#some hw negativity I guess?

[dumpy-dump]

losing a long time interest, falling out of love with something thats meant so much to you for so long, hurts so bad

. . .

i wish i still liked ffxiv :( :( :(

i havent touched the game since finishing endwalker msq bc it disappointed me so much

even then i tried watching videos of the 6.x stuff and i just could not get myself to care and that makes me so sad

and now my old friends are playing dawntrail and getting into arguments about whether it sucks or not (that i cant really comment on myself, obvi)

and idk im just feeling unhappy about the whole thing all over again

[silvyysthings]

We clearly don’t know everything but I understand Armie & Tim’s fallout. I mean they are clearly in different places in their life. Armie wants to be true to himself, be himself, live of his passion if possible and just be happy.

Tim wants to be a big movie star, an A list actor in Hollywood. And both are ok (to each their own) and like Armie said when you have all the perks of being huge in HW you don’t care about all the negative parts. The most important is to not lose your soul. And if ppl freaking out about Tim being involved w the kartrash, it’s bc of the last part. We’re not scared for his career bc he’s an amazing actor but we’re scared for him being involved with those ppl who have no morals. Let’s be honest,  Kylie and her mom were at the afterparty to be introduced to other important ppl. And Kylie was introduced as his gf. Timothee made that trip with her for her birthday, so she had some buzz for her vogue cover (where his name was dropped 50 times). Now she’s introduced to everyone in the industry so after she got some magazines covers, walk some fashion shows etc. Everything is business. The « complete unknown » sweatshirts were made by Nahmias who is the bf of Kylie bff. She wore some Miumiu clothes and and show that off. And then Timothee is wearing a lot of miumiu.

So yeah everything is business and he is involved and related to them on so many levels now. Not just to pretend he is a heartthrob who love big boobs or grab big bottoms.

That’s the scary part.

But ofc you are right there is nothing we can do about it. Just hope Timmy won’t lose his true self in this weird deals.. and just enjoy his art, I guess. 

❤❤ I appreciated a lot this intelligent ask

Thank you

[rametarin]

Okay. So. Why DID American society vote for George W. in 2000? I'll tell you.

Last night I saw a youtube video I will not repeat that seemed to imply that if we had social media of today back in the late 90s, W. Bush would've never become president, "because facts would've come to light educating the voters."

This is such an incredibly naive and astonishingly ignorant thing to say, and it assumes the only reason people voted for any candidate was because they just didn't know what they stood for or what they believe or what that means for a candidate. That they were just a bunch of clueless bumpkins with no agency nor education nor drive and position of their own in the process, they just voted based on shallow 30-second "candidate good, theirs bad." and nothing else.

I am 40. We've been in a post 2000 George W. Bush presidency for more than half my life, at this point (Jesus Christ....)

Lets remove the hindsight is 20-20 of the Iraq War, Afghanistan, New Orleans and FEMA fiasco of the George W. Bush presidency for a minute. None of that stuff has happened yet.

It's the year 2,000. Bill Clinton is leaving the White House. People have been talking about George W. Bush, son of George HW Bush, since he threw his had in, the summer of 1999. People have known of Bush since his father was president.

American Society in the 90s was.. decompressing. That's worthy of a few paragraphs in and of itself.

First and foremost, American Society from the 40s to 91 raised its children, lived and became mature and grey on the premise that there were two major forces on earth at the time. The Americans embodied The West. New, free of classic imperialisms, dictators, private property owning, personal liberty loving. And, then there were the Soviets, whom followed principles that ideally envisioned a more purist, Marxist idea of law and society, where the state ("Society") owned everything and people lived equally under that.

The Soviets were ready and willing to steamroll over the rest of Europe to "save it" from capitalism, as evidenced by their massive fleet of, "steamroll immediate neighbors before unnamed enemies from afar can even get their boats in the water" tanks and heavily armored vehicles. And their tens of thousands of big, heavy tanks and demolition vehicles. They claimed they needed a massive land army and heavy tanks for "self-defense." And sycophants and sympathizers for the USSR outside of it claimed the Americans were the aggressors, imperialist and militant. Sometimes they would say that in comparison to the Soviets, as if the Soviets were just intellectuals, and sometimes they'd just say it as critique of the US as negative qualities that miraculously disqualified the US, but not the Soviets. Some real "you can't get me for things I haven't said, but there's lots of quiet parts not spoken here" stuff.

The Soviet Union was a shitshow of mismanagement and idealism and a circus of corruption that finally shit itself when its dreams died, after decades of careful propaganda and grassroots guerilla informational war that tried to disparage the American military's capabilities went up in smoke, as the Sadam Houssein regime got absolutely righteously SPANKED in the most photographed and video recorded war to exist at the time. Where the American Abrams and the British Challenger absolutely decimated 3,300 Iraqi T-72s and similar Soviet made tanks, and lost 30 tanks themselves. And even then, most of those were lost to accidents like falling off bridges, or friendly fire. So the Iraqi regime can only count 10 Coalition tanks. That's a KD ratio of about 1:330.

So good job on that one assessing the Soviet war capabilities, experts. Reformists stay winning, I guess. If you're hearing the laughter of children reverb through the battlefields of Ukraine, that's my voice from 33 god damned years ago at the propagandists that declared the US entering Iraq would just be a sandy version of Vietnam, where we do nothing but try and occupy and die by the thousand per year unable to meet any objectives or hold territory in the face of supposed superior Soviet armor.

And after their biggest trump card was exposed as a limp dick, which the Soviets always relied on to feel secure and content that, at the end of the day, even if the Americans and Western Europeans lived easier, more free lives, at least the USSR had the security of military supremacy, the Soviet delusion collapsed under itself and the entire dream just DIED. Matrix rejected, Soviet citizens disillusioned.

That's not hyperbole, after Saddam's thorough SPANKING that didn't even last an entire changing of the seasons before we swept up and went home, the Soviet Union croaked. Was it the final nail in the coffin? The final insult that did it? The disillusion, on top of the economic problems? I'd say it had something to do with it.

