#this is just a small part of a bigger analysis I've been working on

[cheeekycharchar]

Aziraphale has always piqued Crowley's curiosity. He fascinates him. He surprises him. He keeps him guessing.

Aziraphale to Crowley is just one big unanswered question and Crowley spends an eternity trying to figure him out. So he keeps asking him questions.. tempting him with choices to understand him better.

But it turns out that Crowley doesn't just love trying to figure out the puzzle that is Aziraphale..

At least not until he's finally given an answer to the one big question he never realized he was asking the entire time..

Do I love this Angel?

And yes. Yes he does.

…excuse me. I broke my own heart again..

[sonicjustbecause]

Humans are hard to include in worlds filled by anthros (Sonic aestetic analysis)

Aestetic... a word I like.

This kinda work. Both of them have about same cartoonish proportions, similar head size, similar hands and feet size. The human girl has a thicker body and is bigger, but humans are tricky to include in a world with anthros.

The fact is, since we are humans, the specie is particularly familiar with us. What we are is written in our DNA. If you ask to a blind person to draw a fellow human, the drawing will turn out correct, the very same a person with normal sight woyld do.

So is tricky to avoid the uncanny valley and keeping them recognizable as humans. Humans are also rather large overall compared to hedgehogs and other beasts as specie. In fact we are included in the great apes group. Alongside the gorillas we are the also the tallest so pretty much big animals (but we are also slim).

Actual hedgehogs are as big as human hand, or so. Sonic doesn't need to be this small. Just more balanced.

Humans are always been a presence in Sonic world. Eggman is the most well known. And he has large hands and feet, like Sonic and the other. But his proportions are quite realistic and I think he should look bigger because actually, his head is smaller than Sonic's and the other...

In this scene from Sonic X it works well. Eggman's human features are exaggerated (like the typical human long nose compared to the flat noses of the other apes), and his head is about as large as Sonic's, making him fit the enviroment.

Those are very a little bit awkward. When I complain that the size are awkward is because of Eggman's small head.

This is no-no! She just doesn't match in the universe. Like, she belong somewhere else. Small hands and feet, anime proportions, vintage Italian style doll face...

Back in the '80s I saw some that were even closer to what Maria looks like. There were even drawings of girls who just looked like Maria around, some hanged on walls in my granparents home, I just can't find them not even online (the last time I saw them I was 16).

(Shadow likes those pictures...)

Surprisling Mario fits greatly despite being part of a completely different universe.

With modern style...

And even with SatAM style

Both in Sonic and Mario, humans tend to have small eyes.

Roundish head, large hands and feet, noodle limbs just like the beasts... Eggman obioulsy has small eyes. I figure them being about roundish, like Mario's.

Now, we see some human eyes there. A western aestetic just look better within Sonic world (the aestetic is pretty much western overall, being based on rubber hose style). Maybe hands and feet size could be more balanced...

I don't like Eggman having Majin Bu style eyes like in SatAM and AoStH. I've read somewhere he has regular human eyes. There (Archie) he looks as if he is possessed by an entity, so I wonder, Sonic should try to save him at this point? I imagine is to show that Eggman is a psychopath, but it doesn't do the job. The shape and size of the eyes is fine.

This is a joke... 'never mix styles' I was told 'Characters should look like they're part of the same universe!'...

Even Eggman was changed to have a realistic look, and it sucked.

Elise should be with Cloud Strife and Sephirot, not with Sonic, if we are talking about the style.

Outside Sonic series...

Top Cat

A human and six cats. They fit perfectly in their universe. Like Sonic, the cats are bigger than real cat, still smaller than humans. Heads look perfectly in proportions.

Now, here we are in the opposite territory. The feline is bigger than a human. In fact he is a puma.

Just to show how well human and anthro blend togheter in Hanna&Barbera works. In addition they also have actual four legged beasts, like Scooby Doo.

In Japan antros are rare, yet it can still work it the style is consistent. In Dragon Ball and Dr Slump we have plenty of anthro characters who blend well with humans. And there are also actual four legged beasts.

Some Japanese anthros

[thewertsearch]

[ there was more to this ask, but some was spoilers 😆 - C ]

Ooh, that is a fun challenge! I might make this a bigger Title post, actually, because it's been a good while since we've had one of those.

...alright, I just finished, and this one kind of got away from me. I hope it's ok that I sort of hijacked your post to talk about Aspects as a whole - but rest assured, I did answer the original question. Let's get into it!

Unfortunately, it might be kind of difficult to make Class guesses. My theory is that they're Sburb's take on RPG party roles - and for obvious reasons, we haven't seen how any of the non-Player characters would fit into a Sburb party. A full analysis of the hypothetical Midnight Crew, Exile and Guardian sessions would be fun, but it's a little out of scope for this question.

Personality certainly seems to be a factor. I don't think it's a coincidence, for example, that the Seers are the most inquisitive members of their respective parties. Dave and Karkat both hide their true emotions behind a persona - but then again, so do Feferi and Jade, two happy-go-lucky Witches with incredibly dark backstories. Dave may be the worst offender, but half the cast is hiding behind some sort of facade.

John, for his part, doesn't seem to have anything in common with Equius - at least, nothing I can see. I might dig a little deeper for human/troll Class parallels once we've seen more of Equius and Feferi, but our sample sizes are so small that it's going to be hard to tell which shared traits are intentional.

Anyway, none of the other classes feature a pair of Players that I could toss into a Venn diagram, so we're at a bit of a dead end.

I suppose I could approach this from another angle, and try to extrapolate a Class from each character's life circumstances - for example, by speculating that Grandpa's inheritance of the Betty Crocker brand makes him a potential Heir - but that's clearly not an accurate method, given that literal heiress Feferi is a Witch.

See, Classes are a tough nut to crack! The main issue here is that the comic has given us very little to work with - it's been tight-lipped on Titles in general, and there's been almost no exposition on Classes specifically.

It might be easier just to try and assign Aspects to each of the non-Players - so that's what I'm going to do. I'll also take the opportunity to put forward my best guess for what each Aspect means.

Without further ado:

Time means time.

This one seems extremely straightforward. Not all the Aspects are quite so literal - Breath, for example, seems more closely related to wind than the body function it's named after - but Time is about engaging directly with its namesake. It may have other meanings as well, but we haven't seen any yet.

If you wield Time, then you're the session's designated time traveler - which is a lot less cool than it sounds, because it means you're on Doomed Timeline cleanup duty. Enjoy the corpse disposal!

Both of the comic's Time Players have fashioned their own personal time machines out of musical instruments. Music seems to have some connection to Time - which makes sense, since it's an art form of pitch, rhythm and beat. Music is time.

We can also talk for a second about Dave's Quest. As we'll see, each Land Quest seems to directly concern the Player's Aspect. Dave's Quest is to...

...um.

Well, one of these is Dave's Quest. The LOHACse is the only one of the two which is directly related to Time, but I've speculated that Dave's sword-in-the-stone quest will involve him rewinding Caledfwlch to an earlier point in its timeline. Plus, the Caledfwlch quest also speaks to Dave's Class as a Knight, so I think it's the real one.

For the sake of completeness, let's also talk about the Time Lands. Each Land always seems to feature one trait which either directly or obliquely references its Player's Aspect. LOHAC is self-explanatory, but Aradia's Land of Quartz and Melody is an interesting case, as its 'Aspect trait' could be either of its two descriptors. Quartz could reference the quartz in a modern clock, and Melody could reference the musical connection I mentioned above.

I can't think of any non-Players with particularly strong ties to Time - aside from the Felt and Lord English, who we know very little about. Let's say they're all Time Players, and English rules over them as a Prince of Time. As a mob boss and destroyer of worlds, he undoubtedly shares some of Eridan's megalomania.

Space... well, we actually don't have much for Space. We haven't seen Jade or Kanaya do anything with their Aspect, nor do we know anything about their Quests.

We do know that both Space Lands contain the Forge, so maybe there's something to that. Presumably it's going to forge something, and I think it's probably where you're supposed to create the universe. If your task is literally to create Space, it makes sense that a Space Player would take point - but that begs the question of what would happen in a session without a Space Player.

Maybe the game prefers a Space Forge, but it can spawn on another Land in lieu of one - or maybe Space is the 'default' Aspect, and it's actually mandatory in every session.

As far as Space's symbolism is concerned, my assumption is that it's as straightforward as Time, but we'll need to see more.

While I'm here, I guess I should dip my toe into this hot mess.

Yes, LOFAF's Space Word does appear to be Frogs. Yes, that does imply that Kanaya's was also Frogs, or something equally mysterious. No, I do not know what this could possibly mean.

These frogs are apparently heralds for their god, Bilious Slick, whose shadow has been looming over the comic for months now. I guess their appearance on the Space Lands implies that Slick is Space themed, which is at least consistent with my theory that he's the final obstacle between the Players and their universe.

Moving on, because I give up.

(Oh, and if anyone's a Space Player, it's Bec. You could also make an argument for Mom Lalonde, since her home was fitted with an observatory, but that's very tenuous. We don't know much about Space, so I don't know how else to tie a character to the Aspect.)

There's a lot going on with Light.

All Quests so far have had ties to the Player's Aspect, so whatever Jaspers thinks he's talking about here should have something to do with Light.

Jaspers... seems to be talking about different ways to represent information, and instructing Rose to find a particular DNA sequence. (I have to assume this isn't the MEOW sequence, because I don't think Sburb wants Rose to fill LOLAR's oceans with First Guardians.) So, it sort of looks like Light is information, doesn't it?

Well... maybe. See, things are are complicated by the fact that Dave's Quest above was also Knight-themed, so this spiel from Jaspers could be partially Seer-themed. How can we tell which is the Seer stuff, and which is the Light?

Recently, Rose said this, seemingly confirming that her Title is about information ('knowing shit'), and also implying that the 'knowing' is a Seer thing.

This allow us to compare her to Terezi, the other Seer. As we'll see below, she specializes in discerning people's personalities and motivations - literally, seeing into their minds - so it sounds like being a Seer is about perceiving or 'seeing' things that relate to your Aspect.

Rose, the Seer of Light, should therefore have an advanced perception of Light - but just what is Light? What can Rose see?

Well, she says she can see 'the big picture'.

I think Rose's powers allow her to zoom out, understand the broad strokes of a situation, and see how it all ties together - and I think that is the essence of Light.

Dave wonders how he's going to navigate the Furthest Ring's twisted-up space, so she scans the overall situation with her Light powers, and vaguely understands that it won't be a problem. Dave will be able to play his part.

However, if he asked why, exactly, it won't be a problem, or how he's going to do it, she'd be stumped. That's not her department.

I think I sort of understand what Light means now, but I can't think of a succinct way to describe it. The zooming-out Aspect, maybe? The everything-is-connected Aspect? The don't-sweat-the-details Aspect?

Guys, I think I'm starting to understand Homestuck!

Ah, shit.

Yeah, I don't know how Vriska or her powers slot into this interpretation. As the Thief of Light, I guess she'd be stealing... the bigger picture... from other people? And that lets her take their luck, somehow?

