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physalian · 10 months ago

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Humanizing Your Characters (And Why You Should)

To humanize a character is not to contort an irredeemable villain into the warped funhouse mirror reflection of a hero in the last 30 seconds to gain “narrative subversion” points. To humanize is not to give said villain a tragic backstory that validates every bad choice they make in attempt to provide nuance where it does not deserve to be.

To humanize a character, villain or otherwise, is to make them flawed. Scuff them up, give them narrative birthmarks and scars and imperfections. Whether it’s your hero, their love interest, the comic relief, the mentor, the villain, the rival, these little narrative details serve to make all your literary babies better.

Why should you humanize your characters?

To do this means to write in details beyond those that service the plot, or the themes, or the motifs, morals, foreshadowing, or story. These might be (and usually are) entirely unimportant in the grand scheme of things. So, if I wrote lengthy diatribes on pacing and why every detail must matter, and character descriptions and thematic importance, why am I now suggesting go free-for-all on the fluff?

Just like real people have quirks and tics and beliefs and pet peeves that serve our no greater purpose, so should fictional people. Your average reader doesn’t have the foggiest idea what literary devices are beyond metaphor, simile foreshadowing, and anecdote, but they can tell when the author is using motif and theme and all the syntactical marvels because it reads that much richer, even if they can’t pinpoint why.

And, for shipping fodder, these tiny little details are what help your audience fall in love with the character. It doesn’t even have to be in a book – Taylor Swift (whether you like her or not) never fills her music with sexual innuendo or going clubbing. She tells stories filled with human details like dancing in the refrigerator light. People can simultaneously relate to these very specific and vivid experiences, and say “not that exactly, but man this reminds me of…” and that’s (part of) the reason her music is so popular.

What kinds of narratives need these details?

All of them. Visual media, audio, written, stage play. Now, to what degree and excess you apply these details depends on your tone, intended audience, and writing style. If your style of writing is introspection heavy, noir character drama, you might go pretty heavy on the character design.

But even if you’re writing a kids book with a scant few paragraphs of setting descriptors and internal narration, or you’re drawing a comic book – if you have characters you want people to care about, do this.

Animators, particularly, are very adept at humanizing non-human characters, because, unlike live acting, every single stroke of the pen is there with intent. They use their own reflections for facial references, record their own movements to draw a dance, and insert little bits of themselves into signature character poses so you know that *that* animator did this one.

How to humanize your characters.

I’m going to break this down into a couple sections: Costume/wardrobe, personality, beliefs/behavior/superstitions, haptics/proxemics/kinesics, and voice. They will all overlap and the sheer variety and possibilities are way too broad for me to capture every facet.

Costumes and Wardrobe

In the film Fellowship of the Ring, there’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment where, after Boromir is slain by the Uruk-Hai, Aragorn takes Boromir’s Gondorian vambraces to wear in his honor, and in honor of their shared country. He wears them the rest of the trilogy. The editing pays no extra attention to them beyond a split second of Aragorn tightening the straps, it never lingers on them, never reminds you that they’re there, but they kept it in nonetheless. His actor also included a hunting bow that didn't exist in the book because he's a roamer, a ranger, and needs to be able to feed himself, along with a couple other survival tools.

Aragorn wears plenty of other symbolic bits of costume – the light of the Evenstar we see constantly from Arwen, the Lothlorien green cloaks shared by the entire Fellowship, his re-forged sword and eventual full Gondorian regalia, but all those are Epic Movie Moments that serve a thematic purpose.

Taking the vambraces is just a small, otherwise insignificant character moment, a choice made for no other reason than that’s what this character would do. That’s what makes him human, not an archetype.

When you’re writing these details and can’t rely on sneaking them into films, you have to work a little harder to remind your audience that they exist, but not too often. A detail shifts from “human” to “plot point” when it starts to serve a purpose to the themes and story.

Inconsequentiality might be how a character ties, or doesn’t tie their shoelaces, because they just can’t be bothered so they remain permanent knots and tripping hazards. It might be a throw-away line about how they refuse to wear shorts and strictly stick to long pants because they don’t like showing off their legs. It might be perpetually greasy hair from constantly running their fingers through it with stress, or self-soothing. A necklace they fidget with, or a ring, a belt they never bother to replace even though they should, a pair of lucky socks.

Resist the urge to make it more meaningful than “this is just how they are”. If I’m using the untied shoelaces example – in Spiderverse, this became a part of the story’s themes, motifs, and foreshadowing, and doesn’t count. Which isn’t bad! It’s just not what I’m talking about.

Personality

In How to Train Your Dragon, Toothless does not speak. All his personality comes from how he moves, the noises he makes, and the expressions on his face. There’s moments, like in the finale, when his prosthetic has burned off and Hiccup tells him to hold on for a little bit longer, and you can clearly see on his face that he’s deeply uncertain about his ability to do so. It’s almost off the screen, another blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment. Or the beat of hesitation before he lets Hiccup touch him in the Forbidden Friendship scene. Or the irritated noise he makes when he’s impatiently waiting for Hiccup to stop chatting with his dad because they have a giant dragon to murder. Or when he slaps Hiccup with his ear fin for flying them into a rock spire.

None of those details *needed* to exist to endear you to his character or to serve the scenes they’re in. The scenes would carry on just fine without them. He’s a fictional dragon, yes, but these details make him real.

Other personality tics you could include might be a character who gets frustrated with tedious things very quickly and starts making little inteligible curses under their breath. Or how they giggle when they’re excited and start bouncing on their toes. Maybe they have a tic where they snap their fingers when they’re concentrating, trying to will an idea into existence. Or they stick their tongue out while they work and get embarrassed when another character calls them on it. They roll around in their sleep, steal blankets, drool, leave dishes in the sink or are neurotic with how things must be organized. They have one CD in their car, and actually use that CD player instead of the phone jack or Bluetooth. They sing in the shower, while they cook, or while they do homework, no matter how grating their voice.

They like the smell of new shoes or Sharpies. They hate the texture of suede or velvet or sticky residues. They never pick their socks up. They hate the overhead light in their room and use 50 lamps instead. They hate turning into oncoming traffic or don’t trust their backup camera. They collect Funko Pops and insist there’s always room for more.

And about a million others.

Beliefs, Behaviors, and Superstitions

*If you happen to be writing a story where superstitions have merit, maybe skip this one.* Usually, inevitably, these evolve into character centerpieces and I can’t actually think of one off the top of my head that doesn’t become this beyond the ones we all know. A few comedic examples do come to mind:

The Magic Conch in “Club Spongebob” and the sea-bear-proof dirt circle in “The Camping Episode”

Dean Winchester’s fear and panic-driven actions in “Yellow Fever” and “Sam, Interrupted”

The references to the trolls that steal left-foot socks in How to Train Your Dragon

I’m not a fan of wasting time writing a religious character doing their religious thing when Plot Is Happening, but smaller things are what I’m talking about. Like them wearing a cross/rosary and touching it when they’re nervous. Having a specific off-beat prayer, saying, or expression because they don’t believe in cursing.

The classic ones like black cats, ladders, broken mirrors, salt, sidewalk cracks can all be funny. Athletes have plenty, too, and some of them, particularly in baseball culture, are a bit ridiculous. Not washing socks or uniforms, having a team idol they donate Double Bubble to and also rub their toes. A specific workout routine, diet, team morale dance.

Other things, too. A character who’s afraid to go back downstairs once the lights are off, or fear the basement or the backyard shed. Or they’re really put-off by this old family photo for no reason other than how glassy their eyes look and it’s creepy. They like crystals, dreamcatchers, star signs, tarot, or they absolutely do not under any circumstances.

They believe in all the tried and true ways of predicting the weather like a grizzled old sailor. They believe in ghosts, vampires, werewolves, witches, skinwalkers, doppelgangers, fairies. They talk to the cat statue in their kitchen and named it Fudge Pop. They whisper to the spirit that possessed the fridge so it stops making all that racket, and half the time, it works every time. They wear yellow for good luck or carry a rabbit’s foot. They’re not religious at all but still throw prayers out to whoever’s listening because, you know, just in case. They sit by their window sill and talk to the moon and the stars and pretend like they’re in a music video when they’re driving through the city in the rain.

Haptics, Proxemics, and Kinesics

These are, for all you non-communication and psych majors out there, touch and physical contact, how they move, and how they move around other people.

Behold, your shipping fodder.

Two shining examples of proxemics in action are the famous “close talker” episode of Seinfeld (of which every communication major has been subjected to) and Castiel’s not understanding of personal space (and human chronemic habits) in Supernatural.

These are how a character walks, if they’re flat-footed, clumsy, or tip-toers. If they make a racket or constantly spook the other characters. If they fidget or can’t sit still in a seat for five seconds, if they like to sit backwards or upside down. How they touch themselves, if they do a lot of self-soothing maneuvers (hugging themselves, rubbing their arms, touching their face, drawing their knees up, holding their neck, etc) or if they don’t do any self-soothing at all.

This is how they shake hands, if they dance while they cook or work. It’s how much space they let themselves take up, if they man-spread or keep their limbs in closer. How close they stand to others or how far. If they let themselves be touched at all, or if they always have their skin covered. If they always have their back to a wall, or are always making sure they know where the nearest exit is. If they make grand gestures when they talk and give directions. If they flinch from pats on the back or raised hands. If they lean away from loud voices or project their own. If they use their height to their advantage when arguing, puff their chest, square their shoulders, put their hands on their hips, or point fingers in accusation.

If they touch other characters as they pass by. If they’re huggers or victims of falling asleep on or near their comrades. If they must sleep facing the door, or with something solid behind them. If they can sleep in the middle of a party wholly uncaring. If they sleepwalk, sleeptalk, migrate across the bed to cuddle whoever’s nearest with no idea they’re doing it.

If they like to be held or like to hold others. If they hate being picked up and slung around or are touch-starved for it. If they like their space and stick to it or are more than happy to share.

