#tl;dr

[markscherz]

A friend of mine sent me a yt video of a guy who was relocating frog eggs (prolly a vernal pool) and showed 1000s of baby frogs coming out of the water in his backyard. she asked me how I felt about it as a ecologist. I felt like it was irresponsible to do, especially to post videos on it, but probably not "ecological terrorism" like people in the comments were saying, because I see baby frogs in nature come out of water in hoards sometimes too. Kind of a mixed bag.

But I wanted to ask you, since you're a herpetologist and waaay more experienced than me: how do you feel about the yt channel "frog army YouTube"?

Many frogs and toads are classical R-strategists. Some toads can lay 20+ THOUSAND eggs in a single clutch. The whole point of that strategy is that not all of the offspring survive. In fact, it would be really rather bad if all of the offspring were to survive, because (1) they wouldn't be feeding the predators and decomposers that live off of their noble sacrifice, and (2) they will require massively more resources than they otherwise would. It can have all kinds of detrimental down-stream effects.

This is the reason we often see swarms of tadpoles darkening some small pools (especially ones where there are no fish!), and later hoards of froglets (that's the technical term) emerging from pools at once. It's an evolutionary strategy, that only few individuals survive to achieve reproductive age.

Point 1: it is *fine* if not all the tadpoles survive to adulthood. That's how the system is supposed to work. You are not doing the system favours if you are changing tadpole survivorship to 100%.

Now, humans really are fucking things up in a lot of environments. Environmental pollutants, like heavy metals, can cause major issues for wildlife, and especially frogs, which (1) are not as vagile as e.g. birds and medium- to large-sized mammals and thus cannot escape the problem zone effectively, and (2) are EXTRA sensitive to the environment because of their permeable skin.

Point 2: we do have some responsibility to do something if we notice that there is a major problem emerging, which could dramatically alter the population dynamics for one or more generations of frogs.

However, *moving* clutches of eggs that are found in polluted pools is not the right move, especially for your average person. There are many reasons that it is not the right move, but chief among them are

(1) A lot of frogs that lay eggs in vernal pools have tadpoles that cannot survive being in larger ponds, and certainly cannot survive in streams or other bodies of flowing water.

(2) A lot of frogs that lay their eggs in vernal pools are already adapted to less than ideal conditions, and have excellent strategies to overcome those conditions, such as incredibly quick metamorphosis (sometimes just a few days!)

(3) By moving clutches of eggs, you could easily be moving the pathogens or pollutants that are causing the problem in the first place.

(4) If there is Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis fungus around, you are spreading chytrid, and that is VERY bad. Chytridiomycosis has already driven several frog species to extinction, and caused massive population collapse in several others.

(5) If you do not know the species, attempts to rescue them might be aiding the advance of an invasive species.

(6) It's often illegal to intervene! Many species are protected by law, and you are not allowed to remove them from the wild. Consult your local laws.

Point 3: the responsibility to do something does not include removing the frogs and raising a frog army.

So what should we do if we find a clutch of eggs in an oily pool? Or in a nearly dried out puddle?

First assess the nature of the problem. Is the pool just about to dry out? Then leave it alone. The tadpoles will probably be fine (and if they're not, they'll provide rich nutrients to predators and decomposers). But are there signs of pollution? Then assess: is the pollution covering a larger area? Or is it localised? If you find dead frogs or other amphibians is a major warning sign, and it needs to be brought to the relevant authorities. Contact your local environmental agency/department, and notify them of the precise location of the problem, and its extent. Document everything with photos and videos.

Point 4: there are organisations and agencies specifically tasked with intervening in cases of environmental damage. It is *your* job to bring it to their attention, but unless instructed by them, you need not take any further action. It is their job to know what to do, and to take appropriate action.

TL;DR: 'Raising a frog army' is for the likes, not the frogs, and is not environmentally responsible or ethically defensible. Build a home for the frogs, and they will come.

[author-of-oddities]

Imagine Fiddleford convincing Ford to smoke with him in college. It's the week before exams, and Ford is beyond stressed, despite having A+++'s in every single course. Fiddleford sees this day in and day out, and no amount of reassurance seems to help, so he does the next logical thing he can think of and invites Ford out. No textbooks, no math talk, no research.

Just the two of them, out in the woods, with a joint.

The first couple hits really help, Ford notices. His anxiety went from a boil to a simmer, and eventually, to nothing at all. He's quite enjoying the company of his friend, too, who is giving a semi-present lecture about the stars.

Ford doesn't stop there.

Another hit, and Ford's convinced he can hear footsteps further down the trail. There's no light, but what if they catch us, Fiddleford? What if they expel us?

One more, and he can't stop rambling about how he feels watched, how it's as if the trees have eyes. Despite Fiddleford's reassurance, he insists that he's right. Eventually, Fiddleford takes pity on him and guides him back to their dorm, where Fiddleford instructs him to just lay down while he gets a TV dinner going.

The 25 minutes that it took to heat the tray was more than enough time for Ford to fall asleep, then wake up, having endless amounts of nonsense to tell Fiddleford once he did. It was all something about this odd triangle-man who wanted to play chess, but also praised Ford on being one of the most intelligent people in the world. Apparently, he was from another dimension, and wanted to help their dimension communicate with others, bridge the gaps between them and make history.

Eventually, he ended with a desperate explanation of, "he said he's be back, Fiddleford. He just doesn't think I'm in the place to comprehend this right now."

Come the next morning, the pair never spoke of it again.

[novella-november]

Fantasy Discrimination, and The Implications

A post on my dash reminded me to share some more writing advice, so here is a very good article by @mythcreantsblog , about how to make sure you're not dehumanizing a species or culture in your writing, which is a good guide on how to avoid accidentally writing racist or ableist tropes:

In particular, I want to talk about the ever-present racist trope in a lot of fantasy and scifi fiction, and that is the decision a lot of creators make where the villains are not just a single person, a faction, or a kingdom -- *its an entire species* who is not only the villain, but are outright, inherently *evil*.

To start out, here's a political cartoon by Tom Gauld you've probably seen all around tumblr with the name cropped out:

[ID: a political cartoon by Tom Gauld, showing two identical cities and boats mirrored on a river, each with a purple or yellow flag; one side is labled "Our Blessed Homeland, Our Glorious Leader, Our Great Religion, Our Noble Populace, Our Heroic Adventuerers", The other side is labled "Their Barbarous Wastes, Their Wicked Despot, Their Primitive Superstition, Their Backwards Savages, Their Brutish Invaders. End ID]

This political cartoon is a very good tool for testing your writing for the trope of demonizing/glorifying your fantasy/scifi species.

Let's use a classic example: your fantasy setting is made up of the following species: Elves, Dwarves, Humans, and Orcs.

Your Elves are a long-lived, ethereal people who live in secluded, perfect cities, all of them tall, blonde, and blue-eyed, who are extremely wise and making plans that can stretch out over dozens of human generations, and they're the deciders of 90% of politics in your world. Your Dwarves are a short, squat, species who spend their lives working in forges, mines, and laboratories, tirelessly toiling (because they enjoy the hard work, of course!) and selling their products to the Elves who are their largest and wealthiest customer base; Dwarves work hard and studiously for decades at a a time to complete a piece of work in order to fufill the intricate orders from their Elven customers, which is how the majority of them provide for their families, working 16 hour shifts each day for decades per order. Your Humans are far more seperated, and often live on the fringes of what their longer-lived compatriots consider "Civilized Society", often living as Subsistence farmers and hunters, not out of choice, but often due to poor land and lack of resources; the wealthiest of Human cities are usually the capitals where the royals reside and may live in luxury with rich markets and high-quality products and running water, but the vast majority of Humans live in small, poor villages that must rely on traveling merchants to sell what produce and livestock they can spare from their farms in order to buy the supplies they need to live out another year. Your Orcs.... well, they don't really live anywhere, do they? Orcs strongholds can only maintain their grip in hellish wastelands where living is nigh impossible, with all food and water only obtained from outside sources; occasionally, Orcs will attempt to establish base camps in more fertile land, invading neighboring Human, Dwarf, and Elven territory to do so, who quickly unite to expel these vile, dark, brutish invaders lest they steal their daughters, destroy and taint all of the natural resources and steal the few jobs available to the Humans in Dwarven and Elven cities as manual labour and servants.