I guess when you give yourself 'good luck', you are sort of improving your situation in the general sense, rather than the specific. You don't know the details of how your luck will manifest, but you don't really need to - all you need to know is that it'll be good for you.

I don't know. This is getting messy, and more than a little abstract. I'm sure Vriska will be doing a lot of luck-stealing, so we'll hopefully learn more as we go.

At least the Land of Maps and Treasure fits Light-as-the-big-picture. A map is, literally, a big picture.

A flurry of disquieting happenstance is related to the ADORED SOVEREIGN. With no other options, her counsel is all that is left to be sought. Abdication is never ideal. But in the face of inevitable conquest, conceding ground can supply the only remaining advantage.

WQ, then, seems like a good fit for a Light Player. After listening to PM's full report, she seems to understand how the pieces fit together.

The Queen knows that Jack wants her dead, and clearly understands how dangerous a Player item can be, in the wrong hands. She doesn't know what's in the package, or what Jack will do with it - but she doesn't need to. She can see the writing on the wall, so she retreats.

I did a bit of Breath research for this post, and landed on the above quote. I think Breath is about direction and destination.

TT: John? TT: Are you there? -- tentacleTherapist [TT] is now an idle chum! -- EB: hey, yeah i'm here! EB: and not dead i think. TT: I know. TT: I've been watching you scramble through the house like a lunatic. TT: You should have answered me sooner.

John's a meandering kind of guy. He's wandered haphazardly around the session for three thousand pages, but he always seems to reach his goal. Despite not knowing where to go, he always seems to be where he needs to be.

John's Quest as the Heir of Breath has been explained in detail. He needs to unclog the pipes of LOWAS and defeat Typheus, freeing his Land's fireflies from their cloudy prison. In essence, John's Quest is to give these bugs a new direction, allowing them their full axis of movement once again.

There might also be some Heir stuff in this Quest, but its ultimate goal seems to align pretty well with that Breeze quote above, so I'm willing to accept it as Breath evidence.

AG: Have you ever tried to fly? I 8et you haven't! AG: How a8out we take to the skies, Pupa! AG: Hahahaha, oh you like that idea, Pupa? Yes, you do. I can feel it in your simple, mallea8le 8rain. AG: You want to fly so 8ad!

Breath might also have something to do with agency - or at least, the ability to choose your own actions. John's freedom-themed Quest isn't the only example of this - Tavros's entire arc is about how Vriska keeps denying him agency, while pretending she's doing the opposite.

(I'm going to avoid comparing Homestuck to other works, because this post is long enough as it is, so you're just going to have to imagine the twelve paragraphs of Deltarune meta that would otherwise be placed here.)

AT: bECAUSE THE ONLY TIME i EVER HAD FUN PLAYING THIS GAME WAS WHEN i WAS ASLEEP,

Tavros just wanted to do his own thing. He wanted to ignore the game and float around Prospit, away from everyone's expectations - but he was denied this opportunity, again and again. It's no wonder that he's on a bit of a high right now, after being granted the freedom of his new robo-legs.

As for potential Breath Players - well, CD reminds me of John a little, but he seems a lot more likely to stay on task. I don't know what Aspect he'd be assigned.

Now - we're onto the Aspects we've only seen in trolls. We don't have as much for most of these, since we haven't seen any troll Quests, nor any Aspect powers sans Vriska and Terezi.

Terezi, the Seer of Mind, deals in personality - or maybe, more generally, vibes.

CG: WE'RE NOT EXILING JACK, HE'S COOL. [...] GC: [...] 1 DO NOT G3T 4 GOOD F33L1NG FROM H1M! GC: H3 K1ND OF CG: STINKS? [...] GC: W3LL GC: SORT OF GC: H3 DO3SNT SM3LL B4D 4CTU4LLY GC: H3 SM3LLS R34LLY CL34N 4ND SH1NY 4ND D4RK D4RK D444RK L1K3 4N O1L SL1CK 4ND TH3R3 1S 4 T1NY H1NT OF L1COR1C3 TH3R3 TOO GC: 1TS MOR3 L1K3 GC: TH3 W4Y H3 MOV3S GC: 1 SM3LL H1S SMOOTH MOT1ONS 4ND TH3 W4Y H3 SQU1NTS H1S 3Y3S 4ND 1T G1V3S M3 TH1S R34LLY N3RVOUS F33L1NG

When she smells someone, her Mind-enhanced perception doesn't just tell her what they look like - it also seems to communicate that person's essence. Terezi can see the idea of Jack Noir, here. She's smelling what it feels like to be inside his head.

GC: TH3 D4Y 1T H4PP3N3D W4S TH3 F1RST T1M3 1 3V3R H34RD FROM MY LUSUS GC: SH3 WOK3 M3 UP, 4ND 3V3R S1NC3 H4S B33N T34CH1NG M3 4 D1FF3R3NT W4Y TO S33 GC: 4 D1FF3R3NT W4Y TO P3RC31V3 3V3RYTH1NG 1 GU3SS, NOT JUST 1N 4 S3NSORY W4Y

Terezi is also a naturally perceptive person, so it's sometimes unclear whether her reads are due to Seer clairvoyance or her own deductive abilities. As a general rule, I'll only treat her insight as a Mind power if she explicitly refers to her sense of smell as its source, since that's the avenue for her supernatural perception.

GC: T3LL M3 YOUR R34L N4M3!!! >:[ TG: ok lets say its TG: dave why not GC: D4V3! GC: TH4T SM3LLS L1K3 TRUTH GC: 1 W1LL D3C1D3 TO B3L13V3 1T >:] TG: fuck

Therefore, I'm pretty sure her powers do, in fact, allow her to detect lies. Mind, then, might be related to the concept of truth - as in, your Mind is the truth of who you are, stripped of all illusions.

I was initially going to place Droog here, since he seems to be the only Crew member with his head screwed on, but I no longer think Mind is about being rational or analytical.

Blood is the first Aspect I don't really have a guess for. Maybe it's got something to do with genetics - Karkat is a carcinoGeneticist, after all, and a mutant to boot.

Spades Slick is blood brothers with a Knight of Blood, and he's got a lot in common with Karkat, commanding his party with a moderately annoying leadership style. I'll put him here on the strength of those parallels, and I can revisit it when Blood is explained.

We don't know much about Nepeta, so we don't know much about Heart. Shipping is all about drawing them, though, so maybe Heart is about romance - or, more broadly, relationships and connections.

Nepeta's Land of Little Cubes and Tea is a lolcat joke, so it might not conform to the Aspect Word pattern. I guess, since the cubes are sugar cubes, it might be a pun on 'sweetheart'? Who knows.

I'll put Hearts Boxcars here, and not just because of his name. He's the only member of the Midnight Crew with any interest in shipping.

Feferi revived Sollux with a kiss, so Life is probably healing, as it is in many other element systems.

How her Land of Dew and Glass relates to Life is a mystery. While dew can refer to condensation on any surface, it's often used to describe the water droplets which accrete on grass and other flora. That's kind of a connection to a living thing, but feels like a stretch and a half.

Let's also put Nanna here, since she's the only true healer in the cast. I don't know why the other sprites don't use the healing beam.

Our Void Player is in a Land of Caves and Silence - a hole in the earth, and an absence of sound. Void seems to represent negation, or a lack of something.

Also - this might be a reach, but Scratch describes the gaps in his clairvoyance as 'pockets of void', so perhaps Void also has something to do with uncertainty - aka, a lack of information.

Most of the Guardians could go here, really. Bro seems the best fit, since he's constantly hiding from Dave, and completely vanishes for most of the session.

When a timeline is marked for destruction, we say that it's doomed.

Doom seems to represent death, obliteration and entropy. Sollux Entered into the Land of Brains and Fire, and I think it's pretty clear that Fire is the trait which is tapping his Aspect.

Doom may also be the Aspect of prophecy. After all, Sollux is a prophet of Doom - so maybe he's a prophet because of Doom. It could also be related to his nature as a Mage, but Mages haven't been explained, so I can't speculate.

I originally thought that Sollux might be a Seer - but the Seer Class seems to be about gathering information related to a particular Aspect, rather than directly divining the future. Maybe a Seer of Time could see future events, but it's certainly not a default ability of the class.

Grandpa seems to have some ties to Doom. He prophesized Jade's death to her when he told her about her dead Dream Self - plus, he's a hunter, with a house full of corpses. Also, his entire presence in the session is overshadowed by the spectre of his future death. This is probably the Aspect guess I'm most confident in.

I guess there's also Hope, a brand-new Aspect with no lore. Eridan's 'hope' would seem to be expressed in the fact that he constantly hits on people, hoping in vain for a yes. Thankfully, we're not aware of any non-Players like that....

The mail is the one final hope for resurrecting a dead planet from its ashes, and the letter carriers are the brave soldiers of God in this righteous crusade. They are the defenders of the light of knowledge, free communication, and the exchange of ideas. They are the bold toters of all those little papery conduits of freedom, the white postmarked angels that whisper a message on their deliverance, a promise to the yearning: "There is hope yet."

...but PM is pretty much screaming about hope in her mail monologue, so we'll put her here.

ORDER IN THE COURT. YOU WILL HAVE ORDER IN THIS COURTROOM. IF EVERYONE DOES NOT SETTLE DOWN YOU WILL CLEAR OUT THIS COURTROOM, YOU SWEAR TO GOD.

It's hard to classify the Aimless Renegade. He's all about crime and punishment - which is certainly a Terezi trait, but I don't think it's a Mind trait.

As for Dad, he has a well-established gentlemanly personality, but I don't know what Aspect is the most 'gentlemanly'.

I could try and classify more obscure characters like FedoraFreak, the Pen-pal, Jaspersprite or the Hussie self-insert, but I'll tell you right now I don't have any guesses. Still, that was fun, and it was a good opportunity for me to update my thoughts surrounding the Aspects!

[triscribe]

The Force is a forest

So I've had a thought.

There are all sorts of posts on this webbed-site that analysis Star Wars, and the Force, and the Jedi vs. Sith dynamic - some I agree with wholeheartedly, others have turned my own worldview on its head, and a select few make me want to throw my computer out a window.

Now I've got one of my own.

The Force, when you come down to it, is an ecosystem. A metaphysical inclusion of all ecosystems in the universe, technically, but for purposes of this analysis we're just going to call it a forest. All different types of fauna and flora, from the big to the small, mega to microbial. All different kinds of networks and relationships, spanning the whole of the forest to just occupying tiny nooks, separate entities working in harmony and others finding the best possible spots to take advantage. Death and rot have their place, too, because nothing lives forever, and when something decays, it provides nourishment to an entirely new generation of life.

The Dark Side is not death and rot.

The Dark side is man-made machinery.

It is the chainsaws, the flamethrowers, the bulldozers, coming in and taking taking taking until there's nothing left, cutting down trees and removing undergrowth and tearing at the earth itself for resources to steal away.