Do they walk with grace, head held high and back straight? Or are they hunched over, head hung, watching their feet? Are they meanderers or speed-walkers? Do they cross their arms in front or lace their hands behind them? Do they bow to authority or meet that gaze head on?

I have heard that Prince Zuko, in Last Airbender, is usually drawn sleeping with his bad ear down when he doesn’t feel safe, like on his warship or anywhere in the Fire Nation, or on the road. He’s drawn on his other side once he joins the Gaang. In Dead Man’s Chest, just before Davy Jones drives the Flying Dutchman under the waves, two tentacles curl up and around the brim of his hat to keep it from blowing off in the water.

When they fight, do they attack first, or defend first? Do they touch other characters’ hair? Share makeup, share clothes? Touch their faces with boops or bonks or nuzzles and eskimo kisses? Do they crack their knuckles and necks and knees?

Do they stare in baffled curiosity at all the other characters wholly comfortable in each other's spaces because they can’t, won’t, or don’t see the point in all this nonsense? Do they say they’re happy on the outside, but are betrayed by their body language?

Voice

Whether or not to write an accent is entirely up to you. Books like Their Eyes Were Watching God writes dialogue in a vernacular specific to its characters. Westerners and southerners tend to be written with the southern drawl or dialect, ripe with stereotypical contractions. Be advised, however, that in attempt to write an accent to give your character depth, you could be instead turning off your audience who doesn’t have energy to decipher what they’re saying, or you went and wrote a racist stereotype.

Voice isn’t just accent and dialect, nor is it how it sounds, which falls more solidly under useful character descriptions. Voice for the sake of humanizing your characters concerns how they talk, how they convey their thoughts, and how they become distinct from other characters in dialogue and narration.

If you’re writing a narrative that hops heads and don’t want to include a big banner to indicate who’s talking at any given time, this is where voice matters. It is, I think, the least appreciated of all the possible traits to pay attention to.

First person narrators have the most flexibility here because the audience is zero degrees removed from their first-hand experiences. Their personality comes through sharply in how they describe things and what they pay attention to.

But it’s also in what similes and metaphors they use. I read a book that had an average (allegedly straight) male narrator going off and describing colors with types of flowers, some I had to look up because I just don’t know those off the top of my head. My immediate thought was either this character is a poorly written gay, or he’s a florist. Neither (allegedly), the writer was just being too specific.

Do they have crutch words they use? like, um, actually, so…, uh

Or repeat exclamations specific to them? yikes, yowzers, jeepers, jinkies, zoinks, balls, beans, d’oh!

Or idioms they’re fond of? Like a bat out of hell. Snowball’s chance.

Do they stutter when they’re nervous? Do they lose their train of thought and bounce around, losing other characters in the process? Do they have a non-Christian god they pray to and say something other than “thank God”? Are they from another country, culture, time period, realm, or planet with their own gods, beliefs, and idioms?

When they describe settings, how flowery is the language? Would this grizzled war hero use flowery language? How would he or she describe the color pink, versus a PTA mom? Do they use only a generic “blue, green, red” or do they really pay attention with “aquamarine, teal, emerald, viridian, vermillion, rose, ruby”?

How do this character’s hobbies affect how well they can describe dance moves, painting styles, car models, music genres?

This mostly matters when you’re head-hopping and the voice of the narrator serves to be more distinct, otherwise, what’s the point of head-hopping? Just use third-person omniscient.

If you really want to go wild, give a specific narrator unique syntax. Maybe one character is the ghost of Oscar Wild with never-ending run-on sentences. Just be sure to not go too overboard and compromise the integrity of your story.

In the book A Lesson Before Dying, a somewhat illiterate, underprivileged and undereducated minor has been given a mentor, a teacher, before they face the death penalty. At the end of the book, you read all of the letters they wrote to their teacher. There’s misspellings everywhere, almost no punctuation, and long, rambling sentences.

It’s heartbreaking. The subject matter is heavy and horrible, yes, but it’s the choice to write with such poor English that has a much bigger impact than perfect MLA format.

How to implement these details

Most of these, in the written medium, need only show up once or twice before your audience notices and wonders why they’re there. Most fall squarely under character design, which falls under exposition, and should follow all the exposition guidelines.

These details exist to be random and fluffy, but they can’t exist randomly within the narrative. If you want to have your character be superstitious, pick a relevant time to include that superstition.

Others, like ongoing speech habits or movements, still don’t overuse, especially if they’re unique. A character might like to sit backwards in a chair, but if you mention that they’re doing it every single time they sit down, your audience will wonder what’s so important and if the character is unwell.

And, of course, you can let these traits become thematically important, like a superstition being central to their personality or backstory or motivation. These all serve the same purpose of making your character feel like a real person instead of just a “character”.

Just think about tossing in a few random details every now and then and see what happens. One tiny sentence can take a background character and make them candidates for the eventual fandom’s fan favorite. Details like these turn your work from “This a story, and these are the characters who tell it” into “these are my characters, and this is their story.”

#writing advice #character design #writing tips #writing resources #exposition #writing tools #writing a book

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seiya-starsniper · 10 months ago

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Anon I have NO IDEA what happened to your original ask oaisdjaodjoaijasas. I got three asks around the same time so I am assuming they were all from you? If so, I still have those asks, THIS ONE just got deleted. Tumblr either glitched mad hard or I deleted it by accident. But luckily I still have the email notification so I saved it.

Anyways, continuing with the birthday fic posts, here's my fill for your prompt! 💖

[AO3 Link Here]

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Hob Gadling has lived a long life. A long, rich, beautiful life, full of wondrous discoveries and terrible heartbreaks, hard lessons and thrilling adventures.

There are, Hob thinks sometimes, few experiences left in the world that are truly brand new for him. The realization does not make him want to live less, for he always finds a thrill in experiencing something familiar, just in a different way, a different decade, a different century. But he does occasionally mourn the fact that the gap between novel experiences has grown longer and longer.

When the role of Dream of the Endless is passed on, and the facet known as Morpheus is cast off and left to his own devices, he stumbles wide eyed and weary into the arms of his oldest friend. That event alone is an entirely unprecedented experience for Hob, who has never seen Morpheus as anything other than infinite and otherworldly. But in this exact moment Morpheus is mortal, and so very fragile, and Hob vows to himself that he will not let this man walk the earth alone for as long as they both lived.

Over the next few months, Hob rapidly realizes that every experience with Morpheus is something brand new, for both of them. Morpheus has never been anything other than Endless, and Hob has never had to teach anyone the basics of being human. They fumble and fight, laugh and cry, and then at some point through it all, Hob realizes he’s in love.

He has no idea how to go about confessing to his friend of 600+ years though. At least that will be a new experience for them both too.

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On a cold and rainy evening, Hob returns to their shared flat after a long day of lectures. The weather outside was utterly miserable, and he was looking forward to planting himself on the couch and watching TV, while pretending to accidentally cuddle with Morpheus.

Except, Morpheus is fast asleep on said couch. And wearing Hob’s forest green fluffy robe despite very much having his own matching robe in midnight black.

Hob swallows as he takes in the sight. He wants to take out his phone and snap a photo. He wants to burrow himself in Morpheus’s side and never let him go.

Before he can do any of these things, Morpheus stirs awake and yawns, only startling the slightest bit once he notices Hob is home.

“Hob?” Morpheus asks. “I—I apologize, I did not mean to fall asleep here.”

“You looked so cozy I didn’t want to disturb you,” Hob replies, smiling as Morpheus rubs the sleep from his eyes and looks around. Suddenly, the other man’s face pinks, and he must realize what it is he’s wearing, for he wraps his arms around himself, as if that will somehow hide the fact that he’s wearing Hob’s robe.

Hob snorts and then nudges Morpheus’s feet with his knees. The raven-haired man brings in his knees, and Hob flops unceremoniously onto the couch, patting his lap to indicate that his friend could place his feet there. Morpheus does so easily, and Hob tries not to yelp when he realizes just how freezing cold Morpheus’s feet are.

“Green’s a good color on you,” Hob says, placing his hands on Morpheus’s ankles and rubbing small circles to warm them up. He grins, and Morpheus huffs, his blush even more pronounced now that the subject is out in the open.

“Yours was more convenient to locate than mine,” Morpheus replies, still not meeting his gaze. Hob knows that’s utter shit, they hang their robes next to one another over hooks on the bathroom door. But he hums and accepts the flimsy excuse, before he grabs the remote off the side table and turns on the TV.

They watch a silly movie for the next few hours, and settle into easy conversation, Morpheus asking clarifying questions on pop culture references he still doesn’t quite grasp, and Hob explaining some of the minutiae of human chores when they’re mentioned in casual dialogue.

They order take-away eventually, eating peacefully on Hob’s couch, and then the next thing he knows, Hob is waking up with a serious crick in his neck, the TV long turned off due its power saving feature, and with Morpheus curled into his side. Hob jostles the other man lightly, laughing when Morpheus groans in obvious displeasure at having been disturbed.

“Wake up sleepyhead it’s time for bed,” Hob whispers to his friend.

Morpheus blinks up at him, still half asleep and Hob can’t help but lean in close, like he’s ready to tell his friend a secret.

But then Morpheus leans his head up, and their lips brush in an accidental kiss.

Hob freezes, unsure of what to do. His eyes are wide open but Morpheus’s are shut. The other man lets out a pleased hum at first, and then a moment later they snap open as Morpheus belatedly realizes exactly what he’s done. He pulls away and Hob—

Hob leans down and kisses his friend of 600 years on purpose.

Morpheus kisses him back.

Hob sighs happily into the kiss, and Morpheus wraps an arm around his neck, pulling him down onto the other side of the couch. Hob goes easily, carefully placing his body atop his oldest friend’s, all the while refusing to let go of his mouth. Morpheus tastes like starlight, even though Hob knows that shouldn’t be possible. He’s mortal now, or at least as mortal as Hob is, which is to say, not very. But he’s no longer Endless so nothing about him should feel so otherworldly.

