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astraltrickster · 1 year

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What frustrates me about disability advocacy is that...of all the people I've seen talk about it, 99% of them - even ones who are disabled themselves - have eventually proven that their support has limits. Really stupid and arbitrary ones, at that.

You support disabled people...but if you see an adult with a DIAPER BULGE in their pants in public it's ON SIGHT, get your kink out of my face! Actually, even if it's not a kink, that's still gross and, like, it's not like the diaper exists to CONTAIN waste, you're a biohazard! Just stay home!

You support disabled people...but, ugh, you're so sick of masks, they feel so icky, the CDC isn't advising them anymore so really how bad can it be, if you don't want to be permanently disabled even worse than you already are then why don't you just stay home forever?

You support disabled people...but if you see anyone using a non-conventional straw that someone's billed as "anti-aging" on TikTok you proudly declare that you'll smack them, because what do you mean it might be a motor control or sensory thing?

You support disabled people...but no one is REALLY so disabled that they can't manage their lights conventionally, clean their homes by themselves, or hold a pen for extended periods of time or at all; that's just something people make up as an excuse for Bad Tech and exploitative luxury services.

You support disabled people...but, god, control your by-definition-uncontrollable tics, they're SOOOO annoying and rude!

You support disabled people...but when someone stops masking or runs out of spoons and starts speaking in a choppy, hard-to-understand way, it's a joke.

You support disabled people...but AAC is, like, sooooo annoying and hard to understand, learn to talk like a normal person instead of pointing like a baby or whatever, geez.

You support disabled people...but you hate image descriptions and video transcriptions because they're, like, sooooo ugly and transcriptions SPOIL things. (Not to be confused with "frequently not having the spoons to translate images and videos into text, which is a skill; one which everyone should try to develop, but a skill nonetheless" - I get that, it happens to me, but if you take issue with OTHER people adding them to your posts for Aesthetic Reasons, you're...kind of a dick! I'm not sorry for saying it!)

You support disabled people...but you think teehee funny joke annotations are a much more valuable use of caption tracks than, you know, actual captions are.

You support disabled people...but you still concern-troll people with armchair diagnoses of heavily stigmatized disorders for harmless weirdness, or try to paint them as icons of some kind of horrible social ill.

You support disabled people...but you're still convinced that every asshole is mentally ill, probably A Narcissist, and what do you mean that's a loaded thing to call someone when a heavily stigmatized disorder is rudely misnamed as such too, isn't it easier to, like, change the name of the disorder throughout the whole system than it is to just stop using that word as your go-to Bad Person Pathologizing Word, which you definitely need? (Or worse, you see no problem with this clash because you're convinced it IS Bad Person Disorder...)

You support disabled people...but you see someone mumbling to themself on the bus and you get as far away from them as possible because it's "scary".

You support disabled people...but you constantly try to pull "gotcha"s about people telling you not to touch people's assistive devices.

You support disabled people...but someone being okay with their delusional disorder and talking about that is BAD and PROMOTING SELF-HARM.

You support disabled people...but your body positivity still focuses exclusively on "people can be healthy and fat at the same time!" as if people who ARE fat because of health issues and/or have health issues BECAUSE of their weight don't exist or deserve support.

You support disabled people...but you declare that advocates who want us all to have more access to things that improve your quality of life are the REAL ableists for acknowledging that those things that you currently can't do tend to improve quality of life.

You support disabled people...but your advocacy for yourself involves distancing yourself from people with more support needs than you.

You support disabled people...but you treat addiction of any kind, or use of anything with known addictive tendencies, as a moral failing.

You support disabled people...until the accommodations they need clash with your own, then it's not just a benign incompatibility that sucks just as much for them as it does for you; no, you are an innocent victim and they are a horrible ableist.

You support disabled people...until it's too inconvenient. Too weird. Too scary. Once that line is crossed, it's not a disability issue anymore, they're, conveniently, just a Bad Person.

It's fucking exhausting and I'm sick to death of it.

#disability #serious tag #bitching #and even after i posted this i keep thinking of more shit people have said #not gonna edit them in because this post is long and has already been reblogged a couple of times #but might keep track of them in the tags or add more in a reblog #because. i can keep going.

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candiid-caniine · 11 months

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dumb dog's guide to self-denial

this was by far the most popular option in my last poll so here goes! full disclosure, i am a drooling idiot so i can't promise i won't miss some things. i can promise, however, that 1) i will do my best!! dogs are v enthusiastic!! and 2) there will be no bioessentialist kink of any kind within this post. adding to it with such things will get you blocked. if you're looking for that, go the hell elsewhere :)

disclaimer: i cannot give you advice that will "simply work" because nobody can. your body, your effort, and your time are all variables which I cannot account for with any certainty, so this is meant to get you started with finding your ideals when it comes to orgasm denial. it's not about learning to edge as much as me/for as long as me/as hard as me/whatever - everyone is different!

my approach to this is basically...building a dom/owner/whatever you'd like to call your ideal "denial partner" in your head. if you're single, either by choice or by chance, or you have a partner/s who isn't interested in being involved w/ your denial, this basically means being your own owner! so how does one do that? and how is that supposed to help with denial? you may be asking.

well, denial is about self-control, at least at the beginning. if you're new to this, that's probably what you're struggling with! your body loves orgasms, and it's used to getting release when it's stimulated. you start off a session wanting to edge, intending not to cum, but...you just can't; your body pushes you too far. when you've cultivated self-control, at some point your body starts to accept that edging also feels good, but until that point, it's all willpower.

only, part of being a submissive is wanting to surrender your willpower. so my solution to that was always playing both sub and dom, sort of at once, and to make a habit of it, so that even when you're in subspace it's not too far beyond you. how does that work if you're not a switch? you may be asking.

well...when you touch yourself, you probably fantasize, right? or you watch porn, or read erotica, etc. you may not be a switch, or have any urge to dom, but odds are you have an idea of how you'd like to be talked to. so start there.

want to be praised and trained like a beloved pet? when your body starts to get more excited, talk to yourself, and yes, it always feels stupid at first. "good boys don't cum without permission, isn't that right?" "so close to the edge, aren't you? now stop. stop right now. good girl." "be a good puppy and leave those puppy parts alone, calm down for me. good pet." whisper it if you have to, but do say it aloud. repeating it in your head isn't going to be enough at the start. eventually, maybe, but not yet. or do you want to be degraded and talked down to? tell yourself you don't deserve to cum, you're a pathetic toy, you're such a loser for obeying. then obey. in essence, emulate the dom that's in your fantasies. this is step 1. let your inner dom set some arbitrary, easy limits: just one more edge, then you can cum. or five more minutes, then you can cum. don't take away the goal of cumming just yet. and i do mean easy.

what if you don't have concrete fantasies/are imagining more sex acts than actual dirty talk? then get some! set aside 20-30 minutes before your edging attempt and get to dirty daydreaming! visualize the way you like being talked to, then enact it to, for, and by yourself. note the time to start this is before you've ever touched, if it's not already natural to you.

step 2: get comfortable with it. work a little of your "inner dom" into other aspects of your life; don't worry too much about the edging sessions, just get comfortable with this new persona or habit. when you finish a hard task, call yourself a good boy/girl/pet. when you're getting undressed for the shower, ask yourself, sexily, "is this for me?" and then your choice of pretty/handsome little thing or dirty little slut. invoke your inner dom in other areas of your life you imagine enjoying control. remember: you have to learn to bear through edging on self-control alone before you start to really lean into it from an internal perspective. and when you're edging, it's really hard for that to be the only time you're trying to do this.

step 3: when it's becoming more habitual, it's time to bring the edging up a notch. start setting true limits, experimenting with various things. these are the parameters i recommend experimenting with, one at a time, empirical-style:

how many edges can you do in one session before your urge to cum outweighs your inner dom? can you stretch this, with practice?

how does your body feel edging over and over again for 1 hour, vs. edging once per hour the whole day? more desperate and fuzzy, or less?

how does your body feel being teased slowly up to the edge vs. brute-forced into as quick an edge as possible? can you shorten, or lengthen, the times for each?

how close to the edge can you get yourself before a ruin becomes inevitable? what signs in your body point to this - tightening, contracting, throbbing, temperature, tingling? from there, can you roughly estimate a timeframe or amount of certain types of stimulation?

does setting aside specific times of day to edge, and not permitting it outside those times, frustrate/distract you more? or does allowing yourself to edge whenever you have time/feel like it frustrate/distract you more?

is it better to (eventually) cum directly after a long edging session, or to allow yourself to cool down completely and *then* cum?

how many methods of edging (insertion, fingering/stroking, vibration, humping, nipples, etc) can you perform, and in how many positions?

is it more frustrating to gently stroke/fondle yourself once every few minutes for the whole day without edging, or to edge repeatedly in a short period for an hour once a day?

there's a lot more you can try out. i recommend keeping a journal for all this. setting these kinds of goals and experiments for yourself will both a) keep you engaged intellectually and motivated, and b) get you in better communication with your own body. throughout all this, continue practicing that inner dom persona. praise yourself, degrade yourself, have dialogues with yourself; tell yourself to be useful or good, then respond with a pout and a "yes" and your choice of honorific.

more ideas/challenges can be found all over BDSMlr if you look for "edging challenges," but be aware many of them contain bioessentialist themes/language.

step 3.5: most d/s relationships have a reward/punishment hierarchy. so as you're taking step 3, explore what motivates you more - punishment, or reward - and, conversely, what gets you subbier: having more, or less of what motivates you. i'll explain, but:

when you fail a goal by going over the edge or ruining, what's the punishment that makes you feel the most repentant? is it impact, humiliating yourself somehow, some other unpleasant sensation, writing lines or other tedium? what makes you feel the least inclined to disobey again?

when you succeed at a goal, what reward makes you feel most fulfilled? is it an orgasm? several orgasms? sweet treats? a good smoke session? buying new lingerie? some combination of them?

from there: what successes or failures feel most, to least, deserving of the worst/best punishments and rewards? can you rank them?

and then: are you noticing you meet goals more when you're punished strictly, or rewarded fairly?

then here's the complex bit...does it align more, or less, with your desired form of submission to be consistent like that, or inconsistent? do you want a dom who always gives you the same caliber of reward/punishment for the same actions, or one who's cruel enough to keep you guessing at their whims? do you want a dom who adheres to you being more reward- or punishment- motivated, or a dom who doesn't care what motivates you, but rather what pleases them?

when you reward/punish yourself, thank or apologize to yourself, too :)

step 4: keep taking notes, but ask yourself these questions (you may want to take a break from edging just to have a clear mind):

why do i want to stay denied? is it because i like the challenge, or because i like a feeling like helplessness, neediness, vulnerability, or dumbness?

once you have that question answered, move on to: which of the ways/variables i tested while edging best gives me the feeling i'm looking for? was it more frustration, or less? was it frustration in small doses through the day, or all at once at a predictable time? was it switching up my methods, or staying consistent?

do i want to feel dumb/humiliated/put in my place/crushed by denial, or do i want to feel empowered/secured/confident because of it? which of the variables i tested made me feel the way i wanted?

your answer to many of these may be "both" or "i don't know," to which i suggest you spend some time on each. you'll either have a preference, or you'll switch back and forth, or find some middle ground - up to you.

one thing i've noticed is a theme among my advice asks is: how do i stay denied as long/edge as much as you, and that's for you to figure out if you even should. it's time to ask the question, what feels more doable for me: longer time periods without orgasms, or more edges total? you might say "both," to which i'd say, you and every newbie denial sub! it is 100% more feasible to pick one or the other as a goal at a time. hone those skills separately, and they'll naturally come together eventually if you decide you want them to.

