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lains-reality · 10 months

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nondualism and "manifestation"

okay so there was an anon question abt manifesting. i'll answer with this post. i barely proof read this so tell me if theres an error. if you need more (you don't) then there are relevent links at the end.

anon: Ima here with a question :) Suppose I'm manifesting my desired clothes , so I just be aware/know that I already have them in my closet ? And Whenever I think that nope it's not true they aren't there …I JUST USE MY IMAGINATION, SEE A PICTURE OF THOSE CLOTHES AND AGAIN BECOME AWARE OF THE FACT THAT I HAVE THEM ? Basically when I found myself thinking about them I just shift my awareness to that I have them ! is this all I have to do ? And what if I feel euphoric 🤧 knowing that I already those clothes in my closet ? Is it oky ig it should be bc feeling has nothing to do with it !? RIGHT ?

I'll ask these questions first: do you want the desire or to be free? could you let go of trying to get happiness from this item and sit in the happiness you are?

you don't use your imagination. you ARE imagination. you're living in your imagination.

you don't have to identify with those thoughts telling you, you don't have the clothes

you've asked this question to another blogger, so you're spamming, searching for an answer? not gonna get you anywhere .. also have u even read my posts?

are you the person that sent this? nondualism IS NOT A METHOD

first of all, i want to you to remove every information, believing that it's real, your brain, spiraling, wavering, blockages, the universe giving you what you want, someone outside of you, the 3d, the 4d, behind the scenes, the 3d mirroring you, saturating your brain, etc ... [choroukgod]

there's no manifesting.

you are not the manifestor. you are not the doer. i mean it as the character, anon, doesn't do anything. Self does. Self can also be called awareness or consciousness. for Self, all exists. its like a comb, there's the handle and then all the teeth. Self is the handle, you anon, are one of the teeth. you are Self imagining being a human with desires.

i'll give you a snippet of a draft post i made:

"they wanted to be the doer. the character doesn't do. it's not You, it's just a habit. when you know you are Self, then everything is harmonious and effortless. the Self does, it is under all the imaginary character - if the character isn't real, then it doesn't do, the Self does."

since you are Self, this means you are beyond time and space, body and mind. they're not real. only the character/mind thinks its real, it'll chat forever about how you need to do this and that.

this is because the mind only knows what it knows. it cannot know anything more than what it knows right now. it's a collection of thoughts, feelings and memories that you've collected and turned into a habit. it's a habit to go back to the memories as a reference point. its a habit to identify with thoughts that come into your awareness. when you stop the habit and don't identify as the character, it goes away.

abt the body: well when you dream, you might still think. you feel the body and all, all the sensations. it feels real enough. then you wake up. you didn't take the physical body into the dream did you? you just felt the sensation of having one. doesn't this mean it's a bunch of sensations, just like a thought in the mind is?

also the mind can affect the body (e.g. nervous feeling -> sweaty palms). the thought or feeling rising into awareness, the mind takes note and ownership "i'm nervous, my hands are sweaty", affecting the body. if the unreal mind can affect something, then is that thing also not unreal?

(try to observe the thoughts or feelings next time without attaching a story to it or resisting it. see whether it goes away quicker. being able to accept the present moment is essential for this)

extra note - you as Self is also imagining the concepts of manifesting and shifting (and all the concepts related e.g. states, 3d, persisting etc).

thinking they the reason why you can get what you want IS FALSE. THOSE ARE YOUR OWN CREATIONS, ARE YOU GOING TO CREATE SOMETHING OUT OF YOUR OWN CREATIONS? [choroukgod]

What is there to be saved from except illusions? And what are all illusions except false ideas about myself? My holiness undoes them all by asserting the truth about me. - acim workbook

so, you know now the reality of who you are and not to identify with the imaginary, lets talk about the desire.

desires are born out of not knowing who you are. if you think you're the body-mind then several hundred concepts are needed to be taken into account to just live.

another snippet

"all these memories, feelings, thoughts and subsequent stories create desires and fears. the mind will try and protect itself and plan for stuff, but it can't. because it's so limited in knowledge & power."

the character wants the desire because of the story it has, the feeling. usually of happiness, love, joy. what you don't know is that that's your standard way of being. so you search everywhere.

the characters main motivation is to find the truth and happiness, underneath the searching is the belief 'i am not okay' or 'i am not enough', which leads to several needs & fears but importantly, need of control, especially of the future. it refuses to sit in the present moment.

desire is completely fine actually, its the attachments to it that make it hurtful. when you don't understand that desire is just another passing sensation, you, as the character, think you NEED it and will not stop until you get it, or you suffer.

you think that theres a world to control. you think that its outside of you. you think that there is a physical world. you're missing the most important info of all: all is Self. all is consciousness. all is awareness. whatever you wanna say. all is you, theres nothing to manipulate now. theres nothing to force now. its all unreal. you as Self, are imagining to be a human with desires that now has to change stuff that they think is real! how exhusting! you don't even need to change yourSelf, Self is perfect!

there's nothing to do.

Self is all. Self is whole. Self is perfect. Self is who you actually are.

there's no transition to Self. you already are that. it's letting go of all the concepts of limitations that is a transition. - i don't remember who said this, maybe lester levenson?

manifesting is not the point. the point is to be free! it's to recognise your true self! not just to feel better or okay .. to BE freedom, to BE peace, love etc. do you want to keep going into imagination to fufilll yourself all the time? you don't have to if you understand that you are fulfillment, you are whole already.

the "world" changing can't sway you because you are complete as you are, when you manifest with the intention to fulfil the desire so you 'physically' get it - you're only gonna feel full when you get the thing .. and then it goes. things cannot fulfil you. what would happen if the clothes get shredded by a dog? your happiness goes. why? why would you place your happiness on a thing that is FINITE?

being in the present moment is best. its literally the only way you live. you can't see into the past or future, there is only now.

The best place to grow is right where you are. The best time is now.

when you're worrying abt the future, you're thinking more. when you're worrying abt the past, more thoughts. in the present moment, you slow down and see what is in front of you now.

when you get caught up in the mind, you can stop yourself halfway (or even after it happens) and go "oh the mind was doing ...", then you start to pick up how much your mind wanders back or forwards. you start to pick up how limiting the thoughts are when you remind yourself that you are not the body or mind. with the understanding that the mind is imaginary -> no need to listen or identify with what's happening. it just is. feelings or emotions that come up into awareness cannot do anything. you are never disconnected from Self.

'oh i want to go [x] but i have to buy a plane ticket and get this and that...' -> if you are not the body-mind you don't have to worry about physically travelling anywhere, you are beyond time and space naturally. you don't have to prepare anything either, the mind wants to plan, but Self is harmonious and all, so whatever you 'need' will come to you. lester actually did this once.

"With full confidence that “everything is A-okay and taken care of,” I packed a bag and walked out of the house."

when you catch yourself in the moment: release and disidentify. you can just disidentify with it immediatly if you want to.

to release a belief or emotion (probs also desires) (sedona method):

welcome the feeling. it doesn’t have to be strong. it is what it is. ask yourself: Could I let it go? Would I let it go? When? then, remembering that you are not the body-mind, answer. deep breath in and out, let relief come if you feel it. read the link for more.

when you ask yourself, “Could I let this feeling go?”, remind yourself that you can let any emotion go, like dropping an object. when you ask yourself, “Would you let the feeling go?”, consider whether you would you rather hold on to pain, stress, and suffering, or, would you rather be free? when you ask yourself, “When?”, what you’re doing is creating an invitation to do it now

it can take some courage depending on the emotion, the character'll want to run away. but sit in the present moment and observe the feelings. ignoring and suppresing is not healthy. the focus is to keep releasing the feeling when it comes up. you can also coax the feelings up yourself.

to disidentify: well, just don't identify with it. just go "oh that's a thought". maybe remember your Self. maybe say 'on this path i constantly give up trouble' and move on. a simple knowing that that is not You, is enough.

surrender. i used to be scared of surrender bcs i thought it'd mean i have to let go of control and i'd get nothing! or just the same thing or worse! i was scared, i as the character was in full force. then some days past and i calm down (and lowkey give up), then i get some experience where it feels like i'm saying 'yes you ARE your true Self, its natural!!' to myself. something happens w/ 0 effort and i'm never suprised tbh (i used to be), it only grows my faith in mySelf. i promise you when you go 'f it idk whats gonna happen, it'll be fine' it'll be okay. but first you need to understand who you are. you trust your Self and just release the stories that tell you you aren't, that you are stuck, that you haven't got it, that you aren't fulfilled etc.

let me rephrase that bcs ppl saying "just believe!" used to piss me off: surrender it all. just stop. on this path you constantly give up trouble. you give up entertaining thoughts that make you feel bad. stop getting annoyed at yourself. stop beating yourself up. stop trying. just let yourself relax. if you want to do something, do it so you can feel better rather than to fix, manipulate, control etc.

all this arguing takes effort. it takes energy to not surrender. its hard to be something you are not. all the effort is being put into being an ego or to resist being it. you're squashing god into a small box and going 'why won't i fit?!' - lester levenson (modified)

Self is perfection, you are not surrendering to get worse, you are surrendering to perfection. Absolute Perfection. your mind only knows like 20 years (less or more!) of experience, in only one way of being. to your Self, there is all.

if theres anything to "do" its recognising stories of limitation and releasing/disidentifying as them.

(although surrendering is put last here. it is actually the first step. it might even be the only step)

self inquiry pointers (do not skip)

could i let go of wanting to get happiness from [insert item] and allow myself to rest as the happiness i am? can i turn [desire] into a desire for freedom? would i rather have the desire or would i rather be free? am i longing for the desire or to get out of pain? can i let go of wanting to change this and let it be as it is? could i let go of [belief]? would i rather believe in [the belief] or know the truth? would i rather believe in [the belief] or be the truth? am i arguing for my limitations?

letting go of ego | haven't read yet, but the skim looked good.

detachment | edwardart

what is the main difference between the now and old? | nisargadatta

go all the way, not just tolerate and endure | lester levenson

the true you | 4dbarbie

self surrender | edwardart

things come to die | heavenlythea (use of the word 3d, but still great post)

manifesting is struggling, life is effortless | 4dbarbie

how did i get something random? | 4dbarbie

attachments | 4dbarbie

some pics to read

after thoughts

i talk abt a method after my you don't need a method post lol, but that method is actually completely for the mind, says it upront and isn't just used for manifesting. in the end you'll stop using this too

could this be a guide to recognising your greatness? maybe?

let go of the insane amounts of responsibility, pressure, and personal attachment you've put on yourself.

#lainsmail #lainsreality #nondualism #nonduality #manifestation #spirituality #do not tag this as any law i will hide in ur walls #self inquiry

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lion-buddy · 2 years

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Thoughts on the Tanjiro and Nezuko role swap au?

Oh i love the swap au!! I think abt it alot in my own time. Ive always wanted to like, make my own content abt it but i tend to get pretty stuck on the mechanics of everything

Like, taking the world building of kny and applying it to a swap is super interesting to me, and i like trying to work it out. But there are a lot of specifics in kny that are harder to work around in a swap au. But thats not a bad thing! If anything it leads to more interesting story telling because it ensures that the swap isnt to 1 to 1. its just, a lot of work. and would take a lot of planning. If i were to like, write out a timeline of how i think the swap au would go, id have to figure out exactly how the mechanics and all the plot reasoning first. Cuz the way i see, it once you establish the world and lore rules, you can better mold the characters around that.

To start, demon tanjiro is such an interesting concept on its own. I feel hes the easier of the two to establish a character for, because we have his canon series counterpart to go off of. We can pick and choose from the many traits we’re given in canon and apply them to demon tanjiro, and its really fun reinterpreting them. Demon tanjiro basically takes the whole Im The Eldest Sibling trait to the extreme, and turning it into what giudes his reasoning now that he's stuck in a demon mindset (presumably similar to canon nezukos). Older Brother tanjiro is the best. :D

I can still see him being that little ray of sunshine he always is and just, being stuck to nezukos side at all time, whether it be in protection, or just wanting to help her with daily tasks. Like a lost little puppy <:D. Hes just fueled by the desire to be productive and helpful because that's where he thrives, and hes just going to do what feels correct in his little demon mind. I can see him like, taking things out of nezukos hands wordlessly to carry for her because his reasoning is, “little sister shouldnt be the one carrying everything. Im the eldest sibling! I will do the heavy lifting for her!! >:[].” meanwhile nezuko just like, “brother can i pls have my bento box back pls i appreciate ur help but that's not what i need <:3!!” hes just trying to help in anyway he can, even if he doesn't fully understand why/what hes doing.