And in the west, our Very Progressive People(tm) have always had a kind of crypto-relationship with anticapitalists, open or crypto-Marxists and all of them liked to hide under liberalism. Not Big L Liberals themselves, but predatorily mimicing it. Even if they wanted liberalism to mean opposition to what they saw as the thing permitting racism.. which.. surprise surprise.. was capitalism.

But the thing is, they're pseudo-intellectuals. They did not want the stigma of openly stanning for socialism or communism, most of the time. They instead chose to convey themselves simply and purely as positive things. Like being "anti-racist," or being "anti-sexist." Wink wink. The fact they intrinsically tied these things to capitalism and western society, to where in order to be good and not oppressive you'd have to destroy and replace western society in its current form (its entire legal system and economic system) was kind of a lower rabbithole you had to go through. They'd still tout themselves as being big fans of justice and equality, even if unknown to you those words had MASSIVE asterisks that departed from the encyclopedic definitions of those words. And unless you were in their vibe and indoctrinated and agreed with them, they weren't about to tell you that.

But the trick was, how do you secretly get Americans to more easily agree with you without even knowing what they're agreeing to? How do you control their feelings and effectively put them down a logical and linguistic corridor so the only conclusion they reach is your logic's conclusion?

You rely on some dirty tricks. Peer pressure, gaslighting, cooking books and then braying about what an educated person you are for employing them. This was the world I grew up in. With little girls being oh-so educated by their buzz cut angry aunts and handed textbooks that were too advanced for them, but contained what amounted to proverbs and bible verses for them to throw out as platitudes and things you weren't allowed to argue with them over. ("Where's your PhD? :^)" )

So. What I'm getting at here is US Society had already been dealing with pseudo-intellectual gadflies, propaganda magazines and unscrupulous people joining publications with a political bias.

It got REALLY, REALLY egregious in the 90s. Radical Feminism was ubiquitously TERF-central, but you couldn't even argue against it as a white man, even if many of the points people like me made in the early 90s were true. Because, "you're a white MAN, you don't get to act like you know anything about feminism and what it means to be a GIRL." And they'd reject any opinion, give you no benefit of the doubt, reject any legitimacy anything you said had, because of its source.

And the thing about this is, the more they argued, the more cracks formed in the obfuscation. The less emotional impact having your younger female family turn on you as disingenuous, morally motivated weapons had on you. The more they would try to back up their arguments by citing the sources of the supposed intellectual professors and professionals they were quoting. The more their works could be scrutinized and made to bleed as men, not omnipotent narrators of science and truth.

The supposed anti-racists, supposeldy motivated by a world where no one is disrespected or made lesser by laws or policies that favored or disfavored people on the basis of race, cheering loudly for legislation that didn't discontinue racist policies, but ushered in "minority community protection" entrenchments, allowing "minorities" (almost uniformly just black people) access to free shit not because they were poor, but because they were black. In the same breath as telling white people they should not be permitted anything on the basis of their whiteness, and should, "get over" race. And in doing so, reveal themselves to not care about racism. And reveal their true values to be about treating race as class, and whites designated as oppressors. These are very different dynamics than trying to free a society from race based favoritism/disfavoritism policies.

So the "anti-racist" populists and their fringe viziers openly bragging about how they believed everybody but white people mattered, how national borders should not exist.. for America.. how they were glad millions of illegal immigrants were pouring in and would eventually be voting for their candidates in their own community's self-interests, and they'd happily vote to make sure the people paying taxes here would finance aid and benefits packages that non-Hispanic whites would not be allowed to enjoy the benefits of. Openly bragging about how "the whites have had enough." and that the poor only mattered if they weren't white.

The "Anti-sexists," which in discussions and arguments from angry radfems at the kitchen table had barked weird Gyno-Futurisms where men would be made obsolete and women would inherit society. How men were the cause and source of all wars, and under a feminist future, "society would equally share everything" and be kind and nurturing and some other shit that phased in and out depending on whether Daughter or Niece Dear felt more like being a spiritualist "witch" or an objective empirical scientist secular intellectual, that day. Where they'd demand all male spaces be made gender neutral and open to all, but open more spaces designated specifically and purely for women, with benefits for women just on the basis of being a woman, and tax the whole of society to make those happen. That women should have automatic positions arbitrarily opened up to remove any possibility women WOULDN'T be elected to share power, and loudly declaring all western art and literature featuring women was garbage, because you couldn't have good western literature and art in a society whose sexual values were garbage (this is hilariously circular and amounts to, "it's capitalist and not socialist, therefore, it's inescapably wrong.")

These were all things we learned as we sat by the supposed saccharine-swet "liberal" that hated all things sexist and racist, and beside them were their best buddies whom they shared literature with. They played Good Cop Bad Cop. They were literally being the Motte and Bailey argument of leftism. The general liberal progressive would set up the general platitudes that if you disagreed with, you were branded a reactionary or retro racist and traditionalist example of the white patriarchy, and then the radical would loudly shout you down while testing the waters of your peers for if they'd resist their own brand of spin on the subject and situations and facts they were beating you with.

So people got a taste of exactly what the very much not-liberal Progressive Leftist believed, and had in store, and through the impurity of the liberal tolerating their very not-liberal leftist friend, was going to allow to taint what should have been simple, acceptable policies.

Policies that were against relegating women to second class citizen status, policies that removed race from the equation in society and did not favor anyone or disfavor anyone based on their background, nor enshrine the importance of anyone's ethnic background.. and then promptly promised that everybody's race and background mattered, but white peoples, specifically. And then had the audacity to call people white supremacists and male chauvinists if they opposed this.

That was my childhood. Stumbling through realizing what bullshit was festering in the left, because according to their own propaganda, none of that was true or existed.

But don't get it twisted; I wasn't blind go the fact racists joined the republican party specifically to deny any benefits to people if it meant minorities would benefit too. Or the favoritism of rich people to rich people. Or the religious fundamentalists that believed in "family values" that used those avenues to push the idea of a monogamous marriage and expectation such would dominate exclusively under a Christian (or Jewish, to a lesser but not insignificant extent) lens. That was true, but not to the degree of evil the hard/far Leftist non-liberal was pushing it.