And Now, take a step back from this world, and take a long, hard look at these species (outside of humans who are just kinda there in the middle and the only ones capable of change because Humans Are Always Special) and societies and what ideas are being reinforced here, especially when the above descriptions are framed as Hard Facts which are both Just and True?

(archived read-more Here)

Elves are morally superior and are always Perfect and Correct,

Dwarves are happy to spend their entire lives toiling in the forges and mines to please their Elven patrons,

and Orcs are Evil Monsters who will rob, murder, and rape any hapless victim who comes their way, so it's better to slaughter them all on sight and kick them out of your cities and towns, and this is the 100% correct morally right choice every single time and the narrative and characters themselves support this?

Did you spot them already, or does the above just seem like a cool, fun fantasy world where Elves are the cool wise good guys and Orcs are the devil's army and can be used as canon fodder any time your main character needs to mow down some enemies for a Badass Scene?

Let's retrace our steps a bit, shall we, and examine this "perfect" world through a critical lens?

When your elves are all portrayed as Perfect Ethereally Beautiful Blonde and Blue-Eyed wise leaders of the civilized world, what idea is being reinforced here? Who does it harm, and what real world ideas is this mirroring and enforcing? Who is going to have their own biases reinforced by this narrative?

When only the longest-lived people are allowed to decide politics, what group biases are being enforced? Is portraying "young people" as "being incapable of making political decisions" as a correct, logical choice in your story something you wish to enforce? Are there any real world issues this trope mirrors?

When your Dwarves are all Happy Workers and Slaves, bound to and reliant on the superior Elves to live, spending the majority of their life purely in service to these Superior Beings while happy to do it, what idea is being reinforced here? Who might see themselves in the plight of the Dwarves and feel alienated and insulted by the Dwarves happily slaving away in the dark? Who might have biased ideas reinforced by seeing the Dwarves treated in such a way?

When your Orcs are portrayed as evil, dark skinned, brutish savages who will kidnap and rape poor helpless women from the "pure" species, when Orcs are incapable of creating anything of their own and can only steal, what racist messages are being enforced and upheld? Who are the real people and cultures being demonized when you perpetuate this? What real world peoples and cultures have faced *decades of propaganda framing them as such*?

If you spotted these harmful messages in the initial indented description, good job!

But if you didn't, it's time to find and read critical reviews and essays written by marginalized communities of works that include these damaging tropes, because if it your Evil Species are Weird Aliens, because when you characterize and describe your Evil Species, you are undoubtedly going to be drawing heavily on your own internal biases of what makes people Other and Wrong.

Are your Evil Species all dark-skinned, physically-strong and animalistic? Congrats, you have just regurgitated centuries-old racism that justifies slavery, segregation, and discrimination *to this day*

Are your Evil Species all nomadic ~cannibals~ who are incapable of creating anything of their own and have to loot and steal from others to have anything of value? Congrats, you are once again regurgitating racist propoganda that has been used against countless cultures and minorities for centuries.

Are your Evil Species reknowned for kidnapping and raping the women of your Good Guys in order to create Evil Twisted Halfbreed Offspring for ....uh, reasons? Congrats, once again, this is literally just racist propaganda being reinforced by your writing.

Anything you come up with to make your Species Inherently Evil is going to most likely be something that is weaponized against real world minorities that you are now reinforcing with your writing, from racism to ableism to queerphobia and all the ways they intersect.

How do you fix this?

It's incredibly simple!

Don't make an entire Species be Inherently Evil.

They need to be just as varied as real living people.

Your Species should not be a Monolith, let alone of *Evil*.

Your Species should not have their only "decent/civilized/kind people" examples come from ""crossbreeds"" [and this term itself should be used only by bigots as a deragatory term] or random orphans who were raised by one of the Good Species(tm)-- this is how your story starts advocating for *eugenics*, which is not something you want to do!

So, instead of having an entire Species be "Inherently biologically" Evil, consider instead:

Making your villain group diverse instead of all one Species.

if your villain group is a Species Supremacist, they're probably still going to have underlings and lower castes who do their dirty work, or have been taken in by the cult ideology.

Making the villains of this Species be a small fraction of a larger whole, who are part of a violent cult, ideology, or political party that not only puts them in conflict with your main characters, but also with the rest of their Species.

Having your main character or their friends be the same Species as your villain group, and they represents the vast majority of the Species, instead of hailing them as "the Paragon of Goodness who emerged somehow pure from of a species forged in hell" or anything similar.

You should also sit down and not only think about the harmful, racist tropes that would come from writing Inherently Evil Species, but also consider:

Why do you want to include an entire species of people who are inherently evil in your novel?

Is your novel gaining anything for including these tropes uncritically?

Does it make it a better, more interesting story to include these tropes uncritically?

What message are you trying to send with your story?

Does including these tropes uncritically in your story *undermine* your intended message?

Another trope in the opposite direction, is talking about "Oppression" and "Fantasy Racism" from the perspective of a character who is part of the oppressed minority, only to spend the entire novel talking about how your Opressed Class are Literally and Factually threats to the population that "discriminate" against them, usually by being rightfully wary in their prescence.

if the Oppressed Minorities in your story in anyway resemble the Orcs in Bright, the Predators in Zootopia, or the Khajiit in the Elderscrolls, where the Racism these peoples face in based on hard proven facts that these people have been and still are threats to most of the population..

... you're less writing a story about how "Racism Against Vulnerable Minorities is Bad"

and sound more like you're saying

"It's bad to be "mean" (afraid of) Nazis who literally want you dead and who can kill you with impunity and no consequences."

If you are writing a story about Fantasy Discrimination, and the basis of your Fantasy Discrimination is based on *cold hard facts that your narrative supports and upholds*, instead of actually basing it on and talking about what leads to discrimination in the real world

(xenophobia and the fear+hatred of The Other, economic gain, mainly),

then you are not making the progressive stance that you think you are, and instead are enforcing the ancient propoganda that racism is based on fact, that racism is "for a good reason", and you need to take care that you are not upholding this idea in your works.

TL;DR:

Instead of making an entire Species of people a trope of Wise Good Guys or Evil Incarnate, consider using *Factions not Races* for your groups, and think long and hard about the implications of your world's politics and how it mirrors our own world, especially in ways *you may not intend it to.* If your story is meant to be progressive and inclusive, but your villains are an entire race of black orcs who slave and rape the good guys species, you need to go back to the drawing board.

[catbountry]

Look, I know the Deltarune fandom has collectively decided that pre-Big Shot era Spamton is called "Addispam," but for interpersonal characterization reasons, I write the Addisons calling Spamton "Spamison." By putting the "Spam" in his name right up front as a prefix, it serves to further alienate Spamton from them. They want to remind him that he is not like them; he is a short, janky prototype, an old guy using tactics from a pre-commercial Internet that are much slower and easier to get around than banner ads and pop-ups. He is an inferior version of themselves and they make sure that he isn't allowed to forget it. His tactics are so disliked by internet users that his unsolicited emails are labeled "spam" by a bunch of nerdy users that think quoting Monty Python is peak humor (this was very common in nerd circles in the 90's and early 2000's; trust me, I was there and I was doing it). Perhaps "Spamison" suggests that he be called "Addispam" just to feel a little bit more included, to feel like he could be one of the Addisons, only for the Addisons to ignore this suggestion unless they want favors from him.

Spamton hoarding money to make Pipis nests or just straight-up eating it comes from him having experienced a time where, for years, he did his job and making money wasn't a thing he even thought about until he was forced to flee from a decommissioned ARPANET to NSFNET, which was still a government program but with more private interests involved, and then flee AGAIN to the increasingly commercialized World Wide Web. Having money means that his home won't be abandoned or destroyed. It means he won't go hungry or sleep out in the cold alone. He was never cut out to be a salesman. He actually really sucks at it, no matter how much he tries, and has to resort to outright, blatant scams, preying on the most gullible users out there and barely scraping by as spam filters become more and more common for email clients. Being a Big Shot provided stability, safety, and having so much money meant that he could indulge in its excesses and the power it brought, going completely go to his head and giving him a massive ego because now he is important and famous and people want to be around him. And then when the phone calls stopped, he was rudderless, unable to pick up on anything useful to keep from going bankrupt almost immediately. Money allowed him to thrive, and he needs money in order to barely survive.