I feel tanjiros presence would also be very important to nezuko. Shes young, and the only one there for her is her demon brother. While hes not able to speak, nezuko would still have one sided conversations with him. And in moments wheres shes unsure of what to do, she’d just think, “what would oniichan do?” because even if he can’t offer advice now, he’s still her older brother, and she looks up to him, demon or not.

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Roleswap nezuko is interesting. We already have such a well established personality for tanjiro, but nezuko can be a little tricky since we dont have a lot to go off of in canon. Theres bits and pieces we can take and interpret to the best of our abilities, and it kinda makes it more fun (for me at least) cuz we get to see how people interpret her character in so many different ways. :]

i actually came up with a design for her! nezuko is canonically good a sewing, or at least knows how to. her haori is made of up her old kimono and obi. i feel the checker pattern is important to keep because its kinda what all the kamados wear. also shorts/hand cropped uniform pants. i wanted to do pants but they didnt mesh well with her black leg wraps </3 (also pluggin my old hair timeline post bc its relevant <3)

(i didnt design a swap tanjiro bc hed just look like ep 1 tanjiro but muzzled. but he might have an outfit change like nezuko did in ep one.)

My TLDR version of early story swap nezuko is basically: During the beginning of her journey as a official demon slayer, she is veryyyy determined to change tanjiro back to a human as fast as she can, and is essentially bee-lining it from mission to mission. People are fine, but she is not going to linger for too long if she doesnt have to. Shes got her brother! And thats all the company she needs :]. this of course changes as she meets, trains, and fights alongside other people. She learns to slow down and appreciate the people around her more and how they can help her cause too.

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When trying to write out how the events of a swap au would go, i try to take nezukos character into mind ensure her experiences are different from tanjiros. Because they're different characters, different people, even if they face off against the same demon/character, they're going approach it differently, and have different takeaways from the things they experience

Now as much as i would love to write out/draw detailed scenes, that's a lot of work and planning and time that i do not really have atm. And i'd need to figure out A Lot of in world mechanics in order to create something I would be proud of. But in the meantime, i can establish a scene with nezukos' emotional beats to get a feel for her :D!

In the giyu confrontation scene in ep 1, nezukos first “emotional” arc would have a very different setup, almost opposite to tanjiros. When giyu steals the now fully demon tanjiro from nezuko, she’d be really angry at him. Shes angry someone thinks they can just take her brother away from her, dare to hurt him even, just because they think theyre stronger, just because think they know whats right (giyu ofc is just doing his best but. she doesnt know that </3). At first she’d try to retaliate, fight back immediately, in any way she physically can to get tanjiro back, but of course it wouldnt work out very gracefully. Shes no where near skilled enough to face a hashira, but she doesnt care. Her actions are blinded by her grief and rage from any rational thought. All she sees is this man stabbing her brother, threatening to kill him, and shes the only one who can save him. she has too. hes all shes got left. and this man is in threatening that. She’d tire herself out pretty quickly and fall to the ground, to tired to make another move. When giyu sees this, she’d get talked at for being too brash, running into a situation without thinking, without a plan, with only a goal in mind and no way to execute it. In a battle, you need to remember the people that youre trying to protect, not just the target youre trying to destroy. You need to remember who youre fighting for, cuz you cant fight for them if youre dead. Anyway funny axe throw scene now [insert plot things that happen that i have yet yo work out yet because the involve swap tanjiro. hes gonna be intersting] and we’re done. Even if her efforts to save her brother didnt turn out, there is potential to hone that determination into something, and giyu recognizes this. He believes that its something nezuko can effectively use if trained properly, maybe even help her find answers for her brother. After waking up, giyu would send the kamados off to urokodakis to be trained.

TLDR nezuko has really bad tunnel vision <3

We’re told in canon that Nezuko was not afraid to stand up to an adult if they were being mean, even if she's the smaller one in the situation. This trait is exhibited through her actions in Nezuko vs Daki, and I thought it was good scene to reference for how this scene might play out. i find the situation to be similar here. While it may seem out of her gentle character archetype, weve seen time and time again how fiercely she protects the people she cares about. hell, we even see her do the same thing in this scene in ep 1 when tanjiro is passed out!! In this moment if swap, she’s in shock, having just lost her entire family. she has already broke, this is just pushing it!!

i reallly wanna write more for this post but it is already. long lol. i have a few blurbs of texts about certain topics, and hopefully i can share them someday because i!! really like thinking abt this stuff! i really want to solidify and share my interpretation of demon tanjiro and how he works. things like how nezuko approaches battle and her overall fighting style. how the kamados fight together and help each other protect those they care about. maybe one day!

#god i have so much to say so much i wanna draw #but alas. i have been demoted to Poor College Student #kny #demon slayer #Kimetsu no Yaiba #nezuko #tanjiro #giyu #nezuko kamado #tanjiro kamado #giyu tomioka #roleswap au

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ofbreathandflame · 9 months

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Appreciate your enthusiasm as a teacher. My ask was about CULTURAL APPROBATION. You are using still living mythology and tradition to suit your ends and to fit your needs. Thief just like Riordan.

*heavy sigh*

im tired of these discussion, but this is important so i will talk about it.

this is such an interesting ask. bc this is what you said in your initial inbox:

you talk about racism in some books and then go on to prize percy Jackson without any comment about it's blatant cultural appropriation. Maybe you could occasionally try to expand outside usamercica too.

you made an assumption. and you asked about cultural APPROPRIATION. and i addressed everything i did as an educator to circumvent that. all of the ways i discussed with my students the problems in the text, even as i kept them engaged with it (its my JOB).

this ask was meant to discredit the ongoing discussion i have on this blog abt racism in books, you also made an assumption abt my backgroud again with the intent of discrediting the conversation about racism on this blog. i corrected you, and told you (1) that i am not from just america, and that i split my time between my home country (naija) and here as i am both black american and nigerian. so there was this idea that i couldn't possibly understand the conversation outside of the west - when literally my whole blog consists of critiques against western ideas in literature. (2) i clarified that the book that they're reading is mandated curriculum that i supplement with culturally relevant materials such as challenging the idea of what is considered 'western civilization' which includes the ideas of americanization. so - the idea that i was only teaching them the book without discussing potential problems and ideals being pushed was addressed. hence, why i discussed my role as an educator (3) if this was truly about racism and approbation then what was the point of undermining my discussion about anti-black racism to then make a point abt...racism? or - to assume that i wouldn't see the problems in a text i enjoy. ive LITERALLY addressed the problems both on this blog and on my last

so - there's the idea that my critique of racism is only relegated to the states which wasn't true, there's the idea that im teaching the books to the children under the guise of absolute truth, which i am also not. and then there's this ask, which ignores all of that in favor for an argument that's not going anywhere. what am i stealing? what are you even trying to ask?

as i said in my other post:

it’s crazy bc i literally have pictures of my board of those VERY things bc it was one of my first days teaching. like im passionate abt the issue of racism and colonialism on here what makes u think i wouldn’t be just as passionate in real life???? and if u know the rhythm of my blog and the things i talk abt what also makes u think i wouldn’t see those issues? or that i would even think to have a problem talking abt it. all u had to do was ask: ‘hey how do you feel abt the cultural appropriation’ or ‘how do you talk abt the issues in your class’ or even ‘hey this piece of literature has things that makes me uncomfortable have you noticed them’ and then that would have been a dialogue. it would have been a fruitful conversation. i hate when y’all demonize the conversation abt racism (and anti-black racism) just to WHAT? discredit my conversations abt racism. like wouldn’t u on the surface level agree with my points? like what do u gain here?

in short, there were other ways to go about this. you made assumptions, all of which were wrong. you took a harmless post i made and made an entire argument in your head abt it. read it and weep, but literally whats your deal. if it was something that bothered you, and you thought maybe i didn't know abt it why didn't you ask? why didn't u just say 'hey this book may have harmful things in it?' and ofc i already knew these things bc its curriculum but its so weird for u to come at me with these issues instead of just saying what i said above. anywho, if u make it to the bottom of this i hope you heal.

#anywho i literally have pictures of my boards as we have these discussions.#i have pictures of my lesson plans like u literally are not making ant sense #i hope you find peace and if my blog bothers u maybe just block me and touch some grass while your at it.

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wheatlev · 4 months

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on the kind of similar vein of scottish folds, I remember at the time I was following someone who was talking about Scottish Folds and they just told anyone who had them to just. Put them down immediately even if they got one from a shelter. Like they straight up told people that anyone who had a scottish fold to just euthanize them as soon as possible. I didn't say anything and I understood what they were trying to say but I was like "...?" about it. i know its not too relevant because ur post made great points but. saying this made me think abt it and im still not fully sure what to think of it

Oh yeah that is uh, I didn't say THAT in my og post back then either, I just said 'Yo maybe BEFORE you get a cat check what is up with them' and they took this to mean I personally attacked them and their cats. As IF I had told them to put them down??

Also like. I was under the impression that most people.... knew about this anyway. It was a common point of knowledge even back then. It is not even bad to have these cats per se, really.

People are still breeding them (partially because they are popular, of course, which is. Hm.) so these cats still deserve a loving home. But you do not walk into a shelter and pick up a Scottish Fold. You do not just randomly come across them, they are a specific breed. You make the decision to get them, and I think I am right in assuming you'd at least look at basic information on the breed.

(I checked the wikipedia article - by early 2014 it already included the information I brought up. A tumblr post should not be the point you say 'wow I didn't KNOW'.)

EDIT: Also yes Anon just to reiterate I agree with you, calling for a culling of the breed is not, uh. How you do this. Sorry I got swept up on stuff but I wanted to reiterate I agree and do not get it either. The idea is solid but the execution is not ideal. Not every cat is going to suffer equally, either, some cats may do well with the gene since it is expressing itself in a lesser form so putting them down is pointless. Why kill an animal that could still live a full life with some restrictions?

Not to mention who the fuck goes up to someone and says 'actually kill your pet that you love'. The hell.

#jamday #quick check also confirms this info was available in early 2010 as well #like. dude.

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k-ru-h · 1 year

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ok first of all. i am sius #1 defender and i wouldnt accuse him of shit without proper proof but. i actually think its important to talk abt this. and second of all this is the only time im ever posting fastpass screenshots but just because the appearance of a character is extremely relevant

listen i know we're all very excited at the idea of a canon gay character in tog, but i really dont think this was the best of moves. tog has so far been mostly pretty alright with handling gnc characters (think how well aka was treated by others, khun being very feminine, etc) and i dont think this one fuckup will change that just. siu is a grown ass adult from a very conservative country and his portrayal of intersex characters such as evankhell or aka isnt very, well, "woke" (evankhell being the only lead brown woman while being "half man" plays into a lot of racial stereotypes, as well as treating intersexuality as a literal curse). i kind of wanna like , talk about this new "queer" character kaya (i saw ppl call him that online, idfk) and like. ill just go thru my points in no particular order idfk ive written too many coherent essays for school this week abd it's 3am i think i deserve a fucked up little one

ok first of all. jesus fucking christ what is this character design

so uh. heres our gay male character! with massive fake tits, lipstick and long hair! this wouldn't be a problem in media already filled with other queer characters, but on its own, especially with the character being darker-skinned yet again, it plays into a lot of stereotypes abt trans women, as well as brown women being masculine. and listen, i know tog has a lot of very wacky character designs, but it also has a lot of gorgeous ones, and while i really dont think it was sius intention to make a transphobic, racist caricature (istg you can psychoanalyse this man just off of tog alone), i think it definitely has something to do either with his own internalised racism and transphobia, or with a lack of education to spot a (hopefully) mistake by assistant artists.

here are some random ass caricatures of trans women i found online and by god i am not crediting this shit, but. look at what i mean. the fake tits, the dress/skirt, the long hair and lipstick.... the resemblance is startling.

but okay. lets say this by itself isnt important. siu made an oopsie and we got a canonically queer character that defends his right to like men unapologetically, and bam didnt seem to mind, and was polite abt it! weeeeeellll... the thing is, this whole fucking thing is a ploy. and if it turns out siu negates my previous point by making it turn out that kaya IS just playing a caricature on purpose because he wants the political advantage and isnt actually gay but is, in fact, homophobic, i will eat that shit up. that would actually make a very good point and having a critique of homophobia is better than having a homophobic gay character. but lets say he is gay for now, lets assume. that still leaves a possibility that he is gay AND just using bam, but lets just assume thats not the case either. lets say he's actually gay and actually wants to marry bam, for whatever fucking reason. bam being polite doesnt mean shit!!! people on twitter are unironically saying this means he's okay with being in a romantic &/or sexual relationship with a man when it literally does not. bam isnt okay with any of this. from start to finish, be it a man or a woman, bam is in this nonconsensually. and one of bams core personality traits is his kindness and politness, and he's been in kayas shoes before, albeit not for queerness specifically. bam isnt a participant, bam is a fucking reward and object and just as that one guy calling khun a "cute little kitten" while literally discussing how much his worth as a slave would be isnt queer rep, neither is this! even if the two of them are actually gay and actually attracted to the two respectfully, they still treat them as objects to be sold or bought for political advantage. someone on tumblr once said that a drag queen will always be a better ally than a gay ceo, and! yeah!

anyways, in conclusion, this is at worst an accidental bigoted caricature, and at best a very good joke on all of us. source im gay intersex trans and i actually go outside and interact with real queer people instead of having pronoun discourse on tiktok. thanks

#tower of god #i am SOOOO fucking sleepy #also one day ill write a ramble on why i think bamdorsi arent a good couple. controversial ig #like its cute but... no...#anyways this thjng has had a grip on me for two and a half years now im not going anywhere ily siu💞

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seritaka · 4 years

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i started watching tua again and i cannot stop thinking about how five and luther are biologically twins

#i know i made a post abt this already but its still relevant #comics are crazy dude #tua #the umbrella academy #kat chats

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ranboo5 · 3 years

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whats 'the clip' and knifetrick?

