#thats three examples of different kinds of being blue

[amber-tortoiseshell]

hey! im making yet another fictional cat for a book so. i just wanted to know what some cool, yet plausible patterns and stuff i could give the cat. hes a very very expensive pet, so you dont need to worry about him being like, a mix and that possibly screwing something up. i just want to make a cool but realistic cat thats not like all my others lol

Interesting! Let me think.

You can always go with real but rare colors or even their combinations like for example mocha+karpati (i have no idea how would that look), or say the owner paid a lot to make a "forbidden color" in some breed: a lilac russian blue, a colorpoint norwegian forest cat, an amber point siamese ect.

The same for other traits, you can go with breed crossing or with random mutations (a few years ago their was a rex mutation in maine coons, resulting in wavy long-furred cats - it's always possible it's still in the gene pool somewhere).

Recently i saw some red and tortie bengals, they are beautiful and suitable as an extra expensive pet lol. So what do you think about red rosettes?

(My sister suggested a bengal that has heart-shaped rosettes - i think this is actually possible and a good idea for a very unique cat😆)

Something more exotic: a few breeders in Russia are working with a brand-new color called phoenix, it's kind of reddish-brown with grey undertones. (It's a new mutation in maine coons.)

Some examples: solid (the first three is the same cat at different ages), solid tortie with white, solid tortie smoke

You can go for extremely rare or extinct specialties (they can always turn up again), like that one-striped thai cats.

Another possibility is taking a different animal (the more closely it is related to cats the better), choosing a variant they have, and saying "actually, this mutation happened in cats too, and someone started to breed it".

Rabbits, for example, have a third agouti allele (beside solid and agouti), it's called otter.

These are genetically black rabbits, the only difference is that instead of aa, they are atat (or maybe ata).

Rabbits also have a different, more spotty white spotting.

Imagine how these patterns would look like on a cat!

Or choose something from dogs, or horses! You have so many possibilities!

[abrisaber]

My Thoughts (and suggestions) on the critiqes on Hazbin Hotels's Character Designs

One of the many complaints about Hazbin Hotel (mostly its character designs) Is that the charaters often use the same color (red) in their pallets. And to be honest I agree with these complaints on some level.

But I don't think completely removing red from the pallets is the best choice. I think using alot of red is sort of a given when creating charaters in such a hellish setting, and it's not like this world is limited to one color.

Helluva Boss explores the other rings of Vivzipops "hellverse." All of which are dominated by a single color.

The Pride Ring is red. The Wrath Ring is orange. The Lust Ring is blue.

Asmodeus, for example, is the embodiemnt of Lust and ruler of the lust ring, and his design empasises that.

Not just the charateristics of his design but the pallet as well. His fur (feathers?) is a similar color to the lust rings sky. His suit and his face have a neon glow to them that a lot of the buildings in the lust ring have. His design isnt just a reflection of his flamboyant yet fluffy nature, it's also literally made of the same building blocks that the ring he rules is.

And yet even in this setting he doesn't bleed into the background. In OZZIE'S when he reveals himself his entire club becomes OVERRUN with his pallet yet he manages to stand out against it.

I think the reason why it's easy to notice Asmodeus in this setting is because, well for one, he's big and the scene is focoused on him, but also because this setting feels built around him rather than him being built for the setting (like the sinners are). It might just be my obsession for this character creating a bias but when I watch this episode I feel like Asmodeus came first and the Lust Ring centers around him, whereas in Hazbin Hotel, the characters sometimes feel hard to miss.

In this frame in particular I genuinley didn't notice Nifty or Alastor in this shot. I mean I rendered in my mind that they were there but It took a couple watches for me to actually notice that they were here. But I will give this credit because my attention was more focoused on Angel Dust than anything else and it was a very short couple of seconds compared to Ozzie's minutes of screen time, but I still think theres a point to be made.

I tried my best to pull from places of equal lighting. The two colors in the top right are the most basic forms, the two on the bottom left are the lighest, and the ones in the center are from the darkest.

While the three examples do varry slightly, the most important ones (being the flatest examples I could find on these images) still look insanely similar to each other. This is MY main complaint about these characters. It's not that they're "too red." I think using red for their pallets is great, but I think using different kinds of red would benefit these designs greatly and help thems stick out against the red backgrounds and other characters.

I think that giving Husker a more deep, dark red, almost like red wine, would empasise his character more. He likes alcohol, wine. He's cynical, depressing, always has a frown, dark. It doen't take away from his character or already estanlished design in any way but does something to help him be more unique.

As for Alastor, I think giving him more muted reds rather than vibrant ones would make him seem more like an oldtimer talkshow host. These reds don't have to be outright pale or grey, but give the red in his suit and hair more fade like they're being seen on a shitty color TV from the 50s. (I don't know what era Alator is from cause I see a lot of different theories but my main guess is from the 1920s-40s since thats when radio became popular) This would, again, empasise his character without outright changing his pallet.

Lastly I want to talk about Charlie

I don't think there's much to change about Charlie's design. I think it works well with her setting. Her suit being a similar red to hell Is a good way to represent her heritege as hells princess, and her blonde hair and pale skin are inherited from her father, who's a fallen angel. One thing I will suggest about her design would be to add something in ger pallet to represent how she likes angels and heaven or at the very least her desire for goodness. Perhaps adding some gold to her design in the form of trimming or a pin or even a simple headband would do wonders for her character and bring some variety that is noticable but not distracting.

I don't have much else to say about the other characters. One thing I will mention is how Sir Pentious sticks out like a sore thumb against all of these main characters who have reds within a similar hue as one of their dominant colors, while he's over here with his piss yellow stripes. Granted he still has red in his design but its more secondary compared to the primary focous of most other characters.

In conclusion, this is just my personal rant about suggestions and ideas and observations. I'm in no way saying that Vivzipop SHOULD do these things. I just think that changing up the pallets and using more variety in the shades and tints of reds she uses for her characters would benefit the show and its characters. This ended up being longe than I thought it would be but I really wanted to get my point across. Please do not point out any spelling mistakes I have made or I will cry and scream and shit everywhere.

[drzone]

So…. Timetravel?

YEAH!!! this is pretty vague so ill just rattle off what comes to mind… Thank you for indulging me!

Something I really love about time travel is its capacity for exploring world building in fantasy and scifi settings especially in non-earth environments. Something i always find myself asking when enjoying things with fantastical settings is what the world looked like in the past or what it will look like in the future. Of course doctor who is the first thing that comes to mind since it also has the ability to explore the entirety of space as well as time, so it does!!! We know earth’s history, of course… But visiting things like the dalek’s home planet at different times, and the worlds the humans populate in the future… I find it all very interesting. It certainly branches off of my interest just in worldbuilding in general. Time travel also just has this thing i call “The Cool Factor” which essentially… I’ll assume you think ninjas are cool as fuck. I certainly do its why i watched ninjago personally. Its that. “COOL” not in a like… Bad Ass way but like in the way thats like if you were 7 youd be like Holy Shit. Thats Awesome. a very po from kung fu panda viewpoint. and time travel TOTALLY has this.

It has roots in a more serious tone, commenting on social things and philosophical stuff and such, which i do love as well (such as the original The Time Machine by hg wells), but im definitely more into it for like club penguin and spy kids reasons LOL. Thats not to totally passover its effectiveness for more serious things (another good example which youve probably read in school: A Sound of Thunder by ray bradbury, in which time travel is used to show why hunting endangered animals is bad, and so is greed, essentially) (this is a super simplified summary dont get mad at me for not putting too much thought into it sorry mr bradbury and english teachers)

in my own stories that use time travel (great blue + its sequel, radio relay) i mostly go for cool factor and world building, and radio relay especially is heavier on cool factor but i also use it in a more serious way as it being kind of… i feel like “metaphor” is a strong word, because its pretty literal. it is the central thing for the three main characters, who all have different adverse effects from time travel, which directly parallel effects i see people have from their creative pursuits (ie burnout, overworking, pouring your entire heart and soul into something and hating it.. That sort of thing!) which is more serious but doesnt REALLY directly relate to the act of time traveling itself because in the great blue universe im more interested in what a society based around time travel would look like, and what sci-fi effects time travel might have on the body and mind of the travelers…

ive lost my train of thought! if you have any follow up questions please do ask!

[connorchen-saddog8]

datamoshing tests :3

hey guyssss its been a while

the goat rudy recently taught me how to databend videos using avidemux and audacity and im no gatekeeper so heres some experiments I did and yep thats the yep.

(most photos and videos are from an upcoming doomslut project so be prepared for that yaya yayayayyaya subscrie and smash that like button and smash and smash)

photos~

these r just made by opening a jpeg in text edit and altering shitttt yeahhhh... (i haven't figured out how to do that on a windows system yet, i assume different file type requirements are needed? or text edit on os system operates differently to windows....)

also not sure if these images will upload correctly given they are all sorts of fucked data wise. I also found that (especially with video) the databending shows up differently on every device, not just across operating systems.)

I found that when messing with the data its best to leave the most beginning and end untouched. I know nothing about data but im assuming thats where the more important information of the image is kept, so messing with those corrupts the file entirely and makes it unable to open. Same applies to messing with the data in audio form.

Videoooos

Here's how it goessss:

Open up your video in Avidemux and change your settings to these and save it as an mp4

2. import that video into audacity (import -> raw data) with these settings

3. mess with the audio track (a little bit) be sure to not fuck with the very beginning or end, just select a small chunk in the middle. (i found using the effects of change pitch or tempo to be the most reliable.) Also try this out with small changes because it is very easy to completely decimate the information and you will have no video.

4. export out of audacity as audio, using this file type.

5. once you have the video as a .raw, rename it and change it to a .mp4. It's a bit annoying in windows as you have to go into file explorer settings and change the setting to not hide file extension types for this to work.

6. open up the mp4 in vlc (it works a bit better i find) and yeahhh thats it.

on selecting the source video: datamoshing is basically looking at the pixels? stuff in the video file itself and looking at movement, so for results of the typical weird movement meshing kind you'd want a video filmed from a stable angle where the only movement is the subject of the video. But using videos where the camera moves as well also produce some interestin effects! i am not at all knowledgeable on this so do whatever yknow.)

these are from video tests... tom being consumed by the digital universe at university of sydney 4k.

this is an example where i think i used pitch shift -0.1. I found when doing this it has good results at the start and end, but the middle of the video just seems to pause? I screen recorded replaying it in VLC.

In this example i used pitch shifting up and down in little sections. +0.1 and -0.1

Some videos and files are hard to upload in their original files since the data is so distorted... my best idea to solve these problems would just be to screen record them to get them back to a blank slate data-wise.

an experiment on a different video. (forgot what effects i applied but it is most likely pitch shift) Produced some interesting pixel effects. It's pretty standard distortion until about 10 seconds into the video where it just becomes a wall of blue with a really jarring sound! eek! aagh! aaagh! im gonna kill myself!

yeah thats about it.

