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dailyadventureprompts · 9 months

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Monsters Reimagined: Bandits

As a game of heroic fantasy that centers so primarily on combat, D&D is more often than not a game about righteous violence, which is why I spend so much time thinking about the targets of that violence. Every piece of media made by humans is a thing created from conscious or unconscious design, it’s saying something whether or not its creators intended it to do so.

Tolkien made his characters peaceloving and pastoral, and coded his embodiment of evil as powerhungry, warlike, and industrial. When d&d directly cribbed from Tolkien's work it purposely changed those enemies to be primitive tribespeople who were resentful of the riches the “civilized” races possessed. Was this intentional? None can say, but as a text d&d says something decidedly different than Tolkien.

That's why today I want to talk about bandits, the historical concept of being an “outlaw”, and how media uses crime to “un-person” certain classes of people in order to give heroes a target to beat up.

Tldr: despite presenting bandits as a generic threat, most d&d scenarios never go into detail about what causes bandits to exist, merely presuming the existence of outlaws up to no good that the heroes should feel no qualms about slaughtering. If your story is going to stand up to the scrutiny of your players however, you need to be aware of WHY these individuals have been driven to banditry, rather than defaulting to “they broke the law so they deserve what’s coming to them.”

I got to thinking about writing this post when playing a modded version of fallout 4, an npc offhndedly mentioned to me that raiders (the postapoc bandit rebrand) were too lazy to do any farming and it was good that I’d offed them by the dozens so that they wouldn’t make trouble for those that did.

That gave me pause, fallout takes place in an irradiated wasteland where folks struggle to survive but this mod was specifically about rebuilding infrastructure like farms and ensuring people had enough to get by. Lack of resources to go around was a specific justification for why raiders existed in the first place, but as the setting became more arable the mod-author had to create an excuse why the bandit’s didn’t give up their violent ways and start a nice little coop, settling on them being inherently lazy , dumb, and psychopathic.

This is exactly how d&d has historically painted most of its “monstrous humanoid” enemies. Because the game is ostensibly about combat the authors need to give you reasons why a peaceful solution is impossible, why the orcs, goblins, gnolls (and yes, bandits), can’t just integrate with the local town or find a nice stretch of wilderness to build their own settlement on and manage in accordance with their needs. They go so far in this justification that they end up (accidently or not) recreating a lot of IRL arguments for persecution and genocide.

Bandits are interesting because much like cultists, it’s a descriptor that’s used to unperson groups of characters who would traditionally be inside the “not ontologically evil” bubble that’s applied to d&d’s protagonists. Break the law or worship the wrong god says d&d and you’re just as worth killing as the mindless minions of darkness, your only purpose to serve as a target of the protagonist’s righteous violence.

The way we get around this self-justification pitfall and get back to our cool fantasy action game is to relentlessly question authority, not only inside the game but the authors too. We have to interrogate anyone who'd show us evil and direct our outrage a certain way because if we don't we end up with crusades, pogroms, and Qanon.

With that ethical pill out of the way, I thought I’d dive into a listing of different historical groups that we might call “Bandits” at one time or another and what worldbuilding conceits their existence necessitates.

Brigands: By and large the most common sort of “bandit” you’re going to see are former soldiers left over from wars, often with a social gap between them and the people they’re raiding that prevents reintegration ( IE: They’re from a foreign land and can’t speak the local tongue, their side lost and now they’re considered outlaws, they’re mercenaries who have been stiffed on their contract). Justifying why brigands are out brigading is as easy as asking yourself “What were the most recent conflicts in this region and who was fighting them?”. There’s also something to say about how a life of trauma and violence can be hard to leave even after the battle is over, which is why you historically tend to see lots of gangs and paramilitary groups pop up in the wake of conflict.

Raiders: fundamentally the thing that has caused cultures to raid eachother since the dawn of time is sacristy. When the threat of starvation looms it’s far easier to justify potentially throwing your life away if it means securing enough food to last you and those close to you through the next year/season/day. Raider cultures develop in biomes that don’t support steady agriculture, or in times where famine, war, climate change, or disease make the harvests unreliable. They tend to target neighboring cultures that DO have reliable harvests which is why you frequently see raiders emerging from “the barbaric frontier” to raid “civilization” that just so happens to occupy the space of a reliably fertile river valley. When thinking about including raiders in your story, consider what environmental forces have caused this most recent and previous raids, as well as consider how frequent raiding has shaped the targeted society. Frequent attacks by raiders is how we get walled palaces and warrior classes after all, so this shit is important.

