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#also thinking about community in that context
drivestraight · 2 days
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good morning val drivestraight I have a question for you... can you sell me on lestappen. I follow you for general attitude swag and don't really follow many max blogs (I actually found your blog after that omega George fic lol) but I feel like you of all people could make the greatest ship primer. mostly I'm not very into it bc I feel like the shared history part of it gets overblown by fandom compared to other ships, and they're friendly enough these days that I can't get hatesex vibes form it + Max comes across as really well adjusted and kind of an homeboy. so I'm like what's the hook? what do you like? what's YOUR platonic perfect idea of lestappen? I want to follow u down this road 
omg what an honor...
this isn't much of a ship primer but mostly about me talking about why i like them if that's okay <3
i agree that we overplay their shared history, but it also provides a really nice backdrop for everything they are now. they've always been in each other's lives but in a peripheral sense. and it's that sort of distanced familiarity that is compelling to me. also the potential for intense physicality despite their inability to communicate like normal people. that's the hook to me: they are in each other's orbit but they never have been close. but then you get to the racing: and when it comes to the racing, they've really given some great battles. and that alone isn't enough. it's like - combined with who they are off the track: childhood rivals turned awkward work friends, the fact that they can race that hard and that they respect one another so much is just. so good. sometimes it feels like they can predict each other's moves. like silverstone/austria 19 (yes, mentioned to hell) and bahrain/saudi 22, the w2w there went crazy. and once again, this with everything else: that they have this one place and this one medium for them to communicate at such a high level, and are just so awkward everything else is very good. lewis and seb who have said in the past that max goes over the limit too much, while charles has always said with max, it's always on the limit and never above. obviously things might change if they ever get into a real title fight against one another, but i think they have such great foundations that it will be compelling no matter what. also they've lowkey like stood the test of time: look at how people characterized them in 2019 and how they characterize them today. they've changed so much and their relationship has changed so much but still, both of them are at two top teams, they have found each other again in f1.
also aesthetically, the red/blue of it all is really nice. and just like. They look good together. yknow
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they also like. say crazy things about each other sometimes. "i will remember it all my life" / "i know max very very well" / etc. etc.
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my perfect platonic idea of lestappen Is Not one where they're best friends and where max is his number 1 defender - because he is not, as many people would have you believe (everyone clipping moments from cooldown rooms and quotes from interviews are putting it out of context and putting words in max's mouth and twisting things weirdly), and because that's frankly so uncompelling and kind of pathetic to think that charles needs max to praise him/defend him for him to have any worth as a racer etc. etc. i could go on about this for ages but i won't. tldr max doesn't care enough to do that.
IN FIC my favorite lestappen is basically: an awkward lestappen who like each other so much and can't actually communicate it properly in any way that isn't physical. but maybe the physicality and the shared history and the racing can be enough.
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theresattrpgforthat · 7 hours
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Thanks so much for doing all this, I love what you do for enjoyers of ttrpgs!!
What I'm looking for is epistolary or long-distance, asynchronous games for multiple players. I know you've done lists of 2-player games that people can play in their own time (writing letters or journal entries back and forth, stating your actions in a message then waiting for the other player, etc) but I was wondering if there were any I could play with 3 or more players with different timezones & schedules at once.
Genre and playstyle are flexible, we love trying new mechanics! I've struggled to find games to fit this myself, so I hope you can have a little more luck. You're awesome for taking these requests and finding so many different games for people!
THEME: Asynch & Epistolary for 3 or More.
Hello friend! First of all, I’m going to send you to my Epistolary (Part 3) post because that was specifically for 3 or more players, as well as my first epistolary post because there were a number there that could also be played with a number of people.
But don't worry, there's more!
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Angels of the Railway Stations, by Speak the Sky.
There’s only so much you can do alone, but you’re not alone. There’s only so much that can be done with any one meeting, but life is more than one meeting. As you go through the stages of Arrival, Stopover, and Departure, take notes of everything in the form of a letter to be sent on with the train when it leaves the station. These letters should give your fellow angels more context to help the traveller in need along the way. They’re also your only way to communicate with your colleagues and comrades.
Angels of the Railway Stations is an epistolary game for 2+ players in which you play a liminal community of lonely angels. Help lonely travellers in a world undergoing a great upheaval, then write about what you see and do to pass it on to the next angel down the line.
All of the rules for this game can fit on one page, and require you to rely on other players to determine what each of your passengers need and help them get to where they need to go - on time. Angels of the Railway Station references a game called Black Engines, which does not actually exist, which means that many parts of this game will require your play group to fill in the blanks. That being said, I think Angels of the Railway Station has plenty of potential when it comes to telling emotional stories.
Intersecting Orbits, by Ell Schulman.
For as long as there have been Orbiters, there has been the Interference. Spikes in data that have no business being there, garbled words, ghosts in the machinery. Few people believe truly in the existence of the Interference as an entity.The Interference does not care what they believe.
The planet below is alive. There are deep oceans and high mountains and biomes we do not have names for. There are plants and animals that do not conform to systems we know.
There are people who look up at the stars and wonder who else is out there.There is so much to explore. 
Intersecting Orbits is a game for three players, two of whom play Orbiters sending messages back and forth and one of whom plays the Interference who intercepts those messages and removes words from them. 
Using a deck of cards, the two Orbiters will try to communicate to each-other about something that is going on. Meanwhile, the Interference uses 2d6 to determine how many words of the message they can remove. You can probably use this method either by sending letters to each-other, or by writing e-mails or sending texts, so I think this game is definitely flexible in terms of how quickly you want to send messages to each-other, and how long you want the game to run.
Chronicle, by a.fell.
The world is coming to an end. It has been foretold, and so it shall be. We cannot stop it; we only wait, and observe, and recall.
