#and i think that fundamentally requires size

[nonstandardrepertoire]

i am listening to a new arrangement of The Rite of Spring for wind band and it's hard b/c on the one hand i'm not sure i love this arrangement but on the other i also really don't like the interpretation, and it's a little hard for me to figure out whether i would think the arrangement better if it were conducted more to my taste

#mostly i think it wouldn't because the band is too small #i actually really do think that part of the ~sound~ of TRoS is the sheer *size* of the orchestra #two contrabassoons babey!!! #and that's just! woven into it i think in a way that makes it part of the piece #which is not to say a chamber arrangement can't be successful! #there are some BANGER reductions out there #but if that's what you're doing you actually have to *do* it #it's gotta be a *choice* #this arrangement feels like it wants to be “the original just rewritten for wind band” #and i think that fundamentally requires size #there is only one basoon!!!! #how can you look at this piece and think that is enough bassoon???? #incomprehensible #anyway #i do actually think the Rite is one of those pieces that is a wind band piece avant la lettre #and we should just take and make ours #even if the ending is bad and doesn't work #it's fine it was 1913 Stravinskii only sort of knew what he was doing #and endings are really hard #especially in a piece like this #The Rite of Spring #BOPS JAMS AND BANGERS #attn #sigmastolen

[beautifulpersonpeach]

HYBE stocks are down so that means investors didn't believe HYBE's payola mediaplay of Jimin renewing his contracts. ONLY RM SIGNED HIS CONTRACT. It's shameful how you ot7s try to force people to doubt Jimin. Forcing people to think staying with the company after all the sabotages is good for him are we in upside down land? Well no and the stocks show it. Armys swallowed the purple koolaid but the investors live in the real world.

***

Please stop sending me asks like this.

Your ask is a very good example of something my friends and I were just talking about. This is the thread (linked here) that prompted our conversation.

Please read it.

HYBE is down ~5% in the hours following the contract renewal news.

Anon, I don't know how old you are or if you have your own bank account, but nobody who knows what they're doing looks at stock movements in isolation. It's a relative metric, by definition. And here's a few things that have happened in the last 48 hours that explain what stocks moved relative to:

The Market - All major Korean stock indices are down on the mixed resolution by the US Fed this week. It's a trend consistent with market movements in every country that does significant trade with the US and/or denominates trade in USD.

The Index - The index for entertainment companies (ex gaming) on the KRX is down ~3.5% over the same period.

The Peers - HYBE's closest peers for our purposes, i.e. JYP, SME, YG, Kakao, etc, are down on average ~6.5%. YG is the outlier here down ~13%. Excluding YG, the average return over the same period is HYBE's peers being down ~4.5%.

At market open following HYBE's contract renewal news there was a massive options call with a volume of about 8K at depressed prices relative to yesterday's closing. By its characteristics it's likely an event-triggered options call made for profit-taking. This is normal for retail and institutional investors who trade in liquid names. Excluding the options volume, HYBE's actual stock performance over the same period, is that they're down ~2.5%.

Meaning, HYBE actually outperformed their peers and the index (ex gaming) following the contract renewal news. The total entertainment index (including gaming) was only down ~1.9%, and so HYBE underperformed that index when you include gaming companies. But that's not a peer group that's usually considered for k-pop companies anyway.

So the stock movements you're referring to, are in effect showing the opposite of what you think.

*

This might be hard to believe, but I'm actually very neutral on HYBE. I have my own opinions about how they run their business, how the sub-labels are managed, etc. But when I see things I don't like, I don't go looking for any sliver of disjointed information to uphold my previously held belief. It's a sign that you're a living, breathing, thinking being, when the introduction of new information challenges a perception you have, you're able to meaningfully deduce the implications, and arrive at a more informed conclusion.

The new piece of information we received in the last 24 hours, is that HYBE's board has approved the resolution to renew BTS's exclusive contracts. Given the size of the payout to BTS, this is a customary requirement to finalize the renewals process. For the nature of company disclosures like this, there's the expectation of a time lag between when a deal is announced and when it closes, but the fundamentals of the deal do not change. The time lag is typically to hash out technicalities and to allow for other considerations (which we know in this case involves limitations due to 2seok's military service), but the fundamentals of the announcement do not change else HYBE will be charged for misrepresentation in their disclosures and for market manipulation at the Board level.

Basically, if HYBE was not at least 100% sure these renewals would be completed, that press release would literally be corporate suicide.

The quality of conversations here would be so much higher, whether in akgae or ARMY circles, if people actually knew what they were talking about.

Please don't spam asks like this in my inbox again. Take those ramblings to a blog that can tolerate it. I have extremely little patience for akgaes in general.

#Nearly every time I see k-pop stans talk about 'stocks' or stock movements I feel a migraine start to develop in my left temple.

[communistkenobi]

Something I’ve grappled with a lot is a dissatisfaction with the popular use of the word “ignorant” - it is meant to describe not merely an absence of knowledge in a person’s head, but an absence of belief itself. “they don’t know any better” “they’re just ignorant on the topic” and other similar sentiments, most commonly used to apologise for a bigoted statement or impolite comment, is a defense that is based on the concept of epistemic innocence, the argument that bigotry itself arises not from active beliefs about the world but rather a simple absence of knowledge. this has the effect of perpetually excusing bigotry, and when systemised, means that bigots don’t actually exist, only masses of the uninformed, the epistemically unconverted.

and over the years I have developed a better understanding of why this view of bigotry is wrong, but I think Said has a particularly enlightening perspective on it in Orientalism. He spends a lot of time talking about how Orientalism is a knowledge framework, a way of not just viewing the East but of understanding the West as well. And this is a constraining framework, one that leads you to particular conclusions (while excluding others) because the foundation of the “East-West” distinction, of sorting all of human life and history into this binary, is brutally limiting. And in particular what he says on ignorance here is extremely productive for this conversation:

[…] it is finally Western ignorance [of Islam] which becomes more refined and complex, not some body of positive Western knowledge which increases in size and accuracy. For fictions have their own logic and their own dialectic of growth or decline.

(Chapter 1, p. 62)

And similarly throughout this chapter he talks about how the Orient does not exist as such but rather is a construction of the West - “it is Europe that articulates the Orient” and so on. And this is not a mutually-agreed upon articulation: “[the] imaginative geography of the “our land - barbarian land” variety does not require that the barbarians acknowledge the distinction.”

