#i’m not an expert i just see so many people share stuff from these people uncritically | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bengiyo · 10 months

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Why Do I Tag So Many Creators in My Posts? It’s About Respect

Earlier today I was talking with @sophsloveskpop in the notes of a post, and was asked about all of the interaction between blogs in the posts and essays about the shows. I’ve noticed an uptick in new names interacting with posts (and making great posts of their own!) and wanted to talk about why I do it and why I like fandom on Tumblr.

Fundamentally, I think it’s generally good courtesy to acknowledge when someone else has expressed a similar idea to your, or an idea that intrigues you. I think it’s best to tag that person and link to their post so that others can also experience it. It also opens you up to a dialogue with them and others.

People Like Getting Their Flowers

If someone posts an analysis or even a quirky idea that I felt the need to think about, I will mention them in my posts. None of the great content we get on here is necessarily quick to make. I absolutely love all of the gifmakers who fight against Photoshop, Tumblr, and God Himself to post snippets of shows on here for us. I wouldn’t be able to flesh out some of my posts, illustrates points, or otherwise breakup walls of text without @liyazaki, @wanderlust-in-my-soul, @pharawee, or @gabrielokun. Whenever I can’t find the gif I’m looking for through Tumblr’s terrible gif search, I reach out to one of them for permission to use their gifs directly.

Also, many of us just like being acknowledged that someone we wrote meant something to someone else. Every time I get tagged by someone in an essay I’m like:

It’s a Conversation

I don’t think fandom is about being the smartest person or the most correct person. My basic framework I’m writing from is Black Gay Nerd Who Watches a Lot of Stuff. It’s what I’m most familiar with personally, and I find that people have really responded to that.

I’ve been around for a very long time, and have been seeing folks like @so-much-yet-to-learn around the entire time, who often has more specific information about fandom life during the airing of shows. @absolutebl and @heretherebedork have watched more BL than I have, and I’ve seen at least 250 productions. ABL has some of the most comprehensive posts collecting some of the history.

I made so many friends after diving into @shortpplfedup DMs to talk about sustainable urbanism and bonding over our shared geography. Now we run @the-conversation-pod together. Through them I befriended so many others, like @elnotwoods and @kyr-kun-chan.

I’m not a color theory expert, and so I love reading posts from @respectthepetty and others (I think @sliceduplife writes about color too).

We wouldn't even have my favorite show without @isaksbestpillow.

I know what shows are coming because of @clairificusrex.

I don’t know much about music theory, but @iguessitsjustme write some great stuff about the music in these shows.

I don’t always read the body language of hands as closely as someone like @wen-kexing-apologist might.

I am not Asian, and so I like reading from @waitmyturtles, @telomeke-bbs, and @neuroticbookworm. I know that @recentadultburnout and @airenyah offer useful perspective on Thai language.

Sometimes folks are going to narrow down on specific shows and consistently write about them for years on side blogs like @miscellar.

Some people have studied so much and bring specific academic lenses to the genre that I find compelling, like @emotionallychargedtowel.

In many cases, I just vibe with them really hard, like @ginnymoonbeam.

I actually didn’t always post as much as I do, but I try to keep up my Stray Thoughts project so that people can keep track of what I’m watching. I used to write less meta, but then I befriended @waitmyturtles and @lurkingshan. Any time I say anything remotely thoughtful Shan is like:

Also, though, this is Tumblr! It’s easy to tag each other and link to each other’s posts! This is what makes us different from every

Isn’t It Just More Fun?

I don’t enjoy shows passively. I grew up in a family that watched things together. My mom, dad, sister, and I all have differing tastes from each other, but we watched a lot of different things together. My friends and I discussed the things we watched at school.

I’m a big fan of the water cooler approach to TV show distribution, which basically says you want your show to be the show people are talking about on their breaks at work. I always like Film Crit Hulk’s theory that movies (and our dramas) are the proverbial campfires around which we gather to share ourselves with each other.

This is all supposed to be fun, and I have more fun when we interact. I get tagged daily by @blmpff about updates from sets, or when we all need to rush to IG to make sure Fluke Pongsakorn doesn’t cut his hair. When @bl-bam-beyond makes a new set or post they let me know, and they recently rewatched Noah’s Arc! I made friends with @gillianthecat in the last year or so, and it’s been fun seeing her make her way through fandom. I always get excited with @troubled-mind pings me in a post because I know it’s going to give me something to chew on. I didn’t have a genuine appreciation for kink culture until I watched along with @lutawolf. If something funny is happening in fandom I know @benkaaoi is going to tag me. I still get excited when @heukheuk pops up in my mentions.

I know I’ve probably forgotten so many people alone the way here, and I’m sorry if I didn’t mention you.

Tag Because It’s the Right Thing to Do

So seriously, tag people and link to their posts. Try to use the giffmakers specific tags when you’re using the search feature. Fandom is better when we all interact respectfully and enthusiastically with each other. Tumblr is special because it lets us create goofy little essays like this and tag dozens of people just to get their attention.

If you have a cool thought about a show I’m watching, tag me. If you see something funny, tag me in the comments. If you wanna hash out an idea before posting it, DM me. This is Tumblr. Don’t be shy with your thoughts. It’s okay to be wrong on the internet. It’s actually fun to be wrong on the internet about show predictions!

Thank you as always for coming to my post.

#Ben writes #fandom life #tumblr life

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prodigal-explorer · 2 months

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AN OPEN MINDED VIEW OF THE ISRAEL PALESTINE CONFLICT: NOT ANTI-ISRAEL, NOT ANTI-PALESTINE, BUT ANTI-HATE.

i’m gonna start by saying this:

the sheer amount of anti-jew hate i’ve seen on my tumblr dash is absolutely abhorrent.

and now, let’s get into the specifics of my view:

i recently went to two events that my college hosted. one was an event in which a guest speaker discussed antisemitism and how it is running rampant lately due to the israel-palestine conflict.

and the other event i went to was an israeli man and a palestinian man who are CLOSE FRIENDS, and them telling their stories and how the animosity between palestine and israel have affected their lives, killed members of their families, and yet, they were friends. because they knew that they shared two things: their birthplace and their grief.

after attending both of these events, this is what i learned: BEING PRO ISRAEL OR PRO PALESTINE IS NOT REMOTELY HELPFUL. zionism is not inherently evil. the conflict is NOT ABOUT RELIGION. it’s not the muslims versus the jews. it’s about politics. it’s about fear and trauma and hurt.

the land doesn’t belong only to israel.

but it doesn’t belong only to palestine either.

the land is land, and it’s a gift from the higher power that created this world.

if the israeli people weren’t constantly discriminated against or expelled everywhere they went, maybe they wouldn’t feel the need to cling onto the one tiny piece of land that they managed to claim as theirs.

if the palestinian people didn’t get kicked out of the place they lived in first, and weren’t treated unfairly in israel’s social climate, maybe they wouldn’t feel the need to cling the exact same way.

israel has money and power from america and other places. and israel has done some terrible things. i know that. but so has palestine. and this post isn’t meant to excuse the bombings, the killings, the genocides. that’s not what this is about.

but people are dying on BOTH sides. countless people. in the usa and in many other places, people are getting hate crimed just for being jewish because people are so pro-palestine that they became anti-israel and anti-jewish. and the same is happening to muslim people who are pro-palestine.

can you see how being pro/anti just fuels the fire more and creates more war and violence and conflict and killing? what feeds a war is the possibility of winning or losing. being on one side or the other side does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to help the people. it HURTS the people. because they are having their homes destroyed due to the polarization that WE are causing due to our need to fit things into one box or another. jewish or muslim. good or evil. israel or palestine. it shouldn’t be israel or palestine. it should be israel AND palestine, finding a way to come to an agreement. to SHARE or to compromise. if not, then the war will destroy them both. two beautiful nations with such rich history and such amazing potential.

my point in writing this post was not just to express my opinion but to spread knowledge based on what i learned from accredited experts as well as people are literally IN israel and palestine and facing the effects of the conflict. most of us on the internet are just sitting back and watching, choosing to be either anti-jew or anti-muslim just to feel helpful, to feel progressive and woke and hip and in-control.

wearing a “from the river to the sea” t-shirt isn’t helping anybody. all it does is create more tension and polarity.

comparing zionism to evil and saying that all zionist’s want palestinians dead is incorrect and hateful and lowkey antisemitic.

and this goes for all the anti-palestinian hate as well, but honestly, most of my dash on here is filled with “pro-palestine” stuff that acknowledges the suffering the palestinians are going through while entirely ignoring the israelis going through something extremely similar.

before you get angry in the reblogs and accuse me of supporting a genocide (i’m not), or accuse me of being complacent (i’m being the opposite), or just any sort of hate, maybe take a deep breath and read what i wrote again.

it’s about the PEOPLE. every single person on this planet has inherent worth and dignity, and nobody deserves to be diminished to one trait of their identity.

“oh, you’re jewish? that means you’re a zionist and that means you’re pro-israel and that means you support bombing and killing innocent civilians!”

that’s actually genuinely logic i’ve seen on this website before, and it’s that sort of thinking that i want to combat. that’s the thinking that the israeli and palestinian friends want to combat.

being jewish isn’t the same as being pro israel. being muslim isn’t the same as being pro palestine. there is SO MUCH MORE to this conflict than what is being put down on social media. i beg of you guys to read a book about antisemitism. look for resources that actually dig deep, primary sources, interviews, multiple news sources so you get a nice collection of perspectives. don’t just read one article and make an assumption about an entire group of people.

and it’s so unfair to blame an entire country for decisions that are being made by the government. it’s like saying “oh everyone in america supports banning abortion” when the abortion bans were choices made by a few powerful people. not the entire country. so when critiquing a country for their choices in war, it’s so important to express that it’s the government at fault. not the people. not the religion that most of them happen to believe in. again, it’s the politics of the situation. not religions.

there that’s all. please don’t kill me or dox me or tell me to kill myself or accuse me of being a jew or a muslim (i am neither) who has control/power over any sort of media influence (i am a disabled, gay, filipino, autistic young gender-non-conformist. i have basically no clout in this society 😂). i am just stating my opinion which is a perfectly fine thing to do online.

#palestine #israel #israel palestine conflict #israel palestine war #israel palestine tensions #antisemitism #anti muslim #anti zionisim

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sibylsleaves · 2 years

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The 911 fic writer’s guide to LA

I asked if anyone would be interested in a short little guide to LA for fic-writing reference, and surprisingly I got a lot of replies. I lived in LA for 20 years so while I’m not an EXPERT per se I thought there might be some knowledge I could share for people who want more info about the city of Los Angeles to add a bit of realism to their fics. I can’t cover everything, so this is just a sampling of stuff that may or may not be useful. I got some additional help from @swiftiesisters14 who added some great insights and details. YMMV of course!

