky humor. This is hardly surprising. According to the prequel comic, The Reign of Megamind, he has had more than 600 failed plots and Roxanne has been his compulsory guest of honor for many of them. Consider how much time for interaction that must have afforded them before the cameras started rolling. Even if Roxanne was only awake for an average of half an hour before each actual battle began, that would still mean that she spent roughly 300 hours alone in Megamind and Minion’s company. To put it in perspective, that’s twelve-and-a-half days! It seems nearly impossible that Roxanne could spend the equivalent of nearly two weeks in Megamind’s company without some of his charm, kindness, and humor showing through. This is quite possibly another reason for her evident attraction.
That’s not all. As mentioned in the post What Sort of Hero Will Megamind Be, the blue man lists several qualities necessary for a Defender while discussing the topic in the Metroman Museum. Although he doesn’t seem to recognize it at the time, he actually displays all of them with the exception of his former adversary's DNA. Strength? The fact that Megamind breaks a saw on Titan’s face while punching him indicates that the former villain is far more physically powerful than he looks, and his ability to remain calm and think under extreme pressure suggests that he has serious willpower. Determination? Megamind talks about learning from his many defeats, and the simple fact that he continued to get up and try again after losing more than 600 times shows that he certainly doesn’t give up easily. Courage? The alien genius goes to Roxanne for help in finding Titan’s weakness rather than fleeing despite Titan’s attempt to kill him. Afterward he puts his life on the line to save Roxanne from the new villain—and that’s after facing a superpowered foe for years. Whatever else he may be, no one can argue that Megamind isn’t brave.
Finally, there’s also Megamind’s industriousness. Imagine how many inventions he must have constructed over the years… There would doubtlessly be hundreds! Everyone one of them had to be not only built but also designed and tested. How many hours of plans, calculations, schematics, calibrations, and labor go into each one? It's unclear, but what is certain is that, despite clearly knowing how to have fun, the blue man just as obviously understands the value of hard work. It’s doubtful that laziness is a vice he has ever suffered from.
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So, why is Roxanne Ritchi attracted to Megamind? While we may never know how physically desirable she finds him—although fans speculate that, based on their relationship, she must find him handsome—the blue man possesses plenty of other beguiling virtues. Alien or not, Roxanne obviously finds his intelligence and personality too alluring to ignore, and as soon as he embraced goodness rather than behaving in destructive ways she could not condone, she gave him her heart. If you consider it, that really isn’t shocking at all. If any one of us were courted by a person who was smart, funny, courageous, kind, charming, hardworking, fun-loving, and strong, would we remain unaffected? Or would we, like the movie’s heroine, tumble head-over-heels into love? In the end, it’s little wonder that Roxanne fell for the new Defender of Metro City. It would have been more surprising if she hadn’t.
That concludes this week’s Fan Theory Thursday! I hope you enjoyed it!
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vintagegeekculture · 2 years ago
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RIP John Jakes, Pulp and Fantasy Author
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A man who’s career began in pulp scifi, then was one of the greatest group of fantasy fans turned authors, and who finally ended it as one of the most commercially successful “men’s adventure” paperback novels of the 1970s, John Jakes died at 90 last week. What a life! He started his career in scifi pulp of the 1950s, switching to sword and sorcery action in the 60s, and finally, ending the 70s as one of the top selling authors of the decade. In one guy’s life, you can see the ebb and flow of trends in men’s adventure fiction over the decades.
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Let’s start the John Jakes story at the end, and then work our way back. Does this book series above look familiar to you at all? 
If you have grandparents and they live in America, I 100% guarantee the Kent Family Chronicles (also called the Bicentennial Series) are in your Mee Maw and Pep Pep’s house right now. You probably handled them while visiting their house and went through their bookshelves as a child, right next to their Reader’s Digest condensed books, Tai-Pan and Shogun by James Clavell, copies of the endless sequels to Lonesome Dove, and old TV Guides they still have for some reason next to the backgammon set. If your grandparents are no longer with us, you probably found this series when selling their possessions after death. That’s because these things sold in the millions, back when the surest way to make money in writing was to write melodramatic, intergenerational family sagas of grandiose sweep set around historical events. Weighty family sagas, ones critics call bloated and self important instead of “epic,” were a major part of 70s fiction as they were four quadrant hits: men liked them for war, action, and history (every guy at some point must choose between being a civil war guy, or World War II guy) and ladies loved them for their romance and melodramatic love triangles (after all, the Ur-example of this kind of book is Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind). This was the kind of thing turned into TV event miniseries, and ably lampooned in the hilarious “Spoils of Babylon” series with Kristen Wiig and Toby McGwire, which, decades after the fact, did to this genre what Airplane! did for the formerly prolific airport disaster movie: it torpedoed it forever by making it impossible to take seriously.
