#tl;dr good structure i'm eating it

[crehador]

translation issues aside, the story of reverse 1999 is really surprisingly good for a gacha. i'm vibing with the characters and setting, and the STRUCTURE of the currently released chapters is just downright excellent

major spoilers for chapters 1 through 4 below the cut

introducing us to the world through regulus was such a good call for chapter one, it's all new to her just like it's all new to the player. we get a chance to learn through her eyes

another reason this works so well imo is it paints vertin, in regulus's eyes, as this hyper-competent character with her own agenda and agency (only to reveal bit by bit that she's in a much more difficult position than it may seem at first, and in so many ways is still just a hurt kid trying to right the wrongs she's seen in this world, desperate not to lose more people)

then we move on to chapter 2, where we see schneider's tragedy unfold and meet some major players like arcana. schneider's story even on its own is pretty damn good, but the way vertin acts and reacts in chapter 2 is full of perfect little hints to what kind of past trauma might have shaped her

THEN CHAPTER 3. THE TRAUMA. i loved schneider's story, but i think this is where we really dive into the meat of the overarching plot. and it is such a perfect dive

like after the events of chapter 2, it does more or less make sense that vertin is being treated for Something. right away chapter 3 gives off a bit of a foreboding feeling because vertin's in the hands of the foundation now, which we as a player knows she doesn't trust, and it's deliberately made ambiguous what she's being treated for and exactly when she'll be released

but at this point, to me at least, it still seemed... possible that she really was just being treated for damage from chapter 2

THEN THE HORRORS UNFOLD vertin's past is shown to us throughout this chapter, and bit by bit it dawns that the foundation is capable of much more heinous acts than we already expected. when we meet the ring and isabella, a feeling of dread sets in right away. because they're clearly important to vertin, but where are they in the present? it's not hard to figure out she lost them (which adds so much dimension to her reactions to everything with schneider)

when the escape plan is coming together, with those side looks at what constantine is scheming, the inevitable dread gets heavier and heavier. like even knowing exactly what would happen, that the kids would be deliberately funneled into the storm just so vertin would see them die and feel responsible because it was her plan that led them there... seeing it actually happen was still a major gut punch, very effective

vertin's naivete in this past is such a haunting thing to see as well, there are moments where the text even shines a light on "will they realize this is going TOO smoothly for them?" and no! no they do not!! because they are 12-year-old kids who haven't lost all hope in the world!!!

seeing these grand scenes unfold with chess (and later go) on the screen was visually very cool as well, imo. might feel a bit gimmicky but it's a gimmick i enjoyed

anyway so then we get to chapter 4, and by then the sense of dread surrounding the foundation has fully set in. so it's almost unsurprising (yet still HORRIFYING) when you realize holy shit the foundation is keeping vertin hostage in a medically induced coma!! treatment for trauma my ass!!!

i feel like chapter 4 was the perfect place to end this arc as well, it was like an extended prologue. a lot of the tension/excitement for me came from the realization that vertin doesn't yet have a place to belong, it's not like "manus bad, foundation good" and that's that

looking at it through the lense of arknights, it would be like if doctor didn't have rhodes island at the start. all these factions around vertin, with their own agendas, and she doesn't have her own "home" yet

we get there, at the end of chapter 4. but of course it's not perfect, the terms of her operating her own team are very conditional, and there are loads of unanswered questions for the future

but it's a nice little set-up for future events, for vertin building this team (family) of arcanists who have some measure of freedom. the tension is still there, the foundation is still scheming, and some new mysterious organization is getting ready to enter the chat...?

all in all just, imo, an excellently structured story so far. it's a shame the translation detracts so much from it, i do think some powerful moments suffered from that. but the actual story is really quite strong, and vertin and her circle are all quite captivating to me so far

[qweerhet]

I see some of your pro-ai stuff, and I also see that you're very good at explaining things, so I have some concerns about ai that I'd like for you to explain if it's okay.

I'm very worried about the amount of pollution it takes to make an ai generated image, story, video, etc. I'm also very worried about ai imagery being used to spread disinformation.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to go by the stance that since we can't un-create ai, we should just try our best to manage. How do we manage things like disinformation and massive amounts of pollution? To be fair, I actually don't know the exact amount of pollution ai generated prompts make.

so, first off: the environmental devastation argument is so incorrect, i would honestly consider it intellectually dishonest. here is a good, thorough writeup of the issue.

the tl;dr is that trying to discuss the "environmental cost of AI" as one monolithic thing is incoherent; AI is an umbrella term that refers to a wide breadth of both machine-learning research and, like, random tech that gets swept up in the umbrella as a marketing gimmick. when most people doompost about the environmental cost of AI, they're discussing image generation programs and chat interfaces in particular, and the fact is that running these programs on your computer eats about as much energy as, like, playing an hour of skyrim. bluntly, i consider this argument intellectually dishonest from anyone who does not consider it equally unethical to play skyrim.

the vast majority of the environmental cost of AI such as image generation and chat interfaces comes from implementation by large corporations. this problem isn't tractable by banning the tool; it's a structural problem baked into the existence of massive corporations and the current phase of capitalism we're in. prior to generative AI becoming a worldwide cultural trend, corporations were still responsible for that much environmental devastation, primarily to the end of serving ads--and like. the vast majority of use cases corporations are twisting AI to fit boil down to serving ads. essentially, i think focusing on the tool in this particular case is missing the forest for the trees; as long as you're not addressing the structural incentives for corporations to blindly and mindlessly participate in unsustainable extractivism, they will continue to use any and all tools to participate in such, and i am equally concerned about the energy spent barraging me with literally dozens and dozens of digital animated billboards in a ten-mile radius as i am with the energy spent getting a chatbot to talk up their product to me.

moving onto the disinformation issue: actually, yes, i'm very concerned about that. i don't have any personal opinions on how to manage it, but it's a very strong concern of mine. lowering the skill floor for production of media does, necessarily, mean a lot of bad actors are now capable of producing a much larger glut of malicious content, much faster.

i do think that, historically speaking, similar explosions of disinformation & malicious media haven't been socially managed by banning the tool nor by shaming those who use it for non-malicious purposes--like, when it was adopted for personal use, the internet itself created a sudden huge explosion of spam and disinformation as never before seen in human history, but "get rid of the internet" was never a tractable solution to this, and "shame people you see using the internet" just didn't do anything for the problem.

wish i could be more helpful on solutions for that one--it's just not a field i have any particular knowledge in, but if there's anyone reading who'd like to add on with information about large-scale regulation of the sort of broad field of malicious content i'm discussing, feel free.

[mossymandibles]

I'm sure it's all lore that will be revealed in due time, but could you tell us about some of the side effects of consuming the celestial flesh?

I’m definitely not good at working linearly and slow at story plot reveal right now anyway, so happy to answer lol

Also, I wasn’t sure how to gage how much context this answer needed so sorry in advance for the long answer 😭. And cw for graphic descriptions of disease/body horror stuff.

Tl;dr Eating Yvishnir eventually caused evolutionary entropy that sometimes causes horrors.

