#that video fundamentally changed me as a person

[fuel-for-the-fyre]

izzy singing la vie en rose :]

[shalom-iamcominghome]

My eyes are red? ...It's just hay fever

(What they don't know is that I was crying in a supply closet yet again because I thought about golems)

[keeps-ache]

i have Thoughts

[boyapologist]

sweetheart please love me too long my heart’s too strong love me too long sweetheart please let me hold on to these old songs I’ve loved too long

[rockmonopoly]

[ashswag voice] oh hell no

[vigilskeep]

hello! you know a lot of dragon age lore so i thought id ask you— i saw a post earlier that was discouraging to me aa trans person where the op said that veilguard having top surgery scars in the cc goes against established worldbuilding. does it make sense for top surgery to be possible in thedas? thanks

my rule of thumb is that in a world where healing spells exist, there’s absolutely no logical, believable reason for it not to be possible. you don’t have to go back and provide sources about historical surgeries—which is something i personally know nothing about—for this to be true

like, i just can’t take this line of thought seriously. ohhh we can have floating cities and magical neon lights and spirit healers who can mend injuries just by passively standing next to you, but we draw the line as soon as it’s something that would make our trans players happy! it’s so transparent. do not listen to these people or let them discourage you

if you want to get into the worldbuilding potential of it—which is just fun to do—we can probably guess that for the top surgery scars to be as neat as they seem to look in the veilguard character creator, similar to modern ones, magical healing was involved. now i do believe that the chantry might get suspicious of body-altering magic, that magical power is hoarded by the circles in the south and the wealthy in the north, and also that “out” trans people are a minority in thedas. so i’m not saying that this is something easy for your average guy to get hold of. that’s where you can feed it into backstory. are they powerful and connected enough that they could find specialists willing to go beyond the ordinary? or do they have underground connections to hidden apostate healers, whose only priority is what helps (or perhaps just how much you’re willing to pay)? do they belong to a culture that might not be restricted by the chantry’s norms about gender or magic, like the dalish or the rivaini? or do they belong to a mage-focused community or order, who among themselves do whatever they like? endless options

some might be referring to a line in dai from krem, a trans man, where you can ask him about potentially changing his body with magic and he essentially says he wouldn’t let magic that could do that anywhere near his body, though when he was younger he might have dreamed about the possibilities. firstly, krem is absolutely not the gold standard for trans representation and nobody should care about being flexible from what bioware put out a decade ago. secondly, krem is a random mercenary who knows one (1) mage, who spends the entire time insisting she’s not a mage. i very much doubt he’s the no. 1 source for what might be magically possible in this or any regard

also ultimately, and i cannot express this enough, you can do whatever you want forever. it could be absolutely fundamentally impossible in-world somehow and it would still not be that serious to be “unrealistic” in the dragon video games. don’t let anyone discourage you from making the character you want to make. it being an option makes it canonically part of thedas, end of. they put it in the game and nobody bitching about it can take it out

[anim-ttrpgs]

Reading the book, and I'm already loving it. I agree with a lot of the things y'all say in it (players control the characters, not the narrator, etc.), but I was surprised at the strong insistence on 3rd person play.

Personally I like 1st person play because it helps me with immersion. If I play in 3rd person then my mental camera goes 3rd person, which feels more like playing a video game and removes that thrill of embodying someone else and living in a new world.

Usually I see people either take a strong pro 1st person stance, or a noncommittal stance, but this is the first time I've come across a game that insists on the 3rd person. I'm curious about the reasoning behind it. Was it just a philosophical decision, or did it bear out in playtesting that 3rd person was the better method? In the book y'all acknowledge that 3rd person play doesn't eliminate the threat of griefing from bad faith players.

Y'all clearly put a lot of thought into the game, so that really interested me. Could be a good learning opportunity!

I passed this on to one of our team and this is what she had to say:

In addition to our own home table just preferring to play in 3rd person, we believe that perspective is an important element of TTRPGs that doesn't get explored very often in the modern landscape. The games we play are composed of language - not just the words on the page, but the words we say at the table. Changing the verbiage will create a different emotional space, and a different experience. That zoomed out mental camera you describe is part of the point! In any TTRPG, players are always two things: participant, and audience. The narration we employ at the table affects the game world, yes, but we are also the only people there to see it play out. Eureka strongly emphasizes the "audience" side of that equation, and wants to frame the "participant" side as an act of authorship and discovery rather than one of inhabiting the world.