[inamckxox-blog]

Production Design: Not as easy as I thought...

"Choose an interior space that you have access to and take some still images of how it naturally looks. Using colour, production design and light you are now tasked with creating a visual mood for the space in 5 photographs. Think about how you can dress the space and introduce colour with props as well as with the use of light. Take notes about your approach, include things like intended colour pallet, time of day, sun position and a basic floor plan. You may also complete this exercise as a short film which is no longer than 1min 30 seconds."

-Andrew O'Connor

With the learning we had done in class, it was time to apply it to our own projects. Originally, I had big plans for this exercise, far too big for a 1min30sec film. I wanted to be overly ambitious because I thought it would be simple, which I quickly realised, was very wrong.

As soon as we had read the brief at the end of class, I had my idea. I had been wanting to change my bedroom around, so I thought, if I stripped everything from the room and then built it back up as the set design, I'd be set. New room design, easy completed exercise, no problem. Except for the fact that I thought this wasn't enough so I wanted to make it stop-motion. Now, do I think thats a bad film idea for a fun personal project? No, I think it would be great. However, for a class exercise I realised later on that I was trying to do a little too much. Also, thinking back on it now, I'm not sure what kind of emotion I would go for. Doesn't really hit the mark for the assignment.

I think on it for a bit and have told a few people about the idea, no objections. Only thing, I was a one man group. This was ok with me, I didn't mind, but when Joseph and I were chatting about the project and we found out we were both partnerless, we decided to team up. Just gave us both a bit of help with everything. We met up for coffee to discuss everything, and I pitched my stop-motion idea. Joseph really liked that idea, but suggested the concept of doing a different emotion. "Uneasy," he said. "Maybe a sleep paralysis type of thing, with the stop motion." Absolutely brilliant I thought, little bit different and gives us a lot to mess around with. We fleshed out the idea a little more while we were there and planned to send each other photos of our respective flats to see what space would work better. The basic concept was to do some sort of stop motion to show that the room was slightly off, things wouldn't be in the right place, or maybe just incorrect in some way. A crooked poster, a teddy staring only at the camera, things upside down, honestly whatever. Just to make it seem like it wasn't quite right, it made you... uneasy. :)

We ended up choosing Joseph's flat, as you can see in the pictures above, and decided not to go with my flat because it usually gets an insane amount of natural light, which wasn't the plan for our shoot. Joe's flat obviously has this very dark blue wall that was unavoidable so it was going to be a major part of our colour palette. We also opted to use the yellow couch rather than the brown one because we were worried that when we used the dark and shadow-y lighting that we wanted for the film, it wouldn't be contrasting enough and it would melt into the background. Additionally, the lighting and candles that we ended up using were quite yellow and worked quite well together from all three sources. After that we decided to include the music posters and bass to provide a bit of context clues about the character, which coincidentally all ended up having red elements to them. Because of these three colours showing up consistently throughout our set and set dressings, they ended up being our core colour palette, and I was honestly quite happy with how they worked together. Using these primary colours together makes for very distinctive breaks within the image, for example, the yellow circle created by the lamp, or the red rectangle on Owen Neil (our actor) made by the blanket and his shirt. Even the dark blue wall in the background is apparent behind the posters.

With our shoot date coming up quickly and two very busy schedules, we were trying to establish a time that would work for both of us as well as an actor who would be available. Luckily for us, Joseph's flatmates and some other friends were booking equipment and we decided to book out one set and share it between us as it would be in the same location and it made it easier to get access to the rather limited supply that the school had (not a dig at the uni, just the reality with 80 other 3rd years). So off we went, picking up the equipment all together and transporting it to the flat. This also kind of helped budget-wise as we were able to split the cost of the taxi we used, and with all of us being broke uni students, it was a win.

All of this resulted in us filming on Thursday, October 12th. I walked into Joe's flat and we got straight to work. Other objects were required to fill the space and provide this sense of uneasy that we wanted, and it just so happened that I had a skull about the size of a small suitcase and some rather large candles from Ikea that when paired together made a very ominous looking backdrop. It was a bit out of place as it is just a random massive skull in the back of the shot but I thought it still made for an interesting piece of set dressing that furthered our desired emotion. We also included a number of posters with music artists in them, one of the larger ones being Jimmy Hendricks. The poster makes it appear like he is looking at you so we put it behind Owen's shoulder to kind of get this idea that something was watching him, and with our chosen lighting and after the edit, it was a dark and creepy addition to the set. Following along with that music idea we had a bass guitar beside Owen and a guitar behind him, trying to imply a little more about our characters personality. Bass guitar, famous musician's posters, guess he likes music then. We also decided to include a coffee table with a lamp on it to imply a light source within the frame. It filled out the righthand side of the shot a bit more and gave the room a bit more of a 'homely' feel. Looking back on it, including a glass of water or a mug might have added a bit more detail to it and while it is a relatively insignificant object in the room, it would have made it feel more lived in. Overall Joseph and I agreed that this was where we lacked in terms of our production design. Although we had our unnerving and somewhat strange/creepy objects, we fell short on the items that would have made the space more believable as an actual home. We did include a cuddly toy, Bongo, seen in the bottom righthand side of the master, but it didn't quite fill that idea of a settled space. The final thing we added was these false plants that hung from the ceiling light, which honestly, wasn't one of our more thought out choices. When I went looking for things that would help fill the space in some way, they seemed like a good idea. Funnily enough though, those plants kind of helped me realise the thing were always told as film students, which is that if something doesn't have a purpose, then it shouldn't be there. This is sort of a universal rule in all of filmmaking, like it applies the same way to production design that it does to script writing, or even a visual approach. Those plants didn't really have to be there, and all they were doing was distracting from the things we did put there purposefully. Wild how that works.

So the shoot went great, little bit longer than we expected but we ordered a pizza we remained in high spirits. Owen sat like a champ while Joe and I took turns setting up shots and discussing what we wanted to achieve visually. I really enjoyed having the double DOP dynamic, and we bounced off each other really well so the process went smoothly. Once we had wrapped I took all the video files and we divied up the editing jobs. Joe had a 48 hour shoot challenge that he was doing that weekend so we agreed that I would cut the clips together, send them over to him, and he would finish the picture-lock and sort out the sound design before sending it back to me and I would finish up the grade. Considering we had no audio recording of any sort other than the camera's audio, Joe did a pretty impressive job of whipping up some sort of sound design. While it wasn't perfectly blended, it was effective none the less. I didn't do much in terms of the grade, just boosted the yellows and reds to make them more pronounced and increased the shadows in an attempt to make it even more unsettling. Joe then came up with the title 'When I Wake', so I slapped a title card and the credits on there and we sent it off to our lecturer.

Overall the experience was one of creative collaboration and learning, and I was very pleased with the final result. It was cool to see how a space can be changed by a combination of lighting, set dressing, location and so on. Some questions that I still have are; does the art department set up the scene just once or do they have to change it with every camera movement or new shot, where do you draw the line between proper dressing and over dressing a set, and is it easier to build a set from the ground up or to find a location that suits and go from there? All of these will be answered in time once I gain more experience but I'm keen to learn more.

[fallout-fandom-confessions]

Call me blue one more time!!!!

[twowink]

womb war explanation

(wrote this a little after it happened and then banished it to my drafts instead of posting it and now it emerges haha. but yeah, all of the time mentioned in this post is relative to july 4, 2022)

to preface this. mika kagehira is from ensemble stars and suzu kuromori is from ensemble girls. they were created by the same people and are pretty much canonically within the same universe. mika and suzu are one example of this because they are heavily implied to be twins.

however this is sort of low on the enstars iceberg. i only knew this because i like reading wiki pages and i found it in mikas wiki page. so a lot of people know it but newer people usually dont.

heterochromia can have several causes of course but chimeras/vanishing twins is one of them (albeit a very rare one) and also one that was immediately jumped to for whatever reason. but this was before len who wrote the post knew about mika and suzu being twins.

so this is kind of confusing already if youre not sure about what they look like. mika has heterochromia of course. but. mika and suzu both have heterochromia. and they both have two different kinds

so after this was pointed out thats where this kind of started. do they probably have it for some other reason and/or anime logic? yeah! but a few people immediately jumped to mika having blue eyes and suzu having red eyes and splitting a yellow-eyed embyro between them. but. of course. not even thats not what everyone immediately thought of. instead there came the idea of there being quadruplets and mika and suzu both having yellow eyes originally but being the surviving two while their red and blue eyed siblings were. well. you know how this works.

NOTE. it is worth mentioning that it Is very important to remember that we were joking about it but chimeras are very rare and generally heterochromia is caused by other conditions and it was very much anime logic. this isnt canon by any means nor is it the easiest medical explanation for their heterochromia. also that it wasnt really an actual active fight fetuses arent people etc. its all very very funny but dont wanna spread misinfo yknow . yeah ! good to mention here

anyways immediately a couple of us all thought the idea of the quadruplet womb war was the funniest thing ever and proceeded to post about various things about it. non enstarries got involved. its endless and so is the pain. hand in unloveable hand. etc etc yeah.

anyways this has been going on for over three hours and there are way too many people involved and i think we all need to loop hit song usa from hit idol raising slash rhythm game ensemble stars music and calm down a little.

[familyagrestefanblog]

Analysis of the Family Agreste Portrait

Quarantine strikes again and since the Agreste family portrait has fascinated me for a loooong while now I decided to put my thoughts into words and write another essay x3

The amount of informations we get out if it is amazing and its not only highlighting the absolute TRAGEDY it is that this family is about to face such a horrible fall out, it also hints at the former family dynamic before everything went to hell.

So make yourself comfortable and get something to drink, because we will be here for a while.

Here we go: My analysis of this beauty of a fictional portrait

Let's start with the most obvious one: Hawkmoth.

Its commen knowledge by now that the background makes it seem like Hawkmoth is standing behind the Agreste family like a bad omen waiting for fate to take its course and cause their doom. The portrait is brilliantly designed so the illusion is created that Gabriels body (here in a blue suit closer to Hawkmoths normals dark purple one) overlaps with Hawkmoths and a darker line is connecting the two faces as well, which rest on the same height right beside each other. The very same line grows bigger as it goes further behind Emilie - coloring her entire background - showing us that EMILIE is all Gabriel sees when he becomes Hawkmoth. But notice that Adrien on the other hand can hardly be concidered part of Gabriels “sight” at all.

Its forshadowing 101 and damn beautiful if I may say so. But this isnt what I want to focus on in this post.

I want to elaborate on two other key factors that tell us about the former dynamic of the Agrestes instead and what they tell us about the present and future.