Augh. Under the cut for shipping discourse and p/dophilia ment (nothing graphic or specific). Gets long bc I discuss my thoughts on DSMP shipping in general. You are setting me up fr anon

Some quick vocab -

intimacy here is used to refer to. Well. Any kind of intimacy between characters, of any sort, as an umbrella term /r, /p, and /qp here are used as shorteners to denote "romantic," "platonic," and "queerplatonic," both as adjectives And as verbs ("to /r" = "to portray romantically") shipping here is used to refer to any focused examination of intimacy between characters

And some clarity that Should follow from the essay next but may not - """anti-antis"""" and RPF writers delete forever

The Clip is from one of if not the? most recent Discord stage(s) Mr Live has done (which I missed when it was live RIP) wherein he issues a hard ban on shipping him ("do not ship me, in any way, with anyone!") which would less influence c!beeduo (which has been portrayed/stated to be romantic AND nonromantic both conflictingly for a while until being confirmed unconfirmed several months ago, that being the last was heard) without its direct invocation if he hadn't also cited for the reason as being underage ("'Cause, one, it's straight up pedophilia") which is! a) immediately applicable to At Least his DSMP character, Partially and b) while not Strictly True (should b obvious that portraying a relationship within the bounds of what it is in canon and in a nonsexual way is not That, and /r-ing c!beeduo etc was possible to do Appropriately again by remaining w/in the bounds of canon) is Clearly Indicative of the fact that baggage-wise it IS associated with people being fucking creeps

This Really complicates things bc like okay the apparent solution is "lol just don't /r it" but it's really like. A Worse issue than that bc like.

Okay the reason shipping in terms of fictional characters is a Different Bar is bc it's an examination of Intimacy and certain lines exist in certain dynamics of intimacy that Isn't Shown (which is the whole Within The Bounds Of Canon thing) which is important in a medium like DSMP because of the smaller gap + more personal relationship b/w character and streamer. Examining intimacy beyond th bounds of the consent that has been established in that regard is Weird at best and Violating And Creepy more often and, As Mentioned In Ranb's Stage, Literally Evil at worst

Which is why writing abt like. QPR or platonically intimate Techno and Philza (characters) is smth that is fine because that's smth that has been shown and repeatedly stated onscreen; it's in the bounds of canon n thus within th bounds of what the streamers've consented 2 be done with their characters. But writing T3chza making out or whatever is fucked up because it's smth that's beyond those consent barriers

And the thing is right

Slapping a /p on T3chza makeout doesn't. Make it less violating

Like what you CALL romantic is not the measure or whether it's past those barriers yk? And if it's indistinguishable, if it's in extrapolative territory that is Past The Bounds, it Does Not Matter how much you /p it EVEN IF IT IS TECHNICALLY PLATONIC y feel? Like at the end of the day placing a moratorium on some/all forms of shipping is placing a moratorium on certain examinings of intimacy

And okay 2 go back to Mr Live and his character. What it implies taken in context w/ older portrayals of c!beeduo and said by invoking smth that both evokes Really fucked up baggage (that does unfortunately exist btw I'm sorry if you didn't know that but People Really Do B Fucked Up Abt Beeduo) AND applies to his character is a revocation of consent to examining deep intimacies:tm: with his character, which is gonna apply regardless of the nature of that intimacy (even if nonromantic)

Like I don't /r c!beeduo myself, do not, never have, but I talk to people who have and have consumed content where they r background /r; I also don't think it matters. Like I don't Actively /r it and I don't Actively Not /r it because imho w/ the intimacy regarding c!beeduo that is plot relevant and character important whether that intimacy is /p /qp or /r doesn't really matter. I don't consider myself Less of a c!beeduo shipper than someone who /rs them because that would be dumb as hell and while none of the content I've made* is Intrinsically or Intentionally /r it certainly can be read tht way as much as it can be read /qp or /p. It's be dumb and hypocritical of me to like, dunk on ppl for /r-ing c!beeduo when I'm also invested in these two and my tonetags r not gonna suddenly Delete the picking apart I've done of the dynamic @ hand

Which Has Been. Within Bounds Of Canon. It's been what's been shown (sometimes to my great distress. There is a reason that the :canon_beeduo: emote looks the way it does) Directly Onscreen and in general keeping with the tone n intensity/directions of what they've Done With The Characters

HOWEVER

As mentioned up there. Revocation of consent

It makes. Full sense 2 me that Mr Live wants to place a moratorium or fullon ban on shipping his characters perhaps where he wouldn't have before because of the Unfortunately Very Extant trends of people being Fucking Weird about shipping his characters AND of using them as a Thinly Veiled Excuse to ship HIM, which. I should not have to explain why shipping real people is fucking abhorrent

THIS creates a problem which is a. Bit of a vacuum in interacting with what is a facet of c!Ranboo's arc, decision making, and character. Like you CAN have c!Ranboo w/o cbeeduo but you Can't Really have his plotline without examining c!beeduo. And as I mentioned earlier: even if your examination of c!beeduo is fully platonic, the significance of it To the plotline means that any examination of it and its relevance to the plotline and characters IS gonna be an examination of intimacy, which. Regardless of it's platonic, Is Still Shipping

Unless some HARD retconning happens it leaves this like. Hole in an aspect of c!Ranboo's arc and decisionmaking and it's very. Uncertain? God. Fucking months ago I was already kind of :huh. Does he know what the fuck he's doing: irt c!beeduo and desperately wishing for things to be cleared up and now it's only That Much Stronger

NOW. KNIFETRICK, FINALLY

Knifetrick (or, as it’s actually listed, Bishop’s Knife Trick) is a fic about "Ran and Jackie from The Pit TFTSMP" in a "canon-typical ambiguously romantic relationship." As you can tell from the scare quotes, especially if you've seen me vague, both of these are, to put it politely, Doubtful. I've read the fic; I will not be sharing my opinions because that would be neither productive nor responsible (I will just say I can't recommend it and leave it at that) but I WILL say the following that Is relevant to the conversation:

Ran's and Jackie's characterizations respectively have very little to do with characterizations from The Pit, and bear a dollar-store-version resemblance to tropes and personality motifs found in ESPECIALLY fanon c!beeduo, especially later in the fic. I would not go so far as to say they are Intentionally Literally Ranboo and Tubbo but they are transparent expies and were clearly written at LEAST unintentionally w/ c!beeduo in mind (esp since. Ran and Jackie barely interacted in The Pit), and for a readerbase that, as far as I can tell, is HUGELY dominated by /r c!beeduo shippers. Like. Sorry. This is off-brand c!beeduo.

The dynamic between the two is pretty unambiguously romantic, also; despite what the fic's white knights claim, romantic tropes and implications/motifs/imagery from at LEAST chapter two, and is very much explicitly romantic by the most recent chapter.

FROM CH1:

"And now, with raised eyebrows and a pursed lip, the newly named General Jackie observes Ran in such a way that makes the enderman’s skin crawl. Ran reminds himself that this kid, as short and harmless as he may look, is trained to kill. [...] Jackie narrows his eyes and tilts his head a little, as if he’s trying to read in between every one of Ran’s imperfect scales."

FROM CH2:

"It makes Ran’s skin itch with discomfort. [...] 'That actually doesn’t explain much of anything at all,' complains Jackie, and he pops a few croutons into his mouth with one hand. 'Tell me what you’re thinking, pretty-boy.'

"Ran feels his face flush, no doubt mildly glowing green.

"Yes, that was the other thing. The unnecessary compliments to his physical appearance.

"They don’t happen very often, and don’t seem to have very much meaning or intention behind them— Jackie often speaks like an unthinking kid— but when they do happen… they’re embarrassing. [...] It’s annoying how the rug is pulled out from under his feet in these moments when he’s 'embarrassed'. Like the conversation see-saw has temporarily shifted weight in the general’s favor."

I am not going to include excerpts from Chapter 6 because it's just the entire chapter.

I WILL SAY, HOWEVER, STEPPING ON THIS SCORPION BEFORE IT STINGS: they are not written in an RPFy manner and I don't think there's any grounds, including Vibes, of accusing Knifetrick of being like. Closet truthing or whatever. Also, while I think there's certainly Some Weirdness ESPECIALLY around the reaction, the romance itself is Not written in any way I'd call weird or problematic pre-clip; it's nothing inappropriate or like Weirdly Fetishy or whatever. Knifetrick is not #problematic or anything and I don't have beef with like the concept of liking it intrinsically; if I thought it was like. Abhorrent I wouldn't be sharing excerpts lmao dhjfnhdsbvdnfjh. Hence: if anyone uses this post or anyth like it to send harassment or bad faith ANYTHING to anyone involved with Knifetrick I will hunt you down in the fucking night even if it WAS #problematic that'd be the LITERAL OPPOSITE of productive and as it stands it's Literally Not. Essentially: Knifetrick is a (questionably-written /mean) fic using Ran and Jackie from The Pit as a vessel for a large chunk of the dynamics and headcanons of fanon /r c!beeduo in particular

And again, I would not call it problematic in any way (aside from the disingenuity of the insistence that it's TOTALLY UNRELATED TO BEEDUO and TOOOTALLY WASN'T INTENDED TO BE ROMANTIC GUYS like own your shit please)... IF it weren't for the advent of The Clip, which is calling in2 question the Entirety of the problem of /r-ing any variant of c!beeduo or any of Ranboo's characters at all

I really do not have an answer for this tbh. I genuinely wanna hear from the streamer on this more specifically because I like,,, I got no clue where 2 go from here? Do I just consider an arc retconned? Was it an issue of speaking abt a troubling subject kneejerk wise and I'm reading too much in2 it?

I just. I dunno

Tl;dr (AT LONG LAST)

- The Clip is a clip of a Discord stage where Ranboo (streamer) loudly explicitly decried shipping in a way that implicitly applies to characters he plays - This would be all well and good but is rendered complicated by the plot relevance of c!beeduo, which does not stop being shipping if it's /p'd due to it still necessarily being an examination of a particular intimacy in a way that is in canon hard to distinguish the /p, /qp, or /r nature of - Bishop's Knife Trick is an AO3 fic centered around using TFTSMP characters as /r c!beeduo expies which is not a bad thing in and of itself unless it also is covered under this moratorium - Things remain unclear until and unless we get clearer word from streamer, but considering Mr Live seems to be allergic to clarifying anything abt c!beeduo this is doubtful

*very little if any of the content I personally have made 4 c!beeduo has been posted publicly, for related reasons. You May have seen it if you're in servers w/ me, depending on Which Ones

#dsmp fandom critical #kind of?#jic #ask to tag #I am technically defending Kn1fetrick on this post #I am not nice to it but I am defending it technically. If people start being rude abt it I am going to set myself on fire #this IS ludicrously long but I have tl;dr'd it as I do with all my ludicrously long posts. I think I have salient thoughts

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aspoonofsugar · 3 years

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Alternative Reality Asks

Hello anons and hello @reene7890,

All your asks/comments can be answered in a single post.

