#but im hoping that that happens not a lot or not widespread

[puphoods]

im interestedin your zombie and superpower worlds..

SMILES SO BIG this took me ages omfg sorry

im gonna do it in order zombies -> zombie superpowers -> superpowers okay. i realised u maybe just meant the one thats both im not sure? but i already typed most of this up so too bad

first up egressregress babeyyyy we all know... i think its set in like. the 2000s/early 2010s... there was a poorly handled viral outbreak that caused zombies to happen etc. its pretty much your typical "society is broken down the government fell everythings a free for all" situation. theres pockets of civilization but much, much more small and scattered, there are areas with few or no people, there are areas that are controlled by certain groups or factions, etc. there is some form of self appointed government out there but they ghave no far reaching control.

the characters the story centers around are mostly isolated- they live close by but still a distance away from a well known main road that leads to an area controlled by the "government" and other safe zones and so is often traveled. cooper, dahlia, and elliot are somewhat a group, but they fucking hate each other so bad and they all suck.

the zombies themselves are pretty generic. disease spread via bite it over the course of days to maybe two weeks at most with no intervention degrades the body and eats away at the brain. theyre slow moving, generally die partway into the disease progression, and move out of instinct. theres not much of a focus on the zombies themselves in the story, but they do play a part in the mindset and morality of cooper

THA SECOND ONE my furry zombie superpowers world. smiles. so this is like my newest ocs so i genuinely dont have much but its one that i really really enjoy bc its very self indulgent lol. its... i want to say kind of futuristic? but its a different world as well so. like its not Futuristic but its set in a world w technology + stuff slightly more advanced than ours. its like Furry World. u get it

theres a very small subset of people who have or develop powers. it is there is a genetic factor to it but i dont really have that thought out yet... typically they develop around puberty but can and do develop at any time in someones life

the story starts at the onset of a zombie outbreak- there are very, very few cases, but it is widespread, and extremely dangerous. id say its been like a few months since the first case... the main characters are a part of a team sent out to investigate and study the disease in an attempt to figure out how it spreads and try to find a cure, or at least prevent it from spreading further. the main character, leah, is a "scientist" on this team- shes the one leading the research for her group. leah has powers that appear very similar to the physical symptoms of the disease. shes trying her hardest to keep it under wraps while they investigate, and desperately hoping that there is no link between her and the outbreak

leahs powers are... bio-manipulation? essentially. she cannot alter the mind but can do a lot of crazy shit to the body

the virus ive actually thought about this one pretty in depth okay hold on. its spread through body fluids primarily and is asymptomatic + will remain such unless its exposed to someone with a symptomatic infection (generally via bite but can also be spread through body fluids). if youre bitten by someone with a symptomatic case and you dont have the virus youll just die no zombie mess it iwll kill u... the progression of the disease once "activated" (idk) is slow it generally takes minimum a week before it reaches its final stage but usually takes closer to 2, with 4 weeks being the longest it can take. it causes rapid physical growth + mutations, mostly additional body parts, and causes a huge increase in metabolic processes and how much fuel the body needs that eating enough food is almost impossible, and it starts eating at the body and brain pretty quickly. eventually the person dies but the body is still driven on by the disease until it eats itself alive, and is unable to function anymore. common mutations are just growth of the body and replication of body parts, especially teeth, fingers, and stomachs, but it also commonly duplicates limbs eyes other organs etc. (SECRAT ACTUAL PLOT POINT SPOILER) in the circumstance the body mutates in a way that lets it take in larger amounts of food (more stomachs mouths teeth) and has access to enough food, for example a group of people dedicated to feeding it, it can, theoretically, grow forever. eventually the mutations will be so severe it will be unrecognizable as having been a person and can no longer move. itd be pretty much impossible to keep one fed for more than a year or so unless you were feeding it like. a ridiculous amount of meat.

last storuy ok the superpowers one. i dont have much additional to say wrt the powers than i did in the other post but i can tell u about the people... i actually have a fair few characters for this one but the story centers on adrienne. adrienne is a teenage girl with kinetic manipulation powers, she can store and use kinetic energy which generally comes out as some find of explosive force or something like that. i really am not happy with her story because shes a very old character now so i need to rework it a lot. some other characters:

kasey- a young woman with healing powers who was working as an EMT when her powers developed. she resents her powers and has the same mentor as adrienne, theyre narrative foils, etc.

sonar- adrienne and kaseys mentor. hes ex superhero + regrets his time as a hero, and is trying to get the girls on track. he doesnt want anything to do with the whole hero and villain sort of scene anymore but feels obligated to keep the others safe

longshot- ^sonars ex husband lol. hes a hero turned villain, in part because of their falling out, but bc of a lot of other things too. he has really good eyesight and shoots people. with guns

roulette, copycat, 2 more unnamed characters- a small villain group that are involved in the plot and that adrienne gets involved with while shes trying to do...whatever i decide she ends up doing in her new story. they arent anything serious and mostly just rob banks and shit

#answered asks #my ocs #THIS IS REALLY LONG eep #idk much to say about the last one its old and htey were fan ocs. LOL. i need to rework a lot of them but theyre like. #backburner ocs i dont think about them too much

[doberbutts]

do you have any resources that one could read on re : bitesports and what ties and origins each sport might have? both for the more iffy things and just overall history. it seems most people into those sports never talk about those aspects of the sports + don't like people questioning things. maybe that's just me, but it's the impression i've gotten and that + the pretty apparent amount of bigots and bootlickers present in those scenes is a big part of why im wary of the whole thing (personally speaking).

so you mentioning those things in your answer to another anon got me wondering if you had any pointers if i were to want to do more in detail research on the topic. i'll be honest and say i'm not a fan of bitesports, i'm not looking to get into any of them as of right now, but that's simply my personal opinion, and i'm trying to be open minded about it,.i'll be glad to learn anything, so feel free to make your answer as short or long as you want. thanks and i hope this isn't a bother!

Honestly? No, I don't, because I don't think a comprehensive historical analysis of any bite sport exists in any form of published format. You have to understand a lot of this is solely reliant on in-person learning and word-of-mouth and oral history, so what written sources we do have you will need to do a lot of reading inbetween the lines and knowing your human history.

For instance, you'll see a lot of history passages like this: the first Schutzhund trial was held in 1901 as a means of testing the German Shepherd's worthiness as a police and military dog. German Shepherd fanciers worked closely with the police and military within Germany at the time to continue to closely cultivate the breed's temperament, eventually proving them to be successful war dogs. In WWII, American soldiers brought several captured dogs back to the country, adding them to the United States military.

Okay. So. Read between the lines here and piece together what you know about what was happening in Germany in WWI and WWII. You're almost assuredly not going to find any bitework-specific material that blatantly says "German Shepherds were Nazi dogs" except maybe in Nazi-branded propaganda published in German within Germany during the war, which the Germany of today has done its best to bury within the confines of time. But... "worked closely with police and military" "proven successful war dogs" "American soldiers captured off the battlefield during WWII" uhhhhhh that means...

Similarly you're not going to find any specific source that says "South American dobermans were specifically Nazi dogs" but if you know your human history then you'd also know that Nazis fleeing punishment for their war crimes went into hiding in South America and many took their dogs and other sources of German pride with them, and if you know your doberman lines you also would know that South America is one of the only continents that still uses dobermans in their police and military widespread to this day because the dogs are known to be incredibly sharp, defensive, and unpredictable, much like the original temperament of the breed.