Just on a fundamental level, perspective is a defining part of any media - the camera angle in a movie or video game, the person of a book's prose, who tells the story, and who they tell it for. The way we frame a story changes the response it evokes. As you say, you've seen either strong pro-1st-person stances or neutral ones, but not a strong pro-3rd-person stance. I don't think that's because 1st person is inherently better for this sort of game, I think its because there is a tendency in the hobby right now - for a variety of reasons - to treat TTRPGs like a form of improv theater. That's not a problem in isolation per se, but I think it's one that limits what the medium can be or do. TTRPGs can be improv theater, but is that all they can be?

On a final note, we have also seen the insistence on 1st-person play and the approach of "embodying" a character occasionally cause real harm when the people involved have trouble separating player and character. That's also part of the reason we're so insistent about these being two separate people, because investigators tend to do some pretty messed up things (this being a horror focused game, after all), and we don't want people equivocating their friends with the characters they play when that level of emotional intensity is involved. Many people who play in 1st person are able to engage with that in a healthy way and understand the difference, of course, but I think it's hard to deny that the language makes that equivocation easier.

- @ashweather (person from out team who doesn't normally run this blog)

Adding on myself, another thing that I always like to bring up in this discussion is that first-person verbiage did not used to be so universal! Playing in the hobby even 4 or 5 years ago, you'd see (or at least I would see) a mix of third and first person verbiage at tables, and even people who used both interchangably. It's only in the past few years that third-person verbiage for TTRPGs has gone practically extinct, and i think most of the blame lies at the feet of big-budget "actual play" shows like Critical Role being many people's only reference for how a TTRPG can be played. Critical Role uses first-person, so therefor that's how TTRPGs are played.

I've even had people tell me on multiple separate occassions "that's wrong" when I'm trying to use third-person verbiage for TTRPGs, when playing with rulebooks which explicitly say in their text early on "you can use 1st or 3rd person to describe your character's actions"! (most, if not all, D&D edition rulebooks say this!)

In closing, yeah, if Eureka were a video game, it would be in third-person. Eureka doesn't want you in its world, it wants a character.

[warningsine]

Notice how Helena uses "I" instead of "she" and how Milchik gives her the soft sell.

Combine this with:

her embarrassed "My dad forced me to recite the 9 rules as a child and I did not like it then" admission in front of a camera.

James basically thanking her for risking her life for the company and lying about it. He "cried" about the suicide attempt, and yet he didn't even contact his daughter, since he's telling her this now at the gala as an aside to the event. In terms of family emergency time? Too fucking late. Is this the only time Helena's seen him since then? Not to mention how he didn't want to take responsibility and blamed it all on his daughter's alter ego.

And you'll get a more nuanced interpretation than the "Helena pure corporate evil, Helly R. good rebel" binary one.

Despite doing that cruel "I'm a person, you're not" presentation and being determined to see the process through even after Helly tries to commit suicide, there's some part of Helena that must know that this is messed up.

Sure, she's complicit and not a hapless victim, but she's also a product of her upbringing. Stripping her of her privilege, heritage, cult-like brainwashing/indoctrination and Shiv Roy-like desperation to win her dad's approval gives you Helly.

They are the same person under different circumstances.

There are no contradictions between the fundamental makeup of her innie and outie.

The version of herself Helena brings inside Lumon questions everything and demands accommodation and answers, because she is used to getting what she wants as a privileged woman.

What changes her is the different context she's given.

Helena is a wealthy and powerful woman who gets what she wants; Helly is a powerless woman who is often being tortured. It makes sense that her traits—stubborness and determination among others—and the fundamental sense of "I deserve to get what I want" are present in Helly.

But also make no mistake: they're both prisoners. Helly in a more literal sense, Helena in a figurative one—a prisoner in her family and the role that was imposed on her.

A willing participant that benefits from a controlling system is not free from the harm or influence of it. Acknowledging Helena's abusive circumstances doesn't take away from her as an antagonist, it makes her story more compelling.

Helena's self-serving qualities are more a matter of nurture than nature, because Helly shows caring and compassion as well as rebellion and independence. Helly is like a very young version of Helena.

All of the outies' emotions leak through to some extent.

Helly's "Well, that's a given for me [that I'm an asshole out there]" is a pretty safe assumption to make based on Helena's video, but it also oozes self-loathing. Helena taking it out on Helly does too.

Ultimately, I think this happens on a figurative level to a lot of people who undergo an—emotionally in this case— abusive upbringing. Rejecting their most vulnerable parts and imprisoning them. It's a survival mechanism, and helps them feel like they have more control over their out of control personal life. But, in a way, it makes them more out of control once they get into the real world.

Their inner, imprisoned parts find ways to make it so they can't ignore them. We definitely saw that with Helly threatening to mutilate herself and attempting suicide.

