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i-love-to-draw1 · 1 year ago

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I found tonight's really fun and interesting

Even if I feel like shaking some of the characters for not talking with eachother. Because they misinterpreted their ideas or them bout all this.

I got a more clear idea of everyone. Like I watch everyone n I mean it. But I only speak n understand English n Spanish. So I get like 20% the conversation in Portuguese if I put my full focus [can't always do tht bc I'm usually busy so I rely on updates on twitter, so I'm like partly listening n trust the people here on tublr]. N like no French so I rely on body language n the translater [also the update n here on tumblr]

I wish they all could talk and pick one person but I also understand due to the characters trauma or worry. Bc this is very a rp VS meta. N the cc gotta choose how their characters should walk on tht line. It also doesn't help tht the cc won't speak their native language to help with explaining their intentions better. I was really hoping for tht this time [hopefully the 3rd debate thyd do so].

That aside. I found really cool!! I like where insaimduo is going, but not all cc join in mostly bc thy arent into rp n bc Twitter fans n chat can get to intense. Their ideas are super cool!! N i feel like itll help those who DO want to come back. but I know tht despite tht the federation are also very powerful group. Bc I feel like they forgot tht they CAN deny request and rule n other stuff bc it must all go through them.

Same with bag, bad n gegg. Bc they all want to destroy it n do diff forms of anarchy. N I tots understand why their characters don't want to fully use the word bc many don't understand that anarchy isn't the typical chaos shit lmao. N i hope they joined together tho bc they are pretty similar on the goal on destroying a single power. But what I hope more from baghera is maybe talk about the council especially the main leader for each language, especially bc the Spanish community which is so small qwq [PLZ MARIANA AND MISSA COME BACK/lh]. But I also understand why insane duo worry bc thy have stuff plan n theirs is a bit uncertain but theirs is tht of relying on the community but also in hopes to be granted on being able to do the council/destroy the pres position n while insane duo also talks for the people. I understand theirs a chance tht feds might take control like they did to celbit on those days.

I love Mike's idea in establish a more aid than just people giving what they can [obviously etoiles is gathering materials for the next group, bad doing community teleports n Brazilians doing the roads, n forevers many projects] bc it can help. Like it did with the French but afterwards they all had to work hard to get most of their materials by themself. N it makes sense bc I feel like thy might make the server even more difficult as times goes by! But I also know tht certain events can be done with or without the feds aid. Like the admins (meta talk) want the players to have fun. But like rp the Feds want the resident to BE HAPPY!!! for some reason. So if this does make them happy they'll do it. Which I get the others view bc u don't need to run as pres to do this fun events.

I just want all of them to talk, to work things out like. Pick someone n I hate to say this, tht can trust and are willing to sacrifice themselfs, to 1st establish a council incase something happens to who gets elected. Start planning things n project n ect. Continue the communication, help with organizing projects ect. Bc it's very obv tht everyone cares for eachother n want to help but it's difficult if everyone trying to see their view bc of their struggles n worries. Bc the feds are powerful, they can n are willing to do anything for wutever fuk up experiment thy wnat to do. They can take control of forever, bad baghera, ect. N do wutever to them to take control.

It's anxiety inducing bc the feds can do something to everyone. N I want ALL of then to talk it out n do back up plans incase something happens. N I want them to work against the feds n Elquackity bc omg he is so sus n thy all want to make sure someone like him won't become the president, which is why thy are running in the 1st place, bc thy DON'T want someone they barely know or the feds in charge. They lost when the feds decided to do this. So now thy must fight for control. So the feds don't get more power than they already have.

Also reminder that the characters maybe fighting in the campaign but it's obvious they still care. Tht the feds failed in trying to do discourse bc the love this characters have for eachother is strong. Sure it'sbumby rn but thts how it is sometimes. Nothing is smooth. They all communicate eventually. It'll just take some time.

They all have their worries n trauma n ideas. They'll talk hopefully soon. Bc rn it's like 3 diff groups [4th bc of foolish lmao KELP]

N for now I'm divided bc now I'm uncertain. I might wait till the voting day to see who's left running so I can make a vote.

But man I super excited n nervous. :0c

I still belive in the communication in qsmp n tht might be my naive self but idc. I'm still giving hope!!!

#qsmp #qsmp rant

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sarcasticidi9t · 10 months ago

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adding on

just in general, the improvement on communication through language barriers has improved SO much. i will never get over seeing ccs being able to speak completely different languages to each other and be able to talk a full conversation. qsmp not only breaks language barriers, but builds bridges as well!

how fast and accurate the translator has become is just amazing to me, how you're able to have multiple translator boxes on the screen now, and how aypierres ultimate captions and quackity studios qsmp.tv continue to break language barriers even outside of the qsmp server is so freaking cool to see. like, qsmp as a project is genuinely a huge game changer and a wake up call for people to realize we have the technology to translate things in real time. thats bonkers if you really think about it. like. that technology wasnt nearly as fast and accurate in like, 2010.

i could go on and on about my infinite respect, support, and love i have for the qsmp :D i really do mean it when i say qsmp is a gamechanger.

just nearly a year ago i never really had the confidence or motivation to learn and speak spanish, so it felt awkward when i didnt understand alot of conversations at family gatherings or partys. but ever since i started following qsmp, its made me want to connect to my culture and language more, and also appreciate other cultures as well!. it has brought me even closer to my family since some, like my nana (grandma) arent fluent in english.

now, i can almost fluently understand most sentences in spanish, even when spoken fast. i also try and speak fully in spanish with my mom or my nana (speaking is more difficult than listening lol), and its honestly just so fun codeswitching between the two :P

rahhhhh and its been SO fun discovering creators from around the world. its also been really fun to see creators i already follow learn and speak phrases from my culture. (VAMO FELIPE MINECRAFT)

its just really fun!! like thats the best word i can use here :] you pick up some mannerisms or phrases from different speaking ccs, as do the ccs themselves. like philza saying no mames every two seconds or fit saying passa tudo while robbing people lmao. as for me, i dont think i can end a sentence without spam typing k now kkkkkkk

im gonna be real. if i were to start talking about the qsmp team now, this post would literally never end. quackity has created the best team ever, the admins are muy chingon

man im just like. thinking about egg signs and how they've evolved over the course of the qsmp and how the qsmp has evolved over the course of the qsmp and just feeling so much love and affection for every part of the project. i dont have any grand overarching point with this just. like. here's a history of egg comms bc of the kind of person that i am

so wayyyy back ten months ago now at the start of the short and sweet egg event that was planned to last maybe a month at most, the eggs had their own custom, decorated signs!

[ID: Leo with a pink sign with an egg on the bottom corner that reads "hello" in all caps. Her nametag reads Leonardo. End ID]

They were extremely simple, single word signs. There was hello, hola, story, feed, sleep, and maybe one or two more and each was its own separate sign. The eggs could only communicate the most basic needs in words and everything else was through minecraft body language or just hoping their parents guessed right.

But obviously, there was a lot more that parents wanted to hear from their children. I'm not sure who was actually first, but the earliest departure from this system I know about is BadBoyHalo giving Dapper a simple oak sign so he could name his pet slime. (Screenshot from @/lxrd-ren)

[ID: Dapper wearing a diver's helmet standing next to a tiny slime in a boat with an oak sign reading "Bouncy (slmecicle but better)" End ID]

Parents quickly realized how much more convenient this was and pretty soon every single egg had stacks of signs to communicate with.

The next innovation came from Vegetta, who was the resident mod knower at the time. He knew about colored canvas signs and gave Leo signs in her favorite color purple because he loved her and gave her everything she wanted.

[ID: Leo's bed in her room under some Fooligetta fanart with a purple sign reading "<3" End ID]

Colored signs obviously had a lot of advantages. Being able to tell at a glance which egg placed which sign was a huge step forward in eggs being able to have long, complicated conversations as well as leaving obvious marks of their personality everywhere they went. It took a little while for them to be standard for every egg though. Bobby never stopped using oak signs even after Richas and Pomme both showed up with colored signs.

[ID: Two signs reading from right to left a red Pomme sign reading "we already started working on a guillotine factory" and a dark grey Dapper sign reading "thats the most french u have said so far pomme" End ID]

And this was the system for a while! And it worked pretty well for most people! The biggest struggle most people had was egg signs not being translated, but streamers adjusted to that by reading signs out loud so the translators would pick up on them. This also lead to adorable and fascinating dynamics like Richas swearing in signs he wrote for Bad and then warning Bad not to read them out. There was also the genuinely phenomenal development of Leolingo where Leo writes only in Spanish to Foolish because it's easier for her to write and he takes his time to puzzle his way through it and learn in a way that's super cool to watch someone else do onscreen.

Then Tubbo joined the server. And Tubbo himself had no problems at all with the system, but he is dyslexic and he casually mentioned offhand that it was getting kind of annoying to read signs after a ten hour long stream and the admin team Fucking Cooked.

Within 24 hours, they had TTS working on the signs. Within 48 hours, it was working on books too. I can't remember how long it took to get translation working, but it was definitely under a week.

And this opened up a whole new world of possibilities for the entire QSMP. The admin team has been on top of capitalizing on it for story purposes, but also just allowing the egg admins to speak in their native languages to everyone whenever they want has been so enriching for everyone involved. Leolingo is awesome but Foolish has been learning Spanish insanely fast and his process is a lot slower and more frustrating than most people can do in front of an audience of thousands of people without feeling discouraged. That's also one language. We've had everything from Foolish being able to check his work a bit more faster to Phil insisting on his eggs taking a day to speak to him in their native languages to Ramón writing a book for Fit in Cantonese, a language we haven't even seen on the server in any other context!

And all of it is fully understood and fully communicated! Sometimes the translators mess up but no one expects them to be perfect and people ask for clarification if the translator says something that doesn't sound right. It's not only a massive step forward in communication technology, but it's a great demonstration of how to use it and when you can and can't rely on it.

And finally, the most recent innovation! One of BBH's viewers sent him a dono saying they had trouble reading certain signs because they were too low-contrast. Bad, Richas, and Pomme just. Took it upon themselves to fix the problem right there and then. Based on One (1) bringing up their own personal struggle, those three came up with new signs that innovate tremendously on the originals.

[ID: Two separate images of the before and after. The first is the egg signs in their original colors with the corresponding egg's name written on them to demonstrate the font color and the second is in the new, higher contrast colors with the same text. The new signs also have custom decorations for each egg. The second picture also has two signs from Pomme in all caps that read "Send all the love to Richas he spent a whole night making this he's the best <3" End ID]

There are three main innovations visible in the above pictures

1: Obviously, the colors are higher contrast. The signs with white text have darker colors and the signs with black text have lighter colors.