Weather and climate: for the most part, yes, it is very warm and sunny in L.A. the majority of the year. Rain is very uncommon, especially from May - October, and when it does come it usually lasts a couple days up to maybe a week on and off. Rainstorms and thunderstorms are very rare. It does not snow but it does, very rarely, hail. Within a few miles of the ocean, mornings will be quite cold and cloudy thanks the marine layer–this is true even in the summer. “June Gloom” is a phenomenon in LA where we get a lot of cloudy weather in May/June (usually just in the morning although it can sometimes last all day). It can get fairly cold at night during the winter (though almost never below freezing). Even during the summer, nights aren’t as warm as you might imagine, as the dry air makes temperatures drop quicker once the sun goes down (if your characters are going anywhere during a warm day and expect to be there until night, they will most likely bring a jacket).

There’s a HUGE difference in weather/temperature between the coastal parts of the city and areas further east (and especially into the Valley, where it is frequently over 100 F degrees in the summer). Closer to the ocean, highs typically don’t break 90 unless there’s a heat wave, lows typically stay above 50 except for some nights in the winter. September is often the hottest month of the year (this surprises a lot of people). This also coincides with wildfire season, which used to be roughly September-October, but has started earlier and earlier and lasts later and later into the fall (hello climate change).

Most people from LA are fairly sensitive to the cold and will definitely wear jackets and such the minute it drops below 68 degrees. Many Angelenos do not own a proper winter coat or snow boots or rain boots. Air conditioning is very common in homes and businesses, so hot days are less of an issue if you’re staying indoors. The heat here is DRY, so if you’re used to sticky East Coast heat, this is a totally different beast. Hot weekend days result in swamped beaches and tons of beach traffic. When it DOES rain, even just a little drizzle, the entire city tends to go fucking nuts, and everyone forgets how to drive (a stereotype that is unfortunately very accurate). I imagine the 118 gets LOTS of calls on rainy days because Angelenos just do not understand how to deal with rain.

Santa Ana winds: you may have heard of these. they suck. Basically an extremely hot, extremely dry, extremely high-speed wind that blows into LA for a week/up to a few weeks at a time and make your allergies go crazy. Trust me, it’s miserable. It usually happens in fall, although they can happen at other times of the year (and doesn’t necessarily happen every year. They’re unpredictable). A weather advisory will go out discouraging from making outdoor fires/doing fire-related activities during this time, as fires can spread extremely rapidly in these conditions. The Santa Anas have a somewhat mythological status in LA, because people sort of think they make people crazy and unpredictable (i mean, it’s not hard to see why--who wouldn’t be irritable in these conditions?) In addition to the Santa Anas, wind storms in general are not uncommon, especially in fall, and winds can cause a lot of damage to powerlines/trees/etc.

Wildfire season: Usually at its peak in September/October, can last all the way into December some years. Areas that are susceptible to burning are the hilly/mountainous areas that surround LA, including Topanga Canyon, the Santa Monica mountains, the San Gabriel Mountains, Malibu, etc. Even if there is a fire that’s miles and miles away, depending on winds it can cause the air in LA to be very smoky and dangerous to breathe. There can sometimes be ash literally falling from the sky...like you go to your car and it’s just coated in ash. Again, this doesn’t happen every year but it’s becoming more and more frequent. 2020 was a particularly bad wildfire year.

Water: California has basically been in one giant drought for the past two decades. Water conservation is a big deal, especially in LA which literally imports a lot of its water. There’s restrictions on when/how long/how you water your lawn. When conditions get really bad, they will place restrictions on commercial water features (fountains and the like) and do stuff like make it so that restaurants only serve you water if you ask for it. There’s always stuff about shortening showers/washing dishes more efficiently/etc. I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily something Angelenos think about on a day-to-day basis but it is part of living in LA.

Earthquakes: small earthquakes happen fairly frequently and most people won’t even notice them (what often happens is you’ll be sitting there and you’ll be like was that an earthquake? And then you google whether there was an earthquake nearby). Occasionally a small-to-medium earthquake might wake you up in the middle of the night. Larger earthquakes that actually cause injuries/fatalities are much rarer.

Driving and Traffic: traffic in L.A. is no joke. If your characters are driving virtually anywhere during the afternoon, they WILL be stuck in traffic or they will worry about getting stuck in traffic. Fridays are the absolute worst traffic days. Something can be “10 minutes away” and take half an hour to actually drive. (For instance, Buck’s drive to get to Eddie’s? during peak traffic hours that could take easily 30-40 minutes). Traffic is a huge consideration in most Angelenos daily lives–-there are certain places you just DO NOT GO during certain hours of the day if you can avoid it, or you have to budget in extra time in case there’s bad traffic. Gridlock in main arteries of the city is extremely common.

LA drivers are known to be aggressive, decisive, and rude. If you display a single second of hesitation or indecisiveness on the road (whether thats making a turn or changing lanes or running a yellow) you WILL get honked at. Maybe this is why Eddie prefers to have Buck drive him around. Pedestrians on the other hand are incredibly timid and cautious. You will almost never see people in LA jaywalking the way they do in East Coast cities.

A common topic of conversation in LA is various driving routes (yes, it’s a stereotype, but at least when I lived there it was true). Why? Because it is essential to know multiple routes to get from place to place because one or more of them will be congested, and knowing alternate routes can be a lifesaver (although everyone uses apps now, but that is its own topic of discussion amongst Angelenos.)

Freeways are referred to as “the ___” (so the 10, the 405, the 101, the 5, etc. Although the Pacific Coast Highway is just PCH--almost no one calls it the 1). There are very few toll roads in LA--in fact, I don’t know of any.

Parking in L.A. also sucks, and knowledge of little-known, cheap and/or questionably legal places to park in popular neighborhoods is social capital. Restaurants with valet parking outside are very common in certain upscale neighborhoods (Cher Horowitz was right about that).

Public Transportation: has improved somewhat over the past decade when they built out the Metro a little, but is still pretty paltry and inconvenient given the size of the city. L.A. remains a very driving-heavy city. Truthfully, in my 20 years of living in LA i almost never took public transportation except when I was too young to drive and took the bus. LA is also not a very bike-friendly city, and there are only a few streets with dedicated bike lanes. BUT you will often see people biking on dedicated bike paths near the beach.

Geography of the city: It’s hard to fathom just how big and sprawling LA actually is unless you’ve lived here or another geographically huge city like it. You can spend your whole life living in L.A. and there will be parts of the city you have never set foot in and know virtually nothing about (and that is partially because traffic makes getting around to these different enclaves extremely arduous). It is a sprawling behemoth, like six or seven cities smushed into one. And actually, there ARE in fact five other cities/unincorporated communities that exist within the borders of Los Angeles: Santa Monica, Culver City, Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, and Marina del Rey, as well as surrounding municipalities that many people consider “L.A.” (such as Compton, Pasadena, Santa Clarita, Malibu, Long Beach, Burbank, Glendale, etc. etc.) As it would be impossible to run through every neighborhood in L.A., here are just a few popular areas near the downtown area where the 118 firehouse is (apparently) located. This is roughly moving east-west but you can look at a map for more precise geography:

Downtown: definitely the most dense “urban-y” part of L.A. with tons of skyscrapers, high-rises, etc. Downtown LA is huge, with lots of sub-neighborhoods and districts, including the Fashion district, Chinatown, Skid Row, and Little Tokyo. Like any downtown, there are a lot of attractions here, like the convention center, sports arenas, theaters and music venues, nightlife etc. This is where Buck’s loft is according to this helpful guide and based on the establishing shot they use, which includes the East Columbia building, a notable Art Deco building that is smack downtown. (It’s the greenish building with the clock on it that you can see in many episodes). To the southwest of downtown is where you’ll find the University of Southern California (USC) where May is starting college.

Silverlake/LA River area: includes Silver Lake, Echo Park (home to Dodger Stadium), Los Feliz, Little Armenia, Westlake and the Griffith Park area (home to the LA Zoo). To be honest I don’t know this area very well because I lived in West LA and didn’t spend a lot of time over here, and also it has gentrified quite a bit. Silver Lake is pretty artsy and trendy, with a lot of small local businesses, and also has historical ties to the LGBT community so there are lots of queer-friendly bars and community spaces.

Koreatown (aka K-Town): pretty cool/trendy neighborhood that was historically home to L.A.’s large Korean immigrant population. The makeup of this neighborhood now is actually a majority Latine, but you’ll still find a lot of Korean food and markets in K-Town. A very commercial area with lots of bars, restaurants, clubs, and shops as well as apartments. Koreatown has an extremely fascinating history, which I will not go into here.

Hollywood: super touristy, this is where you can find the walk of fame (the stars with celebrities names on them), the Chinese Theater, and like, Ripley’s Believe or Not museum. Used to be where most of the major film studios had their studios, but most of them have moved. Best place in Hollywood in MY opinion is the Hollywood Bowl, which is a beautiful outdoor concert venue tucked into the hills.

West Hollywood: a fairly upscale residential and shopping area, but not a bougie as Beverly Hills and not as touristy as Hollywood. West Hollywood is actually its own city/town (although Hollywood is NOT), and is well-known as a historically LGBT+ village/district (historically much of L.A.’s gay population lived here...these days it’s a bit more complicated thanks to gentrification.) As such it’s got a little more of an “alternative” reputation than Hollywood and Beverly Hills, although to be honest it’s lost a lot of its “edge” so to speak. This is where you’ll find the Sunset Strip (historic nightlife area on Sunset Blvd--I would say its more touristy nightlife). Nearby you’ll also find The Grove shopping center, and the La Brea tarpits and The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), both of which are popular field trip destinations.

Beverly Hills: actually a separate city from LA but it’s kind of right in the middle of it. Very upscale. Home to Rodeo Drive, Lots of upscale shopping, big beautiful houses, luxury hotels, trendy restaurants, etc. It’s basically where all the rich people live and hang out and it’s very, like, bougie and curated. Parts of Beverly Hills are in fact hilly, but most of the commercial areas are flat.

West LA: Lots of smaller residential neighborhoods interspersed with commercial corridors (this is where I’m from). You’ll find Sawtelle Japantown here (kind of a smaller Little Tokyo with Japanese markets and shops), as well as “Little Tehran”/Tehrangeles (lots of Persian markets, shops and restaurants. There’s a large community of Iranian-Americans in this part of the city and you’ll definitely see signs in Persian/Farsi.) Brentwood is another upperclass/rich people neighborhood around here, as well as UCLA’s campus in Westwood. I believe according to this guide that Eddie, Bobby and Athena, and potentially Hen and Karen all live near West LA (looks like Athena and Bobby’s house might be in Culver City? idk)

Culver City: another city within LA. Culturally speaking I’d say Culver city is pretty much like West LA and it has gentrified a LOT in the past decade or so. Idk what else to say about Culver City...it has a romance-centered independent bookstore called The Ripped Bodice. And an ice rink!