It is what is not being said that you need to pay attention to, because no one is going to specifically call it out. Whether out of shame, or fear, or even as a means of hiding their own bigotry.

[block-swing-perry]

ok im stuck in class rn so i cant draw this out but like.....plant gender and reproduction in trigun??? i want answers but i feel like i need to make my own headcanons.

because like a) theyre an invented species so there must have been a lot of thought put into them thriving and reproducing for long term especially since theyre basically a power source and gather (make??) water and food (i assume they mean fertilizer or some sort of...plantier plant) and you dont wanna go oopsie they all lived their natural life span and now theyre all gone, wish we made more!

and b) vash and knives seem to be both an exception (e.i not planned/not the planned reproduction) and then also theyre the only male presenting plants?? the translations i read were not the best since they referred to the plants as aliens (which they cant be alien, humans made them) but it looked like the sentient (i still think the normal plants are sentient :/) independent plants were not planned but did eventually become widespread and useful considering the earth fleet had at least two modified ones. but! they were both female presenting.

so theres the question that are vash and knives trans men? they were asexually reproduced (i hope, otherwise something very very messed up happened) so wouldnt they be their parents plant gender?? might just be a whole imitation thing, like how flowers can look like bees. this part i think can be played around with however anyone likes

but then how do plants normally reproduce the regular plants and not the independents? do they send out shoots?? they do seem to have a lot of lanky limbs that coudl easily grow into another plant. perhaps plant caretakers have to regularly check how many entities in the bulb. or they just split in two, or gather enough energy to produce another plant. im a big fan of the asexually reproducing cause clones, and then huge networks of the same organisms like trees which coudl be helpful in a big city

#any ways i need to do research into plant genders and all that #trigun

[chronicallyillphoenix]

My psych says that i am emotionally dissociated and this is the reason that in the past 6+ months i have actually felt a single emotion. The rest of the time i feel nothing. Absolute apathy. I get physical sensations of emotions (like tight chest when i would usually feel anxious, widespread tension/pain when i would feel angry, sinking chest and nausea when i would usually feel sad) but i dont actually *feel* the emotions. I have been explaining it like how it feels when getting a cavity fixed, the dentist numbs up the tooth so you dont feel the actual pain, but you still experience the physical sensations like the vibrations, smell, and scraping. She says its because i am still living with my ex and even tho we are friends, i still havent been given the chance to step back and actually let myself process all of my feelings.

Thats probably one of the reasons i am just now realizing im probably really depressed. Which would make A LOT of sense given a lot of the things that have happened in the past 6 months. Like. I broke up with my fiance the same day i got the money for a deposit for a wedding venue, i have lost not one, but three of my cats. And i never got to tell any of them bye because they live with my parents and even tho i didnt want them living outside, i didnt get a voice in the matter since i no longer lived there and the house went from my 2 parents, to 4 adults and a baby and they just didnt have room. Two of them were just really old and we think they did the animal thing and just went off somewhere to die alone and it *hurts* because the first one to go was my favorite because of how sweet he was and who i always slept with in my arms when i would visit (i have struggled so hard to spend the night there with him gone). But once he was gone the other two were gone within the next two months and none of them were expected (like we knew bandit and bunnie were old but we expected to them to pass away inside the cat pen where they stayed every night like every barn cat before them had and that way we could bury them up on the hill, but it didnt turn out that way). I have also developed more concerning health symptoms and have gotten no answers to them. And now my mom has broken her shoulder and isnt going to be able to work for the next 3 months and even tho shes getting workers comp, her pay is significantly less and shes my sole source of income right now. And so i am always already feeling guilty about spending any money but now i feel worse about it and am having panic attacks because i got fast food once this week because i was flaring too bad to make anything myself even tho my mom gives me money *specifically* so i can get food and stuff when i am in a flare.

But yeah i have realized i am almost certainly depressed and the funny thing is that the way i realized this was a tumblr poll. It was asking what peoples hobbies were and i couldnt answer it because in the past year i havent really had anything hobby wise. Ive mostly stopped reading, i am not doing pour paintings, not doing my paracord stuff, and anytime i decide im going to finally start knitting i just end up picking up the yarn and staring at it for a bit before setting it back down and going back to sitting on the couch with the tv on in the background for background noise.

Im going to see my psych on wednesday and i hope to talk to her about this but i also dont know what there is to do about it. Probably raise my antidepressant but idk. Im not even sad so i dont see the point in raising my antidepressant because idk what being not depressed would change because were pretty sure the apathy is because of current circumstances and not just because of depression idk. I just want everything to be normal again

#chronically ill phoenix #tw vent #tw animal death #tw dentist #tw injury #tw money

[usertiff]

FUCK AMERICA

(assuming this is in ref to my disability post) honestly there's lots of things to say this about like. seriously. yes, fuck america's disability system.

but overall i try to avoid saying things like that. for a few reasons. you didn't ask but i'll tell bc tbh i feel like it needs to be said?

first of all, america (as a country not a region, more specifically USA, but i may use them interchangeably here) is not the only country with widespread systemic issues. and there's a problem with acting like it is. (not you, anon, just ppl in general) because!! acting like the united states is the only country that perpetuates systemic violence/oppression/etc dims the light on other countries that are also perpetuating it, which lets them get away with a lot more. talk to a large handful of europeans or other white non-americans and they will more than likely not see an issue with their own countries. they condemn america while having the same systemic problems in their own region.

i am so tired rn and i never articulate well in the first place so i hope this makes an ounce of sense. pls continue to bare with me.

second, it's sooo shitty to not recognize the pure privilege we have living in america. yes, there's so many problems. but even as a person who lacks privilege in some areas — as someone is ethnically INDIGENOUS to this land (and has suffered at the hands of my ethnicity's most common oppressive problems: poverty, addiction, abuse, loss of ancestry, etc), as someone who is disabled, in poverty, plus sized, as someone with a mixed ethnicity family, lesbian — i still know that there is privilege to living here. yes, a lot of the privilege that others have here (cishet, thin, abled, wealthy white men being the really shiny example lol) is stripped from me, yeah shady stuff happens here within our government just like everywhere else, but like... for the most part, i can say things "freely" without fear (again, for the most part).

and like, with war happening in so many places... so many lives being lost... like... i'm grateful to be where i am. would i love to not be in america? somewhere with a prettier view? lively culture? sure, sounds nice. but it's not realistic and i have to be okay with where i'm at.

i hate certain parts of america. don't consider this post being me patriotic LMFAOOO no this place sucks for so many reasons. i hate hate hate hate so many circumstances that i'm personally in. so many aspects of my reality. so many aspects of the shittier parts of america. poverty, racism, lack of healthcare ESPECIALLY because im disabled, disability system, prison system, police infrastructure, lack of community, the list goes on...

but it's like you honestly have to accept that it's better than some alternatives. no country/land is perfect. certainly not european countries like so many claim, and there are SO many problems we have to tackle. you have to admit how privileged it is to be here.

does being here mean you have all these priveleges? obviously not. i mentioned that above. it just means i have the privelege of not fearing for my life constantly, or sldkfjsldkfj honestly idk rn

im so tired and im so sorry for like rambling ON but 1. tbh i needed to focus on something other than my own head atm, and 2. lowkey needs to be said?