2: The colors themselves are lower saturation. Richas said this made it easier for him personally to read them so he corrected that way, but that's open to change if it causes difficulties for more people than it helps

3: The decorations are for accessibility reasons! People with various different forms of colorblindness will find different sets of colors easier or harder to distinguish, but any of them can look at the decorations and use them to identify whose sign is whose instead.

But! Those innovations are not why I made this post! It's these ones!

[ID: The backs of the new signs when placed on the ground. Most visible are Chayanne's with vines and a hardcore heart, Sunny's with shining sunglasses, and Pomme's with an apple and the Eiffel Tower. End ID]

Richas added distinguishing marks to the backs of the signs too! This is something that Bad brought up specifically as something he wanted because it was hard for him to tell who was talking when he was using TTS from behind signs and couldn't see the colors at all.

We went from custom egg signs (a hotbar or so of words and nothing else to communicate with) through a long journey of expanding communication and expanding who we're bringing along on the communication and how easily they can join in and we've circled all the way back around to custom egg signs (they can say anything they want in any language they want and anyone will know it's them saying it from any angle)

and i guess i have enough feelings abotu that to write All This about it

#sarctxt #qsmp #qsmp appreciation #kind of just started rambling lol #i hope the signs get updated to those ones #after the server comes back :D

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foulserpent · 3 years ago

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yotici have always felt out of place bc they were just kind of a very loose jumble of different biological concepts i found interesting, without being well integrated into the world's ecology. here's an attemptedly final redesign for blightseed's only sapient aquatic species

TONS of info under the cut (mostly about their reproductive cycles otherwise it would be even longer lol)

BACKGROUND

yotici are members of an ancient subphylum of chordata that is thought to have diverged from a close common ancestor with the earliest vertebrates. (going to un-creatively call this subphylum 'pseudovertebrates' for ease). pseudovertebrates have independently developed vertebrae, as well as analogues to skulls/jaws/some other internal structures of vertebrates.

the only surviving branch of pseudovertebrates originate from animals with alternating asexual+sessile and sexual+mobile life phases, somewhat similar to tunicate or jellyfish. however, relatively few species with this trait still exist, with most highly derived modern PVs specializing into one form or the other.

a few random examples of sessile and mobile pseudovertebrates. because of the tremendous physiological differences between sessile and mobile PV phases, they often arent even recognized as belonging to the same phylum, let alone being (relatively) closely related.

"morphoids" (placeholder name lol) are a more basal class which retains the biphasic life cycle of their ancestors, with their sessile phase being referred to as "polyps". most surviving morphoids either exploit very specific niches in each life phase, or one phase is greatly reduced to exist solely as a reproductive or larval phase.

yotici are considered morphoids. them and their close relatives specialize into investing great care in their sessile phase, building 'nursery' environments for their polyps to grow in safety.

YOTICI THEMSELVES

yotici are large omnivorous morphoids, and are fully sapient. they feed predominantly on aquatic plants, but also consume mollusks, crustaceans, and corals, and may opportunistically eat other small marine animals.

gardens

yotici are notable for building massive nurseries (word more closely translates to 'gardens') that can transform entire environments. while their ancestral gardens were restricted to very specific environmental conditions, cognitively modern yotici can tailor their gardens to almost any environment, allowing a much wider inhabitable range for the species and cultural adaptation to different environments.

they are most typically and easily built near the shortline, often in bays or other coastal features that can be blocked off from the rest of the sea. stacks of rocks form the basis of almost every yotici garden, though building materials can also include the bones of whales/other large animals, wood, shipwrecks, etc. these building materials are typically reinforced with living organisms- most often corals or kelp, but sometimes including mangroves, tubeworms, sponges, and the sessile forms of other pseudo-vertebrates.

most gardens have existed for thousands (if not tens of thousands) of years, dutifully maintained by the yotici who temporarily inhabit them. a yotici garden is by necessity a habitat for many other forms of life, doubling as coral reefs or kelp forests. in their ancestral range, yotici are specifically symbiotic with several species of coral, some of whom have been domesticated and artificially selected to make better building materials.

reproduction and 'yotlings'

yotici's reproductive cycle is incredibly complex. it begins with mass spawning in 'nurseries', where fertilized eggs seed the seabed and grow into plantlike polyps. these polyps will grow in vast gardens, and wait for ideal water conditions (sometimes taking years) to spawn. when ready to spawn, the 'buds' are encased in a protective film, and develop into larval yotici (called 'yotlings').

they heavily invest parental care into their 'gardens' but very little into their larvae. a garden can spawn thousands if not millions of yotlings, with less than 1% typically surviving to adulthood. yotlings form schools for protection, and typically stay in or near the gardens. reproductive yotici's stripes are likely a signal to yotlings that this is a safe adult to school around (as non-reproductive adults wander wide ranges and cannot provide even passive protection).

yotlings are not sapient (cognitively are comparable to most schooling fish) and are not treated like children. active investment in their care varies culturally, but at most this is devoted to protecting the overall health of yotling swarms rather than individuals. even in these circumstances, infant mortality is an absolute and less than 1% will typically survive past this larval stage.

around the age of 6-10 years old, healthy yotlings will undergo a growth spurt and begin to develop their shells. their cognitive ability increases dramatically at this time, and they begin to more closely follow adults and learn complex behavior and language. at this point, they are considered children and are protected fiercely, and will be adopted into a pod of adults.

yotici have no concept of bloodline within their own species. young yotici are adopted by entire pods without regard for potential relation. stray and orphaned children are readily adopted. a few cultural groups have more structured adoption practices (ie only adopting children from their own gardens) but this is quite rare.

adult life phases

adult yotici have three major physiological/behavioral phases:

spawning phase- reproductive adults migrate to gardens to breed. they will remain and tend to the gardens until their polyps spawn into yotlings (usually 1-5 years). they passively provide protection for already hatched yotlings at this time.

pod phase- adults will form pods during their time in the gardens, and adopt any children present into the pod. once their set of polyps spawn, pods will depart from the gardens (leaving their own yotlings behind) but still tend to remain in warm, shallow waters. these groups adaptationally exist to care for children, but are also the basic social structure in yotici culture. children stay with their parent pods until they have reached sexual maturity and have experienced at least one cycle with spawning adults (to learn 'gardening' skills), at which point they may disperse to form new pods (though this varies).

dispersal phase- if a yotici is unable to spawn during their fertile phase for any number of reasons, they will undergo physiological/behavioral changes that allow for them to range far beyond their typical environments on their own. in this phase, they can go for weeks without eating, and are capable of navigating even open ocean. as potentially handy as this is, this is likely a vestigial trait from a pre-sapient past where their 'gardens' were significantly more vulnerable to environmental changes and would be frequently wiped out (forcing ancestral yotici to search out new sites). while this behavior is adaptationally defunct, it has tremendous cultural importance to many yotici- often induced intentionally for an individual to spend years wandering alone, returning with new knowledge to disseminate among other yotici.

#blightseed #theyre a lot less weird looking now but that was kind of a sacrifice needed for them to make sense

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captn3 · 2 years ago

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pissed off again at ppl only liking my comm post instead of reblogging it. time for infodump to feel better

i think old human technology including game consoles and game disks are still surviving out there and are just hard to find but theres probably a group of ppl that get them and duplicate them so everyone can play the stuff humans made (explaining crossover splatfests). its just that no one can really.. translate it. if it has a story, it becomes a story without words. and in a poetic irony, i imagine some games (staring at undertale) would be much more heart wrenching when you dont know what theyre saying

like trying to learn a language- no, MULTIPLE language of an entire worldwide species- from scratch with no remaining people who speak it is. probably really hard. not impossible, but near it. i dont think the mammals we Do have can really. help them with learning human languages anyway.

also, the existence of recoverable games, movies, pictures etc, would change the knowledge of human history immensely. be it good or bad. they wouldnt know what is fictional or not, but also would have better references for human anatomy. like, they might think dinosaurs are just mythical creatures we made up. and think fairies were real and common..

there are new games being made in the present by the current society, but games slowly being found from humans are like game releases- very exciting, especially when they probably arent found in order, its like piecing a puzzle together.

anyway all this to say agent 3 would play sa2 and fully understand shadow's issues and relate to him a lot. doesnt know what the fuck he is hes just a spikey bitch BUT would recognize his name is shadow because whenever people look at him they say shadow. shadow the thing. theyd say shadow is a gender name and no one can make fun of them cause the majority of the agents just stole their agent number for their name.

obviously theres a paradox in splatoon the game existing in the splatoon universe following this logic but like. It Simply Doesnt have to Exist. same for smash bros ultimate and mk8deluxe. hell those tow that just feature the characters and arent based around it can probably just. Not have the splatoon characters in universe. paradox solved its not even that hard. its a fictional world anything is possible.

