#People have always been people and you have to live and work within that framework

[princessnijireiki]

what happened w the staff wrt “scortched earth”

ok so staff has a new page @/humans where they've got a post up listing several of the current moderators for the site, some of whom linked their own tumblr blogs. user @partyjockers made an original post like "so the new staff lineup explains why mods aren't blocking actual terfs huh" & then reblogged their own post with screenshots for evidence, one of the @/humans intro post, and one of the blog of one of those mods, "jas," @/jezzuminah. all publicly visible posts.

jas is a diehard hp fan, but people paid close attention to her artwork (her art tag is linked in a pinned post at the top of her blog). she's done a lot of dramione fanart, a lot of attack on titan fanart, and ship fanart of aged up preschoolers from spy x family. of note, she also put in her header, "opinions are my own," which is typical for ppl maintaining private social media accts linked to their real professional lives, as a way to ask for or demand a free pass to be inflammatory in some way w/o facing prof'nl. repercussions.

most of the commentary I saw at that point on @partyjockers's post was like, "lol that figures," bc it's not like any of that is especially shocking to see on tumblr; it's dime a dozen in fandom circles, but funny to confirm that "yeah the employees #on here are like that too, ugh, smh. 🙄"

within ONE DAY, staff had no only entirely shut down & seemingly permabanned @partyjockers, AND copyright striked the original screenshots so they get blanked out to error pictures if you try to repost them, they also did something they've never done before + which past staff have indicated was not doable within the tumblr framework: they scrubbed every trace of the post from the site. original post, gone. THOUSANDS of reblogs, all gone. even notifications from people interacting with reblogs of the post, wiped from the activity page. like beyond twitter, where if you delete a tweet, you can still see people's responses from THEIR pages, and you can still see QRTs even if you can't see what's been retweeted... every interaction w that post was gone. @partyjockers, gone. jas just toggled off the "view top posts" feature, locked her twitter & instagram, and deleted one piece of dramione fanart that people began reblogging after that overkill response.

and NOW the scrutiny is higher than ever before, because it's all fun & games and "my opinions are my own" until one person hurts your feelings (at WORK) by pointing & saying, "harry potter fan!" ...and, vitally, they also proved @partyjockers right. they've always been able to erase the entire footprint of violent fascists, people spreading explicit hate speech, literal nazis, revenge porn distributors, doxxers, bigots who run active harassment campaigns (incl some terfs!), ppl who share EXPLICIT csa materials, gore, etc.— even pages like @communismkills just got shadowbanned, and that was after a LONG TIME being a leaking sphincter on this site.

and tumblr staff have thus far ONLY ever unleashed this big gun ONCE in the whole history of the site, to my knowledge, as a tool to take down a page that wasn't even, like, a "whistleblower" for anything that serious, but who JUST SAID, "y'all don't ban terfs (true!) & y'all hire harry potter fans (also true!)," which apparently this new staff took sooooo personally & seriously & disparagingly (lol) that they nuked a random person's page from orbit over the "insult."

and we're currently on day 2, so I'm sure more will eventually unfold, but yeah, this scorched earth tactic is genuinely batshit hostility out of nowhere, over not even mild criticism but just a literal factual observation.

#it's incredibly stupid like they detonated a grenade to spite their face #smh. #drharlequin #tumblr dot com #long post // #1k #5k #10k #12k

[lurkingshan]

Dead Friend Forever is a Marvel of Mystery Writing

I haven’t been watching Dead Friend Forever live, because I am not always that into the slasher genre and I figured I would wait to hear whether it holds up before jumping in. I admit, I was a bit dubious about a drama sustaining a slasher narrative for 12 entire weeks and didn’t want to spend time on something that might be too shallow to sustain and would end up falling apart. I basically told bestie @wen-kexing-apologist to vet it for me and holler if I needed to start paying attention. And a few weeks ago, they started poking me with increasing intensity, along with a few other friends, because the writing was holding up better than they could believe. I started asking questions, and once @ginnymoonbeam mentioned that Sammon was the writer, it all started to click and I dove into a binge to catch up.

And they were right! This show is excellent, and its strength is sourced in an incredibly strong script from a writer who knows how to construct a longform mystery. Because it turns out, that’s what this show actually is. How do you sustain a slasher for 12 weeks? By embedding a deeper mystery within the slasher framework and pacing your story so that the entire middle delivers a backstory narrative that is even more compelling than the current events. This show is expertly structured to grab your attention and then get you deeply emotionally invested in the coming bloodbath, which is crucial for a slasher to feel like it has any stakes. Let me also note that the excellent writing here is supported by extremely smart direction and editing and some standout performances from young actors. I am going to focus on the writing here because that’s what I do, but it should be said that this whole production is all around excellent. 

So let’s talk about why the writing in Dead Friend Forever works so well! Great drama mysteries should support two kinds of engagement from the viewer: 

no thoughts head empty engagement from the people who just want to be pulled along for the ride and be constantly surprised

red string board theory engagement for the people who enjoy finding clues and trying to solve the mystery in advance. 

It’s actually really fucking hard to thread this needle as a writer, because it requires seeding strong enough clues that attentive viewers could reasonably guess some of the big reveals, but not giving away so much that you are unable to surprise them. A reveal in a good mystery should have you saying “oh my god WHAT” and “of course, that makes perfect sense” at the same time. And the best mysteries support the viewer being able to go back and rewatch, find new meaning they missed the first time, and realize every single thing that happened adds up. A tight mystery has no loose ends and no false steps; it never lies to the viewer, it only works to draw your attention where it wants it at any given point in the story.

Dead Friend Forever does this masterfully with several of its reveals, but I will highlight the biggest example: the reveal of Phee and Non’s relationship in episode 7. In the first four episodes of the show, the story lets us in on a few crucial facts: Phee is newer to this friend group (along with Tan and White), he was not present for whatever went down with Non three years ago, he has some kind of fucked up not!friends with benefits relationship with Jin that involves lots of sexual tension and dick biting, and he seems interested in figuring out what the hell happened once all these dudes start acting crazy about the videos. The string board theorists had enough to go on there to reasonably guess that he was intentionally trying to uncover the truth—but not why—and the no thoughts head empty crowd could just vibe, enjoying his scenes with Jin and wondering how exactly he ended up hooking up with him and getting involved with this group of people he doesn’t even seem to like.

Once we get to the backstory and see Non’s narrative, additional clues emerge, like the existence of both an older brother and a mysterious sweetheart that is only saved as [heart emoji] in Non’s phone. No thoughts head empty is over here going huh I wonder who they’re gonna be and hey when are the rest of the characters going to show up; string board theorists now have two clear options for how Phee could tie in to Non’s story and why he might care enough to investigate, but no one knows for sure. So when the show ended episode 6 with Phee running into Non’s room and began episode 7 with The Most Effective Five Minute BL Of All Time, everything clicked into place. No thoughts head empty got to experience a very pleasant shock moment, the string board theorists got to feel satisfied that they figured out at least part of the reveal, everyone got to enjoy an unexpected shot of romance in the middle of this stressful narrative, and there were still parts of Phee’s motives and involvement with this group that we didn’t understand and would require additional reveals. That is great mystery writing in a nutshell.

And it’s not only the mystery construction that makes the writing here so smart. It’s also the way Sammon is weaving in tons of social commentary, embedding Thai cultural and religious values, incorporating complicated crimes with lots of players in the mix that somehow don’t get confusing, and drawing complex and nuanced characters whose choices and behavior you understand even if you find them abhorrent. It’s not easy to make a viewer both despise a character and still care what happens to them; when you write a story about despicable people you run the risk of inspiring apathy in the audience, which is a death knell for a mystery. We have to be invested for this story to work. We have to feel deep empathy for Non to the point that we fully support axe murdering his bullies, but we also have to be interested enough in the bullies and why they behave the way they do to watch 12 weeks of them running around being awful to each other and harming everyone in their paths. And Non, too, gets to have real complexity. He is not a perfect little Mary Sue who never does anything wrong. He makes big impulsive mistakes, and seeks attention and affection from the wrong people, and lies to the ones he loves, and doesn’t always ask for help when he needs it. He is a flawed human being and that’s so important, because he is the center of this story and we need him to feel real.

In conclusion: holy shit. I tip my hat to you, Dr. Sammon, and I am very excited to be on this ride for the final four episodes. 

#dead friend forever #dff the series #thai bl #shan shouts into the void

[decolonize-the-left]

Hi I've had an influx of followers again so I wanna say hi and tell y'all a little what I'm about.