In short, what Mikasa saw is probably an alternative reality either Eren or Ymir shared it with her through paths.

This is why both Eren and Mikasa saw it:

That said, in the end I do not think it really matters.

These are just my two cents on the whole time-travel aspect of snk.

Of course I might be wrong and next chapter might have a huge plot-twist that shocks us all and changes the whole plot. Still, as for now, this is how I feel.

So far the time-travel aspect of the series has not been relevant plot-wise (at least not in the way it is in time-travel centered stories) and has mostly been thematically enriching and used to give us a deeper understanding of the characters. In a sense, it made the characters more complex.

When it comes to worldbuilding, it is one of the many aspects of the power of paths. All Eldians are linked through time and space thanks to them, after all.

The paths have many powers which manifest in different ways. For example, last chapter dead people managed to briefly come back to help the Alliance.

This chapter, the paths have made possible for Mikasa to see a part of an alternative present/future. Similarly, in the very first chapter Eren saw that same specific possible future.

We might have a more detailed explanation next chapter, but as @aotopmha said here, I do not really think it will be something overly complicated. I think it will mostly be something simple that will not really change the overall plot, but will enrich it thematically. For example, the theory in the post kinda works for me. Ymir/Eren trying to break a loop by experiencing different realities to succeed in the end does not really change the story we have just seen, especially if Eren did not really have memories of it.

It does not change Eren’s massacre being wrong, especially because we have seen the psychologial state he was in when he made it. We saw it was not for a great scheme, but that it was him dissociating. It would not change that in the end the people who saved the world were Armin and Mikasa and that they did so through their choices that were different from Eren’s. It would not change that probably in almost every time-line Eren would not be able to overcome his self-hate and his flaw.

At the same time, for Mikasa what she experienced is and will always remain a dream. In the end it is not what she chose. It is a reality that could have happened if she had chosen differently. Still, it did not happen in the story.

We all as individuals, even without time-travel or different realities, can potentially imagine different possible future selves. And these future selves might have been born if we had taken different choices in key moments of our lives. If I had studied medicine... I would be a doctor right now. I am not, but this does not mean it was impossible to begin with.

For Mikasa, it is the same. She sees a reality that we know it is an alternative reality because we saw Eren seeing it too. Still, Mikasa is experiencing it as a dream. She might never know that was an actual alternative reality she in a sense has experienced and lived. She probably knows this unconsciously, but rationally, it might be left ambiguous.

In the meta I refer to it as a dream precisely because of this and also because it is the realization of Mikasa’s childhood dream. And even in the chapter it is something linked to Mikasa’s personal wish:

She does not see a random alternative reality, but a reality linked to a wish (go back to her home with Eren) and to a regret (what would have happened if she had chosen differently?).

We as people can only imagine different futures, while Mikasa who is in a world where alternative realities exist is given the chance to briefly experience one. And she experiences a reality specifically important for her because it is the reality where she got what she wanted. And she still realizes that even in that case she can’t save Eren.

Let me clarify what I mean when I say that I think time-travel and different realities are used in the series to enrich characters and themes and not really to create structural plot-twist. I’ll try doing so using this chapter.

Mikasa seeing the alternative reality does not let her change the past and does not let her change the future. So, time-travel has no repercussion in the overal events of the story.

What is more, it was really not necessary for Mikasa to see an alternative reality for her to arrive to the choice of killing Eren. In terms of writing Mikasa could have easily come at the same conclusion in a different way. In fact, I think different people had different headcanons about this moment.

Even the first panel:

In the end, it is revealed to simply be an image from a different reality, not even from the reality we are reading the story of. If the loop-theory is correct, it might simply be the conclusive panel of a story that happened before ours. It does not really change what we are reading.

The same goes for the other instances where time travel was used.

Eren convincing his father to kill the Reiss Family is important for his, Zeke and Grisha’s characters. It changes their dynamic making it more complicated. It is also important for Zeke’s arc and character. Still, it does not change what we already know aka... The Reiss Family is killed by Grisha. We discover an ulterior layer to Grisha’s motivation. We also discover Eren’s role in it and how much he has spiralled. Still, the event itself does not change.

Similarly, Eren seeing the Rumbling is important for his psychology I think because we can see him struggling with this idea and partially being consumed by it. Still, in the end it is still Eren’s choice to start it. Other options were still possible and this chapter’s alternative reality proves exactly this.

And it is in this that the time travel aspect of snk works imo. It is enriching thematically. It is enriching thematically because it is used to explore the theme of freedom aka the main theme.

It shows how Eren seeing the future does not make him freer, but a slave of a specific vision he saw.

It shows the fine line between destiny and choices, like in this chapter.

It shows that different realities are born by different choices, even if some factors are meant to remain. It also shows how every reality has within itself different burdens.

Finally, to answer to the anons who asked abt the reality where Eren and Mikasa ran away and its contradictions... I think it is important to remember it is just one among different realities. It is the specific reality Mikasa saw because it is important for her to see it.

Still, other versions were possible too.

As I have written in the meta, a reality where the conflict between Marley and Paradis had developed differently would have probably needed Armin making different choices because thematically he is the character mostly linked to the outside world.

So yeah, there is a reality where Mikasa and Eren choose to leave Armin behind. In the actual story, Eren left both Mikasa and Armin behind, despite clearly loving them, so I do not think it is that surprising that in another reality Mikasa chooses to stay with Eren and to avoid war.

It is implied that in this reality Mikasa conveyed her love to Eren and that Eren opened up to her about the Rumbling. Once she knew about it, Mikasa must have convinced him to give up on this plan and to simply live in peace. Eren was clearly very close to a breakdown when she talked with Mikasa in Marley. He had decided to spare Historia a life as a breeding stock by destroying the world.

Mikasa makes him give up this plan, but Eren can’t still accept the alternative plan, which is about keeping the power of the Rumbling and pass it down from a generation to another forcing Historia and her children to become Titans. This is why they run away in this reality.

Eren says so himself:

He could not choose.

In our story Eren sacrificed the world and humanity for Paradis and Historia (and we see mixed results because Paradis was turning in a dictatorship, many people still died and Historia was still miserable).

In Mikasa’s alternative reality Mikasa and Eren sacrificed Paradis for Histora and humanity.

That said, this does not mean there are not other realities where Mikasa, Eren, Armin and others characters made different choices.

Finally about Mikasa choosing to say “See you later” instead “Goodbye” or something different, I think it is better to ask someone who knows Japanese because the expression translated as see you later might have a different nuance in Japanese. Anyway, I think the context makes pretty clear Mikasa is saying farwell to Eren.

I hope this was clear enough :)

Thank you for the asks!

#snk #snk 138 #asksfullofsugar #anonymous #reene7890

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queenlua · 3 years

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hey, i started following you recently and ur bio says ur a hacker? any tips on where to start? hacking seems like a v cool/fun way to learn more abt coding and cybersecurity/infrastructure and i'd like to explore it but there's so much on the internet and like, i'm not trying to get into anything illegal. thanks!

huh, an interesting question, ty!

i can give more tailored advice if you hit me up on chat with more specifics on your background/interests.

given what you've written here, though, i'll just assume you don't have any immediate professional aspirations (e.g. you just want to learn some things, and you aren't necessarily trying to get A Cyber Security Job TM within the next three months or w/e), and that you don't know much about any specific programming/computering domain yet.

(stuff under cut because long)

first i'd probably just try to pick some interesting problem that you think you can solve with tech. this doesn't need to be a "hacking" project at first; i was just messing around with computers for ages before i did anything involving security/exploitation.

if you don't already know how to program, you should ideally pick a problem you can solve via programming. for instance: i learned a lot back in the 2000s, when play-by-post forum RPGs were in vogue. see, i'd already been messing around, building my own personal sites, first just with HTML & CSS, and later on with Javascript and PHP. and i knew the forum software everyone used (InvisionPowerBoard) was written in PHP. so when one of the admins at my RPG complained that they'd like the ability to set multiple profile pictures, i was like, "hey i'm good at programming, want me to create a mod to do that," and then i just... did. so then they asked me to program more features, and i got all the sexy nerd cred for being Forum Mod Queen, and it was a good time, i learned a lot.

(i also got to be the person who was frantically IMed at 2am because wtf the forum is down and there's an inscrutable error, what do??? basically sysadmining! also, much less sexy! still, i learned a lot!)

the key thing is that it's gotta be a problem that's interesting to you: as much as i love making dorky sites in PHP, half the fun was seeing other people using my stuff, and i think the era of forum-based RPGs has passed. but maybe you can apply some programming talents to something that you are interested in—maybe you want to make a silly Chrome extension to make people laugh, a la Cloud to Butt, or maybe you'd like to make a program that converts pixel art into cross-stitching patterns, maybe you want to just make a cool adventure game on those annoying graphing calculators they make you use in class, or make a script for some online game you play, or make something silly with Arduino (i once made a trash can that rolled toward me when i clapped my hands; it was fun, and way easier than you'd think!), whatever.

i know a lot of hacker-types who got their start doing ROM hacking for video games—replacing the character art or animations or whatever in old NES games. that's probably more relevant than the PHP websites, at least, and is probably a solid place to get started; in my experience those communities tend to be reasonably friendly to questions. pick a small thing you want to do & ask how to do it.

also, a somewhat unconventional path, but—once i knew how to program a bit of Python, i started doing goofy junk, like, "hey can i implemented NamedTuple from scratch,” which tends to lead to Python metaprogramming, which leads to surprising shit like "oh, stack frames are literally just Python objects and you can manually edit them in the interpreter to do deliberately horrendous/silly things, my god this language allows too much reflection and i'm having too much fun"... since Python is a lot of folks' first language these days, i thought i'd point that out, since i think this is a pretty accessible start to thinking about How Programs Actually Work under the hood. allison kaptur has some specific recommendations on how to poke around, if you wanna go that route.

it's reasonably likely you'll end up doing something "hackery" in the natural course of just working on stuff. for instance, while i was working on the IPB forum software mods, i became distressed to learn that everyone was using an INSECURE version of the software! no one was patching their shit!! i yelled at the admins about it, and they were like "well we haven't been hacked yet so it's not a problem," so i uh, decided to demonstrate a proof of concept? i downloaded some sketchy perl script, kicked it until it worked, logged in as the admins, and shitposted a bit before i logged out, y'know, to prove my point.

(they responded by banning me for two weeks, and did not patch their software. which, y'know, rip to them; they got hacked by an unrelated Turkish group two months later, and those dudes just straight-up deleted the whole website. i was a merciful god by comparison!)

anyway, even though downloading a perl script and just pointing it at a website isn't really "hacking" (it's the literal definition of script kiddie, heh)—the point is i was just experimenting a lot and trying a lot of stuff, which meant i was getting comfortable with thinking of software as not just some immutable relic, but something you can touch and prod in unexpected ways.

this dovetails into the next thing, which is like, just learn a lot of stuff. a boring conventional computer science degree will teach you a lot (provided you take it seriously and actually try to learn shit); alternatively, just taking the same classes as a boring conventional computer science degree, via edX or whatever free online thingy, will also teach you a lot. ("contributing to open source" also teaches you a lot but... hngh... is a whole can of worms; send a follow-up ask if you want that rant.)

here's where i should note that "hacking" is an impossibly broad category: the kind of person who knows how to fuck with website authentication tokens is very different than someone who writes a fuzzer, who is often quite different than someone who looks at the bug a fuzzer produces and actually writes a program that can exploit that bug... so what you focus on depends on what you're interested in. i imagine classes with names like "compilers," "operating systems," and "networking" will teach you a lot. but, like, idk, all knowledge is god-breathed and good for teaching. hell, i hear some universities these days have actual computer security classes? that's probably a good thing to look at, just to get a sense of what's out there, if you already know how to program.

also be comfortable with not knowing everything, but also, learn as you go. the bulk of my security knowledge came when i got kinda airdropped into a work team that basically hired me entirely on "potential" (lmao), and uh, prior to joining i only had the faintest idea what a hypervisor was? or the whole protection ring concept? or ioctls or sandboxing or threat models or, fuck, anything? i mostly just pestered people with like 800 questions and slowly built up a knowledge base, and remember being surprised & delighted when i went to a security conference a year later and could follow most of the talks, and when i wound up at a bar with a guy on the xbox security team and we compared our security models a bunch, and so on. there wasn't a magic moment when i "got it", i was just like, "okay huh this dude says he found a ring-0 exploit... what does that mean... okay i think i got that... why is that a big deal though... better ask somebody.." (also: reading an occasional dead tree book is a good idea. i owe my firstborn to Robert Love's Linux Kernel Development, as outdated as it is, and also O'Reilly's kookaburra book gave me a great overview of web programming back in the day, etc. you can learn a lot by just clicking around random blogs, but you’ll often end up with a lot of random little facts and no good mental scaffolding for holding it together; often, a decent book will give you that scaffolding.)