Santa Monica: this is slightly further afield but still significant because Santa Monica is where the closest beaches are located, and is obviously home to the Santa Monica Pier (RIP). Parts of Santa Monica are pretty trendy and upscale, and is also kind of “business-y” because a lot of entertainment companies are headquartered here. 3rd Street Promenade is a pedestrian-only shopping district that’s quite popular, with 3 blocks of shops, restaurants, movie theaters, and more. Lots of buskers and street performers. A popular hangout for families and youths (or at least it was when I was a youth). There’s also a huge mall at one end of it.

Other beach communities: Venice Beach (has a very weed and art and hippies vibe, and is where you’ll find the boardwalk with lots of artisan stalls and shops), Marina Del Rey (lots of restaurants and boats and water-based activities), the Palisades (beautiful oceanside cliffy/hilly neighborhood where lots of rich people live), Malibu (very bougie, touristy, and upscale.)

LAX: not a neighborhood, but I thought I’d include the infamous airport of Los Angeles. (There are actually something like 4-5 other nearby airports, but LAX is the biggest). LAX is kind of infamously terrible, because it’s huge, often congested, annoying to navigate, and not very well-planned. Getting in and out during peak travel times can be a nightmare. Driving someone to/from LAX is a true act of love (I only do it for my most beloved family members and friends). The best thing I can say about LAX is that there’s an iconic art installation as you drive in/out, which are these pillars that light up in different colors.

The Valley: directly north of the other areas I just covered. Referred to as one entity by people who don’t live there, but the Valley is actually comprised of many different cities, including LA, Burbank, Calabasas, and San Fernando. It is MUCH hotter here than the rest of LA and a little more suburban-y. My experience of the Valley as someone who does NOT live there is mainly “ugh I have to drive to the Valley.” AKA, it’s to be avoided. Burbank has its own airport and a lot of the film studios are headquartered there.

Demographics: L.A. is one of the most diverse cities in the world. About a quarter of residents of Los Angeles are white (non-hispanic). Latine people make up about half the population (mainly Mexican and Mexican-Americans). There are also sizable Black, East Asian (mainly Chinese, Japanese, and Korean), Arabic, and South Asian populations. Additionally, LA is home to the largest concentration of Armenians and Iranians outside of Armenia and Iran, respectively. There is a significant and diverse Jewish population.

Food: as you might imagine, the huge amount of diversity in L.A. means the food is equally diverse (and extremely delicious). You can find almost any kind of cuisine in L.A., but common types of cuisine include: sushi, thai, Persian (my personal favorite food to get in LA), chinese, pizza, Jewish delis, shawarma, pho, Korean BBQ (particularly in K-Town) and of course, tacos and other Mexican food, along with your standard “American” fare like burgers (you might find yourself wondering why everyone is so obsessed with In-N-Out even though their french fries are such garbage....), seafood (lots of nice-ish seafood places near the beach where the food is overpriced bc you’re really paying for the view), sandwiches (Bay Cities my beloved <3), etc. as well as lots of trendy fusion cuisine. Additionally, everyone who lives in LA has gone to Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles at least once their life--it is an institution.

Housing: Expensive. I mean, what did you expect? Single-family homes are quite common in LA vs. apartment buildings and condos. In addition, there is a HUGE population of unhoused people in Los Angeles (in fact it ranks No. 2 for the highest number of people experiencing homelessness in the US). I won’t go into all the political hows and whys here, but this is a huge humanitarian crisis and a powder-keg issue amongst LA residents.

Most houses have a backyard and a front lawn and may or may not have a fence/gate. Few houses have basements. I don’t really know why that is.

Lots of houses and apartment complexes have pools, but mainly in richer/upper-class neighborhoods who can afford the upkeep. Many LA parks have a community pool. Some schools even do, too.

Trees and flowers: I personally like knowing what kind of plants there are in any given setting, so here are some noteworthy trees and flowers found in LA:

Palm trees -- of course. The classic. Particularly common to the Venice, Santa Monica, and Beverly Hills areas, but you can find them all over. There are actually a lot of different types, but the most common is the extremely tall skinny Mexican fan palm variety.

Jacarandas -- certain neighborhoods in LA will burst into furious purple bloom during jacaranda season (usually April-June) and the sidewalks will be littered with squished flowers for weeks

Ficus trees -- idk maybe these were specific to my neighborhood but we had a LOT of them

Birds of paradise -- I think this is the official flower of LA. Found in a lot of gardens.

Bougainvillea

Night-blooming jasmine -- smells incredible

Other notes: trees don’t really change color in the fall--you might see a few here and there with orange leaves, but for the most part we don’t get that nice fall foliage (nor do we really...have a fall season...). Grass lawns are common in residential areas (sadly) but more and more people are replacing them with succulent gardens and native gardens (yay!).

School: Public schools in LA go Grades K-5 for elementary, 6-8 for Middle School, and 9-12 for High School. The school year starts mid-August and ends mid-June (evidently they changed this since I was in school). Kids get three weeks of vacation for winter break (usually the week before Christmas - week after New Years) and one week for Spring Break (around Easter).

Sports: there are TOO many sports teams for one city, even one as big as ours (absurdly, four of them share the same arena). They are as follows:

Baseball: the Dodgers are the main L.A. team (who are doing EXTREMELY well this season). They play at Dodger Stadium in Echo Park, and their fans tend to be more die-hard and stalwart. There’s also the Anaheim Angels, which some Angelenos root for, who play...idk somewhere in Anaheim.

Basketball: the Lakers, of course, and the Clippers. They both play at Staples Center which is located downtown (and as of last year is called Crypto.com Arena, ugh). In my experience Lakers fans are the most fair-weather of LA sports fans--they get super intense when the Lakers are good, and when they’re not, well... Clippers fans tend to be more die-hard and less fair-weather because, well, they have to be (sorry). The Sparks are the WNBA team. They ALSO play at the Staples Center (aka Crypto.com Arena but I refuse to call it that).

Hockey: the Kings. They ALSO play at The Stadium Formerly Known as Staples Center. I don’t follow hockey so idk anything else about them.

Football: the Rams and the Chargers. They both play at SoFi stadium in Inglewood (near the airport). Both are recent additions (2016 and 2017 respectively I think). When I lived in LA we had zero football teams and now we have two so I have no idea whats going on there.

Soccer: LAFC (Los Angeles Football Club) who play at the Banc of California Stadium near downtown and LA Galaxy who play at Dignity Health Sports Club near Compton. There is also a women’s team, Angel City FC, who also play at Banc of California Stadium. I know virtually nothing about soccer but hey, the stadium is going to feature heavily in the season 6 premiere!

Hollywood/celebrities/the Film Industry: you will absolutely see celebrities roaming around L.A. from time to time, especially if you frequent certain trendy areas like West Hollywood/Melrose, Santa Monica, Brentwood, etc. I wouldn’t say it’s common, but it’s not super rare. (I’ve seen like a handful of celebrities in the 20 years I lived there.)

You will DEFINITELY see filming happening all around the city. Usually you’ll see signs posted (usually with code names for whatever project it is), trucks, and tons of crewmembers walking around. Occasionally a street or other location might be blocked off for filming, but usually not anything too disruptive.

You will also see those “star-watchers” bus tours (where people go on a tour bus and they like drive around celebrity neighborhoods and look at celebrity houses) in and around the Beverly Hills, Hollywood, and West Hollywood areas. I use to see these tour buses every single day on my commute through Beverly Hills.

There’s also, of course, many people living in LA who work in the industry or are trying to make it as an actor or writer or what have you. There are disproportionately attractive waiters/baristas in certain parts of LA because many of them are waiting tables to support acting careers. This is a stereotype but it’s also pretty true in my experience.

Studios are kind of sprinkled all over the city--there are some in West LA, some in West Hollywood, but the biggest concentration of studios is in Burbank, which is actually its own city in the Valley.

Places to go: in case you want some ideas for fun outings for fic purposes, here’s a list of places in or within reasonable distance of LA (not an exhaustive list obviously):

Disneyland

Universal Studios

Knott’s Berry Farm (this is a small-ish theme park, not an actual berry farm in case that’s unclear)

Six Flags

The Long Beach Aquarium

The LA Zoo (of course)

The Griffith’s Observatory (and Griffith Park in general)

The Getty Museum (very beautiful museum up in the hills with a gorgeous view of the city)

The Getty Villa (different place, also a museum)

Huntington Gardens/Library/Museum

Walt Disney Concert Hall

Echo Park Lake (they have SWAN BOATS 🦢)

LA Science Center/Museum of Natural History

Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA)

JPL (Jet Propulsion Lab): this is where Karen works. Located in Pasadena. Once or twice a year they’ll do an open house where you can go and learn all about the types of stuff they’re doing. It’s very cool!

Catalina Island

Various beaches--closest would be Santa Monica, Venice, Will Rogers (Pacific Palisades), Playa Del Rey, Dockweiler (to my knowledge this is the only beach that allows bonfires). A bit further: Hermosa Beach, Long Beach, Manhattan Beach, Malibu, Huntington Beach

San Diego! Technically close enough for a day trip, but due to traffic you’d most likely want to stay the night.

Palm Springs (same kind of deal, although I’ve done it as a day trip)

If there’s anything I left out that you want to know about, please shoot me a message and I’ll add it! If you spot any errors, please also let me know. This is based mostly on my knowledge/experience of living in LA, but I did some additional research for stuff I wasn’t sure about or just needed a little more detail on (shout out to @swiftiesisters14 for her help!)

The geography might be a little generalized and I left out a LOT of the city, mostly because I just don’t think anyone wants to read a twenty-page paper on LA neighborhoods. If you want any additional details on a certain area/topic feel free to shoot me a message and I’ll do my best to help.

In general, if you ever have questions about LA while writing fic, I am happy to answer to them (if I can).