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This genre eventually went away because men stopped being reliable book buyers and book readers in the 1990s (or at least, were no longer marketed to as an audience), Lonesome Dove’s insane popularity was the last gasp of this audience. I’ve said this before, but men and boys no longer reading is the single most under remarked on social problem we have. “YA books” now basically mean “Girl Books.” 
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John Jakes did not suddenly come out of nowhere to write smash hit bestsellers set around a family during the American Revolution. He came from one of the weirdest places imaginable: a crony of L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter in fantasy and weird tales fanzines like Amra, he was one of the original “Gang of Eight,” people drawn from fantasy and horror fandom to become pro-writers now that fantasy fiction had a home at Ballantine Publishing, just before the rise of Lord of the Rings and the paperback pulp boom, which is an incredible case of being in the right place at the right time. There, John Jakes, a fanzine contributor and ERB fan, wrote “Brak the Barbarian,” which is amazing as L. Sprague de Camp and Ballantine hadn’t even reprinted the Conan stories yet and Conan was as well known as Jirel of Joiry or Jules de Grandin. Only superfans of pulp knew who that guy was at all, there was no audience for it. He wrote Brak the Barbarian as a superfan, and was lucky the paperback market found him. 
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The tireless work John Jakes, Lin Carter, L. Sprague de Camp, and the Gang of Eight did in preserving fantasy novelists of the pulp age into the 50s-60s is one of the great historic feats of preservation and keeping fandom flames alive. It’s no exaggeration to say that you know who Conan the Barbarian and HP Lovecraft are right now because of them, fans who kept the flame alive tirelessly and thanklessly in the ultra-rational 50s that had no place for dark horrific fantasy. 
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Like his friend in fantasy and pulp fandom, L. Sprague de Camp, John Jakes started as a scifi guy in the endless scifi pulp magazines of the 1950s. Unlike his friend de Camp or Hugh B. Cave, who were full of humor, characterization, and satire, Jakes was often pessimistic, dour, and downbeat, and he disliked to laugh.  
It’s shocking to lose someone with a connection to, in one lifetime, the first great group of fantasy fandom, 50s scifi pulp, and 70s men’s adventure. John Jakes’ life spanned all of them. 
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kineticpenguin · 2 years ago
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I've seen some hemming and hawing when it comes to people like Andrew Tate and how they attract an audience, and a lot of people seem to be really comfortable coming to the conclusion that "yeah man there's millions of 12 year olds who are born shitty."
And well, maybe. But I don't think that's likely. See, back when I was a kid, before everyone had the internet, the big worry everyone had was about "using the TV as a babysitter." (I was young enough to miss out on most of the "latchkey kid" years). Kids missing out on being guided in their media consumption by their parents was seen as a contributor to all manner of social ills, especially violent crime. Y'know, these kids come home to an empty house and Mom and Dad are still out working, so they turn on the TV and watch Death Wish 48 and the next thing you know they're throwing pipe bombs at each other.
So there was a time when we at least acknowledged, albeit with much exaggeration, that impressionable kids watching video unsupervised was not really great.
We all know that the major websites all use algorithms designed to "drive engagement," which turns out to mostly mean pissing everyone off by showing them far-right and other whackadoodle bullshit. It's normal for toddlers to play with tablets and for grade schoolers to have smartphones now.
I don't think the problem is the kids are born wrong. I think the problem is that we've decided that the best way to get them to shut up and color is let them watch the Joe Goebbels Podcast and then act shocked when they do a mass shooting
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dolphin1812 · 2 years ago
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The nice thing about reading a chapter a day for Les Mis Letters has been that the impact of each chapter doesn’t get lost in the amount of words in the book, and I think this chapter has been one of the most notable instances of that. I’ve read this book before, but given the intense sadness of the last few chapters, I think I’ve always skimmed this one to try to get back to “the main plot” with Valjean.
But honestly, this chapter is actually good?