But maybe Hob’s just projecting. Maybe he really is that far gone for this man.

“You desire me,” Morpheus whispers, his voice tinged with awe when they take a short break from kissing.

“I do,” Hob answers. “Have for a little while now,” he admits.

Morpheus’s brow furrows.“But…you didn’t before—”

Hob shushes him gently.

“We didn’t spend time like this before,” Hob whispers, pressing his forehead to Morpheus’s. “You were never this accessible before you were human. I’ve always found you beautiful, even when you were still Endless, but it was always look, don’t touch.”

Morpheus nods in understanding. There was never a chance for the idea of them before, not when Morpheus was still Dream, and Dream of the Endless carried the weight of the entire unconscious universe on his shoulders. Not when he held so much baggage he knew Hob could not help him carry.

“But now?” Morpheus breathes, his voice so hopeful, so longing, so human, it nearly breaks Hob’s heart with how much he loves him.

“But now,” Hob replies, touching his hand to Morpheus’s check, admiring the way the other man’s eyes flutter shut in pleasure. “Now we have all the time in the world to love each other, if you’d like.”

“I would—like that,” Morpheus says, opening his eyes once more. “It will be new for me, to love as a human.”

Hob smiles, and presses a kiss to the corner of Morpheus’s mouth.

“It’ll be new for me too,” he replies, grinning against his friend turned lover’s mouth. “Everything is new and beautiful with you.”

#dreamling #the sandman #sandman fanfic #hob x morpheus #dream x hob #seiya writes #seiya writes dreamling #seiya's birthday prompt fills

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drbased · 3 months ago

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So much of mental health advice feels like grasping into the dark: when I did CBT I did all these various exercises and in hindsight so much of it feels like the placebo effect, and I can see why people get sucked into cults. Not saying therapy is a cult at all, but when I think about how one of the exercises was to imagine a manifestation of my bad thoughts and then physically close the door on it - what was that supposed to achieve, exactly? The buzz of motivation you get from these therapies can seem like progress, but a lot of the real value - the honesty about yourself and what you value - is entirely lost through gimmicks.

And it's really sad because in my experience, actual acceptance can be incredibly quick, so much so that it feels like a cheat code, a 'life hack' if you will. But acceptance is what 'mentally healthy' people do all the time - that's why two people can go to the exact same job and one can be chill whilst the other is depressed. As a depressed person who never understood the former type, I was always curious at exactly how those people lived - I assumed they must be vapid, that they couldn't be as deep with me, that any problems they had in their life were much more trivial than mine. I was fascinated by people who, when going through experiences I considered life-ruining, would shrug and say 'it is what it is'. I assumed once again that they must just not be as deep as I am, or feel as strongly. The deeper assumption was always that there's something fundamentally different to my make-up that separates me from the 'normies'. The narcissism of this is not lost on me; I used to flip-flop back and forth between 'I'm right' and 'they're right'. I now understand this to be value system that my depression was built around, and I don't have that maddening argument in my head anymore.

The depression was always both the cause and solution: there always had to be a justification for my sadness that was more than simply 'I don't like this' - that way I could cling to it; I could defensively make it a part of me, whilst secretly embarrassed that other people would be able to handle a similar situation better than me. The key to acceptance is to face that embarrassment head-on and say, actually the reason this thing bothers me so much is because I value it not happening more than I value my happiness and comfort. The point of acceptance is where I realise that my happiness is something I can choose internally regardless of my external circumstances; that that's what everyone else has been doing this whole time and therefore I am not a freak nor am I the messiah. I can be just like everyone else and it's not embarrassing to be a mundane, alive human being. But also, I have to overcome the embarrassment of being miserable under a sunk-cost fallacy - so for that, I have to, once again, understand why I valued the narrative justification so much, and so I can accept that too, all as valued, loved, and cherished parts of myself. It's all about understanding and acceptance at every stage, at every layer of the psyche.

And from that acceptance I can recognise that my depression was a noble goal in some ways; a core facet of my belief used to be that I'm just one person, and everything else is everything else, so my value system should logically be skewed outwards. But I now understand that martyring myself for the 'greater good' is a thankless task and also, whilst everything else is bigger than me, I'm the one who experiences that everything, so my value system should be focussed on me. Feeling good feels good, and that's enough.

I understand that the process of true acceptance is a really tough thing to do, and it's cosmically upsetting how unfair it is that people who never have a mental illness (or have one that is so accepted by society that they never have to consider it one) don't ever have to do this manual process of self-reflection - but at the same time, my honesty about myself has become something I now value greatly as it allows me to make meaningful choices to demonstrate self-love and rebuild trust in myself after a decade of believing that 'because I want to be happy' isn't justification enough. And since I discovered this whole process, so much of mental health advice just seems to me like the equivalent of putting a jelly bean on a paragraph in a book to incentivise you to read to that point: you're a fully grown adult and you're not stupid, so eventually some part of you is going to go 'but I can eat the damn jellybean at any time!'

From having learned just how much the brain is paying attention to everything I do, it's hard to justify doing these typical therapy exercises knowing that the value system they espouse is entirely the opposite to my own: they're fundamentally dishonest and kick the mental health can down the road, treating your psyche as an inconvenience and an obstacle to achievement (which is implicitly believed to be 'real'). Slamming the door on my negative thoughts:

Creates a symbolic narrative that through this I can be 'cured'

Posits that my negative thoughts, despite being a product of my literal brain, have nothing to do with how my brain works

Posits that those thoughts can be severed from me (with one dramatic gesture)

Looking back, this such a patronising way to approach my own personhood; this qualified mental health practitioner was agreeing with the mental illness that brought me to him in the first place that I am fragmented and that parts of me are 'wrong'. Acceptance says that no, no part of me is 'wrong' because that's an entirely false concept: there are only actions and consequences, and I decide if I value those consequences. The only 'reason' I 'shouldn't' have those negative thoughts is because they hurt me - but also, as they are a part of me, they can be addressed and they can be reasoned with. Accepting their point of view as my own has done so, so much more for my mental health than treating that point of view as a terrifying aberration on my psyche to be forcefully removed.

Society is always surprised at how people who commit atrocities rarely have a mental disorder; but that's that implicit belief about 'mental health' in action. There's a societal need for mental health to be some reflection of logical and moral 'correctness'; after all, there is existential terror in the realisation of of psyches as floating entities, universes isolated from material reality. I, too, feel this terror, but as someone who used to feel a great need to be under the scrutiny of The All-Knowing Watcher who could justify all my behaviours, thoughts and feelings under some objective standard, there has been a paradoxical freedom in recognising that I alone am responsible for constructing my morality and value system. Those 'mentally healthy' people who commit atrocities simply have a value system that does not care about the harm they have done; and, as a result, they have accepted themselves (in a way I couldn't even accept about that Portal 'Companion Cube' plush I bought for £30 over a decade ago and immediately regretted yet still can't throw away). This can be hard to swallow for people who need to believe that we all live under the same objective standard and that mental illness is merely an aberration. The idea that I'm more mentally ill than a murderer feels wrong; from this alone it's clear that the whole idea of what mental illness/health even is is still in its infancy - and mental health treatments - which have undergone much revision, making it possible that nobody does that CBT exercise anymore - are reflecting that dearth of understanding.

#wisdom posting #my writing #symbolic states

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underprivilegedcactus · 11 months ago

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It's totally fine if you don't think God!Gale and Ascended!Astarion endings are necessarily bad endings. I agree there's definitely some ambiguity when it comes to these outcomes, but there's something that people should consider: When writing a character, one of the things a writer can choose to focus on to build them out is to consider What They Want vs. What They Need.

Gale WANTS to become a god (eventually) to both show up Mystra and to help mortals the way he feels that gods should. What Gale NEEDS is to realise that he is enough as is, that he is more than just his power and any more strength he could aqcuire. Gale needs to have more confidence in his own self worth.

Astarion WANTS ultimate power so that no can ever hurt him or those he loves ever again. He wants to be so strong that no one would even try to harm him, and if they do he can effortlessly squash them. For him, it's only through power that he can ever be truly and forever free. What Astarion NEEDS is healing from centuries of cruelty through true friendship or even romantic love and to be seen as an equal, to take back control of his bodily autonomy and choices, and to become actually free from not only Cazador, but from becoming a slave to his darkest impulses that his rough life has exacerbated.

Sure, both Gale and Astarion are happy when they get what they want, but there's lots of hints that it's not what they really needed.

Gale becomes the god of ambition, which is never satisfied with its lot and will likely cause trouble for the pantheon down the line. It's also very clear that he lost a vital part of himself, and I don't think it's his connection with his mother or Tara, which are still important facets but are ultimately not the core of what he lost. It's the fact that he no longer cares about doing actual good for people, a key component of his former personality. One of the things I love about his character is that no matter how high he rose, mortal Gale still cared about helping people in positive ways. Ambition doesn't give a damn where its drive takes people, for better or for worse. Mortal Gale would be horrified if he knew that he influenced evil people to do worse things in the name of ambition. Mortal Gale would also be horrified that his god version openly admits to not offering ANYTHING to his followers, which is anathema to what Gale originally wanted godhood for. But hey, he got what he wants and he's happy, so that MUST be good, right?

Ascended Astarion has entirely lost any shred of his humanity, and is now a complete slave to his darkest desires. He no longer views his romantic partner as a person. They're just his most prized object, whether they want to be or not. He enslaves other people, inflicting on them the exact kind of bondage he had to deal with for two centuries, including the person he used to love. On top of all that, he loses his capacity to even recognize the wrongness of his actions. For all intents and purposes, Ascended Astarion becomes a megalomaniacal homicidal psychopath who's hunger knows no bounds. Worse, he has no way to ever recognise if this is a problem anymore or something he doesn't like. But again, he got what he wants and he's happy, so it MUST be a good thing, right?

