#i know i'm supposed to have faith but it's very hard when i myself have also been betrayed so many times | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

wistfulpoltergeist · 8 months

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Dean O'Gorman

Bold the facts!

I was tagged by @ethelgodehel and @honeybeenrw to do this bold facts about my characters, aww, thank you! This one is for @honeybeenrw!

The rules are simple! Tag people and name a character you want to know more about! If you want to let the person you tagged decide who to showcase, then don’t name a character and they can pick somebody. Easy! The person who is tagged will then bold the remarks below which apply to their character &, if they want to, include a picture with their reply!

[ PERSONAL ]

$ Financial: wealthy / moderate (I work hard for it) / poor / in poverty ✚ Medical: fit / moderate (work hard for it too but never am as fit as my boyfriend)/ sickly/ disabled / disadvantaged / non applicable ✪ Class or Caste: upper / middle / working / unsure / other ✔ Education: qualified (lawyer but never practiced, dropped my education and went down to working class. Also qualified car mechanic and cook)/ unqualified / studying / other ✖ Criminal Record: yes, for major crimes / yes, for minor crimes / no (a witness to crimes count?) / has committed crimes, but not caught yet / yes, but charges were dismissed

[ FAMILY ]

◒ Children: had a child or children / has no children / wants children (or at least a cat) ◑ Relationship with Family: close with sibling(s) / not close with sibling(s) (my brother bullied me) / has no siblings / sibling(s) is deceased ◔ Affiliation: orphaned / adopted / disowned / raised by birth parent (but mostly by their neighbours)/ not applicable

[ TRAITS + TENDENCIES ]

♦ extroverted / introverted / in between ♦ disorganized / organized (when needed) / in between ♦ close minded / open-minded / in between ♦ calm/ anxious (who's calm nowadays?) / in between ♦ disagreeable / agreeable (I suppose it means "nice")/ in between ♦ cautious / reckless / in between ♦ patient (with everyone but myself) / impatient / in between ♦ outspoken (I never shut up) / reserved / in between ♦ leader / follower (unless I have a dog) / in between ♦ empathetic / vicious bastard /in between ♦ optimistic / pessimistic / in between ♦ traditional / modern / in between ♦ hard-working / lazy / in between ♦ cultured / uncultured/ in between / unknown ♦ loyal / disloyal / unknown ♦ faithful / unfaithful / unknown

[ BELIEFS ]

★ Faith: monotheist / polytheist (people tried to show me one god but I never saw it) / atheist / agnostic / spiritual ☆ Belief in Ghosts or Spirits: yes (I think one is sitting in the room with me now)/ no / don’t know / don’t care ✮ Belief in an Afterlife: yes (I'll be a siren in the afterlife)/ no / don’t know / don’t care ✯ Belief in Reincarnation: yes (but I don't wanna go back, only forward)/ no / don’t know / don’t care ❃ Belief in Aliens: yes (why does anyone think there is nobody else in entire cosmos?)/ no / don’t know / don’t care ✧ Religious: orthodox / liberal / in between /not religious / pagan ❀ Philosophical: yes (but not very clever) / no

[ SEXUALITY & ROMANTIC INCLINATION ]

❤ Sexuality: heterosexual (but in love with a man which makes me gay. I guess)/ homosexual / bisexual / asexual / pansexual ❥ Sex: sex repulsed / sex neutral (I don't mind intimacy with a beloved person)/ sex favorable / naive and clueless ♥ Romance: romance repulsed / romance neutral / romance favorable (desperately romantic)/ naive and clueless / romance suspicious ❣ Sexually: adventurous / experienced / naive / inexperienced / curious ⚧ Potential Sexual Partners: male / female / agender / other / none / all (my boyfriend. What do you mean male / female / all… Do you think I could sex someone without even dating them?) ⚧ Potential Romantic Partners: male / female / agender / other / none / all (my boyfriend)

[ ABILITIES ]

☠ Combat Skills: excellent / good / moderate / poor (I am fury, I am death only when I'm drunk) / none ≡ Literacy Skills: excellent/ good / moderate / poor (I have zero intellect but big wisdom) / none ✍ Artistic Skills: excellent (I'm a poet) /good / moderate / poor / none ✂ Technical Skills: excellent (I like dealing with material objects more than ideas in my head) / good / moderate / poor / none

[ HABITS ]

☕ Drinking Alcohol: never / special occasions (only when friends drink, I'm actually allergic to alcohol)/ sometimes / frequently / Alcoholic ☁ Smoking: tried it / trying to quit / quit / never / rarely / sometimes (when I'm depressed or anxious) / frequently / Chain-smoker ✿ Recreational Drugs: never (friends say I did that but I can't remember) / special occasions / sometimes / frequently / addict ✌ Medicinal Drugs: never / no longer needs medication / some medication needed / frequently / to excess ☻ Unhealthy Food: never (I'm a cook, eating rubbish offends me) / special occasions / sometimes / frequently / binge eater $ Splurge Spending: never / rarely / sometimes (when Roland pays for it) / frequently / shopaholic ♣ Gambling: never (I don't get these games) / rarely / sometimes / frequently / compulsive gambler

I tag: @qrqr19, @latteaki, @susen70, @simandy, @pralinesims

#WistfulR&D #my sims #sims 4 tag #my sims 4 character #simblr #ts4 simblr #sims 4 #sims 4 tag game #bold the facts #the sims 4

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frogoru · 2 months

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i think i've been able to stay relatively calm about my faith as of recently (i had a small freak out period a little while back about homosexuality but i've mostly gotten over it) but i keep finding myself wondering about what's going to happen to me if everything i'm continuing to indulge in is like... actually a sin. i like to cherry pick the bible and i know that's frowned upon but i don't think i could live under those kind of restrictions, and i've been doing well and content in doing so but what if?? what if.

i keep finding it difficult to call myself a christian since whenever i do it, i feel ashamed because the whole point of being one is that you're supposed to base your life around christ's teachings... which i am clearly not doing!! homosexuality is the main thing i struggle with stressing out about but lust in general is a huge one and all the other temptations that people deal with on the daily and although i limit myself a healthy amount i don't really acknowledge it as me sinning usually because i have a "this is normal" mindset but what if this is all going to contribute to me being turned away and eternally damned.

i don't think i can fully grasp the concept of being damned to hell. when i was little i was scared of going there but for a majority of my life i've been in a state of spiritual decline and now that i'm catching up on everything again i feel like the time i spent not worrying about it is all pouring onto me now and it's so!! man!! so many things in scripture don't make sense to me and i hate that they don't make sense because if i want to be a believer, then i need to... like... BELIEVE, but it's so hard. i'm so jealous of people who are easily accepting of it because I WANT THAT i want that unwavering faith. i want that sense of security. i want to be able to believe that God loves and wants what's best for me but i don't and i hate it.

i liked to imagine that the things that bother me about the bible were added in by people wanting to corrupt it but if each translation basically gets at the same thing then i'm pretty sure i'm wrong about that. i try to dance around how a large part of myself is seen as immoral and an abomination to the religion i try to put my faith in but i keep encountering instances where it's hammered into my mind and i hate it so much. i hate that something so beautiful can be seen as wrong in the eyes of an all-loving god. i don't understand how god is all-loving when he's allowed so much pain and suffering to overtake the world and i don't understand why he can't just change things himself if he's the creator of everything. that's so blasphemous to say but that belief is so hard to go by with just your faith as your guide.

it makes me so upset to know that no matter how good of a person i try to be, it just isn't enough to gain salvation on my own. i love jesus as anyone else would but the notion of having to submit and obey a set of rules in order to have eternal life and not go through an eternity of suffering after i die makes me feel odd and i wish it didn't. it feels so constraining in a bad way and i wish it didn't!! i had to read an article a while ago about how god's love is supposed to feel constraining and i was like wow this is so sick and awesome what a cool way to put it but when i actually think about how i would apply that to my life it feels... CONSTRAINING OBVIOUSLY!! because so many of my interests and things that make me human are based around sin

i'm going out of my way to continue sinning and i probably won't stop anytime soon. it's so hard. i used to be so proud and happy in my attraction to women but now it feels like such a sensitive topic that i need to keep secret or else the people i know and admire in my personal life will judge and pity me. i'm so anxious about them finding my online presence and realizing how fucking weird i am because a handful of people i know in real life regard me very positively and i'm so terrified of having that image shattered.

i'm going to continue acknowledging that god loves me despite the things i surround myself with and indulge in. i feel so pathetic talking about this kind of thing because on one hand i don't want my religious friends to know because ermmm jazzy why are you rebelling against god knowingly?? not good not good. i hate the thought of being judged for this

#cw christianity #yeah #vent thingy

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carriesthewind · 10 months

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Hey, I love your writeups for the ChatGPT case! There's one thing that's kind of confusing me though. You (and the judge) seem to be saying that the good faith argument makes sense for the March 1st opposition but not the April 25th affidavit. I'm not a lawyer, but the more I think about it the more I feel like the other way around makes more sense.