step 5: reach for the stars! if you want to, that is :) you may just find you like a stable pattern of denial. you may find that pushing too hard past a certain point causes dropping. you may find that pushing too hard causes life stress. orrr you may find that "more" is never enough...like myself lol. any/all/it changing/some of each is 100% okay. or maybe you get off (or not) on setting impossible challenges and reaping the punishment for it :)

by this time, your body will have hopefully gotten past the awkward "mind thinks edging is hot, but so hot that i cum when trying to do it" phase. a combo of inner dom chatter + having intellectual/introspective challenges to work through was what got me to where i am right now lol. at some point, having my owner there to take the mental load off was great, but also, i'm so used to it that i still dom myself a lot lol. and a quick note: this may not work for you. that's okay, too: that's all part of your learning process. maybe you need external validation, and that's all there is to it - you're at least one step closer to understanding how denial works for you!

i'll finish with some lecturing to your "inner dom:"

good doms obey limits. if you don't like something you try, no matter how mean your inner dom is, you don't have to put up with it again.

good doms know life happens. if real life gets in the way of edging/completing goals, a good dom would never presume to come above that shit. if edging/completing goals is getting in the way of real life, a good dom would adjust so that it doesn't. responsibilities should continue to take precedence.

good doms are risk-aware. if you're experimenting with pain, bondage, anal, sensation play, etc., do what every good dom should do and educate yourself first! know the risks, and implement strategies to mitigate them.

good doms provide aftercare. take care of yourself on the comedown. try to allow time between a session and IRL responsibilities to recenter.

and finally, just a bit of affirmation for you, the person, as you navigate this exciting new lifestyle:

if you're not having fun, don't do it!

you are fully capable of this. whether it's my method or someone else's, if this is what you want, and it feels good, you can do it. you are not a bad sub if you can't, or if you can't do it the way someone else does.

this is not a masculine thing, or a feminine thing, or an enby thing, or a straight thing, or a gay thing, etc. it's not even a sub thing, really, but the sub perspective is the only one i can speak on. it's a kink, or a kink enhancer, that is "for" anyone who likes it!

in that vein, reject that which does not work for your body. do not be afraid to pass up edging advice just because someone seems to know what they're talking about. you also do not have to accept bioessentialist undertones just because it seems like good advice.

and finally: yes, you can dom yourself. you are capable, you are trustworthy (probably more so than even some doms lol), and you are absolutely worthy of your own submission and devotion.

have fun, stay safe, and drip a little, if it suits you c; (and don't hesitate to ask questions on my blog if you still have them!)

#0rgasm denial #denial kink #t4t nsft #how to #advice #denial #only barks

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ms-demeanor · 1 year

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Do you have any food tips for someone with bad texture sensitivities? The texture I hate Most is anything fibrous, which is almost all vegetables, and makes me feel and seem like a fuckin 8 year old. The best thing I've found so far is removing the central stem from spinach, "deveining" it, but that takes Forever and doesn't add much verity

I do! Because I fucking *loathe* celery strings!

So for one thing, if you find stuff that has textures that irritate you it's perfectly fine to avoid those things. If the stem from spinach bothers you are there good alternatives that serve the same purpose? Is the texture of kale or chard less problematic? If there are good alternatives that serve the same purpose, use those!

For another - look at some options on prep and purchasing. Does baby spinach bother you the same way that regular spinach does? Does baby spinach at least mean chopping off less of the stem because it's softer and less stringy? That might be a good option! But also check and see if there are different methods of prepping the particular vegetable. I started liking asparagus a lot more when I learned to snap the stem at its natural breaking point instead of trimming to an arbitrary length because that gets you a lot less fiber from the plant!

And finally - Destroy The Basic Structure Of The Offending Texture. If eating raw whole spinach is super difficult for you, don't do that. Cook it until the fibers break down (steaming and boiling do this pretty well) or chop it up so tiny that it isn't noticeable (this is the only way I will eat uncooked celery) or Stick That Motherfucker In a Blender (I put spinach in my smoothies and will often use an immersion blender to smooth out textures in soups). A mandolin slicer is a good way to get extremely thin-sliced veggies if cutting things up very fine is difficult for you.

You may also find that you have a better time eating frozen or canned vegetables than you do eating fresh vegetables. That's fine! If you're limited to canned vegetables make sure to watch the sodium in the veggies, but frozen and canned vegetables are still vegetables and they're still good for you.

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everybodyknows-everybodydies · 20 days

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okay so before I can talk about some things I have to establish some other things, and I'm shaking all the bees out of my brain today with great vigor, which means, without further ado: a brief overview of How Does Restoration Work (according to people named Mouse who are me)

point zero: for the most part, simplistically, each school of magic can be thought of as a manipulation of something. enchanting and conjuration fall under different strains of manipulation of souls, illusion as manipulation of the mind, and so forth. restoration is manipulation of the body.

now first (and this might be stating the obvious lol, but I have to state it): it does not work 1:1 exactly like it does in-game. people do not actually have the handy-dandy HP bar, illness/injury does not translate to a single number ticking downwards, and healing is definitely not just "make number go back up" in a matter of seconds. when you're at a point where a hypothetical HP bar would be nearly depleted, anything that's fast is not going to have the kind of long-term payoff that you need, but it might get you somewhere safer so you have the time to dedicate to actually properly healing.

secondly: in order to fix something, you have to know how it works. magic is a tool; any tool is only as effective as whoever is wielding it. it doesn't take a lot of knowledge to close a paper cut that didn't even bleed, but a severed tendon is going to be a very different story. an accomplished healer must have extensive knowledge of the body and its various systems in order to ensure their healing attempt is not going to inadvertently cause a whole slew of other problems. doctors today go through over a decade of schooling and training; in the US at least you're looking at a minimum of four years of premed, four years of med school, and three to seven years of residency. personally I think healers should also be the school of magic that requires the longest time spent learning because... there IS so much to learn! an additional note is that restoration has the benefit we do not of being magic, though: I think that in a world where healing is executed largely through the hands with magic, it stands to follow that you are not going to want to physically open someone up every time you need to check something inside the body, and so for my purposes this leads us to healers cultivating a specialized, passive sense of the bodily interior through touch. I've described this previously as a bit like echolocation as magic is channelled through the body and allows the healer a sort of "sixth sense" of precisely what's going on and where, though an in-universe analog might be a highly-refined version of "detect life".

(but Mouse, one might say, that's not a restoration spell! correct! the classification of magic is arbitrary! now put a pin in that thought because it will be important at a later date. not today though stay with me here.)

thirdly: as any tool should not be alone in the toolbox, magic can be used as a supplement or supplemented by mundane resources. if you have the time for it, an open wound will benefit from being stitched together to hold shape before applying magical healing, resulting in the need to produce far less scar tissue than a wound that you try to heal without closing it first. you still need to know how to use a tourniquet, how to handle a dislocated shoulder, how to drain an abscess, etc. just like you wouldn't whip out your power tools to hang a single photo frame, you have to know when to rely on magical healing and when to take whatever steps you can non-magically.

fourthly: magical healing has limits. manipulation of the body is not an all-powerful solution. no deus ex machina healing here. the two major restrictions are (1) the body's natural capabilities, and (2) the body's preexisting material. a body is capable of much more than we generally achieve in day-to-day life and nobody is running at 100% capacity 24/7 (because you would die, very fast). restoration can amplify measures that are already in place, such as stimulating platelet clotting/fibrin production over a cut to scab it over rapidly - and then, if taken further, providing the energy for tissue repair to move entirely from cut to scab to scar. crucially you will note that you cannot skip a stage! the healer is using what the body already has available, just allowing it to happen on a compressed timescale by boosting the energy available and providing external direction. there is a LOT of potential regarding what a healer could be capable of just by stimulating production of different hormones or shuffling brain chemistry alone. but! to reiterate! restoration is manipulative, not additive: a healer may be able to reattach a limb if they get to you in time, but they can't grow you a new arm out of nothing.

fourthly, subpoint: magical healing has cost, for both the healer and the patient. the more severe the injury/illness is, the longer it will take to heal and to recover fully from the expedited healing process, and thus the more energy the healer has to expend. a healer is limited most sharply by the depth of their own magicka reserve; practicing to expand the amount of magicka one has access to is just as fundamental a skill as learning anatomy and physiology. this is why most healers don't work alone! being able to literally split up the work - I'll take the broken leg; you focus on the slipped rib - reduces the probability of running out of magicka mid-patient and allows for fewer required follow-up sessions to ensure recovery is proceeding the way it should.

(fourthly, sub-subpoint: this is also why Colette Marence, the only professional healer in Winterhold, deserves a significant raise and a vacation and if anyone asks "is there a healer around" somebody ELSE can take care of it for once-)

fifthly: potions! we know that alchemical concoctions are a separate beast entirely from magic as executed by a mage - namely, I point here to spell absorption/spell reflection not being triggered by drinking a potion. this could take us down a separate rabbit hole about alchemy tapping into the innate magicka stored in reagents and the way THAT works, but for now the relevant question is: how does a healing potion differ from a healing spell? primarily the difference is capacity for intent and direction: a healer, being a person, can focus in on the specific site of injury and identify exactly what's wrong and exactly what steps need to be taken to fix it most efficiently. a potion does not have this capacity for specificity and is instead subject to the direction of the body's natural systems. ingested, it will be dispersed through the digestive system and through the bloodstream; applied as a salve it may work faster, but this usage is limited to external injuries. strong healing potions therefore are great for boosting your natural healing capacities long enough to get you to an actual healer for more serious cases, and may be all someone relies on for less serious cases - similar to using over-the-counter medication for a cold versus going to see a doctor for bronchitis.

tldr: restoration IS a perfectly valid school of magic, and just because it emphasizes mundane knowledge alongside esoteric magical knowledge does not make it any less fascinating or worthwhile. thank you <3

#Mouse talks!#the real TLDR is I love!!! restoration!!!! and magical theory!!!!!!#does this make sense!!! I sure hope so 😭

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andthebeanstalk · 9 months

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the average person doesn't expect you to be a perfect ethical consumer, that's not possible for the vast majority of us. but what youre saying is it's better to do nothing at all and choose the worst possible options (sweat shops, overseas shipping waste, idea/product theft, all wrapped up in SHEIN) than to put even the tiniest effort in where you can.

[they are referring to this post]

What I said was "some people are doing literally everything they can to survive and have no extra bandwidth to spend extra time and money on their purchases, and it is cruel and therefore un-punk to gatekeep punkness and add additional shame to these people's lives based on that fact."

I think it's still a good thing to try to ethically consume; I literally never said it wasn't. I had never even heard of SHEIN before. Rather, I am much more concerned about what I saw as arbitrary gatekeeping based on ability and income.

And frankly how dare you claim that I am supporting sweatshops and abuse by saying that this additional work you are demanding (in this case, presumably, vetting every clothing company you buy from) is not always possible for people. It is not a light accusation to accuse me of supporting abuse.

"How dare you say we piss on the poor", Etc. 🙄 this isn't Twitter. You are determined to enforce moral purity, but you are failing to see the nuance.

Because when I say "no extra bandwidth," I mean no extra bandwidth. This is not the "car shows it's on E but actually secretly it has a lot of gas left" situation that abled people constantly assume disabled people mean when they say they are at their limit.

This is "the car has stopped moving, and to move it I'd have to break my body pushing it." This is "at a certain point, people will hit a wall in terms of money and time and energy, and any energy spent after that comes directly out of their life force."

So the argument "okay but just spend a little more time money and energy actually" is not a valid one.

And the argument "if you are not able to do this specific task, then it means you're not doing anything else to make the world a better place" doesn't exactly impress me either. You said yourself that it is impossible to be a perfectly ethical consumer for most people.