So hi, I'm decol. I'm a grown Ojibwe leftist living with my trans gf and my kid ❤️

You may have noticed I posted a lot of politics. Lately it's been Free Palestine but thats because it became my new normal. Before I became so focused on Palestinians liberation tho, I posted a lot more other things. Human rights, trans rights, women's rights, Im mentally ill and AuDHD and post about mental illness stigma, landback, calling out white supremacy, decolonization, etc. My blog has been political for along time but always on the side of human rights and fighting oppression. But that's just liberal stuff. What makes me a leftist is that I don't believe states or borders are good for people.

Let's get into why that is.

I support life and believe that a state or government fundamentally opposes life.

I also support whatever means necessary the oppressed seek to gain freedom. I don't think it's my place or anyone else's to say liberation can only look one way. Especially when it's often from privilege and a myopic view of comfort that most us speak.

There wouldn't be so many people being oppressed if there weren't so many people dedicated to their own comfort instead of liberation. Nobody should have to Vote to have human rights and if in fact any oppressed people had allies we would not have had to march for them either. We shouldn't have to earn our human rights from a majority that didn't want us to vote in the first place and nobody should have to do it now.

I think voting therefore is also a fundamentally flawed system that no amount of voting blue will change because it is not the Votes that must change, but the people who are casting them. It's the people in the majority who are not demanding equality and the people in the majority who are leaving others to fight for themselves.

But I do unfortunately live in a society that continues to use and weaponize that system anyway for their bi-annual puppet theater where they watch BIPOC fight and bid on who will give us more rights .

I think few people see this for what it is and even less are willing to demand the change necessary to give all people a proper and equal voice. Such is the nature of the majority is it not? They may pretend to hate injustice but remember that myopic view of comfort they have? Injustice is included with it, free of charge.

So yeah, you will see me advocate for certain things on this blog that may contradict the views I've stated at first glance. But It's just me working within the framework that I have been given.

For example I'll push for presidential candidates despite the fact that I support Landback and believe voting is flawed and the country is fascist. Because I know we are far from an organized revolution full of intersectional solidarity and realistically I must work within the framework I have. Which is a shitty voting system and a population who doesn't even fully realize why it's so shitty.

Or you'll see me support violence when I support saving lives. And that's because I also believe the language of the oppressor is violence and likewise that anyone who's ever tried catering to their "better conscience" has found that oppression wouldn't exist if the oppressors had a conscience to appeal to. Violence is the answer sometimes and I've found that sometimes it's the only answer that a state will understand.

To that end...I don't want to hear about any state military anywhere. Every single military on earth has done some seriously fucked up shit. I know this. You know this. I don't support any military anywhere. Period.

I don't think anyone is innocent either. As I've gotten older I've realized it's been made clear that race and religion are part of everything including our headlines today and that's it's been that way for a long time. Even freedom and liberation and oppression have been racialized and as a native 'leftist extremist' I've seen that firsthand. I've learned that both sides will lie to make the other look bad without taking accountability for whatever awful thing they did themselves.

Power corrupts. And it's why I support principles and ideas behind a movement and not necessarily the specific people of it or even the movement itself and it's why I will ALWAYS disregard any attempt to undermine a movement because the people leading it were found to have flaws. Of course they did. And of course they're being politicized. Such is the reality of the Us vs Them political landscape. Anything to make the other guy look bad.

It's up to us who were going to stand behind despite their flaws. It's up to us to decide what principles matter to us. And I refuse to let perfection be the enemy of progress. Because I understand a lot of people in 2024 have been spoon fed puritan ideas that have made them believe most movements are not good enough to support. Either they don't follow their ideology perfectly or their tactics are too aggressive or their goals are "unrealistic." It's always something.

I don't subscribe to this puritan 2.0 logic. Nor do I believe that it should apply to everyone. I didn't ask to be held under a microscope for example. I'm just a Tumblr blogger. Yeah I blog about a lot of politics and such but that's because I like politics and such lol I'm not a representation of anything but myself, but you'll find I too have been politicized in ongoing race and theological wars. "Why would you say x if you support y?" says anon in another attempt to make all supporters of Y look unreliable and bad for their opinions on X. As if my singular bad opinion is somehow a representation of everyone else who supports Y and not just my opinion specifically on x.

I also want to be very clear that I'm still learning :)

I don't know everything about everything yet and as such I'm sure I'll fuck up or say the wrong things or use the wrong terminology sometimes.

Please just give me a heads up. Don't be a puritan about it and make a whole post about how ignorant and harmful I am or something, especially when it's been made clear my intentions are not to offend or exclude anyone and I would Never intentionally do anything like that.

I try to educate myself on topics before I speak about them but lots of the things I discuss on my blog require a lot of knowledge to be spoken on in confidence. I am often not confident lol. As a native tho it annoys me to no end when people use the excuse that "well I didn't know enough about the topic so I stayed silent and didn't share opinions on it at all ever" because that's also a puritan act thats detrimental to movement and helps to maintain our status as 'Irrelevant Concern.' So I try to educate myself and show support, tho sometimes it isn't as well worded or educated as it should have been.

All I ask is you have some grace when that happens as I have good intentions. Additionally if I ever fuck up Please tell me. I do not ever want to make someone feel like shit cuz or singled out cuz I said something ignorant I shouldn't have.

Some people choose comfort and don't acknowledge when they fucked up. I try to pride myself on Not doing that and correcting myself where others can see and learn from it too.

Not everyone wants to learn tho. Those are the people I don't understand. Those are my opposers; the people standing indifferently in the way of progress while oppressed fathers beg for them to move aside. And what is he to do with the child dying in his arms? Just allow this man to keep being the only obstacle to saving them? Of course not.

And so I aggressively and vehemently stand by the opinion that self defense in this way is never wrong. Let all the ignorant white supremacists die if they have to and let all their allies cry about it. I don't care. White supremacists fundamentally oppose life which I support. And so I fundamentally oppose white supremacy the same way I do a state and as such I openly call for their destruction as well.

This is getting long so I'll wrap it up.

TLDR:

Human rights are to be taken by any means necessary if they were not given to you. The people with-holding them don't get to complain about how you get them and either does anyone else especially if they aren't helping you get them now. Additionally, people should be given room to grow but choosing not to grow is a choice too so don't tolerate the intolerant who stands in your way. If you can cut him down then do it.

PS:

My asks are always open. I get a lot of mean, bad faith asks and so I answer most asks with this mindset and I'm trying to be better about it but if you send one in good faith and my attitude sucks, please don't take it personally.

P.p.s

I share a lot of politics and upsetting things and images on my blog. I don't feel the need to tag every post because So Many of them are this way..

However, the posts that are especially bad ARE tagged

My trauma/trigger tag is: decolstw

This is a catch-all tag. Gore, white supremacist violence, historical hate crimes, and the like are all tagged with this.

#decols post #decols opinion #my post #you can reblog this im mostly just mostly sharing this for new followers who are confused and lost if my asks are any representation lol

[archivalofsins]

I've been discussing Kotoko a lot in private and honestly while I still don't like her as a person and think the flack, she's getting is emotionally valid. There is room for people to discuss more of her personality outside of the framing of judging her behavior and the Innocent/Guilty framework Milgram has given us to work within.

I for one really love how her second trial shows off her difficulties with socializing more. Kotoko is someone that a lot like Mu feels she has to give someone a reason or motivation to interact with her. She thinks she needs to highlight her value to be valued. Unlike Mu who combats this mindset by giving others around unconditional acceptance to the point of saying we should just vote everyone innocent multiple times this trial Kotoko holds everyone to that expectation.

She doesn't just expect that she should be useful but those around her to be useful as well to merit her engaging with them. This is highlighted in her second voice drama by how she views cooperation. She was always the sort to be just as hard on others as she is on herself. There's a discussion to be had about how Mu, Shidou, and Kotoko view usefulness in relation to personhood. A theme that becomes jarringly apparent when you view their narratives together but ultimately is something that can be seen across Milgram in its entirety.

There's a discussion on collectivism and the pitfalls of it being had over the course of the series. That's highlighted throughout every prisoner's narrative. The pitfalls of it are heavily highlighted within the narratives of Kazui and Amane as they are shown pushing aside their personal feelings for that of the group to unhealthy extents. Or in Amane's case having her treatment ignored or brushed aside by a larger collective that given the circumstances it was meant to actively help her and admonish the treatment she received.