This is why George W. Bush was elected and even given a chance. Because with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Rodney King riots, the initial wide adoption of anti-racism and willingness to change from the propaganda of what they THOUGHT was true and the status quo, what they THOUGHT was the more left position, only to learn much of what they said were wild exaggerations, histrionic delusions and padded stats vilifying history and the status quo just to get people on their side to vote for what they wanted- which was banning guns, opening the borders, making sure people that weren't white had ample tax-payer driven benefits for the purposes of growing those demographics and securing their success at the expense of the majority. And the promise that more of this would come, the more power their fringe had in the left-wing.

This is why younger voters voted for Bush. Because the, "Racism is when white people oppress black people, Asian people and Indigenous people" crowd revealed their real face and said, "this is Leftism, and whether you like it or not, we're a packaged deal with liberals."

And the more general liberal just sat there smiling, not arguing with the radical, not confronting the radical, not disagreeing with the radical. Just playing the role of the enabling mom as the step-dad sexually abuses their child.

The black children from newly integrated suburbs with their first white friends, and their white liberal sisters that were taught from a young age that smart, progressive white girls should make sure their stupid male family members in this "stupid white supremacist patriarchal society" didn't cultivate racism, that they "challenged it' on radical feminist principles. Where at first, Sally seemed like a nice girl that had their back. But then revealed herself to just be a soapbox standing, histrionic mental abuser that would take every opportunity to get one over her male peers and show off how "anti-racist" she was, while toeing a line and trying not to overreach and destroy the delusion.

At the end of the 80s and towards the end of the 90s, those black children had grown up in a place where the white people that were trying to be courteous and respectful and open, just to get treated like shit by girls like Sally, called racist while Sally ran interference for things she didn't need to run interference for.

It's because of girls like the proverbial Sally (Social Justice Sally) that towards the end of the 90s, black people were writing N-word passes hand over fist and so many adopted a mindset (however brief) that we lived in a post-racism world. Because they saw far more accusations of racism than the sorts of racism they recognized or cared about among white people, and were offended on behalf of their white friends and community. It was so irritating and ideologically slanted and intellectually insulting, this is the origin of why the republicans got such a large spike among black people towards the end of the 90s.

Well. That, and how their very far-left peers tended to join with the likes of Farrakhan black supremacists.. And they weren't having that.

It was not because of a lack of information. It was not because we didn't have Twitter and Community Notes, or the algorithm giving us propaganda articles to read to correct misunderstandings or teach us what we didn't already know. Before the digital world and information outlets, we had sources of that information. We had pamphlets, we had reports from the government telling what we had then and what was coming, we had general ideas of where we were, and where we were going.

Put simply, people had the attitude that something was seriously wrong and rotten with the top of the democratic party for enabling and fascillitating the far-leftists, and giving them access to the platform. They were smarter than industrial wealth hogs and racists, and better able to be the +1 in any policy table.

People felt they could more easily police out the religious fundamentalists, white supremacists and financial oligarchs, while still holding policy to reflect gender and racial equality. Bush was not running on a platform of white supremacism, nor beliefs that put women back in the kitchen.

And after we experienced how the federal government handled WACO and Ruby Ridge (look those up), heard the very unflattering rumblings of what they thought of rural white Americans, the willingness to treat them like active militant hate groups and burn down their homes and kill their families over even PERCEIVED violations of federal law, and the promise of more of that to follow, the absurd crusades made to try and make firearms progressively more and more inaccessible to illegal, we figured maybe the illiberal left-wing was a bit too much of a liability to be in power.

George W. Bush was not voted into power because Americans didn't know anything. He was voted into power because Americans had too many bad personal experiences with the hanger-ons of the left, and hoped maybe the right wing could be spruced up a bit going into the new millenium.

And then the Islamic world attacked the west, financed directly and indirectly by limitless oil money and a network of interconnected cultural interests and sacred delusions, among which was the complete destruction of Israel and the Jews, and radical Islamic jyhad. And just by virtue of tackling this problem, with the supposedly anti-conflict bad press of the illiberal left not helping matters (thanks, smearists and propagandists), the right wing had to tackle Islamofascism and take the responsibility of blame for the conflict even existing at all.

As far as the public consensus, reinforced by hard-leftist propaganda goes, it's just white America trying to impose an evangelical death cult on some harmless religious and ethnic minorities in the middle east, based purely on Christian supremacism and white supremacism.

Meanwhile Obama, a democrat, willingly continued the policy of using drones to take out middle eastern Muslim mafioso families and royals, as they thinned the herds and worked to arrange peace across the Islamic world by curtailing crime bosses and radical structures of power that were leading to fundamentalist groups like ISIS and ISIL. And as messy as that looks in hindsight, just based purely on the structure of that religion and the social elements, it was inevitable. It was a question of how that was going to play out, not if it would.

Today, many countries that previously were on board with the Islamic populist belief of bulldozing Israel and getting every Jew out of it, want peace with the west and Israel, and are working to undo decades to centuries of fundamentalist conservatism. Which is the long term foreign policy goal, and has been, since even before the Ayatollah assumed Iran.

Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden all have been party to this Middle Eastern policy that has openly or secretly been dealing with the shadow war of Islamic theocratic expansionism and imperialism and terrorism as a means of physically and conquering the opposition. The idea that George Bush and the republicans just embody some warpigs fueled by manifest destiny and white supremacy is a very uncharitable reading of some very flawed individuals, with uncharitable assumptions of motivations, and the people that voted for him assumed to just be know-nothing morons that just didn't have informed consent, or malicious defenders of what is presumed the status quo, that has never been and will never truly be the modus operandi of the USA, even if some with fringe beliefs think it should.

Bush was voted in not because of ignorance or malice, but because he was an option, and at the time, they thought the opposition could be trusted with a change.

I anticipate to see more absurd takes that disagree with my lived experience. Statistically, it's inevitable. But it doesn't make it any less insulting to witness.

[smallpapers]

Updated profile pic!

Thanks to everyone for your support through the past year <3 I can't believe TOH has ended...

Some updates/ personal notes under the cut!! Like, its really personal its almost narcissistic!