How do you know what else people are doing to resist oppression? How many hours per week until your standards are met?What if someone works 3 jobs? Does that mean it's harder to be a good person if you're poor?? Why do you get to decide what specific avenue of bettering the world is the most morally repugnant or acceptable? What kind of proof of goodness and effort would make you satisfied enough to lay off on the shame?? Who are you helping??

Clothing is a fundamental human need, and some of us have to buy cheap fucking clothes quickly. Billionaires are buying their seventh yacht this month. The people who own fast fashion companies are abusing their workers and putting local affordable clothing stores out of business - and this applies for basically every company with price points that low because governments are failing to regulate corporations to enforce basic human rights.

I have $300 to spend on a new wardrobe as my old clothes have fallen apart or become too small. Do you have a way for me to get a new winter coat, 3 flannels, 10 shirts, 3 dress shirts, new sandals, 10 pairs of pants, 5 bras, 12 pairs of socks, and 10 pairs of underwear within that budget and also definitely 100% ethically sourced, with free returns in case it doesn't fit? Or will I simply have to use the cheap stores?

I have about an hour to spend on this per week. Many mainstream stores doesn't make clothes in my size, and I am now in *year 5* of needing an electric wheelchair and being unable to get one; plus I live up a flight of stairs, so I can't even bring my walker out with me - so thrift shopping is not gonna cover this. Should I continue to wear small and tattered clothing until I have the time, money, and energy to meet your standards?

Did you know there are more empty homes in this country than homeless people? If I decide to splurge on only 100% ethically-produced products, and I can't make rent, and I become homeless, are YOU going to be there for me?? Or are you too busy litigating the endless tiny shames of poverty in your own community?

So I ask you again, are you SURE this is where you want to direct your punk energy?

Because there are a whole lot of rich people relying on people like us punching down and to the side instead of looking up to see where the money is going.

Because energy and time, as it turns out, are limited resources. And I would never expect you to secretly have more than you claim to have.

#original #punk #hopepunk #cripplepunk #i swear to god #reading comprehension website #how dare you say we piss on the poor #jfc 'what you're saying is we should do nothing' - what I'm saying is YOU are doing nothing by enforcing this boundary #you have to give people more credit than this. i believe you want a better world too. and it would be cool if you used your energy to #instead ask 'how do i fight for the people in my community to be clothed and have the time and income to shop ethically?'#or 'how do i support activism that pushes for regulation that could control these companies?'#monitoring how poor people spend money is a supremely Republican thing to do. as is demanding clear moral purity from every scenario.#you want a better world too. you want to demand your peers do better. - fine. good.#but you need to be asking if you have remembered and included everyone's needs when making statements like this.#capitalism is all for forgetting about poor and disabled people and refusing to believe their limits.#shame is a necessary weapon in fighting greed but it IS a weapon. be so careful where you point that shit. enough shame can kill a person #and a lot of us are already defending from it from all sides.#shaming a person who is already at their limit for not doing more is an act of cruelty. think very carefully about what that means please.#i literally don't even know what SHEIN is lol i just know classism when i see it #but I've had friends whose clothes were visibly falling apart with no income and so much so shame so deep in their hearts they were dying #and if they had seen that post it would have made them even sicker and gotten them no closer to the dignity of being properly clothed #shame is a weapon and /you need to be careful!!!!/

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yourdyingwish · 10 months

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Hi! I saw your post about the blue curtain thing and I was wondering what was wrong with their interpretation. I haven't taken an english/lit class in years so a lot of it has slipped my mind, and the way they explained it seemed to make sense to me (especially because I tend to intentionally do something similar for imagery in my own writing).

I just posted a pretty long explainer a second ago about this because obviously I was being flippant when I posted the original screenshot, but basically: there's nothing inherently wrong with using an author's biographical details to inform an interpretation of a piece of literature. Death of the Author is something else entirely. Some people who have never read Barthes' original essay and have maybe only heard the phrase or concept seem to think that Death of the Author is a methodology in which you ignore the author's life in favor of your "own interpretation," which is somehow always right. This could not be more wrong. But to step back, let's talk about why that original post was limiting to the practice and art of criticism (I'm going to use this instead of 'wrong') because that was your question. At the core of that original post is, in fact, basically the same limited line of thinking present in the post I was talking about. (Btw no shade to OP–I care more about the 40k people who seem to agree with them, they might have changed their mind or not articulated themselves well, I've been there). Let's look at the original curtains are blue post and this post side by side.

Putting the rest of this under a cut because it gets long

The left is a version of the original idea in the "curtains are blue" post, and the right is the post I had an issue with which seems to basically be saying that real academic literary analysis doesn't actually try to match color symbolism to meaning, and instead focuses on autobiographical details of the author's life.

If this is true to OP's experience or the experience of those reblogging the post, I hope they high-tail it out of whatever program they're studying in. The issue with both of these posts, besides their general anti-intellectual undertone, is actually their emphasis on "correct" or "real" interpretation of a text, or one that is understood as "right" by some kind of invisible cabal of criticism-theory referees who all want to tell you "what the author really said." This is, among other things, a very juvenile approach to criticism. I think the reason that this type of sentiment is so popular on tumblr is that, frankly, a lot of people on this website are in high school or early college, and have an adversarial relationship to their English teacher/professor, who grades them on how well they can analyze a text based on sometimes arbitrary criteria. It makes sense that they would see themselves being graded on their criticism as "right" or "wrong" and interpret that there is such a thing as a single interpretation of a text that is "right" or "wrong."

However, that's not really what is or should be happening in upper-level/higher education. A high school English teacher trying to teach their students about color symbolism in the Great Gatsby is simply trying to impart one possible methodology of criticism to their students and enable them to repeat the same basic critical moves that one critic, at one time, has made, because grasping the basic ability to adopt a methodology and employ it is a foundational skill for analysis. However, public schools in America can't and don't take the time to explain that this is a methodology, so many students who are tumblr-aged walk away with this idea that their English teachers or even their professors have an extremely narrow view of what is "true" in a text. Often, exposure to one methodology will leave them with the idea that this is the correct methodology, when what they should have been taught first is that obsessing over what is "correct," especially related to truth from the author, is the one thing you shouldn't do. This is why the second post is just as bad: it says that actually, it's not symbolic interpretations from the author that matter (as in 'the author meant for the curtains to just be blue'), but an author's biography which, buried under psychoanalytic layers, can be revealed as a generator of meaning (as in 'the author's mother died in a room with blue curtains'). Both of these things are irrelevant because they, probably through the above process of intellectual alienation caused by grades I mentioned above, are focused on what the author intended as being a source of truth within a text.

This is what Death of the Author makes an attempt to deconstruct, and why I mentioned it in my original post. Barthes wrote his essay at a time when theory and criticism in general was undergoing seismic shifts following two major world wars & a huge variety of other cultural undercurrents in middle of the 20th century. Many things that had been taken for granted up to that point were suddenly being reconsidered, in particular the idea that texts, art, or even language itself has a central "truth" or meaning. Massively simplified, this is one of the core tenets of post-structuralism, and you can definitely say that Barthes was a post-structuralist thinker. When Barthes wrote that the death of the author is the birth of the reader, he was simply pointing out that the assumption many centuries of Western criticism is built on–that the author is the primary meaning-maker within a text, simply because they wrote it–is wrong. I believe this is true. Some people say death of the author is a "methodology" of criticism, but to me it's actually more like a door you have to walk through in order to do really good criticism. If you free yourself from the idea of a "correct" interpretation of a text driven by authorial intent, what you're left with is the really thrilling, life-giving work of criticism: drawing connections from within and without the text, and treating it as a living document whose meaning changes over time. What I think people don't realize is that poststructuralism, either formally or in practice, is the basis for most of the literary theory we embrace and consider valid. That is NOT to say that some French dude in the 1950s invented feminism or post-colonial theory, or even paved the way for it. Instead, you could easily say that marginalized people were already approaching critical analysis in a variety of ways based on their lived experiences, and it was the academy which had to catch up. There are a lot of more complicated theoretical thoughts people have had on this, which aren't relevant here really. But I think it's worth pointing out that Death of the Author is, by my measure at least, very good to do, and is VITAL to do if you've spent most of your adult life having weird, watered-down versions of symbolic, biographical, or psychoanalytic theories of interpretation pounded into your head by overworked English teachers. I feel like I should make it clear, BTW, that what I'm saying about why I think Death of the Author is a useful text or concept and what Barthes is saying about authorship in the essay itself are two slightly different things. Barthes' investment in overturning authorship at least within the confines of this brief essay is a lot more related to him proving out his theories of poststructuralism in general than it is to opening doors to totally new forms of interpretation. In the essay he is essentially saying that the nature of texts is the nature of language itself, which is that they are completely constructed, culturally determined, and therefore open to endless interpretation. This is a beautiful idea and one I embrace fully. A lot of Marxists, queer theorists, and others rail against this at least in part, because if you stop there, you're still functioning within a very limited paradigm. You've probably heard it before, the move is basically: "everything is a construct, so nothing matters" as opposed to the feminist, critical race theory, queer theory approach, which is to say "the things we consider to be true are constructs; what narratives or modes of being exist to disrupt those constructs?" or a more Marxist/materialist approach which is to say "this is a construct, and someone constructed it because it benefitted them to do so."

But I think the original essay really is beautiful. I'm going to quote from it here:

Once the Author is distanced, the claim to "decipher" a text becomes entirely futile. To assign an Author to a text is to impose a brake on it, to furnish it with a final signified, to close writing. This conception is quite suited to criticism, which then undertakes the important task of discovering the Author (or his hypostases: society, history, the psyche, freedom) beneath the work: once the Author is found, the text is "explained," the critic has won; hence, it is hardly surprising that historically the Author's empire has been the Critic's as well, and also that (even new) criticism is today unsettled at the same time as the Author. In multiple writing, in effect, everything is to be disentangled, but nothing deciphered, structure can be followed, "threaded" (as we say of a run in a stocking) in all its reprises, all its stages, but there is no end to it, no bottom; the space of writing is to be traversed, not pierced; writing constantly posits meaning, but always in order to evaporate it: writing seeks a systematic exemption of meaning. In summary: the reason I think we should engage with texts at all is not to find a single meaning. It's not to prove out what the author said or what they didn't say. Instead, when we engage with literary criticism, our goal should be to simply say something as clearly as we can, based on the methodologies available to us. To ask "What is this? What is it doing? How is it doing it, and why do we care?" is a fundamental, beautiful question and the source of pleasure to me as a reader. Art isn't autonomous, and exists in our lives criss-crossed with social and political forces which change over time. When we can untangle the knots around a work of art, we discover ways to articulate ideas that might be impossible in other contexts. To only untangle the knot of authorial intent does ourselves, and the text, a disservice.

#mouseiero

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the-perfect-wagnerite-again · 2 months

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I have a categorical imperative question. I read some Kant in undergrad but do not retain much. My question is; does the categorical imperative account for specificities? As in, is lying, for example, acceptable under specific circumstances because under those circumstances the most ethic action would always be lying (say by omission)?Or is it more of a blanket concept, such that even though I feel it’s the right thing to (more or less) lie and tell an acutely dying man that he will “be alright”, and that this is the correct action under this circumstance, is it still morally wrong because I am lying?

Not sure if this illustrates what I mean properly. Would love an explanation to scaffold my meagre understanding. Please recommend any useful Kant texts that you’d consider readable for someone undergoing intensive study in an entirely separate discipline, too (I mean that I don’t have a whole lot of time to dedicate to personal reading). I’d love to learn more but have some difficulty knowing where to start.