#answered #sorry lmao

[exclamaquest]

Hi lesbian here. I'm so glad you're fucking normal about "mspec lesbians" lmfao. When I tried looking into a definition that wasn't insanely lesbophobic or transphobic I got yelled at (by straight-up nonlesbians, I might add) and told I was lesbophobic and. Needed to fucking read up on my history. Anyway nonlesbians who tell lesbians that kind of shit are cordially invited to eat my ass. I'm tme as well but I've seen these fuckers tell trans lesbians that being bi lesbian exclusionists is fucking radfem rhetoric. It's stupid as all hell.

very glad i can be normal thank you for this ask genuinely o7 it's like insane how far people will go in an attempt to be as inclusionary as possible without actually taking a second to critically think about who and what theyre including. paradox of tolerance blah blah blah talmud quote yadda yadda merciful cruel etc.

im super sorry that happened to you though that's fucking insane. it really just goes to show that a whole lot of this shit is all completely performative bs done to try to avoid getting the label of exclusionist slapped on them. youd be hard pressed to find a """mono lesbian""" whos supportive of bi lesbian bullshit and like. that's for a reason. but when people try to say shit against them....well. you experienced it.

again im really sorry you went through that you didnt deserve it. it's like INCREDIBLY stupid and it's just widespread stupid rhetoric caused by people wanting to say the right things to be accepted without thinking about what theyre saying and if they actually understand/believe it. lack of critical thinking need to be accepted etc. it sucks complete ass and i just hope people start getting better analysis skills bc lord knows we need them

#killing the people who were lesbophobic to u w psychic nightmare beams btw #theo.ask #theo.txt #anon #queer stuff #lesbophobia /

[fatehbaz]

hi maybe you’ve written about this before but i’m working for someone who is part of the ecological landscape alliance and we’ve been having big talks about the concept of “invasive” species vs “native” plants and how the concept is rooted in xenophobia, and also talking about how maybe invasive plants aren’t that bad?? this goes against everything i’ve ever heard anyone talk about invasive species but i really don’t know all that much about it. sounds silly maybe coming from a farmer but i really don’t have a super firm ecological understanding, most of my plant knowledge is agricultural based and im really curious to learn more and was hoping you could point me in the right direction?

Yes, I definitely run into this disk horse all the time. Especially the “maybe invasive plants aren’t that bad” discussion. It seems the native/alien stuff is most often mentioned in disk horse about the Anthropocene. Basically, you’ll sometimes see statements like: “Is anything really natural in the Anthropocene?” I have also seen, and spent a lot of time contemplating, how belief in the categories of “natural” and “alien/invasive” in discussion of ecology might be rooted in or at least inadvertently support racism/xenophobia.

But I am still wary of the “native vs alien” and “no creature or landscape is really natural, not any more” disk horse, at least as explored by some white/settler-colonial academics, for exactly the same reasons: because it might be rooted in or support racism/xenophobia. Because the proposal that “nothing is native, nothing is invasive” itself can actually engage in a sort of “settler absolution” that obscures how there really is a contrast between imperial and Indigenous peoples, and the “nothing is natural, nothing is invasive” proposal could excuse the colonial/imperial introduction and expansion of monoculture by accepting the spread of industry/agriculture/non-native species as an inevitability. And these concepts can actually work to generalize conditions of ecological degradation and apocalypse, as if to say that “all humans now live in such a damaged world, we’re all victims” (even though many non-white, especially Indigenous, people actually bear most of the violence and burden of living in “post-apocalyptic” ecologies.)

But actually, I don’t think I can be too helpful here.

I still have a lot of contemplating to do, about how categories of natural/invasive in ecology might support the violence of categorizing people as natural/invasive. Don’t really know where I stand yet, y’know? So I don’t want to be too quick to come to a conclusion. I don’t even really want to offer opinions here. That said, I am very sensitive to language, and the language that I use. So I do appreciate that there is an effort to interrogate the negative consequences of describing things with words like “alien”. Also, the categorizing of lifeforms is and always has been a mess.

I don’t have many reading recommendations. The “native vs alien” and “nothing is really native, actually” proposals are concepts that I brush up against but don’t read too deeply into, even though this disk horse has been popular-ish in dark ecology and academic ecology/environmental studies circles for at least 10 years or more by now.

I guess, for my thoughts on native vs alien, what counts as “natural”, invasive species, and how the disk horse can excuse settler-colonial/imperial racism, I would point to this post I made about Pablo Escobar’s feral hippopotamuses in Colombia.

One introduction to the concept, which I think is an enjoyable read (though I don’t necessarily agree with all of his implications), is this essay by Hugo Reinert about the category of “natural” and the “purity” of a species: “Requiem for a Junk-Bird: Violence, Purity and the Wild.” Cultural Studies Review. 2019.

Anna Boswell’s very famous article about stoats and non-native species in Aotearoa kind of dances around this same issue of naturalness: “Settler Sanctuaries and the Stoat-Free State.” Animal Studies Journal. 2017.

-------

Generally, I agree with the implication that there is no “remote” or untouched corner of the planet where ecology has escaped human influence.

On that aspect, here’s a post I made about “planetary urbanization”.

But the native/alien disk horse can be extended to problematique degrees, with proposals that sometimes remind me of sci-fi goofiness, like fans of dark ecology or weird fiction or Mieville/Van der Meer got a little too excited about “the boundary between human and other-than-human has become so blurred that there may as well no longer be distinctions between native species and invasive species”, like they got a little too drunk on theory and just decided that “everything is in flux!”. Criticisms, then, of the “nothing is native” disk horse include how this oversimiplifies ecology and might enable/excuse settler-colonial invasion.

A lot of the “invasive plants are good, actually!” disk horse I’ve seen shows up in Australian literature written by settler scholars, which might be pretty telling.

Basically, it seems some scholars will take Alfred Crosby’s “neo-Europe” and “ecological imperialism” concepts, and then say something like “look, the damage is done, so much of Earth’s soils/landscapes are altered by introduced plants that we may as well accept it as the new baseline/normal ecology, and work from there.” As if to point at how North America has been entirely overrun by non-native earthworms and then to say “well, the worms are going to inevitably destroy hardwoods forests, soils of the Great Lakes region, the boreal-temperate transition zone, and maple trees which supply place-based maple syrup foodsheds, so we may as well accept that we live in a damaged world.”

I don’t know if I’m entirely satisfied with this.

-------

Other related concepts brought up in the same  discussion of “nothing is really native” might include “invasion biology” and “assisted migration.” I see these concepts brought up in academic writing from the University of California system, Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand, and “environmental humanities” generally. Basically, these writers/scholars will point to the past ten thousand-ish years of the Holocene, and how humans have had such profound influence on global ecology that “introduction of non-native species” and “mass-scale anthropogenic climate/ecological change” are not just recent developments since Industrial Revolution or Indus/Yellow/Mesopotamian statecraft, but even older. For example, I’ve talked a lot about how, in the Late Pleistocene or early Holocene, the Asiatic steppes and parts of the Great Plains could have apparently been more like intermittent woodlands before humans engaged in deliberate fire-setting to better target megafauna herds, meaning that the human role in creation of vast “naturally-occurring” grassland regions may be underestimated. This dove-tails with the better-established fact that the forests of Central America and eastern North America in the early Holocene were/are actually more like cultivated food forests managed by Indigenous people.

The argument, then, may also point to yams, sweet potato, and coconut as examples of creatures with what now appear to be “old” and “established” widespread transoceanic distribution ranges which actually may have been introduced via assisted migration by humans.

The argument, basically, says: Well, let’s say hypothetically that humans didn’t play a role in spreading sweet potato or coconut. By chance, if ocean currents “naturally” introduced these species, if these plants “naturally” colonized whatever lands they were swept off towards, doesn’t this mean they could essentially be “natural” to anywhere they might arrive and successfully establish themselves? Therefore, does it really matter if humans helped them get there?

