#you do not think they should engage meaningfully with their base

[hyumjim]

Sorry but feeling superior to random Muslim/Arab Americans who did not vote for a party that told them over and over again to get over the ongoing genocide of their people…… is not gonna save you

[omgthatdress]

Oh god it gets worse

Okay, before I go any further I should give a little disclaimer that there's nothing wrong with doing a Christian-themed line of dolls. Toys and stories as a way to teach faith are nothing new and can be perfectly appropriate ways for kids to learn.

However the Life of Faith dolls are a unique kind of fucking horrible because they are obviously American Girl knockoffs. Instead of meaningfully engaging with the difficult themes of history like the AG dolls did, they present a disgustingly white-washed, pretty, frilly, and pleasant view of history that straight up ignores the dark stuff.

So the Life of Faith dolls are based on the Elsie Dinsmore stories which were published between 1867 and 1905. They're about a deeply faithful little girl who grows up on a plantation. In the books, when Elsie turns 18, she marries HER FATHER'S BEST FRIEND, because, to quote Wikipedia, "He has been her knight in shining armor who constantly helps her when other people are cruel to her; he has loved her for a long time." Yeah we call that "grooming" today.

Yeah, that's pretty sickening. But there IS a girl who escapes slavery in this series lemme see how that gets addressed....

WAIT YOU'RE TELLING ME SHE ESCAPES FROM THE SAME BEAUTIFUL PLANTATION THE OTHER GIRL WAS RAISED ON?! So when Elsie came of age she would literally own Laylie. Seriously did no one see the conflict in this?! Did no one involved in all of this stop for a moment and think, maybe we're not presenting a fully accurate view of history?

What really galls me is the playing Robin Hood stuff. While enslaved children did find ways to play and have fun, their lived were still dominated by the grueling, demeaning work they had to do. And they would not be given luxurious playthings like bows and arrows and green silk capes. And they didn't have frilly pretty dresses and elaborate hairdos.

I know the dolls are Christian and they all come with a little Bible but like.... Are we just gonna ignore the whole "slaves weren't allowed to read" thing?

While all the other dolls come with lots of dresses and accessories, Laylie only has the one dress and her Robin Hood accessories.

So yeah we're just skipping over the whole Civil War and Reconstruction. Violet is Elsie's daughter still growing up on the plantation like always.

So moral of the story, when you're trying to teach kids about history, maybe try a book series that wasn't written by this lady:

Because you actually can write stories about faith and being Christian that DON'T involve romanticizing slavery.

[toskarin]

you should share more of your thoughts on metaprogression! the masses are curious what you think

metaprogression in roguelites is a sort of cursed ring because, on premise, it just seems like a way to make every run meaningful and rewarding in the grand scheme (and to make deaths less punishing)

but what it actually does is encourage locking content away from the player and spreading it exceptionally thin to justify it existing outside of the primary game loop

this has a lot of knock-on effects, but an especially awful one is when you realise that, despite the fact you're playing the game well, you're forced to play the game in a way that's more meaningfully boring and limited than what the game could be offering you

instead of making each run feel less disappointing when it ends (the idea behind persistent progress, usually) it makes playing the game feel like a skinner box chore you're doing for the promise that it gets more interesting later on, or worse, that you need to stop playing well on purpose to end the run because you've done all you can do

the abyss here, the graveyard of design, is when you are actively having a worse experience for engaging with the game at a reasonable level than somebody would have by playing it passively

I haven't found a single example of a roguelite where I wouldn't much prefer the same effort be used to make the game more reactive and open-ended. it's the ubisoft "climb towers to view the map!" of rpg design and it's every bit as annoying as that trapping of poorly-designed turn-based rpgs that deprioritised status effects to the point where you could just spam your normal attack for turns at a time

the mark of a good roguelike is whether a player enjoys playing the game enough to complete a run for the sake of playing the run. is the game experientially worthwhile? I think you've failed on a deep level of roguelike design if a player ever stops and says "I hate playing [blank] because it's boring but I need to do it to unlock [blank]"

[transmascpetewentz]

One Challenge For People Who Deny Transandrophobia

I have one challenge for anyone and everyone who denies transandrophobia for any reason that has to do with transmasc advocacy allegedly harming trans women. Seeing as you all are very adamant in your stance against trans men demanding basic respect in queer spaces, this should not be difficult for you to do if you have thought about your reasoning for holding such opinions.

My challenge for all of you is to answer this one question:

What is one way that transmasc activism harms trans women directly, or is transmisogynistic in some way?

Now, because I know that some people will put together words that don't make sense to avoid answering the question but sound intellectual, here are some logical fallacies that your answer must avoid for me to consider it completing the challenge:

You must not include any criticism of the word transandrophobia that does not meaningfully engage with the activism and discussions that trans men have been having.

No comparisons to any sort of hate groups (MRAs, TERFs, etc). Point out the specific ideas that you disagree with instead of saying "this is just like [x]."

You cannot cherry-pick the concept of intersectionality or cite any particular white woman's interpretation of the ideas proposed by Kimberle Crenshaw to discredit transmasc advocacy without engaging with the new ideas we have put forth.

No whataboutisms; do not base your argument around the idea that trans women should be centered in trans men's spaces and discussions.

Avoid making use of a strawman. Try to think of the most compelling argument you've seen for the existence of transandrophobia and refute that instead of trying to attack the weakest possible argument (that probably hasn't been made in good faith).

Acknowledge the fact that closeted, non-passing, and passing trans men exist, and do not treat non-passing trans men as having a less legitimate male or trans experience than those who pass. Don't bring up passing trans men to say that all trans men have male privilege, because just like trans women, trans men who pass still face transphobia.

No projection of cisgender dynamics of gender and sexuality onto trans spaces, as while those aren't totally irrelevant, they are irrelevant to whether or not transandrophobia is a thing that exists.

Acknowledge that trans men are oppressed by misogyny, just like trans women and transfems are. Also, acknowledge the existence of intersex trans men and trans men of color.