PRONOUNS: I go by she/they now!!! I've always had a lowkey gender crisis (fueled by an existential crisis really) so I am FINALLY trying this out. Feel free to refer to me with they/them pronouns :) (I guess I should have seen something coming when I made my first proper OC over a decade ago as an aro ace agender lol)

TOH ENDING: I'm really sad that the owl house is over...but I'm so glad I got to meet so many cool people in the TOH fandom!!! I even had the pleasure of sending a few friends stickers as a small token of appreciation. I'm like super grateful for all the encouragement and notes! I don't talk much here but I do read the reblog tags :) The brainrot was so serious that it made me draw basically everyday the past year (even if its a small doodle) and i really feel like i grew as an artist, and I honed my skills although I still have a long way to go! I can see improvement in my framing and colouring skills :) I think I might do some funny compilation video in the near future...

A BREAK/MINI-HIATUS: I am considering taking a small break from fandom. It might be a few weeks or maybe less, depending on how quickly I get out of this slump. I am guessing its a burn out from all the negative news regarding AI 'art' and being tussled round by the twitter algorithms. Also maybe because i did two epic pieces back to back... I have a lot of ideas and I really don't want to stop posting art online! I want to do sort of a post-WAD/pre-epilogue HW comic series, as well as a grom animatic :)

THANK YOU HUNTLOW ugh they mean so much to me... I know its silly because its a silly little fictional ship. But its really unlocked some creativity in me that I lost? Along with such a lovely community, it has really inspired me to keep drawing! Maybe its a right place at a right time thing, but after watching ASiaS, it gave me brainrot so much that it kicked my other bad habits out the window! I got to do so much cool stuff i always wanted to do including making an animatic, comics, being in a fan zine, epic pieces, making stickers... I can't believe they are canon now its been such a journey to watch this ship and the shippers blossom :)

THANK YOU!!!! If you've ever liked or reblogged any of my drawings, especially leaving funny tags, I just really want to say thank you <3 I really do cherish all the comments I get!!!! and if you've read this far, I'm super impressed!

That's all from me for now!!

<3 papers

[fever-project]

Any like. Special sexuality headcanons for the crew? (I am running out of questions here help)

Personally I hc Rav as bi

Tbh, for most of them I don’t lol. So I’ll be thinking up of some right now for the others

Ravio - He’s also bi to me, and I also hc him as Acespec. Tbh it’s mostly because the flag’s purple and he’s purple. Purple’s my favorite color.

Tetra - Uhhh she’s either straight or a lesbian based on how I feel that day. Honestly it’s a coin flip, I can’t choose lol. Biflux. Pretty sure that’s a term

HW/Captain Link - He’s somewhere on the aro spectrum, maybe he’s akoiromantic. Which is when you feel romantic feelings for someone until it’s reciprocated, then those feelings basically vanish. But I’ll just say he’s arospec, because the flag is green and he’s green. I’m very creative.

Wind/Tune - Blue.

Spirit - Yeah he’s straight.

Time/Mask - Duraromantic pansexual. Duraromantic means that someone rarely experiences romantic feelings, but when they do it lasts for a long time. He had a crush on his Zelda for far longer than he liked lamo.

HW Zelda - Bisexual. You see, the flag has both blue and pink, like how as Sheik she’s blue and as Zelda she’s pink and-

ST Zelda/Phantom - Straight, just like her Link. You see the straight slag is both blue and pink like how Spirit is blue and Phantom is pink and-

Impa - uhhh aroace. Yeah. Maybe a lesbian. Both.

Marin - Pansexual. I think. Anyways the flag is pink, yellow, and blue, and she’s-

Medli - idk. Bird ig

Ruto - I don’t think she even knows what romance is, or at least never truly felt any romantic feelings towards Time. But she clearly does want to have a romantic relationship, so I guess she’s cupioromantic now. So uh, here’s a version of the flag that’s color picked from her Great Sea’s outfit

Lana(and Cia ig) - Forgot about her for a moment ha. She’s bisexual but mostly has a preference for men.

Linkle - Aromantic lesbian. She’s green and orange. Do you know what flag has orange in it

Agitha - idk she’s 10. I had barely any idea what I was when I was that age, nor did I really care ngl, so yeah. Idk, and neither does she.

Darunia - I feel sad that I have no thoughts about him. He’s just some guy, so I guess he’s straight? No thoughts.

Minda - Bisexual.

King Daphnes - Realistically, he’s straight. But I think it would be funny if he was a raging homosexual. Oh, and there’s this drag feather pride flag, created in 1999, and idk, the vibes fit. Also it’s red and gold and you know

Skull Kid - uh. Idk that’s a creature(positive) he can be anything. Be free king 👑

Wizzaro - Creature(negative).

Volga - Homosexual.

Ganondorf - Apothisexual(and apothiromantic). Basically it’s someone who is asexual(and also aromantic in his case) and is repulsed by sex(and also romance in his case). The apothisexual flag has red and black

Yuga - I’d say he’s pansexual ig. I support pan rights and wrongs. But not his

Fi + Ghirahim - They are definitely asexual. Aromantic? Maybe.

And that’s it! Boy was that a lot of guys. I sure hope I didn’t miss anybody-

I SAID I SURE HOPE I DIDNT’ MISS ANYBODY-

((((；ﾟДﾟ)))))))

Tingle - Creature(creepy and unnerving)

[coconox]

random ramble since i’ve been thinkin a lot lately instead of doing hw but ermmm anyways

i guess for some lore about myself i was a lurker on pgrtwt starting late 2021? then august 2022 was when i started posting there (basically around the time of pgr’s 1st anni art contest). anyways i’ve been playing the game ever since day 1 of its global release and it took me a while to get out of my comfort zone to interact with people cause my social skill levels are in the negatives lol

from my swiss cheese memory i’d say my experience was relatively ok in terms of interacting with the fandom at first. i’ve made so many friends whom i still talk to to this day and i honestly love and appreciate them with all my heart. and as much as i wanna shine on the positives i remember, there’s definitely been more memorable negatives that i want to let off my chest after idk how many years at this point.