Something highlighted through her line of

"The “It can’t be helped”, from the scum who can’t be helped."

Calling directly to attention the ways large groups ignore the struggles of the few as unsolvable or the bystander effect in general. Where a lot of systems present just go well a neighbor will say something, her school will say something, the health system will do something, the authorities will do something. There are so many systems around Amane that have the power to report the abuse that she's undergoing but just do not. In contrast to that we see the adults in her life have no qualms about reporting her misconduct to her mother.

So, why are these same people taking a stance of noninterference when Amane is going to school in the state we see her going to it in Purge March? Is it because that's less important or just because they keep thinking surely someone will say or do something we're all seeing it- I don't need to be the one to do it, right? The same can be said with Mikoto's work abuse. He has coworkers they certainly must know he's being called in at strange hours to make last minute corrections.

It's something that Kotoko even uses to her advantage in Harrow going if I don't do anything about these evils who will? Framing herself as the only aid in a hopeless situation. The same way Shidou does in Triage. They necessitate their own existences off violence that they themselves perpetuate.

"There are lives that need saving."

Yet the ones Shidou was meant to save he to his own admission killed. Mu states there's no reason to be a bully in her second voice drama but bullying not only gives her the ability to hold power over others but allows her to avoid being bullied herself. Because if she's on top she doesn't have to be on bottom.

Just like if Kotoko protects useless weaklings that in itself validates the idea that she is strong and useful. That she is necessary and needed. I think that link between these three has been greatly understated and I don't personally know what it means for Milgram moving forward. However, discussing how collectivism overlooks and fails individuals is something I believe is an important aspect of Milgram that should be discussed more frequently. I believe it not only impacts the prisoners highlighted here but all of them.

#milgram #muu kusunoki #shidou kirisaki #yuzuriha kotoko

[headspace-hotel]

Howdy! I've been following your discussions of ecology and spirituality and indigenous ways of knowing with interest! If it's alright I'd like to share some thoughts. A commonality I've noticed in a lot of the people who object to a lot of the things you're saying, and I think you've noticed as well, is that they seem to see science as a way of accessing reality without filtering by bias and belief. I think that idea comes from how we teach science in the US, and probably more broadly. We tend to teach science as a set of objective unchanging facts and truths without much detail or thought on how we came to know these things. My personal belief is that it would be far better to teach science as a process. Maybe have a class tracing the history of scientific ideas and understanding previous scientific or even pre-scientific thoughts and theories.

I've commented on your posts a few times and you may know I'm a geologist. As I've gotten further into my studies, I've had to change my idea of what science is. I now see it as a living process of making ever more useful simplifications about the world. The world itself is far too complex to understand even one aspect of it in its totality, so we observe patterns and try to simplify them to make models and rules out of them to understand behaviors of the world around us. Scientific models aren't always true in a simple direct way, but what they are is useful. If it isn't useful get rid of it and make a new hypothesis or conjecture or theory. I think one culture difference between different scientific disciplines is in how the subject matter confronts you with complexity. Much of the rigour that gives physics and chemistry their prestige for being able to explain so much stems from the fact that they remove as much complexity and impurity as possible. I think that baked into that sort of hierarchy of sciences is how close they are to pulling all of the different theories within the discipline under a universalizing theory (ie., quantum mechanics/relativity for physics being the best example) but I'm now off topic so I'll stop.

That turned into a bit of a stream of conscious mess, but I think I put down what I wanted to. I've been really enjoying your thoughts, and it's been (as you may be able to tell from the length of this) food for thought for myself in a similar way as reading Braiding Sweetgrass was for me. Keep it up!

basically, yes, correct. and also that, in times and places where "spirituality" and "science" are not culturally considered separate, you can't bring your "science is about the real world of real things, spirituality is about things that can't be measured or proven" framework because it Doesn't Work

The oldest mathematicians viewed mathematics as what we would today call "spiritual;" that doesn't make mathematics not real. Just because shamans with a framework that deals in the world of spirits use X plant for medicinal purposes, doesn't mean the plant doesn't have medicinal properties or that the shaman's usage isn't rooted in observations of what that plant does.

And if you went back in time to a Neolithic shaman with nothing in common with you and tried to explain the germ theory of disease to them, through a universal translator so both of you could understand, you could explain that mammoth pox isn't caused by a slight to the mammoth god by accidentally knocking over the mammoth god idol.

But you couldn't explain that mammoth pox isn't caused by evil spirits that leave the body of a mammoth when it is killed. It would be literally impossible to explain this. Because the Neolithic shaman's conceptual framework for "evil spirits" doesn't have a stipulation that it excludes microorganisms. It has no reason to.

And instead of trying to explain to the shaman THAT "demon=things that don't exist in physical reality" and THEN explain that demons (by this definition) aren't real, you would have to realize that you and the shaman are using different models for the same thing, and the shaman isn't fundamentally misattributing the cause of illness in any meaningful way, they just don't know exactly how it works.

#science

[zzzzzestforlife]

🦋 Falling In and Out of Love 🧡(with your job)

a.k.a. how to recover from burnout in 3 steps~ 🍰

My job has taken me on an emotional rollercoaster lately and it got me thinking about how much I invest in my career the way I invest in my personal relationships. The advice I've gotten to address the stress/anxiety I feel has always been to detach and disconnect more, but the more I try (and fail) to do that, the worse I feel and perform. So instead of fighting it, I reflected on my relationship with my work as I would a personal relationship and implemented some of my realizations. It seems to be working well, so of course I wanted to share~ 😉

🏇 Do more of what you're good at

People tend to naturally take on certain roles in different relationships. The mom-friend, the mood-maker, the hype-upper, etc. Being the person you naturally gravitate towards being anyway can make you feel more needed and appreciated because you're using the specific talents and skills that make you unique.

You might not know what you're going to be good at. It might even be something you think you're really bad at. For me, despite being an introvert, I was given the opportunity to take on an incredibly rewarding project coordinator role. So if you're willing to push yourself, be sure to communicate that.

🍊 Communication is key

No one is a mind-reader. And the tendency when having a hard time to shut down and clam up is very strong. A good partner (or friend or boss) may notice and take action to help you, but you can make both your lives easier by speaking up. It's not complaining, it's just taking responsibility for the relationship.

I was very daunted at first because work doesn't seem like the right place for "feelings" to exist, but the fact is that you're a human, your colleagues are all human. Talking things out can help make sure that no one (me) takes feedback on the project personally, and that everyone (me) has clearer guidance on how to take their careers to the next level.

🔥 What motivates you

Working for the next promotion is like studying for the grades or getting close to someone for superficial reasons. But if you're motivated by wanting to learn (about the topic or the person), the promotion (or grades or deeper, more fulfilling relationship) will follow naturally.

Sometimes talking to someone about your motivations can help crystalized them. Feeling like I had no motivation to work, I gave my manager a very honest five minute word-vomit that she, with absolutely no judgement, distilled into simply: "Oh, so you value human connection and feeling useful." Being able to put names to what I'm looking for means I'm better equipped to actively seek them out, especially when they sometimes goes missing in the busyness of the work day.

💌: Like any relationship, how I feel about my job will ebb and flow with time, but viewing it within this framework of "a relationship" helps me better accept that somehow. Hope it can help you too! ☺️ How do you like/tend to see your job? How do you stay motivated? (Genuinely asking because I never know how long these little strategies of mine are going to last due to my novelty-seeking nature 😅)

#workblr #self improvement #career advice #life advice #good advice #career growth #self development #codeblr #progblr #motivation #tips and tricks #life tips #adulting #life hack #life skills #burnout #leadership #lifestyle #life hacks #how to #that girl #it girl #inspiration #pinterest girl #becoming that girl #studyblr #lifeblr #zesty's life #advice #career

[laundrybiscuits]

I've recently been tagged in a few WIP/"last thing you've written" type games, and…to be completely candid, I haven't been writing any kind of fic lately because I've become a little bit obsessed with analyzing the Broadway revival of Merrily We Roll Along.

Not for any particular purpose, I just saw it at the Hudson a little while back and have a lot of feelings about it! In my tiny scraps of spare time, I've been working on an essay about Merrily and inevitability that will probably end up rotting in my google docs*, because that's how I approach writing as a hobby.

There's just so much there, holy shit. I'm focusing particularly on "Franklin Shepard, Inc." because Radcliffe's Charley brings a frenetic, desperate vulnerability to the performance that reads so, so differently from earlier productions. Throughout the show, I was consistently blown away by the heavy lifting Radcliffe, Mendez, and Groff do in shifting the core tension from "art vs commerce" (fine but basic, and difficult to keep modern) to "how people prioritize different types of relationships in their lives."