(also, it's pretty useful if you can find a knowledgable someone to pepper with random questions as you go. finding someone who will actively mentor you is tricky, but most working computery folks are happy to tell you things like "what you're doing is actually impossible, here's why," or "here's a tutorial someone told me was good for learning how to write a linux kernel module," or "here's my vague understanding of this concept you know nothing about," or "here's how you automate something to click on a link on a webpage," which tends to be handier than just google on its own.)

if you're reading this and you're like "ok cool but where's the part where i'm handed a computer and i gotta break in while going all hacker typer”—that's not the bulk of the work, alas! like, for sure, we do have fun pranking each other by trying dumb ways of stealing each other's passwords or whatever (once i stuck a keylogger in a dude's keyboard, fun times). but a lot of my security jobs have involved stuff like, "stare at this disassembly a long fuckin' time to figure out how the program pointer got all fucked up," or, "write a fuzzer that feeds a lot of randomized input to some C++ program, watch the program crash because C++ is a horrible language for writing software, go fix all the bugs," or "think Really Hard TM about all the settings and doohickeys this OS/GPU/whatever has, think about all the awful things someone could do with it, threat model and sandbox accordingly." occasionally i have done cool proof-of-concept hacks but honestly writing exploits can kinda be tedious, lol, so like, i'm only doing that if it's the only way i can get people to believe that Yes This Is Actually A Problem, Fix Your Code

"lua that's cool and all but i wanted, like, actual links and recommendations and stuff" okay, fair. here's some ideas:

microcorruption: very fun embedded security CTF; teaches you everything you need to know as you're doing it.

cryptopals crypto challenges: very fun little programming exercises that teach you a lot of fundamental cryptography concepts as you're going along! you can do these even as a bit of a n00b; i did them in Python for the lulz

the binary bomb lab is hilariously copied by, like, so many CS programs, lol, but for good reason. it's accessible and fun and is the first time most people get to feel like a real hacker! (requires you know a bit of C beforehand)

ctftime is a good way to see when new CTFs ("capture the flag"s; security-focused competitions) are coming up. or, sometimes CTFs post their source code, so you can continue trying them after the CTF is over. i liked Stripe's CTFs when they were going, because they focused on "web stuff", and "web stuff" was all i really knew at the time. if you're more interested in staring at disassembly, there's CTFs focused on that sort of thing too.

azeria has good ARM assembly & exploitation tutorials

also, like, lots of good talks out there; just watching defcon/cansecwest/etc talks until something piques your interest is very fun. i'd die on a battlefield for any of Christopher Domas's talks, but he assumes a lot of specific x86/OS knowledge, lol, so maybe don’t start with that. oh, Julia Evans's blog is honestly probably pretty good for just learning a lot of stuff and really beginner-friendly?

oh and wrt legality... idk, i haven't addressed it here since it hasn't come up in my own work much, tbh. if you're just getting started you're kind of unlikely to Break The Law without, y'know, realizing maybe you're doing something a bit gray-area? and you can cross that bridge when you come to it? Real Hacking TM is way more of a pain-in-the-ass than doing CTFs and such, and you'll learn way more with the latter, so who cares lol just do the fun thing

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superangsty · 3 years

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👉🏼👈🏼 ive been fixating on spirk lately and would like to talk abt it, if you were being sincere in your tags

fsdgfh honestly when I want to talk about something it’s mostly just me SCREAMING bc that SCENE man that SCENE. Like, the rest of STID is garbage especially when they brought Kirk back with Khan’s blood like what was that??? Why did they do that?? Also I feel like the first two films of AOS are really missing the whole crew being like a family and made it instead about a bunch of beautiful straight people having awkwardly written personal issues.

FIRST THINGS FIRST: required reading is of course Henry Jenkin's thing about The Glass. I tend to assume everyone has read it but if you haven't. Get on that. Here it is:

When I try to explain slash to non-fans, I often reference that moment in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan where Spock is dying and Kirk stands there, a wall of glass separating the two longtime buddies. Both of them are reaching out towards each other, their hands pressed hard against the glass, trying to establish physical contact. They both have so much they want to say and so little time to say it. Spock calls Kirk his friend, the fullest expression of their feelings anywhere in the series. Almost everyone who watches the scene feels the passion the two men share, the hunger for something more than what they are allowed. And, I tell my nonfan listeners, slash is what happens when you take away the glass.

Anyway all I'm saying is that no matter what JJ Abrams thinks he CAN'T recreate WoK because he doesn't UNDERSTAND WoK at the necessary level.

But with regards to STID so like okay at a very basic level you've got two things which are 1) Spock having Big Feelings and 2) the knowledge that Vulcans kiss with their hands and these two things on their own were enough to make 14 year old me watching it in the cinema for the first time feel ABSOLUTELY INSANE like for real I've been chasing that high ever since. And when Spock starts screaming? That's the Good Shit.

Also sidenote there's this theme park nearby (ish) called Thorpe Park and I went there on school trips a couple of times and there's a ride there called Rumba Rapids and the music they play in the queue is really not relevant but its fun and when I was 16 I suggested to my friends how much funnier films would be if it was playing during sad scenes so one time we watched STID and when we got to this scene we turned the volume down low and the rumba rapids music up high. Not relevant to this post, but I just Unlocked that memory while I was thinking about this and I wanted to share.

Just gonna preface this by saying that Spock's death in WoK is obviously a lot more compelling than Kirk's in STID because in AOS JJ Abrams has this obsession with making Kirk the big hero who's so amazing and brilliant and is carrying the entire world on his shoulders so of Course he would give up his life to save the ship (and when you think of the parallels w his father doing the same it becomes even more about him trying to live up to his father's reputation and idk! I feel like it cheapens the sentiment!). Meanwhile the original films they'd moved past TOS's kirk-centric vibe and it was about the crew working together bc they're a family and it's about Spock! Who'd run away to try and escape all these feelings that had come from the enterprise! And it's like yes he can explain his decision with the 'needs of the many' logic but at the end of the day he is doing this to save the people he loves and EVERYONE knows it.

One thing I will say in STID's favour is that the lead-up to this scene with the repetition of the "Better get down here. Better hurry." line from WoK is excellent mostly because Quinto is a much better actor than Shatner and you can see how INSTANTLY he understands it's to do w Kirk as opposed to Shatner looking over at Spock's empty chair and being like huh. Wots all this then. Also I like the way Quinto Spock runs I think it's funny :)

The next part when Scotty's like blah blah decontamination whatever after Spock asks him to open the door like sure okay I can get behind Spock being so overwhelmed that his common sense flies out the window but what I DON’T like is that it's only them down there. Where is the Drama of the entire engineering department watching Kirk have a meltdown over his best friend dying? Where's Kirk needing to be held back by three people because he's so desperate to get to Spock? Where's Scotty saying 'he's dead already' and the life just DRAINING out of Kirk? In STID it's just like "open the door." "can't do that." "yeah okay whatever."

NEXT BIT: Their dying conversation. In WoK Kirk and Spock have known each other most of their lives. They don't need to say much bc they just Understand each otherand you see that! When Kirk is finishing Spock's sentence and when Spock says "I have been and always shall be your friend" which seems a lot more meaningful than STID Kirk and Spock going "I want you to know why I went back for you" "Because you are my friend" and yeah it still HURTS but it's like. They don't have the history they don't have that enduring kinda love they just have a couple of years of being vaguely passive aggressive towards each other and it's still nice for Spock to realise like oh this is friends! This is a friendship! But Kirk's death just doesn't seem as tragic!!!

That being said. There ARE some raw lines there like "I'm scared Spock. Help me not to be. How do you choose not to feel?" "I do not know. Right now I am failing." Like that's IT that's the GOOD SHIT it's been nearly 8 years and I still think about it all the time. And again I can't say much for Chris Pine but Zachary Quinto's acting is MILES ahead of Shatner's and the crying! Spock crying! It's So Much!!!!!!!! And I like the music. I like the long shot of their hands meeting between the glass. It's very cinematic which while missing the campiness of WoK has it's own charm.

I like in WoK when Spock dies and Kirk slumps like he's lost every last bit of energy he had, like he's dying too, however I ALSO very much like in STID when Spock just fucking. Screams. And then goes and runs on a train and beats up Benedict Cumberbatch. I feel like it's fitting that Kirk dying kinda untethers him and lets him just absolutely lose his shit. I love seeing men beat each other up.

This has gone on much too long. Sorry I guess it just turns out I have Thoughts and this is probably barely skimming the surface but it's 9am on a Thursday and I have class in an hour but I've been sitting here rewatching the scenes and typing out this rant. As I said I really don't think I have anything original to say but like. Here ya go babe

#spirk #god anon im sorry adsfdgh i didn't know this was gonna turn into a whole long rant but like? enjoy I guess?#Anonymous #trek #asks

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fencesandfrogs · 3 years

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a follow up from this post where i talk about math and me as a kid.

Wait you have dyscalculia but are a math major? Wow I have dyscalculia but I like the philosophy of math I guess like I sorta forced myself to get into it to learn, I feel I can do basic so for me it's mainly the math anxiety

@totallysweetheart

tl/dr: the part of my brain that deals with abstract/tangible is, i think, broken, because i can’t deal with numbers as real things, but i can do that with polynomials or w/e.

so to summarize, based on wikipedia’s list of dyscalculia symptoms, here is me:

analog clocks: i’m fine to 15min in real life where i know the time of day, but in a vacuum, most real clocks r tricky. doesn’t come up. the teaching clocks i’m usually fine with because the minute hour hands are really distinct.

larger numbers: depends on presentation. purely verbally? no. visually? depends. if they both start with the same number it’s harder.

sequencing issues: not really.

financial planning: bank accounts are black magic and my mom still manages mine. i err on the side of frugal, which lead me with like 50% of my college meal plan unspent last semester.

visualizing numbers: no. nope. can’t do. not at all. numbers r fake.

arithmetic: it sucks, a lot. i’m better at multiplying and adding, and it’s gotten better because i did a lot of practice a few years ago, but i still prefer calculators.

number writing difficulties: yeah? hard to say i’ve been doing algebraic stuff for a long time and that really cuts down on the number of places to make those kinds of mistakes.

concepts and practice: this is where i’m strongest. my math conceptual game is strong as hell, and i don’t usually struggle with putting it into practice. even word problems i’m pretty strong at because like. it’s just math.

names of numbers: not really an issue.

left/right: also not really an issue. although it takes me a second.

spatial awareness: doesn’t exist. just. doesn’t. people don’t believe me then they ask me how long something is and i say like three feet and they’re like “it’s taller than you” and i’m like “oh really? huh the more you know”

time: im timeblind af. also adhd tho so that doesn’t help.

maps: ehhhhh. hard to say. I’m okay with some parts of maps but not others. this has definitely improved since school.

working backwards in time: i have an app for that its beautiful and i love it

music: i am good at music notation. not great at rhythm but i’m good at music in general.

dance: i did 12 years of dance. i’m not amazing, but it was a nonissue.

estimation: see: time, spatial awareness (the answer is i cannot)

remembering formulas, etc: i’m usually good at remembering this stuff.

concentration: adhd already so? maybe?

faces, names: i do not do very well here.

so like. i basically have the best possible set of symptoms to become a math major. i kind of skirted attention as a kid because i could get around a lot of my difficulties and didn’t really have anything to do but use brute force to cram multiplication facts into my head.

and because i had this really strong conceptual understanding, i just sort of survived until algebra. at which point i was very happy.