#911 fic writing reference #911 fic writers guide to LA #i actually had so much fun putting this together #no idea if any of it is remotely helpful but hey now you know a little more about LA

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whentherewerebicycles · 6 months

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ugh I am really struggling with a thing with a former student/mentee of mine. in the week or two of the post-hamas attack aftermath I posted something on instagram that was basically like, i feel an obligation to be an informed global citizen and believe me I read/think about/despair over the news every day but I also think it’s ok to really viscerally hate “doing politics” on social media, where complex, centuries-old geopolitical and cultural conflicts get reduced to a sensationalized infographic some teenager designed on canva last night. at the time I was watching people spread rampant misinformation about the hospital explosion when we had zero conclusive information, and had also just heard jon favreau talking about research indicating that something like 80% of the images and videos people were sharing on social media weren’t actually FROM the current conflict or couldn’t be verified as real. and idk I also have some private thoughts about how american leftists in particular really glom onto this issue because we perceive israelis as ‘white people’ and palestinians as people of color and we get to feel like we are exorcising our own country’s racial demons by advocating for the expulsion of the israeli people from land that many of them actually have deep historical ties to and at least a semi-legitimate cultural and religious claim to inhabiting.

to be clear I think the current israeli government is pretty much your trump-inspired shitty/evil right-wing militaristic populist movement and I feel like their response has squandered every single ounce of empathy garnered by the hamas attacks!! but idk I guess what I want to carve out space for is like, the right to say I AM NOT AN EXPERT HERE. I DO NOT HAVE DEEP ENOUGH KNOWLEDGE TO FULLY UNDERSTAND THE ROOTS OF THIS CONFLICT. I WORRY ABOUT SPREADING DANGEROUS MISINFORMATION IN BOTH DIRECTIONS IF I SHARE UNVERIFIED SOURCES OR REDUCTIVE TAKES. ALSO I AM A PRIVATE CITIZEN AND I DO NOT HAVE A “PLATFORM” JUST BECAUSE I HAVE A SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNT. I RESERVE THE RIGHT TO BE CONFUSED, TO NOT PASS SNAP JUDGMENTS ON RAPIDLY EVOLVING INTERNATIONAL INCIDENTS, AND TO ENGAGE IN POLITICS BY MEANS OTHER THAN SOCIAL MEDIA POSTING. but idk this former student, who I had a really good relationship with for many years, has just come after me in my DMs and keeps sending me posts implying that anyone who is not furiously posting right now is pro-Palestinian genocide, etc etc, and meanwhile she is posting hundreds of unverified stories a day from Arabic-language sources that aren’t just like, anti-Zionist but are actively pro-Hamas, actively denying that the attacks on Israel happened, and actively calling for the immediate and violent expulsion of all Jews from the area. dude idk she’s not my student anymore so I think I’m just going to disengage/not respond and continue staying off insta because it sucks out there!! but it sucks!

I also just refuse to experience a war via unfiltered social media posts again. I did that for a month or two at the start of the ukraine invasion and I can’t unsee some of the stuff I saw on telegram. I don’t actually think any of us have a moral obligation to watch or share a 24/7 feed of graphic images of maimed corpses and crying children. I can’t make the violence STOP by watching that content and I also don’t believe that ravenously consuming the most terrible moments of people’s lives is a form of meaningful political solidarity. WHATEVER as you can see I still feel super conflicted about how to feel about all of this but I also have to remind myself that IT’S NOT NORMAL to click through my stories or scroll down my feed alternating between liking people’s cat photos and watching people dying half a world away. we were NOT BUILT to process world-historical events this way and it is OKAY to opt out of watching a livestream of human suffering you are personally powerless to do anything about.

#I think it is fine to post a lot about an issue you are passionate about! she is clearly passionate about this!#but I hate that the active-posting crowd often acts like people who don’t do exactly the same thing are evil complicit or indifferent #I am so distressed about the state of the world right now!!!!#but I just don’t want to do politics like that it makes me feel so much worse and often makes me feel more powerless

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riality-check · 1 year

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Advice for New Fans

AKA: Things I Wish I Knew When I First Started Out

Disclaimers

I’m by no means an expert.

This list is not comprehensive. Please add your own thoughts to it!

I’m approaching this from a lurker/fic writer perspective, so artists/gifmakers etc. might have different perspectives.

I’m also really only on tumblr and ao3, so different advice might apply to different sites.

This advice will not apply in every single case; it is just broad generalization that I have found to work most of the time.

General

Protect your personal information! I’m going to sound like my mother for a minute, but be aware of how much you’re sharing online. Don’t make yourself easier to dox by sharing personal information like names, locations, etc. Be careful. The internet is more good than bad, but bad still exists. Please protect yourself, especially if you’re a minor.

Respect people’s boundaries! For example, if accounts say “minors do not interact,” don’t interact if you’re underage. It sucks (I’ve been here personally), but it’s better for everyone if you scroll away. Boundaries like that are in place for people to curate their own online experiences for whatever reason they see fit. You don’t have to understand a boundary, but you do have to respect it. Be mature.

Don’t be afraid to create! If you’re debating over whether or not to hit the post button, do it. Just do it. If you had fun making whatever your creation is, and you want to share it with people, DO IT. This kind of stuff is supposed to be fun, and it’s all about collaboration. There’s an audience for everything, so someone will absolutely see what you put out and love it, even if you just made it for yourself.

Don’t feel ashamed for not creating! If you’re nervous or unsure about making something, but still want to participate, that’s totally fine! There are so many ways to do that, and I’ll talk about them later in this post. But even if you’re not creating, you’re still a vital participant in fandom (I remember all of my regular commenters!)

Two cakes! Just because it’s been done before doesn’t mean it’s been done by you. No one can make what you make in the way you make it, so even if it is similar to something that already exists, go for it! Chances are, people want more of that thing and will be happy to see it.

Don’t be afraid to join fandom spaces! If you see a link for a Discord server you’re interested in (and you meet requirements set by the mods), join it! If you see an event you want to participate in, participate in it! Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there and talk to people. More often than not, you’ll make really awesome friends, and you’ll have a lot of fun. We’re all just people, there’s nothing to be afraid of.

Tumblr

Don’t be afraid to change up your blog! I’m going to be honest: most people won’t care about your blog title. Make it as silly as you want and change it on your own time. Your url isn’t permanent (though it is more recognizable), so feel free to change it whenever and however you see fit. Icon, layout, anything else, change it up. Nothing here is set in stone, so make it what you want!

Curate your experience! “Unfollow” and “block” should be your best friends. Don’t like something? Unfollow. Still keep seeing it? Block. Poof, all gone, you’re done. Don’t pick fights. Don’t waste time energy on fighting when you could be making something or doing something that makes you happy. Follow who you want, like what makes you happy, and, most importantly, REBLOG.

Reblog, reblog, reblog! You gotta do it. It’s how this site works. If you enjoy something enough that you want to show another person, hit that reblog button. It’s how more people see the post, and it makes creatives super happy to see. Likes are for storage, reblogs are for sharing.

Tag your stuff! I really, really wish someone had told me this earlier because now my blog is an absolute wreck. Use tags to make your life easier and your blog more filterable. They don’t have to be funky custom tags like some people use. Fandom tags are a good place to start, and then you can add character, ship, and personal tags if you’re feeling fancy. But please, please, please, tag your stuff, it’s going to make it easier to find it all in the long run. You’ll thank me later.

Talk in the tags! In addition to being organizational, the tags are a fun little place for you to share your thoughts, and only OP (original poster) and the person you reblogged it from. As a writer, I love seeing people’s thoughts in the tags, so don’t be afraid to share them, weird or incoherent or long as they may be!

Yes, and! tumblr has a really, really cool “yes, and” culture. Meaning, if you see a cool little post and have your own ideas that you want other people to see, reblog and add on to it! Just go for it. You’re not stealing anyone’s post or ideas, you’re adding your own thoughts, and, chances are, other people are going to find that pretty cool (and may even add some thoughts on your thoughts, and down the line it goes!)

Post your stuff! I seriously wish I had done this earlier. For a long time, I only posted on ao3 and didn’t really bother with tumblr, which I kind of regret. For example, have you written a snippet you can’t fit into your fic? Post it! Posting to tumblr is a really fun way to get engagement on stuff you may not be ready to post to other sites, like ao3, or it is the final site you had in mind. Whatever the case, go for it! Tag with your fandom, characters, ships, any personal or additional tags, and send it out into the world. More people are going to love it than you think, I promise.

AO3

Titles! Don’t sweat the title too much. Most people don’t read it. They’re going to pay a lot more attention to the summary and tags of your fic. If you are struggling with a title, I recommend song lyrics or a phrase you really like from your fic.

Summaries! This is what’s going to draw your reader into your fic. Don’t just say “I’m bad at summaries,” that’s not going to interest people. Either summarize your fic in one sentence or take an engaging excerpt from it and copy it into the summary box. No matter how bad you think that is, it’s better than no summary at all.

Tagging! Honestly, same principle as tumblr, but for a different reason. Tag your stuff so that people know exactly what’s happening in your fic. Most people filter by tags, meaning that what you put ensures that they get the best reading experience possible. Best advice I can give: tag major romantic and platonic relationships, characters, dynamics (ex: Steve Harrington Has a Crush on Eddie Munson), and themes of the fic (ex: fluff, angst, pwp, etc.). Better advice: go find the fics you like that are similar to what you’re writing and see how they tag.

Format! This is the biggest one, and it’s the thing that made me want to create this post in the first place. Please, do not give me a wall of text to read when I click the link to what looks like an amazing fic. It hurts my soul. The best advice I have for format is to read actual books and see how they’re formatted. Briefer, more simplistic advice: start a new paragraph every time someone new speaks or the focus changes. You also don’t have to indent on ao3, and if you’re in Rich Text, it’ll put spaces between paragraphs for you. Also, there’s a horizontal line button in rich text, so you don’t have to spam the underscore key to manually create one.

Comment! I personally have to get better at this, but comment! If you liked the fic, share your thoughts, even if it’s just a little heart emoji! Writers spend so much time on their fics, and they love feedback that’s a little more in depth than a kudo (although kudos are always appreciated)! If you’re able to, comment. You’ll make a writer’s day, I promise. If you’re a writer, don’t feel pressured to respond to every comment. If you want to, go for it! If you don’t, that’s okay, too. You’re all good either way.

Conclusion

Please add on to this with whatever you wish you were told when you were first starting out! And new fans, welcome! We’re happy to have you here, and we hope you have fun!

#save for later #ria life

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a-student-out-of-time · 9 months

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Despair Time: The Meaning of “Thematic Significance”

//Hey everyone, Mod Bubbles here again.

//Now, I’m not going to pretend like you haven’t heard me talk about Despair Time over and over at this point, as people often ask me my thoughts or challenge me on my personal theories. I still stand by much of what I’ve said, as I don’t feel the counter-arguments people have presented, while sound in many ways, are particularly strong and also rely on plenty of assumptions.

//I’m not here to talk about any of that.

//Instead, I want to talk about something else. I recently got another ask about DT, and this one wasn’t a theory question, but an entirely different one. One that actually got me thinking as soon as I read it:

//I’ll be the first to say, no, I didn’t write DT. I’m not part of the writing team and I don’t know any of the people involved. If I was, I doubt I’d be pushing any of my theories as hard as I have. Instead, this ask got me thinking about a recurring exception people have taken to my theories and I think I know exactly why.

//I don’t think I’ve properly explained what exactly I mean when I talk about themes and messages. Which is a pretty big oversight, given how much I’ve brought it up.