In an effort to make this slightly less wildly off-topic for this blog: this has gotten me thinking about the way that platonic relationships are treated in narratives, particularly but not exclusively in fandom.

"Found family" is and has always been a popular trope, but I do think its current incarnation trades a lot on the underlying fantasy of relationship permanence. When we recategorize friendships as familial relationships, we're making a claim—whether or not it's justified—about the indelibility of those relationships.

That's not inherently bad (or, god forbid, problematic). I think it's very very natural, especially for those who don't necessarily have a lot of experience with the way adult friendships change over time. Why wouldn't you want something as precious and unique and amazing as a good friendship to stay with you forever?

Certain people can feel like pillars of your world, and it's fucking terrifying to think about that being yanked out from under you—or even worse, to think about your lives slowly shifting like geologic plates until suddenly you realize it's been weeks, then months, then years since you last really talked.

CHARLEY: We're not that kind of close any more, the way we used to be. And a friendship's like a garden. You have to water it and tend it and care about it. And you know what? I want it back.

It's a peculiar, particular kind of grief when it happens, because even though it's a fairly common human experience, it doesn't get socially acknowledged in the same way as e.g. a romantic breakup.

So yeah, it makes a lot of sense that found family is a popular trope in all kinds of media, not just fandom.

However...at this point, I've developed a knee-jerk wariness to the phrase "found family," because I've found it often correlates with a really flat, simplistic depiction of human relationships. In extreme cases, it simply recontextualizes a relationship within the socially acknowledged/acceptable framework of a stereotypical family unit.

This does a disservice to familial and nonfamilial relationships alike. Every family is different, so why do so many found families in media look the same?

(I was monologuing about this to my very patient girlfriend, and she pointed out that this also sets up a success/failure binary condition in relationships, where permanence is the arbiter of success in both romantic and nonromantic contexts. She is of course both beautiful and correct!)

I have friends with whom I can sometimes share a glance and know exactly what they're thinking. I even have a running joke with one friend about the sheer number of times we've said the same thing in unison over the last 15 years. I still need to be intentional about building those relationships, extending empathy when we differ, and carving out time to reconnect. Truly intimate long-term relationships of any kind involve disagreements, conflicting priorities, and negotiating and renegotiating boundaries.

Being "basically the same person" or "sharing a braincell" actually sounds super fucking lonely to me, personally, and it handily elides the difficult, essential process of keeping people in your life.

FRANK: Old friends let you go your own way. CHARLEY: Help you find your own way. MARY: Let you off when you're wrong. F: If you're wrong. C: When you're wrong. M: Right or wrong, the point is, old friends shouldn't care if you're wrong. F: Should, but not for too long. C: What's too long?

That's a more complicated and much more mature narrative to tell than "friendship will save the day!" Because it's not that common and there's not a deep bank of references to draw from, it takes a lot of effort and skill to depict well, and I don't blame creators for not wanting to let it suck up all the air in the room. However, I think it's important to acknowledge that platonic relationships can also be flanderised and flattened.

In the context of fandom, which has always traded heavily in Romance genre conventions, I would really like to see more thoughtful explorations of complicated nonromantic relationships. I'm not even talking about genfic here! I've actually been thinking about Stobin specifically because that relationship (rightly & understandably) tends to show up in any Steve-centric fic, including the vast ocean of Steddie fics, so it makes the issue slightly more visible than I've seen in other fandoms.

I'm not saying I want to see them fight, or not be friends, or not love each other fiercely and near-obsessively in the way that lonely teenagers can. I'm just saying I want them to be distinct individuals who view the world in very different ways, and choose each other anyway. They already have a complicated past; I know from personal experience that it's possible as a lesbian to be best friends with a guy who once made a little speech about how into you he was, but that little layer of history never quite goes away.

I don't want frictionless relationships in my life. I want people who will challenge me and whom I can challenge, in the context of love and trust. I want people in my life whom I have to work to understand, because my life is richer when I do. And sometimes, I want narratives that will reflect the grief of friendships that are no longer part of my life, despite the best efforts of everyone involved.

In Merrily, Charley sings, "Friendship's something you don't really lose—" but Radcliffe's thready, pleading delivery makes it all too clear: Charley already knows he's lying. The audience just needs to catch up.

*Other essays in that particular graveyard: understanding the cast of Peanuts through the lens of anomie, humor and subversive linguistic nationalism in 00s Singaporean TV, how to fix Miss Saigon. WHY am I this way.

#side note: how fucking good was Radcliffe in that role? what a glow-up from HTSIBWRT #all the casting was brilliant but (Tony winner!) Mendez and (Tony nominated) Groff were less of a dark horse #anyway I think...I might start to get a little less rigid about letting myself dump nonfandom or fandom-adjacent posts here #we'll see if I have more time to post and/or write once this busy period at work dies down #recently is a relative term btw. I have been tagged more recently than the cambrian explosion. so that counts. #I appreciate the tags and it's very nice of y'all to think of me though!

[postitforward]

One step at a time, folks. Slowly but surely, we are making our way through winter, and, well, it’s not all bad. It’s a little darker and a little colder, sure, but there have been some beautiful mornings this week. Where we are, there was even a little frost, and frost has the magical ability to make even the darkest December evenings a little brighter. Seems to us that you lovely people deserve to give yourselves a big ol’ pat on the back, and we appreciate that it’s not always easy. If you’re struggling with SAD, know that it won’t last forever. 🌄

And it gets even better. Because if you’re finding it a little tricky, we’ve got just the thing. If you’re finding your mind is here, there, everywhere during the long winter days, we would suggest Mindfulness Grounding Meditation this week with Holiday Blues! It calms the mind, relaxes the body, and helps to keep your mind and feet comfortably on the ground. 🧘 

Your tour guide for this week! Introducing your host: Kirat Randhawa! She is a New York-based meditation instructor and founder of A Kind Rupture, which implements contemplative training into client work as a method to explore yourself. Currently a student at Columbia University, where she is studying the role of contemplative training within psychology and how associated practices can be used as instruments for transformation. Kirat aims to integrate Buddhist philosophy into a traditional psychotherapeutic framework to support others, and this philosophy is focused on facilitating a subtle societal shift beautifully designed for each individual’s participation. All great stuff, and we are delighted she is here to join us!

We’d love it if you could join us for just ten minutes of quiet breathing here on Tumblr Live. And you never know what big little differences this time might make… 

🧘 Watch the Mindfulness Grounding Meditation with Kirat from HealHaus at 10AM EST 🧘

#holidayblueswithtumblr

#holiday blues #holidayblueswithtumblr #mindful monday

[olreid]

Question regarding Neverafter: how much do you think Brennan is trying to do horror? The players and the format are working against him, but what do you think of the world he’s created? I honestly can’t tell how much he wants them to commit or not.

yeah i guess at this point it sort of feels like he's let the horror go lol. it seems like he's been pulling his punches a lot; the biggest example is letting pinnochio be his own warlock patron but also giving tim the power to put people in the book without confronting him with the ethics of it and even going so far as to be like. sure, they're happy in there :) there's also just a constant undercurrent of like. letting players give help actions and have advantage, or not imposing disadvantage even when the roleplay calls for it. this is EASILY incorporated into the horror -- the realization that the story prioritizes your life over that of minor characters and so contact with you is often fatal for them is terrifying -- but it's reflexive rather than intentional and so it's left unremarked upon and works against the tone of the season rather than for it. most recently when they got to the tundra and had levels of exhaustion and then he just FAST FORWARDED THROUGH IT... ill tell you right now if that was a naddpod episode someone would have died of exposure and rightfully so.

a lot of the horror seems to happen offscreen (elody: i found your body in the other world) or in character backstories that the players often don't take the time to explore; overall it seems like the horror at this point is largely confined to combat which is like. just how any normal season of d20 works. like there are always scary villains.... its not enough to have an extra scary boss if theyre just going to beat it in 3 or 4 rounds... AND he keeps putting in these like. cheat codes into the fights so that they dont even have to BEAT the bosses they just have to like. break the wolf's chains or outlast the dogfish or whatever. THE PARTY HAS ONLY DIED ONCE and even then they all died together so there was no like. player that had to face death alone OR player that was the only one left alive and had to go on living alone... there is no reason that we haven't had another death by now! acoc showed that if he wants to kill a party member he absolutely can.