to not turn this into a giant essay i’ll just say it upfront here: i left pgrtwt and ultimately twt as a whole last year because it's simply just not for me. these past few days/weeks from what my friends had been showing me really shed light on my experiences in the past, how a lot of the fandom just doesn’t appreciate artists/creatives, even months ago saying ai images are better which is fucking absurd and i will never, EVER tolerate that.

i loved the game so much, hell, i still want to love this game and as much as i want to, a huge part of my thoughts/feelings towards the game are also dependent on fandom interactions/experiences, and majority of that has been fairly negative whether that had been through twt or guild-related discord servers.

i’ve rarely ever felt like i was respected during my times of interacting in those servers, i have friends who felt/are feeling like they aren’t being respected on either twt or certain discord servers, and i’ve gotten tired of everything that has happened with this fandom. 

i’ll be announcing here that i’ll no longer be making any pgr fanart. my love for the game has been slowly dying out too, as personally future patches after vera’s gacha coating story just don’t interest me. i pretty much have it set in stone that i’m quitting gacha games altogether by the end of this year anyways. i'm still in school so the process of changing aesthetics and whatnot have been rather slow, but i have been moving on to other games/projects i've been wanting to work on

[nikatinencaffeine]

Friday morning is weigh day:

-11.4lbs! I've been angry and depressed for not losing more than a pound or two, so it's been like 2 weeks since I've weighed in. It was a nice surprise and gives me the motivation to keep restricting...but I have a loooooong way to go. I'm morbidly obese and it's disgusting. I have always struggled. Does anybody else feel like they have imposter syndrome? I'm a full-grown adult! I'm not young and skinny enough to take seriously in the 'local' 3d community, but I'm not happy identifying with the people who glorify unhealthy behavior. I go out and I'm just some f4t lady. Don't get me wrong, I believe in loving yourself above everything else, but that means I go to extra lengths to keep my struggling private because I can't practice what I preach. I'm a single mom with an impressionable young daughter that I want to protect from all of this and shield her from the negativity. I feel like a hypocrite sometimes. What motivated me to even lose in the first place was that I could not fit down the slides at the playground with her when she was a toddler. I guess that's the only good thing about being too overweight for my struggles to really show, but then neither do my small successes. Right now, I'm just showing her that I'm getting healthy, but I also make sure to tell her how beautiful and capable she is. I don't ever want her to feel the way I do and suffer the way I do. I've never been at my gw, I've struggled since puberty to be skinny. I was doing so well, but trauma happened and I ate my feelings. A year of hard work, dropping 130lbs, and I gained 50 back.

Now: 500-800kcal a day | 30minutes cardio at the very least a day | 10k+ steps per day

I also try to eat keto in those kcals because that's how I went from 300 to 170 in a year.

Hw: 300

Lw: 170

Cw: 214

Gw: 130

Ugw: 115

Here's to another day. Drink your water, take your vitamins, go take a walk, eat your kcals.

[littlemissidontcare]

I think a lot of fans are getting bored with Sebastian. He didn’t get cast for a new role, he’s choice of leaving social media really hurt the promotions of the Sharper. He doesn’t allow his friends and girlfriend to post him. Sebastian needs to improve his personal life, if it’s real with Annabelle than show it to his fans, don’t keep them guessing. / While I agree that especially since award season ended Seb hasn't been very visible but I'm not sure he needs to improve his personal life as much as he needs to up his PR game. His fans want to see him and he needs to keep people in HW thinking about him. He's had a year with AW and whatever the nature of their relationship, real or PR or who knows, they are not using it for the maximum attention they could if they choose to. He does need to do PR but my preference would be solo pap walks, charity event, photo shoot, a gym photo, plenty of ways to do PR. Doing PR with AW brings negative attention from some which he could avoid if he does solo PR. Anon I hope this doesn't come out bad but I'm uncomfortable with the idea that Seb needs to show fans what the nature of his relationship is, to not leave them guessing. Honestly as much as I enjoy discussing him and yes even his private life, the nature of his relationship is no one's business but his. There is no reason he should share that with the public. Not even if they are dying to know what's going on.

[issom-har]

Under cut for Stormblood talk and general personal rambling.

I don’t know what it was about Heavensward, but I logged in the night it went live, got as far as Ishgard, and then just...logged out. For about three months. I only logged back in as often as was necessary to make sure I still had my house. And then I played sporadically--sometimes not for months at a time--for something like a year.

I wanted to love Heavensward so badly, I was excited for it when it was first announced, and then something about it didn’t grab me. At all. I had to force myself not to skip dialogue and cutscenes. I never do that. I have never lost interest in something I loved like that under circumstances that were no fault of the game itself, and I was honestly pretty devastated. I lost all confidence in my ability to RP, because I was having such non-feelings toward the expac content that it manifested as total apathy toward my character. What could have caused it? Did I not have the attention span to read quest dialogue suddenly? Was I just utterly bored with my main? Had the pleasure and reward centers of my brain been infested by Depression Silverfish and finally destroyed? I had some theories, but none of them could fully explain it. 

Some of the things that might have contributed to my pile of blah:

Janvier had no personal stake in the storyline of HW at all. Canonically, he went to Ishgard at the start of the expansion exactly once, at which point he offered to let Saint dunk him off a cliff into the Sea of Clouds for being a lying sack of shit. Realistically, he would have immediately realized he couldn’t handle being that close to a war zone and gone home to get his head screwed on straight and refocus on his priorities. It really didn’t make sense for him to involve himself in a war before outright conflict with the Garleans became unavoidable.

The zone design immediately turned me off. Sea of Clouds was beautiful, but the story was so on rails that I felt like I was actually being punished for exploring before I was done with the MSQ. I was used to stopping and hanging out in places for a while before moving on with the story, but there was limited stuff to do in many places pre-flying. You were supposed to get that, then come back.

Crafting and gathering, my eternal relaxation activities, seemed to get way more complicated. Beyond the collectable system, node clusters were placed to encourage the use of flying mounts (and discourage gathering pre-flying). Lots more stuff on timed nodes. HW crafts were more complicated and required a lot of cross-class stuff, and even some basic mats (cured leather, thread, etc) took either timed resources or random amounts of pre-HW materials. 