I love that it starts with, “A man overboard!” It’s so dramatic - I was automatically engaged by that line (for a moment, I forgot that it was metaphorical and was wondering when Valjean got on a boat). And the metaphor itself is so effective. I find the fact that the ship is in a “hurricane” especially interesting - it conveys how the sailors don’t ignore the “fallen” man out of malice, but out of their own need to survive. If they stop attending to the ship to help this one man, who knows what will happen to them? Similarly, other people around Valjean may not have wished him ill, but how could they have gone out of their way to help him and his family when they were consumed by their own immediate needs? How could they hear Valjean’s pleas for help over the cries of their own poverty, the cries of the storm? And of course, there are the “passengers,” who aren’t working on the ship (and could, therefore, help him) but are still oblivious to his plight.
Hugo is, of course, a strong proponent of compassion. But compassion isn’t possible when the problem isn’t known, and it’s much harder to notice that one specific person is struggling so intensely when everyone else is suffering as well. And by the time someone does discover that something is wrong (that the crew member is missing, that Valjean has been imprisoned), what can be done? 
I also like how Hugo stresses that there is “no support” in the ocean. The problem with falling overboard isn’t just that it’s exhausting to swim and that it’s scary to be isolated in the unknown, but that there’s no respite. The drowning sailor can no more take a break to regain his strength to swim than Valjean can take a moment to recuperate from his years in prison. Alone in the ocean, they swim until they inevitably no longer can.
While the chapter itself is sad, the ending is somewhat funny. Hugo really couldn’t risk someone missing his metaphor, so he had to dramatically add:
“Oh, implacable march of human societies! Oh, losses of men and of souls on the way! Ocean into which falls all that the law lets slip! Disastrous absence of help! Oh, moral death!
The sea is the inexorable social night into which the penal laws fling their condemned. The sea is the immensity of wretchedness.“
Just in case anyone missed the connection. And he had to explain it twice, because if “ocean into which falls all that the law lets slip” wasn’t enough, the second part must be. I just think it’s hilarious that the second paragraph is so matter-of-fact, too. The first one at least keeps with the dramatic tone of the rest of the chapter and really only includes a few key words to help the reader make the connection, but the second one blatantly states his idea. The digressions are definitely the main reason for the book’s length, but Hugo analyzing his own writing is a major contributor as well.
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badaxefamily · 6 months ago
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I have a very rare disease, hooray! Under a cut in case I ramble, not for content warning. I won't be talking about anything explicit.
It's official: I have hypophosphatasia, which is a genetic mutation that causes a deficiency of alkaline phosphatase (ALP) which is used for building bones and metabolizing vitamin B6 into energy, among other things.
Ever since I started getting my lab results mailed to me as an adult, I've had low ALP. But most doctors either only know about the more severe infantile form of HPP, or they don't know about it at all. So it's understandable that they always wrote something like "Low ALP isn't a concern", because most doctors only look for high ALP (which indicates liver problems). I'm accustomed to doing research into medical things, but even I didn't have reason to suspect HPP because most of the information (at least in the past) focused on the severe form.
I didn't look hard enough. Childhood-onset HPP is a thing and it isn't fatal, just painful and annoying. And that's what I have. The signs were there as a kid: disliking standing, finding it easier to walk than stand, difficulty with stairs, "growing pains", less energy and muscle strength than my peers. But none severe enough to catch the attention of teachers or pediatricians. In the US you can only get treatment if symptoms presented before 18 (adult-onset is also a thing but the FDA doesn't care about those people*), so when I was gathering data for the endocrinologist I thought back to my childhood for anything out of the ordinary. One memory that stood out to the doctor and my case managers was the time my classmate broke his leg in fourth grade. He had crutches, and - as our rural school somehow managed to be fairly progressive and inclusive in 1993 - he chose to allow the rest of us to try them, so we could have empathy for him. When I tried them, I remember feeling relief. I though this was cool, there was less weight on my legs but I could still move! It did not occur to me that that isn't a normal thing for a ten-year-old to think. I think it was the pharmacy case manager that went "OH" at this memory.
So HPP is at least a major contributor to my ongoing struggles with chronic fatigue and weakness. It may not be the only one, but it needs to be treated even if only to protect my bones as I get older. ALP is needed to metabolize vitamin B6 as well as make bones though, and Strensiq (a lab-created form of ALP) is known to break down B6. It's so good at it in fact that you can't really get a B6 blood test to be accurate if you're on Strensiq, because the drug will keep eating the B6 in the vial! So we're hopeful that Strensiq will make me feel better, even though it's really made with people with soft bones in mind. The fact that I haven't broken a bone going up the stairs like many people do may make it difficult to get Medicare to approve the prescription. Thankfully, not only am I perfectly willing to fight about it, I have a team to fight alongside me. HPP is so rare that the manufacturer and pharmacy for Strensiq have enough resources to assign each patient case managers to assist with everything from insurance to learning about the drug and how to take it (it's a subcutaneous injection), and also there's Soft Bones, the largest patient advocacy group for HPP in the US. I've already touched base with them and they're standing ready to assist if needed.