ACTUALLY the smash games would be insane to find for them. like HOLY SHIT ALL THESE GAMES ARE CONNECTED. WOW. and people making theories on whether or not these unrecognized characters have games that we just havent Found yet or if theyre original to the smash bros series. god its just so neat life finds a way. infodump over thank you <3

#memo's ted talk #long post #can you tell i think about splatoon. a lot

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babysizedfics · 4 years ago

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the first time vee regressed in therapy (and meeting michael after)

NOTE: this is almost 2k words... so it continues under the cut. No TWs!

for the first few sessions of vees therapy with dr picani, patton is in the room with them because of vee's selective mutism, so patton hung around to help translate for vee during seasions until she is able to speak for herself, and thru these firsts sessions emile sees how attached the two are to each other

and after about three or four weeks, once vee can reliably talk for herself, patton stil sits in the waiting room so if vee needs him he's there

im their first session without patton, emile actually prompts vee to tell him what she calls her uncle patton. she says "patton" but emile is like do u not call him uncle? and she hesitates bc she definitely doesnt call him uncle but she hates lying

and emile smiles knowing that she doesnt. then he asks "are there any other names you call your uncle, vee?" because unbeknown to vee, emile actually heard her call patton "dad" one day in the waiting room

she is made rlly nervous by this question but emile assures her he isnt trying to trick her or anything, he just wants her to be honest. and after some more coaxing she whispers that she calls patton "dad" and emile is like thats lovely

and suddenly vee is teary and panicky because shes scared emile is being sacastic or will quiz her about it, but he insists that its very nice that she is comfy calling patton that and that they are so close and it makes vee feel a lot safer

but that prompts emile to start asking her about her biological father, janus. has she ever called him dad or was he always janus? does she know why that is?

vee really tries her best to stay calm and answer, but the questions suddenly get too much and before she knows it virgil goes non-verbal bc she realises she is starting to regress

emile notices vee's distress and changes his voice like softer and more clear. he asks what is wrong, he assures her they dont need to talk about anything vee doesnt want to talk about. Can you breathe with me? Good thank you, can you talk? No thats alright you dont have to. Is there anything he can do to make her feel safe?

and the soft caring words just push vee compeltely into half regression and she starts fully crying, tears spilling down her cheeks and shaky breaths and little squeaks and sniffles and tightly cuddling her softie she took with her (a lilac octopus, dr violet)

after a couple minutes of just crying and emile givinf her some space to let it out, the tears arent slowing down. so she cries " i w-wan pa-p-p-..." giving up after she realises her voice is definitely little now

"what do you want, vee?" emile prompts so so kindly that it just makes vee's chest ache

she whimpers "w-wan papa" and trails off in sobs

and emile instantly knows she means patton. he very easily rolls with this infantile behaviour, being a child therapist a lot of the time. he just sees her acting like a toddler and he immediately thinks okay time to turn on the toddler therapy, no questions asked

emile stands up carefully and speaks clear and gentle "okay vee. dr picani is leaving for just a moment to get your papa, okay? I'll be back very soon" and vee just squeaks through her tears, so he hurries out to the waiting room to fetch patton

pat literally jumps from his seat when emile calls him in saying vee is upset and practically runs through the corridor and into the office. he immediately pulls her into a one armed cuddle on the couch while emile just closes the door rlly gentle for privacy and hands a box of tissues to patton. so patton softly shushes his baby and wipes her tears away while emile takes quick notes in his book

patton is rlly quietly shushing her and comforting her, trying to be discreet. emile notices that this is obviously a common occurence, and also notices that patton seems to be holding back something

so when patton looks up briefly and catches emiles gaze, emile just smiles and speaks softly "do you know what age regression is, patton?"

and patton breathes a massive sigh of relief and hugs vee tighter "yeah... yeah we do"

and emile nods and smiles a little sympathetic looking back at vee and patton jumps right back to comforting her, not trying to be discreet this time, going full papa mode now that he has the confirmation that emile knows about regression

patton lifts a still crying vee into his lap and cuddles her to his chest and rocks her. "its alright, baby, shh shhh, papas got you" (vee still crying and grabbing pattons shirt tightly) "i know i know, baby, youre ok"

then emile adds in softly "youre doing very well vee" and patton smiles at him then repeats for vee "did you hear dr picani? he said youre doing sooo well! youre so so brave, hunnybunny"

and eventually when vee is comforted enough and the tears have stopped, emile raises his eyebrows questioningly at patton and pat talks to vee: "vee, are you ready to talk to dr picani again?"

she whimpers and grips patton tighter. "its okay babygirl, papas not going anywhere..." patton hesitstes and looks up at emile a little worried "uh, as long as thats alright with dr picani"

emile nods and smiles softly when vee peeks over her softie at him "of course. you can do whatever you want vee, if having your dad - or your papa here makes you feel safer then of course he can stay. would you like patton to stay so you can feel safer?"

vee doesnt respond but frowns and hides behind dr violet again, and emile looks to patton

patton explains gently "we need simpler language than that for her when she's regressed."

"oh my apologies..." emile starts, then tries again. "Vee?" he waits for vee to lower her softie from her eyes again to show shes listening. "Do you still want your papa?"

vees shoulders are tensed and shes hugging her softie so tight, still hiding partially behind it, but she nods a little

and so they continue with patton in the room

throughout the session she is REALLY shy of emile in this headspace but emile is just rly gentle and treats her like an actual young child while she sits in pattons lap and tries to interact with him, so emile manages to coax some stuff from her. and is shocked to find that this seems to be a headspace that actuslly allows vee to be more open and honest with him even if her language is limited

he asks her how does she feel right now? its okay if she doesnt know. is she scared? thats okay, it is very scary. she's being so brave. but is papas lap soft and warm? thats very nice! does it make her feel safe? does it help her tears go away? well thats good to hear, we dint want you to be sad. do you love papa? Can you show me how much? Woah that's a lot!!

and once vee has calmed down a lot and giggled a little at how nice dr picani is being to her, emile sees vee start to suck her thumb

unfortunately its not sanitary for her to suck her thumb in oublic since she must have touched surfaces, and pat brings her thumb away and desperately apologizes when vee whines and starts tearing up when papa wont let her suck her thumb. she dorsnt have her pretty paci so what else is she meant to do!

then emile announces in a very babytak voice. "vee, can you guess what I have in my desk drawer? Haha No, not frogs. Look!" and he pulls out a handful of lollipops! all different colours! and vee starts bouncign a little on papas lap and smiling

with a quick check that she has no allergies (egg, but there aint no egge in lollipops) emile lets her pick a flavor/color then givs it to her to suck on

patton needs to hold it for her though in case she accidentally swallows it, so her lil hands are just holdin gently on papas hand as he holds the lollipop for her and her legs are swingin, dangling down from papas lap bc she happy stims when she is eatin sweets by kicking her feet!

nearing the end of the session emile tells vee how good ahe's been answering al his questions and being well behaved for her papa. so he lets her pick a sticker to prove how good she was today!

but she doesn't want to touch the sticky or have it one her pretty dress, so patton asks her to point to her favourite and papa can pick it up for her. but shes too shy to pick one

so papa chooses one for her, a puffy pink kitty, then puts it on his nose to make her giggle. shes shy abt giggling in front of emile and buries her face on papas shoulder and patton cradles her head and coos and emile just watches all of this rly softly

and then their time is up and patton smiles and pats vee's leg and asks if she wants to be carried and she shakes her head with a proud smile. patton gasps "are you gonna be a big girl and walk on your own?"

then vees smile drops and she whines and grabs pats hand and patton giggles "no no not completely on your own. paps gonna hold your hand baby" so she nods and they get up with patton holding her hand

then patton says goodbye to emile and thanks him for being so kind to vee, and emile says "my pleasure. i'll see you next week vee!"

vee squeezes her papas hand and shuffles behind him a little. but she waves her softies tentacle at emile to say goodbye and emile smiles and waves to them "byebye dr violet, make sure you keep vee safe and happy this week!" and vee giggles and patton leads her outside

in the waiting room vee is much more closed off because theres the receptionist and a couple other clients in there so she just keeps her eyes down while papa signs them out - then she hears a slightly deep voice say "oh, I really like your stuffie"

vee doesnt really know how to react, she looks up a little and sees dark blue jeans and thick legs and vans sneakers but then quickly tugs pattons hand and steps behind him to hide from the stranger

"Thank you! It was a 'well done for going to therapy' gift from me" patton says cheerfully, and vee starts stroking his fingers as a comfort stim

"aw that's sweet!" the stranger says just as joyful as patton... so vee feels okay looking up now that she knows this stranger wasnt trying to make fun of her

she only catches some shaggy brown hair and a tshirt with what looks like a horror film image on it that she doesnt recognise. she doesnt dare make eye contact but she can tell the stranger is smiling at her

and she cant talk, shes too little, but shes not little enough to not understand whats happening. so she lets go of pattons hand bruefly to sign "thank you" then quickly grabs his hand again, feeling her cheeks warm and looking back to the ground

"you're welcome!" the stranger says, still happy, so vee smiles a little, then tugs pattons hand and looks up at him pleadingly

patton is beaming, his cheeks bunched in the biggest smile. "ready to go, sweetie?" vee nods "okay, here we go. It was lovely meeting you..."

"michael!"

"michael" patton smiles and holds out his other hand to shake michaels hand. "im patton and this is vee! have a good night!"

"you too, patton!" michael bids as patton and vee start walking away. then the voice soeaks again "bye vee!"

vee doesnt respond but she smiles and pulls dr violet up to hide it

patton leads her out to the parking lot and as he buckles her seatbelt for her he presses a big kiss to her cheek "im so so proud of you, babygirl"

and the whole ride home patton speaks softly and recaps what was good about theraoy this week. he does it to reinforce with vee that this is a good thing to do.

he talks about how lovely dr picani was and how he already knew what regression was. he talks about how funny his jokes were and how much she giggled. and her lollipop and her sticker - which they just realised was still on pattons nose and laughed about. and he talked about the lovely boy in the waiting room who liked vee's softie!

and the whole time vee is smiling and giggling and blushing and getting closer to full regression so that when they get home vee is just a bouncy wiggly giggly baby all night

#little/big concepts

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thoughtfulpaperback · 9 months ago

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As I Polin Stan I feel this but I think the biggest issue with all of this is perspective.

I love the Marina storyline not for its value in a romance story, but in the shows exploration of women. Yes obviously we can hurt with Pen in this and Bridgerton is a romance, but I think what the show has done well although sometimes heavy handed is exploring how women make thier own happiness and deal with the limitations and expectation placed on them in this setting/world while maintaining complex female characters.

While people want to fully vilify the women on the show whether it is Pen, Marina, Lady Featherington, etc.

We glance over the point that each woman is doing what they got to do to survive and in doing so is bound to make mistakes due to jealousy, desperation, loyalty, duty, bad decision making skills or whatever.

Marina is scared and manipulative (less that she herself is a manipulative person and more that she does do manipulative things). She is a victim of the social constructs around her (expectations of virginal women/ideas of ruin) and circumstance (her lover dies). Her manipulations don't have to get a pass, but to pretend that she doesn't have legitimate reasons to take the actions she took is delusional.

I don't see Colin as a prop in Marina and Pens' story, and I think not having a POV for him is actually developing him. Because Colin is supposed to be "lost" his isn't a prop but he imo is supposed to feel like he has limited agency because he goes with the flow of wherever the plot is going (lack of purpose and all that). That said, while obviously polin was being shown and dragged out, because the point of thier relationship is that they grow into it (over years in the book which wouldn't translate well in the show if it wasn't shown in the previous seasons). So I don't mind no Colin pov since I think it gets the job done. He is shown as naive and definitely not mature, which was part of the goal, I assume.