i also agree with others who have said that there's just too many moving parts for things to really feel tight and well-executed. the stepmother and the fairies who were omnipresent threats at the season's start are now apparently unable to reach the party for basically no reason at all which removes a lot of the fear. you're not supposed to say the authors' names or there will be grievous consequences but nothing has happened even though they've slipped up multiple times. they destroyed a wing of the lines between and there was no effect on their dimension. they also left npcs in there e.g. little miss muffett and it was apparently just fine. we haven't heard from scheherezade or aesop or any other dimensions in weeks. i appreciate that brennan wanted to give the party options and build a fleshed-out world AND that with improv some level of discontinuity comes with the territory but it really just lowers the stakes when villains or horrors only exist if they're on the party's mind and fade to the background as soon as the party becomes interested in something else. what's horrifying about a world where you have to actively seek out the horror?

he was saying in the last adventuring party like 'oh i created all these factions and had no idea what you all would gravitate towards in the season.' so it seems like most of the 'horror' was in the design of the world and the backstories of the characters etc and then he just let players loose within that framework to do whatever they want rather than intentionally injecting horror into the rhythms of play, game mechanics, plot structure, etc. we have all said over and over again that this is largely what comes of insisting on using d&d no matter the genre or season concept, despite the fact that there are tons of indie ttrpgs out there specifically designed to facilitate horror.

i'll be really interested to see how the season wraps up because there is absolutely still room for a horrifying ending but it's feeling less and less likely and more and more like the party is going to be allowed to just fully win and fix everything. we shall see!

#asks #anon #neverafter

[nicollekidman]

i think eventually we’re going to have to find a way to appropriately and realistically engage with young people who are publicly learning new information, because everyone is on board with the concept of “after a certain point you can’t blame ignorance on education you have to take responsibility and seek information out” but then when kids lack the foundation or framework to then analyze and synthesize that information it’s too easy to sit back and say stupid gen z the youth are doomed!!!!!!! especially when those same kids are - for better or for worse - working through their ignorance in a public forum.

like we either have to swallow our knee-jerk reaction to their lack of understanding and offer guidance when we’re able, or we have to have a bigger conversation about what it means to become radicalized or introduced to leftist spaces when you don’t have a strong background in how to interact with new information/facts and when information is spread through Trends like a new pair of shoes. i know that wailing about how we think the youth are wandering into bigotry traps or don’t know how to verify information or whatever is like. standard but. i do remember what it felt like when every new thing i learned required that i readjust my entire worldview and how i accepted things and thought critically about things, and there is a way to extend that grace to people who have the unfortunate impulse to document their journey out of stupidity online without catastrophizing.

and again i guess the context changes for each person as everyone is being fed different videos/articles about The Youth(tm) and their habits but personally i have been so uplifted by the massive amount of young people who are trying to learn (and unlearn) an enormous amount of information in a very small amount of time, especially considering that many of these people (again, that i have personally seen) are doing so without the support of the adults in their lives or often their peers. and trying to do that within a hive mind echochamber in public is HARD and i guess i just think there are more beneficial ways to react to sensationalized accounts of what they’re doing and how they’re reacting than just like. assuming worst case scenarios for entire generations of people…. especially when we know the people who are used as examples in articles etc are always going to be the dumbest and most controversial

#sorry to let my People Are Good and we Owe People Space To Learn pollyanna attitude is coming out but #knowing how to engage with new information is a learned skill and a lot #of these kids don’t have it!!! but they can develop it if they’re not met at every turn with either derision or doomsday #also please don’t purposefully misread this i’m not saying young people cannot be bigots #or aren’t bigots #i’m saying when you’re trying with the best intentions to educate yourself you deserve to be met with assistance and resources so that you #can make the best use out of the things you’re seeking to understand

[rathologic]

hi, sorry to send something again so soon 😅

so, the religion Clara tries to convert people to in P1. is it meant to be a spin on Christianity? because there are references to God, figures from the Bible, and many mentions of Heaven and Hell. P2 Clara especially seems to have a much more religious aspect to her character (if the “God loves me 😌” line doesn’t give that away)

and i’ve always been really curious about that. is it an altered version of Christianity? (i say altered because i know Clara has a line in P2 where she’s like “why does everyone think God is up above us? he’s down below!”)

the "religion" she's converting people to is the ideology of Humility, as developed by yulia lyuricheva and katerina saburova -- I'd summarize it as "justification of sacrifice to keep the world in order". the Law it maintains is the same as that which aglaya is an instrument of, but it's also integrated into the Kin's cosmology (moreso in p2 with one of p2's worst twists). humility itself is the mechanism of the saburovs' insane death gamble to save the town via clara, so it's also manipulation all the way down :-)

The first thing, the original creation, was the Earth. The ancient one, giving life to plants and animals. She begat the Abattoir; she begat the Kin. She gives and she takes. The dead go into her; everything ends with her. She is the inception and the completion. Such is the Law. We, the Saburovs, act in the interests of the Law, by which everyone must abide. Ours is a faith of Humility.

The faith of humility is a faith for the doomed. Whoever is resigned to death deserves to die.

Let me tell you about the Law. It's not a state law, but rather a natural one. When mysterious evil emerges from nonexistence, it's a clear sign that this law has been violated. Disease is a retribution for trespassers. It's an attempt to restore the balance.

the thing with all of the Humbles is that they believe themselves responsible for the tragedy that's befallen the town, by way of some immediate or past misdeed, and by converting them to the faith of Humility they agree to sacrifice their lives to stop the plague. while the idea of the humbles' "sin" and of a "miracle" in this framework are basically christian, I'd say that comes from the lens of how Clara is interfacing with the idea of humility, and not a foundational way of describing it as a religion

which is because Clara herself 100% identifies with what I'd call not altered, but neutered christianity - the type of cultural implicit christianity where text and worship aren't rigorous (per there not being any functional religious meeting places in the town) but like the ideas are there. patho goes to some lengths to avoid mentioning, e.g., jesus, but the biblical tie-ins especially re: peter stamatin, the idea of the Cathedral, and the dialogue you mentioned lay out that the settler-town is influenced by a basically christian worldview. though I don't have the background on Russian christianity to give any implementation details 😄 (this also applying to pathologic being written from mostly the same cultural context)

+ the changeling justifies her existence (having woken up in a grave five minutes ago) by believing she's a saint and miracle-worker, which in the context of the town's beliefs, of her being a kid, and of how she finds her powers to work, spin into mysticism where within this culturally christian baseline (a post I drafted this very week basically asks why this is the case for newborn clara, given that she's ultimately better described by the Kin's beliefs and imagery) she bends the rules to portray herself as more legitimate (consciously or not) i.e. the voiceline in 2 above. so since she's the point-of-view character for 95% of the interaction the player has with humility, it gets translated through her own lens :-)

#would the townsfolk celebrate christmas? there's a right answer and it is james utopians' drawing of sexy christmas card pinup saburov #this one wasn't supposed to be so long I'll do the other one after TASKS haha #long post #p1 spoilers #pathologic #asks #urdeepestfathoms

[theresattrpgforthat]

Hi i came to ask: is there a ttrpg like disco elysium? By that i mean the immersive world, how failing a check does not always mean the end and the vibes in general

THEME: Disco Elysium

Hello friend! I had to do a bit of research before I could answer this prompt, because I’ve never played Disco Elysium before. I hope that something within these recommendations speaks to what you are looking for!

Dreams Detective, by Almost Bedtime Theatre.

Someone - or something - is stealing from dreams. Those Who Protect the Dreamers have pulled a detective from a plundered dream, imbued them with a fraction of Their power over dreamstuff, and tasked them with finding the culprit. You are that detective.

Uncover the perpetrators, discover their plans, and report your findings.

Dreams Detective is a solo journaling game based on the Hints & Hijinks solo mystery game system by Pandion Games. You play the game by yourself, writing down your actions and answers to the questions posed. This book guides you, but you are ultimately in control of where you want the story to go.

What this game offers that brings it most in line with Disco Elysium is the idea of being a detective who is dealing with a problem that isn’t wholly rooted in the physical world. This game also carries the ability to really kick you when you’re down, because every failure reduces your ability to succeed in future attempts. Over the course of the game, you’ll collect clues which you can use to make a Deduction Roll. Unlike Disco Elysium, failure can close off many paths for you and even render your Deduction unsuccessful. However, the Hints & Hijinx system carries with it many connections to Choose-Your-Own-Adventure novels, and Disco Elysium provides that same feeling by giving your character multiple responses to problems. 

