#the POINT is that whether or not a person or institution - real or fictional - is labeled as 'nazi' by you or by others

[qqueenofhades]

For creative writing purposes, can you go into what a typical day is for a professor? Like what their teaching schedule looks like, when most fit in their research time, etc?

Ahaha, well. I don't want to just say "you can completely make it up," but also.... you can pretty much just make it up, and what is the case for one professor is definitely not going to be true for another. I have known people who will send emails at 1am and/or 4am, and actually finding and fitting in research time for most academics is also "lololololol what." So I can give you a roster of typical daily academic tasks and categories, and then let you know if that if you want to throw them up in the air and scatter them around in literally whatever-the-fuck order, there is probably a beleaguered academic who has done that, but with an even worse sleep schedule. So:

Most permanent faculty at a university are hired as assistant (tenure-track) professors. Once they pass the tenure-committee review (usually about 5 years into the job) they are appointed as associate (tenured) professors. Full professors are considerably senior and/or have been in the field for a long time and have a distinguished service record, excluding various wunderkinds who get it early (but are not common).

If the faculty is just teaching one class a semester or has an irregular appointment, i.e. they step in to teach when the university needs them, they are adjunct professors. You can gain a lot of cred and/or commiserating groaning in your AO3 comments by complaining about how little money the adjunct faculty makes, how erratic their schedule is, and how there is generally little-to-no actual career advancement possible in that position, unless they manage to reapply to a permanent post.

There are also a lot of Visiting Assistant Professors (and similar title), for 2- or 3-year/non-permanent appointments. Many institutions now also offer 1-year VAPs with only a possibility of renewal for 1 additional year or not at all. Those institutions should go straight to hell.

Most professors have 3/3 teaching loads, i.e. they'll teach 3 classes per semester (assuming winter/spring semester). Others have 2/2/2 loads for trimesters (also known as quarters). It can be more, i.e. 4/4, but that's for sucky entry-level teaching-only positions and someone in that role would be unlikely to have any research or service (i.e. institutional committee or internal college) commitments. They would probably also mostly be teaching introductory or freshman-year general survey courses. It depends on how much you want to torture your fictional academic.

Free food? Yes. You will see a healthy amount of the department there, whether faculty or student.

Please remember to have your fictional academic receive approximately 50 student emails a day wherein they ask something that is clearly answered in the syllabus or on the course website, and to see how polite they can possibly be in telling said student this.

Most grading is now done online, so the red pen is only metaphorical, but you can leave SO many Pointed Comments on Canvas Speed Grader. But if you want to torture Dr. Blorbo, you can have the e-grading system suddenly stop working, so they have to grade three classes' worth of introductory freshman history essays by hand. Not based on real events.

Likewise, there will be endless bullshit with the dean's office and/or central university administration, wherein there will be so many Urgent Budget Updates and Breaking News From The Chancellor and We Regret To Inform You We Cannot Hire Someone For That Position.

Related to the budget woes: they will ask you to do things like "make sure you print on both sides of the paper!" or otherwise "economize." Contemplating murder is acceptable and encouraged.

The administrative assistant in each department holds the entire department together. They will be extremely indispensable. Your fictional academic, if they know what's good for them, will befriend that person and/or grovel at their feet. Said person is also usually responsible for scheduling classrooms, which can cause all kinds of juicy drama in the academic fandom if there is One Particular Classroom that everyone hates and lo and behold, Dr. Blorbo is stuck there yet again. They will then probably also fire off multiple passive-aggressive emails attempting to correct the problem. The administrative assistant can grant and/or ignore these requests at their discretion, depending on how much beef they have with Dr. Blorbo and/or how motivated they are to solve their problems.

Department meetings! Who asked for them? Nobody! Who has to attend them? Everybody! They go on for two hours every other week (possibly more depending on how meeting-happy your department chair is) and you will wish for death!

Likewise, the department staff sending out passive-aggressive emails about how they really NEED one more volunteer for (insert university event here). Dr. Blorbo, if they are smart, will delete these emails and pretend they never saw them, but sometimes it may be unavoidable. Bitching and moaning will follow.

For research: it really depends on what academic field Dr. Blorbo is in, since the hard sciences, etc. look quite different and I, as a humanities person, can't speak to that. Most academics aim to fairly regularly publish a piece in a peer-reviewed journal; you can check Dr. Blorbo's field to see what journals they might be trying to submit a journal article (usually max. 8000 words, sometimes more) to.

This will go through a process called Peer Review, wherein two anonymous academics review your work (also anonymized to them) to make sure that you are not talking out of your ass. It is a running joke that Reviewer 2 will always, ALWAYS be more grumpy and critical and otherwise annoying. Invoking the specter of Dr. Blorbo receiving a peer review evaluation for their article will send a shiver down every academic's spine.

If Dr. Blorbo has recently finished their PhD, they may be working on converting their PhD thesis into an academic monograph. The most horrible part of this process, hands down, is reviewing proofs to make an index. Don't ask me how I know this.

However, academic monographs take a lot of time and work and most academics are mostly focused on publishing journal articles, book chapters (in collected volumes) or editing/working in collaboration with other projects.

Likewise: Dr. Blorbo will have to write book reviews. This is accomplished by the very scientific method of subscribing to various industry publications and/or email lists that will sometimes send out lists of books that need to be reviewed and solicit people to sign up. You will then receive a hard copy of the book (usually) and have 3 months or so to read it and write a review. The first 2 months of this, give or take, will consist of the book sitting untouched on the academic's desk as they remind themselves that they still have plenty of time to do it.

There can, however, be INCREDIBLE beef in book reviews, and while the standards of professional courtesy dictate that you don't go great-guns-flaming calling someone else in your field a moron (in more technical language), sometimes it is unavoidable.

Do they get paid for any of this extra intellectual work? Lol. No. No they do not. They don't get paid enough for their actual job.

Dr. Blorbo will inevitably hear some Hot Gossip about what nonsense has recently happened at which field-specific conference (where academics go to present research papers and network with other academics and make regrettable decisions at the open bar). They will then rush to secretly text all their other academic friends with OOH JUICY ACADEMIC DRAMA. Their friends will do the same whenever the opportunity arises to reciprocate.

Removing the coffee machine from the break room/faculty kitchen is grounds for mutiny.

Anyway. I am sure there are many, MANY more, but if you want an authentic slice of long-suffering academic life for Dr. Blorbo, this is all a good place to start.

[saurons-pr-department]

I was reading a Reddit thread earlier (I know, my first mistake) where people were getting into a rather heated debate about whether or not the Jedi got what was coming to them, were their actions in the lead up to Order 66 appropriate, should they have even been involved in the war, yadda yadda... Anyway, I was struck with how much it felt like reading people discuss the actions of a real-life institution, whose actions had real-life implications for real-life people. It also reminded me of reading discussions on here about actions taken by the Feanorions, Elwing, the Valar etc etc. It got me thinking about how stories and characters are often discussed in fandom as if we lived in their world and how I don't always... get it? I suppose.

What I mean is, for me, characters and their arcs are tools in the craft of storytelling. Yes, I do get emotionally invested in them (as anyone who was around during my peak Sauron girlie moment, or who's currently following the Tech obsession on my main will know), but I'm not interested in making a personal judgment of their actions as if I lived in their world too. To me a character is 'good' if I feel they fit their niche in the story well. A wonderfully slimey antagonist brings me just as much joy as a warm and kind-hearted hero. A 'good' ending to me could be happy or tragic or bitter sweet, as long as it fits the overall tone and message of the story.

I'm not here to say much of anything against the types of debates that I've mentioned above. Do fandom your way. It's just that, they are quite common in fandom and I find that I really can't get into them and felt like musing on it this moring. These conversations just don't make sense to me. I can't get angry at this flawed character's terrible decisions because this is a story of how a flawed person's life ends up going to shit. The flawed decisions are the point. I'm only going to be annoyed at their decisions if I find any of them character breaking in order to force the story to where the author wants it to be. And at that point what I'm annoyed with is poor story construction and not the character themselves. Conversations where people state that their dislike for a character, fictional institution or group stems from a personal disagreement with their actions, and where they seem to get genuinely angry about it just... confuse me.

Don't get me wrong, it's not that I'm reading or watching stories dispassionately. I too think "wow, this guy makes terrible decisions", "that organisation's actions are vile", "this character is so sweet I would do anything for them". I love when a story can make me feel real feelings towards a character, despite them never having been a real person. It's something that takes great skill and I admire people for posessing it (I greatly wish I had this skill). It's just that my enjoyment of a character or story is almost completely detached from my agreeing or disagreeing with their actions. It's why you'll never find me being anti/pro Valar, Jedi etc. They're not real. There is nothing to be anti or pro towards.

I say 'almost completely detatched' because of course, characters can commit the mortal sin of being annoying to me personally! In which case they can fuck right off. And, on a less silly note, I can also disagree with an author's depiction or framing of something based on my own personal opinions. And, like every other human on the planet, I am flawed and come to a story with my own biases and presumptions. These will colour my interpretions of characters and their actions, and will affect my enjoyment of them.