The short answer is: no, the moral law is immutable and absolute.

The thing to understand about Kantian deontology, and the thing that gives most people the most trouble with accepting it, is that it makes absolutely zero room for conditionals. Kant was not trying to derive moral rules based on sentiment or hypotheticals, he wanted to derive a moral LAW from the principles of his metaphysical system. A law is universal, regardless of circumstance.

It's difficult to explain why this moral law is such without getting into the specifics of Kantian metaphysics, because the two are deeply interconnected, but I can give a few brief comments to summarize Kant's first Critique:

We live in a phenomenal reality full of objects that we perceive and cognize through our rational faculties (this is the world of science and matter).

Our capacity to understand this world is predicated on the subjective unity of our self-consciousness (Kant called this the fundamental unity of apperception). If we had no self-awareness, and no awareness of our self-awareness, we would have no knowledge of the world.

The Self, therefore, is simultaneously an object in the world (we interact with other people every day) and a subject transcendental TO the world (you are not the object of your own experience - you are the vector through which experience is possible).

This becomes more clear as we consider freedom and free will, which directly contradicts the deterministic laws of nature upon which science is possible. We are both determined objects of nature AND self-determined subjects of free will. This contradiction cannot be rationalized away, because it extends beyond the limits of our cognition, and yet we still know it to be the case.

This leaves the Self as the isolated viewpoint of experience. When we try to experience the Self, we simply shift our perspective, in much the same way that we cannot isolate the boundaries of our field of vision without changing it. The question of morality then becomes: what is the way in which I should interface with the Other, that which is the "Not Me" but still possesses that same agency and self-determination as Me?

This cannot be a conditional hypothetical, because those change with the tastes of the person and their desires. Anybody can determine arbitrary rules of conduct (and indeed, the constantly evolving landscape of moral norms proves this), but it's something quite different to derive a moral law that is universally applicable in all cases. This is the categorical imperative, which has three formulations:

Act in such a way that the maxim of your action (the will informing it) should be established as a universal law.

Treat other rational beings (including yourself) always as ends in themselves, and never as means only.

From the following two, it follows that the will of every rational being must be regarded as though it were a universally legislating will.

The end result of this is an almost common-sensical notion of fairness and justice, a sentiment we all know personally when we are honest about our interpersonal relationships. The "golden rule," as we call it, has had a nearly permanent presence in the moral discourses of all sufficiently civilized societies throughout recorded human history specifically for this reason. When we lie or cheat or steal, we know it to be wrong on a level more fundamental than arbitrary rules or regulations of society: we are violating an imperative that impels us to act with the same sense of duty to others that we would expect from them. This is why even white lies feel "off," because in the process of sparing our interlocutor the pain of the truth, we are denying them their right to full agency as a rational subject. We treat them as a means instead of as an end in themselves. The autonomous will, the truly moral agent, therefore consists of the agent that identifies the moral law within themselves and intentionally acts in accordance to it by virtue of their freedom. Willing oneself to obey the moral law IS freedom, because in doing so we release ourselves from the cage of desires, appetites, and incentives that would otherwise inform and inhibit our practical reason.

Obviously this is a prescriptive system and not a descriptive one, because human beings do not behave in this way. We are fallen creatures, we lie and cheat and steal where we can afford it, and we make excuses to rationalize our own moral failures in the face of scrutiny. But in that rationalization, we vindicate the categorical imperative, because it is only when we know we have violated it that we feel compelled to make excuses for ourselves (I only lied because X, I cheated because I deserve Y, if Z didn't happen then I wouldn't have to steal, etc).

As for readings on Kant, I advise you stay away from Kant himself. His work is an incredibly complex analysis of thought, and that makes it impenetrable for those who lack either the means or time to commit to him. Instead, I offer these recommendations to introductory texts on Kant, which are sadly insufficient as a substitute but good as a supplement:

"Kant and German Idealism," from The Story of Philosophy, by Will Durant (audio version available on youtube, highly recommended)

Kant: A Very Short Introduction, by Roger Scruton

Introductory Lectures by Dan Robinson, a personal hero of mine, found on youtube or here:

Let me know if you have any more questions, I absolutely love talking about this stuff

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the-least-undefinable-ordinal · 3 months

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A neat math problem

I remember last year I went to a talk given by a colleague of my thesis advisor, most of it was way too advanced for me but there was a neat problem (probably a standard one in information theory) that stuck with me.

I may be getting the specifics wrong but it goes something like this: you have to send large batches of text using only the symbols 0 and 1, there is no symbol for the blank space and you can't separate words by sending them in separate messages, I don't remember the reasoning behind this last restriction but my guess is that (a) it may be inefficient in terms of storage space for sufficiently long texts and (b) you run the risk of the messages being sent in the wrong order, in which case you wouldn't be able to deduce the original text.

The question is essentially "given a finite (but arbitrarily long) alphabet, how do you assign binary sequences to each symbol so there is no ambiguity?"

You can't just do something like a=0, b=1, c=00, and so on, since in that case the string 000 can either mean "ac" or "ca", you need some way to denote when you are done reading a sequence.

Spoilers under the cut in case you want to try to figure it out yourselves.

At this point the professor gave us a couple of minutes to think about it, the closest we got to some answer was "limit the sequence lenghts to a fixed natural number n and give the blank space a sequence of lenght n+1", but we were told the sequence for the blank space had to work for alphabets of arbitrary lenght (maybe to give room for additional symbols when needed).

The solution (or at least one of them) turned out to be "type each digit twice (so 101 would be 110011) and let 01 denote the space, that way you just have to read two characters at a time until you run into a 01, then you'll know the current sequence is over".

This kind of problem is much more representative of what doing math feels like than most of what is taught in schools, and it's kind of neat how it doesn't take much math education to solve it all, it's pure creative thinking.

Yesterday I posed this problem to my mom (a lawyer who has trouble with percentages, for reference) and she figured out a solution in like 30 seconds: "just type each symbol as a finite concatenation of 01s and let the blank space be 00" (translated from spanish).

It's not an optimal solution, it's wildly inefficient compared to the one the professor gave us, but (unlike the ones we had given) it works and she did it with very little math education, it was pure problem solving.

#math #mathblr #studyblr #maths #mathematics

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stillness-in-green · 11 months

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Chapter Thoughts — Chapter 391: Rejecting the World + Chapter 392: Villain Name

On Toga’s Accusations

I am somewhat wary that two-thirds of Toga’s accusations towards Ochaco—you’ve never wanted for anything; your life was perfectly easy to live—are worded in such a way that they’re very easily parried by a reminder that Ochaco grew up in poverty.[1] No, Uraraka never struggled with quirk-based compulsions like Toga did; she always seemed to fit easily into her social surroundings; that doesn’t mean she’s never wanted for anything and has always had an easy life. It feels extremely akin to the Spinner fanboys yelling at the Black dude that he has no idea what it’s like to be judged by his appearance; it makes the accusers look wildly self-centered, oblivious to hardships suffered by people other than themselves.

That said, Ochaco’s already done the thing where Toga expresses that she finds her life difficult and Ochaco responds by ignoring that statement completely in favor of moralistic scolding about actions having consequences. One would hope, given the contents of these two chapters, that we’re not due for yet another speech of that sort. At most, I’d like to see Ochaco use their shared difficulties—different in nature, but both still present—as a basis for empathy rather than an excuse to chide Toga for not trying harder.

A while back, I criticized the Flamin’ Sidekickers for feeling the need to justify their continued association with Endeavor to Dabi—as if their reasoning makes any difference to Todoroki Touya!—and I feel similarly about this. True as it is that Ochaco has faced her own share of problems, her firing back about those problems and comparing her and Toga’s responses to them would not actually be helpful right now in de-escalating the situation. It’s not always about you and your own problems! Especially not when you’re trying to talk someone down! As was the case with the Spinner fanboys, Toga’s in a very bad place right now, and has been for a long, long time. Ochaco doesn’t have to validate her crimes, but I do think it’s important to validate her pain.[2]

(Hit the jump for more on Toga—her flashback and the intersection of her emotions with her quirk mechanics—as well as some musings on the broader implications of the quirk counseling scene, and the usual assortment of odds and ends.)

On Toga’s Emotional Quirk Mechanics

O Nice to finally get a hard confirmation that the doubles are clones of Toga-as-Twice, not clones of Twice himself. Makes sense, given the speed with which she’s replicating, and makes it slightly easier to justify her own emotional hang-ups interfering with the way Double normally functions, though I’m by no means rescinding my complaints about that whole thing being hella arbitrary. Also, confirming that these are all Togas would seem to make it less probable for Uraraka to be able to pick out the real thing by her tears, right? If they’re all Toga-masquerading-as-Twice, shouldn’t they all be crying?

O I like the Zeno’s Arrow-esque nature of the problem with Toga’s time limit on her transformation here. Like, yes, any given double, and Toga herself, will run out of transformation time eventually, but she’s making exponentially increasing numbers of doubles every single second; each one of those doubles is created with the same amount of blood stock its creator had at the moment it started the creation process. Each double thus comes into existence with one second more time than its creator now has. So, how thin can Toga slice those seconds? How infinitesimally close to the timer reaching zero can a double still snap out a new copy, which now has that tiny fragment more time remaining to make a copy itself? Real life doesn’t operate on philosophical time, of course, so she’ll run out of time eventually, prompting a huge tidal wave of Twices turning back into Togas, but it’s a neat thought exercise.

O DELIGHTED that Tsuyu’s guess was off-base, so all the ice-cold, “Toga doesn’t really love the League,” take meta from the people who think the League are toxic and bad for each other is rendered just hilariously short-sighted in retrospect. Because, hey, maybe you shouldn’t take Tsuyu’s word over Toga’s about Toga’s own feelings! Imagine that!

O Interesting that, despite the whole horde moving with the feeling of, “All heroes must die!” when they overrun Tsuyu, they don’t kill her on the spot, but rather just bind her and hoist her up as a hostage. I assume there’s at least some influence from Hori not wanting to kill off any student characters, but extra-canonical explanations being what they may be, it still reflects interestingly on Toga’s own desires and intentions, and certainly her (underutilized) affection for Tsuyu.

On Toga’s Flashback

O So like, Toga’s dad definitely hit her in the flashback, right?

His hand is outstretched, specifically visible against the black silhouette of the rest of his figure; he could have just slapped the bird out of her hands, but I don’t think that would have been enough to spin her all the way in the opposite direction from when her parents first discovered her with the bird. Further, she’s on her knees and hunched over, one arm raised towards the left side of her face, and if you look closely at her cheek in the next panel—

—you can see a mark on the left side of her face that isn’t there on the right.

I don’t have a particular observation about this to discuss further—just wanted to point it out. Toga’s father’s first response to seeing his three-year-old daughter holding a dead bird was not to tell her to put the bird down, or to hit it out of her hands, but to slap her so hard it spun her around and knocked her over. Oh, and then to accuse her of killing it.

The three-year old. Killing a fully-grown sparrow with her bare hands. I couldn’t kill a fully-grown sparrow with my bare hands because a fully grown sparrow wouldn’t let me in touching range without flying away! What is wrong with Toga’s father, exactly, that that’s the assumption he jumps to??

Incidentally, one of the bright little changes the anime made to that sequence back in MVA—one I actually overlooked in the In Memoriam posts—was to specifically animate him slapping the bird out of her hands and then leave her standing there grinning, arms lowered, as her parents continue berating her. It’s truly astounding that we are still uncovering new issues stemming from the anime’s butchering of My Villain Academia!