Urban Shadows, by Magpie Games.

The streets bleed shadows as the supernatural politics of the city threaten to swallow you whole. Will you die a hero—a savior for those who have never had enough—or live long enough to become the villain? Will you fight the darkness...or give in for power?

The choice is yours. 

Urban Shadows is an urban fantasy tabletop roleplaying game in which mortals and monsters vie for control of a modern-day city, a political battleground layered just under the reality we think we know. Vampires, faeries, hunters, and wizards fight to carve out a piece of the streets and skyscrapers, ready to make deals with all those who have something to offer. Urban Shadows is based on the Powered by the Apocalypse framework, with all new rules designed to help you play a game of political urban fantasy.

This might not look up-front like Disco Elysium, but tone-wise, Urban Shadows is remarkably resonant. You live in a city that is not kind to you, and politically, it’s a patchwork coalition of factions that both despise and depend on each-other. As a play group, you get to decide how exactly these factions work - and how your characters are indebted to them. Getting what you want isn’t easy in Urban Shadows, because getting anything done puts your characters in debt to someone else, who has their own plans and goals for the city. 

Finally, the dice system is reminiscent of Disco Elysium - you roll 2d6 and add a modifier. What’s more, failure in PbtA games doesn’t stop you in your tracks - it just gives the GM license to choose how the narrative moves forward, and hit you where it hurts in the process. You might still learn something about whatever it is you need answers for, but the solution is something that makes your heart sink into your stomach, or forces you to confront something you’ve been trying to avoid.

The 1st edition of Urban Shadows is out in full form, but if you want to take a peek at the 2nd edition, you can download the Quickstart for now.

Numenera, by Monte Cook Games.

They say there have been eight worlds before ours. Eight times the people of this planet, over vast millennia, built their civilizations, reaching heights we cannot even fully imagine now. They spoke to the stars, reshaped the creatures of the world, and mastered form and essence. They built cities and machines that have since crumbled to dust, leaving only their barest remnants.

This is the Ninth World. The people of the prior worlds are gone—scattered, disappeared, or transcended. But their works remain, in the places and devices that still contain some germ of their original function. 

Become a part of the setting, and help shape the future of the Ninth World. The people of the Ninth World are locked in a medieval-like state, a world of struggle and danger and often suffering—all in the shadows of the prior worlds’ wonders. You can make the world a better place. Help a community defend itself from abhumans or the iron wind. Create centers of learning or trade. Innovate, build, and protect. Manage an entire community and help it prosper and grow—or simply create new cyphers, a cool base, or maybe a vehicle for your adventuring group.

Numenera contains a rich and weird setting, much weirder than Disco Elysium. Disco Elysium takes place in a world very similar to our own in terms of technology and politics, and the weird creeps in gradually. In Numenera, the weird is front and centre. 

When it comes to the stories you tell, Numenera rewards discovery over combat (although combat is still likely to play a pretty prominent role if you use the bestiary as written). The expansion book, Destiny, possibly shows this theme to a fuller extent, providing you with character options that promote diplomacy and creativity and giving you tools to set down roots and better the lives of communities that you care about. When you figure out how a piece of the world works, you are better enabled to solve (and survive) large problems that your characters will face, whether that be extra-dimensional threats, mutated hordes, or a weather event that fundamentally alters you when it collides with your part of the world.

Tales from the Loop, by Free League Publishing.

The landscape was full of machines and scrap metal connected to the facility in one way or another. Always present on the horizon were the colossal cooling towers, with their green obstruction lights. If you put your ear to the ground, you could hear the heartbeat of the Loop – the purring of the Gravitron, the central piece of engineering magic that was the focus of the Loop’s experiments. The facility was the largest of its kind in the world, and it was said that its forces could bend space-time itself.

In this roleplaying game, you play teenagers in the late Eighties, solving Mysteries connected to the Loop. Choose between character Types such as the Bookworm, the Troublemaker, the Popular Kid and the Weirdo. Everyday Life is full of nagging parents, never-ending homework and classmates bullying and being bullied. Explore the secrets of the Loop in two main game settings – one based on the Swedish Mälaren Islands, the other on Boulder City, Nevada.

Tales from the Loop carries a similar blend of the real and the unreal together, in a world that’s reminiscent of the 80’s and 90’s, with the exception of the retro-futuristic technology that pervades the whole of society. You play as kids, solving investigations that the adults of this world can’t seem to see or care about. This game feels more hopeful than Disco Elysium, which makes sense seeing as you’re playing kids and not a drunk, washed-up cop. The idea is that new technology is causing strange things to happen, and the powers-that-be that may be responsible for this are too powerful for anyone to really get any solid answers.

System wise, you’re using dice pools created by adding together your attributes and skills. There’s a lot of ways to avoid failure, including a “push yourself” mechanic that gives you a negative consequence that persists regardless of whether or not you succeed.What you might like about Tales from the Loop is the fact that you have to be creative when it comes to solving problems - kids can’t just beat down a door or argue their way into a boardroom. 

What’s So Off About This Small Town, by Ostrichmonkey Games.

What's So Off About This Small Town? is a hack and riff of Jared Sinclair's What's So Cool About Outer Space? about creating and getting lost in a weird and dark small town. Think of places like Twin Peaks and you've got the general idea.

Players rotate the role of the TOWN, who is responsible for keeping things off (and making sure the characters stay cocooned in the web of the town, never leaving). When you're not the TOWN, you do your best to find and unravel the web of the weird and dark by gambling against the TOWN.

Break into the high school after hours, get chased through the woods, do a weird dance in a room with no windows. See what happens. 

Full disclosure: I haven’t seen Twin Peaks, just like I haven’t played Disco Elysium. What I’m going off of here is the vibes that they seem to give off, based on how people talk about them. However, both of these pieces of media seem to have a lot in common: detectives solving a murder, the broader world takes up more of the plot than the actual case, the tone is strange and off-putting, and the response to the piece of media is one of both love and befuddlement. People love these pieces of media, probably because they have to wrestle with what it means. 

That being said, What’s So Off About This Small Town is a ttrpg meant to emulate this feeling. The system falls back onto standard ttrpg hallmarks: rolling dice when you try something risky, using elements from your character background to increase or decrease your chances, and failure leading into interesting consequences. When it comes to defining itself genre-wise, the game gives each player a chance to contribute to the story, which allows for a weird concoction of story elements that you won’t get from having a single GM. Additionally, the idea of the Town itself interacting with the players contains echoes of the city of Rechavol and it’s relationship to Elysium’s main character.

What matters the most in this kind of game is table buy-in: if you want to make the game feel a bit like Disco Elysium, you’re definitely going to want to play with a group that has experience with the game.

#game recommendations #dnd #tabletop games #indie ttrpgs #hope this helps #could use some feedback or recommendations from other followers!

[journey-to-the-attic]

eeee okay!! i was gonna ask about the actor au i know its from ages ago but im a sucker for that kind of au 😭 thinking about the cast all taking care of each other on set and stuff and everyone is ik's biggest hypeman/woman, after all shes carrying the whole show on her back. ik falling asleep mid-scene and belphie carrying her back to her trailer and telling off the directors for pushing her... beel sneaking her snacks on set just in case.... mammon and ik making each other crack up while theyre trying to film........

i do have a soft spot for this genre of au, especially since here the actors just get to be regular people... allow me!! (this ended up being more au framework than cast interactions so feel free to ask for more of those haha)

okay so quick refresher on what i'd previously established: jtta is a show, and everyone's an actor in it

for simplicity's sake, they all have keep their names, and the character they play within the show is just named for their sin/role

so lucifer's character's is Pride, mammon's is Greed, so on for the other brothers - diavolo is The Prince, barbatos is The Butler, etc

of the brothers, in this au, only beel+belphie are still twins, and satan+lucifer are cousins, but the rest aren't blood-related

now starting to add some stuff...

diavolo's already very well-known before being cast, he'd be the Big Celebrity Name that draws in people

they're all from varying backgrounds - lucifer used to be a concert pianist, solomon was in stage magic, asmo's an idol, satan and simeon were both in theatre, luke started out in local pantomimes and got scouted, etc.