Also Alexion sent me this frickin adorable kids' book with the information packet:
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*Forgot the note I was going to add about this. The reason the FDA doesn't authorize Strensiq for adult-onset is probably because studies didn't show as dramatic an improvement for adults compared to kids. But I think that's stupid. For one thing the disease is rare so studies are always small and there aren't very many of them. For another, of course the improvement in kids is more dramatic, their disease is more severe. Japan is the only country that allows Strensiq for adult-onset, as far as I'm aware.
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spearxwind · 1 year ago
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been thinking a lot about my different oc worlds recently. ive said before ive got four, but technically it's five if you count extinction.
im gonna put all my thoughts under a readmore bc once again this got insanely long jkllkjjkf. i be rambling
most of my attention has definitely been going into challenger deep the past year (and will likely continue), recently i refurbished hollowridge as well and have had a lot of fun with it (even if i havent drawn much to show for it...)
the other two of the set of four i originally posted about are my agony drive and broken horizon settings. Broken horizon is more of a personal headworld where ive set my dragon ocs, but I have not really been successful with it in terms of like. worldbuilding and crafting a story for it, mostly because there are very few characters in it currently and i struggle with it. But it's the world where cercerion and my sona dima (as an oc) exist. i would love to actually do a better job with it sometime but it currently isnt a huge priority because ive been focused on the other two main ones (but again since its just a personal headworld it literally is just some place i like to mentally hang out and fly around in, im not super bothered by it being undeveloped.)
However we have the two troublemaker worlds now
the agony drive setting has been driving me more than a little nuts because of its whole situation with it. i absolutely adore the characters i have in it, but i have no idea what to do with the world itself. it used to be a joint project so i was extremely limited in the way i could develop it bc i depended on the other individual enjoying the ideas and i did my best to keep it afloat almost being the sole contributor to it, so now that its liberated i just didnt know what to do with it. i do like a bunch of the lore bits i came up with but some part of me is like 'idk if i enjoy this as a world' bc it still feels limited in some way? Another issue is that while hollowridge (previously my horror and slapstick gore setting with demons/angels/magic vibes) was dead in the water, i channeled that violence slapstick demon/magic vibe through TAD, but getting a focus back on hollowridge has kinda just. straight up deleted a bunch of TAD's reason to exist? i dont know if that makes sense
HR isnt really that much slapstick violence because death is final, and TAD is more cartoony in that sense bc death ISNT final which is its main reason to exist (unlimited violent major character death for the funnies), but theres a weird overlap that is keeping me from focusing correctly because it makes my brain go 'you are doing the same thing twice'
I would really really love to actually turn it into something fun and unique (separate from my other worlds) but i really havent been sure how to go about it because of that overlap. i genuinely think its just a problem of 'you have to actually develop the setting to have fun in it' and i just havent been able to do that yet bc i cant decide what i want it to BE. TAD has also never really had a lot of story to begin with so it makes things harder bc the story is the vehicle to explore the world with. its pretty frustrating bc midas set and david are some of my fav ocs ive made and i miss them but god dammit if it isnt hard to actually work with the whole thing....
and last but not least... the fifth one. extinction. a lot of you probably know this one from my comic. if youve been here since like... 2014-2015 (which would be insane) you might remember me beginning to develop that story until it eventually became the comic that is currently sitting unfinished and feels like a huge weight on my shoulders just out of sheer shame
the issue with extinction is that it was a lot of characters that i deeply loved (and still i still deeply love!!) all with fun plotlines, backstories, and a lot of fun tidbits to em that i ended up bending and breaking dozens of times just for the purpose of fitting them into a relatively short story that i could draw out and finish. and more importantly into something i hoped would be handleable instead of spiralling out of control like it had happened before
but what i didnt realize is that by doing so, i "locked" their lore in place into these very small boxes that would fit into a story, and thus i would remove what i had loved about those characters and their interactions that i had come up with years and years ago and a lot of my very very cool ideas for them simply went out the window in favor of .... well i dont. know. but off it went
i live in complete shame for not being able to finish the comic. it genuinely is a huge and extremely heavy weight on my shoulders and this whole thing has prevented me from even thinking of said ocs for years now even though they are some of my oldest and most beloved. saying all of this is not something i take lightly in the least as well
so recently I have been thinking about bringing them back as well... maybe (to the extent that i can... i have a lot of ocs and you guys know i have a lot of bias when drawing faves. so i cant guarantee content but at least i would be able to think about them again).