There are consequences to denying and imprisoning any part of ourselves over the long term.

[rosettyller]

some analysis of this scene from 2x02, because i am going absolutely insane over it:

first up: it's 2 500 BCE. They've known each other for around 1500 years at this point, but they haven't been meeting up very often; it's implied at this point, that they've only met at the Garden, and the Flood, and now here (as well as in Heaven, but there's varying interpretations about how much they each remember of Heaven).

(worth noting that these meetings are all bible-related meetings)

So, they don't know each other very well at all. This is why Aziraphale approaches Crowley so cautiously (apart from the fact that he thinks Crowley's going around murdering goats and soon kids). He doesn't know what happened to Crowley when he Fell, how he changed when he fell in with Lucifer, how God's rejection has warped Crowley's perspective or changed his morals (their meeting at the Flood seemed quite short, not enough time to get a definite picture.)

Aziraphale is still seeing Crowley as demonic, although there's already that thread of doubt - can you really see him trying to talk Hastur or Ligur out of this the way he does Crowley?

Aziraphale clings to the memory of Angel Crowley - Crowley gets quite defensive.

Here, Crowley reinforces that he's changed - personally I don't believe that he did fight in the War, but his views of God's Plan definitely got more extreme than "thats terrible god should get a suggestion box".

But, I also believe that here, Crowley is reinforcing that he is no longer an angel, and therefore no longer has to play by angel rules. He can do what he wants. He's a demon, it's in his job description.

And of course, that he is a demon, and he is Evil, and of course he would kill goats.

(more under the cut, because I just can't stop talking)

This shot is very yellow. Crowley's hair being the season 1 orange rather than red, the yellow walls, all accentuate the colour of Crowley's eyes, highlighting the physical reminder of Crowley's demonic nature.

I couldn't be bothered to gif it, but here, Crowley leans forward into Aziraphale's face. There are two reasons for this:

Get his yellow Demon Eyes right in Aziraphale face, just to hammer home his point.

It's an aggressive action, moving into someone's personal space like that. Saying, I could hurt you, I'm violent and aggressive and dangerous, I killed those goats, the kids are next.

The way the light hits Crowley's eyes in the above shot and the below shot also make them a very bright yellow. (Edit: I think someone pointed out that Crowley is making his eyes glow, but the overall yellowness of the scene serves to highlight this)

Clever wording on Crowley's part, because as we will find out, he faked the destruction of the goats to keep them safe, while making himself sound very evil.

You'll notice the repetition of "blameless"; this makes him seem even more evil, hurting the innocent, but also gives deeper insight into one of Crowley's biggest issues: hurting the innocent. What have they done to deserve this? Nothing.

This ties in quite nicely with what we have seen before of Crowley and free will; he gives people the option to sin. It's their actions that decide whether they end up in Heaven or Hell; they get what they deserve for their actions. He just makes it easier to choose Hell. (see: phone lines being down making people crankier and encouraging them to be horrible to each other, but it still being their choice, setting the holy water bucket above the door, so it's Ligur's choice to come in after Crowley that gets him killed.)

Note also the use of "long":

Aziraphale says to "tell me you want to do this". "Long" has rather stronger connotations than "want", but also rawer, more fundamental. Crowley is reminding Aziraphale that he is a demon, and that he has the traits of a demon, this is what he is now. He longs for violence, for destruction.

Aziraphale looks quite sad here. If you watch the video I linked, his previous conviction that Crowley doesn't want to do it is very strong. He fully believes in Crowley, that all he needs to do is reframe not killing the kids as within the rules of Hell, the way Crowley so often comes to do for Aziraphale ("Then you can't be certain that thwarting me isn't part of the divine plan too. I mean, you're supposed to thwart the wiles of the Evil One at every turn, aren't you?" "If you put it that way, Heaven couldn't actually mind me thwarting you.").

Aziraphale believed Crowley was still good, that the angel he remembered was still in there. But Crowley rejects it - and it hurts. Crowley has become what a demon should be.

Crowley looks quite sorrowful here, too: he already cares for Aziraphale (he fell in love at the Garden), and it hurts to decieve him, to disappoint him, to hurt him.

I would argue that here, Crowley is scared.

He's in shadow, which dims the yellows; his undemonic nature is about to be revealed.

And that is not safe, because Hell does not send rude notes. And here, Crowley is not doing just any temptation, but trying to help Satan win a bet (supposedly). And out of every demon in Hell, Satan is the one you want to piss off the least.

But here, Crowley is scared because Aziraphale could reveal him - because Aziraphale is on God's side, and because it is revealed that Crowley is not nearly as demonic as he makes himself out to be. He's vulnerable. Aziraphale could scorn him, hurt him. But instead:

Aziraphale is incredibly smug. "I knew I was right", he says. "I knew you were still good".

