#stress = output for me it seems

[heytherecentaurs]

What a masterclass of D&D combat from the players and the DM.

Brennan did such a good job of making the combat engaging and dynamic. He juggled so many plates and kept his cards close to his chest regarding aspects no one was aware of until near the end.

The Bad Kids maximized their effectiveness and importantly, they stayed on top of their HP better than they ever have before.

Adaine did some really great spellcasting plus the exploding mephits. Her Bigby’s Hand (or whatever it’s called) dealt solid damage and using it as a bonus action after casting is great. Really helped whittle down the purple worm’s massive HP.

Gorgug took all the punishment from a CR 15 purple worm and beat it after already fighting other monsters. Zac was in crit city this episode and he needed to me to beat that fucker.

Fig got to smite and used Booming Blade and spirit guardians to fuck up enemies basically doubling (sometimes more) her damage output every round (Really effective against the swarms.) and she 1v1ed a Wyvern, which is only a CR 6 but she also had other monsters after her because was disguised as Gaven. Really the mix of hexblade, paladin and bard stuff she did was cool. (Bonus action heals were good.)

Fabian as sort of a floating fighter, getting into the mix and fighting monsters wherever needed was so helpful and his flourishes and using his spell slots for his magical sword were great. He didn’t necessarily get the biggest moments this fight but he was integral and they’d have sorely missed him because he killed a lot of creatures. Not to mention the Hangman’s breath and bite attacks.

Riz doing peak rogue shit with haste and coming in clutch sniping monsters. Saving Gavin’s life, being able to ready an action to shoot from hiding and just all the sneak attack goodness. Plus Murph was so good about the test parts. He and Riz both seem to really thrive in stressful situations.

And Kristen who took her role as the primary healer so seriously it kept everyone up and banished a monster for good. Ally has been far more diligent about using Kristen’s abilities this season and it’s been such a big help. Plus truesight wrecked Killerpally’s plot to fuck them.

And they did all of this while answering timed test questions. This is the best they’ve ever played from a technical standpoint. Bill Seacaster would be proud they took his afterschool lessons to heart.

[twst-hottest-takes]

OKAY TRAUMA OLYMPICS TIME!

Ranking every Overblotter based on how sad their backstory makes me: THAT MEANS IT’S VERY BIASED AND SUBJECTIVE!

Waves hands in a manic gesture towards the disclaimer* (Now is your chance to turn around!)

7: Azul Ashengrotto-Got picked on for being different. The thing that takes me out about Azul’s backstory and its connection to his overblot is how basic it feels. I’m not here to invalidate his feelings, I understand those insecurities, but apparently the only thing stopping more people from overblotting is that they can’t accumulate blot at the same rate because of lower magic output. If you ask me, the real tragedy of his character is his inability to acknowledge his own achievements. He says, “I’ll show them!” and, yes, hon, you did. Calm down. You are 17, nothing is stopping you from becoming the person you say you are (unlike half the other people on this list). (0/10 He tried to take advantage of my compassion and took my home away. He can cry harder into his money for all I care. Also bottom tier Overblot design.)

(Slight edit: changed Azul's age to 17 because I put 15 before. That would have been his age before turning human to go to NRC, but that might have been confusing and seemed inaccurate. Thanks to the person who pointed that out! The rest of the statement remains the same.)

6: Vil Schoenheit—Hates being typecast and treated like number two. Bro’s real crime is checking his socials too much and letting it get to him. I feel nothing for Vil and he’s only above Azul because his situation is a little less common as a one in a million super celebrity which can come with outlandish amounts of stress I can't comprehend. Again, the tragedy is his inability to be satisfied with his current state of his career and acknowledge his success because someone’s always above him. YOU ARE 18! YOU HAVE YOUR WHOLE CAREER AHEAD OF YOU! Give yourself some space to breath. He’s the one character you’d think would know and see a therapist. He’s so perfectly managed about every other element of his life it seems almost out of character for him not to be considering his mental health. If you consider he's even taking time away from his career to go to school and have "normal teen experiences" I don't know why I should feel bad. (0/10 Attempted murder. Jealous biotch. Probably, less sympathetic than Azul actually.)

5: Leona Kingscholar—Also hates his life situation and being treated like second fiddle. Leona is above Vil because he DOESN’T have a way out of being “typecast.” Time and talent can't save him. He was born into a situation where he can’t be anything other than the second prince and when he finally got a chance to be number one at something (Spelldrive at NRC) Malleus shows up to put him back down to second place again. Life seems to have a karmic way of making Leona nothing more and I feel that. Honestly, Leona’s state makes me cry but I can’t rank him higher because the canon content for his character is sparse. Most of the elements about Leona are things you have to look into and read out of his actions and backstory and while that’s not bad, it’s frustrating that a lot of people overlook them because they aren’t as explicit as the other characters. Leona’s depression is very real, but because the symptoms manifest as less sad-boy and more tired jackass a lot of people overlook his failing mental health. He’s badly written and I feel like the first iteration of his backstory (Book 2 in game) does the worst job about making you feel anything for him considering his actions. (4/10 Smart character with lots of potential but written like an idiot where it counted. Also attempted murder.)

4: Malleus Draconia (TENTATIVE)—Doesn’t want to be alone. After all, what’s the point of being so powerful when it’s so lonely? Loneliness is a feeling that I think doesn’t get explored enough in the media I consume (maybe I need to look harder), so Malleus can be a little higher for what I currently perceive as his reasons for overblotting. He’s an immortal being constantly ostracized by the position he was born into and suffers from the classic conundrum of having to watch everyone he cares about go before him. For all intents and purposes he’s an orphan. He doesn’t have a lot of people he’s related to and can really consider close, so it hits him extra hard when they can’t be around anymore, and for all of his age, as a fae he’s really very young, immature, and inexperienced. The game is doing its darndest to make sure that he gets as thorough an explanation as possible and actively wants you to understand where he’s coming from and feel bad. So he gets the halfway point because as much as I love this kind of thing, favoritism and getting the longest time to explore his feelings only gets him so high. (6/10 I like that the MC has a personal stake in this one, and he's not actively trying to kill anyone.) (Since Book 8 isn’t over yet, his position is subject to change later.)

3: Riddle Rosehearts—Anal retentive to the extreme. Riddle’s mom is so hated by the fandom she is never getting a face reveal. Is now the time to express how bad I feel about Riddle being traumatized by strictness and rules to the point where he honestly believes that bending the most absurd rules will result in disastrous consequences? Maybe. I appreciate that we saw exactly the inciting incident that made Riddle the way he is now. So much of his character falls back on that one time he broke the rules as a kid, and it HAS SO MUCH IMPACT. He gets a lot of props for being one of the few overblotters to actually have character growth post-featured book. Riddle is a contender for second place, but his potential ability to grow beyond his circumstances makes him less tragic. (7/10 Riddle is a surprisingly strong first antagonist in the main story. Almost killed someone, but that was notably AFTER he broke down and turned into a rampaging monster.)

2: Jamil Viper—Can never be his true self. Jamil is another guy who was born into his lifestyle and has no feasible way out of what’s driving him up the wall. It’s not just about Kalim being naïve and sheltered, it’s about how Jamil himself can’t ever use the gifts he has or escape from that fate. He is better than Kalim at a lot of things, but has to act like an amateur so he doesn’t outshine the guy he’s been sworn to protect and serve. He has expectations set on him, and duties to fulfill, and his best route in life as presented to him is just to be as average and boring as possible despite his innate talent and potential. I don’t know if there’s supposed to be a way for Jamil to get out of his family’s servitude to the Al-Asims that causes him to be so bitter, so at this point I kind of assume he’s stuck and that makes it extra sad. The fact that he really just wants to go on vacation makes it hit harder that he’s not even that bad for a guy at a villains’ school. Book 5 giving him a chance to break out of that shadow is great, honestly. (8/10 I can't hate him. He just wants a break, man. He wasn't even trying to hurt anyone, but loses a point for dragging Yuu/MC into his scheme. [Don't y'all dare throw Kalim hate in here. That's not what this is about. I will fight you.])

