#share examples if you want!

[bleue-flora]

Ok, I recently wrote an essay [here] talking about the definition and duties of civil engineering as well as the ethics because of the brain rot @swordfright gave me with calling Dream Sam’s ultimate engineering project. So, because I actually am a civil engineer I took it upon myself to design the title and summary of quantities sheets just like I do at work for roads but with Dream as the project instead. And in honor of angst day sponsored by @sixteenth-day-event, I figured I’d share it because I feel like it kinda works for the prison of the mind prompt.

“Sam’s “ultimate engineering project” he deemed too damaged like a bumpy road or crumbling building that wasn’t worthy of patching and filling in the cracks or reinforcing, that’s too eroded to be fixed and preserved. So, Sam strived to tear him down to the bedrock so he could remake, remold, and reengineer Dream according to his design for the common safety, public health and well-fair.”

{These are very similar to the actual sheets I make day to day, which I shall not share for the sake of doxing my location, but yea pretty much everything has a significance. Some of it doesn’t necessarily make sense but that was because I was more so taking inventory of what we see in lore (so you know I counted ;) lol)}

[ssruis]

I appreciate that mizu5 portrayed outing as a horrific & violating thing even if you’re accepted by the people you were outed to. I feel like a lot of times the approach taken is “well this character wasn’t going to come out anyways so they’re going to be better off now that someone knows” or “everyone accepted them so it was totally ok and fine in the end” or even “it’s actually a relief to this character because now they don’t need to come out” - where being outed is portrayed as something beneficial in the long run. You’re being robbed of the chance to choose when and where and if this deeply personal information gets shared and who it gets shared with, and that’s awful and damaging in itself regardless of the outcome.

[aardvaark]

parker teaching a little kid how to pick locks in the wedding job & hardison explaining how to overload a security system to a little kid in the hot potato job. couple of all time. they are truly made for each other <3

[thepoisonroom]

'I flirted with the idea that instead of being trans that I was just a cross-dresser (a quirk, I thought, that could be quietly folded into an otherwise average life) and that my dysphoria was sexual in nature, and sexual only. And if my feelings were only sexual, then, I wondered, perhaps I wasn’t actually trans.

I had read about a book called The Man Who Would Be Queen, by a Northwestern University professor who believed that transwomen who were attracted to women were really confused fetishists, they wanted to be women to satisfy an autogynephilia. And though I first read about this book in the context of its debunkment and disparagement, I thought about the electricity of slipping on those tights, zipping up those boots, and a stream of guilt followed. Maybe this professor was right, and maybe I was only a fetishist. Not trans, just a misguided boy.

About a year later, on the Internet, I come across a transwoman who added a unique message to the crowd refuting this professor. Oh, I wish I remember who this woman was, and I wish even more that I could do better than paraphrase her, but I remember her saying something like this: “Well, of course I feel sexy putting on women’s clothing and having a woman’s body. If you feel comfortable in your body for the first time, won’t that probably mean it’ll be the first time you feel comfortable, too, with delighting in your body as a sexual thing?”'

-Casey Plett, Consciousness

[theminecraftbee]

you know sometimes one of the things the fandom does that i like the least is joke about how certain ccs are "lorephobic" because it basically always ignores the lore they actually are really and visibly doing. like, sure, they may not be doing the lore YOU'RE looking at, but, one, lore doesn't just mean "big overarching server storyline" it can also mean solo stuff. it can also mean 'builds that have story built into them'. it can also mean 'fun little storyline between like two guys'. it can also mean character continuity. it can mean many things. two, "this guy doesn't do lore" is NOT the same thing as "this guy doesn't do the specific lore i personally like and want to see them doing" and i don't always think you guys know the difference. all of this, of course, is to say: hey guys did you know zedaph can canonically time travel,

[uter-us]

radfem help !!

2 of my little cousins (14yrs and 15yrs) are both girls dating boys right now, and together we are coming up with a "dealbreaker list" of things they will never put up with from their bfs! and also we are including positives, like so they aren't just looking for the absence of bad things, but actual positive things

what do yall think are the most important things to add? (i put extra info in tags)

Thank you so much!!!