//I don’t blame anyone for that. After all, as impassioned as fans of any work can be, not everyone is a writer, nor are they as intimately familiar with the mechanics of writing as someone who’s spent well over a decade working toward becoming one.

//But as with many fields with multiple sub-topics to cover, and no one right way to do them all, I also don’t claim to be an expert. I’m just someone who has a passion for this stuff, and it’s what forms the cruxes of my theories. That’s what I want to share with you now, and to hopefully clear up some misunderstandings.

(Just so you know, this has been in the works for a while and I’ve already covered the points I’ve made here at some points before, but I’m sticking with what I’ve written so far.)

//There is a very common stance on writing that anything can happen. That you, as a creator, have infinite freedom to create. This is true in many aspects when it comes to creating a fictional setting and populating it with characters, but you also need to understand another important thing about writing: its limitations.

//Now, I don’t mean limitations on creativity. I mean things like themes, narratives, plot structure, the very bones of a story. These can often be changed and distorted in different and creative ways depending on the work, but you can only bend them so far before they break, and the story breaks with them.

//For example, why is it that when a protagonist dies, it’s often either very early on in the story, or at the climax? You could potentially have it work if they died at the halfway point and another took over, sure. But would it make sense for them to die 23% of the way into the story? 62%? No, because these simply don’t work.

//Take the classic Three-Act Structure. You can see the points at which the story rises and falls between different events, steadily building before arriving at a major moment and then diving back down into another. Of course, this doesn’t apply well to Danganronpa.

//DR has more in line with the five-act structure (technically six, but same logic), which takes all of this and moves it across a wider series of events. Now, you’d be forgiven for looking at this graph and thinking that Act 3′s need to be the climax or turning point, when it can really happen at any point between 3, 4 and 5. As I said, things can be bent in new ways.

//This is where I feel much of the logic for the counter-arguments to my theories comes from, how the story is building up to a turning point in Chapter 3, which means she’s more likely to double down in Chapter 2 in regards to not trusting people.

//if I were looking it purely objectively on a graph like this, I’d understand. But I have to disagree for the reasons I keep bringing up: themes.

___________________________________________________

//In its most basic form, a theme can be thought of as the underlying meaning of a story. What exactly is this piece of art trying to tell us and why? Some are much more overt than others, and DR is definitely in that category regarding its continuous and very unsubtle themes of hope and despair.

//DT, on the other hand, takes the approach and discusses the themes of trust and distrust. These are evident as early as the prologue, where Teruko asks Xander a simple question:

//Now, this is already a huge departure from the canon games, and this moment sets Teruko apart from people like Makoto, Kaede, Shuichi, Komaru, and even Hajime. Whereas most protags would be the ones keeping everyone together or directing their anger at the mastermind, Teruko already feels a sense of doubt against everyone else.

//And as we later learn, this is not for no reason. Yet at the same time, she reels back on that comment when Xander seems uncomfortable.

//Yet he actually agrees with her, up to a point:

//The prologue cements the core theme in here, and Chapter 1 goes a step further and shows us how that sense of trust can go wrong.

//Teruko, who’d spent the chapter hanging out with people she considered friends- especially Xander and Min- gets betrayed hardcore by both of them. Xander is pushed into stabbing Teruko thanks to a mysterious note he received, and his own belief that it was the right call, and Min’s decision to try and frame her for Xander’s accidental death.

//All of this, combined with the group’s unwillingness to even hear her out at first and instead forcing her to defend herself on her own, drives Teruko to give up on trusting people entirely. Come Chapter 2, we see her sticking to that.

//Chapter 1 of DT is very much an exploration of how having too much trust in others can backfire significantly. Does that mean that Chapter 2 would see more doubling down on that? Not necessarily.

//A common mistake made by both amateur writers and some readers is the idea that, because a viewpoint is held by the protagonist, that means it’s the correct one. This is called Protagonist-Centered Morality, and it’s why you get a lot of bad stories where the protag gets away with doing hypocritical things because they’re the hero.

//Now, it can be easy to fall into that with Teruko, who I’ve seen many describe as the most realistic and grounded protag because she understand the situation. Of course, we as the audience know that no amount of trusting and hoping is going to just make the killing game stop two chapters in, but the characters don’t know that.

//There’s also a common view held by many in the DR fandom that characters can be preemptively judged based entirely on their behavior; in particular how people like Eden in DT or Shion in Heartless Deceit are often slapped with the villain card. That being kind and optimistic makes them naive at best or secretly evil at worse.

//I don’t like these sorts of theories because they aren’t based on actual in-universe foreshadowing or hinting. Instead, it feels more like metagaming; using previous experiences with these archetypes and basing your expectations on that, rather than what’s actually in the text.

//When you focus so much on the meta aspects of these fangans, especially ones that aren’t adhering to the regular DR formula, it can really undermine the experiences. With this sort of narrative metagaming, you’re not engaged with the work itself, but the tropes of the series you’re more familiar with.

//Not to mention it feels a bit disrespectful to assume all DR writers are drawing from the exact same idea book.

//We are, but we can explore those ideas in new ways, and that doesn’t always equate to “optimistic character dies/is evil.” I bring all of this up because Chapter 2 is a good source of another important piece of writing: contrast.

_______________________________________________________

//You may have heard a bit of writing advice that says you need to raise the stakes to keep an audience engaged. This is wrong for many reasons, and instead it’s more accurate to say that a story shouldn’t repeat itself too often to keep people engaged. Indeed, many people find grounded stories about characters overcoming emotional issues more compelling than plots about saving the world.

//One of the best ways to avoid repetition is to provide different challenges to your characters. Bigger threats are one option, but there’s also new and unfamiliar situations, which is where I think we’re going with this chapter.

//DT’s first chapter showed us the story of Teruko waking up, meeting a group of her peers, getting to know them, and despite the danger of their situation, offering them a sense of trust...right before all of it is shattered by Xander’s and Min’s actions. That leaves her in a very different position from when she began, now deciding not to trust anyone.

//I don’t believe Chapter 2 is doubling down because so much of it has been devoted to the exact opposite. Many of the characters have been tearing into Teruko for her unwillingness to trust, particularly how she pulls a knife on Charles and J, and how she isolates herself to the point of playing with cacti to stave off boredom.

//To put it another way that might make a bit more sense, have you ever noticed that plans, like heists or military operations, are more likely to succeed when we see less of them? When you get the full details of a plan, it seems more likely to fail in some ways when they put it into action. When you don’t, you get big dramatic reveals of how the plan actually works.

//The reason for that is simple: if you have the plan shown in full once, and it plays out exactly as described, you may as well have either not shown one of them or have them happening concurrently. Otherwise, you’re just repeating yourself unnecessarily.

//Likewise, the more a point is brought up, discussed or challenged in a story or storyline, and the more the protagonist adheres to it, the more likely it is that they’re going to either dismiss that thought by the end or see it in a new perspective. This is especially true if the point is being directly challenged at first, then seemingly not.

//I talk about Eden a lot in this regard as well, because her scene is really the big one that seals this for me. I’ve seen people talk about her optimistic attitude as being naive at best or a sign of villainy at worse, and that’s a take that actually appears in the story with Arei.

//And then she immediately turns that around and admits that, no, she doesn’t believe any of that. In fact, she wants to be like Eden.

//It still hurts to see her like this, just fyi ^^;

//But continuing on, a similar sort of situation occurs earlier with Teruko and Eden in the kitchen, where they talk about why Eden wants to be friends with her so much. Teruko admits that Eden’s the last person she wants to be friends with. Not because she doesn’t like her, but rather that it would hurt too much to lose her.

//Teruko appreciates her kindness, but she also views Eden as naive. She’s under the impression that optimism could only come from a place of ignorance or childishness. The idea that these are things you’re supposed to grow out of, and that being a pessimistic cynic is the rational response to betrayal.

//And of course, Eden tells her how it REALLY is.

//Now, it might be easy to look at this and say “Okay, but you’re still in a killing game and people are gonna die, so why does it matter?”

//It matters because she gets through to Teruko with this speech, if only for a moment.

//Teruko has spent the first three episodes of this chapter pushing people away, threatening them, telling them they’re going to die and that trust is stupid. Yet when Eden tells her this, it makes her heart stir. To the point that she has to deny it to herself that she’s actually moved by her words.

//This is how I can pretty confidently say that Teruko doubling down on her cynicism is very unlikely. She’s also unlikely to dive right back into friendship, but this might be the first taste of compassion she’s had in a long time.

//And this is also why I say DT is not this grimdark edgefest that so many theorists seem to portray it as. The metagaming with character archetypes combined with a lot of assumptions and circumstantial evidence has already lead a lot of people to conclude Eden is the killer and that’s why Teruko will double down.

//None of that is substantiated by the actual character interactions and themes. If that were true, scenes like this would either not exist or they’d exist just to prove Eden wrong. Or, as I’ve seen much more frequently in grimdark stories, Eden would have been the first victim to cement that theme home right from the start.

//And more importantly, there are always the hidden quotes with these characters, whom I refer to many times for these sorts of theories. What’s Teruko’s?

//Chapter 1 demonstrated how far her trust issues go, where two of her friends betrayed her in different ways, and she responded by trying to disconnect herself from the lives of everyone in the game. Yet Teruko cannot, and will never, be able to do that so long as this Killing Game is ongoing.

//In a killing game, either one person wins or one person loses, and Teruko needs to be on the winning side if she wants to live. She’s already made it clear she’d rather not kill or leave the site of the killing game, so that means she has to participate whether she wants to or not.

//And to participate, even from a purely self-interested perspective, she needs to be willing to trust people at their word in some respects. That, I think, can be the setup for a very interesting situation for this chapter.

//Now, you might say “Well, Bubbles, have you considered how many characters in DR aren’t who they say they are? Why are you so certain that Eden or even Teruko is being honest? What if there’s a twist reveal with them?”

//To which I say, yes, I have actually thought of that. In fact, we’ve already seen that with the fandom’s favorite motivational speaker, who is also a perfect example of what I’m talking about.

________________________________________________

//People really like David. A lot. To the point that it actually surprised the creator, who was convinced everyone would hate his guts after this chapter. And I will admit, I am one of those who do.

//I really hate David. A lot. I will, however, be as unbiased as I can in my examination of him, as he’s a perfect example of what I’m talking about.

//The thing about twist reveal characters is that their true nature is always hinted at and foreshadowed in some manner, either in the story or their FTEs (I’d prefer if it was in the story, but maybe that’s just me).

//You see it with characters like Toko, Mukuro, the whole of Class 77-B sans Chiaki, and Korekiyo. They’re not always satisfying, admittedly, but the signs are at least there.