It’s said that Yvishnir (the body not in the ocean) was a fallen star from long ago, before humanity and the fall of Tartarus(ocean body). The primordials, (Furies and sea dragons) were the ancient fish and birds that fed on Yvishnir in order to sustain their size and godhood and multiply on Earth as its continued keepers. They grew jealous over humanity’s progress and out of fear they buried Yvishnir so humans wouldn’t find it, and hid themselves away. That’s how part of the creation myth goes anyway. Then Tartarus fell and uncovered Yvishnir once again, drawing the primordials out and changing the sea.

So when I say ‘eating the flesh’, I mostly mean the Crux. At first, when Yvishnir was discovered and exposed to the atmosphere, it produced something called Crux which permeated the corpse and oozed from it as a liquid, thought to be a type of otherworldly bacterium or ichor to help it decompose. It caused a sort of explosion of hyper biodiversity/evolution, starting with plants. Here are some examples, mostly some fungi:

Most Humans didn’t really consider eating the Crux of course.

There were a few eccentrics and cults however that started the ball rolling. They would mostly eat it from fungi that had grown around Yvishnir, as well as cooking with it. This caused versions of human evolution, where they began to evolve into the Myce and other species to repopulate as, genetically merging with fungi in order to survive the new world. They’re under the blanket term ‘Hox Strays’, who make up most of Marrowtide and other known civilization islands to this day. There are different variations of these and their mutations have ‘stabilized’ over many generations but that’s another story.

As for Yvishnir, there was a point where the Crux changed its properties, becoming more crystalline. Entropy took over the longer the body was exposed. Even the very insects that were feeding on it began to quickly horrifically mutate and grow. People would say that demons were being birthed from its rotted juices. The Crux began to bring on less desirable effects. Humans classified it as several new forms of horrific diseases ranging from otherworldly prions to the very DNA itself denaturing and mutating.

✨Some outcomes include but are not limited to;✨

>Victims known to have fits of uncontrollable laughter while bleeding from orifices. Several cysts that had broken out on the skin were found to contain bits of teeth, hair and even eyes, like they were growing them.

>Some victims became more beast-like but at the cost of their minds and insatiable hunger for more of the celestial flesh/Crux.

>Victims first described it as a tingling sensation in their chest and extremities. Their blood began to change its molecular structure to be crystalline as well. Cells became shard-like, until their blood eventually hardened completely. It could be seen poking through skin, like they were full of glass.

>Worse still, in a sort of sped up form of the first outcome, they can become a never ending cycle of constantly evolving body parts, growing biomass like cancerous tumors of body parts forever in bloom, eg. growing several hands from your eye or numerous organs. The body can’t sustain this and it pretty much ends in death.

These modern day effects were mostly observed by The Ladder and they determined that Yvishnir was not to be consumed by organisms any longer. In the modern day it is safely contained in Hearth, which is the name of the quarantined citadel outside of The Fever, serving god knows what purpose aside from genetic experiments they’re rumored to be continuing with the remaining crystalline Crux Root.

The primordials felt that those who continued eating the Crux were forsaken, punished for eating the god. They along with others had migrated far, far away at that point, populating the mountains of Zenith and oceans that no one dared to sail through. The body of Yvishnir faded into legends. Even people living within Fever and the isles surrounding it knew less and less about the body as time went on, more focused on surviving day to day.

Their are cases where people have somehow managed to preserve the liquid form of Crux, said to still be procured and preserved when the body was first uncovered and would thus have the least amount of risk involved.

Some people hunt mermaids for the soul purpose of searching the contents of their stomach, to see if they have remnants of Tartarus in them.

With Tartarus it’s all based on theory because no one is able to get down there to see wtf is going on, they only see the results.

[doctormastertardis]

I am re-watching the first Dalek serial IN COLOR and it's a whole new experience bruhhh!

I love that Ian is the Doctor's conscience. When the Doctor speculated that the "people" (daleks) who live in the city are "very intelligent", Ian immediately replies with,

"Yes, but how do they USE their intelligence? What form does it (intelligence) take?" SPOKEN LIKE A GOOD PERSON. What good is intelligence if it takes the form of evil?

ALSO SEE: "note to self"/tags HERE & HERE :

#what is empathy without a moral code #without a moral code there is no empathy - just “rules” #and I don't have rules - social conventions ARE rules #social conventions are very subjective and are often in accordance with the POWER STRUCTURE of the system and interpersonal cultural biases #a lot of social conventions are oppressive and don't align with a moral code

#autism doesn't mean you don't have empathy #it means you have trouble understanding social cues #because often times SOCIAL CUES are conventional #and “conventionality” from an “autistic” perspective is something to be “dissected” first in order to understand “conventionality”

#Having a strong moral code doesn't mean the person has “low empathy” #THAT is misleading because EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE requires BOTH deep empathy AND a moral code

TL;DR: Empathy and intelligence need to have moral codes. Otherwise, both will merely be acting on conventionality/social rules. MORAL CODES ARE NOT SOCIETAL RULES/LAWS. Legality and social conventionalities aren't necessarily "good". In fact, often times, CONVENTIONALITY were made by and for those who monopolize power OVER others within a systemic OPPRESSIVE structure.

It's sorta like when people say shit like, "Hitler was a human being too so why should he get punished for a genocide? He was an artist too! He painted!!! He must have FELT something" OR

"(insert serial killer/extremely abusive person) eats and breathes like us too, so why talk bad about them when they clearly just have personal issues like you and me?"

Empathy and intelligence (emotional or otherwise) are not supposed to be a GENERIC application for everything. I'm only going on a tirade about this because a lot of New Age spirituality (the capitalist "psychedelic movement" in California) nowadays MASK the abusive system and PROTECT abusive people who perpetuate the oppressive system.

[thetwistedrope]

I know this is a dumb question, but would you mind explaining the Kemetic afterlife in layman terms? I still can't wrap my head around some of the concepts.

tl;dr: it depends on the era

pre-dynastic egyptians, the Buto Burials, show that there was still heavy focus on cattle, and ppl were buried wrapped in cow skins with a small amount of stuff. likely, to get them through the afterlife? to get them to wherever they needed to go. texts are sparse.

earliest dynastic eras of AE mostly focused on the king, a lot of egyptologists believe that the afterlife was only available to the king in the earliest eras of AE history, but i personally don't feel like we have enough information to really say that.

either way, you crawled up into the sky with teh gods. you are both saved by the gods and the enemy of the gods. you consume the gods and become a god. there's a lot of ladders.

the pyramid texts of the OK become the basis of coffin texts in the MK. tbh, a lot of the texts are really similar. i've flipped through both the PT and CT, and they are very similar. you still go claw and caojle your way to the gods until you become an akh.

later periods, the afterlife moved more into the ground, into caverns. BotD materials p much focus on this aspect of the afterlife, and by the latest periods, you get the Book of Earth which is... as the name suggests, funerary texts about the afterlife in the ground.

egyptologists will tell you that they prepared tombs and texts to get them through the afterlife, and that this persists throughout all of AE history. and that these things seemed necessary to be able to even become an akh, but i've personally never been a big fan of assuming that you need a bunch of physical shit to get to the Hall of Two Truths. it just doesn't sit right iwth my that commoners were somehow barred from an afterlife because they didn't have money. instead, i prefer to think that rich ppl needed to jump through hoops because rich ppl are awful at adhering to ma'at :)

anyways, after you die you're nothing but a shadow, a really weak spirit that isn't fully Established. your goal as a spirit is to become Established, to become an Akh. a "shining one." akh are represented by stars, because in the OK, you went into the sky when you died and became a star (which, again, goes against the idea that only the king could get there omg).

in order to become an akh, you gotta make it to the Hall of Two Truths. in order to get there, you need all that shit you were buried with (supposedly). you end up going through a journey of the duat, you meet different guardians and are supposed to know the right things to say to get through the gates and make it to the Hall. traditionally it's believed that the path to the Hall is treacherous, because the Duat has a bunch of things living in it that would love to eat you, but my personal experiences of the Duat haven't bore that out (esp in the modern era, idk maybe it was all spooky n shit in the past).

but also, i'm really not down with suggesting that poor ppl just get picked off because they didn't have money.