1: Idia Shroud—Survivor’s Guilt. Book 6 really went there and we are going to talk about it. He did something he shouldn’t have as a kid and now he has to live with the fact that his kid brother is dead. He wanted so badly to undo what he did that he built a new version of him even though he knew deep down he could never replace Ortho. No. I’m sorry. You’re not beating that. That’s not event including the fact that he’s also stuck as a fracking guardian of the underworld in a family that is supposed to be incapable of overblotting in the first place. Idia has textbook depression, and that’s not a bad thing. He feels just as trapped as everyone else and doesn’t see a point to doing anything the conventional way if he doesn’t have to. Idia is NOT a perfect person or character, but as far as his writing for why he ends up doing what he does, I think he easily takes the cake. (10/10 Will weep again. Character writing, with a little dash of hope that he can find some bright spots in life. Extra points for Ortho telling him to keep living. Also, he has the coolest Overblot design. 100/10 for Technopunk Hades.)

This is a super abridged version of what I have to say regarding each of these characters, so I may have to write out actual essays and character analysis for them eventually. I tried to get out the gist of my rankings in as short a form as possible, but that might not be good enough for some people. Feel free to tell me how I misunderstand and mischaracterize your fave.

[snapscube]

Remember when people were calling you the "long lost McElroy sister"? Do you see the similarity at all, or do you think it's just because you share a similar creative niche (gaming/streaming/comedy) with the McElroy brothers?

Lol, "when" people were doing it.

I still get it to this day, friend, despite my constant protests.

I used to understand, and it was even expected initially if not personally encouraged! There was definitely a period of time where they were my biggest comedic/creative inspirations, and the truth of the matter is that I am a mannerisms sponge. I mimic people around me, and people that inspire me, and whether or not it's more than the average person I have no clue, but I will go through seasons of daily watching a particular personality or creator I'm fond of and/or inspired by and usually come out the other end having picked up certain tendencies VERY quickly, a large portion of those being speech patterns.

There's definitely a segment of my content around 2017/2018 or so where, yeah, you can very much tell I adopted a McElroy-esque speaking pattern directly (like what felt like 70% of other Tumblr users also did lol) and it was both because of how much of their content I was into at the time AND also because at the time I found their output inspiring as someone who was used to more... Loud Gamer forms of comedy, to put it bluntly. So at first I took the comparisons in stride and saw it as a signal of my own growth as an entertainer, and my ability to be funny in a way that wasn't just Loud = Funny.

But the thing you have to know about me, and my time as even a minor public figure, is that this comparison was not the first of its that was constantly levied at me, and it unfortunately was not the last one in the slightest. Some will remember the days in which I was a reasonably renowned "Bill Cipher" impersonator in the Gravity Falls fandom, and the pattern was very similar at the time. I dealt with people CONSTANTLY telling me that, despite all of my attempts to separate myself from the voice work I did as the character, I always sounded Just Like Bill even when I was just using my casual speaking voice. If this sounds familiar to those of you who have only been around since the dubs popped off, it's likely because I also go through the same thing ever since I became known for Sonic impressions.

And then outside of voice work I've had my style of content continue to be compared to the McElroy's body of work and even beyond to the likes of Jerma and other big-name-of-the-era content creators. And I have to once again stress: I am completely self-aware that it is not entirely unfounded. I mean, the most recent one I got was just the other day when on stream someone told me I had a speech pattern similar to Northernlion. And like, I even admitted right then and there.... yeah! That makes sense! I've had NL compilations going into my ears and brain for hours upon hours on end lately. So I don't mean to only complain and say "this makes no sense" with delusions that it's completely baseless. BUT, I guess if I do have to circle around to a point, it would be that, though I can occasionally understand comparisons, I would hope y'all in turn can understand why it might not be an easy thing for someone like me to hear, especially in the way it never really seems to go away? Even if one like Bill Cipher fades out, the whole "SnapCube is just a female version of [insert larger male peer in the content space]" thing is something that cycles along regardless. And I get it, it's human nature to compare and contrast. I do it too! But as someone who is always trying to stand out in what I do and make my own value as an individual known above the cacophony of content saturation, I do implore people to think twice about the language they use when making otherwise favorable comparisons. Recommending my content by saying something like "if you like Jerma/McElroys/NL/etc., then SnapCube gives off similar vibes" makes of a WORLD of a difference compared to "This stream is just something Jerma would do" or "Penny is just a female Griffin McElroy" (both things I have heard almost verbatim, constantly). They approach the same ideas, but one gives me so much more of a chance to like... start off a first impression as My Own Person and not just a derivative Girl Alternative, if that makes sense.

Whoops I talked about this way too much :) Can you tell I think about this a lot LMAO

Anyway here's the obligatory joke response that's been spread before

[redslug]

NEUROSLUG NEUROSLUG NEUROSLUG

Ahem. So, I spent the last day force-feeding Stable Diffusion my art to teach it the concept of an anthropomorphic insect. As a result, I have a working LoRA that imitates my coloring style fairly decently and it can kinda do bug anthros. Emphasis on "kinda", it still needs a lot of iterations to be able to maintain proportions on it's own. However, it does quite great when provided with a simple line drawing as a quideline. Here are some examples I whipped up in like 2 hours. Input image:

AI's pure output:

After touchup:

There was quite a bit of touchup on this first attempt with the generation serving mostly as a rough under drawing, but then again I didn't stress the network with details too much. Then I tried squeezing more definition out of it. Attempt 2:

It can be quite competent when I supplement it with styles it knows well. I only used 30 of my own images to teach it, so it might be a little starved for examples at the moment. Adding "Bob Eggleton" seems to knock some sense into it for now. Okay, still images are working, now let's bash Neuroslug against some animation.

For something named Stable Diffusion it's not the most stable, huh. I'm still pleased with the result though, it's pretty cute. And while trying to make it cute I learned a little thing. AI art isn't art. It's a mixture of alchemy, gambling, detective work and demon summoning it seems. And a bit of just art. What I mean by that is that it can attach very unexpected meanings to words. Since I trained the AI on just anthro insects, it follows their defined anatomy quite closely. Specifically, they do not have breasts. As a result, adding "with big boobs" to the prompt changed the shading style and colors but not the actual anatomy. And so, most of my prompts have this lovely phrase just to improve the colors. 'Kay, time for the freak show. At some point during testing the machine decided that my moth isn't decent enough and put panties on her suddenly.

Now that's a booty

Look at those eyes

They have seen things As you can probably tell these have no sketch to guide the result.

It's still bad but it's got the right spirit.

THICC

Surprisingly cute even if janky.

Looks better than it has any right to Now I'll crawl back into my hole to play with settings for an indeterminate amount of time. I'll publish my mini-me for you all to mess with once I deem it stable enough.

[contemplatingoutlander]

The Wonderful Trump Headline Machine

Everything makes sense now.

Once again satirist Alexandra Petri nails it regarding the mainstream media's penchant for using headlines to make Trump's unhinged, rambling rants seem like they are standard political speeches. This is a gift🎁link, so anyone can read the entire post. Below are some excerpts. Enjoy! 😂

I found it! The machine! The wonderful machine that they have at all news production headquarters. Its input is Donald Trump’s remarks; its output is headlines. Everything makes sense now. It functions somewhat like a juicer. You insert Trump’s remarks at one end, turn a crank (you have to turn it pretty hard; the machine does a lot of heavy lifting and twisting) and then — Presto! — out comes the headline or chyron produced by those remarks. I had long been wondering where we were getting these headlines and chyrons. You glance up idly at a muted television and see “DONALD TRUMP DELIVERS REMARKS ON ECONOMY,” and you think, “Ah, presidential at last!” And as long as you do not make the mistake of unmuting your television, the machine’s work is complete. If you are silly enough to unmute your television, you find yourself thinking, “I don’t know what those are, but I would not describe them as remarks about the economy.” A similar process occurs in print. If it were not for the machine, we would have headlines every day like: * “Would-Be President Rambles Unintelligibly For Eighty Minutes After Promising He Would Speak About The Economy. * "At Intervals We Glimpsed Something In The Torrent Of Words That If Pulled Out And Dried Off Might Become A Policy Idea, So We Sent Several Guys In After It, But None Of Them Returned Alive, Except For One Guy Who Just Said ‘The Horror, The Horror’ After We Retrieved Him And He’s Now Staring Off Silently Into The Void. * "Is Donald Trump Entirely Well? * "Harris Also Delivered Remarks But Not As Many As We Wanted.” Maybe we should have those headlines, but, thanks to the machine, we don’t. Just for fun, I started putting other strange, incoherent things into the machine — bits of old horror movies, certain reader emails — to see what headlines it would spit out. “The Silence of the Lambs” gave me “In Impromptu Remarks, Buffalo Bill Stresses Importance of Moisturizing.” [color emphasis and bullet point punctuation added; formatting & punctuation changed in bullet-point section]