Regarding not reading the cases: if I was looking for a book, even because someone said it doesn't exist, and I found a book that had the right title, author, and cover, and wasn't obviously a fake book (like, no words on the pages, or something), I think I'd be convinced. If I'm supposed to think it could be a forgery, I don't know how I could tell by reading it. How hard is it to write a fake opinion that looks real? What tells would you look for? And why would anyone write one? It seems to me like the only thing that reading the cases would prove is whether or not it was generated by a bleeding-edge large language model. (This is setting aside all the warnings they had to ignore that ChatGPT specifically isn't a reliable source. And the fact that they didn't even annex the "entire opinions" they were ordered to. And that they didn't even seem to realize that they were being accused of citing bogus cases. And that they should have read the cases anyway, possible fakery or not. And the way they tried to downplay it afterwards. God, there is so much stupid in this case. "The ChatGPT lawyer" really doesn't do it justice.)

The opposition seems less defensible. Schwartz didn't just find and submit documents, he submitted assertions about the contents of cases without reading said contents. Why would you use a "search engine" to write your arguments for you? That's your job. How can you claim in good faith that precedents you didn't read are in favour of your position? Even if ChatGPT really was incapable of making up cases, if they'd found all the cases on Google Scholar and annexed them, they could still be in deep shit, right? They could be sanctioned if they misrepresented the contents, or at least lose the case if the interpretations are dubious. Not to mention the legal argument about state law in a federal case - that's something I would expect a lawyer to know to check for.

Am I missing something? You've anticipated all the judge's points and it's probably me who's wrong here. Just trying to understand.

Hi! Thank you for the question. I think I understand your confusion, and I am going to try to clear it up - let me know if this makes sense.

The difference comes down to the idea that when he submitted the opposition, he was doing very poor work and was not acting reasonably. However, when he submitted the fake cases, he was knowingly lying to the court.

For example: for my job, I use secondary sources that other people have written to explain the current state of the law. Those secondary sources refer to, cite, and summarize various cases. When I use a secondary source, I don't rely on the source - I use it as a jumping off point to look up the cases myself and do additional legal research. But, based on my experience, I expect the summaries of cases in good secondary sources to be more-or-less accurate.

Now, that doesn't mean it is okay for someone to submit a legal brief based solely off the summaries in a secondary source - as you say, you can't know for sure the summaries or correct (and "more-or less" leaves a lot of wiggle room). And there is a lot of potentially relevant information that is left out of the summaries. And even if they are correct, you don't know if they are still good law - they may be out of date.

But "being a bad lawyer" is not sanctionable misconduct. Especially because with sua sponte sanctions, the question isn't whether Schwartz was reasonable (he wasn't), but if he was acting in subjective bad faith, which in this case means essentially that he was knowingly lying to the court.

If he, as he says, genuinely thought the cases he was citing in the opposition were real cases and the bot was accurately summarizing their contents, he was not knowingly lying to the court. He was doing terrible work, but again, being a terrible lawyer is not sanctionable misconduct.

But - and here is where maybe I think the confusion is coming in? - when he submitted the fake opinions, he was making an assertion to the court about the contents of the cases. He was telling the court, "these judges wrote these specific things in these specific cases." (And in terms how hard is it to write a fake opinion that looks real - those cases did not look real. Anyone with any legal training, even just glancing at them, would realize something seemed wrong.)

It was unreasonable for him to cite the cases without reading them in his opposition, but at that point, he can at least try to argue that he had reason to believe the citations and summaries were accurate. Once he was put on notice, continuing to "assume the cases were real" without checking and reading them was no longer plausibly good faith.

And to return to your analogy - he didn't just "find a book" that had the right title and author and so on. He went back to the same source that had given him the titles, and asked it to provide him the full text of the book.

For an analogy: Imagine you are writing a research paper. It would be like if you were emailing a friend looking for a published scientific article to support your research, and they gave you a citation and a summary of the article, and you relied on that article in your paper. That would be unreasonable, but you could honestly say you thought your friend was being honest in providing you information. But now image a bunch of reviewers came back to you and said, "hey this article might be fake, we can't find it." And so you went back to your friend and said, "hey, can you give me that article?" And then they sent you an email back that said, sure! And they sent you about a thousand words in the body of the email. And those thousand words were complete nonsense, where in the beginning it says this was a study on the evolution of bacteria and in the conclusion it was talking about the behavior of the two sample groups of primates. In that case, if you printed out those thousand words and gave it to the reviewers and said, yep, look, the article is totally real, here is the text of the article, the reviewers could reasonable conclude that you were intentionally lying to them.

That was a lot of text, but I hope it helped!

#ask

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theladyragnell · 1 year

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Hello! I'm jumping on the chance to request a ficlet, and since I'm in a bit of a nostalgic mood : Merlin/Arthur ! And for a trope... Truth spell and declarations? Sending lots of love your way 💞

(Wrote the first bit of this from Merlin's POV, hard drive crashed and I lost it, now finally back to it and reconstructed from Arthur's POV. And also it's 3k because I was having some feelings. Set in a sort of nebulous AU-post-s3 situation.)

When Merlin finishes talking, Arthur is silent for a long, long time. He has to be. He’ll scream otherwise.

“What do you expect me to do now?” he asks at last. “I can’t very well kill you, not when I’ve just gone to all this trouble to legalize magic.” And then, spitting out the beginning of the bitterness he knows will twist him up for a long time, “Coward.”

“I don’t know.” Merlin shrugs, so hapless, as though none of this is his fault. Still playing the bumbling servant when he’s just told Arthur how many deaths can be laid at his door. Arthur respects killing, when it’s necessary, but the lying rankles. “I just had to tell you. I should have before.”

“Yes, you should have.” Arthur runs a hand through his hair and wishes for simplicity. “How am I ever supposed to trust you again?”

Merlin shakes his head. “You’ve heard all of that. What more do I have to lie about?”

“If I’d told you for five years that I’d never so much as held a sword and then won a duel while you watched, wouldn’t you wonder if there were other lies along the way?”

“There may have been,” Merlin admits. “It sort of got into everything, the big lie. But as I think of truths, I’ll tell them.”

“There’s still the problem of me believing them.” Arthur waves Merlin silent before he can continue. “Get out of my sight. Don’t let me see you again until I send for you.”

With honesty, it seems, comes obedience. For once, Merlin does what Arthur tells him to.

When the door is shut behind him, Arthur sits down at his table, stares at the stupid bowl of apples Merlin caused to float in the air, his declaration when words failed him. There are a hundred thousand problems with all of this, but perhaps the worst is the knowledge that he’s been giving unreturned trust for years now. His closest companion, the first person he sees every morning and the last he sees at night, may as well be a total stranger.

But Arthur doesn’t have so many allies, particularly so many magical allies, that he can simply send Merlin away and have done with it. He’ll have to learn to live with this, but he still can’t see how.

I have an idea, Merlin sends in a note two days later, having become so close to invisible that Arthur wishes he could make a joke about Merlin’s sudden skill in being a servant. The trouble is that he wants to make the joke to Merlin, and jokes between them will cut, he thinks, for a long time.

Arthur goes to Gaius’s rooms instead of summoning him, and sits in frosty silence with Gaius while they wait for Merlin to return from an errand in the forest before dismissing him while Merlin is still gaping in the doorway with a bag of useless mushrooms that make Arthur suspect he’s still lying.

Of course he is. Arthur knows, but Merlin hasn’t made a sign to Camelot as a whole what he is. Nobody trusts Arthur repealing his father’s laws.

“What were you doing in the forest?” he asks when they’re alone.

Merlin frowns. “Meeting with one of the druid leaders. He wanted reassurance.”

“Did you give it to him?”

“Yes. I’ve got no reason to believe you’ll kill others when you didn’t kill me.”