O Speaking of Toga material the anime wildly fucked up, let’s talk about ~~quirk counseling.~~

So like, I tried for so long to maintain a layer of skepticism about what Curious said about quirk counseling. After all, Curious was a villain, a member of a free-quirk-use cult, violently against the current social order. She was categorically not a reliable narrator about the intentions and outcomes of quirk counseling! All the same, it seemed safe to assume she was at least partially right, if only because, in a meta view, no one ever showed up to contradict her! If we were meant to understand that she was wrong, why allow her words to stand uncontested?

Well, it turns out it’s because she was 100% right!

“They attempt to hammer out any bumps in your understanding of the world and program you to fit neatly into society’s little boxes,” she said, and, “The counseling ends up emphasizing the inherent differences among us all.” And here we find a counselor saying, “Let’s get you all reformed, nice and normal,” thus emphasizing that Toga is very much not normal.

Of course, the counselor then immediately turns around and reveals that Toga’s desires are normal, at least in the sense that “deviant” desires are quite common in “children with powerful quirks.” It happens all the time, apparently! Despite the frequency of the problem, though, the best answer Hero Society has come up with is to preach repression, to strictly control who is allowed to use their quirk—and thus alleviate any natural urges that might accompany it.

Remember what Re-Destro said back in Chapter 227?

Wow! It’s almost like this was an entirely predictable outcome!

O My perennial gloating about the (MVA-era) MLA being justified and correct aside, it’s interesting and, I think, promising that Horikoshi made time to include that bit on quirk counseling here. Firstly, it reinforces the idea that Toga did not become a villain due to the actions of one discrete villain like AFO; she was failed by society at large, so simply offering her the sanctified blessing of The Sympathy of One (1) Teenager is not going to do a thing about the problems that created her, and will go on creating others like her unless real change happens in the attitudes of the current society.

(Of course, all of that is also true for Spinner, and we saw how the confrontation with the societal problems that created him went, thanks but no thanks, Shouji.)

Moreover, though, it’s yet another element that points in the direction of the Quirk Singularity Theory looming on the horizon. If quirks are getting stronger and stronger as generations pass (and we’ve got plenty of evidence that suggests that they are) and psychological issues like Toga’s are common in those with strong quirks (and I don’t see any reason for a professional counselor to misstate something like that[3]), then it follows that such issues will also become more common as quirks increase in strength. Indeed, an irresistibly strong desire to use one’s quirk would be a logical expression of Ujiko’s conclusion that quirks will eventually go out of control!

This is the dark side of Second’s conflation of a person’s intent with the term “quirk” back in Chapter 369. It’s a place where the translation of the word kosei as “quirk” obscures the sentence somewhat. Recall that the word Horikoshi uses translates more literally as “personality.” So, Second says that a strong intent is what makes a person fearsome, and this is why meta-abilities were given the name they were[4]: the power is merely a vessel, a weapon to be used to carry out the intent in question, a characterful, personalized expression of one’s inner will. In other words, a “personality.”

But the inverse also becomes true. If a quirk, a “personality,” is reflective of one’s will, then to suppress one’s quirks is to suppress one’s will. To condemn someone’s quirk becomes the same as condemning them. To label a quirk deviant is to label the person’s will deviant. And if a quirk grows too strong to control, then the will-as-embodied-by-the-quirk also goes out of control. Hence, Toga snaps after too many years of suppression.

So how does that problem get addressed? The MLA, of course, wanted free quirk use, because Destro foresaw a time when quirks would grow too powerful for suppression to be effective. Even radical self-acceptance and an even more radical restructuring of society are still just kicking that problem down the road, though, assuming they’d be effective at all—not that it looks like Hero Society is on the cusp of embracing that particular point of the MLA’s ideology regardless! Indeed, as Team Hero still regards the problem of quirks increasing in strength as “fringe thinking reserved for cults,” they don’t seem to have any intention at all of addressing the problem. Time will tell if the story itself will do so.

O It’s striking that even after some years of emotional abuse, Toga was still barefacedly begging her parents to please explain to her what made her so different from everyone else. It’s a telling parallel to her willingness to actively seek out Ochaco and Deku to ask their opinion on things, and makes it not terribly surprising that she reacts so negatively to being rebuffed by them. Her whole question in the wake of Jin’s death was whether heroes viewed villains as human—when heroes go on to reject her, like her parents did, of course she’d assume that it means those heroes also view her as inhuman.

Stray Notes

O ‘Eeeeeey, people picked up on the Death part of the Parade name this time! I notice it hasn’t been corrected in the online version of 375, though; I wonder if the volume release will fix it?

O One thing I wasn’t clear on from the leaks/scanlation—the former of which are too fuzzy, the latter too murky—but am very happy to see here is that the Himijin Horde is definitely visible on the horizon for Hawks. You can tell from the difference in the shading: fuzzy, gray, irregularly sized trees on the right and left, but a long black line of much more regular height in the center:

They’re heading for the Todorokis and Iida, too, of course, but Hawks is obviously the confrontation I’m most interested in. (Read: GET ‘IM. GEEEET ‘IM.) Very much hope we get to see that before Uraraka completely defuses this whole situation.

O Love the acknowledgement from both Ochaco and Tsuyu that Ochaco’s efforts here are late, and that’s worth an apology, worth Toga being upset about. I’m thrilled that the story is finally, explicitly folding villains into that idea expressed by Nedzu that it’s difficult but necessary for someone to be the first one to hold out a hand if society is to meaningfully advance. I extra love that Ochaco is holding out that hand while also taking a huge risk: offering her thoughts on why Toga’s having problems with making quirk-use-capable clones.

As I said about Chapter 382, Toga resolving that issue would be incredibly dangerous for Team Hero, and I love that Uraraka is still—despite being very aware of that danger—willing to try to help Toga with it. With no guarantee of reciprocity, with everything at stake, Uraraka still takes the time to carry on that conversation because it’s what her heart tells her is the right thing to do.

After all, if she can resolve Toga’s issue, that stands to win her back at least a degree of Toga’s faith, at which point a Toga-made clone of Shigaraki obliterating this whole stretch of countryside would no longer be what Toga wants.[5] More than the strategic considerations, though, it's plainly apparent that Toga struggling with Jin's quirk is causing her great anguish, and that's really what Uraraka wants to soothe.

Taking the talk-no-jutsu gamble is how Shinsou should have handled Machia; it’s how Deku should have been handling Shigaraki instead of drowning him in his Fist Ocean. I praised Mirio for making at least a game attempt at it, and Shouto took a crack at it before slipping back into castigation; if Spinner had been coherent enough to hold an actual conversation with Shouji, we might have gotten it there. This conflict, though, is where I expect the tactic to finally work, as Toga has both the emotional investment in Uraraka[6] and the presence of mind/free agency to actually respond. I can’t wait to see how it goes!

O Toga’s spitting-mad injunction that Uraraka not dare to pity her based on societal standards that never made room for Toga to begin with is an excellent echo of Jin's indignance that Hawks would dare to say Jin led an “unlucky” life, as well as Toga’s own fury at Curious for trying to paint her as miserable.

----------------- FOOTNOTES -----------------

[1] So far as I can tell, there’s not an officially recognized difference between “being poor” and “living in poverty”—they’re just different parts of speech describing the same condition—though it seems many people feel instinctively that there’s a difference in severity there. Still, I’ll stick with “poverty” in this case: while Uraraka’s family never seemed so destitute that they were worried about keeping a roof over their heads, we know that, as of the beginning of the manga, she was skipping meals to save money. I doubt she would have been so blasé about going hungry that it could be used as grist for comedic volume extras if she didn’t have prior experience with it, and not having enough money to have regular meals is right there in what it means to live under the poverty line.

[2] Elsewhere in this same angle, Deku’s frank empathy for and validation of Gentle and his motivations is what made Gentle’s return feel so much more earned compared to Nagant’s, and Shouto scolding Dabi for involving innocent people proved ineffective. Shouji, meanwhile, took a stab at validating the mob’s pain, but didn’t have a single word of sympathy for Spinner.

[3] You know, assuming she doesn’t turn out to have been secretly on AFO’s payroll or something.

[4] Setting aside Second’s rampant historical revisionism about the origin of the term, of course, because not a lick of what he says lines up with the actual story of the Mother of Quirks.

[5] Though, you know, the clone Shigaraki would probably still want it!

[6] Dabi’s emotionally invested in Shouto, but in an inverted way, not one that primes him to listen to anything Shouto has to say.

#bnha #bnha 392 #bnha 393 #toga himiko #uraraka ochaco #bnha endgame #bnha worldbuilding #chapter thoughts #my writing

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theinstagrahame · 8 months

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Not to go all Game Designer on Main (too late, I know), but again found myself thinking about D&D as a game, and again... failing to see the appeal.

By volume, combat accounts for like 75-80% of the rules. I find the combat system ponderous and dull, which means I tend to avoid it at all costs. I just don't find it fun to wait 10 minutes for my turn to Do the Cool Thing on my character sheet, find that the opportunity passed 2 turns ago, and whiff my basic attack *again*.

But this leaves us with about 25% of the rulebook being dedicated to everything else, including a lot of the rules people always tell you you can ignore (encumbrance, lifestyle, food and water, etc). What's left is a bunch of stuff that I find interesting (sneaking, animal handling, perception, deception, acrobatics, sleight of hand, and a bunch of other stuff). But, we again run into mechanics that I am not interested in:

1d20 + Modifier vs Difficulty

The DMG doesn't have a ton of guidance for how to set Difficulty (not no guidance, but also not much I found helpful when running), so it feels very arbitrary. Players also don't have a wealth of resources to impact that roll, outside of Advantage/Disadvantage (which is probably why people are always asking if they have it).

And the outcome is usually either: you do the thing OR you do not do the thing. Which, depending on context, could be interesting, but could also be boring, or possibly soft-lock some content behind a door you can't open.

Plus, I think other systems do it better. Here are some other systems I'm familiar with, and how they do it (I think) better:

One of the core ideas of PbtA games is that whenever the players touch the dice, something in the world should change. So, something as simple as picking a locked door becomes way more interesting, because if you fail, you could: Alert guards to your presence, Take harm, Lose something valuable, or Whatever Else the GM Comes Up With.

We are still looking at a roll:

2d6 + Modifier vs 2-6 Fail; 7-9 Mixed Success; 10+ Full Success

Adding that extra layer of success changes a lot. Mixed Success adds a lot of Narrative Juice, because in addition to the players' success, their situation can get worse. Statistically, 7-9 is also more likely than the other two outcomes (I think? I did get a D in stats in college), meaning you can succeed but also make things a lot worse for yourself in a few rolls.

But another neat design element is: moves with triggers. Players can choose moves during character creation that also impact how things progress. The move might trigger "When you pick a lock" or "When you fail to pick a lock", and then give the player or the GM some kind of tool to use during that situation. Sometimes it's just a tweak to the modifier, sometimes it's another option for the outcome. In some cases even it's "whenever you pick a lock, the door always opens; but on a failure, the worst possible thing is on the other side."

Now, picking a lock is a really interesting choice.

Special Case: Monster of the Week

MotW in particular has a neat additional mechanic: Luck. Players can spend their Luck resource several times per campaign (usually 7), and declare that a roll was a Full Success. The resource is Limited, and the book tells GMs that players who run out are Doomed, which makes it a capital-D Decision every time someone uses it. This forces us to wonder: Is this lock *worth* picking? Is it Mission-critical, or can we find another way in?

Forged in the Dark

As a system, FitD is very much drawn from Apocalypse games, and has some similar ideas behind it. But, we have some interesting changes.

First, a roll is a bit more of a process:

Describe your process. Work with the GM to determine what kind of roll you're doing. (This is interesting, because different skills have different statistical ratings, but also because they can change the outcome. You could "Engineer" the door lock open, or you could "Wreck" it; both will get you past the door, but one may take more time, while the other may leave more evidence).