Slavers: Just like raiding, most cultures have engaged in slavery at one point or another, which is a matter I get into here. While raiders taking captives is not uncommon, actively attacking people for slaves is something that starts occurring once you have a built up slave market, necessitating the existence of at least one or more hierarchical societies that need more disposable workers than then their lower class is capable of providing. The roman legion and its constant campaigns was the apparatus by which the imperium fed its insatiable need for cheap slave labor. Subsistence raiders generally don’t take slaves en masse unless they know somewhere to sell them, because if you’re having trouble feeding your own people you’re not going to capture more ( this is what d&d gets wrong about monstrous humanoids most of the time).

Tax Farmers: special mention to this underused classic, where gangs of toughs would bid to see who could collect money for government officials, and then proceed to ransack the realm looking to squeeze as much money out of the people as possible. This tends to happen in areas where the state apparatus is stretched too thin or is too lighthanded to have established enduring means of funding. Tax farmers are a great one-two punch for campaigns where you want your party to be set up against a corrupt authority: our heroes defeat the marauding bandits and then oh-no, turns out they were not only sanctioned by the government but backed by an influential political figure who you’ve just punched in the coinpurse. If tax farming exists it means the government is strong enough to need a yearly budget but not so established (at least in the local region) that it’s developed a reliably peaceful method of maintaining it.

Robber Baron: Though the term is now synonymous with ruthless industrialists, it originated from the practice of shortmidned petty gentry (barons and knights and counts and the like) going out to extort and even rob THEIR OWN LANDS out of a desire for personal enrichment/boredom. Schemes can range from using their troops to shake down those who pass through their domain to outright murdering their own peasants for sport because you haven’t gotten to fight in a war for a while. Just as any greed or violence minded noble can be a robber baron so it doesn’t take that much of a storytelling leap but I encourage you to channel all your landlord hate into this one.

Rebels: More than just simple outlaws, rebels have a particular cause they’re a part of (just or otherwise) that puts them at odds with the reigning authority. They could violently support a disfavoured political faction, be acting out against a law they think is unjust, or hoping to break away from the authority entirely. Though attacks against those figures of authority are to be expected, it’s all too common for rebels to go onto praying on common folk for the sake of the cause. To make a group of rebels worth having in your campaign pinpoint an issue that two groups of people with their own distinct interests could disagree on, and then ratchet up the tension. Rebels have to be able to beleive in a cause, so they have to have an argument that supports them.

Remnants: Like a hybrid of brigands, rebels, and taxfarmers, Remnants represent a previously legitimate system of authority that has since been replaced but not yet fully disappeared. This can happen either because the local authority has been replaced by something new (feudal nobles left out after a monarchy toppling revolution) or because it has faded entirely ( Colonial forces of an empire left to their own devices after the empire collapses). Remnants often sat at the top of social structures that had endured for generations and so still hold onto the ghost of power ( and the violence it can command) and the traditions that support it. Think about big changes that have happened in your world of late, are the remnants looking to overturn it? Win new privilege for themselves? Go overlooked by their new overlords?

Art

#monsters reimagined #bandits #dnd #dungeons and dragons #d&d #ttprg #pathfinder #heavy topics #monsters reimagined

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transmutationisms · 1 year

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wanted to ask what your thoughts are about the show’s subtextual implications of csa? its never mentioned really but it kind of just hangs in the air with the other abuse and the cultural of sexual violence and abuse of everyone and everything else. i personally don’t believe logan even abused any of them that way, but obviously with people like mo and that whole group of men at the funeral, it was still something the kid’s grew up around and were vulnerable to, and i think because of that logan Did perpetuate csa against them, in a way. like even if He never touched them, by putting them in such close proximity to predators and he himself being complicit in a culture of sexual violence both in his personal life and his company, he still betrayed their trust that he would protect them from that.

but idk, do you think there’s a possibility any of them were actually victims of an assault or harassment?