And so to return to the topic of ignorance, I think it is much more productive to view ignorance as a system of beliefs all its own. Or perhaps, when describing bigotry, “ignorance” is a fundamentally incorrect diagnosis for what is happening - bigotries are an epistemic model for viewing the world, they contain systems of information and knowledge. transphobia and racism and misogyny are not products of ignorance but rather fictions of cis-heteronormativity, white supremacy, and patriarchy, respectively (all of which are not mutually exclusive and overlap heavily). These are ways of viewing and knowing the world. Now these systems are not empirical; they do not stand up to even basic scrutiny, and so me calling them epistemic frameworks is not to legitimise their beliefs but rather a desire to not let them off the hook. A person who says something sexist or racist is advancing a particularly type of understanding of the world, whether they “know” they’re doing it or not. It may be unintentional, and an intellectually honest person, when corrected, will admit fault and refrain from repeating this bigotry again, but those systems of bigotry do not themselves arise from the ether of pure ignorance. They have definite and mappable origins, and the beliefs they contain cannot be described as an absence of knowledge about the world. The bigot does know! They just don’t like what they see

#orientalism #book club

[alexissara]

Sonic Fighting Game Dream Roster!

Me and My Metamore messed around to make a sonic fighting game roster and I wanted to share kinda like the roster and the thought behind it and stuff for fun since this was a silly little fun thing. Our limitations where only including canon sonic characters in the main roster, the roster was going to be 24 characters because that was the base Dragon Ball Fighters Z roster size at launch, we were assuming the game would be an another Arcsystem Works Tag Fighter. I elected not to go for an even gender ratio like I normally would since we were aiming for a realistic roster but obviously when between viable options I favored a woman. 10/24 of the base roster are women so pretty close to half and like do Mecha Sonic, Chaos or Omega even really have genders? This game would also be one that focused on a more modern control style given Sonic is intended for children but also that modern controls are becoming simply the norm.

The team play is important for this game since sonic is not really a fights alone guy. Since Sonic 2 Sonic has been a serious about working together to overcome evil and it's been that way since with Sonic 3 adding another playable friend, Knuckles Chaotics having a whole squad, leading to the eventual adventure games and that eras bigger rosters. Like Skullgirls you could pick between having 1, 2 or 3 people in your team and have the characters enhanced on the smaller team number but lose access to the full sweet of abilities being teamed up gives you.

It's one thing to make a roster but another thing to try and think about how the characters would play. I have minor concepts on many of the playable characters, one requirement we had for putting someone on the not DLC part of the roster was having an idea of how they played.

Sonic obviously establishes the Foundational parts of the game being a rush down character to stay true to the archtype but one with a bit more resilience, he'd have just a tiny bit of everything to teach people while staying true to the speed focus. Blaze gets a mild zoning game with fire balls but is more aggressive being more of a combo focused character with the ability to further her combo potential with her blazing blade super similar to Juri in Street Fighter. Surge would be a character who was able to damage herself to increase damage to others, reckless in her desire to prove her strength and get out of people's shadows. Metal Sonic would play like sonic with a few different moves and a tankier set up but lower combo potential. Shadow would have the most advance moveset of the rushdown characters. having tricky moves that result in high pay offs but require solid execution.

The Balanced characters present most of the games features in the movesets. Honey the Cat being from Sonic Fighters makes her the perfect character to be the most basic fighting game character having basically just Ryu's moveset with no frills but some additional girly flare to give her some personality. Trip is a transformation character like Hellsing from Blaze blue with her dragon mode providing her a more aggressive style but a bigger hit box and body while still working off the more fundamental gameplay. Tails would have a bit of it all but with a bit of a stronger zoning game as a charge character. Emerald being from Sonic's second fighting game and copying movesets would be like Seth from Street Fighter 5 and other similar characters giving them a diverse moveset using moves from other characters.

Amy Rose would be a perfect midrange character wanting to not be too close or too far, her hammer being the distance away she wants to be. Tangle would have some command grabs she could preform further away and in general she wants to be fighting with just a bit more room than the average fighter. The deadly six are summon type character who work at any range but average out to about wanting the same distance as Amy and Tangle. Each of the six bring different abilities to the table similar to Captain Ginyu in DBFZ.

Chaos is a tricky grappler with a lot of strange movement tools. Big the Cat is our big time joke character where he is just trying to find froggy in battle and your just in his way accidently getting boddied by his long distance fishing hook grabs and friendly hugs as Froggy is set up on opponents allowing Big to hit with bigger damage. Omega is a more classic big body, get the fuck out my way or I'll kill you zoner with a weak projectile it can use to discourage running away from him.

Rouge is our iconic trap setter allowing her to steal wins from opponents who aren't ready to deal with the puzzle game she throws before them which includes inflicting some debuffs that remove options from your opponents for a particular amount of time like tagging out. Starline has his warp topaz for movement allowing him a more zoner focused gameplay style with a command grab that is styled after his hypnosis and otherwise his inventions being little traps on the field to control where the foe is and their approach. Nights and Cosmo would be characters more focused on the assist role creating items that their team mates can use with buffs. Nights would have a higher risk reward where the opponent could also use them where Cosmos would be locked to benefiting the player. Finally Eggman is tanky with all the traps and annoyances of a zoner. He can't do big damage but he is hard to take down and there is probably a boss version of him that is even more annoying.

Fang/Knack had the name sniper, their an archetypical zoner. Whisper's whispeon allows her to customize her shots by switching which whisp she has loaded into the gun, this allows her a diverse arrow of zoning options allowing her to always keep her opponent guessing on what is the best way to approach her. It's no use trying to beat Silver when he can yet you away to keep his ideal distance having a weak command grab that allows him to toss his foe full screen and keep up the aggressive physic assault.

Cream is our Puppet character with a special twist on being a puppet character with a puppet that evolves over time from Cream to Cream + Cheese to Gemerald building a meter to have a stronger puppet to use but stage 2 having some reasons to use it over stage 3. That can be paired with one last appearance in her ultimate attack allowing her mother Vanilla to get mad at the foe for attacking her daughter and finish off the opponent in a motherly rage. Knuckles would function like most boxing characters only having punches and being a bit of a bully in battle who is hard to handle but his special ability to glide would allow her far more air mobility then most other characters in the game. Espio would be a classic ninja character with all that entails having lots of moving and plenty of tricks to serve. Jet wouldn't be fighting alone coming in swinging with his crew able to dive in from the air like a hawk and take opponents into large air combos where on the ground he is pretty lacking.

While this is typically the type of thing reserved for Youtube videos but I felt like idk writing out this kind of thing and if you enjoyed it please let me know. I had a blast doing it and I would love to make more dream rosters with my lesbian edge where I am gonna favor women. I think these are just fun ways to nerd out about a series I enjoy and I'd love to go even more in depth I stopped myself from being extra indulgent on this one but I'd have loved to go into how I imagine a single player mode would work, talk more about universal mechanics and everything else.