The heart:

This is hitting me on another level because look at the heart these three form with Adrien right in the middle! He was so LOVED. This family may have never been anywhere close to ideal but still, there was LOVE and now he's gonna loose it all.

Adrien already lost his mother which led to his father getting even more distant and cold and now his father is becoming increasingly more abusive as he falls deeper and deeper into villainy. Gabriel was never a good father, the show has already made this clear with episodes like "the bubbler", “the collector” or "Gigantitan" for example but gosh there was hope for their little family! The end scene in "Jackady" portrayed it perfectly and I wrote a whole other post just covering the sigificants of Adriens and Gabriels hug in that episode. Check it out here if you want, it goes hand in hand with this one.

Miraculous is all about love and the completely different ways it can affect us, our behavior and actions. Because love isnt just wonderful, pure and empowering, it also can be twisted, destructive and cause the darkst nightmares. And with this family the writers know how to portray the complex love in an abusive houshold thats destined to go up in flames and they also know how to hint at their troubled past with the family portrait.

But this heart visual tells us even more in connection with the positions of their hands. And with these two key factors, lets start with Gabriel:

His hands convey it so strongly. He loves/d Emilie and Adrien so much and no doubt this love for them was certainly the reason why he started his quest as Hawkmoth. But he is now losing himself more and more in the pleasure of his villainy to the point where he forgets why he's doing it in the first place and becomes a complete monster (of a father). But this turn and spiraling into villainy didn't came out of nowhere - this root already had to be in him to grow like that. And this is also something the portrait indeed hints at as well.

Because Gabriel is the only one of the three who:

1. We see so completely open and without hesitation reach out and hold BOTH his family members.

2. Is visually “cut off” from them as well.

But this doesn't mean he was excluded and the only one who truly cared and loved, it just shows that things were more... complicated...as usual.

This is best explained with Adriens hand placements:

One hand is holding his mothers but the other one is visibly not reaching out for his father. But as we all know, that's not because Adrien doesn't love him. In season 1-3 it is made more than clear that Adrien does not hate his father - he loves him alot and tries to be there for him and be patient because he knows that the loss of his mother brought his father terribly down.

Sure, Adrien gets frustrated and angry with him, literally how could he not?? But Adrien tries his best to reach out to Gabriel so they can bond and come out of this tragedy stronger.

But this loving willingness to forgive his father for the chance of growing a father-son bond with him doesn't change the fact that these two didn't had a bond prior to this. And let's be honest here, does anybody actually think this distance between them was caused by Adrien? I don't think so.

So notice how Adriens hand - not reaching out for his fathers - is the only one in the portrait NOT inside or forming the heart.

When the connection of the hands between the family members symbolise their connection to another, then Adrien keeping the hand for his father away from the display of love is VERY telling. It tells us very directly what this distance did to Adriens side of the relationship. Despite Gabriels hand being right there, Adrien does not meet the gesture. And I cannot believe that he did it out of resentment, nothing in the show indicated such strong negative emotions from past Adrien.

It's much more likely that Adrien not reaching for his fathers hand is meant to show us that Adrien felt that he either CAN'T return the gesture because he fears that it'll end in an unpleasant reaction from Gabriel - that it isn't Adriens "place" to reach out to his busy and distant father like that, like it's demanding something - or Adrien simply didn't took Gabriel laying his hand on his shoulder, in the context of posing for a portrait, as a gesture of love and affection.

The way I interpret the portrait is that prior to Emilies dissappearence Adrien did not exactly try to reach out to his father the same way he did from s1-s3, which, I mean, of course wasn't the case. Not only is it NOT the 13 years olds (or younger) job to form an emotional connection to their absent parent - when that’s the PARENTS job - it also wouldn't be necessarily "needed" for Adrien to do so.

Because Emilie at this point was still in the picture so and she was the complete opposite. She was a (or maybe the ONLY) safe, reliable and loving constant of parental attention, affection and care in his life and because of these two HARSH contrasts Adrien learned from very early on to focus mostly completely on her in that regard while kinda blocking his father out.

That most likely wasn't even an active choice whatsoever - Gabriel proofed to be an unreliable resource so Adrien learned to subconciously treat him that way out of self protection. That doesn't mean he had any kind of dislike or malice against his father it just means that he wasn't able or allowed to connect with Gabriel the way he needed. Several episodes show that Gabriel deadass only parented like 15 minutes tops in his life with one of the worst offenders kinda being “Gigantitan” ngl.

So yeah, when I see that the portrait wants to tell me that prior to Emilies loss, Adrien - a 12-13 year old at most - is THIS used to rely solely on the strong bond he has with his mother and not even really reaching out for his fathers love, then I can't help but interpret it in the way that... Well... Gabriel was so distant and emotionally unreliable to Adrien for all his life, that Gabriel simply... wasn't needed by his son. Not at that point of time at least.

And while this may seem weird, because obviously Adrien only now starts to stop craving for his fathers affection and approval (which is btw a horrible, HORRIBLE thing and not something good. A half orphan losing the last remaining hope he had left of having the chance to finally get to form a bond with the only other parent he has left, just to be crushed by disappointment and abandonment all over again until he let's go, is REALLY NOT as much of a good thing people will make it out to be. This is... plain awful) it's actually quite logical.

Adriens hand outside the heart doesn't mean that his father meant nothing to him and therefore refuses to meet and accept his affection (that's literally the complete opposite of what the show shows us), it means that Adriens and Gabriels father-son relationship suffers from a fatal emotional disconnection caused by miscommunication/ a lack of communication.

And this was caused by Gabriel. How? Let me elaborate on that by going a bit far afield (cuz lbh we all have time for this. I’m writing this in quarantine and youre reading this is quarantine, so lets gooooooooooooo).

In "The bubbler" Adrien says that his father "always forgot his birthday", but I cannot agree with this in true honesty. Gabriel is controlling his sons entire life, calls him "the epitome of perfection" and temporarily truly gave up being Hawkmoth for him, he definitely never forgot Adriens birthday.

"The bubbler" even SHOWS us that Adriens perspective of the situation is actually not the truth:

This is Adriens first birthday after Emilies dissappearence and it's incredibly telling how Gabriel handles the planning.

What this entire little sequence tells me is that Gabriel is completely and UTTERLY used to NOT be the one to take care of anything related to Adriens birthday. So Emilie was always the one who did it but somehow - now without her - Gabriel apparently still hasn't even considered changing anything about that nasty non-involvement and just expected Natalie to pick everything up where Emilie left it.

Because let's be real here, knowing Natalie she would NOT have forgotten to get a present if Gabriel truly had told her to. Natalie is never presented to do mistakes like that but Gabriel on the other hand IS definitely presented to us claiming things about himself as ultimate, blameless and true when they simply do not reflect reality. A great example: Gorizilla

You didn’t even speared a minutes of your time for Adrien and he DID try to! Asshat… It's a problem guys. The lack of self awareness Gabriel displays in moments like this is legitimately concerning when you think about how deeply this man is falling right now.

But back to the topic:

Because even if Gabriel didn't even consider doing anything himself for Adriens birthday - not even taking the time to SEE his son (who just recently lost his mother, come on Gabe, really?) - one thing one cannot hold against him: he sure as hell remembered Adriens birthday like any decent parent would and it wasnt portrayed as a this-year-for-the-first-time thing.

And yet Adriens statement still makes complete sense. Because a big, BIG problem with Gabriel is just how much he takes things for granted. He EXPECTS things to be universally known and to never be doubted, just because that's how HE sees them. I will write 10 essays if it's needed to make people understand that Gabriel DOES truly love Adrien, it's just that Gabriel HIMSELF is such a rotten, twisted and toxic person that he cannot see how much his (oppressing) behavior and the way he (doesn't) express his love hurts Adrien and that HE is the one at fault. (for more, once again, read this)

Gabriel LOVES Adrien but he takes the love he feels as such a matter-of-fact that he just completely... forgets to show it.

And when we take Adriens words and look at the Family portrait it unfortunately seems that...

…. Gabriel ALWAYS forgot to show it.

Adriens hand - that should at least be reaching out to his father - is outside of the heart in accepting certainty. Because that's what Gabriels non-presence was for Adrien while growing up: an unreliable and unreachable certainty he had to accept early on as safer to not try to emotionally depend on too much or else he will get hurt.

So yeah, Adrien is the one in the portrait who is very openly not reaching out but only because Gabriel never gave him the needed affection and stability to be able to create that bond.

But let me correct what I said a little earlier: Adrien ALWAYS needed his father. Every kid, especially one in a bad situation like Adrien, does need their parents/friends etc as support system to become independent and confident in a healthy way. And if they don’t have that they WILL crave and look for it!

What Adrien has been doing up to now IS normal for a teenager - humans NEED affection, belonging and safety. What ISNT/SHOULDN’T be normal is Adriens disconnection towards his father in the portrait and just how much Gabriel fails to take care and BE THERE for his son in BOTH TIMES!

Collector:

Bother Christmas:

One thing I like about the show is that it portrays their young main cast with one very important truth: The psyche of a child/teenager of their age will react and adapt so it SURVIVES, even if it results in unfortunate consequences in other relationships and places. Thats the psyches main concern and it'll try to cope with the limited experience and development it has in whatever way necessary to get itself to the next day. A coping mechanism is not there to make you a better person, it ensures your SURVIVAL, everything else is a secondary concern.

So seeing pre-show Adrien not react to Gabriels touch and even feel completely unloved and disconnected from him is no surprise to me. Kids are incredibly observant. They may lack the needed experience and knowledge to truly understand that they deserve better and to stand up for themselves but they are masters in picking up red flags in people and can put this danger into perspective while comparing the different danger levels of their options of people and places to adjust their behavior.

Feast:

Stormy Weather 2:

So the broken connection between father and son we see in the portrait (that Gabriel doesn't even notice but Adrien fully internalized) isn’t there because Adrien “didnt needed” or wanted his father, its because Adrien NEEDED Gabriel so much in his isolated upbringing but Gabriel didn’t LET him need him - so Adrien had to adjust to that accordingly. Big, huge, ENORMOUS difference.

Honestly the most miraculous thing about Miraculous is that Adrien was able to bring up the strength to stay positive and friendly and to forgive Gabriel in hope for a better future. That boys situation is 7 kinds of depressing and traumatizing...

It's just flabbergasting to me how well this portrait shows how basically non-existent their relationship was at that point. And it's horrible to know that this estranged and unformed bond is all Adrien had left after Emilie dissappeared, just alot worse because after Emilie incident Adrien states that his father changed alot for the worse as well.