Arthur isn’t the noble king Merlin thinks him. He knew that even before he started repealing his father’s laws. If Merlin had told him a year ago, or two, Arthur would have let him live and sent him away and continued killing other sorcerers. He hasn’t earned this faith. “You said you have an idea.”

“A truth spell. I’ll cast it on myself, and it will last as long as I want it to. I won’t be able to lie to you or to anyone.”

It’s a pretty offer. There’s just one problem with it. “And how am I to trust that you’re casting the spell you say you are?”

Merlin reels back a little. Arthur won’t feel guilty for that. “I could,” he says after several soundless seconds, “I could cast it on someone else you trust? Someone you choose. You’d hear me say the same words.”

“And subject Leon or Gwen to magic to assuage my worry?” They would do it, and he won’t abuse their trust for just that reason. There’s one answer, and if it’s the one he hates most, it’s the one that will set his mind most at ease. “No. You’ll cast it on me.”

“Why would you do that? I could, I don’t know, I could cast a spell to control you so you’d think you were telling the truth, or something else awful.”

To his own relief, Arthur discovers that he’s found the limits of his own distrust. “I think if you were going to do that, you already would have. No, you’ll cast it on both of us, and when I find that I can lie again, I’ll know that you’ve let the spell lapse so you can lie.”

“You want the spell on us forever? You’re a king. Kings have to lie.”

“That’s not the kind of Camelot I want to build. And no. I just want to know you’re telling the truth until I can believe it.”

After a long moment, Merlin nods. “I don’t know a spell that will compel an answer to a question, and for the sake of Camelot and your advisors I wouldn’t cast it even if I could. One of us can always choose silence. But if we speak out loud, it’s going to be the truth—and if we try to lie, the truth comes out too.”

Arthur would be less angry if Merlin had chosen silence, at any point in these last years. At least he hopes that’s true. Maybe he should speak it out loud when he’s alone, once the spell is cast, and know for sure. “I’ll take that. When can you cast it?”

“Let me practice the incantation. Tomorrow, but I haven’t cast this one before. I don’t want to do something I can’t undo, or that will go wrong.”

Arthur nods sharply. “Tomorrow, then.”

He doesn’t linger. Merlin’s hunched posture and obvious misery are making him want to reach out in comfort and he can’t give either of them hope like that.

Merlin comes to his room the next afternoon and pulls his previously-very-illegal spellbook out of a satchel. Arthur despairs of his attempts at secrecy and hates himself a little for not guessing before. “Are you sure?” Merlin asks.

“Just do it. I’m not the one who has trouble with the truth.”

After a shaky sigh, Merlin reaches out and says a few words in that half-familiar language. He gestures at himself first, and then repeats the words and gestures at Arthur. Nothing seems to change, at least not that Arthur notices, though he’s busy being disconcerted at the way Merlin’s eyes go liquid gold when he does magic. “It’s done,” says Merlin. “Try to lie.”

My shirt is green, Arthur tries to say, but somewhere between his brain and his mouth, it comes out “My shirt is red.”

Merlin’s mouth twitches with what would have no doubt been a tease if everything hadn’t changed between them. “Safe one. Mine’s blue.” His expression of faint surprise is a comfort. “My hair is black.” More surprise.

Arthur can’t help responding with a glimmer of humor. “What color are you trying to say?”

“Pink,” Merlin admits, and Arthur has to swallow a smile. There’s a moment of awkward silence where he would have filled in a tease of his own a few days ago before Merlin forges on. “Is there anything you want to ask, now that you know I can’t lie?”

Arthur considers his options. “Do you regret telling me?” he finally asks.

“Yes and no.” Arthur glares and Merlin shrugs helplessly. “It’s the truth! I’ve been wanting to tell you for years and I was too scared, and I hate you being angry at me, so I wonder if I should have stayed scared. But I think in a while, when you’ve decided how much you do or don’t trust me, I’ll just be relieved that I can finally stop lying.” He hesitates. “Do you regret being told?”

Arthur could choose silence, but it’s not going to help either of them to do that. “I wish you weren’t a sorcerer,” he says after thinking it through. “But seeing as you are, no, I don’t regret knowing. Only what we’ve lost through all the lies.”

“Do you think we can regain any of it?”

He can’t imagine a “Yes” coming out, under the strictures of this spell. He can’t imagine a “No” working either. It would be so much simpler if he could say either. “I wish I knew,” he says instead, and then, before he can be dragged into saying anything else, “You’re dismissed.”

Arthur wakes every morning and tries to lie. For the first few days, it’s stupid factual information, and it’s pure comfort when he can’t say it’s raining on a sunny day, or that he’s going to wear one of Morgana’s gowns to a banquet, or that he prefers the bow to the sword. After that, he starts testing the limits of the spell. He can’t, he discovers, say outright that he’s the best swordsman in Camelot, but finds he’s saying “I believe I’m the best swordsman in Camelot” instead, and other opinions or facts he can’t know for sure come out in similar ways.

He tests his own opinions too, and fails at it. He can’t say “I believe magic is good” any more than he can say “I believe magic is evil.” The answer to both is “I don’t know what I believe about magic anymore.” Embarrassingly, the truth between “I trust Merlin” and “I don’t trust Merlin” is “I wish I trusted Merlin.”

He doesn’t recall Merlin to his service, but he doesn’t avoid him either. He suffers through the quiet and competent service of various palace servants and watches Merlin out of the corner of his eye. He’s quieter than usual, which isn’t surprising. He’s also good at lying without lying, which makes Arthur angrier for a few days, realizing how many times Merlin just led him without adding more outright lies to his conscience.

“You seem upset,” he overhears Gwen say to him in a corridor one afternoon. “Are you and Arthur still fighting?”

“I don’t know,” says Merlin, sounding exhausted. “I was never fighting with him, anyway. I made a mistake and he’s angry. He’s right to be. I don’t know what to do about it.”

Gwen makes soothing noises, and Arthur slips away to spar with anyone who will agree on the training fields.

The next day, he summons Merlin for dinner.

“Details,” he says when Merlin sits down. “You gave me broad strokes, and I can fill in some of it, but I don’t know what magic can do, aside from evil. Tell me what you’ve been doing.”

“That’s a lot for one dinner,” Merlin warns him.

“Start somewhere.”

After a bewildered little silence, Merlin does. He wanders terribly, and sometimes stops and grimaces and says “This is someone else’s secret, so I’m going to change the subject,” but he explains how often he’s been pulling strings, saving lives and hurting other ones. He doesn’t pretend, to Arthur’s relief, that everything he’s done was good, only the best he could do with the knowledge he had.

When he drifts to a stop, with much untold but more truths told between them, Arthur leans forward and meets his eyes. “Now try to lie to me,” he says.

Merlin winces, but he doesn’t look away. “My mother’s name is Hunith. I know you hate duck eggs and that you ordered them because I like them. I’m still sorry.”

I believe you, Arthur tries to say, and is relieved when it comes out “I want to believe you.”

Arthur is the king of Camelot. He can’t dine with a servant every night. Still, in the weeks that follow, he sets aside time every few days to invite Merlin to disgorge more secrets.

Some of the stories are awful, and Merlin doesn’t try to pretend that they aren’t. Others, to Arthur’s surprise, are funny, and Merlin’s obvious disgust at everyone treating him like some legendary figure goes a long way to earning his sympathy. He’s spending some time with the druids now, and he doesn’t like the way they talk about his future either. At the end of every meal, he asks Merlin to lie to him, and Merlin tells him the truth.

It’s been easy, for five years, to dismiss Merlin’s importance. Princes rely on servants to do things for them, but they don’t rely on the servants. The gaps in his life and his conversations where Merlin might have filled in seem constant and unbridgeable, and Merlin’s stories make it obvious that whatever they are, prince and servant isn’t it.

“I miss him,” he says one morning. A bare and simple truth, not qualified as an opinion.

It’s not surprising.

Merlin tells Gwen, and tells Leon and the other knights who don’t know. Arthur has a fight with Gwaine and with Lancelot about things they’ve known without telling their king, in his turn, but after that, when those closest to him know what Merlin can do, he invites him to council meetings and forces himself to ask Merlin’s opinion on how to bring magic back, how to convince Morgana that he’s in earnest and wants her help.

Gwen and Gwaine both lobby privately for Merlin to be named court sorcerer, but there’s not enough trust for that yet, and anyway it’s something he’s hoping to dangle to tempt Morgana home, a position that’s likely to matter more to her than being a princess or even a queen, if she’ll only trust him.

