#the perfect way to participate

[curiosityschild]

Last week I sent out 200 postcards to progressive voters in North Carolina through the Postcards to Swing States initiative by the Progressive Turnout Project.

It was fun! And easy!

They sent me 200 blank postcards, a list of names and addresses, and a page of instructions including 3 prewritten messages I could use.

I just had to write and address the postcards, get stamps, and stick them in the mailbox.

10/10 would do it again.

[little-shadow-club]

SL Rag spoilers below

just another Haein ramble post don mind me.

Look man I love Haein as much as the next person but I feel like, even with the new content of her coming out (from SL Rag to Arise to the anime) she's still lacking in something of her character. And, as I began to look more into her I kinda saw that the main culprit of her characterization is that: She is perfect.

Too perfect, I mean she holds no flaws or anything that can set her aside from the rest (and no being an s rank and female doesn't automatically make her different), and even if she does she doesnt hold them to the extent that other characters might have them, or she just has the same thoughts as anyone else. Her personality as well never clashes with the other hunters or is too different, especially from Jinwoo-- and okay yeah that's expected bc trophy wife trope and all that–  and in a sense I think this might derive from the fact that everyone wants her to still be stuck into this mold of ��perfect wife + perfect mother” that doesn't have the same level of flaws as the rest. 

She wants a comfortable life, like Jinwoo, she trains constantly, like Chiyeol, she is not burdened by trauma unlike Juhee who leaves the story or Jinah who actively tries to stop his brother at one point from entering dungeons (and stopping the MC? Clashing due to real life precautions and worries? And expanding on that? No sir we don't do that). She is strong but not too strong to be a threat (in their first meeting maybe but then Jinwoo just levels up in the castle and then bam stronger than her again) just like… yeah everyone else lol. She fights Jinwoo at one point but it's not due to some difference in thinking or to stop him from something, rather Haein just wants to spend time with him. And yeah despite wanting a comfortable life, or so told so far, she is still placed in the spotlight during her idol years, and has to deal with the most supernatural shit going on in her life constantly. She might be strong but she is still a damsel in distress, and her olympic background… I mean it's there.

I like the implication that she might have been stressed about appearing perfect during her idol life, especially pressured to do great by the adults around her just as she was pressured to be a maintainer of peace when she was an S rank (friend’s death and all), but that… doesn't get anywhere, and I admit Haein hinted to being stressed was only in the date scene with Jinwoo, the rest was expanded by Arise and Rag, still, still its not treated as anything else except ‘oh she is so camery shy’ and ‘oh she just wants a normal life being a normal wife’ (mind you Jinwoo is there as well but he even he doesn't see a problem with that except for when the cameras are pointed at him to which he just makes all the photos look black) and not, idk, dwell on the amount of pressure she would have been faced in since she was a child, the failure of not meeting those expectations in her past life and wishing to meet them when she was given the chance to become an s rank hunter, or how all of that constant training might have affected her life and social ties with other children who werent as talented as her. Or maybe how Haein has had to constantly keep people at a distance due to her nose problems, plus her almost never appearing in the news (so it was said during her hunter years, bc she had signed a contract with Jongin for this to not happen i think) leading everyone to not get to know her as well as the rest of the other hunters who were practically seen as celebrities.

No? None of that? Not even tackling the fact that olympic athletes tend to suffer from burnout, eating disorders, depression, anxiety, or how traumatic the double dungeon must have been since it was the first time Haein, an S rank, had ever come so close to dying (as far as we know in the og sl), and it cant be backed away with saying ‘oh that would be too complex for the story!’ when we’ve seen Haein trying to challenge her fears against Beru during the Ahjin guild arc. 

It's also not needed for her to be so overly complex either, I was listing examples out of the many routes in which her story could be fleshed out more. She can have a small healing moment to herself or slowly unwrap the tolls of pressure she’s been under, and that would be enough, because tbh, she does deserve some time to breathe, as a character, as herself. For the most part she’s never alone, in every scene we see other she either is with someone (mostly a guy) or thinking about someone (90% Jinwoo), so seeing her outside of anyone’s interaction, seeing her go on about her daily life or her daily struggles, or seeing how Haein fixes her own situations without the reliance on others, that I think, would be more needed than ‘just more Haein scenes’ 

Arise has one scene which I like, her talking with Chiyeol after his double dungeon incident. Both characters definitely needed something like that in my part, 1) because it highlights Chiyeols maturity over the certain years he has been as a hunter, and 2) because it emphasizes Haein’s relationship with her teacher and how she’s not only learning to be skilled but also the pain that comes with losing your comrades afterwards.

And in Rag, though I find it way too absurd to the point that its funny that Haein has managed to protect an entire village, on her own, for the past 5 years, with daggers, in her 40s, no experience whatsoever in a fight unless it was also transferred alongside her memories, and also had no qualms in protecting the race of beasts that had once pose such a level of danger Jinwoo himself rewinded time itself— I do like her interactions with Sirka,  and it posses such an interesting dynamic to see considering she is one of the few humans who has managed to maintain a connection and lived alongside intelligent magic beasts like he elves (Suho being the other which is… interesting actually when you think about it considering Jinwoo is somewhat yes and not on the list). 