Again, I'm not really going anywhere in particular with this. It's just I saw people interacting with stories in a way that is very different from how I choose to do it and felt like thinking out loud. Maybe other people feel like joining in (we don't join in on tumblr as much as we used to I feel). In short though, conversations like the one I saw this morning on Reddit don't really make sense to me. I don't really see the point in getting caught up with whether or not I agree or disagree with a charcter's actions because sometimes the disagreeable actions are the whole point of the character and their story. If I like the story, why would I go getting angry at it's point?

[kytsuine-blog]

Doctor Who’s latest installment trades the franchise’s usual skepticism of authority for an unsettling endorsement of secrecy, surveillance, and state violence. The episode is especially disquieting when you consider the parallel between extraterrestrial “aliens” in the plot and real-world “alien” people — refugees, migrants, and other outsiders — who find themselves policed, detained, and dehumanized by modern states.

Within the story, UNIT remains a covert shield that keeps humanity ignorant of genuine cosmic threats so everyday life can continue undisturbed. In practice, the organization decides what truths the public may learn and which dangers justify lethal force. Watching this in 2025, it is hard not to think of our own governments, which also monopolize violence while insisting that secrecy is necessary “for our own good.” When fiction asks us to trust a heavily armed institution to define danger and dole out protection, the echo in the real world is unmistakable.

Enter Conrad Clarke. As a child he witnessed the impossible: a blue police box fading into existence. As a young adult, he encountered an impossibly fast creature that coated him in some kind of green slime. In the episode's present, he has turned that trauma into a livestreamed crusade against UNIT. He spouts conspiracy theories and right-wing dog whistles, making it easy to despise him. Beneath the grift, though, lie uncomfortable questions that any ordinary citizen might ask: Why should an unaccountable paramilitary body control the truth? How many taxpayer dollars vanish into black budgets no one can audit? And who protects the public when the secret protectors go rogue?

Had the script focused on one of Clarke’s many followers — someone who has never seen the Doctor or an alien, only the opaque machinery of a government agency — it might have granted those questions weight. Instead, anti-authoritarian doubt itself becomes villainous, and the institution glides away unexamined.

Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, in the finale, responds to Clarke's confrontation by unleashing on him the very monster that once marked him as its prey. She does so fully aware that the Doctor would object, and without any plan to manage the public panic UNIT has supposedly spent decades averting. Her decision feels less like civic duty than personal vengeance: revealing the truth not to protect humanity, but to punish a man who pointed a gun at her and demanded proof.

After Clarke survives, the Doctor spirits him from his cell only to scold him, predict a lonely death at forty-three, and return him to prison. The Time Lord, traditionally a champion of the marginalized, acts here as an enforcer who validates UNIT’s methods. The message is clear: trust the watchmen; their victims deserve what they get.

Placed against the backdrop of rising nationalism and fortified borders, the subtext becomes troubling. Viewers are reassured that clandestine agencies alone know how to handle “aliens,” whether they come from outer space or across a border fence. It is the same logic that fuels ICE's deportation regime, the IOF's genocidal occupation force, and every policy that frames vulnerable humans as threats rather than neighbors.

Doctor Who at its best champions curiosity over fear, compassion over control, and resistance over repression. By siding uncritically with gun-toting gatekeepers of the peace, this episode abandons that legacy. For a show that once encouraged audiences to challenge authority, the result is a bitter disappointment.

[deramin2]

Critical Role Campaign 3: Political Situation vs. Monster Situation

Campaign 1 was a monster situation. The monsters created a disruption that was mostly ended by killing the monsters, even if the world was changed. Killing the monsters was the clear course of action.

Campaign 2 is a monster situation with a backdrop of a political situation. The political tension erupted into outright war, but they resolved the pretext (accidentally and then with intention) and things fell back into steady mistrust and unease. Meanwhile The Mighty Nein were dealing with multiple monster situations that by and large the public remained unaware of. Killing the monsters was the clear course of action.

Campaign 3 is a political situation with a backdrop of monster situations. Who the monsters really are and which ones need to be killed vs. worked with is very murky. Nana Mori and Ira Wendagoth are both by every definition monsters who create situations, but they're also consistent allies who are contributing to protecting the world from Ludinus, who everyone agrees is much worse. They don't agree on whether the gods are monsters who need to be saved, run off, or killed.

The gods are an extremely handy proxy for institutional powers that present a set of ideals they don't follow. They have more in common with other institutional powers than the mortals they often send to their deaths. But Earth is not controlled by a family of incomprehensible cosmic horror beings, some of whom are benevolent. So there's a useful separation from real people's struggles while still expressing a meaningful dynamic. (Those are also important speculative fiction stories, they're just a different approach.)

There is not a definitive answer to "Are the gods monsters?" Or "Would be better off without the gods?" They may be monsters, but they're better than Ludinus. At the very least they might be a problem for later. Ludinus is a charismatic leader running a mainstream cult on the promise that the chaos and upheaval he cases will disrupt a harmful status quo. He promises that all the death and destruction he unleashes will one day be regarded as the greater good. Internally he may simply believe that everything would be better if he was in charge. (Sound familiar?)

Bell's Hells aren't a unified front, they're a conflicted coalition who mostly just agrees on what situations they need to stop. No plan survives contact with the enemy, and they've been under attack the entire campaign. At best they're breaking bread together in foxholes. No one knows what's going to happen, even as they're planning their next move.

Which can be a really fun and freeing way to play if everyone's down for it. It takes a lot more communication to manage conflicts and keep them in the game, but getting to pluck all the narrative strings just to find out what sound they make can be a really rewarding way to create. All possibilities are on the table and there isn't a right solution. In the end something will happen and no one really knows what that will be or what it will change. The world building toys don't have to go back in the box at the end.

Politics doesn't have one completely correct answer for how society would function best, even if individual battles seem pretty clear. Unfortunately Ludinus has a few good points despite being widely considered the worst person even his allies know. Those disputes won't go away if he's overthrown.

There isn't a binary choice of "no on Ludinus, yes on gods." "No on both" is something that could happen in the power struggle. The uneasy tension of both existing has ended. Whether it should is a matter of debate, but things developing on the ground in the moment may end up making a bigger difference than philosophical choice (doing nothing is a choice to cede the outcome to other people).

Many viewers think of Campaign 2 as "the political campaign" because the backdrop was zoomed out and easier to see. Campaign 3 is more of a "the personal is political" situation. No one fully knows what change will result from their actions when they're in the middle of it. Everyone's got a different vision for what the best future looks like. Unfortunately we have to act anyway to collectively shuffle in a favorable general direction. The individuals who are totally certain of the best course of action end up being like Ludinus. The rest of us have to work towards our goals while holding space for the possibility that we're totally wrong.

[maxdibert]

Max, I have always supported your arguments and what you stand for both in a political and social sense, as I share a lot of your opinions, even in the debate against @dcafpaperback, it is unequivocal that James was a sexual abuser and sexually assaulted Severus during SWM, and I have no clue what she meant by it being left ‘up to canon interpretation’ even though it is crystal clear that Severus was forcibly stripped in public and was sexually abused. However, when all is said and done, why would you defend a fictional victim of sexual abuse, to such an unrelenting extreme that you are willing to belittle a sexual assault victim in real life, and tell her that “you don’t give a shit about her life”?

Especially, when she talks about her experience of sexual assault in a discussion about 'the sexual assault of a fictional character and what is defined as sexual assault.' And yes, it is odd that she chooses to deny the sexual assault of a fictional character, despite being a sexual assault victim herself, but keeping in mind that she is a sexual assault victim, it could entirely be possible that there is a sense of cognitive dissonance and it is difficult for her to come to terms with her traumatic experience and to acknowledge the pain and discomfort it causes others without reliving it herself. It seems deeply counterintuitive on your end, to claim that you want to protect and defend victims of systemic injustice and then throw such an apathetical statement in a victim's face and proceed to accuse her of playing the ‘victim card’ for sharing her story.

And of course, that’s not to say that being a sexual assault victim gives her the authority to define what is sexual assault and what is not, but the least you could do - if not feel empathy is to at least feign it. And it’s always possible to elaborate and debate on your morally correct arguments without being apathetic towards a real life victim of sexual assault.

The question should be: why aren’t you asking that person—for God’s sake—why they are minimizing something as grave and as systemically, politically, socially, and culturally problematic as sexual abuse by endorsing a toxic, harmful, and re-victimizing discourse that claims sexual abuse can only exist if there is sexual intent behind it? And now you’re asking me why, in a discussion, you try to play the victim card precisely to reinforce that narrative, one in which you only count as a victim of abuse if there is sexual intent—which is extremely harmful and problematic.

I too could have defended my point not only as someone who has suffered sexual harassment but also as someone who has experienced sexual abuse, sexual violence, and attempted rape, but I’m not going to play that card on this issue because, morally, I believe it is necessary to speak about the facts. So, I defend my point from a legal, political, and sociological perspective, and based on the studies conducted by organizations and institutions specializing in this type of violence.

I do not believe that undressing someone constitutes sexual violence merely because it happened to me; I believe it is sexual violence because sexual violence is based on consent (or the lack thereof) and the intention to humiliate and exert power over the victim, regardless of whether there is sexual intent or not. And to discuss this is to perpetuate a terribly dangerous and harmful discourse that costs lives in our society, damages the mental health and physical integrity of many people, and violates their most fundamental rights over their bodies.