“Maybe I should tell her I can’t lie right now,” Arthur muses over dinner with Merlin one night. “It’s helping us.”

Merlin beams at him, knowing that’s true, before returning to a troubled frown. “Maybe. I’m not sure if she’s ready.” He hesitates, but he doesn’t choose silence often. Arthur isn’t sure how much of that is penance and how much of it is relief that he can finally speak. He’s not ready for the answer to that question. “I would do it. Everyone says I should, druids and dragon and all. Have I really ruined things that much?”

“You’re very bad at politics,” Arthur says. “I don’t know what you’ll be in my court, but not that, not unless Morgana turns me down.”

“I could learn,” says Merlin, scowling, and Arthur teases him about it, learning how to talk around the lies that teasing so often requires, and the next morning, when he tries to lie and say “I trust Merlin” it nearly comes out.

They have a stupid fight. Merlin mentions Arthur’s mother, Arthur gets a refusal of parlay from Morgana, and they both shout unforgivable things at each other that are, unfortunately, still true.

“What kind of legendary king do you think I’ll be,” Arthur yells when he’s had enough, “when you don’t even trust me to make my own choices with full knowledge?”

“Because you do make choices that make you a good king every day! And you wouldn’t accept full knowledge about magic until you came to it on your own!” Merlin shakes his head, visibly calming himself. “You are my king, Arthur. You have been for a long time now. I want to be at your side.”

The affirmation of his loyalty feels like a knife in the back. It would be easier if Arthur thought he were trying to lie, but he’s not. After weeks of being unable to lie, Merlin still looks startled every time he fails at it. “I don’t know why,” he says, exhausted. “You’ve told me all these things, and I still can’t understand why you’re loyal. You thought I would have you killed for having magic, but I’m still your king? Tell me it’s not just destiny. That’s not what I want from you.”

“Of course it’s not just destiny. If some prophecy had told me your father was a legendary king who should have my full loyalty, I’d have run off to live in a cave. But you … I trust you. I trust your heart. I trusted that once you understood, you would do the right thing.”

Arthur swallows. “And have I lived up to that trust?”

“Nearly every day.” Merlin gives him a thin smile. “Whenever you’re not being a prat.”

It’s answer enough, and it’s the truth. Arthur kisses him, and in a whirlwind of arms and legs and startled noises, Merlin kisses him back.

“I love you,” Merlin says in bed later, intense and, somehow, true. “You don’t have to try to say it if you don’t think it will come out.”

Arthur could say it, he thinks. It’s not, though, the thing that matters most now. “I trust you,” he says instead, and he doesn’t have to qualify it. It’s just true. And, while Merlin is staring at him with wide wet eyes, he continues. “Take the spell off.”

“What? Are you sure?”

“What’s the point of it? I trust you,” and it’s easier even to say the second time, “and that’s what this exercise has been. Surely you’ll be relieved to go back to fibbing about where my dessert has gone.”

“And this has nothing at all to do with you panicking when that ambassador offered you a marriage,” Merlin says, but he’s already taking Arthur’s hand, saying a few words with his eyes flaring gold, and then saying them again, removing the spell from himself as well. There’s a long silence. Eventually, Merlin clears his throat. “My hair is pink.”

Arthur chokes on a laugh. “And my bed hangings are made of spiderweb. Which might actually be true, come to that, given who my manservant is.”

“I haven’t cleaned your bed hangings in ages, blame your temporary servants for that.” Merlin hesitates, smile going softer. ��I do love you.”

“I believe you,” says Arthur, and kisses him again.

#fkyb #answered asks #sometimes i write stories

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ilikecheeseandchocolatee · 9 days

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minor vent again, read tags first

I got a response from my teacher :c and I just remembered how nice he always was to me and now I feel worse because i don't wannaaaaa I don't wanna go back to the UK I don't wanna go back to that school I don't wanna face my teachers again I don't wanna make them all so very disappointed in me :cccccccccc

I'm gonna be there in less than two weeks and I'm having a proper crisis right now. I don't wanna go. I haven't studied enough. I feel like crying. I don't wanna go back. I really really really don't wanna go back. I don't wanna go back and see all the teachers that believe in me and care about me, only to disappoint them because I can't find it in me to function like a normal human being just for a few months. It's just for a few months. I don't have to stay there forever. I don't wanna go backkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk :C

I'm probably gonna cry about this in a while. getting back the response from my teacher just made it hit me in the face that I'm actually going back and I'm actually gonna have to face them all again and there's going to be people I know and there's going to be people I don't like and there's going to be people that don't like me and most of all, there's going to be all my teachers. All my teachers that have so much faith in me, all my teachers that care about my mental health so much and try to not misgender me and all the nice stuff. I'm going to have to face those teachers again. I'm going to have to tell them that coming back to India did not in fact fix my motivation levels and they're worse than ever and I haven't studied SHIT in the few months that I've had away from people. Like I haven't even been doing much else I've just literally been doing absolutely nothing and now I'm STILL doing nothing because I'm panicking too much to do anything.

wow that response really triggered this crisis-mode in me. why am i so incompetent. why can't i find something to make me get through these few months and actually study for once so I don't disappoint everyone I've ever respected in my entire life. My physics teacher from Junior college. She was expecting so much from me. I don't think I could ever contact her again if I barely pass my A Levels. God I feel so stupid right now. I wish I could just STUDY. It's not even that hard for me is the thing. Like I LOVE studying, it's my favourite goddamn thing but MOTIVATION IS MISSING. For like. the past year maybe? ever since I got started on my medication. And i can't just randomly go off it right now just for the sake of my exams because it's 30 freaking miligrams and that would cause some bad withdrawal symptoms. i'm just stuck. i'm just stuck like this. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa i'm so disappointed in myself and everything in the entire world right now. I don't want to disappoint my teachers :c I don't want to disappoint them I don't want them to look at me disappointedly i don't want to end up ruining their dreams for me i don't want toooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo :c life is so so hard sometimes and i don't want to keep trying at this point. but the tickets are already booked and if i don't go then i'll be wasting a shit ton of my parents' money which will STILL disappoint them so i have no choice but to disappoint SOMEONE. either disappoint my family or i disappoint my teachers who had faith in me.

in the response my teacher showed so much faith in me "i'm sure you can nail all 4 practical experiments in the 4 hours" boy i don't even know what experiments i'm supposed to be doing i don't even know how to calculate the tension in a pendulum, i don't even know if i'm SUPPOSED to know that. i don't know what sort of forces will count in ladder questions or whatever shit. he has too much faith in me and it's all going to go to shit when he realizes i am so so clueless about my subjects. and my further maths teacher was always so caring of my mental health and he made sure i didn't feel like shit for not being able to keep up with everyone else content-wise because it's okay because my mental health is shit and i have plenty of time but sir i dON'T have plenty of time anymore i have two weeks left to come back to school and i haven't even STARTED studying your subject yet. there's a bunch of content i haven't covered even ONCE, there's a bunch of stuff i know literally nothing about because i haven't even checked what's gonna be on the exam and he's gonna be so disappointed that even all this time away didn't prove enough for me. to heal and study and catch up. and they all had so much faith in me. i was literally given an A* in the practice exam or whatever it was because i was just that good at his subject. and now? I haven't done it in months. i haven't done the things that i was supposed to cover for the first time. i don't even know the BIG M method or whatever that is for decision maths. i hate decision maths. i like pure maths the one that's just letters and occasionally numbers and then symbols and whatever. i have to teach myself the rest of my decision math syllabus and the rest of my pure math syllabus and i haven't even STARTED on it yet. i'm sorry everyone.

i wish there was something i could do to make myself just concentrate. if i concentrated like usual for the next two weeks i could probably cover everything i need to cover before i have to travel. but i haven't been able to concentrate like that since last december and i don't know if i will ever be able to do that again. i want to scream and i want to apologise and i don't want to face my teachers again i don't think i could survive their disappointment. i'm trying so hard to not have another SH relapse. it won't even do me any good, hurting myself is not gonna help me do better at my exams it's just gonna make things worse. why the fuck do i still feel like doing it? I care about these exams so much. why is my brain being like this to me. it's not fair. why can't i just be like everyone else. perhaps i'd be average at everything academic but at least i wouldn't be like THIS. I'd take average-at-academics-but-able-to-function over excelling-at-academics-and-unable-to-function ANY day. i've raised everyone's expectations for me way too high and now everyone's going to be disappointed and it's all going to come crashing down and i know this isn't the end of my entire adult life but it sure as fuck feels like it right now and i don't know how to get past that.

i want a hug :c

#okay this was not a minor vent again this was a major vent again #tw vent #tw rant #vent #rant #cw vent #cw rant #tw sh urges #tw england mention #tw mental health #tw depression #tw depressing stuff #tw depressing thoughts #btw this is a very long rant and also very repetitive because i'm on my laptop and i can type a lot faster on my laptop #i highly recommend you don't read this if you're already struggling with motivation #dfddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd #i'm sorry everyone #i'm so fucking sorry

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kookaburra1701 · 10 months

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Writerly Thumbprint Challenge~

Rules: look back on your work, both past and present, finished and unfinished. what are five (or more!) narrative elements, themes, topics or tropes that continuously pop up in your work?