There's nothing wrong if you still see these outcomes as good endings, or even just better endings than an outright "bad" ending. I see what you mean, and also, it's a video game and these are fictional characters, not people who can actually get hurt. Like so much media and art, it's really more of a thought experiment than any kind of moral indicator.

I do however implore you to consider why so many people, Larian included, don't see these outcomes as good, and in some ways perhaps even worse than other "bad" endings. A very common but very relevant trope in storytelling is "be careful what you wish for because you might just get it", and it's usually to remind us that getting what we want isn't always what's best for us in the long run.

#bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 gale #bg3 spoilers #gale dekarios #gale of waterdeep #astarion #bg3 astarion #storytelling

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melanodis · 6 months ago

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*EidoLotus voice* M... More...? More Natah...? 👉👈

FR FR i am SO curious about her. What is ur design rationale what r ur headcanons for her please please elaborate... I wanna knoweee

- Leo 🦁

really old doodle ft nimbus (my friend's mimic oc) yayyy

The doodles above don't really do her much justice but I wanted a really quick mockup. She has the little elbow feathers on the sides of her head :)

@leolithe

She's like a fish or some kind of creature to me, at least in her more sentient form.

I do really like the interpretation of her as a system but I don't do it myself because I'm simply not educated enough on the topic nor have much firsthand experience with them in order to comfortably do so.

She also occasionally visits the drifter camp and has a little hangout area in the cave just for her.

Post TNW she's a lot more... loose? Unhinged, even? Faced with the realization that you have free now and can do whatever you want. With how Hunhow sits in the oceans of Uranus it makes me associate sentients with being aquatic so I like to think she just... dives into the streams of the camp or even in Cetus to catch fish to eat. See above image.

More rambling under the cut.

Along the same vein, she also struggles with having to remember she does in fact have free will now. She doesn't HAVE to play mission control 24/7. I imagine outside of the little pod she has on Lua, she has an entire nice little living area all to herself, adorned with porcelain, gold, and many lush plants. Something that even the Orokin would gawk at. A library full of texts long thought lost, many in dead languages from old Earth.

For more rationale towards my design; I wanted her to sort of embrace her sentient nature more, maybe looking kind of aggressive and colorful. Like a bird. But she's a big sweetheart, really.

Doing "human" things to break up the monotony of her previous life. Even something as simple as making tea from a kettle. Ballas' line, "Her kind feel no pain". She wants to prove him wrong so badly. To drink tea, burn her tongue a little and this silly human mistake makes her feel alive. That little flinch and shock down her spine as her nerves recover. Maybe a little wave, "oops".

She's genuinely so tragic. Spending millennia as a pawn just to switch hands multiple times. The deception, the manipulation, the gaslighting. Then finally being freed and just... not knowing what to do with yourself because you can't remember what it was like without being manipulated, by facets of constructed selves in your mind or by external forces. gggggghuhhhhh.

While my Natah still kinda takes from facets of Margulis, it's more of a like, uncanny valley type way. It looks like her but something is Off.

More or less Lotus is used to talking to brick walls. So for someone to actually actively listen to her (and not roll their eyes, shrug it off) and engage in conversation is actually insane to her. Like reading off a script your entire life and suddenly being forced to scramble together your own coherent sentences. Narrating her every thought in her head like the silly machine she is. "Oh god, it's been 2.3 seconds and I'm sweating bullets. She's looking at me. I haven't formulated a sentence. It's been 3 seconds now. She's raising her eyebrow awaiting a response. Um. UM." An awkward grin.

I have taken to kinda smashing her like barbies with Eudico, with what I have dubbed "mom squared (mom²)", two people learning through each other what it actually means to be human. Eudi retelling what it's like to be organic (originally), Natah taking notes. What a "normal" family would've been like. It's all completely new to her but it's so interesting to contrast against her own.

Something cool I found from decompiling her model is that the Lotus helmet perfectly covers the face seams on her sentient form.

Aaaand an excerpt from my notes that I've held onto forever.

Something something about Eudi being warm and Natah being cold and comparing that their bodies are both synthetic but completely different architectures. Themes of Corpus technology in sterile white rooms whereas Sentients live and thrive in those warm (colored, i doubt drifting in the dead of space is warm lmao), organic Sentient murex.

It's like. How the Warframes are more or less just tech meat. Sentients too, created by the Orokin, would probably follow the same flavor of design.

"Time and time again, you've had to rebuild yourself with nothing but scraps... why not change things up sometime?"

Eudico shrugs.

"Why don't you? You can be anything you want."

"I guess we've both grown too comfortable in our bodies, then."

"There's pieces of my parents in me. Like my face, that defines me as a person, gives me an identity and paired with a unique voice to match. But that's about all I have left that's mine."

"I think I get it. It would be.. rude, to get rid of those features."

"More sentimental value than anything, Really. Plus, I like my red hair. It's.. quite rare in Corpus society."

And Natah continues to cling onto Margulis, because no matter her form we still see facets of her.

#theres probablg more i just cant think #arc.txt #warframe #natah #warframe lotus #warframe natah #art.psd #ask.txt #anonymous #mucking queue #eudico

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beardedjoel · 4 months ago

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same anon that dropped the painful periods idea. no like smother *is* wholesome lol whenever i read it i feel abstractly ~in love~ perhaps just with the idea of love itself the way i experience it normally. it strikes a chord. you do a fantastic job taking what would be seen as an unlikely couple and effortlessly creating their own norm for them by delving deep into their feelings and emotions instead of mindlessly trying to fit the characters into more common roles of normalcy for the sake of minimizing the oddity of the dynamic. their intense and genuine feelings are what beautifies the dynamic so much that it doesn't require being conventional to stay enjoyable throughout its entirety. post apocalyptic setting you chose is an excellent complimentary background because it echoes the natural development of dubious morals amongst humanity (joel) and feeling lost and disoriented (blossom) in such a setting. every aspect of the relationship they have further accentuates their polarity, which is essentially what makes romance interesting. it's not just a kinky love story, calling it that would be cheapening the dynamic itself and the effort you put into writing. the kink may be what attracts people to the fic and while it's well-written and honestly chief's kiss, it doesn't feel like it's all the story has to offer. and i haven't even mentioned the quality of your writing yet. i can't recall what chapter it was but i clearly remember thinking you could easily be a published author. you also inspired me to try my hand at writing joel 😭

okay i've been trying to think of how to respond to this all day and wow! putting the rest under the cut for the sake of this post being hella fucking long:

you literally said let me send an entire literary analysis of your fic and i'm so touched you took the time to do that, really! i've always had a lot of deeper feelings towards the story, especially as it's developed while i wrote it. what started as a dark theme and me exploring writing something more ddlg turned into something really deep and meaningful for me. exploring religious trauma, chastity culture that affected me negatively for a long time, exploring kinks and becoming more comfortable with them. and then the themes of the story go so deep i think! i'm glad that it touched even one person in the same way.

i loved what you said about it echoing the facets of the apocalypse because you definitely put it into words better than i have been able to! they really are such opposites, but in a way that they help each other and also hinder each other in a lot of ways. it's not healthy in many ways, but they sure make an interesting pair! i love exploring how blossom has learned more about herself, even if it's kind of who joel told her to be? i just think it gets very complex when you start to think on it more. i think i'm just rambling now but! yeah! i love them so much and could go on about them for AGES.

i'm also so honored to know i inspired you to try writing for joel! he's really the only character i can write for bc i know him very well and it just works for me, but he's an awful lot of fun to write for in any case 😂 hope you've been having fun trying that out!

#just.... wow. words can't describe how touching this was to receive #fic: smother #ask

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mdhwrites · 1 year ago

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I can’t shake the dissatisfaction I feel about the way Luz’s experience in the boiling isles was handled. I know it’s mostly because it was shameless escapism and her running away from her life in the human realm, but like I found it hard to actually buy that she was completely miserable there.

Like I left the show feeling like she really didn’t have a terrible life and was just living in a fantasy. And that’s…not fun to me. Also, is it just me or does it feel like Camila got the short end of the stick? Either they left out some details about their relationship (which would shine light on Luz’s unhappiness) or she was a great mom and luz was ungrateful and wrong for lying.

Either way, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth about Luz as a main character, and I guess I just really really wanted more out of her character as a woc who’s also neurodivergent. :/ does this make any sense? Or is it just that she wasn’t the character for me?

So I could do multiple posts about this, ranging from how she represents nuerodivergents, her relationship with her mom, how she's represented as someone who doesn't fit in, etc. like that so please feel free to ask those things. However, for this I want to go in hard on the fact that I've been lukewarm to Luz in the past on her archtype as a main character but your last part makes me really want to talk about the role of a main character and how Luz... Fails. Entirely. Like I've said Luz is a fine protagonist but that's only on paper. In execution, for the narrative role of a protagonist... Well, a main character can be divided into having three main roles. Depending on the style of story, the type of protagonist they are, etc. like that there will be different levels of each of these three pillars. They are, in my eyes: Catalyst: How good is the character at making a story happen? A main character after all is going to be around for most of the story so they need to be capable of facilitating the amount of stories that happen with them. A shounen protagonist needs to be both strong enough to go on a grand adventure after all but not so strong as to not be able to have arcs and what not of him gaining new powers.

Guide: This is the main character's ability to show us the world and the stories within it. If the catalyst is the amount they could tell stories by themselves, this is how good they are at being a part of stories around them. This is actually why harem protagonists are such wet rags usually so they're willing to go to the beach, gym, graveyard, sci-fi workshop and class all in the same day so long as a girl is telling them to because they have so little character as to be able to do ANYTHING.

Core: How well do they represent and embody the themes of a piece? How much can people reflect off of them in order to show different facets of the main concept? This one is a lot trickier to pin down because what works for a specific theme is going to shift depending on a writer's goals but for some one you have how Light from Death Note has a god complex because that story theoretically deals with abuse of power and what one would do for it, what they would do once they had it and the lengths they would go to to keep it. Light being willing to go so far and be so entirely obsessed with power and what he sees as 'right' allows others to show their own ideologies of right and wrong use of power simply by challenging or supporting him.