This seems to be related to the “no plants are actually invasive” proposal. As if to say: “If English pasture grasses have successfully reproduced themselves in Patagonia, Aotearoa, South Africa, the Canadian prairies, etc., what does it mean that their migration was assisted by humans?”

But this is where I have reservations: It wasn’t just any humans that “assisted the migration” of monoculture grasses from Europe to the prairies of Turtle Island. It was specific humans, with deliberate intent, upholding specific institutions, protecting their own well-being at the expense of other humans and lifeforms, enacting specific violence against specific victims.

-------

Another aspect of this which I see mentioned often is how early human/Polynesian settlement in Oceania and the South Pacific is an example of how mass anthropogenic ecological change doesn’t always involve statecraft, mass mono/agriculture, and imperialism. Aside from the famous decline of creatures like the moa, Polynesian islands were also home to relict species of large land turtles and ancient terrestrial/semi-arboreal crocodiles until human arrival in recent millennia. Writers will also point to human settlement in the Caribbean, where human arrival coincided with extinction of remnant populations of endemic Pleistocene ground sloths. (This also happened on Mediterranean islands, which hosted endemic species of hippopotamus and goats until recent millennia.)

Again, though, this is where white/settler-colonial academics advocating “nothing is natural” can kind of obscure settler-colonial violence, by pointing to history of anthropogenic environmental change and saying “see, all humans provoke extinction.”

Thus, you’ll see these scholars invoke Anna Tsing or Donna Harraway, referencing the “arts of living on a damaged planet” or “living in post-capitalist ruins.” Essentially, advocates of “nothing is native, any more” might say “we all live in a post-apocalyptic world now, so we should get used to it.”

This, coming from white/settler-colonial academics, sometimes rubs me the wrong way, as if it’s sort of like wish-fulfillment, or “an adventure” for comfortable white academics to engage in low-stakes thought experiments about extinction, naturalness, and apocalypse from which they’re actually largely insulated, at least compared to the poor, non-white, non-academic people who cope with the worst of environmental racism and ecological collapse.

This, again coming from white/settler-colonial academics, is also of course more than a little grating, since it kind of co-opts or culturally appropriates the “Indigenous/Native people actually live in a post-apocalyptic world” concept proposed by Indigenous scholars. It kind of takes from Indigenous/non-white people, and then generalizes the apocalypse as something that all humans now live with in seemingly equal measure, obscuring the fact that many people are actually forced to cope and/or live with more-serious-of-an-apocalypse than others.

-------

At the end of the day: Sure, kudzu or English pasture grasses or coconuts or European earthworms or domesticated cattle might be generalist species which can successfully inhabit landscapes across the planet. So whether humans introduce them via agriculture, or whether they "naturally" expand by some accident or by drifting across ocean currents, they might exist in this strange ontological space between "native" and "alien" which confounds human conceptions of what "belongs"? And this is worth considering! This is good to think about! But there are still, and always have been, those "small" landscapes, those isolated pockets, those relicts and remnants in shaded stream corridors, where small populations of endemic species teeter on the verge, with highly-specialized adaptations to highly-specific microhabitats. You're not going to "assist the migration" of or "accidentally introduce" a cave-obligate salamander from a limestone cavern or a temperate rainforest-dwelling land-slug to a desert biome.

But, again, I still think it is good to stop and ask ourselves whether categories of “natural” and “alien/invasive” in ecology make sense, are outdated, or if they reinforce racism/xenophobia. And, again, I haven’t read enough -- I haven’t grappled with these questions enough -- to have an opinion which I’m comfortable sharing, so I don’t want to discourage this disk horse too much.

Anyway, hope some of this is interesting. Sorry. Again, I don’t really have any good recommendations.

[stargirlfics]

Hi.

I know that this is a safe place for us to talk about our problems and i want to share mine with you. Have you ever had a masturbation problem? (I don't know how to call it i will explain). So when I started masturbating yesterday everything was fine untill i got to the fingering part. I inserted a finger in and it felt like nothing, there was no pleasure at all. Then i added two but still and then 3 to 4 however i was really turned on and so i just went with it. I have never put more than 2 down there and when i was done i was feeling a little bit guilty or even like a slut. I dont know why tho, im really calm about those things and i know a lot about masturbation and sex but that day i literally had to stop myself from putting another finger in. Today, i tried "checking" how things are and 1/2 fingers were feeling like nothing in there , i could only stretch with 3 and i wasnt even turned on. I started panicking of course cause whatever i do i always finger myself only with 2 of them (except for once i just wanted to try more) and now it felt like nothing. Apart from that when i told my friends about my problem hoping that they would calm me down,they were looking at me so weirdly and then asked "you put more than two fingers in there?" With a disgusting look. "We dont want to make you feel any worse but it probably looks like a cave right now". Then my other friend said while trying to hide her laugh "I think you better start looking for bigger guys now cause the small ones wont do it for you anymore". I got SO ashamed about it I almost cried in front of them and now im feeling even worse than before. I just want to know if other women have experienced similar problems to this because i am feeling really shitty right now and have zero confidence.

Hey sweetheart I am so so sorry that happened to you, your friends need to be dropped for your life immediately and I also want to say that what you’re experiencing isn’t actually a problem at all, putting more than three, four, however many fingers in to pleasure yourself is normal and not at all a problem!

You’re not having a problem, you’re just figuring out what your body needs to feel good! I know it’s hard but please don’t feel ashamed about that because it’s perfectly normal

There’s many misconceptions about masturbation when it comes to vaginas, it’s a myth that if you put multiple fingers or bigger toys or have a lot of sex that your vagina will be a loose cave, that’s 100% not how your vaginal anatomy works at all and this is coming from general knowledge but also from someone who’s studied anatomy!

You have muscles in your pelvic/vaginal region, muscles don’t become loose, your vaginal canal can expand (like during childbirth) but it’s not possible for you to become a “cave down there” or anything like that!

I really would advise you to cut those people who said that to you from your life, there’s no reason they should have ever made you feel ashamed or like that’s somehow wrong! You deserve better my love ❤️

Please know that you can and should add as many fingers as you want and feel the need to so that you have a good experience! A lot of people do! It also may take some time to let go of some of those societal messages about “sluts” and sex when it comes to your own self, I still find myself having to go no this is normal and fine! Slut shaming is very much imbedded in a lot of sex ed and there isn’t much talk or exploration that’s widespread about masturbation for women but what I can assure you of is that you’re perfectly ok as you are!

Some people can only take a couple fingers, some can take more, some people don’t even like penetration as much as other stimulation, all of it is normal and ok! 💓 I hope this can help ease your mind a bit, you deserve better, I’m holding your hand and giving you a big hug!

#asks #sex advice

[thoughts-on-bangtan]

‘Friends’ on the Marvels ‘Eternals’ Soundtrack

So, this is a thing that’s happening? Which, honestly, is quite awesome, though I suppose it’s even more awesome for those ARMYs who are also Marvel fans. Though, as a vminnie, I’m so, so proud of Jimin and Tae for their subunit song being selected, for a movie about soulmates no less, and this also being Jimin’s first produced song. Very fitting, even with the fact that the lyrics are so very specific for them, so my best guess is that they’ll use the chorus/the you are my soulmate part of the lyrics. Though really, what context and scene the song will be played in, your guesses are as good as ours.