There's definitely a lot more of this I'd like to properly explore that I haven't even mentioned. But the idea of him having had to uproot his entire existence, twice, just to be able to find a home that wouldn't be destroyed, is something I haven't seen anybody else expand upon. He's in his 40's and didn't have an actual childhood, instead just being created fully formed as The Email Guy, and going from that, to Spamison, to Big Shot Spamton, to the glitchy, dumpster-dwelling Spamton G. Spamton we've all come to know and love.

Also I like the idea of him always having been short to really give him that short man syndrome that later goes into a full-blown Napoleon complex and serves as yet another reason for him to resent the Addisons. They treat him like a young, exploitable intern despite the fact that Spamton is nearly two decades their senior based on the fact that he's so much shorter than them, he has eight fingers instead of ten, and he's inexperienced in sales, the thing that the Addisons were created for. Indignity upon indignity.

TL;DR:

[k-is-for-potassium]

hey guysss

i have stuff to say 😔

so ive been hiding that i use this site from my parents (yes, i know, scandalous) and after a close call i think that it's wise to not use tumblr on my phone anymore :/

note: on my phone

ive still got a tablet that i use (sometimes) and i can log in on there and check on y'all :D

and also, i think im low-key addicted to this site, so it's good to take breaks lol

and remember:

this is not "goodbye"

this is a "see you later"

and i still love y'all, and i hope y'all still love me even if im not gonna be active as much :)

[tarbuchyloewenthal]

i loved and hated dragon age: the veilguard???

apologies for the extended rant i'm about to go on.

i loved being back in thedas after 10 years, and i loved that final scene with solas. the emotional beats hit just right in that moment.

i loved to absolutely annihilate groups of enemies with arcane bomb popping off every five seconds.

i loved almost all of my companions' arcs. they had so many moments of genuine pathos.

yet all these barely made up for my growing frustration throughout the game at the dialogue and dialogue system, the repetitive quest design, and narrative focus.

this game shares pretty much all the features that i hated when i first played mass effect 3 all those years ago. from the opening of the game skipping everything except the most minimal story set up in favor of bombastic cinematics to the extensive use of auto dialogue taking away the feeling that i had control of my player character.

bioware has apparently gotten into the bad habit of thinking the set up at the beginning of a story is unimportant. i hated starting off with a bang in mass effect 3. i hated it in inquisition. and i hate it now in veilguard. to me it feels like narrative malpractice to forgo the most vital part of the story. only getting a slickly animated cutscene to set the scene in the story instead of any actual attempt to know rook and their relationships with varric, harding, and the world at large really put me off.

the large amounts of auto dialogue only exacerbated my frustration. mass effect 1 (and 2 to a slightly lesser extent) made the dialogue wheel and voiced protagonist feel like an actual evolution of their previous dialogue systems in kotor and jade empire (and origins even though that came out after). i felt like i had actual input. conversations flowed like rpg conversations had always flowed. but in veilguard conversations feel way too passive, only needing my input when the game wanted me to add a small dash of emotional flavor to the conversation or the ever present binary choice for major story moments.

that's not to say bioware didn't write in a lot of reactivity. there's an absurd amount of unique dialogue depending on lineage and faction choices, but i, as the player character, never felt like i was in the drivers seat for any of it.

it made my rook feel completely disconnected from the story they were ostensibly the protagonist of, like they manifested into existence mere seconds before showing up to the bar in minrathous.

and the quests, individually well paced, all mainly followed the same formula of walk down a path, grab loot from side paths, fight some enemies, and listen to your companions talk all the while. part of why i like rpgs is the feeling that i'm inhabiting a world that revolves around more than combat and puzzles for loot. even if that's mostly what video game rpgs boil down to at the end of the day, it's the illusion of that which sells me on the game world. when all your quests involve that same formula, it flattens the game world to nothing but a combat arena. which, to be fair, i felt was a problem all the way back in mass effect 2, as well.

i also didn't like how all the lore reveals flatten nearly all the setting's mysteries down to solas and the evanuris. they were really neat in isolation, but taken together they kind of hollowed out the world.

ok, so i'm tiring even myself out by now, so i'll just mention in passing the relentless and unnecessary expository dialogue, as if the writing team didn't trust the cinematics team to get across literally any information (i'm looking at you bellara on the approach to d'meta's crossing).

this rant gives off the impression that i didn't really enjoy veilguard, but i did. it's just that the things it does well are what you expect from bioware, and the things i find issue with have become a bit of an unfortunate pattern from the studio. the game was so good, but it could have been so much better.

[self-spaghettification]

callum is a trojan horse s6 theory

In the event that the Novablade doesn't work on Aaravos, because .... he's already been stabbed with it, then...

Aaravos intentionally made Callum terribly afraid of him so Callum would HAVE to go to the Starscraper to kill him—so scared that he’s even doing it when he knows—and Rayla told him—it was a bad idea to bring the pearl. he just made it easier for him. the irony is wonderful. so Aaravos gets the sword, the last ingredient to his revenge on the stars, who he swears will fall.

so he's not dying at the hand of the Novablade, it's his weapon

Added thoughts from mutuals were-- Startouch elves were probably barred from entering the Starscraper for some reason, that’s why he needed to use Callum as his vessel, his Trojan horse—throwback to Fall of Lux Aurea btw, "You allowed my vessel to walk ...directly to the source of all your power?" He's done this before—anyway

Today I Realize

the intro to the show directly supports this idea

just the novablade, on screen. while the stars are falling. in aaravos’s name

in his name. the novablade is literally in his name. but also. metaphorically. likely going to be used/ the stars will be falling in his name

in the intro of a show planned out by arc, an intro set to go the rest of the arc

those bastards knew what they were doing since s4 while everyone was bashing it and they were doing this. they were doing this. isofjdsokfjlskghjoiyet4rwehsufdiggjkhlytr im so ILLLLLL

love you show creators for also making it evident it's gonna be callum/supporting my theory further because

The only other place Aaravos's desire for the stars to fall is mentioned is in Patience.

And what's right below this part that closely parallels the arc 2 intro?

Ziard, Viren, and Callum. in S6, Claudia is also likely interacting with Aaravos. (S6 poster) so...why isn’t she here? Only Callum and Viren are here. Could it be because they’re fulfilling such similar roles?

After the end of s5, we know Viren is likely not the main player in Aaravos's game now, not an option (in one way or another) so

next up as Trojan horse / vessel…

Yeah

so excited for hearts of cinder 2: epic fail: so good at "hero" stuff he accidentally doomed the world

[wesleysniperking]

Usopp Rant 😡 TL:DR

It pains me…

“If Usopp doesn’t do anything in Elbaf, I���m giving up on him. I love Usopp. I do. But if he’s useless in Elbaf, I’m letting him go.”

Or better yet…

“Even if Oda were to throw Usopp a bone, it won’t make up for 10 years of uselessness.”

Heck, this takes the cake…

“When Usopp told Nami to lie that’s when I lost all respect for him. The crew should have left his lowsy a** back in Water 7. He became what he was so afraid of.”

Nah. I was wrong…

“If Van Augur loses to this useless bum, it’ll ruin all of One Piece for me. It’ll be a major a** pull.”

Regardless of wherever and whatever direction Oda goes in with Usopp, I’ll always stand behind Usopp. No doubt about it. It honestly gets my goat when people in snark threads or even official One Piece pages (*cough cough* Reddit, YouTube, Worstgen) continue to criticize Usopp for small things, like they just really want him to lose (nitpick the h*ll outta him). Like, no kidding. But there’s one thing that really bugged me about Wano….

And what that was—was in a famous scene when Nami’s about to get annihilated by Ulti, and Ulti tries to force Nami into denouncing Luffy’s dream, and Nami remains firm by opposing the villainess…and Usopp wants Nami to lie and say Luffy will not become pirate king. He thinks this and urges for this to happen. For her to do so.