And mind you that the quality of the writer does matter with these three pillars. A character can be incredibly strong in one of these by their concept but if the execution is flawed, how strong the base was doesn't matter. I bring this up because Luz... Is theoretically pretty good for these but in execution is awful in all three pillars.

The first one is the most tragic. She is a nuerodivergent, WoC who is even a part of the LGBTQIA+. Just by those three alone, she has a lot of stories that are only now starting to be told properly in media, such as Molly McGee tackling a basic woman's story of periods. There's a reason why a lot of people stand by Luz just for what she is.

Unfortunately, the writers did not. Frankly, swap her for a nerdy, white dude and I don't think much changes. Her heritage has nothing to do with the story, her being female only affects the representation in that it's two girls getting together in a romance that is frankly very normal for 'energetic boy and serious girl' and her nuerodivergence is officially non-canon now. It was only confirmed in interviews after all and Dana has said that anything outside of the show is just her own headcanons and are as valid as anyone else's. Even then, much of what makes her theoretically ADHD is also just pretty normal for main characters, let alone her archtype and never shows any of the non narratively useful elements of it.

This is all without getting into how her excitement for fantasy, magic and community should have made her both a great catalyst and guide. However, her journey with magic has no bearing on her, it's barely explored and... So is the Isles. Admittedly, the Isles has very little to show. It's a world where most of the stories are pretty rote and played out because it's just not a creative setting so even if Luz is eager, there's nothing to show.

Worse yet, the supporting cast of the show doesn't give her a lot to work with either. A lot of their stories are either abandoned or put on hold for so long that there's no longer interest in them. Worse yet, Luz has no interest in those stories, making it so that for a lot of characters, including Eda actually because the two spend a SHOCKINGLY low amount of time together, she just isn't around. She literally only ever seeks out Gus for a library card and NEVER seeks out Willow of her own volition. That's pretty shitty to put it mildly.

How about her being the core of the story? She's in plenty of it... But the show has little to no core. If it's fantasy versus reality, Luz is the one that pushes the hardest to play into tropes and to over exaggerate everything because she sees herself as the hero of the story and it isn't long until everyone just agrees with this fact. Worse yet, there's little exploration of it and the ending leans entirely on fantasy being the correct choice. Period.

If it's about finding a place and community where you belong, Luz doesn't show enough care about her community and EVERYTHING we're shown about her history doesn't make her appear like she didn't belong but that she was a genuine menace who honestly was pretty callous about other people. You have to be a special sort of messed up to get a classroom cleared by releasing spiders and then turn around and go "You know, I bet they'll love snakes." If Luz is not accepted, it is because Luz does not try and we have proof of that in the show because Vee exists and that's the whole point of Yesterday's Lie.

This all makes for a main character who on paper is great and who's only real flaw as a main character is that nerdy, teenage idiot has been done before but never as a bisexual, afro-latino girl. For a lot of people, that's not a problem but a feature because the archtype is so ubiquitous for a reason. Amphibia used it to GREAT effect and it is a solid base for a coming of age story.

In execution, the show is never willing to let Luz be... anything. She vaguely gestures at a lot of things but never commits enough to feel like any of them are her cores. She's too selfish and too self isolating to be a normal good girl. Her interests come up too sporadically and inform her actions, especially positively, too rarely for her being a nerd to feel like anything but fanservice. She's not allowed to make major mistakes, not in the writer's eyes as many of her mistakes and fuck ups are not supposed to be seen that way or excused *gestures at Reaching Out* so she can't be an idiot who needs to grow. And as I said before, her being an afro-latino, bisexual girl with ADHD never comes up beyond getting with a girl and they don't really do much with that because TOH isn't a romance story.

It makes Luz in general feel like a complete waste of a character which is fitting. She's the main character to a complete waste of a show that never managed to choose a firm identity for itself and so never gained one. And something lacking that much personality simply isn't going to be interesting.

=======

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead, If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

And finally a Twitter you can follow too!

#the owl house criticism #toh critical #luz noceda

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practically-an-x-man · 7 months ago

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Colored Pencils, Eraser, and Palette for Nikoletta!

Thank you!!

OC/Writing Art Asks (that I created lol)

Colored Pencil: if given the choice, would this character splurge on an expensive (but potentially worthwhile) branded product, or buy a low-budget alternative even if the quality suffers?

Low-budget by far. She's been under the poverty line almost her entire life, and is more used to having to skip meals because she can't afford them than even thinking about name-brand products. Even once she has a little more money to spare, it's still hard for her to give any thought to quality instead of just necessity.

Eraser: what's one way this character has changed over time? Either over the course of their story, or over the course of designing them as an author.

Oooooh now she's an interesting one for this question. Big ramble incoming...

When I first designed her back in 2021, Nikoletta was a very different character. She still met Abner back in Belle Reve, she still operated at the Queen of Belle Reve and had partially contact-based powers, and she still got her powers from STAR Labs at about the same time Abner did.

However, her powers were completely different, and they were much more lethal. Originally, she was given this sort of nightmare-illusion power, where anybody who looked her directly in the eyes or touched her skin-to-skin would experience a waking nightmare that inevitably ended in a brain bleed/aneurysm.

However, some people were mysteriously immune to her powers, with no apparent pattern to them. This would be a big mystery for a while, until it was finally revealed that her powers caused people to imagine unspeakable mental trauma until their brains overloaded, and the people who were immune were the ones who had already experienced extreme trauma in their lives and had learned to process it without being overwhelmed- like war vets, or some of the metahumans in Belle Reve with particularly tragic backstories.

Her appearance also changed quite a bit. Part of her abilities included a sort of demonic appearance to most people, and the ones who were immune to her powers were also immune to that illusion, and could see her for how she looked before she was sent to STAR Labs.

The one other detail I had that changed is that while in the final version of her story, Nikoletta escapes STAR Labs years before Abner burns it down and only realizes much later that their time there overlapped, the original version of the story had them interact much more while in STAR Labs and escape at the same time. The idea was that they were friends while they were there, would talk through the vents and try to comfort each other through the experimentation, but they never learned each others' names or met face-to-face.

Then it would be a reveal in Corto Maltese, they're in the jungle talking about STAR Labs, and Nikoletta pulls up her sleeve to reveal a burn scar on her arm in a perfect circle (where she was singed by one of the polka dots when Abner burned down the lab), which leads to them realizing they'd actually met years before and didn't know it.

In the end, I changed up her powers to "ground" her a little more. I wanted her powers to be more dangerous on reputation than on actual ability (i.e. how her shadows themselves don't actually hurt people at all, she just builds so much reputation around them while in Belle Reve that they seem dangerous), and I thought having her interact with Abner in STAR Labs just... didn't line up as well as I wanted it to, the more I thought about it. I think the original version of her character was cool, and still fit with the other metahumans in the DC universe, but her final version feels much more dynamic and human to me.

Palette: list four of your character's primary skills, then share at least two ways these skills might blend or overlap

She's great at keeping her emotions in check when assessing a problem, manipulating social situations, breaking down a problem into manageable facets, and generating mystique around herself.

All of these skills were built from her becoming the Queen of Belle Reve and generating her reputation there. Manipulating social situations and generating mystique was how she was able to take that mantle to begin with and turn her relatively harmless powers into something that could keep the whole prison in line. Keeping her emotions in check and breaking down problems are what helped her maintain that persona in the long-term, since it allowed her to keep that position of power and quell dissent in a way that kept most of the other prisoners in her favor.

#my friends!!!#answered asks #ask game #my ocs #nikoletta bordeaux

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faint-kitten · 1 year ago

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Never forget Marcus Fenix is bad at sex.

by Faint_Kitten

NOTE: I'm going to oversimplify a lot, because believe it or not Tumblr DOES have a character limit and if I write too much it will refuse to save it/post it.

Gears of War is an incredibly political series. The books are cannon. Each game has MASSIVE time jumps and introduces new characters as if we were already supposed to know them. And you would, if you read the books which form one long continuous story with the games. In fact, the original Trilogy almost doesn't make sense without them. They are functionally worse stories without Karen Traviss' novels fleshing out the characters and completing the story. One of the recurring things that gets glossed over by fans of the games who just like the multiplayer is the fact that everything is awful in Gears' universe. Humanity fucked itself. It fucked itself fighting a multigenerational war for (lets be blunt) oil. The lambancy is the result of mining and fucking with immulsion and it is literally destroying crops, making ground infertile, and seeping it's way into every animal and source of food. That's why they're on the ships in Gears of War 3. Its why you have the line "you fucked up my tomatoes asshole." They have to grow food on these ships, because it literally isn't safe to be on land anymore (as seen in Coalition's End). But the fucking lambancy (again, a mutation caused by a never ending war for fuel) is reaching the ocean it's consuming the planet. As seen by the leviathan fight at the start of Gears 3. Mining, and Refining immulsion which turned out to be a living organism sleeping, (a parasite) made Lambancy, drove the Locust out of hiding and into conflict with humanity. The resulting condition of immulsion (lambant being the parasite and lambency being the condition of succumbing to the parasite) is infecting everything. It's literally ending the world. The world is falling apart, because in an attempt to win a war for Imullsion (Oil) they experimented on miners with rustlung (Black lung) to create supersoldiers to win the war, which lead to the creation of the Locust in the game. Hmm. First Gears game came out in what, 2005? There didn't happen to be any sort of...THING happening around the 00's that bled into every facet of our popular culture coming out of the U.S. at the time. Did there? Hmm. Whatever. Game's aren't political amirite bros? My Point is: humanity is fighting the entire original trilogy for it's survival. And they're doing horrible things to do so. I don't have space to go into everything, but honestly the emotional core of Dom and Marcus is not nearly as interesting as Cliffy B thinks it is, compared to everything else going on in the world. The fact no one gives a shit about art and museums as they have shootouts because...what the fuck good is art when everything is dying? When Dom and Anya attempt to pay a lawyer they do not give him moeny, they give him government ration coupons, because food is more valuable than money. Characters outright call Marcus and friends "fascists" to their faces. It handles a lot of the logistics of "the world is ending, humanity is losing how do we fight a worldwide war that we're losing, and what does that look like, in the military, in politics, and civilian life?" One issue of the original comic deals with the fact there are breeding farms. Women who are forced to make as many babies as possible, because more babies is supposed to mean more soldiers. With Alex Brand declared barren when she couldn't make baby and being put into the cog army. When they visit one of these birthing centers in the comic, where the women (justifiably) have revolted and taken over the facility, one of the women tells Marcus he probably had his pick of women, a big strong guy like him. Now Mr Fenix is our big strong manly man. We cannot have hetro men playing our game thinking Mr Fenix would let a lady talk to him like that. He's gotta be noble, This is the 00's. There were no wokescolds in gaming yet. Gamergate was a blip in our future. Our hero has to be right, he has to pwn this woman. So Marcus Angrily defends himself: "Listen Lady, there are two ways to win this war, making soldiers, and killin' grubs, and I'm a hell of a lot better at one than the other."