Naydler posits a different theory, that the process of going through the Duat and meeting all of the guardians and such helps you to become prepared for the Hall, and you only reach the Hall if you're actually ready to become an akh.

The most well-known part of the Hall is the negative confessions (sometimes called the 42 truths of ma'at, which is not a good name for them) and the weighing of the heart.

the confessions are really meant to be heka that fully transform you into someone who will exist within the structures of the Field of Reeds (sometimes called... aaru). by reciting them, you become the person the heka says you are. if you're not an absolute shit person, the heka should be enough (imo) to get you through the process.

after you say the heka, your heart is weighed and if you're "good enough" O welcomes you as an Akh into the field of reeds. from there, you can sorta.... do all sorts of things. but basically, after you become an akh, all of your physical trappings are no longer necessary to sustain you. you're able to come and go btwn the Duat and here, and you're able to partake of the offerings the gods receive each day (lol).

you are established there now, so you don't need to be fully established here. that's why the most dangerous time for a dead person is right after they die up until they pass through the Hall. this likely informs why later kings were not too concerned with robbing old tombs to refill their coffers. similarly, it mirrors the way that the AE ppl seemed to view akhu veneration. you would focus on specific ppl who are within a generation or so fo yourself, and then anyone who is beyond that point tended to get moved into a collective "past ancestors". the egyptians may have done this because after a point, you don't really necessarily /need/ the direct assistance of your remaining kin, because you are now fully established in teh duat.

i could include here what happens if you don't pass the weighing of the heart, but i'm gonna be real with each and every one of you: most of yall don't have shit to worry about. whatever trivial mistakes you're making in life are not what gets you fed to ammit. i'd say to not trouble yourself with that and just focus on being the best you you can be. care about others around you, care about yourself, don't be an exploitative shitbag, and you'll be fine.

idk, hopefully that helped.

[blue-hi]

I should be using my hooky day to work on homework but there's a Situation in the group chat that is making me feel somehow lucky I had an evening class to attend, and I want to address it here because 1) this place acts like a diary for when I can't say something out loud and 2) I see what I consider to be the root of this particular problem in rhetoric all around this site (and places of similar persuasion, you'll see what I mean) and if possible, I want to help as best I can.

Under a read-more because unfortunately this is long. But if you have any interest in persuading people of your positions, especially political ones and especially this year, please consider what I have to say at least.

Tl;dr— Arguments require evidence, no matter how righteous you consider the cause to be; changing minds takes time and effort but that time and effort will be well-spent; your audience questioning your claim does not necessarily mean they are hostile to it, just that they want clarification.

First, the Situation, as quick as possible, as I understand it: a new individual joined some meetings of one of my friend groups last semester. We have meals which are open to all students, so this person is welcome to join us and we are happy to have them. Last night, after I left for class, they made a request to the group to help them fundraise to help someone they know pay rent. Which is totally understandable, but things have gone off the rails—

This person, so far, is not known for making requests. They're more like. Assumptions and demands. The message in the chat that they sent was definitely a demand, and it was definitely hostile, because of the response to the initial request, which I'll get back to shortly. I haven't been able to speak with them, only my other friends who were there, but I cannot honestly say that I believe the original topic was brought up with. Um. Tact.

The person they are fundraising for lives in another city entirely (another state even) and they have never met in person before. Not necessarily a red flag—I have plenty of friends I only know/have met online, and so overall I'm pro-being-friends-with-people-online (Hello! If you're reading this, you know who you are :) I love you)—but it can be. I don't know anything about my acquaintance's relationship with this person besides "they met online." How long have they known each other? Where did they meet? Do they know this person is who they say they are? A lot of my online friends, we've known each other for over ten years, and over multiple platforms. If they were catfishing me, it would be a hell of an accomplishment.

My acquaintance has been sending a lot of money to this person, reportedly. Like, enough that they came to us for meals because they don't have enough to eat themself.

So a potentially shady scenario (I'm equivocating because I'm trying to hang onto good-faith interpretations of things with all the strength I can muster but. It's definitely shady, let's not kid ourselves) presented with righteous gusto, to people who had not heard of this situation moments before.

Needless to say, this didn't go over well, and my friends weren't immediately on this train. This caused our acquaintance to leave in frustration, and they later put in the group chat a link to the fundraising page and the demand that they "expect each of us to donate and them prove to them that we donated."

This is continuing into this morning. My friends are doing their best to ignore it. Which I think is not how this gets resolved. I don't know how this gets resolved, but I don't think it will be pretty.

So. That's the Situation. What does this mean for the rest of us?

It turns out that I'm studying how to make arguments and effectively deal with people. Right now, in fact! I was doing a reading for one of my classes that dealt with how to structure effective arguments literally yesterday morning, before shit hit the fan. Let's go through how to do that.

How to Structure Arguments: Rhetoric 101

"Rhetoric" is a whole field in itself, but simply (admittedly, perhaps reductively), it is the art of persuasion. You have something you want to say, and you want the person you are speaking with to accept your position.

Quick definition, off the bat: argument is a neutral term here. People use it in English to talk about verbal fights (my other language is German, this would be streiten), but here, it will merely refer to an attempt at persuasion. If I want to refer to people yelling at each other, I'll use Streit or fight.

Your position, or your thesis, is a claim. It is the central idea around which your argument spins, and without it, there is no reason for you to me making an argument. My acquaintance's claim is that we should help them fundraise for their friend.

The reason you make a claim is called, fittingly, the reason. It is the basis for the claim, and the claim flows from it. My acquaintance's reason is that their friend is having financial troubles.

In addition, there is an unspoken warrant. A warrant is a general principle that binds the reason and the claim; it justifies (or warrants) the claim flowing from the reason. My acquaintance's warrant is that good people help others in trouble.

All of this is well an good. The problem is that this is where my acquaintance ended, and then made their ask (I...may be using that word liberally but technically that's the term). The further problem is, that's not a full argument.

What's missing? Evidence.

We still have many questions. I have a few of them above. Who is this person? What is their relationship to you? How did you meet? How long have you known each other? Do you have proof that they are who they say they are? What is their general history? Etc. etc. etc.

This is not to determine whether or not this person is deserving of help (maybe it is for others, but to me, that question is irrelevant). It's to learn more, to make an informed decision. Especially with something like financial resources. A rhetor has to be aware of their audience's hesitances, goals, resources, etc. Asking college students for money is always a hard sell, no matter what cause or what amount you're asking for. Maybe it's not "right," but it just is, and ignoring that will only kill your argument.