I disagree that most of the Fandom doesn't care about Colin outside of being an extension of Pen. I think many people see themselves in Pen and ergo want him to hurt because they felt hurt and would want someone who did that to them to hurt as well. Which is a very human response and I'm not gonna knock people for it even if I don't feel the same. I personally want him to hurt a bit. Not actually hurt or suffer but to actually realize and regret his action (not with Marina, but his words and how he obviously was a jerk). Now that said let not pretend romance hos aren't about that angst life. Of course people want him to suffer, but I agree we need to be careful of the narratives we push and the perspectives they take or lack.

I do think much of the fandom like most fandoms on this hellsite suffer from lack of perspective and/or some outright misogyny and racism.

We don't acknowledge the complexities of characters or the fact that these are supposed to be young characters with limited choices in this setting. We don't acknowledge or recognize that some plotlines aren't about the extention of the romance, but a comment about women and the rules of society in that setting.

There are some really great Polin fanfics that don't overly vilify Marina, acknowledge the complexities of the character and situation, and recognize that the whole polin story line is supposed to be about growing up and living though experience and realizing you love someone because of not only who they have grown into but how they help you grow. But like OP state there are definitely more obviously Marina hating Polin fics which just paint Marina as this cold unfeeling person and not this teen girl who has to be shrewd because of the very scary high stakes situation she is in. And I personally hate Modern Polin AUs because in my experience they way they portray Marina is usually as the worst possible manipulator (which i mean her exact story doesnt really work in a modern context if you arent looking at the real themes of her story).

Also! While totally different fandoms, I bet some of y'all haters would be defending characters on Shamless who have done worse crap and try to trap a boy to survive in society. Just saying.

BtW Book Colin wasn't a virgin by a long shot, yeah he opens states he never loved anyone while show Colin fancied himself in love with Marina. That's freakin life. If we assume the same age differences Colin is only a few months older than Daphne who maybe is either supposed to be 18-20 years old. So my boy is on his 20s and Pen is supposed to be a teen, he can have a crush. He can make mistakes, just like pen has and will.

I agree that I feel that Colin needs more screen time dedicated to his thoughts and processing, which we probably will get now that it is his season.

The Polin fandom (over)reaction and discussion around the Marina plot always blows me away because people are so over the top about it. Like, I also didn’t love it, but I sense for incredibly different reasons.

For me, the issue is more that it doesn’t treat Colin as his own character and rather just as the plot device that exists to develop Marina and mostly Pen. Colin gets basically zero POV and *that* bugs me. It could be a great story for his development but he’s essentially forgotten. He’s betrayed by the first woman he believes himself in love with and is exposed to that truth along with everyone else in highly public and humiliating fashion. That would rattle a person’s confidence in their ability to trust their own instincts to the core! And now it’s going to happen again! He’s going to fall in love with someone who is keeping a massive and potentially life-altering secret from him. How would he not see and have to grapple with that parallel? But none of that matters to the majority of the Polin fandom.

For a lot of people, it seems to be more about the fact that Colin is supposed to “belong” to Pen and him having any interest in someone else makes him lesser. Him and how he was impacted matters way less than that it made Pen sad to watch it.

Hence why so many want Colin to have to “watch Pen with someone else like she had to do” Which completely ignores the actual story that played out with Marina and how, while I understand and empathize with her, she was not an actual LI for him?

Side note: That also kind of reflects in how the fandom casts Marina so often as the villain/punching bag but rarely is that focus on her impact on Colin. It’s almost always about Pen and how *she* felt. People care more about one unkind moment, done out of fear and desperation, of Marina towards Pen than they do about the totality of Colin.

I also think, and this is the most controversial part, that people do know deep down that how Pen handled things with LW wasn’t great but, despite complaining that no one accepts her complexity, they don’t want to grapple with her choices or actually allow her that complexity. Hence, Marina bad but also somehow Colin bad so they must suffer for causing Pen pain (however indirectly) while we must brush past the impact that LW and Pen’s choices had on Marina and will continue to have on Colin. It’s also why Colin’s pain and how he was impacted only really seems to come up when people want to make Marina look like a villain so they can argue that Pen did nothing wrong. All initial discussions about the Marina storyline centre Pen and how it made her feel.

It’s why, again, people are so ready for Colin to “suffer” and uplifting some random plot device character (I have not and will not bother to learn his name.) Because, at the end of the day, even though the person actually most hurt and impacted by Marina *and* Penelope’s choices was Colin, he committed the ultimate sin of liking someone before Pen and that matters more to most of this fandom. Because, if most of us are truly honest, Colin doesn’t matter to this fandom other than as an extension of Pen. He is her prize and not his own worthy of development and complexity character.

P. S. If you don’t believe me, spend 2 minutes perusing the Ao3 page for Polin. How many stories are about Colin truly grappling with everything vs him being ‘punished’? And how often does that ‘punishment’ feature Marina cheating on/mistreating/abusing him but still focus mostly on Pen? Spoiler: it’s a huge chunk.

#polin #bridgerton

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emmiewtf · 4 years ago

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ur not wrong abt the dub but the reason it doesnt have the exact same dialogue as whats written in the sub is because often the length of the spoken japanese sentence doesnt match the length of time it'd take to say the sub dialogue out loud in english. i agree with you that the translations are fucking wack in some places but they were never gonna be able to copy the sub (which shouldnt be hailed as a 'fully accurate' translation either bc its not,, it also colloquialises stuff just not to the crazy degree of the dub) word for word anyways bc thats just not how language works unfortunately. also personally i LOVE reki's VA matt shipman but his dialogue makes me want to fucking scream, and howard wang as langa,,, buddy plz speak up i have hearing issues didnt ur parents teach u not to mumble?

yeah! i know the sub isn't a perfect translation ive seen a fair share of posts about lines that didnt translate right with the different sentence structures and words with multiple meanings, and trying to get the lines to match their mouths is always gonna be hard but like... they didnt have to try to hard to sound hip it's just so painful to watch😭😭 even if they had the best voice actors in the world those lines would be bad like? they just arent? sentences any normal human would ever say.. like whyd they make them say things like chesticles and boomer what was the reason

#f in the chat for aikata u went to buddy then to groupie #emmask #anti sk8 dub #ish

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littlebabycrybtch · 4 years ago

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bro..... im sooo tired of ppl being whiny freaks about ppl liking fictional shit ‘~too much~’. like bitches are literally fully convinced if you prefer acting out certain ideas in fiction but not irl, thats not your normal preferential boundaries but rather your brain is a mental illness BOMB and you need to be fucking hospitalized for being imaginative and having autonomy. like yall if its not taboo or smth shut uuuuhp man you’re not ‘concerned for their health’ or w/e you’re fully just tryna get away with being a nihilistic asshole who lacks sympathetic reasoning skills. listen to me. fiction is valuable. the thoughts we have on it are important. the personal lack of value you happen to put on a media is next to worthless. its not a fuckin waste of time dude, creators are people, who live in the real world, they experience it and have ideas through it and about it, they form and tweak their ideas while still definitely existing in the real world, and then put that back into the world with a new angle and new perspective, to share with other people definitely encountering it in , you guessed it , the real world. thats not disconnected. its not nothing. these things do not magically appear from fairytale land, they are created. stories mean smth, people tell them for a reason, its ok to feel smth for any story, why would we even tell them if not with the intention to impact others emotionally somehow i mean??? fiction does not Just affect reality, it is valuable to real life society, it is a functioning thriving part OF reality.

humans have told stories since the dawn of our existence. it is literally all but an inherent species trait for us to imagine things, its tied to each and every one of us, and to reject ‘fantasy’ as smth worthless to human life is frankly just fuckin wrong and weird of you. bitch we are Supposed to get outside the box, the fandom ppl you cringe your pants over arent thinking abt fake shit too much, you guys very often just arent exercising abstract thought and imagination enough, which actually hurts your ability to engage with it critically in all the ways its meant to be. if you dont see the value in fiction its because you put in no effort to form the analysis skills. in other words, you idiots dont get the hype bc you’re too stupid to get how you're supposed to compare a book to the real world it came from. ‘uu but cmon not everythings valuable what about [tumblr designated cringe media]-’ 1. ok! somehow you havent come to this conclusion yourself yet but thats not real, whatever ppl get to enjoy is not all abt you, your bias means less than dirt to others outside of hivemind social medias, you can keep it to yourself, ppl shouldnt care about it bc it means nothing outside of ur own space, its literally funny to me that you’re so elitist you want me to cater my interests to you, Your Standard Of Quality Isnt Universal, 2. ranking the values of fiction is the waste of time here, if you compare mlp to pride and prejudice ill dissect your teeth, different emotional impacts from tragic to funny to Just A Vibe are all able to be assessed as ‘valuable to somebody else so leave well enough alone’ if you dont have 2010+ funnyman brainrot disease that makes you incapable of reflecting on anything you can find a way to joke abt first.

i mean seriously like. whenever randos start engaging with medias you ppl dont like or in ways you dont get, the strawmans yall make up to get to be cringe culture vultures abt such benign shit, and almost Always at the expense of neurodivergent people with a deeply rooted undertone of extreme ableism might i add..... its just so selfish. u have a brain ok, you’re manipulative but we both know you dont Actually think ppl automatically default to being a waifu obsessed incel rotting away at their basement computer, stagnating their social skills and straying further and further from reality with each passing day, a poor disturbed wretch that you just HAVE to save from themselves, all bc they say they. prefer fictional porn or w/e to having sex irl. buddy thats not a big deal, theyre normal, just different from you. theyre fine, you’re just uncomfortable. as a functioning adult you’re gonna have to try and recognize that sometimes that feelings gonna be 100% on you, and you cant always just lie abt the validity of it to make ppl feel obligated into agreeing with you. this is gonna be one fragment of their personhood and your self obsessed brain imploding over how unrelatable that is doesnt fucking matter, grow up bitch like. how detached do you have to be to think thats so unstable or morally wrong.... its just a completely inconsequential preferential decision that only affects them and isnt a wrong choice at all cuz nobody has to get their dick wet if they dont wanna for any reason ever and thats gotta be that tbh.... and it kills me cuz they still inherently experience the real world and are capable of thinking abt it critically,,, even tho they... masturbate to drawings or w/e the fuck ppl think is unhealthy ???? like? imagination is just fun we dont need to moderate it anymore than we moderate other fun activities i mean lol ksdjfsd this is the DEFINITION of ‘just vibing’ no one FUCKING cares and it deosnt fucking matter the way you desperately try to make ppl think it does just so u get to be loud abt ur shortcomings as a decent understanding person.