The Jedi Order is big on ideals, on finding your path towards enlightenment and spiritual contentment - in other words, maintaining and watching over a patch of woodland, finding joy in small things and taking time to appreciate each individual detail. That isn't to say sometimes a person doesn't get annoyed, or outright angry, that this plant isn't growing where it should, or that animal is stealing more than its fair share, and at that point, out comes a hatchet or a gun (or a lightsaber), to fix what is seen as the problem. But is the destruction truly necessary? Could the annoying plant have been gently pulled from the soil, and moved elsewhere? Could the irritating animal have been trapped and relocated rather than killed? The point of being a Jedi is not that moments like these never happen: it is learning from them, learning restraint and how to see another option, so that each member of the Order can strive to do and be better.

But if one refuses to mind themselves, if they think well, there was no harm done in cutting down that one weed, or eliminating a single pest. They've joined the cycle of life and death, after all. No great loss to the ecosystem. And that makes it easier to justify the next time a bigger plant needs to be removed, a larger animal exterminated, rearranging the woodland to be better - if it's yours to protect then it's also yours to tend as you wish, right? And you really want that particular tree out of the way for something else to grow instead, but wait, now it all looks wrong, the dratted bugs are gone but nothing new is growing, you cleared out all the frustrating birds but now there's rotting fruit everywhere, why doesn't it look nice anymore, why won't this stupid piece of land do what you want it to? Fine, if it won't cooperate, tear the whole thing down.

But you can't recreate what was lost at that point. Because the level of annihilation you unleash is Not part of the usual cycle of life and death. It is wholly un-natural, and nothing will be as it once was. Perhaps this bit of forest will recover in time, after you've finished and left; perhaps not. Maybe a more gentle soul will come in to repair what they can, in the aftermath or long decades later.

(Maybe, at the very last moment, you are struck by realization, and halt, and attempt to redeem yourself by healing the harm caused - but even then, long years of work won't be enough to restore what was there. Even if the forest does grow back under penitent hands, it will be something new, and possibly not ever equal to its former self.)

Tldr: the Force, as a whole, will have small ups and downs, the occasional wild fire catastrophe, and a wealth of different experiences every day in every place. Individuals can get frustrated, can feel a whole range of emotions, and sometimes inflict more harm than they mean to. Jedi, too, which is why they strive towards the ideal of "there is no emotion, there is peace". Because that's a better path than losing one's temper every day; to tend to the forest, instead of harming it. But Sith? Those who get attached to what they want above any other consideration, who cling to a thing, a person, a vision of how things should be?

They're the ones bringing out woodchippers, sooner or later.

[copperbadge]

I don't know the extent to which having to count on your fingers is part of what makes you feel not good at math, but I think you can be very good at math and still count on your fingers. I add on my fingers and I have a PhD in a math-based discipline. Not trying to discount your self assessment at all just wanted to add the data point.

Aw, thank you! There are bigger issues for sure than being unable to remember small-sum addition -- I do genuinely struggle with a lot of math conceptually, it's not just the mechanics that bog me down. Pretty much everything that requires that part of the brain -- math, grammar, musical theory, coding -- I really am not equipped to comprehend or retain. But also like, I don't use much math in daily life, even working as a researcher who does quite a bit of quantitative analysis, and you don't need to know musical theory to play the ukulele, so it's not a big deal.

There are things in life I've been prevented from doing by my inability, but it's not like working harder would have fixed that, so at least I just gave up early and used that energy on other, more productive things. I doubt, for example, that I could ever "learn to code" -- it's simply not something within my ability -- but a lot of devs I've met can't write a coherent email, let alone a novel, so it all averages out in the end. And knowing my limitations has allowed me to focus on my skills -- those failing grades in high school are irrelevant now, but the prose skills I developed while failing math class are still useful to me. :D

[tiredfoxtf]

Small analysis on DR murder mystery no one asked for but I wrote it anyway!

Danganronpa! A colourful series of murder mysteries with a pink tint of blood. The last addition to the series – Danganonpa V3: Killing Harmony – has been around for 7 years now and that makes me automatically feel so old, but hey what’s worse than that is to think that 2019 was 5 years ago now. It’s been half a decade since the start of COVID epidemic and that alone would make someone sick. And during these years I found myself in and out of Danganronpa fandom spaces. Specifically a Fan Danganropa fan spaces, the inception goes crazy on this one. I am a big enthusiast of taking the Danganronpa’s core ideas and shaping them into something new. I don’t really go into actual canonical Danganronpa fandom, because, well, it's a completely different can of worms that I really do not want to deal with. I've had enough discourse these past 5 years in MCYT fandom and am really tired. But that’s a side tangent.

What we are actually here today is to take a peek at what makes the most intriguing part of any Danganronpa game tick – the murder mystery. And as a side hustle we can take a peek on how different characters affect it. And just maybe a structure of the plot itself. (spoilers for mainline dr games ahead)

So, first thing first let’s look at the way a chapter in the main line Danganronpa game is structured, something you guys know very well.

DAILY LIFE

First we have a Daily Life. On the first glance you might think – “What Daily Life has to do with a murder mystery aspect of the mainline game? Isn’t it supposed to be a peaceful time with no murder?”. And on the surface you are right. But Daily Life serves many purposes for the Murder Mystery: Environment, Motive and Social Interaction.

Firstly, set up of the environment. Like props on the stage, rooms and layout of the building or other environment that is introduced in Daily Life will affect the murder in some way. It’s basically Chechov’s Arsenal we’re talking about. If there’s a gun in the first act, it must be shot by the end of the third and if there’s a garbage compactor in the Daily Life it must be used in a murder. Of course as we progress down the chapters and the area of the Killing Game’s grounds grow bigger it gets harder to just keep in mind what happened when and what rooms have what. And mainline DR games really suffer from “we used this room once in one chapter and forgot about it” disease. But in defence of the games, the area they work with is usually so unbelievably huge (especially suffers SDR2). I really don’t blame them for not utilising stuff from previous chapters in new ones. 

But also it’s what is really easy to fix for us, the murder mystery and DR enthusiasts, in our own Danganronpa-like stories. All that needs to be done is to shrink the scale a notch. Instead of opening up a whole new section of buildings or new floors every new chapter, it’s worth opening up a few rooms. It’s also important, listen to me, it’s very important that every new room that is opened is unique in some way. You should not be able to replace it with a room from the previous chapters and you should not be able just get rid of it without significantly changing the plot! It shouldn’t be just a prop that characters alternatively hang out in. This one gets really bad in V3 with the Ultimate Research Labs – most of the labs were not really special and not used at all, which is a pity.

The second thing which is provided to us by Daily Life is a motive. Motive is a really broad term for any event that was planned by the Mastermind or organiser of the Killing Game. It can be Practically anything, but what’s important to keep in mind is that it’s something that someone who Wants murder to happen made. It’s basically a stimuli for a murder however it might present.

 Some of the cannon motives in Danganronpa, especially in the very first game, are very trivial, while the others are kinda weird. In the THH it was the very point that Junko was making – the Ultimates, so called symbols of hope, will actually abandon morals like any other person for such trivial reasons like secrets and money. In SDR2 and V3 they just kinda decided to get crazy with them. The infamous Despair Disease and that Virtual Reality thingy or even the First Blood perk. Because, well, Ultimately both of the games’ Masterminds didn’t have anything to prove with them. One existed to just simply send players into a state of Despair again and the other was a TV show for fun. 

Which leads to this interesting point – the Motives of your Danganronpa-like story should reflect the Mastermind’s ambition or their own motive for making a Killing Game. Also, personally I think it would be nice if every motive was related to the main theme of your story. Since the Mastermind tries to prove something to the cast to “win” over them, the protagonist usually symbolises the opposite idea (ex. Makoto “Hope” vs. Junko “Despair”; Hajime “Future” vs. Izuru & Junko “Past”; Shuichi “Truth” vs. Tsumugi “Lie”), so it would be a great chance to show how Mastermind thinks and how cast and specifically the Protagonist overcomes the motive from the other side of the ideological spectrum. And it works to show the grey area of the spectrum too, but it’s way deeper into themes than into murder mystery itself.

And the final third part that presents in the Daily Life I eloquently named “Social Events”. To clarify, I do not mean like Free Time Events, no. I mean Major Events that were organised by the cast that played into the murder. A lot of people caught on to the importance of this one element of Daily Life, but got stuck on the execution part of it – something I dubbed in my head as “Party Syndrome”. Categorised by the extensive need to write a some sort of party in one too many chapters.

Jokes aside, the Social Events are VERY important for a murder case in every Danganronpa chapter. Basically Social Events is something that characters That Are NOT the Mastermind do that will affect the way the murder will play out. They are often made to be something to combat the Motive or other ways to cope with the reality of being in a killing game. Rarely they are set ups organised by a wannabe killer and when they are, the wannabe killer got beat to it by someone else. Except for all chapter 3 murders. Yeah, one of the absolutely weakest parts of every Dangnronpa games, what a surprise. Not! Absolutely no one is surprised that the most obvious murders have the easiest solution – a person who set the whole thing up. Which is an important lesson – sometimes the thing that makes the most sense is not a good answer for a good murder mystery. 

There’s actually a lot of good examples of Social Events in the mainline DR games that aren’t some party. Like the switch of rooms between Sayaka and Makoto, the sauna challenge between Mondo and Kiyotaka, Kaede’s and Shuchi’s Mastermind investigation, Kaito’s and Shuichi’s training, Insect Meet and Greet (technically. Not a party. Kidnapping). 

A lot of fangans faced this criticism about how weird it is to throw a party in the killing game, which is absolutely completely fair. Whatever your social event is, please remember that your characters in the story feel the weight of death on them. Even the most carefree and borderline delusional ones. Which unless it’s the point, not all and definitely not most of them. Keep it real, ask yourself would YOU approve of such an event in these circumstances? If not, why would it happen anyway? Or come up with other ways to introduce social activity. Remember the worst your characters can be is passive and reactive in lieu of being active and making decisions. 

And that’s about covers Daily Life, in conclusion to the end of the segment I would like to say that Daily Life should highly set up the scene for Deadly Life, they should not exist as two separate entities. Of course when murder happens you are supposed to feel shocked, but to a reader of Danganronpa-like story it’s very obvious that the murders will happen. There’s no point of trying to surprise the audience, they highly expect it. So, set the viewer up properly instead of trying to use an element of shock. But don’t fall into the pit of predictability either. It’s a delicate balance. 

DEADLY LIFE

Before we could go into details of Deadly Life part of Danganronpa Murder Mystery inner workings, I want to make a note of the methods they use to conceal the identity of the killer: time of death, murder scene and murder weapon. Or simplier put: “when?”,” where?” and “how?”.

 On the most rare occasions it’s also “who?” as in “who’s the victim?”, such as in chapter 5 and 6 of THH and chapter 5 of V3, one of the most convoluted chapters of the entire game trilogy. The reason why it’s so rare is because, at its core, DR Killing Game is a closed murder mystery which means we have a set number of characters we know, so it becomes obvious who’s not with us anymore. It’s a really hard trick to pull off to completely disguise a victim to beyond recognition And not make it obvious who is missing from the cast. In THH it’s achieved by “extra body” of a secret sixteenth’s student who was murdered by a mastermind previously, the whole chapter relied on that lack of knowledge and was a set-up by a mastermind to get rid of one of the players. In the V3’s case however the idea was flipped – now it’s a plan of two students working together to confuse the game and break it, which was supposed to result in beating it entirely. The idea of both is pretty clever and it’s what sets these 5th cases apart so much.