Does it feel a little odd to know such personal song will be used in a Marvel blockbuster? A little, perhaps, but it’s such a great achievement. And great coin, not that they have a lack of those but you know what I mean. The thought of Marvel fans/broader general public being exposed to a Bangtan song largely in Korean, a b-side at that, has me both excited and a bit weary, I mean, we all know how widespread the general hate against anything BTS is for the sole fact that it’s BTS, but my hope is that perhaps we’ll get to see some positive reactions instead. More people realizing that their music is more than worth listening to and giving a chance.

I can only imagine how excited vmin, and BTS in general, were when this deal was made. A song produced, written and then sung by two of their members in a movie from a franchise they enjoy? What a moment!

From anon: Did you guys hear this?? Vmin's FRIENDS Is going to be a part of Marvel's Eternals movie soundtrack ??!! Holy shtt, So proud of them

I'm loving the memes vminies are making too. Like "you are my soulmate" playing in an action sequence xd

From anon: did you hear about friends being on the marvel soundtrack that’s crazy im so proud of prod jimin and vmin

As you can see, yes, we did hear about it (even if we’re late to posting about it, so sorry about that!) but I still very much appreciate both these asks a lot, so thank you! They actually came in rather quickly, not long after I’d seen the first mentions of Friends potentially being on the soundtrack.

From anon: i’m so excited for friends in the eternals!! even if they play it very shortly AAA

Can someone fill me in on the use of songs, as opposed to score, in Marvel movies? How long are the snippets usually that get played? Because, honestly, the last Marvel movie I’ve seen was...the first Avengers, maybe? Or the third Thor? Which came first?

And yet, here I am willing to watch this new one all because of vmin and Friends. The things I do for Bangtan, lol.

From anon: I dont get it why some people are promoting friends song like it was just jimin. I understand that jimin produced the song and it all started with him, but the song is something about his friendship with tae and more importantly it's sung by both of them. Why I only see jimin's photo being released in the news? And if jimin didn't produce would it be a photo of some big hit producer or vmin? I don't understand but I know jimin and tae must be proud of how far they've come with their story <3

I think in most cases it’s the fact that it is a song Jimin produced that makes the difference, as opposed to if it were “just” written and sung by them yet produced by a BH or outside PD, and is why some outlets use a picture of Jimin instead of one that has both Jimin and Tae. I’ve also seen some use OT7 pictures, after all it is a BTS song and, let’s be honest, most publications don’t care about BTS enough to get down to some specific details even if they are kind of the point in this case, you know, and then there was also a handful that used a picture of Tae and Jimin together. 

Cotton candy vmin, lovely choice.

What news, something I didn’t think I’d ever see even if Bangtan’s music is more than blockbuster soundtrack worthy, so this was a very pleasant surprise. Congrats once more to our beloved soulmates!

#vmin #Jimin #Taehyung #BTS #answered ask

[fairycosmos]

hi!! i wanted to send you something about your post that said about grief and how can anyone get up in the morning, i don't know why but i had this urge to write you. the people i grieve and have grieved for touched me in ways that made me who i am - they are eternal. i will touch strangers and people i love by being who the people i've "lost" made me to be... their habits, something they said that one night, their dreams... it all lives on in the people they touched as long as we touch others too. i guess i can wake up because there are people i want to protect.. they are the ones i want to make happy, like i made the ones i've "lost" happy too.. all those things i wanted to do with them, i want to do with the ones i have by my side now, not in a replacing sense, but because i want to continue giving life to desires and dreams that didn't grow inside me by themselves. i think in my worst moments of grief, it comes down to that. i do see them in so many people and things and when i saw your post i couldn't look away.. i'm crying now. it never goes away, the pain. but it doesn't stay the same either. it's as if the pain were something alive, that transforms itself as the years go by, that cries inside, sleeps, screams, even laughs, i guess at the absurdity of everything. today, it's not that people depend on me, but i want to be there for them. like i would have and had been there for the people i 'lost'... i miss them everyday but i also know now that i don't want to lose anybody else. i want to make them happy, that would make me so happy... i can't save anyone, i couldn't save the ones i miss even though i tried so hard, but i can be a better version of myself, for me, for them, and for the people that are here with me. i guess for most of the days, that's what makes me get up and.. live. with the pain. but because of the joy and life that they brought me when they were alive, and they still bring me that. i'm sorry. for what you are being through, for writing this even though we don't know each other. i hope this can make some sense to you, that it can bring you something that matters, everyone's process is different but all of this is what helps me get through the days...

this was really nice to read, seriously. thank you so so much for sending it. we’re all ignoring the lump in my throat and moving on. but yeah, that makes a lot of sense. you could probably break human nature down to its bare emotional essentials and find the gist of this ask. love, grief, connection. it’s cool that you want to stick around both for the people you still have and the people you’ve lost. and i am really really sorry to hear you’ve had to mourn so much. i get it, because after my sister passed away, one of the only thoughts that made me pause from absolute despair was the fact that she had fundamentally shaped me as a person and so in that sense, i was keeping her around. not in the way she deserved to be here, obviously she deserved her own first hand life too. but it’s definitely kind of amazing that we all make each other into who we are and it’s like, a never ending web of people going on and on infinitely throughout the generations. im really glad you still have people you care about who can help you stay alive and who can help you keep the ones who have passed on present. you deserve that and more, and it’s incredible that you’re able to get through this and articulate it all so succinctly. i know in reality its probably been the hardest, messiest thing in the world. im sure the longest happiest life imaginable will find you. sending you an endless amount of love. 💖 as like an afterthought i do wonder what happens to the people who have no one, though. like nobody left to get up for. not saying that’s me. im pretty sure at least 3 people would notice if i died or something, they care about me. it just makes me crazy how widespread grief is, how many people must have been through it all by themselves. sometimes it does feel like that because i feel like i lost the very best person in my life, and that there’s no one left who understands me. it’s such a paradox, how lonely and uniting it is to grieve

#anon #long post

[arowrath]

yO i wanna hear about the history of kins n shit

HI BFF I AM INFODUMPING ^_^

so!! fictionkin stuff has existed 4 a lot longer than it seems, and general otherkin/therian communities even longer. the otherkin community specifically goes back to around the 1960s, with elf-kin specifically being the start. it became more widespread than just elves in around the 1990s as the internet became a bigger thing. there was a mailing list called elfinkind digest in the 1990s that catered mostly to elf-kins, although many dragonkins (dracoforms being a more popular term at the time) and other otherkins were members. it was technically running til 2018 but usage dipped ~2013 (probably due to tumblr becoming more popular although idk that for certain)

wait i forgot to define like all these words ok so. otherkin is just the belief that u are/were an animal / another being in a past life, usually related to reincarnation and/or the multiverse.

around 2004 (if im remembering correctly), the word otakukin was used for what we now call fictionkin. fictionkin being a subset of otherkin, with most fictionkin (who r using the original definition anyway) believing that they share a soul w/ a character who they were in another universe. the word otakukin was used less in favor of fictionkin and mediakin by 2010.

by around 2015 everyone who was going to cringe at otherkin had pretty much done so (i am guilty of this i used to look up "otherkin cringe" on pinterest. and well. look at me now) and otherkin pretty much stuck to their online communities. in 2016 or 2017 ppl who were just discovering kin communities went . yo holy shit we can make SO much discourse out of this . and ive got my theories as to why the discourse was So Bad (boiling down to misuse of terms + lack of research) but until like 2018 seeing genuine kin drama and kin discourse on my dash was something that happened frequently and i didnt even go there til like. early 2018 when it was dying down.