because basically most of my dyscalculia issues revolve around numbers and the real world. i can’t do time, i can’t estimate, i can’t really work with numbers. but i can work with algebra because the concepts were fine. there was just a road block.

for me, it’s kind of like having a major speech disorder in your native language. speech in the your mouth doesn’t work, not the language issues. as a kid i loved writing because the words came out the way they were in my head. they didn’t get shuffled and mangled. and that’s also how i felt about algebra. like, look! you don’t have to worry about getting the numbers right if you can move the variables around,

and obviously it’s not that complicated because i’m skipping basically from fifth grade to my junior year of high school, but even though it was a constant friction between me and everyone about why i kept making careless mistakes, even after other adhd stuff got treatment, it was generally acknowledged that i knew what i was doing, so i never really developed math anxiety.

and as a math major, like, numbers are not a very large part of what you do. i use wolfram alpha a lot for solving that sort of thing. i do stuff that’s more about the logic parts of math. lil puzzles waiting to be solved.

it really does feel kind of like the abstract and tangible parts of my brain were swapped. because numbers really do feel abstract, but figuring out the equations of a graph is a fun game to play with friends. i usually get the constants wrong, but that’s besides the point.

i’m not entirely sure if this was helpful and/or clarifying in any way. if asked, i will usually not mention dyscalculia because? it just doesn’t feel very relevant/serious. because my management strategy is: don’t do anything with numbers and estimation ever. and then that works, because i don’t have to. it’s only really relevant in the context of me, a child, very confused about why those centimeter cubes exist, etc.

and also, as i got older, i dug more and more into theory and proofs. learning about numbers as entities that follow rules was a really useful thing for me. learning about negative numbers made subtraction easier for me because it wasn’t addition in reverse, it was addition of a negative number. which made more sense to me.

i struggled in high school geometry because of all of the numbers and angles (i have a shirt somewhere that says “all i learned in geometry is that you can’t measure shapes”) and every time someone pointed out applications to me i kind of just went “okay but there are rulers for that”

and i do like geometry! i like how we can build properties out of simple rules and how shapes behave and its really cool you only need like 5 postulates to build a lot of geometry but if you make me deal with too many angles and i want to cry

so yeah. uh. i’m a math major & it works because when we deal with numbers, they’re almost variables in themselves? like okay we’re going to use 0 and 1 here to apply this theorem but the numbers themselves aren’t relevant.

here is a screenshot from my calc textbook, if this helps make my point. most of these concepts are things i can just. put in my head and hold the way people who can think about numbers describe numbers to me.

i have no idea where u are in ur life but if u like math from the logic side, then pure math exists and its p cool. usually you gotta get thru calculus, and then take a course in proof writing (at my uni it’s called “transition to advanced math”) at which point everything turns into theorems and proofs and the most number intensive course is probability. i don’t even need statistics credits to graduate.

this was a lot and i tried to wrap it up like 3 times and then i had more to say because i think a lot abt math and the fact that i was lucky to have the right opportunities to not entirely chase myself away from the field (which is a lot more words and i should probably work on my hw) but if u have more questions lemme know bc! i am very dedicated to exposing people to math and why i love it.

#dyscalculia #twice exceptional #university #math #mine #txt #25th #January #2021 #January 25th 2021 #ask #not really but also yes #learning disabilitiies #essay

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pocketsizedquasar · 4 years

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So.... I followed you in the wee beginnings of my giant moby dick obsession and I've been avidly consuming your comic. But TODAY I found your writings on the musical and... oh my gosh that part with Fedallah . just. you make all the good points there! And its like... I saw it at ART before my giant obsession took root, but so much of it confuses me! and moby dick is a book with some pretty explicit sections about race (if not a big coherent Take) 1/?

so to take it and then make it all about how some white man is ruining the voyage (ahem, the US) is so strange to me!? Like there ARE sections about whiteness, and there are parts where Ishmael totally turns protestant evangelizing ideas on their heads (queequeg as being tainted by christianity, also the part where queequeg says something along the lines of ... poor ishmael, so confused). Idk maybe i'm just a purist. 2/?

I have to say though... the song version of the reverend's sermon at the beginning absolutely takes my breath away (and i'm sad that I don't have any audio version...). Do you have a take on all the prophet imagery/stuff going on in the book? (elijah, ahab, jonah &c).ANyways, I've been rambling. tl;dr: your comic is So Good and I have opinions about the 2019 musical. 3/3

hhhh first off thank u for following & for ur kind words!! i’m so glad to be a part of Whale Obsessions & i’m glad you like my comic!!

& ohhh boy. the musical. the musical the musical. i actually have a more distilled, shorter post in my drafts about my problems w the musical bc my existing review is kind of long and unwieldy but YEAH, tl;dr a white man trying to take a story already very intrinsically about race and modify the racial aspects to make it “more relevant” to “modern america” is. dumb and shitty and not his place as a white man to do and i’m Not a Fan. you don’t need to try to make md relevant to modern day america! by virtue of the fact that it’s already about race and racialized dynamics in the 19th century US -- dynamics which still exist -- it’s already relevant to today! especially when he takes away a lot of the existing racial commentary in favor of adding his own lukewarm white takes on racism! like what abt the time ishmael learns he fucked up wrt queequeg on his own, without queequeg having to pull some bs “i’m just like you!!” moment like so many characters of color in white narratives are forced to? what about ishmael drawing comparisons between the pequod and colonialism/imperialism, and talking abt how the act of whaling at sea mirrors US colonialism on land? what abt the fact that all of the officers on the pequod are white and most of the sailors are poc (which is mentioned in a brief throwaway line in the musical but otherwise not meaningfully discussed bc the officers are played by WOC)? there’s like. so much to work with already that you can build off instead of just... eschewing that to insert your own opinions lmao. and it’s less work!! to just work with what already exists and build on it!!

and !! yeah the sermon song is absolutely fantastic. there are several really really good musical moments in the show (which makes the problems w it all the more frustrating imo). it’s a lovely lovely song sung beautifully and a really wonderful opener. psst if you want an audio boot of the show dm me i can link u to one that my friend took the night we went together

but yeah re: prophet stuff in the book-- i live for that shit. the sermon chapter is probably one of my favorites in the story, both for its beautiful language and for how much it foreshadows everything! something i think a lot of adaptations (not just the musical) get wrong about Moby Dick is the exclusion of the on land chapters. and, like, I understand why people do it -- they want to get to sea and the adventure as soon as possible -- but the problem is those first 20 or so chapters exist to frame the story in a way that we can’t really when we get to sea. there’s so much foreshadowing and tone-setting and groundwork that’s done in those early chapters that we miss out on if we just skip them (not to mention the adorable character interactions btwn Ish & Queequeg, Ish & Peter Coffin, & really just the only time we actually get to see Ishmael be a character).

putting the rest under a cut cause this is getting long lol

but yeah so much of what shows up in the latter half of the book is explicitly referenced in those opening chapters. aside from the obvious biblical connotations of the names (ishmael, elijah, ahab), connotations that the narrative itself is well aware of and comments on, there’s so many little things that just... really nicely hint at what comes in the end.

like, okay. ishmael getting saved by queequeg’s coffin at the very end? in what can easily be interpreted as ~divine~ or ~angelic~ intervention (esp if we consider the biblical origins of his name)? okay, cool, look at this line that ishmael yells when he first sees queequeg in peter coffin’s inn:

(ID: “Landlord, for God’s sake, Peter Coffin!” shouted I. “Landlord! Watch! Coffin! Angels! save me!”)

or how about the swinging lantern in Jonah’s cabin that shows up in the sermon?

(ID: “Screwed at its axis against the side, a swinging lamp slightly oscillates in Jonah’s room; and the ship, heeling over towards the wharf with the weight of the last bales received, the lamp, flame and all, though in slight motion, still maintains a permanent obliquity with reference to the room; though, in truth, infallibly straight itself, it but made obvious the false, lying levels among which it hung. The lamp alarms and frightens Jonah; as lying in his berth his tormented eyes roll round the place, and this thus far successful fugitive finds no refuge for his restless glance. But that contradiction in the lamp more and more appals him. The floor, the ceiling, and the side, are all awry. ‘Oh! so my conscience hangs in me!’ he groans, ‘straight upwards, so it burns; but the chambers of my soul are all in crookedness!’”)

that image, the rocking, swinging lantern, reappears again and again in Ahab’s cabin throughout the book! it’s there in the beginning when we see Ahab charting their course for the first time, it’s there when the ship sees the mysterious spooky Spirit Spout TM and Starbuck finds Ahab sleeping in the cabin, clinging to a rocking lantern, it’s there when Starbuck has his existential crisis over whether or not he’s going to kill Ahab (another Jonah parallel -- killing the captain would save everyone else).

or how about when queequeg saves that racist dumbass on the schooner to nantucket, and ishmael literally tells us queequeg’s going to die?

(ID: All hands voted Queequeg a noble trump; the captain begged his pardon. From that hour I clove to Queequeg like a barnacle; yea, till poor Queequeg took his last long dive.)

there’s just a ton of really lovely little nods and details and symbols in the early chapters that lay down the foundations for what comes later. those chapters, and elijah and ahab and jonah and the sermon and peter coffin, have a job to do: they’re there so we know how this ends before we’ve even started. before ishmael ever sets foot on the claw-footed pequod, we know, at least on some level, she’s destined to sink.

remember, ishmael is telling us this story in hindsight. he knows how it ends. he doesn’t deceive us, doesn’t try to hide or avoid it. he makes it very clear from the beginning that this is a story where everyone dies.

sorry that got so long! thank you for the asks i always love an excuse to ramble about Dick

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rogueshipagogo · 4 years

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ppl have been asking me my opinions on space channel 5 vr... and i guess since i bought a vr headset off craigslist just so i could play it and speedrun it before work the day it came out... i should talk abt it now... i dont rly think i’ll be able to separate it into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ things i think i’m just going to do a rambly stream of consciousness bc i have a headache... but i DO have good things to say abt this game... so st.... sta stay t tune d

right off the bat, the thing i appreciate most abt this game- i like that space channel 5 vr doesnt have cash grab vibes. i Do genuinely believe that they Wanted to make this game For the people who are still obsessed with it, and that they ultimately did what they set out to do when they intended to scale certain aspects of the series up conceptually to match the way the fandom perceives it nowadays. but like i’ve said before... i’m not going to Disagree with the very common conclusion that it Needed to be longer, or at Least more intricate plot-wise. one of my fun and fresh excuses for sc5vr being as short as it is is because you arent really supposed to be playing vr games for too long anyways, its really disorienting and kinda painful, but even that doesn’t account for why so much of the game that we got is a rehash of old settings, concepts, songs, and characters. [i dont even have a problem with reusing old songs, i just think the ones they chose ended up being misleading]

for example i think it makes sense that the first report is a remake of the first games first report on the surface, it’s meant to take you back to the way the first game felt and give you an idea of what it means that the games classic scenery can be rendered in actual high quality detail now [same with the recurrence of events like encountering the space pirates in the asteroid belt/the last battle against a villain being singing to it about what it’s done wrong], but i really thought, like, report 1 was going to end up being a simulated scenario for the benefit of lou and kee’s training... which i dont think ended up being the case??? i think they really did write ‘ok here you are in the first game’s setting again, fighting the old enemies again, because... :^) ok have fun playing report 2!’

and then whats report 2... you fight another old boss from the first game... but theres Still no clear villain or motivation for anything thats happening... and there wont be until like... basically the end of the game...

like, glitter is a really cute character, but its kind of underwhelming that shes just a random citizen who was kidnapped by an entity that we NEVER LEARN ANYTHING ABOUT... like part 1 was extremely notable for being about corporate greed and corruption, part 2 honestly wasnt that political in comparison but at least made you do a think wrt purge’s motivation and his methods, and this game just has a plot device that feels like it’ll do smth but then ends up not doing anything beyond what we already learned about it from the information on its character bio before the game was out. if it turns out that cell x is actually relevant again in a future entry in the franchise and they do have a more developed concept for what cell x Is in mind, i’ll do an entire backflip, but for now its just chalked up to being the result of More Space Hijinks that dont need to be explained