Again, she is so interesting in her own right, but the thing is that we never see her act alone or be solely in the spotlight, and don't get me wrong, this also goes from the other characters too. But with her I feel like too much of what she could be or experienced is brushed off too quickly or not given enough time to expand. 

So anyways, I will like to see where she might go off from here foward, especially in rag, and the anime.

[viralarcadian]

the fact that nerubians have really poor eyesight and rely entirely on smell to tell non-nerubian entities apart is rly neat and goes a long way to explaining how players are able to traipse around the city of threads w/o instantly being mobbed. most spiders IRL have pretty poor eyesight and use a combo of touch, taste, and smell to find their way around the world, w jumping spiders and to a lesser extent ogre-faced spiders being exceptions.

it also doubly makes sense bc they live underground w nothing in the way of overwhelming bright lights. there's no need for them to have eyesight on the level of surface-dwelling sapients

w how ascended are specifically noted to not only be unable to emit pheromones consistently, if at all, but can't even really sense them at all anymore, i wouldn't be surprised if one of the "boons" given to ascended is that they have much better eyesight.

not THAT much better obv bc then they'd immediately aggro from much farther away than they actually do in-game, but enough that if you get close they can tell you're not supposed to be there

[grimark]

i like bad special effects. meaning not just old and outdated (which in a lot of cases were actually groundbreaking for their time, but i digress) but also low-budget or rushed or just kinda corny and poorly executed. i think it adds charm where a lot of more polished productions are lacking.

[spikeyjo]

also uh im kind of not thinking about it much because its insane. but if everything goes right (and i mean a considerable amount of things that probably wont go as planned) but if they DO... i will have a major surgery in like two weeks

[makeitlookdecent]

you ever had a class with that one person who's always sleeping, not paying attention, never in class but they are still somehow passing with (almost) flying colors? teacher calls on them while they sleep in class to have a 'gotcha' moment?? but they still answer the question flawlessly???

thats him.

[kijosakka]

WHY DID NOONE TELL ME MERMAY WAS TOMORROW I HAVE NOTHING PLANNED

[andromedasummer]

i ended up having a like. 30 minute conversation with some of those "freedom convoy" people. was at the bus stop. they were wearing trump hats. i ended up roped into the conversation because i was so taken aback at seeing one in public i was just. staring at it. ive never felt more depressed about someone elses life and beliefs than when i talked to them.

[liquidstar]

all of the previously untranslated "dear society" suddenly got uploaded to mangakakalot a couple weeks ago out of no where so yes i DID read it and yes i DID cry doing so. several times in fact. i really liked it.

[bylertruther]

the day that fandom realizes that pointing out writing choices, the negative effects those choices have on other characters, and the less-than-kind actions of a character, aren't a personal attack on you, a call to arms for everyone to hate this character, or even a hate post in and of itself is the day that we will finally know at least a crumb of Peace in these e-streets 🤦‍♂️

[pepprs]

the mortifying ordeal of today being a potluck day.

[dancingplague]

My algebra professor regularly makes typos in her notes that make problems impossible to solve, but I can't really hold it against her because in direct violation of university policy she's letting me skip all the lectures and take all the exams and quizzes unsupervised in a hallway after work hours

[doctorwhoisadhd]

i think more general music classes should include punk rock / metal as a genre

[transvampireboyfriend]

diary entry bc it got long

you know, not to be dramatic but im kind of emotional about not finding gifs of that movie readily available but finding a TON of posts about how Andrew was so good in it/filmographies of him/screencaps of him in this when he didn't win an Oscar for this and Jessica did. Like I know how this site works I know search sucks and this is already out of date so idk what the perception was when it came out or what we were all watching at the time, and i know how the world works you know, idk what I expected. But i guess because the first time i heard of this story was already in a frame of, this is what they did to Tammy Faye, this is how they treated her and then this is what he did and this is how they treated him, i already came into the movie knowing she's special to me, like her story is what i wanted to hear and that's what i got but a lot of other people i guess never wanted to hear her story in the first place. It's just kinda ironic, just kinda sad because of course it would repeat itself in one way or another.

[parsleysagerosemarytimemachine]

'Locklands' was an interesting conclusion to this fantasy trilogy, but also just not a heist novel in the same way the first two were - this is more of a thriller about magical transhumanism and family trauma, which is fun, but also I was hoping for it to somehow give us 'one last big score' in a way that this didn't. (Also, I was kind of disappointed in the epilogue, in the way that is more about my problems with failures of transhumanism than anything to do with fantasy or heists…) Anway, really can't recommend starting here because so much of this is about wrapping up plots and paying off revelations from the earlier books, but if you like fantasy heists, 'logical' and interlocking magics, or canonical lesbians going through it, 'Foundryside' is a good book, and it'll get you here eventually. :)

[smokescreenedforestry]

Honest to god. Honest To God. I might start writing for them again. Thought about the way Emil died and got nailed in the face w an au idea