My point here is that people asking questions of a premise does not automatically mean they are disagreeing. It means they want to make informed decisions as to whether they agree or not, and they do not want to feel strong-armed into making that decision. In the end, it is your audience's decision as to whether they are convinced of your argument. All you can do is make it as best you can.

And to do that, you have to actually finish the damn thing.

I see this a lot in political discussions here. Person X has strongly held convictions, and they want to convince the more moderate Person Y to agree. Convictions like, "You should sign this petition to switch the city to renewable energy (claim), since our current energy sources pollute the air and water (reason)." This is a sympathetic cause for me, and I imagine you too. But Person Y is in their rights to ask for more clarification, even if they do agree. Maybe Person Y will ask questions like,

What kinds of renewable energy?

How long will implementing your vision take?

Will it create or destroy jobs?

Is the technology feasible?

How polluted are our air and water?

Etc.

Far too often, I see Person X get frustrated at this point. It's self-evident! Why are you pushing back at me! The environment will only get worse, we don't have time to sit around answering these questions! So they lash out, and Person Y walks away, deciding they hated that interaction and that they aren't going to do what Person X told them to do. Meanwhile the environment is still polluted.

I see this all over. It's an election year in the US. You're gonna see it a lot too. Why don't we make a game of it, see how many posts like this we can come across before November. We'll see if I haven't had a stroke by then.

My main critique of leftists is that we have no patience, not even to make an argument. Yes, many important things are pressing! Yes, people will get hurt unless they get fixed now! Yes, these are true!

But change doesn't happen overnight, not even in the most ideal of revolutions (my god, don't even get me started, that's another discussion entirely). Things take time, especially when trying to influence politics or attitudes of whole societies. It took 40 years for conservatives to overturn Roe. It may take 40 more years to put it back. That doesn't mean that all the time in the middle is misspent. Have you ever seen a stonecutter? It happens all at once, but what made it possible was the 100 whacks you didn't see.

Take the extra time and finish the argument. Don't assume people already agree, or that if they do, they'll follow you without question. Remember that questions and clarifications aren't inherently hostile. It is your audience's right to make their own decisions, so it is your duty to make your argument as effective as possible. Rhetoric is a finesse tool, not a hammer. If you try to bludgeon someone with it, it will break.

Post-script

I'm worried about my acquaintance. I don't want them to feel unwelcome with us, and I want them to take care of their own well-being. I'm a Franciscan, I get the impulse. Absolutely I do. But remember that it is not a sin to care for yourself as well.

The reading that inspired this impromptu essay is from The Craft of Argument by Joseph M. Williams and Gregory C. Columb, particularly Chapter 2, "Argument as Civil Conversation."

I didn't talk about tone here but I want to do a brief discussion of it. I'm aware this is possibly too-close to "tone-policing" and I do want to avoid that. But another fact of life as it is, is that people don't like being demanded to do things. How you say something is just as important as what you say (the medium is the message). It doesn't affect the quality of my claims—I can still be right even if I'm an absolute asshole, or I can be calm and civil and just plain wrong—but it does affect how those claims will be received. When I saw the demand in the group chat, my immediate reaction was, "Fuck that, why should I?" Even if I would donate, and therefore accept the claim, I still wouldn't follow through on that demand. Because I'm a petty and spiteful bitch and I don't like being talked to like that. But I can understand the difference between the claim and the demand; my other friends may not, and that hostile demand puts the entire argument at risk. Keep this in mind as well.

[sybilius]

ohhh I'd love to know about Jay White / Bullet Club character study piece?

Ahhhhh I think you would really enjoy this one though it's very ill-formed right now and is basically why I'm on the Jay White Deep Dive. I am tossing around several things structurally, and mostly trying to figure out how to write it at a length that won't burn me out. But essentially I like the idea of writing a Jay POV story about his time as leader of bullet club and the layers of struggling with hmmm being both a paranoid maniac who WILL backstab but also caring so much? I think a LOT about Phantasmo "we discussed it and we were going to let Jay ride off into the sunset--". There's affection between the shitty losers of bullet club (affectionate) and I want to tease that out and how Jay both trusts it and cannot trust it as a result of his own actions.

Again, not super well defined yet but I think a lot of the story is contained within my initial idea of how Jay approached Kenta to join bullet club. I think there's this sense to which in order to recruit for Bullet club, he looks for people who are fundamentally dissatisfied with their lot on the roster and preys on that to get them to flip.

And Jay is very very good at that, and I've kind of tapped Ishimori as a character who helps him with that structure. But like, it comes with this terrible double edged sword that is both people pleasing and "I need to stab first". The "I need to stab first" paranoia is visible in the character development as I understand it, but at heart I want this fic to be about the ways in which Jay White is always trying to one-up himself by hyper-reading in to how happy his Bullet Club friends are with being in Bullet Club-- because fundamentally, he's afraid of someone like him stealing them away the same way he did.

There's a whole element too with Gedo + Okada that I'm still tossing over how to weave into the story. Gedo's presence as Jay's crutch is unmistakable but I don't see their relationship as fundamentally all that good for Jay (or Okada)-- so like, Gedo as a character really feeding the twin paranoia / product of Jay White The Best Guy Ever, and that eventually eating up Jay inside. It's like, the contrast is that Jay and say, Phantasmo or Kenta or Ishimori, still fundamentally like and care about each other on some level. Gedo cares about Jay White The Product the same way he cared about Okada the Product (before Okada went full mid-life-crisis mode). But I'm still tossing around how to weave this in and/or how much

AND THEN there's also David Finlay who I have the most ill-formed ideas about but want to have a presence in the story too...same with Tama Tonga... we'll see when I get to that in my backwatch....

tl;dr Jay White is a neurotic mess of a guy and I want to write about him fucking himself over in various ways until his untimely (narrative) demise.

[grandmasickomode]

OC ask time! Who are your most active or developed OCs at the moment? And how would you describe their aesthetics?

OH GOD HELLO.

So basically, I have a handful of ocs that I'm like always chewing on. I will put them under the cut becausw this is gonna get LONG.

Spoilers for Library of Ruina ahoy btw. Also CW: gore I guess in the latter half.

First we have Kep'cho, who has been mentioned before, and he is part Mime on his mothers side. His mom was in fact a mime by birth and his dad was the leader of what amounts to a criminal organization obsessed with rules and pecking orders. (For the library or ruina fans in the audience, this is the Thumb).

His Mime-ish nature made shit hard, though he was often sullen and unwilling to speak to anyone anyway. The excessive structure was too much pressure for him, and so he did what any reasonable teen would do: fake his death and run away to work elsewhere.

His heavy involvment in the Lobotomy Corp/Library of Ruina universe makes it difficult for me to go into edtail about his adventures w/o spoilers. But hes a very calm, sullen man who has grown to learn to be more happy, and accept the idea that its ok to just be a lil silly and goofy.

He absolutely also has a clown bf now, a specific clown from Library of ruina.

Heres what he looks like:

And here he is with his Clown bf

I deew dis :>

anyway. There is also Tusya.

Tusya. Well shes kinda fucked up.

Less a girl and more a flesh polyp with a girl exterior, Tusya was born in the Outskirts of the Ruina universe. Taken in by R corp employee Lamarcus when he was on an expedition with the Rhinos, she was raised in the city, where thankfully she grew up okay despite everything.

Because as it turns out, being a fucked up little flesh eater/cannibal isnt the worst thing to be in this universe.