Tagged by @thana-topsy ❤️❤️❤️

For all of the nattering I do at my friends about my fics, I really had to think about this, (unless I just wanted it to be a list of all my favorite fanfic tropes.)

(Which I kind of do so they will come rapid-fire at the end hehehehe)

Crisis of Faith - At some point, at least one of my characters will have to question everything they've been taught or thought about the Way the Universe Works. This may be a crisis of actual religious faith, or in the way they view abstract concepts like Truth or Justice, or in the way they view some institution or authority figure. Unlike some of the themes that follow, I know exactly where this one comes from. See, I grew up in a very fundamentalist house hold. Like speaking in tongues, the earth is 5000 years old, and having an erotic dream is just as sinful as sex type of fundamentalist house hold. I even went to a religious college and learned some Latin and Greek to try to figure out which Christian denomination was The One True Church. I graduated from that religious college with straight As in all my theology/religion courses and new found atheism. So, crises of faith and deconversion arcs are very compelling to me, but I really love exploring what a deconversion/reaffirmation of faith means in the context of worlds where there is incontrovertible evidence that the gods/divine/supernatural do actually exist. I suppose it's a little bit of wish fulfillment - sometimes it would be nice to have the comfort of religion again, but that's a bell that can't be un-rung, at least for me. Tropes that come out of this that I loooooooove: -baptism imagery -oracles/prophecy -martyrdom -pretty men tied up and tortured (I'm not sure whether going to church and being SURROUNDED by the kinkinest goddamn fetish art of various saints dying horribly changed my brain chemistry or whether my brain was always That Way and the visuals just made it bearable but either way.)

The Universe Doesn't Give a Shit About You, but I do - this is the second part of the Crisis of Faith. The Protagonist has realized that searching for meaning outside of themselves is pointless, and that in the face of an implacable, uncaring void the only way to find meaning is within oneself and in the connections forged with fellow beings.

The Crucible - I love angst. I...honestly cannot think of a time that I wanted to do something horrible to a character and toned it down before publishing a fic. But I really want it to have a point - I want my characters to go through hell and back, to be completely destroyed, remade, but also to come out the other side changed when they shed all the extraneous things and discover what their essential inner essence is.

Hidden Depths - in this case I'm not referring to the main protagonist discovering their inner strength; to me that is part and parcel of The Crucible. What I just eat up with a spoon and love writing is secondary characters, minor characters, and especially antagonists revealing some of their inner world and it surprising the hell out of everyone. The taciturn swordsman turns out to actually be really good at sewing. The logical scholar loves romance, etc. It can be hard to not have this end up being a deus ex machina crutch to resolve corners I've written myself into, but some of the best times of my life have been when I've discovered something I didn't know about someone I've known for years and they bust it out just when we need it (usually final jeopardy round at pub trivia) I want my protagonist to suddenly see every previous interaction with that person in a new light because they've now glimpsed the Hidden Deep.

Cleansing, or in other (Greek) words Catharsis - Someone somewhere is going to end up in a bathtub. Getting scrubbed. Usually this physical vulnerability will mirror the emotional vulnerability between the scrubber and the scrub-ee. It's also a really fun place for smut.

Sanctuary - in real life, after we've gone through the Crucible to achieve our Catharsis we rarely get a chance to breathe. The activities of daily living still require our attention: pets must be fed, jobs must be reported to, taxes must be paid. But something that almost always happens in my stories after the big resolution is that circumstances contrive to give my characters a physical place where they do not have to worry about keeping themselves fed or housed while tying up loose ends. They've ended up in a secure environment separated from the rest of the world. They always end up having to leave this place, and do so willingly, but the time they spend in it gives them space to come to terms with the events that came before, and plan out their next steps, without the pressures of the outside world. This has taken the form of a temple, a spaceship, and a giant tree in various fics. And then, of course, there's this that might as well be a personal attack:

I tag @gilgamish @moriche

#tag game #writing #self reflection

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laineystein · 3 months

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(Prompted by your post about leaving for work.) Do you enjoy your work as a physician? I've been a nurse for 10 years but am desperately trying to change careers to something outside of healthcare. (Oh, how I'd love to have one of those jobs people were able to do from home on their couch in PJs during Covid. I think they just read spreadsheets all day or something.) I'm burned out. I'm exhausted. I'm tired of taking care of other people. But it makes me feel inferior to my healthcare colleagues because they're ~passionate~ about ~caring for people~ and I don't hold that same passion 😅

First I’ll say that even the people that love their jobs have bad days and doubts. That’s life. But this is a tough question.

Do I enjoy my work as a physician? Yes, mostly. I love emergency medicine and working in an ED. I am absolutely passionate about being able to help people during some of the worst moments of their lives. I’m proud of how hard I’ve worked to be where I am in my career. I love my unit and my hospital and my team. I’m phenomenal at my job and I couldn’t picture myself doing anything else. However, COVID completely changed my life. Something that I loved became something I hated. Things have definitely gotten better the more time passes but the pandemic gifted me with moderate PTSD and it can flare depending on various factors, which can make working in a hospital nearly unbearable sometimes. I think the great part of emergency medicine is that when things need to happen, you just do it. Anxiety and flashbacks and pain go out the window when you’re helping someone else. But sometimes after a code or after hours in the trauma bay, when everything is stable again, the situation hits me and it can be very triggering. I understand this isn’t everyone’s experience but for those of us who worked in healthcare during COVID, we are forever changed.

So yes, I’m also burned out and forever exhausted. And I know so many of my friends in healthcare feel the exact same way. I was supposed to be on a bit of a sabbatical then October 7th happened and now I’m back in the hospital for 24 hours/wk. But I am passionate about what I do even though it’s different now. I’m so passionate about what I do that my favorite part of my week is the remaining 20+ hours where I get to teach emergency medicine to students/soldiers that haven’t been disillusioned by a pandemic and the overall state of healthcare.

Please know that so many in the healthcare field are burned out and exhausted like us. It seems to be the norm. But it sounds like your malaise may be more than that, and that’s okay! I’m proud of you for recognizing that nursing may not be a great fit and I hope you find something that more aligns with what you’re looking for and ideally makes you happy. I know “starting over” can be tough so it might be advantageous to look into more clerical nursing jobs - case management, insurance review (in the US), recruiter. The change of pace/scenery might spark the passion that initially got you into nursing (it can be difficult to think clearly when you’re knee deep in the problem) or it might show that you need a complete change and I have faith that you’ll find it. All the love and best of luck! 🫶🏼

#er md #md things #hashtag things Covid gave me that I’d like to give back #ask things

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aquamine-amarine · 6 months

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Shugo Chara! Sequel Manga

I was supposed to make this post shortly after the news broke on 10/3 about the manga getting a sequel, but I got lazy. So it's late. And then it ended up being super long...