[cryptidorchid]

I’ve seen a lot of people call out Scott’s lack of care for Jimmy’s life in Third Life. (Usually, this is part of their explanation for why they think flower husbands is toxic) And I think these points are interesting but kind of miss that the lack of care is reciprocated by Jimmy.

In Scott’s case, the moments I see pointed out the most are the two times Scott treated Jimmy dying like it was a spectator sport. Like when Jimmy got attacked by the enderman or Jimmy played the Tango’s lava minigame and Scott was like “I’m just here to see if Jimmy dies” and when he told Grian that “once our husbands die, we can be free.” 

I will play devil’s advocate for a moment here and say that in all of these moments, regardless of what Scott was saying about it, he took action to try to keep Jimmy alive. In the first two instances mentioned, he gave Jimmy advice to help him survive and in the last one with Grian, he suggested Jimmy should stay in the bunker so he could be safer. But I will admit that Scott acts very apathetic about Jimmy dying.

In Jimmy’s case, he’s less verbally apathetic but his actions seem strange for someone who should want Scott to stay alive. Like that time where Grian and Scar let their enderman free to attack Scott and Jimmy scolded Scott for killing the enderman because it upset Grian and Scar. And even when Scott was being attacked, Jimmy’s response was just yelling that he wasn’t the one who looked at the enderman and then watching as Scott gets attacked. And there was that time when they found the enchanting table outside of Renchanting and Jimmy (correctly) guessed that it might be a trap so he told Scott to mine it.  For the second one, Jimmy says it’s because he’s just died so he doesn’t want to die again which would be fair, except neither of them have any motivation to mine the enchanting table in the first place, so the reasonable response would be “it might be a trap so neither of us should mine it”

Which made it really weird when the Dogwarts confrontation happened and suddenly, they’re all protective over each other. Suddenly, they’re like “Jimmy, don’t go near the scary red name!” and “Scott, what if they sacrifice you on their altar?” 

What? Where did this come from? At least in Scott’s case, I can guess it was because Jimmy’s now a red name so if Jimmy dies, it’s permanent. I don’t know what was up with Jimmy in that moment.

And, as far as them continuing to be protective after that? On Scott’s end, he was pretty consistent and explicit about wanting to keep Jimmy safe after that (except for him being weirdly happy about the idea of being a widow, don’t know what was up with that). 

On Jimmy’s end, after this, as far as I can tell, he went back to using Scott’s green life as an excuse to ask Scott to take risks. He finds a cake unexpectedly in his house, thinks it might be a trap, and asks Scott to eat it and tell him if anything bad happens. When they're in a fight with Dogwarts, Jimmy tells Scott that he should "get in there" because he’s a green name. Honestly, I don’t think these are that bad because Jimmy was on red and Scott was on green, but it is a big difference from him burning the Dogwarts banner over just the possibility that they might try to kill Scott (and it implies that Jimmy sees Scott's life as disposable which while pragmatic, is not very kind). Anyway, my main point is that I can’t remember Jimmy ever really being worried about Scott’s life outside of the one moment with Dogwarts.

In conclusion, neither of them seemed to be super concerned about the other one dying (Scott said it. Jimmy acted like it) until Jimmy went to red. Which I think mostly had to do with the fact that they both knew the other had more lives to spare. They really lived their lives like “me and my husband who couldn't care less if I live or die.” My dysfunctional faves.

[skibasyndrome]

.

[xx-j4nu5-c4t5-xx]

WARNING: INCREDIBLY LONG POST AHEAD

The Sims 2 Fitness System: Proposing Reworks and Slowly Going Insane

I. Introduction

The Sims 2 was absolutely revolutionary, both for its time, and even into the modern day, as a life simulation game. The level of detail put into seemingly basic systems and interactions and the love that was poured into every part of the game make it stand out even among titles that released years later.