All I want is some feedback if you enjoyed it but if you wanted to I am always happy to get support on making my own original queer art over on Patreon and Ko-fi which includes my current ambition to make an SRPG along with my for sure going to happen TTRPG projects.

#Sonic #sonic the hedgehog #idw sonic #sonic the fighters #Sonic The Fighters 2 #Sonic Fighting Game #Dream Roster #surge the tenrec #whisper the wolf #tangle the lemur #knuckles the echidna #tails miles prower #amy rose #honey the cat #emerlad #emerl the gizoid

[alternianstuff]

Grubs! A Kind of Extended Talk

If you are here reading this, chances are you're either a curious extraterrestiral that somehow got hold of this blog's url (greetings!) or you are one of the lucky few who survived the hardships of the first stages of grubhood and somewhat safely matured to trollhood. An applause to you. 👏

Statistically speaking, only a measly 15% of a batch of grubs from a Mother Grub make it to trollhood. The rest either are stillborns, get eaten, get hunted down, or die of natural causes like illnesses or injuries. No matter your caste, you are special.

A curiosity, there is a 2% chance that a single grub egg might have twins. However, the two do not particulary tend to stick together, but they will recognize each other thru scent, both in their larval stage and adult stage.

There is also the typical rivalry that comes with such an occurrence and they might actually try fighting each other, so you might not even know you had a twin in the first place.

Anyway, what happens once the little guy pops out the slimy ball of mucus? Well, at that stage they are VERY small, around the size of your palm. Their eyesight is miserable, and they can barely emit noise. That's when they are allowed a period of stasis in the caves to absorb their egg's slimy nutrients, and grow a little.

Once their eyesight forms a little to the point they can distinguish color and depth, rougly 1.1 feet long, and their horns are no longer little nubs but somewhat a recognizable shape, that's when they're let out on their own.

If you're wondering, at this stage it's virtually impossible to tell a grub's gender (why would you assign it one anyway in the first place?).

Out there they have to survive on their own until they find a Lusus to bond with, unless they meet a horrible demise. Obstacles include the scorching sunlight, Lusii that see them as food rather than kin, and also poachers. Despite their size and apparent helplessness, they do have some tricks up their sleeve.

An example is Rustbloods and Goldbloods just now developing their telekinetic or psiionic powers, which actually makes them slightly more dangerous than a pupated troll, since they cannot control them.

People tend to avoid Cerulean grubs completely (or try to snag them for a ton of cash), because they tend to fire random mind control at their attacker when threatened. It does not last as much as a pupated troll, and feels more like a pounding migraine, but it is very annoying.

Then there's higher castes like indigos and purples, which have abnormal strength. A grub's bite is already nasty by itself as they have some sharp teeth, but when indigos and purples bite, they lock their jaws and don't let go until they're satisfied. And sometimes, they can dig right past your muscle tissue.

You'd think seadweller grubs are an easy catch since they're in confined areas like lakes and rivers and the sea, but those tend to have a strong scent that gets them a Lusus fast (highblood privileges I guess). And those Lusii tend to be very nasty. So, do not try.

Now that we got a look at the castes, what's next?

The Pupation process!

The journey towards trollhood requires some fundamental steps. The grub must be at least one sweep old, have a Lusus it bonded with, and feel safe in an enclosed area like a cave, tree trunk, etc.

Eventually, a grub will start to secrete a foam-like substance from their mouth that is greenish in color: That is them making the cocoon's silk and mixing it with their saliva.

They will soon find a comfortable spot to cocoon up, and each grub was observed to have their own style based on caste and personality: Some hang by a thread, others literally 'glued' themselves on a surface, some lazily sat on the floor like a sack of tubers, And plenty more creative ways.

The silk, when hardened, is surprisingly sturdy. Some trolls keep it as a memento after they pupate, or reuse it for clothing.

It takes a troll half a sweep to pupate, and what goes inside sounds gruesome, but fascinating: The grub's body 'digests' itself sort of, and some specialized cells start to rearrange that slurry around into the new body.

After they hatch, they will have one last reminder of when they used to be trolls: Troll scars. They're present on the sides of one's body, a little more below the armpits. Apparently the middle legs of the larval stage simply fall off and get used in the pupating process.

Everyone remembers the silly things we did when we first got out that slimy mess. Personally, I fell right on my face, rolled on my back, then went to get some water from my sink, which strangely didn't seem so scarily big and tall anymore. My lusus took a whole day to lick me clean. - SL

#troll #fictional #fanon #homestuck #hiveswap #grub #grubs #anatomy #tw mild gore #alternia #bug #bugs #cocoon #pupation #headcanon

[gremlins-hotel]

I'm not going to make this long because I am tired and am being consumed by the thoughts BUT

If nations were to keep up the insane amount of repair their body has to go through every day, ie if they have normal bones and tendons and shit they just repair real fuckin fast, or even if they aren't they would thereby weigh more if they had a different bone density and structure and need to eat more calories, so like what would the average caloric intake of a nation be and how much would that vary from let's say an Ivan to an Alfred to an Arthur?

Bc I font think 2500kc are cutting it

i gotta admit heam i unfortunately don't know as much about this stuff as i probably should/could. but you're absolutely right in saying that organisms of their size and with their ability to repair would not be able to sustain such abilities on 2500. and like any organism they would also have differing metabolisms and lifestyles. like in the modern day, one arthur does not require the same intake as one alfred, given the fact that one is likely way more physically active than the other. ivan (for me) probably requires a higher intake based on size alone, but again, is not as active as some others.

but yeah like if they're structured fundamentally different, they're going to be pushing at least like...2800? i'm not exactly sure of the measurement/scaling on such things. 3000 seemed like a high number. but i mean if you're occasionally having to regenerate a whole limb or something, you're going to need something to keep you going during that process.

at that point i would literally just give up and say magic sdkjhfd can't have weird eldritch nation abominations without a healthy dose of the arcane i think

#callsign gremlin checking in #mechanics of nations // eldritch abominations #i feel so bad that i couldn't give a satisfactory answer on this #my brain is too fried and my knowledge base too small #but i would still be very open and very glad for further conversation on such things

[balioc]

LARP Sizes

When you talk about the "size" of a theater LARP, you might mean a lot of different things -- how long it lasts, how long the game materials are, how much physical space you need to run it, etc. (These things heavily correlate with one another, which helps to confuse the issue.) But the most important version of "size," of course, is player count. A LARP is nothing more or less than a bunch of characters doing stuff, and the experience is shaped heavily the number of characters who are contributing to it.

