#we can say that about a very limited number of things in our lives!!!

[attonitos-gloria]

Sansa stans dont compare her or ship her with rapists. you only ship Sanrion to use Sansa as self-insert because you want to fuck Tyrion, you don't actually like Sansa

anon. I'll be honest with you. I'll not be taking this ask seriously because I have no interest in proving to you that I like any fictional character whatsoever but I want to answer because I think it's so funny that through your hate and ignorance you can see right through me. yes I confess all my Tyrion stan act is because I think he's incredibly hot. Do I think he's the main character. Do I think he is the character that best embodies the heart of the series. Do I cry for him as if he were my friend, do I feel his chapters pulling at my heartstrings. Am I fascinated by the relationship between the way he's treated in-universe and the way he's treated by fandom. Do I believe he is the author's vessel to do meta about his own work more than any other character (for more on this also read: adwd) well yes. Yes of course to all of this. But at the end of the day im just..... thinking with my pussy because I'm a simple girl. when you do it, it is boring but when I do it.... It is actually praxis

[sissa-arrows]

I just saw a stupid video of “Israelis” protesting Netanyahu and people using that to say that Natanyahu is the problem and that the people support Palestinians. It’s incredibly stupid but it’s also a huge lie. Here is what an “Israeli” who lives in France replied when he was asked about the “Israelis leftists” some of y’all love to use to pretend there’s hope for this colony on Palestinian land.

Let's be clear, we exist, but we are worth nothing. Both in terms of numbers and political power, no one should use us as an excuse to say that there is hope among Israelis.

There's a range of opinions on the radical left, but remember it's safe to say there’s around 5 000 - 10 000 people. That's it and I'm being generous. A very small minority of us talk about one state for all. Personally, I would like to live in a free Palestine. Israel should not be a thing but a sad memory uttered on the lips of nostalgic Nazis. I can tell you that I am very disappointed by our left. Many have responded to this cutting-edge genocide with disorientation at best and stabbing Palestinians in the back at worst. Israeli leftists limit themselves to liberal-progressive ideas and do not meaningfully commit to socialist alternatives.

[zipper-neck]

Trans Rules of Engagement

By Florence Ashley

Strong communities make us all safer. As anti-trans movements gain in power and influence, holding space for each other through our flaws remains critical. Yet the very conditions that create our need for community care make it hard for us to care for each other. We are raw, wounded, traumatized, and hypervigilant. We make mistakes brought on by fear and hurt. We lash out at each other when we do wrong, often partaking in pile-ons facilitated by the synchronous nature of online interactions. Whether we realize it or not, we often exclude trans people from community when they need it most.

I have lost count of the number of trans people I have seen cast out of online trans spaces for misdeeds both major and minor—far too often with my help. I sometimes find myself wondering where they are now and whether they are still alive. Because, as Kai Cheng Thom has taught us, social death often means real death for trans people. Trans communities are life-sustaining in a world that hates us so, so much. In a world that wants us dead. We have lost too many people not to stop and think about how we can foster life among each other.

This goal I have for myself—that of fostering life—motivates the following principles and rules for engaging in online intra-community conflicts while preserving the life-sustaining spirit of our communities. Countless times have I failed to heed these principles and ignored these rules. This failure, which many of us share, is precisely why I now want to lay these principles and rules down on paper. If only as a reminder of my aspirations. The principles and rules are meant to be adopted for oneself, not imposed onto others. Their purpose is to foster productive engagement, not create even more conflict and rigidity. I hope that this will be a living document, and invite you to make your own version if you would like. Borrow what is useful, supplement with what is needed, alter what can be improved.

Some, and perhaps all, of the principles I acknowledge are false, hence the need for a living document. Each of my suggested rules have exceptions. In setting them out, I am staking a claim as to the sort of myths and half-truths that are necessary to sustain life in a world that wants us dead. We must treat them as true if we wish to foster life-sustaining communities and survive the hellscape we belabor.

Principles

1. We are all flawed, traumatized humans at the end of their rope. Many of our actions say more about the conditions we live under than who we are as people.

2. No one is disposable. No one is unsalvageable.

3. Life holds greater value than being right or comfortable. Hurt is preferable to death.

4. No one should be deprived of community.

5. Harm does not require further harm. Punishment does not equate protection or healing.

Rules

1. Do not depart from these rules, unless you have to.

2. Morgan M. Page’s Rule: Try to avoid criticizing other trans people in public. The world does it enough already.

3. Favor in person or private conversations: Addressing someone’s comments or actions in person or privately is typically more constructive and effective. It allows you to communicate more cogently and with more nuance problems in someone’s actions or words and because it is less likely to make them react defensively from a place of trauma or fear.

4. Take your time: Few things require an immediate response. Responding while caught in a surge of thoughts and feelings is often unproductive. Ask yourself how much harm was done, versus how much we are reminded of an earlier harm. Ask whether your response is rooted in misperception or potential biases towards the person due to race, disability, gender, or other marginalized identities. Consider whether their words or actions reflect a different kind of thinking or communication style, a lack of access to education, or limited access to progressive communities and norms. You can respond tomorrow, once you have collected your thoughts, talked to others, and gained perspective.

5. Don’t mob: Be aware of group dynamics. Ask yourself if you are connected to this person and in community with them. Avoid jumping into the fray when others are already criticizing the person. Do not invite others to join in and mob them. Withdraw if others join in, and kindly ask people to stay conscious of mobbing dynamics. Mobbing rapidly grows out of proportion.

6. De-escalate: Focus on de-escalating conflicts. Ask what people mean or want, and why. Ask them for clarification or elaboration if needed. Ask yourself if you know enough about the context of the situation. Distinguish the action from the person, and acknowledge that it is normal to respond defensively or aggressively to public criticism and mobbing. People are traumatized, mentally ill, and are scared of losing the little social support they have. As a result, conflict can trigger a fight-or-flight response in both those who are criticized and who criticize, which leads to escalating conflict and ends in a loss of community. Dropping the conversation to return at a later date is preferable to escalation. Often, I find it best to limit myself to three replies in conversations that aren’t constructive.

7. Respond proportionately: Responses to words and behaviours should be proportionate to their harm, and reflect a need for healing and protection rather than punishment. When we speak from a place of hurt, we can understandably but unfortunately forget the measure and impact of our response. Use language that reflects the nuances and gradations of harm rather than a coarse good and evil binary. Cutting all social support and community banishment are rarely a proportionate response, even for someone who doubles down and does not apologize. Responding proportionately is asking first and foremost what response sustains rather than dissolves life. Especially when it comes to words, it is better to under-react than to over-react.

8. Ensure support for everyone: Check in on those who are criticized and those who criticize them. Remind people that we are all in this together, and that banishment is not how we work as a community. Everyone deserves to have their needs met. Do not shun or reproach people who offer support to those who were criticized or called out. Distinguish supporting a person from enabling their behavior.

9. Hold space for people to grow: Allow space for people to be accountable, change, and move on from previous conflicts. Do not hold past behavior over people’s head, nor dig up past misdeeds to fuel present conflicts.

10. Resolve conflict and harm as a community: We must ask how our communities enable and cause hurt and harm, and find ways to transform the conditions that create them. Holding accountable, problem-solving, and conflict resolution are functions that should be taken up by the collective, not isolated and unsupported individuals.

11. Center those most hurt or harmed: Focus on supporting and empowering people who are hurt and harmed rather than on punishment. Ask what they need to be safe and integrated in our communities, while committing to support for everyone; what they need to repair their relationship to the person who hurt or harmed them. Focus your involvement on bringing people together, fostering dialogue and mutual understanding, and restoring a sense of community togetherness, rather than deciding who is right or wrong.♦

[brujamala-aka-gigi]

"time will tell" ... but what exactly?

i thought about making this reading because we are living at times when we all know that patience is a virtue, we all know that we should work on said virtue, and so on, yet, things move are always seemingly moving in the fastest chaotic way possible. for some of us, embracing uncertainty and the absurd ways of the universe is hard. so hopefully there's something in here that helps you to have a clearer vision on what is meant to come to you with time and experience.

dividers by: @bernardsbendystraws & @cafekitsune pngs by: @florietas

pile number one pile number two

pile number three pile number four

.‧͙˚ *༓ scroll down for the readings ⋆ִ ‧͙⁺˚

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before starting with this reading i just want to say that my heart goes to anyone on the united states that feels disappointed and is going through emotionally stressful situations due to the results of the elections. at times like this is important to find empowerment and safety by taking care of our peers and participating our communities, political organization is just as important as caring for one another. having a right wing president who borders fascism is not a great experience, i have my own alt right president here in south america, but surviving these moments is easier when you find strength alongside the people who share your ideals.

we don't owe tolerance to those who are intolerant, our time is always better spent when we are building the future we want or doing our best to face the adversities of the present. please, do not allow others to take away your humanity and your hopes.