However, the passage of time halts for no man, and The Sims 2 is no exception. The graphics are often described as looking rough and rudimentary, some of the references haven't aged spectacularly, and it is very clearly a product of its time. Despite this, most aspects of the game translate perfectly fine to today's audiences, except for one system that I've noticed is less than spectacular: the part that dictates the shape of your sim's body.

The fitness slider is a pretty simple framework: work out, and your sim gains muscle, and their body changes to reflect it. Eat too much, and they'll put on some weight. Do neither, and they stay skinny.

Simple enough.

But why is being skinny the default? And why are muscle and fat treated as mutually exclusive, like a human being can't have both?

And why are they in that order? Why would you have to lose muscle to gain fat? Why is being skinny a step you have to go through at all, when someone could realistically transition from muscular to fat or vice versa without ever fully losing either?

Well, a large part of it, I'm sure, was the 2000's and the focus on skinniness, especially among teenagers and young adults (which seemed to be the target audience when TS2 released). Skinniness being treated as a default somewhat lines up with the culture of the time. But it shouldn't have to work like that, right? Especially not now? There's got to be a better way of going about it all.

II. The Proposal

A muscular frame and a heavy-set frame can both be considered extreme values on a scale, and a thinner one can be considered neither. Simply put, if you've got fat, you're chubby; if you've got muscle, you're beefy; and if you've got neither, you're skinny. But that doesn't mean that skinniness is a midpoint between the two other states like on a simple scale, number line style.

In reality, muscle and fat aren't positive or negative values of one variable. They're two entirely separate variables that can be toyed with to create an entire spectrum. Thinness is now no longer a midpoint, but a third state that the body can fall into.

You can be fat, and you can be muscular. You can be neither.

And now, you can now be both. Or a mix of all three states, go nuts.

With this setup, you've got less of a line and more of a triangle, with any point falling inside it corresponding to a different mix of variables. None of the points cancel out or directly oppose one another, and none is treated as the default value of the system.

So what's the default, then?

III. The Catch

The three extremes have to meet at one point in the center, right?

So what do we do if a sim is right in the middle? Does any fluctuation immediately send the poor thing careening into an entirely different body shape?

No. That's a bit much. What we need now is a middle ground between the extreme values. Something that doesn't lean too hard into being muscular, fat, or thin. A nice balance. A default or average body shape.

Would this require adding a fourth, entirely new body morph to the game? Would it even really solve the problem? Would it be worth any of the trouble of setting it up?

Yes, maybe, and probably not, if I'm honest.

But as long as we're dreaming the dream, let's imagine it.

The cool thing about equilateral triangles is that you can divide them into four equal triangles that are congruent with the original one. So, if we take a standard triangle and divide it into fourths, we get our little zones.

A sim, based on some outside stuff I'll get into later, will be assigned a point in the triangle that falls into one of these four zones, assigning them a different body shape. As the sim's point moves through the space, it may land in different zones and change their body accordingly.

But computers can't just look at a cute little diagram and understand it. We need a way to communicate to the program that hey! this does actually make sense and isn't just a bunch of nonsense. We gotta speak their language, and they speak the language... of math.

IV. The Math Jargon

Stick with me. I don't know what I'm talking about either, so I'll try to explain what I'm doing as well as I can.

The cool division thing about equilateral triangles also applies to right triangles as well, specifically the one we're using. Basically, what we need to do is make a graph all math class style so the computer can interpret it into usable data.

To do this, we need a series of steps.

Step 1: Make a graph. Let's say the Y axis is muscle and the X is fat. A Y-value of 1 is entirely muscular, an X-value of 1 is entirely fat, and the origin (0,0) is entirely skinny. Cool.

Step 2: Make the triangle. Let's add our X and Y values together so that, if the result is ever greater than 1, the point is invalid. This means that the point (0.25, 0.75) is valid, but (0.26, 0.75) is outside of the triangle and is therefore a nonsensical value. This makes it so that any point defined must land within the triangle to make any sense.