(It's like party size for a TTRPG, only more so, because you don't have an omnipresent GM who can keep everything in hand for everyone.)

If you're thinking of writing a theater LARP, I would strongly encourage you to think about your game structurally when you're deciding how big it's going to be. Don't just decide that you want to write a large game because you're feeling ambitious, or that you want to write a small game because you're feeling nervous; don't just include every character concept that you have in your head. Choose a size that works well with the kind of experience you want to generate, and with the mechanics you have in mind.

Every additional character changes things, of course, but (in my opinion) these are the size ranges that really matter:

0-1 PCs: This is not a LARP, in the conventional sense. This is a joke or an art project.

2-3 PCs: The PCs cannot escape each other at all. The game will necessarily consist of a single extended conversation, and you should think of it in those terms. It's the writer's job to make sure that conversation is interesting and sustainable.

[The general rule is that character sheets and other documents tend to get longer as the game gets bigger, because there's more material that has to be incorporated...but games with 2-3 players often have really long sheets, just for the sake of making sure that everyone has enough to talk about, and that every PC has some very substantive thoughts about every other PC.]

4-7 PCs: At this size, the game will likely default to being a single round-table conversation, and fundamentally everyone is going to have to deal with everyone else -- but the PCs will be able to split off for private chats (without leaving anyone twiddling his thumbs). Plotting and politics begin to become possible, although you shouldn't expect that anyone will really be able to hide anything from anyone else. This is an excellent size for games that are basically about emotional tangles.

8-15 PCs: By my standards, a "medium-sized" LARP. There's enough going on that you can thread multiple plots into your narrative, although you should expect that everyone will likely be interacting with everyone else, at least to some extent. It is totally plausible that a PC will be able to maintain a more-or-less complete understanding of the total game situation, although you can't count on anyone in particular doing so. Complexity and factional conflict are viable here. This is the sweet spot for intricate integrated mechanical structures where you want every PC to be interfacing with the same system. It is not an accident that two of the most successful game-structure templates that have come out of my LARPing tradition -- the Dance and the Dawn template and the Be Not Afraid template -- require exactly 13 PCs.

16-30 PCs: In a LARP of this size, a PC can probably have more-than-zero clue about every other character in the game, and about all the overarchingly important plots...but no one is going to be able to keep up with everything that's going on, not even remotely. Chaos and fog-of-war start dominating the play experience here. Games this big usually require multiple interconnected narratives, and there are usually whole plots that just don't have much to do with each other. It becomes important for the writer to ensure that any given PC has enough different things going on that his game won't get randomly destroyed by the tides of happenstance.

31+ PCs: Any given PC will be totally clueless about whole swathes of the game; certain characters, and certain plots, will completely fail to intersect at all. Either the LARP is secretly a bunch of loosely-connected game modules, or it needs to be robust enough to survive all manner of butterfly-effect-generated madness as unusual outcomes and choices ripple outwards. (I don't actually have any experience writing LARPs at this scale. My biggest game is for 30 PCs, and it was definitely straining against the kind of structural cohesion that I tried to impose on it.)

#larp

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

I've talked a lot about how I can't wait until the John Robins level of competitiveness and intensity gets featured on Taskmaster, but I'm not sure I've made it clear enough yet that I am also excited just to see the skillset. Quick and lateral thinking is probably one of the most significant fundamental skills that comes up across Taskmaster tasks, and he's really good at it, and when I say I think he'll win I don't mean just because he's my favourite, I mean he's my favourite because I love his comedy and will enjoy watching his playing style, and as a separate issue from that, I think he's going to win due to being better than everyone else at the tasks.

Just heard a Made-Up Game that I believe illustrates this. Relevant to know that it's a running discussion that Elis James is really really into football and John Robins prefers other sports, follow football only casually. Which has come up before in these games, the time when John Robins started a feature of reading out excerpts from his old diary (which are amazingly horrifying, that's a whole other post), got so upset about doing so that he immediately contracted a migraine, probably. In that he started complaining of a bad headache, made them stop to turn off all the lights in the studio, asked if it's normal to "feel like I'm not here", asked if anyone else saw that flashing light, to which the poor interm producer said "No" while sounding fairly afraid that the radio station was going to fall apart on his watch because this happened while the normal producer was on holiday, and Elis started sounding genuinely panicked that he'd have to broadcast by himself. And in the middle of this, they played a Made-Up Game that based on guessing things about football stadiums, which is Elis James' special source of interest and John's casual one at absolute best, and John still won the game 3-0. Incredible showing. I was so impressed. The cut to a track and came back and he was able to keep broadcasting. It was fine.

Anyway, a few episodes later they did another game that John won so easily that afterward, he offered to play another round but base this one on football players to significantly stack it in Elis' favour, and still took the round easily.

I mean, it definitely makes a difference that Elis James is very, very bad at quick thinking. Elis definitely makes John look quick. I somewhat recently listened to John's first few appearances on the Pappy's podcast, where he got into some back-and-forths with people who are not Elis James, and the difference was noticable, Elis definitely makes John look quick. But even on those Pappy's podcasts, John still sounded fairly quick (impressive, I think, considering that he was clearly very drunk in both of them), just not totally unchallenged as he is on home turf. Quick thinking and ability to accurately size up factors to make a good guess is such a transferable skill. Nick Mohammed has the wildly strong memory skills, and I'm hoping they'll give him a chance to show those off on Taskmaster, but I have to hope that because not every task requires it. While John Robins has skills that I don't have to hope come up in the season, because those are fundamental to almost every Taskmaster task.

So I would like to make it clear that I will not just be enjoying the comedic stylings of John Robins on Taskmaster, I will be backing him like he's my favourite sports team as I believe in his abilities, and will get upset if he doesn't win. Not just if he doesn't win the whole thing, I'll get upset every time he doesn't win a task. Everyone get ready for that. I'm nailing my colours to the mast on that right now. It's going to be an exciting ten weeks.