essentially the same way that i rewrote and got back my old concepts for hollowridge that slapped hard i want to get back my original ideas for extinction that i thought were really cool and just wasnt able to fit into a comic narrative
obviously this would come with a lot of retconning and i know a lot of people will probably not like it if i do it and i think thats something i have to face and learn to live with
but yeah anyways. TLDR is i really want to actually do something proper for TAD but have been having a lot of trouble with it unfortunately, but im working on it. and ive also been feeling rly nostalgic about extinction so you might see the characters again, albeit different in terms of story from what you probably know
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rjzimmerman · 2 months ago
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One of the World’s Biggest Health Risks Is a Philanthropic Blind Spot. (New York Times)
Excerpt from this New York Times Op-Ed:
The Air Quality Life Index at the University of Chicago, which measures the impact of air pollution on life expectancy, shows that people living in the most polluted places on Earth breathe air that has six times as much pollution as the air breathed by people in the least polluted places — and those in the most polluted places are seeing their lives cut short by more than two years because of it. An estimated 8.1 million people globally died in 2021 from the health impacts of breathing dirty air, according to a 2024 report by Health Effects Institute and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
Private philanthropy could do much to turn the corner on this problem in some of the most polluted parts of the planet. But just an average $41.3 million in known philanthropic funds are devoted to air pollution each year, according to a recent report by the Clean Air Fund, a philanthropic group based in London. That is less than 1 percent of the more than $5 billion spent annually by one major funder, the Global Fund, to combat malaria, H.I.V./AIDS and tuberculosis.
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This is especially disconcerting because particulate matter in air pollution has become the world’s largest contributor to the global disease burden — a metric quantifying premature death and sickness — and one of the greatest threats to life expectancy, outstripping the impacts of malaria, H.I.V./AIDS and transportation injuries combined. Polluted air does not just cut off a few years at the end of a long life. It is the second highest risk of death for children 5 and under.
Europe, the United States and Canada are barely affected by the health impacts of air pollution when compared with the rest of the world. But they receive roughly 60 percent of the philanthropic funds devoted to combating it. Africa is home to five of the top 10 most polluted countries. From 2015 through 2022, the entire continent received an average of $238,000 per year in philanthropic grants aimed at reducing air pollution.
Data — or, more precisely, a lack of data — is the most immediate problem. The paucity of data makes it difficult to stir public opinion, develop policy or measure progress. It also makes it hard to attract funding. But when air quality data is available, pollution declines. And when air quality improves, decades of research make clear that people live longer, healthier lives. Yet, 39 percent of the world’s countries aren’t producing air quality data for their citizens. Those countries are also some of the most polluted.
A recent study showed that when American embassies installed air pollution monitors at some of their locations and began sharing the real-time air quality data publicly, pollution declined and led to decreases in premature mortality, suggesting that local governments and perhaps residents took steps to reduce pollution once they learned of it.
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catflowerqueen · 1 year ago
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Well it looks like the threat of Eclipse is finally dealt with, so long as he didn’t stash more backups somewhere. I feel bad that Solar Flare had to die as well, but, in a way, he did get what he wanted in the end. I also really like that Moon protected Nice Eclipse as well, and stopped him from attempting to be self-sacrificial. There has been too much of that going around on the show lately! Hopefully Sun survived using the star power and also that Moon comes back to fulfill his end of the deal with Nice Eclipse to try and help him fix his Sun and Moon. …After he takes a bit of a break first. They all need it, and no one has really gotten a chance to rest or properly mourn everything that went down after the magic explosion, and I’m sure that is a major contributor to why things have been so tense lately. Of course, that might have to take a bit of a back seat depending on how Lunar takes the update on what went down while they gone, especially the fact that, while Moon does consider them family and already cares for them a great deal, he doesn’t actually personally remember them at all.