Now, I do honestly understand why he said that, and why he did it. If people had good reading comprehension and knew how to pick up on context clues this wouldn’t have to be brought up in anything regarding “Usopp’s bum-a**”.

Point blank, Usopp didn’t want Nami to die.

Lying means nothing to him. They both know Luffy is going to become Pirate King. They’ve seen their captain make the impossible happen!

Ergo, my main gripe is that it seems what Oda did is that he had to paint Usopp in a bad light in order for another character to look good. Nami is awesome. Kudos to her for staying head-strong. But in the same breath I stand by Usopp’s actions and see nothing wrong in them. Luffy wouldn’t look at Usopp badly if he found out what he did, because as the strawhat himself said, there’s no such thing as playing fair in a pirate fight (I may have paraphrased this), and what’s important is Nami making it out alive.

A dead navigator? How else are they getting to Laughtale. F*ck winning the raid/battle when the Strawhats are down a member. It was already looking rough with Luffy…

So, the misconception that Luffy would be mad at Usopp for saying that to Nami is illogical. Besides, how can Usopp force his ideals onto others? Yes, if he’d been in Nami’s same exact situation, he would’ve done what she did. But the point in that scene FOR HIM was about wanting to protect a friend. He loves Luffy, and has already defended his dream (e.g. Arabasta). The first one to do so! But for Usopp, what’s important in that moment is Nami making it out alive. He CAN’T watch a friend die. He can’t watch a friend die in the hands of some b*tch with a power trip; trying to force Nami’s hand. And sure, Nami remained head strong, and she did the d@mn thing. But when other people and fans decide to commend Nami for that moment while also putting Usopp down, things get really ugly for me. Nami fans and Usopp fans should be allies. But it doesn’t happen because they praise Nami and kick Usopp down to the ground.

No, this doesn’t go for EVERY Nami fan, and I’m not saying Usopp fans aren’t guilty of this.

So, I don’t criticize Usopp for his actions. Nor do I criticize Nami for her actions. What I’m trying to come to terms with is how it seems like it’s the whole classic case of painting one character in a very bad light in order to paint another character in a very good light.

Very SEEMINGLY so, Usopp regresses (no he did not regress!), and Nami progresses (cheers! 🥳😕…haters ruin it).

It’s a bit disheartening to have to defend Usopp over such pettiness. But I’ll continue to trust in the process. It just seems like Usopp fans are running on switchblade faith. And sometimes that faith isn’t enough.

But there’s indeed a beauty in the whole concept of retrospect, and at this point, it really does appear that in the overall One Piece narrative, in the overall grand scheme of things, Usopp is the true underdog.

And if people are so certain that Usopp doesn’t a stand a chance against Van Augur then why even entertain the idea? People always maintain (and it STRONGLY appears) that outside of Luffy vs Blackbeard, Usopp vs Van Augur is the most anticipated duel in the Blackbeard Pirates vs Strawhats battle.

Again, why even insult Usopp, if y’all are associating this “sniper with the ice cold drip” with “bum Usopp”? And if Usopp winning would be such an a**pull, will that keep y’all from watching? Will y’all not stop and look? Y’all low key have some big expectations for Usopp (who y’all consider fodder).

The fight might not even happen, yet haters are still looking forward to it. The speculation is strong with this one.

I honestly don’t understand it when people say Usopp is holding the crew back. How??? If that was the case Usopp would be given more focus. The camera would stay on him a little longer.

It’s like Usopp can never win.

Like this BS…

“Yeah, but Luffy and Law wouldn’t have been turned into toys because Haki can counteract DF powers. So, they would’ve been able to successfully mitigate the situation without Usopp’s help.”

Why???

“No. Usopp is still useless. Perona could’ve been defeated by Robin if she were there. Strawhats can make it without Bum Usopp.”

But in all seriousness, I think most of the hate is honestly just bitterness and impatience. And overall, misguided expectations. But people just don’t know how to articulate stuff proficiently in a debate (the comment section) without hate.

If you’re going to like a character, you have to know what you’re getting yourself into. And if you don’t want to do the research, then just pick up on the fine details and know what you want (know who you are). Usopp has flaws, but to just straight up say “I wish he could f*ckin die” and some other hot mess? No dice! If you don’t like him, move on. If you like him, but can’t love him at his “lowest” then get to steppin’.

There are a lot of bitter fans who’ve been unimpressed with Usopp post time skip. But there are even some far more bitter enough to the point to say that whatever he accomplished pre-timeskip was his peak, and that the whole fight with Perona was Oda “just throwing him a bone”. Some aren’t even satisfied with Enies Lobby Usopp, because he didn’t get a decent 1 v 1. “He should’ve had Sanji’s fight”. Typical shonen fan, I guess.

Yet, this bitterness also stems from the upset of Water 7’s narrative working in favor of Luffy instead of Usopp (apparently Longnose was the bad guy here 😒).

Ugh…The Sniper King joke isn’t fun anymore…

“Yeah. I truly just separate Sniper King and Usopp now. Meme aside. They really are separate people, and Usopp is just a bum.” [Proceeds to show panel of when Usopp was on the ground, heavily injured after the Franky family “dealt with him”. And the crew found him. And other racial slurs follow…]

Final + Conclusion

Usopp is still my favorite One Piece character (unconditionally), and I hope he’s given the justice he deserves. I love Sniper King, but I don’t want him to comeback because of the haters.

Usopp needs to get the last laugh.

His fans deserve the last laugh.

We will get the last laugh.

Just wait and see, he’ll come in clutch again.

[whinlatter]

In Beasts the idea of Harry buying all of these items for the house he would live in with Ginny is on one hand super sweet because it shows he takes the relationship seriously and on the other hand super irritating because why does he assume he gets to choose all that shit himself without even asking Ginny or without even asking her if she wants to move in?? It's the fact that Harry is making decisions for them by himself and assuming she'd be cool with it. I don't like that tbh. It's like when Harry realizes he has feelings for her in HBP and instead of wondering if she's moved on or if she would even still like him, he worries instead about Ron's reaction. ????? I lowkey feel like Harry should have felt really miserable that Ginny had moved on and liked Dean more than him. But it's like he is arrogant about her feelings for him or something. He doesn't even question it. I can't decide if that's cute or annoying lmao. Like I am not sure if this is Harry truly understanding Ginny and knowing her tastes ("Yes she'd love these egg cups!" "Dean doesn't make her laugh like that! She must still like me we get on so well!") or if its just Harry being a self-absorbed dumbass (SHOULDN'T HE THINK ABOUT HER FEELINGS IN BOTH SITUATIONS!!!!). Like I am over here as a staunch Hinny shipper thinking... "What if Ginny wanted different egg cups, Harry?!" Now she has to pretend she likes your ugly egg cups because if she wants different egg cups it might cause a fight cuz you'd act like a little bitch about it? Am I thinking about this too much?? TL:DR can Harry be normal about something for two seconds or is that not possible. I want Ginny to have a wonderful, caring boyfriend that thinks about WHAT SHE WANTS.

ahh i see where you’re coming from, anon, but i will defend harry and his egg cups a bit here.

there’s no denying that harry is a bit selfish in his relationship and asks of ginny in canon. there’s arguably some necessity to this - the plot demands it - and it reflects something of who harry is and the coping/survival mechanisms he’s developed by the series end. it’s the reason i’ve written his arc in beasts as him having to face up to what he’s asked of ginny, as he discusses this in his letter to her in the next chapter. his arc is him grappling with a loss of identity after the war, trying to look towards building a future he never thought he’d have, and finding out that a big part of that is learning to be on a team with ginny after a long time demonstrating some understandable, but not excusable trauma response behaviours where he hasn’t always treated her as an equal.

which is where the egg cups come in. they (and other assorted crockery) represent harry, at a particular lost moment after the war unclear what he’s for, trying to self soothe by imagining the familial domestic stability he has always craved and buying a little token of that aspiration he can have by him to keep him going. it’s supposed to be a sad sweet (slightly pathetic) image. but there’s no malice in it, just a very lost lad who has gone through a lot doing his best to try and have things to look forward to that might make him happy, like having some dippy eggs and toast with our girl.

i will also reassure you that, should ginny dislike the egg cups, i have no doubt that hjp would bend over backwards/drop serious galleons to source her the egg cups of her dreams.