Read the article to see what Alexandra said the "machine" did to turn Trump's "358-word ramble about child care" into headlines for The New York Times and CNN's website.😉😁

[therealmofstarwars]

hey! I’ve seen a few posts about your server & it seems like an interesting idea! but I think your expectations/tone may be putting people off.. i know for me, I like a server where I can come and go based on my time & interest, and a lot of servers im in have dozens of members with a much smaller core active group. I can see how that’s frustrating as a mod! but your posts would make me nervous to join the server because it sounds like high expectations for creative output. & ultimately fandom is a hobby, that i do when it’s fun & when inspiration strikes, which sadly i cannot control. I can only speak to my own thoughts & experience of course!! but I wonder if others are feeling similar & so you’re ending up with low engagement :((

I understand perfectly thank for sharing your side of story you need to understand why I am pissed off why my tone and expectations is like that but you need to understand it just really annoying from my side of story just trying to get along with people who change their mind leave last minute without communicating sabotage plans for server which is rude I am doing with same problem for last 8 months one years it fucking annoying I am not putting people off I am just finally venting that all is really I am Aries I am very passionate my personality is like Anakin I have no regrets I can’t take this shit anymore I am fed up . It stressful I am recovering from college burnout my patience is thin I am exhausted I try to patient a good sport I finally had enough in general the mask just slipping

For this summer I just want to relax and write as fun hobby collab with others for fun

That what my server is I am a hothead when I vent I just let it out writing is art form I have no regrets

Sorry my tone come up like that and drive you away just know we are all humans with on and off days

I am finally venting it fucking annoying I am tired with this shit to the point I am thinking of disbanding my server and writing group chat all together just join fandom writing support group

I am done pleasing others fix in box as young adult you have zero fucks to give at this point

I try to be patient it really annoying. 😒

I am pissed off tired had a lack of sleep I finally vent

I am a writer I am tired of being a motherfucking saint. I am over it. I being my true self.

Fanfic is fun hobby I am a only mod in dead server also in a dead SPN writing group

When I try to collab everyone is offline my reaction privately 😒 believe me I am friendly try to communicate others just keep wasting my time

I am trying not to give up it just so annoying

It so annoying. It pissed me off. I am a perfectionist type A so I finally vent because I am writer it catharsis.

I don’t regret finally venting

It really annoying

I don’t care if my posts are passive aggressive I just finally had enough.

No I will not give up. Just understand where I am coming from.

Have a great day.

Aries do not sugarcoat they tell how it is. I am an Aries a passionate and leader sign.

I been patient for a year I am over it. Done being a motherfucking saint. I just want a break and go to spa.

Now I trust the universe go with the flow.

Have a great day.

Thank for being honest Guest I just need to vent.

I am glad we trust each other to be honest.

Just know I am not changing my post tone

I am done pleasing others I am go with my guts trust in the universe

Stay safe guest 💜✨💫

[lilacxquartz]

Don't Make Me Feel Alive I Chapter 4

Kenjaku (Pseudo-Geto) × Fem!Reader

[This fic contains Shibuya Arc spoilers and is updated every Saturday.]

ABOUT: Diagnosed at an early age with an illness that slowly deteriorated your body; you went from being a promising sorcerer to a retired husk of your once former self until he found you, offering you an opportunity to live instead—not that you had a choice to refuse.

CHAPTER SUMMARY: Your bond with him thickens but there’s still a lot to uncover. Meanwhile, Kenjaku plots something a bit different than what you agreed to.

TAGS/THEMES: (starting next chapter): »yandere, chronically ill reader, forced dynamic, non-con, dub-con, violence, caretaking, unrequited feelings, sorcerer reader, dead-dove, mixed pov, potential interpretations of dubious sorcery«

< Previous Chapter • Next Chapter >

4. Bonding

You tried to understand why he was so beaming despite how he treated you the day before, but with little avail.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” you warily asked.

“Oh,” he seemed to be caught off guard that you caught him but recovered nearly instantly, “I decided on something.”

“On what?” you asked.

He glanced down at you with his expression suddenly cold, before returning to an unreadable smile, “You’ll see.”

After that strangely cold interaction with him last night and after such a strange morning, such behaviour seemed to never repeat ever again. Even when the continued practice of the technique seemed to wreck its toll on the energy output and even when such drainage sent you off to an early night—he never once repeated such coldness with you again.

As a result, you decided that it was best to not dwell on it again because it didn’t make sense for you to be upset over such trivial things. The agreement was to help him out as he figured a way out to help you live, that was it, so as long as he remained conditional to his promise, you decided that how he treated you in the end didn’t really matter.

However, as the days continued to pass you by and you invested more time into researching ways into improving both energy input and output, you couldn’t help but feel more and more curious about what your involvement actually was here.

“No seriously, what am I helping you with?” You asked once more, having done so just a moment ago. You felt frustrated, finding that you didn’t quite like how he ignored you the first time.

Kenjaku in the meanwhile resisted spilling you the full truth, biting onto his tongue as he held back a smile, “As I already told you, you’re going to fight.”

Oh, how he wanted to spill it all, but he knew better than to tell you the full truth. It was already a miracle that you were fighting someone from your side; rather, that you switched sides immediately in exchange for life.

Mortality was so easy to play around with.

“Who?” you persisted.

“That’ll depend when the time finally comes,” he replied, leaving more questions than answers.

You sighed in response, finding yourself growing increasingly frustrated as he purposefully kept you in the dark, “What time, though?”

“You’ll know when I tell you,” he simply replied as his eyes squeezed with his smile, pointing straight down at you.

“But-”

“—Don’t worry about it,” he dismissed, leaving you utterly frustrated.

Despite finding your frustrations amusing, he did have his reasons for keeping you in the dark about his plans that went beyond just losing your willing participation, even if he could force your hand. There was the experiment he was running on the cursed tool for one and he didn’t want to feed into unnecessary stress that could likely deal more strain for the battery.

At least for now, he wanted to keep the drainage minimal which is why he excluded you from strenuous activities while assisting you with the tedious ones; such practice that he dubbed training, even if it was just helping your body to relearn eating independently, to utilise cutlery efficiently again, to aiding you in walking and even to helping strengthen your mind through reading and puzzles.

Even if you didn’t realise it, all of these tasks helped you gradually decrease energy consumption. Just like he planned initially.

As he noted earlier on before too, the company that you offered him wasn’t half bad, so he didn’t actually mind assisting you during such tasks, no matter how pointless or boring they seemed to either of you. Moreover, he introduced you to the concept of helping him with his own work, such as aiding him with the more tedious aspects of his planning.

However, despite giving you such independence, he still kept you relatively closeby, just in case another hiccup resurfaced.

“Hold still for a moment,” he instructed, taking the pendant slightly away from your chest but within reasonable reach so that you wouldn’t drop dead, tinkering around with it as you patiently waited. Cursed tool manipulation wasn’t an easy task, but his intentions were to maximise the efficiency of the item so that’s what he did.

However, as he placed the amulet back against your chest, something then went strangely wrong. He did his best to observe your reaction carefully, understanding that perhaps too much energy cast upon a body unused to it was overwhelming on your being.

As a result, your body began to feel off and suddenly you felt terribly dizzy. Again. In a different way though.

It was beginning to get a little tiring, he thought.

Standing up to try and determine what was going wrong, you accidentally ended up plummeting more energy, causing your body to take a heavy hit. Something about it made you feel similar to how you felt on the deathbed just before you met him; something sinister lurking within your instincts and pulling—dragging you off to a place you shouldn’t explore.