It was difficult for me to be invested in the antagonists. The Heavens’ Ward themselves I mostly care about because my friends (one in particular) have fleshed them out in headcanons and fic, but in the story itself they’re basically exactly what they are in the end: extensions of Thordan. Thordan was interesting, but he himself was a personification of the attitudes that made Ishgard a hellhole more than a compelling person.

Ishgard was a hellhole, albeit a very pretty, snowy one. There were no places I wanted to sit and hang out, nothing that looked particularly inviting. Big monolith buildings and imposing wide walkways would have drawn me in if it had been a friendlier city, like Jeuno maybe? I could go to the Brume or the Foundations to see people in abject misery, or go up top to watch the nobility glide across beautiful, empty streets. All of it left me with the appropriate uncomfortable feeling, but I didn’t want to set a home point there, if you catch me.

There were a lot of missed opportunities everywhere. After a start in which it seemed like she’d get NPC main character status, Ysayle was criminally misused. The explosive end to the 2.x series--so important it was referenced in the CGI opening for HW--amounted to very little. Midgardsormr, also set up to be a major player, rarely appeared. Those amounted to most of the things I went in very interested in. The Churning Mists, a beautiful zone filled with mysterious ruins and evidence of human/dragon cooperation, is entirely taken up by a sprawling web of quests about running mundane chores for throw pillows with wings.  

Entirely on me: I created Janvier with RDM in mind for him and misjudged how difficult it would be to play him as something else for years and years. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense for him to travel as a conjurer. Having him go back to MNK felt slightly off, like negative character development. RDM hit and it was perfect for him and I instantly enjoyed playing him again. It was wild.

In the end I think the problem was that it discouraged playing with the things that usually keep me busy (exploring, crafting, and gathering) out of the gate, while just not appealing enough to me on a personal level to keep me interested. 

To say that I’m relieved by being blown away by Stormblood is putting it super mildly. I had to force myself to log off tonight. I’m really, really happy to have confirmation that it was a case of incompatibility with HW and not a 95% reduction in my ability to experience joy. That said, I feel pretty weird that I so firmly disliked an expac that most of my friends loved that I probably would have quit altogether if not for Palace of the Dead. Especially since there wasn’t anything wrong with HW! It was a good expansion! I actually quite liked the dungeon design, and exploring the zones once I had flying, Churning Mists in particular! I think it’s just me.

[mynameisbillandimaheadcase]

'

[coinandcandle]

I guess concerning witchcraft questions... hm. Do you have any sources for spirit work? After seeing the conversation about deities it had me feel a bit foolish for not asking if I was getting assistance from Athena. I'm a new witch and I didn't get to use my pendulum to dowse or ask for a sign. I assumed after giving offerings I just felt up and ready to get help with my hw. Silly and small thing, I know, but I also assumed because I do dragon work and my co-magician and guardian dragons didn't really have a negative reaction when I called Athena. I know it wasn't spell work but I've never worked with other deities. I've only recently come out as a Catholic witch/Christopagan so I just wanna make sure my deity and spirit work is done correctly. A friend told me that trickster spirits are the reason some ex-witches convert to Christianity because trickster spirits disguised themselves as helpful spirits and scared these witches Christian. (For context before I decided to practice the craft I had concerns about witches who wanted to try God and their spirit guides turned on them like demons so this was what I was told)

First I'll say that I'm happy to hear that you're questioning! I know it sucks to feel insecure in your religion or spiritual beliefs but please know that it's always healthy to be a bit of a skeptic!

I don't think it'd be a bad idea to ask for a specific sign from Athena to make sure you're working with her.

If you find that you're not actually working with Athena don't freak out! The spirit might not be trying to trick you. If they have been helpful and the relationship is founded on healthy boundaries then there's no reason to stop interacting with them.

It may be that the entity just didn't care what you called them, not that they're trying to pretend to be her. Ask some clarifying questions if you feel like the relationship is good and safe.

For references I'll scoot you toward @windvexer and @crazycatsiren on the matter:

Windvexer's Masterpost

Cat's Grimoire Page

As for witches being scared into Christianity: People are a lot more scared of spirits than they should be due to media portrayals of them. I'm not saying they can't be scary, but humans can be pretty scary too! So treat any interaction with the same energy and respect you'd treat an interaction with a human.

People come and go from religions for many different things.

I think a good number of people being "scared out of witchcraft" is probably due to the MANY hyperbolized warnings that circulate in the community.

[lilac-melody]

Okay so I’m extremely late to this, but do you know what happened to ASCANA?

It's all good! Are you referring to in general, or in the anime?

To answer both, Johnny's Project, who owns Ascana, has finished making Ascana videos. They had their last stream some months back, which is where their final song Step x Smile x Step came from!

Since they're done with their streams and stuff, I'm assuming that JP doesn't want them active anymore, so it's unlikely they'll be able to be in anymore Honeyworks MVs.

As for the anime...probably because they're discontinued they're not allowed to be in the anime.

Also, JP fans of Ascana were quite angry that they were in the LIPxLIP movie. I guess it's because HW doesn't own them? I don't know, that bit still blows my mind tbh. So due to the negative reception, Ascana may not show up in Herotaru at all.

Hope this helped~

[ask-badlydrawn-mercosur]

To mun: what do you think of hetalia's return? It feels so weird seeing something I watched years ago come back tbh dkndkdn

// I'm really happy that we’re getting more animated content, since its been a while; but I’m ngl... I'm way more excited about the World Stars manga resuming...

[more thoughts under the cut]

Don't get me wrong - I'm happy we're getting another season and how lively the fandom will get because of it; I love the japanese voice cast (Romi Park, Eriko Nakamura and Rie Kugimiya are personal faves who happen to voice some of my personal fave nation-tans ); and I’m truly am glad that we finally reached World Stars in the animated continuity; since its been a while that the series rebranded from the Axis Powers and shifted the focus from WWII, which was a MUCH NEEDED change... Now both Manga and the Anime can be referred as HWS. I am also excited to see the debuts of Czech, Slovakia and, specially Portugal.