[rowanthestrange]

i just read the entirety of your Rogue is the Bad Guy essay, and i’ll admit, you’ve convinced me, but not that he’s the Master, but that he’s trying to cosplay the Master cosplaying whoever. Also, it was really long so, like, i’m asking with full concern: are you okay? it just seemed like it took a ridiculous amount of time /lh

What I think is the case, probably 51% the Master. Just squeaks it.

What I want is Chuldur/Pantheon member ‘The’ Rogue cosplaying the Master cosplaying Jack. I’d prefer it by a very large margin. A huge one. But as to whether I think it will happen, I give that 49%. But that’s still good odds.

(I’ve got a lot of Pantheon!Rogue feels, ideas, and desires and have had nowhere else to put them yet, and this is a valid place to share them, rip. And to anyone else who followed the first Essay, let me convince you of my secondary Sub-Thesis in it.)

I’m giving that seemingly crazy high 49% despite the risky complexity of double-layering, because A) that was the Ruby resolution: she cosplayed the bird cosplaying as her - we’ve done it already and everyone got it.

And B)…Is actually complicated literal-meta but hear me out. Since they’re the only other writers this season I think there’s a very high chance they’re forerunners for next showrunners. I know at least one has high level management experience, and if they were given that as a test to do highly complex work to cut their teeth, this would be an incredibly good test that they passed imo. The Master is in themselves hard to write but necessary to fully comprehend because even when not present they are a lynchpin of the show. Here you’d have to write him well. But also effectively set up two twists (that he’s the Master, and then that he’s not he’s just pretending he is). You have to establish a Pantheon member - make an important part of an overarching narrative. And link together with other writers current and past. As well as create a good story with all functioning meta, on multiple levels.

The second you let Rogue be The Bad Guy the complexity of literally everything skyrockets anyway. (And one of the reason I’m a little annoyed that people want to believe he’s so flat - it does the writers a deep disservice to just think they wrote Space Darcy and there’s no shared metaplot there). But while Russell likes a certain amount of simplicity — Occam’s Razor 51% Master — RTD2 has been having fun with more complicated stuff, more prior-knowledge and using that, more thinking needed if you’re going to get the answers early. I think if he was going to give future showrunners something hard to do this would be it. For me Chuldur/Pantheon!Rogue is the pinnacle of that while still being perfectly possible to pull off to casuals without too much brainache. ‘The American accent guys, come on.’

I certainly think they have seeded all they need to, obviously can’t grade without seeing the full execution. And they certainly succeeded in writing ‘the Master’ well. Rewatching that ending? That actually got to me. And I’m a wall. I hated him which is what makes an actually good Master/Master-Proxy - you can neither go too far with that or the character becomes too unenjoyable (Simm!Master), but also too little with the hatred being turned almost entirely into pity (fandom), or even just they’re pretty purely enjoyable (Missy - but she’s an odd duck anyway), also robs them of something essential. This is pitched very well. Test passed on that score.

If my preference and height of percentage seems confusing, to me it makes no difference when talking about them whether he’s the Master or The Rogue perfectly playing the Master. Because if he’s perfectly playing him, as his Pantheon power should presumably allow him to do, it tells us about the Master anyway, so I don’t actually feel any need to differentiate most of the time. Certainly in The Essay it seemed stupid to bog it down with that and risk confusing the people still on ‘but he’s a good guy’ where it wasn’t necessary, because all arguments stay basically the same for a perfect copy. I trusted the reader to apply the level of abstraction themselves for the most part, only coming in with that where I thought something could be particularly relevant/missed in regard to that specifically. Muddying the issue with too repetitiously focusing on ‘remember it called also be a perfect Master cosplay’ and that seemingly complicated (even if I think valid) double-layering didn’t feel like the right call for something where just Rogue Is Playing The Bad Guy was already a hard sell to who I wanted to reach. Ymmv.

The only things that give me pause are that 1: The implication that he’s cloaked seems very high - the earring interference, psychic scents can mask real ones, seeming lack of recognition by allies (until the end I think - they shut up while he’s doing the scene rather than threaten or beg for their lives) etc. The Pantheon seem to have a lot of reality twisting powers. You wouldn’t need to, surely? You’d need to have a reason other than ‘same devices too close’ for that interference which starts the whole thing at minimum and I think ‘he made it happen for the Doctor to come over’ is too cheaty. And 2: The Bag. Why would you need to pack a bag and ensure you have it on you at the end if you can just snap your fingers?

But could be that it actually just contains his dice and he’s a stickler for doing things manually - think of daddy here, rules and ways to do things and following structure while also being creative within those constrictions. Which also very much applies to Dungeon Masters (won’t lie, the ‘Master’ part of that is what eeks it to 51% for just being him). This could come up, it’s feasible.

A Chuldur needing the teleport is also fair of course. And would want the psychic jewellery for the reverse of Ruby - being a Chuldur who needs to smell human to keep the gang on their toes and unsuspecting it’s him.

And there are lots of little things that complement the Pantheon element. We have the dancing scene where the lights dim. We have the fact he’s working with alternate dimension creatures and knows a lot about them. Certainly shows no fear at being sent to an alternate dimension once he’s got what he wanted. We have the American accent. We have him probably having watched Doctor Who like Bridgerton because he’s very familiar with Jack’s introductory episodes with all the references. We have the Vitamin String Quartet’s cover of ‘I’m The Bad Guy’ - Dungeon Masters love making playlists for their scenes, so why wouldn’t he (and also Theme of Music)? Maybe he doesn’t overtly use his powers during The Session because that sort of ugly manipulation of the world is cheap and bad DMing. Daddy liked the Spice Girls, why wouldn’t he like Kylie? He’s a game player like daddy but there’s no winning D&D, especially as DM, which makes an easy natural conflict between them. And we need at least one Pantheon member, cus while I think this is actually just a set-up season for them, there needs to be at least four, really five to truly feel ‘Pantheon’, three would be bare minimum and not enough for when the shit actually starts to go down next season, need at least four by then. I’m assuming we see one: The Writer, or The Audience, or Death or (The Twist At) The End/Grand Finale or whatever else you interpret the oldest one/one who waits to be, in the finale itself.

And this means we get a new (and if Pantheon rather than Chuldur) long-term character. Cosplaying the Master means The Rogue isn’t a copy of them, can just be playing The Bad Guy cus it’s fun right now, but they themselves don’t have to be Master-like, they can be anything. Something new. Anyone who knows me knows I wanted more rogue Time Lords and these guys are like that but with magic powers - what’s not to love? If The Rogue is a Joker, A Wildcard, and they just become a character that fills a void, that’s fascinating. Or they want to create exciting stories whatever that means and become whatever NPCs necessary to drive them on, that’s so interesting. Or they’re guided by being whatever they find cool much like the birds, with all the capricious ‘eh, bored now I’m wrapping this story up’ of a greek god (cus, well.) with all the associated dangers and disregard of these not being characters but people they’re playing with, and also expects there to be no hard feelings after The Session is over and next time it’s a new one. Can they perfectly roleplay a character but still break character if needed, or are they locked in to it until The Session’s done? Do they believe themself to have a ‘real’ personality or is that all fuzzy? Or all of the above. You could go anywhere from standard villain to a full Chaotic Neutral with that. And all the implications you could have of their power being to perfectly roleplay a person. And I use ‘they’ here because surely this is the most genderfluid a character you could get. The Rogue could literally be the red-nailed woman who picked up the gold tooth, think about that. How perfect would that be. Maybe that’s what’s in the bag. Live Tooth Reaction To The Kiss Not Clickbait. A character that could literally be anyone at any time, we would never know peace again. If Susan Twist appearing everywhere is something Pantheony, The Rogue is the inverse of this. Siblings maybe.