You gulped as the pendant waned and the glow subsided as though there was nothing left to keep it fired up and running anymore.

It was then that you felt stiff as your body fell, a dull thud drumming against the floorboards—the wood failing to echo the hit. You felt strangely cold as the feeling persisted; a sensation of pure dread enveloping your senses, anchoring you down into an early demise.

Kenjaku initially reacted slowly, incorrectly thinking that you would recover just like the previous times before. However, as you remained limp and your body grew colder, he froze in place as he realised you were on the verge of something irreversible.

His project had been going so well yet suddenly, it showed signs of failure.

“Hey, wait,” he backtracked, feeling caught off guard due to its sudden failure, unable to mask it so well this time. He was simply just surprised though, not panicked. He mostly just didn’t understand what went wrong.

He didn’t want for something that he had already invested so much time into dying off so early on, especially before your full potential could shine.

Thinking quickly, he transfused some of his own energy into the pendant while extracting the excess energy from your body. It was a slow, intricate and daunting process, however it seemed to be working as your body soon stabilised—your breathing returning back to normal and your flesh once again saturated to its usual complexion.

You later woke up feeling much worse from before though, wondering exactly what had just happened as soon as you sat back up.

“What was that…?” you groaned, your mind begging for answers.

As usual, Kenjaku continued to keep you in the dark yet again as he withheld answers.

He smiled, pushing you gently back down into bed, “don’t worry your pretty little head, I won’t try it again,” his fingertips stifling your lips, “get some rest instead.”

“But-” you let slip.

“—You’re alive, aren’t you?” he stifled, his eyes once again devoid of any emotion, he wasn’t going to answer a single thing.

Too tired to protest, you hesitantly nodded off as your body continued to nod off into a deeper sleep, your body feeling oddly heavy as you succumbed to a weary state.

Kenjaku then sighed a deep breath the second that you did so, continuing to remain locked in place as you slept, slowly inching closer to keep a watchful eye as you did so. Just like always, it was just in case something went wrong.

He sighed again as the familiar emotion resurfaced from before but in a different form, finding that he didn’t like how it made him feel. Eventually though, he too grew tired as his eyelids drooped, unintentionally leaning against the bed as his body yearned for some shut eye. It was then that he decided that it didn’t hurt to even share the same bed, just to monitor you and your sleeping habits if so.

But in doing just that, he secretly felt some form of relief as your safety was now secured, however finding that this might have been too just a little too close for him to be.

Something troubled him as he considered it all, determining that he had to be more careful with his experiments, hoping for some reason in particular that this couldn’t happen again.

That’s why he considered something new—something he wouldn’t usually do.

His mind internally conflicted, trying to convince himself that he shouldn’t risk it.

After all, you weren’t that special to begin with.

(Or were you?)

***

Your recovery was slower this time as it took a couple of days to get you going again.

As you figured out how to get back to right where you were before, you adopted a streak of independence in doing so and usually when dabbling in technique mastery, Kenjaku would often detach from someone who was getting the hang of it, letting them find their own way—but he couldn’t quite do so with you.

Finding that in fact, he didn’t like it at all.

And as he watched you slowly recover and train yourself without him, he didn’t feel a single shred of relief or pride for any longer, as it turned out.

Instead, deciding that since you were his project, that he didn’t trust you to seldom practise anymore. Finding that while it must have seemed irrational, that he preferred it when you were much more dependent on him instead—enjoying your company much more when you seemed to be unable to even function without him.

For some reason finding that it actually made him feel more attached to you.

Not that he could fathom why.

And as he continued to tinker around with the pendant yet again, you didn’t suspect a single thing when he changed something rather drastic in its function. Nor as his tone of voice grew slightly unstable.

“The battery is on standby unless I activate it with a condition now,” Kenjaku said as he offered an unsettling grin, the direction of his change feeling off as though he wasn’t actually addressing you.

“Why though…?” you asked, confused by the sudden change.

He then redirected his sights to meet with yours, leaning in a little closer with his smile falling flat as he did so, “Do you really think I’d trust you to do things like that alone?” He asked, his stare intensifying, “You’re already a lot to work with, you know.”

“But, I really don’t like that,” you chose to protest instead.

However, he didn’t really care about what you liked, only about what he preferred. Yet rather than arguing with you back and forth and getting nowhere, he instead tried to manipulate you that this change was for your own good—your freedom be damned as long as you remained docile and dependent on him, a feeling he unashamedly wanted more of.

“Just think,” he said as he leaned closer, “I can keep you safe from yourself forever,” his breath hot against your temples as he leaned in, “isn’t that so much better?”

Feeling cornered and distressed, you didn’t want to continue this strained dynamic, realising that you were no longer content with helping him out if all he was going to do was to keep you so restricted.

You knew that you were getting into something weird, but you didn’t quite realise the extent of his true intentions until now when he kept pushing nonsensical change after change upon someone he seemed willing.

As a result, you then pushed him aside.

He let you do so though as his lips formed into slightly curved lines—slowly rising to his feet and following you closely behind as you tried to leave the room. Just as you tried to take your chances with leaving through the front door however, he deactivated the pendant to minimal output, prompting you to be hit with a wave of exhaustion instead.

He then grabbed your wrist as you succumbed to the sudden hit of tiredness, leading you back into the room and locking both the door and the window on his way out, leaving you alone for the remainder of the night.

The energetic feeling from before returned.

Perhaps he would talk you into a binding vow, after all.

Maybe you were that special to keep around.

[splatsvilles-fashionista]

Salmon Run tips for beginners

My last post about Salmon Run, the one about Explosher, was kind of a hit, and I had some other advice that I wanted to share with people new to the series. Salmon Run gets pretty intense and stressful as you climb the Grizzco-rporate ladder, so hopefully some of these tips will ease that burden for you all just a bit.

That said, here’s some things I would suggest new players keep in mind! People who have played for a long time will probably not need me to tell them these things, but you never know, sometimes a reminder is nice.

Killing bosses is more important than collecting golden eggs. This might seem contradictory at first, after all, collecting golden eggs is how you win waves. While this is true, you also need to survive the wave, and the thing most likely to lose you the wave is not having too few eggs, but being overwhelmed by bosses. Boss Salmonid control vast amount of space with their size, damage, and paint output, and leaving them unattended for too long, even the more passive ones like Drizzlers and Fish Sticks, can very quickly spiral out of control as more of them spawn and completely take over the stage. This isn’t to say that you should ignore eggs entirely and run towards a boss at every given opportunity, but I’ve seen people basically pretend bosses don’t exist and instead try to ferry six eggs from the shoreline to the basket on their own, and this can cause far more harm than good. Move around stage with purpose and pitch in eggs where you can, but never sit idle. Time is precious and it’s on you to use it well.

Adapt to the weapon you’re assigned. All weapons have their own strengths and weaknesses, and you should act in accordance to them. If you get a Charger, park yourself up on a ledge and support your team from afar. If you get a shooter, move around the front line mowing down regular Salmonid, and so on. Far too often I see people approach all situations the same regardless of what they’re armed with, and it usually ends in disaster. Chargers and Exploshers rushing in to gather eggs who get themselves trapped and dogpiled, short-range shooters that try in vain to shoot down Steelheads or Slammin’ Lids, getting tunnel vision in the progress. I know not everyone can be good at or even like all weapons, but you should always try to use whatever you’re given to the best of your ability.

If possible, drag bosses to the basket. Okay, so when I said you should kill bosses as soon as possible, I was actually lying. There are a lot of boss Salmonid who don’t pose a threat until they’re right on top of you, like Maws, Scrappers and Steel Eels. So why go through all the trouble of dragging all of the eggs you’ll get for splatting one of them to the basket when you can make the boss itself do it for you? This was common knowledge in Splatoon 2, but it’s something I see a lot of people disregard in 3 now that we have egg throwing, but throwing eggs come with a hefty ink cost every time you do it, so it is usually more efficient to pull the boss to the basket first. Trust me when I say that doing this will save you a lot of time and effort, and having eggs around the basket when things go south is often what saves an entire run.