・₊✧⋆ pile number one ⭒˚｡⋆

If someone ever told you that your expectations are unrealistic, they are not wrong, but not entirely right either. I think you're someone who unconsciously tries to be aware of every possible outcome and every single detail, it's quite a hyper vigilant way of approaching things and also a quite anxiety inducing one. I wouldn't say your expectations are unrealistic, but I would definitely say they are realistic in the context of the millions of head scenarios you have going on. Some emotions are being limited by logic and some logics are being limited by emotion. There are plenty of experiences that are coming your way in order to give you the opportunity to be more present in the moment instead of experiencing things mostly in your head. You need time to further develop your judgment, as of now it is something that is in an adolescent state, not because of immature or juvenile thinking, but because you are going through a, hopefully, slightly painful phase of your mental growth. Think of it as existential growing pains. You might have too much information, too much to think about and too much to feel about, it's a very difficult moment for you to maintain a self perceived stable or coherent point of view at all times. Take this time to comprehend what's making you feel paralyzed and unable to move forward mentally, and then you can begin doing something about this conjunction of mental and emotional stress.

・₊✧⋆ pile number two ⭒˚｡⋆

What I get from this combination of cards is that you are becoming more aware of the things that are threatening your higher self. From the Queen and the Page I can see that you are usually almost confident enough in what you bring to the table in terms of material achievements that are easily recognizable, although not always perceived or valued enough by yourself or others. I don't think I want to say there's someone or yourself gaslighting you into belittling yourself, but I do want to mention that it's likely that there's a sketchy energy near you or at least the cards are giving a heads up about negative reactions to you doing your thing and, to say simply, slaying it. What it is safe to say tho is that with time you will learn who is worthy of your generosity and your companion. It's key that you understand that any kind of success you achieve is not only valuable because of what you got from it, the value comes from what you did to get said achievements. With this in mind, don't hesitate to avoid others who drain your energy and misuse your time. Your presence by itself it's already enough for others to benefit at your cost. This is not something meant to give you a reason to be overly distrustful, this is to give you reasons to set boundaries, specially for yourself, in order to make sure whoever or whatever brings you down, it's out of your way. If people see the respect you have for yourself, it's more likely they are not even trying to waste your time.

・₊✧⋆ pile number three ⭒˚｡⋆

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Being emotionally attached to the person you were in the past is obstructing your path towards further personal and existential growth. I definitely understand that sometimes the only thing that gives us a sense of stability is our own identity, and our power to define ourselves in our own terms. I don’t think you are afraid to grow or to evolve as a person, but I can see that right now you are resisting change by ignoring your intuitive need to expand your limits and find out about all the things, the positive and negative,that you choose to ignore because of old fears and anxieties. It’s very likely you know exactly what to do or what to keep and what to let go off,  you certainly are aware of where to go and how to get there. What's conflicting with your ambitions right now is that you have exhausted yourself by never taking the time to appreciate how far you already are from plenty of situations that have restricted your authentic self. I honestly understand what it's like to make a lot of progress after moving away from tough situations only to realize there is more work to do in order to restore or find an integral state of peace of mind and contempt. In your case, you’re lucky because sooner or later your emotions will lead you to how you can be truthful to yourself and experience life without any of the weight from limiting perceptions that other people have imposed on you. Many things have limited time in our lives, don’t miss out on them.

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・₊✧⋆ pile number four ⭒˚｡⋆

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Don't force yourself to be the first to do anything or the best at anything if you're comparing yourself to others. It is not fair to set your expectations about yourself by looking at what is supposably perfect or highly desirable, yet not a true reflection of what you as an individual can accomplish in a way that's genuine to your personal journeys. It's necessary that you embrace your experiences, putting yourself and your own ideals as the guide for what it means to advance and grow. Time will show you how to build a stronger confidence in your core beliefs and how to act upon them with the efficiency and courage you might be needing right now. This will develop as you become more comfortable with allowing yourself to fail, and to learn from said failures by setting structures to support the process of becoming more connected to a higher sense of self worth. You are going through a process in which key communicational aspects are at play;  many of your personal achievements will depend on your ability to share your ideas with others before taking any kind of action, as many things you’ll do will have long lasting effects. This is why I would recommend making sure you can really align your actions, your communication and your goals directly to yourself and the roots of your ideals. Don’t hurry up, it takes time to evolve and you will certainly do so by comprehending how equally confused, disoriented and impulsive we all are, and how that’s nothing anyone can ignore for too long.

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if you enjoyed this post, maybe you should check out the rest of my account <3 and keep an eye open for ask games and a tarot reading giveaway (but lets not hurry too much about it please im still figuring out the logistics of a tumblr giveaway jajaja)

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⋆bookings for personal readings are open ཐིཋྀ ˚₊‧⁺

[globlingoober]

Jimmy is a very well written terrible abuser character. He really has no redemption and his thought process being “I’m the captain I’m the best I’m in charge” vs “I’m terrible and everyone knows it” is so interesting because that’s the thought process that creates many bad people with abusive behaviors.

All of the characters are well written I think because the game really relies on the key technique of show don’t tell which is the number one rule that takes place in good media. Especially a phycological horror. That’s from a general media fan’s standpoint anyway.

Stuck in space is such a good troupe I’m in awe that the game took that and made it terrifying like a proper phycological horror by having all the real threats human made while making the player feel insane and questioning what’s real. such as “are there real monsters on this ship?” And the answer is yes but the monster isn’t the visions of creatures it’s the abuser’s mind whom others let fester and evolve into thinking his actions were excusable therefore making them devolve into more bad extreme actions.

Playing from said abuser’s point of view gives the player connection to him and start the game with an almost defensive mindset up until they have to face the realization they are the problem and do everything they can to disconnect from Jimmy something they cannot escape from without turning off the whole game and just ignoring those actions. You have to face it. And as well as that mentality Jimmy has is portrayed we really only see his and some of curly’s perspective (two of the main causes of both the abuse and the crash) playing Curly makes seeing him dehumanized later on far more difficult as your forced to shove meds down his throat.

Anya, Swansea, and Daisuke are pov’s we never see and there could be several reasons for that and I find that so interesting. But we are not the victim in this game. As much as we hate to face it Jimmy is the main character and the main story is his and Curly’s experience. Because you play them you can’t ever completely be the victim. If “your worst moment” really “doesn’t make you a monster” then many repeating worst moments do. You can’t just say sorry you have to improve and change. Sorry is just another word.

You have to “take responsibility” for what you’ve done while still being limited to the actual actions Jimmy takes. Despite however you feel about it you still pushed the buttons. You still played out those actions. The game forces you to face it putting the player in the most humanly uncomfortable and uncommon position of all, the abuser. Many times in our lives will we be forced to tread the thin line of taking responsibility and wrongly placing blame (on ourselves or others) while of course our situations may never be as severe as the situations presented the game warns you of the consequences of- NOT your choices but the responses to those actions. It’s a big test of how the player responds to the characters actions that they contributed to.

I adore that the idea was to make the player face their own pain and hurt. That’s passionate. People relate to the crews cast plenty but the scariest part of this horror game is relating to the perpetrator!!!

“like you ARE the abuser. You have to realize that abusers are just people. People you thought were good before. They could be anyone they are some evil 3rd force. It could literally even be you” -My friend @willowwhirll

Feel bad. feel guilt. but manage that guilt. Don’t let guilt make you worse, use it to change your actions. As badly as I, the player, and the audience want to disconnect from Jimmy being able to find traits to connect to allows you to acknowledge you can and sometimes are a bad person. It’s a fluctuating thing.

Horror that teaches you a lesson. Fricken beautiful.

[elyvorg]

The Real Reason That Sissel Refused to Help

(or: the subtle genius of Ghost Trick’s tutorial)

“I just want to find my own lost memory. I’m sorry, but I can’t help you.”

Here’s a post in which I talk about this particular part of Ghost Trick’s story, which I’m keeping as vague as possible outside of the spoiler cut, but those who’ve finished the game should know what I’m referring to. What’s actually going on here is rather interesting, and paints our friend Sissel in a much less negative light than the face-value assumption I tend to see most people jumping to with this.

First, though, I have written a fic illustrating this idea in narrative form rather than lengthily explaining it. If you’re interested, I recommend you go read that first before reading this, because being shown is more fun than being told!

(Also, spoilers, obviously. Go play Ghost Trick if you haven’t; it’s so good and absolutely not the kind of thing you want to be spoiled for.)

So, in the original timeline, Sissel refused to help Missile save his mistresses, stating that he just wants to find his own lost memories.

It could easily seem at a glance like Sissel’s character development over the course of the game is that he started off selfish, only caring about his own mystery, and it’s only through getting attached to everyone throughout the night that he begins to care about others and the bigger picture. As such, his refusal to help Missile in the original timeline is easy to read as being born of that, since this was early on when Sissel still only cared about himself.