this is kind of a huge topic, but: i think what the show is getting at wrt sexual violence and childhood trauma is the idea that growing up in a context that enables and even encourages rape is itself sexually traumatic, and that type of immersion in systemic violence has a profound impact on the psyche with or without specific or discrete instances of direct interpersonal violence. which is to say, yes, i agree that there is a very real way in which all of logan's children have experienced sexual violence simply by virtue of being part of his company and his family (part of the capitalist structure).

i do agree that the presence of the 'wolf pack' is significant (the kids weren't allowed to get in the pool around them, etc), but even beyond that, i think the show is suggesting that it would be impossible to grow up in an environment where 1) sex is equivalent to violence, and 2) business is expressed through this language, and 3) familial love is secondary to the business concerns and so also expressed through this violent language—and not be traumatised by that. capitalism is itself already traumatic, homophobia and transmisogyny / transphobia are traumatic, and logan's rigid hierarchical ideas of masculinity and strength are elevated expressions of these systems.

anybody in waystar's orbit will have a relationship to sexual violence and trauma—and a child, who lacks legal personhood and bodily autonomy, is quite clearly going to experience this entire upbringing as violent and traumatic. like, even if logan's childrearing was 'successful' on his terms, ie produced an heir capable of the kind of emotional repression and capacity to inflict violence that logan valorises, that would still itself be a traumatic outcome for that person. the ideology governing waystar is alienating and intrinsically violent. how could you grow up in a world where the powerless are denied personhood and subject to rape and murder and not have that shape how you—again, a child denied autonomy and power—relate to your body, your sexuality, and your concept of self?

so, as to whether the kids did experience specific and direct events of child sexual assault, rape, etc—i honestly just find this line of questioning uninteresting because it's speculation. i've already said i don't find the 'explicit' csa reading necessary in understanding roman's character, and that the incestuous sub/text with him is there on purpose not to indicate that the roys are uniquely incestuous but to suggest that capitalist family structures inherently create this type of desire and propensity for abuse. i would extend basically analogous arguments to the other roy kids, and indeed, to any character on the show. all of the roy kids are sexually traumatised and this is explicitly because they grew up in a company (which is to say also a family and an economic system) that is violent, specifically sexually and specifically to those designated weaker and lesser-than.

#he doesn't even trust water

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mayapapaya33 · 5 days

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A Game of You/ Brief Lives

I'm seeing some people complain about Thessaly in such a way where it implies that they think the narrative likes her? Guys, she sucks on purpose lol. I am begging all of you to pay attention in English/Lit class more often. Wanda is clearly the hero of the story, everyone treating her badly are dicks, it could not be more clear. I love Wanda so much. Thessaly should die in a fire lmfao. (the parallels between her and Esther from Dead Boy Detectives are fascinating, I wonder if they ever met?) All the people giving Wanda shit are wrong; Thessaly, The Animated Severed Face on the Wall, the Moon Goddess, her family, etc.

Death, the most level headed, kind, compassionate character in all of Sandman is on Wanda's side. It's generally bad form to read the author's personal stance from one particular character, but Death is as close to a stand in for Neil Gaiman's personal opinion as we are ever going to see in a story as far as I can tell. She is always who he gives the final say to in terms of morality over every other character, very much including Dream. (We also got Barbie being a ride or die, and the disaster lesbian neighbors Hazel and Foxglove being confused but supportive, and the homeless lady Wanda helped talking about her grandson being like Wanda and how dumb it was that people were so cruel and just because some people are different it doesn't make them bad.) Go read it again.

Neil Gaiman literally talked to his Trans friends about their lives and the stuff that was happening to them and then put it in his comic in 1989! I repeat, 1989! (through to 1996). No, the terms and language aren't all going to match up to 2024, Think, please, I beg of you. He wrote Desire as non binary before that was really a thing "Well why didn't he just use They/Them" IT WAS 1989 PEOPLE!!!!!! (the concept obviously has existed for longer, I'm talking specifically about language trends).

(Characters in stories doing or saying bad things to other Characters does not make the Story Itself racist/ sexist/ homophobic/ transphobic/ etc).