Use the Squid Roll! Squid Rolls are one of the fancy new things in Splatoon 3, and its something a lot of people forget about, but it has a lot of useful applications in Salmon Run. One of the simplest applications is to start doing them as you pick up eggs, immediately shifting your momentum in a different direction and letting you get back to the basket faster. Squid Rolling also gives you a bit of ink armor, letting you tank some extra damage. If you haven’t used Squid Rolls much up to now, experiment with it for a bit, I think you’ll be surprised by the ways in which it might help.

Don’t forget about bodyblocking. Did you know that your body can block bullets from your own team? This is most commonly an issue with Shooters and Splatlings, and can cause some serious headaches if you or your teammates aren’t cognizant of it. It can especially become a problem in Glowfly waves, where the whole team is usually huddling together and guarding a single pathway. Don’t be the one who loses your team the wave because you soaked an entire charge’s worth of shots from your Hydra teammate.

And that’s all I have for now, I think, don’t want this post dragging on for too long. Hopefully this will be useful to someone out there!

[striderl]

I have a general art-related question, if that's okay. I admire how _quickly_ you seem to be able to produce art -- whenever someone sends you a character-based ask, you seem to always answer it with a nice little picture (not just a scribble or something) with lineart and often colouring too! Do you have any advice for acquiring art stamina like that? I used to enjoy drawing, but got burnt out on it because every piece felt like so much WORK and it drained the enjoyment for me. I absolutely could not match the output you do!

Thanks for the compliment, lensman! Your drawings are equally cool too! I'm engrossed in the textures especially. And yes, sometimes I’m even amazed by the many asks I’m able to answer in a single week. Usually, I answer them within 3 days, in rare occasions, it may take me 2 weeks or so to answer them.

As for insights, there you go.

#1: Practice is the key. To not get art block, you need to be constantly practicing, like doing scribbles on your sketchbook when you have time. It can be anything, from basic shapes to “whatever you can spy with your little eye”. Also, improve your speed while doing it, and limit your time to finish an acceptable rough draft, so you won’t lose the motivation to finish the entire drawing.

#2: Mastery. READ THE MANUAL AND INSTRUCTION of whatever platform you are using to make art, and master the tools, so you won’t drag on too long on a single project. Personally, I use a mixture of Procreate and ibisPaint X to make art and comics. And the skills don’t come for free, you need to constantly learn new features in order to keep up the pace and limit the time you spend on each project. Honestly, I think I spend more time on Youtube, Pinterest, and Instagram scavenging art tips and resources than doing other things with them. The result is rather rewarding, the knowledge I gained about the color wheel, anatomy, and platform features like multiply and overlay are really helpful.

#3: Reference. I always have available anatomy or art references on my side, usually from Pinterest, so I don’t need to waste time speculating what the result would look like. I also collect references I’m interested in whenever I have time, so I’m well prepared whenever I want to start a new project.

If you want to check it out, this is the cover I made for Foley’s playlist, which I finished within 3 hours.

#4: Motivation. You need to truly enjoy the process of producing art in order to not get an art block. I think I never get a single art block period so far. Why? It’s the only way I get to relieve my anxiety. College can be really harsh sometimes, I have a really small social circle, and on top of that I need to deal with stress which most of my peers don’t even need to worry about, like managing an apartment, doing accounting on my own, taking care of electric bills, and more. What’s worse is that people can be massive suckers sometimes, and I just turned 18 a few months ago. I know I can’t just throw a tantrum or jump off a building whenever I feel stressed, so I just move on and focus my attention on doing better in art. If people want to insult me, I just insult them back with my talent.

Also, I mentioned this in my reblog to your Skibidi Toilet anniversary post. My parents don’t approve of me doing art like this, because it’s “unrealistic” and basically “useless”, I just want some space where I can express my creativity. Ironically, defiance can be a motivation sometimes.

Plus, I just purely enjoy the feeling of sitting in my room, listening to my favorite playlist, and sipping on a cup of hazelnut matcha, while doing art. And I always, ALWAYS appreciate people putting comments in their reblogs, it’s like an accomplishment, and it shows that people really check out my content and READ IT, instead of “wow, cool art”.

If I don't feel like doing art, I'll just go for a 5 miles run instead. Physical health is still important : }

[enbycrip]

I have come across a number of things in books and podcasts about historical West Africa recently which have made me think about our current society and how we as humans handle prestige, class, resources and stability.

(I am aware I’m writing this as a white European and that the people this knowledge passed to me through had European or American accents and names; while all of them referenced academics with African names, I am acknowledging as a starting point here that there is going to have been flattening of power relationships, oversimplification, translation issues, issues with how oral histories reach academic writings, and the issues of a colonial lens *at the very least* in the transmission of knowledge to me here, and that’s before whatever misunderstanding and issues with my lack of context and structural racism have occurred in how I have processed what I have read and heard.)

So it seems that, in a lot of medieval West African kingdoms, particularly historical Ghana (relationship to the modern state of Ghana is complex and not really geographical), land was neither owned by individuals/families or by the king a la European feudalism; it was in something closer to corporate wider kin/tribal group ownership.

Unlike the situation in *most* of medieval Europe, there was just not a land shortage; there never seems to have been an issue with any individual or familial group having security of tenure of a particular area of land as long as they had the capacity to work it.

The issue of shortage was *labour*, not land itself; it’s basically the complete inverse of the situation in Western Europe in the 14th century just before the decade preceding the Black Death, when there was so much labour due to population growth that all the marginal land was under cultivation just to feed everyone and there was this underclass living in serious poverty and food insecurity, who were, horribly and familiarly, the first people to start dying in the decade of disasters that led up to the Black Death.

This kind of situation, where *land* is the prestige resource, is the one really baked into the European and colonial mindset, and you can still see the effects of it stretching into our modern western capitalist mindset when, in a lot of ways, that doesn’t entirely make logical sense. But, in medieval to early modern West Africa, the prestige resource was *labour*, not land.

Hence the long, stable social history of slavery in West Africa; when labour is your scarce resource, holding and controlling labour is how you gain, hold and demonstrate power and prestige.

And because it is long and stable, the institution of slavery in West Africa seems to have had a lot more in common with serfdom in Europe or thralldom in early medieval Scandanavia than chattel slavery in the Americas or Roman slavery. Because both of those depend on an Imperial mindset. While a society can *absolutely* persist stably with manifest inequality and exploitation, and even dehumanisation of whole classes of people, it can’t *use up* people the way those institutions did and still remain stable.

It’s not even simply an issue with birth and replacement rates etc; there are conditions of life that humans can tolerate on a generational scale and ones we can’t. We are these highly social apes that evolved to survive and thrive in small, hierarchical but highly interdependent clan communities. So there are certain kinds of stress we can tolerate an enormous amount of *if* we have other protective factors.

Imperial societies do not allow their underclasses these factors because they do not only seek to *maximise* output of resources at any given time; they see the maximum theoretical output as their “right”. They work slaves to death and exploit land to infertility because they can always conquer more land/take more prisoners/buy more slaves. The fact that they *can* acquire MORE people, and/or more land, quickly becomes a social imperative; they are *duty-bound* to acquire more people and/or more land; to EXPAND, and not doing so becomes a “loss”.

(Yes, Augustus set Rome’s imperial boundaries; it didn’t stop them continually starting wars for resources and prisoners to become slaves until the collapse of the Empire.)

I think it is fairly clear that modern capitalism is a global imperial society. You can, in fact, explicitly see that evolution. Capitalism was born at the same time as Spanish imperialism - and colonialism-genocide - in the South Americas; it was South American silver that was the resource injection that allowed the beginnings of the stock market in the Netherlands. Both of these were part of the Spanish Empire at the time, and the Netherlands’ nascent capitalism powered itself on that resource injection and used it to leap free from Spanish control and immediately begin its own colonial ventures.

Capitalism was part of the imperial machinery of the Dutch, French and British Empires; the American Empire has been more explicitly capitalist than it has been imperialist, as one became more overtly acceptable than the other. It didn’t really change its nature; just moved it from a national base - and let’s be clear; nation states are as much social constructs as anything else is, and the fact that they are somewhat anchored to a geographical location does not give them more objective reality than, for example, money - to something more diffuse that nonetheless still operates to systemically entrench power and privilege to certain people and marginalise others.