I saw the sentence on the cover of Nakayoshi earlier that weekend, and it didn't specify if it would be a sequel manga. It just said something about the issue containing information about a new project. So it could have gone either way, with that sentence being so vague. It was either a sequel manga or anime reboot. I was personally hoping for the latter. When there was a leak about it being a sequel manga I initially dismissed it. There was no concrete source for it, and with my prior knowledge of how this fandom lies I wasn't going to blindly believe something. I remember first joining this fandom way back in 2008, on a SC! forum called Guardian's Wish. Around 2009 when Crunchyroll first started streaming numerous ongoing anime at the time - the second season of SC! being one of them - the girls on Guardian's Wish would talk about how everyone on the Crunchyroll forums were leaking and lying about all kinds of things for SC!, claiming that their leaks were telling them what was to come in the manga, and it was ridiculous stupid shit like Ikuto having a dog Guardian Character. Lol, no. It was very hard to get Japanese raws back then, so leaks were all we had. Most of them were obvious lies. So I've grown to never believe anything the western fandom says. If I don't have a Japanese source for it, it's bullshit. This fandom still doesn't have its manga lore straight after all…

It was around Sunday night on the 1st (which was actually already the 2nd in Japan) that a Japanese Twitter account finally posted more concrete proof - an actual picture of the article in the issue. I had my legit source. It was a sequel manga… and honestly it wasn't what I wanted. I'm probably the only person in this fandom that didn't want a sequel manga. I wanted a faithful anime reboot. I was scared of a sequel manga. I didn't want them to give into pressure from fans and Nakayoshi to make a sequel manga and then have the story be worse than the original manga or have it ruin the ending. That would have disappointed me so much. The ending was perfect, I didn't want them to ruin it.

I feel like this fandom has constantly missed the point of this manga with the constant ship wars and cries for a sequel. The story of the Guardian Characters ended in Chapter 48 (Volume 11). Why do you think Volume 12 (the Encore chapters) was such a ship fest? That was them wrapping everything else up. Because they finished the main story with Volume 11. They pretty much say this here in a very old blog post about Chapter 48. They purposely made the manga very fast paced, and they admitted that some things had to be cut because of that, in particular chapters dealing with the other Guardians. Which is why Encore focused on the other characters initially.

I think we, the readers, were never supposed to know what Amu's would-be self is, because that would ruin and contradict the message the Guardian Characters were trying to send - that you can be whatever you want to be. It's a very positive message to send, especially to children. Why would they cancel out this message by immediately having Amu decide what she wants to be? This was always supposed to be left open ended. An answer to a fan question about Hikaru's egg hatching back in a 2010 Q&A session kind of supports my theory that Peach-Pit meant to leave things a little open ended. They said they had initially planned to have Hikaru's Guardian Character be revealed in the final chapter, but decided to leave it up to everyone's imagination instead. So that's why I didn't want a sequel. Clearly the ending of the manga was meant to be open ended, and it wrapped almost everything up perfectly.

And as for the shipping, because of course this is going to be brought up within this stupid fandom… I just laugh to myself whenever people STILL naively wonder who Amu ends up with. Are you kidding me?

First, did you not read my previous paragraph? Romance was not the main point of this manga. The Guardian Characters were. Plot first, romance second.

Second, are you people blind or just still willfully ignorant and unable to accept reality? Did you not actually read the manga? Did you not read the last chapter? Did you not listen to the drama CD of the final chapter? Most people haven't and it's shocking, even among the Japanese fandom, the amount of people who don't know about the drama CD adaption of the final chapter. The panel where they start holding hands at the wedding and Amu is having an internal monologue, reading it you think she's the one that says "one day", but in the drama CD both Amu and Ikuto say that line together. I need no other proof that this is canon. The kanji in their last names were also a dead giveaway, and as for the artbook notes for the final chapter title page…

万里: グランドフィナーレですね. 白い服の2人とブーケ…, というのは最初から決まってました. 12巻でバージョンちがいを描きましたよ.

Banri: It's the grand finale. Two people wearing white clothes and a bouquet… that was decided from the beginning. The Volume 12 version is drawn differently.

This was planned from the beginning. Obvious to anyone with functioning braincells, of course. And people who actually read the manga and not that awful, filler infested unfaithful train wreck of an anime. That's a different rant. It's no secret that I despise the anime and how it ruined everyone's character development, especially Amu's.

I did always find it rather odd that there were literally no title pages with just Amu and Tadase in them. You can see the artbook scans for the first artbook here and second artbook here. There was either a third person there or it was a group shot with the other Guardians. There were definitely some chapters early on where a Tadamu title page would have made perfect sense given the content of the chapter. But they just… never did it. It was always strange to me since every other shoujo manga in existence loves to troll readers with the love triangle (and Peach-Pit definitely did plenty of that) and usually that includes being on the title pages an equal amount… but not here. Sometimes I wonder if because this was their first shoujo manga, they didn't know what they were doing. Or maybe they were doing it on purpose.

I can't believe I've never talked about this one before, because it was something I noticed back in 2021 when the new editions were first revealed. A juicy little line I saw on the back of the new Volume 2...

元気と勇気をもらえるミラクルファンタジー, あむとイクトの恋も仲間たちとの友情も深まる第2巻.

A miracle fantasy that gives you energy and courage, Amu and Ikuto's love, as well as the friendship between friends, deepens in Volume 2.

I remember thinking... did I read that right?! Is my shitty Japanese working right?! Did they just admit this so blatantly?! It wasn't the word "suki" they used here either, they used "koi". Even with all the new illustrations, especially this one, they're not exactly being subtle about it anymore. I think that covers the shipping now...

Also, the "miracle fantasy" bit is the tagline the manga had when it was serialized in Nakayoshi.

I also really, really did not want a time skip sequel manga, and I am forever reminded of how badly time skips can go whenever I think of the Digimon Adventure 02 ending. They wrote themselves into such a fucking corner with that epilogue the current movies dealing with them as adults are so messy as a result. Not everything can have a nice clean time skip ending like FMA… and of course the shipping elements in SC! would have just made things even messier, further making people forget once again that the point wasn't the romance, it was the Guardian Characters...

So after this announcement I was left wondering, what kind of sequel manga is this going to be? Is it going to be like Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card Arc and take place immediately after the original manga, or is it going to be like Mermaid Melody: Pichi Pichi Pitch Aqua, taking place in the future and being about the main character's children instead? I wanted the former, I was terrified of the latter.

Thank God Peach-Pit immediately came out and said exactly what kind of sequel this is going to be in a post on their pixiv Fanbox - it is going to take place while Amu and the others are in middle school. Hopefully that eases some fears like it did for me. Normally their pixiv Fanbox rules state not to share the information found on their pixiv Fanbox posts, however this particular article is listed as "All Users", and can be viewed by anyone who doesn't have an account or isn't paying for a plan. I think it's safe to share then. Everything else is locked behind a paywall, so I won't talk about those posts.

I honestly don't even know how they plan on continuing the story. I'm still convinced this is just Nakayoshi being greedy and forcing Peach-Pit to do a sequel because Nakayoshi's current cash cow - Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card Arc - is ending soon. And with the success of SC!'s 15th Anniversary celebrations, with constant new merchandise and new illustrations, Nakayoshi knows they can milk this next. This is also why I think an anime reboot is still possible, and that they're just saving that news for much later. You don't spend almost 3 years now making new illustrations and merchandise just to give everyone a sequel manga which doesn't cost nearly as much as an anime adaption to make. Yes it still costs money, because art supplies are needed and publishing companies need to print it. However I imagine an anime reboot costs a lot more, especially if they want to get the original voice actors back, all of which are even more popular than they were back then. And they better get them back, because it would break my heart if they were all replaced. Don't even bother to reboot it then if it's not possible to get the original voice actors back. It just wouldn't be the same. And I only really care about the Guardians and Easter, all the minor characters and parents don't need their original voice actors back. Unless someone retired or passed away, then obviously a replacement has to be selected, and in those cases it's understandable. So again, I'm still hoping for a reboot, and I'm convinced they're just hoarding money in the meantime while they wait for a perfect chance to announce it. There's also the matter with Utau's songs... they definitely need to get the rights for those.

Another thing that makes me annoyed with Nakayoshi and the current state of shoujo manga as a whole is that trash like this gets an anime adaption before SC! gets a reboot?! Holy hell this manga is just so bad. I've been so disappointed with the crap running in Nakayoshi nowadays. Obviously I'm not talking about Cardcaptor Sakura, that's good, but everything else in Nakayoshi (like Vampire Dormitory) is just so bad. Shinkon dakedo Kataomoi does actually look sweet and wholesome, it's a shame there are no translations.

And then there's Chou ka Han ka: Gokudou-sama Afurete Afurete Nakasetai, a manga that used to run in Nakayoshi but it got so fucking raunchy they transferred it to a different more adult magazine. The shit I saw when I skimmed those pages make the shit Peach-Pit got away with in SC! look tame. SC! and Arisa really were one of the last good shoujo manga to run in this magazine… and I still need to get around to reading Sugar Sugar Rune and Mermaid Melody: Pichi Pichi Pitch. I've heard good things about them both.