And see my Christmas Special pitch. Which is both a joke, but also an example of what fun you could have with The Rogue if you wanted. It doesn’t have to be pure heartbreak and misery Master 2.0. Especially if they are as seems here, a god not just trying to entertain themselves, but also entertain others. D&D requires a group, it’s co-operative, we see Rogue appear to adapt rather than (in any way immediately evident to us at least) externally force the story a certain way like a good DM. He never shoots the birds or threatens to or gets them in actual danger despite the in-character reasons to, and they looked like they all had fun - besides squished beak #5. But also sees NPCs as little more than set dressing as we ourselves would in a D&D game. What a dynamic that could be in a Pantheon god. It’s unique. Which is so valuable. A Chuldur slightly less interesting in that score but still.

If it is the Master I’ll be fine and accept it, but I want this, because it does double duty. It might as well have been a Master episode as it has most of the benefits of one (for me anyway), but also gives us all this new possibility and complexity on top of it. Those options are currently open and I want it.

It’s not popular, but I’m really pro trusting the writers. All of them. They’re smart. And I know these two just seem like randoms, but I doubt they are, they could be our new mothers, and I really think that while the Pantheon Rogue option is complex, it’s viable and has so much scope. If I hate people trying to see Rogue as flat Space Darcy because it shows zero belief in the writers, then I gotta do the opposite and entertain the option that they have intelligently created a deep and complex story, and have taken that to the end of the road. Even if complicated is by nature less likely than simple.

also lol I started The Essay at around 11pm sunday, wrote til gone 4am. Then woke up at 9:30am and wrote solidly plus edits until about 4am, and in-between edited the subtitles into that video. Am I ok? Physically, yes. Mentally, probably not. It is literally 10k and that’s why I made the joke. But I’ve done infinitely worse writing fanfics so...

EDIT:

‘Chuldur/Pantheon member The Rogue cosplaying the Master’ has just flipped into the dominant reading! Alert! Alert! Cus he’d never do this about him literally being the Master. If he’s acknowledging we’re having the feelings we’re intended to have, there’s another twist in it.

I officially move The Rogue Cosplaying The Master to 55% from 49% likelihood, and Rogue Is Just The Master down to 45% from 51%. You may wish to adjust your stock investment accordingly.

[markscherz]

i love trying to identify frogs, and ive made progress, for example i can usually tell if a frog is in the families of ranidae (obviously) hylidae and bufonidae, as those are the ones in my area. but i find it quite hard after outside of those families. i feel like just sort of memorizing what families have which attributes is a bad way of going about it, so do you have any tips to narrow down types of frogs, or what i could look into and research about it? i feel like you may have answered this before but i couldn't find it in your FAQ

Vibes and location my friend, vibes and location. There isn't really a recent-enough key to anatomically determine families, and even if there were, it would not work based on external appearance alone—there is too much variation within families, and also many diagnostic features are only in the skeleton.

The best way I know is to just see lots and lots and lots of frogs, and slowly puzzle together which family they're in. For me, that keys my brain into the vibe that the family has, even when the animals are diverse.

BUT, you always have to be aware of what the analogues are in other families. For instance, dendrobatids and mantelline mantellids can look extremely similar—but nothing else looks anything like them. If you know where the animal is from, you can tell which family it is.

A more challenging example may be 'tree frogs'. There are almost identical-looking tree frogs in at least six families (e.g. Arthroleptidae, Hylidae, Hyperoliidae, Mantellidae, Rhacophoridae, Centrolenids). If you don't know where the frog is, there are some traits you just have to know. For instance, arthroleptids have veritcal pupils, whereas centrolenids, hylids, rhacophorids, and mantellids have horizontal pupils. Hyperoliids have weird triangular pupils. Hyperoliids also have weird gular pads in males; some mantellids have special femoral glands. There are special bones in the fingers of some groups and not others. And the way they reproduce can differ—rhacophorid treefrogs mostly make foam nests, whereas mantellid and hylid treefrogs mostly make jelly nests over water. Centrolenids are pretty distinctive.

But this wouldn't be a problem if you know where you are: if it's a treefrog and you're in South America, hylids and centrolenids are your prime candidate. In East Africa, arthroleptids, hyperoliids, and rhacophorids overlap, but are easy to tell apart. In Madagascar, there are only really mantellid treefrogs that look like this, though there are two similar-looking groups that are not closely related. In Southeast Asia, hylids and rhacophorids overlap.

Then there are the ranid-looking frogs, and honestly, this is also where I really struggle. Most of these were formerly in Ranidae, but then we realised they were vastly distantly related, and so they were split—but those splits happened without clear diagnoses for the groups. Consequently, consistent differences between ptychadenids, dicroglossids, ranids, conrauids, pyxicephalids, many mantellids, etc. are essentially unknown, afaik. And many of these can occur together in the same place. In these cases, you get a better clue to the FAMILY if you can work out the GENUS, which is extremely counter-intuitive, but that is just how it is.

By the way, this problem is not unique to amphibians—in birds it is just as bad, and many well-known groups do not have synapomorphies

[chryza]

Presidential debate SICK ASS REACTIONS.

“The microphones will only be turned on during their turn to speak” thank the lord they finally learned

“VP Harris you and President Trump (sic.) were elected four years ago” I hope to god that it was a slip and not an omen.

Harris coming right out and attacking project 2025 is pretty pog anyway I hope she kills him. I’m still skeptical about her in a lot of ways and I’m not a fan of the continuing imperialist military industrial complex ie genocide. but fuck me she’s not a raving lunatic or a decrepit dude with dementia so like. Fuck man I’ll take it.

he keeps saying “as she knows” to try and ruin her credibility which might be effective if he didn’t immediately then verbally veer off the road and crash into a tree

WHY DID THEY TURN HIS MICROPHONE ON. THEY SHOULD HAVE JUST LET HIM FUCKING TALK TO AN EMPTY STUDIO IT WOULD HAVE BEEN SO FUNNY.

I hope Kamala kills him. I’m obsessed with the way she keeps laughing at him. KILL HIM.

“She’s a marxist” this is the only time in my life I wish trump was right I fucking wish Kamala Harris was that cool.

[on abortion] “When the baby is born they will decide what to do with the baby and they will EXECUTE the baby” i don’t even have a quip to add the quote speaks for itself

Live Kamala Reaction your opponent just said Tim Walz wants to “Execute Babies”

The MODERATOR being like “there is no state where it’s legal to kill a baby after it’s born” is KILLING ME

Harris does sound legitimately incensed about abortion rights which is a massive W for her, I fully believe she would crack down on restrictions to women’s healthcare

Harris “I invite you to attend one of trump’s rallies and what you’ll hear is him talking about fictional characters like Hannibal Lector, how windmills cause cancer, and you’ll see people leaving early out of exhaustion and boredom” YES. BLOOD. BLOOD.

SHE KNEW EXACTLY WHAT SHE WAS DOING HE IS NOW SOOOO MAD SHE IMPLIED PEOPLE WERE BORED OF HIM AAAAAAHAHAHA I AM MAKING TRIXIE MATTEL SEAGULL NOISES RN

Shown: watching Trump take the bait hook line and sinker

My mom sent me memes so I knew about this beforehand but

“THEYRE EATING THE PETS OF THE PEOPLE OF OUR COUNTRY”

*further trixie bird noises*

[Harris] “This is why I have the endorsement of former Vice President Dick Cheney” that’s NOT A GOOD THINGGGGG I don’t know if it’s like trying to be bipartisan but girl this is NOT the way

I need them to stop turning on Trumps microphone. Just leave it off

I TOOK A BULLET TO THE HEAD BECAUSE OF THEM

KAMALA I SUPPORT FRACKING HARRIS EVERYONE

WHAT ARE WE EVEN TALKING ABOUT ANYMOREEEE THIS IS SUCH A SHITSHOW

“Strength as a leader is not about beating people down it’s about lifting people up” Bold words from a woman who is actively delighting in mocking her opponent, to be clear I think it is an objectively good thing, I simply think this is a hilarious thing to say ten minutes post Live Kamala Reaction

“NOW SHE WANTS TO DO TRANSGENDER OPERATIONS ON ILLEGAL ALIENS IN PRISON”

Most of what trump says is just bloviating nonsense but I am noticing that Kamala Harris is very good at making her words sound nice while not actually saying much of substance. This is not a specific indictment against her because it’s a very Politician thing, but she isn’t actually saying much here.