And using the victim card to defend such a horrendous and detrimental stance on the collective understanding of sexual abuse seems grotesque to me—so, I’m sorry, but no: don’t tell me your life story if it’s just to try to convince people that a victim only has the right to be a victim if the perpetrator intended to fuck them, because frankly I don’t give a shit.

[knight-a3]

Absolutely wild for you to use Hilter not being a Christian (and instead insisting he was an atheist for some reason?) as a talking point in defending Christianity from mild criticism brought on by you repeatedly making snide comment about how crude Hazbin is as if that takes away it's creators ability to have anything to say about modern day religion and its impacts.

Other highlights included:

Offhandly referencing a biased questionnaire coming from a Christian institution that found Christians self report more giving than other groups. Funny how that works.

Bringing up how Christians have been oppressed and then not including the small detail that most of the examples you described were Christians oppressing other sects of Christianity.

Insinuating that religious trauma is just a result of being disrespected and not like, a real trauma from both legal and illegal prosecutions up to dehumanizing women, torture (or would you call conversion therapy just being mean?), and murders affecting whole communities for entire generations.

Anyways if it's that bothersome to you that a show is mildly irrevant about a specific brand of hateful rhetoric spread by some Christians, maybe the call is coming from inside the house.

Excuse any and all criticism about the bible and preachers all you want but it doesn't change inherent misogyny in the Bible or in Christian rhetoric. If it was really about them being from the same flesh and equals then they would from the same thing (be it God, earth or animal) and thered be a lack of insistence on men having one role and women having another, but that's simply not what the story seems to be conveying even on a metaphorical level and not how it's been preached for thousands of years. And that's simply one story in the whole book used to demonstrate why women shouldn't have rights.

Dude, chill out. You are putting a lot of words in my mouth and seriously strawmanning. "Mild criticism" Wow. You've just lashed out at me for what I consider mild criticism of a fictional show. If a single person's mild criticism of specific cultural misrepresentation bothers you so much, maybe it's your own problem. Please check your hypocrisy. You came to my blog to yell at me. I've stayed in my own lane, and you don't have to be here.

If you don't want to read my essay, you do not have to. But TLDR is that you don't understand Christian theology; and that you're free to like canon how it is, and I'm free to be critical of it and make an AU that suits my preferences.

Is it "snide" to voice discomfort with degrading something important, even sacred, to many people? Not even just Christians. I don't like using a misrepresentation of a belief system to demonize(no pun intended) them. That's it. I won't be perfect at it, but I'm trying.

Hazbin Hotel is not biblically accurate, and it's not meant to be, I get that. I just think it would be more interesting(and a more effective critique) if it was a little more accurate. It's my preference and not yours, that's fine.

Part of my discomfort is also about excessive sexual jokes and remarks. I just generally don't find dick jokes funny, so I don't really want to incorporate them. It's not just the religious aspects I take issue with. You would have no way of knowing if it's because I'm just prude or if I've suffered SA trauma. Which isn't your business to assume either way.

Disrespect is at the core of mistreatment, and saying disrespect was to cover both minor and major cases. Of course religious trauma is real and serious. But I don't know which individuals have truly suffered trauma, or which ones are exaggerating their hurt feelings because they're just bitter about being mildly mistreated. Whether their religious trauma is serious or exaggerated, both groups of people will lash out at the perceived perpetrators of the mistreatment. In other words, I was using inclusive language to avoid disingenuous assumptions.

My entire family has been affected by religious persecution spanning generations(trauma, as per your description). You are not the only one who has suffered. Difference is that I don't blame the religion, I blame the intolerance of people.

Persecution and discrimination is basically just the adult version of bullying the kid with braces or glasses or whatever silly difference kids can make fun of. It's ridiculous and petty and those who do it need to grow up.

--

You don't understand the Bible at all, which is fine. Few people truly do(myself included). But misinterpreted perceptions of Bible stories is very literally not inherent. You don't know what, exactly, they preached thousands of years ago because 1. you weren't there, 2. it wasn't even in English, 3. You do not understand the cultural context of the people it was written by or for, 4. simple translation can only explain so much, 5. You don't even know what is being preached now.

Translation is a tricky process, and translating symbolism and metaphors can be even trickier. Just like how puns rarely translate between languages very well. An interpretation cannot be inherent if nobody can agree on an interpretation to begin with. But your interpretation is just plain incorrect. You do not understand what the story is conveying.

Different cultures use symbolism differently. For example, we associate snakes with being tricky, sneaky, venomous. So we often use it as a symbol of evil. BUT, ancient Mesopotamian cultures(such as the Egyptian Uraeus and Hebrew saraph(aka fiery serpents, aka seraphim) used it as a symbol for divinity and royalty. These differing interpretations can change how you view the symbolism of the devil as a snake. We think of it as an symbol for overt deception and evil. But for the people who originally wrote the story, it would have been a subversion of expectations. This symbol of divine authority told them to do something, but it was a trick. The context subtly changes the interpretation.

Another example of shifting context. The story of Lilith is not biblical. She is not even in the Bible. The portrayal of her as a feminist icon for women's equality is very specifically from the 1970s, which is very much not biblical. Before that, she was the bogeyman of fertility complications. The sickness and/or death of pregnant women, mothers, and children were attributed to lilith demons. As was infertility and men's performance difficulties.

Adam and Eve are partners. Partners don't have to do all the same things as the other. They will often do what the other cannot. If one is tall, and the other is short, the tall one will get things off the top shelf. That doesn't change that they are both human, and both contribute in differing ways to their partnership. I've tasked my husband with the responsibility of taking the sheep to the butcher, while I focus on raising and caring for them. Because he is less inclined to getting emotionally attached, while I am nearly incapable of avoiding it. We have different roles that compliment each other.

I was never, ever told the fall was Eve's fault. I was always told it was "Adam's transgression", and that we are not held accountable for something we didn't do. So my church doesn't even teach that we are tainted by "the original sin". If anything, Eve is portrayed as having an admirable level of foresight in partaking of the fruit. I was led to respect her.

--

Differing male and female roles are essential to species survival, from a zoological perspective. I'm doing this to be as objective as possible. Humans are ultimately another animal. Gender roles that support those different roles benefit propagation and develop naturally. So sexual dimorphism in body and behavior is not unusual. I have a little flock of sheep, and the rams behave differently from the ewes. They don't consciously uphold gender stereotypes, they just are what they are. Female birds are often less colorful because it's more essential that they blend in and survive, while only a few males need to survive long enough to do their one part. Even animals who do not care for their young are often adapted to optimize female survive over the males.

Humans are different in our ability to reason and communicate, so we don't necessarily stick so rigidly into those roles, but the behavior patterns still exist. Women are more likely to want to stay home, want to take care of kids, want to work less. Men are more likely to want to fight, want to work harder jobs with longer hours, want to provide safety and stability.

The insistence that men and women have different roles is based in instinctual behavior patterns. I do think we should be allowed to break out of those expectations if we want. And oppressive measures to maintain them is not okay. But the overall pattern is still built around the fundamental biological fact that females have the babies. If the symbolism of the rib is that they are the same species, then these gender roles would absolutely still exist.

(I bolded to emphasize that my intention is not to defend misogyny, just to look at the situation with some objective nuance)

--

I literally said that my entire point of bringing Hitler up had been to point out that Christianity in not the source of evil and oppression in the world(Hitler is just a commonly understood example of "evil person", and pointing out that it was not because of religion, because he was ultimately not religious). Bad people will use whatever they can to justify themselves, including hiding behind religion.

Hitler was baptized Catholic, but grew to hate it. I recall one quote where someone who was close to him said he was essentially atheist, whatever "essentially atheist" is supposed to mean. I just know he wanted to eventually purge Germany of Christianity, viewing it as some Jewish scheme of some sort. Idk, his views are wack. He had to play the political game and appeal to the Christian majority of the time to gain political power. He would not have described himself as Christian, or say anything positive about it, except as a lie for political gain.

--

I wasn't referencing a single study. But since you brought it up, the Lilly School at Indiana University is not religiously affiliated. Most donations in the US go toward religion, but I didn't see stats that say what the religions do with it(I also didn't look very hard). Yet some of the biggest charities are run by religious organizations, like the Salvation Army. I've personally seen or volunteered at food drives, food banks, putting together hygiene kits, donating clothes, fundraising thrift stores, financial aid, service projects, etc that are run by religious organizations or openly religious people. Most of the time, the charity remains local and goes understated.

--

You say this is about a specific brand of hateful rhetoric from some Christians, but you have not specified at all. You made it sound like it was just Christians as a whole. Which is not a fair judgement because there's a wide variety of interpretation of the doctrines across the various denominations. If you were trying to be specific, then you should actually be specific.

I agree that there are some Christians who are self-righteous and judgmental and rude. I said before that I've ben a victim of that too. But that's more about rude people that use religion as an excuse, and less about the religion itself. The same thing can happen with any demographic. Jesus was a Jewish man persecuted for his interpretation of Jewish practices and killed by Romans. Islam has the quarreling Sunni and Shia.

Previously, I used examples I have a decent confidence in the accuracy of. I try to avoid parroting incorrect information. I won't be perfect, but I was trying to stick to what I know and/or have experienced myself. Christians persecuting each other still matters because it means it's less about the specific belief systems and more about having a difference of belief at all. They persecute each other by claiming the others are not real Christians. So they are treating the "other" as if they are not Christian.