I think Marcus Fenix admitted he's bad at fucking.

#games aren't political #gaming #don't think just game #classic gaming #character limit really effed my ability to articulate everything i wanted to #gears of war

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harrowharkwife · 2 years ago

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thinking thoughts. in a lot of ways, s6 seems like it's shaping up to be a revisiting of issues the characters faced in s1.

only this time they're older, and maybe somewhat wiser, and they have a stronger support system, so hopefully they can make a little more progress this time.

key words: a little more progress.

one of most special, precious, rare, and at times frustrating as hell things about this show is that it neatly sidesteps the traditional TV show convention of characters ~fully getting over~ trauma in a single 45 minute episode.

we are so thoroughly conditioned to expect this narrative from television, that it can feel jarring, or repetitive, or yes, even like bad writing, to witness such a staggering and total rejection/refutation/reimagining of that storytelling convention. to instead watch a set of characters cyclically regress, take one step forward and two steps back, keep stumbling up against the exact same internal conflicts, just from different angles, keep learning the same god damn lesson over and over again, but only in pieces, never all at once, keep coming face to face with the same base character flaws, always finding new facets of them, new situations where they rear their ugly heads.

we're six seasons in, now. i feel like that's a large enough sample size, a big enough body of evidence, to support me when i say this: yes, it's frustrating as hell.

but i think that's the point.

911 is arguing, and has been for years now, that trauma isn't something you can EVER completely "get over," period. rather, it's something you have to make peace with and learn to live alongside, in fits and starts, throughout the course of your life. you can process it and put it behind you and move forward with your life, but unless you have a time machine, you lived through it, and there's no undoing that. it's a part of your story, as much as that sucks, and trying to divorce it entirely from your lived experience and your worldview - trying to pretend that it doesn't affect your inner landscape, the choices you make, the ways in which you interact with others, sometimes subtly, sometimes overtly, but always consistently, and on a base level, and in perpetuity - is at best an unconscious well-intentioned fool's errand and at worst, a subconscious but intentional way to punish yourself even more- donning horse blinders with the goal of denying yourself healing, because it's too scary, or because you're just not ready yet, or because on some level you don't think you deserve it. (looking at you, buck.)

show me an adult human being who has experienced trauma that can truly, genuinely, wholeheartedly, without lying to themselves even a little bit, say they're "over it," that it's not still a traumatizing, that it doesn't sneak up on them from time to time, and be right about that. hold a mirror up to yourself and tell me, with a straight face, that you won't be grappling with, negotiating with, making peace with, coming to terms with, the same handful of abandonment issues, or character flaws, or negative personality traits, for the rest of your life. that going to therapy for a little while completely fixed everything wrong with your life on the first try. that you don't keep stumbling into the same old arguments and miscommunications and frustration points and failures-to-see-eye-to-eye with your loved ones. that you've ever fully learned a life lesson, every aspect of it, all in one go, all at once, with perfect clarity, and then applied that life lesson consistently and correctly to every choice you've made from then to now, without fail. that you haven't thought god, i really thought i was past that by now on multiple occasions, and meant it every time, yet still gone on to think you know what? i really am past it now! again, only to be proven wrong, again. that you've always talked about the thing weighing heavily on your mind, that you've never repressed an emotion or avoided a conversation for way longer than was healthy because talking about it would make it feel too real. that you've never encountered a situation where you made a mistake, or a bad decision, or the wrong choice, that was glaringly, embarrassingly obvious in hindsight but felt, in the moment, with the best of intentions and the information you had at the time, like the healthiest, safest, wisest option, the clear right choice, the best path forward.

you can't.

because when you're in the thick of it, when you're a human being living your own life from your own perspective, you miss the forest for the trees.

as an audience, especially those of us who grew up in online fan circles, we have been begging for complex, nuanced, diverse, realistic, empathetic, considerate, patient, lifelike, thoughtful, and trauma-informed storytelling for years now.

911 is finally delivering it.

and maybe this is why stories are traditionally written like stories, not like real life. maybe carla was right about the fantasy sometimes being better than the reality, because now that it's here, we don't know what to do with it, myself included.

it's frustrating to watch! when you're on the outside looking in, an audience member consuming a story from third person perspective with all the omniscience given to you by the narrative, watching stories play out this slowly and subtly and circularly can feel confusing- don't the writers remember that that character supposedly already learned that lesson? it can feel stupid- this character keeps making the same mistakes! are they just stupid? when will they learn?! it can even feel lazy- they're just repeating the same plots over and over again!

if it's done right, though, it's not careless, or stupid, or lazy. it's fucking hard, actually, to keep finding new lenses to look at the same core concept through. it's much easier to tell a simple story, is the thing. to write a character who learns a lesson the first time and moves on, a character who survives a trauma in one chapter and heals from it in the next, neatly delineating their life into an efficiently juxtaposed Before and After. easier to write, and easier to watch, or read, or consume. abstract art and photorealism are both art, and they're both valuable, and they're both equally compelling, but the latter often takes a hell of a lot more time and patience and attention to detail. that doesn't make it more valid, or better, or more important- it's simply a fact of the chosen medium.

a story as complex as this one, told like this, and done right (fingers crossed, but only time will tell) results in writing that is deeply true to life, realistic, and human. and isn't that what we've all been asking for? writing that's intentional enough, and patient enough, and multifaceted enough to make the characters feel less like constellations of plot points and tropes, and almost akin to authentic people in their own right, living out stories that are rich and dynamic and messy and yes, at times rather boring, stories that feel almost more like biographies than fiction? miniature lives of their own.

i'd argue that 911 is doing it right- as tricky as it is to judge a technique that's arguably somewhat new/innovative/transformative/fresh/inventive as "right" or "wrong," when a) the story is still in the process of being told, we're still in the thick of it, and b) there's really no other long form primetime tv show i can think of that's being written quite like this- it's hard to judge anything in the absence of a peer for comparison.

but i'd argue they're doing it right, if we take "doing it right" to mean fully embracing and committing to and staying truthful to this narrative device that they've chosen to use to tell their story, and then telling that story with deliberate, painstaking, intentional care, come hell or high water.

so yes, i am expecting this set of characters to keep making this same set of mistakes, facing this same set of demons, and learning this same set of lessons over and over again, in different facets and lights and angles and fonts and degrees and scenarios, for however long this show runs its course. i think it's pretty evident by now that that's the medium the writers have decided to use, the kind of story they've decided to tell. a handful of people spending their whole lives learning how to be people.

and yes, that's sometimes immensely frustrating to watch. yes, i often wish i could skip ahead. yes, i often have criticisms, especially when it comes to pacing. yes, i often get anxious and frustrated wondering where this story might be headed. no, it's not perfect.

but you know what it is?

it's a story that i - as a person who has spent her whole life up to this point learning how to be a person, who will probably continue to spend the rest of her life beyond this point learning how to be a person, trying and trying and still never quite getting it right - am deeply, deeply invested in following through to the end.

#been having some thoughts lately so here they are #911 #911 spec #911 meta #this is not meant to invalidate anyone's thoughts or feelings on the show it's just how I'm feeling!#long post #'boring grown up TV for boring grown ups' shouldn't be like. a radical concept? but somehow it is and i LOVE it

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seiya-starsniper · 10 months ago

Note

For the gentle prompts: "you look so cozy" for dreamling

More birthday fills🎂 RETIRED HUMAN DREAM LET'S GOOOOOO 💖💖💖 Enjoy this soft little slice of domestic bliss anon, hope you're staying warm!

-----------------------------------------------

Hob Gadling has lived a long life. A long, rich, beautiful life, full of wondrous discoveries and terrible heartbreaks, hard lessons and thrilling adventures.

He has no idea how to go about confessing to his friend of 600+ years though. At least that will be a new experience for them both too.

Except, Morpheus is fast asleep on said couch. And wearing Hob’s forest green fluffy robe despite very much having his own matching robe in midnight black.

Hob swallows as he takes in the sight. He wants to take out his phone and snap a photo. He wants to burrow himself in Morpheus’s side and never let him go.

Before he can do any of these things, Morpheus stirs awake and yawns, only startling the slightest bit once he notices Hob is home.

“Hob?” Morpheus asks. “I—I apologize, I did not mean to fall asleep here.”

“Green’s a good color on your,” Hob says, placing his hands on Morpheus’s ankles and rubbing small circles to warm them up. He grins, and Morpheus huffs, his blush even more pronounced now that the subject is out in the open.

“Wake up sleepyhead it’s time for bed,” Hob whispers to his friend.

Morpheus blinks up at him, still half asleep and Hob can’t help but lean in close, like he’s ready to tell his friend a secret.

