#we can make them do any infinite number of things

[purble-turble]

Godddd this is so good 😍😍😍

To be fully real with you, this exact sort of scene did almost make it into the final draft of that last chapter… so now I’m going to use this as an excuse to talk more about my fanfic thx 😂

Originally, there was going to be some sort of scene similar to this where Red Son was shoved into the workshop forced to work at the many abandoned projects there under threat of torture. I even set the scene up way back in chapter 3 with him visiting the workshop and everything and noting a few of the projects because I fully intended at the time to revisit them. It wasn’t until I was actually writing the thing that I changed my mind.

The reason I ended up having Demon King Red not attempt to force Time Travel Red Son to help him with his tech in the exact way you drew here is only because there were more reasons for him to just leave him in a cell and forget him.. The thing about DKR is, while he does get some sick satisfaction out of watching TT Red get tortured, it’s less about “I want him to suffer because he got in my way” and more like “I want him to suffer because he’s ME and I made MK suffer like this in the past and I deserve it.. but I can’t face that without completely breaking down so I’m going to just take it out on this past version of myself who I have an excuse to hate.” He really does hate being around Time Travel Red Son because seeing how different he ended up, it reminds him of his own failures, and it’s hard to keep making excuses for why he did so many terrible things when this other version of himself ISN’T making those same mistakes…. So sticking the time traveler in a cell and just having the one conversation with him about pitying him (as a reversal of exactly how TT Red felt towards him earlier in the chapter) worked better thematically.

One last thing becasue I’ve been rambling on your art for a bit here! But the other reason I left this scene out is, the whole point of Time Travel Red Son is that the choices we make are what define us. That, and the hope for making the future better than we fear it will be, are the things that define him.. if TT Red were at any point to stop resisting DKR and actually help him, whether under duress or not, it would defeat the whole purpose of him. Plus, Red Son struggling under the tightening spell is a big, dramatic event, but seeing him still able to overcome it in order to do what he knows is the right thing is an even bigger moment… and, well, if I did that in the last chapter, I’d be jumping the gun a bit I think. No need for him to do it twice wink 😉

Oh how I adore making King Red the worst person in existence /pos

Yes the clock went from 1:30 to 5:45 for TT Red

If you're gonna break someone down, you need to force them to heel under so much pressure. And for a king with a powerful fillet only he can control, well...

How about he uses it?

His past self kept refusing to work, refusing to sleep, trying to make himself appear too exhausted to focus on work. He only brought this down on himself.

So how about he enjoys this... Enjoys his torment, just for a bit longer?

He'll break eventually. And once he does, he'll be compliant to his fate.

:)

(Demon King Red and Time Travel Red belong to @purble-turble)

[a-memory-a-distant-echo]

i feel like people forget that sometimes characters in fic are written like that because it's a reflection of real life.

people have sex without setting boundaries. people have unprotected sex without talking about their sexual histories or producing recent sti tests. people play with kink without discussing it ahead of time or establishing a safeword. they have anal without 'enough' prep or lube—they may even prefer it like that.

and none of this is really a fantasy. it's all pretty normal. you can feel that it's inappropriately normalised, and you'd probably be right! but it is normalised: one study found that 58% of female undergraduate students on the campus studied had been choked during sex. 20% of those students said that they'd never been asked if it was ok; another 30% said they'd only sometimes been asked if they consented. fully half! (non-paywalled journal article on choking during sex here, including these numbers.) despite a rise in stis of all sorts, condom use is declining. (pdf link to the full text of this study about declining condom use in the us; aidsmap article about an australian study with similar results.)

even when people do talk about things—sex or anything else—they communicate imperfectly. 'yeah, but don't go too far' is consenting and setting a boundary, and also relying that the person you're talking to has the same metric for 'too far' that you do. for some people, 'the trash needs to go out' is a neutral, factual observation; for others, it's a request that the person they're speaking to take out the trash.

even when people understand each other perfectly, people react unpredictably to things sometimes! we behave irrationally! people laugh uncontrollably at funerals, or get angry at the straw that broke their back rather than the enormous load they were already carrying. they get scared and lash out at people trying to help them. when hurt, most people do not instinctively reach for therapy-approved grounding exercises and 'i feel' statements.

pretty much any bad choice that characters could conceivably make is a choice that people make in real life, on purpose, all the time. people do things that can have catastrophic, life-changing effects because it felt like a good idea at the time, or they're leaning into the vibe, or they just didn't think about it all that much, or an infinite number of other reasons.

fiction isn't intended as a guide on the best, safest, and most responsible ways to live your life, and fanfic isn't any different. it's not a narrative flaw to let characters do things that are messy or harmful or downright stupid—it's a reflection of what people are actually like, and not something that authors should feel they have to apologise for.

[eamour]

about negative thoughts.

"it is so hard to remain in my desired state and feel convinced… i keep having negative thoughts that pop out of the blue and just completely throw me off. i feel irritated, confused and i wonder if i'm truly living in the end. what do i do? how do i flip every thought? am even i doing this right?"

let’s talk about it!

thoughts and states.

in my latest post "dominant thoughts and dwelling states" or my "states" post, i have already talked about what states and thoughts are, how they "function" and what the difference between the two is. here is a short summary:

thoughts come from your state.

your dominant thoughts give insight to your state.

your dominant thoughts equal your dwelling state.

intrusive thoughts, as long as not identified with, don’t manifest.

your state manifests, not your single thoughts.

you are not your state, you are your "i am".

there is an infinite number of states.

you enter and exit states all day long.

now, you know that thoughts can only manifest if you assume them to be true, making them your dwelling state. but even if you know all of this, it still may not stop you from having undesirable thoughts here and there. so, how do we deal with them?

about all thoughts.

now, let's take a look at the characteristics of thoughts.

all thoughts are neutral. negative thoughts, just like positive ones, don’t have any meaning pre-assigned to them. they are all neutral until you categorise them to positive or negative. meaning, they are the exact same.

… therefore, thoughts don’t hold any power. thoughts don’t have any truth attached to them. no state has. because you are not your state. you are your i am. you decide what’s truthful to you or not, which state you want to occupy and which thoughts you want to have. your thoughts look at YOU for validation.

all thoughts are equal. because of that, negative thoughts aren’t easier to manifest than positive ones. all thoughts hold the same "value" or no value at all. they are all equally easy to manifest.

all thoughts are temporary. and thus, all states are as well. especially intrusive thought’s come from a place of fear, uncertainty and insecurity. who is feeling all those? who is controlling all those? YOU. you are not as out of control as you may think. just like you can alter a thought, you can alter the very origin of it — your state. you dictate your state and your thoughts.

all thoughts are yours. imagination creates reality, meaning creation comes from you. all thoughts and furthermore all states stem from your own awareness. there is no need to feel intimidated by them!

step by step resolution.

1 · emotion · this is the first thing we will do whenever we have a very mean thought — so mean, it makes it hard for you to change it on the spot or ignore it: we let ourselves feel the way that thought makes us feel. some thoughts, you can choose not to absorb but rather observe. however, if you do absorb them (which can definitely happen), make sure to embrace them. let out all the emotions they make you feel. express them. talk to a friend, scream into the void, bawl out your eyes… whatever helps your nervous system to relieve and regulate. you are not meant to internalise all that negativity.