Don't bring up individual trans men who have done certain bad things that do not implicate the entire area of transmasc activism or transandrophobia theory.

Do not mention Israel or Palestine, or bring up other irrelevant issues that you may disagree with me or other prominent trans men in these spaces on.

As stated, all that I am looking for is one (1) argument. I have searched through a lot of posts, a lot of articles about this subject, yet I have not found one coherent argument that avoids basic logical fallacies and doesn't just throw words together to sound like it's refuting anything. I can and will respond to all of the arguments that I get that fit this criteria. You can send them to me in asks or in the notes of this post.

[talenlee]

April 2025 Wrapup!

This month, I focused on me, and that meant writing about things I mostly wanted to write about and wanted to share with you because I think they’re cool and I think you’d think they’re cool. Come read, see, you might find something new you love!

Game Pile:

Libertalia: Wings of Galecrest, one of my new favourite board games, which I finally! got! to! the! table!

Quest For Glory I-IV, turning the four articles I wrote on these games years ago into an accessible experience and updated some of the wording and ideas.

The First Hour of Disco Elysium, where I contemplated just the initial experience of playing Disco Elysium. It’s a really engaging game, it’s an incredible joy to play, but also, it’s something almost nobody has meaningfully explained. ‘Why play Disco Elysium’ is a question that most people respond to by either gritting their teeth about the finale, or just effusing about the premise, neither of which work as ways of getting you past a bit of a brick wall of ‘why are you even trying’ opening.

I Can Be Normal About Selaco, where I played one game so much for this month that I not only ran it out of material (100% secrets on all levels), I also ran out its minigames to the best of my ability. Selaco is one of my favourite games I’ve played all year, and even the ways it fails its legacy are still ideas I think are worth trying.

Story Pile:

Gleipnir, an incredibly horny, violent gory action manga. I really enjoyed this one, to my surprise, and I love finding things like this; complete, finished manga that get to run their course and tell all the parts of their story they want to. Manga is such a great format for this kind of story, too, where the pace of release allows for both speedy and abrupt paces in narratives, and very dark, conscious genre shifts.

Hundreds of Beavers, a live-action Looney Tunes cartoon that I’ve been recommending as much as I can to anyone I know who likes practical effects, despite the movie being 80% green-screen by volume.

Keasbey Nights by Catch-22, an album of songs I already knew by a band I already liked, in a primal, and primeval state. Basically, it’s things I knew, mixed worse, and somehow all the stronger for it.

X, by Daniel Sloss, a comedy show about getting guys to pay attention and relate to the host as he drags them along into analysing his own toxicity and his own limits as a guy, and then the things that those limits made him bad at doing and bad at helping.

Dev Diary:

14 — Generative Art as Intuition Pumps. I used a free generator to make some images in class, then critically examined those images.

15 — Time Exchange in Wyrmspan. After playing the game Wyrmspan I dedicated thought to the idea of managing time in the game mechanics of Moonshiners and Bloodwork.

16 — Playtesting Results. Did some playtesting, wrote about it.

17 — The Guff You Gather. Article on the sets and components in Moonshiners and how they’re going to proliferate ot.

18 — As Yet Unpublished. Hopefully, this will be the print-and-play of Moonshiners I’ve been working on all month, but it goes up tomorrow, so who can say.

I think it’s only natural as a big dorky fan of TTRPGs and specifically of Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition (with an nunecessary amount of expertise in 3rd edition I find worth sharing), my month should focus on an unnecessary amount of D&D based material. For example, I talked about the explosive potential of the Artificer (with a rules misunderstanding that I mention at the bottom of the article – turns out I’d forgotten the even cheesier trick of use magic device spoofing metamagic feats). I also ruminated on what decoupling the Druid from the Cleric’s space permitted, with the mysteries of the druid. I wrote about something generic in Cobrin’Seil that you should feel free to poach for your setting, the Fluttering Groves, with their moth-people, ooze-people, and chitin-people, who all represent a kind of material version of pluralisation, and the specific anarchist pirate state of Mertzenne.

While talking about worlds and world building, I reflected on the way that magic rules get regulated and enforced in settings, and I even did a different kind of How To Be where I instead approached the characters as level 1 puzzles, and focused on the narrative questions I would use to engage other players and the GM, while contemplating the really good (first season of) Arcane. A final dash of TTRPG rumination was brought to bear on the nearly impossible task of making a good Pokemon RPG.

I wrote about Homestar Runner fanfiction, which I wrote before the brothers chaps released a 25th anniversary recommendation to go back to a websiiiite, which you are doing, if you’re reading this. I also put together some words on the Locked Tomb and its relationship to the composition of a person, who, in universe, is largely regarded for their decomposition. Eyyyy. Then I wrote about my birthday, but don’t worry I also wrote about the Autobots’ crab-shaped wetwork expert, in order to make sure I didn’t explode from being too serious on the internet.

I made a shirt for the new semester. It’s been in and out of Redbubble jail. It’s also a type you absolutely do not want to buy, so I won’t bother linking it.

It’s my birthday as I write this. I took it very easy today. I got up, I went to the grocery store, and I came home with lunch. Then once I was home, I marked student work for a few hours, then did two hours of PhD work, and then watched some Russ Reviews talking about Beverly Hillbillies with Fox. My dad and mum dropped around, and then my mother in law. I walked the dog. I got some pants and some pepsi for my birthday.

It was so wonderfully nice. So very chill.

This month has had a chunky break in it and I’ve really appreciated it. Starting tomorrow I expect to get more students asking me questions, and that’s fine for then. We’re going to have to approach May one step at a time.

I still have an incredibly important writing project to do, though. Working on that.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[crazycurly-77]

Bob (2/24)

This is written in the style of the series 24. Events occur in real time

Hour 2 of 24: 11:00 pm - 00:00 am

11:04:20 p.m.

On the outskirts of Washington D.C.:

Gibbs continued sanding the newest strut of his boat. The construction was going well so far and without any problems. That was kind of suspicious because he had never completed a boat without any problems.

Nevertheless, he finished sanding, took a short break and treated himself to a strong swig of bourbon that burned wonderfully in his throat.

When he had emptied his cup, he went over to the clamped board, loosened the pliers and attached it to the boat's hull without any problems.

The work with his hands slowly showed its effect and he decided to go to sleep as soon as he was finished with the assembly.

Who knows how long he could sleep before a new case woke him up.

11:22:46 p.m.

Quantico Base (on the edge of the base):

You had finished your weight training for the day. Lifting the weights relieved the frustration of all the unnecessary chatter from the commanders, but you still couldn't relax.

So you put the dumbbells aside and went on the treadmill to run a few kilometers.

You started running with your favorite music in your ears, hoping that you wouldn't have to spend the whole night running to calm down.

11:39:06 p.m.

At the other end of the base:

The night was very dark and quiet. Nothing moved. No one came by, and yet the two Marines had to stand there and keep watch.

Their shift lasted 4 more hours and it was deadly boring.

"It's completely dead here. Do you think anything will happen tonight? Standing around here isn't exactly my favorite task," Jack complained to his comrade who replied grumpily: "If you hadn't yelled so loudly when we were absent without permission and came back drunk, we wouldn't have to do penal service now."

That was the end of the matter and each of them sulked.

11:51:13 p.m.

Somewhere outside DC:

The planning for the operation was progressing quickly.

"The important thing is that we stick strictly to the plan. Once we're in, we'll have very little time to get out again," James declared to his team.

"Listen, that's the plan," he began again.

"We're heading to Quantico in 5 minutes and should arrive there around midnight."

He paused, then continued:

“We'll stop first at this point where you, Chris and Giuseppe, climb through the fence.”

He looked at each of them and commanded threateningly: “Pull yourselves together, otherwise I'll shoot you personally.”

They looked at him in embarrassment: “Understood, boss.”

James waited a moment and continued to look at them seriously to make it clear to them that this was no joke.

Finally, he continued the plan:

“So, as I said: you two slip through the fence and sneak to our target and wait. Make sure you don't get discovered.”

He looked at them meaningfully again and they confirmed: “Yes, boss.”

James nodded and looked at Don.

“I see you're already wearing your uniform, very good. At least someone is thinking for themselves,” he couldn't resist a dig at the two squabblers.

“Do you have your new ID card with you?” he asked Don.

“Yes, it has a different name on it, but it's identical to my real ID card. No one should notice anything,” he confirmed.

The leader nodded again.

“Good. So, we’re both driving to this gate. As a side gate, it's not as heavily guarded. You show your ID and we drive onto the grounds and straight to our destination. We'll park the car here behind the trees and then walk to our destination. There we'll engage the two guards in conversation to distract them.”

He paused again, then looked at Chris and Giuseppe again and explained: “That’s your cue. If we distract the guards, you sneak up and overpower them. But make sure that this happens quickly and quietly so that they can’t warn anyone.”

He looked at the two of them warningly.

Chris was annoyed: “Dude! This isn’t the first thing we’ve done!”

“Exactly! And we’re not stupid either!” Giuseppe agreed.

Don raised both eyebrows: “Really? I’m not so sure about the lack of intelligence.”

“I’ll give you…!!!” Chris exploded again. His extremely short fuse could still become a problem, but he was the best in his field who wasn’t currently in prison, as James realized to his regret.

“QUIET!!!” he yelled as loudly as he could.

Everyone was silent and when they had calmed down a bit, he came to the conclusion:

"As I said: we'll distract the guards and you'll take them out. At 02:00 a.m. the thing will be over and we'll be out again," he ended the meeting.

11:59 p.m. ...the clock was ticking.....

----------------------------------------

Here you will find the other chapters of this story.

Masterlist stories - Part 1 (finished ones)

Masterlist stories - Part 2 (finished/ongoing)

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Tags: @ilovemark1951, @hobby27

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[mbti-notes]

Anon wrote: Hi mbti-notes, I am a INFJ in their late twenties. My purpose for this inquiry is to better understand, on a mbti-function level, why I am feeling emotionally overwhelmed and burnt out.

For additional context: I am currently in a graduate program that I detest—to the point where I’ve had to keep myself from crying at my desk in public. Usually, when I’m dealing with something arduous I can engage in some sort of Ni-led vision of what I want in the future to encourage myself to keep going. But lately I’ve just been so tired of trying to ‘inspire’ myself to keep moving.

On top of this, I feel like I can’t express my disdain for my work life to friends because they either work in the same field (and they enjoy it) or they are going through other issues of their own. In general, I find that people are (reasonably) concerned with their own sources of stress, and I don’t want to bother them about it again unless its serious.

Additionally, I have found it hard to meaningfully engage with such people about their own life. Instead of being attentive and curious about others’ lives, I now feel like I’m always thinking of my own problems. Is this because I am over-exerting myself (Fe) and not reflecting enough (Ni)? If it is a lack of Ni, then why do I feel so tired of trying to work with Ni (please see ’inspiring myself’ sentence earlier in my post)? Thank you so much for reading and considering my long entry—I really appreciate it.

----------------------

There are several factors that can contribute to burnout, so the solution will depend on which factors are most influential in your case. You'll have to reflect on it yourself and tailor the right solution. Possible factors include:

1) You are in poor physical health. Your body can only operate at peak efficiency if you eat well, sleep well, get enough exercise, and moderate stress. If you lack energy due to poor physical health, then you need to develop better physical habits.

2) You are expending more energy than you are generating. Ns often need to be reminded that physical and mental energy are finite resources. There is a limit to how much your mind and body can do every day. Everyone needs rest, relaxation, and recuperation time. This is especially the case for introverts. If your workload is too heavy, find a way to reduce it and/or schedule better. Proper work-life balance is necessary for making sure that you take enough time for yourself to recharge.

3) You are taking on too much. Are your work roles and responsibilities clearly articulated? Are you taking on tasks that don't belong to you or should be done by someone else? It's not uncommon for Js to be controlling and Ns to fear missing out, which means they end up doing more work than they should. If this is the case, you need to learn to manage your workload better by prioritizing, deferring, or delegating tasks more appropriately.

4) You are in a disadvantaged position and don't experience all the advantages of your peers. This can happen for a variety of reasons. For example, you might be experiencing overt or covert exclusion because of being a minority and not fitting in (due to class, race, gender, etc). Another example is that you have lower professional status than others, which you might be able to change through hard work and getting promoted to a higher position. Another example is that you haven't done enough to build professional relationships and aren't reaping those social rewards.

5) Your workplace is toxic. A workplace is experienced as unhealthy when you have unsupportive authority figures to contend with, overly competitive or undermining peers to watch out for, and/or unfair practices that don't reward people based on merit. When the social environment is toxic, you can try to improve the situation, or you can leave if you don't have the power to change anything. When leaving is not an option, try to limit engagement and increase positive engagement elsewhere in your life. The more time you spend in a toxic social environment, the more energy it will drain from you until you have no motivation at all.

6) You lack a healthy support system. You seem to downplay or ignore your own needs, which is a common INFJ issue. Yes, you should be professional when dealing with peers/colleagues in a workplace, so it's understandable that you don't want to be constantly discussing your personal issues with them. However, this raises the important question of why you don't have family or friends outside of school/work to lean on and get support from. It sounds like you're not doing enough to build a community for yourself, which leads to isolation and alienation, and eventually, depression that saps away your energy. Neglecting emotional and social needs means you're not taking care of your mental health and well-being. When you don't take care of yourself, you won't be able to attend to others.

7) You lack control and/or confidence. When people don't feel in control or don't feel confident enough to tackle their challenges, they're more likely to waste energy in feeling anxious, preoccupied, distracted, fixated on trivial matters, etc. If this is the case, you may need to be more assertive in: expressing your needs/wants and fulfilling them; organizing your environment to better suit you; clarifying your goals/aspirations; seeking help for improving knowledge and skills that would help you feel more self-confident.

8) You focus too much on the negative and discount the positives. Why is it that two people can work in the same environment but experience it completely differently? Part of it is due to perception. You don't like the work you're doing, so you are full of negative feelings and emotions that then cast everything in a negative light. If this is the case, you need to make more of an effort to recover the positive aspects of the situation. Looking on the bright side involves seeking out and realizing positive possibilities/potential, which should be easy enough with healthy Ni. Positives exist in the present, and you can create them in the decisions you make today. If you're always waiting for happiness to appear in a distant future, chances are, it's not real.

9) Your work doesn't seem to matter or get rewarded. Does this career align with your identity and values? It's hard to feel motivated when you don't believe in your work or others don't recognize your work. Does your work matter? Are there ways your work matters that you're not seeing and appreciating? If others aren't appreciating your work, have you done enough to show it off and keep people informed of your activities?

10) You are on the wrong life path. If you truly believe your work doesn't matter or isn't the right fit for you, why are you still doing it? Why aren't you listening to your own heart? This would constitute going against Ni, which is self-sabotaging. It sounds like you're using Ni-Ti to rationalize. Lying to yourself is only going to make you more and more miserable every time reality slaps you and debunks the lie. While it's true that it's not always easy to change paths, is it really harder than staying on the wrong path forever? I'm not telling you what to do but simply raising the possibility that you haven't done a proper reckoning of the path you've chosen and compared it objectively to the alternative paths that might be better suited to you. Remember that it's not foolish to make a mistake because mistakes are necessary for learning and growth. What's foolish is to deny a mistake and keep suffering from it for the rest of your life.

[liquid-mercury-in-alive-form]

I noticed an unsettling pattern within a discourse around "human nature", climate consciousness, and otherwise activism. This particularly is something to think about given that I'm Udmurt and Komi, and some other more northern tribes.

That pattern is - Indigenous peoples are the only standing counterexample to the ideas of inherent human cruelty, ecofascism, and the idea that humanity and nature are inherently incompatible.

While browsing tags surrounding misanthropy and the doomerism, or in general archaeological or anthropological stories, I noticed this recurring pattern of comments:

"Humanity is a plague, who would want to be one?"

"But what about indigenous peoples, please decolonize your mind".

Ummm... no. Why are the Indigenous peoples the only demographics whose existence is used in this manner as a counterargument? It feels as if the entire argument is based on the premise that Western thought treats Indigenous cultures as something "separate from civilization", so they can be used to contrast modern society without actually challenging how modern society itself should change. At the end of the day - it is not an actual counterargument to "human cruelty", just finding a convenient other who isn't corrupted by the civilization's compounded failures. And oh do we have a name for that term that was invented by Jean-Jacques Rousseau...

Let's pretend for a moment that ethnically nature-conscious peoples like Udmurt, or peoples with a very old heritage like Nganasan, didn't exist. What would be your policy for nature support advocacy? Carbon tax on breathing? Complete ban on any interaction with nature? Would you just accept "humans are a plague" without questioning it?

And besides, I too have my own reservations about human anthropology, and have my own opinions on how it isn't all "femur equals kindness equals humans are good". But I can't even engage with those meaningfully because my peoples' existence is supposed to be a proof of human kindness for those who "decolonize their anthropology".

[frannyzooey]

hi Kelli !! hope you’re having a lovely day :) i’m not sure if you’ve answered something like this before, and no pressure for one!

do you have any advice for getting a fic out to more people, or increasing engagement? i am super new to actually posting what i’ve written, and while it’s so heartwarming seeing the likes, tumblr is very much about reblogs and comments 😃 are there actually any tricks to this, or is it basically just down to luck and the algorithm?

also a huge thank you for the write nights you’ve done, which seriously motivated me to get my ass into gear 🫶🏻

hope you have an amazing rest of your day/night! <3

First of all, I am so glad that you like the write nights! Part of the thing I feel (imo) that has been missing around here is creative encouragement of others? I know it's hard to find your people, and I know it's hard to share, and I know it's hard to find the time in busy schedules to make space for creating and I wanted to sort of tackle all those issues with that night. I myself have found it super motivating, but also just so heartwarming to think of the other people out there all sitting down to create, knowing they are with "their people" while doing so ❤

In terms of engagement, I wish I had a better answer for you my lovely, but the one I have is slightly defeating 😔 that said, here are some things I've noticed:

The site has definitely changed. The likes to reblogs ratio has been off for over a year and has only gotten worse as the fandom has expanded, due to the migration of users from other platforms where engagement IS liking. Tumblr was never meant to be used this way, as the dash is created by reblogs, but it doesn't seem that people participating in the fandom are interested in learning the correct way (in my observation). I don't think this will get better any time soon - in fact, I only think it's going to get worse.

That said, I would: reblog your own work several times a day just to get it into the algorithm/tags, respond to all reblogs with your own reblog to boost it back into circulation (and engage with people who like it!), make friends who will in turn reblog your work (though it should never be an assumption/one should not feel entitled to it because of the friendship because that just makes for hurt feelings, not everything is for everyone), don't be afraid to rec your own stuff when people ask for recommendations and above all else, just keep writing and posting. It took me ages to get interaction on my work, and even now it's hit or miss depending on the subject/character/trope.

I know it can feel defeating when you see some things that have a billion notes, but remember that there are so many factors that can come into it: fandom (marvel and tlou have enormous fanbases and I have noticed their metrics are often super skewed), creators that have been posting for years and have built up a base during that time, or even something as simple as it "hitting the dash at the right time" aka people just seem to like it for whatever reason on that given day aka luck, lol.

Something I like to do when I feel bummed about engagement is work on my own skills - not because you need to be super talented in order to get notes, but it helps me feel better about the piece itself, which helps me think less about the actual engagement because I found so much satisfaction within the creative process alone, if that makes sense? Another reason behind the write nights ❤

I wish I had something more concrete for you, but it really does boil down to: persistence, working on your skills, engaging meaningfully with others in the fandom and luck. ❤

[twochildreninamoteldemo]

im gonna vent in your askbox i hope thats alright, but genuinely deangirls who are also hellers are so. delusional. like even if someone doesnt "ship" wincest like... incest is a theme of the show? like you cannot meaningfully do analysis of the wincest show without talking about wincest. and when hellers try to make every moment about destiel (even when it would be more apt to talk about wincest, like in the siren episode!!) it just. frustrates me so bad. i feel like samgirls + wincesties have a better understanding of the themes of the show (esp s1-5) like. genuinely.

ok to be frank, i wasn't originally gonna post this and just let it sit in my inbox/be deleted and you got your vent and etc. but i'm gonna use it to push back a little in places i'm frustrated with the wank in this fandom. i'm sorry that it's your ask, anon, that prompted this--i have nothing against you, and completely understand your frustration. however.

(btw, in good faith, i'm going to take your usage of "hellers" to be like extreme destiel-only shippers, not chill destiel shippers, as per the original meaning of the term. also note that everything i say here is based on my experience of the FIRST FIVE SEASONS, aka core spn.)

i agree that incest is a big theme of the show--or i should say, incest subtext. there is no actual incest between the show's main family (aka the winchesters) aside from mary's demon deal. is this due to the network? is this due to kripke's creative vision? we'll never know. it can't be ignored within a full analysis of the show, but to say that one can't have meaningful analysis of the show without discussing the incest subtext ignores the conversation that supernatural has with masculinity/gender, american folklore, race, class, etc--whether these conversations are done well or not. i'm not saying you are doing this, but there is a tendency of wincest shippers, as with destiel shippers, to focus solely on sam and dean's relationship, as if there is literally nothing else that matters in the show, which is just blatantly false and prevents people from having a fuller understanding of the show, just as wincest shippers claim to be frustrated about.

and the other thing is that yes, while i do feel that wincesties (using this broadly to also encompass the entire winchester family) have a better understanding of the show than those who don't engage with the incest subtext, i don't actually think that samgirls or deangirls better understand the show over one another. i know i jokingly make posts about this, but it's mainly out of frustration with the dean-centric hellscape that is what the spn fandom is. the true fact of the matter is that it doesn't matter who your favorite character is, it just matters the way in which you understand their motivations and engage with that. i'm sometimes critical of dean because i love him, but i think a lot of the stuff he does gets glossed over by both the fandom and the show, while sam does enough self-bashing on top of the bashing canon already gives him, resulting in a fandom who, when combined with ignoring him in favor of destiel, doesn't choose to engage with the text critically and question why the narrative repeatedly slams sam but praises dean, when they both are complicated people. but i don't think that means you have to necessarily be a samgirl to fully understand the text. especially if you're ignoring dean's plights and positioning of victimhood/survivorship (as sam is too) because he's just not your favorite character. imo it makes someone just as short-sighted.

[avatarthelastairgender]

happy ides of march it's also the go outsideiversary. this is a half formed thought soz. but hm. i do broadly agree with the general critiques of why it's not accurate to frame bad opinions, or fringe opinions, exclusively as someone being 'too online', or to believe that that makes those opinions or communities 'less real'— it's dismissive, and more importantly just not a good framework. but i do think it's not completely without merit, only in the sense that i think it is at least true that a lot of social media algorithms construct these angry insular communities to make money. i don't think that makes them less real or meaningful, and indeed all communities are created by the factors around them not just online ones. but i think when some people say 'this is a very online opinion that you wouldn't hold if you engaged with real people', even though they are phrasing it poorly, they are sometimes getting at something real here. it's an incomplete viewpoint— people online are 'real people', and these spaces are meaningfully real, but it's also true that much of social media is tailored to incentivize/profit from producing clicks based on engineering rage and misery, and that existing within this can lead some people in some of these communities to behave as reactionary, reactive and less thoughtful. like i do not believe that person who genuinely said 'it is morally bad to own decorative pillows' in response to that joke post would have formed that opinion were it not for an outside force incentivizing a directionless-anger-to-clicking-to-more-directionless-anger-to-more-clicking path. HOWEVER this is, or should be, a critique of how a lot of modern social media functions, not of any specific individuals.

[hannahssimblr]

Chapter Nineteen

The sun rises an hour later than usual on the day the clocks go forward, but I get out of bed anyway, even in the dim haze of this late March morning, feeling ready for the day. I throw my hair up into a ponytail and pull on my running shorts and throw my foot up against the windowsill to tie the laces of my runners. 

I like the way that Fitzwilliam Square looks this early, right before it all comes to life, and the low sun is steaks of golden yellow against blue shadow, and dew glitters on the grass around the base of the iron railings of the park, and nobody is around. A man comes around the corner jogging and I crane my neck to look, wondering if it’s Shane, but it isn’t. I stuff my keys and phone into my little waist bag and head out into the chill. 

I wait on the steps and check the time. Ten to seven. I glance up and down the street and frown. Shane is usually here on time, and it isn’t like him to run late. I wait another five minutes before it starts to feel suspicious, and then I text him. 

You coming??

He responds immediately. 

In library. 

????

What’s wrong with you

What are you doing in the library?

Studying, dope.

I stare at the screen in disbelief. Since when does he get up at half past six in the morning and go to the library to study? The last I was aware he was still refusing to engage in his college work, and I wasn’t aware that anything had changed so much in the last week since Claire and I talked about it. 

But our run

I text. 

You don’t need me there for everything, Evie. Run on your own. I’m turning my phone off now. 

I shake my head and stuff my phone back into my bag, and then I take off running along the park’s edge all by myself, for the first time all year. 

Later, once I’ve finished showering and dressing myself I head downstairs to the kitchen to start making breakfast. Claire is there as she always is, still in her pyjamas and sipping on a cappuccino she made from a sachet. She beams at me when she sees me. 

“Good morning, Evie,” she says. “Good run?”

“It was a solo run,” I tell her, and start digging around in the fridge for yoghurt. “Your boyfriend told me that he was in the library.”

Her eyes are sparkling. “Yes! He’s studying.”

“That’s a bit of a change from how things were.”

“Well his exams are coming up soon, and he’s got a whole thesis to do and everything, there really isn’t time for slacking off.”

I pull out a chair and sit next to her. I don’t think I’ve seen her looking so happy in a long time, but still, it makes me feel a bit suspicious. “Is there something going on that I don’t know about?”

She shrugs cryptically. “Something might have changed, I’m not sure.”

“What’s changed?”

“He’s decided to finish his degree and try to pass the course.”

I touch her arm as she raises the giant frothy mug to her lips, obscuring her expression. “But he was dead set on not finishing the course. In fact, I was pretty sure he was going to drop out the last time that we talked about this.”

“Yeah I suppose that he’s changed his mind now,” She smiles to herself, “That’s all, really.”

I raise my eyebrows. “Okay. You’re hardly pregnant, are you?”

She snorts, “No.” and reaches out to poke my chin with the tip of her finger. “Have you forgotten to moisturise?”

“Hm?”

“Your chin, all around your mouth.”

“Oh,” I feel my cheeks heating. “This is a new thing for me, my skin has become so dry and flaky, I don’t know. I think it’s from, like… Jude’s face is a bit rough.”

“So when you’re over in Clontarf distracting him from his thesis seven nights a week you’re not actually there to talk, you’re there to smush your faces together for two to three hours.”

“Something like that.”

She throws her eyes to heaven, “Just go on the pill.”

“It’s not like that, we don’t do anything but kiss.”

“Go on the pill.” She repeats more meaningfully. “Because things are going to start happening someday soon and you’re going to wish that you were on it. Believe me. You should just set up an appointment with the doctor, sure they hand Yasmin out like chewing gums.”

“The effort of going to the doctor and all…”

“The effort of getting pregnant.”

I chew on my lip.

“You know, it’s time that you think about these sorts of things. My mam had me on the pill since I was fifteen.”

“Yeah but you know that my mother would never have done that for me. Like, she never even gave me The Talk.”

Claire’s eyes are saucers as she chews on a mouthful of Cheerios. “So how did you learn? Hardly from the nuns at school.”

I cringe, “She left a book on reproduction distributed by a christian company on my bed and then we never ever addressed it again.”

“Oh, God.”

“I know,” I say, adding hastily, “I obviously didn’t just rely on that book though, like, I know loads more about it, I mean, I know everything… uh, yeah I think I do anyway.”

“So you’re both going to get tested then?” She says casually. 

“Tested?”

“Yeah, like, you should go to the clinic for an STI test and so should he. You’ve both had previous partners, and obviously nobody knows where Dean had his grubby hands.”

I baulk. “You think I’ve an STD?” Suddenly I’m nauseated. I’ve been sure that I’m permanently rid of Dean until now, but what if some part of his rotten DNA is still hanging around in my body in the form of some insidious disease? It makes me feel filthy all over. 

“No, it’s just something that you do.”

“How would I even go about doing that?”

She puts down her spoon and her hand comes to rest over mine. “Evie, I can go with you, it’s fine. You just go down to the clinic and they do a few simple tests. Then we can figure out which birth control works for you. There’s plenty of options.” She sees my startled expression and squeezes my hand. “It’s fine, honestly. There’s nothing to panic about.”

“It’s just that once again I feel like I’m prepared for nothing and I don’t know a single thing about anything.” 

“But you will.” She insists, and I rise from the table with my empty yoghurt bowl and stack it in the dishwasher. “Just one step at a time, Evie. It’s obviously not very sexy to have to do anything-”

“I get it.” I interrupt. “It’s also not sexy to get some gnarly disease or launch out a baby while I’m still at college. Let’s just get it all done at the weekend.”

Claire agrees with me, and I grab my coat from the rack and start zipping myself into it when she stops me. “Oh, I meant to say, Shane and I are thinking of spending the Easter holidays in the holiday house in Cyprus.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, just to have a quiet getaway for a week or so. We were talking about it and we’d love it if you’d come this year.”

“Oh!”

“I think it’d be good for us all to get away from the city for a while, you know what I mean? Just get a bit of culture, or scenery, or something like that. Obviously you can invite Jude, we’ll do a couples thing.”

As I consider this I am immediately awash with serenity  at the image of crystalline blue water lapping over my ankles on a white sandy beach and the heat of the sun on my skin after the oppressive, heavy darkness of the winter just passed. “That sounds great.” I say dreamily. 

“I can help you out financially, obviously.” She adds, to which I say, “No, It’s okay, I actually have money now, for once. I’ve been getting paid a bit for these commercial jobs I’ve been getting, you know, and with the cards in Mezzotint and all…”

“Okay, well, the accommodation is free anyway, so really it’s only the flights and the food.”

“Yeah, amazing!”

She beams at me. “Okay! I’m excited.”

“Me too. But I’m also going to be late.”

“Okay, hurry up and leave!”

“Bye, Claire!” I flash her one final grin and duck out the door. 

Beginning // Prev // Next

[erintoknow]

I really wanted to like this book, and like, I don't intrinsically have any problems with a protagonist who effectively is the reason the antagonist's plans work out, or is kind of a dumbass but like, it kind of undermines the girl empowerment vibes of having an opinionated and independent aspiring young woman in the 1800s going against the cultural grain only for the male characters to have been right all along to want to put her back on the boat home because yeah, she really did fuck everything up and make it all worse! Also, can we like, talk about how much pains this book takes to performatively call out the colonial exploitation of the time period and find ways to alleviate the guilt of setting a story in the zeitgeist of the worst of it while neglecting to make any native Egyptian character a central focus of the story? The ones we get are strictly background or permission givers to participate. That kind of sucks! I'm white, so like, maybe I'm just completely off base here - I've caught myself having blindspots before, but... like, if you want to go full in on the Hollywood fantasy of it, sure fine, whatever, I'm on board, but it's weird as hell to rub our nose in the horrible reality of it while making no actual effort to rectify or meaningfully change up the trope. By which I mean, this book fundamentally does not care about Egypt or egyptian history, you know? It's all just window dressing around a weird conflux of action archeology where 'we gotta race to find the tomb before the bad guys do!!' and family drama. You could set that literally anywhere in the world with ancient ruins around and nothing would meaningfully change. The narrator keeps telling me I should care about this exploitation and theft of history and context from the people it belongs to while the story itself happily engages in that very same practice! If that's something you want to investigate, and you want to stick with having our main character be native Argentinian then why not have the archology plot happening in Argentina? Why not dig into that directly? Because then it's not a Mummy riff? Is it purely just the nostalgia for that Hollywood exploitation image??? I just don't think enough is done with the shared understanding of suffering under colonialism angle to justify it when our main character doesn't actually meaningfully befriend any of the people actually effected by this colonial project - nevermind the fact that she comes from big money and was largely sheltered from the material effects of such in her home country! It just all comes off as a weirdly performative desire to have the cake and eat it too, I dunno my dudes. Like, I loved The Mummy (1999) too, but I'm not gonna pretend it doesn't have problems.

[blue-lantern]

Thinking on it and I miss Kyle being earth based. Sure he’s a Green Lantern and he should be in space at least a little, but my favorite stories from him are always from when he was primarily on earth, with his civilian supporting cast (and his earth based superhero friends I miss him interacting with Connor so bad give them back to me).

I also just feel like having him be earth based would let him explore his relationship to his Mexican identity more meaningfully. Like, he did not grow up connected to his culture at all, he only learned about it when he was well into his 20s. With that in mind I think it’s easier to explore that part of him by having him engage with learning about it more, and it’s easier to do that on earth, particularly by talking to his dad who we haven’t seen in so long.

I know people want the GL’s to be space based because of their concept, but there’s eight of them, assigning them different roles is a requirement if you want to keep them all and I think Kyle’s role should be terrestrial largely.

[freevoidman]

Man, Viper getting a borderline immediate rework to remove a timer feels... really weird and worrying? I don't think I'm the only person that's noticed XIV is trending away from managing time-based "things" that apply debuffs/DOTs since at LEAST Endwalker with Paladin. Combine that with Monk losing Demolish's DOT and Viper now losing Noxious Gash, I feel like the game's job design is trending away from interesting things in order to manage less debuffs on bosses to avoid overflow bugs.

Which SUCKS because Noxious Gnash was fun! I like maintaining damage debuffs! I think timers are an interesting way of engaging with fights and requires you to focus more on what you're doing button-wise than simply going on auto-pilot mid-fight! Now it feels like a super braindead job where I 100% just follow whichever button lights up. At the very least Monk and Paladin losing their DOT attacks didn't completely fuck up a key component of their job too much (PLD still has Circle of Passage, Monk lost Demolish's DOT but gained the beast chakras instead to add a non-timer based complexity).

This has been weird feeling ever since Summoner got it's rework (cough cough gutting cough cough) in 6.0, which gutted ANY complexity from the job and made it so simple there's no way to meaningfully innovate it for future expansions. Just throw another random Bahamut on there (is there even ANY lore about Solar Bahamut??? is it just a random new dragon??? all the egis had MEANING behind them, you're seriously telling me we got a random dragon before Ramuh, Shiva or Leviathan? Or hell, even Hydaelyn or Zodiark?) and that'll stick it to them!

Hot take: if you have to get a class to a minimum of level 80 and BUY DAWNTRAIL to access the new job, that job SHOULD be more complex! It starts 80% of the way to the max level available right now! There should be a higher execution level that makes the job more engaging. At the very least, if it does turn out to be "too complex," wait until the first tier of savage is done to see how well it works in higher-level play then IMMEDIATELY planning reworks as early as one week after early access.

idk there's just something about how the very, very minor complexities of certain jobs has been removed and simplified to a baby-level degree of "you can't possibly manage more than one thing/your 60s-120s buffs" that it feels frustrating. I almost don't want them to add any more new jobs because of this, because part of the problem is definitely that with the more jobs added, the harder it is to coordinate all their unique buffs/debuffs/timers.