//Super Danganronpa Another 2 is full of these for characters like the Voids and Kanade, who all have little moments here and there, be it in the main story or their FTEs, where they let their true personalities leak through before it’s revealed what they really are.

//Any good twist reveal benefits from foreshadowing, and David is no exception. In fact, seeing DT for the first time, I was already unwilling to trust him right from the get go.

//He puts on this facade of an inspiring, upstanding dude. But as soon as he thinks he’s alone?

//Now, you’d be forgiven for seeing this as a sign that David doesn’t like his title but still wants to help people. That maybe he doesn’t like dealing with people, but nevertheless has good intentions. After all, don’t his interactions with people like Xander and Arei show that?

//I’m sorry, but it’s quite the opposite.

//As we’ve since learned, David Chiem is a manipulative bastard. He not only doesn’t give a damn about other people, he’s an raging misanthrope who looks down on everyone else.

//Not only that, he is actively cruel and malicious toward everyone in the game for no damn reason. Nobody ever actively bullied him, mocked him or did anything to make his life miserable. Yet he lashes out, calling people names, deliberately saying hateful and cruel remarks for no reason other than to hurt them.

//I’ve seen some people try to suggest that David actually does have good intentions, or that he’s doing this for a good cause.

//Pardon my French, but that’s complete bullshit. Here’s why:

//If David had good intentions, he wouldn’t have done any of what he did. He spent the better part of this chapter lying and making things up, from his supposed secret about a family history of depression to the idea that he got Xander’s secret in the trial.

//Unlike Eden, who wears her heart on her sleeve and has never shown a malicious bone in her body, David very clearly hates the people around him. Even before Episode 11, the cracks in his facade were always visible.

//This is also not brushed away with the notion that he’s only like this because Xander died. That may have exacerbated things, but this is David. This is how he really is, fully exposed. He is filled with unmitigated anger and bitterness, and Xander would probably hate his guts if he saw him like this.

//The big reason why I see no good in his actions is because he doesn’t have anyone’s best interest in mind.

//Take Nico, for example. I’m not going to get into the discourse over it, but Nico’s secret is that they’re nonbinary and received absolutely no support for it their whole life. It’s clearly not something they want to talk about, yet David keeps trying to drag it out of them until they relent.

//Likewise, Hu doesn’t want to talk about her secret, yet David keeps trying to press her on it, but then gives up when she doesn’t seem receptive. Instead, they talk about some other secrets, like how Hu used to go by the name “Julia.”

//And what happens later in the trial?

//This is evil. This is unquestionably malicious evil. David couldn’t get her to spill her secrets, so he goes out of his way to harm her with what he does know. How anyone can see this as anything less than evil is beyond me.

//But it also illustrates my point: if Eden is kind by choice, David is kind by motive. He doesn’t care about people, he care about what those people can do for him, and to him, kindness and inspiration is the best way to achieve that goal.

//The thing about manipulators is that they’re as superficial as they come. Their facade is only there to take advantage of trust, yet even when any sort of good graces are lost, they will still use what they know to try and turn things around. When they can’t do that, they just get aggressive and threaten people.

//If you want more proof, here are some lists to look up if you want:

//I’ve looked over David’s actions and attitudes many times, and he dolls out love-bombing pretty frequently, especially with Xander. Everything on these lists, he’s done at some point.

//This isn’t about whether or not I think he’s the killer, but instead reinforces my point about the themes of DT. If Eden represents kindness through choice, and Charles and Arei represent the willingness to change for the better, David represents everything Teruko fears.

//It’s very interesting to look back and see that, when David reveals himself, Teruko isn’t nearly as shocked or appalled as the others. She’d already seen he was putting on a mask, so to her, thus must’ve just felt like a “told ya so” moment. She already expects the worst out of the others, so seeing this already reaffirms what she believes.

//What sense is there in having her double down from that point on?

_________________________________________________

//So, I hope that clears up some of the misunderstandings that may have come from my previous posts. When I talk about thematic significance, this is what I’m referring to. The actual driving ideas and intentions behind a story.

//This isn’t me complaining about elements of the story I don’t like, this isn’t me trying to rewrite it because I think I know better and this isn’t meant to be an insult to anyone who’s ever made a theory I’ve disagreed with. None of that is ever my intention.

//I admit I do find it a little hypocritical that people will accuse me of wanting to rewrite the entire story to fit my desires for it, when I’ve seen theories that do everything from frame characters like Eden and Hu as the villains for incredibly petty reasons, giving them motivations that make no sense for them as characters, to trying to suggest David is the real hero of this story. He’s not. He’s a villain, you guys.

//Putting that aside, all of this is just me hardcore analyzing the story based on the evidence that we’ve been given, and from careful contemplating of the story thus far. What’s my conclusion?

//Teruko is our protagonist, and she’s in a unique position as someone who has to be the one to learn the importance of trust and friendship. This story is her character journey, and while I do think it’s possible for her to double down at some point, I have my doubts that this entire story will be about her getting worse before she gets better.

//Likewise, Eden is our support, and she’s the one who embodies a genuinely optimistic hope, meant to invoke the same sort of role as Makoto or Chiaki, but in a bit more of a side role. If she weren’t meant to serve that role, she would either have died first in this game, and she’s either poised to face a similar fate as Chiaki or she’ll be a survivor. That’s my prediction, at least.

//I think this is what makes this a part of the Danganronpa fangan universe. The overarching nature of this series is about the better angels of our nature overcoming adversity, even in the face of overwhelming despair. If you have a fangan that doesn’t really do that, I greatly hesitate to even call it “Danganronpa.”

//That journey of overcoming adversity doesn’t always equate to perpetual upward momentum, and sometimes people will stumble or not survive the journey, but that doesn’t mean any of it was pointless. It becomes pointless when the story doesn’t offer any sort of character growth or any resolution beyond “Everything is awful, we should just lay down and die.”

//That’s not what Despair Time is, and this is why I emphasize that constantly. Teruko is not our typical protagonist and this isn’t our typical story, but even through a darker and more adversarial group, that doesn’t equate to a story that’s reinforcing those points, but is instead challenging them and showing why going too far in either direction will only lead to failure.

//I have a lot to say about Teruko in particular, but I’ll save those for a proper character analysis. For now, I hope this has cleared up my points about thematic relevance and made my theories make a bit more sense.

//And if you made it this far, thanks for reading!

#mod talks #a student out of time #essay #drdt #danganronpa despair time #writing advice #themes

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ticklystuff · 5 months

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hello hello! ✨ i’m back from my travels to terrorize this place again heheee i’ve been gone since late october so any messages or asks haven’t been looked at but i will get to them!

but ya i was mostly in japan for vacation (singapore for work and philippines for family too but those were both bleh) and i traveled alone and it was so fun! my biggest concern was that i’d get lonely but that was never the case because i kept running into so many cool people, some of which i’m friends with now and i’d love to go back in a couple of years just to see them again. would also love to hike mt fuji next time too!

also this trip was basically unlimited calories so i got to eat all the yummy food i saw~ my feet are super fucked up tho..

i also did a ton of shopping (had to buy 2 extra suitcases lol) and just wanted to share some of the goods hehe

official primaniac perfumes for childe and zhongli! i went to all four animate stores in tokyo (shibuya, shinjuku, akihabara, ikebukoro) and childe’s was the only one sold out in all four. i gave up looking for him after the fourth store BUT while i was shopping in ginza i luckily happened to walk past the official primaniacs store (not sure why i didnt think of checking there first) and he was in stock!

childe’s kinda smells like the ocean, with hints of mint and vanilla. it’s refreshing and if i had to describe it, the scent is light, warm, comforting, slightly flirty

zhongli’s is kinda hard for me to describe. it’s more bold but also gentle?? i smell some kind of wood and also cherries i think? it makes me feel like i should be sitting at a fancy bar with a cup of bourbon that’s worth more than my life

anyway i’m not an expert when it comes to perfumes so here are threads that go into more detail: childe zhongli

other official genshin merch i bought! childe whale and zhongli dragon plushies, zhongli bracelet, and childe card holder. the bracelet is cute and i can see myself using it!

i also bought an itto keychain for my best friend at work, but i’m too lazy to pull it out of the gift bag i made for her lol

came across official xiao and aether figures in akihabara! they were having a cute date in the defect pile 💕 (didn’t buy these though)

my favorite purchases~ japanese knife and three others for my closest friends hehe (i already gave out one before this pic) they’re so pretty and they slice so good! i can’t wait to start cooking with mine

i bought more stuff than what was pictured but this post would go on forever if i talked about everything and its mostly clothes and skincare anyway lol

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nite-puff · 11 months

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I don’t think Taka has ever shot a gun. I believe you have to be over 20 in Japan to even get a license to use a gun, not to mention the tests and fees associated with it. And with how strict Japan is about gun usage for civilians, I don’t think it’s feasible to even think that Takaaki would’ve been able to train him at the police department’s shooting range (if they even have those located in the city and not further out in the countryside). If they did it illegally and in secret, I don’t think that would’ve sat well with Taka’s morals.

If we’re going with “the DR cast in America” then I can definitely see him learning from his dad.

It was really interesting to think about the concept and whether or not he would! Tell me more about your training headcanons!

Yeah, we kinda went over the logistics of Takaaki being able to train Taka considering gun laws and stuff like that. But I’m considering letting it slide since dangan is already so detached from reality, even before the tragedy, what with the hypnotism, brainwashing, and super complex robotics in what is most likely the early 2000s-2010. Also how there is a member of his class that knows how to use military weaponry despite being the same age as him. So hey, we’ll just say that Takaaki was able to train Taka how to use a gun legally and safely.

There’s been a lot of people under the initial post saying that Taka does know how to use a gun but has never actually shot one before, and to that i say… i mean, sure, i guess, but not really. Because it’s really not that smart to only teach someone the mechanics of gun with the full intention of teaching them how to use one without actually, y’know, using one. Especially if Taka is only meant to use this information in a high stakes situation like extreme self defense. So I do think Taka has handled a gun before, but never outside of their training. If that’s what people meant by “he’s never shot one before,” then i agree.

I don’t have that many training headcanons because, granted, i don’t know that much (if anything) about gun training. But here’s a few:

- Taka has only known how to use a gun for about a year. He’s no expert. He just knows the basic background info (like safety, how to hold one, the specific parts and what they do) and how to simply aim and shoot.

- Because of how Takaaki is disliked at the police station, they don’t use their shooting ranges for training. Mainly to keep his coworkers off of Taka’s back. They used an abandoned one near the outskirts of their town, one that was always fairly empty outside of some teens looking for a place to hang out very sparsely. It’s some sort of strange father-son bonding time between them considering the reasons why they’re doing it in the first place.

- Yes, Taka does know how to use a gun and has shot one before during training, but would absolutely let his nerves get to him if he ever had to use one in a real situation. That’s why he never actually has plans to use one in any situation, no matter the stakes.