2 · reflection · reflect on your unfavourable thoughts. ask yourself "is this thought helping me? do i want to continue thinking this? does this do me any good?". if yes, keep thinking it. if not, stop thinking it, forget it and correct it.

⋮ 2 · attention · some thoughts don’t need to be corrected for them to not affect you negatively. some of them can be entirely ignored and disregarded. not every little thought needs to be investigated. you don’t need to monitor every thought of yours. let them pass you by. don’t assign any meaning to them. renounce them. learn to be indifferent to certain thoughts. take your attention away from them. sometimes, that's enough. because some thoughts need to be dealt with a certain level of neglect. otherwise you will only drive yourself insane. ⋮

3 · identification · realise where the thought is coming from. most likely, it’s coming from your limited human self. but you are your unbounded god self. return to it! you have what you want and you are who you want to be. stop contemplating on your unwanted circumstances and focus on your end. continue to live from there. don’t just think of it, embody it. fully claim it. it’s your end. your reality. change the direction of your thoughts and remind yourself of your actual identity — GOD.

in short, feel your emotions, reflect on your thoughts, abandon negative thoughts, declare them as wrong and replace them with positive ones, remember your desired version of self, embody it and persist.

important.

before you go, there is one last thing i want to touch on. changing your thoughts, distancing yourself from unfavourable situations and trying to persist while feeling triggered by something external… can be very challenging. what i mean is, it takes determination, dedication and discipline. you need to be courageous and eager enough to make tough decisions, to choose your ending of the story and side with YOURself, even when you actually want to. but it’s possible. it’s attainable. it’s doable. you know what you want and you are going to continue to live your truth, with conviction and commitment!

you will do it. and you will succeed.

with love, ella.

[violetsquare111]

perhaps overly rambly thoughts on the influencer arc

it is very hard to watch but i don't think it's contrary to what we know of green, and i'm enjoying it just fine.

we know green is a showoff and perfectionist. the color gang all like winning, but green likes making a big display of it too. he's quite a sore winner and loser, and hates having the spotlight taken from him when it is his.

he loves attention and praise. and like, that's okay, don't we all? he cares about his friends in the end.

but i get the feeling that, while they love him and appreciate his talents, his friends don't really give him that big attention that he might want. they're used to him winning and being good at art/performance of any kind. it's normal to them really. maybe even a little disheartening.

so i can easily see how getting that attention in the form of being an influencer is a huge thing for green. an addiction, even. he gets so drawn into it that he overlooks his friends' discomfort, so he can keep being the Perfect Celebrity, keep the hype going.

obviously this end outcome here isn't actually what he wanted, and i'm sure he feels guilt for all this on some level. but he's pushed that away in favor of the high of getting a number to go up, getting more of the spotlight. there's nothing else that matters right now but getting that new dopamine hit. again, it is an addiction.

surely his friends will come around. why don't they get it? this is a good thing for him. he's winning. he's harsh, yes, but he's just trying to be successful. his friends aren't actually hurt (they are), they're doing fine (they're not), what's the issue? (everything.)

i don't think current green is character assassination - right now he's doing horribly and hurting the people around him because he is at his lowest, the worst version of himself where his flaws overtake him. it can go up from here. i have no doubt that by the end of this green is going to get some sense shaken into him and make up with his friends. like, that's just the kind of series this is.

and despite all the character analysis i just did lol - i ALSO think it's important to remember that we are probably taking every little action of these characters infinitely more seriously than the creators are. while the series sometimes dips its toes (or entire face) into being a dramatic and beautiful story, it is ultimately a cartoon, and sometimes the character writing will be put on the back burner for a moment in favor of a gag or an overall episode arc. and that's fine! nothing they're doing is unprecedented for the characters they've set up, and i think they'll wrap this up alright.

[evilminji]

(O_O ) I sit here. With a Realization.

There.... There might be... ONE(1!) Danny.

Like... Multiverserally. Because otherwise? He WOULD have met himself. Would have had a big ol "Into The Spiderverse: This Time It's All Spooky Boys (Girl, and Other Assorted Genders)!" Lair and? QUICKLY started running into Portals that lead to Not-His-Parents Fenton Labs.

But he doesn't.

He might? Literally be IT. The ONE in countless of countless impossible numbers, monkey smashing on keyboards until you get a story, Impossible Combination. Maybe the Fenton Luck really DID take them out in every other universe. Maybe Maddies family had some near misses of their own. Maybe BOTH.

There is Only One Daniel Fenton.

He Dies At Fourteen.

He defeats Pariah Dark.

He Becomes King Eternal of The Infinite.

It Was, It Is, It Always Has Been.

Why would you need to create more then one? Clutter up creation with dead end roads and possible successors? Let the Zone be punched full of holes? No, no, if you NEED to replace the old king with a NEW one... you really only NEED One(1) soul... don't you?

I've heard it discussed the Clockwork might be Father Time, father of the Endless. Father too Death herself. If we allowed this to be true? Then the Zone is HER domain. Yet? She does not rule it. Why is he HERE? Time still lives. Still flows. He is not Dead.

Thus the Observants.

You may play here, papa. But not interfere. This place is MINE. She created something with the very literal job of watching her father. He's NOT in charge here. She is.

But! She also hates it. Forever chained to one place between places? Never to see her siblings again? Nah. She can delegate.

A Holy King, if you will. Sit on her throne, listen to their problems, nod and smile, then do her busy work! She'll check in. It should not be hard. Right? Just don't do anything crazy.

It Shouldn't Be That Hard.

But Nooooooo. King after Queen after Monarch after Boss! She comes back and they are either insane or NOT who she left in charge! Everything on fire! The newly dead terrorized and not where they should be! Pariah tried to INVADE THE LIVING WORLD!!!

Did he think she'd LET HIM?

Death is miffed. You could even say... annoyed! Possibly so far as even AGITATED.

It's unsustainable, Father. But, what to do? And, well, "Have You Considered Making A Person?" If organic royalty isn't working, store boughts fine. Check the timeliness, sweetie. Death IS your Domain. You can... delay some.

And he's right. She CAN. She shouldn't, there are consequences, but she can. Others may die sooner then they ought too, in place they should not. It MESSES with things. But... yes... yes she CAN.

She... LOOKS.

Finds herself JUST the right soul. She adores it. It's PERFECT.

AND she barely has to nudge things around! Hardly any messes! She's honestly.. kind of excited. It's been so long, since she and her Father worked on anything together. Bonded like this. Will he watch over him? Make sure he sticks to the right path?

Of course Clockwork would.

Anything for his Children.

[reashot]

A Final Goodbye... (Lancaster in the end.)

So with RT gone and with RWBY never going to get a satisfying ending I made this instead.

Salem: ... It has begun.

Tyrian: May I ask, what has begun exactly, your evilship?

Salem: The end of the universe.

Tyrian: Oh... Can we stop that?

Salem: I'm afraid not. It has been decided by someone higher than me.

Tyrian: Someone higher. Is it the twin gods?

Salem: Ehhh..... Someone much higher than even them I'm afraid.

Tyrian: I see... So this is it then?

Salem: This is it.