‘uuuuuu im sorry but thats unhealthy :///’ you sound like a goddamn maniac dude stories are not unhealthy having feelings abt them is not unhealthy thinking some anime bitch that was DRAWN TO BE HOT , IS HOT, is not UNHEALTHY and you clowns arent convincing anybody you ‘care’ abt that concept anyways !! im losign my mind here skdlsdfsd medias are literally DESIGNED TO DO THIS TO PEOPLE... WE’RE SUPPOSED TO FEEL THINGS FOR IT.... IT IS WHAT MAKES THE ART WE’VE TAKEN PART IN FOR CENTURIES, “ART”.... ITS JUST... HAVING IDEAS AND EXPERIENCING IMAGINATION..... whats wildly unhealthy actually is yalls toxic obsession with ‘harsh truth’ and validating your stupid ass cwinge feewings to the point where everything that gives your underdeveloped selfish ass hives has to be a matter of health and morals and whats ‘best’ for everyone. u dont know that shit!!!! ur a petty brat and im not ur mommy ok i wont baby you so u dont feel like the shitty whiny person you are, you need to grow and do better and think outside urself already, dont put the responsibility of making u feel right for judging somebodies benign hobbies on me. i wont bc its wrong and unnecessary. you’re not a savior no ones falling for that lmao you’re just a bitch girl xoxo get over it shit truly does not matter. let them write nsfw self insert fics instead of banging !!

to make it real do yall really not Get that basic consent kinda doesnt just mean ‘no when im not in the mood at the time’ but it means ‘no if i just dont fuckin feel like having sex ever for literally any reason at all bc i choose what i do’ and pressuring them, even with what your warped brain translates as the best of intentions, is inherently disgusting? especially with the ‘i know how to help you’ attitude like......... ohhh die soonly ew lmao! lay off this nasty shit already please it doesnt matter! stop trying to make it matter!! its not hurting you or them you stupid tumblr phd ass!! and like again yeah some media shits just truly gross but tbr now its like even That kind of shit, the Real social issues caused by Actually problematic media that ppl should discuss Genuinely without ulterior motives, is being used more and more rampantly as just a stepping stone to get to the needless mockery of other harmless things in the media they want an excuse to bag on.......... like a bitch cant just be grown and talk about problems at face value without getting a bully jab in. smhhhhh you all fuckin suck please just stop talking already. so anyways yeah being attracted to fictional characters instead of real people or w/e IS funny, funny how many boyfriends they have when u have none xoxo theyre having fun and you can die sad abt it they get to die 5 times in an angsty fantasy fic and be brought back with mouth to mouth by fuckin kakashi every time and then they go get lunch irl while ur updating tinder bitch ... different fucking strokes ig !

#long post//#i would like one free ticket to pop off please. thank you #can i cash it in immediately if you dont mind

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peachymilkshakes · 5 years ago

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Thoughts on Project Diva Mega39s

I thought i’d write a little blog post about this, since i’ve had this game for a few days now. There are a few things i’m happy with, and a few things that i’m dissapointed with. So i’d like to talk about that. Keep in mind that I am a NintendHOE. I do not own much Playstation stuff besides my Vita and my brother’s PS2. So this is coming from the perspective of someone who has only played PDf, PDf2ND, X and Project MiraiDX.

Since i’ve learned to end with the compliments while giving a critique, i’ll start with the things that i wished were different.

1. The setlist I’m missing SO many songs from older games! Since this game is calling itself MEGAmix, i would’ve expected way more. I’m missing songs like Nyanyanyanya!, Love is war or Glasses. (seriously, how else am i gonna look at Racing Swimsuit Luka in awe if it isn’t for that slowmo bit at the beginning of Glasses?) If i had to list every single song that i’m missing i could have written a book instead. So i’m not going to do that (yet!) The video that i’ve linked in paragraph 3 under this lists a few more that i think deserve a spot. 2. The PVs Then there are songs like Dreaming ChuChu, or Suna no wakusei, who, don’t have a 3DPV at all, but rather their original PVs the way they were uploaded to Youtube/NicoNico. Excuse me? SEGA, if you’re going to charge me 60 euros for the full game (current DLC included) I’m expecting nicely animated story PVs. I haven’t even talked about the Roki PV or all those PVs that just has the vocaloid dancing on a stage and that’s it. Sure, for some PVs it works. Like for Clover Club. But other than that it’s just utterly boring man.. Where has the time gone where we got fully animated story PVs? Like i dunno.. the VOiCE PV? Who remembers that? I miss that!

Roki’s PV was made by slapping the dance motion they made for the concerts onto the models and bam there ya go. Originality has been found nowhere. I mean sure, they’re allowed to do that. But at least tweak it a little. This is just boring and unoriginal. But hey at least Roki has a 3DPV unlike other songs i would’ve loved to see have one. Exhibit A Exhibit B (Timestamp 2:15 but watch the whole video)

3. Something else Going from the PDf and PDf2nd on my Vita, to this, has been a rough transition. I’m dearly missing the hold notes. Sure, we have a different type now, but it’s not the same. Although I’m sure it’s just an issue of getting used to, I will most likely just go back to my vita to play certain songs the way i like to play them instead. It’s not a big deal, just a thing that i’m personally missing.

Then I heard that SEGA Japan overcharged their people for the game as well. The English translated game was significantly cheaper than the Japanese game, which is interesting since Japan is Miku’s origin country. This is just something i’ve learned from a video on youtube, and i think you should just watch it yourself rather than take my word for it. You can find it right here.

Another little gripe i have is that when you finish a song it’ll have replay preselected and i end up accidentally pressing that instead of back. But that’s just a tiny little nitpick.

I miss the diva room so much!! Why don’t we have any diva rooms anymore? I wanna pet Teto and feed her dangos :(

Oh and, the module selection screen couldve been more nicely ordered. I have to go through like 20 other modules to get to the one i want. It’s really messy looking and i get really overwhelmed by it.

Honestly my biggest issue has to be the setlist, the unanimated and dance/stage PVs, and the oddly looking graphics of the game. (Toon shader on the models but no toonshader on the stages. It looks off. I just don’t like it.) At least the models aren’t looking like the Dreamy Theater models. Good grief was that an eyesore. But i don’t like the toonshader either. I guess it’s more of a taste thing, but i’m not into it.

4. So, which game is the worst. X or Mega39s? Honestly, in my opinion it has to be X. I’m sorry, but despite it having my favourite setlest out of every Project Diva game, I just really dislike the premise of the whole thing. At least the Arcade type Project Diva games lets you play every song freely without any burdening annoying objective like filling up a crystal and having to clear live shows and medly songs in order to advance. And besides that, the Arcade games have way more songs added by all the loids that arent called Hatsune Miku. I’m more of a Rin and Luka stan, so i’d prefer more songs by them, or even Meiko.

And yeah, we could criticise the other games for this as well, but i suppose it’ll always be like this since Miku is Crypton’s flagship product much like what Mario is for Nintendo. She just sells well, so we get more songs involving her, and i get that.

5. What do I like about Mega39s? The sliders have been a lot of fun. Although i miss the star icons from PDf, it’s a great way to keep the gameplay feel fresh. And I feel like especially in songs like Unhappy Refrain they fit in great and add to the feel of the song. I also like the clean menus and the music that plays during them.

Overall the setlist isn’t bad. I love the songs we have. I’ve been dying to play Tricolore Airline outside of Project MiraiDX. (Which by the way, Rin’s version is the most superior one of all of them)

I’m glad that they’ve included the fact that you can change the icons into the old Playstation ones. I’ve changed them into that and have gotten better scores because i’m just more used to that. Although i still have to stop pressing B when i should be pressing A to select something since we’re playing on Nintendo after all.. Yeah, i have trouble SWITCHing if you get me.. haha..

I’m curious of what’s to come for the franchise’s future. I hope they’ve learned from the debacle of PDX.. but who knows really.

The game is fine. You could argue they should’ve just marketed it as Future Tone but on switch, since it is essentially that. But for people like me, who do not own a Playstation, that is not much of a problem. You could always just not get MegaMix if you already own Future Tone. (Honestly, if you own a playstation, please just buy future tone)

But that’s all i have to say on the matter. I also have been thinking of writing a post like this for ACNH since i’m sort of a “veteran” but we’ll see wether i’ll feel like writing another essay by then. If you made it this far, thank you for reading <3

#project diva #hatsune miku #Sega #nintendo #rythm game #vocaloid

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whatifwekilledgodandwebothgirls · 1 year ago

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Alright babes i cannot understand shit because its from like 100 years ago and in καθαρευουσα ( a greek dialect idk its like modern greek but wierd ) im in the worst conditions possible with no clean water , a brush , or sanity left but heres what i got so far

Honorable mention to the fact that socrates just is wierd like that sometimes and that people just are ok with that . And also to the fact that they were all fucked up the night before which i find cute

The choice not to have a dude telling them when to drink ( i forgot what hes called ) is such a fucking show of intelligence and class it was soooo done on purpuse to so how cool and not like other philosophers the group was . But also like , chosing free will over years of tradition . Kinda based . By the way im low key sad the author didnt include what ode they might have said when they finished eating, i would have loved to learn about more practical aspects of the religion

Alright so Eros isnt aphrodites son ?? I mean one version of him is , which i think is very very fitting mytjologically speaking and also i geuss it ties in well with the metaphor , if you exuse the reference about ouranios eros ( the pure gentle type of love ) being only for men because it was born from no mother which i dont fully Get ( yeah being gay has unfortunately not played that big of a part in my life until now and while i do feel the urge to be like , yeah gay love is suppiror because yeah ok the dude has a point but i cant agree or disagree because i havent expirienced it ) and its also wierdly and hilariously staightphobic from an outsiders pov but like . Difrent times , difrent people . Whatever . I just think its funny

.Bottoms are the best because they the Lovers have god inside them ( are eros fucked up little puppets ) and the loved ones chose to worship that god so in turn , the gods like them more. I dont know. I dont fucking know . I feel like that part was very agressively profound but i read it while heat stroked after sunbathing to long and it was really a blur . Ill re read it tomorrow . Generally i was kind of in a haze while reading all of it anz kinda skimmed through some parts because i was more exited on getting the translation right than actually paying attention to the text .i defenetly misunderstood some Stuff

Im not sure who said this but the fucking ionians being tyrants and by defult refusing to let strong relationships form between the men , democracy being so woven into the concept of loving in the context of their society, and loving in turn , being so woven into the fact that there is strength in duality and unity , as much in war as in politics . Tyranny , and of course its cause , lack of wordsmithing , of literacy and so on so forth , literally not allowing love to prosper while the armies at thebes ( i cant for the life of me remember if the armies where under the comand of a kind or not , point is they were well read and cultured people) actually favoring couples . Something something love concurs all something something ερος ανικητε (ανικατε?) μαχα . Now i TYPICALLY have beef with love being portrayed as anything other that a self fulfilling purpose and i cant say im to keen on the idea of it being used as a mean to an end , even if the end is glory , power , freedom whatever . However that my personal thing that i have in the back of my head and i get how love fullfiling such powerfull roles is so fucking good and awsome and im getting emotional thinking about this

There was this part which i adored about how the vows ( prayers?) Given to the gods of love ( aphrodiety, eros and whatnot ) arent actually ment to be kept , and that lovers can do all shorts of demeaning things that even slaves would refuse to do , and that society will turn a blind eye . Something about how the lovers words dont reach the eras of the gods . Nice stuff - im killing myself over it .