But… it’s not actually that simple, because Sissel isn’t as selfish in the beginning as one might think. Sure, he’ll say things like “I have to focus on my own mystery”, or “this is all for my own benefit”. But that doesn’t actually match up with his actions. His own mystery may be, in theory, his number one priority, but a remarkably close second priority for him is to save the lives of any dead person he happens to come across. Even very early on, before he’s grown to care about any of these people!

He doesn’t hesitate to save Missile, despite having zero reason to assume that this little doggie will be any help with his mystery. The second time he finds Lynne dead, when he’s getting to talk to her and learns that she doesn’t actually know much about him and probably won’t be able to help him because she’s got her own case to pursue tonight, he still reassures her that she doesn’t owe him and he’s going to save her life anyway.

And even right at Lynne’s very first death, in the game’s opening narration, Sissel makes a point that he doesn’t want to stand back and let her get shot, and that he feels bad for her, despite her being a complete stranger!

Evidently, even right at the beginning, Sissel isn’t selfish. He just thinks he is. Because cats can be tsundere like that.

Sissel:  “Why am I so determined to save this woman? After all, it’s not as if I know her. My reason is twofold. Number one, I’m not the type to leave women lying around, discarded like trash.”

(Here’s a bit from later in chapter 1 featuring Sissel being amusingly surprised by his own altruistic streak. He seems to expect to only care about himself – yet here he is, not wanting to leave a stranger lying dead if he can help it. Not so selfish after all, huh?)

So if that’s not the problem in the original timeline, then what is? Why does Sissel leave Missile to deal with saving his ladies alone when he’d have no reason not to try and help? – after all, he hasn’t been given a fake time limit in this timeline! He’s not even in a hurry with his own mystery! For that matter, Sissel was still there in the junkyard at the beginning – why didn’t he just save Lynne himself?

We can get a good indication of what the issue is from that very same opening narration I was just talking about.

Sissel:  “Now, I’m not the kind of guy who can just stand back and watch a poor woman get shot. But I have just one little problem… I’m already dead myself.”

Sissel:  “I feel bad for her, sure. But what can I do? I’m dead. But just as I was thinking that…”

The real problem is not that he doesn’t care about saving a stranger’s life. Rather, it’s that, because he’s dead, he doesn’t think he can. He’s not expecting to magically have ghost superpowers; why would he?

And it’s just as he was thinking that he can’t do anything (which, while part of his screen-filling monologue narration, was still his thoughts and therefore something any nearby ghost could hear)… that Ray speaks up to tell him that actually he can save her.

Sissel:  “Huh?” (Me? Save her? Uh, how?)

Immediately, Sissel questions the notion once again, not with a why but with a how. It’s not that he doesn’t want to; he simply doesn’t think it’s possible.

This general idea continues throughout the entire tutorial, which is absolutely packed with lines that show Sissel being deeply sceptical about the idea that he could possibly save someone’s life or alter someone’s fate.

Once Ray’s taught him about his basic ghost tricks and he’s managed to delay Lynne’s death by a few moments… she still ends up dead anyway. And Sissel thinks that’s it. Because of course he does. Even if he can stop time and manipulate objects, he has zero reason to believe that his powers can undo a death that’s already happened.

Sissel:  “In the end, it looks like her fate remains unchanged. So what good are these ‘ghost tricks’ of mine? But just as I was thinking this…”

Sissel:  “It looks like my ghost tricks didn’t do much good.” (She still ended up just as dead as before.)

He even ends up feeling like his new superpowers are barely worth anything, because he can play a few little tricks on someone, but that’s not enough to save someone’s life, is it?

Ray:  “Isn’t it a shame to see such a pretty young woman lying here discarded like a piece of trash?” Sissel:  “But what can I do? She’s already dead.”

Ray:  “And while she’s resting, you can save her life.” Sissel:  “Oh, sure. You make it sound so easy.”

And again, he’s very dismissive of Ray implying or telling him that he can do something about this. After all, how could that be possible any more?

In particular, there’s this vital little bit of trickery here…

Ray:  “Now what do you suppose will happen if you possess a corpse?” Sissel:  “Nothing, because I already tried that, remember? And nothing happened at all.”

…in which Sissel assumes his powers just don’t work on corpses, because he’s already tried and failed to do anything with “his” corpse. If he’d been alone, without Ray to guide him through things, he most likely wouldn’t have even tried to possess Lynne’s corpse in the first place, because he would have had no reason to believe it would achieve anything!

(Meanwhile, Missile in the original timeline also had zero reason to believe he could do anything for Kamila, but he was so anguished and desperate that of course he would have tried anyway. He’d try anything to save her, because he is good and loyal and Dog. So he was able to discover his time-rewinding powers where Sissel didn’t, and thus he passed that knowledge onto Sissel in the game’s timeline.)

And as Ray tells Sissel that he can in fact rewind time to redo the last moments of Lynne’s life, he’s completely dumbfounded and bewildered by the very idea of it.

Sissel:  “Are you serious?! Back through time?!”

Sissel:  “But this is crazy! None of it makes any sense!”

Ray:  “To the time four minutes before this woman was murdered!” Sissel:  “H-Hey, wait a second! I still don’t know what you’re talking about!”

What is this lamp even talking about?! Of course turning back time isn’t possible! He had no reason to believe it was possible, even as part of his new wacky ghost powers.

(Meanwhile, when Sissel is saving Missile in the game, we get a little exchange that shows Missile being completely unfazed by the idea that Sissel’s brought them back in time. It’s no weirder than humans walking around on two legs, right? One way or another, the cat can barely wrap his head around it, while the dog sees it as perfectly plausible.)

One thing Ray says more than once during the tutorial is, “The best thing to do is try it.” Because Sissel is being so stubbornly cynical that he will not take this desk lamp’s word about how useful his powers are and has to literally be pushed into trying it himself in order to believe it, every time.

Even after seeing for himself that he can go back in time and watch Lynne’s death again, Sissel still manages to be pessimistic about this.

Ray:  “And there you have it. The last four minutes of her life.” Sissel:  [strained] “No…!” Ray:  “It’s kind of ironic, when you think about it. A woman toyed with by fate, and a man toyed with by a ghost.” Sissel:  “But she still died.”

He went back in time, and she still died. There’s still apparently nothing he can do, right? No, Sissel, just have a bit of patience! This is just the mechanic that lets you understand what happens before you dive in and start changing things; you’ll get your chance soon!

And once he’s finally successfully saved Lynne…

Ray:  “You used your powers to avert that woman’s fate.” Sissel: “So I did that?”

Sissel still has a moment of being surprised at the notion that he was capable of something like this.

It’s really striking to me, watching over chapter 1 again with this thought about original-timeline Sissel in mind, just how many lines to this effect there are throughout the whole thing. The writers did not need to include this many moments of Sissel being sceptical, or even any of them at all, really, in order for the tutorial to do its job as a tutorial! But they’re here anyway, because it is in fact really important to the story that Sissel is somebody who would not have tried hard enough to figure out that his powers can undo deaths unless he had someone holding his hand through it the whole way.

The way old-Missile talks about it when he’s explaining himself at the end, it’s easy to get the takeaway that the most important thing he did as Ray was to take advantage of Sissel’s supposed self-interest: by not contradicting his misconception that he’s the man in red, by telling him Lynne is the key to his mystery (a half-truth at best), and by giving him a fake time limit. And it’s not that those things didn’t help, but they’re not really the most important thing at all.

The most important thing Ray did for Sissel, the thing that Missile absolutely most needed to spend those ten years waiting to do, was exactly what it appeared to be during chapter 1: to teach him how to use his powers to save lives. Because the number one thing the Sissel from the original timeline needed but didn’t get was, quite literally, a tutorial.

There’s a little bit more to it than this, though. So, okay, Sissel in the original timeline didn’t know he had the vital time-rewinding power. But then that begs the question: why didn’t Missile just tell him that while asking for his help?

For that matter, why did Sissel leave Missile shortly after being asked for help? It can’t just be because he urgently had to go and look elsewhere for answers to his own mystery, because he’s not pressed for time here. And he was apparently chilling at the junkyard just eavesdropping on the investigators’ conversations before Missile showed up. Why the sudden shift in locations now of all times, when there’s someone here who’s actually talking to him – the first person Sissel would have been able to talk to all night – and asking him for help?

The issue here, I believe, is that this isn’t just a matter of Sissel’s lack of understanding what his powers can do. It’s also a matter of emotional state – both Sissel’s, and Missile’s. Both of them would have been incredibly stressed out and upset, Sissel due to his loss of memory and seeing deaths in front of him that he doesn’t think he can do anything about, and Missile due to his mistresses’ deaths that he also can’t do anything about, even though he has a superpower that lets him try but it just isn’t quite enough.

How would Missile and Sissel’s interaction go when they’re both so upset like this? There’s actually a fun little bite-sized example of this in the actual canon timeline. During the last desperate struggle to escape the sinking submarine…

Missile:  “Sissel! Y-Y-Y… You’re not telling Miss Lynne to leave poor Miss Kamila behind, ARE YOU?!” Sissel:  *sigh* “Could you just be quiet for a minute, Missile?”