And here is another issue: Aziraphale conflates God/Heaven/angels with good, and demons/Hell with bad.

And Crowley does not see Heaven as good. He doesn't want Aziraphale to see his angelic core past the demonic exterior. He's on his own side.

This, for Aziraphale, confirms that "the angel you knew is not me", is not correct.

And I think, out of the three minisodes, it's this one that does the most for fleshing out Aziraphale and Crowley's frames of mind this series, and why they choose what they choose in ep6.

Aziraphale has been proven right about Crowley's angelic nature, and that he wants to do good, but can't, for fear of Hell's retribution.

And Crowley does not see Heaven as good. He recognises that being an angel again will not allow him the freedom to do good. (as Aziraphale had to try and talk a demon into helping him save the kids from God.)

[thejournallo]

Explain the basic: Energy manipulation

Disclaimer: in this chapter you are going to learn the physical and spiritual meaning of energy! Everything I will talk about is information that I got from books and sites online and even videos on YouTube. In my years of practice, I learned as much as I could out of curiosity and what works best for me. I suggest you do the same by learning as much as you can on your own (I will be here making posts teaching this kind of stuff) from multiple sources.

tags: @koda-manifesting

As always, I will love to hear your thoughts! and if you have any questions, I will be more than happy to answer them! If you liked it, leave a comment or reblog (that is always appreciated!). if you are intrested in more method check the masterlist!

When it comes to energy manipulation, we have to remember the 12 laws of the universe!  According to these laws, we are all connected; everyone vibrates at different rates, and energy is always changing! We can use the knowledge that those laws gave us to manipulate the energy that is around us in different aspects. Before we start to talk about what energy manipulation is, let's learn what energy is, even in a more scientific aspect.

witchcraft: 

"Energy" is often referred to as the life force or spiritual power that flows through all living things and the universe itself. People who practice witchcraft often work with this energy to bring about desired changes in their lives or the world around them. This energy is believed to be manipulable through various practices such as rituals, spells, meditation, and visualization.of course Different traditions and practitioners may have their own specific beliefs and terminology surrounding energy, but it is generally understood to be a fundamental aspect of the spiritual and metaphysical realms of witchcraft.

manipulating energy: 

More often than not, we manipulate this energy, which can happen on a daily basis without our knowledge. In a more visual explanation, we are surrounded by a bubble. Bubble = spiritual energy. When we go out and do our daily things and have our daily experiences, we give some piece of bubble. Energy manipulation is understood if we are using our bubble, understood when we have to use it and use it to our own advantage. for example, "If I feel this kind of bad feeling from a person, I will use a piece of my bubble to protect myself." I used my spiritual energy to protect myself from negativity.

science:

Energy is defined as the capacity to do work or produce heat. It exists in various forms such as kinetic energy (the energy of motion), potential energy (stored energy), thermal energy (the energy associated with temperature), chemical energy (energy stored in the bonds of chemical compounds), electromagnetic energy (energy carried by light and other electromagnetic waves), and many others.

The law of conservation of energy states that energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only be transformed from one form to another. This means that the total energy within a closed system remains constant over time, even as it may change from one form to another.

Energy plays a fundamental role in all physical processes and is a central concept in fields such as physics, chemistry, and engineering. It's a crucial aspect of understanding the behavior of matter and the interactions between different systems in the universe.

Why am I talking about physical energy?

because we can use physical energy to practice witchcraft. Let me give you another visual example.  We are going on a walk to feel relaxed and release some tense energy. We are using kinetic energy to protect our peace.  It is all in the intention and the mindset when you use this kind of physical manipulation; even lighting a candle before a spell means using thermal energy to protect the space. (I'm saying protection as an example.) You can do pretty much anything; a walk can equal aboundance if that's what you want.

NSFW TALK AHEAD (MINOR DO NOT INTERACT)

It is a bit uncomfortable for me to talk about this, but it has to be said. Carnal acts like sex or masturbation can also be used to manipulate energy, and it is a whole practice in itself called red magic, where you use the build-up energy of the orgasm and the peak release to put your intention in the world. The tricky part is to actually concentrate on your intention until you release it. 

[howlsofbloodhounds]

What would you call the seven sins of Undertale AU fans? (Sin as in general thing most of them do that rubs you wrong.)

Uh..i don’t know? All I have are just pet peeves related to my favs ig.

1. Forcing ships where they don’t need to be and where no one wants them. There’s nothing in the video, art, music choice, tags, comments, nothing that indicates that the content is supposed to be a ship yet people leave comments about the ship and tag it with that.