Also i forgot that people called boys παιδια ( the word we use for children in general today ) and was kinda startled when the author started going on about παιδεραστία ( today would be translated as pedophilia but used to just mean BoyLove aparently)

Gonna love blog my thoughts on the symposium stay tuned

#anyway the point to be taken from all of this is i am dying exaustion havent slept in a Bed in a while and im more and more worried #that my hair will start matting because i dont have conditioner ( or a comb for that matter) with me and that spiders will nest in my hair.#but yeah campings fun #so take everything i say with a grain of salt because i am low key losing my MIND #im having fun though

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uiruu · 6 years ago

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im rly struggling with the most niche, unrelatable problem in the world lol

so i have a conlang, a constructed language, and im transliterating various names and words and such, and so for Korean... hmmm... romanizing (or i guess conlangizing? lhashizing? my language is called lhash or lhax) the “eo” and “eu” vowels is tricky. i get that i dont have to have a one-for-one system, some sounds just naturally fall together when translating them from one language to another. for instance, in Korean borrowings of English words, the vowel sounds in “bit” and “beat” would probably both be written with the “i” vowel. so it’s not a huge deal... the struggle is.... which vowel do i make them lol.

i have six main vowels which can be long and short and there are diphthongs too. /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/, and a sixth that is like anywhere from /ɨ/ to /ɘ/ to /ə/, though is primarily /ɘ/ when short and /ɨ/ when long. for simplicity’s sake, i’ll refer to this vowel the way i write it, “y”. so okay, korean “eo” can be /ʌ̹/ or /ɘ/ too, and its /ɔ/ in north korea. hmmm. i’ve been using “y” to represent “eo”, but is it closer to just “o”? ive also been using “y” for korean “eu”. maybe i should be using long “yy”, which is /ɨ/, for “eu”, but its not always long in korean. i know that doesnt matter but... still. should i go with y or o? y feels too high but o feels too rounded. hell, should i go with “a”? because /ʌ/ is a lot like /a/..... no, im not gonna do that one lol. hmm tho... hm.

i realize that unless you know about phonology this is probably completely unintelligible but... still.

i also am not sure if i wanna distinguish unaspirated vs aspirated consonants word-initially... word-medially is easy because i can use the voiced consonant and it’ll match the phonetic korean, but word-initially not as much. and i dont have distinctive aspirated in my language. should “Gyuri” be “Gjuri” or “Cjuri”? either way, “Seulgi” is “Sylgi” and a hypothetical name (since i cant find good examples) with an aspirated k mid-word like “Seki” would be “Seci”. and what about the fortis consonants? the doubled ones? do i just leave those as is? do i make them into geminates? i think right now my plan is to leave them as is, not distinguish them, but idk. my method at the moment has also been to just use voiced consonants word initially too, as English romanization does.. but that’s not fully accurate. it’s not a big deal to merge them so “Tami” and “Dami” are both “Tami” in my language, but “Mata” and “Mada” would be different (those arent real, i just dont have examples ready to go lol). My voiceless stops are slightly aspirated.... I say slightly because I think if this was a real language they wouldnt be (or it would be pretty slight, not unlike the way the voiceless consonants are pronounced word-initially in korean), but I’m a native English speaker, and that aspiration shit is really hard to unlearn lol. Who knows, like, maybe i’ll even just copy wholesale the voiceless-aspirated vs voiceless-unless-between-vowels thing, so I can make my language’s “g” voiceless word-initially... i probably won’t do that lol... i also have a LOT more fricatives than korean, and distinguishing aspiration on fricatives isn’t really common. it’s not unheard of, it’s just not common.

there’s other little assimilations that my language makes that korean doesnt, for instance the name “Sunmi” (in strict romanization Seonmi) would be phonemically Synmi in my language, but n is pronounced like m before p, b, and m, and i write out all assimilations unless they occur across morpheme boundaries. So her name is Symmi. but if i had a compound word where the first word ended in -n and the second word began with m-, it’d be written -nm- but pronounced /m:/, just because i wanna make the morphology clear. so but idk, there’s a precedent for not being too strict and just adapting it the way a hypothetical native speaker of my language would hear a Korean word.

#korean #conlang #conlang phonology #conlanging #phonology #long post #o #and yes i use c for the k sound #i dont like writing the letter k by hand lmao #it started as an aesthetic thing cause i was taking latin at the time but now i hate latin... i still use c though... just looks better #i also use q for ng tho so.... not following all the conventions haha

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wordsworkweekly · 6 years ago

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Rawls vs. Nozick A dialogue

In 1971, John Rawls published A Theory of Justice outlining a political philosophy of Justice as Fairness. In 1974, Robert Nozick wrote, what some have called, a rebuttal to Rawls’ theory in his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia. In it, he calls Rawls’ work: ��...a powerful, deep, subtle, wide-ranging, systemic work in political and moral philosophy which has not seen its like since the writings of John Stuart Mill...”. He goes on to say, “Political philosophers now must work within Rawls’ theory or explain why not” (Nozick, Ch. 7, sec “Rawls’ Theory”). But even in his extreme praise, Nozick is hesitant to illuminate any specific part of Rawls’ thesis that he agrees with and, instead, limits his work to points of conflict (as he sees them). From these points of conflict, Nozick generates his own political philosophy called “Entitlement Theory.” The main thrust of his argument is that for society to provide for the have-nots is to impinge on the freedoms of the haves (i.e. it demands constant intervention by the political body and the stripping and redistribution of property/ownership/rights from those who have “justly” acquired them). Rawls’ distributive justice, Nozick argues, works in opposition to the freedoms of all men, that it is a “patterned principle” and an “end-state principle” (Nozick, Ch. 7. “Patterning...”), and therefore will eventually be impeded by the liberty of individual humans or the liberty of individual humans will be impeded by it. He says, “...any derivations from end-state principles of approximations of the principles of acquisition, transfer, and rectification would strike one as similar to utilitarian contortions in trying to derive (approximations of) usual precepts of justice; they do not yield the particular result desired, and they produce the wrong reasons for the sort of result they try to get.” (Nozick, Ch. 7, sec “The Original Position...”). To translate, Rawls’ design of Justice as Fairness cannot stay within the designed pattern without intervention of the political body and therefore, by design, will eventually harm/impinge the “precepts of justice” Rawls’ theory advocates.

The following, imagined dialogue between Rawls and Nozick hopes to illuminate not only their opposing concepts and define them, but to show the cracks and contradictions (and strange agreements) that emerge specifically in Nozick’s rebuttal. I will draw from their own works (Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia and Rawls’ 1985 essay “Justice as Fairness”). Unfortunately for Nozick, he’s right when he says, “Political philosophers must work within Rawls’ theory or explain why not.” It is Nozick’s job to explain himself and his thinking and show us, to mangle a boxing metaphor, where he’s landed clean blows (and that all of his blows are above the belt). Or to quote Omar Little from the HBO television show The Wire, “You come at the King, you best not miss.”

A DIALOGUE

ROBERT NOZICK: I read and very much admired your work.

JOHN RAWLS: You say that, but I’ve seen your rebuttal in Anarchy, State, and Utopia.and I am not so sure where your admiration lies.

RN: What do you mean?

JR: Your engagement with my theory of distributive justice, based on my belief in justice as fairness, seems to be superficial and, at least, seems to reject my definition of justice as fairness especially in regards to how the state, or political body, would have to intervene to make fairness a reality. Where my concern lies with the least advantaged, yours seems to lie with the most. You appear, time and again, to indulge in the myth of peoples’ disadvantages as being of their own doing. You say, “From each according to what he chooses to do, to each according to what he makes for himself (perhaps with the contracted aid of others) and what others choose to do for him and choose to give him of what they’ve been given previously (under this maxim) and haven’t yet expended or transferred.” (Nozick, Ch. 7, Sec. “Patterning”). Or, crudely, that they must, figuratively if not literally, pull themselves up by the bootstraps while ignoring that a lot of these have-nots aren’t born with boots to begin with (and, unfathomably, that this is somehow of their own making).

RN: I agree that we disagree on the concept of fairness. Your boot analogy holds little sway though. If the boots have been acquired justly, to have the state intervene to redistribute these boots, is, indeed, to infringe on the rights of the person who’s talents and labor went into justly acquiring them. To intervene broadly, as your justice as fairness would recommend, without knowledge of whether or not thiswealth was justly acquired, risks infringement on those living and earning a just entitlement.

JR: But you allow that some wealth and advantage that exists now has been derived via unjust means. You acknowledge this when you say, “Some people steal from others, or defraud them, or enslave them, seizing their product and preventing them from living as they choose, or forcibly exclude others from competing in exchanges.” (Nozick, Ch. 7, Sec. “The Entitlement Theory”)

RN: Yes. And I go on to say that, “none of these are permissible modes of transition from one situation to another.” It is an important principle of my “Entitlement Theory”. The first two principles, of course, are as follows: one, “[a] person who acquires a holding in accordance with the principle of justice in acquisition is entitled to that holding.” And two, “[a] person who acquires a holding in accordance with the principle of justice in transfer, from someone else entitled to the holding, is entitled to the holding.” (Nozick, Ch. 7, Sec. “The Entitlement Theory”) Any existence of injustice or infringement of the first two principles raises the third principle: rectification of that injustice in holdings. My Entitlement Theory, by design, allows a remedy for any historical injustice.