But generally the culprit will try to conceal the true time of death, the true murder scene and the true murder weapon to hide their identity. Or for other reasons (ex. Mondo moved Chihiro’s body to Girl’s changing room in order to keep his secret rather than hide a true murder scene). 

You should be aware that no matter how much effort you put into murder, there’s no such thing as a “perfect murder”, there never is. Especially in the DR killing game. The game is NOT fair for the killer, please, understand it. Your killer works alone against a group of innocent students AND against the Mastermind. Mastermind does want to test the participants’ abilities and for them to feel despair of possible looming death. HOWEVER, the mastermind won’t allow the unsolvable. The mastermind wants the game to continue, this is why they provide a case file about a murder. Of course they would leave out some information that would probably reveal the identity of the culprit immediately, but generally the mastermind's goal is to have the innocent party win and win until there’s 2 (or 3, depending on the rules) students remaining. 

Also even if it wasn’t that way, it’s nearly impossible to set up a perfect murder, due to a killer and a victim being flawed. Everyone makes mistakes, especially in a high stress situation as murder.

Now we can move on to Deadly Life.

I would love to divide Deadly Life in three parts: a body discovery, investigation and a trial. Very obvious division, but an effective one at that.

When we talk about Body Discovery I of course mean these things:

When was the body discovered?

Who discovered the body?

What circumstances led to discovering the body?

These things are crucial to understand when you write a body discovery, because Discovering a body is one of the important things for the killer in the DR scenario. Until the body is discovered there will be no trial held, which means the killer has no chance of escape even if they kill somebody. 

When was the body discovered? Time frame. In the killing game time measured a lot like this daytime/nighttime due to having morning and nighttime announcements and some areas being off-limits during night.  Which actually doesn’t matter for Mastermind, I think. Like a lot of rules have literally no effect on the mastermind (like no sleeping outside dormitories). They are made exclusively for the murder mystery part, so guilty students could take advantage of it. When answering this question it’s also important to think “How much time has passed between actual death and the body discovery?” and “Why did it take this long to discover it?” and “Why discovering it at this time would benefit or hinder the killer?”.

Who discovered the body? According to canon DR rules across the trilogy, the body is officially discovered when three non-guilty participants see it. It’s a very special rule to the killing game and stayed a very important part of it across the mainline games. It’s often used to either deduce the killer or prove the innocence of one of the suspects. When you answer this question, think about “Why was it they who discovered the body?” if discovery wasn’t immediate after one person found it why didn’t they tell others?

What circumstances led to discovering the body? Did the group of participants just accidentally stumbled across the body? Did they come looking for this person, because they were missing? Were they doing something unrelated and the body just sort of dropped on them? Did they actively witness death live and where too late to save the person? And most importantly “why is this circumstance important/not important (in case they didn’t do any preparation) to the killer?”

Noticeably every part should include an answer to “Why?”. Killers in DR do not do anything for no reason. BECAUSE IT’S A WASTE OF TIME! If something doesn’t benefit them in some way, do not do it. Very simple. 

The Investigation is a mandatory part of the game where you run around and note down all the clues you can find, as the name suggests. It’s always a convenient amount of time when at least one person finds everything there’s to find physically. The main mistake you can make during the investigation is to give out all the information about the circumstances of a murder. You give out hints, not the whole murder and it’s very important. If your audience solves the murder entirely from investigation alone – you’ve failed to write a mystery. 

Class Trial – the main event of the Deadly Life, where innocent parties try to find the guilty and where the audience should try to puzzle together the whole mystery. During a class trial some new details about the murder should present themselves as we go along. Like for example in my absolute favourite case 4 for SDR2 where we deduce the layout of the funhouse. Something that we couldn’t understand from investigation alone. But it doesn’t have to be anything big like a whole layout of the building. It can be details of someone’s seeing the victim or the killer and realising it at the moment, the details of how some part of the mechanism works, etc. Also it’s the perfect time to catch slip-ups. The DR community do not usually like when something is solved on pure chance of slip-up, so if you plan on using them, make sure that instead of chance, your characters set up a trap for their suspect to fall in. That would look MUCH cooler than if your culprit just gave out too much info by accident.

A danganronpa case always gets solved because it was something specific to a character that only the culprit could have done, but it is not supposed to be obvious from the start.

Also I really want to bring attention to the victims of the case. Victim is an important part of the case WITH the killer. They should play an active part in the murder. This will further the context to the murder and give more mystery. Was the victim doing something to provoke the culprit? Why did the culprit choose this character as their victim? Did they even have a choice? If the victim was strong, how were they overpowered by the culprit? What if they wanted to be murdered? What if they tried to fight off the murderer and lost? Did the victim have habits a culprit took advantage of? All of that WILL directly affect the murder mystery. Make the victim an active character and make it so no one else but this character can be a victim in this case.

FROM START TO FINISH?

The truth is – murder mystery starts with a new chapter, we just do not know it yet. When you start writing a chapter you should already have an idea of who the culprit and victim are and how you want to carry out a murder in this chapter. Because you need to go through several steps and even the first one – level design with it in mind. It's kinda a question of “what came first, a chicken or an egg?”, but instead of “chicken” and “egg” it’s a “murder plan” and “level design”. Say, I can’t exactly tell if the idea of Kirumi using a ropeway that connects the gym window and a window of Ryoma’s lab through the pool came before or after they designed a level like that. And neither do I know how the hell they had an idea to use a confusing building structure of a funhouse from SDR2 as a “secret weapon” to kill a guy. But what I do know, it was set up from the very beginning of the chapters. 

What I do know is, when you already have an idea who the culprit of the case is, try walking them through the chapter as if they were the protagonist. “What made them want to kill now?”, “how did they choose the victim, the timing?”. Construct a “perfect murder” from their POV, divide it into parts and think about what can go wrong? Because something always goes wrong. Maybe rules will affect their plan, or there will be some witnesses the culprit wasn’t expecting. If the whole thing was actually a freak accident – how would they react and improvise? How can you involve other characters into that murder otherwise? 

Just start somewhere and answer your questions “what’s next?” on the way. When you write it it may seem genius and convoluted or maybe on the flip side, too simple and obvious. So my advice is to have a story “beta-testers”. When you finish the draft of a full chapter – send it for a reading to someone who could provide you with feedback on the quality of the mystery. They will tell you if you are being an idiot. If you work completely alone then it gets real hard to judge the story.

[donotstealoc]

Blorbo Spotlight: Trynnt

Howdy gamers! In today's spotlight we have a character from Pip/Pyppyn (he/they) @pyppyn. Go check out their blog!

Who do we have the pleasure of speaking with today?

Excelsior! I'm Trynnt! That's Explorer or Artificer Trynnt if we're using titles, but I just like my name.

What's your background? Where do you come from?

I'm from a smaller settlement on the Tarnished Coast called Rata Kasus. It's a good way away from Rata Sum but there are just as many krewes and labs at work out there. Fishing too, your regular coastal town. I graduated from the College of Synergetics and apprenticed with a few different krewes before making my own way in the world. These days I live in Lion's Arch with my family!

What are some important relationships in your life? (romantic, platonic, familial, etc)

I'm lucky to have two romantic partners - my wife Seffi and our other partner Welxx. His name may not be on our marriage contract but he's every bit important to us. They both mean the world to me and I'm glad to have made a life with them.

My other closest relationship would have to be my older brother Czoll. He and Seffi always looked out for me when we were little and to this day he's the kindest, most caring person I know. I love 'ya, big guy.

I have some great friends as well! i could talk to Zexx for hours about jewelcraft and chronomancy and the same goes for Neffh's understanding of the magitechnical use of necromancy. It's been a delight to work and learn with them and I'll always enjoy the time we spend together. True geniuses and great people, both of them.

This ah- this list would get really long if I kept going, so I'll move on!

Have you done anything you'd like to brag about?

You're giving an Asura an opportunity to brag? You're either very brave or very foolish and will regret this by the time I'm done!

I'm an elementalist - a weaver specifically - and I've always been fascinated by the way different kinds of magic interact. It all exists in a kind of balance across a broad spectrum. Not just the four elements, but everything! It's always changing, working in harmony at one point or total dissonance at another. That kind of ordered chaos got me thinking.

I'm also an artificer - an inventor. I make machines and technologies that I hope to use to better the world around us. Tyria's changed a lot in the past decade, and now more than ever is it important that we rebuild and we've been given an amazing opportunity to do that thanks to Aurene and Her unique fusion of different magics that should react violently - but don't!

-ah bolts, I'm rambling. I made a machine that uses prismaticite to alter the state of magic from one input to another! I call it the Prismatic Aetherconverter. Turns out if you cut those crystals in the precise way, you can alter their output of magic. Put that assembly in a channel and feed magic through the whole system, you get a means of shifting its attunement to your exact specifications.

I use this for my other craftwork. It's a great way to speed up enchanting or charging magitech and it's a great source of magic for study in lab environments! I hope to improve its scalability and introduce a number of different form factors in the coming years, make magic more accessible to the masses.

What's your profession? What does a typical day look like for you?

I'm an explorer with the Durmand Priory. I joined almost ten years ago now and my responsibilities there vary from day to day.

If I'm out in the field it probably means I'm part of an expedition or a Pact taskforce looking to discover something or solve a problem. For me that often means I'm a small part of a much bigger team. Excavation, ruins-delving, anomalous materials handling. Everybody's important and everybody's got their role to fill. What we uncover tends to end up in my lab for analysis and adaptation into artifice.

If I'm working back at the Priory proper, I serve a logistics role. Any equipment requests for advanced technology, enchanted items, and specialized tools flow through me and artificers like me - a golem suit for hazardous environments, a camera designed to look into the Mists, or special munitions for use against dragon minions, for instance.

I find the work to be quite fulfilling!

What are some hobbies you enjoy?

I like to collect and restore old technology for starters! Really old - stuff my grandparents would have used. Datapads, audio devices, communicators, golems and golemites, that sort of thing. A lot of it doesn't work but it has a history all the same. We Asura don't have many connections to our past because of the Elder Dragons, so it feels like a way to look back on where we came from.

I play Polymock too. I was never good enough for the pro leagues but what could be more fun than some simulated holographic violence between Tyria's deadliest monsters? There's a card game variant too that makes for good entertainment on longer expeditions.

If all of that wasn't enough, Seffi's good at keeping me active! We swim or go on hikes or head out to Tyria's different mountain ranges for rock climbing. We don't bother with climbing back down though - that's what gliders are for! She calls me a cheater for using earth magic to speed my way up the cliffs, but she sure doesn't complain about more airtime after the fact. The Festival of the Four Winds is the best time for it - tall rocks, strong currents, and the summer sun? Alchemy, that's just perfect.