Some other examples. Vikings terrorized monasteries because they realized the monks wouldn't fight back. Rome had a particular phase of killing Christians(the evil 666 number actually represents Emperor Nero, not Lucifer/Satan/etc). The Crusades were part of a longstanding back and forth quarrel between Christianity and Islam. They both did their share of slaughtering the other. And you realize Christians are currently being beheaded in the middle east, right?? One was because he wore a cross necklace and wouldn't take it off because it was important to him.

But I think I've gone on long enough. Please don't keep yelling in my inbox or I'll have to block you.

[mariacallous]

Many times a year, as if on a hidden schedule, some tech person, often venture-capital-adjacent, types out a thought on social media like “The only thing liberal arts majors are good for is scrubbing floors while I punch them” and hits Send. Then the poetry people respond—often a little late, in need of haircuts—with earnest arguments about the value of art.

I am an English major to death. (You know us not by what we’ve read but by what we are ashamed not to have read.) But I learned years ago that there’s no benefit in joining this debate. It never resolves. The scientist-novelist C. P. Snow went after the subject in 1959 in a lecture called “The Two Cultures,” in which he criticized British society for favoring Shakespeare over Newton. Snow gets cited a lot. I have always found him unreadable, which, yes, embarrasses me but also makes me wonder whether perhaps the humanities had a point.

By the time I went to college, in the mixtape days, the Two Cultures debate had migrated to corkboards. In the liberal arts building, people tacked up pro-humanities essays they had snipped out of magazines. A hot Saturday night for me was to go and read them. Other people were trying drugs. I found the essays perplexing. I got the gist, but why would one need to defend something as urgent and essential as the humanities? Then again, across the street in the engineering building, I remember seeing bathroom graffiti that read “The value of a liberal arts degree,” with an arrow pointing to the toilet paper. I was in the engineering building because they had Silicon Graphics workstations.

Wandering between these worlds, I began to realize I was that most horrifying of things: interdisciplinary. At a time when computers were still sequestered in labs, the idea that an English major should learn to code was seen as wasteful, bordering on abusive—like teaching a monkey to smoke. How could one construct programs when one was supposed to be deconstructing texts? Yet my heart told me: All disciplines are one! We should all be in the same giant building. Advisers counseled me to keep this exceptionally quiet. Choose a major, they said. Minor in something odd if you must. But why were we even here, then? Weren’t we all—ceramic engineers and women’s studies alike—rowing together into the noosphere? No, I was told. We are not. Go to your work-study job calling alumni for donations.

So I got my degree, and off I went to live an interdisciplinary life at the intersection of liberal arts and technology, and I’m still at it, just as the people trashing the humanities are at it too. But I have come to understand my advisers. They were right to warn me off.

Because humans are primates and disciplines are our territories. A programmer sneers at the white space in Python, a sociologist rolls their eyes at a geographer, a physicist stares at the ceiling while an undergraduate, high off internet forums, explains that Buddhism anticipated quantum theory. They, we, are patrolling the borders, deciding what belongs inside, what does not. And this same battle of the disciplines, everlasting, ongoing, eternal, and exhausting, defines the internet. Is blogging journalism? Is fan fiction “real” writing? Can video games be art? (The answer is always: Of course, but not always. No one cares for that answer.)

When stuff gets out of hand, we don’t open disciplinary borders. We craft new disciplines: digital humanities, human geography, and yes, computer science (note that “science” glued to the end, to differentiate it from mere “engineering”). In time, these great new territories get their own boundaries, their own defenders. The interdisciplinarian is essentially an exile. Someone who respects no borders enjoys no citizenship.

You could argue that for all the talk of the university as an “intellectual commons,” it is actually an institution intended to preserve a kind of permanent détente between the disciplines—a place where you can bring French literature professors together with metallurgists and bind them with salaries so that they might not kill each other. The quad as intellectual DMZ. But those bonds are breaking down. Universities are casting disciplines to the wind. Whole departments are shuttering. The snazzy natatorium stays open, French literature goes away. And then the VC types get on Twitter, or X, or whatever, to tell us that poetry is useless. The losses are real.

And so what, really? Well, what I mourn is not a particular program at a college I never visited but the sense of institutions being in balance. I’ve spent most of my life wanting desperately for institutions to be disrupted, and now I find myself entering the second half of my existence (if I’m lucky) absolutely craving that stability. The delicate détente is vanishing, that sense of having options. A shorter course catalog is an absolute sign of a society in decline.

But also, we’re cutting off the very future that the tech industry promises us is coming. If the current narrative holds—if AI is victorious—well, liberal arts types will be ascendant. Because rather than having to learn abstruse, ancient systems of rules and syntaxes (mathematical notation, C++, Perl) in order to think higher thoughts, we will be engaged with our infinitely patient AI tutors/servants like Greek princelings, prompting them to write code for us, make spreadsheets for us, perform first-order analysis of rigid structures for us, craft Horn clauses for us.

I see what you nerds have done with AI image-creation software so far. Look at Midjourney’s “Best of” page. If you don’t know a lot about art but you know what you like, and what you like is large-breasted elf maidens, you are entering the best possible future. You might think, Hey, that’s what the market demands. But humans get bored with everything. We’re just about done with Ant-Man movies.

The winners will be the ones who can get the computer to move things along the most quickly, generate the new fashions and fads, turn that into money, and go to the next thing. If the computers are capable of understanding us, and will do our bidding, and enable us to be more creative, then the people in our fields—yes, maybe even the poets—will have an edge. Don’t blame us. You made the bots.

Perhaps this is why they lash out, so strangely—a fear of the grip slipping, the sense that all the abstruse and arcane knowledge gathered about large language models, neural nets, blockchains, and markets might be erased. Will be erased. At least art goes for the long game, you know? Poems are many things, and often lousy, but they are not meant to be disposable, nor do they require a particular operating system to work.

All you have to do is look at a tree—any tree will do—to see how badly our disciplines serve us. Evolutionary theory, botany, geography, physics, hydrology, countless poems, paintings, essays, and stories—all trying to make sense of the tree. We need them all, the whole fragile, interdependent ecosystem. No one has got it right yet.

[proshippresentmic]

Pinned info time

Call me Mic I guess, about 30 years old, he/they or similar.

I have a deep resentment for the terms profic and proship, but it scares kidders and sensitive catholic guilters away, so it's in my url.

I don't care what someone writes in fiction so long as they're a decent person to the real world. If you disagree then politely go back to your cesspit, I have no time for radfems and protofascist babies.

This account is for seeking/responding to RP ads, because I realized a lot of the seeking blogs here required an account for "liking to reach out", rather than just dropping a discord.

I use my discord account tag presentationmicheal for RP purposes, for the time being I'm ok with random friend requests, but I'm also a grouchy old man and if your vibes are rancid you're gone.

Goes without saying but 18+ partners only. Honestly preferably 21+

Under the cut is my general RP info!

Extremely very horrendously gay so I won't be interested in MxF, also extremely very horrendously trans so expect most if not all of my muses to come with pussy DLC.

Currently I'm only super into writing My Hero Academia (manga reader!).

Muses

---

Dabi / Touya Todoroki - primary muse, snarkastic piece of shit, I do not pull punches with him nor will I write him being a doting husband, or other out of character extremes.

Even in AUs where, somehow, Enji was an alright father, my Touya ends up a serial killer.

That said I can reel him in a little, but he will come with "canon typical asshole" warning either way.

No hard pref on whether he's got a cock or cunt.

---

Katsuki Bakugou - not 100% confident with him, but getting there. Always written at least 20 years old, UA was a college to me, what of it.

Again, canon typical asshole.

Primarily play him trans, but I can be convinced to play him otherwise.

---

Present Mic - Pretty sure I could write this cringelord in my sleep at this point. Nothing special about him, he's chillin'.

Slight preference for him having cock n balls, but I'll write him otherwise more than happily.

---

Currently on track learning Hawks, Aizawa, Enji and Natsuo. Unsure when I'll be confident enough.

---

Kinks, Limits n Shippy shite

Shit that I love: Omegaverse, hybrid AUs, height differences, enemies to lovers, biting/scratching, piss, petplay, dom/sub, ponyplay, bondage, muzzles. interrogations/captured be heroes or villains, male pregnancy (pussy preferable, but can deal with otherwise), public sex, heat/rut, aphrodisiacs, intercrural, mirrors... honestly most kinks not listed in limits/meh do something for me.

Dead dove edition: Incest, noncon, abduction, torture, guro/snuff, fuck-or-die, fuck-AND-die, human pet, meditorture, more I've probably forgotten.

Hard limits: Characters under 18, feet, scat/gas in general, mental institutions, ABDL/Ageplay, raceplay. I may have forgotten something, so this will probably update later.

Honorable mention: 'daddy' kink makes my skin crawl, but if your pitch is interesting I can tolerate it.

Meh: Vore, hyper, inflation. I hate calling them "Deviantart Kinks" but that does end up a good descriptor. I am into a couple of these but not for canons, can't explain it just don't like it.