Tusya eventually grew up and started to work at Lobotomy corporation. She was INTENDED to be enrichment for Nothing There (read: he would tear her insides out and use her body as a shell to go walkabout) but that did not come to pass.

It turns out she has an affinity with Nothing there, as he does not see her as a human and as such, has no desire to kill her. Unlike other ocs who have an affinity with Nothing There, this isn't so much a friendship as it is "enrichment for two similar but different freaks".

At best, he tolerates and interacts with her because HEY. HEY HOW DID YOU GET YOUR SHELL LIKE THAT. HEY WHATS YOUR SECRET WHY ARE YOU ALLOWES TO WANDER WHEN I CANT??? At worst, he will try and eat her because she tastes good. He loves chewing on her hair, which is actually more like fleshy string cheese that looks like hair.

(Here we have Tusya modeling Lobotomy Corporation's attempt at making a clothing line. Its pretty fucking amazing to look at).

Tusya herself is somewhat unhinged, but not malevolent. She's arguably friendlier than most of her coworkers, but she also just. Does her own thing. She doesnt much care for right or wrong, just sees a goal and goes to get said goal by any means.

But how did she get this way?

To be honest Tumblr doesnt like links. So Im going to have to ask you listen to the following songs to help showcase tusya coming into being (dont worry its only 2 songs):

Kiss me, Kill me by Jerryterry

Lusus naturae by Jeff Williams

For those who want the tl;dr version, Tusya's parents (who are unknown to her) wandered into the wrong parts of the outskirts. Tusya's mother was devoured and absorbed by a flesh colony and was dispatched by well meaning membera of the town they belonged to.

After a year of dormancy, the flesh colony came back to life and spat out a now human shaped Polyp that now goes by Tusya.

Tusya is one of my most prolific ocs, being able to be found in many other universes, including but not limited to twisted wonderland, monster high, and dead by daylight.

[g-kat423]

I'm glad that you've eaten, but your girl dinner is making me a bit concerned, but you did say you're not really that hungry, but I'm worried you will be later, but you said you'd be making breakfast by then, so I guess it's all good, unless your breakfast is another few pieces of salami and a handful of grapes...

I appreciate the concern, but the end of this message is coming off as a bit passive aggressive. Forgive me if you didn’t mean it that way, it’s hard to interpret the tone of text on its own.

Trust me, I eat enough. More than enough most days.

A general trigger warning for eating disorders and calorie counting. I feel it’s necessary to explain myself so people can understand where I’m coming from. Gonna put this under a read more

Before waking up and having the salami and grapes, I had around 1700 calories. I am an avid MyFitnessPal user and I haven’t gone a day without it apart from my inpatient stint in august of 2022 where I wasn’t allowed a phone. Even if I didn’t eat, that’s a perfectly fine amount of food for someone who is going on 31 years old and isn’t all that active due to chronic health issues.

I won’t deny my history of having an eating disorder. I’m not currently diagnosed(originally diagnosed with anorexia at 17 and later bulimia which became my main struggle for years), but if I did speak to a professional, I’d likely be diagnosed with OSFED or nothing at all because my weight and behaviors don’t currently match up with any anorexia subtype or bulimia since I no longer purge(apart from one slip up back in December which was the first time I had purged in 2 years).

Currently, my focus is on maintaining a certain weight range and curbing binge eating behaviors so I’m less likely to engage in harmful compensatory behaviors like severe restriction/fasting/purging.

When my health took a nose dive in 2022, I already wasn’t in the best place. My weight was the highest it had ever been because I had gotten into a horrible habit of comfort eating during the worst of the pandemic. It was the only vice I had. I lost weight pretty rapidly over the course of may 2022-may 2023 because I kept getting worse and instead of seeking comfort through food, I sought control in the only way I could, my weight. I couldn’t control my pain, I couldn’t control that doctors wouldn’t listen to me, but I could control how much food did or didn’t go into my body. I reached my lowest adult weight ever and likely would have gotten to a dangerous point, but by some miracle a doctor finally listened and I was able to get my pain under control. I had the desire to live and eat again. I needed the fuel to go on the walks I was so excited to be able to do again. I gained up to a healthier weight where I was active/energetic and able to maintain that for months, but then the combination of my surgery and the holidays, I fell back into comfort eating. While I’m still a healthy weight, I am not as lean as I’d like to be. I was much happier in the body I had over the summer because I was skinny, but in a healthy way for my height/age. I’m looking to get back to that so it really doesn’t hurt me to eat in a deficit, in fact that’s my secondary goal to curbing the urge to overeat.

TL;DR

I do have a history of an ED but I don’t feel at risk for a full blown relapse. I’m also not one of those people who can eat intuitively. Even when I had outpatient treatment for my ED, while I initially didn’t track calories, I had a structured meal plan. The reality is, If I want to maintain a certain weight, I have to track my calories because when I don’t, I always default back to overeating and binge eating behaviors. I’ve accepted that that’s just how it’s going to be for me because binge eating to obesity, which I did, was just as unhealthy for me as starving myself down to underweight. There’s also diabetes in my family and heart disease on top of my own health issues like POTS and the likely connective tissue disorder so it’s best I stay on top of things and strive for controlled eating habits and a leaner physique.

[ericaloses]

Hello, all 2 of my followers who haven't given up on me!!

I haven't posted in so long!

I haven't had motivation to be really committed to anything, although having a healthy young pup does help me get out and be more active. He is quite attuned to me, though, and isn't so high energy that I can't miss a few days here and there.

My eating has been so blah. A real pain in the neck - actually tongue - is that the acid in even an apple is making certain taste buds swell and feel awful, and nearly all fruits are having that effect. SO annoying, because it limits my snacks when I want some sweetness.

One thing that I've been having more than I need is the really nice, Tassie-made cashew ice cream the local supermarket has brought in. Which is one reason I'm making this post. I have a food/fitness compromise for myself, and I'm writing it down for accountability:

When I feel like buying a tub of ice cream, I'm going onto Kobo and buying a book instead!

This is a good compromise because, brain food > unnecessary food and e-books don't add to the clutter I desperately need to find the motivation to bust!

The other things I have planned that will be giving me some structure in an exercise way revolve around my pup. I have a friend who has conservation detection dogs - an old hand and a pup in training - and I asked her if she could point me towards any basic resources for training scent dogs. So now I have a 15-day course workbook to train Tarka to be a sniffy boi. He won't be a professional sniffer, since I'm not able to work as his handler, but it will be awesome enrichment for him and his springer/hound nose.

Next, I want to teach him some gundog moves using lures and teaching him how to scurry. That will be more exercise for him, but there will be some for me as well!

And then, I want to do some agility stuff. When I'm teaching him about the course and obstacles, I'll be going around it with him, so that will get me moving!

I have become very dog-focused (you might have noticed?), but having Tarka has been a huge help with my emotional well being over the past 7 months.

TL;DR - Books instead of ice cream; lots of pup stuff for exercise and mental health. Might remember to post sometimes.

[avelera]

Even as I literally just finished a fic where Ed is furious with Stede for leaving him, I'm still not 100% convinced that he will be.