The stuff running in Nakayoshi today is so bad that they have to bring back old classic stuff, first giving CCS a sequel, then Mermaid Melody, now SC!. In one way, it's a compliment to that classic stuff, finally giving them the recognition they deserve because they really were good. And then on the other hand it's insulting to the new stuff running in the magazine because Nakayoshi is basically saying none of them are good enough to compete with what came before them. I find that kind of sad. Instead of cultivating that new talent they just go back to manga that ended a while ago. And I'm afraid that doing that would just end up ruining everything that was good about those manga. They don't need sequels, what they need instead are faithful anime adaptions that respect the source material this time. That Tokyo Mew Mew reboot was so awful though, and it wasn't faithful to the manga at all.

I'm enjoying Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card Arc though, so thankfully that sequel ended up being fine. At least Clamp's art actually improved a lot from the original manga, which brings me back to what I've been ranting about lately regarding Peach-Pit's art style not looking the same as it did back in 2010 when SC! first ended. I really hope they use this time before the sequel starts to work on their shoujo art style again, and making sure the story is just as good as the original. I really want this to do good because I love this manga, I'm just hesitant to trust Nakayoshi's intentions here. I'm convinced they're just doing this because CCS is ending and they needed something new to milk money from.

Holy shit did this end up being really long. Damn, I had way too much to say about this, hopefully it isn't too much of a confusing mess.

#Shugo Chara!#Shugo Chara #Amuto #Tadamu #Peach Pit

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delusinalandpassionate · 9 months

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Sorry to bother you. I saw that you'd gone through 4.5 and couldn't help but try to make a plea to convince you to join in the boycott of the game going forward.

Project Moon hasn't made a single announcement since the Korean-only notice of the story illustrator's absurd(and certainly illegal) layoff. I'm thankful a lot of tumblr's been made aware, but. They're clearly hoping the situation will blow over with 4.5's release, possibly with many international fans never even hearing of this... this absolute idiocy they've commited. They won't post English or Japanese explanations, they didn't even include the Korean one in the in-game announcement. They know they're in the wrong. It's cowardly and their horrible treatment of their employees and contractors need to face justice. We have to make clear we don't approve of these practices, because if we let them get away with this, in the present, they'll be doing it forever. Their actions have shown all they care for is the capital they get from active users, directly and indirectly.

I realize it might be hard to let go of the characters and the unique world of project moon that you've become fond of. Isn't it the same for us all? But I implore you to consider refraining from logging in, at least for a little while. The investments they get, that keep the company going smoothly, are tied closely to the number of active daily and monthly users, especially after a big update like now. If the international fandom could join in the boycott(not logging in, deleting the game or requesting refunds through the app store and steam if they've spent money on it), projmoon will eventually have to address the situation if they want to continue servicing limbus. I mean, there are other factors such as pressure from news media and the possiblity of a lawsuit from the illustrator, but this is the most definite way.

Projmoon's broken our faith in the worst way possible. They'd rather indulge the outrageous demands of a hate group that antagonised their employee over evidence of nothing and tanked their game's reviews for fun than show an ounce of sense, and personally? Those very employees and contractors seem to have been the heart and soul of the stories I fell in love with, and with kjh refusing to even pretend to understand the very themes his games have been built on, I can no longer take any of it seriously either.

Uh, well. The ask's become a bit of a slog to get through. If you have anything you want a clearer explanation on I'd gladly answer, and if you want to keep on playing I can't stop you. And I suppose it might not feel fair that you were the one I addressed, out of the many, many who are doing the same.

But thanks for reading anyway, because I loved their games, loved anticipating the future stories they'd tell, and kjh turned out to be the kind of asshole who fires a longtime employee over the phone at 11 pm over baseless claims with not a shred of regard for labor laws, and I am at a loss at the absurdity of this entire... thing. I had to say something. Hell world.

To my fault, I didn't think about boyscot as act of protest by myself, and saw people suggesting it on Twitter only when finished 4.5. It made me feel really stupid, especially when I saw graph showing how many people visited game. But now I'm not going to return to the game, at least until PMoon makes an announcement. I also feel horrible and confused, especially with the amount of false information around, which makes it extremely difficult to trust anyone right now. But I'm trying to stay optimistic.

Also hope that at least my mistake, will help people, satisfying their curiosity without need to read by themselves.

#limbus company #project moon

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jewishtwig · 11 months

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Hi Twig, I have a little problem - I'm a Jewish conversion student but I fear I might be going *too* hard to a problematic level!

Judaism is for Jews and Jews alone, and I understand this. There's no obligation or expectation for gentiles (or even Jews tbh) to believe in G-d. Yet since joining a shul and starting on a conversion course, I've started to feel threatened when my atheist friends talk to me about faith or lack thereof. They will say "I fully respect other people's belief in G-d but it doesn't make sense to me, I don't see how something like G-d could exist." And in that situation I suppose the best most Jewish thing to do would be to hear them out and nod along. But instead I feel prompted to justify my faith, to debunk atheist misconceptions, and to 'well actually' my friends about theism. I know my friends aren't trying to tell me they have a problem with my faith, but it still feels scary, and I've started to verbally justify myself, and I'm losing impartiality! If I wasn't speaking from my own brain, I could absolutely mistake my own words as trying to convince someone else that they should believe in G-d.

Moreover, I understand that Judaism forbids proselytizing, which I wholly agree should be banned. Yet when my friends ask me about my conversion, I follow a compulsive want to tell them to come to service with me to learn more about the culture and religion, to come with me to classes with my rabbi. I've had a few nonreligious friends tell me that they heavily vibe with Judaism and would be Jewish if they were to choose a religion, but they know religion isn't right for them, so they happily remain as gentile allies. But some part of me wants to encourage them to explore Judaism, because that's how I felt too until I felt the calling to convert, and I think maybe some of my friends would convert to Judaism if they only knew more about it. I don't want to encourage people to convert because I know it's wrong, but I get all excited at the idea of someone else feeling the call and embarking on their own journey, and I've caught myself recommending to my friends that they should speak to my rabbi just for an enlightening conversation!

And of course, there's the issue with Christianity. We all know Jews are horribly oppressed by Christians, but most Jews I know are still chill with Christians existing, and it's a known Jewish value to be chill with other people practicing their own religions, including the Jesus fan club. Yet I've found that recently, whenever Christianity is mentioned or when I walk past a church, I feel the need to express my discomfort and distaste for Christianity, because of its appropriative relationship to Judaism. I don't think I should be doing that - after all I think everyone should have total religious liberty within the cultures that are open to them. I know it's not very Jewish of me to be going "I hate Christians!" every time I see a crucifix. But sometimes it feels like I can't help it! This is definitely because I live in a culturally Christian country, but I also recognise that there is a problem with me.

And finally, I've received permission from my rabbi to wear Judaica and kippot, and now I catch myself wearing them visibly wherever I go. I'm proud of my faith and I want to display it to the world! But I'm not Jewish yet and I don't want to catfish any Jews into thinking I'm part of the Jewish people when I'm not. But I really like wearing Judaica in public. I don't know if this is a problem but I fear it might be.

Is this something you experienced at all while converting? I don't know if this is something born Jews also experience, but it does feel like the reality of Jewish life has come crashing down on me, as well as all of the excitement in converting, and it's led to me getting overly emotional and behaving in ways I wouldn't agree with if I sat and thought about it for 5 minutes. Do you know how to confront thoughts like these? Is this something I should talk to my rabbi about?

Hi! I really hope you see this response. I'm sorry it took so long!

This is absolutely something to talk to your Rabbi about. It is good that you recognize that some of these behaviors are not appropriate.

First I want to address the two that are okay:

Wearing Judaica visibly wherever you go is awesome! This is not a problem at all. If it were your Rabbi wouldn’t have given you permission to wear them.

Answering friends’ questions about conversion and offering them resources if they are interested in Judaism is not proselytizing. As long as you are not telling them that Judaism is the only way or pressuring them into attending events with you I think you are in the clear on this one. If they are interested in learning, even just to better support you through your conversion, there is nothing wrong with telling them about Judaism.

The other things you address like arguing with atheists and saying “I hate Christians” whenever you see something Christian are certainly problems.

The hatred is something that very much should be addressed with your Rabbi. Hillel teaches that the entire Torah can be summarized as “What is hateful to you, do not do to others.” I’m not going to tell you how you should feel about Christianity, but making hatred such a prevalent part of your life is concerning. At the very least, I would highly suggest not speaking these thoughts out loud. Especially when other people are around.