- I guess the only bit of humor that could come with this concept is Taka having the knowledge and experience of using a gun. I imagine him bringing up his training one day for whatever reason and his classmates doing a double-take. Like he was the last person they thought was capable of knowing how to use one. They act a little more hesitant to misbehave and are more cautious around Taka. He’s at first happy with the change, but becomes devastated once he learns why they’re acting differently. He’s so genuinely offended that any of them thought that he would actually resort to that level of violence as a form of punishment.

I guess I’ll use this to open the door for more people to share their headcanons on the matter. :)

#kiyotaka ishimaru #takaaki ishimaru #ramblepuff #askpuff #ask #can you tell I don’t actually know that much about guns???

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coldtrait · 1 year

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how i keep myself motivated in playing sims 4

i’m no sims expert but i’m writing this post to share how i usually play my game and maybe it may help people.

NOTE: some of this may NOT apply to you, and if you feel that you don’t resonate with it then that’s fine. i may mention some mods and cc ahead since i play on pc.

rotational gameplay & aging off

i have a lot of households on my save, and when i’m bored of one, i go to another. each household is a different story, different chaos and different atmosphere. i play with aging off, and age them up manually so i don’t feel rushed.

if i want to, i can turn aging on for active household.. why i enjoy rotational gameplay is that it feels like the worlds come to life. when i’m playing with a household and bring them to a community lot, i will see my other households i’ve played with and feel familiar with them coz i know how their life and how their story goes but they’re just there hanging out on their own while i’m playing with another household.

have a main save file and stick to it, don’t discard it.

i believe many people do this. i think this is quite crucial for me personally. starting a new one every time kind of always demotivate me because you have to restart again.

if you’re bored of that save file you can create another one for fun but don’t ignore your main one especially when you’ve worked hard on it.

renovate renovate

recently i have this household that i felt so bored of, and i realise it’s because of the house. not like there’s anything wrong with the house… but, it’s just been like that for a pretty long time. after i renovated it, it feels so brand new and more lived-in, and since it’s new to the eyes, i felt refreshed and more willing to play through that household again. i added some clutters and stuff, and just sat there, doing some subtle renovations, changed wallpapers and stuff.

don’t force yourself to know your sims fully

i know it sounds weird to say this because you’re the one who created them. sometimes when you create a sim , built a house, you may be like “ok so, what now?” well, that’s quite common. the sim that you’ve created, it’s okay if you don’t feel connected with them. in the early games, they can be like a stranger to you, so it’s good to be curious as you go along.

maybe put it like this— your sims are not a blank canvas, they’re a canvas with colours and identity but they’re not revealed yet. take your time with gameplay to find out more about them :)

stop having ‘same face’ sims

i know we all have a specific style when we create our sims. there’s no wrong in experimenting with your sims faces, making them different from one another. i personally find face references on the internet very helpful or play with randomisations. i recommend zerbu’s more presets mods or custom sliders but that’s all up to one’s preference!

keep only the cc / mods that you will use.

this is just personal preference but if i find myself having too much cc, i sometimes overlook the things that the game already have. always tidy up your folders and keep things that you need in your game so you don’t feel overwhelmed with too much content.

personally, in my early game i only play vanilla. then i slowly add on some cc and mods if i find them necessary.

youtube creators recommendations

petey plays: he shows you very interesting ways on how to enjoy the game mostly WITHOUT cc or mods. sometimes, you’ll find out things you didn’t know through his videos too, or find out ways on how to play the game in ways you never thought of.

oshinsims: i get very inspired whenever i watch her gameplays. the way she’s connected with her sims is just amazing because she talks about them as if they’re real and you’ll get so engrossed with her storyline. also she plays the sims with minimal cc so sometimes you’ll get to know about the game a lot more through her videos too.

i also love watching random simmer’s current households and it can spark inspiration for gameplay

stop the game from generating townies

my sims don’t generate townies anymore because i pour the game with npc service sims, townies from the gallery and use a mod called ‘no random townies’ by zero and ‘sim spawner tool’ by carls guide. sometimes i’d use ‘carl.killrandoms’ cheat to delete all randomly generated townies but with zero’s mod , it already prevents a lot of autogenerated sims. don’t forget to keep adding sims from the gallery.

i recommend simsontherope !

make major changes

if things get too stale and there’s just no inspiration, make major changes. probably give them a full makeover, move them out of a region, have them cut ties with someone, break up with somebody, run away from home, or anything you’re too afraid of doing. maybe that might spark your inspiration and make things progress more

#ts4 gameplay tips #ts4 gameplay #sims 4 #ts4 #the sims 4 #ts4 tips

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amrosenberg · 1 year

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Taxonomies of Fandom

In the 19th century, taxonomies were a big deal. A hundred years after Linnaeus developed the system of binomial nomenclature, Darwinian natural philosophy emphasized that new and existing taxonomies should reflect the principle of common descent, giving rise to today’s system of evolutionary taxonomy.

If you’ve read the Aubrey-Maturin series of nautical adventure novels, you might be familiar with Testudo aubreii, the majestic tortoise that Stephen Maturin named after his best friend Jack Aubrey. It is an honor not lightly to be given, a sort of taxonomy as immortality: “This is Testudo aubreii for all eternity; when the Hero of the Nile is forgotten, Captain Aubrey will live on in his tortoise. There’s glory for you.” Putting a name to something makes it easier to understand and discuss; it can provide a starting point for study and for further investigation.

I’ve been thinking a lot about taxonomy lately, thanks to a few conversations I’ve had this month with people looking for expertise on fans and fan studies for final projects. I’m always happy to chat about this stuff, but sometimes I’m unexpectedly run up against the limits of my expertise: to be honest, I don’t know a lot about sports fans, or the practices of fans of massive commercial domains like Disney.

I’m interested in transformative fandom, which is a relatively small (but impactful) slice of the pie, as well as digital platforms and the ways in which youth audiences in particular utilize affordances of those platforms to express enthusiasm. I suppose I’m a fan scholar in the same way that an expert in ants is an entomologist: it’s a useful bit of nomenclature, but don’t ask them about spiders. There’s obviously a lot of benefits to specialization: but for someone who has aspirations towards the public humanities, I’m increasingly aware of my own need to have a more comprehensive overview of the different types of fans.

Over the 30 years of fan studies’ existence there have been numerous attempts to do just that: create a useful paradigm that neatly sections off fan practices into families and genii. The split between “transformational” and “affirmational” fandoms, first proposed by a pseudonymous fan in 2009 and later taken up by scholars like Henry Jenkins, is broadly handy, but problematic: it can lead to viewing “affirmational” fandom such as cosplaying, merchandise-buying, and information-collecting (such as in wikis) as purely mimetic and of lesser cultural value than “transformational” fan activities (see Hills, 2014).

That binary also ignores the large swathes of people that perform both types of fandom, or whose fan practices exist somewhere in between, or not on that axis at all; it’s also slightly outdated. In 2009, transformational fans who wrote erotica about non-canonical ships could still be safely said to be “against” canon in some way, non-sanctioned and acting transgressively out of bounds. I would say that in many cases, that is far from the case today.

Something I’m interested in is how fan practices develop and spread from one “genus” of fandom to another. (Presuming “species” is an individual fandom, and “genus” is a group of species connected by ancestry and shared practice). You see this in the phenomena in sports RPF, for example: slash fanfiction is a genre of practice developed by media fandom (TV/film fandom) in the 1970s and 80s, but it has been “adopted out” so to speak to form the nucleus of a sub-species of sports fans.

This circulation of practice is especially notable in the field of transcultural fandom (see Morimoto, 2017). Fan practices developed in the context of East Asian pop music fandom, such as chart-boosting, have made their way over to Western fandoms and communities centering on non-music media objects. Digital platforms afford this circulation, which in turn results in a blurring of boundaries between fan species and increasing difficulty in parsing out which “type” of fan someone is. Practices are contagious and amoebic. The type of sparkly fancams intially made by K-pop idol fans were adopted by Succession stans.

Like the animal kingdom, there’s just so much going on. To say nothing of what was going on. Which types of fans have gone extinct? Which modes of interacting with media are now archaeological artifacts, thanks to the shifting relationality of the apparatus of cultural production with respect to audiences?

I think that especially in a time when many groups who might not explicitly consider themselves “fans” have freely taken up digital practices developed and popularized in fandom spaces, investigations into the origins and classifications of fans and fan culture has the potential to provide broader behavioral insights into online communities.

#fan studies

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bonded-by-love-and-hatred · 2 years

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So, I’ve been listening to an SCP podcast lately. I’m no expert on the SCP world or anything, buuuuut I had the idea that “what if Wayne Enterprises contained some of these top secret facilities?” I mean, a multi-billion dollar company could easily hide and fund such a thing. And Gotham being Gotham, it kinda makes sense? Gotham would be like a breeding ground for this kinda stuff lol.

Like could you imagine Arkham Asylum being a sorta sentient building sending out mindless orderlies/guards to kidnap people who are driven insane by the building? It lets people go to wreak havoc upon the city and ultimately bring more people in, ‘cause how else are the inmates always getting out??

Idk, I just think it’s a cool idea.

And, of course, being the Wayleska/Valeyne lover that I am, I’ve had to connect the two. Soooo, under the cut is a little concept fic I wrote just now about it.

"Oh, Bruce." That voice. A whisper in the noise. A bellow in the quiet. A melody in their dreams. A shriek in their nightmares. Like honey and silk. Like ice and chemicals. Familiar and strange.

"Brucey, darlin'." A deep, raspy mimic of the other. Louder, grander, with discord in the melody. Instead of ice and chemicals at its core, there was fire and electricity.

"Long time no see." Together, a harmony luring you into a trap. To your doom.

And the boy they worshipped and put up on a pedestal made of rotting flesh and bone, grown so much from the time they first met, stood frozen at the sounds of their voices. Eyes wide with images of ginger hair, freckled skin, and wide smiles. With memories of knives and blood, mazes and generators, shared hugs and kisses and tears. Conversations and promises made what seemed a lifetime ago echoed through his head. Until he crumpled under it all.

Ecco, fighting off her own memory-filled trance, fell to her knees in front of Bruce, pulling his quivering body into her arms. Huddled together, hiding their faces, clinging to one another, blocking out the world, she chanted the same old lie: "It'll be okay."

I may expand upon this, but there’s so many things already lol. The basic idea I have right now is just: Thomas and Martha’s deaths were SCP-related, and Bruce is devoted to containing and learning about every anomaly he comes across. I can’t really decide if the twins should be like humanoids from the very beginning, and now they’ve built this deep connection so Bruce can’t let go. Or if the twins died because of some entity that now taunts Bruce with the memory of them. Or maybe I’ll leave that all ambiguous, who knows? I don’t.