[cinnamonest]

your xiao x teacher!darling post got the absolute degenerate part of me thinking and now my fav dynamic is xiao x therapist!darling. poor boy cant control himself when literally anyone shows a sliver of kindness at all. darlings naivety has lead her to brush off any signs of a crush as a coincidence until he eventually cant take it anymore and noncons her because he has no other way to communicate what he wants. <3

Yesssss he would fall in love with someone who shows him the slightest semblance of caring, this is accurate

---

He didn't want to go, but either someone (an employer noticing a lack of output or the like) essentially forced him into it. Therapy... he doesn't need something like that. He's perfectly fine. Is he the most social or upbeat person in the world? No, but that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with him. He's very begrudging about it at first, thinks that maybe after a session or two you'll realize he doesn't have anything wrong with him, and that there's no reason for him to keep coming.

Likewise, he doesn't really... open up very easily. At first, he gives a lot of one-word answers. Yes, no, maybe, etc. Occasionally "I don't know," which is an improvement, since it's three words. You have to work with him for a while to get him to open up about himself and his feelings. You do insist he should keep coming, this being at first much to his dismay, but after a while... he doesn't mind it as much. He keeps finding that he does feel better overall after each session for the rest of the day. Maybe it's not so bad after all, he thinks. It's probably just catharsis.

When he finally does really open up, though, it all sort of comes pouring out at once, like a bursting dam. He has a particularly bad day or something, and he just kind of breaks. It all comes spilling out -- how he has no motivation in life, no direction, his life feels devoid of anything that brings him pride or happiness, so on and so on. How he has no partner... no friends... no ambitions... he's just... very empty. He doesn't use the word lonely, but he does mention more than once that he has no real source of interaction.

Well, of course, you see that as a very fixable issue. Of course someone with no social support or resources would feel isolated and consequently depressive. He just needs, you know, a social network. Friends.

...Except therein lies the problem.

Do you ever go out to social venues?

No.

Do you ever try talking to your peers?

No.

Do you have any special interests that there might be events for?

No.

You go down the line, but get the same answers. You find he work from home, never goes out for lunches or groceries, preferring to get it all delivered. The most social interaction he gets is you and the occasional email back and forth to his employer. No hobbies, except for games and collecting some niche things. Terrible eating and sleeping habits, he gets no nutrition, is addicted to caffeine, never gets any sunlight or fresh air, and his internal clock is completely in disarray from an irregular sleep schedule, no doubt contributing to his depressive issues.

And when you suggest he try to get out more and make acquaintances, he gets an uncomfortable look on his face. He mutters something about how he'll try, but he's not even really trying to hide that it's insincere.

On the bright side, he does seem to make some effort to fix his other habits, but you realize very quickly he has no intentions of actually trying to form relationships with others. You keep stressing that social interaction is essential to one's mood and mental health, but it's like talking to a brick wall. Eventually you lay off trying to get through to him on that end.

But he also gets much better about being very transparent, will openly talk about things that upset him or bother him. He ends up starting to take up the whole allotted half-hour as well, whereas he used to be so closed-off that after fifteen minutes or so you'd run out of anything to say and end things early.

In fact, after a while, he ends up switching his weekly session to a different day of the week so that he can come in for a full hour. He's still somewhat awkward about it all -- he never looks you in the eye, tends to do these sort of nervous habits like wringing his hands and bouncing his leg a lot, but the fact that he keeps coming back is a testament to the fact that he's obviously getting something beneficial out of your sessions.

...In truth, though, it's not really your advice or anything. Actually, he hasn't been following said advice at all -- he's still staying up late at night, hasn't changed any consumption habits, he just lied about having fixed both of those because he didn't want you to be disappointed.

But he is happier. He looks forward to coming to see you, it's the highlight of his week. He just enjoys your presence. You're so nice, your voice is so soothing, you smile when you see him and it makes him feel all warm and weird, but in a good way, an addictive way. No one has ever asked him about how he feels before. No one has ever given him empathy for his problems. And sure, he feels bad not fixing his habits and lying and all that, but the concern you show for his well-being makes him feel cared about, like he has significance to you. He's not lying when he says he feels a lot better these days.

He knows, of course, that you're doing all of this because you're getting paid. If he didn't have the money, he wouldn't be here. It's your job to care... or at least pretend to. Maybe there's a slight empathy there that's just part of human nature, but if he were to stop coming tomorrow, he would never cross your mind again, he's sure of that. Sometimes he lays there at night (well, morning, since he goes to bed around 3 a.m. or so), reflecting on the matter, sulking in bitterness about it. Yeah... it's just feigned concern. It's just your job.

...No, you're not pretending. Sure, you are getting paid, but you're a sweet person, you're so nice, surely you do care. Plenty of doctors and similar professions do genuinely care about their patients, and often get personally emotionally invested in their well-being, right? That's why they go into the profession in the first place! The same is true for you. You wouldn't be doing this if you didn't care.

So, then... you do genuinely care. You have to. Even if money is a transactional part of the matter, you do really care, even if it's just that you simply wish good for his well-being out of general empathy and benevolence. It is real in its own way. It's a blissful thought.

You've already noticed that these sessions are more conversations these days than anything. He keeps derailing the sessions by asking you about your life, what you do in your spare time, the kind of questions you might ask a client (even the more invasive questions). You entertain the questions briefly, since it's good for him to get some interaction, but you always follow up your answers with a 'well, let's get back to talking about you, okay?' And he's compliant... until asking another question about you a few minutes later. And back and forth it goes.

Until one day, he sort of crosses a line.

In his defense, you asked him first. You figured that he would probably be happier with a partner, most people are, but for someone like him, you know getting one might... present a challenge. Can't meet people if he never goes out, and you're pretty certain he'd be the type to avoid dating apps like the plague, so you don't even bring that option up. But you did figure it would be worth asking if he's ever had one. He went to school and college, right? Maybe had a high school sweetheart or a college relationship or something?

No. He just shakes his head. You can tell he's about to say something, you see his lips part just the slightest, so you stay quiet. But he takes a few moments to speak.

...What about you?

The question catches you a bit off-guard. You hesitate for a moment, and just sort of mumble. Oh, well, that's... that's not really relevant, haha. Anyway...

He just nods in response, but you can see the displeasure on his face. Maybe he's irked he didn't get an answer, or maybe he's formed his own conclusion based on the lack of an answer, and doesn't like that conclusion. Still, it doesn't feel quite as awkward as that time you got around to the standard 'are you sexually active' question and just got a blank stare and quick shaking of the head as a response, so at least it wasn't that bad.

Regardless, he doesn't stop trying. As time goes by, he keeps prying more and more, trying to get information out of you, always seemingly displeased when you abruptly cut him off. He might be a bit socially inept, and isn't always particularly perceptive, but he gets the message when you are clearly shutting him down from asking anything further. And he wouldn't want to upset you, so he obliges. Always walking a thin line.

But if he can't get answers out of you, he'll have to resort to other measures. It's compulsive, he has to do it, he's been losing sleep over the thoughts.

It's not too hard to find you online. Aside from a brief listing of you on the psychiatric group's website, he eventually tracks you down on social media, your family, your friends. You did say he needs to learn how to do social networking, right? This is sort of like that, minus any of him actually interacting with anyone. In fact, it's incredibly easy to find all sorts of things about you. He's able to find even more, the deeper he digs. Where you got your certification. Where you went to high school. Old pictures of you, thankfully some of your acquaintances have public social media profiles and an image with you in it here or there. He ends up spending hours and hours scrolling through page after page, only realizes how long he's been looking at it when he sees the sunrise through the window.

It almost makes him feel guilty and embarrassed the next time he sees you. How is he supposed to look you in the eye knowing he spent several days scouring the web for crumbs of your existence? What would you think if you knew about that? You'd be freaked out for sure.

You notice he's acting a bit off, but, well, he's a bit of a unique individual, slightly eccentric or unusual behaviors and mannerisms aren't uncommon for him. He fidgets and mumbles a lot and leaves a bit earlier than usual, kicking at the leaves on the sidewalk in frustration as he walks, all the way until he's home.

He's fully aware it's all unhealthy. He realizes it's a sign there's something wrong with him. But obviously there is something wrong, or he wouldn't be coming to you to begin with.