-

That's all for today! If you're an UWU guild member and would like to put your character in the spotlight, use this form!

[yvtro]

op I am going fucking feral over "he can take on a tragedy, what about a tuesday?" thank you that is now being added to my charlie day conspiracy board meme jason todd edition

speaking as someone who is 19 and has been (figuratively in my case) dead inside for the past like five years I think jase should get to relearn how to be alive because I am doing that right now and shit slaps this fucker deserves to be happy! goddamn!

also in related news something I read once (in an analysis of superhero media in general lol): "it's about being /part/ of the world that you keep saving" and I thought you would find that interesting wrt jay meta

i've been thinking about this ask since yesterday. it's such an open-hearted message, so i will reply in kind, and tell you that the reason for which civilian jay and the general trope of him relearning how to live is very dear to me for basically the same one as yours.

interrupting my regular jayposting to go on a personal tangent (or a literature survey. or both.) but, around a year ago i came across this review of solnit's "orwell's roses," which contained this fragment (apologies if you have already seen it and to everyone else who did; i quote it all the time):

It strikes me, in this context, that one measure of maturity might be attaining an awareness that there can be no genuine devotion to fighting the forces that unworld the world without genuine devotion to the littlest manifestations of beauty that make this planet a world and this existence a life.

i'm not a part of any bigger effort to change the world, but then also didion's speech comes to mind:

I’m not telling you to make the world better, because I don’t think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I’m just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave’s a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that’s what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it.

and then i also got to rereading some authors i used to be obsessed in high school with (lots of existentialist; a very typical adolescent phase i believe, so revisiting it felt a bit regressive), and i got into a space of mind very similar to what you describe. i think you really need to learn how to appreciate small things, or just even see small things, else there's nothing you can do.

and i like to project this quest onto jay, because it fits. it's about being /part/ of the world that you keep saving. you are so right. i'm just telling you to live in it.

thank you so much for sharing <3 i wish i had such a mature outlook on it when i was 19, you're also beating jay to the ground with it. i apparently needed years reading and rereading the same books to learn it. nevertheless, let's do our best.

[human-still-developing]

Constructive Criticism: A Guide

Hey everyone :)) Here's a quick guide that I've created for giving others constructive criticism. This is by no means 'all inclusive' and you should of course use your own judgment before sending anyone feedback of any kind, but here a few general rules that I use when writing con crit (as a professional editor) <3

For those wondering, don't worry, I'm still working on another SoC rant and some more poetry but this is just an interesting aside I thought I might post :DD

So without any further ado, the concrit rules:

Firstly and most importantly, don't provide constructive criticism unless the writer has explicitly asked for feedback. If you're asked by a friend to 'let me know what you think' -- this is generally an opening for support, rather than concrit

Be sure to read the text as an objective piece of work, with a clear frame of mind. These may seem like obvious stipulations, but avoid reading anything for the couple of hours before you read the work to prevent your mind being swayed to a particular judgment (e.g. reading a famous poet's work might make you more critical of a novice writer's first poetry). On that point, remember:

You are not here to give judgement! Avoid stating any terms like "Overall, this piece of work is good enough for ...." or "I think that I would rate this work a ../10". Your job is to provide an analysis of the text in front of you, not its value or worth

Okay, so now to the actual concrit. Lets say you've read this person's work and you're ready to give your feedback:

Always open up with your interpretation of the work so that the writer can see what exactly you are thinking as you are analysing. This statement could be something as simple as "The poem that you've sent me was an evocative teenage love story intersected with romantic poetry to show the everlasting nature of love". In the case that you have mis-interpreted the text, this allows the writer to take your further evaluations with a grain of salt and also gives them a subtle nudge to perhaps improve the clarity of their message :)

List your points in size order. What I mean by that is start with the easiest thing that the writer can fix (e.g. your basic line edit including spelling, punctation, grammar, word choice, etc.) and then slowly work down your edit as you reach the bigger ideas (e.g. major themes, overarching concepts, etc). There are a few benefits for doing it this way. Firstly, as a reader, it makes logical sense to evaluate the themes of a text after you have finished reading the entire work; this way you have a greater appreciation for the text as a whole (which is required for a concept) rather than the text as a collection of small parts. Secondly, for a writer who may be using your edit like a checklist, they can quickly 'tick-off' the easy fixes and then work the bones of their text more thoroughly (also its often hard to start editing your work and simple fixes are a good early motivator).

Afterwards, I always like to go for the 'one for one' rule. For every one feature you 'criticise', give one place where the writer as done well. These should generally be linked if possible. I'll give an example, say my friend who is writing the teenage love story has a really compelling plot that falls short due to flat characters....you'd state something like "You create a touching story that could be enhanced through better characterisation." So this way, you acknowledge the work the writer has done and also introduce your feedback. Notice how instead of criticising, I posed the above statement like an improvement. Give the person something concrete to work on!

Expand! Apart from the judgemental trope, the other trap that editors often fall into is writing wishy-washy statements that don't really have a solution. I'm sure we've all been in that english class with that one teacher who circles entire paragraphs with the overly descriptive term 'vague' and not had a clue about what to fix. Don't be that teacher! Try and list as many clear examples of what the author could touch up on and fix (without sounding too domineering of course). For example: "The characterisation of your protagonist Sue falls a little flat because it's hard to have empathy for her. You portray her as an extremely beautiful young woman who is bullied for her good looks but is still really popular....I'd suggest reconsidering how realistic this may be. You have an amazing connection built up between Sue and Alex however, perhaps a greater focus on that rather than so much description about Sue might be more effective :)"

Finally, wrap everything up with a nice (generally uplifting) conclusion. My advice is that no matter how terrible the text you have just read, the writer has taken the steps to go out and send you their work! This is much more difficult that it seems! Congratulate them for their effort, perhaps point out some of the nicest parts of their work. I like to add short quotes from the work that I found particularly interesting at the end. This not only leaves them on a happier note but also makes them feel comfortable and safe about sharing their work and moving to improve it! Remember, you have had plenty of time to talk about the flaws, this is the time to build up their morale and let them work through everything.

Okay, so now you've written out your concrit. Here are a few things you should do before sending it to the person:

Give the text another read! I cannot emphasise how important this point is!!! Often themes or concepts that might not have made too much sense the first time become a lot clearer now that you are in the world of the text. Also you can make sure that your critiques actually match the work :)

Give your concrit a read. Try and avoid basic spelling and grammar mistakes and make sure you don't sound too patronising or rude. Perhaps sprinkle some other nice things in there too :)

Remember, a piece of writing is often someone's baby! It can be personal and vulnerable for someone to hear its criticism. Be kind and supportive in your work!

If everything is good, send through your concrit to the person. Generally I like to wait a few days or until the person themselves reaches out to me again before talking about the text anymore. Give them some time to process; allow them the space to decide what they want to do with their work.

Sometimes, your writer might not take all of your edits on board. That is perfectly okay! You, like any other human being, can be flawed and have opinions that don't align with someone else. At the end of the day, it is not your work that you are giving concrit to and it is entirely the writer's decision of how they want to shape their work. Try not to take ignored concrit too personally :)

So there you have it; a relatively comprehensive guide to giving concrit. Whether it be for the next literary journal you edit or for that fanfiction you've read (with a writer specifically asking for concrit ofc), I hope some of these tips and tricks help you in your editing work :) If you have any questions, feel free to ask me (I love asks, comments and DMs) :))) I might consider doing beta reading here in the future and if you have requests you can also contact me as above!

Concrit is welcome for this article (ironic, isn't it?) cos I've literally written it all in one sitting and not even had a glance over it before posting (terrible writing advice...don't do that) :) Reblogs and likes are also extremely appreciated!!! Anyways, happy editing out there folks :)

Until next time,

Hics <3

[mgsapphire]

Ethics and morality... and how they're not the same...

Weird title, and I don't even know if I'll properly approach this one with all the topics I wish to this discuss in today's The Devil Judge essay, because a lot of things peaked my interest, I was debating on doing a separate post for each subject, but I'll do them all in here:

Starting simple

I know we're only 4 episodes in, but I want to break down the things that I often look for in a new show:

Cinematography

Soundtrack

Character building

Plot devices

Social commentary (sometimes)

Of course, these are things most people would consider basics, but I find that a lot of TV shows don't have enough balance in them. Also, cinematography and soundtrack are pretty up there for me because when a plot gets slow, or something like that, I stay for those two (biggest example: King Eternal Monarch).

The soundtrack in The Devil Judge is amazing and the cinematography can be a character of its own. They really get me hooked and are used as tools to properly tell a story. And I'll get into that further down this post.

The onlooker will never understand the actor

Experience is your best friend not only applies to job hunting, but it's true in the real world too. You can't truly weigh in on something unless you've experienced it yourself, you can give it your judgment and everything, but when bad things happen to someone, you'll never truly understand their pain. Am I bringing up because of the difference of mind in Judge Kang and Judge Kim's opinions? On how the public treated the minister's son? No. I'm talking about a very specific scene, where the cinematography told me to think that way and not the dialogue (it's that easy for my mind to be swayed). In episode 3, when the rich are about to dine right after the foundation's commercial for a better future, we see this aerial shot:

What's interesting about this? The seclusion and the enclosed feeling it conveys as a counterpart to the poverty shots we were just shown. Yet, these are the people making ads for a better future, what do they know?

They live comfortably behind concrete walls with no windows to see what goes on apart from the bubble they live in. This idea is further enforced at the party in episode 4, where they're not even a part of the donations, and watch and mock from afar as spectators. Yet, these people call the shots. They even call it commenting, as if they were watching the pain of others on TV.

The intriguing personality and the duality it encites

Now, this was a costume and wardrobe decision, but it was also very well thought of:

Judge Kim wears white and Judge Kang wears black. One is morally perceived by viewers of the show as morally good and the other is perceived as morally dubious at best. However, besides the costume and wardrobe thought put into this, we also have to think about the delivery of this scene and how it may further affect my detailing of this section. Judge Kang brings down the coats, and hangs over the coat to Judge Kim, he's the one who is making that annotation: You're pure, I'm tainted. This can have one of two interpretations:

Either Judge Kang believes Judge Kim to be pure and innocent due to his status as a rookie in the field

Or he believes Judge Kim to be morally white and himself morally black as he's looking at his brother's face and not at Judge Kim's heart.

Because most of the back story we're unveiling is through Judge Kim's perception, there's also an inherit bias we're having as well, because in Judge Kim narrative, he believes he's doing what's right and believes Judge Kang to be evil. In being served information about Judge Kang through Judge Kim's eyes, our bias is inherently skewed.

Another thing is that, when they put on the coat, they're standing in front of the other, as if the producers of this series are telling us they're two sides of the same coin.

The duality is made in more deceitful ways, which include:

A difference of classes that implies one has suffered while the other has not.

A difference of experience that implies one is more tainted while the other is pure.

A difference of age that implies one is a sly fox while the other one is is bunny about to be eaten.

A difference of temper that makes one erratic and the other logical.