So to think that all Adrien had left wasn't even this former basically non-existent relationship with his aloof father - who would only barely show his true affection for his son because he's either not around enough to do so or he thinks it "unnecessary to proof his affection" for/to Adrien because he already thinks it so obvious and undoubtable.

Well he thought wrong. And GOSH, it breaks my heart!

So now comparing the "Gabriel" hand from Adrien with the one representing his connections with his mother conveys a pretty harsh contrast.

Because last but not least, let's take a look at Emilies hand placements:

But here is now an interesting difference to Adrien. Whereas we openly see that Adriens side of the Adrien-Gabriel relationship is completely disconnected from the heart/love - showcasing just how badly Adrien has always been neglected by his father - we don't see Emilies hand in her Emilie-Gabriel relationship AT ALL.

Once again just like with Adrien, this doesn't mean she didn't love her husband and that Gabriel was used and fooled by the woman he so utterly adored. It just means that from Emilies point of view things were a bit more complicated. What exactly this is, the portrait is keeping secret from us. We have no way of knowing if and how Emilie is returning her husbands gesture. All we can say is that if she does she is definitely not doing it in such an open and unconflicted way as she does with Adrien.

But since when has anything with this family been this easy?

One thing the portrait makes very clear, Adrien and Emilie had a strong and good bond. Definitely the healthiest because the Adrien-Emilie connection is the only one depicted without any kind of disruption from both sides. Both mother and son are reaching out for the other ones hand creating a whole half of the heart, showcasing their affection for another openly and without any of the implied doubts the other connections display. And honestly? Comparing all the hand placements, the one connecting Adrien and Emilie just comes across as strikingly pure and true (which makes it even worse that it was HER Adrien lost…)

As I said it's a HARSH contrast to the one Adrien shears with Gabriel. This contrast is highlighted even further by the way these three face on another.

Emilie and Adrien are positioned facing another and so are Emilie and Gabriel. Telling us that Emilie was "face-to-face" aka involved with both her husband and son. It is Adrien and Gabriel were this looks wildly different. These two have no way of seeing each other in the eyes the way they stand now/then, further displaying their deeply rooted disconnection. It's portrays perfectly how important Emilie was in this family dynamic, because even though Adrien and Gabriel bearly had a connection at all they at least had Emilie as a link between them, keeping the family together. But then they lost her and where this left both father and son off we know oh too well...

So to collect all the informations we get out if this portrait:

-Adriens and Emilies relationship was the strongest and purest. Both of their hands connect and reach out for another in the heart, showcasing that they had a loving and positive bond.

-Adriens and Gabriels relationship is heavily scarred by a deeply rooted disconnection leaving Adrien feeling unloved and unwanted by his father to the point where Adriens side of their dynamic is outside the heart altogether. Gabriel may love and adore his son just like he loves his wife and never thought he displayed his love for him in a lacking way, but fact is: this love never reached Adrien the way it should have and Adrien is the one in their dynamic who got severely hurt and damaged by it.

-Gabriel was the only one completely unconflicted and happily at peace with the former Family situation. He's reaching out to both his family members with open love and affection in blissful oblivion that neither his wife nor son could return them the same way (to different degrees for different reasons). Gabriel was the ONLY ONE in the Agreste family who didn't saw problems in their lives and thought them all happy, hence why he's so obsessed with changing the past and bringing THIS state of their family back. He was happy and he had everything he needed and loved right with him, of course he wants THIS back. He's not aware that Emilie and ESPECIALLY Adrien did not feel the same about their former situation and that bringing all of them back to this is not the perfect happy ending for their entire family as he thinks.

-Emilie may not have been as unconflicted with Gabriel as he was with her but she is NOT feeling the same disconnection her son feels and isn't depicted with negative feelings towards Gabriel. Her side in the Emilie-Gabriel relationship is neither shown outright positive as with her son or outright bad as Adrien with Gabriel. Her side of their bond is depicted through her unseen hand placement in the unknown area in between.

-Despite their not so unconflicted feelings towards Gabriel - and Gabriel himself being aloof - neither Emilie nor Adrien are actively trying to cut Gabriel out. They aren't flinching away from his touch or exclude him from the heart whatsoever. He's happily included, obviously feeling loved. They may not be 100% happy and Gabriel doesn't notice it, but they aren't denying him his happiness and make him unhappy. Again, he's the only one truly happy here. Something neither Emilie nor Adrien tried to take away from him.

-Emilie and Adrien are facing each other as do Emilie and Gabriel, implying the presence of communication and a bond. Adrien and Gabriel do not face each other, showing their disconnected bond. If they could see each others face Adrien would have been able to see that Gabriels hand is a gesture of genuine affection and Gabriel could see that Adriens expression does not exactly display pure happiness the way he thinks. This also goes for Emilie. Emilie just like her husband is placed BEHIND her son, so even if she is facing him she would not be able to really see just how much Adrien is not satisfied and truly happy with his life at that point (meaning how unhappy being looked up, friendless and at distance with his father actually makes him).

- This fascinating family makes me sad and I like it lol

[chaaaaalk]

What r ur top three movies rn

!!!! seeing this in my inbox was so exciting! I'll jump at any chance to talk about movies. This was difficult tho, not gonna lie, I had to sit down and really think because honestly I can have a great big handful of favourites at any given time and they will all be so different to one another.

Part of me really wants to answer with things like Freaked or Meet the Feebles and all the batshit, over the top stuff with hybrid aesthetics that I really really like ha.

But I'll answer with 3 of my favourites that I can go back to in an instant that I think are all around pretty entertaining, interesting and kinda bizarre.

Phantom of the Paradise is one I absolutely love to the moon and back, everything about it enthalls me, from the overall themes of corporate bullshittery and the whole idea of art being so easily and quickly passed into the wrong hands (to the point where it is used as a weapon against it's original creator) being the main driving plot, Willem Finley, Paul Williams and Jessica Harper (in her first feature!!!!) being an iconic as fuck trio which everything is sorta balanced on, all of the stories about the film's production and the whole swan song set back, the music, the tonto synthesizer, the bird motif and how it's still pretty relevant now, I love all of it.

Possession from 1981 is one I just keep going back too, and I think thats just because I think it works great as a genuinely unnerving horror film/creature flick while also being pretty damn camp at the same time??? I get so much out of every performance every time I rewatch it (I fucking read a letterboxd review recently where the person said that Sam Neil reminded them a bit of a 'hot Mr Bean' and I literally cant stop thinking about it). Im a fool for content involving doppelgangers and I think this is still to this day one of the more mysterious and eerie examples of that kind of subject matter. On a more serious note, I think the setting (right by the Berlin Wall, something that really amplifies the films overarching theme of devision) and the gritty blue, green and brown colour palette makes the whole thing pretty identifiable as 'Possession', you know. I think I really just enjoy the heaviness of this movie, theres so many layers to it and I feel like I come out of it after each revisit with a slightly altered interpretation.

This third spot had me a bit stumped cos theres so many that could take it, but I knew it had to be a movie more on the theatrical side of things, in the sense that its something relatively contained in terms of characters and setting and relies heavily on the interaction rather than the event itself. Im gonna have to go with Dog Day Afternoon, which is different than the last two previously listed, since 1) it doesnt have any horror/fantasy elements in it at all and 2) it is a fairly recent favourite of mine. I love movies where dudes are just terrible at doing what they set out to do and this is like the pinnicle of that kind of thing. It's claustrophobic and insane and manages to be quite funny at times in a completely natural way, the humour coming from the absolute absurdity of the situation rather than the script itself. Lastly, but just as importantly, I think this movie and the sympathy it contains remains, to this day, incredibly culturally rich and fairly relevant (despite it being released in 1975) with the way it handles a lot of subjects that are still being discussed in 2021. Also, and this is a given, Al Pacino gives one hell of a performance here, the nuance, the range...

Forgive this long write up but yeah those are probably the three I currently wear on my sleeve the most. I do feel like I should mention the two I had running up for that third slot that are also high-stake, tense character pieces primarily set in the one location, and those are Funny Games from both 1997 and 2007 and Angst from 1983, however these are tough to sit through to say the very least and arent for everybody so I'll leave them in the honourable mentions (because god theyre effective in what theyre trying to do and I couldnt just post this without mentioning them, my apologies).

Alrighty, that's probably more than enough to answer your question, Im gonna go sit down on the floor now before I think of anything else and drag this on any further, bye 🏃‍♂️🏃‍♂️

[scoupsy-remade]

For this gif tutorial I’m going to try to keep it as basic as possible, I may add a few tips for coloring at the end, but for the most part this is going to be how I make my basic gif. Also I’m not going to use my vapoursynth to process the video beforehand, just because I know not everyone uses it and it’s harder to learn. This is going to be just a downloaded mp4 video through the gif process. Don’t let the idea that this is a BASIC TUTORIAL fool you, I’m going to try to teach you a lot of things. It’s gonna get wordy, but i will try my hardest to keep the process easy. I’m just going to explain what things do instead of having you just copy + paste my method and not know what it means. okay? okay.

Before we start though, if you plan of giffing live stages you either need to accept the they will not be super crisp and clear OR learn how to use avisynth/vapoursynth to resize the videos without quality loss.

If you just want to gif music videos or variety shows then this should still give you HQ gifs.

Other notes:

try to ONLY use 1080p and up video if possible, maybe 720p if you’re really desperate, but anything under that... it’s not going to look good at all, so try to avoid using them.

The Photoshop I am using is PS 2020, so all my screenshots will be from that version and with my weird set up. But I’ve been using pretty much the same method since cc 2015 so other than the fact that some placements and names are tweaked, it’s the same. (If you can’t find something on your version shoot me an ask and I’ll try to help! And asks I get on this tutorial I’ll link HERE for future reference) 

CUTTING VIDEO

To cut videos I’ll just use my quicktime player.

I use edit > trim to select the portion of the video I plan to gif and save that as it’s own new mov file.

which pops up this tab 

that you just slide until the part you want to gif is selected

then just save it as a new video and your done with part 1

ENTER PHOTOSHOP

Now what we’ll do is open our photoshop and import that clip into layers

FILE > IMPORT > VIDEO FRAMES TO LAYERS and select your video.

A small pop up will appear to show the clip you’re opening, you can trim it further here or just keep going by clicking okay

my setup is weird for drawing BUT you should have it looking remotely like this: 

The things you will DEFINITELY need to see are TIMELINE, LAYERS, ADJUSTMENTS. If you don’t have these sections you can add them to your screen by clicking on the WINDOW tab at the very top menu bar and clicking on them

LAYERS - this is pretty self explanatory but each row is a layer in the gif. the more layers the bigger the gif will end up, the longer it plays. So bigger clips will have more layers and end up as larger gifs in the end.