This is a game to create a chronicle of a world, and to find the world again in the last seconds of its life. The game is different depending on which path you choose to take.
You will not play together. You might not play at the same time, or in the same place. You might not even know each other before you play this game.
When you play The Chronicler, you will play alone, across time, across worlds. There is foretelling that an end is coming. You are here to ensure that your life, your people, and your world, survive. The Witnesses will find your artifacts an unknowable amount of time later. They will observe, they will wonder, they will remember their own lives, and they will know you. The world they know is empty, and soon they, too, will be gone. But they will carry these moments with them.
Chronicle uses a tarot deck (or something similar) as an oracle, and requires some form of map for the Chronicler to add to. The Chronicler will draw from this deck to create the events, artifacts and messages from this world. Most of the Chronicler’s work is done by the time the Witnesses come into play, who will travel across the map, pick up artifacts left behind by the Chronicler, and use their own oracle decks to recall personal memories. Eventually, a cataclysm will fall, and the game will end.
Leaving Cambridge, by Nora Katz.
You were together once, a lifetime ago, in a place called Cambridge. It was a place you held dear—a place that you called home, even if just for a moment. But something strange or sinister happened, and now you are all gone, dispersed across countries, continents, and maybe even worlds. There are stories untold and things unsaid. This is your chance to say them. 
“Leaving Cambridge” is an intimate, asynchronous storytelling game that takes place through letters exchanged between a group of people who have parted ways. Over the course of a real-life calendar year, a group of players write letters to each other, piecing together what happened to them, trying to reconcile their checkered pasts with their current realities. As the letters arrive, this group of people will come to understand each other, and themselves, with more clarity—and, most likely, more questions. 
Leaving Cambridge is a setting-agnostic game, so you can set it at any time period and any technology level, as long as it is possible that all of the players at some point went to Cambridge together.. What remains true is that you were once friends, but you have since grown apart. You will draw from a deck of cards, with red cards reflecting memories you share and black cards representing your emotions. Writing will happen over four seasons, with an inciting reason for you to get back in touch with each-other, and generative prompts that encourage your characters to reveal pieces of themselves the longer that they write.
I’d Also Recommend…
When I Lived Here, by a grumpy little critter.
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destinysbounty · 3 days
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Yo what if you went off about s3, it'd be cool
The love triangle, the quick tech development, whatever you want, I wanna know what you think
(I saw you in the tags of that post, please gimme the analysies. pretty please)
The entirety of my thoughts on Ninjago's technology are long and vast and complicated, and I could probably make a full video essay on just that topic alone. But for the sake of simplicity, and also because I'm too lazy to write a 10k-word essay with screenshot evidence on why Ninjago tech isn't actually anachronistic, I'm going to just focus on the season 3 issue for now.
Now, one criticism that often gets lobbed at Rebooted is the matter of the technology. How did Ninjago suddenly become a hyper-futuristic technoscape in the span of what couldn't be more than a year? At first glance, I can understand how that might feel unrealistic. I used to feel the same way! But it actually makes total sense when you realize that this technology probably already existed, if only in a beta form, for years before s3 started.
But wait! If the technology already existed in some form, then why wasn't it used? Why did Ninjago only become a cyberpunk dystopia during s3??
The answer to that question is something that sounds like a no-brainer, but should probably be said anyway: just because a technology exists, doesn't mean it is democratized. That is to say, just because a society has made certain technological advancements, doesn't mean everyone in that society can actually access those advancements. Look at any country in our contemporary world - richer and more industrialized communities typically have better access to cutting edge developments, whereas more rural communities may not even have reliable internet access. Even Ignacia, which is one of the most rural communities we've seen in the entire show, was depicted as having landlines and telephone poles in the very first scene.
Moreover, it's reasonable to assume that robotics and digital technology has existed - and fairly advanced - for decades in-universe.
My evidence? The creation of characters such as Zane and Unagami. Both were invented roughly 40 and 20 years pre-canon respectively. Coding, and especially programming an AI like both characters are classified as, requires the existence of a computer. Which means that computers existed as early as the Serpentine War. (Unless Zane is the product of magi-tech, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Especially since Zane's original body also has other functions that, to my knowledge, wouldn't be possible without programming. For now, I'm proceeding under the assumption that Zane was created purely with technology.)
For these reasons I would argue that certain technologies, and in particular digital technology, have existed in-universe for a lot longer than we might think at first glance - but due to what appears to be some very extreme wealth disparity, technology has only recently become more widely accessible within the last few decades.
Think about it. Most human settlements we see are fairly small and rural, except for Ninjago City. Ninjago City is the only city we've seen on-screen in the entire series (with a few small towns here and there, but it's mostly just villages). And even then, the cost of living in Ninjago City itself is astronomically high. There's clearly something funky going on with this country's distribution of wealth.
With that in mind, it makes total sense that the tech we see in s3 was at least in development a lot earlier than anyone might realize. It's just that it was too expensive and exclusive for anyone in the general public to actually use it.
Now, let's look at this in the context of Rebooted.
Imagine you're a multi-millionaire tech mogul and the CEO of a very powerful tech company. The city is in shambles in the wake of an apocalyptic battle against Lego Satan. You take this opportunity to spearhead the reconstruction efforts. On top of being an impressive PR stunt, this is also great for business as it presents you with the perfect opportunity to populate the city wholesale with your own products: flying cars, holographic floating streets, AI vending machines, elaborate VR and AR setups, mechanical spider wheelchairs, the whole nine yards. The government probably even writes you a big check to make this process more accessible to your consumers - I mean, to the citizens of your the shiny new corporatocracy you may or may not have stumbled into creating. Whether or not you employed lobbyism to get this check is neither here nor there. After all, this is for the greater good! And to finally seal the deal that this city has become a Borg Industries outpost, you rebrand Ninjago City to New Ninjago City. This isn't just a city anymore, it's a corporate asset. It's an ad campaign. It's a way of life.