However, and I hope people don’t take this personally, as much as I love the series ( and I've been following aph for almost a decade now) it does kinda bothers me how... white and eurocentric aph is sometimes... and like I get it, the main characters are Italy and the World8 bunch, I am fully aware that aph is a SEINEN and it was made by a japanese individual and for a japanese audience, and that the characters that are featured often most likely reflect the personal interests of its target audience... I know it was just the FIRST episode, but as the only two non white main characters, Japan only got a few lines and China showed up a few times in the ending... and while a few other characters made small cameos (Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey), considering the seiyuu info that has been confirmed so far... I feel like the only characters that will be getting speaking roles will be the ones featured in the final shot of the ending with the chibi heads...

And this is why I’m way more excited about the manga coming back because who knows what Himaruya has in store for us...

I'm really hopeful to see content that doesn't focus too much on World8, like... I want to see Macau, Taiwan, Vietnam, India, Thailand, Seychelles, Cuba, Cameroon and Egypt get their time in the spotlight too! And like... will we get new characters this time? Hima has been teasing us Ecuador since 2013 but has yet to formally introduce him (he just showed up in the background of a WS strip, in a blink and you’ll miss moment), and I bet everyone is excited about Philippines debut too!

Just so to not end this in a negative note, credit where its due... I do appreciate the extra Seychelles scenes VERY MUCH thank you DEEN!

And I guess... these are my feelings lol... I’m excited for Hetalia’s return and especially hopeful for the manga.

This got longer than I intended but if you made it this far... thanks for reading!9

[mrchalamet-mrstyles]

I guess I’m the only one that thinks that the recent pap shots probably were arranged by his team (not him directly), but that it’s not that big of a deal? Every celeb has to deal with the “promo” (for lack of a better term) side of their job and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. I personally believe that his team probably said something along the lines of, “you’re going to have to go public with your rs at some point, so let’s get it out of the way before you start filming on your next movie”. Doing it right before Lily’s next movie is released also makes sense. I feel like Charmie loons have taken control of the “PR” narrative in that now, we ALL feel like any “PR” is negative, but it shouldn’t be—it’s NORMAL. PR does not equal FAKE.

I could maybe agree with you if we were actually getting photos of them together but...we're all still waiting.

I don't necessarily agree either that he is in need of this sort of promo since his films to come will keep him in all the spotlight he will need? No one in HW is gonna see him walking down 5th Ave with a coffee in his hand and *light bulb* I NEED HIM IN THIS FILM STAT! He has legions of fans, his ig numbers rising steadily even when we never see him. So yeah. I'm never gonna believe he is doing these walks for pure publicity. He lives in a thriving city that is reopening and being out more and finding him isn't hard. Everyone knows where he lives, where he likes to spend time. It isn't rocket science that he is being hounded because he gets clicks and people want to see him. That's it. Anyone making it some master scheme on his behalf is being ridiculous.

[fencesandfrogs]

a follow up from this post where i talk about math and me as a kid.

Wait you have dyscalculia but are a math major? Wow I have dyscalculia but I like the philosophy of math I guess like I sorta forced myself to get into it to learn, I feel I can do basic so for me it's mainly the math anxiety

@totallysweetheart​

tl/dr: the part of my brain that deals with abstract/tangible is, i think, broken, because i can’t deal with numbers as real things, but i can do that with polynomials or w/e.

so to summarize, based on wikipedia’s list of dyscalculia symptoms, here is me:

analog clocks: i’m fine to 15min in real life where i know the time of day, but in a vacuum, most real clocks r tricky. doesn’t come up. the teaching clocks i’m usually fine with because the minute hour hands are really distinct.

larger numbers: depends on presentation. purely verbally? no. visually? depends. if they both start with the same number it’s harder.

sequencing issues: not really.

financial planning: bank accounts are black magic and my mom still manages mine. i err on the side of frugal, which lead me with like 50% of my college meal plan unspent last semester.

visualizing numbers: no. nope. can’t do. not at all. numbers r fake. 

arithmetic: it sucks, a lot. i’m better at multiplying and adding, and it’s gotten better because i did a lot of practice a few years ago, but i still prefer calculators. 

number writing difficulties: yeah? hard to say i’ve been doing algebraic stuff for a long time and that really cuts down on the number of places to make those kinds of mistakes.

concepts and practice: this is where i’m strongest. my math conceptual game is strong as hell, and i don’t usually struggle with putting it into practice. even word problems i’m pretty strong at because like. it’s just math.

names of numbers: not really an issue.

left/right: also not really an issue. although it takes me a second.

spatial awareness: doesn’t exist. just. doesn’t. people don’t believe me then they ask me how long something is and i say like three feet and they’re like “it’s taller than you” and i’m like “oh really? huh the more you know”

time: im timeblind af. also adhd tho so that doesn’t help.

maps: ehhhhh. hard to say. I’m okay with some parts of maps but not others. this has definitely improved since school.

working backwards in time: i have an app for that its beautiful and i love it

music: i am good at music notation. not great at rhythm but i’m good at music in general.

dance: i did 12 years of dance. i’m not amazing, but it was a nonissue.

estimation: see: time, spatial awareness (the answer is i cannot)

remembering formulas, etc: i’m usually good at remembering this stuff.

concentration: adhd already so? maybe?

faces, names: i do not do very well here.

so like. i basically have the best possible set of symptoms to become a math major. i kind of skirted attention as a kid because i could get around a lot of my difficulties and didn’t really have anything to do but use brute force to cram multiplication facts into my head.

and because i had this really strong conceptual understanding, i just sort of survived until algebra. at which point i was very happy.

because basically most of my dyscalculia issues revolve around numbers and the real world. i can’t do time, i can’t estimate, i can’t really work with numbers. but i can work with algebra because the concepts were fine. there was just a road block.

for me, it’s kind of like having a major speech disorder in your native language. speech in the your mouth doesn’t work, not the language issues. as a kid i loved writing because the words came out the way they were in my head. they didn’t get shuffled and mangled. and that’s also how i felt about algebra. like, look! you don’t have to worry about getting the numbers right if you can move the variables around,

and obviously it’s not that complicated because i’m skipping basically from fifth grade to my junior year of high school, but even though it was a constant friction between me and everyone about why i kept making careless mistakes, even after other adhd stuff got treatment, it was generally acknowledged that i knew what i was doing, so i never really developed math anxiety. 