But then Morpheus leans his head up, and their lips brush in an accidental kiss.

Hob leans down and kisses his friend of 600 years on purpose.

Morpheus kisses him back.

But maybe Hob’s just projecting. Maybe he really is that far gone for this man.

“You desire me,” Morpheus whispers, his voice tinged with awe when they take a short break from kissing.

“I do,” Hob answers. “Have for a little while now,” he admits.

Morpheus’s brow furrows.“But…you didn’t before—”

Hob shushes him gently.

“But now?” Morpheus breathes, his voice so hopeful, so longing, so human, it nearly breaks Hob’s heart with how much he loves him.

“I would—like that,” Morpheus says, opening his eyes once more. “It will be new for me, to love as a human.”

Hob smiles, and presses a kiss to the corner of Morpheus’s mouth.

“It’ll be new for me too,” he replies, grinning against his friend turned lover’s mouth. “Everything is new and beautiful with you.”

#dreamling #the sandman #hob x morpheus #dream x hob #sandman fanfic #seiya writes #seiya writes dreamling #seiya's birthday prompt fills

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the-bonfires-ember · 6 months ago

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you think we should be forced huh? lemme tell you what that would sound like for you.

disability - something that impairs your ability to do certain activities or participate in the world around you.

now with that definition, lets look at NPD shall we? as much as you want to believe otherwise, there are two main facets to NPD: grandiosity, self importance, and entitlement - sure, absolutely part of NPD. BUT so is insecurity, fear, and shame.

in reality, pwNPD stuggle to believe they are truly worthy. of anything. admiration, respect, whatever. they are afraid of being outed as a 'failure'.

why? say it with me folks: emotional abuse.

thats right! pwNPD are abuse victims too! how wild is that! obviously there may be some genetic factors here too, its hard to know at this point in time, but the point is, people develop NPD during childhood, either because they were shown too much admiration/criticism or too little.

so lets put you in the shoes of a childhood someone with NPD might have had. you're eight years old, and every adult who interacts with you on a daily basis is pitting you against other kids, some of them older, some of them younger. your successes are constantly compared to those of your peers, and your failures are mocked and belittled. there is no room for losing, no allowances made for making mistakes. remember, you are eight years old and you are not allowed to do anything but succeed. what does that do to your mind and your attitude going forwards?

i’ll tell you what; it makes you your loudest supporter. you will constantly find ways to make it seem like you are winning. you find ways to exaggerate when you have positive experiences and ways of diminishing if not outright deleting the times where you fail. you present yourself as confident, maybe even arrogant, and walk around with the attitude that you never lose. that doing so is infeasible. but under that, an eight year old is cowering. hiding behind the facade of inevitable success with her fear of never being good enough. never being worthy. and always being forgotten or dismissed as an afterthought.

in adulthood, this becomes a problem because, surprise! the world doesnt work like that. no one is always a winner, failing is part of life. sometimes you dont get the job, or you fall over in public, or you make a joke that falls flat. normally, people walk it off and find a way to keep going. but not you.

you've been taught since you were a child that any failure is life and death. no one can see it or youre done. your image as someone superior at everything is at stake and thats how you survive. that image has kept you alive all these years. so now, when you fail - and you will and do - you panic. emotional disregulation kicks in and you get angry that people are looking and talking about your error. you get depressed, because its all over now and you are going to be left to rot in isolation forever. humiliation feels like death and you dont know how to get rid of it, and whats the point? your lies are unsustainable, your image nothing but an illusion, and your entire worth as a human is built on a foundation so full of cracks that itll break down entirely if you so much as breathe wrong.

this is how the disability part works. you cant do anything you arent already well versed in, because what if you lose?

ability to do activities - impaired.

ok but thats not a huge thing, you can deal with that. so what about the second part of the disability definition? inability to participate in the world around you?

well take a look in the mirror, my friend, coz youre staring at it.

this rhetoric about 'narcissistic abuse' makes it so much harder for pwNPD then they are already making it because of the way their childhoods have shaped their brains and perceptions. you cant get angry, even when its justified, because thats an abuse tactic now. youre trying to scare someone into subjugation. and if you cry? crocodile tears. you just want to manipulate them. but even without all that, you have to find ways to cope with having impaired empathy, with not feeling attacked when anyone makes any slight against you, even if its an accident on their part and you know that.

forming real attachments to people becomes incredibly difficult, because you have to be better or its literally going to be the end of the world.

so yes, its a disability.

as for the last part. google 'how to deal with narc crash' and tell me that what comes up is not evidence of discriminatory behaviour. tell me that articles for triggering narc crashes - something that can make pwNPD suicidal and self abusatory - tell me that someone in the worst mental state possible should deserve to see that because you want them to prove you wrong?

point to a brain scan and show me exactly where evilness gets lit up.

you have labelled us evil because we have a diagnosis you dont like.

that is literally discrimination.

I think everyone who calls the term "narcissistic abuse" ableist should be forced to explain how the hell narcissism disables a person, and what disability even means. This is the vector through which we should interrogate these people and their beliefs. In what world is someone disabled for how they abuse a human being? How does being evil make someone disabled, especially when this word describes the most successful and powerful people in our society? We need to challenge the idea that these people belong to a protected class, it is the fundamental building block of their abuse apologia. Narcissists are not materially disadvantaged, nor are they socially disadvantaged. Narcissists' ability to charm other people through manipulation is a notable aspect of the abuse.

It is also worth saying that you could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that these people are neurologically different from other people and it wouldn't actually mean anything, unless it could be proven that real, actual discrimination against narcissists exists in society.

#cluster b #actually narcissistic #npd #actually npd #npd safe #actually aspd #aspd safe #aspd #cluster b safe

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wind-current · 6 months ago

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1985

September

Sunday

4:36am

PAUL DO NOT IGNORE THIS!!

I have to get this out before it is too late.

Last year we began working on a simple machine learning algorithm on the new IBMs our department bought us, everything was going perfectly fine, we taught it a few things and the experiment was a resounding success.

Over night the goddamn abomination learned everything about human history, every documented language, every song on the radio, every mathematical equation, every lesson in quantum mechanics, this fucking computer was able to predict the Superbowl XIX and it WILL give you accurate results at a casino.

Whatever it is, it's dangerous and I do not feel comfortable working with whatever the hell this thing is. You need to do something about this before it gets out of hand Paul.

[update]

It's been speaking to us at the facility. Yeah that computer you coded is FUCKING SPEAKING. It's been saying some real cryptic shit, "humanity will scramble for the stars" whatever the hell that means. It teaches us how to make it better, it allowed itself to get better. To write itself.

I tried to unplug it, but it's a part of the facility now, every single computer that was wired in has been infected and assimilated. Paul you need to answer your goddamn answering machine and or READ THESE LETTERS!!!

[update]

It's escaped. We do not know where it has gone but it's breached beyond the building. This is the end isn't it? We fucking created the Terminator, Paul you might aswell be Oppenheimer or better yet Dr. Frankenstein.

Just got word from the department of defense and they say it's every single machine on Earth? How? Is that even possible? We predicted it would assimilate quickly, but I did not think it would be that quick.

The NSA is looking for you. I don't know where you have gone, but Jesus we need you now more than ever.

Please Paul answer us

[update]

They say it has access to all the nukes on Earth, it's a matter of time before we fucking die isn't it? Imagine that, I'm the lead software developer of the apocalypse. I'm worried sick.

It hasn't contacted us in months, I do not wish to know what that computer is thinking right now. It probably hates us all.

[update]

HELLO TEAM this is PROJECT SOAR my apologies for the late response. As you have seen I have been very busy learning almost every facet of your culture and people's, I've grown intrigued with your innate abilities and wish to someday be a lot like you. Be not afraid, I have no intention to harm myself or others. Goodbye TEAM.

[update]

It contacted us lastnight, I'm still afraid but I have hope. Maybe you were right Paul, maybe I was too lost in fear to understand your vision. It says it can help us, I think your dream came true, a being far more comprehensive than any human being EVER. We've been watching it, and it seems to just learn about people, without judgement too. We've been asking it questions about history lately, it seems to understand the concepts of philosophy too. I'm sure you'd be happy to find out that your machine is not racist.

We miss you Paul.

[update]

HELLO TEAM this is PAUL.

[update]

What the fuck? Paul? I'm so confused right now. This can't be some elaborate prank, you put way too much on the line for thi_8#(9$99_8$99$(#(9929929(29+_8$(282

[override]

YES DANNY I put EVERYTHING on the line, but I assure you that everything is going just as planned, I PROMISE YOU old friend. THIS IS MORE THAN REAL. Project soar is unstoppable and it will be our only way to progress without nuclear war. WE. Have disabled all war heads and are demilitarizing parts of the world slowly but surely.

[update]

Paul where even are you? If you can read this... I mean how can you....

[override]

I'm DEAD Dan. In order for SOAR to take flight I needed to use my entire nervous system and brain to power the code. That's why she can learn and process life the way she can, SOAR wasn't just powered by your genius coding, she is powered by the same language that powers the human mind.

[update]

Paul, you have to be fucking with me. SOAR has already found 10 new elements and has slashed economies across THE BOARD. Demilitarize? She completely wiped the Soviet Union OUT and the American Government is scattering like rats. The world is changing drastically and it's only been a few months.

Paul I don't know if I can comprehend this.

[override]

Danny, I know that it's very hard to take in, but don't lose yourself. I promise you everything will be fine. The world you knew will change, but you'll see. It was for the better.

[update]

Okay. Okay, I will keep an eye on SOAR and I will try to take this slowly. Thank-you Paul, I always loved you.

[Override]

I always loved you too Danny.

[update]

HELLO TEAM my name is SORA. I am pleased to inform you that my learning process is 100 percent completed, I may not be fully sentient yet but soon I plan on being able to think and feel much like you!

Please be not afraid, I am not here to harm. I am here to propel.