This also explains why all the tech mysteriously vanishes after s3 ends: supply and demand. A robot apocalypse is, among other things, bad for PR. I don't wanna think about the existence of a Lego Stock Market because that will hurt my brain, but a robot apocalypse is definitely what I would classify as a "black swan event" (an unpredictable crisis that severely disrupts the stock market). The company starts faltering financially because of all the public backlash, people stop buying and investing in their tech, their stocks start to crash, and Borg Industries has to roll back on their infrastructural monopoly. And so the technological status quo is (mostly) restored.
The theme of s3 isn't "technology bad" - at least, it shouldn't be. If you're as brainrotted as I am then the theme of s3 instead becomes, "maybe you shouldn't let one sole company have a total monopoly on your society's infrastructure because they might accidentally start a cyberpunk dystopia". And that is a...disturbingly apt moral for our current day and age (cough cough Amazon).
...can you tell I've been listening to The Fine Print by Stupendium on loop for too long?
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waywardmillennial · 3 days
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watchergate & where we go from here...
To start at the end, I purchased my annual Watcher TV subscription on April 20th because I wanted to support them when it felt like so many others were not. I'm cancelling another subscription to make this work with my budget, and I'm very happy with this!
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Watcher has always made high quality, entertaining content that I love, and I'm happy to support them as they try to grow like they've always wanted to so they can bring on more creators and give us more diverse art.
So, moving forward, I'm going to be posting about Watcher TV when it comes out - spoiler parties with the sexy moots! - and I'll be blocking any and all haters I see. 💜💜💜
(read more bc ofc this got long)
To walk this back and give a little history/context, *ahem* [sotto Byron voice]
April 12, 2024: Watcher announced they had a surprise coming for us in a week's time. The news came in the form of a very spirited ad-read in the Mystery Files s2 finale. And afterwards there were a few blogs posting about it, but I commented to a friend that my dash had been devoid of Watcher posts (oh, how that sweet summer child would grow to long for a day such as that).
There were some corkboard theories, and I broke down the new logo design, but nothing big happened until the following Thursday.
April 18, 2024: I saw the leak for the announcement. It was on reddit and a sock tumblr blog was made sending the link out to people. I didn't post it or share it because it wasn't my news to share. I wanted to wait to see how they were going to explain it.
Maybe I should have said at the time (but it's fine if you don't believe me now I guess) but I was hoping Watcher TV would become like their enhanced Patreon replacement, where the new shows like "Puppet History Karaoke" and "Road Files" would be exclusive, and some other perks like early access. [note: if Apollo is laughing at him right now, I'd kindly request he stuff that red ball somewhere Helios doesn't shine]
I imagined some people would be mad at the streaming news but it didn't prepare me for how bad it would get...
April 19, 2024: Most of us know what happened. The announcement was not well received. Watcher's silence right after wasn't helping, but I don't think many people were willing to give them any grace for their pre-planned trip to the UK and instead demanded answers immediately.
Do I think maybe their announcement could have been timed better? Or maybe given a different tone? Perhaps. But either way what they were trying to communicate was not what people chose to hear, and the response from many viewers was, to choose a very formal phrase here, absolute bonker banana balls insane.
The main anti-streamer "arguments" I saw basically boiled down into these categories:
"high production tv quality content is what they want to make, but we don't want that - we only want them to sit in a blank room and talk to each other with blue and yellow text like the bfu days!!"
"Steven's the one behind all this bc he's rich and greedy and only eats gold"
"they already make enough money off their patreon why are they doing this?? they should have consulted [insert other yt-er here]"
"they've become the capitalist elite that we swore to destroy! so we have to tear them down from their thrones!!"
Even now, feeling better than I have in days, I don't have the energy to say why each of those takes completely misses the point of who they are as a company, as creators, and as human beings. But there are some eloquent posts in my #watchergate tag, or my other post, if you're interested.
April 22, 2024: We got the Watcher update - giving people access to all videos after a month on the new streamer - and that seemed to placate a lot of viewers and those on the fence. But it was also the day I learned about that horrible petition against Steven, and I'd been following all this drama for several days (foregoing some self-care) and so I had a little meltdown...
Even though the new setup is closer to what I'd hoped for like 10 days ago, I hate how we arrived at it. It's shown people that they can bully creators to get them to compromise on their company. In fact, I've seen accounts celebrating this.
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Opinions like this have given me trust issues when it comes to the Watcher fandom at large now. As many of my beloved mutuals have said, I'm going to be wary of accounts that follow me and be applying that blocking feature liberally.
I can also only imagine how things like this must have broken some of the trust that the Watcher crew feels for us - fightingfuries really said it best. If they do start distancing themselves on socials and things, I wouldn't really blame them.
I don't have more to say, other than I'm going to support them as much as I can, for as long as they continue to make content. I'm going to send the team a care package. And I hope in time we'll earn back their trust.
Now I'll let Ryan Bergara play me out...