Tyrian: Then I'm proud that I was your number one henchman.

*flash*

think of this as the same thing that destroyed the multiverse during the crisis on infinite earth.

Somewhere in Vacuo

Yang: Well this sucks.

Blake: Tell me about it. Just right when we're finally together,

Yang: I know babe. And before we get to be erased from existence I want to say to you again.

I love you.

Blake: Come here...

*flash*

Tai: There goes my daughter.

Raven: At least she died with someone she loved.

Tai: ...It doesn't mean she hates you know.

Raven: Tai. We're about to die. So you don't have to lie to make me feel better.

Tai: If it makes you feel any better Yang doesn't want to spend her final moment with me either.

Raven: Some parents we are.

Tai: The last time I check I was the parent. And you were the one that left us.

Raven: I know that! Do you think I want to leave her in the first place and leave you?! But it's too late for that now.

Tai: You know maybe we can try again. You can apologize to Yang in the next life.

Raven: I-I would like that...

*flash*

Willow: I really picked a bad time to stop drinking.

Whitley: At least we can spend our last family time together.

Weiss: As much I hate saying this. I'm glad I at least got to spend my last time on Remnants with you, mom and.... Wait a sec, where did Winter go?

Qrow: Boy. I really picked a good time to start drinking.

Winter: Qrow. There's something I wanted to tell you.

Qrow: Fire away Ice queen.

Winter: *gets down on one knee* Qrow Branwen will you marry me?

Qrow: Uhhh.... all right.

Winter: Great. Let me introduce you to my family. Weiss meet your new brother in-law.

Qrow: Uh hey Ice princess. I guess I'm marrying your sister now.

Weiss: WHAT!!! If you think I'm letting a drunk deadbeat marrying my sister then you must be fuc...

*flash*

Ruby: This it Jaune. Are you scared?

Jaune: Very. So how do you feel Ruby.

Ruby: Same... It's not supposed to end this way.

Jaune: I know Rubes, but what done is done. And I'm glad I got to spend the end of the world with a friend.

Ruby: Yeah... Ah screw it. Jaune please don't get mad at me.

*kiss Jaune on the lips*

Jaune. I love you.

Jaune: W-what?

Ruby: I said I love you, you dork! I've been in love with you for a long time. I always wanted to tell you this but there was never a good time to do so.

Jaune: I see. Then I also have a confession to make. I feel the same way too. For a long time. I thought you don't feel the same way as I do.

Ruby: Well now we know. I just wish we have more time. To go on more dates, to go on a beach together, to get married, have kids and grow old togethers....

I don't want to die Jaune. Not yet. Not until we achieve our dreams together.

Jaune: I know Ruby but it's too late for that. At least we will die together.

Ruby: I guess there are worst ways to die. Jaune I love you and I hope we get to see each others again in the next life and the next life after that.

Jaune: Ruby I love you too. And I promise to always find you no matters where you are.

Ruby: And I will promise to always love you.

*kiss Jaune for the last time*

*flash*

Will make an epilogue if this gets 100 likes.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: Thinking

The way we represent the world influences the degree of success we experience in our lives.

Example 1: If we represent yellow traffic lights as the time to hit the accelerator, then the world might give us tickets, scares, or accidents.

Example 2: If we represent our diet as a way to maximize refined sugar intake, then we might wind up experiencing heart disease.

Mental representations and intelligence go hand in hand.

Some mental representations are more intelligent, because they are more adaptive and support outcomes such as well-being, safety, and success.

Concepts

The information we sense and perceive is continuously organized and reorganized into concepts that belong to categories.

Most concepts cannot be strictly defined but are organized around the best examples or prototypes, which have the properties most common in the category or might be considered the ideal example of a category.

Concepts - are at the core of intelligent behavior.

We expect people to be able to know what to do in new situations and when confronting new objects.

Example: If you go into a new classroom and see chairs, a blackboard, a projector, and a screen, you know what these things are and how they will be used. You’ll sit on one of the chairs and expect the instructor to write on the blackboard or project something onto the screen. You’ll do this even if you have never seen any of these particular objects before, because you have concepts of classrooms, chairs, projectors, and so forth that tell you what they are and what you’re supposed to do with them.

Categories

Objects fall into many different categories, but there is usually a hierarchy to help us organize our mental representations.

A concept at the superordinate level of categories is at the top of a taxonomy and it has a high degree of generality (e.g., animal, fruit).

A concept at the basic level categories is found at the generic level which contains the most salient differences (e.g., dog, apple).

A concept at the subordinate level of categories is specific and has little generality (e.g., Labrador retriever, Gala).

We use category hierarchies to help us organize and group different concepts.

Brown (1958) noted that children use basic level categories when first learning language and superordinates are especially difficult for children to fully acquire.

People are faster at identifying objects as members of basic-level categories (Rosch et al., 1976).

Recent research suggests that there are different ways to learn and represent concepts and that they are accomplished by different neural systems.

Using our earlier example of a classroom, if someone tells you a new fact about the projector, like it uses a halogen bulb, you are likely to extend this fact to other projectors you encounter.

In short, concepts allow you to extend what you have learned about a limited number of objects to a potentially infinite set of events and possibilities.

Categorization & Culture

There are some universal categories like emotions, facial expressions, shape and color but culture can shape how we organize information.

Chiu (1972) was the first to examine cultural differences in categorization using Chinese and American children:

Participants were presented with 3 pictures (e.g., a tire, a car, and a bus), and were asked to group the 2 pictures they thought best belonged together.

Participants were also asked to explain their choices (e.g., “Because they are both large”).

Results showed that the Chinese children have a greater tendency to categorize by identifying relationships among the pictures but American children were more likely to categorize by identifying similarities among pictures.

Later research reported no cultural differences in categorization between Western and East Asian participants.

However, among similarity categorizations the East Asian participants were more likely to make decisions on holistic aspects of the images and Western participants were more like to make decisions based on individual components of the images (Norenzayan, Smith, Jun Kim, and Nisbett, 2002).

Cultural differences in categorizing were also found by Unworth, Sears and Pexman (2005) across 3 experiments; however, when the experiment task was timed there were differences in category selection.

These results suggest that the nature (timed or untimed) of the categorization task determines the extent to which cultural differences are observed.

The results of these categorization studies seem to support the differences in thinking between individualist and collectivist cultures.

Western cultures are more individualist and engage in more analytic thinking and East Asian cultures engage in more holistic thinking (Choi, Nisbett, & Smith, 1997; Masuda & Nisbett, 2001; Nisbett et al., 2001; Peng & Nisbett, 1999).

Holistic & Analytical Thinking

Holistic thought - characterized by a focus on context and environmental factors so categorizing by relationships can be explained with referencing how objects relate to their environment.

Analytic thought - characterized by the separation of an object from its context so categorizing by similarity means that objects can be separated into different groups.

A major limitation with these studies is the emphasis on East Asian, specifically the use of Chinese participants and Western cultures.

There have been no within culture replications using participants from other non-Asian collectivist cultures.