Power dynamics

This one, in this one I could make a whole thesis based on just a couple of scenes in the drama. And you know I have to mention it: director Jung being the puppeteer.

It may not be as unexpected at first, nevertheless it brings forward a lot of things I've wished to touch upon for quite some time now. A woman being a puppeteer of an old man in the portrayed dystopia that The Devil Judge is painting makes much more sense than more common demonstrations of these dynamics where it's either a:

A man of power being controlled by a bigger man of power.

A man of power being controlled by a seemingly man of a lower status.

A woman being controlled by a man of power.

Although, there's nothing wrong with those power dynamics, and if they were to be used, a message could also be conveyed, this one in particular works as a megaphone.

A subversion of power in such a way can be interpreted as a true indication of the weak overcoming the powerful. Why? It is not that woman are naturally weaker than men, but that in society, patriarchy has been a big factor in taking voice away from women in order to give it to men.

In order for Director Jung to achieve her purposes, it's smarter for her to do it under the pretense that an old rich man in power is the one calling the shots.

This is better exemplified by her stance when the old man tries to excuse his behavior, and what her moral compass is. I'm not saying I agree with her unethical conduct, but that her morality is directly impacted by the perception of the public of her as a weak woman:

Just because a dog bites a human does the person get dirty?

This is telling on how she perceives the actions of the old man in gropping the waitress. She didn't do anything wrong, even if you touched her, you are the dirty one.

While she's evil, it's a refreshing and deep evil.

The public's opinion and how there's actually logic in the show's portrayal

The public opinion can make or break a person, even if it's not on a public trial like this. While "cancel culture" barely works in today's society, a person's reputation is forever tainted. The show does tell that, but it also exhibits the scary downside of it, by showing how easily it was to make people accept flaggelation as a fitting punishment.

There are many experiments that have tried to test the effect of societal pressure on an individual's decision and the effect of the authority's enforcement of power in the outcome of these decisions. Furthermore, theories based on analysis of human behavior not necessarily relying on experiments can also help break this down. What do I mean? Here's a small attempt at explaining:

Milgram Experiment on Authority: which measured the individual willingness to carry out actions that go against their conscience due to an authority's approval.

Argument from Authority; The idea that people are more likely to use an authority's opinion on something as an argument for their reason. This is often seen in science, where trusted authorities have done the research and offer it to the public. In here, authority bias also plays a role, as we often believe, at first, that an authority must be right.

Moral disengagement: basically speaking, because this is evil or bad, I'm not part of it and I most probably am not actively participating in it. One may disengage by moral justification, which means that before engaging in something that has been previously perceived as immoral, I'm changing my stance on it based on what I tell myself to be logical arguments. This particular form of moral disengagement is very effective in changing the public opinion. I'll be touching on another form further down this post.

Other factors played a part, but these ones in particular came to mind when public flagelation as a form of corporeal punishment was wildly accepted. First, an authority is the one telling them it's correct, to go ahead. Secondly, another authority (the minister) had previously shown approval to such unusual punishment. Thirdly, they are not the ones to be engaging directly in the act, and even if they were, it would be acceptable because an authority has told them so. They may even believe the punishment to be a necessary evil for the greater good.

In fact, the minister's son was actually correct when pleading his case, they were accepting it because it wouldn't affect them directly.

Regarding the cinematographic descent of the public opinion regarding the situation can better be exemplified by the old man we've seen through the episodes.

Does suffering justify misdeeds?

Today I came along the difference between excuse and reason. You may give a reason for your behavior, but it doesn't excuse it.

Not because I've suffered through shit, means I have to make you suffer too.

I may explain myself, but it's on the other side to excuse me.

Why I hate the unreliable narrator and why I love it so much

This story has been told mostly through the eyes of Judge Kim and what he hears and sees regarding Judge Kang, if anything, the narrative is very close to that of the narrative we've seen in The Great Gatsby. An enigmatic man is being narrated to us from the eye of a man who hasn't known him for a long time.

How is that an unreliable narrator? The narrator has their own set of bias and moral standards which function as lenses through which they see the world.

Another way of putting it would be the way teenage romances are often written in a first person narrative where either of the two teenagers is the narrator, so the author can sell to us something as simple as offering a pack of gum as the most romantic act on earth. We're perceiving interactions through rose tainted glasses.

In this case, we're seeing the interactions through Judge Kim's eyes who doesn't trust Judge Kang from the get go due to his own preset bias.

The narrative becomes even more unreliable as we're not exactly sure if what Judge Kang disclosed himself is a fact.

The reason why I love this narrative is because it leaves a lot of space to make simple plot twists to a narrative and make them seem grand, and can elongate a story without making it obvious.

The reason why I hate it is because sometimes, in tv shows mostly, we as viewers can see the other side of the story and grow increasingly frustrated with the main character's prejudice and misunderstandings (I'm looking at you my beloved Beyond Evil).

Also, because I have to wait for a long time before I actually have a clear picture of it.

[mallowstep]

What are your opinions on forbidden relationships in Warriors? I've seen people label it as a "trope" because of how common this is. Some find the forbidden romance aspect intriguing, though others find it extremely repetitive and old

I'd like to know your thoughts!

hm. well, it is a trope. i mean, there's an average of one major one a series, right? greysilver, leafcrow (and others, but that's the big one), heatherlion (and implied others), tigerdove, idk i don't remember anything from avos but violetshine luv her but there's probably something, bristleroot. dotc doesn't count bc well it's dotc.

anyway.

definitely a trope.

but that's not a bad thing.

what i think people don't give warriors enough credit for is that these are not all the same forbidden romance. most of them are handled in different ways and bring up different conflicts. i understand why people are tired of them, but let's not discredit one of the only good things in warriors romance: that they make forbidden relationships different.

like, with grey and silver, it's about loyalty and responsibility. leafcrow is just bad idea central, both heatherlion and tigerdove are about responsibilities and young cats, and they have two different answers, and bristleroot is challenging the whole idea from the start.

so like. give credit where credit is due: we're not doing the same (forbidden) relationships again and again. i don't see enough people talk about that.

okay so it turns out i have um. a lot of thoughts about this. idk i just kept writing and now it's over 2k words. so you know. under the cut: matthew does half-baked media analysis to talk about why the code and cats' relationships to it are misunderstood. while actually staying on topic.

anyway from here on i'm just going to say relationship/romance, and understand that i'm generally talking about the forbidden kind. also i'm talking exclusively within the realm of warriors romance, which is, on average, bad. so when i say "X is good," i don't mean "X is good in general," i mean "given what we have, X is good." just to be clear.

right! basically, this is a tool. it creates tension and drama, and that's fine. warriors is a soap opera, remember. soap operas use secrets and relationships and all sorts of plot devices over and over again. warriors is not Serious. it can be dark. it has serious moments. but it is not a Serious Book Series for Serious Kids. it is a soap opera for Future Theatre Kids. yeah?

from that perspective, i'm a-ok with forbidden romance. (also, as a mini-aside, it creates some much-needed genetic diversity when kits are involved.) and again: all of the major relationships are different, so i think that's better than a lot of people give it credit for.

yeah, heatherlion and greysilver and tigerdove are all about the same general idea (loyalty and responsibility), but they all have different circumstances and different resolutions.

so like? yeah. sure. why not?

plus, like, who's reading warriors for the romance? i separate the concept of "romance" from a "relationship" here: i like the relationships in warriors (ivy and dove tension my beloved), but i'm not here to read about tigerheart wooing dovewing. (yes, i do love the tigerdove scenes in oots. no, that's not because i think they're very good at being romantic.)

but i digress.

if warriors was a Serious Book Series for Serious Kids, i'd have a different take here. having been in an IRL forbidden relationship, i have the Personal Insight and Experience to say they're this weird mash of "very much how it feels" and "not at all how it feels."

tigerdove is probably my favourite bc it's the closest to my circumstances, and i think dovewing is a good pov. i like how she breaks up with him because it's a bad idea, but that's not the same thing as not feeling for him.

(heh. twelve-year-old me reading oots like "this will never apply to my life" what did you know)

but to the point, if warriors was serious, i'd point out that the consequences always seem to be internal. we haven't seen characters be punished for their actions. and so on.

but warriors is a soap opera.

and here's my actual thesis: we haven't seen characters be punished for their actions, because "forbidden relationships" are a normal and expected part of clan society.

like no, fandom-at-large, you're kind of missing the point. okay, you know how like. people complain about. idk. ivypool and fernsong being distantly related?

(third aside/very long ivyfern rant, i put a nice big "rant over" after it if you want to skip past it: they're third cousins. they share, max, 2.2% of their genetics. they are fine. do you know your third cousins? do you? yeah. and like. they live in a closed society. there is no one new.

i've never seen someone complain about forbidden romance and ivyfern at the same time, and i do generally agree we should have more mystery fathers, altho for a different reason, but like. idk. this bothers me.

their last shared relative was nutmeg. that's so far back. god. i get it, there was a prophecy saying they're related, but if you remember my rant about how dovewing shouldn't be a part of the prophecy because of how distantly related to firestar is, you know how i feel about that already.

complaining they're related and that's a problem is. deep breath here. it requires demonstrating that warriors has kept track of kinship all the way back to firestar's mother. and even if you wave that requirement, you still have to convince me they would care about that. this isn't a "they're cats, harold" situation, this is a "you would not know your third cousin even if you lived in the same town" situation.

i mean maybe you would. some people do. but my hometown has generations of people who married within its borders. you get as far as "cousin," maybe "second cousin" if you're feeling fancy. i'm not trying to make an always true statement, i just. every time i see someone complain about ivyfern being related, it strikes me as not understanding how extended families work?

i know third cousins isn't technically classified as a distant relative, but you have, on average, 190 third cousins. i feel so strongly about this i looked it up.

like i'm not. okay if you say, "I don't ship ivyfern because they are third cousins and that makes me uncomfortable" you are Valid. in general, you are all valid. i do not think you have to, on a personal level, be okay with ivyfern. you are free to do as you wish.

but. if you want to argue "ivyfern is a Bad Ship because they are third cousins" you have a hell of a burden of proof. simply saying "they share a great-great-grandmother" does not meet that, because like. yeah. we're all pretty damn related.)

(ivyfern rant over)

IVYFERN RANT OVER

right so. anyway. if you remove forbidden romance? you're forcing a lot more of those situations.

i've been messing around with modelling some small-scale fan clan-adjacent stuff to double-check the ratios for wbcd, and it's. it quickly becomes a necessity, is what i'm saying.

but i got distracted like. researching how related third cousins are. my point is not about that, that's like. a different topic. that i crammed into here because i have no self-control.

no, no, what i was trying to get to is: oakheart straight up tells us that cats have half-clan kits all the time, it's not a problem, no one talks about it. and that? that is exactly what we see modelled by warriors.

the only reason greystripe and silverstream have a problem is that silverstream dies and greystripe claims the kits. i feel very strongly that if she had lived, the kits would have been born and raised riverclan kits, that might, maybe, one day, guess who their father is.

we haven't had any half clan kits in a while, which yes! i think is a problem, but like. the fact that the three are medicine cat kits seems to be a bigger issue. which feels right.

and i'm not trying to argue what i think should be, i legitimately believe the text of warriors defends this, even in newer books which throw out a lot of the older world building in favour of more human-like conflict.

as readers, we are naturally following protagonists. we are following the interesting story. but imagine you're just a background riverclan cat. minnowtail, if you will. do you think, do you honestly think, anyone cares about minnowtail?

not in a bad way, just. if she's meeting up with mousewhisker at night, do you think anyone cares? of course not! no one cares. she's not a Protagonist. her kits aren't going to be prophesized about.

heck, finleap switches clans! and it's barely a big deal. it feels like one, but when's the last time anyone bothered dealing with it? that's what i thought.