This is massively with Killermare and its shippers. No one can make, write, draw, or talk about killer and nightmare even standing beside eachother without someone coming in and sexualizing or romanticizing it and making it in to a ship.

2. Making everything about ships. It pisses me of when people make the conflict between Color, Nightmare, and Killer into a love triangle or a ship war.

Not only because this does a massive fucking disservice to Color’s character, but it also fundamentally mis-fucking-understands the situation between them.

Nightmare kidnapped Killer. He holds him captive. He’s trafficking, using, and abusing Killer. He’s manipulating him. He’s isolating him from people and resources that could help him. He’s taking advantage of a traumatized, mentally ill man for his own benefit because he’s skilled, intelligent, powerful, and easy to take advantage of.

Killer is not a person to Nightmare. Killer is a tool, Killer is property that belongs to Nightmare. And given the way the Multiverse works and the fact he has already canonically replaced Killer multiple times (meaning he’s either killed or allowed Killer to be killed/die multiple times so that this being with high amounts of Determination just gives up completely, not counting all the times he simply killed a Killer because they could Reset and it was convenient for him) Killer is a resource to be exploited.

Color is helping someone who needs help, who asked him for help, because he’s a decent person and because he—unlike Nightmare—cares about Killer genuinely as a person and his basic fucking right to live and be free. Not because he’s in love with Killer, or because he’s jealous of and hates and demonizes Nightmare.

He does hate Nightmare. But not because Nightmare’s a romantic rival. But because Nightmare’s a kidnapping abusive trafficking Multiversal terrorist who knows what he’s doing and shows no signs of stopping or changing and Color has every damn right to despise Nightmare.

The conflict between Color and Nightmare and Killer is a fight for Killer’s sanity, his health, his identity, his grasp on reality, his very basic freedom and rights, his very life and right to exist. Not his love.

3. Sexualizing and romanticizing abuse, sadistic torture, conditions and abuse that can arguably fall under MC and OA in RAMCOA, and trafficking just because it’s a gay popular ship and nightmare is supposedly “hot.”

No, TikTok killermare shipper #35, a video depicting Nightmare horribly beating and terrorizing Killer while he trembles and shakes in pain and fear is not, in fact, “definitely sex” or “kink.”

Real people go through the same shit Killer does. Some of them survive, some of them are still alive, most aren’t. All of them are deeply traumatized and nearly all are permanently disabled and struggle to support themselves because of what people chose to do to them. A lot of them were children—infants, babies, toddlers— when it happened, born and raised in it or sold or kidnapped off the streets.

It’s not fucking cute. It’s not “uwu toxic killermare!!11!!”

4. The complete erasure of Color Sans and his relationship with Killer.

only ever acknowledging him or bringing him up to demonize him for some fucking reason, replace him with someone else Killer either doesn’t even know or care about, pretend like Killer would ever choose Nightmare over him without consequences and that somehow ever being a good thing for Killer, trying to painting him as only caring for Killer because he’s in love with him (that’s not the reason he’s trying to save killer ffs.)

And also people completely ignoring that Killer literally asked Color to save him.

Killer. Wants. To. Be. Saved. From. Nightmare.

We can stop pretending that Color is forcing himself on Killer and not taking no and his “I don’t want to be saved” for an answer now in all the little fanfics.

Even if Color did think Nightmare was brainwashing Killer in these fics or not, regardless of if it’s true or not, he wouldn’t fucking force Killer to leave against his will. That would only push Killer back into Nightmare’s arms and Color knows that.

And also. Only bringing him up to kill him in a way that was clearly just done to push Killer into Nightmare’s or someone else’s arms and serves no purpose in developing killer’s character or the plot.

5. The lack of anything done with Killer and Something New Chara’s relationship as if that wouldn’t effect Killer for the rest of his life and effect the way he views, builds, and approaches relationships of any kind and people and the world now in his present.

As if that wouldn’t affect his views of and relationship with Nightmare, either, that are not just going to be fixed just because Nightmare “saved him” in some fanon interpretations.

Like. KC is still in his head, he believes they live in inside him.

6. The inability to ever let Killer be independent or even separate from Nightmare ever and that being the reason why some people refuse to explore Killer and Color’s relationship or even Chara and Killer’s. Hate the framing that Nightmare is somehow the most important person in Killer’s life.

7. The lack of exploration with Papyrus. There’s been more of it, but Something New Papyrus is alive in timelines where Killer is with Nightmare. He doesn’t remember Killer, but he remembers Sans. Interesting ideas. And just in general the lack of exploration of Something New characters as a whole like Flowey and Chara. Don’t really consider it a “sin” just something I want to see more of.