[hwasang]

Love those renchanting designs, they look great in your style! You guys have any fun headcanons about them you wanna share? I'd love to hear em!

thank you!! what i love about this ask is that you know my gf and i feed each others brainrot over this. anyways, we got a few

i think martyn is fox coded but lexi says he is more cat coded but also will go with fox coded.

i need to do a fucking line up but there are so many people thats so many people to draw TAT but really martyn isnt Small, hes 5'8", its just that ren is Massive

ren loves to bite, which was already drawn out by this person, but we also believe that martyn is Into it, and also has gotten to a point where, unless its the neck, he doesnt really gaf.

we both like to make them gnc but martyn is more obviously so. ren paints his claws, and likes to wear long skirts if the weather calls for it while martyn is a lot more creative with his expression

i consider ren more of a shifter than a werewolf, but i still like calling him a werewolf. mandatory moon shifts are still fun. hes also horse sized doggo. he likes to flop onto people he loves, in or out of wolf form. again martyn has gotten used to this.

i usually don't use the name dogwarts for a couple of reasons, one of them being how i headcanon the red army as a pack, like a proper one and everything. AND OH BOY THAT REQUIRES ITS OWN POST HONESTLY

I AM UNWELL ABOUT RED ARMY

i have many many thoughts abt how ren, martyn, skizz, etho and bigb interact with each other, how its changed their relationships fundamentally with those closest in their lives. ren had false and doc, but now hes got four others who he needs to have close at all times because he wants to take care of them and thats impossible bcus three of them are not on hermitcraft server, theyre not /home/ with him, and it drives him a bit batty and makes it easy to take advantage of him. doc, etho and false can only do so much.

and of course ren and martyn are proper soulmates, not whatever was going on in double life. no wonder bigb thought ren was cheating on him

OH AND I HAVE A WHOLE LIST OF THOUGHTS ABOUT MARTYN AND THE EVO KIDS

#gay blockpeople #a question #well that was longer than it should have been #sorry #mcyt fanart #rendog tag #inthelittlewood tag #not putting these in the main tags so as to not clutter them #doodles #anopse

[breadcrimesprevention]

earlier this week someone I know got in serious trouble with our university for removing one of those shockingly vile "kidnapped from israel" signs/posters/fliers from a university bulletin board. some asshole student recorded him and reported him to campus police and now he has a hearing with the university's dei board. this could end his career.

there is a better and safer way to combat the recent surge in zionist propaganda on college campuses. most universities have what they call a "posting policy" or "signage policy" which dictates what is allowed to be displayed on campus. I've looked at five of these policies from different institutions. it is incredibly easy to find a common set of provisions that are sufficient to argue for removal of israeli/zionist propaganda.

this is particularly useful for removing those KFI signs. it is not a guarantee that your university has these provisions in their official signage policy, but odds are high that you'll be able to find something similar with a bit of digging. the common denominators of these provisions are:

signs must have clear authorship/sponsorship. (there is no such credit on the KFI fliers)

signs must promote an event or student organization on campus and usually list a date and time. (a picture of some settler's face with a "missing" label is not an invitation to an event)

there are always going to be exceptions in the language. the university of chicago has a clause stating that anonymous postings are permitted in one of their halls, but this is the only exception i could find in my limited sample size and it feels like an exception with an exception. like even fucking harvard has these two requirements in their student code: all posters must have clear authorship and a direct nexus to a real life event.

i'm happy to report that at my state university in a red state in the southern usa, university admin acted very quickly to remove the propaganda once i pushed for their involvement by emailing their pr department. do keep in mind that the person you're emailing may or may not agree with your cause on a fundamental level, but they will more than likely want to protect the university from violating their own policies. some tips on what to say:

do not talk about zionism. you want to make this person feel like they are protecting the university from stoking division/inciting violence/whatever you think your university's pr team cares about. refer to the zionist colonizers/settlers as "individuals," refer to operation al-aqsa flood as "the events of october 7," and refer to this genocide as a "sensitive geopolitical issue" if you must. neuter your language as much as possible to sound objective. i know that this can be very difficult to do.

appeal to the University, not the university. by this i mean to literally capitalize the word university in your email or otherwise appeal to some sense of authority beyond yourself. you kind of want the pr person reading this to feel that they must act as an agent for their employer (the University) to protect it. i said that i "trust that the University will act with integrity in addressing this matter, as it does for other violations of its signage policies."

kind of a weird one, but if you're jewish and feel safe mentioning that, do it. i am jewish. nowhere in my email did i represent myself as pro- or anti-zionist, but many goyim are casually antisemitic enough that they will assume every jewish person is an unwavering zionist and take their opinion on israel more seriously and sympathetically. there are too many bullshit nyt thinkpieces going around about how "jews are feeling unsafe on college campuses" and "jews are being vilified on campus" to not take advantage of these biases, especially in order to make muslim students feel safer here when they are in fact the ones receiving disproportionately more threats.

calling for a free palestine from the river to the sea is a mitzvah and is one of the most important parts of tikkun olam right now.

#israel #palestine #antizionism #jewish voice for peace #students for justice in palestine #free palestine #free gaza #kidnapped from israel

[tetedurfarm]

That’s ok, in that case what would you suggest? Mini rexes?

Also yeah that list would be awesome if it isn’t a bother lol

mini rex are great but depending on where you are they're VERY competitive. i know a lot of MR people in washington and unless you have money to drop on some real good rabbits i wouldn't start there either haha.

in general, these things are gonna be pretty regional depending on how competitive you want to get and how much disposable income you have to throw at rabbits. going to shows can get you a better idea of what's around and what's popular.

in general though i like to point people to breeds like californian, new zealand, and florida white when they're starting. boring? yes. but they are easy to find, usually very typey, and a barn full of rabbits that all look alike will really teach you how to look at the body rather than the colours, which is probably THE most important fundamental skill.

fur breeds like satin/mini satin, rex/mini rex, silver fox, etc. can be very typey but the fur is an added difficulty that can be fun to some and absolutely brutal for others. people tend to love fur breeds (because who doesn't want to drown in rex fur) so they can be quite competitive, and often the act of breeding will ruin fur quality, especially in does (something to do with hormones and the fact that does pull fur for nests.) satins/mini satins also have the added bonus of having really horrible personalities.

Woolies, angora, and fuzzy lops require a LOT of grooming and that may be fun for some and really intimidating for others. If it's not done appropriately it can lead to matting and wool block so not really something you can slack on. also, most wool breeds don't have a lot of meat since all their nutritional resources go into fur production.

my favourite little guy with an added Thing to make it interesting though is dutch. they're a marked breed, which can be really frustrating, but they're also very easy to tell at birth if they're worth growing out. they're compact, generally very typey, and also make really great little meat bricks (which is nice for all those culls you'll be doing if you aren't doing it in the nest.) unfortunately in washington there is basically zero competition.

i am not very familiar with the upright/running breeds so i can't really comment on those, except that in general full-arch may not be beginner friendly due to their space requirements, high strung personalities, and the fact that most of them are marked breeds.

as i said before i also don't touch dwarf breeds in general but in my area holland lops are so popular that they'll often have a judge doing nothing BUT that breed at local shows. netherlands and lionheads are also really popular. i have no idea how difficult they are to show necessarily, i just know how many i see at any given local lol. i like papillons a lot but they're still a little difficult to find, and brittania petites are demons in physical form, but they are pretty typey and seem easy to find.