(also i forgot like all of avos so that very last point might be a bad one if it is my argument stands i just literally do not remember anything in avos but violetshine. none. zero.)

but it's easy to get caught up with characters like hollyleaf and bristlefrost and forget that like. not everyone cares about the code. most of our protagonists do, because it's become mostly equivalent with being moral. and i have an essay draft titled "the code as religion vs the code as law" where i want to expand on this more, but i think like. that idea, that we as readers should use the code as a way of evaluating cats' behaviour, is flawed.

like, i'm not talking about being inconsistent with how that is applied. if you want to say, "the trial leafpool goes through for having half-clan kits is legitimate because of the code," i still think your approach is flawed.

because the cats themselves don't seem to think that way.

the code doesn't, to me, feel like the ten commandments. it does not feel like "you must do this to be a good cat."

rather, it feels like aesop's parables. "here are mistakes cats made and what we do instead of that."

i don't think the cats know the code the way we do. i do not think they memorize a list of rules as kits. i think they know what is and is not part of it, but i imagine they know the stories far more than the rules.

(i'm working on my lore stories to replace code of the clans.)

and even if that's my thoughts, i do think this is supported by the text. no one ever teaches the warrior code, cats just learn it in pieces. "don't waste food because we don't have enough to spare" is taught, not "there's a rule about food and starclan on the code."

that's why the whole arc of the broken code even works: the reason the imposter is able to manipulate things is because cats don't treat the code as a rigid set of rules and commandments, but guiding principles.

the parts of the code that we tend to focus on the most are relationships, apprentices, and battle. or that's my perception. i didn't do a poll to obtain that. there's also the leader's word, but readers don't usually think of that as a good rule, so i'm not including it.

but the parts the cats focus on most are food, territory, and the leader's word. which makes sense: those are basic needs: food, security, and...i don't want to say authority so much as some kind of social system. explaining it would be a whole thing. just trust with me, if you don't mind.

i don't think we have any real reason to believe cats care about half-clan relationships half as much as we do. yes, apprentices are chastized about it, but that's not really the same thing as being punished.

and it's hard to tell, because apprentices being punished has really fallen off, and that's kind of the problem with any argument i try to make about warriors, but.

wow.

i'm actually still on topic? i'm 2k words in and i'm still on topic? a day i never thought would come.

let's wrap this up. cats seem to care about half clan relationships in that: a) they lead to conflicted loyalties, b) they mess with borders and prey, and c) they are in the code as bad. in that order.

and again, if the code was some high and holy religious doctrine, we couldn't have the broken code as an arc. it does not work if the cats are already following it to a t, and know it word for word, because it's signfiicantly harder to manipulate people if they do.

not to the level the imposter does, at the speed he does.

and yes, you could argue that it's more bad writing, but. i think that discredits warriors. yeah, it sure has its fair share of bad writing, but i don't think that's in the way the imposter works. instead, he seizes on a big important doctrine that's nebulous, and uses that to control people.

and that? that feels much more interesting.

so with that in mind, i don't think the cats would care about your typical, non-protagonist forbidden relationship, and i don't think we should, either.

as far as a plot device, i think we're okay with what we have. don't get me wrong, i understand why people are tired of it, but i think we also should remember that warriors is not repeating itself. having multiple forbidden relationships is not repetitive. now, if medicine cats were having half-clan kits every series, i'd make a different argument.

but all of the major forbidden relationships have different outcomes, lessons, and circumstances, and for me, i think that's signficantly interesting.

i didn't really check sources and quotes for this, so like, if you spotted something wrong, feel free to correct me. my overall point stands, but there's a lot of warriors and i have a bad memory, so i could have missed somthing major.

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

Alright so for my first post let's look at the one fantasy creature design that just angers me more than anything else. It's the Vrock from D&D 5th edition. This is official art from the monster manual, and it is absolutely the worst design for a winged creature that I can think of right now.

(Image description: handwritten title "The DnD 5e Vrock". Below is the official art of the Vrock, a scrawny creature with long limbs that doesnt appear to have any room for internal organs or a ribcage. Its partly covered in pale greenish brown hairy feathers like a balding emu, exposing its blue skin. The claws of the hands and feet are very large and bird like. It has a skinny tail. The face looks like a vulture with a ring of small horns at the back of its head. It has very large wings that look more like matted shag rugs draped over curved poles than actual wings.)

What is wrong here? Well a lot. But for now I just want to focus on the structure of the wings, particularly the feathers.

(Image description: same as above but this time I have written some critiques on it. An arrow pointing to a weird ridge of spikes on the edge of a wing is labeled "what are those?!?". A remark near the top corner asks "feathers or scales?" in reference to the bizarre wing texture. Another arrow points at the wings to label them "ugly drapery" while a major gap between the wing and body is also labeled with a bracket. At the bottom corner I ask "no wing muscles?")

So let's see why this is all bad for wings. First off and most obvious is the way the feathers are structured. They are just a total mess, looking more like poorly organized reptilian scales than feathers, except on the front edge of the wing where there is a clear indication of soft feathers that would be rather useless in flight. There are too many layers of feathers, no thought has been given to the way actual feathered wings look and move. It's impossible to tell where the bones and muscles might be, and the weirdly large gap at the wing base would prevent this creature from getting much lift, especially since the primary flight feathers part of the wing looks so much bigger than any other part.

These are common problems I see in fantasy wing design. Ignoring the size balance between the primary and secondary flight feathers, draping feathers over the bone like weird cloth, misunderstanding how wing bones and muscles work, and a lack of basic research into how feathers are actually structured on the wing.

So now that I've pointed out the flaws, the next post will give a bit more specific analysis on feather structure in this image. Part 2 here

[mountaingoatsfirstlineaday]

Next up I wanna talk about the performance lines.

the "performance lines" are what I've started to call the middle 4 lines of this snippit - everything from "It feels like it takes forever" to "hits the ground". They seem like part of a performance, a façade, to me. Jam pointed out that a screen implies a camera somewhere, someone is watching, probably, and then had a bunch of cool connections because of that (I am once again plugging their analysis of this. Go read it). What stuck out to me, though, was the contrast between trying to "stay true", presumably be honest about who you are, and also... putting on an act. Performing. Smiling for the camera. Every photo is a lie, even if it's only a lie of omission. The frame of the camera is always obscuring the bigger picture. This is great for storytelling -- john darnielle is amazing at making the metaphorical frame of the camera work in his favor in terms of his songwriting. The way he uses lyrics pumped full of emotion and vivid imagery really lends itself to this, which you can see especially in songs like International Small Arms Traffic Blues or Jam Eater Blues, both songs that don't have a ton of lyrics but you know what they're about.

In terms of connections, I instantly thought of more btc, because of the prevalence of performance in that album. Southwestern Territory ("black out on local tv"), Unmasked! and Hair Match ("crowd's half-gone, just a few hangers on, come to see me finally tear through the stitching at last" and "some people leave before it's over, but most of them stay/some hide behind their programs, some turn away"). The doctor who knows Bull Ramos in The Ballad of Bull Ramos implies a degree of performance in Bull Ramos' past, Animal Mask ("they won't see you, not until you want them to"), the list goes on. There's also the sheer amount of songs jd has written about famous people, people who have to perform essentially for their living... Liza Minnelli comes to mind.

The line about horns and strings reminds me of a goats song, I'm absolutely sure, but I cannot think of what, so if anyone has any ideas please please please let me know! I've been thinking of this for like two days now.

The last two lines are the most interesting to me personally, because when I heard them they totally flipped the idea I was having about the song on its head. i'm doing this for revenge! I'm doing this to stay true! I went from thinking this was a song about a decaying star, a person exhausted and exasperated at the motions they had to go through to continue being the person that they are right now, to thinking maybe... maybe it's a song about someone burning brighter than ever, and goddamned hellbent on burning up everything and everyone unjust in the world along with them. There's a long, long list of tmg songs about revenge, some of which include The Day the Aliens Came, Lion's Teeth, Up the Wolves, Getting Into Knives, High Doses #2, and Going Invisible 2. The term revenge also implies that some kind of personal justice is being executed, and songs that I was considering that deal with justice or ethics are The Legend of Chavo Guerrero, Against Pollution, Prowl Great Cain, and The Pigs Who Ran Straightaway Into the Water, Triumph Of. I think these songs are fascinating -- I'm really interested in laws and moral codes and how those function in relation to society, and the mountain goats happen to be a great avenue of exploring exactly that, what with all these songs jd writes about passionate people self-destructing.

Something that really caught my fascination though was the lore behind The Legend of Chavo Guerrero ("It is about a guy who I looked up to when I was a child." - John Darnielle). This snippit of the song gives me the impression that maybe this is a song of someone who was in Chavo Guerrero's position -- like a reverse-perspective of The Legend of Chavo Guerrero -- and like, painstakingly aware of it. Know that they are a source of hope and justice for someone, and continuing despite the toll it's taking on their health/wellbeing.

okay thank you for coming to my ted talk. i think if dissecting every inch of mountain goats' lyricism was a day job i'd be rich.

there a couple of things that i wrote down that i didn't really explain in this long ass thing, so if any of you all want me to elaborate on something just send in an ask! clearly i enjoy talking about this lmao

because i am a visual person, my first inclination upon hearing the new song was to copy down the lyrics and draw some literal arrows -- Black ink is the lyrics, red is what i was thinking of before reading @unloneliest 's fantastic analysis, and purple is for after i read it. if you can't decipher this photo don't worry! I'll be typing up some coherent thoughts once i get on a computer (typing this on an ipad)

[transgenderteensurvivalguide]

Ok I'm sending this in bc I'm genuinely confused and want to be corrected if necessary. Why aren't trans people taught to embrace their body instead of changing it? I've seen posts going around with words like 'its ok to be a trans man and feminine' and I agree because your gender is what it is no matter your outward appearance. why can't trans men be men and be feminine why is 'transition' needed? You can be a man with a vagina and that's okay.. I don't understand why that needs to change

Kii says:

If a man is comfortable with his vagina, then there is no reason that anyone should pressure him to change that, but if someone is uncomfortable with a part of their body and that discomfort is affecting their mental health, then they also have the right to change that.