But that leads to a new train of thought. If he were to fix his problems, there wouldn't be a need to see you anymore. Or even if you saw him sometimes, you'd probably tell him he doesn't need to come in as often or for as long. That thought is unpleasant, as soon as it crosses his mind, he begins to worry. What if he runs out of problems to talk about? Or, more likely, what happens when you realize he's not making the changes you told him to? You'll reach an impasse, where there's nothing you can do and give up on him.

So if he fixes his problems and gets better, you'll be out of his life. But if he refuses, the same will be true. No matter what he does, he's at risk of losing you. There's no route he can take that works out in his favor! He ends up pacing around his room, running through his thoughts on the matter for hours. He was hoping to think of another way at first, but after a while he's forced to acknowledge there's really only one way to ensure he can continue to see you indefinitely: having to go out of his way to ask you to meet him outside of the sessions.

And, well, he quite simply cannot do that. Absolutely no way. The mere thought makes him feel sick. There's no way he can summon the gall to ask you that. You would surely say no, probably get creeped out if not worse. He probably wouldn't be able to see you at all after that.

But if he doesn't do something, one way or another, this can't last, and the knowledge that it can't last is going to eat him alive every waking second. It already keeps him awake at night.

He knows he's reaching the so-called point of no return when he finally gives into an urge he's been having for a while: waiting until your day ends and following you home, on a day that's not the day he comes to see you (if he planned it on that day, he'd surely act strange enough beforehand that you'd be wary). He knows that that is definitely something normal people do not do. Normal people occasionally internet-stalk, sure, but this? It's the kind of thing people get involuntarily committed for. Would you do that? Would you get him in actual trouble if you knew about it? He would like to think you would be okay with it, but the rational part of his brain says otherwise. He tries to prevent himself from doing it again, but once the impulse is given into once, it's harder to fight off in the future, and he ends up doing it again, and again.

If you really wanted to point a finger of blame to what pushes him over the edge, though, it would unfortunately be the internet. He has no one better to ask how to solve his problems, so why not a bunch of strangers behind screens?

He's frustrated with the answers he gets. Granted, it is the internet populace, but when he posts to an anonymous board about his problem, he's still irked that the answers are far from helpful. Sure, after posting it, he realizes that the way he worded the whole thing is really really creepy, and that he probably should not have included the details of having followed you home and stalked you online ("collecting data" was the term he used, though), but these replies are unnecessary. Mostly poking fun at him, replying with implications that he's a stalker and memes. One guy mockingly replies with "here try this" and a staged stock photo of someone tied up in the trunk of a car. Ugh. Should have known better than to trust these assholes to be of any help. He's not like that.

...Is he?

You know, a mentally sound person wouldn't even consider such a thing, or so he thinks to himself. Guess you were right to say he needed frequent sessions.

Admittedly, the thought does stick with him. Couldn't say exactly when it goes from a laughable, far-fetched idea to something that starts to seem feasible and practical. It's a gradual thing, perhaps. The thought just pops up in his head every now and then for a few minutes, and the more it occurs, the more desensitized to the concept he gets, the less it triggers that socially instilled sense of immediate avoidance and nervousness most people get at the thought of committing a serious crime.

Likewise, the more he thinks about it, the more justified it feels. Technically, you are there to help him get better. You were supposed to fix him. So, from a logical point of view, if he does something... abnormal, perhaps criminal, to you, that's technically your fault for not curing him, right? If you had done your job a bit better, he wouldn't be having these thoughts to begin with. Besides, when you chose this career path, you're knowingly acknowledging risks like this. Which means you were okay with taking the risk of this happening to you, which is basically a form of consent in and of itself, is it not? The more he repeats it to himself -- and he does, over and over, whenever he's sitting slouched over in his desk chair or laying in bed or taking a (rare) shower -- the more he gets used to the idea, envisions it in his head.

He cancels one week. Calls the front desk of the psychiatric facility (a big step for him, as much as he hates having to talk to strangers on the phone, so you're proud of that much), tells them he has to cancel over a schedule conflict. Which does strike you as odd -- since when does he have anything else going on in his life? Maybe he's finally listened to you and decided to go be social or something, or maybe it's just another type of appointment... you hope maybe it's the former.

In truth, he's worried things will go badly if you see him right now. He's not in a very good state of mind, it's all becoming too consuming, he's neglected sleep and work. He has to take that week to work himself back down, get rid of the jitteriness and bloodshot eyes that you would undoubtedly notice if you saw him in person. Just enough to see you again without you immediately getting freaked out.

You know something is a little off, still, when he does come in the following week. But that's normal, people often behave strangely when going through periods of change in their lives, so this is actually probably a good sign!

...Although it is rather unsettling. It's different from his usual brand of weird. Instead of the frustrated tone and grumbling and looking at the ground, his voice is very... flat. Empty. No trace of the usual demeanor, not even the coldness he can get when he's particularly irked.

But even more unnerving is that, rather than looking at the ground, at the wall, back and forth the way he always does, he looks right at you. Fixated on your face, eyes staring directly into yours, you haven't even seen him blink. His own expression is also completely blank, transfixed. It's incredibly unnerving, you find that you end up looking down at the ground for once. You did tell him once that he doesn't make eye contact enough for social appropriateness, so maybe he's trying a little too hard to rectify that or...?

You feel like somehow he's getting worse, and yet for some reason, when you ask him the standard opening question -- how have you been? -- he seems to perk up.

He nods, finally shows some emotion in the form of what appears to be a sort of resolution on his face. He says he's thought a lot about some of the things you've said. That you were right, that he can't keep living with no goals or direction, can't keep up the unhealthy lack of socialization. So, he's put a lot of consideration into it, and he's decided that very soon, he's going to be making some major changes to his life, for the better.

Well, if that's truly the case, you're very happy for him, you say. Granted, based on his history, you're not inclined to believe he's actually going to make any changes, but part of the job is always believing in your patients and all that. He seems more determined than usual, so, maybe he really is serious about it. You hope so. He seems like such a sweet boy at heart, you really do want to see him change for the better and be happy.

He knows that too. Says he's very serious about it this time. He's going to go through with what he's decided is the best course of action, and in the end, he will be perfectly content and happy. He'll probably be more productive, more energetic, more motivated, everything. It'll all get better.

And technically, you will be the cause. You'll see. He'll be sure to thank you for all your help, too, he's very grateful.

[cilil]

🌿 for ask game. thank you!

🌿 ⇢ give some advice on writer's block and low creativity

Now I may be both a good and bad person to ask about that because I've been inspired and writing almost every day for 2 1/2 years straight now and, while there certainly were unproductive episodes in terms of output or low motivation or stress and anxiety keeping me away from writing itself, I always had inspiration in my head at least; I suppose you could say I've been somewhat "blessed" with keeping this up without putting in real conscious effort. I don't think there's a secret recipe either, but I'll try to give some helpful (?) ideas :)

So a good chunk of this is sadly, or at least I suspect it might be so, dependent on how prone to hyperfixation and how attached to an individual thing you are on a personal level. Speaking for myself, I'm the kind of person who always has their "one main thing" and sticks with it for several years at least (I was tenacious enough to spend 5 years doing my own thing in a dead fandom) and slowly digs deeper and deeper as time goes on. Others may change interests more frequently, be in several fandoms at once or experience greater fluctuations with high and low creativity. That leads us to my first point: Know who you are and work with that, don't try to be anyone else.

The second thing I think is important is to find a good balance between trying to be reliable and finish your stuff and give yourself some space to do whatever you feel like and fuck around. You may have heard creativity being compared to a river before and it's true: Too much human interference - for example straightening a river - can impact the environment around it negatively, and too much scheduling and deadlines and forcing yourself to be creative will impact your creativity negatively. Make sure you have the space to at least occasionally do what comes to mind. You should be working on project A, but you're feeling project B? Work on B for a while. The muses are moody.

Another thing that may seem a little contradictory at first, but I think is helpful: Keep at it. If you do whatever is your creative thing regularly, it's less of a "big deal" and threshold to cross every time, it becomes natural and a comforting part of your routine. For writers, drabble challenges and prompt events are examples for good tools to ensure you write at least semi-regularly. But again, please don't feel like you have to force yourself to create every single day, especially if you're someone who experiences periods of little to no creative energy. That's fine. Let yourself recharge. We're all different (in general what works for me doesn't have to work for everyone else).