ESPECIALLY WITH ALL OF THE ALLUSIONS TO CELL X BEING AN ENTITY THAT FEEDS OFF OF DANCE ENERGY... it had me thinking that there would have to be some New Method of fighting it off that didn’t just lend it more power in the process, but nah apparently just tacking on the disclaimer ‘*this dance energy is not for glitter’ is enough to turn it from smth it can consume for power into big attacks you can use to kill it... like honestly it sounds like im asking for a lot from a game that has Never made too much sense, but considering that in part 2 they could add details like ‘oh didnt you know purge can open pocket dimensions? ulala is capable of manifesting tangible dance energy and the only other person who can do that is purge???’, its not like they havent come up with weird new shit for dance energy to do within the plot before. they just didnt do it in this game fsr

like did anyone else think that cell x/glitter was going to be the result of tossing purge out into deep space and him encountering the sc5 universe’s equivalent of an eldritch alien creature, smth more bestial than morolians?? even if purge wasnt part of it, when you say ‘uh oh, this guy Eats this society’s only source of energy!!!’ i expect the stakes to get HIGH, and i want the ramifications of it to be kinda STARTLING, because blank wanted money and purge wanted to ritualistically end the world but something this near to an ecological disaster that would force an entire paradigm shift hasn’t occurred yet in the series?? its totally new!!! there’s a lot they could do with this but OH DONT WORRY ABOUT IT EVERYONE ulala knows how to make dance energy kill cell x instead of feed it she’s got this we’re good no need to investigate more into all that

i can’t explain why the game is like this. and i dont expect grounding to address it in any meaningful way either. i’m sure they’re Aware of these complaints by now- the game reviewing community has Not been kind to sc5vr specifically due to all of these shortcomings [i didnt even touch on the issues with motion sensing and how many of the games mechanics were removed in favor of smth presumably easier to program yet much less satisfying, like Secret Moves just being mini quicktime events and Turning Your Ratings Into Stars just being replaced with the standard Three Strikes You’re Out method of scoring], but the pr team still seems very enthusiastic abt the game and is still promising dlc and potentially even more games in the series after this one- heres hoping that they’ll at least take these grievances to heart and consider making the experience not only more accessible [aka it will... go back to being a rhythm game with controller input.... and not... an exclusive vr experience...], but also as immersive and detailed as the old games, with less reused plot beats. i can let some of it off the hook in this game simply because i’m aware that it began its life as a tech demo that was only supposed to be that initial first report from the first game But Happening All Around You!, but i Really dont think they could get away with doing this little to expand upon the groundwork set by the first two games again. not with the way people remember part 2 being such a vast upgrade from part 1... the bar had been set so high that this just felt like a huge backslide into something even sillier and harder to take seriously than part 1 before we had any idea what kind of staying power the franchise would have as a hallmark of sega’s quirky antics. like... this game is what i think space channel 5 looks like to people who don’t understand the appeal of the first two games. and that scares me

but i guess for the most part, aside from wishing they had done more to revitalize the setting and the lore of the sc5 universe itself, im kind of glad it didnt do a lot to change the existing storylines the characters have kinda forged for themselves- here i was stressing out that they would pull out some plot development that would utterly and drastically change the way we talked abt the series for the rest of time, but so little happened and so little was added to the bank of sc5 lore that we can kind of all just carry on as usual and keep having the same headcanons we always had.

BUT!!! there ARE a lot of cute little details here and there that make the experience feel wholesome and like i said not an utter cashgrab- like so many of the character profiles referencing previous games [all of the references to npcs in this game being relatives of the npcs of the last games made me lose it] and how often ulala changes her expressions up and looks right at you and talks to you. the new music they wrote for the game also all slaps and everyones redesigns [if they got a redesign... rip pudding] are stunning

one of the most important things they did in this game was give a nice sort of Update to every character.... for example explaining that ulala isn’t a rookie reporter any more like she was in the first 2 games, that she’s moved up to being in charge of training new channel 5 reporters, and that while pudding is still somewhat stuck on her rivalry with ulala her career isn’t stagnant either, she was just cast in a romcom series as the lead... which is really nice considering how in the past she was portrayed as somewhat of a loser with almost no remaining fans left from her idol years

and you knew i was going to bring up jaguar at some point HES ALL OVER THIS GAME AND IT LITERALLY MADE ME FEEL LIKE MY LIFE WAS WORTH POWERING THROUGH THESE LAST FEW YEARS AND ALSO LIKE IM A GENIUS FOR SPENDING SO LONG POSTING EVERY SINGLE DAY ‘NO REALLY, HE’S THE SECONDARY PROTAGONIST OF THE STORY, ITS ABOUT CHANNEL 5 AS A COMPANY AND THEIR IMPACT ON EVERYONE WHO HAS EVER ENCOUNTERED THEM AND THAT INCLUDES JAGUAR AS WELL AS ULALA HES INTEGRAL TO THE PLOT BC SHE WOULDNT BE ALIVE IF IT WEREN’T FOR HIM’ i feel like it’s really incredible how in this game he has genuinely nice energy and doesnt withhold praise from ulala just to be helpful in a mysterious way later and he like HAS FRIENDS now. like consider how he went from disgraced former ch5 employee who got mad every time he saw them, to kidnapped robot henchman kinda humbled by the fact that now the turns tabled and ulala had to rescue Him, and now 3 years later his bio is all about how he has a new tv show thats super popular and he has a new entourage of ladies who he considers his '’’’’’comrades’’’’’’’ within the station he founded??? AND AFTER 20 YEARS THEY WERE FINALLY ABLE TO GIVE HIS MODEL JUICY ASS CHEEKS??????????????? NO MORE PANCAKE BOOTY???? THE BOY HAD A GLOWUP AND NO I WONT STOP TALKING ABOUT IT

WHEN I SAY MEOW MATCH THE POSE MOTHERFUCKERS THIS BLONDE BASTARD GETS TO BE IN CHARGE OF THE HUNDRED STAGE BATTLE NOW TOO THIS IS THE YEAR OF THE SPACE PIRATES BAYBEE

#its almost 4 am. idk i will probably have more to say tomorrow. my head still hurts #the galaxy depends on my funky moves

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perenlop · 4 years

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Could you tell me more about Starfall? I really like what I've heard so far, but some more context for the characters/their world or even just a preview of the very beginning of the story, would be really cool to see, anything you want to talk about!

AAA ok ok so starfall honestly is. weird. its a pmd story ofc but its also a dimension travel story in the vein of svtfoe sooo things may be kinda wacky but i can share some things abt the story and the pmd world itself!! the story itself has. quite a bit going on tk the point where i already have a prequel mostly scripted that im waiting until starfall itself is more finished to actually start. adhd storytelling folks.

basically though the Starting Plotline is that this platinum ranked team called team silverwind (Castor, Atlas, and Quinn!) get roped into a job request dealing with wormholes that have been popping up throughout the world and something goes VERY wrong and the team pretty much drops off the face of their world and the multiverse entirely. so, our main trio team starlight- Asha, castor and atlas’s daughter whose spent her entire life traveling through wormholes and is tired and mad about everything, Skylar, an amnesiac impulsive dare devil adventurer who wants answers and to help their new friends, and Valerie, the optimistic happy go lucky newest friend whose never been outside her hometown much less her dimension and just kinda fell into the plot- have all set out to find the lost exploration team, find out what happened, and maybe see if they can fix the wormhole issue themselves while theyre at it!

valerie’s hometown, Serenade Falls, is set on mist continent (aka the gates to infinity continent) and is “the hub world” as you will... its kiiinda like a vacation place ironically so like there are a ton of attractions and places to relax and Just Have Fun. theres only one official rescue team placed there (as anyone there knows anyways ;) ) because its so safe. as of right now anyways. hint. in fact skylar chose to stay there after meeting valerie bc “asha we are way too young for constant anxiety and stress we need a decent rest stop now”. so yeah thats the town where our main gang rests and plans things in. the first arc basically is them going into the wormholes, searching for these people, getting into some plot relevant shenanigans, and mayybe getting some hints about their lives that make them question their own selves and the universe but perhaps. ;)

there is also stuff going on in the pmd world as well ofc tho!! bc im assuming people read pmd stuff to see more abt the pmd world. the events of the games are referenced, some more relevant than others (one main driving point of the story actually is caused by gti, but uh spoilers for that game so i wont say 😔) but starfall takes place yeeeaaars after psmd, id say five generations or so after that game. idk if people will care for it but the main things dealt with in the pmd world itself will be emotional stuff. some exploring and conflicts there, of course! but the majority it will deal with is character stuff.

i cant give an official preview or anything yet but i can give a brief thing of what the opening will be like! the prologue will basically show team silverwind’s apparent demise, with atlas handing baby asha to castor and he escapes with them and goes on for a while as she ages before he eventually vanishes too. (or i could cut that and just show the scene of him vanishing... still pondering What Works with the prologue 😔) and chapter 1 is basically about how valerie meets skylar and asha! basically she falls into a wormhole and they help her out of trouble! dont mind spoilers like that bc. its chapter 1. but yeah! its gonna be fun, more fun than it sounds! (besides the prologue thats just gonna be sad sorry)

i could go on about the characters but i feel ive made the post too long as is but THANK YOU i love talking about starfall ty!! im sorry if this was kinda incoherent bc my brain is kinda rushing rn it was more rambly but i hope it answered some questions at least!!

#aprilcruelsday #mail #oc talk

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dontyouhearmehowling · 4 years

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oh my god. Ok so I just scrolled through your blog and my heart hurts because there is so much love and just so much stuff I can relate too and I just ahhh damnnn it I cant even but like can I please have the story of your relationship with this girl your with? please? i'm a hopeless romantic I feel too much I love so hard my own love life is complicated but i know the kind of love you talk about thats exactly how i love the love of my life too so yours is a story I need to hear

ok so. it all started on April 31st, 2018. i reblogged one of those ask games and she sent me an emoji that said “i’m too scared to talk to you but i think you’re great” and i was like do it!!! and she did!!!! she texted me after i had already gone to sleep tho, so i only answered the next day. but then we talked all day. and the next. and the next. and we never ran out of things to talk about and even only knowing her for a few days i already felt comfortable enough with her to talk about anything?? it was wild. since day 1 we’ve had this connection that i’ve never had with anyone else and its my favorite thing in the world. after like a week we already had a bunch of inside jokes, something that i’d never had before, and i was already crushing on her. ok so we became very close friends like immediately, and i mostly ignored my crush on her bc i thought she didn’t like me back and usually i’d get meaningless crushes on everyone at first before i met her. but then this other girl and i started flirting and i realized i didnt like her bc i liked c too much, so i broke things off and kinda went like “oh shit this is real” and decided that i’d just stay friends with c until i eventually couldnt take it anymore and had to tell her abt my feelings bc thats how i am. anyways ok cool meanwhile i made her watch the good place on rabb.it with me which will be relevant later.

ok so fast forward to may 21st or something around that time. its time to sleep bc i have school the next day so we say goodnight, but then i guess she says something or reblogs something and i get sad bc i realize she doesnt like me back. so i make some hashtag sad posts abt yearning and then i realize i told her i was going to sleep and i didnt want her to think i didnt want to talk to her so i text her again and say like “ok i was going to go to sleep but then i got sad abt my crush” and SHE GOES “you have a crush????????” and im there like. what in the hell bc not only did i not try to hide it At All, i constantly posted about it and had an entire tag about her and i thought it was pretty obvious. so anyways i go “yes?? i thoought you knew that?? im literally always posting about it??” and she asks me to talk abt the crush and who it is. i say “just stalk the tag if u want, im going to sleep” then shes like “nO WAIT WHO IS IT” and im like. blatantly ignoring that and my heart is already beating out of my chest but she Really wants to know and then at one point i say “please dont make me answer that” so shE SAYS “you’re making me think that its me” and i say “i dont know what you want me to say” and SHE GOES “I WANT YOU TO SAY THAT ITS ME BC I HAVE A HUGE CRUSH ON YOU” so i just. die. right then and there. also yknow we talk about it and its like after 1 am and im just happier than i’ve ever been. ok so 2 days later she asks me out Officially and its great and shes the cutest gf ever and she made me feel more wanted than i’d ever felt in my entire life. then 6 days later she sends me a big big big text on tumblr and long story short (bc it was kinda personal), she would be deleting her all social media for the summer.