Also wanna see more of the fact that Killer is aware of Players. He may even be aware of Creators, but he just calls them Players..

[raptorish]

Being 'Kin Without A 'Heart

Written by Max on October 28, 2024.

I think I have an interesting disconnect between being otherkin and being otherhearted. I see people who feel as though the two terms are nearly indistinguishable, and for some reason it's not like that for me! There's a clear line between them in my brain, and I wanna journal about my personal experience with that.

I'm a velociraptor, velociraptor therian, raptorkin, raptorkind, a prehistoric bird, a wereraptor. I use those words interchangeably, since they all convey the proper information: I'm a raptor. I also strongly identify as human. I have two species, equal in value, and they fluctuate in intensity - in my daily life, I'm content to see myself as human, and my raptor side is almost a separate creature entirely, but not quite. It's a median headmate, an important part of me, and also different from me. We are the same until we are not.

And I'm not raptorhearted, even when I'm only partly identifying as a raptor, when I'm feeling more human. I don't identify with raptors, with the traits humans have given them or with their reconstructed biology - I don't feel a sense of belonging, or home, or love for their species in a way that's beyond what I feel for other animals. Raptors are, for some strange reason, not very special to me. I just happen to be one.

Even when I'm not a raptor, when I'm a human with a raptor side and raptor instincts, I don't relate to my raptor brain - that's why I separate it from me! I don't feel a sense of familiarity with it, beyond the familiarity of being it and knowing how it works from being it.

Other raptors aren't inherently family to me. I'll call them cousins, as an affectionate shorthand, because they're like me and not quite the same, but I don't feel a sense of caring for them simply because they're raptors. I feel familiar with them because they're like me - I enjoy seeing how much we're alike, what ways we might differ! But I don't deeply care about them, in the same way someone who's raptorhearted might.

Here, for contrast, let me tell you about how I experience being fictionhearted with a particular canon, and why I'm confident in calling that a hearttype.

My heartcanon, the fictional canon which I'm connected with, is a personally-created alternate universe of the video game Detroit: Become Human, which I've named Detroit, Machina. I've named it, given it a different title, because it's so fundamentally important to me and feels so different from the original source from which it was derived that calling DBH in general my heartcanon feels painfully wrong.

I don't identify as any character from Machina. I identify with the beats of the story, with the characters and their struggles, with the joys and failures and everything about creating it. I say I have a heartcanon because I could tell someone about it as a story, as a fanfic, and it would not convey the depth of how this story is embedded into my psyche. I would not be the same person if I hadn't written about it for years of my life, put pieces of myself into it. I'm not fictionkind, I'm not anyone in this story, but the story is an integral part of me anyway. I have such strong feelings about it that I don't know how to put it to words, and I don't feel comfortable trying in a public post. It's important to me. If you told me I could never talk about Machina again, I would crumble to ash.

Contrast that with being a raptor. If you were to tell me I could never have any piece of dinosaur paraphernalia ever again, I would shrug. They're cute, sure, but I don't care about raptors that intensely. I would be just as disappointed if you said I couldn't ever have any cat paraphernalia, and I'm not a cat in any alterhuman sense.

Basically - I don't care about raptors in such a strong, personally intense way that they've changed who I am. I am a raptor, and that's changed who I am, and that doesn't mean I necessarily love them. And that's perfectly okay.

[confused-rat]

You can't seriously be so dense that you can't see why trans people are not comfortable with Joon's thumbnail.

Idgaf what Lily did, idgaf that Joon was "respectful" in the video(not really, if he was truly respectful he would've censored her deadname, we are not asking for much here).

There is such thing as being covertly or accidentally transphobic, Joon being a cis man should be open to criticism and just change this shit.

Stop being dismissive of trans people just because Joon is on "our" side, it's embarrassing.

No, I get why people would be uncomfortable with the images. I still think it’s important to have the facts straight, that the photos used were photos Lily herself posted after coming out. There is a fundamental difference between posting images of a masking trans person (which is what people are assuming), and posting images of one who is out and transitioning.

I’ll also admit, the visuals where instances of Lily’s deadname was on screen did make me uncomfortable. The name is dead for a reason, and even Lily is owed that respect. But then I remembered the time where someone had had the decency to cut out Lily’s deadname, and Lily pounced on the opportunity to claim the screenshots used were faked specifically because said name was removed. It’s evidence, and Lily’s already shown that good faith doctoring is something she’ll exploit, so it’s getting left as it. I don’t like it, but I get it.