Determine Position and Effect. If it goes well, how well does it go? If it breaks bad, how bad does it go? (Knowing the stakes up front helps you make a decision about what resources to commit, and feels realistic, in that your character would be able to foresee some possible outcomes).

Assemble a dice pool, based on your rating and any resources you're spending. (Dice pools are already a different mechanic, but you also have resources to increase your odds. All characters usually have Stress or a similar resource, which you can spend for extra dice, position, or effect--or that your colleagues can spend to help you out).

Roll the dice. Look for the highest result (or Lowest if your rating is low). Again, we're looking at Success/Mixed Success/Fail. Things change in the world based on it. (FitD games also use a lot of clocks and tracks, and typically a Mixed Success or Failure ticks up some of the "Bad" clocks, and Successes or Mixed Successes tick up "Good" clocks. Some of these clocks are secret, and some are open, which gives players a sense of how their actions have consequences.)

Resist consequences. You can also spend stress to undo some of the negative aspects of a roll. (If the GM introduces a bad consequence, such as "You set off the alarm while picking the lock", you can roll and take stress to say "Actually I stopped that.")

There are also PbtA-style moves with triggers, but the dice mechanic here is already doing a lot. I like that the stakes are written up front, and it also encourages the GM to come with some ideas for what could go wrong, but not plan too much (Which I also really hate doing anyway; planning is hard!)

It feels like a lot written down, but genuinely when you're playing, it feels very smooth. It also helps keep people engaged, because the options to help are more at the forefront, and the outcomes impact everyone equally.

No Dice No Masters / Belonging Outside Belonging

This one is a slightly odd case, but it also draws from the PbtA design philosophy. Generally BoB games are GMless, so we're already putting everyone's hand on the narrative ball in a different way.

Your character sheet will probably have something like the following:

Strong Move (Spend 1 token to...)

Succeed without any negative consequences

Basic Move (You can always)

Complete a task, but draw unwanted attention

Weak move (Gain 1 Token when you)

Completely fail at a task and draw unwanted attention

Let's assume you already have 1 Token, and you want to pick the lock.

You could do it. But, you can also talk to the rest of the table and ask: "Hey, is it narratively interesting if I succeed here? Or are things going a little too smooth, and should we mix things up?"

This is probably one of the things that trips new NDNM players up, because it's so unlike other systems. You can choose the outcome! You and your fellow players are encouraged to "Metagame". You're telling a story with your friends, and it can be the story you think is cool.

Resistance System

(as seen in Heart and Spire)

Resistance is another dice pool system that uses Stress, with d10s instead of d6s. There are also moves, as in other systems. But, there are a few interesting things that I think are worth looking at.

Characters have Skills that they're good at, and Domains that they're familiar with. A Skill is going to be something like your Lockpicking (or a more general, like, mechanics skill), while the Domain is going to be related to the area you're in. The locks in a "Technology" domain are going to be different than those in a "Haven" or "Wilderness" domain (I don't remember the exact terms, so I'm kinda fudging them).

So, as you assemble the dice pool, you get bonuses if you have the right Domain and Skill. You can also get a die for help from other players, as well as a die for a Knack: Something you're especially good at. The roll ends up being:

1d10 + 1d10 (if a relevant skill) + 1d10 (domain) + 1d10 (if getting help) + 1d10 (knack) (- dice for difficulty) = Success +/- Stress.

(With a gradient, where low results give you stress with no success, and higher rolls give you success with no stress, and all results in between)

The Stress is what's interesting, instead of being a resource, it's closer to your HP, but you have different kinds of it. So the GM will tell you up front what kind of stress you're taking. After you take any stress (and there are ways to not take stress, or take less of it), you roll again to see if you get fallout.

Fallout can be temporary or permanent, and usually has a mechanical consequence. Fallout can also take different levels, and upgrade over time. It does give each roll a sense that the player is pushing their luck, and hoping the fallout doesn't take hold. This makes the rolls feel very significant, because even picking a lock badly could turn into a Fallout; so is it worth taking that kind of a risk?

----

And this is just three categories of games that I think do it in a more interesting way. There are a ton of other games out there, many of which I've never even played, so I don't know how they work. I also think there are ways to spice up a 1d20+mod roll in interesting ways, but generally, I prefer that kind of stuff.

#indie ttrpgs #ttrpg dev #ttrpg design #ttrpg

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brostateexam · 1 year

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This is going to be a post about diets and weight loss

On the one hand, I am really glad to see people starting to recognize that dieting is just... not effective. Because it isn't, sorry. You can lose an arbitrary percentage of your highest body weight via diet and exercise, and the more you lose:

the harder it gets to lose more weight

the easier it gets to gain back weight

These two things, in combination, mean that unless you are looking to lose a relatively paltry amount of weight, dieting is probably not the answer. It can work if you've gone up one size and would like to go back down. It does not work if you want to drop six sizes. The odds against someone doing that via diet and exercise alone and keeping it off are overwhelming.

I've done it, actually! Pre-surgery, I lost over 50 lbs (22kg) four times in my life: once when I was in highschool, once in college, once as a young adult, and once in my early 30s. It got harder to do each time, and required more extreme interventions each time. The first time was with good ol' Weight Watchers and a restrictive eating disorder, the last time was with a limited calorie diet that made me feel like I was going to pass out all the time.

People who can lose weight in this way and keep it off long term (the longest I kept it off was about 1.5 years) are outliers, or people who are willing to devote their entire life to diet and exercise, which is impractical unless you're an athlete or a personal trainer.

So it's encouraging to hear people in the weight loss industrial complex say "diets don't work." Because they don't. They just don't.

On the other hand, we are once again prescribing weight loss drugs that are touted as safe and effective to handle the "disease" of obesity. I have nothing against Ozempic and Wagovy in particular. I don't know enough about them to have positive or negative feelings. I do think it's safe to say:

The history of weight loss drugs is pretty rotten. Fen-phen, redux, (or the ol' speedball special of both fen-phen and redux), as well as amphetamines were all touted as wonder drugs that would help fat people become skinny. Largely, they just gave fat people health problems or killed them.

Weight loss drugs also don't actually drop that much weight from people. Again, maybe Ozempic and Wagovy are different! But the combination of fen-phen and redux was found to help people lose 15 lbs on average for as long as they stayed on the drugs. Then they gained it back. Not exactly a miracle.

To me, weight loss drugs, and dieting, and the weight loss industry in general falls into the category of "things we don't need proof to believe." We as a society want to believe that fat people are lazy, ignorant slobs because that excuses the daily cruelty and discrimination society heaps upon them. If weight loss isn't actually as easy as just dieting, well, there has to be something else that totally works that fat people are just not doing, or else we are being callous and shitty to a large percentage of the population for no actual reason. Therefore, diets don't work, but ozempic and wagovy totally do, and anyone who is fat is just choosing to be that way. Just like before, but now it's with medicine instead of a dietary regimen.

#*diet culture #*weight loss #*eating disorder #there's another post I've been wanting to write about this but I'll save it for later cause it's more personal

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zeeckz · 4 months

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This person wrote about the light/color symbolism in MGSV and added a few examples from PW. Which can be easily represented as a whole with yellow. Again, my knowledge towards the entirety of the series is limited, but since that person talked about the importance of red in MGSV... What about yellow & its negative meanings? Like. Big Boss is permanently surrounded by blond people. MSF logo (+DD) & uniform contain yellow (<- a desaturated greenish one, but u get me). The uniform could be easily explained given the military context, but give me a chance;;

There's no denying it also conveys a positive meaning at times, but I can't stop thinking about the other side of the coin. I'd say the most extreme case would be The Joy, aka The Boss.

One of its negative meanings is betrayal. But also lies. Danger. Some of those blonds surrounding him, if not all of them, are involved in at least one of those things. Specially in PW (and GZ, I think? I know there's something off later on, but not sure when exactly happens), not only given the stylistic choices surrounding the comic/cutscenes, but also Big Boss explicitly stating his thoughts about The Boss' actions and its implications regarding him.

She literally represented Joy. Love. Warmth. And yet, despite how powerfully positive she was to him, she betrayed him. Lied to him. She was a constant threat to both his life and his mission. She became the exact opposite of what she once was.

Ocelot, EVA, Kaz. I only know portions of their actions throughout the whole story, but it looks to me that all of them have both a positive aspect to them towards Big Boss (devoting himself to him, experiencing some sort of love, building their business) and a negative one (literally trying to kill him, lying & having his clones {from what I've gathered it doesn't seem he's too cool about it}, lying & betraying him).

Like yeah, it's so not unlikely for those things to happen in their context etc etc, but it doesn't feel that arbitrary to have so many blonds around him... So much yellow...

#I wish I could add others like Paz but I'm missing out too much yet to do so :^(#im almost done w pw...#spent the whole game thinking about this. had to get it out. sorry.#mgs #txt

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thessalian · 1 month

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Thess vs the Sons of Prometheus

Had to leave off last night because the migraine was too bad to start in on the hyperfocus. Feeling somewhat better today, so I figured to just get a few side quests going.

Right. Runda's Rollerback salvage. And then maybe I'll go do Handa's stuff because it feels unfair. Granted, Runda really needed help whereas Handa's just ... erm ... Handa, but y'know. Fairness in all things? I guess?

Oh. Except if I'm really being fair, I should probably check on that rebel camp the delvers have been on about.

This is ... actually useful. Show myself juuuuuuuuuust enough to lead people out of camp, and then shoot them when they're out in the open. I am such an ambush predator.

Only problem is knowing exactly how much or how little is "showing myself juuuuuuuuuuuuuust enough" because now I'm in melee. Oh, fuck you, rebel shithead.

...I ... do not know how I did that thing where I rammed Aloy's knee into her attacker's face but I doubt I will be able to repeat it. No matter how much I want to. This is part of why fighting games will never be my thing. Well, that and the fibro.

And we're in the camp and ... where is everybody else? Oh. Right. I lured them all outside and killed them.

...Oooooooh, so this is how they're overriding machines. I mean, respect to them for figuring out that whole deal of pulling remote override cores out of Corrupters and then trapping machines with the intent of performing surgery on them, but still, yeesh. Also they can't be doing very well at this if there are this many machine corpses lying around.

Welp. No more of you. Stabby-stabby.

Okay. So. Where is everybody else?

Ah. There's like three of them behind this wall. How do I get in?

Oh. Okay. Gate.

And you ... and you ... aaaaaaaand you. Sorry, Son of Prometheus sniper; I am a waaaaaay better sniper than you. Now. Let's have a look.

Focus that I need to deal with back at base. Right. Okay. I had to go back there for a couple of bits and pieces of quest anyway. I guess this is important enough to drag me back there fairly soon.

Also ... can I just pretend in my head that the Oseram going along with this were just caught by the possibilities of the tech, and aren't blatantly evil? I usually like the Oseram.

...Well, there was Ulvund. Like I said; usually.

.........Maybe if I tell Erend about this, he can crack some Oseram heads and tell them to stop being shitheads. That'd be nice.

Anyway. Rollerback salvage. If I actually have to kill a Rollerback for this, I'm going to be pissed.

Oh. Okay. So it's just picking salvage out of a field and--

OFUCKSHELLSNAPPER DODGEROLLDODGEROLLDODGEROLL!

Right. So much for you, you subterranean pain in my ass. Now. ROLLERBACK. SALVAGE. Plus some extra Shellsnapper bits.

Oooh. Shiny close-range bow. This will be useful when I've upgraded it a little more. I should put together a shopping list.