TIMELINE - This is where you can edit the gifs timing (make it faster or slower) 

We’ll be doing a bit of work with it so it’s important to know it well

ADJUSTMENTS - Best friend and worst nightmare. this is where ALL the tedious recoloring is done. VERY rarely would you not use these. 99.9% of kpop things are filmed through a green or blue lense so you’ll want to fix that to not have ghost idols

So, Let’s make a gif

Step 1 - In the top right corner of your timeline is a set of lines, click there and then click SELECT ALL FRAMES

under each frame is a time stamp (this video’s is 0.04) this decides how fast each clip goes by, or how quickly the gif moves. Personally I prefer slower gifs, but I say anywhere between 0.04-0.06 is a decent speed.

Step 2 - with all the frames selected, click on the small down arrow next to any of the frames and change the speed to your liking. (I’m going to use .06)

Step 3 - in that same tab of lines we’ll now click CONVERT TO VIDEO TIMELINE, which will change our Timeline to look like this:

Step 4 - Back in our very TOP menu we’ll click SELECT > ALL LAYERS, then on the TOP menu click FILTER > CONVERT FOR SMART FILTERS (this might take your computer a minute since our File is still pretty large.) Now our Time line will look like this: 

Step 5 - Sharpening

This one is VERY MUCH something you’re going to have to play with to get your settings to be how you like them. It’s also where I’d use topaz adjustments, BUT since I said we’re doing basic PS gif we’re just going to be using smart sharpening. SO: 

 in the TOP munu again, click FILTER > SHARPEN > SMART SHARPEN

A pop up window will appear and you can edit the settings to your liking. Mine:

Step 6 - Resize your gif or crop it to tumblrs standards:  big singal gifs have a 540px width ||  Two gifs use 268px || and three gifs use 177/178px

To do this we’ll use the crop tool and type in our dimensions in the menu bar:

and then crop to your liking. (this doesnt resize the gif it just crops to the correct ratio so we still have to shrink the gif) 

Next, we’ll resize the gif to that size in the TOP menu click IMAGE > IMAGE SIZE a pop up menu will appear and you’ll type in your resize ratio and click enter.

Now technically thats a gif. it’s TECHNICALLY done. but mine is white washed and there are words on it that I dont want so onto the coloring and blurring. 

First I’m going to show you how I blur text on gifs. because text is EVERYWHERE in kpop content and it’s hideous and I hate it. so lets kill it.

BLURRING LETTERING

First we’re going to add a new blank layer to our LAYER TAB by clicking the little box with the + inside at the bottom

Sometimes doing this can mess up the timeline’s selection but its SUPER easy to fix so lets do that. 

So in our timeline we have these two bars on each side that select what part of the gif will play. this is also where you can readjust your gif if it has extra frames at the end, or it ends up being too large and you have to make the gif smaller to save it. Just click and drag the bars back to where our gif actually ends, and all is fixed!

Now on our new layer we’re gonna take a paint brush (one of the ones with a lot of fade NOT the solid circle ) and paint over where the words are like so:

MAKE SURE ITS ON OUR BLANK LAYER AND NOT THE GIF LAYER!!

I know it looks stupid but trust me okay. 

Now in your LAYER tab we’re going to duplicate our gif layer by right clicking on it and selecting duplicate. 

Then we’re going to drag the new gif layer so that it’s above the paint layer in our LAYER tab :

Now, right click on the top gif layer and select CREATE CLIPPING MASK. it should put a little down arrow to the left of the picture, toward the paint layer. This means the gif is ONLY visible where that paint is now.

So we’re going to click on FILTER in the TOP menu again (while we still have that top gif selected!) and Go to BLUR > GAUSSIAN BLUR. a pop up menu will appear and you can just drag the radius until the text is as blurry as you want it to be. (also IF you missed part of the text, you can just go add more paint to your paint layer and it will blur wherever you paint!) 

so now my gif is like so:

So now we’ll color him, because he’s pretty washed out.

ADJUSTMENTS

This is where I’m going to be the least specific about what I do and more about what tools do, so that you can learn how to color things the way you like them!

The Adjustment tab on Photoshop has 16 options but I’m really only going to talk about 6 of them. We’ll do it in order though. All the actual adjustment tools will open in the PROPERTIES tab

Brightness / Contrast  - Pretty self explanatory, but definitely should be toward the end of your coloring, as if can effect the quality a lot. Small adjustments do A LOT so don’t go crazy, 

Levels - Levels is all about the balance of how dar or light your gifs will be if you adjust in the RGB layer it will adjust for the entire image, but if you change the selection to RED/GREEN/BLUE it will adjust just those colors hues. Also there are three small droppers to the left of the graph. using those you can select which part of the gif you want the image to recognize as the lightest/darkest part of the gif, and the tool will adjust the gifs coloring to that point. ( play with those droppers! magic happens i swear!) 

Curves - Kind of like levels but instead of how light or dark the entire image is it works more on contrast. REALLY play with the curves options, i’m sure most things you can do with other tools can also just be done in curves if you’re patient enough to learn

Vibrance / Saturation -  Vibrance will make duller parts of an image higher contract and brighter and saturation will make everything a more neon shade. or in reverse lowering vibrance will dull out the things that were already neutral and saturation will dull out the more vibrant parts of the image (usually reds)

Color Balance - Good for fixing tones. so if a live stage is SUPER BLUE!!!!! you can readjust and calm down the blues to dull them out or get rid of them completely. Again play with this its insane what it can do 

Selective Color - adjusts the different colors in your image without touching the other colors. if you wanna touch the reds, make them pinker but not change the blues and greens, you do it here

If you want MORE drawn out explanations of what each of the 16 adjustment layers do here and here are actual articles you can look at.  But it’s all about practice. playing with all the adjustments alone and together. Finding out what you like to do!

Now when you gif is ALLLLL colored and you’re ready to save it we do FILE > EXPORT > SAVE FOR THE WEB and a whole new window of options pops up. I’ll give you two examples of how to play with those options and then we’re done! 

keep in MIND tumblr’s gif limit is 10MB which is pretty huge now, but still watch your gif size!!!!

AND SAVE your done!

I hope this was helpful! Let me know if you have any questions,again I’ll have an ask tag for it and it’ll get linked HERE if people end up needing help!

Happy giffing!!!

[rosecorcoranwrites]

Censorship and Banning Books

As I mentioned in my last Rant Rave Review, as of last Monday, six books by Dr. Seuss are now officially out-of-print, and they are out of print due to supposedly racist, offensive, and/or stereotypical images. The company that owns the rights to these books is no longer publishing them and some websites are no longer selling them. People who do own the books, or who swooped into stores and bought them the day of the announcement, are now selling them for hundreds or thousands of dollars. So, what are we to make of all this?

Is Dr. Seuss Racist?

There are actually three questions here: is the man racist, are his books racist, and are those images racist? The answer to the first is, he kinda was, and then he got over it. During the war, he was openly against the Japanese, and in favor of the internment camps, then went to Japan during the occupation and realized, hey, maybe these are just people. Apparently, he wrote Horton Hears a Who in response to the US occupation and dedicated it to a Japanese friend. People can change, if you let them.

Okay, well, what about his books? This is an obvious "no". Race basically doesn't come up in Dr. Seuss stories, except "The Sneetches", which is actively against racism. Which, in some people's fevered imaginations, makes it racist. Yes, in some Olympic-level mental gymnastics, saying that whatever race you are isn't important, ie being against "racial essentialism" means that you are a racist. Such people think that the story doesn't address "structures of power" and "systemic oppression". This is true. It's instead a story about a sleazy businessman who goes in and preys on existing racial biases in order to make a buck, constantly telling people to think of their identities in terms of their outward appearance. You'd think the racial essentialists would appreciate the representation.

But I digress.

What about the images themselves? Are they racist? Not having seen all of them, I can't say for sure, but some are definitely cringy. Take the yellow skinned "Chinaman who eats with sticks" in And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street. Though one could argue that the entire book uses only five colors: yellow, red, blue, and touches of purple and green, this man is the only human whose skin is colored at all. Later editions of this book have actually changed the image and text:

Honestly, I think this is fine. The meter still scans, and the image isn't straight-up removed. I mean, we could maybe discuss whether it's okay to alter an author's work, but he was alive when at least one of these these changes was made, so I think he allowed it.

Next we have some from If I Ran the Zoo, like this one, of some Asian dudes who "all wear their eyes at a slant":

I think, in this case, the text is the problem, but not the picture. Though some describe this image as "exotified", I think it's more just exaggerated, as are most of Dr. Seuss's characters. He doesn't do things half way. Aside from that, the picture is kind of cute and silly; nothing in it is derogatory or mean to the helpers. The text on the other hand... oof. Yeah, I would say this is a true example of something "offensive". I could see changing that (as long as the meter still scans!).

And then there are the fellows holding the tufted mazurka:

That's pretty bad. So bad that as a child, I don't think I actually registered that those were supposed to be humans, but rather other Seussian creatures. It doesn't help, again, that in his color pallet, people that would ordinarily be brown are now black-black, not unlike the most racist images of yesteryear. But the fact that their lips are left uncolored, I think, is what gets me. It's a little too close to black-face for comfort. Again, I think it would be okay to alter the image: color in their lips, change the shading. I know some people quibble with their costume, but some peoples do wear little amounts of clothing, so I don't think thats the issue here.

I can't speak to the other books, because I haven't seen those pictures, but I would say, yeah, some of the images and phrasing are problematic. I don't think that means the books are racist. Seuss isn't saying the Asian helpers or the African mazurka wranglers are less than the white child running the zoo. He is exotifying them to some degree, but the degree to which that is being done can, I believe, be fixed with very minor alterations.

Should the Books Be Banned?

Again, I think there are a couple questions here: are these books being banned, and should they be banned?

In our increasingly-willing-to-cancel culture, people like to talk about the difference between government censorship vs. corporate censorship, which is a valid topic. But when it comes to huge corporations like Amazon banning books from their website for hate speech or Ebay halting the ability of vendors to sell certain titles on their platform, to say "it’s a private corporation, so it's not censorship" is disingenuous. Maybe it doesn't violate the First Amendment, but it is censorship. A single bookstore refusing to sell a book, a single library refusing to carry a book, is censorship.

A single company that owns the rights to a book refusing to sell it is 100% censorship. I'm personally offended by the idea of any book being out-of-print in the day and age of print-on-demand, but I'm especially sickened when companies pull this nonsense. This is similar to foreign companies who refuse to publish novels, games, and videos in English copyright striking fanlations; they are not losing money, so why do they care?

In the case of the Seuss estate, or whoever owns the rights, all that they are doing is denying poor people access to books. That's right, if you can shell out $786 for a children's book, you can read these delightful stories. What's that? You're a single mom who works two jobs? Well, sucks to be you.