But let’s be real here. It doesn’t matter what I say. You’ve already made up your mind. It’s always always always going to be something. It doesn’t matter how much evidence is presented to you, you’re going to ignore it and tear into whatever hapless messenger brought it up to you instead. You already admitted it. You don’t give a fuck what Lily did. You don’t care that she’s tormented people for years, that she’s sexually harassed people, created multiple false identities to push people to do what she wants, that she’s completely sanitized her past actions and lies constantly about anything worthy of criticism she’s done. A youtuber was insensitive when presenting all this, so it gets thrown out the window, and Lily gets to go on another day where she has a platform and access to new people she can abuse.

Well here’s the thing. Lily is going to fuck up one day. Even if Joon’s video isn’t the final nail, Lily has a pattern of behavior. She’s going to keep doing what she does, and inevitably, she’s going to get caught. One day, she’ll damn herself enough that nobody will be able to defend her any more. Until then. ✌️

[gentleralts]

not to be a downer but while i agree with the sentiment of what the "death note AU where hbomberguy solves the kira case while investigating light yagami for something unrelated to the murders" post is trying to go for, it gets a bunch of stuff fundamentally wrong about light as a character and of how the death note itself works, and as a noted Light Yagami Hater™ i feel like i should set things straight here:

light was top of his class in high school and got into one of the most prestigious universities in his region. he does his research pretty thoroughly and would not even consider plagiarizing anything, especially with how unreliable it would make you look if you got caught. this "light would probably be a plagiarist if he was a youtuber" bit seems like it's there just because the james sommerton video is so fresh in our minds; if that post was drafted like a year ago there'd probably be a bit in there instead about light straight up lying about his accomplishments and how his mother is very proud

"light would have unhinged right-wing political takes if he was on youtube" there's a pretty significant possibility that he would, although not intentionally. light would brand himself as more of a center-left intellectual debater type and gets popular going up against people who are so right-wing that his points seem progressive by comparison (on top of him being conventionally attractive), and that would make stuff like his misogyny and pro-cop stances and "there are some types of people the world would be better off without" sentiments stand out when comparing him to more leftist youtubers. hbomb's initial investigation into light likely started out with the thesis of "light yagami can get away with saying shit like this because he's an extremely fuckable twink"

the thing about that post that stood out to me as its most egregious mistake though was the insistence of legal names being the ones you need to kill someone with the note. you've probably seen joke posts going around before like "if you write a trans person's deadname into the death note it kills you instead," and that's built upon one of the rules of the death note:

[id: The names you see with the eye power of a god of death are the names needed to kill that person. You will be able to see the names even if that person isn't registered in the family registration.]

a name doesn't have to be legally registered for it to work, and a legal name might not even work in some cases. granted a change of a legal name could still be a viable defensive strategy to throw off someone trying to research what your name is, but outright saying "i've legally changed my name to something you won't be able to find out so you can't kill me" will not protect you from the death note at all.

in my opinion, i believe the point in which hbomb spots the thread leading to his conclusion of light yagami being behind the kira murders is around the end of the yotsuba arc. he'd be able to intuit the first, second, and third kiras being separate entities by the types of people they kill, and the situation of "this guy i've been looking into has dropped off the face of the internet for like two months and the kira murders are suddenly different" would probably be too interesting of coincidence for him to ignore

[bluecapsicum]

hi Blue! I am absolutely IN LOVE with the "Reports From Unknown Places" series. If you don't mind me asking, how did you learn to draw the clouds and the sky so well? I've always found the prospect very daunting, but you draw them in a way that simply amazing! Do you have any tips for brushes/practice?

Hello!

Thank you so much for the message, and your kind words! I'm so glad you enjoy Reports.

I completely understand how one might find drawing the sky daunting. I still regularly give myself headaches when working on reports. Everyone has their own issues when it comes to drawing, though.

For instance, this might sound a bit absurd, but one of my main issues as an illustrator is that I don't think well in 3D, and I ended up realising that I was unconsciously thinking about the sky as a flat image. When I started drawing clouds as objects moving in space, everything became a little easier.

(This is the kind of epiphany that I had. Truly a revolution in my mind. Now I can totally rotate clouds in my brain.)

This all came about as I kept on drawing more and more, sure, but the most important part really was watching clouds for myself, as much as possible, and to try and notice things every time. It's mostly silly stuff, especially at first, like oh yeah, I guess clouds produce shadows on other clouds too. Wow! Or, huh, this cloud doesn't have the same density throughout, so the light scatters differently inside of it.

Because it's all fundamentally physics, it ended up sounding incredibly simple once I had noticed it. Of course! It's all logical! I had just never connected the dots before I saw it in person.