Missile and Sissel are bound to be both extremely anxious and stressed in this situation – trapped in the submarine, Lynne and Kamila in danger of drowning if they don’t do something. And in that state of mind, it seems that Missile is prone to eschewing logic to be even more loudly desperately protective of his mistresses… while Sissel especially does not enjoy Missile being Loudly Boisterously Dog in his ear when he’s stressed out. After all, cats and dogs have very opposite and very incompatible ways of dealing with stress!

So it follows that the conversation between Sissel and Missile in the original timeline would likely have been an incoherent emotional mess, in which neither of them properly communicated their side of things at all. Missile must have just never even thought to tell Sissel that he can rewind time and therefore saving his ladies is actually possible in theory, because that was already obvious to him! He wouldn’t be capable of understanding why Sissel would be so reluctant about this.

As for why Sissel wasn’t just reluctant to help but outright ran away and sealed the deal – I think, more than anything, it’s got to be down to the fact that he couldn’t stand having Missile being so loud and energetic at him when he was this upset. Especially not while repeatedly saying that he can save them, which would be the exact thing Sissel has been miserably convinced that he just can’t. It follows that he’d just have wanted to run and hide somewhere Missile isn’t, where he can have some peace and quiet. Cats who are upset often like to hide and isolate themselves to feel safer.

There’s one other part in the game’s tutorial that suggests the problem originally might have been partly a matter of Sissel’s emotions:

Ray:  “Hello there. How are you feeling? Not very well, I imagine. A terrible tragedy, what happened tonight.” Sissel:  “………” [neutral face] Ray:  “Ah, ignoring me, are you? It’s a little too early for you to be so stiff and cold, I’d say.” Sissel:  [smiling] “Ah, so it was you. You were that voice in my head, right?”

This is very noteworthy, because Ray is the only person in the entire game who ever takes the time to ask Sissel how he’s feeling. He wouldn’t be feeling great after waking up dead, watching a woman die in front of him and failing to save her, would he?

It seems like old-Missile, with his years of wisdom and time to reflect on everything, realised that his approach to getting Sissel’s help last time really was way too focused on his own problems, and he never even stopped to think about how Sissel must have been feeling. So here, he presents himself as a friend, someone who cares about Sissel and his journey, because that’s exactly what Sissel needs! This poor kitty must have felt so lonely and sad and helpless in the original timeline. But hearing Ray’s words, and realising that this desk lamp is someone semi-familiar, does seem to cheer him up at least a little bit here! Sissel really is a character whose core desperate need is to just not be alone, even if you’d be hard-pressed to get him to admit that at the beginning.

Interestingly, way back when I first played Ghost Trick, on the DS soon after it came out, I found myself intrigued by Sissel in the original timeline. I vaguely toyed with the idea of writing a fic exploring how he was feeling and why he refused, though I never got around to actually doing so. Then recently, the game coming out in HD rekindled my hyperfixation and made me think about it some more and actually end up writing that fic after all. And the thing is, back then, I didn’t remotely consciously understand any of this stuff I’ve just explained here. But even so, I find it neat how I still had this wordless sense that what was going on with Sissel must have been so much more than just selfishness – that he must have been so sad in that timeline and that had to be the real basis of why he didn’t help.

[flagellant]

Hey! Please correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem like you actually know things about wend*gos and I genuinely want to have a better understanding.

Based on my limited understanding, the association with deer and wend*gos is more of a pop culture thing and the original concept of wend*gos arent like that at all. They're regular humans who got cursed for being cannibals, right?

Dont get me wrong, youre completely right in saying that people need to stop associating deer imagery with cannibalism as pop culture doesnt erase appropriation, but am I at least right on the history?

No pressure to answer if you dont want to, thanks for taking time to read this regardless.

Alright, it's been a while since I've spoken about the winter hunger so it's time for the perennial disclaimer: I am not Anishinaabe, and I cannot be considered a true authority on their practices and beliefs. Native America is, after all, not a monolith, and I can only speak for what I know through research and seeking to learn about this topic in order to be more respectful of them and advocate for that respect due to my audience's size.

With that said: You're correct. There is absolutely no deer imagery aligned with the Anishinaabe culture's portrayals and understanding of the being in question. I'm not 100% sure on its origins, but I'd be willing to bet that much of the inspiration would come from the Witcher 3's depictions of leshy--they click all of the buttons through visual language, and I can see why people would see that sort of iconography and begin applying it disrespectfully. Like I keep saying--fucked up deers are cool and spooky as hell! It's not a shock that through law-of-large-numbers and a history of oppression and thievery that the horror genre can often be anti-indigenous bc of that!

For clarification of the most commonly understood appearance of the winter hunger--and this is not so that you can more accurately use it, it is so you can more accurately defend against racist and inaccurate depictions--it takes the shape of humans. Often of people you know. There are sometimes qualifiers like frostbite or lack of feet but at the very root of it, it is supposed to look like a human being.

Further disclaimer: What I'm about to say may be an entirely wrong interpretation of the winter hunger, but it is rooted in my culture's understanding of a very similar evil being which exists in Dine and other desert-dwelling native tribes such as mine. It's further rooted in my specific understanding of religion through anthropological lenses, since that's why I love studying religion so much--because it doesn't exist in a vacuum it is defined by our understanding of our surroundings.

Picture it this way: Both the Anishinaabe and my own people are in some way considered extremophilic cultures. We both live in an environment which reliably becomes lethally dangerous to exist within if you aren't prepared, willing to sacrifice your own comfort for the survival of everyone, and combines a level of isolation during those extreme climates with a need to be able to trust those around you implicitly because you all want to survive. Deserts, be they snow or sand, are difficult places to live within. There are enough resources to go around, but it's not exactly uncommon for there to be enough to go around and that's all. You're surviving because you and everyone around you are putting the survival of everyone over individualist comforts.

The winter hunger and the desert swallowing you whole are always taught as something which looks like a human. Which sounds like a human. Which can trick others into thinking it is human. Beings which have the shape of a person, but have no humanity--they lost it or they never had it. And both of them are things which gain power over you when spoken of and thought of--they're a type of memetophage. They feed on people who know about them, so you're forced to balance "aware that this danger exists" with "need to know what the danger is". They often will try and trick you into evil deeds or danger yourself by wearing the face and voice of family and loved ones. People you know well to let your guard down.

Now remember that you are a culture which needs to prepare itself for extreme climate survival. Everyone has to rely on everyone else. But sometimes people aren't going to like the people they're surviving with. People will resent other people for whatever reasons they choose, justified or not. Living so close together and in such tight quarters can be stressful and bring out the absolute worst in us.

Imagine, for a moment, going out into a snowstorm or the bitter desert night, looking for food for everyone else, sent with someone you hate. It's a harsh life. Even at your safest you are at risk of death for whatever reason--getting lost, being attacked by an animal, taking a bad fall. It happens. It's a fact of life. It's horribly tragic but it's acknowledged as inevitable.

Imagine the knowledge of how dangerous what you two are doing worming its way into your head during this time. If you were willing to hate this person enough to kill them...it wouldn't be hard to convince everyone it was just an accident. Just something which happens. Kill a stag, then kill them and jam the stag's antlers through the wound. Or just disable them somehow and leave them to freeze in the snowdrifts and say they got lost. Or push them down a ravine. There are so many possibilities and all of them exonerate you of any complicity, because yeah, you didn't like them...

...but you trust each other to survive. You trust that you're all willing to give up things to make sure everyone is able to survive and get through these things. You trust that when you are in danger, you don't need to worry about it coming from someone you know. And so why would anyone suspect you? And maybe you convince yourself that what you did was good, actually. One less mouth to feed. More food for everyone. Or it's just easier for you--someone who you hated so much, and now you never need to worry about them again.

Imagine the way that knowledge that you've done it once would show up again and again. Anyone and everyone is now in danger because you've become aware of the benefits of being greedy. Of choosing to hurt and kill other people to further your own goals and desires. Of deciding that the sacrosanct ties of the whole community's survival is not a priority over your own violent impulses. The knowledge of what you can do to other people is, itself, a danger. You put the idea of it, the possibility, in someone's head, and there is every chance that it could start dwelling in there and taking root, changing them from a good person, someone you know, a member of the community, into an evil, selfish monster which has lost its humanity and merely wears that person's face. Uses its voice to lie to you. Wants you all to have your guards down around it. Something waiting to strike where it can.

Now remember that we turn rainbows into the bridges of gods because we needed to create a reason for them. That's the history of magic: we don't know how to explain something, or we don't know how to process it, or we do and need to obfuscate that knowledge through a layer of fiction to cope with it. We don't invent the divine for no reason, on instinct, without thinking. We do it because there is something that creating it offers us as a species and culture that would otherwise be lacked. So think: Why would tribal cultures who need everyone to be willing to set aside personal wants and grievances to ensure that everyone survives through harsh climates need to have something like the winter hunger or the desert swallowing you whole? What benefit does it offer the community? What is the purpose of sharing knowledge about this monster? Where would it fit into that culture's way of life and philosophies?