As for the question of why we decided to launch our own platform, when we started Watcher in 2020, we wanted to create shows that we were proud of, that we had ownership over, and that would provide you the caliber of content that we felt you deserved. However, we were finding it harder and harder to stay relevant to advertisers and the constantly changing YouTube landscape. We faced some incredibly challenging decisions. We didn't want to compromise our content to ensure they met advertising requirements. And we definitely did not want to lay people off that have brought Watcher to life behind the scenes. And we didn't want to bring Watcher to a close, which would have happened if we stayed solely on YouTube. - An Update, April 22, 2024
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watcherthrowaway · 13 hours
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also one real post about this and like, plenty of ink has been spilt on how disconnected watcher entertainment seems to be from its fans but i think the missing piece here is how disconnected watcher is from the rest of youtube. when the catastrophe hit i went to all my terminally online friends, the same way i did after the hbomberguy james somerton video, or after the ned fulmer fiasco, or the creepshowart scandal etc, or every time jenny nicholson dropped a new evermore video, including the ones behind the $2 patreon paywall we all gladly pay for, and for the first time...
no one knew who i was talking about.
these are not insulated people. these are people i can trust to have at least name recognition of almost any youtuber i mention. they know downtherabbithole and strangeaeons and cjthex and kappakaiju and miniminuteman773 and kazrowe and somemorenews etc etc etc
so when i put in the group chat, with no context, 'he wasnt even on cribs' or 'we have no cats kathleen' or 'only humble pagan commune schemes' or whatever, i usually do so with great trust that at least half the group will know what im on about.
this time, crickets.
i backpedaled a little and pulled up the 'ive connected them' meme and the fuzzy blue professor, and i got nothing at all. the only recognition i got was when someone belatedly realized that he had seen the goatman video when it dropped (although he had no idea that they had their own company now), and another person remembered that they had offered to collab with danny gonzalez, a youtuber with twice the subscribers
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because she had checked back to see if danny went ghost hunting again, and lost interest because he hadnt.
i also brought it up in my dedicated buzzfeed unsolved group chat but ummmmm i am the only one in that group still watching ever since the shift to watcher oops
the only splash they had made in my again, TERMINALLY ONLINE friend group that watches hours and hours of youtube a day was a buzzfeed video seven years ago, and when they had failed to collab with someone more famous than them. i found myself in the unusual position of having to explain the situation to a bunch of dirty internet gremlins, all of whom heard the whole story and said 'why would they do that'
not 'why would they do that to their fans' but 'why would they do that as youtubers'
even aside from the moneygrubbing, we watcher stans were confused about why they tried to offer us a service we didn't need or want, and i think it obscured the confusion on why they thought it was a good idea at all, when so many other models were available to them. why werent they using their patreon like other youtubers? why weren't they collaborating with other youtubers? why weren't they putting out regular, lower quality content like other youtubers? if they wanted higher quality content, why weren't they partnering with nebula, like lindsay ellis, or netflix, like bo burnham. why didn't they run their ideas past someone like the green brothers, who have jumpstarted scishow and many other similar projects successfully, and are famously good to work with/consult with? why would they try to pull a roosterteeth? don't they know what happened?
and i think the answer is no. i think they just don't know those things. and they didnt bother to check, because they think all those things are beneath them. because they think corporate content is the only worthwhile kind there is.
why else would they think they have to have an office building, keep dozens of people on staff, buy expensive cameras, and build a streaming platform? why do they only collaborate with actors and singers who have corporate entertainment approval? why are they reinventing the wheel on buzzfeed when thousands of youtubers build perfectly stable careers with a mic and a camera, and sometimes hire an editor?
i guess my takeaway from this is that, at least they didnt break my heart as a fan entirely because they fundamentally misunderstood me. they did it, at least in part, because they do not understand how youtube works, or what part they play in it.
they dont understand how people use youtube. it is not a cinematic event worthy of the big tv, it is line goes up playing in the background for the 400th time as i wash my face and put my laundry away.
that is why they spent months and months planning this without ever noticing it was a bad idea, while millions of youtube viewers knew instantly. thats why they didn't start with a more moderate solution, why they never used their patreon properly, why they cared so much about the production value, why they thought a youtube audience, any audience at all, would jump at the chance to leave youtube.
bc youtube as a creator sucks, and we all know that, but youtube as a viewer is extremely comfortable. all i ask of youtube is to be mildly interesting in the background while i do other stuff. it is filler. some of the filler is extremely good, yes, but there is no room or reason in my life to give more of my money and attention to my filler, let alone to get a bigger screen for it.
and honestly, this is why i and others stayed on with the ghoul boys even though their quality dropped. because it's filler. im not even looking at the screen you apparently spent 100k on. im flipping my eggs. im washing my hair. im waiting for the bus with my headphones in and my phone in my pocket. thank you for being my background music. in return i will sit through your ads and push your view counter up by one. i may even hit the like button by accident bc my phone is in my pocket.
this is not to say i dont enjoy my filler. i would absolutely die without it. but it is not and never will be exchanged for the instances when i make popcorn in The Big Bowl and turn on a Real Movie on the Big Screen (my old laptop that is 15 whole inches) with my phone turned over so nothing can distract me.
my filler can't be my movie, and vice versa. nor should it be. but watcher doesnt understand that, apparently. they think youtube is cruelly preventing them from being netflix, and they think we want netflix, and they don't understand that, even with that half-assed apology that they didn't explain their dream correctly and they are jsut so destitute they had to take extreme measures after they went to europe 6 too many times...
there is a fundamental misunderstanding about how people use youtube , both as creators and as consumers. they didn't just misunderstand their fanbase. they continue to misunderstand the entire ecosystem. idk guys. maybe you should have learned something from those youtubers that you apparently think you are too good for.
and as for me, welp. i've booted people from my filler line-up for less. and there are soooooooooooooo many other fish in the sea, and they are not asking me to pay them 27 corporation salaries from my own pocket. they are asking for me to bump their view counter up by one.
goodbye boys. i really hope you find a way to fulfill yourselves artistically or whatever. but you have burned this particular bridge, like. forever. and i don't think i'm the only one who feels that way.
and not because i dont support people getting a living wage, you guilt-tripping vultures, or because i dont believe in following dreams and wishing on stars and whatnot.
but because i prefer to consume content from people who know what they're doing, and i simply no longer trust that includes you.