I digress a little, but I think a topic that often gets left out of the body positivity movement is the right to body modification. So, if someone (cis or trans) has small breasts and they feel insecure and that insecurity is affecting their clothing choices, relationships, etc, then they have every right to get breast implants if they feel that is the best way to remedy that discomfort. They shouldn’t be shamed or told that they should learn to love their small chest because if they are resorting to surgery, because they’ve probably tried. Surgery is expensive and painful, so it’s generally not something people decide on overnight.

Many trans people experience dysphoria about their bodies and have experienced that for awhile before they make the decision to pursue physical transition. It’s impossible to know what’s best for a person unless you are that person, so trans people shouldn’t be discouraged from transitioning if that’s what they want, as long as they’re making informed decisions. 

Lee says:

I think people tend to overlook the fact that a lot of trans people don’t medically transition in every way possible, and there are a lot of trans men who have vaginas and choose not to get lower surgery. In fact, I think the majority of trans men don’t get lower surgery.

There are many reasons why trans people might not to transition:

Medical transitioning can be expensive and time-consuming

They may have health issues or disabilities that make it physically unsafe to medically transition with hormones or surgery

They may feel comfortable with how their bodies are currently and just don’t feel the need to change it

They may not want all the changes that come with starting hormones, or the scarring or potential sensation loss or complications that come with surgery

Some trans people don’t have dysphoria so they don’t feel the need to medically transition

Other trans people do have dysphoria, but try to manage it in other ways than pursuing medical transition wearing masculine/feminine clothing, binding/wearing breast forms, packing/tucking, etc.

They may be genderfluid or have a changing gender expression/presentation and not want to change their bodies in a permanent way

Some non-binary people may feel dysphoric no matter what genitals or hormones they have, so they figure it’s not worth it because none of the options are what they want

Some people may not be able to access medical transitioning due to medical gatekeeping

They may be mentally ill and can’t get a letter in support of them and their mental health (hello ableism) and their local medical teams may not do informed consent

They could be larger and a surgeon refuses to operate on them because they aren’t skinny enough (hello fatphobia)

Some people may not be satisfied with the current surgical options available and feel that they aren’t a good choice for them

Younger trans people may not be able to transition medically without their guardian’s permission and many parents/guardians say no

If someone is financially reliant on a transphobic or abusive relative they may not be able to safely medically transition

They may be able to pass without a medical transition so don’t feel the need to bother with it or they may not care about passing or not want to pass

They may be waiting to medically transition until they’re ready emotionally and when they’re in a stable situation

Some people would rather not go through the whole process of getting surgery and going through the recovery

It can be hard to afford to take time off from work to get surgery or keep up with school while recovering from surgery

Trans people who are comfortable with their bodies because their bodies are their bodies even if most people of their gender have a different body are valid

Relevant links:

Here’s What Trans People Who Aren’t Medically Transitioning Want You To Know- Buzzfeed

Transgender people: 10 common myths

On Choosing Not to Medically Transition: what transition has and has not meant for me

How I’m Transitioning Without Transitioning

Are you still transgender if you don’t want, or are scared, to have surgery or hormone therapy?

Debunking the ‘Surgery Is a Top Priority For Trans People’ Myth

So yes, there are some trans people who do embrace their body instead of changing it, and people who can’t ever quite embrace their body but still choose to stick with it.

But that doesn’t mean that path works for all trans people. There are trans people who just aren’t comfortable in their bodies, and medically transitioning is the path that will make them the happiest in life. There’s nothing wrong with choosing not to medically transition, and there’s nothing wrong with getting surgery and hormones.

I’m a trans person who has been under the knife more than once. I’ve been through major surgeries, a double mastectomy to give me a flat chest, and a hysterectomy to remove my uterus and cervix and fallopian tubes. That was about 8 hours of surgery and I’ll be going through a much bigger surgery when I get phalloplasty. In total, I’ll be going through at least 4 transitioning surgeries, maybe more (there are multiple stages of phalloplasty). And surgery has risks, it’s expensive, and it’s disrupted my life. I really wish that I didn’t need this surgery because it would make my life easier, but I do.

Trans people sometimes have to take drastic steps to reduce our dysphoria, but we do it because it’s necessary. I had debilitating depression that I had been hospitalized for despite taking antidepressants and being in months of intensive outpatient. Once I got top surgery, I no longer had to spend hours fighting off dysphoria about my chest and my depression decreased and my mental health improved.

Maybe I could live with this body I was born with- but I shouldn’t have to. If I could be happier after surgery, then getting surgery is the right choice for me.

And multiple mental health professionals have agreed with me on this- I’ve actually needed to get multiple official letters from licenced medical professionals according to the WPATH guidelines saying they think surgery is the right choice for me before I could get surgery.

Some statistics:

Suicide rates dropped from 29.3 percent to 5.1 percent when there was access to transition-related treatment. (De Cuypere, et al., 2006)

A meta-analysis of transgender people who transitioned medically demonstrated that the average reduction in suicidality went from 30% pre-treatment to 8% post-treatment, and that 78 percent of transgender people had improved psychological functioning after treatment. (Murad, et al., 2010)

86% of patients who accessed transition were assessed by clinicians at follow-up as stable or improved in global functioning. (Johansson, et al., 2010)

In a cross-sectional study of 141 transgender patients who accessed medical transition, suicide fell from 19 percent to zero percent in transgender men and from 24 percent to 6 percent in transgender women. (Kuiper, Cohen-Kettenis, 1988)

“Although more evidence would be welcome, adequately treated gender dysphoria is likely to be safer than the untreated condition, which is associated with an enhanced risk of depression and suicide. Reassuringly, few transsexuals regret undergoing treatment.” (Levy, et al., 2003)

“Second to social support, persons who endorsed having had some form of gender affirmative surgery were significantly more likely to present with lower symptoms of depression.” (Boza, et al., 2014)

“Studies show that there is less than 1% of regrets, and a little more than 1% of suicides among operated subjects. The empirical research does not confirm the opinion that suicide is strongly associated with surgical transformation.” (Michel, et al., 2002)

Testimony for HRT, by TransActive

WPATH’s statement on the medical necessity for transgender healthcare

AMA Resolution 122, which determined the American Medical Association’s stance on the medical necessity of transgender healthcare

The APA’s statement on the medical necessity of transgender healthcare

TranScience Project’s Hormone Therapy and Safety, which offers several citations that talk about the medical risks (and overall importance) for HRT

The Endocrine Society’s Clinical Practice Guidelines for transgender patients, which details their recommendations in full favor of HRT beginning on page 4

More info: What does the scholarly research say about the effect of gender transition on transgender well-being?

So back to the question. “Why aren’t trans people taught to embrace their body instead of changing it?”

Well, as I stated before, plenty of trans people choose not to medically transition. And those people aren’t visible enough. There’s a lot of pressure to medically transition and look cis-passing from both cis people and misinformed/misguided trans people (truscum/transmedicalists) because trans people who choose not to transition are often invalidated and misgendered. So yes, your gender is what it is no matter your outward appearance, and not medically transitioning is valid and it needs to become part of the mainstream narrative too.

But the trans people who do medically transition have probably tried to embrace their bodies, but that doesn’t always work. It just isn’t the way our brains work, for whatever reason. People who do choose to medically transition do it because it’s what will make our lives the happiest moving forward.

And there are many studies and experts who will attest to the necessity of medical transitioning for the people who need it, as you can see from the sources above.

[seokjins]

I'VE JUST READ YOUR ANSWER/ANALYSIS OF HOSEOK'S DANCING AND I NEED THE ENTIRE FANDOM AND THE WORLD TO SEE IT?! I've been dancing for close to fourteen years & my base is ballet (I've done other genres before) and when I first saw hope on the street after I've watched their usual music broadcasts, I WAS SHOOK. "always moving, milking every step, always engaged", "utilizes every part of his body in order to fill up the counts. really see the movement going thru every single muscle"

(cont) " every single action to be deliberate" YOU LITERALLY HIT EVERYTHING ON THE MARK; I COULD LITERALLY HEAR MY OWN DANCE TEACHER SAYING THIS. ((the clOSE YOUR RIBCAGE PART I'M SCREAMING I THOUGHT THE SAME IT HAD KINDA MADE ME SO!!!!)) "what some fans forget is that he is part of a group, and the whole point when you’re part of a group is that you “take one for the team” and don’t treat it like a solo; you’re not supposed to stick out." I'M SO !!! BECAUSE YOU POINTED IT OUT THANK YOU (2/?)

(cont2) i'm trying to summarize as much as i can LOL but your points are too !!!!! for me to do sO BUT I'M GLAD CAUSE I'M SO HAPPY ABOUT THIS POST :'((( "doesn’t outshine the others bc that’s not his job, not what he is there to do. purposefully coexisting with the group in order to make the dance look & feel cleaner" AND THEN THAT MAMA16 REF I'M SO GLAD YOU PUT IT THERE BECAUSE THAT REALLY HELPED THE PERF LOOK STRONG EVEN THO THEYRE ALL TIRED AF. (3/?)

(cont3) "9 minutes into killer choreo & still slaying the facials. his charisma is off the charts, & it’s clear that he’s having so much fun?? he engages the audience with his expressions & isn’t afraid to use it to work the crowd" EXPRESSION IN DANCE IS THE MOST CRUCIAL THING!!! I'M GUILTY OF LEAVING IT OUT IN FAVOUR OF TECHNIQUE AND TO FIND THE PERF BLEND = A M A Z I N G. THANK YOU INFINITELY FOR THIS POST I LOVE IT SO MUCH THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!!!!

HIHIHI! thank you so much for these enthusiastic messages omg (ꈍ .̮ ꈍ) im so glad that i’m not just spouting gibberish n all the dancers on here are like “wtf is she talking about” lmao

HONESTLY I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO SAY hoseok’s dancing kinda speaks for itself im just putting a loudspeaker on it and translating what he does? every time i typed something in my analysis my ears were haunted w the cleaning rehearsals and what the teachers yelled all the time and i cry For Him whenever bts releases new pieces

IM GLAD U UNDERSTAND THE RIBCAGE THING I COULD HEAR MY BALLET DIRECTOR SCREAMING WHEN IT HAPPENED. also same about group work!!!! as a dancer i really had to point that out bc people were sleeping HARD on hobi (moreso before BME) bc he doesn’t always go as far as he can. it’s corps work, fam, he’s not supposed to. but then, like you said, he put so much energy back into the formation when he was jumping all over the place during MAMA 16????? i cried and then died i think

AND YES his FACIALS ! besides all of hoseok’s technique, this is my favorite part about him. ofc he’s not the only one who does this, but i was talking about his dancing so i had to mention it ,,, he’s so energetic? it’s so natural, and it’s soooo easy. it’s hard to get the right expressions without looking comical (although onstage it’s not always bad if ur dramatizing a character), but he manages to expand his presence to fit any space comfortably don’t u think? like during big stages, he’ll dance bigger, in small stages, he’ll dance smaller. idk the way he exudes his presence is such a weird n small thing to notice, but i don’t think it’s the easiest thing to do ... adapt so quick to the performing environment lol

ANYWAY imma shut up before i start talking too much and get annoying 😪😪😪 but thank you for messaging me about it ! i loooooove talking about dance amsndgfmggmgajdg