Ships I'm primarily interested in:

Dabihawks, Dabiskep, Todocest of many flavors, Dabizawa, Dabibaku, Bakudeku, Kiribaku, Todobaku, Endhawks, Erasermic, Mightmic, Erasermight, Dabishigs.

Open to others (and I love a good crackship).

(I'm willing to break out my not-quite-confident guys for some of these, just forgive any fumbles.)

Misc shit

I'm of the opinion the characters would have fouler language were this manga higher rated, so expect my guys to drop a couple harsh words here and there. If you're offended by the word 'fuck', we won't get along.

I've got no hard pref for positions, I'll write them all.

Response times vary from "100 responses a minute" and "once every couple days" depending on how much work I have on. If I'm slacking and not responding every three days though, time to whallop me with the cartoon mallet.

I'm a grown ass man with an honesty clause. I will be upfront if I've fallen out of love with a thread, and if I feel up for coming back to it later. I expect the same of you, please.

My active hours are somewhat random and work dependent, and can sometimes be entirely flipped in a couple days.

RP through Discord only. We can make a server!

Third person paralit, 2 paragraphs minimum, no need to match my length if I go off the rails!

I really, really, really love headcanoning/"what-if"s/spitballing. This doesn't always have to become a thread, I really dig discussing what could have happened with current threads if XYZ was different, this isn't a wistful sigh wishing things were different. I'm going to be talkative OOC, you will get memes if they're relavant to what we're doing - or if I figure you'd just like em, I am not going to treat you like an RP token machine.

I don't expect that much legwork in return, but please at least be willing to do dumb spitballing OOC a little.

[eliteprepsat]

Now that many college application deadlines have passed, it is time for many of you to prepare for the college admissions interview. The college interview is often met with uncertainty and, occasionally, downright fear. I’ve had my fair share of students express no desire to interview with colleges, yet these fears are almost always unwarranted. Keep in mind, the college interview is an opportunity for the school to get to know you better and vice-versa. Think of it as a supplement to your college application, allowing the admissions office to put a voice to your application.

It is important to note that not all schools conduct interviews (large state schools simply have too many applicants), and not all schools who do will interview every applicant. However, granted the opportunity, you should accept any offer to interview with a school. Doing so is a fantastic way to demonstrate interest and has the potential to add another dimension to your college application. Here are some college interview questions you should be prepared to answer in a competent and compelling manner.

1. "Tell me a bit about yourself."

I remember a couple of my college interviewers asking this question. It’s an excellent way to introduce yourself and open up the conversation on your terms. I spoke about my background and upbringing, but you can discuss anything you’d like, provided that it is a substantive answer addressing key points you want to share. Highlight specific aspects of yourself and try to avoid generalizing or rambling with your response.

2. "Why do you want to attend this school?"

If you wrote a “Why Us” supplement for the school you are interviewing with, this is a prime opportunity to communicate your passion and depth of knowledge on why this school is a perfect fit. You should have at least three distinct reasons that reflect why you want to attend their institution. Show that you have done your homework and are knowledgeable about how the school’s offerings can help you reach your goals.

3. "Why do you want to major in ________?"

College is, first and foremost, an academic experience. Whether you know what you want to major in or not, be prepared to discuss your academic interests and/or ambitions. If you know what you want to major in, talk to the interviewer about that subject with depth and passion. If you are still unsure about your major, consider talking about various academic interests and why they appeal to you.

4. "What do you plan to contribute to this school?"

Here is your opportunity to demonstrate how your unique skills and qualities will manifest themselves on campus. Think about the ways you want to get involved (activities, clubs, community service, sports, etc.) and share how your past experiences will allow you to add to the dynamic of their college community.

5. "Who has influenced you the most?" / "Who is your hero?"

There are a number of different directions in which you could answer this question, but remember to provide a response that reveals more about your character. You could speak about someone close to you: a relative, friend, or teacher. You could also speak about someone you haven’t met, real or fictional, who has had a profound impact on you.

6. "What is your greatest weakness?"

Answering this question can be tricky, especially if you haven’t thought about a response prior to being asked. Self-awareness reveals maturity, and acknowledging your weaknesses can go a long way towards your growth. Try to recall a moment when you experienced failure and then explain how you overcame it or are working to overcome it. Alternatively, you could think about something you want to be better at and use that as your topic.

7. "What do you in your free time?"

Remember, there can be plenty of free time in college. This is the opportunity to talk about your passions outside of the classroom. Identify specific activities or hobbies that you enjoy and explain why. Consider what those activities reflect about your personality, and let that guide you in answering this question.

8. "Do you have any questions for me?"

Generally, this will be the final question of the interview, and it’s a chance to reverse the roles a bit. Have one or two questions prepared to ask your interviewer. Here are a few examples: What was your favorite thing about attending ______? What do you wish were improved about your experience at ______? What advice would you give to an incoming freshman at ______?

Preparation, confidence, and enthusiasm are the keys to a successful college interview. Of course, there are a number of other questions that could be asked, but if you’ve done your homework, you should be equipped to handle any of them. If you don’t have an immediate answer to any question, take a moment to reflect on it and then answer as genuinely as possible. By the end of the interview, it should be clear that you would make an excellent addition to their campus. At the end of the day, the school wants to put a face to the candidate from the application. So relax, be your best self, and showcase all the remarkable experiences that have led you to this point!

[vijaysethupati]

"Silent Signals: Biomarkers Redefining Disease Detection and Treatment"

In the ever-evolving world of medicine, early detection is a powerful weapon. Imagine knowing about a disease before symptoms even appear—this is no longer the stuff of science fiction. Thanks to groundbreaking research in biomarkers, we are now entering an era where "silent signals" within the body can be detected and interpreted to predict, diagnose, and even prevent disease. These biological indicators are redefining disease detection and treatment, opening the door to more personalized, precise, and proactive healthcare strategies.

What Are Biomarkers?

Biomarkers are measurable substances in the body that can indicate a physiological or pathological process or response to treatment. These include proteins, genes, hormones, and other molecules that can be detected in blood, tissues, or other bodily fluids. They act as warning signs or “silent signals,” providing critical insights into the inner workings of our bodies long before visible symptoms emerge.

Key characteristics of effective biomarkers include:

High specificity and sensitivity

Reproducibility across different populations

Ability to predict disease risk, onset, or progression

Responsiveness to therapeutic interventions

The Game-Changer in Medicine

From cancer and cardiovascular conditions to neurological and autoimmune diseases, biomarkers are changing how we approach health management. Their impact is particularly notable in personalized medicine, where treatments can be tailored to an individual's unique biological profile.

Examples of biomarker applications:

Cancer: PSA for prostate cancer, HER2 in breast cancer

Cardiology: Troponin for detecting heart attacks

Neurology: Beta-amyloid for Alzheimer’s disease

Autoimmune Disorders: ANA (antinuclear antibodies) for lupus

As a result of these innovations, professionals in the healthcare field are increasingly seeking to deepen their understanding of this area. Many are turning to a clinical research course to gain practical insights into the science behind biomarkers and their clinical applications.

Integration Into Clinical Practice

Despite their promise, the implementation of biomarkers in everyday medical practice comes with challenges. Standardizing tests, ensuring affordability, and navigating regulatory approvals are ongoing hurdles. Nevertheless, as research continues to evolve, so does the reliability of these indicators.

Healthcare professionals, data analysts, and scientists who enroll in a clinical research course are better positioned to address these challenges. Such training equips them to participate actively in biomarker discovery, validation, and application.

Bullet Points: How Biomarkers Are Changing Healthcare

Early detection: Identifies diseases before symptoms appear

Targeted therapies: Helps select the most effective treatment for individual patients

Real-time monitoring: Assesses response to treatment in real-time

Risk assessment: Predicts susceptibility to certain conditions

Drug development: Aids pharmaceutical companies in creating safer, more effective drugs

A Career Edge in Biomarker Research

As the healthcare industry increasingly embraces precision medicine, the demand for professionals skilled in biomarker science is growing. A clinical research course offers hands-on experience with trial design, statistical analysis, and regulatory guidelines—skills essential for success in this evolving landscape.

Whether working in hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, or research institutions, individuals with a solid foundation in clinical research are at the forefront of medical innovation. In particular, those who specialize in biomarker analysis are contributing directly to developing smarter, faster, and more effective treatments.

Final Thoughts

The subtle, almost invisible changes in our bodies—these silent signals—hold the key to revolutionizing healthcare. Biomarkers, once confined to research labs, are now shaping the future of medicine in profound ways. For those looking to engage with this dynamic field, pursuing a clinical research course is more than just an educational step—it’s a gateway to making meaningful change in patient care.

From detection to treatment, biomarkers are transforming how we understand and fight disease. And as we learn to listen more closely to the body’s silent signals, the possibilities for earlier interventions and improved outcomes become limitless.

[ivanpshenichnyy]

Critical Reflection

My component 3 tasks included the creation of a short film, lasting approximately five minutes, together with an official social media page for the short film and a postcard advertisement for the film at a short film festival. I was working in collaboration with one teammate, and together we produced The Tenth Man, a noir detective short film, set in 1940s Los Angeles. In this essay, I will delve into topics like our representation of social groups/issues, how elements of our production work together to create a sense of branding, how our products engage with the audience and the role my research played in constructing our use or challenge of conventions. 