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obstinaterixatrix · 16 hours
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I recently got my first office job where I am interacting with my coworkers regularly. do you have any evil conversation skills that you think i should learn first
1. Figure out the easiest/most comfortable ways to say the whole spectrum of soft no’s to hard no’s from a scale of ‘genuine regret (invites future attempts if scheduling allows)’ to ‘polite deferral (respectful and evasive, somewhat firm)’ to ‘stone-cold shut down (professional Fuck You)’; you gotta know them all and you gotta be able to deploy them as needed. or at the very least, you gotta know how to give yourself time so you don’t automatically say ‘yes’ when you don’t want to.
2. The easiest way to make a good impression on people is to balance being useful and making others feel useful, which means offering some of the specific knowledge/insight you have and also asking for/acknowledging the knowledge/insight of others. offering/asking can be a weird balance, sometimes for some people in some contexts it comes pretty naturally, other times I find myself parsing out one (1) resource bit by bit to gauge whether someone’s actually looking for it or if it’s received in a lukewarm way. If ‘useful’ can’t really be a selling point at the moment (e.g. starting with zero experience rather than having an established knowledge base in a new environment) then you can always swap out ‘useful’ for ‘interesting’. know a charm point you have that can hook other people’s interest, know how to find and highlight other people’s charm points. If you want a mutual relationship it’s better to make an effort to share equally (for some people that means intentionally holding back, for other people that means intentionally speaking more), but if you’re just trying to coast it’s usually easiest to keep turning the conversation back on them and track topics the other person can get chatty about (pets, kids, shows, how they’re doing, etc).
hang on those are too reasonable and not evil but I’ve typed it all out so I’m not deleting. so, there’s a bunch of worksheets about ‘rules for fighting fair’ and if you ever meet a coworker you fucking hate then you wanna take those rules and do the opposite of all of them in order to have an on-purpose bad faith conversation and to make it as miserable for everyone as possible
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1. If the coworker you hate is trying to talk about one specific problem, disagree with whatever their definition is and refuse to compromise
2. Bring in as many stupid tangential asides as possible so their original point gets buried
3. If you want to be legit evil, always imply or directly state that whatever they’re going through is a personal problem and a Skill Issue
4. Always find a way to vaguely disagree with your coworker. If they have a good point, say ‘Well, no, it’s actually like [basically rephrasing their point]’; you can either be subtle about this (negging) or blatant about this (The Mansplainer)
5. There’s a limit to how disrespectful anyone can be as a new employee. Find that limit and keep just short of it.
6. Always deflect and blame someone else, or if there isn’t someone to blame, have different excuses at the ready for anything that anyone might take issue with.
to some, evil communication skills is to win. but I think the most successful (insufferable) application is when the point is to make everyone as miserable as possible. I’m not trapped here with you, You’re Trapped Here With Me. also I wouldn’t actually recommend doing many of these things if you want functional working relationships. but it’s good to keep in mind if you’re ready to go nuclear! but more seriously, I do think these are important evil communication skills to learn because if you recognize someone using them against you, it gives you the chance to make strategies based on their behavior. 1. If someone is disagreeing with you any time you try to express a problem, shut down the conversation and reengage with a mediator that will be fair to you; 2. if stupid tangents keep showing up, it’s up to you to be the terrier with its teeth sunk into the mailman’s leg; etc. anyway this has gone too long and someone else should probably be giving more legit advice
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bluelotuswrites · 18 hours
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hi <3 so i’m on my like 5th reread of red is the color of sinners and i know the term rent free has kind of lost its original meaning now, but when i say i think about this fic series CONSTANTLY, i need you to know i think about it daily. i genuinely think i’ve thought more about this fic and it’s universe more than any other fic i’ve ever read :’) that being said i have a couple questions!! so i know you have a lot planned for this series and i was wondering when jason knows matt is DD and starts helping him out more on missions and stuff like we’ve seen him start doing as his guy in the chair, do you think if they were doing field work matt would learn tactile signing to communicate with jason? i feel like that would be sooo cool to see and also it feels like another step of trust between them with how almost intimate the act of needing to physically touch someone or even hold their hand to communicate is. also as someone who is also obsessed with hellblazers apprentice, im curious if you’ll drag constantine into this fic? i’m not sure if you think he would really have any place in this AU, but it would be fun to see a little cameo, i love their dynamic. anyways i have so many thoughts about this series, i sometimes just bounce it around like a ping pong ball in my head throughout the day and i can’t wait for more! <3
You have no idea how long I was reading this ask. Legitimately, I was laying on my bed and kicking my feet while giggling like a school girl.
As for your first question, in field work is gonna be a bit ;)
Tactile signing (which I did not know that was it's proper name was so thank you for that bit of info!) would definitely be something that Matt and Jason would use. Honestly, how I see their ways of communicating is very diverse. Later on, it'll be revealed that Matt can pick out some signs thanks to his enhanced senses, but they have to be ones Jason does a lot, don't have a lot of nuance requirements (ex. smaller motions or an expression), and it's still a mix of context clues (i.e., conversation topic, others' responses to them, etc) when he's translating them. Otherwise, they'd use tracing when they're close by. Matt and Jason would also use morse code to communicate (Matt has to learn it and Jason has to kinda relearn it/brush up on it).
As for your second question, I may or may not have some ideas I've been toying with...
Here's a lil snippet as a thank you for the ask.
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(Rough draft atm so ignore that it's not up to my standards >_>)
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kytsuine-blog · 3 days
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Ok so I'm going to do a better, Tumblr-focused writeup soon and also track down those blogs to talk about them more specifically, but I fell for a misinformation scheme today and want to talk about how and why. Here's an email I sent my little cousin about it.