Source ⚜ Writing Notes & References

[mayakern]

Why....why are the sweaters 3/4 sleeve??? Personally I would totally get a black sweater (or white tbh) but I can't vibe with a 3/4 sleeve (for a few reasons, mostly various sensory/attention problems) so i was wondering why that choice was made and whether there's any chance of a full length sleeve being made in addition or instead? But also I'm curious as to exactly what kind of fabric it is? Is it an anti-pill material? (Pilling is one of my fabric enemies)

so first off, this as is about the lace collar sweaters that will be hitting the store later this year. you can watch the full video here, but i’m including screenshots as well for those of y’all who don’t want to watch the video.

2nd, i get that everyone has personal preferences, but this was unnecessarily rude. you’re not going to like every decision we make, and that’s OK, but if you’re old enough to use a credit card to buy things online, you’re old enough to realize that product decisions you dislike were not made to personally gall you.

there were a few reasons we chose to do 3/4 sleeves, but the primary reason was that 3/4 sleeves work better for a variety of arm lengths. a 3/4 sleeve will look good whether someone’s arm is shorter or longer than average, whereas a full length sleeve can easily be too long or too short for the person wearing it. we also didn’t want to do short sleeves because at the time the only other shirt we had in production was the wrap top, which has short/cap sleeves.

we do have some full long sleeve shirts/sweaters in planning/in production that we have not shown off yet, but currently we do not have plans to make a long sleeve version of this particular sweater because we have no idea what sales will look like. if these sweaters sell well and there’s considerable customer demand, we’ll consider doing long sleeves. if these sweaters sell poorly they will not be returning to the store, period. we are a small business with limited funds and we cannot throw infinite money at the wall.

last, the fabric composition is 62% polyester, 33% viscose, 5% elastane. we tested a lot of fabrics for this sweater, and this was the only one that felt right. its appropriate thickness (not super thin, but not super thick, so that it can easily be layered under warmer garments or worn solo without causing you to overheat), the cute ribbing, and the texture/feeling (which don’t aggravate my textural sensitivities as an autistic person with very sensitive skin) were all just right.

we’ve also done a number of wash tests and did not encounter any issues with pilling. in general, if you take good care of our garments, that is not going to be an issue from our current manufacturer, who have demonstrated time and again that they prioritize quality labor and material that is made to last. the reason shein products fall apart isn’t because they’re made of polyester: it’s because the sewing is rushed and the fabric fibers are low quality and often have a looser knit or weave, which makes them more prone to damage/falling apart on a structural level.

as for pilling specifically, pilling is actually the fabric breaking. looser weaves/knits are more prone to breakage because they are more open and cheap fabrics are often made of looser weaves, which results in more pilling. but even a high quality material can pill under the right (or wrong) circumstances. when fiber is wet, similar to hair, it is more vulnerable to breakage, and washing machines with agitators (the big thing in the middle of some washers) are really really good at breaking your fibers, thus resulting in more pilling.

anyway tldr the sweaters shouldn’t have any pilling issues if you treat them right and full length sleeves are not likely to happen but are not totally impossible.

[cerastes]

can i get other examples of gamepress being wrong about arknights? i've been using them as my main source since i started and now i'm worried i'm missing out on some operators i haven't bothered to upgrade 🙃

We could be here literally all day because it's not like they have one or two outliers, Gamepress is just mainly edited by people that live in an echo chamber and that have authority in their own circle so it's just off-the-hip, all too often wrong biased takes based on their own really reductive metrics. Chiefly, Gamepress ranks characters 1) as if they were the sole unit in the battlefield almost exclusively, and 2) using the single most broken units currently live as the barrier of entry. The unit you are looking up can't clear a chunk of map in one tap? Worthless and sub-optimal, according to Gamepress. Their only metric is Mlynar, Ch'ung the Hung, Surtr, that kind of Press To Win philosophy, and if a unit can't do that, Then It's Bad And Not Worth It.

Now, you may be thinking, "goodness me, Dreamer, you are being awfully harsh to call them complete dogshit at every angle of the game in this manner!", well, see, it's not just their Operator "reviews", they have articles sometimes. And they are god awful dogshit as well, such as "What Happened To Blaze?"

You can't see the comments anymore, but the author was getting reamed. I have one screenie at least:

Comments were mainly of this nature. Because, well, the article is straight up awful, especially since it reduces Blaze to "laneholder" and compares her to "competition" like Thorns, Mudrock, and Mountain, who, yes, they all can hold a lane, but Blaze has her own space of "infinite duration, high statline, healable 3-block with 2 tile range" that has historically allowed for Funny Tricks like clearing enemies through "walls" on tiles that could shred Thorns even with a healer, or, you know, in conjunction with any of Mudrock or Mountain, given you have 12 whole slots for you team. Again, Gamepress editors rate characters as if they were your main in a fighting game and not one of 12+1 characters you can throw in at any time. They also tend to shit on non-specialist characters (generalists; more versatile units that can do a bunch of things without really breaking the game in any regard), which is very interesting because those usually will make up a strong backbone of any competent Integrated Strategies team, so the specialists in role can do their thing while the other needs of the map are being met.

"Ebenholz is nothing special." "Goldenglow is nothing special." These are takes they genuinely held until, you know, it turned out that Eben and GG are the most relevant Casters, up there with Eyja. To be fair, it wasn't just them being wrong on Eben, but how do you look at the global blasting of GG with her numbers and don't immediately realize that's an ICBM button? All it takes is having the game installed.

The biased nature of Gamepress is also blatant:

Imagine rating April as "Really Good" while relegating Dorothy as only "Really Fun". Even before her Module3, Dorothy was absolutely devastating, bringing huge damage multipliers, crowd control, one of the single best class autoattacks in the whole game at 6* stat weight, and a Talent that gives her even more Attack for basically using her as intended. I'm not saying April isn't good, mind you, I'm just trying to highlight how biased the hands behind Gamepress are: They can't figure out Trapmasters? Then surely they are merely "really fun". Can't drop and forget them like April or Surtr, after all.

About the only thing Gamepress is good for is objective, in-game info: Dates, mat requirements, what skills do, that kind of stuff. It's got a good interface and is a good place to just quickly look up what you need to know that can otherwise be found in the game. The moment their personal opinions come into play, though? The most absolute dogshit takes. Unless you are a "unga bunga drop Surtr and Mlynar and win instan-- WAIT WHY IS INTEGRATED STRATEGIES AND RISK 23+ KICKING MY DAY 1 PLAYER ASS...!?" kinda player, then you don't really want to follow Gamepress advice.

Because they simply do not give good advice as a whole.

[wilhelminyard]

compilation of nice/sweet things the foxes said to neil because even though they're a bunch of assholes who insult anyone in their vicinity they all just love him so damn much - except aaron - (part 3) :

ANDREW :

"I said I would keep you alive this year. you make it infinitely more difficult for me when you actively try to get yourself killed."

"the next time someone comes from you, stand down and let me deal with it. do you understand?"

"you were supposed to be a side effect of the drugs" "I'm not a hallucination" "you are a pipe dream."

"what would you give me?" "don't ask questions you already know the answer to"

"this isn't yes. this is a nervous breakdown. I know the difference even if you don't. I won't be like them. I won't let you let me be."

"I've never understood why he likes knives" "he will lose his taste when he has one in his gut"

"kevin is a fool whose style is numbers and angles. formulas and statistics, trial and error, repetition and insanity. all he cares about is finding the perfect game. a junkie like you can't be that cold."