JR: So you admit that in our current state, that some of the strife and disparity we witness is not simply the natural extension of just entitlements? It is not as simple as boots and bootstraps. That present injustice (and inequality) might be traced back to an original injustice, and that our modern concepts of wealth and justice, even the conception of your “Entitlement Theory”, might just be entangled with and originate from a premise of unjust acts (like theft, fraud, or slavery etc.)?

RN: I acknowledged this, but I ask: What now? How can we rectify these injustices? How can we know them? “If past injustice has shaped present holdings in various ways, some identifiable and some not, what now, if anything, ought to be done to rectify these injustices?” (Nozick, Ch. 7, sec. “The Entitlement Theory”).

JR: I have a suggestion. Justice as fairness! As I have said before, “the conditions for a fair agreement between equal persons on the first principles of justice for that structure must eliminate the bargaining advantage that inevitably arise over time within any society as a result of cumulative and historical tendencies.” (Rawls, 16; emphasis added). My “cumulative and historical tendencies” implies that the bargaining advantage that arises (via the accumulation of political power, wealth, native endowments) may also include disparities that have occurred via your concept of unjust acquisitions. I would go so far as to say, as your bafflement alludes to on this subject, that just and unjust acquisitions throughout history are inextricably and forever entangled.

RN: But you do not present direct accusations of injustice. You make no attempt to untangle the mess.

JR: We are both guilty of that, it seems.

RN: Instead, you broadly paint those with advantages as having come to those advantages via unjust practices. Meaning, that in the application of your theory, within its basic structure, you will harm those who have committed no injustice.

JR: I would say my position is less nuanced than that. I would say that any advantage – be it political power, or wealth, or native endowments – that allow for a “threat advantage” cannot be the basis of political justice (Rawls 16). I am not so concerned with how the power imbalance arises (historically, like you are), but how that power imbalance acts to oppress and destabilize right now and into the future. I allow for rectification of unjust acquisition by assuming that any threat advantage is unjust and will always be an imposition by the haves over the have-nots, those with boots and those on bare feet, implicitly. I am working from an original position, where absent the presence of any threat advantage, its negotiators, on the premise of justice as fairness, “...regards all our judgments, whatever their level of generality... as capable of having for us a certain intrinsic reasonableness.” (Rawls 30). We, when stripped of our arbitrary threat advantages (and the disadvantages they create), not only want to ensure a basic structure that allows for anyone to pursue the life they so choose, but also for no one to be left behind, forgotten, or be taken advantaged of in pursuit of the lives we so choose. This is a reasonable position. This is justice as fairness.

RN: This is what you would define as the “difference principle”?

JR: The difference principle is found within the second of my two principles of justice. The first principle being that “Each person has the same indefeasible claim to a fully adequate scheme of basic liberties, which scheme is compatible with the same scheme of liberties for all.” And the second being, “Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: first, they are to be attached to positions open to all under the conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and second, they are to be to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society (the difference principle)” (Rawls 42-43). In other words, any inequalities that naturally arise from the first principle, must, too, benefit those at the least advantage.

RN: You know what I’m going to say.

JR: Wilt Chamberlain.

RN: Well, yes. But first I want to briefly discuss Locke’s theory of acquisition and his famous proviso. And how, from this, I get to Wilt Chamberlain, and locate the crack in your system of justice as fairness – namely that it is a patterned principle and how patterned principles, or end-state principles, will always be disrupted by human liberty.

JR: Okay. Tell me about Locke.

RN: Simply, “Locke views property rights in an unowned object as originating through someone’s mixing his labor with it.” But “[t]his gives rise to many questions. What are the boundaries of what labor is mixed with? If a private astronaut clears a place on Mars, has he mixed his labor with (so that he comes to own) the whole planet, the whole uninhabited universe, or just a particular plot?” (Nozick, Ch. 7. “Locke’s Theory”).

JR: Why use an astronaut for your analogy when Locke provides a simple rendering of his property formula via the “Wild Indian.” He says, “The fruit or venison which nourishes the wild Indian, who knows no enclosure, and is still a tenant in common, must be his, and so is his— i.e., a part of him, that another can no longer have any right to it before it can do [the Wild Indian] any good for the support of his life.” (Locke 116; emphasis added). If the “Wild Indian” eats the venison, it is in his belly and the calories consumed are processed and delivered about his system to maintain his body and thereby his life. The venison and the fruit he has consumed are his property and no one else’s. He has “fenced” it off behind his organs. For another human to acquire what is in the “Wild Indian’s” belly would be for that other person to cut it out from him. But I would think this falls within your conception of unjust acquisition?

RN: It does. And is exactly my point. At what point does the venison become his property? When he ate it? When he cooked it? When he dressed it? When he killed it? When he picked up its tracks and saw it for the first time?

JR: Locke would argue, “The labour that was [his], removing [the object that was held in common] out of that common state they were in, hath fixed [his] property in them.” (Locke 117).

RN: Okay, for argument’s sake, let’s say property begins when the “Wild Indian” removes the venison from the commons, when he kills it, when he realizes the fruits of his labor. But before he can remove it from the commons, Locke’s proviso comes into play. “For this “labour” being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to [that which was removed via his labor from what is commonly held in nature], at least where there is enough, and as good left in common for others” (Locke 116). That is to say that the taking of the venison is just so long as there are other venison held in common, so that the “Wild Indian’s” fellow humans are not disadvantaged by him making this venison his property. That is to say that, “Locke’s proviso... is meant to ensure that the situation of others is not worsened.” (Nozick, Ch. 7, sec. “Locke’s Theory...”). But there is an argument that this proviso introduces a problematic end point where, if all the venison are claimed by the labours of human beings, that the natural end point would be to the disadvantage of whomever did not lay claim or apply their labor to the acquisition of the venison. For, ultimately, to own something (of a finite nature – like venison) is to say someone else cannot own it and eventually disadvantage and inequality will emerge. This is all to say, “Someone may be made worse off by another’s appropriation in two ways: first, by losing the opportunity to improve his situation by a particular appropriation...; and second, by no longer being able to use freely (without appropriation) what he previously could. A stringent requirement that another not be made worse off by an appropriation would exclude the first way if nothing else counterbalances the diminution in opportunity, as well as the second” (Nozick, Ch 7. Sec. “Locke’s theory....”).

JR: The difference principle, you might say, is a stringent requirement not dissimilar to Locke’s proviso?

RN: You said it, not me.

JR: And how does Wilt Chamberlin come into play here?

RN: As an example of my Entitlement Theory, one not predicated on the need for a difference principle or a proviso, but instead a demonstration of wealth acquisition that is just and has no need of state interference (or a minimal need). It is based on the fictional situation that Wilt Chamberlain, being so sought after for his basketball talents, signs a contract that twenty-five cents from the price of each ticket of admission goes to him. “The season starts, and people cheerfully attend his team’s games; they buy their tickets, each time dropping a separate twenty-five cents of their admission price into a special box with Chamberlain’s name on it. They are excited about seeing him play; it is worth the total admission price to them. Let us suppose that in one season one million persons attend his home games, and Wilt Chamberlain winds up with $250,000, a much larger sum than the average income and larger even than anyone else has.” (Nozick, Ch. 7. Sec. “How Liberty Upsets...”). Is he not entitled to this wealth, this advantage?

JR: It depends.

RN: On what?

JR: Ignoring whether or not this plays within my own theory, I’m not sure this example can even live up to your own standards.

RN: Explain.

JR: The third principle of your Entitlement Theory acts to rectify any unjust acquisition.

RN: But I have demonstrated that that Wilt Chamberlain’s $250k was acquire via the first two principles.

JR: Yes, but you don’t account for the origin of all those quarters and whether or not each and every of those one million quarters were justly acquired. Not to mention the facilities in which the game is being played, and the owners of Wilt’s team, where did their wealth originate?

RN: This does not undercut the premise of Wilt’s just entitlement to that $250k. If injustice can be proven, it, too, can be rectified.

JR: And, say, hypothetically, those ticket buyers were all slaveholders. That not only did the quarter they gave Wilt Chamberlain derive from the labour of slaves, but the full ticket price too. Your third principle calls for an intervention, does it not?

RN: (says nothing)

JR: By amending your fiction even slightly with my fiction of 1 million slaveholders, we render Wilt’s natural endowments meaningless if the value of his labor is being paid for by unjust means. Before you protest, we know that your theory can be applied to the concept of slave reparations. Matt Bruenig discusses this briefly in a short article he wrote for the think tank Demos in 2014. He quotes you as saying “If the actual description of holdings turns out not to be one of the descriptions yielded by the principle, then one of the descriptions yielded must be realized.” (Nozick, Ch. 7, “The Entitlement Theory”). He rewords this to say, “If the actual holdings of property do not match the holdings that would have resulted under the conditions of justice, then steps must be taken to rectify that and place things back in just order.” In other words, Bruenig continues: “That's the most straightforward reparations argument there is.” (Bruenig “Robert Nozick agrees...”). Because the injustice of slavery is so vast and insidious and woven into the texture of all American wealth, rectification of this injustice would devastate the US economy (as we know it). Just like the realization that Wilt’s fictional $250k, and the fictional ticket prices, were being paid for by unjust means would necessitate a rectification (to put things in just order) that would devastate (force a redistribution of) not only Wilt’s $250K, but all revenues that the owners acquired and used to maintain their business and the facilities in which Wilt plays (including the pay cheques of Wilt and his teammates). For your Entitlement Theory to work, the third principle must be applied before the first two can come into effect. Just order must be restored. Even if all just acquisitions follow from one unjust acquisition, no following acquisition can be just. Your rules, not mine.

RN: But I did wonder, out loud, “Is an injustice done to someone whose holding was itself based upon an unrectified injustice?”(Nozick, Ch. 7. Sec. “The Entitlement Theory”). Is it not an injustice, in our fictional scenario, if Wilt’s just acquisition of wealth is used to rectify past injustices?

JR: So you would let an injustice stand rather than find an alternative to alleviate the encumbrances of threat advantages (like political power, wealth, and natural endowments) acquired via unjust practices?

RN: Ideally no rights would be impinged.