Now if you do find yourself in a bit of a creative slump or lose passion for a project you used to enjoy a lot, here are some things you can try:

Take a break and do something else. Scratch a different itch. Have fun!

Put yourself in the right mood/mindset by looking for media that evokes the feelings/vibes needed for your project (note that this will work better for people who are highly sensitive or otherwise react/connect to media on an emotional level more strongly). Examples: A playlist, a specific song you associate with your work, a movie/book/game/etc that inspired you, artwork of a character

Talk about it with someone else. Be excited together. Ask for advice if needed. Or just talk through whatever block you have; you may not even consciously realize it, but just to have someone listening will help with explaining the situation to both them and yourself and clearing it up

Write a project list (I recommend either a spreadsheet or a handwritten one). Sometimes the crux with a project is simply all the disorganized noise around it and you begin to feel anxious which causes writer's block and/or kills your creativity. Writing a list can clear that up, make you feel more calm and collected and show you a clear way forward. Note: This applies to other situations in life too. Try it and I promise things will become easier to handle

That's all I can think of right now. Again I can't promise any of this is "the secret sauce, but maybe some of it can help someone :)

[jpitha]

Blockade Runner Part 2

Part one is back here

Tingmell could barely follow what was going on. The noise, the smells, the changes in orientation in his seat were all playing havoc with his perception of the scene. It seemed they were diving towards the Xenni blockade but also avoiding the warp gate - the main method of transit between systems. It seems like the humans were buying time for something.

"Power output at 420 percent, nice!" cried the human at the front console. Even during this high stress environment, a few humans around Tingmell who heard the number chuckled, thought he had no idea why. Some Human thing.

Dawnbreaker spoke. "Captain Bennigan, power output is sufficient for wormhole generation, and the navigation solution has been found. At your command."

"Thank you Dawnbreaker" Captain Bennigan was calm and collected even with all the noise and stress and action around him. He signaled the ship. "Attention, Attention, Attention. Wormhole generation shall commence once this message has completed. Those of you who.." he paused a fleeting moment. "...have trouble with the process, please make sure you are secured. See you on the other side."

"Dawnbreaker, generate the wormhole."

"Aye sir." At that, Tingmell felt, rather than heard the change. It was a whole body vibration that started in his lower extremities and worked it way up until his whole body was vibrating as if he was a bell that had been struck. The vibration grew and grew until...

*****

Tingmell awoke. He was lying on soft moss, and the dappled orange-yellow light of home was shining down on him. With a start, he sat up and found himself in a forest at home. The kind of forest his kind came from. About 3 meters away, were a small group of K'laxi, all wearing very old and traditional clothes. Some in the back had fashions that predated Contact even! The one closest to him tipped his head back and made the barking cough sound of K'laxi laughter.

"You did it! You actually did it!" He stopped to laugh again. "I have a wager with Himelli over there." He pointed to a K'laxi in the back in an exceedingly ancient garb. "Did they tell you what was going to happen, or did they just buckle you in and say something like - he affected a surprisingly good human impression - "This is gonna be so cool! Just wait and see!"

"W-what? No, they didn't tell me." Tingmell saw Himelli make a sour face and give a small satchel of what he assumed were coins to the elder he was speaking with. "They said they were going to generate a wormhole. What actually happened?"

"Oh, that happened. They did it. They actually learned how to do it before Contact, so they used it as their sole method of transit for a while before someone showed them the warp gates. Most of the other sapient races know about it too, they're just not crazy enough to do it. This happens to about 1 in 10 of all sapients who try. The humans just decide that it's fine."

"But, please, honored elder, what happened?"

"Oh, you're dead."

Part 3

[health-1387]

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[macmanx]

To some extent, the significance of humans’ AI ratings is evident in the money pouring into them. One company that hires people to do RLHF and data annotation was valued at more than $7 billion in 2021, and its CEO recently predicted that AI companies will soon spend billions of dollars on RLHF, similar to their investment in computing power. The global market for labeling data used to train these models (such as tagging an image of a cat with the label “cat”), another part of the “ghost work” powering AI, could reach nearly $14 billion by 2030, according to an estimate from April 2022, months before the ChatGPT gold rush began.

All of that money, however, rarely seems to be reaching the actual people doing the ghostly labor. The contours of the work are starting to materialize, and the few public investigations into it are alarming: Workers in Africa are paid as little as $1.50 an hour to check outputs for disturbing content that has reportedly left some of them with PTSD. Some contractors in the U.S. can earn only a couple of dollars above the minimum wage for repetitive, exhausting, and rudderless work. The pattern is similar to that of social-media content moderators, who can be paid a tenth as much as software engineers to scan traumatic content for hours every day. “The poor working conditions directly impact data quality,” Krystal Kauffman, a fellow at the Distributed AI Research Institute and an organizer of raters and data labelers on Amazon Mechanical Turk, a crowdsourcing platform, told me.

Stress, low pay, minimal instructions, inconsistent tasks, and tight deadlines—the sheer volume of data needed to train AI models almost necessitates a rush job—are a recipe for human error, according to Appen raters affiliated with the Alphabet Workers Union-Communications Workers of America and multiple independent experts. Documents obtained by Bloomberg, for instance, show that AI raters at Google have as little as three minutes to complete some tasks, and that they evaluate high-stakes responses, such as how to safely dose medication. Even OpenAI has written, in the technical report accompanying GPT-4, that “undesired behaviors [in AI systems] can arise when instructions to labelers were underspecified” during RLHF.

[rindemption]

So, I'm not sure how many people are still around from 2-3 years ago when I first talked about it, but I had some (for me) significant health changes a few summers ago that, while greatly improving, are apparently still affecting me

I was in a high stress/ high energy output job for a while. Nearly 10 years, and the longer I was there the worse it got. From a promotion that changed my job expectations to post-covid understaffing. Over the course of one summer I lost a significant amount of weight for the size I already was. It was just under 10% of my total weight, and put a lot of strain on my body. I lost muscle mass as well, because I ran out of fat to lose. On top of physical stress, I was under a lot of mental stress as well, and situations at home and among my social group left me in a very negative headspace that in no way helped my situation. When I'm depressed and stressed out, I have no appetite.

I had to make changes to my diet that, while not ultimately healthy, ensured I wasn't at a calorie deficit. It was a horrible cycle: I would come home from work with no energy to cook, which meant I wasn't getting the nutrients to give my body energy. So I'd resort to quick, high calorie, ready made meals, that in the long run resulted in vitamin deficiencies instead.

And the physical state affects the psychological state, so mentally I was a mess. My two main creative outputs at the time were writing and virtual photography. Looking back, my writing style was inconsistent, messy, and the tone of it was all over depending on my current mood. I didn't have the mental energy to draw, but I could get excited about and do vp. But even that was only to the point of "good-enough". I could never focus long enough or put the energy in to get it to the standards I wanted.

I'm in a much better place now, but I can still feel the shockwaves of the toll all of that took on me. I left that job a few months ago, and thanks to my spouse's support I'm putting weight back on. But I still feel like a train wreck. I lose words- even just writing this I've had to stop multiple times to try to figure out what word I was about to write. I'm doing low impact workouts to try to put functional muscle mass back on, and my balance is completely shot. I'm doing stabilizing workouts meant for the elderly and struggling. I'm not even 30 yet. I started drawing again, but I get fatigued quickly and take a day-long break between doing any significant art. And I still struggle to focus long enough to get the game pictures I really want, but it's slowly getting better.

I guess the point of writing this is three things. Firstly, an update for anyone who was around back at the beginning, when I mentioned my struggles. Secondly, if anyone else is dealing with something similar, or finally getting out of a stressful situation: you're not alone. It's hard, long work, but we'll get better with time and persistence. And thirdly, if it seems like I'm changing it's because I am. I'm not in survival mode like I was before, I'm slowly patching up my mental state, slowly getting better. I'm figuring out who I am when I'm not struggling just to stay alive. But I feel like I'm changing for the better.