Step 3: Define the regions. Now we do the thing where we split it into fourths again, creating our zones (and making sure they match the variables we set). I've attempted to work out the math below but I'm a notoriously shit mathematician so don't take my word for it.

If x + y < 0.50, set the body type to Thin.

If .50 > (x + y) > 1, then check the variables.

If x > .50, set body type to Fat.

If y > .50, set body type to Fit.

If x and y are both < .50, set body type to Default.

(I've also tried my hand at writing something that could correct the values if they get out of the triangle.)

If x + y > 1,

If x = y, set both variables to .50.

If x and y are not equal, average both values with .50 over and over until the point is valid.

Step 4: Now, all we have to do is link up the zones with the different body shapes and, if all the math works right, we're good to go!

V. So what does this do actually

Having this system in place not only allows for more realistic and balanced weight and fitness changes, but also for more control over the changes themselves.

A sim's body type is no longer a single variable; it's a dynamic value that can be skewed in more specific directions based on their actions and lives.

For example:

A sim that gets pregnant could have their fat value increase slightly.

A sim that has recently been very ill or has died and been resurrected could lose points in both their muscle and fat values, making them skinnier.

A sim that successfully wins a fight could have their muscle value increase slightly.

A sim that stops working out regularly could gradually lose muscle points over time.

A sim that frequently eats things like takeout and pizza could have their fat value increase over time.

This system would allow for not only more variation in bodies among sims, but also for more realistic reactions to their habits and environments. Would it be tricky to implement? Yes. But maybe it could be worth the trouble.

[dietmimo]

Daily life: YHK edition

[oceanmojis]

btw i'm not saying you guys have to commission me or anything

but i am saying that if you guys want, these are our most up-to-date emojis, and theyre only $17 per (or if theyre on base, $15)

[ssruis]

Really funny that tsukasa will be like “I’m so talented and great everyone praise me” & then when people try to thank him for something big outside of like. Acting or producing something. He’s like “I didn’t really do that much though”

(Specific context bc I’m not taking screenshots of two entire card stories: toya is thanking him for bringing him out w saki to the mall/arcade to cheer him up after main story akitoya divorce)

[angelnumber27]

violently forcing myself to have better days

[purecommemasolitude]

There’ve been criticisms about Darry being too mean or too cruel in the musical, and I get where those people are coming from, but — and speaking as someone who hasn’t seen or listened to it but has listened to the soundtrack and follows the information account like the paper — I think this phenomenon stems from two things

First, on the side of the discussers, a lack of exposure to the musical as an actual piece of material instead of (occasionally very out of context) lines or screenshots. Obviously seeing the musical, even if one lived in New York, would be expensive as all get out, and even audios and boots are pretty hard to find for this show, but there are many details and contexts that change how lines on the page should be interpreted that simply cannot be gleaned through, well, lines on the page. As someone who has dabbled in acting & directing, and has spent time analyzing play texts in depth, delivery and direction can change everything. The entire sentiment of a line can be the opposite of what you’d expect if you took the line at face value, and unless that’s explicit in the stage directions, it can go unrealized if one is merely reading the script (which, as an aside, is exactly why I find analyzing play excerpts tricky — because without a performance or direction, scripts are often so ambiguous and versatile that they could go any way). And honestly, despite also being someone who unfortunately does not benefit from first hand knowledge of the musical, I feel like this is very evident in discussion of Darry in the show. For example, none of his lines in, say, Runs in the Family (Reprise) should be taken at face value, because if you’ve even listened to the song you can tell he’s completely spiralling and hitting a breaking point. This is a state that, historically, causes people to say things they’d never believe in real life. We’re not meant to believe Darry would ever walk out on his brothers, we’re meant to hear him talk about it and understand how deep of a breakdown he is having. As a less obvious example, from what people online have said, Darry spends the last twenty or so minutes of the musical in tears. Again, the things he says here aren’t necessarily the things he believes, or things that he’s expressing coolly or off-handedly because they line up 1:1 with his worldview, they’re things he says when he’s desperate and struggling and has no idea what the correct path is when his brother & responsibility has effectively been comatose since the deaths

Which brings me to my next point!