so she was gone. and we had only dated for a week at this point, but we’d known each other for 2 months, and i already loved her. i already knew she was the love of my life. i didnt even try to move on, i’d tell people i didnt wanna move on cuz i knew i was meant to love her. i had another blog like this that i used to talk about how much i loved and missed her (so like. exactly like this). i literally reasoned with myself that like. that happened because before i met her i was in a really bad place after a terrible relationship and i was almost giving up on finding someone who actually made me feel loved bc i thought it would never happened, so i was like “ok so i was in a really bad place, so the universe brought my soulmate a little early just for a while so that i would know i had to hold on, and when its actually time for us to be together, it will bring us to each other once again” like i actually told myself that, in those words. and yknow what? i wasnt even wrong. on july 15th she texted me from an empty tumblr with her old url and at first i literally couldnt believe it but we talked for hours and hours and i asked her what happened bc i thought she was disconnecting for the summer and she said “i was. i am. i just couldnt not talk to you anymore” and she said that she thought about me every single day, and i told her i missed her and she said she didnt text sooner bc she thought i’d be angry at her and ofc i wouldnt, i could never be angry at her and besides, she was just taking care of herself and i said i dont think i could be anything less than head over heels for for, and she said she felt the same way, but wasnt ready to be more than friends yet. but that had always been more than enough for me. just having her in my life would always be more than enough for me. so we stayed friends.

then, on august 9th i got this ask.

and she saw it after i said i was gonna go to bed (bc again, i had school the next day) and she texted me a whole thing about how that was the nicest thing anyone had ever said about her and that i should be asleep but she had to get it out of her chest and that her anxiety made it hard for her to show how much i meant to her so she was sorry if i didnt know and this would probably make no sense but she was tired of keeping it to herself bc shes the luckiest person alive for having met me and that it was gonna be so hard because shes so difficult (shes not) and her anxiety is difficult but that she literally spent every night thinking about me and of buying plane tickets to come see me so that she could be with me. then she was like “im sorry if this is uncomfortable to you and you can just ignore it but i think im in love with you and this is over text and not romantic at all (it was the most romantic night of my life) but you’re asleep (i wasnt) and we arent together but i want to be one day” and until this i was Trying to fall asleep and then i checked my phone that kept RINGING and died a thousand times over and started to answer and she sent other texts saying “i’ve never felt this way about anyone before i’m so in love with you its fucking ridiculous and this is gonna be so complicated but fuck i want this so bad / i’m sorry it took me so long / would you move to new york with me?” and i was This Close to literally fucking exploding like. how the hell was this happening how was it not a DREAM. so we talked and i obviously said i loved her too and eventually she asked me out and thats still probably the best night of my life. other highlights: “i’ve loved you way before august 9th so jot that down” and “off topic but i love you / you’re honestly my other half” and, after i said “you cant make me laugh its 2am”, she answered “i’m going to make you laugh for the rest of your life so help me god” and thats my favorite thing anyone has ever said to me probably and so far she’s kept her word.

anyways we got back together and then she told me that she never even told her friends she broke up with me??? bc that way she could keep pretending we were still together???? literally like sjdksndk imagine being this loved. i dont have to. anyways she wrote poems abt me sometimes and her christmas gift for me was gonna be a book with all her poems and she called it “what we owe to each other” because of the good place (remember how i said it’d be relevant later? its later) bc like she said that when we were watching tgp together on rabb.it thats when she realized that she Really Truly liked me like For Real. and the inscription on the book was going to be “to the girl i love / and what i owe her” and. yall. i cry. anyways one of the poems had a huge impact on us. heres the story:

and she got them but we broke up before she got to mail them to me. what happened was she had some mental health problems and she said she couldnt give me what i needed at the time but knew i’d still give her my all bc thats just how i am and she thought it wouldnt be fair so she broke things off to work on her mental health. she said she would need some time before we could be friends. the last thing we said was that we loved each other. this was in like november 2018, and we didnt talk for months. i actually tried to move on this time after a while, but it didnt take. and then i gave up for good. havent tried since. but anyways, then, on march 11th, 2019, i had my first day of college back in my home country, and we have this “pranks”/games that seniors get to do to the freshmen, and one of them required eggs, and they asked us to paint them, so i panted mine as iron man bc it was easy, but c LOVES iron man. like. LOVES. like in a Whole New Level of loving. once when we were dating she said she loved me more than tony stark and i was like. shook. like she tattooed “T.S” on her ankle after him. u get the point. she loves him very much, its adorable and endearing and i love it. anyways. so i sent her a picture of it saying like “you dont have to answer this but i made this for my university and i thought you would like it” and she answered and IMMEDIATELY something clicked and we talked and talked and talked and it was never weird or awkward or uncomfortable. it never is with her. its incredible, i cant explain it. i Know shes my soulmate like thats the ONLY possible explanation for this kind of connection. its unreal. anyways. we became friends again! all was well.

then one beautiful night she drunk texts me sndjkajs she sends me so many texts and says it sucks that we live so far away and that she saw my posts (in this particular case, one that said something about like. when she talked about love now, was it about someone else?) and she said that it wasnt. and then she went to sleep and i only saw the texts when i woke up and i was DYING bc we had a 4 hour difference and it’d take a while for her to wake up. when she did, we talked and she said she wasnt over me and was scared she might never be, and even though we were still gonna stay friends, it was nice to know that she still loved me. ok so fast forward a bit more and i was starting to wonder if she’d moved on again, when she finds out her best friend had a crush on her, and that conversation ends up with her saying “it was 100% platonic for me / sorry if thats weird i just wanted you to know that” and it was NOT weird it was GREAT NEWS bc i was Hella jealous of her best friend and at first i wondered if they were dating and anyways the fact that she wanted me to know that was a pretty good hint that she still had feelings for me. ngl im still somewhat jealous of h (c’s best friend), but thats just bc im an insecure lil bitch and also bc they get to go out and do stuff together that i cant do with c bc of the distance, yknow? but anyways. then she went on a graduation trip in mid to the end of june and she bought me a magnet. just. out of nowhere. i cannot stress enough how Incredibly unexpected this was. so much so that i actually convinced myself that it meant she was over me????? literally. what the fuck. anyways we named him together and coincidentally (or bc of soulmate powers. who knows) we both had the same favorite names. i still love that.

okay so then we go to july 29th, 2019. first of all theres one of my favorite interactions Ever which was like after i was venting about something and i was thanking her and i said “you’re always here for me” to which she answered “nowhere else i’d rather be” and i still think thats peak romance and i will take no criticism on this. anyways so then she sent me a poem that she wrote based on a song i’d sent her (the song i called “heaven is a place” and its the BIGGEST mood for being in love and i sent it to her bc it was how i felt about her so her writing a poem about it?? literally the best thing ever. love it) anyways it was a beautiful poem and i cried and got very emotional and kinda went too far in my compliments (aka being very obvious about my romantic feelings) and then i was like oh no sorry if i made u uncomfortable and she was like. “you have NEVER. EVER EVER EVER EVER made me uncomfortable” “you’re the only person on planet earth i am comfortably myself around” and “there’s nothing you could ever say that i wouldn’t wanna hear” and anyways it was just very good and romantic conversation even tho we were just cough cough platonic hashtag gal pals hashtag no homo ✌️ and then she was like ok wait. i need to talk to u abt something. and in short she said she was waiting for us and i was like well what are you waiting for exactly? and she was like idk?? for us to accidentally bump into each other in new york in a few years?? WHICH WAS LITERALLY WHAT I’D DAYDREAM ABOUT BACK IN JUNE 2018 BEFORE SHE CAME BACK OKAY so anyways we had a Great conversation and said i love you about a thousand times each and she decided she was gonna buy tickets to come see me. and then she dID like TWO DAYS LATER. lichrally. queen of impulsivity but in the best way possible.

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ok quick edit here cuz i forgot to say that when i found out she was coming i asked for my mom’s help to make a necklace pendant for her from scratch. my mom works with prosthetics so she has the material to make jewelry and back when c and i were dating in 2018 i had made this lil design for a necklace that had the moon and the ocean (bc duh) and i was gonna give it to her for valentines day in 2019 but we broke up before that so i didnt get the chance, but when i found out i was meeting her i knew i had to. so i made the necklace in wax, like this:

and my mom took it to her work and heated it up to melt it and keep the shape of it to fill with silver, and this was the result:

i gave it to her when she got here and she wore it while she was here and it made me so happy. ok edit over

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ok so we kept being like couple-y but not officially in a relationship bc we didnt want to make her anxiety worse. also at one point she was like “so about the ‘i love you more than the moon/ocean’ thing, since we BOTH love BOTH of the moon AND the ocean, i think its only Fair if we update our love declarations to ‘i love you more than the mocean’ bc its mix of both but thats not a word, buT its pronounced exactly like ‘motion’. therefore we should both start saying ‘i love you more than the motion’”. so now we have both the wonderful, romantic, original version, and the NOT ROMANTIC AT ALL DO U HEAR ME C??? version :) and after this day she always started with the WORST!!!!!! version, and i always started with the Only Valid Version, but we’d still answer each other’s ofc because. well. thats love i gues?? it sorta goes like this though: her: i love you more than the motion / me: i hate u / me: i literally hate u so much / me: i Also love you more than the motion

but anyways she was coming to visit me but the plane ticket wasnt for my home country it was for where i was going to university at (a new university, i was starting over) and when i first got here on this campus, i didnt have a working phone number for this country, and i wouldnt be able to access the wifi for 3 days, so i had no way of talking to her. it was TERRIBLE and i missed her more than anything in my LIFE but when i got wifi (after CRYING to the people here bc theyre the most unorganized uni ever and i was already very overwhelmed and stressed) i immediately called her and she’d sent me over 100 text messages dkfjssjks it was amazing, there were two (2) videos of her singing (which is like. objectively the best thing in the world, and the song was rlly romantic and i love it sm when she showed it to me for the first time she said it made her think abt me), a poem, AND a HUGE text with “i love you” written like. a THOUSAND TIMES. seriously i have a gif of it opening and scrolling bc it was so long that the text wouldnt show up directly on the chat screen and u have to click on it to see the rest. i’d never felt more loved in my entire life by anyone ever. anyways so then it came the day for her to get here and i had to wake up at 5 am to go get her at the airport and the uber was like $40 but who CARES it was the best day of my LIFE and i got there 20 minutes earlier bUT GUESS WHAT SO DID SHE (hashtag just soulmate things) then we facetimed the entire time while she was walking through the airport and getting her luggage and then she hung up to walk to the door where i was and we hugged for like 5 minutes and we were totally in people’s way and also almost fell but it was the best thing in the world and i never should’ve let her go. but, we had to go home, so i did. and we spent 4 days together and im not gonna go into details bc this is already too long but u can always send me another ask about her visit if ur not a coward. also i bought her a hoodie from my uni and whenever she wears it i just. die. in short, those days were the happiest i’ve ever been. this campus res had never felt like home before that friday and it hasnt again since that monday, but i swear to god, during those 4 days, this was the only place i could possibly belong.

anyways then she left and i cried for the entire uber ride home and then i cried all day. lmao. also when she was here she gave me the poetry book, the magnet, and the bracelet. still wear the bracelet every single day and i love it more than anything. but then personal stuff happened and we kinda stopped being couple-y again and we’re just friends now but before new years i asked her if she still loved me and she said yes and she said she’d tell me if it changed so ✌️✌️ im assuming it hasnt. even tho my brain is a bitch and everyday its like. today. today is the day. this is when its gonna happen. buT yknow we’ve spent months before without even talking to each other and we got through that still in love, so i mostly ignore it. and tbh i know that actually like, even if we grow apart now (god forbid, but still) we’ll find our way back to each other eventually. like, i’ve said this before and i’ll say it again: nothing, not even the universe itself, can convince me that shes not my soulmate. and even if it turns out i’m not hers, loving her is still the greatest honor i can think of.

another edit: also i started drawing recently and the first person i’ve ever finished drawing was her and also (surprise surprise @c since you’re already seeing all my feelings anyway) bc of my second drawing i almost missed the deadline for one of my midterms (which was a take-home test) bc instead of writing it i spent the entire day before the deadline finishing the drawing which was a secret valentines day gift (secret as in she didnt know it was supposed to be a gift, she thought it was just a drawing inspired by a quote that she loves) and i finished at 2 am but shes 3 hours behind so for her it was still 11 pm which MEANS it was still valentines day so it still counts, i win, lesbian rights!

#mine #l #answered #dont rb #i dont think anyone will but this is personal and i dont want to risk it getting out #i wanna have this bc i love telling people this story and next time someone asks i’ll just send them this post

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