JR: Indeed. But rights have been impinged; they have led to inequalities and threat advantages in negotiating the basic structure of society. Your theory does little to rectify these imbalances; you even say you’re not really concerned with the specifics only the generalities of your theory (Nozick. Ch. 7. Sec. “The Entitlement Theory”). Even though you can acknowledge that these disparities exist and that some are derived by unjust measures, you still insist that one’s worth is their ability to tug on their own bootstraps. It is a troubling position to take, since, we established earlier, that it is hard to untangle the just or unjust origins of the person who wears boots and the person in bare feet (and what exactly their own abilities had in effecting their position or whether their circumstance arose out of an unjust imbalance). If Wilt’s wealth, like America’s, was built on the back of slavery, well, then as William Faulkner said about the injustice of the death of Emmett Till: “...if we in America have reached that point in our desperate culture when we must murder children, no matter for what reason or for what color, we don’t deserve to survive, and probably won’t.” (Stein, “William Faulkner...”). If we allow injustice to stand, or to wipe the slate clean as you put it, even if from here until eternity all acquisitions are just and follow the three principles of your Entitlement Theory, we will forever be haunted by those injustices – by the slow deterioration of society into ever greater extremes of those who have and those who have not.

CONCLUSION

Contrasting these two thinkers is an interesting challenge because, it is obvious, Nozick is inspired by Rawls’ thesis (he is an acolyte and a heretic at the same time). But his arguments tend toward the narrow, the specific, the arcane, and his formulations always support the haves and always place the have-nots in a weaker position (of having to beg or wait for the volunteer charity of others – the charity, of course, being generated by the surplus of the haves’ Nozickian “just” ownership of resources). He also doesn’t seem interested in collective political stability the way Rawls is interested in it. Though he does allow for a minimal state to maintain some form of coercive power to maintain some form of political stability (favoring, again, those who already have vs. those who have-not). He allows for this via his concept of liberty and by evoking that old cliché: that the have-nots are in their circumstance by their free will, that they need to pull themselves up by the bootstraps to overcome those circumstances. He openly ignores that a lot of these have-nots aren’t born with boots to begin with and privileges those who not only have one pair of boots, but may have more pairs of boots than their feet can fill (and that they may have come to this wealth of boots via unjust practices – either directly or indirectly). The third principle of his Entitlement Theory allows for the rectification of injustices, but as shown with slave reparations and my fictional Rawls’ amendment of the Chamberlin allegory, it doesn’t acknowledge how entangled our current circumstances are with historical injustices and to rectify them may mean the dismantling of our society as we know it. Here Nozick seems, sometimes, to be the contrarian for the contrarian’s sake (concerned with matters of the mind vs. matters of existential reality – like whether or not someone’s just ownership might impede access for others to what Rawls calls primary goods, or how lack of access to these primary goods places at risk the stability of the society (and the market) in which those so advantaged can pursue their so-called natural liberties.

Citations

Bruenig, Matt. “Robert Nozick Agrees With Ta-Nehisi Coates” Demos. 2014. (accessed via: http://www.demos.org/blog/5/22/14/robert-nozick-agrees- ta-nehisi-coates)

Locke, John. Two Treatise of Government. Printed for Thomas Tegg; W. Sharpe and Son; G. Offor; G. and J. Robinson; J. Evans and Co.: Also R. Griffin and Co. Glasgow; and J. Gumming, Dublin. 1883.

Nozick, Robert. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Chapter 7. Basic Books. 2013. (accessed via: https://www.safaribooksonline.com/library/view/anarchy-state- and/9780465063741/Chapter007.html)

Rawls, John. Justice as Fairness, Part I §6 to 11, and part II §13 to 17. 1985.

Stein, Jean. “William Faulkner, The Art of Fiction No. 12” Paris Review. Issue 12. Spring 1955. (accessed via:https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4954/william-faulkner-the-art- of-fiction-no-12-william-faulkner)

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viralhottopics · 8 years ago

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If you were an elephant

the world would be a brighter, smellier, noisier place and you would be a better, wiser, kinder person. The author of Being a Beast explains all

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If you were an elephant living wild in a western city, youd be confused and disgusted.

Youd have one two-fingered hand swinging from your face a hand as sensitive as tumescent genitals, but which could smash a wall or pick a cherry. With that hand youd explore your best friends mouths, just for the sake of friendship. With that hand youd smell water miles away and the flowers at your feet. Youd sift it all, triaging. Category 1: immediate danger. Category 2: potential threat. Category 3: food and water. Category 4: weather forecasts short and long range. Category 5: pleasure.

Grumbles from trucks and cabs would shudder through the toxic ground, tickle the lamellar corpuscles in your feet and ricochet up your bones. Youd hear with your feet, and your femurs would be microphones. As you walked 10 miles for your breakfast youd chatter with your friends in 10 octaves. A nearby human would throb like a bodhran as subsonic waves bounced around her chest.

Even if it swayed with grass instead of being covered in concrete and dog shit, the city would be far, far too small for you. Youd feel the ring roads like a corset. Youd smell succulent fields outside, and be wistful. But youd make the most of what you had. Youd follow a labyrinth of old roads, relying on the wisdom of long-dead elephants, now passed down to your matriarch. Youd have the happiest kind of political system, run by wise old women, appointed for their knowledge of the world and their judgment, uninterested in hierarchy for hierarchys sake, and seeking the greatest good for the greatest number.

No room here for the infantile phallocentric Nietzscheanism that is destroying modern human culture. If you were a boy youd be on the margins, drifting between family groups (but never allowed to disrupt them) or shacked up with your bachelor pals in the elephant equivalent of an unswept bedsit (though usually your behaviour would be gentler, more convivial and more urbane than cohabiting human males). Your function would be to inseminate, and thats all. Government would be the business of the females.

Youd hear with your feet, and your femurs would be microphones. Photograph: Bruno Guerreiro/Getty Images/EyeEm

Youd be a communitarian. Relationality would be everything. Its not that you couldnt survive alone, although there would certainly be a survival benefit from being a member of a community, just as humans live longer if they are plugged into a church, a mosque or a bowling club. Yes, at some level your altruism might be reciprocal altruism, where you scratch my back if I scratch yours, or kin selection, where you are somehow persuaded to sacrifice yourself if your death or disadvantage will preserve a gene in a sufficiently closely related gene-bearer. But at a much more obvious and important level youd be relational joyously shouldering the duties that come with community because it made you happy. Why do elephants seek out other elephants? Not primarily for sex, or for an extra arsenal of receptors to pick up the scent of poachers, or because they assume that the others will have found particularly nutritious food, but because they like other elephants.

This should be terribly unsurprising. Yet many humans will be surprised. That shows how fully weve fallen for the anthropocentric lie that only humans have minds and real emotions. The lie is the high-water mark of scientific fundamentalism. Fortunately its going out of fashion now, but for years it paralysed the study of animal behaviour.

As an elephant, youd have a mind. You would, no doubt at all, be conscious. All the evidence agrees. None absolutely none disagrees. Youd have a sense of yourself as distinct from other things. When you looked out contemptuously at humans, wondering why they ate obviously contaminated food, opted to be miserable and alone, or wasted energy on pointless aggression and anxiety, it would be your contempt, as opposed to generic elephantine contempt, or reflexive contempt that bypassed your cerebral cortex, or the contempt of your sister. It would be you looking out, and youd know it was you.

Youd have a mind. You would, no doubt at all, be conscious. Photograph: Palani Mohan/Getty Images

The American ecologist Carl Safina argues that elephant X can understand the relationship that elephant Y has with elephant Z whether it is a kin relationship or simple friendship. Just think about that. Think about what it entails for Xs knowledge of itself; for Xs ability to think itself into the head of another, and for the way that X must articulate to itself the concept of a third-party relationship. Perhaps elephants are explaining the world to themselves by formulating, evaluating and selecting propositions a faculty we tend to think of as uniquely ours.

That will be too much for most. Indeed, its a mistake to assume that in order to have a mind one has to have a mind that is like human minds. So lets just say that, according to the evidence, its not obviously ridiculous to invite you, the human, to imagine yourself as an elephant. Theres some biological justification for what sounds like a whimsical, sentimental literary device. You and the elephant both have minds, wrought from the same stuff. And your minds engage with the world using the same devices. Your neurological hardware differs only in sensitivity: sodium and potassium surge in the same way through the same molecular gates when you and the elephant step on a nail; the same ancient hormones mediate pleasure, anger and stress. If you prick us, ask the elephants (using a chromatic orchestra of sounds, and well over 100 distinct body movements), do we not bleed? Indeed they do.

We can be cautiously Beatrix-Pottery with elephants. When the temporal glands near their eyes stream in circumstances that, for us, would be emotional, theyre crying. When a bereaved elephant mother carries her dead baby round on her tusks, or trails miserably behind the herd for weeks, her head hanging down, shes grieving. When other elephants sit for hours around the body of a dead elephant, theyre mourning. When they cover an elephant corpse with soil or vegetation, or move elephant bones, theyre being reverential. When they cover a dead human, or build a protective wall of sticks around a wounded human, theyre showing an empathic acknowledgment of our shared destiny that wed do well to learn. These, dear reductionists, are, as you would put it, the most parsimonious hypotheses.

Youd smell water miles away and the flowers at your feet. Photograph: Simon Eeman/Alamy Stock Photo

If elephants have minds, and minds (as seems likely) can extend beyond the brains in which we conventionally assume theyre situated, wed expect them to tune into distant elephants, and perhaps into the minds of other species too. There are some tantalising hints that they can. Safina was told by a keeper at a Kenyan elephant sanctuary that the resident elephants knew, from distances well beyond the reach of ordinary senses, that other elephants were on the way just as Kalahari bushmen know, from 50 miles away, just what a hunting party has killed, and when it will return. When the elephant whisperer Lawrence Anthony died, two groups of elephants that hed rescued came to his house on two consecutive days. They hadnt visited for a year.

Perhaps one of the reasons were so keen to deny non-human creatures minds, consciousness and personhood is that, if theyre people, theyre embarrassingly better people than we are. They build better communities; they live at peace with themselves and arent, unlike us, actively psychopathic towards other species. They know, and take account of, a great deal more information about the natural world than we do.

Back to the shamanic fantasy: youre a city elephant. Youll inhabit the city much more intensely and satisfactorily than most of its human denizens. All your senses will be turned fully on. You wont, like most woefully unsensual humans, use only your eyes, and then translate the visual images into self-referential abstractions with only a slight and dysfunctional relationship to the real world. Youll be much more properly local than any cockney, New Yorker or Madrileo, though you call Africa your home. Youll know far more of the city than any geographer, historian, zoologist, botanist, policeman or lover. By trying to become an elephant, you might become a much more thriving human.

Be careful, though. Youre likely to end up dead because someone wants a couple of your teeth.

Charles Foster is a fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford, and author of Being a Beast. Some of the speculation in this article is based on elephant lore recorded in Carl Safinas Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel.