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my idiot minion ordered gender change traps for my megadungeon instead of sex change ones so now there are a bunch of adventurers wandering around physically unchanged but with wicked dysphoria

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1: alloromantic = somebody that isn't aromantic and experiences romantic attraction

2: I had this post on my mind for a LONG time. In fact, I did this episode a while ago as episode #8 on webtoon back in 2023. I knew that I didn't really do it justice back then, so I'm glad I had this opportunity to do it again.

3. As always, if I got something wrong, please correct me.

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The corollary to "you shouldn't call historical people gay because it's a modern term" is "the word friend didn't always mean what you think it means".

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My body is but a #poetry temple.

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He means a little squeeze bottle with brine shrimp inside but… bottle feeding the loblings…

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obviously there's a difference btwn someone who cannot do a task Literally Ever and someone who can do it under great duress in an emergency but i feel like these conversations ignore that the latter person, if their entire life becomes "an emergency", is going to become the former person in about 2 weeks - 2 yrs depending. if you are the type of person who says "i can't prepare my own food" and really mean "i can force myself to prepare my own food if i would die otherwise" and you are forced to prepare your own food All The Time lest you die, how long do you think that "emergency" skill is actually going to last? and how many other skills are going to go down with it? or: what else is the person sacrificing, on purpose or not, to stay alive under those circumstances? it may be Almost Every Other Skill They Have. this is where things like "autistic regression" come from!

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Its me, your feral godmother

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With an influx of asks and comments I have seen on multiple different blogs scolding people for talking in a simpler way (e.g. third person, less use of inbetween words, simpler words, etc), here is a non exhaustive list of why someone may speak like that:

- Intellectual disability

- Autism (All autistics. Not just level 3.)

- Dyspraxia

- Traumatic brain injuries

- Cognitive issues

- Processing issues

- Systems/plurals

- Not have the energy for "proper" wording

- AAC (It takes a while to type on AAC so it's often easier to use simpler wording)

- May just prefer it

I don't think I have ever seen someone who talks like this say that only people who always speak like that are allowed to speak like that. Unless the person is being mean with it (mocking) then they aren't doing anything wrong. Just let people speak comfortably and how they want to, please.

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being poly with no bitches is a little funny

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yes i know you depict all kinds of different women. are there any trans women in it. yes i know you depict all kind of body types and shapes. are there any trans women in it. yes i know you give them so many different backgrounds and nationalities. are there any trans women in it. yes i know you give them cool sexualities and all. are there any trans women in it

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Has this been done yet

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Has this been done yet

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I mentioned wanting to make a post like this a few weeks ago and then forgot, so have this absolute behemoth to make up for lost time: let's talk martin and defensive rejection of choice.

the short of it is that while martin obviously wants control and agency over his life, the first few times he makes big moves to actively take that control, they blow up in his face by either doing nothing or leading to something worse, and that makes him afraid of being responsible for doing anything wrong in the future. it doesn't quite scare him away from taking any control of his life at all, it's a bit more complicated than that, but much of his arc in s5 involves him progressing from trying to influence jon's decision making while rejecting any choice given directly to him to making three big choices in the last half dozen episodes that seal his (and everyone else's) fate.

the long of it is, uh. Long. without counting transcript exerpts this is about 1.3k, so if you want to hear my reasoning for saying the above you might wanna strap in.

for most of the first three seasons, we don't see martin making a lot of choices, he mainly just tries to keep things stable. he gets displaced from his flat? okay, cool, move into the archives and carry on like normal. the archives get attacked and everyone deteriorates afterwards? okay, cool, try and keep jon from burning himself out, listen to tim vent so he doesn't start running himself ragged either, don't shake things up too much by forcing anything. elias is a magic murderer and everyone's trapped? okay, cool, just read statements, keep an eye out for the others, keep everything together.

we can extrapolate where this tendency towards maintaining stability comes from; he's had a very precarious life where a lot of his options have been taken away by poverty and abuse, it's probably always been too dangerous for him to try and make big leaps to change his situations. this is in contrast to jon, whose gut reaction to most problems is to take the option that lets him (often literally) throw himself at it as soon as possible.

as a turning point in mag 117, we get martin talking about his plan to trick elias and get him arrested.

I mean, it’s not like I’m going to be safe, like my plan’s not dangerous, but it’s, it’s mine. This last couple of years, I’ve always been running, always hiding, caught in someone else’s trap, but, but now it’s my trap, and, well, I think it’ll work. I know, I know it’s not exactly intricate, but it felt good, weaving my own little web.

[...]

Anyway, I guess I’m just sick of sitting on my hands drinking tea and hoping everyone’s okay. This way, I finally get to do something. It’s gonna hurt, but I’m ready. And I want to. Also, I get to burn some stuff, so that’s cool! I just really hope everyone makes it back.

he's sick of not being an active agent. maintaining stability hasn't gotten him anywhere, he knows how he wants things to change and how he can make it happen, and he's now willing to do it. it's a similar moment to one basira has in this same episode, she also talks about having previously been resigning herself to the situation and now being ready to push back against it, but where her arc continues on from this point of deciding to make choices to eventually being about what kind of choices she makes, martin's stalls a bit and never quite gets to that stage.

he goes through with his plan for elias, and it works without a hitch. it deals him quite a lot of hurt, but he planned for and expected that. elias goes right off to prison, sent down by the evidence martin and melanie stole.

and it doesn't do anything to help anyone.

tim, jon, and daisy die. one monster boss is replaced with a new monster boss. melanie gets more volatile. basira gets more paranoid. his mother dies. the archives get attacked. martin played his hand, got hurt in the process, and got absolutely nothing from it.

here we see another pattern starting to form. in mag 158, when he talks about why he joined with peter, he says that he told himself it was just to protect the others and didn't confront his real, personal motivations. in mag 154, he at first tries refusing jon by saying he wants to see through his plan with peter, but when jon presses it he switches to saying "I won't because you don't really mean it, this is a bluff so you have a reason to not do it and you wouldn't even if I agreed." here, martin starts taking decisions he wants to make, acting on them, and coming up with reasons for why it was never actually his choice to go with them, taking the responsibility for his choices off of himself and putting it on to others.

but we then get mag 158 and his big heel turn of rejecting peter's plan! and it works! and then the world ends as a direct result of that choice! luckily, we don't have to wonder how he felt about this, 'cause he talks about it directly in mag 186:

ALSO MARTIN: You feel guilty about everything. [...] The end of the entire world?

MARTIN: If I’d done what Peter had asked… If I’d not chickened out, and just killed Elias when I had the chance…

ALSO MARTIN: Really? Really? That’s how you’re choosing to remember it? Chickening out?

MARTIN: I remember it was the wrong choice.

the big ritual happens and he feels like his choice, the first "proper choice" he made in a while, was wrong enough that the the end of the world is on his shoulders. as a result, we then see him defaulting back to some old habits of trying to be a comforting, stable presence while jon's having a time of it in the cabin, with any decisions of what they do still ultimately up to jon. after this, though, things start to get a bit weirder.

he pushes for jon to start killing avatars; he pushes for jon to specifically kill oliver banks; when jon gives him the choice between walking into the burning building to kill jude perry or going around, martin outright rejects choosing either; he pleads with jon to do something in callum brodie's domain; he goes silent when jon directly asks him what he should do.

because martin doesn't like not actually having any agency, because of course not, no one likes that, especially no one in this kind of environment. what he said in mag 117 still holds true, he's long since had enough of being reactive and neutral. what martin really doesn't like is feeling responsible for anything. if the choice is jon's, then he'll make his thoughts crystal clear and try to guide him towards an decision, but the second it's put on him, he'll outright reject it. at this point, martin's ideal way of functioning would be never having to personally put anything into action while jon makes every decision in the way he wants.

he chills on this after jon stops the murder spree, but he still doesn't have much cause to make choices for a while until he's told his domain's coming up. he watches the whole thing with jon and jordan kennedy, and that seems to strike something in him, because the next time there's a choice to be made, he makes it. when the time comes for them to save or doom another victim in a domain, martin decides that if the inspector would like being a torturer, then they should leave him, and that is exactly the bit of development that lets him into his domain. the main point of mag 186 is letting martin get used to the idea that his avoiding decisions is a problem and something that he can't keep up.

MARTIN: I don’t know, all right? I don’t know.

ALSO MARTIN: And that’s okay for now, but I just want us to have thought about this stuff properly before it comes up. Because even if that’s not it, chances are it’ll be something else you don’t want to do, and we need to make a proper choice. We can’t just react out of shame or fear or whatever.

MARTIN: What, like with Peter and Elias?

ALSO MARTIN: Yes.

MARTIN: That was a proper choice?! I chose wrong!

ALSO MARTIN: But you made a decision. Your own decision. Regardless of the outcome.

it's a big turning point for him in a lot of ways, this is also the first time he actually considers the idea that he might have to kill jon, but it also sets him up to close this last part of his arc. in the final stretch of episodes, he makes three big choices:

he follows annabelle when she turns up and says she has a way to turn the world back.

he agrees with melanie, georgie, and basira over jon and decides to go with the plan of passing on the fears.

he believes in that decision enough that he predicts and plans around jon's lying and sends the others to light the gas main early.

all of which contribute to sealing the events of the finale. thank you for coming to my ted talk.

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For the first day of disability pride month I challenge you to treat people with bladder/bowl/other digestive tract problems like normal people. Not gross. Not a joke. Normal.

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fuckin oath mate the bin chickens got into me esky