EDIT: FUCK I forgot they also removed Huton timer from Ninja too! Another timer they removed to homogenize the now two members of the scouting classes.

[talenlee]

Game Pile: Princess Wing

Princess Wing is a Japanese indie TTRPG, by Hayato Suzumiya, in which players take on the role of Princesses at the prestigious Princess Training Academy, who defend earth from mechanical monsters called Void through their cool outfits that also double up as multi-purpose military machinery and short skirts. Drawing heavily on a particular kind of anime genre that I mostly know in the terms of ‘like Symphogear, right?’ it’s a card-based RPG where players use a predetermined micro-deck to make strategic moves and drive their narratives forward, and everything novel about it I can think of I pretty much describe in this opening paragraph.

Yeah, uh, I don’t know what I’m going to tell you about this one. Come with me on the journey to not really understanding a book that I’ve spent several days reading and the reasons why I think that is.

Just a note: I’m reading an unofficial translation of Princess Wing. I’m not fluent in Japanese, and any time I think a phrase is badly written or clunky or strange, I let it go. That’s not important to this and treating the game as if that’s vital is a great way to cut yourself out of a lot of really cool translated TTRPGs.

Straight up, the things in this game that stood out to me, from my initial notes:

I like the way it suggests players recruit other players to play NPCs in scenes. That’s a cool idea to make part of the recommended text.

I appreciate the idea of dealing players a hand they get to use over the course of a scene, meaning you can have good and bad moments that you get to pace out, without full control over the.

It includes a section on pronoun use in the game.

And then the followup notes…

Wait, the pronoun use splits everything into a hard dichotomy where players are all ‘she’ and the enemies are all ‘he’? Kinda simple binary there.

Hang on, what’s the resolution mechanic for this game? What do I do if something comes up that’s not in one of these specific tables?

Wait, character creation starts when?

At which point I realised I kinda had to give up on treating this book like I would one written in a more familiar language to me. I think it’s very it’s important to look at games outside of my genre interests and my readership space – I love Golden Sky Stories and had a lot of fun engaging with the hot mess that was Gensou Narratograph, after all. I am an anime fan, but something like Symphogear that this game is pretty explicitly referencing, has never been my interest. What’s more, this is a translation of a Japanese RPG — which means there’s a range of ways I think things should be done because they appeal to me and make clear sense to me, that are culturally signified. I won’t know what I don’t know if I don’t look.

Now, you may think, hang on, but you don’t know anything about Symphogear, so why should we care what you say about the Symphogear-inspired TTRPG? And if you need an expert’s opinion on whether or not it’s delivering on its ideas, then yeah, I suppose that’s a thing. I cannot tell you if this is a game that’s good at being Symphogear and crucially, anything I learn about this game will not be useful for interpreting Symphogear. After all, if I was to just look at this book I might assume that Symphogear is about some very specific, complex machinery that’s designed to work under specific rules and conditions, almost like a kind of murder mystery of a mechanical construction, a system of combat rules that remind me a great deal of Bleach in the way that it relies on hard-to-decipher but consistently-applied rules and mechanisms that don’t actually make the narrative they construct meaningfully engaging.

Y’know, Bleach and Symphogear, two very similar anime that I’m sure won’t annoy anyone with that comparison.

Here’s the thing: I think this game is explicitly and delicately tuned to its audience. I really do, and this is an assumption based on the idea that this game is trying to do a good job, by people who are confident in what they are doing. It has the presentation of a thoughtful, creative, well-made book, after all. How then do I grapple with this mechanically uncomfortable system, awkward problem-solving mechanism and system for narratives that need the whole thing mostly created ahead of time, across a language barrier, and not come across as being, at the very least, a little bit of a dick?

I do not know this audience. I do not know who this book was written for. It is a mystery to me and even obvious inferences – it was for people who read Japanese, probably in Japan, and probably used to other Japanese TTRPGs, of which I know exactly one – can’t be treated as representing a meaningful truth. I am peeking through a keyhole and what I am seeing makes no sense to me.

When I talk about games, I describe them as a machine that makes stories. TTRPGs, then, I tell people, are a machine that makes a machine that makes stories. It is a system that you then use to construct your game, and then you play that game to find out what happens. And twice now I’ve looked at Japanese TTRPGs that seem to instead take one step back from that freedom, away from that creativity.

I think that this game hooks you instantly if you like its pitch. Do you already have a Symphogear OC that kinda works in these five general overtones? Do you already have a character you think of as ‘An Amanda’? Well, here’s what you want, here’s the onramp, let’s go. For me? Someone who doesn’t know what it’s about and doesn’t have a reason to resonate with its looks and vibes? It has no time for me and I don’t find a reason to want to belong to a universe that is primarily about teenaged girls with multiple pages dedicated to showing you the components of their uniforms.

At the time of writing I am coming off watching another strange set of interactions about Dungeons & Dragons by people who do not like it remarking on the behaviour of those that do like it. This space is interesting because there are some valid criticisms in deep and thoughtful ways and some shockingly headassed takes that don’t make any sense to me. One criticism is that it’s really weird that the official D&D tiktok is boasting about the new Players Handbook being the largest one ever, as if to say that getting more book in your book means the game is better. To that end, I’d like to submit that Princess Wing is a game that wants to make sure before you start, you’ve already watched twenty plus episode of an anime ahead of time. By that marign, I think it’s fair to say that makes this one of the best games ever.

I don’t think this game has a bad approach, I just think the approach is one that misses me, and unlike other games I criticise for a bad approach, I think this is a good thing here. It doesn’t want me. It has no interest in me, and it does not care about informing me about its world.

You have to admire the purity.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!