mandolin is another group i'm not super familiar with but from what i understand they are not hard to show just difficult to find. most of them are also pretty big and can have difficult housing requirements due to their size. big bunnies don't make as much meat, grow slower, and don't live as long so keep that in mind.

and of course i have not forgotten about the most perfect animal in the world: the himalayan. truly the ideal shape. the ideal size. the ideal "personality", if you can call it that. i think everyone needs a himalayan in their life. unfortunately though they don't have a lot of meat on them.

the other two cylindrical breeds, holicers and czech frosties, are having new/rare breed difficulties despite how pretty and meaty they are.

ultimately like...any breed is good. but if you have never bred rabbits and definitely haven't shown before, some are easier to get involved in than others. i started in mini lops and standard rex and i almost quit showing altogether because rex frustrated me so much lol. shifting to different breeds helped me realise the type of showing i enjoy doing (i am not particularly competitive though i enjoy having a little competition - but mostly the Projects are what i enjoy when it comes to rabbits) and the breeds that clicked with me. now, i ended up with two really awful ones, but i now have experience with spicy rabbits and have the knowledge and experience to know how to move forward with the project of hotots, which is very fun for me.

there aren't a lot of resources out there on how to get started and what you're looking for in showing rabbits unless you're in 4H, ARBA youth clubs, or are lucky enough to find a mentor. making it easy on yourself at first is the way to go (or at least have on easy and one harder breed.) that being said, i'm trying really hard to build some non-discord resources for people, especially adults, who are new to rabbits to help them. because genuinely, it's hard out there for us.

this was a real essay but clearly i love infodumping about rabbits and i have onions about showing as someone who started in my mid-20s.

anyway please get into rabbits

#long post / #questions

[cookinguptales]

I’m sorry, but it seems outrageous that you would contact a podcaster about accessibility at their show before contacting the venue and feel hurt when they redirected you to contact the venue. From their perspective, they’re probably doing a lot of shows in a lot of places, and they’re experts in podcasting and putting on shows, not on the accessibility of every venue they perform in. If the venue isn’t communicative or is inaccessible, it’s understandable that you’d be frustrated with the podcasters for not considering that before booking the venue, but anyone could’ve told you that contacting the podcasters first was the wrong order to do things.

Yeah, I figured I'd start getting these as soon as the post hit over a thousand notes.

Welp. *rolls up sleeves*

I think it must be very nice to just be an expert in your chosen field. To not have to worry about whether you can physically walk into a building whenever you go some place, especially for work. It's not something that I've ever experienced, but I think it sounds nice.

Personally, when I book venues for my job, that's a question I have to ask, both because I am disabled and because my boss is. And so are many of her fans.

I wonder how you think disabled podcasters book shows, or disabled comedians, or disabled musicians. Do you think that it's impossible to ask about basic accessibility options before you book venues? Do you think that might be an important question to ask if, in your podcast, you explicitly say you support disabled people and treasure your diverse fans? Do you think that might be a question that might be asked along with things like stage size, auditorium capacity, and sound system? Because, like all those things, it is a basic concern when it comes to putting on a show?

I am not upset that the venue is accessible or not. Hell, I still don't know if the venue is accessible or not, though I suspect it probably is. I am upset that they did not ask. I am upset that when they were asked a question that might confront this privilege, they continued not to care about the answer to this question.

I never expect able-bodied people to be experts. I expect them to ask questions and consider the answers before they call themselves friends or allies. I am tired of people saying they shouldn't have to be experts in accessibility to put in any effort whatsoever. And frankly, I resent the idea that the onus should always be on disabled people to find a way to exist in public.

The entire point of my post is that they should know what kind of place they're performing in. And, if they realize that they do not know the answer of a fundamental question that would make their show accessible to all fans, they should damn well ask. Shifting that responsibility onto others shows me that it never mattered much to them in the first place.

You're acting like I've never planned an event or spoken to a venue in my life, and frankly, that's condescending. This whole ask is condescending. I'm tired and my blood pressure is low and I'm cranky and I'm tired of people like you showing up in my inbox to treat me like I'm a goddamn idiot for expecting able-bodied professionals to give a shit about accessibility before I ask them to.

You know, I don't usually make a big fuss about the ADA and the legal requirements that small businesses have to adhere to when offering services. This is not because I want to be a nice, accommodating cripple. It's because I'm fucking exhausted. If I made a fuss every time I encountered an ADA violation, I'd be comatose. There are like three of them on my fucking block.

But if you're a business, and make no mistake, we are now speaking about business matters, you had damn well better know if you're even in violation. Christ. These aren't infants, they're grown-ass adults taking money for their work and advertising themselves as inclusive.

I know exactly what their perspective was. I know it because I have encountered it every day of my goddamn life. I know that it wasn't a concern they thought was important while booking because I'm sure it's not a thing they regularly have to think about. I know that they think it's the venue's job or the customer's job or the government's job to make sure that places are accessible. I know they thought it should not have to be one of their many logistical concerns while planning this tour. They just wanted to be podcasters.

I would like to be just a lot of things.

Well, what I'm telling you is that's a privilege and it's apparently an unexamined one. Someone doesn't have to be kicking my cane out from under me to be engaging in (and benefiting from) systems that oppress me. And while I don't expect people to know these things immediately, it says an awful lot about a person what they say when they're confronted with them.

And they said "this isn't our concern."

So uh. Their show isn't my concern. And frankly, your pearl-clutching isn't, either. I'm tired of exhausting myself so able-bodied people don't have to, and I'm tired of treating your perspective like it doesn't piss me off.

Get fucked, anon. I have friends to attend to.

#replies #I usually try so hard to be nice when I talk about these things but goddamn #if you're not going to enter into this conversation with good faith neither will I #you anonymous fucking coward #cw: #ableism #disability

[justatalkingface]

Even more so than the other female characters, I argue Momo has been screwed over massively both in-universe and out; her public image is in tatters after being publicly humiliated during the Sports Festival, meaning the hero industry is unlikely to take her seriously, and from then on she's constantly being denied any poorrtunity to be relevant or even prove she's more than someone who can help the "true" heroes, in spite of being potentially the most OP character in the entire fucking setting.

I've actually written a fic that deconstructs the way she's treated by Horikoshi and the likely in-universe consequences of such.

Ah, Momo. You were meant for so much more than this.

So, the thing is with Momo and her reputation is you need to remember that she's not... unique in these problems. To be blunt, you can count on one hand the number of non-sexualized females of any importance, and it seems to be baked into the industry on a fundamental level, again considering how sexualized the heroines seem to be. So, in that context, Momo's outfit (sigh) isn't actually a problem, because the only reason she shows so much more skin that everyone else is because of her power which 'demands' it.