What's really vile is that people are saying, "It's only six books. You still have the others." First off, this is admitting that those six books are now censored and unavailable. Secondly, this is a stupid argument. It's like saying, "Well, the Nazi's didn't burn every book in Germany. There were plenty of others." What if I wanted to read the ones that were burned?

And that brings us to the question of whether or not those books ought to be banned. Heck, should they even be altered? Some of you might have balked at my saying I was fine with the images being changed; isn't that censorship? I think that would take it's own blog post, but here I'll just say that I don't think the changes I discussed would really alter the content, message, or meaning of the work. That being said, I don't think you have to change the images either.

That is, I think it's okay to publish, purchase, own, and read problematic material. As many commentators have pointed out, no child is going to be made into a racist by reading these books or seeing these images. Any racist or even iffy overtones are going to go right over their heads unless parents point them out. If, in the one in a million chance, your child actually notices anything wrong with the images, like "why is his skin yellow?" or something, then you can have a conversation about how sometimes, back in the day, people drew some not-so-nice pictures of Asian people and thought their skin should be painted as yellow, but we don't do that anymore, but this book was written a long time ago, etc etc. If they ask about what a Chinaman is, say it's an old word for a Chinese person, but you should never say it, because it can hurt people's feelings. Talk to your children; it isn't hard.

Should Any Books Be Banned

If you've been paying attention to what's been happening in book land lately, you'll know that Dr. Seuss's books are not the first to be put on the chopping block. Last year, Abigail Shrier's book, Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, was removed from Target due to requests of trans activists. It was returned after backlash. Now I think it might be banned again? Who can even keep up anymore. Similarly, When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment, by Ryan T. Anderson, has now been removed from Amazon for being "hate speech".

In the microcosm of the library world, I've had some people take issue with certain controversial books. When processing our new books, my part-timer picked up Irreversible Damage and asked, "Did someone request this?" as if we shouldn't have ordered it if they didn't. Both that book, and White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, by Robin DiAngelo, were face out in our new book area, since they were the newest books. The former was turned backwards or put spine out with the older books multiple time by patrons, the latter turned backwards once. During the election, I found books for and against Trump hidden behind other books.

My question for people who do this in the library, and for corporations who do essentially the same thing on a massive scale, is who exactly do you think you are helping? Do you think anyone's mind is going to be changed on Trump? Or transgenderism, or white fragility, just by reading a book?

If the answer is "no", then why bother banning or hiding them? If the answer is yes, then that means you think books have the power to change minds, but you want to deny that opportunity to people. Rather than debating ideas, or writing a better book, or showing people why they shouldn't think a certain way, people are increasingly trying to banish certain ideas entirely. How dare an author question X, Y, or Z idea? How dare people be allowed to have an opinion different from the one we say they should!

What's so frustrating about cancel culture and censorship is that people think they really are trying to do the right thing. What they don't realize is, the people they cancel also think they are doing the right thing.

Take Irreversible Damage: obviously, those that want it banned think that trans kids will be hurt by the ideas expressed in the book, that they will be denied hormones and surgeries and so forth. I'm sure Abigail Shrier believes that trans kids would be hurt by no one examining the idea of wether or not they should be given hormones and surgeries as minors. Both sides care about kids. Both sides are trying to figure out how to help people. If you think that Shrier is wrong and her book is dangerous, then write a more compelling argument explaining why she's wrong.

An example of the right way to go about this is with White Fragility, a book that some people see as problematic, if not racist against white people or black people or both. People have written books specifically refuting the ideas in the book. Others have compiled titles that handle race more tactfully and that can be read instead. And that's the thing; you can choose what to read. You can choose never to read a book deemed problematic, but you have no right to take that choice away from other people.

Where Do Libraries Fall Into All This?

That "right to read" is one of the pillars or librarianship. The reason libraries exist is so that all people, regardless of money, have equal access to books, movies, and other aspects of our shared culture. We librarians understand that books are important not just for education, but also entertainment and escape. Stories are how we as humans process ideas, and everyone has a right to expose themselves to ideas--even controversial or dangerous or flat out wrong ones. They have the right to examine different sides of an issue and form their own conclusions. To try and control what a person reads is to try and control what they think, and no government or corporation has that right.

Thus, libraries don't ban books, wether those books are literary classics, modern treatises on current events and ideologies, or silly picture books by Dr. Seuss.

So it was with some concern that I got an email saying that our county library district would be taking the six Seuss books in question out of circulation. The rationale was that, given that a single book was selling for hundreds or thousands of dollars, some sticky-fingered patrons might steal then from the shelves or "lose" them after checking them out.

Though this logic was sound, I still had misgivings, especially because of incidences of library censorship in the past. Yes, even libraries have not been immune to the scourge. During the Cold War, some libraries would keep books about communism behind the reference desk so that people would have to ask to read them in the library. Not only did this potentially help identify commies, it also discouraged people from reading the books.

Thus, when our new policy is to keep the Seuss books "at the desk" and only let them be read in the library, is that not censorship? Is this accidental censorship, or perhaps intended by the very cancel culturists who want all problematic books to be sent down the memory hole?

No, I don't think it is, because--despite what the very mob who’s in favor of all of this would have you believe--intention matters. Reasons matter. We are not trying to make the books harder to read; we're trying to keep the books from becoming impossible to read. By protecting the books from theft, we're ensuring that the poor as well as the rich can enjoy Dr. Seuss's stories. This, in my mind, is similar to chained up bibles: it looks bad, until you remember that books were rare and expensive, and illuminated manuscripts even more so. If someone steals a book, no one gets to read it, but if a book is under lock and key, some people still can.

Of course, everyone could, if companies would simply stop censoring books, if stores would stop banning them, and if well-intentioned but short-sighted activists would stop digitally burning them. But maybe that's too much to hope for at present. For now, we librarians will have the books safe and sound for when you want to read them. You have only to ask.

[sazzafraz]

my pants no longer have coffee on them

nodus tollens!

Over time Sasuke learnt to tell by the smell. Ore meant a blood mutation. Licorice meant bone. Sweet ammonia meant parasites growing fat inside their hosts.    

sasuke’s memories of orochimaru are very sensory. i wrote him as a sensory person. i think the whole uchiha ‘hearts too strong to break easy, and that’s a warning’ thing would make them worse at managing their basic five experiences. 

Fuyuki shakes her head like a parent would, like Sasuke’s disgust is childish. “It’s an opportunity,” she says neutrally, “we have to make the most of them.” We don’t have the same means and opportunities as others, the silence says, we have to build from ruins and carnage. This is the right reason, boy. Even when it disgusts you. As if that makes doing something they’d kill someone else for doing right. Sasuke looks, and thinks, and looks again, and although he can understand it he can’t justify it.

oh man. at this point fuyuki pretty much knows she’s lost him. she is in fact saying shit to make him leave so she doesn’t have to make him while trying to jam common sense into his brain one last time. who knows if it takes. 

“What?” He feels it. Warm, wary, growing distant. Before Yumi was ’kunoichi, dangerous, fun loving’ she now has a little box in his internal checklist that says ‘caution: complicit and unrepentant’.

yeah. this is the thought. oof. dude just wants to trust his friends. 

She pats him lightly on the cheek, stepping back to give him some space. “You have my full and free permission to leave at any time. No member of Giri is forced to hold to an allegiance they feel no longer reflects their ideals.” With a wry smile she shakes her head reaching down to pull something from her pouch. “You always had an out.”  

He watches her hand. “What’s that?”

“For services rendered.” With a deliberate showiness she flips the object in her hand -a scroll- and holds it out to him. He blinks at her, taking the scroll from her outstretched hand. It’s thin and blue tipped, the personal seal of the Godaime Hokage glows in the night. The future in his hand.

AGAIN. SHE ALWAYS WANTED YOU TO LEAVE. THE POINT IS THAT YOU CAN LEAVE THE CYCLE nvrmind he’s not gonna get it for another 60,000 words. 

Sasuke says nothing. The pardon is cold in his hands, shame rolling through his gut. Truth be told he never actually thought he’d get it. Truth be told he’d forgotten about it. There’s never an out, there’s never something given without something taken away. She was honest. She did say what she was going to do. She never offered a single promise. Betrayal is a reflexive emotion for him, though, and he still feels it like a punch. Leaving is a choice. One he has made more often than any other. Being let go of is something he isn’t used to.  

woof. a long 60,000 words. still love that last line. fucks most verily. 

Giri have flying ships.

never used this. very mad about it. 

If extremely pressed Sasuke will admit that he picked Team Hebi based on a wild mix of comfort, usefulness and poorly placed boundaries. Orochimaru collected a bunch of weird traits and weirder expressions of trauma in the kids he lured to Oto; Suigetsu, Karin and Juugo are some of the best examples. Perfectly capable of respecting his needs and following his orders, completely incapable of acting like competent human beings the rest of the time.    

oh thank god they’re weird. sasuke actually needs at least three to nine people around him at all times and has never not once thought about how developing his chakra sense in a compound full of other people might effect this. not even once.  

Sasuke rolls his eyes, crosses his arms and clearly announces, “We won’t work together again after this.”

Karin and Suigetsu stop squabbling to turn to look at him.

Sasuke shrugs, “I’m going back to Konoha, Suigetsu is going to Kiri, Juugo will stay with Giri and Karin will go to Uzu.”

Karin sniffs delicately. “Back to Konoha?”

karin begins to plan konoha’s downfall. i envision karin as someone with a rather unique personal perspective. she is sasuke focused but its because she literally just thinks differently. i had a little bit for her that was about how uzumaki seals are literally a kind of meta-magic and thats why mito changed the game so much. to be able to use them effectively you have to be able to look at the world strangely. anyway. konoha will never recover from this.  

In Oto there were war orphans, normal orphans, freed slaves, second or third generation missing-nin, the odds and ends of clans that had died off, those who had seen their entire families exterminated and those who did the exterminating. In Oto there was no safe dinner conversation.

Except, of course, for the food.

fucks. it fucks. 

Juugo chuckles and waves him off. Sasuke is dead certain they’ll meet again. Maybe he’ll find them himself in a few years. He takes one last look behind him, sharingan on, and then leaves quickly and quietly. It’s not a bad snapshot to have. Karin has resorted to using her chains to manage Suigetsu, who is either helping the fire or taking the longest possible route to putting it out, Juugo is calling the small woodland animals and pets out of their homes. There’s an enterprising rabbit on his head. Suigetsu has one sword and Karin has the other. They’re all smiling.

favourite bit of favourite chapter. does not fuck. does gently cuddle and give glowing aftercare. 