So I also bought some books, and watched videos (all those airplane videos are fantastic), read websites, looked at pictures. Everything was helpful in one way or another. Listen, I knew about cirrus and cumulonimbus and that was pretty much it, at first. So looking at diagrams about how high cirrus are in comparison to stratocumulus, for instance, was a revelation. Looking at the life cycle of cumulonimbus explained so much for me.

These are studies I did on the side of Reports, in November 2020, then April 2021, and the third one in September 2023:

I think I'm able to look at these and tell that I got progressively more confident because I understood what I was drawing a lot better.

If I had to say, a few concrete things I learned that work for me is being bold, not to be afraid of contrast and sharp edges, and to treat light as an actor of its own. I can't find it right now, but I once read a quote by (I think!) Cezanne that went something like "I'm not painting the mountain, I'm painting the air between me and the mountain". I think it's the most helpful thing I've ever heard for painting and drawing. It's obviously especially relevant here. The air changes everything.

Anyway, I could go for ages more, I'm totally rambling, so I'll just leave a few references I find helpful:

The International Cloud Atlas

The Cloud Appreciation Society

What's This Cloud

In the end it's just fun, and good for the soul, to spend quality time with clouds, so nothing is ever lost!

[jewishvitya]

hei. i enjoy your blogs, i hope you could clear something up for me., i just saw someone claim to be "zionist as in i believe jewish people have the right to self determination in their indigenous homeland",, ive actually seen the claim that jewish ppl are indigenous to israel and are somehow denied that identity as a form of anti semitism and erasure of jewish experience multiple times.. and it always confused me so much cuz like israel was set up as this nationalist project in 1948, before the region was a mess mostly under the rule of the ottomans, but the palestinian culture and ppl were always there. how can someone be indigenous to a region if they werent there before? is there any truth to the claim or is it just co-opting leftist language again?

its so evil how the state of israel could jist completely legitimize itself by co-opting jewish culture and pretending like being in support of it is a fundamental part of jewishness :(

Thank you!! I'm glad you do.

I can try, but I'm not sure how good I'll be at explaining this. Maybe someone else can add to this. If I repeat things I said before, I apologize.

That is a definition of zionism used by many zionists who lean politically to the left. I don't subscribe to these softer definitions of zionism because saying it's just "the right to Jewish self determination in our ancestral homeland" ignores that in practice over the last century the next words are "to the exclusion of others." I define zionism through its practical outcome - which is what we did to Palestinians.

Jewish people originate here. Our religious laws and practices (many of which are regularly disregarded by Israel and by settlers when they do things like destroying olive trees and water sources) are tied to this specific land. There are holidays and religious rituals that are either fundamentally changed or can't be practiced at all if we're anywhere else in the world. Culturally most branches of Judaism maintained this connection throughout our history. And we didn't leave willingly. An empire expelled us from the place that was our land. When the point of indigeniety comes up, this is why. You'll see arguments like - when does indigeniety expire? How many generations until you no longer have a claim to the ancestral homeland you were driven away from?

So this is the cultural context for Judaism. This is something that I also can't really ignore. I can't pretend I don't care about this land and the connection we always had to it.

That said, I still see this as using leftist terminology inappropriately.

To talk about Israel, a lot of us talk about colonialism, and specifically settler colonialism. I lived in the West Bank settlements so to me this really resonates. The argument I get at that point is that an indigenous group can't colonize their own land.

And this is why I'm saying it's a misuse of terminology. We're using that label to absolve ourselves. As if the word "indigenous" is a stamp of approval we get to apply to our actions while we repeat the violence of colonizing forces in history.

Ethnic cleansing, occupation, building settlements - and now also genocide. The tools we use resonate with indigenous people all over the world, because they suffered through similar kinds of oppression. Always with differences and different contexts, these things are never 1:1, but there's a reason indigenous groups around the world are in solidarity with Palestinians. I shared about a video from a Korean person talking about how colonialism by Japan broke the thread of their history - old buildings that had to be rebuilt instead of being preserved, historical cultural practices and art forms being lost or changed due to the loss of artisans. These are things Israel is doing now.

So to me, this is using the word "landback" and "liberation" for a violent takeover of land from an indigenous group. You mentioned the Ottomans - Palestine has been conquered over and over throughout history. Those regimes, sure, fighting them off can be liberatory, if the intent isn't to become the conquerors in their place. But there's nothing to liberate from Palestinians, because they're not colonizing anything. They belong in this land.

I'm really angry that so many of us try to deny the Palestinians their own connection. They have roots here, a long and rich history shaped by life in the land. While we destroy so much and say our claim is so strong we get to kill or drive them away for it.