The thing is that Momo's costume has both Watsonian and Doyislist problems with it's design; on the Watsonian end, Mirio exists, as I've said before, and since his costume can be made to work with his power, there's no reason that Momo's costume can't work with her powers. And, while it's canon that she asked for that skin to be exposed, to work with her powers (which... I kind of look at judgingly but ultimately can buy), the people who made her costume, presumably, actually communicate with their customers and offer suggestions, like, 'what if we make this this color instead'? Or, maybe, and relevently, 'what if we make it so you don't have to be half naked and exposed to the elements to use your power'?

It honestly should be part of their jobs to not only make what these kids want, but to help them figure out what they want, and use their careers in making these kinds of costumes to think of something an inexperienced kid without industry knowledge wouldn't.

Or, to be even bolder, even if that was, like, a UA special, something that would have to happen in-house after being in school instead of random company or something... buttons exist. And zippers. And velcro. And, hell, magnets, if you want to be fancy with My Hero's high tech levels, and are used in her dictionary she carries around. In other words, even if Momo's powers require all this exposed skin to properly leverage it... can't they do something that opens and closes? So she can be battle ready, and then be able to walk around and not get sick from a brisk breeze; rocket science that isn't.

Meanwhile, the Doyalist problem is that Hori designed this. The requirements for the power exist because of him, her costume looks like that because he wants it to. Even if you're keeping to the idea of 'made from her body' to go off the idea that Quirks are biologic, it's so unnatural that it wouldn't stretch imagination that whatever she made just sprouted from her hands, and that things like the size to skin ratio are as irrelevant as Momo making a cannon that probably weighs more than she does without visibly losing weight.

There are dozens of ways, with minimal changes to her Quirk, to get past this problem. Hori chose none of them.

On the matter of Sports Festival humiliation... the cheerleading and Tokoyami. On the cheerleading... Yeah. While that was personally humiliating, in that she didn't want to do it, was tricked into doing it, and was unhappy about it, between MHA's entire... female end of the heroics in general, and the way they did it as a group, outsiders probably thought they just did that to encourage their classmates and so it was acceptable, instead of being punked on national television. So, from that perspective, that probably didn't damager her career, but only because MHA heroics standards on this thing is so low that no one thought much of it.

Which. Is not exactly a shining defense: 'Everything about this is terrible, therefore this one specific terrible thing vanished into all the other terrible things and so had no real consequences!' is not an argument that fills me with the warm fuzzies, but it is what it is.

Tokoyami though... I'm going to segway this into her power in general, because the thing is she should have been able to win that, easily.

Tokoyami: I use my incredibly light sensitive living shadow!

Momo: I use a road flare! Or a flashbang! Or a spot light! Or one those big flashlights that can cause actual damage to your eyes!

Tokoyami: Oh no, my one weakness! Bright light!

Momo: Haha! My big brain allowed me to see your weakness and pull out the proper tool to exploit it to my advantage!

After that, use a bo staff, her default weapon that she's trained in using, or something to drive him off the stage; GG easy.

The thing is with Momo's powers is... part of it is that, obviously, that Hori doesn't want her to be competent, or powerful, or a viable threat to anyone tougher than a nameless thug, the same way that every female not named Mirko is. But more that, more than the other female heroes, her power is just... criminally under used, and to some extent it's because it's that potentially broken.

I've mentioned it before, beyond anything else a tranq gun, some flashbangs, and more sleeping gas in a more easily handled container would be a massive game changer; a good ninety percent of the setting could be easily managed with those tools alone, and maybe her wearing a gas mask or some night vision goggles.

But if I'm remembering right, she uses a electric proof blanket to survive Kaminari's full out electric blast. Well, off that alone, she should also be able to make some sort of fire retardant material to tank fire, warm stuff, layers and actual heat generation for ice, and depending on the situation something super absorbent or a rebreather for water, and just like that the basic elements are covered.

Walls in the way? Good thing Momo has siege equipment/a cannon/high explosives/a battering ram!

Are you falling? Jet pack/pillows/pile of flubber, depending on how serious you're playing it and how high tech the objects she can make.

Speaking of, support gear exists, which can effectively give people superpowers while using them, including offense ones. Momo is a super genius who can memorize things super easily, with a belt carried dictionary filled with useful designs. Why... can't she just pull out 'Insert gear here' for any given situation?

Because it's too broken, too adaptable. Full Potential Momo is basiclly memetic Infinite Prep Time Batman; at virtually any given situation, with the technology she should be able to access, she should be able to counter whatever problem she's facing almost instantly, short of Izuku, SFO, AFO, and the few others with enough raw power to just overwhelm her adaptability. She's so broken that, if Hori allowed her any true successes, (more) people are going to start asking, 'What about Momo? Why can't she do X like she did last time?'

So, instead of dealing with that, the genius prodigy Momo is just stuck with an idiot ball for a head.

#ask #mha critical #bnha critical #hori's chronic hatred of women #please give her some clothes #momo is op #momo is basiclly batman

[autogyne-redacted]

@loving-n0t-heyting hope you don't mind a bit of a longpost. I was gonna reblog one of your posts but this became A Whole Thing and I just decided to let it be its own post.

I've been thinking since you posted about it a little while back, and I do think (as an abolitionist) that the classic sources like Are Prisons Obsolete do stop short of making the case that no form of incarceration ever makes sense in any circumstance.

I think they make compelling cases that prisons cause more harm than they prevent. And I think there's a ton we can say about the limitations of viewing some ppl as just inherently Bad/Dangerous (or of acting like the majority of ppl incarcerated are in any way exceptionally "dangerous").

But I have the impression you're probably on board with at least most of that, and that's different from actually making the argument you're asking for.

///

At the end of the day, there are and will continue to be situations people who have crossed lines and caused major harm and made clear that they would or likely would do so again if given the liberty to do so.

And I don't feel the need to shy away from talking about that just because it gets messy.

And so our options are:

-refuse to infringe on their liberty.

-kill them.

-or in some lesser way limit their liberty.

And while I wouldn't want to totally write off options 1 and 2, I think it would be foolish to hardline and refuse to consider options in category 3 as part of what ideal solutions might look like.

As for what that looks like, I think it varies a ton depending on what context we're talking about and what kind of individual / situation we're talking about.And I think fundamentally in any context I'd advocate for a more case by case approach, which unfortunately means my answer is still somewhat vague (tho if you want to propose specific hypotheticals or talk about specific historic court cases I'm open to that).