(Honestly I'm really glad that whatever arbitrary time limit I've been given to get main quest shit done isn't really worth beans. I'd hate to think I doomed the world because I was trying to help an Oseram lady win an armour contest and upgrade my gear Because Reasons.)

Okay. I should head in a Handa-ward direction, but again I'm going for campfires and ... oh. Ruins. I should check those.

If there's a metal flower in there I am going to scream and punch things.

Nope. Just Firegleam. Now ... how am I doing this?

Huh. We're playing with water physics today, are we? Okay. A-swimming we will go.

Y'know, I didn't even look at what symbols this stupid holo-whatever was giving off. I have ceased to care. I am soggy and I would like out of the water hole, please.

(Why can't we go tell Drakka that, hey, if they want to go south a ways, there's a whole flooded ruin that might be a source of potable water while they wait for the Wound to fill up again? This feels like a waste.)

Right. More campfires and ... okay, that Thunderjaw looks upset. Oh, look, Oseram are baiting it again. Lemme see what I can do about this.

STOP. MOVING. NO. STOP. YOU ARE GETTING IN THE WAY OF MY SHOT-- uhoh.

SO glad I'm getting better at dodge-rolling. Smoke-bomb, dodge-roll, INTO the bush I go.

Okay. There. That's dealt with. Oseram, STOP BAITING THE THUNDERJAWS. YOU ARE OUT OF YOUR DEPTH.

What's all this now? Oh. Rebels. It's dark, I'm stealthy, and you're all doomed. Bye, rebels!

Ooh. Spikesnout. I can always use bits from them.

Okay. Just going to collect this shelter, because shelters are awesome and it's the best place to pause for the day. Though I should consider going back to Base later to drop shit off, and also to a settlement to dump some vendor trash.

Also I need to see if I can upgrade anything-- Huh. One upgrade on the shiny purple short-range bow. What do I need for upgrade 2? Ah. Greenshine cluster. I have fragments and slivers a-plenty, but no clusters. Lemme check my map.

Okay, new order of proceedings. Stop game, have food, see how much time I have before D&D, and then possibly go hunt up that greenshine cluster up in the mountains to the east.

I have more to-do lists for my video games than I do for my Being A Motherfucking Adult sometimes and it's weird. Ah well. At least it's more fun. And takes up fewer spoons.

On that note, food.

#Thess plays video games #Thess liveblogs Horizon Forbidden West

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mbti-notes · 10 months

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Anon wrote:

Hello mbti-notes and thank you for having this blog. INTP here (probably). Sorry if this post is unstructured. I'm writing this in middle of what I think of as Fe-grip (anxiety/depression) as my problem is related to that.

If you aren't certain about your type, do a proper type assessment. I won't comment on function development otherwise. At the end of your message, you ask whether your thinking is "rational". This is a concerning question since INTPs should automatically understand what it means to be rational and how to determine it.

My aux Ne is trying to remind me of lots of future worst case scenarios, to the point that I experience anxiety, depression and hopelessness.

These "future worst case scenarios" you speak of are fiction. It is your imagination, so why do you treat them as real? Are you being rational when you can't tell the difference between what happens inside your mind and external reality?

And my Si (combined with Ti) tries to find out other people's experiences (online) and facts to support them. And then my Fe makes me regretful, anxious and depressed.

I don't really understand, why should other people's experience have any bearing on you? Are you not an individual with your own path and your own life to live? Are you being rational when you conflate their experience with yours?

I have written to you before. To cut the long story short, I made wrong choices and also trusted my family in some cases in my late teens and 20s, which caused me to waste all those years and my youth with it.

What do you mean by "waste"? Aren't all of your experiences a part of you and important for making you who you are? Acceptance of your past is an important aspect of self-acceptance. Are you being rational when you seek the impossible, such as wanting only positive experiences and never any negative things in life?

Then in my late 20s, I found my path and decided to fix my life. The problem is, despite trying to improve my life (in order to find a career and also reach my other goals), I feel behind in life. I know I can't make my life as good as the wise version of my teen or YA self, or a person that starts this process in their early 20s.

What do you mean by "fell behind"? By what standards? Society's standards? What is this "wise version of my teen or YA self" you speak of? Wisdom can only come through learning from extensive life experience, so teens, by definition, aren't wise. It may sound insulting but it's a fact of brain maturation. Your perception of the past seems distorted, so your comparisons are nonsensical. Are you being rational when you adopt arbitrary beliefs about "success"?

I'm also really terrified of ageism and aging. To the point that I get a panic attack everytime I see small signs of aging in myself. I've heard people are more respected and desired from 18 to 30. I was always indifferent towards those things and didn't care about being desired by other people, but lately things have changed and I'm starting to get terrified of myself, my age, my body and my future.

People age and die; these are facts of life. Are you being rational when you spend all your energy refusing to accept the facts of life, rather than taking action to make the most of your limited time?

I can't get over my lost youth. I studied something my family wanted and even graduated, but couldn't find a career with it where I live. And I spent most of my 20s in isolation. I refused to date, refused to make friends didn't experience life much and didn't reach my goals (professional, gender-related and immigration related).

You refused to date, refused to make friends, and refused to live a full life? In other words, you are now facing the consequences of your decisions. Negative consequences exist to teach you the error of your ways, such that you can CHANGE and evolve throughout life. Are you being rational by getting angry at logical consequences, rather than learning from them, making different decisions, and getting better outcomes?

These days, I'm either numb or experiencing Fe overload (panic attack, anxiety and depression and some worse things). To the point that I'm afraid of myself. I can't trust psychiatrists as I live in a conservative place and don't know if I can explain EVERYTHING to them.

I sympathize that it's difficult for you to get professional help where you are, but this doesn't mean it's an impossibility. With the internet, you have access to people all over the world. Perhaps you need to learn how to use your imagination for good and explore more possibilities for getting the help you need. If you are deep in Si loop, it means you talk yourself out of good opportunities or convince yourself there are no good opportunities, because you don't want to risk feeling disappointed or hurt again. If that's the case, are you being rational when you'd prefer being stuck in pain to moving forward in life?

And I can't trust my family either. I have tried to find solutions online. It says you have to accept aging or hide it, but I can't do either of them. Nothing has been able to help me. I still regret losing my 20s/youth, not being able to be myself, starting late, etc. To the point that I can't be hopeful about my future. I'm also angry with my society/cntry for being conservative and irrational, for making me stay closeted, forcing me to be covered and wear things that don't define "me" in public, and not being able to deal with a person like me. Plus other issues. I'm also disappointed with my family, for being ashamed of me, forcing me to dress up and hide/change myself, not seeing my struggles and not researching. And most of them are high Si or Se users, so when they see me depressed, they either gaslight/shame me for it, or buy me food or want to take me out, which actually makes me guilty and more depressed.

I have written many times about the pointlessness of blame. It is a distraction. It is a way to deflect responsibility. It is a way to wallow in self-pity by always taking the position of the helpless victim. By your own admission, over and over again, you kept allowing yourself to be swayed by mere opinion. And now you blame all those things rather than facing up to the facts. Without being in touch with the facts, on what basis can you make good decisions? Are you being rational when you continually refuse to face facts?

Yes I know, the most logical thing here is to focus on my goals and studies. And I'm trying my best. But those fears and regrets are always on the back of my head (sometimes even worse) causing me anxiety attacks.

You seem to have a habit of constantly fighting against your feelings and emotions - has it worked for you? Or have they only gotten worse the more you resist and battle them? When a strategy doesn't work, is it rational to keep repeating it?

This is an issue of poor emotional intelligence and another example of being unwilling to face facts, in this case, the facts of your psychology. Please consult past posts about how to improve your emotional intelligence. Are you being rational when your decision-making process has been hijacked by runaway negative emotions?

I mean, my youth got wasted, and from now on, I'm probably going to experience age discrimination and ageism in many areas of life (professional, dating, clubs, etc), even if I reach my other goals and immigrate to a better place.

Do you know why you suffer fear of ageism? Because you have chosen to use age to define your worth. You have internalized the destructive ageist standards of the most shallow members of your society. You blame others for their faults, but you have chosen to be just like them, haven't you?

At some point, you have to grow up, which means making a difficult decision: Are you going to be your own person and live life as you need to, guided by your own carefully considered beliefs and values? Or are you going to keep subjecting yourself to the standards of others and constantly suffer on a roller coaster of their dis/approvals?

You can't have it both ways; you can't keep seeking the highs of validation without also experiencing the lows of invalidation. As long as you keep using this shallow system of evaluating your self-worth, you'll suffer. Pain is unavoidable in life, but suffering is a choice. Is it rational to keep choosing suffering?

My question is, 1) Am I making a rational judgement here?

I'm hard-pressed to find any rational judgment above. It is rational and healthy to feel bad about bad circumstances. You ought to seek comfort for getting through difficult times and support/assistance for changing what you can about negative situations. But it isn't healthy or rational to indulge judgmentalness, throw around blame, dwell in negativity, and/or obsess about things you don't have the power to change; these activities are an empty comfort that not only hold you back in life but keep you stuck in pain and suffering.

2) Is there a way to permanently get out of Fe grip without being later triggered by Si viewpoints?

Yes, it is through properly developing Ti and Ne. If you really don't want to correct your flawed judgment and open your mind to alternative ways of thinking and solving problems, then perhaps you do need to reconsider whether you are actually INTP.

#intp #si loop #fe grip #past #self worth #ask

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douglysium · 2 months

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Episode 2 TMP Quick Thoughts

Housekeeping and Prologue

Hello, this is Douglysium and you might not know me as that guy who wrote over 100 pages of analysis on the Eye (which can be read on Tumblr here (https://douglysium.tumblr.com/post/735599414228484097/the-relationships-between-the-dread-powers-the) or Google Docs here (The Relationships Between the Dread Powers: The Eye- Knowledge is Fear and Ignorance is Bliss)) or as that guy who wrote an article on the Extinction (which can be read on Tumblr here(https://douglysium.tumblr.com/post/717929126195003392/what-would-avatars-of-the-extinction-be-like-a) and Google Docs here(What would Avatars of the Extinction be like?: A TMA Speculation)). Suffice to say I might be a bit of a TMA fan. Also, spoilers for TMP up until episode 2. You can read my ramblings on the last episode here (Episode 1 TMP Quick Thoughts).

However, Protocol offers a very unique opportunity and experience for me because I didn’t actually get into TMA until after it was over and I binged all of it. So this is my first time experiencing something even remotely similar to what the original TMA fans probably experienced when waiting for each episode week by week and slowly having to put everything together with the limited information they had. So I decided to throw my hat into the ring since this might be my only chance to do something similar. However, I’m working on some longer form TMA content so I can’t spend as much time on these articles giving a bunch of super detailed thoughts. I will try to keep these short and that inevitably might mean some could have questions about why I think or predict certain things and in those cases I would probably recommend you read at least some of the two articles I mentioned above to get a better idea of where I’m coming from. This also means I won’t be giving you a play-by-play of every single thing that happens in the episode so I encourage you to listen to or read them yourselves and feel free to comment if you feel something is important.

These reviews are probably going to end up focusing mostly on the Entities and their manifestations as they are what I have thought about the most and spent the most time interpreting and there’s been a lot of… interesting theories floating around about how the Entities are manifesting that I want to go over.

Finally, I’m just going to say it right now, spoiler warning for all of The Magnus Archives. I know that Jon and co said one could start with Protocol and be fine, and while that’s probably true, media like this tends to be made in conversation with or take into consideration what came before it in the irl chronology in order to connect them. While I’m sure you could skip The Magnus Archives, I don't really see the point of skipping over it when we are already getting characters from TMA showing up in TMP in Protocol. So to me it’s pretty clear that if we want to understand the full picture of TMP and all the things it is trying to say then we can’t just try to pretend TMA doesn’t exist or scrub it away. Just because you could understand what’s happening without the context in broad strokes doesn’t mean you're getting all the nuances.