The most compelling meta I've seen on this was someone pointing out that Ed didn't get mad after Stede left. He went back to the Revenge heartbroken and embarked on his whole "lesbian pottery teacher" era of self-care and creative expression. He took the lessons Stede gave him and the people Stede brought into his life and leaned on that support network and those healthy modes of emotional expression and by all appearances, seemed to be healing and figuring out who he was without Stede in his life but trying to keep the good parts of what Stede taught him about himself and what he wants out of life.

What set him off was Izzy's declaration of disgust at what he had become (again, a heartbroken but healthier person trying to work through an emotional time) and told him to get back in the closet and back to work, with the implied threat that Izzy (perhaps as a stand in for the ugly world of piracy itself) would eat Ed alive if he didn't. And Ed "snaps out of it" (in my reading, "as an abuse survivor, gets dragged back into his past toxic environment and habits") after he is shaken by this reminder, abandons his new support structure ("Bonnet's playthings"), gets rid of some (but not all) visible reminders of Stede (crying and basically torturing himself with the reminder of him with the lighthouse painting) in the public room of the captain's quarters (I maintain Stede's closet is untouched for a variety of reasons, and we can delve into the symbolism of Ed having a secret closet filled with the fine things of his boyfriend that no one else knows is there and that he doesn't show to the toxic people in his life another time).

^^ But that's where I think the slippage occurs, the confusion over whether he's mad at Stede or not. Because the predictable beat would be that he went home after being abandoned and immediately went full goth, reverting back to the Kraken as a direct cause and effect. But that didn't happen. So I guess I'm asking, is he throwing away Stede's things (including his crew) as an aggressive action towards Stede or towards the things Stede brought into Ed's life that are now Ed's things too?

There's an important nuance and distinction in the latter, that Ed's addressing something about himself rather than anything about Stede if that's the case. Substitute "Bonnet's playthings" with "Bonnet's friend group" that Ed's cutting himself off from and you can see the lie immediately: these are Ed's friends too. He's not cutting off all reminders of Stede, he keeps the lighthouse painting after all, he's cutting off the new path out of his life as Blackbeard (the toxic environment he was escaping) and most (but not all) of that support structure though in a self-destructive way (how else can keeping an enraged Jim around be viewed?).

TL;DR Ed's actions during the Kraken reversion are self-cauterizing rather than retribution towards Stede. Ed's immediate reaction to the breakup was different, we saw that. This isn't Ed's reaction to the breakup as such, this is Ed moving out of Stede's nice apartment and back into his old abusive home (while keeping a few mementos, like a metaphorical boyfriend sweater except it's your boyfriend's murderous knife-wielding crewmate, wtf Ed, this is strong evidence that your deathwish is back tbh).

And if we accept logically that the Kraken reversion isn't directed at Stede, it's more a sign of Ed giving up on the relationship and the possible future it represented for him, then I'm not sure what grounds there are to assume that Ed is going to be aggressive towards him if they reunite, other than cliche romance tropes which OFMD actually already avoided. And if Ed's heartbreak is as a result of Stede leaving then I struggle with how that justifies a reading where Stede coming back would be the point of conflict between them. Unless the real tragedy beat is if Ed sticks to his Kraken reversion by feigning apathy towards Stede, rather than anger?

[vaspider]

Ah, yes, because as we know, the expression of free will is far more important than something that actually functions properly or creates real equity.

I have never seen a better explanation of the difference between the concept of charity and the concept of tzedakah, and why I don't like translating the latter word into "charity," because it's not.

"Charity" comes from the word carus, referring to the Greek word agape, for love. It comes from "feelings" as noted above. You do it because you love people. And in theory, this concept isn't bad, except that it can manifest like this bullshit above where what's more important is how the giver feels about it than how effective or just it is or what kind of real change it creates.

Tzedakah comes from the same root as tzedek, justice, as in "tzedek, tzedek tirdof," Justice, justice you will pursue. Tzedakah asks not how do I feel about this, do I love the people that I'm giving tzedakah to, do I feel good, do I feel like they deserve this, but is this just? This is why the highest level of tzedakah according to Maimonides is to give to someone in such a structured way as to allow them to no longer require help, and the second highest is to give in such a way that you don't know the person receiving and the person receiving doesn't know who gave. You know. Like. Systematically. In a structured way.

Tzedakah asks, "Is it creating justice?" not "does it make me feel good?"

(Nothing is a fool-proof system, because people will always be people, so don't bother me with that, but the difference in priority here is striking.)

The point of the above post is that people love feel-good stories that don't actually address the root causes, don't actually lift people as a whole out of poverty or need. People eat up stories where a kid runs a lemonade stand and wipes out the lunch debt of the kids at his school without asking "why does lunch debt exist, and shouldn't we just do away with it?" They devour stories where the kids at a school raise money to buy a car for the janitor at their school because he was walking 10 miles a day to work without asking "why doesn't his job pay him enough to be self-sufficient?"

These stories never address the root causes, never go beyond the surface, never want to systematically solve problems. Because if we did that, gosh, how would people have the "expression of free will" that allows them to feel good about lifting up a deserving poor?

I do think it's also extremely telling that the immediate assumption of the above poster is that they'd be required to give more than they'd receive, that they'd have to give monetarily, that they wouldn't get what they actually needed in their own time of need, or that their feelings are more important than someone else's dire need.

I dunno, buddy, if you're so sure that you're going to give more than you get, or that the system won't be there for you when you need it, you could try being part of the group that builds the system to make sure it works. But if the problem is that giving to others in a systematic way that actually works and creates justice and equity takes away the special warm feeling in your tummy, that sounds like a you problem.

tl;dr: nobody asked for you to be the bad example, but here you are, honking your squeaky red nose and spinning your bow tie for everybody.

[queerautism]

So, I've had an incredibly restricted diet due to sensory issues ever since I was literally a baby being fed mashed baby food-- my mom even had cps called on her when I was a toddler because at daycare I'd eat so many snacks because quelle surprise, Mass produced snack crackers were a safe food I could tolerate, but cps thought that meant my mom was starving me. (She was not)

She did her best to accommodate me growing up but my needs were different than the 5 other family members she needed to care for, and a lot more work

But now that I'm an adult who can cook for myself in my own kitchen or, if need be, drive myself to a fast food place for some nuggies, my sensory issues with food are p much a non issue for me most of the time.

Sit down restaurants and dinners at other people's houses are still a source of anxiety for me if I don't know the menu in advance, but that's not much of a problem nowadays (thank you pandemic /snark)

ANYWAYS tl;dr the better you are able to be accommodated for your differences the less distressing they will become for you.

I'm still autistic, I'm not fucking "cured," and this is just one little thing in comparison to most other people's problems.. but it was a huge deal to me growing up and I'm much happier now that it isn't a constant source of distress. I'm able to structure my life in lots of little ways now that some of my autistic traits are no longer sources of distress for me.

I hope everyone is able to find that source of relief, and if they can't, at least stop trying to fucking tear down the work of those of us who do.

This is a really good example, thank you!