But my general principles are:

-try and find a solution that minimizes the risk of them cashing more major harm in the future while not infringing on the their liberty more than necessary.

-reject punishment for the sake of punishment, or for the gratification of the victim.

Prison is a one size fits all solution and a fairly comprehensive denial of someone's liberty and I would (thinking about solutions that could be implemented without changing more than the criminal justice system)* advocate asking lots of separate questions:

-can the person in question continue to live at their home? If no, why not?

-can they continue to work a (non-prison) job. Or hell, work a bit al remote job from inside a prison?

-can they attend specific events / otherwise go to specific places they want to?

-can they keep their possessions?

Etc.

Requiring that any reduction in freedom be actively justified.

A lot of the logics that justify prisons act as if some ppl are Inherently Dangerous and the only way to mitigate that is total separation between them and law abiding citizens because if they were allowed to walk thru a grocery store or go to a football game they'd manage to kill someone. And it's like ... that's 100% media super villain logic and not a real threat model.

Generally the capacity to cause major harm is dependent on specific things (having a weapon, having an established relationship, an institutional hierarchy, an isolated space, etc).

And none of this says that we could never decide that the best course is for someone to be confined to a specific location or otherwise be under close supervision long term. But I think there's a real paradigm break we can make from that being the default to something that has to be justified piece by piece, case by case.

//

Also, I'm gonna include this link as the only specific historic anarchist examples I know of:

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/augustin-souchy-with-the-peasants-of-aragon#toc7

Is it abolitionist? Is it trustworthy source? I think lots of ppl would say no to both, but it paints a specific kind of picture that seems like the result of ppl using similar principles to mine. And like, how do you handle a large group of fascist soldiers seems like one of the harder challenges you could pose to prison abolitionism (tho tbf my understanding is lots of them were drafted and actual ideological commitment wasn't super high)

*this is a weird thought experiment for me to do because my relationship to the prison system as it exists is so fundamentally one of antagonism and I see the kinds of cases where I would see ~ongoing control or supervision~ as justified as so limited, but they're not non existent and I hate seeing abolitionists in your threads just refuse this conversation so I'm trying.

#long post #prison abolition #ok bedtime now

[deusvervewrites]

In regards to the people that referred to JoJo or HxH as examples: I think the reason these fights work so well is the fact that,very often, they aren't really fights. They are puzzles!

When it comes to Shounen Power Systems there are, very generally, two types: There is the "One size fits all" system, in which all powers and abilities are based on the same magic/ki/soul/strength/etc... So it usually comes down to who is stronger. Thats you classic Dragon Ball Z nonsense, whoever yells the loudest/invokes the power of friendship & anime the most, will win.

The other system is what I like to call "Apples and Oranges". There might be some underlying connecting lore, but in practice, all powers are fundamentally different in a way that can't directly be compared. Obvious examples are the Stands from JoJo, but also things like the Devil Fruits from One Piece. In these settings, it is often not possible to "just" overpower your enemy, you also need to find their limits or weak-spots. The fight starts turning into a puzzle while the protagonists and the reader are trying to figure out what the opponents power is and how it works. Luffy was always physically stronger than Crocodile, but he first needed to figure out how to counter Crocodiles Sand-powers by using water to actually stand a chance.

And thats why I personally dislike the later arcs of MHA. Quirks are a perfect "Apples and Oranges"-system. All of them are so fundamentally different and have so many different use cases, that the puzzles write themselves. And Izukus analysis hobby/talent is perfect to figure out weaknesses and limits. Imagine, for a second, Uraraka as an hitherto unknown antagonist. At first she would seem to have some sort of super-strength or telekinesis power that is extremely strong and dangerous. Then you could slowly figure out that it actually is a gravity power, followed by the 5-finger activation requirement and the nausea-backlash, which, finally, would give you options to defeat her. And thats just her!

Now, you can obviously have hybrid systems/settings, One Piece is actually a good example here, some fights are puzzles, some are regular yell louder until you win with the power of friendship. It gives the series a nice balance, there is something for everyone, different characters can shine in different ways.

But it feels to me as if MHA slipped fully into "MOAR POWERRR!!!" in it's later arcs. We just crank up the power level of the antagonist and the protagonist and call it a day, no need for clever strategies and puzzles. Overhaul, Re-Destro and obviously Shigaraki have just extremely powerful Quirks with little to no weakness and generally are fought/taken out by a Friendship powered attack of the "I can't lose here!" variety. And that just feels like a waste of an amazing system to me.

This is one of the many reasons I hate All For One. Because he could have multiple Quirks to work through like this but instead he goes, "ah fuck learning Quirks, here are five strength boosters and a wind cannon. I have no other attacks. Fuck you."

#asks #meta

[beastygames]

So in short were Alex Mercer from prototype in a fantasy setting...... Cool. Anyway question 1, is biomass dependent on size or threat level of an enemy or both and can we still eat older corpses? Question 2, do traits like claws teeth and scales offset weak physical stats like strength and endurance and will higher physical stats add to it? Question 3, what exactly are the difference between traits and perks are traits active and perks passive? Question 4 do we eventually have the option to evolve into another more powerful creature for a larger amount of biomass or is it just partial evolution of our salamander traits into more powerful versions of itself?

Great questions. 1-I would say both. Biomass is the life energy of every living being, and bigger, stronger creatures would indeed require more biomass to sustain themselves. However, it's more nuanced than that. For instance, a small B-tier species could potentially provide a larger quantity of biomass than a huge C-tier species. So, it's not just about size; other factors come into play as well. I hope this makes sense. Also eating older dead creatures would net you lower biomass, the same way eating old stuff is less nutritional than eating newer fresher stuff. 2- Traits are akin to tools. Think of it this way: someone with a pointy stick would naturally be more dangerous than someone without one, even if they both have similar physical stats. Traits work on a similar logic. Except in this case, the traits are physical aspects of yourself. 3- While you can draw similarities between traits and perks, there's a fundamental difference between them. Traits are a result of natural evolution aided by the system. They're a part of the user's body, much like hands or legs. Perks, on the other hand, are not a physical aspect of the MC, and are boons bestowed upon the MC by the system to further assist them. These perks don't always require biomass to acquire, and can only be granted if the MC fulfills certain conditions. 4-Both options will be available for the player to choose: species-to-species evolution or enhancing the same species gradually. However, there's a bottleneck for the latter that can't be overcome unless the species evolves completely. It's akin to modifying and enhancing a low-end car to make it faster, but you can never make it faster than a supercar unless you completely overhaul and change it. At that point, it might be an entirely different species, right? 😄

Hope these answers helped, and im very glad you enjoyed the demo.