Speaking of Lunar, I kind of both hope for and dread the possibility of them meeting Ruin, for a multitude of reasons. But based on some of the stuff we saw on the Monty and Foxy channel today, it seems like Ruin’s situation might be one more easily resolved? Or at least resolved in a way that gives them a slightly happier ending. Because it seems like at least part of them doesn’t want to be doing the things they are doing. And Foxy, at least, is aware of it. Though it is unclear how many bad feelings he would hold toward them in the aftermath. He’s honestly pretty chill over all, and I was laughing today both at Ruin’s antics (especially when they kept jumping off the ship) and how Foxy was just rolling with everything. I do hope they can fix him up again, though. And also that he gets along with Lunar.
Also that whatever Eclipse seemed so panicked about regarding Lunar doesn’t end up happening. And, like, there are some possibilities for Lunar coming back possibly leading to trouble—though inadvertently on Lunar’s part, I’m sure, and possibly just with their presence being some sort of catalyst for someone to start paying more attention. First and foremost is the fact that Lunar probably still has their magic, and so might cause some sort of chaos if they start experimenting with that unsupervised. Another possibility is that the Creator does something, since he seems to pay them both more and less attention that the others. Like. Lunar was able to scare him off that one time (unless he was just pretending), and does seem to be an unexpected variable for his group… and we do know that Eclipse was at least not lying about there being monitors for the star power, since that is definitely something that the Creator has been keeping an eye on. So it wouldn’t surprise me if he decided to make a move if Lunar does indeed become more involved with the Daycare attendants again.
Oh, and another thing they all need to consider is the fact that a lot of peoples’ memories of the Daycare Attendants are still mixed up, and that might become a problem if any of the ones still under the star’s influence realize that Moon killed him. I really hope they address that soon. Especially since most of them also don’t know Lunar even existed in the first place or that Moon lost his memories. Which kind of does provide some angst potential, especially with the short list that Moon gave Eclipse for who he could consider his allies, but I’m pretty sure that the nature of the show means it isn’t going to be addressed too deeply, if at all.
Though that invitation for Nice Eclipse to come visit does open some interesting possibilities in that he actually does act and have the personality that the usual Eclipse tried to make everyone think he had.
Anyway. The next arcs should prove exciting. I’m looking forward to them.
…And still hoping that Sun and Moon, and possibly Earth, play one of the Kindergarten games, or at least Pineapple on Pizza.
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samiesramen · 2 years ago
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Random thought just had:
Piers has a ton of unchecked trauma: like super unchecked.
Like he’s conically been with the BSAA for years, I think since he was 19. He’s lost a lot of friends, probably family too, over the years. Not to mention the physical trauma. I feel like there has been very little thought to it from everyone he knows.
I feel like the only people who would know or care, even just a little bit, would be Helena, Sherry, and Jake. In terms of his superiors, Jill, Leon and Sheba would be a concerned.
Nonetheless, he’s gotten so used to being the lieutenant, an amazing BSAA soldier, the person everyone probably went to, that he’s just gotten used being someone who people fall to and rang to he’s just ignored it. I don’t ever really remember Piers every really talking about what he felt or seeing that man catch a break.
I honestly like to think that that reason was one of the biggest contributors to him staying in the underwater base in RE6. (SPOILERS but he did not deserve to die, Chris and Piers had already been though a lot c’mon man. >:[ )
Like, there is no way Piers wasn’t absolutely tired, and done with everything.Constantly trying to keep Chris focused while stuck in country literally being destroyed with a virus they have no cure too, all with the weight of the world. Not to mention he’s was probably STILL dealing with trauma from the events tags happened before the 6 month time skip. Man’s was definitely going though it.
I know this is pretty random and long for a character I feel like isn’t very popular in the Resident Evil series, but I like Piers a lot, he’s a pretty interesting dude when you get tk learn more about him. Especially since his first time in the series was before re6. If Piers never took that virus, the world probably would have ended or at least the problem in re6 would’ve taken much longer to solve.
Also, Piers was kinda carrying Chris’s campaign??? Why isn’t anybody talking about that???? Like even if the other two campaigns went well, the would’ve been fucked a little bit if Piers didn’t take the virus, right??
Leon, Jake, and Piers had the final blows to their final bosses. For two new characters to do something like that is awesome.
Again, I know this is super random and you can clearly see how much I like this character. But I never do this. Also it’s my autism and I can chose whoever I get to hyper-fixate on, loser >:]
Point being:
Piers Nivans deserved a hug and free therapy (along with majority of RE characters of course :] )
He’s underrated and deadass is one of the reasons the world is saved in his game
He’s underrated
Puppy :3
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