[missymurder]

i wanna make out with yr fem noiz her hairs so cute. so flippy :) also would love to hear more abt your dmmd oc i feel like i never hear abt dmmd ocs im scared to talk abt mine

HIII sorry im replying so late!!!! I'm so happy u like my fem noiz she is The gamer girl i luv her

as for my dmmd oc..............i have so many things i want to say about her but i don't want to clog ppl's screens so im gonna stick em under a cut and pray tumblr doesnt do that thing where it just shows the whole thing anyway

(be warned it is a very, very, VERY chunky read more cause i'm just gonna ramble off how much of her story I have figured out at this point)

(TL;DR: nevaeh is born on a plane, -1 leg but +1 brain injury, she gets adopted, 20 yrs later does a DNA test, finds out shes got exactly one living relative in midorijima whos 100% a criminal)

Nevaeh time!!

Was born on a plane and subsequently chucked into a busy road upon landing, but got grabbed by a pair of local punks before anyone could hit her

fall damage gave her a bad leg injury, aka "had to cut the whole leg off" bad, as well as bonking her on the head which gave her severe memory + emotional regulation issues down the line

fast forward 20-ish years, Nevaeh (named after her papa's motorcycle, but backwards) is graduated from high school but a college dropout who's living with her dads and working part time at the local bar trying to save up some money for her own place

eating dinner w her dads when her papa mentions that some guy brought in a really nice motorcycle for repair (fancy Allmate port and everything), but wouldn't say how it got damaged and didn't ask how much it'd cost. obvs a criminal but he seemed like a calm, quiet guy so it probably wouldn't hurt to do the job, but his vibe was Off

he probably gets a felon's bike every single day so nevaeh decides to use her free day to follow her papa to work and see wtf has got him so weirded out about this guy

soon as he walks in, the vibes go bad and its like the whole place gets a little weird, but nevaeh can't shake the feeling that she knows this dude?? from somewhere?? way too old to be a high school classmate, too felon-y to be a teacher, doesn't seem like he'd hit up a bar for funsies, where tf does she know him from????

he gets his bike, pays what he has to + some extra, and leaves without getting his change back. thank god for that but now nevaeh is getting pissed off cause she KNOWS him from somewhere but like everything else, she just can't remember

her papa tells her to use the back door to cool off in the alleyway before she starts breaking stuff, but on her way out, she sees Bad Vibe dude smoking a pipe and leaning on his bike while he talks on his coil (no respect for the bike?? he really is some bad news)

AYO HE'S TALKING ABOUT ARMS SMUGGLING?? nah nevaeh can't hang w this guy he's Crazy crazy

but also she really really really wants to know how tf she knows him and if she doesn't find out she'll forget later and then she'll get more pissed off cause she forgot

fuck it we ball

"omg hey u like ur bike? my papa does great work hes like soo good at it anyways have you ever been to the Casa Flora on Yui-dori?? the high school right across the street?? prison?? i'm taking ur silence as a no just let me know when i get it right"

bad dude taps out his pipe and leaves (do criminals just not have manners now??)

maybe he has one of those familiar faces but lets be honest he looks like a personified brick wall no way he'd just be Some Guy in a crowd nevaeh KNOWS HIM

.........maybe they could b related? nevaeh knows she's adopted, he's the only non-Japanese non-white person she's seen around town besides herself and her dad, and they have similar cheekbone structure......kinda.....if you squint...........

only one way to find out: DNA TEST!!!!!! she sends her dna off to a company that checks Japan, North America, and Europe (covering all the bases here) for any relatives

good news! the test found lots of relatives! bad news! they are all dead!

the company actually has her come in and explains that she has a very very very VERY rare strain of DNA found in a teeny tiny section of North America which was home to a tribe of unnamed Native Americans who were said to be antisocial and reclusive

its most notable feature is a genetic whoopsie in melanin production that makes the eyes a bright gold color, but doesn't seem to affect much else besides maybe a higher chance of skin cancer??

unfortunately, the tribe was wiped out by a group of nationalist terrorists, and nevaeh most likely ended up in Japan because Toue's corporation swooped in to save her remaining family and bring them to Midorijima for treatment--that being said, all of them succumbed to their injuries and died within a few months

she must have gotten lost during the transportation process and was super duper lucky to have minor injuries

(obviously not what happened, but the sudden and violent destruction of an entire village doesn't just get Ignored in a world where social media exists, toue had to cover his ass somehow)

there's only one relative left whose name, age, gender, and living status are unknown, so there's a good chance that they're dead, too, but the company agrees to give Nevaeh whatever genetic information they have on this individual and hopefully she can use it to do some research on her own

its not very specific but she has a few tidbits that might help, namely that they're 42.5% Unknown Native American and 45.7% African-American (similar genetic makeup, so maybe some shared features), higher chance of being a smoker, and very likely to have a mood/personality disorder

.........hey wait a second

[cardboardslugs]

i think a lot of it boils down to what people actually want to do in dnd.

for a lot of modern players; dnd is a space to RP without being made fun of. to avoid the percieved 'cringe' element of RP. and like... yes- SOMETIMES involving one or two dice rolls and a teensy bit of structure to keep an RP from flying off the rails or reaching an unresolvable stalemate IS, in fact, cool and fun. but that isnt DND and it's *barely* tabletop RPG, if you even want to think of it like that. people just coming in that want less of a board game and more of a space to play pretend without being made fun of or belittled for liking to do a natural thing that humans like to do.

For a lot of older DMs, DND is a space to write stories. My father has been playing since the release of 1E back in the 80s, and hell, my Parents Met because of DND. They found the original game boring and pedantic-- 3.5e is the game they live and die by. They want to kick ass and chew bubblegum. They want to play out the books of epic that they dont want to actually write. And the battle and being a cool action hero is cool and fun and fine, but that's not EVERYTHING that makes DND a game, you know?

People who truly LIKE dnd know its mostly a strategy game and its not *all* about the battle or *all* about the RP, but a healthy mix of all 3. You cant eat only meat or only dessert. You need some veggies in there, too! learning a proper dungeon crawl and how to pack and plan for the hoards of likely but ultimately completely random shit in a dungeon is the functional foundation of the game! its not *all* of it, no! but its a sizable chunk! I'm not saying any of the people who fall into any of these groups who would prefer one piece over any of the others are wrong or bad, but if you discard all of the strategy pieces, around foraging and around encumbrance or spells per day and whatnot- youre not playing DND. you're playing something custom on a d20-base system, and There's nothing wrong with that! it's not dnd! tl;dr- embrace cringe and make a rainbow sparkledog RP server, free yourself from dice rolls. Or play call of duty. Or just actually sit down and read a 1e handbook/watch dungeon meshi bc dungeon meshi actually does a REALLY good job of portraying all this ngl.

It's often remarked how D&D 5e's play culture has this sort of disinterest bordering on contempt for actually knowing the rules, often even extending to the DM themselves. I've seen a lot of different ideas for why this is, but one reason I rarely see discussed is that actually, a lot of 5e's rules are not meant to be used.

Encumbrance is a great example of this. 5e contains granular weights for all the items that you might have in your inventory, and rules for how much you can carry based on your strength score, and they've set these carry capacities high enough that you should never actually need to think about them. And that's deliberate, the designers have explicitly said that they've set carrying capacity high enough that it shouldn't come up in normal play. So for a starting DM, you see all these weights, you see all the rules for how much people can carry or drag, and you've played Fallout, you know how this works. And then if you try to actually enforce that, you find that it's insanely tedious, and it basically never actually matters, so you drop it.