One of the most known things about the musical, even to people who aren’t very familiar with it, is that it goes more in-depth on Darry’s trials and tribulations, so to speak. He gets one solo at status quo, another (mostly) solo when he gets his breakdown, and a (mostly) duet in his own self-described darkest hour during Pony’s absence. All three of these songs go into detail about what his life is like and how much he’s been struggling, and even songs that aren’t about him emphasize this feature of his more than in the book: his description by Ponyboy in Tulsa ’67 & Great Expectations reminding the audience of his life’s path, his verse in GGAH making it clear that his life is a very different one with arguably more severe burdens compared to the other boys. Other than the three most important characters of the original narrative, he is now undoubtedly the most important and developed character — which makes sense in a musical format, because with the story of The Outsiders it would’ve been pretty much impossible to do a true ensemble cast other than the main three while doing any of them justice, especially if they’d kept Steve as a principle (rip king). But I digress. In my opinion, being clearer on Darry’s hardships actually gives the musical space to show him as saying crueller things, to have him make more mistakes and mess up worse. In the book, we’re clearly meant to sympathize with him by the end, but we only get Ponyboy’s infamously flawed and unreliable narration as the lense through which to view him. As such, if we went too hard into Darry messing up, while 3/4 of the book have Ponyboy going “yeah Darry’s a rock and doesn’t love me or anyone”, he ultimately would’ve come across a lot worse and a lot harder to “redeem” in the eyes of the reader (personally I never disliked him, but I’ve seen enough accounts of people who hated him on their first go at the story to know it is not an uncommon sentiment). He already slaps his brother and argues with him all the time; it would’ve been even more legwork to make him liked if he’d also been saying harsher things and making more mistakes. In the musical, however, we get that objective perspective that’s missing in the book. Ponyboy’s not narrating to us the lyrics of Throwing in the Towel, he’s not even present for the events of Throwing in the Towel! It’s a lot easier to understand and forgive mistakes if one is familiar with the psyche behind those mistakes, and the musical delivers that psyche to us at every turn. Because the audience understands Darry Curtis and how hard it is for him to hold on, the audience also has more understanding and forgiveness for when he’s spiralling. It’s also just a more specific proof of his plight — three songs with first-hand, emotionally explicit lyrics penetrate the uninvested understanding a lot easier than a second-party description of circumstances. Due to its nature and promotion of Darry’s importance, the musical simply gets more freedom to show an arguably more realistic version of him.

Also, I do believe that Darry in the musical is just that much closer to the edge than he is in the book, which is a valid character choice in an inherently emotional and transformative medium such as the musical adaptation 🤷🏻‍♀️

[corpsentry]

at the asian american studies sponsored movie screening i run out of my seat to press a button for the presenter and you look away, not in shame, but in anger

go make your own movie.

One where you’re the star

and everything’s my fault

the way you want it to be. I know, it’s easy

to let someone else hold this grief

and sit in the bathtub,

all dressed up to go to the party.

Maybe in this movie it’s your party

and I the party crasher,

holding cymbals and a baseball bat, et cetera.

But we don’t stop getting older when we’re angry

and you’re only twenty,

can’t listen to lullabies at night,

can’t sleep without a blanket

over your head like you’re scared

of your own shadow. God, go

write your own movie.

You could do it,

you’re still

pretty. Angry? Me too.

The bathtub’s overflowing,

the bathroom’s flooding

with whatever you couldn’t say

to the poet with their palms glued shut

in a cheap simulacrum of prayer.

Didn’t you say you were tired? Angry? Me too.

Upset? Unhappy? Me too. Hungry? Lonely? Me too. Me too.

Standing barefoot in the grass

I remembered the month of bad weather.

How I parted the fog with broken hands each night,

looking for your voice.

Oh, I will not forgive you.

Not like this.

With your fingers splayed

against the brute February sky,

lips cracked open like windows,

waiting, like you always are, for me to say the first word.