"last summer you made me a promise. I'm asking you to break it." "no." "you said you'd stick with me if I kept kevin south, but kevin doesn't need me anymore. he chose us over the ravens because as a whole we're finally worth his time. there's nothing else I can give you in exchange for your protection." "I will think of something."

"spring break's coming. we could go someplace" "where and why?" "anywhere. anywhere at least three hours from campus. there's no point in going someplace closer than that. it won't feel like a vacation. the only trick is figuring out how to pry kevin away from the court" "I have knives"

"no one's said a word to them since they said we couldn't see you"

"if you tell me to leave I'll go" "you aren't going anywhere"

"I have to go. I don't trust them to give you back."

"ready?" "waiting on you"

"can I really be neil again?" "I told neil to stay. leave nathaniel buried in baltimore with his father."

"andrew could break our deal and let me go or break things off with neil" "he chose neil over you?"

"your close calls are getting old. I thought you knew how to run" "I thought you told me to stop running" "survival tip: no one likes a smart mouth" "except you"

WYMACK :

"I can't believe you trusted david to patch you up" "I was careful with him"

"you're a hundred times better now than you were in may. don't sell yourself short."

"go easy for a few days, would you?"

"are you okay?"

"neil asked us to leave the authorities out of this. I respect him enough to allow that"

"didn't I tell you not to worry about it?"

"I'm making you vice-captain next year"

"didn't you notice? they're uniting around and behind you. that's something special. you're something special."

"look me in the eye and tell me if you think I care who you used to be. hm? I care about who you are right now and who you can be going forward. I'm not asking you to forget your past, but I am telling you to overcome it."

"neil. talk to me. what do you want?"

"giving up on neil now goes against everything we are."

"I'm sorry. I should've told you but I couldn't" "don't worry about that right now."

"we'll wait for you, all right? as long as it takes, neil"

"I should be thanking you. you told us last night you intended to end the year dead or in federal custody. you could have shut everyone and everything out and worried about yourself this year. instead you agreed to help dan fix this team. you're saving the two I thought we couldn't reach, and you're a living example for kevin to follow. he never used to watch you but he's had eyes on you since december trying to figure out how you stand your ground."

"they told me to call them as soon as you returned. have you returned?"

"neil is a critical member of my team. you can ask any person on my line-up and they will all agree : we would not be where we are today if he wasn't here with us."

MATT :

"I want to break his face in six places. if he ever comes within a thousand yards of you again-"

"you okay?" "I'm fine" "for the record, I don't believe you"

"neil? we're here when you want to talk about it"

"neil? you good?"

"we're all legal adults here. we've made our decision. unless he wants to stay with you, you'd better bring neil back to us when you're done with all your questions

"hey, coach made us promise to leave you alone but are you okay?"

"they will get rid of me" "you're not serious"

"things could have gone much worse. I'm glad they didn't. you want anything, you need anything, you let us know. okay?" "okay" "I mean it" "I know. I'm done lying to you, matt. I promise."

"did andrew really choke kevin?" "took three of us to pull him off"

"we can't replace you"

DAN :

"neil? if you want to talk about any of it, or anything, or... you know we're here for you, right? whatever you need."

"kevin knew about this didn't he? he knew what riko was going to do to you and he let you go anyway. the next time I see him-"

"don't do this to us. don't sit here and lie to our faces. we're your friends. we deserve better than that."

"you told the truth. it's not your fault they don't like it."

"are you sure you're okay, neil?"

"go. but come back to us as soon as they're done with you, okay? we'll figure this out as a team."

"you're not playing. you think coach will let you on the court when you look like that? I'll sub in for you, neil. renee can help allison out one more time, right? trust us to hold the line. you focus on healing so we can use you in semifinals."

KEVIN :

"kevin called me yesterday morning when he couldn't get a hold of you. he wanted to make sure you were okay."

NICKY :

"don't you dare tell me you're fine. I can't hear that from you today, okay?"

"you can't have neil. he belongs with us"

"neil isn't a real person. it's just a cover that let nathaniel evade authorities. it's past time to let him go." "neil or nathaniel or whoever. he's ours, and we're not letting him go. you want us to vote on it or something? bet you it'll be unanimous."

"don't worry. andrew will protect you."

"hey, you good?"

ALLISON :

"it would have neen better if you'd come to the store with us. it doesn't matter. I bought out the entire row."

"I'm sorry" "shut up. no you're not. you're not. have you forgotten who has to paint you back together every morning? if you'd let them steamroll you yesterday after all this I would hate you"

"it is not safe for [neil] here anymore and it sure as hell isn't safe for you. it is better for everyone if he disappears." "what part of 'go to hell' do you need us to explain to you?"

RENEE :

"so those knives he brings everywhere are yours?" "were mine. he was right; I don't need them anymore. if you need them, he will give them to you, and I will teach you how to use them"

"if you want to talk more later, you know where to find me"

"will you be all right here?"

"kevin is very analytical whereas you're passionate."

"what do you need from us, neil?"

"I can do it." "I know you can. but perhaps it's easier if someone helps you."

ABBY :

"sometimes I think this job is going to kill me. seeing what people have done, what people continue to do, to my foxes. I wish I could protect you but I'm always too late. all I can do is patch you up afterward and hope for the best. I'm sorry, neil. we should have been there for you"

"let me take a look at you"

"it's over. it's over. you're going to be okay. we've got you."

"I dropped my gear in new york" "andrew found it while he was looking for you"

[tiredspacedragon]

I am plagued by thoughts of Toa Kaita and how their names and titles are determined.

Is every single one unique? That leaves the most room for creativity, and means the result of each fusion is dependent on the personalities of the individual Toa components, which seems like the most narratively satisfying option. But also, if every possible Kaita is unique, how do they avoid overlapping domains? Eventually Valour or Wisdom are going to be really fitting for some other combination of three Toa, or they'll just run out of fancy mental concepts to name themselves after.

Alternatively, do the names, or maybe just the titles, of any given Toa Kaita, depend on the elemental combination used to form them? Does every instance of Ta-Toa+Po-Toa+Onu-Toa result in Akamai? Does every instance of Ga-Toa+Ko-Toa+Le-Toa result in a Toa of Wisdom? I went and learned some math specifically to determine that there are 560 different possible 3-element combinations that can be formed from the 16 Toa elements, assuming all three have to be different, because that makes the most sense to me. 546 if Light and Shadow could not coexist within a single Kaita for some reason, and 455 if you don't count Shadow at all. Those are still really big numbers! But it seems a lot more feasible to come up with 500-ish attributes for each combination to represent than for each of the infinite combinations of individuals to result in something completely unique. But then again, it seems awfully limiting to simply assign a default attribute based on elemental alignment without taking into account the personalities of the constituent Toa at all. Would Vakama, Onewa, and Whenua really result in a Valour combination rather than something more tailored to them? Could Tuyet and Nidhiki really be part of a Wisdom combination?

Then perhaps there is a set number of possible Kaita and which of the limited (but likely still beyond extensive) list of possibilities the fusion forms is dependent on the three Toa's personalities? That feels like it's getting dangerously close to personality-based categorization though, and I've seen enough bad YA to know that's never a good idea.