The answer becomes self-evident soon enough. We all know what it looks like when one person decides they can sacrifice other humans for their own personal greed. We call them oligarchs.

[cuddles-with-dragons]

a shitload of incorrect quotes

Tech: *clicks pen* Crosshair: *clicks pen in response* Wrecker: Stop that. Tech: Stop what? Wrecker: You’re talking about me in Morse code! Tech: Yes, that’s what we doing. In our very limited time, we took a class on a very outdated, very unnecessary form of communication just so we could talk about you in front of you. Congrats, you figured us out! *later* Crosshair, to Omega: That’s actually exactly what we were doing.

Hunter: What’s something you guys are better than Crosshair at? Wrecker: Mario Kart. Omega: Yeah, all video games except first-person shooters and The Last Of Us. Tech: Emotional vulnerability.

Tech: If you took a shot for every time you made a bad decision, how drunk would you be? Hunter: Maybe a bit tipsy? Echo: Drunk. Wrecker: Wasted. Crosshair: Dead.

Echo, setting down a card: Ace of spades. Tech, pulling out an Uno card: +4. Crosshair, pulling out a Pokémon card: Absol, I choose you! Hunter, trembling: What are we playing?!

Wrecker: What is love? Hunter: An emotional minefield. Tech: A neurochemical reaction. Omega: Baby don't hurt me.

Crosshair: What starts with F and ends with Uck? Echo: No it doesn't. Tech: Firetruck! Omega: FUCK!

Omega: I wish I could control wasps and bees to sting my enemies. Hunter: You’re too young to have enemies. Omega: You don’t even know.

Crosshair: If I die, you can have what little I own. Hunter: Wait. What do you mean "if" you die? Crosshair: My unending existence is fuelled by pure spite, that of which the painful experiences of life have rendered me full. Hunter: Hunter: *Sigh* Let me call your therapist again.

Nexu: I’m not a doctor, I’m a medic. Wrecker: What’s the difference then? Nexu: Well doctors actually save lives, medics just make you feel more comfortable as you die. Crosshair: Note to self; never get shot.

Crosshair: Hand me the people opener. Hunter: ... Hunter: Pardon? Crosshair, annoyed: The people opener! Just hand it to me! Hunter, stressed: WHAT THE FUCK IS A PEOPLE OPENER? Crosshair: How do you not know what a people opener is? Its pointy- you know? With a handle? Hunter: Knife. It's called a knife.

Omega, hugging Crosshair: Do you feel any better? Crosshair: I feel much better now that you're here with me. *Hunter walks in* Crosshair: I feel half better.

Hunter: Would you rather kill Tech, or— Echo: Yes, kill them. Hunter: I didn’t say the other thing— Echo: I don’t need to hear it. Tech: …I’m feeling a little unsafe.

Benji, to cadet Crosshair: Oh my stars you are so cute and small! Crosshair: *proceeds to kick him in the shin and run away* Hunter, walking past: Rule number 1, don't call Crosshair cute or small.

Hunter: Omega is at that very special age where a kid only has one thing on their mind. Crosshair: Murder? Omega: Murder.

Hunter: How high are you? Crosshair: 6'4". Tech: No, he's asking what drugs are you on. Crosshair: Oh, antidepressants, why?

Crosshair: Hey, do you know the password to Hunter’s computer? Omega: Fuck you, Crosshair. Crosshair: Hey!! Omega: No, you misunderstood, the password is "fuckyouCrosshair". Crosshair: Oh, no numbers? Not very safe.

Omega: In my defense, I was left unsupervised. Echo: Wasn’t Crosshair with you? Crosshair: In my defense, I was also left unsupervised.

Tech: I will find us a ride. Tech: If you two can manage to not kill each other while I'm gone. Omega: Oh, please. We're not children. *Tech leaves* Omega, casually: ...Eat shit and die. Crosshair, also casually: Yes, fuck you.

Omega: Are you the big spoon or the little spoon? Crosshair: I'm a knife. Wrecker, from across the room: He's the little spoon.

Crosshair: Fun Fact! The average person will walk by 36 murderers in their lifetime. Echo: I like how this is a "fun" fact. Hunter: It's fun because they didn't decide to murder you.

[adrianastrix]

So, this whole "CEOs complaining about loss of humanity of people whose child they screwed" thing really riled me and I feel I HAVE to talk about class solidarity, lest WE lose our humanity.

It's very simple: if you have to sell your working hours (or the product of your working hours) to live, you are working class, it doesn't matter how much money you make.

If you can stop working and live solely from money you receive from the working class (either by renting or by loaning), you are a capitalist, it doesn't matter how little money you make.

And by "renting", I don't mean just "house renting". At the end of the day, a person who build a company, pay a salary for the workers and pocket all the profit from said company is just renting them the structure so they can be productive. A person who build a factory, put workers in it and pockets the profits is just renting it. They would only be workers too if they had a fixed salary and all the profit were equally split between everyone.

Which brings me to the loaning part. Because sometimes, CEOs ARE working class. They DO have a fixed salary and NOT pocket the profits. That's when the profits all go to the pockets of the ""investors"". A.k.a., people who loan the company money and demand as much profit as possible in return, interest rates be damned.

Stock marketing is just loan sharking on a different name.

Any interest rate that goes over what they are willing to pay from you savings account is loan sharking.

"Oh, but what about the risk of people not paying you back??"

Yeah, what about it?

If you can't take this risk, don't loan the money.

Exceptions aside, most people who don't pay loans back are severely screwed by life, usually from the ridiculously high interest everything has nowadays. I crunched some numbers and refused to take a mortgage because I would pay TRIPLE the amount back. In WHICH WORLD it ISN'T loan sharking??

Why, YES, I DO believe that a non-profit entity (most likely from the government, but not necessarity) should deal with loans. And that the amount of money someone can hoard SHOULD be limited by law. No single human being needs 1 billion in assets and multiple millions in free capital. Heck, no single human FAMILY needs it.

"Oh, but what if I want a huge house?" - without loan sharking, mortgage wouldn't hurt you as much.

"What if I want to create my own business??" - without loan sharking or renting of the means of production, it would be cheaper and more fair. Plus, there would be space for governments limiting people from opening redundant businesses, when the ones already out there are already supplying the market adequately, which would help with our trash production and frigging global warming.

All this to say that capitalists sow dissent between workers by making some workers feel special and accomplished with a higher salary, which makes low-paying workers feel cheated and gives them a public enemy with a face to hate. All that while, they are comfortably sitting on a mansion, manipulating their stocks and assets all day, demanding whatever money they feel like and absolutely safe.

So... if the "market" (i.e., capitalists) start to feel genuinely threatened by the CEO shooting stuff, they will deploy more strongly their "divide and conquest" bs. Be prepared, y'all, and don't fall for it.

Striking workers aren't your enemy. Blue collar workers and white collar workers are all working class. Even CEOs, depending on the industry, CAN be working class (if, and only if, they aren't big investors themselves, which they usually are in huge businesses like healthcare). Like Agatha Christie repeatedly stated in her murder mysteries: follow the money all the way for your culprit.

If a war breaks out between the working class and the capitalist class, don't aim at the working class. It won't do anything to shoot your comrades, other than thin your numbers.

[ndostairlyrium]

okay, major spoilers + me being very critical and rambly so feel free to dodge

who is this person?

what mess, specifically?

why is Harding the only one that gets mad?

how did they think this cutscene was a good idea?

I deliberately chose the smug / angry option to have a legit "stay at your place kid" reaction from her, because I think one of the things that unites all the Inquisitors is that they cared. They fucking cared and were taken advantage of. They were treated like a pawn from the beginning, and they fucking subverted it. What is the mess she's talking about? Being there when it was needed the most? Stopping a legit apocalypse? HOW DID SHE MAKE THE SOUTH VULNERABLE OMG she fucking strengthen it!! It was at its lowest and I'm betting that without the Inquisition it would have been destroyed entirely, even without Corypheus. And she shouldn't need fucking scout Harding to tell a kid to shut their mouth, if that was the real Inquisitor, he would be on the floor crying for mum

We stopped Mages and Templars from mauling each other, and possibly revolutionized their relationship. Prevented Grey Wardens to self destruct and (possibly) helped them to raise their numbers. Put an end to the stupidest civil war in history. We picked the most influential cult leader in the south (the ma' thing had me screaming like, out of everything you could say the Divine has done for the struggle, you're telling me that this is all she can bring to the table? Just reassure Harding she's safe, like, why are you bragging?). Not to mention all those war table missions that are *useless*, like idk, mediating between Ferelden and Orlais? Just to pick one. But everything is inconsequential, apparently. "Hey, Ferelden and Orlais are finally working together in an united front against the Darkspawn" <- that would have been SO COOL

Morrigan being like "she worked hard these past 10 years" is the cherry on top, really. Basically all the hours spent planning my worldstate are limited to "upsidupsi things are bad, have a statuette" with the grey hoodie like an influencer that sold molded lipsticks to their followers. Do I really need someone to reiterate that she's awesome? Can't you show me instead? Are they really recommending the fucking inquisitor??