[moderator] So do you acknowledge now that you lost the 2020 election

[trump] No it was obviously sarcasm

[moderator] I did watch all of the videos where you said that and I didn’t detect the sarcasm.

Trump, on Biden: I’ll let you in on a little secret, [Biden] hates her *pointing to Harris*

Okay so Harris is a proponent of a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine and is opposed to civilian mass-murder. I don’t even know how to begin to touch that with a ten foot pole and the whole situation feels so confusing to me in general. Overall she seems Anti-Civilians-Being-Slaughtered in the name of self-defense but then in the same breath assures that Israel needs support to defend itself from Iran so. Wow sounds like a whole mess of colonization practices that have deliberately destabilized a region that can’t easily be nuanced in a single answer

[Trump] “If she becomes President Israel won’t exist within two years” God I wish Harris was half as cool as he makes her out to be.

“I WOULD GET [PUTIN AND ZELENSKY] ON THE PHONE AND GET THE WHOLE THING SETTLED.”

Kamala Harris PUTIN WOULD EAT TRUMP FOR LUNCH put that on a check and take it to the bank I love national television

I love Harris essentially dishing the hot goss on Trump negotiating with the Taliban. Is this the platform to do it? No. But this is practically kayfabe at this point anyway. Do I even care

What a shitshow. Harris has zero high horse here, she refused to answer basic questions about position in an attempt to remain bipartisan, Trump endlessly blathered about nonsense. Kamala Harris won the debate, but to be frank, trump could lose to a mildly literate dog.

[pliablehead]

Heyo, what do you consider the top 5 must-watch EE interviews???

I AM SORRY I TOOK SO LONG TO ANSWER THIS and I think it's because I really don't have a proper answer!! So much of my deep dive into EE was done in one long hyperfixation spiral back when I was first getting fangirl-level into them, a good 6 or 7 years ago, and so I'm running into the problem of most of the interview content I've consumed all sort of homogenizing into one sort of blur of Lore that I've internalized and I am not doing a great job at separating out into its individual components! So, that said, the following list is probably not in line with what I'd actually ultimately believe to be the best, most crucial ones--it's just the ones my brain can call to mind at the moment. lol. BUT HERE ARE SOME:

serious/insightful: • Jon and Alex for Tape Notes podcast. (so not a must-watch so much as a much-listen, but there are a few individual clips from this on youtube in video form as well I believe.) RDF is my favorite EE album and I thought this was a hugely interesting look into their writing process and also had a bunch of cool personal stuff in it! Plus, I think it's a very good look at who the band are, like, "now" -- there's a lot of great content around from MA up through GTH, but by the time they were on album 4 and all like, 30+, and especially once covid hit and sort of changed the trajectory of like.. bands, in general, I feel like it's just been a different animal re: regular interviews etc. • this 2013 3-parter with Jonathan. It's been ages since I watched it but I remembered it almost immediately, and for some reason I'm remembering it as an oddly vulnerable Jon moment. just talking about things. (more good band lore! etc.)

funny/meme-y: • Mike and Jez at Isle of Wight. Unlike many others, I could not possibly count how many times I have rewatched this, and it is funny every time. The interviewer is a buffoon asking totally clueless questions and Jez is having absolutely none of it, he's just chomping his chewing gum the entire time, Mike's doing his best, it destroys me. • Mike and Jez look at memes. Less interview-y and more just #content but whoever edited this video did a TOP NOTCH JOB and it's one I often show to not-in-this-fanbase friends that can still be a fun look at the band and a good laff. • This very sweet one with Alex and Mike being interviewed by a literal child. Contains the infamous "Jeremy, and yes," which is one of my most quoted EE-related sentences ever • this Man Alive track-by-track, also audio only.. the BITS that Jon and Alex are doing. truly incredible stuff

just lads having a nice time :) : • the CAPSLOCK ON talkback - lots of pleasant band and lyric insight, and a great Jez cheese moment at the end • this livestream dot com session is some performing but some Q&Aing, so not really an interview proper, but the energy in the room is delightful alskdghj

other noteworthy bodies of work: • anything with Andy Backhouse. I'll be the first to admit that Andy can grate my nerves sometimes, he often feels annoyingly a little too simp-y or something, but the other side of that coin is that as a huge fan of the band he actually does always ask them questions that are like, Real, he Gets them, so it's guaranteed to be a notch up from just random music journos who are engaging with them on a more surface industry level. Nothing is more frustrating than watching an EE interview where the interviewer just so blatantly doesn't "get" EE's whole deal and doesn't know how to interface. Andy never has that problem ! • any episode of Chips of Chorlton that features them (I think Jon's been on twice and Jeremy once). Dutch Uncles are their friends and hearing them all shoot the shit in an extremely comfortable environment is suuuuch a pleasant and wholly different experience than when the lads are being Professional Music Band guys, even when the latter still consists of them doing fairly goofy things

A VERY LONGWINDED AND NOT ESPECIALLY COMPREHENSIVE ANSWER ?? !!!!! Ultimately I think I was the wrong man for the job. @hellkitepriest has way more of an archivist's nature sort of just intrinsically than I do, he can probably do a better and less ridiculous job akjdshglak

[catbountry]

Re: your reblog: No idea why a lot of men don't want anything to do with a movement that was regularly comparing them to bowls of poisoned M&Ms. It'll forever be a mystery

Oh fuck, that fucking post.

Like, look. I understand the importance of communicating why women might be intimidated by men. But that was such a bad comparison. I remember it being circulated by the kinds of people I was hanging out with who would wind up becoming increasingly right-wing, and it felt like every single time there was some sort of poorly articulated point about the fear that gets ingrained into us, it would just push these guys further and further away. This is purely anecdotal, but I was in a discussion with some guys in a server who said that they'd talked with multiple guys who were just kind of vaguely anti-woke not because of any deeply held principles, but because someone on the left was mean to them or disparaged them. In nerd spaces especially, these are guys who were likely already ostracized in school for being weird and are looking for, well, a safe space. And when perceived outsiders (other nerds who are demographically different from them) come in and try and make a space more inclusive, make it safer, and call anybody who objects a bad person... there's a really big social element to that. Like yeah, there's probably misogyny or racism or homophobia that could be unpacked, but those are things you can unlearn. And the best way for these guys to unlearn these behaviors is just through contact with people who are different from them with whom they have positive experiences. It's not the whole process, mind, but it's a good first step. And simply telling someone off for being bad when they might not even fully understand why it is that they have objections will succeed in getting rid of those guys from your spaces, but where do they go from there? Not the diverse and inclusive spaces we would hope they'd go, that's for fuckin' sure.

I don't want to say that it's our jobs to be super nice to these guys all the time, because you know what? Yeah, some of them do suck, as many people of all walks of life do. They won't change their minds because they see no reason to do so. But if you have the energy to try and level with these guys and just say things in a way that isn't accusatory and is just matter-of-fact, it works better. They're more likely to see you as a whole-ass person if you're willing to engage with them as a whole-ass person. It's exhausting, and I'm not the best at it, but goddammit, I've tried, with varying results. Even if they come in swinging, they can be tripped up by a simple "why would you say that?" or "I don't get it." Challenging them in a way that's not accusatory so much as it is asking them to self-reflect. Why would you say that? Why is that offensive joke funny? Why do you think it's an appropriate thing to say to people you barely even know?

I'm not one of those people that denies the existence of the male loneliness epidemic, though I certainly do think loneliness is up with everybody, not just men. I think neuroatypical men are particularly vulnerable; people with autism aren't any more likely than NT people to believe conspiracy theories, but I definitely found myself taking the word of people who I was friendly with when they perpetuated misinformation to me about shit like AGP or ROGD because why would they lie to me? Looking back, there were definitely people who were racist in a more lowkey way that wasn't immediately detectable by me because I couldn't hear the dogwhistles. But just by virtue of being a enby in predominately queer social circles, I have people around me that were able to challenge these views and help pull me away from these ideas (and help me realize that my gender is more "woman?" rather than just "woman"). These friends allowed me to realize just how stupid they actually were. There's a lot of guys, particular straight guys, who just do not have that in their lives. The bigots are always recruiting and there's nothing they love more than disenfranchised young men who are full of misdirected anger and resentment, especially ones who might be psychologically or emotionally vulnerable and incredibly insecure about it. It's a really hard mindset to get out of, particularly when your views get more extreme, and it's also something you have to actually want to change. Admitting you've been played for a sucker by people with agendas and who don't actually give a shit about you is hard. Nobody wants to admit when they've been had.