I've also seen people talking about Thessaly and Dream dating, again Dream is making poor life choices, as per usual! I think he was initially attracted by her audacity and strength, and her longevity. Him sulking Byronically and inconveniently in the rain he himself creates to be more moody and Goth about being dumped is meant to contrast sharply with the scene after You Know What happens at the end of Brief Lives. He returns home to the Castle and quietly walks through the corridors, being polite and kind to everyone (freaking them out a bit in the process), he slowly washes the blood off his hands, and collapses into a chair to mourn deeply in solitude and silence. No more drama, no more rain, no more epic windswept shots of him staring pensively into the distance, just true sadness. It's almost like his earlier performance about being upset by Thessaly's absence doesn't actually matter that much in the face of true tragedy.

The first is shallow and dramatic, He's the Prince of Stories, he falls in love at the drop of a hat, but he's bad at maintaining relationships. The Drama is inherent to his being. He IS stories. But in the second situation it's more real, he's more real. The Grief is too much to bear turning it into a story. Dream is being forced to face harsh Reality. After all, like Dream said, stories are how we keep ourselves alive, "If you rob them of their Dreams, if you take away their hope, then yes, this is the truth of Mankind." Perhaps it's also the Truth of the Collective Unconsciousness of Mankind? His path forward was set from that moment on.

#sandman #sandman comic spoilers #dream of the endless #thessaly #wanda #a game of you #brief lives #the wake #neil gaiman #lgbtq community #If I see another uninformed baby queer call Neil a transphobe I'm gonna flip my shit #Man's got at least 1 GLAAD award #probably more #reading comprehension skills #acquire them please #It's fine if the story makes you uncomfortable #feel your feelings #But it's well written and on your side #trans rights

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misrepresentedmorallygrey · 2 months

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PROPAGANDA

Jean Vicquemare

He's a minor character with a surprising amount of depth when u look into it!! But he is also a Cop (derogatory) and I feel a lot of people take the few things we know about him and twist it into an entirely different entity separate from the source material. I think he's an interesting character and should also be catapulted into the sun <3

This could not be more of a divisive character in this Fandom, which is hilarious considering he doesn't even have that much screen time. He is either seen as the devil incarnate or a poor little baby who's so sad! Being a fan of him means it's just best to block his tag here on Tumblr otherwise you'll tear your hair out at how frustratingly people misrepresent his purpose in the story.

Dark Pit

Most of Dark Pit's mischaracterization comes from the fact that he's in SSBU- everyone assumes he's like every other nintendo clone; evil and just a 'bad' version of the original. But he's not!! Even the characters in his own game think he's just cruel by nature, when he's never actually done anything wrong. He's a dick, yes, but wouldn't you be a bit pissy if you kept getting dragged into a war you want no part in, called a name crafted specifically to belittle your own existence?

Dark Pit was created when Pit, the original, was on a mission to destroy a mirror that would copy anything that stood before it, since the villians were using it to create an army. It's incredibly important to note that it does NOT create 'evil' versions or even just copy the body and leave the personality at home. It's a 1:1 conversion. Unfortunately, the villians also knew Pit would destroy the mirror quite directly, standing in front of it (or more accurately, flying kicking towards it) and triggering the copy to be made. It was shattered midway through creation, creating Dark Pit- something the villians were hoping would happen, as Pit is the last angel to exist and they REAAAALLY want their own angel.

Immediately everyone assumes Dark Pit is just evil by default- even the villian is gloating about her new minion, but he immediately rejects that and punches the villian and helps you in the fight. He steals her power and flies away after, but its important to realize that Dark Pit could've just allied with the villians for the same result, and instead chose to be alone. Sure, he's kinda a dick to Pit, but he hasn't done anything outright evil. Just took a dead god's power in order to fly and left.

Cue the next mission where Palutena calls Dark Pit 'twisted' and 'inherently corrupt' like ma'am where??? Hes just an asshole cmon, you would be too if your birth parent is a reflective piece of glass. You go off on a mission to try and KILL him, and he obviously defends himself- once again, he's done nothing outright wrong. He's rude and aggressive, yes, but he literally doesn't want ANY part of all this war between gods shit, and here you are killing him for merely existing. During the final battle of the mission Dark Pit tells Pit that he is his reflection, and that they're the same person- Dark Pit is just more than willing to say the things Pit refuses to admit to himself.