Is any of this important at all? Oh no, not at all, we only ever see two Toa Kaita in the entire story and even they barely matter, this absolutely isn't the sort of thing that needs to be thought about deeply at all. But here I am, distracted by it anyway.

[alexanderwales]

For Thresholder there are lots and lots of worlds, most of them just name-checked, sketched out in a handful of paragraphs as a place that people had visited before and now has little plot relevance. It's my favorite part of the series.

I'm not writing one of those chapters where I need one of those worlds, and I'm not sure I could give this one its due, but the idea I had last night was a world where people could increase and decrease the size of objects virtually at will. This doesn't work with conventional physics, but that's okay, some of the worlds can be more conceptual.

To start with, we have some ground rules: you have to be touching the thing, it can only operate on loosely defined "whole objects", and there's some kind of thing that happens with objects where they retain their physical structure to some degree, even if the square-cube law means that not everything stays functional. This is easy for things made of base elements (an iron nail becomes bigger and we can grok that it's still just made of regular iron) but it's less easy for complex organics. If you increase the size of an apple, are the individual cells increasing in size? Are new cells being generated? I think for this, I would have to say that the answer is that the world works on a level of pre-Enlightenment human understanding that the real world doesn't have, one where there aren't cells. (I am a bit sketchy on when cells were discovered, and more sketchy on what they thought was going on before that.)

As far as consequences, which is my favorite thing, I think there are a few big ones.

For one, any amount of food is enough to feed an infinite number of people. A single apple can feed a family, if they want to have nothing but apple for a meal. A single apple slice can feed a family. In fact, even the smallest crumb can undergo the process of magnification to become a full meal. But while you can make "more food" by making it bigger, the taste and texture don't necessarily stay the same. It seems to me that there's probably a sweet spot for most foods in terms of size, and eating a grain of rice the size of a loaf of bread is a very different experience than eating a bowl of rice. And if you've ever eaten one of those sourdough breads with way too large of bubbles, that's what pretty much all bread would look like if magnified, just holes with strands of gluten between them. So I think in terms of food, there would be a lot of class divide, along with a lot of processing of magnified foods to make them more palatable. Maybe a loaf-size grain of rice wouldn't appeal to many people, but you can break off bits of it and probably still make mochi with it.

Another big issue is manufacturing and the trades. In my mind, you have construction workers building the equivalent of dollhouses that then get sized up on a plot of land, but I think dollhouses are a little bit small, and most trades would work on a scale that was easiest for human manipulation. I don't think that's what we do for dolls, which tends to be nimble, finnicky work, and if you can freely scale up and scale down your tools and materials, I think you'd naturally want to work a bit bigger. Probably you would rescale on many different steps of whatever you're producing, and if this world was in the industrial age, then you would have people in factories rescaling as a human step in a factory somewhere. Another cool thing is that a chef could have a single pot and pan that they resize for their needs, and a single knife that fulfills roles we would use two or three different knifes for, though I think maybe handles would be a problem there.

Anyway, I'm not going to use this anywhere, though I do think it's cool, if maybe in a way that's not all that unique (What if Big Thing were Little Thing and What if Little Thing were Big Thing are both speculative fiction staples, see Indian in the Cupboard, The Borrowers, Ant-man, etc.). I have a bunch of outstanding questions re: conservation of momentum and some hacks that only work under certain implementations, but sometimes that's a bridge too far.

[lovelyrotter]

okay but i actually kinda wanna know ur take on stridercest being canon compliant O_O <- autism stare

oh hey i am also hitting you with the autism stare. ill try to get my thoughts down in a way that makes sense to more than just me hahaha

bear in mind that im an epilogue lover and i think Meat/Candy are really valuable pieces that further all of the characters and are also hard canon in the sense that we're looking at just 2 post-game universe outcomes out of an uncountable number (the book in the picnic basket representing post-canon fanfic). i think the characters actions in the epilogues make sense and are satisfying to me. yes even jane (i love alpha jane and i will not do her the disservice of 'cleaning her up' w/o showing her work for it. thats not how you depict a character who grew up with fascist programming). i could totally go on a whole tangent about this specifically but thats another post lol we'd be here forever and its also not stridercest

but okay. canon stridercest. under the cut cause it got kinda long

basically it has to do with the cherubs and how their relationships and mating rituals are pretty obviously incestuous leaning even though cherubs dont have the human concept of Siblings or blood family. the cherub who predominates will search across paradox space to mate with another cherub who closely resembles the cherub they predominated which is like textbook Freudian sexuality. theres a lot of Freud and Jungian stuff in HS imo even if im kinda [wobbly hand gesture] at the validity of these theories applied to real life and real people. but theyre super fun tools and lenses to use in fiction and i mean. gestures at all of dave

so the incest aliens cherubs. the whole reason why im talkin about them is bc Caliborn is so incredibly interested and invested in the Striders in particular. caliborn as both Lord English and Lil Cal shapes earth NOT OVERTLY but more so embeds himself in earth society, but again, the Striders lives in particular. dave is full of incest jokes. hes even apparently got a list of his friends arranged in order of how likely theyd incest-elope with each other (thank you epilogues for this amazing factoid). he seems to think about it often enough to, yknow, Do That. have a good solid think about that and construct an organized list about it. bearing in mind dave makes jokes about stuff thats a) bothering him, or b) generally camping out in his brain. hes not even really aware of it most of the time (as we see in one of the openbounds where hes all 'why am i thinking about puppets???' after seeing dirk for the first time in that dream bubble. he is thinking nonstop about dirk at that point and going off his only frame of reference for ANY dirk, which is his bro. his bro who was most likely deeply warped by Lil Cal)

sorry for the long blocky paragraph lol. but now onto the next thing

Caliborn as Lil Cal is the centerpiece in the beta strider apartment. dave cant escape him and beta dirk grew up with him. what the fuck do you do when youre childhood comfort item is also the most evil creature across all of paradox space? if youre a dirk you try to fight it. but how long can you keep fighting something like that. its safe to say that bro was affected by Caliborns particular brand of perversion and sfw kink. i dont think i have to say how insidious abusive and toxic he is about those things. and looking at the truth of beta bro (16yo alpha dirk) you can start to see just how warped beta bro became. beta bro is a false dirk (still a very Real dirk but not the Truth of dirk. beta bro has been toxified and made infinitely worse by an absolute evil influence over decades of life. in 80s fuckin texas. presumably in the system. anyone would be fucked up after that)

so for this analysis/theory im stating beta bro as a false persona. using jungian terms he is apha dirk's shadow

both dave and dirk live with a fake, carefully manicured version of their bros. they live with personas (or shadows of their guardians on the walls. hello platos allegory of the cave). they dont actually know e/o and they dont until the striunion

alpha dirk especially grows up embedded in the Public Persona Of Dave Strider 400 years post mortem and completely alone with unlimited internet access. hes a self admitted expert on his bro and we dont get to see a lot if any of his early childhood but i can hazard a guess at how much he clung to that persona of his bro. he fuckin idolizes dave. he LOVES dave. right off the bat he is in some kind of love with dave and i think if you try to argue against that then thats you slippin. i think youre a fool and have to reread homestuck because i wholeheartedly believe the striders loving eachother is part of the win state