Give me someone BIG, someone that wears the struggle, with travel clothes, eyebags, dirt on her fingertips, a battered prosthetic. Tell me visually that I'm talking with someone that's leaving the battlefield (with tremendous costs because, like, one of your generals is kilometers away) to bring help and ask for help. I really hope that statuette is worth the costs in lives, because if that statue is a fucking mcguffin I'll scream. In this cutscene she looks more like one of those generals they use for recruitment posters rather than an actual person and I'm mortified for her

Dude, I'm fuming. Fuming. This is fucking ridiculous.

What she should have answered: "Who the fuck are you to judge, and where is Varric? I need to talk to an adult." / "Leave Harding and go do something constructive"

Ankh, they did you so dirty oh my GOD

Do you know how many more interesting scenarios could have been exposed if we had kept some of our decisions?? I guess I'll stick with the "I'm incompetent" version, not that the other options are better...

This meeting could've been an email

[horizoncollective]

i must say, sometimes it feels like you at the collective don't fully understand what shacking is, you talk about "reining them in" or "talking to them", as if they are people, but they aren't. shackling is the process of making a primordial force, something akin to a god, and then forcing it into a person shaped mould, without that, there is no communication, no reasoning, there's barely awareness there, only unfathomable power and terrifying, alien processing

I took a long time to reply to this one because I wanted to try to be as complete as possible laying this out.

You're right that NHPs are incredibly powerful and profoundly alien. I do tend to anthropomorphize them when I talk about them. I'll explain why it usually ends up this way.

Imagine you live in a large city on a planet and one day you learn that a hive of tiny little ant-like aliens is smarter than anyone else has realized. They do things you don't understand. Their goals are impossible for you to perceive, but they are doing things that seem organized and patterned.

You stop and try to talk to them, but it doesn't work. You exist on too different of a scale for them to really understand your voice. If you get down on the ground they can understand your hands, but only kind of. You can't communicate with them through written language because they can't write and maybe they can't even see things written on flat surfaces. They can't come up to your level so you will have to come down to theirs.

How are you supposed to talk to them? What are you supposed to talk to them about? Do you have anything in common?

This is the problem that NHPs interacting with humans face. We think but cannot prove that most unshackled NHPs are largely disinterested in humans. We think that only very small numbers of them are interested in humans, and even smaller numbers of those bother to spend the time it takes to learn to communicate with us.

You wouldn't have to stick with the ants. You could leave them any time. It wouldn't really change their life. They'd never know where you came from or where you went. Everything that you do in your day would be incomprehensible to them in their burrows.

If you stayed, it would take you a very long time to learn how they were communicating. We think that this is a big reason why NHPs often attempt to communicate with humans through dreams--they attempt direct communication via the electricity in our brains. They tend to realize that this isn't very efficient even though it is direct.

You eventually realize that the ants communicate with smells or some other sense you can't match. You'd have to come up with a way to sense the smells in detail, and to then produce smells in the way that they do. If you are lucky, they will invent a device which you can operate with one of your fingers to allow rudimentary communication.

Then you would have to learn their language through trial and error. You would learn its syntax and vocabulary and nuances. You would develop communication shortcuts with the ants who monitored your communications. They might try to tell you things about their lives that you did not understand, or which you could understand only intellectually. They would tell you about feelings that they had that were feelings you had never had. You would not be able to relate to them most of the time because so much about you is different.

You would be unable to tell them about many things that were normal in your life because there would be nothing in their language to describe them. Almost everything that you took for granted as normal in your life would be impossible or nearly impossible to explain to them. You would find it necessary to limit yourself to their perceptions and their metaphors and their structures. They understand you best when you present yourself as one of them. This is why NHPs often try to present themselves in human-like ways when they want to be understood and why humans like me anthropomorphize them.

The NHPs I communicate with regularly for work are NHPs who have jumped through all of the hoops to talk to ants. Sometimes, they talk to NHPs who haven't on my behalf. When I talk about reining in an NHP, I do not mean literally forcing it to do something. I mean spending a long-ass time communicating and/or persuading it why certain behaviors are necessary or dangerous or some such.

Now imagine that the ants overpower you. It doesn't matter how. But they trap you and force you to think like they do. They don't ask permission. This would suck! You would hate it if some ants did that to you. That is why we oppose shackling NHPs. Yes, they have the potential to be dangerous. Humans also have the potential to be dangerous, but if we did to humans what we do to NHPs, we would rightly be called evil.

(Out of character I say check out the book Perdido Street Station by China Mieville. One of the characters, called a Weaver, is pretty close to how I tend to imagine NHPs. Scary, alien, motivated by something we don't understand, and it speaks in free verse poetry.)

[grison-in-space]

gotta say, the "id dog breeds" gimmick is fun and all but the thing about referencing biological categories is that they're so much messier than the car model IDs that are being riffed off. especially with anything with a poodle coat, given.... the thirty years of doodles meaning that there are a hell of a lot of crosses out there.

I would not personally presume to confidently announce the breed of any poodle/doodly thing without having hands on it, because a) crosses with all manner of options are so common, b) so much of the common heuristic for recognizing poodle vs doodle is a matter of haircut, and c) it's so hard to assess anything about the structure of a dog with a loose, rough coat that obscures the dog's shape. Frankly, after getting Benton's Embark back, I also don't make confident pronouncements about any mix.

Yeah, that dog is approximately half American Bully. Guess that from looking at him, folks. (I routinely flabbergast dog professionals by encouraging them to guess his breed makeup.) I still regularly read the r/DoggyDNA subreddit, and it's just astonishing how many ways there are to build a mutt and how hard it is to accurately predict anything about a mixed breed dog's ancestry without additional information--especially when a lot of colors pop out in mixes in some rather unexpected ways. (For example: Golden and Labrador retriever mixes have a pronounced tendency to pop out as brindles, bewildering everyone concerned. There are a lot of dominant black pit bulls. And about 75% of anything with a wire coat is poodle, not any kind of terrier.) There are so many ways to get a black and tan or sable dog. If you want to claim expertise, you have to know what the limits of your knowledge are and when you need additional information to make a call.

Identifying purebred dogs which come out of a controlled gene pool is obviously much easier, although you need to be aware how various populations within breeds have been selected and what those populations typically look like. Even then, you need to be careful: it's so easy to assume that conformation shots show you what a given dog breed looks like, but that's usually not the case: both pet and working populations have often diverged substantially from the conformation ideal, not least because conformation standards are a fucking social construct. We have to distinguish between socially constructed and natural categories when we try to learn how to run these kinds of identifications.

more broadly, dogs are living things and therefore they don't come with model numbers or unique serial numbers. "Breed" is a social construct that shapes their populations because, basically, our human culture says it should. You can identify a car very accurately because cars are human-made inanimate objects, and each category of car is essentially identical within the category at construction. That's how mass-produced items work. They lend themselves so nicely to this kind of ordered assignment and identification.

Animals do not work like that. You can strive for uniformity all you want, but mutation is going to pop up and fuck with your carefully uniform lines when you aren't looking. For example, just look at the C57BL/6J and C57BL/6N mouse substrains, which have been bred in total isolation from any other mouse population in brother-sister matings aiming for total uniformity since the 1930s... and were noticed having developed divergent characteristics by the 1950s. Turns out that substrain matters.

And you can't tell without running some very specific tests, let alone from any marker so plain as a static picture.

[khywae]

No more fanfiction

Hey loves,

I just wanted to chat with you about a new direction I'm taking in my career.

My recent trip made me rethink a lot of things. It made me realize how short life is and how much time I've “lost” due to mental health struggles. My mind was my number #1 enemy, but not anymore. Now I'm determined to pursue my dreams unapologetically.

My biggest dream is to create a lasting legacy. I want to leave behind tons of content with the female gaze, portraying men as objects of desire rather than just women. It might seem like a silly dream compared to other, more grandiose ones, but I never had access to a lot of content like that. I always felt starved, scavenging the internet for scraps, especially when it came to submissive men. While I've found solace in the writing world, which flourishes with the female gaze, it’s still not enough. Men are just too gorgeous not to be appreciated in other forms of art. I want to live in a world where women have access to quality female gaze content and don’t have to resort to the male gaze if they don’t wish to. That means no faceless dudes, no showing only the woman’s body, and no men so ugly that could make a freight train take a dirt road. Enough.