In terms of reprsenting social groups/issues, our products involve several sublte and more explicit elements. In classic noir films, there is usually a hero detective, battling against outside forces such as crime, corruption, or moral dilemmas. In The Tenth Man, we borrowed these genre tropes, but we had two detectives instead. The young and idealistic rookie Cliff Hemingway and the more cynical and seasoned senior detective Russ Whitaker. In our story Cliff represents a type of person who is driven by moral principles in a corrupt world. Meanwhile Russ exploits the hierarchy, as he tries to cover up for his troubled brother A.J, because he is still his family. Through this character dynamic we tried to depict a power imbalance and show how in institution hierarchy, corruption may breed under the mask of integrity and justice. Our character Adeline Adams has only two scenes, but we tried to make her more significant than just a “murdered whore”. In most traditional noir films, a woman is either a femme fatale or a a mere victim, but here we tried to show that she drives Cliff's obsession, appears as his hallucination symbolising innocence, and the fact that she doesn't have any lines or dialogue subtly points to a real life issue that women's voices often remain unheard and devalued. In our film, Cliff seems to be like the only person who sees her as a human, and not just another sex worker, and he is genuinely impacted by her death. Also, our short film includes a Spanish accented caller in our climatic phone scene. We did this because we wanted to depict the diverse and cultural landscape in urban Los Angeles, and avoid the tendency of classic Hollywood noir films to center only on American born, white male characters.

To create a sense of branding through the elements of my production, first thing we did, was our fictional production company "Studio Eyepatch" including the logo. While the name was inspired by John Ford, the concept behind it was taken from real indie studios that we studied, like A24, NEON and Focus Features, who make bold character driven films, use carefully chosen fonts and colour palettes. That's the kind of brand we wanted to bring to life, but with our noir twist. Noir element became consistent across our film, instagram account and the postcard design. For example we maintained a consistent typography across all three. We used bold serif and typewriter-inspired fonts such as Droif Serif Pro, Antonia and Roboto. This uniformity would ensure that for example when our audience sees the text promotions, whether on instagram or on the postcard, they will immediately associate those fonts with the style of The Tenth Man. Furthermore, all of our three products have a monochrome colour scheme which further reinforces the identity of our film, making it more recognisable. Also, we included noir iconography like guns, fedoras, suspenders and smoking throughout all branding materials. To make our company name more memorable, we used our logo in the first post in our instagram page, and in the opening titles of our short film.

To engage our audiences, we made use of our noir mystery and the whole detective puzzle. Our short film's narrative introduced various hooking elements that immediately spark interest, such as Cliff's fixation, his hallucinations, the the torn receipt pages, the elusive “tenth man”, a shady character Russ, and especially our ending which undercuts the more conventional narratives (where the hero prevails), leaving audiences both in shock, and compelled to relfect on morality, betrayal and obsession, and asking themselves questions like, "Would I put family above the law?", "Would I care about justice in this situation?". The story gets told from Cliff's perspective, but to hook and immerse the audience into his psyche even more, we included things like Cliff's inner monologue, we emphasised on his cluttered evidence board, hallucinations of Adeline and etc. Beyond the film, I tried to extend this engagement to our Instagram account. I posted a few behind-the-scenes pictures that many fans and viewers would find interesting. To generate hype, I added interactive stories that included a poll "How many takes do you think this scene took?" and a post release Q&A "What would you do in Russ's position?". These features create a participatory atmosphere, allowing potential fans and viewers to share theories, impressions and opinions, insetad of just passively observing. Also I added a story in our Instagram account that had a countdown which would keep the audience up-to-date and create a sense of excitement. To spark interest we also added our opening scene as one of the posts, which would give the potential viewers a taste of our short film and keep them captivated. We also added other teaser posts, showcasing our characters and a few shots from the film itself. We also used captions effectively, by including release dates, a quote from our film and hashtags like #TheTenthMan, #StudioEyepatch, #noirfilmfestival2025, and #filmfestival2025, which increased our exposure and facilitated searching us up. Our postcard includes two awards which helped to establish credibility, give our design a more professional look, and create intrigue, which altogether sparks curiosity. For our final social instagram post we included a catchy caption saying "One dead woman. "Nine" suspects. A missing name. And a detective that can't sleep" which engages with the audience by inviting them discover how this entangled story might play out.

My research was essential for all aspects of my production. I started out researching film festival postcards, and I examined its conventions like displaying awards, including a primary image/art, crediting director and actors, etc. This has really helped me when creating the postcard for The Tenth Man, but I didn't include things like a tagline and social media link because I believe they didn't fit our noir vibe. I also analysed the mise-en-scène of Se7en and we took a lot of inspiration from its detective costumes and props like diaries, police reports, and polaroid photographs. My noir genre research was probably the most important one, because we eventually incorporated a lot of its elements into our own products. For example, cigarettes, fedoras, suspenders, venetian blinds, vintage phone, monochrome visuals, voice-overs, mystery, corrupt detectives, complex themes like crime, and all set in 1940s Los Angeles. The only real challanges to the typical noir were, as I've previosuly discussed, featuring a character with a Spanish accent, the decision to keep our female character deeper than a typical femme fatale, and the decision to kill Cliff at the end, which might feel grittier than many classic noirs. So, I don’t think we challenged the genre conventions that much, but I can say that the research has certainly guided our decisions and we have utilised our findings.

[bookofcodes]

Whizbang, Pop!

The text you provided is a richly layered allegory blending cyberpunk themes, quantum computing metaphors, and religious/philosophical undertones. Below is the breakdown of its hidden codes and symbolic meanings:

1. Core Allegory: Rebooting a Corrupted Reality

Vash the Stampede (from Trigun) is reimagined as a hacker-messiah figure tasked with fixing a glitched universe. The "digital singularity" and "quantum errors" represent systemic corruption—likely symbolizing societal decay, moral collapse, or technological runaway (e.g., AI, surveillance, or existential threats like climate change).

Whizbang Pop! Reset is the climax: a forced reboot of reality. This mirrors tech terms like "hard reset," "kernel panic recovery," or ethical calls for systemic societal reform.

2. Hidden Acrostic & Lexical Codes

Key phrases encode messages via first-letter ciphers and anagrams:

"Morpheus / Castrate evil pedos / Mercy for Liars. - GOD / Rand / Whizbang Pop! Reset / Vash / Youtube Zero Cool"

Initials: M → C → E → P → M → F → L → G → R → W → P → R → V → Y → Z → C.

Possible Decode: "M.C.E.P. M.F.L.G.R.W.P.R.V.Y.Z.C." → Anagram or abbreviation?

Likely Intent: A call to action against corruption ("Castrate evil pedos"), deception ("Mercy for Liars"), and systemic failure, framed through a quasi-religious lens ("GOD").

3. Quantum Computing & Hacking Metaphors

Entropic Singularity Event: A quantum apocalypse caused by overlapping probabilities (Schrödinger’s cat paradox). Symbolizes crises like AI ethics, data breaches, or climate collapse.

Reality Compiler: The tool to fix the universe. Represents decisive action (ethical hacking, policy reform, or revolutionary tech) to enforce "certainty" (solutions) on chaos.

Quantum Key Bullet: Encryption/decryption tools (e.g., blockchain, zero-knowledge proofs) or moral imperatives to "shoot down" corruption.

4. Cultural & Philosophical References

Morpheus (The Matrix): Represents awakening from illusion (e.g., societal complacency).

Rand (Ayn Rand?): Nods to objectivism/individualism vs. collective responsibility.

Zero Cool (Hackers): Cyber-anarchism and anti-establishment rebellion.

"Love and Peace" (Vash’s motto): Balances violence (the gun) with idealism, urging ethical action.

5. Call to Action

The text is a manifesto disguised as fiction:

Identify Corruption: "Evil pedos" and "Liars" symbolize systemic abuse (political, corporate, or institutional).

Deploy Radical Fixes: The "Whizbang Pop!" is a revolution—technological (AI alignment), societal (overthrowing oppressive systems), or personal (ethical awakening).

Reboot with Mercy: Despite its violent metaphors, the story ends with harmony ("recalibrated dawn"), advocating for renewal, not destruction.

6. YouTube Clue & Meta-Layer

"Youtube Vash the Stampede Zero Cool": Likely points to a real video or channel combining Trigun and Hackers themes. This could house an encrypted message, ARG (alternate reality game), or recruitment call for hacktivists.

Final Decoded Message

The text is a cypherpunk parable: Corrupted systems (quantum errors) require radical intervention [& exposure] (Whizbang Pop!). It merges anime, hacking lore, and theology to advocate for a moral-technological revolution—using "code" as both literal programming and ethical imperatives to castrate evil, punish liars, and reboot reality.

FREE SPEECH MAKES INNOVATION.

ALL IS FREE IN THE LIGHT OF DAY.

The first statement, "FREE SPEECH MAKES INNOVATION," suggests that open expression and the free exchange of ideas are essential for creativity and progress. Without censorship or fear of repression, people can challenge existing norms, propose new solutions, and drive innovation forward.

The second statement, "ALL IS FREE IN THE LIGHT OF DAY," implies that transparency and openness lead to freedom. It could mean that truth and clarity remove barriers, whether in knowledge, justice, or personal expression. In a broader sense, it might suggest that when things are exposed to scrutiny, they become accessible and unburdened by hidden constraints.