and as a math major, like, numbers are not a very large part of what you do. i use wolfram alpha a lot for solving that sort of thing. i do stuff that’s more about the logic parts of math. lil puzzles waiting to be solved.

it really does feel kind of like the abstract and tangible parts of my brain were swapped. because numbers really do feel abstract, but figuring out the equations of a graph is a fun game to play with friends. i usually get the constants wrong, but that’s besides the point.

i’m not entirely sure if this was helpful and/or clarifying in any way. if asked, i will usually not mention dyscalculia because? it just doesn’t feel very relevant/serious. because my management strategy is: don’t do anything with numbers and estimation ever. and then that works, because i don’t have to. it’s only really relevant in the context of me, a child, very confused about why those centimeter cubes exist, etc. 

and also, as i got older, i dug more and more into theory and proofs. learning about numbers as entities that follow rules was a really useful thing for me. learning about negative numbers made subtraction easier for me because it wasn’t addition in reverse, it was addition of a negative number. which made more sense to me.

i struggled in high school geometry because of all of the numbers and angles (i have a shirt somewhere that says “all i learned in geometry is that you can’t measure shapes”) and every time someone pointed out applications to me i kind of just went “okay but there are rulers for that”

and i do like geometry! i like how we can build properties out of simple rules and how shapes behave and its really cool you only need like 5 postulates to build a lot of geometry but if you make me deal with too many angles and i want to cry

so yeah. uh. i’m a math major & it works because when we deal with numbers, they’re almost variables in themselves? like okay we’re going to use 0 and 1 here to apply this theorem but the numbers themselves aren’t relevant.

here is a screenshot from my calc textbook, if this helps make my point. most of these concepts are things i can just. put in my head and hold the way people who can think about numbers describe numbers to me. 

i have no idea where u are in ur life but if u like math from the logic side, then pure math exists and its p cool. usually you gotta get thru calculus, and then take a course in proof writing (at my uni it’s called “transition to advanced math”) at which point everything turns into theorems and proofs and the most number intensive course is probability. i don’t even need statistics credits to graduate.

this was a lot and i tried to wrap it up like 3 times and then i had more to say because i think a lot abt math and the fact that i was lucky to have the right opportunities to not entirely chase myself away from the field (which is a lot more words and i should probably work on my hw) but if u have more questions lemme know bc! i am very dedicated to exposing people to math and why i love it.

[mysticalmusicwhispers]

WSKFJEKGJ indus Not Approving of yao is BRILLIANT also i am not a dog person but also not a being mean to animals person so i am not sure how to feel about the poor dog... still it is exactly what they would do (and then poor indus has to deal with yao being invited over repeatedly after this visit. f. if they do something too stupid he's going to be banned and there will be the additional chaos of sneaking him in.... )

YEP i don't think baby yao has much pity for anyone let alone himself and he also doesn't know what fear means. also OH NO NYO CHINA AS HIS GUARDIAN. OH N O the thing is that nyo china is probably working/worked either in finance or as some sort of private tutor for like 25 subjects for students over the world because she's brilliant... but that means like long or irregular hours and probably a lot of time out of the country... which means that yao has so much time (and money, via a fat allowance) to go F E R A L. also you KNOW she wouldn't discipline him even if she had the time. she'd just be like go baby! kids will be kids! i'll use my money to scrub your bullshit from your records! as long as you get good grades and keep yourself fed you are a-OK! she also has the moral backbone of a chocolate éclair and negative 10 parenting skills. and yao obviously follows this example of "if you have enough money/power you are Above The Law, you can ignore any laws you think are stupid". which uhh cultivates his ambition and discipline in academics, so i guess at least she didn't fail there??? she would be such a terrible parent/guardian omg i think both 2p and 2p nyo china are better parents/guardians who can actually instill but NO of course it HAD to be her

also thank you for the book rec when i get back home i'll read it!

SNEAKING HIM IN AKSJDKS also yeah india is like “haha you suggested I invite him now he’s Excited!! I have to keep inviting him, or else I’ll lose my friend!” *puppy dog eyes*. F in the chat for Indus. Also lol yeah I’m not a dog person either but I think it would be one of those small yappy dogs because they are not very intimidating but very annoying. Yao dislikes it for whatever mysterious reason and they somehow manage to get it to wash itself in a bucket of water with pink hair dye, and then lock itself outside the neighbor’s house. Unfortunately the neighbor has a security camera and things get out of hand from there. Idk what would get him banned but I honestly don’t think it would take much lmao, Indus is already at her limit with the first stunt...

Also YES to finance/tutor nyo China! I love that she travels a lot and is just that sort of absent but also pretty cool guardian who facetimes her ward (or whatever) and says “Ill bring you (insert souvenir/traditional snacks) from (insert country here) when I get back. Did you do all your homework? What have you been eating? Mhmm.... ok! You seem to be holding up fine, I have a call from a client right now so I have to hang up.” (Yao usually has his hw done and even if he answers he just ate snacks and like 1 proper meal at a friend’s house it’ll probably satisfy nyo china). YES TO THE FAT ALLOWANCE and the too-much leniency.... FFFFFFFFFF in the chat for every single classmate of Yao’s and their parents. IMAGINE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN SHE GOES TO MEET THE TEACHER ON TEACHER PARENT NIGHT lmaooo all Yao’s classmates are scared of her but all his classmates’ parents are giving nyo China the evil eye (but simultaneously being a little bit scared of this woman who has ended up raising a feral child) sksksksks kinda hilarious. Yao and nyo China are just in their own little familial dynamic while everyone else is trying to stay as far away as possible from them lol. And yeah lol, I was gonna have her either be Yao’s adult cousin or aunt (like idk mid 20s (23 would probably be the youngest) to early 30s or something) so she’s just vibing by herself and then gets a child, says “oh well, I guess I can take him” and literally is just his provider of food and shelter but not much else. Yao is fine with that though because his Independence is strong lol