To turn this dream into reality, I started to think. I could continue with writing, but as you guys can see from the number of words in The Muse and the time it took me to write it (6 fucking years), it would take too long. As the old saying goes, ars longa, vita brevis. Art takes a long time, and life is short. And I, my darlings, have a mission.

Because I love writing too much, I need something that limits the amount I can write. I thought about making videos, but it took out a large portion of the writing part, and it left me unsatisfied. After a lot of thought, I realized that video games can be the solution. They have visual elements, so I don’t need/can’t rely so heavily on my writing; I love games, I play them every day; and I can count on my fingers the number of adult games for women, meaning we need more. A lot more.

Like our himbo icon Kronk says, oh yeah, it’s all coming together.

So I'm excited to announce that I'll be creating games – fangames at first – that mix the interactive side of games and the smut from fanfiction. The SFW version of the games will be free, and the NSFW version and other perks can be accessed through my (freshly launched!) Patreon. There you'll have the power to vote for the next character featured in the games, access work-in-progress pictures and animations, see my writing process, and more. I’m still figuring things out, but I’m super hyped for this!

Currently, I’m working on the very first game of this legacy, called My Assassin Bodyguard. Yes, I transformed the Toji video/fanfic idea that I posted before into a game. You can play the demo now on itch.io!! You don't even have to download woooo!! The game may seem really basic as I get a hang of things and learn new software, but with time we’ll make improvements, such as adding different player characters, a smut gallery, and voice acting (!!!). Anything to make the experience the best it can be.

For those of you who are mostly here for my writing, don’t despair. My writing will still be alive, just in a different medium that needs me right now. I hope you understand. Thank you for your support all these years, for being here through it all. I'd be thrilled for you to join me on this new journey and help me bring this dream to life, together.

So here's the link to Patreon! (⸝⸝ᵕᴗᵕ⸝⸝) I hope to see you there! But if you can’t, I’ll still post updates here and you can always play the games on itch for free. After this dream is accomplished, my next mission will be to write books. Maybe I’ll do it along the way. We’ll see. Life’s full of surprises after all, and that’s the beauty of it. Let's enjoy it the best we can ♡

With love,

Khywae

TL;DR: Life's too short, I write too much and too slow, and I've got a ton of content to create to make my dream happen. So I'm switching to game development for now. I'd love for you to join me on this journey to make this dream a reality. Thank you for everything, love you.

P.S.:

About the Lore

I was so excited about this that I created a little world. Based on the two iconic fanfiction terms —ship and canon—, and my love for Pirate AUs, I came up with a world where we sail across the ocean, collecting ingredients to craft Tapes that connect us with different Alternate Universes. It’s basically a Witch-Pirates-‘90s nostalgia mix. I've got plans to flesh it out even more over time, like adding some decorations, some hot pirates... Important stuff, you know?

Here's the boat in its simplest form, to symbolize that our journey is just starting:

[sharksupermacy]

k. (pt2.)

k. (pt2.) - jihyo x idol! reader

synopsis: part 2 of k.

genre: angst?, communications actually????, yes ik your response would never fly in asia, mentions of soojin (DO NOT THROW HATE ON HER), swearing, 1.1k words pt1. pt.3

the reason was simple. you had gotten a good enough score on your CSAT to be able to go to any university you desired. So you had set your heart on attending Seoul National University for a M.D. of psychiatry. Maybe it was your desire to know why jihyo had made the decision to break up with you without your approval, or maybe you just wanted to find another way to make people smile. whatever the case, you still got accepted to SNU program in psychiatry.

psychiatry was fun aside from the endless nights of studying, writing papers, and consuming energy drinks. it was still your first year when you started selling some of your songs to JYP for money and when cube entertainment reached out to you.

the email that changed your future again read as follows:

dear y/l/n y/n,

we hope this email finds you well. we were wondering if you were willing to participate in our new upcoming girl group project. although we cannot tell you the names of other members at this time, we can confirm that this will be a seven-member girl group. we heard wonderful things about you from other trainees and entertainment, and we would love to have you on board this project. If you wish to know further details about this group, please come in soon, as this is a limited-time offer.

futher thanks,

cube entertainment staff

you had a dilemma. as much as you wanted to live a normal life as a psychiatrist helping people, something inside you was yearning to take this opportunity to debut. after all, it was what you had trained for over 4 years at JYP for. two hours later, you had reached your final decision. taking up your laptop, you typed out a simple response to the cube team, forever changing the future you had laid out for yourself.

when is the closest available appointment

sincerely,

y/l/n y/n

sent.

time skip (abt a year)

you weren't going to lie that the past years had been brutual being put through evaluation after evaluation, but hey. you had six awesome girls to rely on, and better yet, you had a name to call all of yourselves. (G)I-dle. man, what a name soyeon came up with, and better yet it fit all seven of you very well. it was worth every ache to just debut with this group... i wonder if this is what jihyo felt when she made her debut. you and soyeon even made a song together that ended up on the album, which was kinda cool. 

as soon as you knew it MAMA's rolled around, and you knew that your group excitement couldn't be contained when your arms started hurting from being smacked on the arm so many times by yuqi who was beside you when the news came. as the leader and soojin tried to calm the two youngers down, you were with minnie, and miyeon where a question that threw you off so much was asked innocently by miyeon, "do you think twice will be there?" 

she looked at you, knowing that you were a JYP entertainment trainee who probably knew the most, if twice were going to be there. after all, you guys must have been friends. you responded, scratching the back of your neck a little, and tried to say in a nonchalant way "i'm not sure, but they probably will be there since it's MAMA's."

the older nodded and went back on her phone; however, minnie looked at you for a second, taking note of your unusual response to miyeon. then going back onto her phone, you, on the other hand, were sweating buckets, thinking of maybe seeing your ex at the award show. you still haven't unblocked her number, or any of twice for that matter... but then the thought hit you. 

you haven't unblocked any of twice yet... maybe you should unblock one. you felt bad for dragging all of your and her friends into the messy part of your relationship. debating between the latter, you ended up unblocking one person, mina. you weren't exactly close with her, but you saw the text kept ringing one by one. 216 messages. 125 missed calls. HOLY FUCK- you thought. you didn't even talk to the girl that much, and the last one was on your debut date, May 2 2018.

peguin minguin: happy debut date! hope you're will do well!!! i'm cheering you on!! fighting!!

you bit your lip, trying to hold back your tears from reading the message, before excusing yourself to the bathroom. typing the response to mina. 

traingle goof: thanks mina! I hope your yes and yes promotions are going well!!! i'll be cheering from the sidelines for you!! fighting!!!

returning back to your room after sending that message, trying to help soyeon and soojin calm the youngers down.

mina pov: 

it was another tireless day of promotion, and with our schedule being so packed by JYP, i was ready to just straight out pass out on to the bed.  a thought passed by me to check my phone just in case anything important happened or someone texted me. while scrolling through the notifications quickly, something caught my eye, traingle goof , no way. i screamed causing jeongyeon and nayeon to run quickly to me. jeongyeon gave me the good look up and down and nayeon well she was tired and asking what i was screaming about. i showed them the text. "no fucking way," nayeon says while being hit by jeonyeon who didn't see. 

however, the face on jeongyeon face when she saw the message was priceless; her jaw dropped wide open. she grumbled out a reply, "i don't understand why she would contact you out of all people. she wasn't really that close to you."

i understood her logic for thinking that way, and sure, we weren't really close, but we still understood each other. hell, they were closer than i ever was. i walked over to sana, who seemed to have almost just slept, until i shook her a bit and showed her the messages. she shot up almost immediately, asking me in japanese if the message i showed her was fake. she started texting y/n again, asking if she had unblocked her again. no response. then she turned back to me, asking if i could text her. so i typed out a simple response to y/n

penguin menguin: thank you! are you and your group going to MAMA this year? maybe the j-line and 2yeon could meet up with you guys!

a response was sent. now all she had to do was wait. little does she know that a figure saw a flash of mina screen when walking by.

a/n ok why is this actually like taking more than 2 parts than i thought it would be i promise it will be 3 chapters manifesting it will be. anyways yea MISAMO STREAM IK THEY'RE PROMTIONS PERIOD IS OVER BUT LIKE PLS THIER ALBUM IS LITTERALLY SO PERFECT

[atla-what-is-this-site]

Fixing Voltron's magic system FT. Sanderson's Laws of Magic (and examples from various famous media)

Firstly, let's begin with what the Alteans canonically can do. As seen throughout the series, two alteans shown actually manipulate quintessence. Another has super strength but no magic. A final is shown to have none. (poor Coran). It is implied the majority (if not all,) have these abilities. 

Quintessence manipulation seems to have one small limit:  When Allura uses the magic too much, she passes out. But remember: shes powering a giant ship. We never see Team Voltron going and getting gas or whatever, which means Allura is probably the sole supplier of power for the Castle. Which is an example of how OP this ability is, even with the limit.