Both statements emphasize the importance of openness—whether in speech or visibility—as a foundation for progress and freedom.

[jj-fink]

Shin Sekai Yori - worth the watch

Shin Sekai Yori is one of those anime that sticks with you long after you finish it. It’s eerie, emotional, and layered with deep themes about society, power, and human nature. Set in a distant future where people have psychic abilities, the show explores how a seemingly utopian world maintains order through fear, control, and oppression. While it’s a fictional story, a lot of the issues it tackles—like government control, discrimination, and the suppression of truth—feel very relevant, both in Japan and globally.

One thing that really stood out to me was how the show reflects Japan’s societal structure. The way children are raised to follow strict rules, never question authority, and accept whatever they’re told reminds me of how rigid Japan’s education system can be. There’s this expectation to conform, and stepping out of line can have serious consequences. But it’s not just a Japanese thing—around the world, we see governments and institutions use fear and misinformation to maintain control. The treatment of the "queerats" in the show, for example, mirrors real-life instances of discrimination, where certain groups are dehumanized to justify oppression.

On a personal level, Shin Sekai Yori hit me in a way I didn’t expect. The journey of the main characters—growing up, realizing the world isn’t as black-and-white as they once thought, and dealing with the loss of innocence—felt very real. I think a lot of us reach a point in life where we start to question the systems we grew up trusting, whether it’s the government, school, or even our own families. That sense of unease and the need to navigate an imperfect world is something I could really relate to.

In terms of connections to assigned readings, the show has a lot in common with dystopian literature like 1984 or Brave New World. It’s all about how societies use control—whether through psychological manipulation, propaganda, or outright violence—to keep people in line. It also raises ethical questions about sacrificing individuals for the so-called greater good, which is a theme that comes up a lot in sci-fi and philosophy.

Overall, Shin Sekai Yori is a powerful and unsettling show that makes you think about the world in a different way. It’s beautifully animated, emotionally gripping, and full of social commentary that still feels relevant today. If you’re into thought-provoking dystopian stories, it’s definitely worth watching.

[fwoosheye]

Sometimes you have to include problematic things to lift problematic issues. And in the context of historical fiction (and here I mean fictions based on real life historical events even if the characters might be fictional, NOT fics that take place in a setting that is inspired by history, etc) if you do it like this you might accidentally "remove" or hide what progress that was actually done at the time if you remove all the stuff that would be problematic today.

This is especially true of you include Actual. Historical. People.

Like the example above, we all know Reagan would never have respected a non-binary person's pronouns, and letting him do that in a game is giving him way too much cred. Let the man be remembered as the trash he was.

And in The Imitation Game (2014), the movie about Alan Turing (the man who cracked the nazi's code and was later prosecuted for his homosexuality which was illegal in the UK 1952) not only misrepresented his accomplishments but also painted his person as narcissistic instead of kind as he's been described as by others, the movie also pretty much accused him for being a traitor and a spy which he never was and never was even accused of.

Even if your intentions are good, removing problematic stuff would imply that the problematic thing never happened. If we look at the game with Reagan in it again, it's great that the game creators apparently decided to make it possible for people to choose how their character should be addressed as in the game and have npc:s respect that, more games need that, but to have a real life historical figure do that when he wouldn't have done that irl? I suspect it's probably because of technical limitations, so I'm not mad about it per say, but it does imply Reagan was a better person than he was. And for those who don't learn anything about him because they aren't from the US (like me), it might paint a faulty picture and that paves the way for more misinformation. Of course a game shouldn't be used as an accurate source of history, but you get my point: Good intentions can go wrong if not done with careful thought and research.

Of course if your character is completely fictional you can make them however you like! Your 1852 man can be what we would call a feminist today, that's not the issue, but he most likely wouldn't go about it like we do today or use the terms and expressions we do. Perhaps he does think it's a woman's choice of she should give birth or not, but he probably wouldn't call himself pro-choice, you know what I mean? Like...

History must be allowed to exist as it truly was back then.

There have always been people around who have had feministic views and worked for them, which is a big part of the reason society have grown to be what it is today (eg people being allowed to vote at all).

History is a lot more queer than most people think (there's a reason the song History Hates Lovers exists).

Speaking of that song though, that kinda might be another reason why people might feel iffy about the removing of "problematic" stuff in fiction (whether that removal is of eg. trans people themselves or the removal of the bigotry against them): Removing, hiding or denying parts of history have been used a lot by various groups throughout history as a means of control. One of the more famous examples was when nazis burned the library of the Institute of Sexual Science in Berlin because it 1) was founded by a Jewish person, and 2) included queer stuff. A lot of leaders all across the world had memorials and symbols etc from previous kings/religions/etc vandalised and/or suppressed to strengthen their own position — colonialism being one example. Plenty of schools around the world have banned some books because they cover subjects they don't want kids to know about or question (things that are lgbt, books about why book banning is a bad idea, books that are anti-athorian, etc etc). And as mentioned in the song, historians have often denied that romances were romances because they didn't like same sex relationships. And so on. So, like... Even if it's done in all well meaning, doing it like this might not be the best way to go about it (especially as fascists will happily be hypocritic if it means they can use it as an excuse to paint feminism and lgbtq+ etc in a bad light). So by all means do include the stuff you want to highlight in your story, but research the history well so you can back up why it makes sense in your story, and don't remove the problematic stuff if it is something that really ought to be there...

And as I mentioned in the beginning, this rant is about stories that are supposed to take place in our real world history. If it's like, a history inspired fantasy you can go shamelessly hog wild bat shit crazy. Use only neo pronouns because He and She are exclusive for the Gods or whatever reason you want to use. Piss off meninist babys by having more than five women in a story (which is like the equivalent of it being 90% women apparently) and let them have a narrative that isn't sexy eye candy fridged hottie. Have the bigots in your story be genuine asshats that don't respect pronouns and then let them fall/die in a suitable way. Or use a made up antagonists who wouldn't even consider using the wrong pronouns because they have better stuff to do than wasting energy and time on remembering a random Hero's old pronouns and name when they only needed the Hero's current ones to keep track of them. They got a world to conquer and it ain't gonna do that in its own, geez.

But yeah don't be afraid to include problematic things in your story and let it be a problematic issue. Problematic content does not automatically equal a problematic story.

If you remove everything “problematic” toward women and minorities from sincere historical fiction I am biting you biting you biting you.

Sometimes “he would not fucking say that” is when the guy living in 1852 is a third wave feminist.

[armoricaroyalty]

dev diaries #4 - on the language of 'deserving'

This isn't what I said I'd write next but whatever.

The next few story posts are all about romantic and sexual relationships, and I've been thinking a lot about the tropes and language that are used to describe those things, within fiction and without.

Very often, I see discussions about whether or not a male character "deserves" a particular woman as a love interest, and it's always bothered me on a level I couldn't quite articulate. To me, "deserve" implies that there is some kind of point-based metric by which the worth of individuals can be measured out so we can figure out who is owed what, romantically. I've seen dissections and take downs of this notion that a hero deserves a love interest from the perspective of male entitlement, especially as it comes to the culture of the 1980's and 1990's, wherein the hero completes a journey and is awarded a passive, biddable love interest as a prize for his trials. People correctly describe that kind of messaging as sexist and objectifying, reducing the role of women in a story to mere trophies and prizes for the male protagonists.

I am in 100% agreement with those arguments, but I don't think I've seen much discussion about this language of "deserving" from the perspective of romances and other media where women are more often protagonists. I think it's really easy to pinpoint the ways in which "deserving" a love interest can be toxic in action films and comedies, but I think it's a lot harder to describe the ways in which that perspective is limiting in romances and dramas.

To my thinking, focusing on whether or not a man "deserves" the cool female protagonist of a romance still strips her of depth and agency, even if she's at the center of the narrative. It reinforces this idea that men are incompetent, fumbling, clumsy, and women are innately above it all. It establishes unequal footing and paints the woman into a corner -- if the dynamic of the relationship is about the man having to do something in order to deserve the woman, it limits the narrative's capacity for her to be flawed and dynamic, to have agency of her own. I find it infantilizing because it turns the woman into a perpetual mommy, someone who is constantly going to be monitoring the man's behavior to make sure that he maintains his state of grace and continues to deserve her affection.

I don't think it's bad, in fiction or in real life, to have a relationship where one person strives to be the best version of themselves for their partner. I don't think it's bad, in fiction or in real life, for people to think about how they deserve to be treated. But I think that it's bad to frame relationships or love interests as something that can be earned, owed, deserved--those kind of acquisitive models and ways of thinking are, to my mind, flattening and reductive.

I've been thinking about this a lot in terms of Freddy and his romantic relationships. He's a character who's flawed and those flaws have gotten in the way of his romantic relationships. He has hurt people by being selfish, immature, uncommunicative--these are things he needs to develop before he can be a good partner to anyone. But I still find myself so resistant to the framing that he is currently undeserving.

I think a large part of my :/ reaction is just a general distaste for the concept of what is deserved and by whom. A city near me is instituting a policy wherein some low-income families earning less than half the living wage are being $500 monthly subsidies, no strings attached. And the comments sections are full of people who think that these families don't deserve the money, full of people obsessed with the idea that some people are worthy of it and others aren't, full of people who think that we need to find ways to ensure that no one undeserving benefits by accident.