There's always a lot of resistance whenever anybody floats the idea that hey, maybe we shouldn't automatically assume these guys are assholes when we encounter them; they might just be ignorant, and you can talk to people who are ignorant without coming across as condescending or sanctimonious. Some of them might be assholes but let them show themselves first before deciding that you can't deal with them. But men are like most people; they don't want to see themselves as fundamentally bad or wicked. Nor should they. I know a lot of women who have been hurt by men; shit, I was hurt by the same man over and over and over again and was in denial about it for decades, and it was only after leaving him that I realized just how absolutely fucked he was as a person, and how he'd never have any incentive to change, even when faced with the consequences of his incredibly selfish actions. I tried so fucking hard to get him to improve only to be met with the same rote excuses for why he couldn't, and I kept giving him grace he did not earn. But also I was trying for 21 years. But his problems are his own. Not every man is going to be like him. I've known men who are, deep down, decent people, but they pick up shitty ideas that linger around them like a stinkcloud. The good news about stinkclouds, though? You can take a shower and smell better. You do it regularly enough, you won't stink no more. It's not an immutable trait. But it definitely helps to not hang around other guys who cluster and form a larger stinkcloud. You gotta wash your ass, if you must, as Del the Funky Homosapien once said.

Fellas, you are not a poisoned bowl of M&Ms. You might just be kinda smelly and in need of a bath. You can't remove the poison from those M&Ms, but you can clean up and become the best version of yourself. A lot of us have the stink of a lot of cultural ideas we've been fed without question, and you're not a bad person for having thought these things one time; it's a long process trying to challenge and prune these ideas. But you might be a bad person if somebody tries to reach out to you and you go and roll around in pig shit and declare how much you love being stinky, while also being upset that girls don't want to talk to you on account of the stink... unless they are taught from a young age to ignore it, or they also want to just socially isolate themselves by diving headfirst into the Bog of Eternal Stench. Those women do certainly exist, but they're not going to bring out the best in you, you know?

It's not an easy process, and it's not easy to reach out to people and have the psychological wherewithal to be able to handle some potentially wild shit. But if you're the kind of person who believes in rehabilitation in the justice system, then you should be able to extend that to people who just have some really shitty ideas that they just internalized without question who might just need to hear a perspective that they haven't heard before. Not everybody can do it, but for those who can? Try. You might help keep somebody from quoting crime or suicide statistics to strangers online in an attempt to feel some semblance of power above those they see below them in the societal hierarchy. You can't force change, but you might be able to nudge them in the right direction.

I think that's the best anybody can do. Try to be as kind as patient as you can, but don't take any shit, either. Remain firm in your principles. Remove yourself if you have to. But at least try, even when it's hard, because like it or not, we need as many of these guys on our side as possible of we want to affect the kind of change we want to see in the world.

... And that's all I have to say about that.

[nonbinarymlm]

Let’s talk about venting and boundaries, especially in the context of social justice.

There’s a place for venting negative feelings about oppression. That venting doesn’t have to be 100% correct. It’s okay to be like “I hate straight/white/cis/male/etc people” on occasion when frustration with oppression is getting you down without specifying “not ALL x majority group”. Venting is going to be messy sometimes. That’s okay.

But if there are no boundaries or limits to your venting, THAT will be harmful to yourself, others, and any social movement you try to represent. Not every single place, time, and context is going to be an appropriate space for venting.

If you are running a social justice or minority focused space of any kind, you need to have clear guidelines around venting and when it is/isn’t appropriate with your space or your space will likely turn toxic and unhealthy. People can use supposed “venting” as a weapon to harm and silence others.

If a trans man is talking about his experience with oppression and someone responds with how he sucks because he’s a man and men suck? That’s not okay. That’s using the excuse of venting to silence a marginalized person discussing their oppression. The same is true for black, Asian, disabled, gay, mixed race, bi, ANY marginalized men. I use this as an example because women are numerically the largest oppressed group globally so it can often come up, but there’s many other examples. Venting about white people can even be used to silence women and LGBTQ+ people depending on the specific context (like complaining about “white girls” or “white gays” doing stereotypically feminine things that are entirely harmless).

Venting about “straight” or “het” people can be used to silence and exclude aro, ace, trans, intersex, and even bisexual people depending on context. It can also be used to dismiss and silence non-white people and discussions around interracial relationships. Venting about “cis” people can be used to silence and exclude intersex people. The diversity of the LBGTQ+ community can make this tactic all too common.

Even if you’re not trying to hurt someone, if you don’t have separate spaces or clear boundaries on your venting, then you will likely hurt someone. If a straight intersex person constantly hears about how straight people suck in LGBTQ+ spaces, they’re going to feel hurt and excluded even if that wasn’t the intent. If you expect queer men to be totally fine with having to randomly, arbitrarily hear how much they suck for being men in queer spaces, then you’re making queer spaces unsafe for queer men.

There can be vent spaces, vent blogs, personal spaces, etc that are there for venting about majority groups. It’s healthy for outlets for anger to exist. But if a social justice space expects some members to always be ready and willing to become an outlet for venting and anger with no boundaries or limits because those members have some kind of privileged identity, then that’s not healthy or reasonable. It’s not okay, and it often ignores intersectionality and the fact that people can embody marginalized and privileged identities at the same time.

TL;DR:

It’s time to get more nuanced about venting in social justice spaces. Yes, oppressed people need and deserve space for venting. No, it is not always reasonable, healthy, or okay to vent in every single context.

I know that there’s a lot of complexity to talk about here, but I think we need to talk about it. Because “venting” has become a tool for dismantling intersectionality, lateral oppression, and even plain old regular oppression in too many progressive spaces.

[novella-november]

What's your favorite thing to write about?

I love fantasy and scifi!

One of the Big Works I'm planning on doing in the future is a big old series set on the same planet across multiple eras and stages of development, which starts off as your typical Fantasy setting, full of various species of people in a lower-technology era of settlements, kingdoms, and a few bigger cities in each region, up to steam technology, then "modern" equivalent, all the way up to space-faring times, etc.

One of my biggest issues with xenofiction (any fiction where the main character is Not Human, usually in fantasy settings but also scifi with Aliens) is that people come up with these really cool designs and concepts that are interesting, but they usually have some form of Biological Essentialism baked into them that is never actually addressed, or if it is, its ultimately dismissed as

"We evolved this [oppressive culture] eons ago, therefore we cannot [do not want to] change it ,and it is in fact *correct* and *natural* for our kind to be this way."

Like, as an example:

Say a fantasy series where there's cool fantasy animals inspired by hyenas with extremely rigid gender roles and abilities, where its matriarichal and the males of the species are commonly beaten up by the females who are asserting their dominance? Neat, I wonder what kind of role they play in the fantasy ecosystem!

But if you take those same hyena-inspired fantasy animals and make them a fantasy sentient species who are *People* and their behavior stays the same...

.. you do, in fact, have to actually put in the work to say that just because their ancient animal ancestors behaved in this way does not make it right or just for them to continue to beat down and oppress literally 50% of their population, and what kind of movements are going on either currently to change the status quo, or decide at what point in the past they mostly stopped such Explicit Behavior, while they perhaps continue it is more subtle ways, much like how misogyny, heteronormativity, and associativity are still widespread even in ""progressive"" countries.

TL;DR:

My favorite thing to write about is taking a generic trope and *Actually Thinking About The Implications* if it were something in an Actual Society of living people.

My other, less complicated favorite thing to write is I am planning on writing some (*cough cough* A LOT *cough cough*) original Arsène Lupin stories in the future once I have finished reading all of the books that are currently Public Domain in my country :D

If you are curious about Arsene Lupin, here is a link to the first book on Project Gutenberg, and here is a link to a fantastic audiobook on youtube made by Games and Gutenberg :)