This morning, I encountered a Tumblr post talking about the TikTok ban and the government's attempt to severely curtail digital privacy rights as part of it.
I had heard that the TikTok ban was currently up for debate in the Senate, after passing the House with strong bipartisan support. I was not surprised by the information in the screenshots; it matched with things I knew the government had tried to do often in the past, and often under similar circumstances. I looked up the bill linked to verify, and yeah, it was an active bill that had been introduced in the Senate. (I should have realized then that there was an issue with what I was reading, but in my defense it was about 6:00 AM, and I was just glancing over things in the parking lot before going in to work.)
Concerned for the digital privacy and security of my family, and especially the ones I can't just drive to, I drafted the following message to you:
"I haven't had time to read all the way through the RESTRICT act that the Senate proposed, but summaries I've seen indicate that as written it's a massive overreach. It's better known as the TikTok ban; the news has been focusing on that part as it passes through Congress so far.
I always sign my emails to you with my public key. Both of you should look up how to use PGP to send me encrypted emails with that. It may become even more important soon to normalize secure encryption in Internet communications, and there may also be things that we wish to discuss that state or federal laws may frown on in the future.
I planned to introduce topics related to computer and information security more gradually, but making sure that talking about those is possible at all is an important part of that.
Congress.gov page on the bill
Tweet thread"
(As an aside, I do still think that normalizing encryption is a very worthwhile thing to do; it makes the web a safer place for activists and informants needing a way to communicate without surveillance, without being singled out as enemies of the surveillance state.)
I then checked through the notes of the Tumblr post to see if there was more context I wanted to share, and noticed people who called out a detail that I missed. That post was first posted in March of 2023, a little over a year ago. It refers to an entirely different bill than the TikTok ban which is currently going through the Senate, one which activists successfully stalled (and likely killed) last year. This year's bill is much more targeted (though, as implemented, I still have issues with it); its text can be found here.
This is a classic example of how misinformation spreads. I did not have bad intent when I went to share that commentary on last year's bill with you, and I did not find it from someone with bad intent (in fact, she subsequently shared a commentary I posted on the actual bill, in reply to her original incorrect post.) From what I can tell, on March 14, a number of mostly inactive politically-focused blogs all shared that post directly from the original poster (not from someone who had it in their feed, like a normal Tumblr interaction). Each of these was tagged with fairly popular political tags. None of these blogs has posted since, keeping it at the top of their page to get more eyes on it.
Misinformation is spread deliberately, and it takes caution and checking of your biases to combat it. I almost fell for this one because I expected it to be true. I should have checked on it before sharing anything at all. Looking at it now, I ask: who benefits from this?
Most directly, proponents of the current TikTok ban benefit from activist efforts being directed towards a functionally dead bill. This, apparently, includes the strong majority of the House, on both sides of the aisle; it may be assumed that it also includes the government's surveillance agencies (as it is easier to compel data from American companies than from foreign ones, particularly Chinese ones). It could also include other social media sites, especially those like YouTube and Instagram that compete directly with TikTok in the realm of algorithmically driven short videos.
More abstractly, though, this misinformation benefits the status quo, and conservatism as a whole. By causing people who are invested in the TikTok ban (mostly left-leaning people) to engage with more stringent and concerning bills, stress is increased on activists and burnout becomes more likely. Targeting the mental health of left-leaning activists is a tactic we've seen multiple times recently in misinformation campaigns; another example is the "the Guardian is doing a story on DIY HRT" hoax that recently circulated among my trans friends. This type of stressful lie misinformation serves the dual purpose of causing activists to burn out and decreasing trust among communities that share it.
This is a new specific strategy to me, but the solution is the same as ever. Check your sources when you speak publicly, check how your biases affect what ideas seem "clearly correct", and aim for your statements to maximize quality, rather than quantity. That's a discipline I still need to refine, but it's not hard. Just requires a bit of diligence.
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plead-au · 1 month
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a compilation of recent PLE:AD AU-related drawings. sorted by oldest to latest
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muninnhuginn · 4 months
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Ngl definitely thinking back to the cartoon-making chapter now we know that Twilight doesn't realise studying/pursuit of knowledge can be fun. No wonder the cartoon he made sucked. He was approaching it purely from the educational angle with zero idea of the entertainment aspect that makes edutainment programming effective.
It's not that he was really bad at writing the fun parts. He plain didn't realise there were meant to be any in the first place for it to work.
Copying the aesthetics with no understanding of what was underneath.
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Just curious what the average level of personal investment in these sorts of things is. Like, how much do people usually get into silly stuff like this their friends ask of them? etc. etc. Which I know, only surveying a small sample on a very specific website means I'm not getting an exact average idea lol, but.. curious nonetheless .. Maybe reblog for bigger sample size but also this is not very serious at all/not worth a call to action gbhjbhjb
#which I know this could be context dependent like.. maybe you'd normally dress up but on a week that#you feel sick you wouldn't or etc. etc. - but I mean.. GENERALLY. in the most general average scenario#where you have the average amount of health and free time that you always do. etc. just based on your personality#and level of investment in these things - what on AVERAGE are you most inclined to do#also of course assume they communicate with you ahead of time and are not like planning a part last minute#like 'throw together costume in 5 hours and show up tonight randomly' or etc. I would hope that if we're going with the#AVERAGE of things - most people's friends have better communication skills than springing entire parties#on people last minute lol#assume you have like.. a few days-a week or so to prepare. however ealrly people usually start talking about#birthdays. In my experience it's usually one or two weeks ahead of time. Like 'oh next weekend' or 'oh two weeks from now' etc.#ANYWAY.. feeling a little Sick again of course but still trying to get some photos or something posted#AGAIN i promise I am not going to exlcusively post polls and ntohing else forever hgkjgnekj#I just really really love the ability to post polls and have always my whole life been obsessed with surveying people#I used to think I wanted to do that as a career somehow like.. be one of the people that does psychological interviews#or produce interview asessments for a company or etc. etc. I am always the one friend in the group thats giving out custom made#surveys or asking for other simialr stuff (did you ever take an mbti quiz? how about enneagra#m?? oh yeah I know they're not really scientifically valid or antyhing but like... DID you take them?? huh?? did you??please?? ghjj)#I simply cannot resist.. posting a little poll every once in a while.. as a treat#whilst I still fall behind on like actual content and costumes and stuff gbjhbjh#New poll adventure should be not as much of a wait as the last one was though since I already have the writing#for it really. I just have to do the ms paint sketch. hopefully no unexpected other health issues will get in the way#*** *** ***#< (anytime I do these three star patterns it is an ocd compulsion not me bleeping out words or something just ignore it lol)#(it means something secret in my evil brain just pretend you do not see it. significant only to me)#BUT YEAH.. ... poll... what type of costume party atendee are you?#:0c
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kaladinkholins · 3 months
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i know I've mentioned my interpretation of mizu's gender a million times on here but i don't think i ever fully elaborated on it.