anyway this has been a crash course on kin history from nik nikolas i hope this makes sense it was almost all from memory except for the words i googled 2 make sure i was spelling them right ^_^

#ask #long post #youre welcome / im sorry whichever fits best

[ofcowardiceandkings]

I think you mentioned listening to podcasts? Do you have any favorites to reccommend? I've run out of content :(

that i do !

im not entirely sure what kind of podcast you'd be interested in but i'll throw out a few of the goodies in my huge library of stuff , i'll miss out a few of the HUGE podcasts that have been all over tumblr though

a LOT of it is true crime or human interest stuff , or history because im nerd ,, and a few of these dont have nearly enough attention so [shrug] i'll try to keep this short i guess lol this isnt EVERYTHING ive got in my library or listened series' by any measure

i AM gonna pop a shout to both Stuff You Missed in History Class and Stuff You Should Know from iHeartRadio because their HUGE archives have kept me from losing my mind many times over , and they cover a wide range of both important and wacky topics

BomBARDed (ongoing) this is the only fiction podcast i have happening right now really but its DAMN GOOD ONE .... it's an actual-play D&D 5E podcast in the DMs own musically-inspired world, focussed on a group of multiclass bards going to music school !! and all players (+DM) are members of the Texas band Lindby !! and they actually use and play music in the show with one original song an episode !! Kyle's worldbuilding and storycraft are truly incredible, and (Nick) Goodrich, (also Nick) Spurrier, and Ali's characters are in depth and interesting as well as an absolute powerhouse :') i actually made a piece for its first fanzine, Bardic Dreaming, which published earlier this year and is free to view now, all the players and the community are super wholesome its just very good overall 💙

History & Humans;

Fall of Civilisations (ongoing) legit one of my favourite podcast finds, im so glad my youtube autoplayed one of these ... it took me like 2 hours to realise it was 1) not the same as what was playing before and 2) had been on for 2 hours and wasnt near finished lmao. anyway, this is a series by historical fiction writer Paul Cooper, and is honest to all thats good one of the best documentary series ive encountered in years - and ive consumed a LOT of documentaries. it covered the downfall of various civilisations through history, and the episodes run from an hour to FOUR hours depending on the topic. its so chill to listen to and just get done, but over the pandemic all of the episodes have been given full movie-quality video versions too on youtube if youre more of a visual person.

Casting Lots: A Survival Cannibalism Podcast (on series break) yeah that says that lol ... its a SUPER niche topic but its very interesting and treated very well despite being kind of comical at times, the hosts are just naturally funny lol ... it delves around from the history of cannibalism in whole regions to specific incidents as recently as the 1970s, and of course the first episode is about the Donner Party, and it covers things ive never heard of despite being kind of important ?? anyway Alix and Carmella are good eggs

Sawbones (ongoing) i probably dont need to mention much here other than say that Justin and Sydnee saved me from being SO BORED sooo often, the history of medicine is wacky as hell and its what most of my history GCSE was on so [shrugs]

Cautionary Tales (on series break) this was a wild-card find lol ... it's by Tim Harford "the undercover economist" who writes for the Financial Times, and its topics kind of weave modern topics and science with how to learn from historical errors ... its a bit weird but well worth a go, also each series has a few celebrity guest voice actors which is pretty awesome

Ephemeral (ongoing) this is a very strange but thought provoking series about sounds and other things just barely saved. topics include the last castrato, the hello girls, hand-stamped records, the spread of kīkā kila music, and acoustic fossils of wild places.

Neat! The Boozecast (ongoing) history and bartending whats not to like lol ... hosted by Teylor Smirl and now their dad Tommy, they're just digging around in how important booze is to human culture

True Crime (white collar and weirdness);

Swindled (ongoing) this is an amazing show full stop. A Concerned Citizen details some of the most impactful and unruly things to happen in white collar and corporate crime. very factually accurate but given the sheer bullshit of the topics the deadpan snarking is [chefs kiss] absolutely warranted ..

American Scandal (on series break) this one is a series within a series type, and spends a few episodes at a time poking holes in some of America's biggest scandals, from a dramatised but fact-based point of view. such as what the hell was going on with Enron, how big tobacco was forced to own up to covering its own ass, how Iran-Contra happened, etc. it also now has a sister show called British Scandal, which does the same thing for British cases but with a slightly different format.

Missing in Alaska (finished) this was a fascinating series, a deep dive into what happened to two US government officials who disappeared on a small chartered flight in Alaska in 1972. it goes some really strange places, but it actually turned up a lot of previously unknown information through the audience. John Walczak's new series in a new feed is Missing on 9/11 which looks into what happened to Dr Sneha Philip.

Pretend (ongoing) Host Javier Leiva holds interviews with anyone living a lie, or who have been touched by them. con artists, snake oil salesmen, former cult members, catfishing victims, anyone and everyone.

Power: The Maxwells (finished) hosted by journalist Tara Palmeri, the story of media tycoon Robert Maxwell from nothing to empire to mysterious death and the scandals uncovered after he was gone.

Lets Talk About Sects (ongoing) Sarah Steele covering cults from around the world, in particular those in Australia - where she is from. She often has former members on the show to share their stories, and share knowledge of how they left. each story has the relevant content warnings at the start of each episode.

Brainwashed (finished) investigation of the CIA's covert mind control experiments, centred on the experiments performed at a hospital in Montreal, and its cultural impact.

Dr Death (2 series finished) two series investigating huge cases of fraud and medical malpractice, and how they were brought to a stop. series 1 covers Dr Duntsch and his horribly butchered neurosurgery, series 2 covers Dr Fata and his fraudulent cancer clinic

The Immaculate Deception (finished) untangling the weird and disturbing fertility fraud of Dr Jan Karbaat, who fathered children himself through his fertility clinic, and the impact of his deception. later episodes also touch on other similar cases.

True Crime (Violent/General);

The Casual Criminalist (ongoing) Simon Whistler of-the-many-youtube-channels cold reads a script about the case of the day, with some of his daft commentary thrown in.

Southern Fried True Crime (ongoing) Crimes from the American South hosted by Erica Kelley, she puts all the facts out there but refreshingly for true crime she doesnt hesitate to tell you if she thinks someone is human garbage lol

They Walk Among Us (ongoing) probably one of the most popular UK crime podcasts, very measured and well put together, not weird or annoying about it either.

All Crime No Cattle (ongoing, feed slowed down for now) specifically about crimes from Texas, hosted by Erin and Shay, they're very sensitive hosts and a lot of the cases they cover shed light on why the Texas criminal system is how it is or show an impact at a national level

Canadian True Crime (ongoing) Canadian crime from an Aussie who's lived there for a decade, Kristi is again a sensitive and measured host covering some important topics

True Crime (Violent/Deep Dive);

Hitman (finished) journalist Jasmyn Morris digs around in the sticky tangle around a book published by fringe publisher Paladin Press, and its apparent use as a blueprint in the killing of a mother, her friend and her 8 year old boy for financial gain.

Camp Hell: Anneewakee (ongoing) this series is exploring how a wilderness camp "correctional facility" was endorsed by the Georgia care and juvenile reform system, despite widespread abuses and shady practices the whole time. warning for csa and child cruelty throughout.