Foraging is the example of this that bothers me most. There's a whole system for this! A table of foraging DCs, and math for how much food you can find, and how long you can go without food, etc. But the math is set up so that a person with no survival proficiency and a +0 to WIS, in a hostile environment, will still forage enough food to be fine, and the starvation rules are so generous that even a run of bad luck is unlikely to matter. So a DM who actually tries to use these rules will quickly find that they add nothing but bookkeeping. You're rolling a bunch of checks every day of travel for something that is purpose built not to matter. And that's before you add in all the ways to trivialize or circumvent this.

These rules don't exist to be used, that is not their purpose. These rules exist because the designers were scared of the backlash to 4e, and wanted to make sure that the game had all the rules that D&D "should" have. But they didn't actually want these mechanics. They didn't want the bookkeeping, they didn't care about that style of play, but they couldn't just say, "this game isn't about that" for fear of angering traditionalists. And unfortunately the way they handled this was by putting in rules that are bad, that actively fight anyone who wants to use that style of play and act as a trap to people who take the rules in good faith.

And this means that knowing what rules are not supposed to be used is an actual skill 5e DMs develop. Part of being a good 5e DM is being able to tell the real rules that will improve your game from the fake rules that are there to placate angry forum posters. And that's just an awful position to put DMs in (especially new DMs), but it's pretty unsurprising that it creates a certain contempt for knowing the rules as written.

You should have contempt for some of the rules as written. The designers did.

[achillianacedemia]

Neil Abraham Josten‘s Birth Chart Analysis

Neil is a never endingly entertaining character, to read about and analysis. As a self proclaimed astrologer I've taken up the task of reading some of Neil's birth charts to better understand our beautiful Junkie. This might seem like a waste of time to most people, including myself, but I have no life and I need divination intuition practice. 

*Note: the information we were given about Neil’s birthday is he was born January 19, 1988 in either Alexandria, Virginia or Baltimore, Maryland. We do not know his time of birth so I can’t tell you his rising (If I had to guess: Aries?) or houses. I just go over his big 6 in this post. Nora if you see this… what time was Neil born?  

Sun: Capricorn

Your sun sign is considered your core self, that’s why everyone knows their sun sign (and because it’s the easiest to calculate). Fundamentally Capricorn suns are defined by their need for structure. They are people who are very skilled and ambitious and focused on this material plain. For Neil this manifests as his fixation on Exy. When Capricorns want to be good at something they will stop at nothing to achieve this goal to the point of self destruction. Capricorn is ruled by Saturn, planet of fortune, which basically means Capricorns are almost destined to go through some sort of great misfortune, normally involving money in some way. Neil's money problems are deadlier than most but it's classic with this sign. Similar to how your Moon sign represents your relationship with your mother, your sun represents your father. Fun fact about the deity Saturn or Kronos: He ate his children. Need I say more? Capricorn and daddy issues are basically synonyms. Capricorn's aren't necessarily social, mostly because their trauma leads them to avoiding people to protect themselves. They put their goals ahead of all else, including love and connection. Neil rather talks about Exy then sexuality. Some say this make’s capricorns boring but these people clearly have never met a capricorn. Capricorns might be rough around the edges, but in my experience they are great friends, even if they don’t realize it. 

Moon: Aquarius

OH THE MOMMY ISSUES!!! So your moon represents your emotional self and your relationship with your mother... and Aquarius is ruled by Uranus or Ouranos in Greek myth. You thought Saturn/Kronos eating his kids was bad? URANUS SHOVED HIS CHILDREN BACK INTO HIS WIFES WOMB!!! I see this play out in how mother was highly disattached from him, leading him to respond to emotional situations in a disattached and uninteresting way. This is shown in how he grieves for Seth. Contrary to popular belief, Aquarius is an air sign, meaning they have the characteristic Air sign aversion to feeling feelings. They prefer to logic their way through situations and to use their coping mechanism to deal. Yes they have emotions but they don’t like to share them (‘iM FiNe”). In contrast with Neil's Capricorn sun Aquarius moon needs to be able to communicate. Not about feelings but about what they do like talking about what they enjoy. This leads to a personality that craves human connection but doesn't know how to ask for it. Aquarius moon people also don't really give a shit about labels. It's all semantics for them. Now here is my unpopular opinion: Aquarius placements are sarcastic and temperamental. I know I said they don’t really like to share their emotions, but I feel Anger in aquarius is a natural consequence of not sharing their emotions. TL;DR Aqaurius placements we know you use sarcasm to mask your feelings. Talk about it. 

Mercury: Aquarius

So your Mercury is how you communicate with the world and your logical mind. again Aquarius is a logical air sign. These people are natural intelligence. Yes this does explain why Neil is good at math. He doesn't necessarily have to study to understand things as much as he can just get things from intuition. This explains his playstyle being largely intuitive and hard to explain how he knows things. Mercury in Aquarius people are active protagonists in their lives and do things to change the things in their lives (see him bringing together the team) as the humanitarians of the zodiac it comes naturally. Also going back to his capricorn sun mixed with his Aquarius in mercury means he physically cannot not talk about Exy and opening up about feeling’s is actually painful. 

Venus: Pisces

BOTTOM!!! No but seriously, Your Venus is how you relate to people, the things you value, and your romantic endeavors. Pisces is something else really. Pisces is the last sign of the zodiac giving them a spiritual, almost not their quality.  They don't like large groups typically prefer smaller social gatherings. When a Venus in Pisces love you they don't have boundary (you literally can't make this shit up it's literally the astrological embodiment of "It's always yes with you") they love you wholeheartedly and when it's just the two of you it's just two souls alone in an endless universe. If this sounds like an Andriel kiss scene then good because that's the vibe Pisces energy just gives off when they're MAKING YOUR DAMN HEART MELT WHAT THE HELL!!! So like most water signs THE SAVIOR COMPLEX IS REAL WITH THIS ONE!!! Neil values sacrifice and he rather be hurt then let someone else get hurt (*cough* running away to Evermore for Andrew *cough*). Pieces  will see you as your best self and likes to imagine you as your best self (Kevin and Neil both want Andrew to achieve his full potential in Exy). Venus really likes it in Pisces so pisces people are wholehearted in how they love. Basically they will love you with their entire soul and it will feel like a real life pipe dream. The only thing that can shatter this is when the other person tries to sabotage themself and their highest potential. Pisces wants the best for everyone and it hurts them to see other people not reach their fullest self. This is why that scene in TKM where Neil felt really hurt after Andrew didn't want to celebrate after winning the game and belittled Exy ment to much. More mushy gushy stuff, they believe in true love. They don't need to talk in order to feel that love. They rather just feel your souls connect on a higher level.

Mars: Sagittarius

So your Mars is akin to your Id. It's base animalistic desires. The things that make you tick. Sagittarius being the mutable fire sign is more mellow than your leos or aries. Sagittarius likes experiences. They tend to travel a lot and enjoy travel and experiencing new things. This sign is known for having commitment issues (being ruled by Jupiter) and likes to run from shit. This placement hates people who don't practice what they preach and hates to feel like they're being talked down to. They really want to try new things with you, be it traveling to new places or trying stuff out in the bedroom. Speaking of which… I mean they will try anything once. Definitely adrenaline junkies. The sign most likely to be down for a threesome. Also associated with the hips and thighs so definitely an ass man 

Damn that's really where i'm ending it. Here's his chart if you're curious...K bye