As for arguing with your atheist friends. I learned a long time ago that, for both sides, it is just an exercise in futility. You are both locked into your position and it is very unlikely that either one of you will be swayed out of it during a discussion like that. There is no point trying to convince someone there is a G-d. You can talk about what your faith means to you if asked but I would suggest that you do not try to persuade other people. I usually tell people just that. Something like “If you are interested in hearing what my faith means to me, I will happily share that with you, but I don’t think it is productive for us to debate this topic.”

Good luck!

#asks #<3 #it would mean a lot to me if you could let me know if you see this

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promptling · 1 year

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the adventures of robin hood ( 1938 ), dir. michael curtiz. change pronouns as needed.

you intend to act on your plans?

we must drink to this moment.

but who's gonna pay me?

stop! stop!

but i protest!

don't you know it's death to kill the king's deer?

and death from hunger if i don't.

be quiet, you.

i won't be quiet! you can kill me if you like, but not until i've had my say.

what the devil?

you'd kill a man for telling the truth?

by what right do you interfere with justice?

this man's my servant.

better look before you shoot next time.

from this day, i follow only you.

i've heard precious little else since i've been here.

by my faith, but you're a bold rascal.

what you hope can hardly be important.

why, you speak treason.

have you no stomach for honest meat?

i've no stomach for traitors.

i've pulled seven acorns out of my ribs.

my teeth ache with chattering.

it's your skull, not mine.

it's much too warm to brawl.

this fly has a mighty sting.

a small price to pay for the company of such a charming lady.

you must tell me more about myself.

i suppose you say that to all women that tickle your fancy.

i think it's revolting.

may i serve you, my lady?

i'm afraid the company has spoiled my appetite.

you're a strange man.

what's your reward for all this?

you'd best be started before i have a change of mind.

with your permission, my lady?

we'll outwit him.

how do we get word to him?

i hate to see a human being trapped.

i want to help him.

please don't stand there staring.

tell me, when you are in love, is it hard to think of anybody but one person?

are you completely mad?

that was a game.

we'll start where you're in love with me.

i had to see you again.

you must go at once.

do you know you're very impudent?

i'm not bold.

i've nothing to offer you but a life of hardship and danger, but we'd be together.

are you not ashamed?

you'll be sorry you interfered.

sorry? i'd do it again if you killed me for it.

you wouldn't dare.

what do i care about your kings and thrones and such?

give us a kiss and wish me luck.

you've traveled far this morning?

save yourself!

my sword is yours, now and always.

#ask meme #rp prompts #rp memes #sentence prompts #sentence meme

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gay-baby-brig · 6 months

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Very personal rant about the whole mess with Izzy in ep8 (major spoilers)

So I've had time to process my feelings and for me (personally, not for anyone else) it kinda doesn't matter if Izzy's dying is a misdirection or not? I'm more hurt, maybe mad, that they even teased it? I mean I get it, for the lolz. For the angst. For the payoff. But like damn???? I don't watch TV shows anymore. I don't watch movies unless I know the full plot beforehand. I don't read books anymore. Video games are touchy. I outright refuse to ever watch shows like Stranger Things and GoT. The last show I really got into was Hannibal. Because I knew they both survived. Franklyn's death still hurt because Dan is an og blorbo of mine and Bevs death actually made me take a break.

I get people don't have the hang ups I do (tmi time, my dad was shotgunned to death when I was 10, my beautiful kind mom drank herself to death afterwards from grief, my kid brother drowned, my grandmother and grandfather who raised me afterwards both died young, I lost several pets that were like children, all my aunts and uncles are gone, let's not get started on abandonment issues) but a lot of other people do. I don't think I've lost as much as some of you reading this.

But I get people die sometimes. I get life isn't fair. Stories are supposed to be an escapism from that, for me. People that live life hard don't need simulators like other people do. I heard this show was safe, that's why I finally caved. (and I'm absolutely not saying ofmd is going to do this, in truth I actually have faith that it really is different and everything will work out. I mean in freaking general) I'm just tired. It feels like grief is a fuse that burnt out a long time ago but it's still being forced to pump out voltage. It's not fun to me. It's not funny. He's just a silly character on a show (that I'm legally naming myself after) but I got nothing else going on in my life rn. I'm disabled. I can't draw or crochet or craft. My partner is a fan of the show too and is just as worried. I'm sad about all the wars and I feel shame that this is my biggest problem rn. I guess this is just a apology for my unhingedness? I'm going to be annoying about it. Thanks in advance

#ofmd finale #Thinking about skipping it for a few days actually #I DO know why am like this #Just canny do anything about it #our flag means death season 2 #izzy hands #WHY DO ONLY MY FAVORITES DIE

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daisychainsandbowties · 7 months

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I'm sorry if my question made you feel that way, it wasn't my intention.

you know i never mind talking about why i find certain character dynamics compelling or interesting!!

and much is lost in translation when the anon sunglasses emoji comes into play but um, i think my feelings this time come from just having seen a… disheartening degree of negativity around what is a brand new thing, something we don’t have all the material for yet - and in any case a pairing between two characters i have love for individually and not simply through my shipping goggles (sexy as i know i look in those).

and there’s a reason i made a separate post instead of answering an anon - because i was just made aware of a feeling i’ve had forever about sapphic ships. i tell everybody how i didn’t believe avatrice would happen until they literally kissed in front of me (and yes, that’s very beatrice of me 😂). live slug reaction was me crying for an hour and yes that’s funny and YES, it makes me sad.

because it’s still so astonishing to me, and part of queer survival has (sadly) always been a matter of separating that hope from how i engage in things like shipping.

i’m very fascinated by shipping actually from a technical perspective! (i write at doctoral level about T4T and touch a great deal on this form of queer community, knowing that it helped me to survive when i should have been squashed by the machine that seeks to kill things like me before we get to be adults)

i don’t mind talking about why a ship just works for me; not many things can make me pick up my pen (if not for avatrice i wouldn’t be sharing my writing on here at all, and indeed i would be writing a lot less if not for the wonderful people who actually read it 🥰🥰) and so i usually have things galore to say about characters and why they work for me, but i like to discuss things in what i call “good faith” and that usually means that i don’t answer things that i feel i could respond to rudely or in a way that’s hurtful.

simply put it’s not what this is to me. um, not to drag out that Malatino quote again but i’m gonna because it’s everything

(Hil Malatino. “Future Fatigue.” Transgender Studies Quarterly, pp. 656.)

so, yeah! it’s all about witnessing, being with my friends not in a manner that precludes the acknowledgment of difficulty but one that is, at least, centred around love, seeing and being seen. i know it’s hard to express tone in that grey anon box, but in a sense it’s an old hurt to me; most of my work in fandom turning into justifying the fact of “making them kiss”. having to defend it like a position in chess, over and over again.

the reason i made a separate post was just to acknowledge to myself that i felt sad about it and weighted down by a lifetime of feeling invisible, having my hopes belittled and i suppose some of that hope (certainly as a teenager) being distilled into silly fandom ships but always having to say “this is a crack ship” or “lol i know the creators either hold me in contempt or simply don’t see my existence as important… but!”

it’s not your fault, and as always with humans we sometimes just encounter people at the moment something tips them over into an emotion we don’t deserve to be met with. that’s why i would never angrily answer an anon (certainty not one that, more than anything, i was struggling to read the tone of), because the issue is much bigger than me or one instance but it just made me think and then… feel sad about larger trends and how those trends made me feel so small when i was younger. so invisible.

i don’t want anyone to feel like it’s their fault because it’s not!! it’s the line we push and push and push in queer solidarity and yeah it can seem like these things (shipping) are inherently stupid and petty and unimportant but speaking for the kids who are alive because of it i don’t think that’s true. i agree with realism, and i think when it comes to canon we sadly still need to proceed with caution. more and more it seems like you can have your show, or you can have canon sapphic ships (this term - sapphic - used as always and forever in a trans-inclusive sense).

this is as usual a lengthy way of saying that (i hope) i went out of my way not to put this on anyone. it’s just a thing that makes me sad to reflect on as the flinching of a lifetime, so afraid to hold what i love and to talk about it because that hope is seen as pointless. but what’s the star wars rogue one quote again?

rebellions are built on hope 💖💖

#anon #sorry if there are mistakes too tired boi to proofread it

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