These articles are meant to be quick and short so sorry if there’s typos and if I don’t address every possible question or possibility. I don’t want to repeat myself too much in this series outside of the prologue so be sure to skim some of my other articles.

Episode 2: “Making Adjustments”

Okay, let’s dive right in. It’s pretty clear that at this point, just like how the story of TMA is told through the tapes, the story of TMP is being told through computers at the O.I.A.R. and seemingly various other devices too. We once again tune into Sam trying to understand the obtuse categorization system with help from Gwen. While Sam struggles, Gwen seems to be quite in her element. Despite this Gwen refers to the index as arbitrary even though Sam argues that there must have been a logic or pattern it was based on at some point. I don’t really have much to say that hasn’t been said in my last quick thoughts but I have to wonder if there is actually a logic to it? Maybe it’s sorted by Entity or some other system but like I said in the previous review maybe the point is simply that it’s going to be vague and obtuse sometimes. Either way, Gwen basically tells Sam to just do his job and not worry about that kind of stuff which ties into what I’ve said earlier about Sam’s curious nature and how that often relates to The Eye as well as the idea of blissful ignorance.

After Sam questions what’s happening Gwen says “(coldly) Then quit. No-one’s making you work here.” Even if this is just a coincidence it is giving me a flashback to the moment when Tim realized he couldn’t quit the Institute.

We finally got a statement in the form of a video call pulled from the internet. The account given by Daria screams of The Flesh or some similar Entity. While I am currently in the camp that the Smirkean categorizations probably still do have some merit in TMP, if the Entities happen to have changed or been rewritten then they at least seem to still really parallel a lot of the themes the Powers had in the TMA. So even if I end up being wrong about the idea that the Powers haven’t really changed that much, if at all, I don’t care all that much because this is still a fun and interesting lens to view them through I think. If this is another set of Entities or the Entities swapped places it will at least be interesting pointing out the parallels or maybe even what categories they would have fallen into in TMA.

Case in point, what we see in this statement contains a heaping helping of bodily dysphoria, as Daria starts feeling self-conscious about her body due to social media. As she puts it “Like, we all know it's fake, it's all filters and Photoshop and everyone pretending that they're the “real deal” #makeupfree! But just because you know that doesn't mean you’re immune and yeah, I’d ended up in a pretty dark place. And when I turned 30, I decided to do something about it.” As it keeps going we hear “I started with my hair, grew it out to make my face look longer. It sort of worked. Then I chucked out all my older sister’s clothes and dipped into my savings to get myself a couple of pairs of my own jeans that didn't make me look quite so much like an overloaded ice cream cone. I even shelled out for a cute LBD for when I did lose a bit of weight. Mum said I was being overambitious, but it hangs off me now of course. Most clothes do…” So there’s a pretty big emphasis on dissatisfaction with one’s body and physical appearance. Something we often see with the Flesh, especially with the likes of places like Jared Hopworth’s gym in MAG 90 (Body Builder) and how it was built on the idea of giving everyone the perfect body.

Daria then resolves to get a tattoo and find a tattoo artist that went by Ink5oul (InkSoul). They got an appointment and when Daria arrived they noted that Ink5 had “an absolutely gorgeous floral serpent design running up their arm and into their neck that was so vivid it looked ready to slither off their skin and onto the chair.” When the time came to get the tattoo Ink5 doesn’t actually ask Daria what she wants but instead asks her about her life and upon Daria revealing she is an artist Ink5 grins and cries out “The artist becomes the canvas!” and they begin to stream the affair before dragging Daria to a chair and starting on the tattoo. Daria mentions the pain and panic of course but surprisingly when Daria looks down at the tattoo, expecting a bloody mess or wound, she sees “Instead, a pristine paintbrush design spanned from the interior of my elbow to the inside of my palm, a flurry of colourful floral patterns entwined with symbols I didn't recognise. Despite the pain I twisted my arm back and forth to admire the work and those symbols almost seemed to glitter in the light. It was... It was beautiful.” Then they suddenly turned off the lights and kicked Daria out with no debrief or after care.

When Daria gets home she says “I stood before the bathroom mirror and looked myself over and for the first time I saw someone interesting. Someone I wanted to know more about.” and ��I went a bit manic at that point. For the first time ever I wanted to attempt a self-portrait. Something real and physical, I wanted to feel the brushes in my hands and the oil on my fingertips.” She works all night before falling asleep and then waking up and seeing herself in the self-portrait. But now… she notices an imperfection.. “As I stared at it though, I noticed that

whilst it was accurate it wasn't perfect. The eyes were still slightly wrong, the angle of the smile was off and obviously the nose still wasn’t quite right.” After looking at the tattoo on her arm she takes a palette to the left eye and despite there barely being any change she knows she’s making progress because she begins to feel bone. She goes to the bathroom to check her face and “...I was still pleased with the result. There was no discolouration, no bleeding, no damage at all but the face around my eyes was definitely more symmetrical. It looked so much better. But not quite perfect.”

So she keeps editing her face in an attempt to make herself perfect and well… it goes about as well as you would think in a horror podcast. She keeps altering herself and altering herself, admitting that she should have stopped, before her tattoo begins running along her upper arm and she resolves to work around it. She tries harder and harder to perfect her body but she has to keep making more and more compromises around the ever-spreading tattoo. Eventually Daria’s roommate Sarah returns home to see what I imagine is a very horrifying sight given her reaction. Even more unfortunately, apparently Daria was still finalizing her mouth so she couldn’t speak either so Sarah started screaming and even punched Daria when Daria tried to grab an reassure her. The punch from Sarah apparently messed up her cheek and undid days of work. Sarah would go on to claim Daria tried to kill herself with acid, probably trying to rationalize what would look like extreme melting mutilations, and Daria hasn’t edited herself since then.

The therapist asks if Daria wanted to hurt herself and Daria says she “just wanted to be better.”

As I mentioned earlier I think this statement at least parallels The Flesh. “Flesh sculpting” is something we see quite a lot with the Flesh and people like Jared Hopworth, and leitner’s like The Boneturner’s Tale give people the ability to warp and bend bone. They can even reach into people’s bodies and seemingly pull out bones without creating a massive bloody wound that one would expect. Additionally, the desire for perfection is something we have also seen with The Flesh and things like Jared Hopworth’s gym in MAG 90: “Body Builder.”

There is an argument to be made for parallels with The Eye in how apparently Ink5oul streams the tattooing session and maybe The Spiral with Daria pushing back against others calling her crazy or delusional and expressing fear about it. The Spiral can always be a bit trippy and I could see see the idea of it “distorting” something in a similar manner to distorting the truth. I mean it did literally have a monster known as “The Distortion.” There’s also the idea of realizing something is wrong with Daria continuously realizing her edits are imperfect every time she thinks she is done. But, as I’ve mentioned before the Entities have always just been general categories that overlap all the time, so if I had to put my money on an Entity I would say it’s The Flesh unless someone wants to argue that multiple Entities are at play or it’s an Entity like Eye overlapping with the fear of judgment, The Spiral with the fear of being wrong or realizing you are wrong about something, etc..

Sam asks Alice how she can put up with all the horrifying statements and she just says she ignores them. Which is something I mentioned a bit in my last talk with the relationship between The Eye and the idea of “ignorance being bliss” or the fear of seeing / witnessing too much. It’s also something I talked about a lot in my article dedicated to the Eye. The transcript of this episode (https://rustyquillcom.sharepoint.com/Shared%20Documents/Forms/AllItems.aspx?ga=1&id=%2FShared%20Documents%2FRusty%20Quill%20Public%20Access%2FTranscripts%2FThe%20Magnus%20Protocol%2FPublic%2FMAGP%2002%20%2D%20Making%20Adjustments%5FTranscript%202%2E0%2Epdf&parent=%2FShared%20Documents%2FRusty%20Quill%20Public%20Access%2FTranscripts%2FThe%20Magnus%20Protocol%2FPublic) mentions a cut to a CCTV before we hear what Alice and Gwen are talking about. Pointing to the idea that just like in TMA we are witnessing the story play out via something that is listening through a device. However, this time whatever Entity is present seems capable of listening through almost any device with a speaker and not just tapes.

Alice gets a call and after it's over Sam asks how Luke is and if he is still “playing with Bullets for Saint Sebastian?” This could just be a random name and this is one of the times where I might just be reaching and sound totally crazy but I wonder if we will get a statement from Luke or something relating to the “Bullets of Saint Sebastian” in the future? The reason I wonder is because The Slaughter has been an Entity that manifests as music quite a lot and Grifters Bone from TMA seems to have been aligned with the Slaughter. With a name like BULLETS for Saint Sebastian I wonder if such an encounter led to Luke leaving or if it’s even possible that Grifters Bone themselves got dragged into this universe and formed another band. But once again, this could just be a throw away name and it really depends on how closely they were tied to The Slaughter if we are to believe Annabelle’s hypothesis, but I also know that Johnny can be really cheeky at times.

It’s also possible it IS a Slaughter aligned band but has nothing to do with Grifters Bone. Just to be clear I’m not saying that The Slaughter is the only Entity to ever manifest as music or that it’s the only one that could. But rather that there’s a precedent for Slaughter bands and the name “Bullets for Saint Sebastian” rings rather violent to me. I actually cheated a bit and did a quick Google search about Saint Sebastian and apparently he is a saint that is “a patron saint of archers and athletes and of those who desire a saintly death.” I think the idea is linking both bows / arrows and guns / bullets as projectile weapons, so you could read a Saint Sebastian being riddled with bullets instead of arrows as a more modern take on the story of Saint Sebestian. He apparently died from being clubbed or beaten to death too which would tie into The Slaughter and themes of violence. I should make it clear that this hypothesis is making the assumption that Bullets of Saint Sebestian are tied to The Slaughter specifically, which is something we have no evidence for outside the name, which isn’t exactly the strongest evidence. I’m just considering a fun possibility.

This is where we learn Sam is looking for information about the Magnus Institute for a seemingly unknown reason at this point. As I’ve mentioned Sam’s extreme curiosity can be compared to some other Eye related folk like Jon and in TMA it seemed like the Institute also acted as bait to drag people searching for answers or closure towards The Eye. But this could be unrelated to what Sam is doing since the Institute is nothing but ruins in this universe at this point. So I don’t know what information could be at the site at this moment if anything. Alice also warns Sam against thinking about this stuff while he is off the clock which ties into the whole “ignorance is bliss” theme I think The Eye sometimes has.

Conclusion

That’s really all the thoughts I have for now and it’s important to stress that this is off the top of my head so if you think I missed a character parallel or possibility feel free to point them out and I might give my thoughts or interpretations on them.

I’ve seen people mention the possibility of this universe having its own set of Entities and someone even asked me what I think about the possibility. The answer is… I can’t even begin to guess… I have no idea. I’m not trying to claim that I’ve solved all of TMP, just that I think some theories hold more water than others based on the precedent TMA set. Some theories are completely up in the air and could go one way or the other. If this universe does have its own set of Entities I think the most likely possibilities as it stands right now are 1. The Entities in question are at least somewhat similar to the ones from TMA (so much so that they share a lot of themes and imagery) or 2. Such Entities haven’t shown up during this episode or the last yet. But who’s to say for sure until we get more information. Right now I’m leaning a bit towards the idea that at the very least the statements up until this episode the Entities are pretty close if not the same as the ones we know and fear.

But I’ll see if the next episode changes my mind considering how intriguing the statement is.

#tma #tmp #themagnusarchives #themagnusprotocol #theory

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