of everyone, simeon, levi, ik and luke are regarded as 'newbies' to showbiz

ik and luke because they're young, though luke has more acting experience (ik got called to audition purely by chance so this is her first role)

simeon because he came into acting from having been a nurse, which doesn't really prepare you for the job

and levi because this is his first role, his previous work has always been on practical effects and such (so he ends up being the most nervous in interviews)

before being cast in the show, lucifer and mammon were already acquainted - lucifer was mammon's mentor when he first got into acting, so they're under the same agency (they get called 'double threat' because they tend to appear in the same productions)

satan and lucifer are fairly distant emotionally, but they aren't on bad terms, they just had different trajectories in life before both ending up in acting

(satan starts a faux-rivalry with lucifer to prepare for their roles as wrath and pride feat. all the baggage from obey me, and it turns out they're actually very good at annoying each other in real life)

everyone has the same base personalities - mammon is still loud and impulsive, levi is still self-conscious but passionate, diavolo's still cheerful and confident

but with some elements softened (for example, barbatos isn't a super dedicated butler who literally lives to serve diavolo, he's just a good friend of his)

partially because the different setting means there's a different sort of social hierarchy, partially because they're all humans who lived mundane human lives and experienced a lot less trauma

e.g. lucifer is still fairly formal, stern, and not exactly cuddly, but he's much softer by default, has less sophisticated speech patterns, and has a higher tendency to joke around with the others

before they start filming, they get the cast to spend a few weeks together to get a feel for their chemistry

the seven 'brothers' click fairly quickly, but it takes a bit longer for the purgatrio to do so because for some reason simeon and solomon can't STAND each other in the beginning

it's so bad at some point that they almost consider recasting, but then one night they get drunk together and suddenly they're best friends the next day

ik's probably under a lot of pressure, since she's completely new to all this and is now expected to shoulder basically the whole show

diavolo and barbatos would be the quickest to take her under their wing

but ik is a little (a lot) intimidated by her new co-star, given that diavolo is like a ss-tier celebrity (as is asmo, solomon (though he's less mainstream and more cult-following), and lucifer to some degree

so at first she gravitates towards levi instead - who is similarly new to the scene, and not too busy arguing with solomon like simeon

and since levi's also spending time with his 'brothers', at that point ik gets pulled into the group

it's only after getting used to lucifer that ik can graduate to just accepting diavolo's support without freezing up

anyway by the time filming starts the entire rest of the cast has agreed: ik must NOT be bullied by the directors, we are going to make her first acting job go as SMOOTH as possible

there's actually a bit of an issue where they film scenes from earlier in the season before the characters have actually bonded in canon, but because ik's already formed a very strong bond with the 'brothers', their acting ends up being too familiar

the scene will call for pride to very haughtily look down his nose at the lost kid (ik's character name) and say something scathing, and instead lucifer will look at ik with the Gentlest eyes and deliver the line with entirely the wrong vibes

they're still actors at the end of the day though, so once suitably scolded they do know to ignore their real life relationships and play the roles as directed

one time ik accidentally breaks a prop mid-scene, which mammon notices before the directors can, so he grabs it and makes it look like he did it instead (he gets a reprimand for not being careful, but nothing otherwise. even so ik feels so bad that mammon has to distract her with card game)

later they figure out what happened while reviewing the footage, and when they go to ask mammon about it he's like "yo you stay QUIET about this, understand?!!"

beel is ik's designated hide-behind person when she gets nervous/uncomfortable in interviews, while belphie is the designated deflect-the-questions or tell-the-interviewer-to-fuck-off person

#answering asks #anon asks #jtta aus #actor au #spent longer than i thought i had on this. i should've been asleep an hour ago #Whoops

[thatlittleegyptologist]

Is it possible for you to have a dialogue with this person please? She appears to be a real Egyptologist and not intentionally transphobic, but denies you can call any ancient Egyptians trans and calls that western and basically seems (to me) to imply it’s racist. She also cited things making it seem like that is the main academic view.

https://rudjedet.tumblr.com/faq

Honey, I don't know how to tell you this, but none of what you've said is factually accurate and I can say that having known @rudjedet personally for over a decade.

a) She is a real Egyptologist. She has been the entire time I've known her.

b) She does not deny that trans people have always existed. She specifically says we cannot use modern western terminology and apply it to an ancient poc civilisation. They didn't have or use these terms. The Ancient Egyptians specifically didn't use any terms, which means using terms outside 'possible queer/gnc/wlw/mlm person' simply doesn't work within the cultural framework to use them. We can't even use cis because they don't know what that is either! It *is* racist to insist that we should shove a white western framework onto a decidedly non white ancient civilisation. You're basically telling ancient poc you know more about their lived experience than they do. Can you see how that's racist? Because it's pretty damn racist.

c) this does not mean that gnc people did not exist, and your extrapolation of that from her posts is incorrect. She does not deny they exist, she simply states that within the cultural framework for Ancient Egyptian understanding of gender the Pharaoh Hatshepsut is very clearly the Ancient Egyptian understanding of female. To our modern eyes, there appears to be gnc stuff, but to the Egyptians this is completely within cultural norms and Hatshepsut isn't even the only female King to do these things. She wasn't even the first or even the second! In fact every female ruler of Ancient Egypt does this, so we can in fact identify this as working within Ancient Egyptian ideas of gender: male when they express their kingship, female literally every other time they speak about themselves.

d) Rudjedet firmly admits that some of the older posts on this were not always worded in the best manner, and has addressed and apologised for this on multiple occasions. Her later additions, and I'm absolutely certain you're coming here from Controversial Truths because we're endlessly dealing with people who only see something from 2018, and assume the worst without reading the newer and better explained additions. She even edited earlier posts so they were worded better, but left them up so it can be seen how she's grown and developed better language for talking about this.

e) I had a 'dialogue' with her privately, wherein I showed her what you sent me and what you accused her of. In doing so, I saw your anons to her where you outright accuse her of being a transphobe, one of which was from a post that she never even added to that was posted, by someone who's agender (and you can take your problem with that post up with the agender person who posted it), so you can come here all 'she's not intentionally transphobic' all you like, but I know what you sent to her where you just directly accused her of being transphobic and you weren't as polite to her as you have been with me. In fact you didn't even attempt to ask her to clarify any of her points and went straight onto the attack, yet you want me personally to engage in 'dialogue' on your behalf when you behave like this? No.

Finally, just anonymously asking someone to 'go have a word' with someone else who they may or may not know is incredibly passive aggressive. You're the person with the problem here, so if you want to talk to her and discuss the issue like adults, then you can go over there and have that conversation. Do not seek to involve me in your disputes.

[gracefullou]

you know if I was a larrie and I claimed to genuinely love Louis even just a little bit, or claimed that he was responsible for saving my life at one point, or believed that he was a closeted individual working within the framework of whatever the industry will allow him, the second that I heard the words ‘someone else’s fantasy is nothing like reality, I know that, yeah I know that. for a moment stay with me, and let me feel the freedom that you’re holding” (especially in the context of the very serious subject matter of that song) would be the second that I ceased to make or believe in a single theory about his private life and distanced myself from those who continue to do so for years. I honestly cannot believe that there’s people on this earth who genuinely claim to love him and yet continue to keep fantasizing his life and creating theories to fit their own personal fantasies and deny him the freedom that he deserves to create his own narrative or live his life without the burden of their fantasies and all the negative effects those have on him, his career and his personal life

sorry to dump on you like that I just don’t have any real life louie friends

THIS, thank you anon. The reality is these people are so entitled and think of themselves as the center of Louis and that man's lives. They think these two millionaires have nothing better to do but keep sending them signals about their relationship in every little thing they do 😭. No wonder Louis' career is secondary to them (if that) if they believe it to be secondary to the man himself. These people see the damage they do to his image and career everyday but they just don't give a fuck. I genuinely don't understand how can someone say they love Louis but be ok with the way larries treat him. Every single day, they find something delusional to hate him for. Yesterday, a larrie was "warning" Louis that the sign he did the last show is for white supremacy when that couldn't be further from the truth 😭, today someone else is saying how Louis would've been a horrible person if Larry wasn't real 🤮, they threaten to boycott his projects before they're even out, they find imaginary flaws in everything he does (just recently the whole 28 clothing drama), they nearly had a collective stroke (amen to that) when a louie had a "solo louies and you till the end" sign but were encouraging ugly larrie outfits. They have no respect for Louis' art and make every song about their ship even copy and saved by a stranger 😔 and if you tell them that their obsession with Louis' sexuality is unhealthy and they should leave Louis' songs especially a song like sbas out of their delusion, then you're a delusional homophobic het 🤣. As you said, if you were a larrie, you would've stopped making theories about it the moment you heard sbas, but these people have no shame they use even that as proof for Louis being closeted. Can't even imagine how he must feel, having the burden to deal with their delusions for years (even his family wasn't spared) but still being his lovely self and creating his magical music (only for those freaks to disrespect it like, that it's like screaming at the wall). And that's why i'll always be greateful for louies like the difference in the way they speak of him, of his music. They adore him. For him and nothing else.