Walking is in itself a refreshing experience. For the first time in his life there’s nothing to rush to. It’s a free sky: so high, so blue. So filled with things that he’s never seen before. He flicks his sharingan on and off. At sunset the sky fills with the lush pink and orange of change. At night the stars are so bright it feels like he’s counting the freckles on some great dragon’s back. At dawn he lies in the grass and lets the light wake him. He takes a long path winding his way down and around to his birthplace. He has one goal left, one last thing to do before it’s all done and he never thought he’d get this far. There is so little between him and the freedom to finally, finally put this all to rest.

So for the first time he lets himself linger.

The stars lead him into the mouth of a valley, green and bright with flowers. He doesn’t put people to places very often. People are memories. He sees them clearly enough. But he’ll cast a look onto the calm water and think Juugo, onto the high point of a knife and think Yumi, onto the twisting branches of an out of place blooming flower and think Sakura. In darker moments he names the other things. A tree changing out of season, riddled with the beautiful but deadly rings of a strangling vine earns Orochimaru. Just as a black expanse that appears in the middle of night is called father. Just as the ephemeral falling of flowers, the scent, is mother.

The clear sky is called Naruto. The fading mist of dawn is called Brother.

sometimes you’ve just gotta let the prose happen. and then make it sad at the end. i wrote paragraphs about naruto and itachi here and deleted it because haha sasuke WILL NOT THINK ABOUT IT like hes not really thinking about his suicidal ideation. i did recieve more than one comment that was like ‘......wait he wants to kill himself?’ haha! yeah! body made for one thing! he has yet to decide a man is allowed to have multiple life purposes. 

“Please,” the woman begs, “please, my child. Take her. Please.”

this is not JUST about how much sasuke would like to save children its just MOSTLY about sasuke being the only one around to do it, and hinata. eventually. 

“Sasuke.” Kakashi says.

“Sensei.” Sasuke says automatically. “Hatake. Hatake Kak-”

kakashi, heart in his throat, thinking today is the day he has to kill his sort of son and lose the rest in the grieving: sasuke

sasuke, holding a baby: AHHHHHHHHHHH

Sasuke scowls and shakes his head, looking down at the bundle in his arms. “This is a goddamn baby Hatake.” Then, softer, “It’s a baby. I have to take it somewhere safe.”

kakashi, soothed by the pardon, worried about all of that: sasuke

sasuke, holding a baby he is EMOTIONAL about: AHHHHHHHHHHH

Fuyuki is still radiating smugness as she lets them out. She plucks the baby from his arms, tucking it into hers. Sasuke almost groans, Kakashi is approaching a sulk at break neck speed. As he crosses the threshold of her home Fuyuki grabs him by the end of his hair and yanks, “Oh, Uchiha?”

Sasuke scowls as he pulls out of her hold. “Fucking what Hashira?”

She smiles, baby stuffing the length of her hair in it’s mouth. Sasuke looks at them both and feels an odd sense of accomplishment. Fuyuki mimes a scissoring action. “Cut your hair.”

i’m not going to do the first chapter but this. absolutely. slams. sasuke’s hair is so important but the hair thing was a specific thing about honor and service. about the redemption that a lot of missing nin feel in giri, the longer their hair the more they’ve done to repent. even if sasuke never quite gets it he actually doesn’t cut his hair until after this.and its not by much. 

[dream-journalism]

journal entry | 3-10-20 | regarding shifting

I feel like i’ve been close to shifting these past two days (like really close), especially the day before yesterday. I think that if I’d been persistent and resisted scratching my side (it was too much I was dying) maybe I would’ve been able to do it.

Unfortunately last night was a bit of a mess and didn’t go as well as it had before; I tried some new methods involving songs, but youtube ads had this really funny idea of wanting to completely take me out of the experience and then Spotify also did me dirty by automatically playing more songs than I had queued (and no, the queue wasn’t looped, so it wasn't that either). The setbacks made me feel super frustrated, which obviously didn’t help, so I decided to keep giving those methods a try some other day and went back to using the raven and sunni method combination, which (as I mentioned in a previous post) has so far worked the best for me and shown me the most progress. 

Now, there’s two aspects of this that I want to explore, firstly it’s why I think I’m getting close, what have I noticed that changed? What’s different? What am I doing right? And the second one is why I feel like I haven't shifted yet, what am I missing? What am I doing wrong?

-

As for what I’m doing right, I feel like the Raven/Sunni method combination is working the best and most efficiently, and think I should stick to that one until I manage to learn how to shift with ease before trying something else and risking setting back or stalling my progress the way I did last night.

Now, there are a couple of reasons why I think I’m getting close: the symptoms have been coming way easier and more persistently than they did the first few days. The first few days that I started trying to shift I only seemed to get to a point of meditation and stopped there, which is great, it helped me concentrate and focus on visualizing, so that felt like a good first step, but recently, I’ve gotten past that and actually felt a bit different.

I’m going to talk a little bit about the symptoms that I’ve felt in more detail, mostly because I feel like most people who talk about them just say “dizziness, feeling like you’re floating” which, yes, that is what it feels like but personally for me, sometimes its hard to just base everything off of one word, because to me, there are different kinds of “dizzy”, for example.

Now, because I know these symptoms aren’t necessarily something that everyone experiences, but they seem to be the most common and generally accepted ones, as well as the ones that I have personally experienced so far and I will list them. They are in no particular order, since they all happen but don’t seem to have particular pattern in which I experience them.

Floating

This one is a bit confusing for me, not in the literal sense of the word, but it sort of overlaps with Detachment. The closest thing I can compare it to is when you’re swimming and you just completely relax your arm in the surface of the water and it’s, well floating.

I like to think of it as air fairies holding my arm up so it doesn’t fall through the mattress, I sort of stop feeling the sheets of my bed and the cold air of my AC, it’s this sort of just neutral feeling. In general, it’s just very relaxing. However it is with this symptom that I personally have the most trouble dealing with because as I start feeling it, at first its just calm and comforting, but after a few minutes, I start to get itchy spots (mostly in my legs and torso, which are the worst for me personally) and I have to concentrate really hard not to scratch them or think about them.

Dizziness

I felt dizzy, but it was a strange sort of dizzy. I’m anemic so, I’m pretty familiar with bed-dizziness, and for a second, I thought it was just that, but, it felt different. Instead of it being like everything around me was moving, it felt like I was the one moving. My back was still to the bed but it felt as if I was standing and the mattress was behind me. And yes, the world around me does move a little bit, though its not painfully disorienting, it just feels sort of like when you get off of a trampoline, or done a lot of exercise a lot and your legs make the ground feel wobbly, but in my head.

Detachment

I don’t know if this is what people call but the best way I can describe it is feeling detached from my body, something similar to disassociating (if you know what that feels like). To me, it feels the way a 3D movie without glasses looks, off kilter, like my body is the red and I am the blue. When I say I, I mean my brain, my soul, my essence, whatever you’d like to call it, but thats what it feels like. They’re not quite separated from one another yet, like in a 3D movie, they’re still touching, but they’re definitely out of phase.

The most noticeable parts for me are the arms, sometimes they feel a bit shorter for my actual, physical arms (which makes sense, since I did script that I start at a younger age in my DR) and they want to move forwards and reach for what I’m visualizing in front of me. The only thing that has stopped me from actually doing this (re: reaching out) is that a lot of different elements are still the same (i can still feel my sheets, i can still hear my AC running, etc.) and I don’t want to break concentration until I’m sure 100% I’ve shifted.

Other Symptoms

Some other symptoms that I’ve been feeling (but honestly I don’t think too much of them for a couple of reasons) are seeing Angel Numbers and Migraines /Headaches. Now why am I talking about these separately? Because they don’t particularly mean anything to me, but they are listed as some of the most common symptoms you experience during the day when you’re close to shifting (but not necessarily attempting).

Migranes/Headaches are something I experience quite often, it’s just something that runs in my family and my caffeine addiction doesn't help at all, so even though I had one throughout the entire day yesterday (the day after I have felt the closest ever to shifting), I don’t want to get my hopes up about it, since it’s not an uncommon thing to happen to me, however, it is still worth noting (if this is something you experience though, and it doesn’t happen to you often, then I’d probably take it as a sign that you’re close! Hooray!)

And as for Angel Numbers, they’re something that I’ve been seeing a lot of in these past two-three days (of course, when I say “a lot” I mean once a day or so.) I don’t count the Angel Numbers I see on my fyp on Tik Tok for example, because it makes sense to me that I’d see them on posts regarding Shifting Realities because those feel a bit like cheating, of course I’d see them under that particular topic. Though not gonna lie, I’m a little bit of a skeptic when it comes to Angel Numbers (I know i shouldn’t be but i just can’t help it), but it doesn't take away the fact that I HAVE been seeing them

-

Now that I have the positives down and the changes I’ve felt identified, I want to focus on why I think I haven’t shifted yet. Other than the fact that yesterday all the shifting setbacks really threw me off from the progress I thought I had made, it made me feel really frustrated and I feel like that negative thinking and feeling carried on with me until I fell asleep, which is never good, so I need to stay positive, and I think I will, now that I’ve mulled it over, so that should be good.

I’ve also had a really busy week so I’ve been super distracted in general and haven't been able to prepare as well as I would’ve liked for the Sunni method, but I’m going to try to get some preparation in before I go to bed, and since I can sleep in tomorrow, I won't feel as much pressure. I hope that’ll give me the last little push that I need to shift.

-

As of writing this, its 11pm and I’m going to prepare as best I can for the Sunni method before I wash off and then go to sleep. Hopefully today will be the day, and if not, I hope it’ll be soon.

[blue-shaded]

This is not discourse or internet tea. This is honestly asking for advice on something.

Before I start the issue I’m stating happened 4 years ago but as the story progresses it will catch up to present.

My junior year of HS I met this guy in my science class we will call him satan (it’s my nickname for him and he knows it). Satan and I became really good friends over the course of the year and I started to like him and enjoy being around him. Homecoming came and he asked me to help him ask a girl and I thought it was going to be me...news flash it wasn’t. He was later rejected and well i offered him to join me and my friends. Soon he was a member of our friend group.

Now this is where it gets interesting, my HS had a intro to cooking class (nothing like home Ec) and whenever he made anything he would always give it to me or offer me the food they had. So I assumed he had a crush on me and stuff so I just kept waiting for him to ask me out, but he never did. Come around November he asks my friend (let’s call her Elsa ((she likes frozen))). So he asks Elsa out and she asks multiple times do you like D—- (which is me I’ll refer to myself as D) and Satan kept saying no I don’t. And they were very happy and if I’m being honest I was okay with it because I wasn’t sure of my sexuality at that point.