once again this is speculation cause we get barely anything about alpha dave, but from what we already know about him im guessing this bro-persona is

achingly effortlessly cool

oozing masculinity (toxic or not, not really interested in categorizing that although toxic coolboy masculinity IS something the striders contend with & is an important facet in their lives)

a skilled fighter

a dedicated moviegoer (hes a director need i say more. this one is probably the only genuine thing about his on-screen persona)

and now lets look at jake. someone whos grown up on pretty much nothing but movies, whos doubtlessly been influenced by hollywood and its idea of gritty 'main character' masculinity through that, and who also clings to more old-school ideas of manliness (think victorian/edwardian era gentlemanly-but-loves-a-good-scrum kinda manly. moustache twirly with a monocle kinda manly. basically everything that grandpa harley is)

but okay lets look at what jake wants to be. lets take a look at his teenager persona

achingly effortlessly cool (his own 'hollywood star' kind of cool also def influenced by his favourite characters like lara croft who is indeed achingly cool. you see him succeed in inhabiting this hollywood star persona on earth c)

oozing masculinity (the old school manly mans-man kind)

a skilled fighter (two pistoles always. harder to aim cause you cant use a free hand to make up for kickback. that takes skill)

a dedicated moviegoer (again one of the only genuine parts about his persona. his questionable-to-wretched tastes aside. but bearing in mind that the SBaHJ movies are intentionally bad which is what makes them loop around to good. such is the nature of intentionally 'bad' art. jake fuckin lives in this perpetual bad-good art loop. okay enough with the art tangent keep focused man cmon)

because dirk has obviously way more contact with jake i dont doubt he sees through jakes own (admittedly way more flimsy) coolboy persona but the point still stands i think. different flavours but the same kinda guy. dirk has a type and i dont think its a stretch to say that hes looking for aspects of the bro-persona he grew up looking at in other boys, much like the winning cherub looking for the one they lost in the cherub theyll mate with

also wtf is with dirks obvious boner for dave chasing him across paradox space to decapitate him huh?? the last few sentences in Meat are about that very thing. he wants to fuc fight dave sooo bad. haha remember how the cherubic mating ritual is one of the most violent and long running spectacles in paradox space? i sure do

[tobiasdrake]

Could you tell us something underrated about Bulma? For being around since literally the very beginning, I find she’s not talked about as much.

Bulma is the scariest person in the Dragon Ball universe. The anime softens a lot of her edges. And, like, she's not a total monster; She cares about things like people not being killed by genocidal assholes too.

But she is such an asshole and I love it. Bulma is the character I relate to most in Dragon Ball.

(Also she has an unshakable faith in Goku and he'll always be the number one martial artist in her eyes, and any man that wants to be with her needs to respect that.)

For starters, it's worth noting that the naming convention of Bulma's family is called out as weird even in-universe. Nobody bats an eye at characters being named after fruit or vegetables or rice or the Dairy Special Forces but they draw the line at underwear.

That's weird, Bulma. Your name is weird. Your father Briefs is weird. Your sister Tights is weird. Your son Trunks is weird. Your daughter Bra is weird. Why is your family like this?

Nearly every single person in the cast is someone who Goku initially had to fight in some way or another. Bulma is no exception, though their battle took place as early as issue #1.

When shooting a 12-year-old in the face with a gun failed, Bulma resorted to manipulation and subterfuge, and thus the most important relationship in the entire Dragon Ball universe was born.

Though Goku would not be the only person whose arm Bulma twisted, as this initial journey also sees her enslave a sentient being to do her bidding.

Despite ironically filling the role of a Buddhist monk in the original Journey to the West, this opening arc lays a lot of groundwork for who Bulma is. She tricks Goku and enslaves Oolong to coerce assistance in her quest to conjure up a magically-generated boyfriend (or infinite strawberries).

...then again, Tang Sanzang imprisoned Sun Wukong in the original so maybe Bulma's a better adaptation than I gave her credit for.

Point is, Bulma's a fireball. Even Goku sees it.

In the first arc, we also see her get accustomed to calling on Goku like he's her Pokemon.

Bulma is not a martial artist. She knows next to nothing about the implicate complexities of the art. Though she does enjoy being on the outer fringe of it and watching from a distance.

Well. Not from that much distance, because she always has the best seats in the house. Courtesy of inappropriate violence with firearms.

Not only is Bulma complicit in this - they clearly discussed it in advance, based on Oolong's remark and Bulma's knowing smile - but in the 23rd she actively makes it happen.

Sitting in the nosebleeds is for peasants; Bulma is a princess.

I should probably note that after Lunch moves on and leaves the group, Bulma doesn't lose access to violent backup. She just trades Lunch out for Chi-Chi.

The Battle of the Soccer Moms is the best part of the 25th's Junior Division. There's only room for one Alpha Bitch in these audience stands.

Notably, it doesn't take long for her relationship with Goku to grow into a genuine friendship. Following this first arc, Bulma goes out of her way to hang out with Goku when she can and is always excited to see him.

Fun fact, despite the fact that Bulma's boyfriend Yamcha is actively living with them at the time, Bulma's dad ships her with Goku.

No love for Yamcha in this house. Notably, when they're six years older and it's not fucking weird, Bulma herself starts to agree.

But it's honestly best for everyone that this never became a romance. Bulma would have been even more miserable with Goku than she was with Yamcha, and having them hook up would deprive us of one of the greatest platonic male/female friendships in anime.

I'm not saying Vegeta is a replacement goldfish for Goku who got married and became unavailable this same day.

...but I'm not not saying that.

So far as martial arts go, her practical knowledge of the art is simple: Goku is a) invulnerable and b) infinity powerful, and that's all she needs to know. Nobody matches Goku. Ever.

You might think that this unyielding confidence in Goku as the Supreme Warrior would cause some conflicts for Bulma. Her boyfriend Yamcha is one of Goku's rivals, and has his eye on the Tenkaichi Budokai medal.

You'd be wrong. Bulma knows exactly who she's rooting for.

It's Goku. It's always been Goku. It's always going to be Goku. Bulma watches Yamcha and Krillin gush over how well they plan to do in the tournament and her takeaway is "LOL Goku's going to school both of you clowns."

This attitude makes it really funny to imagine what her relationship with Vegeta must be like, I gotta say. That Goku will always be #1 in Bulma's eyes can't be doing good things for Vegeta's insecurity.

But I digress.

Bulma is an exceptional scientist who comes from an exceptional scientific background. She's from one of if not the richest families in the world courtesy of her father inventing revolutionary shrinking technology that changed the entire nature of how products are transported.

You can put anything in a Capsule Corp. hoi-poi capsule. Throughout the series, we see not just vehicles stored in these capsules, but portable homes, weapons, and her father's pornography collection.

For her part, Bulma's a chip off the old block. I've spoken at length in the past about Bulma's invention of the Dragon Radar, trivializing what was meant to be a holy quest of virtue and turning the miracle dragon Shenron into her own personal plastic surgery vendor. She was 15 years old when she made that.

One year later, she extrapolated her father's shrinking technology into a portable device that safely applies its principles to people.