This is just a concept I wanted to share and can’t promise I’ll do more with. I would like to! But idk if it’ll ever happen. I’ll probably get lost in my research of the SCP world and never get around to writing anything. ‘Tis the way of life, I’m afraid.

Please let me know what you think!! <3

#gotham #wayleska #valeyne #i don't really know what else to tag this with

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vent-rat · 9 months

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This isn’t exactly a vent? Nor is it particularly helpful to anyone, just something I noticed while marinating in my own thoughts. Maybe it could help someone have the courage to speak up if the post blows up (doubtful).

You know how the world has an obsession with weight loss and losing weight and stuff? It’s pretty commonly talked about here.

Obviously that’s a harmful societal perspective for plenty of people who have higher weights for any number of reasons, which I’m not gonna get into. I’m not an expert on the topic, nor do I have personal experience to draw from. I’m just a person who’s seen some tumblr posts on the topic.

But I’m kind of realizing it’s also probably pretty harmful to people who are underweight as well.

And I don’t mean like people with anorexia and bulimia, those are mental and eating disorders, but they themselves are typically brought on by the obsession with weight loss. I’m talking about people such as myself, who have fast metabolisms, or low appetites, or some other more natural reason

I’ve never talked about it here before, but I was almost dangerously underweight for most of my life, because I just did not eat, like ever. This was me as a child and young teen, so I didn’t really understand what the repercussions could have been if that got out of control. All I knew was my doctor would always tell me to eat a lot of food when I was there, and my parents were very insistent on me eating/drinking weird foods, like Ensure and stuff.

But now as I’m reaching adulthood, and I’m more online, and starting to understand more the societal pressures and perspectives on people who are overweight, and the perspectives from those people and the people that love them and the problems that societal perspective causes.

And it’s kind of starting to occur to me that I’ve been… left out of the conversation entirely.

I don’t see any takes or stories of people who share my experience online.

I don’t see any of the issues that it caused for people like me who didn’t have such supportive and protective parents.

And again I’m not talking about anorexia or bulimia, that gets talked about plenty in the conversation. Like, don’t starve yourself. Don’t make yourself throw up. Almost every side of the conversation agrees, even the side that’s pushing weight loss, at least in my experience.

But when it comes to people who just… are underweight, for either natural or more regular medical reasons, I don’t think I’ve seen anyone remark on that.

And it kinda makes me sad.

I may have gotten through my period of being underweight unscathed, but I had loving parents who made sure that happened, and a good doctor to keep them updated on my condition.

I’m sure there are people out there who DIDN’T get through that unharmed, and people who are still struggling with it today.

And I’m sure the weight loss rhetoric society pushes constantly is harming them too. It can’t be easy to be dangerously underweight and told that it’s a good thing to be skinny constantly, as long as you’re not starving yourself to do it.

I want to know what other people have gone through. I may have been pretty unaffected, but others surely weren’t, and I want those voices to be heard. Not only do I want to know the stories of people who went through things similar to me, but I feel relatively safe in saying that a lot of people pushing the weight loss rhetoric pretty easily dismiss the stories and struggles of overweight people with some excuse like “they don’t know what’s good for them”. Having a second side to that story, a voice from the other end of the spectrum would (I hope) be more effective in making people listen.

I don’t know, I kinda just got on this train of thought off a random YouTube comment, and it reminded me suddenly that I was underweight for a long time. I’ve been seeing so many stories lately on Tumblr and elsewhere of the struggles that overweight people face from the societal stigma against them, and it occurred to me that I don’t think I’ve ever heard any stories from underweight people. I don’t think I even KNOW anyone that’s underweight, online OR irl.

#underweight #overweight #weight loss #rambles

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mask131 · 9 months

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I hadn’t planned for this post, I’m just throwing this right now.

I used to regularly look at channels that covered creepy Internet incidents, weird ARGs, bizarre Youtube videos, the debunking of horror rumors, etc etc... I used ot but I don’t anymore - not because my passion for these videos has stopped, but because so many of those I followed shifted their content to “true crime” and talking about actual murders and suicide cases, and stuff that have nothing to do with either 1- fictional horror or 2- the Internet.

If I want to see “true crime” content, I won’t look at a random Youtube video, I will look for more professional media. And while it is these people’s decisions to run their channels how they want and to go with whatever has the more views on the Internet (we know thanks to the success of some talked about TV series that true crime always attracts more audience), it isn’t why I make this post today.

I make this post to share a very sudden, very new, very fresh unease that just formed itself over this lack of interest I talked about above. One of the channels I regularly followed was ScareTheater, and while I am still following the channel, I have been looking less and less at his videos because, as I said, they are not the type of content I originally followed him for, or they are things already covered enough and much better by the news or experts or actual investigators.

And he just dropped a video today about a disturbing and frightening footage recording some of the last moments and dialogues of divers that got trapped into a pipe and died there. Real-life stuff, a quite recent thing. And upon starting the video it suddenly hit me that this video was just voyeurism. A bad form of voyeurism.

I am not talking about or criticizing the man behind the ScareTheater channel, who seems to be a very decent and kind fellow. But I am talking about the direction his channel (and other similar channels) have been taking, and the shock I had just now. Because... it is a real-life case, as I said before, and the footage from these real life deaths, which is quite disturbing in itself, is not something that went viral or was massively spread over the Internet (at least to my knowledge). It was sought and researched for the making of this video over a pretty popular channel.

I know and I understand that talking about these incidents is needed, and that by sharing the stories of disasters and tragic death we can learn very useful information. I am myself a “fan” (if the word can be used for this) of a channel covering mass disaster and accident-caused deaths, “Fascinating Horror”. But the video of ScareTheater did not felt like a documentary recording the incident - because it was centered around the “horrifying found footage” of the last moments of these people that died stuck in a pipe. The title is about the found footage, the video opens with “Let’s discuss the found footage”, it all relies on us hearing the last words, and seeing the footage... It is about the footage, not the incident, and as a result this made me realize how ScareTheater had fallen (probably unconsciously since it seems to have just been a slow shift many channels that try to cover “true crime” topics fall into) into one of the big flaws of covering actual deaths and recent accident cases. A bad case of sensationalism, by highlighting a very gruesome and disturbing fact (last recorded words, videos of the cause of a death), and playing on the voyeurism of the audience so that the video would be shared and liked.

It isn’t like when he covered last videos or last photos of persons before they went missing - because in these cases, talking about it might help find back the person or understand what happened. And it isn’t like talking about something that happened a very long time ago, so that the case is closed or most people directly impacted/involved by the case are out of the picture. It is still very fresh, and these last moments are incredibly private and horrifying, and to see this shared online massively and used as the subject of a video, when it is still so fresh... it feels perverse. But not that ScareTheater seems to have done it on purpose - but this video clearly works in a way that it will appeal and attract the perversity of the worst voyeurists. This is a bit more than just a morbid curiosity, this feels almost indecent.

Because again - we are not talking of something that was purposefully posted on the Internet by someone part of it. When it comes to disturbing and horrifying footage actually sent on the Internet purposefully, it is important to talk about and analyze it and explain it, because it is already there and people are being exposed to it. But with this... it is something brought onto the Internet, brought onto the platform for people to see...

Honestly I don’t know, I can’t put my words in place. Yesterday I watched a video of disturbing footage found on the Internet - you might have seen the one, with a man filming as his house was being hit by a tornado, and the “man at the door” video of a dangerous criminal coming at the door of the one he wanted to turn into his next victim... And these didn’t felt like voyeurism. It was videos posted on the Internet, it was treated as content to be contextualized and analyzed, it was explained, it was informative of dangers... But tonight I see ScareTheater’s video about the last moments of those stuck divers, before they die, and I am hit with the knowledge that “This video is voyeurism. The bad type of voyeurism bad true crime-info channels or bad criminal magazines use, to form an audience by building on the perverse curiosity to glimpse into the last breath of a dying man or to see what the mutilated and torn up body of a murdered woman looks like, or to assist to the suicide of a desperate person that was in need of help”.

If it was just about the incident itself, about the media coverage, the way the rescue was handled, the reason these divers died, if it was just a video about the accident I probably wouldn’t have felt that - but it was about the found footage, and the last moments, and the last recorded words, as these poor people were stuck in a pipe certain of their death... I don’t know. Or rather I know that saying this invites to a lot of comparison, evaluation and re-evaluation of a lot of other content on Youtube, and opens a whole debate to “Where is the line? Where should Youtubers stop exploring disturbing footage, and what should one post on the Internet when discussing about it?”. It is not an easy debate, and it is precisely because it is such a complex issue that I am left with this “I don’t know feeling”.

But the thing that I am certain of, and that frightens me, is that I had probably grew a bit desensitized and complacent towards the voyeurism of those “death-covering” and “true crime” channels, about the general morbid voyeurism and view-collecting sensationalism of channels that are well-meaning even though in the facts they seem to do things more badly as time goes on... And this video shook me and woke something up in me, and made me go “Wait, that’s voyeurism, that’s not a good way to share this video, and the people who will watch this video probably will do it badly”. I mean, I just looked at the comments and most people just go “I feel bad for those people.” It is a sentence that comes up again and again “I feel bad for them”, “feel bad for them”, “this makes me feel so bad”.

Commenter on Youtube - seeing the last moments, the last recorded words and actions, the last of the life of people who just die isn’t supposed to make you “feel bad”. It is supposed to make you feel deeply disturbed and shocked. It isn’t about it being “uncomfortable”. It is another human being trapped into their death! It is horrfying and sickening and terrifying! One says “I feel bad this guy” when someone’s is the subject of something like a public humiliation, or falls prey for a scam, or has a nasty allergy - it isn’t supposed to be something you say upon watching the LAST OF SOMEONE LIFE! I am not particularly religious, but if there is something sacred in this life and that should be treated with respect, it is certainly the last moments, the last words and the last breath of a living being! It isn’t just some Youtube video you look at and say “Aww, feel sad for me, :( “. NO!

Anyway... I will certainly unsuscribe from ScareTheater, and my dislike of the current state of Youtube will go ever growing - and my suspicions and cynicism towards humanity will blossom a bit more. But I just wanted to share that because honestly I have no one else to share that with, and I want to have it recorded somewhere.

I am not a prude, and if this content is indeed present on the Internet I do think peope should explain it, and talk about it, and contextualize it, and warn people about it. But I am also a man who is for decency, and it is something people on the Internet clearly seem to have forgotten the existence of sometimes. I am sorry this all falls on ScareTheater’s video because clearly he isn’t himself a voyeurist, a perverted or an indecent person, but his video was clearly badly made if it managed to re-open my eyes about the morbid vulture-nature of Youtube.

#i don't even know how to tag this #youtube #true crime youtube #indecent youtube #i don't know

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