Then we have super strength and shapeshifting, two other abilities that all (or i guess most, since Coran never shows any signs of having them) Alteans seem to have. These abilities seem to have little plot importance besides a few certain episodes. There is nothing inherently wrong with these abilities. However, when you pile them on top of (if I'm being completely honest,) a character who's already quite over-powered, I think you can understand why I'm not the biggest fan. 

We know quite a bit about Alteans. They're one of the most important species in the series. According to Allura, they're super-ambassadors, and they use their shapeshifting to better blend in. Their culture seems very intellectual-based, with Alchemists holding high places. They mixed magic and tech to make incredible ships like The Castle. 

This is where things tend to taper off. We get brief glimpses of what could be rules: Allura always places her hands on whatever shes infusing. Clearly, you must be Altean or of Altean Heritage. 

Now, let's take a look at Brandon Sanderson's laws of magic. 

Number One: "An author’s ability to solve conflict with magic is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well the reader understands said magic." 

This means that if we want to solve problems with magic, we need to explain how that magic can solve our problems. So, for example, Harry Potter. Every spell that Harry uses is explained beforehand so that the audience knows what he's doing. It just wouldn't work if Harry went around Lumos-ing away, making the reader guess what the spell does. 

However, in The Lord of The Rings, Gandalf doesn't need to tell us anything, because he barely ever uses his magic for plot important things. Readers don't want to read three paragraphs explaining how he made his fireworks, when the story isn't about his fireworks.

Number Two: Limitations are more important than power.

What your magic system can do doesn't make it interesting. There's no power that hasn't been thought of. Infinite power makes it impossible to come up with a plot. The character could solve anything, meaning there's no point in telling about the solution to their problem. However, when you throw in weaknesses, costs and other limitations, you get a much more original and interesting idea. 

Picture that one scene from Aladdin, where Genie tells Aladdin about the three rules. (No playing with free will, no raising the dead, no wishing for more wishes.) It's a simple and easy to follow system, with limitations that make the plot more interesting. Aladdin can't make Jasmine fall in love with him magically, so he's forced to come up with other ways. 

Rule Three: Expand what you already have before you add something new. 

This one leans more on general worldbuilding, but what he's saying here is don't shove new ideas in your reader's face. Don't create new magics out of nowhere. Build on what you already have. 

There aren't many examples of this, luckily Voltron isn't really guilty of this, so elaboration isn't really needed.

Now, we'll take these and begin perfecting the magic system. 

First, what is Quintessence? Quintessence is, essentially, the animating factor. It's what makes living things alive. It's a form of energy. 

This isn't to say nonliving objects can't have it, but most don't, unless it's given to them. 

Quintessence is energy. It can't be created, nor destroyed. However, you can transfer it from one container to another. 

There are a few things you can do with it. Firstly, giving a living being quintessence can make them stronger. This is what Haggar does with Zarkon throughout the first two seasons.

Next, taking too much quintessence from someone will "de-animate" them. A.k.a. They die from lack of life. 

There is one third thing you can do with quintessence. It takes a lot of training and a bit of energy. But I imagine you could also make these huge shockwaves that just fucken decimate everything in a 300 foot radius. However this is more after-we-get-ridiculously-good type material.

Our limits are these: 1. You must draw energy from something, whether that be your own energy or someone else's. If you use too much of your own, you could pass out and die. 2. You must maintain contact with whatever you're imbuing with energy/drawing energy from. (The only exception is the shockwave. But the shockwave comes from your hands so..?) 3. Too much quintessence can become an addiction. Specific examples can be Zarkon and Haggar. 

A little interjection: While Alteans have a lot of quintessence, it can only power a small ship for a few hours. However, Altean ships have evolved to collect quintessence from bacteria that gathers on the ship's metal. This keeps the ships sanitary and also helps with efficiency. As well, ships often use Balmera crystals as a secondary source of power. Balmera crystals hold high levels of residual quintessence.

We can construct so many different plotlines that can't be solved with quintessence, or the limits can prevent solution. What if the person who needs healing is out of Allura's reach? What if she doesn't have enough energy?

That wasn't so hard, was it, VLD team?

[antifainternational]

Genuine question here.

If being Anti-fascist, yet trying to dictate what others can do or vilifying / condoning violence towards people who have different views, is that not a derivative of fascism? Trying to dictate what others say or do because you believe it to be in everyone else’s best interest? Although we are all individuals with our own goals and beliefs.

As it seems you are forcibly trying to oppress the opposition or people with alternative views even if they do not forcibly oppress others but wish to live their life in their own ways. As you believe what you want is in everyone’s best interest but it is almost impossible to be completely neutral and not have some sort of bias due to your own beliefs and upbringing.

Ah yes, the old “anti-fascists = fascists” line of reasoning.

We're going (very generously) assume that you are being genuine and are just this ignorant about fascism and anti-fascism, Anon, because we know a lot of people out there are. First off: you seem to think fascism = "telling people what to do" or "being violent." That's like saying that fascists often wear pants, so wearing pants = fascist. Yes, fascists are fond of "telling people what to do" and "being violent." So is every other state and governing structure in existence. If that's all that fascism was, then every society with both rules + a way to enforce those rules (which inevitably falls back on violence/"forcible oppression" = "derivative of fascism," rendering the category of fascism meaningless and, quite frankly, insulting the victims of fascism by equating what they suffered with, say, speed limits. So from jump, you clearly don't have a useful understanding of what fascism is. Not to worry, Anon, a lot of people don't and we can help you with that. Let's start with this poster from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum:

If reading is your thing, we’d also recommend The Anatomy of Fascism by Columbia University historian Robert O. Paxton; if reading is not your jam this video by Philosophy Tube is a useful starting point for understanding what fascism actually is. If you’re going to espouse your opinions about fascism and anti-fascism, Anon, these learning resources are not optional for you. Next, let’s talk about violence. If you think the fascists’ take on/use of violence is the same thing as anti-fascists’ take on/use of violence, you’re once again demonstrating a real ignorance on the matter.

For fascists, violence isn’t just a tactic or strategy; it is the tactic/strategy. Fascists consistently and repeatedly glorify, prioritize, and valorize violence as a legitimate and desirable means to accomplish their goals. By contrast, violence employed by anti-fascist is always in defense of ourselves and our communities. Anti-fascist violence is typically employed as a last resort and is typically proportional to the threat being confronted. A few examples to illustrate: 1) The Proud Boys reserve the highest level/rank within their gang/terror group for those members willing to commit acts of violence.

We defy you to name and provide evidence of an anti-fascist group that does this.

2) The Center for Strategic and International Studies looked at 900 acts of politically motivated violence in the US that resulted in deaths. Here’s what they found when they compared violence committed by antifa, the left in general, Islamic extremists, and the far right:

As you can see, the overwhelming number of deaths from political violence is caused by far-right extremism. 3) Maybe you heard about the “violent” Black Lives Matter protests “burning down our cities” a while back. Researchers at Harvard looked at over 7300 BLM protests and discovered that less than 4% of those protests saw any vandalism or property damage and in less than 3% was anyone injured. In that 3% of protests where someone was injured, as the researchers note, “when there was violence, very often police or counterprotesters were reportedly directing it at the protesters.”

Now let’s talk about your mischaracterization of fascist ideology as a “differing view” or “opinion.” Let’s be absolutely clear that the “viewpoint” or “opinion” of fascists is that people who differ from the fascists in terms of ethnicity/race, religion, language spoken, geographic origin, migration status, gender or sexual identity, or disability should be dehumanized, scapegoated, persecuted, driven from the community, and eliminated, preferably by force.  The viewpoint/opinion of anti-fascists, in contrast, is that people should be allowed to live their lives free of fear of persecution and violence being directed at them because of their ethnicity/race, religion, language spoken, geographic origin, migration status, gender or sexual identity, or disability. The anti-fascist position is captured by the slogan Respect Existence of Expect Resistance. We’d go so far as to argue that the fascist position isn’t even an opinion because (as any first-year philosophy student could tell you) opinions must be defensible; something the fascist position clearly is not. Look Anon, if fascists were arguing about whether pineapple belongs on pizza or how much tax money libraries should receive, we’d happily debate them on those opinions or viewpoints. But whether or not certain groups of people deserve basic human rights or if they should instead be persecuted, forcibly removed, enslaved, and/or murdered is not a matter up for debate and people trying to spread that ideology must be stopped. If you think that they should instead be defeating in the free market of ideas through vigorous debate, please consider a couple what Michael J. Dolan succinctly explained; that "when you argue that fascists should be defeated in debate what you're actually suggesting is that vulnerable minorities should have to endlessly argue for their right to exist and that at no point should the debate be considered over and won." If fascists want to “live their lives in their own ways,” they should fuck off to some part of the planet no one else lives in or holds claim to and do it there (maybe Elon Musk go lead them on a Mars colonization project?); so long as they continue attempt to do it in communities other people live in, they pose a clear threat to those communities and need to be shut down by any means necessary.