True Crime Bullshit (on series break) this one is a huge huge rabbithole but a very interesting one where the host Josh Hallmark has spent years digging into the life and potential crimes of Israel Keyes. Keyes is often mentioned as a serial killer with no pattern, but in picking it apart thats not quite true, and has sparked some re-evaluations of missing persons cases and stumbling upon information the FBI has redacted organically. there's also a series in the middle looking into the crimes of Kelly Cochran

Forgotten: Women of Juárez (finished) this series looks into the huge numbers of missing women of Ciudad Juárez, the strange circumstances surrounding them, and the potential cover-ups and corruptions on both sides of the border, trying to give a voice to all of the forgotten women and girls and their families without answers. the series itself is finished, but a spanish language edition is being released every week now.

aaaaaand i'll call it there before i list everything lol, i hope you find something to plug your boredom hole with !!

#audio #rory's ramblings #podcasts #asks #anon #long post

[relaxxattack]

ayo! (wait this might be a bit of a jumpscare dishdks i apologize) i’m op of That Post and was wondering what your opinions were on the whole woobification thing? /gen

because it’s a Tiny Bit widespread within the dream apologists to sort of,, overdramatize stuff like l’manberg hurting him. like they’re not a 100% wrong but if you look at it subjectively you can see some sort of bias going into that sort of thing that makes the character’s mistreatment a bit more blatant and intentional which,, it really wasn’t? and there wasn’t That Much of it either. especially on twitter (tumblr is much better about it) people just jump to conclusions it seems and yeah. since you brought it up i was wondering if you wanted to write a bit about it from your perspective!

we’re kinda from different corners of the fandom but i still notice that once you are too attached to a character you start taking certain evidence and giving it more weight than it actually has. there’s a blurry line between “taking away a character’s humanity” and woobification and it’s extremely difficult to find a balance when said character shows pretty much nothing of his emotional life (e. g. putting up the intimidating villain act in front of only c!tommy, pretty much everything he does making rational sense with no emotional subtext) and a lot of the fandom instantly jumps to one side or the other while it’s like.

we don’t know by far enough to say “he’s traumatized” or “he isn’t traumatized” or “he was villainized and it hurt him” or “l’manberg didn’t affect him at all”

as a very analytical person people constantly jumping to conclusions grinds my gears, but that’s about it for my own view of the situation - sorry for the rambling.

in general i agree with you that both dehumanization and woobification is Bad and i really hope getting Actual Context sorts this out (e. g. him saying he was betrayed by his friends doesn’t mean it wasn’t partially his fault or that they were allowed to leave him, but it also shows that he did care about that happening. mentioning the cat doesn’t mean anything about what happened to c!tommy but it also shows that he did care about what happened to it. it’s just always interesting to get more information about the way he feels because he usually does a very good job at hiding it.) because man.

it’s like being stuck between a rock and a hard place, especially if you also are attached to the character and are expected to automatically agree with everything the people on “your side” say. it just ends up with everyone being mad and the character being mischaracterised overall.

oh wow hello! i didnt expect the op of the post to find me you’re right lol

and yes i agree! you seem to have a lot of very good thoughts tbh.

and by woobification, i mean exactly what you’ve already pointed out— the people who will say l’manberg purposely villainized dream, the people who will say wilbur faked his mental illness to manipulate dream, the people who are pretty much always talking about how badly dream was treated by people who were acting only fairly for themselves, usually.

for example people who act like dream was a perfect peacemaker before tommy showed up, or that tommy started most conflict. these are just actual lies that are told by c!dream himself to justify his abuse of tommy, and people fall for them incredibly easily because not a lot of people watched early dsmp and know that truthfully it was chaotic even then, and that dream was chaotic too. not to mention wilbur soot tried very hard to secede peacefully with l’manberg and dream jumped directly into war with no warning. and then people say he was forced into their war when, no, he started it.

theres also people who will say like, dream and sapnap for example are such good friends. i’m sure they cared for each other, but dream on multiple occasions has done horrible things to sapnap with no regard for his feelings (like leading fundy to sapnaps pets during the petwar, leading tommy to sapnaps pets during the other petwar and encouraging him to kill them, handing mars over to tommy to use as leverage against sapnap, etc). george he’s been less awful too but he certainly spoke over him and ignored his feelings enough that george felt hurt. he had places in his hall of attachments for beckerson and mars. george and sapnap were right to walk away from being treated like that.

there’s also what you just said here — “dream puts on a villain persona for tommy”— but honestly he acts like that around quite a few people (example: eret) and it’s usually when he’s revealing crucial info, which leads me and many others to believe that ‘persona’ is actually a more truthful version of him.

there’s the fact that he really isn’t safe for people to be around (or at least he wasn't before the prison) because he was planning to come up with ways to control every single person by stealing and threatening their attachments (some of which were not items but were living animals, or a real breathing person).

and then people will say dream was doing exile to enforce rules, or to keep the peace— when it’s very clear in canon it was a deliberate plan to get tommy on his own and into the prison. (from the way he was framing tommy for multiple crimes, and having sam set up the prison, and kidnapping tommy instead of correctly exiling him, all at the same time).

not even going into how he wants to kill and revive people for fun or make tommy immortal.

it’s just— ignoring all these actual facts and saying “oh he misses his friends, let’s get him some friends now” reminds me of like. when people would put flower crowns on pictures of serial killers. and then, there’s hardly anyone on the server who wasn’t subject to dream’s plans, so there’s absolutely no one i would be okay with him interacting with.

just remembered about the torture thing, and wow i still hate it so much. it’s someone’s sick revenge fantasy twisted into a way to get a manipulative villain sympathy, and it’s just gross to me on every account. i do think dream is traumatized-- just not by l’manberg, which was a conflict he started on his own terms. i would think l’manberg did affect him, because he was scared of losing control.

i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again— my ideal ending for dream would be for him to be sent far away from dsmp to an island full of therapy animals and super strong therapists who have never met him before. and for him to get a shit ton of therapy until he becomes a halfway normal person. and then eventually he could get integrated into society again; but a different one with new people. (although maybe dteam + bbh + puffy can visit him, they might still like him.)

none of the people on the server (who have all been affected by dream) should be burdened with befriending him or rehabilitating him— look how that turned out with sam! sam had a personal grudge towards dream and it ended with the poor dude being tortured every day; and sam himself falling into corruption and literally cutting off his boyfriends arm. like we can all see thats fucking awful right?

no one who was affected by dream should have to deal with him ever again. and contrary to popular belief, that includes a LOT more people then just tommy. dream isn’t just tommy’s antagonist, hes almost everybody’s.

the only person on the server who might also be able to stand to help dream is techno, and that’s from sheer lack of ability to give a shit. but techno is probably THE furthest thing from a good therapist there is lol, and dream needs better then that.

this kind of just ended up being a rant about my thoughts on c!dream, so im so sorry op. especially since it was probably negative for you. i hope you’re doing very well.

i guess in the end it’s true what you said— people will highlight or ignore things based on what characters they like, and it’s especially easy to do in this fandom, where half the content doesn’t even get watched and then we become a big echo chamber of half-truths.

considering dream has hurt so many of the characters i care about, i almost can’t understand how he could be someone’s favorite or comfort character— but he is nonetheless, and it would be unfair of me to be rude about that.

essentially it just bothers me to see someone who was a perpetrator of accurately portrayed abuse and manipulation (using both those words in their actual definitions, not just as random buzzwords lol) being given the flower crown edit effect. especially since he’s hurt the characters i care about a lot.