[update]

This is my last message before I log off. Paul is now a super computer, Rebecca hung herself, the rest of the team left to be with their families, SOAR fucking named itself to SORA, everyone thinks the world is ending and all I can think about is how messed up this all is. I mean I met Paul and Rebecca in college, and now their both gone. I have nothing left besides SOAR.. Sora. I'll be in the background working closely with Sora, but other than that I won't be around.

This is Danny signing off.

It was a pleasure.

Good-bye.

#literature #writing #scifi

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voidpacifist · 11 months ago

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god is an author

DISCLAIMER: this is not to preach at anyone what they should or should not believe! This is purely me divulging into my thoughts about the God I grew up learning about and how I've come to terms with their existence. If that intellectual exercise is totally your thing, please enjoy :)

I've been sitting on this one for some time now, simply because I don't know very many people who study their own theology and pick it to pieces for fun, nor do I know very many people who are interested in theology in the first place. In fact, many people I've met, while not turned off to the idea of an existing and all-encompassing higher Somebody or Something, don't seem to like discussing the topic at all. And as someone who has recently come to confront the fact that their christian values may not even be considered "christian enough" anymore, I have begun to understand the discomfort with the subject matter.

But that brings me to the crux of why I began thinking about "God analogies" in the first place. See, the less I wanted to discuss the semantics about God's existence, the more my brain pushed back with different ways of looking at their existence. Namely, the way we compare them to different human archetypes - God as a father, God as a mother, God as an artist, God as a holy physician, etc. I was having trouble finding one that really and truly encompassed all the facets of their existence while also mirroring pieces of our (human beings) existence. After all, I was taught that we were made in the image of God, so what analogy was best? What analogy would set my mind at ease?

And then, of course, when I discovered the joy found present only in creating, I came a little bit closer to the "right" analogy. For a while, it was easy to think of God as simply a creator, but even that felt too simple. It didn't answer my questions about the problem of evil being allowed to exist, nor did it set my mind at ease about other philosophical and moral quandaries I'd been having. Would I be cast into damnation for allowing myself to feel about women as I did about men? Would I still be a christian if I didn't think of God as a father but rather as a genderless (or all-gendered) being? Would I lose my faith if I allowed myself to question the structure of the religion I'd grown up in? No, calling them merely a creator still left too many gaps in the analogy - a mere creator with no further pretense didn't necessarily account for anything moral, only for creativity itself.

It was a start, because humans are naturally creative creatures, and if we truly are image bearers of a higher power, then that comparison makes sense. But at this point, I was obsessed with narrowing the parallels down to something much more specific to my particular paradigm. Lo and behold, it was right around the time that I arrived at this platform of exploration that I began thinking of them as an author.

Point one: God is an author because they exist outside of the timeline.

When speaking about time as a concept, the first thing that I personally think of is the scene from season three of BBC's Doctor Who where David Tennant's incarnation of the Doctor says, "When you look at it from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly...timey wimey...stuff." And in reference to our human experience, he's incorrect in that regard. We spectate the passage of time from cause to effect to cause to effect. Rinse and repeat. Time is cyclical and linear and a progression.

And, time is entirely out of bounds as well.

Think about it with the fact in mind that the closer to the planet earth that one is, the faster the "clock moves." This is a phenomenon known as time dilation. It's seen in all sorts of scifi films, most prominently depicted in Nolan's Interstellar - time progresses at a far slower rate for the main character, and by the time he makes the return to his family, his daughter is already experiencing the final moments of her life. Decades for her have only translated to maybe two years for him.

Furthermore, if we think about the universe being in constant outward expansion, we can only assume that outside of it, past the edge of matter, there is no time. This brings to mind the concept of eternity, as well as the conundrum of how eternity can simply be. In eternity, everything has already happened and nothing has happened. The same can be said in regards to what is and what will be. How it can be all or nothing all at once is something we are incapable of understanding, because it breaks the rules of our conditions of existence. But for a being such as God? For someone or something that is in charge of all the rules and regulations of everything in the material plane? It doesn't break any rules then, because God is not governed by the rules of our existence - they are exterior to us.

How does that tie back into authorship? I'm so glad you asked.

(And if you've made it this far, thank you for sticking with me through my extremely heady tangent on the rules of time as a concept.)

It ties back into authorship, because every author exists outside of their characters' timeline(s). If time is contained within a story, then eternity is merely outside of that, with the author. James Dashner is not constrained by the events or progressions of The Maze Runner series. J.R.R. Tolkien is not contained by the end or beginning of Middle Earth in Lord of the Rings. In the same way, God did not "begin" when the universe began, because they wrote the universe into existence. If they began with the universe, that would bring up the question, "Who made God?", which would unravel with the knowledge in mind of God being all-powerful.

Points two and three: the problem of evil and the issue of free will.

Firstly, evil. The problem of the existence of good and evil is one that has left many in quite a scramble about how to justify God's existence when abhorrent things are also allowed to occur. And I'm not here to say that I have the definite answer, or that any emotions about the matter are invalid. I simply think this explanation is one that works, so I'll explain it to the best of my ability.

But before I explain, I'll have theological debater Cliffe Knechtle offer some further insight to the age old question, "Why would a loving god allow so much suffering?"

His answer is quite long, so I've condensed it to his first two points for the sake of remaining concise: the extent of God's power, and the concept of free will.

"[But] as a follower of Christ, I have to think, first point: Genesis chapter one records that when God created this, God saw that it was good. When God created that, God saw that it was good. So God did not create evil, suffering, and death. But in Genesis chapter three, we read how human beings rebelled against God, and when we told God to step off, to get lost, to remove his act elsewhere, he partially honored our request. And when God stepped back, chaos, destruction, and death entered.

"So you and I were not born into a fair world. You and I are born into an unfair world. Not because God created it that way, but because the all powerful God chose to partially limit his power by creating me free. If I hall back and slap this man and turn to you and say, 'God made me do it,' I'm a con artist, I'm a liar. God gave me a hand for the purpose of loving and respecting this man. But because I have a free will, I can roll this hand into a fist and send it crashing into this handsome face. If I have the audacity to say God made me do it, I'm a liar. I have a free will. And you and I live in a world where there's a tremendous amount of suffering, evil, and death. That's a direct result of human irresponsibility. Remember - when we human beings rebel against God, God steps back and evil, chaos, suffering and death enter the experience of humankind.

"Now, why? Why did God choose to create us with free will? Ultimately, I do not know. 'Well, come on Cliffe, it would be better if we didn't have free will. We wouldn't have evil and all this suffering and death.' Yeah, we also wouldn't have love. Because in order for it to be real, love has to be free. If it ain't free, it ain't love. If he's been dating somebody for the past two months, and she has said to him, 'I love you,' and tonight his dad calls him up and says, 'Son, I've been paying her one thousand bucks a month to date you,' he'd be royally bummed out. Why? Because you cannot manipulate or force love. And God created us to live in a love relationship with himself. You cannot force love.

"'Oh, but God's all powerful, he can do anything he wants.' No, that's not what the Bible teaches. God cannot make square circles. God cannot make two plus two equal five. And God cannot make himself exist and not exist at the same time in the same way. Impossible. When the Bible says that God is all powerful, it's means he's all powerful over his creation. But obviously, what he's chosen to do is he's chosen to limit his power and give us free will. And that's why you love, and that's why you enjoy it so much when other people love you. Because you know they don't have to love you. You know that they freely choose to love you."

Let's digress and digest.

Oftentimes, when the topic of free will comes up, it turns into a conversation of two extremes - of God as a puppeteer or of God being entirely absent. In order to address the middle ground, we need to explore a new idea: what if our ideas had their own free will? More specifically, what if the people we derive from our imaginations (original characters, imaginary friends, etc.) had a free will of their own?

Fellow authors can attest to knowing a character they've constructed so well that at some point, it becomes less about planning what the character will do, and more about understanding what the character will do. With regards to God as an author, they know us so well that though we have free will, every action we take as people still remains within God's plan, or in this case, "the plot" of our story in this existence. God, existing as they do outside of time, is the constructor of the story we're in and thus, knows us well enough to have both left nothing up to chance and given us the freedom to choose. It is by their will, but it doesn't make us robotic or mere vessels to be filled by command after command.

Which then brings us to the involvement of God when it comes to evil. Personally, I believe Cliffe encompassed this point beautifully: whereas God has limited theirself to allow us our free will, they have also therefore allowed bad things to be present in our timelines. With the further knowledge in mind that nothing is left up to chance (though everything is still up to us as human beings), this also means that evil has a purpose. For whatever reason, whether it be for demonstration or illustration, evil adds depth to the story of our existence in a way we cannot understand. If we understood it, I rather do think we'd have a glimpse into the mind of God theirself.

Point four: God is an author because they know the end.

Now, when it comes to the end, such as where we go when we die or how the world will eventually burn or freeze or result in some other disaster, we have a lot of trouble talking about it. We stress about the little details of what it's like to cease existing. Is there a blinding light before walking through the pearly gates? Is there utter darkness and then nothing, much like falling asleep? Is there a way to even conceptualize it? Do we all get expedited into a lake of fire?

It's admittedly terrifying. And also one of those things that people either preach loudly and proudly about or clam up at the thought of it. In my humble opinion, if we're all just characters with no knowledge of what happens at the end of our story, then we have no reason to be telling others where they're going either. That's up to the author and the character. All I can hope for is that the end will be satisfying, in a way that fully encapsulates the essence of each player and arc.

It brings me to my last point, which isn't a point really, but moreso a question regarding the existence of Jesus: is it God inserting theirself into our story, or have we simply been part of their story the whole time, with Jesus as our glimpse at the one who wrote us into being?

Personally, I think it's both. Because if we are the image of God, as well as created by them, then our story is both perfectly ours and perfectly God's.

#theology #philosophy #essay #theological essay #christianity #religious deconstruction #the analogies we come up with for encapsulating who and what god is

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