Come December of Junior year me and my friends have our usual Christmas party and well in my friends basement he held me because I was upset and I thought nothing of it. Come later that month I’m off in NY with my parents for a birthday weekend to meet a friend and I get a text from Satan saying “what if I left Elsa for another girl” I said “I will kill you” and then he said “that girl is you” and at the time I was flattered but I wasn’t about to break girl code so I said to Satan “don’t break up with because of me just tell her it’s not working out.” Satan didn’t do that he went to her and said “I’m sorry I’m breaking up with you for D marry christmas” and hung up the phone. Three seconds later he asked me out. I was said no maybe in a couple of months.

Come January junior year I developed a crush on this girl (now my best friend) and I asked her out and she said yes. And well he became very hostile TW/// suicide, guns, knife.

He started texting me about my dads gun and asking me to give it to him with one bullet, threatened to stab my at the time girlfriend and threatened to kill my other friends so I respectfully told the school and they were dealing with it. His parents blame me for his depression to this day.

Come end of Junior year me and my ex broke up and well he took his chances. Every month he would ask me out constantly, bring me gifts, give me food. I kept saying no.

1. Because I felt like if I was in a relationship it would be very controlling

2. He was my friends Ex and I wasn’t about to that

3. My parents would disown me and his parents would despise me

4. I Just wasn’t interested.

Now just last year my freshmen year he asked me out AGAIN after 4 years of rejection. It’s upsetting me at this point I remained his friend so he would always have someone to lean on since he has nobody. But it’s bothering me always having to say no to him because I hate upsetting people. And I don’t wanna drop him as a friend at all but I wanna be able to hang out and have fun and not have to worry about him thinking it’s more.

Just a month ago I saw him before he went off to college and he said that he was tired of seeing soulmate tik toks because his dosent like him back, called me pretty, called me beautiful and that he couldn’t look at me. I’m flattered but it comes from a different place and it makes me feel bad for him. I dont know. Plus on top of that i dont know anything about myself to even step foot into the dating pool.

I’m sorry this is long and I’m sorry if I wasted your time I just wanted to set the scene. Anyways anons? blue? What would you do if your in this situation?

My apologies for grammar and run on sentences I’m just trying to vent and get advice.

I honestly hate to see how he developed from an opportunity, into a huge ass red flag. Can he redeem himself from that? Yes, but I’ve barely seen anyone ever get over their red flags. I’m going to use my situation as an example here. My ex was the same kind of red flag at the end of our last relationship. He projected it all on me. We were in the same group of friends so we remained that way but he was horrible. I couldn’t stand being in the same room as him since he’d just gaslight everyone into thinking I was the evil being that was the red flag. I left it alone, all my friends left the situation alone. And now its better. For his depression, he needs help, serious help to get over that. I feel like right now he’s sort of, trying to convince himself that you are the solution to his mental problems and thats a lie. No one can make you better than you, yourself. Be mindful of him, support him when he needs it, but don’t join his pityparty in the sense of letting him date you. That’s not going to be good for anybody involved. The only thing you can do is be a good friend where he needs it. The 2 of you need to figure out yourself, and love yourself before you can love anyone else.

[frillshark-fr]

having a site where gijinkas are baked into lore and part of official art stuff sounds like a really good idea on the surface since it’s combining dollmakers and petsites (and shapeshifters), two (three) different things i like a lot, but i also really enjoy robust genetics mechanics in pet sites ......... but the moment i tried applying them to humanoids it really easily turned from Gijinka Pet Site to Eugenics Pet Site, which is. obviously bad. that could go really, really fucking badly. im going to continue hashing this out under the cut since i ended up writing basically an essay on this thing literally no one cares about but its FINE

i really want to find a way that gracefully bridges these concepts but anything I can come with is still like, breeding humans for aesthetic appeal/”better genes” at the end of the day? which.... eighgjghhg. eieighghd. The more I thought about how to handle stuff like body type, gender, race/skin tone (especially that one. especially that one) etc the more complex and bad it got

I still feel like there’s a way to have a “pet” site with collectible customizable humanoid characters but it’d have to rely heavily on randomly-generated characters with additional customization on the part of the player (giving a character a haircut and an outfit, for example, is not eugenics), without any kind of breeding going on, which is more like one of those mobile gacha anime character collecting games with an additional customization component rather than the Pet Site that I want. that could still be fun, actually, but it’s just not what I want

I don’t even think “site mechanics =/= lore”* would solve it, since even if the official lore of the world is that it’s all natural two-consenting-adults-having-a-good-time thing in lore, in the real world it’s still players picking and choosing genes they think are Good or Bad and breeding to select/avoid them, which reads really badly. it’s fine on sites like FR since there’s no actual human element to them and we’re not giving arbitrary value to the genes of actual living human beings, it’s just colorful pixel lizards with no real analogue to any actual group of people :v

just because i fear someone will say this if i don’t preempt it: maybe i could avoid some of the worst of it by doing a huge dumb cop-out and making all the characters have non-human skin tones, but a) like i said. that’s a dumb shitty cop-out and basically just as bad for a variety of reasons b) my own aesthetic taste . i just. don’t like non-human skintones on humanoid characters. this is my fantasy pet site that doesn’t nor will ever exist and i get to choose the aesthetics. if undel is allowed to not like dragon pants, im allowed to not like blue people

*(side tangent: i think giving fan-lore to site mechanics on FR, like the auction house and exalting, is kinda dumb. i know exalting does have official lore, but the auction house doesn’t, and it doesn’t need any, it’s completely outside the text and serves only for player interaction and we don’t need to loreify everything guys it’s just a game mechanic it’s jUST A GAME MECHANIC)

BUT i really want to make a hypothetical-site in the same lore vein as FR where there are no human(oid) caretaker avatars like Dappervolk and others... Where it’s less of a “pet” site where you pretend to take care of little animal friends, you’re building up a group of people (or groups of people!) who all have complex relationships with each other... sandbox style creative environment with just enough scaffolding to let players go wild with their own ideas and ample opportunity for character creation rather than something thats strictly Pet Care... Which is a little different from a Pet Site at that point I think? A new branch on the evolutionary tree of Pet Sites, less of a Pet Site and more of a Character Site?? Maybe that’s why I vibe with FR more than other pet sites, since it’s only kind of a PET site. I wouldn’t call any of my dragons PETS, they’re closer to OCs, yknow? and that seems to be the draw for basically every FR player I know. theres room in the world for an evolution of this concept and id LOVE to be able to take part in making that, but it also sounds extremely difficult and i have no idea where one would even begin

[arkfeather]

a ramble abt humes, anomalies, and other weird things

ok so basically ive had these thoughts rolling around in my head for a while now, and with egos post from awhile ago ive been having even more of these thoughts so i decided to put them down on paper. i apologize if these seem a bit incoherant as im not really good at putting whatever my mind comes up with into words, but i wanted to share these so. here goes nothing.

so, ego was talking abt how the longer you are behind the veil or working with anomalies, the more non human or anomalous you get. now this ties into humes in an interesting way…  if you dont know what humes are, id suggest reading these two articles as well as these four supplements on thaumatology and reality bending to get a better grip on what im saying, or you could click the read more below for the quotes i based this whole rant off of. but anyways! as one of the articles describes, the hume levels of reality benders are abnormally high, and the area around them abnormally low. so! how does all this sciencey mumbo jumbo tie into egos theory? well, you remember the law of diffusion from science class yes? and how particles tend to move from high concentration to low concentration? (this is also mentioned in scp 3001!) so! what if when one spends enough time around anomalies, the abnormal hume levels the anomalies generate would “rub off” of said person, thus making them anomalous as well. this also ties into one of the three basic principles of thaumatology: “like produces like”. now i may be stretching the rules here, but as one of the big rules of the scp wiki states, “there is no true canon”, so i can do what i want. the whole “rubbing off” thing would also explain how quite a few of the researchers (at least, the ones that survive long enough) end up with an anomalous quality or two(eg king, gerald, iceberg)

not only that, but this also ties into how and why the foundation operates, or how i think it does, at least. you see, another rule of thaumatology is “Observation Changes Reality”. this, when combined with “Like Produces Like” and “The Part Affects The Whole”, can be expanded to mean that anomalies can “spread”. there is another thing that supports this as well, nexuses! nexuses are “population centers that also seem to attract anomalous amounts of anomalous activity”(mind the tongue twister), so if an area has a high enough number of anomalies, it can cause a snowball effect and drastically increase the anomalousness of said area. an example of this could be boring, oregon, where wilsons wildlife solutions takes place. now, keep in mind this is all purely speculation and just my version of canon so im obviously stretching things a bit! but!! what if the foundation is so crazy about keeping normalcy because if the whole world were to know and believe in magic, a situation like in competitive eschatology could happen? this is nicely explained from this lengthy quote from this magic orientation: “if everyone outside of Sigma-3 all became Type Blues like me — then our perspective on the world would change. And if that happened, we might not be able to hold back dangers to reality any longer….It could be the end of containment, forever. The end of the Foundation's preservation of normalcy. And then we'd all be at the mercy of all the horrible things out there, the old gods and demons that would ensure humanity does nothing but huddle in caves around campfires and scratch on the walls, forever…. And it ends with being unable to believe that Cthulhu can be contained behind sheets of steel and walls of stone.” this, is why the foundation operates, or at least how my version of the foundation operates. if the serpents hand or the chaos insurgency were to get their way, humanity would be more at risk of all the paranormal dangers in the world. of course, there is a big hole in this theory, that being how in the hell could the rest of the anomalous world not know about this??? one explanation could be that they do know, and just dont care, as both the hand and chaos wish to change the world to be more anomalous in some way. another, more implausible explanation is that this whole thing is simply overlooked in favor of the groups respective goals. again, this whole thing is really cobbled together and based off of a few lines from the wiki that i interpreted in my own way and this whole rant quite frankly kind of chaotic, so i apologize if some things dont make sense or if there are a few holes in this theory. 

So, bluh, thats my whole little rant/theory abt my scpverses rules n shit. I apologize for the general incoherence of this whole thing as my mind jumped around alot while writing this lol

SOURCES:

“A Hume is a way to determine the strength and/or amount of reality in a given area”

“reality surrounding them (reality benders) is usually slightly less real than normal. Secondly, their own personal Hume reading is usually a little higher than is normal”

“like affects like, and like produces like, too”

“The third and final way is to change the world, or wait for the world to change.”

"First of all… remember those three basic principles: Like Produces Like. The Part Affects the Whole. Observation Changes Reality.”

“Every time you utilize Aspect Radiation to make a change in reality, it bounces off the fundamental fabric of existence and causes a secondary effect called Backlash.”

"What you're seeing in the COLLICULUS headset is the EVE energy being given off by you and your classmates. You'll see that different people have different color and shape patterns.”

-these readings can fluctuate in vanilla humans

“And that means… overtime… the Hume field's going to want to… equalize,”

Nexuses. You probably know of them. Nexuses are population centers that also seem to attract anomalous amounts of anomalous activity