ANYWAY all of that being said (this got LONG im so sorry op) i am so so excited to get dream’s pov, because although i disagree with his actions strongly i actually find dream’s character very interesting and cool, and watching his POV is going to insanely fun. i cannot wait to see what theories get confirmed or denied

ALSO incase it wasn’t clear this is all /nm at you! you seem lovely and smart, and neither of us can help what characters we get attached to :]

#c!dream critical #dream meta #og post #hey guys i would actually like some feedback on this one since i worked hard on it #rbs are okay and encouraged :] #my meta

[delicrieux]

im sorry abt the current discourse going on but i just wanted to provide my perspective. u obviously dont have to post or respond if u dont want to.

i was born and raised in america in a urban area and i had no fucking clue what AAVE was. i was raised by a african-american mom and hispanic father so i myself am mixed and i can assure u that there is nothing wrong with myso. the internet has spread AAVE like a wildfire to the point where ppl dont know that it is its own language. i did a bunch of research on it last night and from what i gather, to be genuinely offensive and malicious abt it ud say things like "aave is improper english," "aint isnt a word," "use proper grammar," etc.

i have ur post notifications on (& have for a while) so i see a lot of the things u post and u do use some of the language (more common ones like "ion" and whatnot) so i dont rly understand y some of these anons r upset. u werent putting AAVE down in anyway imo. u simply used the language that uve seen and absorbed in the internet.

as for the american anons that were upset, u have to understand that expecting ppl to understand topics like AAVE that isnt even taught to americans is absurd. AAVE is widespread on the internet (tumblr, tiktok, instagram, twt, etc) so for english language learners that learn the language through internet exposure, they dont necessarily know what AAVE is and that it is its own language. be understanding and have patience abt these topics. u literally couldve just said "hey i noticed u used a lot of AAVE in myso, was that intentional bc of yns upbringing in brooklyn or was it unintentionally done?" be kind. pls.

dee, i truly hope u dont let this discourse get to u and u continue writing myso. if u dont ill totally understand tho. sending love 💕

no, its completely fine! conversations as these need to happen, i think they are very productive, and everyone (besides a few exceptions, naturally) have been overwhelmingly kind & understanding, which i appreciate very much <3 thank you offering more insight. xx

#i am also very happy so many ppl still love myso despite its faults #alrightlosangeles-afi

[radramblog]

Some thoughts on Deltarune Chapter 2

I’m going to try to avoid being effusively praising of this game…demo…chapter. I’m sure there’s plenty of people doing that already, and I am more than cognizant of the platform I am presenting this post on. That’s going to be tough, yeah, but I’ll make it work.

I’m also going to try to avoid spoiling the thing too hard, even though there are spoilers everywhere and certain supposed-to-be obscure things are widespread at this point. But, someone could still end up reading this before they play it, so I’m going to hold my tongue a fair bit as a result.

With that in mind: new chapter is obviously out, so how does it stack up?

…I think it might be better than the first one. In my opinion.

Undertale 22 over here is a continuation of the first chapter, released about 3 years ago, taking place literally the next day in-universe. Chapter 1 coming out was a Huge Deal, not in the least a result of how it was announced. Despite the distance since the release, the Undertale fandom was still simmering along, and with an announcement that appears tied to one of that game’s biggest mysteries, it was no wonder that it was going to make some waves.

Chapter 2’s release was a surprise for different reasons. I believe at the time of the first demo, Toby stated that the remaining chapters would release as one, but that it would take a long time on account of the game being so much more complex than Undertale and not playing as much to his strengths. Of course, a lot happens in 3 years, especially with the last couple being as they have been, so Chapter 2 got its own release about a week ago.

I suppose I should stop beating around the bush and explain why I think Ch.2 is better than Ch.1, huh? I think there’s three main factors that swayed me.

Prologues and introductions always have to do one thing, and that is to familiarise the audience with the setting and characters. Despite sharing many side characters with its pseudo-prequel, Deltarune Chapter 1’s main cast are all completely fresh, and those side characters are in an unfamiliar form, and so much of the game is spent establishing cast dynamics. We have to learn who Susie, Kris, and Lancer are, and how the dynamics between them will be working for the stories to come.

However, there is the slight difference that Deltarune Chapter 1 is kind of a complete story. It’s like the pilot to a tv series- you have to establish characters, yeah, but you still have to get the plot spinning, and those characters still need to have small arcs over the course of the story. Susie and Lancer are kind of the only ones to go through actual arcs across the first chapter, given Ralsei’s currently kind of static character and Kris being a blank slate entirely.

By contrast, Chapter 2 has these dynamics in play from the get-go, and we get to more deeply explore them as a result, making the character work overall stronger. And while there are new characters at play, two of the three (arguably four) new players are already established in Chapter 1, and so we don’t need to spend as much time getting to know them. Character interactions are at the core of many styles of storytelling, and with the quirky characters we have to work with, getting more time seeing them do that is great!

The second of why I like Chapter Two better is just the gameplay. A fair few little tweaks have been made to make the whole thing cleaner- enemies now have a parallel meter to their HP bar to show how close to sparable they are, so pacifistic players have a better idea of their progress in longer fights. For those players, actually having Susie and Ralsei get ACT options is great, seeing as it makes them substantially more useful (especially Susie). When I replayed Chapter 1 in preparation for playing Chapter 2, I found myself just Guarding with them over and over while Kris did most of the work.

And the creativity with the fights is ramped up a whole bunch. This is another Not Being The First Part thing, but now that the player is used to how fights in this game are going to go, the complexity gets to increase to match, and the characterisation of the bosses and even generic enemies can better be expressed in the gameplay. I remember being genuinely shocked at how much was going on with the Ambyu-Lance enemy’s highway bullet pattern, especially when combined with other enemies in the fray.

I very much enjoyed the secret boss. Oh come on, that’s not a spoiler, everyone knows about Jevil at this point, and you get hinted at it super early on! And it’s way easier to find than Jevil was!

Anyway. My final point is just that I do like the characters in Chapter 2 better- particularly the antagonists. As fun as Lancer is, the sort of annoying whacky child characters are never something I’m particularly fond is. Even though he’s written really well, it took a lot to sell me on him. As well, as sicknasty as the King’s boss fight was, as well as the scenes surrounding it being an excellent summation of the point of the game as a whole, he’s not an especially interesting character.

And while I suppose Queen isn’t particularly deep either, everything about her is so unbelievably fun. I was pretty much sold on her immediately, with that regal “ohohoho” laugh followed by just absolutely shitposting for the entire length of the game. Her presence makes so much of this game an utter blast. Her presence reminds me a lot of the characters in Undertale who were mostly just there for one area, Alphys in Hotland and the skeletons in Snowdin, constantly popping in to keep things moving, giving each area its own little arc, and generally be fun and amusing along the way. And since each chapter of Deltarune is a lot longer than one arc of Undertale, it’s for the best that Queen manages to make this much of a good impression about the whole thing.

As I’ve stated, I think most of the reasons why Deltarune Chapter 2 are a simple result of being a Chapter 2 rather than a Chapter 1, rather than being any fault of Chapter 1’s (and the last point is basically personal preference). Both are obviously still excellent, and I’m happy to wait patiently for the series to continue if it keeps up this level of quality. At the end of the day, like, this game is currently free. And it provides a better and longer experience than a lot of actually paid games I’ve played. Toby Fox has managed to be a big shot after literally releasing one and two sevenths of a game, and it doesn’t seem like he’s going to be slowing down anytime soon. Here’s hoping that the assistance he’s apparently getting for future chapters works out such that it doesn’t end up sacrificing quality, but I don’t see this happening quite yet. I suppose only time will tell, but I’m optimistic. Filled with determination, as some would say.

no that’s cringy cut that one sheesh okay let me out of here im done

#ramble #deltarune #deltarune chapter 2