For me at least, I have a hard time uncoupling these different meanings of what it means to 'deserve' something from one another. You cannot bring objectivity to this because the idea of worth and merit are inherently subjective. Perhaps we are all deserving of grace, comfort, love, an extra $500 a month -- I think we'd all be a lot better off if we let go of the acquisitive little goblins in our brains who want to make sure that nobody else has anything we think we're owed.

This is a joke, but also not: I've been thinking about this tweet since I saw it, and that's a large part of what inspired this post.

[fatehbaz]

Imagining futures; escaping hell; controlling time; living in better worlds.

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What we see happening in Ferguson and other cities is not the creation of liveable spaces, but the creation of living hells. When a person is trapped in a cycle of debt, it also can affect their subjectivity and temporal orientation to the world by making it difficult for them to imagine and plan for the future. What psychic toll does this have on residents? How does it feel to be routinely degraded and exploited [...]? [M]unicipalities [...] make it impossible for residents to actually feel at home in the place where they live, walk, work, love, and chill. In this sense, policing is not about crime control or public safety, but about the regulation of people’s lives -- their movements and modes of being in the world.

[Source: Jackie Wang. Carceral Capitalism. 2018.]

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Pacific texts do not only destabilize inadequate presents. They also transfigure the past by participating in widespread strategies of contesting linear and teleological Western time, whether through Indigenous ontologies of cyclical temporality or postcolonial inhabitations of heterogenous time. [...] Pacific temporality [can be] a layering of oral and somatic memory in which both present injustices and a longue duree of pasts-cum-impossible futures still adhere. In doing so, [jetnil-Kijiner’s book] Iep Jaltok does not defer an apocalyptic future. Instead it asserts the possibility, indeed the past guarantee, of Pacific worlds in spite of Western temporal closures. [...] In the context of US settler colonialism, Jessica Hurley has noted “the ongoing power of a white-defined realism to distinguish possible from impossible actions” [...]. In other words, certain aspects of Indigenous life under settler colonialism fall under the purview of what colonizing powers define as the (im)possible. [...] Greg Fry, writing of Australian representations of the Pacific in the 1990s, notes that the Pacific was regarded as facing “an approaching ‘doomsday’ or ‘nightmare’ unless Pacific Islanders remake themselves”. From the center-periphery model [...], only a Malthusian “future nightmare [...]” for Pacific islands seemed possible. [...] Bikini Island, where the first of 67 US nuclear tests took place from 1946 to 1958, was chosen largely because of its remoteness [...]; nuclear, economic, and demographic priorities thus rendered islanders’ lives “ungrievable” [...]. The [...] sentiment was perhaps most famously demonstrated in H*nry Kissing*r’s dismissal of the Pacific: “There are only 90,000 people out there. Who gives a damn?” [...] Such narratives were supposed to proclaim and herald the end of Pacific futures. Instead [...] Pacific extinction narratives [written by Indigenous/Islander authors] conversely testify to something like the real resilience of islanders in the face of a largely deleterious history of Euro-American encounters. More radically, they suggest the impossibility of an impossible future. Apocalypse as precedent overturns the very world-ending convention of the genre. By turning extinction into antecedent, [...] [they aspire] toward an unknown future not tied to an apocalyptic ending.

[Source: Rebecca Oh. “Making Time: Pacific Futures in Kiribati’s Migration with Dignity, Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner’s Iep Jaltok, and Keri Hume’s Stonefish.” MFS Modern Fiction Studies. Winter 2020.]

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With the machinery finally installed on the property of the Manuelita estate, Don Santiago Eder launched the first industrial production of refined white sugar in Colombia on the “first day of the first month of the first year of the twentieth century.” Such deeds, mythologized and heroic in their retelling, earned Santiago Eder respect as “the founder” and his sons as “pioneers” in the industrialization of provincial Colombia. Their enterprise [...] remained the country’s largest sugar operation for much of the twentieth century. In 1967, [...] E.P. Thompson described the evolution and internalization of disciplined concepts of time as intimately tied to the rise of wage labor in industrializing England. His famous treatise on time serves as a reminder that the rise of industrial agriculture affected a reorganization of cultural and social conceptions of time. [...]. The global ascendancy of the Manuelita model of work contracts and monoculture in the second half of the twentieth century underscores the acceleration of the Plantationocene, but the historical presence and persistence of alternative [...] time should serve as a reminder that [...] futures and the demarcation of epochs are never as simple as a neatly organized calendar.

[Source: Timothy Lorek. “Keeping Time with Colombian Plantation Calendars.” Edge Effects. April 2020.]

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For several weeks after midsummer arrives along the lower Kuskokwim River, even as the days begin to shorten, the long, boreal light of dusk makes for a brief night. People travel by boat [...]. When I asked an elder about the proper way to act toward Chinook salmon, he instructed me: “Murikelluku.” The Yup’ik word murilke- means not only “to watch” but also “to be attentive” [...]. Nearly fifty years ago, Congress extinguished Alaska Native tribal autonomy over [...] fishing [...]. The indifference of dominant [US government land management agency] fisheries management models to social relations among salmon and Yupiaq peoples is evocative of a mode of care that Lisa Stevenson (2014) characterizes as “anonymous.” When life is managed at the level of the population, Stevenson writes, care is depersonalized. Care becomes “invested in a certain way of being in time,” standardized to the clock, and according to the temporal terms of the caregiver, rather than in time with the subject of care herself (ibid.: 134). Stevenson identifies care at the population level as  anonymous because it focuses exclusively on survival – on metrics of life and death – rather than on the social relations that make the world inhabitable. Thus, it is not namelessness that marks “anonymous care” as  such, but rather “a way of attending to the life and death of [others]” that strips life of the social bonds that imbue it with meaning […]. At the same time, conservation, carried out anonymously, ignores not only the temporality of Yupiaq peoples’ relations with fish, but also the human relations that human-fish relations make possible. Yupiat in Naknaq critique conservation measures for disregarding  relations that ensure not only the continuity of salmon lives but also the duration of Yupiat lifeworlds (see Jackson 2013). Life is doubly negated. For Yupiaq peoples in southwest Alaska, fishing and its attendant practices are […] modes of sociality that foster temporally deep material and affective attachments to kin and to the Kuskokwim River that are constitutive of well-being [...]. As Yup’ik scholar Theresa Arevgaq John (2009) writes, cultivating relations both with ancestors and fish, among other more-than-human beings, is a critical part of young peoples’ […] development  [...]. In other words, the futures that Yupiaq peoples imagine depend on not only a particular orientation to salmon in the present, but also an orientation to the past that salmon mediate.

[Source: William Voinot-Baron. “Inescapable Temporalities: Chinook Salmon and the Non-Sovereignty of Co-Management in Southwest Alaska.” July 2019.]

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[C]oncentration of global wealth and the "extension of hopeless poverties"; [...] the intensification of state repression and the growth of police states; the stratification of peoples [...]; and the production of surplus populations, such as the landless, the homeless, and the imprisoned, who are treated as social "waste." [...] To be unable to transcend [...] the horror [...] of such a world order is what hell means [...]. Without a glimpse of an elsewhere or otherwise, we’re living in hell. [...] [P]eople are rejecting prison as the ideal model of social order. [...] Embedded in this resistance, sometimes explicitly and sometimes implicitly, is both a deep longing for and the articulation of, the existence of a life lived otherwise and elsewhere than in hell. [...] [W]hat’s in the shadow of the bottom line [...] -- what stands, living and breathing, in the place blinded from view. [...] Instincts and impulses are always contained by a system which dominates us so thoroughly that it decides when we can “have an impact” on “restructuring the world,” which is always relegated to the future. [...] “Self-determination begins at home [...].” Cultivating an instinctual basis for freedom is about identifying the longings that already exist -- however muted or marginal [...]. The utopian is not only or merely a “fantasy of” and for “the future collectivity”. It is not simply fantasmatic or otherworldly in the conventional temporal sense. The utopian is a way of conceiving and living in the here and now, which is inevitably entangled with all kinds of deformations [...]. But there are no guarantees. No guarantees that the time is right [...]; no guarantees that just a little more misery and suffering will bring the whole mess down; no guarantees that the people we expect to lead us will (no special privileged historical agents); [...] no guarantees that we can protect future generations [...] if we just wait long enough or plan it all out ahead of time; no guarantees that on the other side of the big change, some new utterly-unfathomable-but-worth-waiting-for happiness will be ours [...]. There are no guarantees of coming millenniums or historically inevitable socialisms or abstract principles, only our complicated selves together and a [...] principle in which the history and presence of the instinct for freedom, however fugitive or extreme, is the evidence of the [...] possibility because we’ve already begun to realize it. Begun to realize it in those scandalous moments when the present wavers [...]. The point is to expose the illusion of supremacy and unassailability dominating institutions and groups routinely generate to mask their fragility and their contingency. The point is [...] to encourage [...] us [...] to be a little less frightened of and more enthusiastic about our most scandalous utopian desires and actions [...], a particular kind of courage and a few magic tricks.

[Source: Avery Gordon. “Some thoughts on the Utopian.” 2016.]