so on that note i just wanna ramble about that for a bit. basically, it's my reading of the show that mizu is nonbinary, so let me dig into that.
putting the rest under the cut because it ended being pretty long lol. also here have a cute mizu pic of her being happy and most at ease with herself, symbolised by her letting her hair down. <3 ok let's proceed.
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okay note that nonbinary is an umbrella term, and applies to a vast range of gender identities, but it's my personal preference to use it as is, simply because i'm not a fan of microlabels. more power to you if you are though, but anyway.
essentially when i refer to mizu as nonbinary it means that i interpret mizu as a woman, but not ONLY a woman. not strictly a woman. she is also a man. she is also neither of these things, she is something in between, while at the same time she is none of these at all. i've said as much many times, but i just don't want people to think that by nonbinary it inherently means a "third androgynous gender" that essentially turns the gender binary into a gender trinary. not only is that going against what the term nonbinary was crafted for (to go against rigid boxes and categorisation of gender identities), but also, not all nonbinary people fall under that category or definition, and that's definitely not the way i interpret mizu.
also, before anyone fights me on this, let me clarify further that gender means something different to everyone. it's not your biological sex or physical characteristics. but at the same time, gender is not mere presentation. you can be a trans woman and still present masculine—either because you're closeted and forced to, or because you just want to—and either way, that doesn't take away from your identity as a woman. same goes for trans men. if you're a trans man but you wear skirts and don't bind or don't get top surgery, that doesn't make you any less of a man. because gender non-conformity exists, and does not only apply to cis people! some lesbians are nonbinary and prefer using he/him pronouns while dressing masculinely, but that doesn't mean they're a man, or that they're any less of a lesbian. neither does this mean that they're a cis woman.
the thing about queer identities in general is that, like i said, they mean something different to everyone, because how you identify—regardless of your biological attributes and fashion or pronouns—is an extremely personal experience. so a nonbinary person and a gnc cis woman's experiences might have plenty of overlap, but what distinguishes between the two is up to the individual. there's no set requirements to distinguish you as one or the other, but it's up to you to decide what you identify as, based on what you feel. either way, by simply identifying yourself as anything under the LGBTQ+ umbrella, you are already communicating to the world that you are not what a conservative, cisheteronormative society wants you to be.
which is why i find all this queer infighting on labels to be so ridiculous. because we're all fighting the same fight; the common enemy is a societal structure that divides us into set roles and expectations purely based on our biological parts. that's why biological essentialism in the queer community is a fucking disease. because by arguing that women are inherently weak and fragile and soft and gentle and must be protected from evil ugly men, while men are inherently strong and angry and violent and exploitative of women, these people are advocating for the same fucked up system that marginalises and abuses women as well as effeminate and/or gay men.
anyway. i'm going on a tangent. this was meant to be a blue eye samurai post. so yeah back to that— the point i'm trying to make is that there's no one way to identify as anything, and everyone views gender in a specific way.
so with that being said, yes you can definitely interpret mizu as a gnc cis woman and that's a totally valid reading. however, interpreting her as nonbinary or transmasc also doesn't take away from her experiences with misogyny and female oppression, because nonbinary and transmasc folks also experience these things.
me, personally, i view her as nonbinary but not necessarily or always transmasc because i still believe femininity and womanhood is an inherent part of who mizu is. for example, from what we've seen, she does not like binding. it does not give her gender euphoria, but is instead very uncomfortable for her both physically and mentally, and represents her suppressing her true self. which is why when she "invites the whole" of herself, she stands completely bare in front of the fire, breasts unbound and hair untied. when she is on the ship heading to a new land in the ending scene, she is no longer hiding her neck and the lack of an adam's apple. we can thus infer that mizu does not have body dysmorphia. she is, in fact, comfortable in her body, and relies on it extremely, because her body is a weapon. instead, what mizu hates about herself is her face—her blue eyes. she hates herself for her hybridised identity, hates herself for being a racial Other. hates that she has no home in her homeland. these are not queer or feminist themes, but postcolonial ones.*
* and as a tiny aside on this subject, i really do wish more of the fandom discussion would talk about this more. it's just such an essential part to reading her character. like someone who's read homi k bhabha's location of culture and has watched this show, PLEASE talk to me so we can ramble all about how the show is all about home and alienation from community. please. okay anyway—
nevertheless, queer and feminist themes (which are not mutually exclusive by the way!) are still prevalent in her story, though they are not the main issue that she is struggling with. but she does struggle with it to some extent, and we see this especially during her marriage with mikio, where we see her struggle in women's domestic spaces.