But both of those devices pale in comparison to the greatest invention of her life.

No, not the kid. Though he's cool too.

In a sense, despite being out-of-focus for most of it, the entire Cell Arc is Bulma's masterpiece. It's a proxy war between two mad scientists over the fate of the Earth. Seeking to kill Son Goku and avenge the Red Ribbon Army, Dr. Gero destroyed the world with his Androids.

Bulma took exception to that. And by "took exception", I mean she bent the time-space continuum over her knee and spanked it.

Trunks's journey through time is the culmination, both of Bulma's impossible super-genius and of her unyielding faith that Goku is the answer to any problem that needs to be solved with violence.

Dr. Gero's master stroke was to flood the world with murderous Androids. Bulma's response was to load a bullet named Goku into a gun named Trunks and fire it through time to put it between his eyes. Everything that transpired from there was the consequence of their two plans colliding.

The happier future we get to know in the Buu Saga is the world that Bulma made happen. Because the woman who would make a personal assistant out of our Great Green God's greatest miracle had the audacity and the irreverence to violate causality itself.

[janmisali]

the additive group of day-2 normal partizan games

recently I've been trying to gain a deeper understanding of one very small subset of the class of normal partizan games: the games that are born on or before day 2. I've explained the general concept on main before, so I'll assume you're already familiar with the idea.

to recap, there are 22 games under the normal play convention that end after at most two moves. three moves extends that to 1474, and beyond that many moves it's an open question.

normal partizan games can be added together to form new normal partizan games. analyzing when a complicated game can be broken down into the sum of multiple other simpler games is one of the most important concepts in combinatorial game theory.

the sum of games has the properties that it's associative ((F + G) + H = F + (G + H)) and commutative (G + H = H + G), just like regular addition. so what I'm interested in is what happens if you ignore the game-ness of these games and just explore the behavior of the sums of these particular small games as an abelian group. that is, given two games G and H expressed in the form of some number of day-2 games all added together (allowing duplicates), when does G equal H? and I uh, almost understand it? but not everything.

the generative set

while these 22 games are all very simple, we don't really need all 22 of them. I'm not 100% sure how small of a generative set you can reduce them to, but I've been able to cut it down to just ten:

*2 = {0,*|0,*}

½ = {0|1}

-½ = {-1|0}

↑ = {0|*}

↓ = {*|0}

±1 = {1|-1}

±½ = {½|-½}

{½|-½*}

{1|0,*}

{0,*|-1}

the ones I've put in red are not actually day-2 games, but they can be expressed as the sums of other day-2 games, so they're fine to use. they could be replaced with actual day-2 games, but I think these particular forms make the math easier. and the last two are uh, weird. I don't know what their deal is.

anyway, all day-2 games (and by extension all sums of day-2 games) can be represented as the sum of some combination of members of this generative set. I won't explain how for all of them because it's pretty trivial a lot of the time, but here are some of the highlights:

the zero game can be reached by adding any game to its negative, or alternatively it just doesn't need to be part of the generative set because the "empty sum" comes for free

the switches {1|0} and {0|-1} can be represented as ½±½ and -½±½, respectively

the hot game {1|*} has the property that {1|*} + {1|*} = 1 + * = 1*. this suggests that it could be broken down into a "one half" component and a "star halves" component. */2 is not a unique value (there are in fact infinitely many games which when added to themselves equal star), but {½|-½*}, one half less than {1|*}, does indeed have the property that when added to itself you get * as we'd expect, and since * is its own negative, three copies of {½|-½*} can be added together to get its negative.

adding these games together

a lot about the behavior of the sums of games is already very well-documented. as I said, this is one of the key concepts in combinatorial game theory.

within this generative set, three games are their own negatives (*2, ±1, and ±½), which simplifies things a lot. they essentially don't interact with anything else in the group. "star halves" works in a similar way, as described earlier.

numbers and arrows also don't interact with each other. ↑ is infinitesimal, smaller than every positive surreal number but still positive.

if we ignore the hot fuzzy game {1|0,*} and its negative, everything else then is pretty straightforward. games in this group can be broken down into a number part, an arrow part, a "star halves" part, a *2 part, and two switch parts. the sum of two games in this group can then be handled in all of those parts individually without needing to worry about any of these parts bleeding into each other.

but what of the hot fuzzy games {1|0,*} and {0,*|-1}? do they interact with anything else?

and I don't have the answer to that. they're really weird! {1|0,*} is hot (players have an incentive to move) and fuzzy (whoever makes the first move wins), but {1|0,*} added to itself is positive! I don't think these games will ever combine with something in this group to form something that could have been expressed without using them, but I also don't know how I would go about proving that.

anyway that's just what I've been thinking about recently

[schizodiaries]

how to care for a loved one with schizophrenia

I have made a few posts already about self-care tips for schizophrenic people, but now I want to talk about different ways a non-schizophrenic can help care for their schizophrenic friends and family.

Do some research on schizophrenia. Learn about the history of the disorder, the symptoms that may be present (and the different categories of symptoms), the medication we take, etc. Showing that you’ve made an effort to try to understand us is a kind gesture and we won’t forget it.

Learn how to talk to someone who is actively delusional, psychotic, or hallucinating. You want to stay as neutral as possible, as in, avoid outright denying or endorsing what they believe. (Ex. “I’m the president of the U.S.” “Oh, I thought the president was Joe Biden?”)

Uncover their triggers. If they are comfortable sharing it with you, it may help to know what their triggers are so you can avoid them or help them to cope. (Sharing triggers is a sign of trust, don’t abuse this trust by taking advantage of them.)

Create a safe and welcoming environment for your schizophrenic loved one. Refrain from using ableist language, or misusing words used to describe our symptoms (delusional, psychotic, etc). We might not act like it hurts us, but it does.

Don’t believe in all the stereotypes you see in the media. Schizophrenic people are not inherently violent. At the same time, don’t be surprised if they display bizarre or unpredictable behavior. This illness affects different people in different ways. There is no one way to be schizophrenic.

Speaking of which, let your schizophrenic loved one unmask every now and again, or as often as you’re both comfortable with. Let them talk to themselves, make odd movements, rant about their ideas, obsess over numbers, or whatever unmasking looks like for them. Don’t punish them for it or make them feel bad about it either.

Try not to see schizophrenia as something that needs to be “cured.” Currently there is no cure for schizophrenia, though it is treatable. It’s one thing to wish for a cure as a schizophrenic person, but it’s another for someone else to wish we can be cured. To us, it implies that you don’t want us to be ourselves or want to change something about us. Wouldn’t you rather have us just the way we are, schizophrenia and all?

Avoid sending your loved one to a psych hospital as much as possible. I understand that they aren’t all bad and can be necessary or even beneficial to a person experiencing a mental health crisis. But these places are notorious for being neglectful, traumatizing, and abusive. Look at the reviews for any of your local psych hospitals and tell me why you would want to send your loved one there.

If you want to join support groups for schizophrenia, online or irl, look into ones that focus primarily on the people that have the illness, not just their loved ones. It’s important to hear directly from schizophrenic individuals and learn about the experiences we have. I understand it may be hard for you as a parent, child, caretaker, etc. of a schizophrenic person, but it’s infinite times harder for them.