#sorry for the rant #it's just that i hate how they treat Louis and how they have to speak on my man everyday #need them gone #and it's ok not to have irl louies #i introduced some of my friends to his music #they're fans now #like if he came to my country i'm sure they'd buy tickets and go to his concert even without me #but i can't rant about these fandom things 😭 #larries are embarrassing #and irrelevant #i won't be talking about their delusions to my irl on the daily 😭 #like the things that i have to see and read are enough #don't want to traumatize my friends too 💀 #and you're welcome to rant in my inbox anytime

[autogeneratedkahootnickname]

Ok stuff's been happening in the world of UK politics and I need to share it with you before I scream.

So first, some important context. Way back in the 1920s when Ireland left the UK, the province of Ulster, by this point predominantly Protestant, remained, splitting from the rest of the nation. However, as is always the case with partition, it wasn't a clean break: people got stuck on sides of the border they weren't necessarily happy with, and over time, historical political and cultural divides were exacerbated by a new concrete separation that culminated in the Troubles, a period of violence in NI between the 1970s and the 1990s as radical nationalists (the IRA) clashed with the UK military over control of the region. This was largely ended in 1998 by the Good Friday Agreement, tearing down the hard border across Ireland and facilitating free movement of goods and people. In order to preserve the peace, a power sharing mechanism was implemented in Stormont (NI's assembly) whereby the government had to consist of two equal and codependent parties. The first minister was from the party who won the elections, the deputy minister was from the opposition, etc. This system worked well enough at suppressing Unionist/Nationalist tensions for about 20 years and was considered one of the greatest diplomatic achievements of British and Irish history.

Flash forward to 2016, and the UK votes to leave the EU. Overall. Within the nations, it's a different story, and while Scotland's desire to remain gets most of the press, Northern Ireland also voted disproportionately to remain. And as the Conservatives would discover, they kind of had to.

Because you see, a big part of the reason why the Good Friday Agreement worked is because both parties were EU members, so they were already part of the Single Market, meaning free movement of goods and services wasn't an issue since it was already European policy. Now Britain wants to leave the Single Market, we have an issue.

If you were looking at memes around 2017, you'll be familiar with the term 'Hard Brexit'. What that means is the UK is fully cut out of all the various levels of EU membership: the free trade, the external tariffs and, most importantly, the regulatory framework of the Single Market that allows goods to be easily traded across borders. As you may also know, the EU takes regulation very seriously, so ensuring imports are up to code is a lengthy and time-intensive process. If Britain wants a Hard Brexit, and they're cut out of the Single Market, there has to be a point where goods being traded in and out of countries still in the framework are checked. Say, for instance, in Ireland.

One problem: this entails a hard border. Not for people, perhaps, but for products, and people need products to make a living. On top of that as well, Northern Ireland would be cut out of the free trade area and potentially face massive import duties, massively increasing costs and threatening demand. Even on a symbolic level, its a firm dividing line across Ireland. And the Good Friday Agreement is very clear about the No Borders thing because Look What Happened The Last Time There Was A Border. If the Conservatives try and surround the UK with a hard customs border, Northern Ireland will fall.

But the alternative is either not having a Hard Brexit, the entire point of their manifesto, which would be political suicide, or leaving Northern Ireland behind basically in the EU, creating a border not across Ireland but across the UK. And if that happens, Northern Ireland will fall because of the radical unionists.

(Alternatively the solution was 'No Brexit in the first place' but too late for that now ig.)

David Cameron resigns before having to sort this out. Theresa May spends her entire premiership trying to sort this out while part of a coalition with the DUP (the leading Unionist party, at this point the largest party in Stormont and basically NI's Tories) and she can't, forcing her resignation. Then Boris Johnson comes along and finds a 'temporary' solution to get the paperwork signed: put the border between Great Britain and Norther Ireland, keeping Good Friday intact, until they can find a better way. Until then, Northern Ireland abides by EU trade regulation and future amendments: the Northern Ireland Protocol. And they wait. And they wait. And they don't.

As this shitshow is going down, Northern Ireland is getting increasingly tired of Westminster's routine (and the DUP's dumpster fire coalition attempt) and pivots towards new kid on the block, the party of compromise, Alliance. The Nationalists, led by Sinn Fein, lose votes through this too, but to a far lesser degree. DUP loses 10% of the vote share in the 2017 election, putting them and Sinn Fein neck and neck.

And in 2022, for the first time, Sinn Fein wins Stormont. The nationalists are in power in Northern Ireland. Or rather, they're half in power.

Because as we established, Northern Ireland has a power sharing system. And the DUP have boycotted Stormont. They aren't happy with the potential of being pulled away from the UK, so they decide if they can't have NI, no-one can. By refusing to participate in the coalition government, the Sinn Fein half is prohibited from governing alone, forcing the government into shutdown.

That shutdown has lasted for a year.

This happened around the time Boris Johnson started sinking over Partygate, followed by whatever the fuck happened with Truss, so NI got overshadowed in the news cycle but over the course of 2022, order has been breaking down in Northern Ireland as radical unionists begin to stir trouble. Indeed, it looks like Northern Ireland is heading straight back to the Troubles, and no-one seems to want to do anything to fix it. In fact, the Conservatives seem to want to declare war with the EU through a proposed override of the Protocol, dismantling decades of diplomatic hard work and plunging the continent into anarchy.

In October, Rishi Sunak is 'elected' Prime Minister, and he sets out to solve the Northern Irish issue. For all her many faults, Truss was pretty cordial with Europe, and Sunak continued that trend well into his premiership. Combined with the looming threat of Russia over European stability, the EU is in a compromising mood, and agrees to help work out a new system that tears down the border between the UK and Ireland. The plan is: separate goods going to Northern Ireland and goods going to the EU. Why it took them 7 years to sort that out I don't know but huzzah, a solution. But on top of this, they also implement the Stormont Brake: whereas before, EU law applies automatically in Northern Ireland, Stormont can veto proposed amendments from applying in Northern Ireland if they're too radical. This is a hugely generous concession by the EU since this is a major compromise on a lot of their core principles, since Northern Ireland is now part of the Single Market but theoretically exempt from following it, and by extension a huge win for Rishi Sunak. While the DUP have lost all credibility, this will hopefully be enough to get them back into Stormont. This new arrangement is called the Windsor Framework, and buries the final major hatchet in the Brexit divorce proceedings.

OK, LENGTHY context complete, lets discuss what's happened. Because turns out, there's opposition to this new framework.

Who from?

WHY ITS BORIS JOHNSON AND THE CHUCKLEFUCKS.

Basically, leading members of the Johnsonian and Trussian governments (including both PMs) explicitly said they wouldn't support the deal. They don't have an alternative. A plan. Anything. They just won't support it.

Joining them is, you guessed it, THE FUCKING DUP. No matter what happens, they're refusing to go back to Stormont. Just to spite their rivals.

Some more important context, the Conservatives are on the verge of self destructing since vast swathes of the party believe Johnson is a martyr and Sunak is not the True King, so getting the Conservatives to vote together is a massive challenge. If this vote passes, it'll give the Tories a lifeline to the next election, possibly their one positive achievement since 2016 outside of 'not actively backing Putin'. If it fails, the Conservatives are history. Making matters worse in the best way, Keir Starmer pledges Labour's plurality in support of Windsor, saying, to paraphrase, 'if you fucks can't get it together we'll do it for you.' Iconic. By doing so, Labour guarantee the vote passes unless the entire Conservative party rips itself in twain, but potentially force the PM to rely on the OPPOSITION over his OWN PARTY to pass groundbreaking legislation, which is almost worse for Sunak than the bill failing.

The vote took place today and the Conservatives, despite a massive rebellion, barely managed to vote in favour on their own majority alone. Barely. We're talking single digits. Two dozen Tory MPs rebelled, and 3 dozen more abstained. With no alternative. They would rather have chaos in Northern Ireland than be forced to work with the EU when the EU is bending over backwards to make this happen.

Today is a positive for the UK's future, but it reaffirms that the Conservatives need to go now more than ever.

#uk politics #northern ireland #windsor framework #long post #stormont #sorry for the long post i just needed to vent #i hope its accurate if its not ill make edits