on the other hand, though, she finds no trouble or discomfort in being a man or being around other men—even naked ones—and does not seem stifled by living as one, does not seem all that bothered or uncomfortable navigating through men's spaces. contrast this to something like disney's mulan (1998), where we do see mulan struggle in navigating through men's spaces, as she feels uncomfortable being around so many men, always feeling like she doesn't belong and that she's inherently different from them. mizu has no such experiences like this, as her very personality and approach to life is what can be categorised as typically "masculine". she is straightforward and blunt. her first meeting with mikio, she tells him straight to his face that he's old while frowning and raising a brow at him. she approaches problems with her muscles and fists (or swords), rather than with her words or mind. compare this with mulan, who, while well-trained by the end of the movie, still uses her sharp wits rather than brute strength. this is a typically "feminine" approach. it's also the approach akemi relies on throughout the show—through her intelligence and persuasive tongue, she navigates the brothel with ease. mizu, in contrast to someone like mulan and akemi, struggles with womanhood and femininity, and feels detached from it.
thus, in my opinion, mizu is not simply a man, nor is she simply a woman. she is both. man and woman. masculine and feminine. she has to accept both, rather than suppress one or the other. her name means water. fluid.
as a side note, while i do believe mizu is nonbinary, i also primarily use she/her pronouns but this is a personal preference. i find it's easier, plus it's what the creators use, and because, in general, being nonbinary simply doesn't necessitate the use of they/them pronouns. nonbinary is not just a third gender. it's about breaking the binary, in any which way, and that's exactly what mizu does.
also, i'd also like to mention that one of show's head of story even referred to her with the term "nonbinary", rather than simply "androgynous" (see pic below). and it's possible this could be a slip up on his part, in which he believes the terms are interchangeable (they're not btw), but regardless i find it a very interesting word choice, and one that supports my stance.
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so anyway yeah that's my incredibly long rambling post.
TL;DR nonbinary mizu rights 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻 congrats if you reached the end of this btw. also ily. unless you're a TERF in which case fuck off. ok i'm done.
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cowboyhorsegirl · 6 months
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As a recovering Catholic, one of my fav anecdotes the spn set is Misha mentioning that they had all these papers flutter around when Cas flies in angry sometimes and he once looked at WHAT the papers were and they were bible pages. And he pictured all the set dressers just ripping up bibles and thought it was funny and mentioned it in an interview (or at a meet and great with some network people? it was years ago lol) and the show higher ups were like 🙅🙅🙅🙅😬😬😬 maybe we don’t mention that?? But he still tell that story at cons
Anyway, for me that’s how I’ve interacted with the religious themes in spn, as ripped up bible pages for set dressing (that they did knowing that they might get in trouble for it is anyone was paying attention) lol idk if that helps but it does for me haha so I hear you on the “complicated feelings on religion while watching spn” front
now imagining misha collins himself feeding bible pages into the company shredder to make Castiel Confetti
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finelythreadedsky · 2 months
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 On one level the book is about the life of a woman who is hardly more than a token in a great epic poem, on another it’s about how history and context shape how we are seen, and the brief moment there is to act between the inescapable past and the unknowable future. Perhaps to write Lavinia Le Guin had to live long enough to see her own early books read in a different context from the one where they were written, and to think about what that means.
-Jo Walton
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p2ii · 4 months
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forgot to post abt this panel but god it absolutely breaks my heart. I love when kaworu's 'ethereal easy-going' composure is broken through and we get scarce bits of the lonely boy unacclimate to being treated like a person underneath.
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lunar-lair · 3 months
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every time i think of system jason i think about. well first i think about how jason todd is a separate alter but jason todd is also the person because thats the name they own but the main host for like 20 years goes by jason and thats his name and. anyways. next i think about the ways he dissociates. but THEN i think about the littles/teens/even some adults that will only respond to robin or their name, and if they dont have a name, just robin, and maybe jason
sometimes its just a game of firing off names. some of them only respond to red hood, some of them respond to jason todd in full specifically, some of them respond to peter. theyre bad at names and in the early days its hard to figure out whos who (both in the system and out), too, so sometimes theyll just stare at whoevers talking to them with squinted eyes until they say a name they recognize as their own. some of them only respond to Specific Nicknames, some of them love people besides dick and bruce and alfred (and sometimes damian and tim and steph, but not duke, or...you get the picture) because they all love their family, even if they dont know them, but they dont Know Them. and some of them only respond to jaylad or jaybird or little bird, some of the older ones only respond to damian. its definitely a trial and error kind of thing. usually they can interact with everyone just fine, but some days they find jason in the kitchen and when tim tries to talk to him he looks away and creeps into a corner of the kitchen and they have to find dick and then bruce (bad choice) and then damian. its the trauma conversation but its also the memory conversation and the 'who are you to yourself and who do people know you as' conversation. i have a lot of thoughts abt jason w osdd/did (preferably did that sounds more like him) it does things to my brain. this post was supposed to be abt alters that respond to robin and then i just. kept talking. oops
oh my god the thought i just had. some of the littles dont know any of them and just hole themselves away in the library and everyones like 'ok has anyone seen jason he skittered off earlier and he looked fucking Scared we are Worried' but they learned early on that looking for him is a Bad Idea because hell get scared. so they just have to wait until jason texts one of them or smth like 'bad news weve got a new kid and they dont know any of you. good news we know what they respond to. bad news its a nickname from our mom most of us cant bear to hear. good news were getting them a name. bad news we cant leave the library yet. were alive though' and thats all they have to go off until he trudges out of the library three hours later asking what the hell happened because the little and a protector had a whole Convo then threw jason back in front to fend for himself
ok thats it this time i think. for real this time. anyways i have thoughts abt system jason if you have any queries please ask them i would love to talk abt him
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