AND HE'S RIGHT. Dark Pit believes the gods are selfish, are using Pit as a tool for their own gain, and that the world would be better off without them since all they ever seem to do is cause war and destruction. If you pay attention to how Pit reacts to the world around him, he DOES share these beliefs but instead of acting on them, he just buries it. Pit will even snap at the gods about half-way through the game, telling them outright that its THEIR war that is destroying the planet and that THEY'RE all at fault. Dark Pit is NOT an evil clone; he's an inversion. Everything Pit hides away, he wears on his sleeve, and interestingly, everything Pit openly is, DARK PIT STILL IS TOO. He, just like Pit, hides it away instead of admiting it.

After the fight Dark Pit runs away, and shows up mainly as an ally to Pit going forward. The game mentions further how kinda fucked up Dark Pit's whole situation is- if Pit's soul is removed from his body, Dark Pit just DOESN'T EXIST during that time. If Pit dies, Dark Pit dies, and he has no control over it. He never even gets his own name- its either Dark Pit, or his nickname of 'Pit two' (Pitto). If Pit ever attacks Dark Pit and tries to kill him, there's little Dark Pit could ever really do; In the game he'll defend himself and try and kill you, but at that point he's dead either way. His life is barely his own.

Worst part is, SSBU confirms Dark Pit allied with Viridi after the events of Kid Icarus Uprising. I cannot STRESS how horrible that is for his characterization so far. Viridi is the god of nature and hates humanity for even existing, with her first appearance being her dropping NUKES onto towns and cities to purge humanity. And Dark Pit now works as a commander under her. Either Viridi has to mellow out REAL damn fast and stop nuking medieval humans, or they accidentally wrote Dark Pit to be a Human Murderer (we specifically know Viridi sends her commanders to kill off anyone who survives her nature nukes). Really hope this stays in the realm of 'not canon' because holy shit there's so many better options to pick from than the 'little girl god with a hit list and a factory of bombs'.

(Not even sure WHY Dark Pit, who thinks gods are selfish and use angels like tools, would want to ally with a god. Yes, he can't fly without a god's help, but even then why ally with the most vindictive and murder-happy god that isn't Hades??? Poor dude really just needs a break from all the gods to sort out who he is and to start building his own life independently from Pit)

#misrepresented morally grey #round 2 #bracket c #both bracket #disco elysium #jean vicquemare #kid icarus #dark pit

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sunstranded · 5 months

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INTJ: Urges

I don't know if it's an introvert (in general) or introverted intuition dominant urge or something specific to INTJ but I've been having 2 urges: 1) create and perfect my own system; 2) deleting everything I've said or made that I no longer want to be associated with.

By system, if I were to specify or relate a real world thing to it, possibly something similar to Plato's or Nietzsche's work that doesn't end up in the self-help section of a bookstore.

There is this appeal to be so clear and concise in your manner of writing that kills philosophy for me (yes, I am that type of INTJ). It might be because I value interpretation, pluralism, and pragmatic effect of words more than being logically true. Stereotypically that's more INFJ but I don't have this inherent need to consider what the majority or what others value nor percision/accuracy of my meaning (which is very Fe-Ti). I want something useful but formless. I prefer it when philosophy was liberated and untamed. I did not enjoy analytical philosophy because of the desperate attempt to establish some correctness for the sake of clarity.

I don't like that. There's a beauty in miscommunication. There's something inherently poetic with the journey of understanding something your own way or understanding someone in their work amidst the fog of stylistic writing. There's something so timeless about it. Writing a string of words that is true no matter where, when, and what has this empowering and liberating feel to it.

That is where my love-hate relationship with philosophy teeters towards hating it. The enforced standard in thought. It kills it. That's when Plato said writing will be the end of philosophical discourse. I believe he is right. That is the curious case of the obvious. When things are taken at face value because they are so clear, philosophical discourse is left for the crazy and overthinking.

I understand the use of such a standard, which makes me hate it more. The purpose is to have a guide to tell you where you can improve. But the means of using metrics to gauge that is all the more annoying. I'd rather have someone grill my ideas in verbatim than a silent grade on a paper.

Moreover, I am glad that generative AI had caused people to distrust written work and require that verbatim interaction again. Granted, those can be draining but in a way it's exhilarating. It tells me in a sensory manner that makes sense to me that this is what I could work on, this is the part I could improve.

Anyway, that's enough catharsis and declaration of my qualms for one post. Moving on to the other urge: deleting everything that is now irrelevant.

I think it's of the INTJ-brand to seem so assured and certain that you're probably irrefutable or can no longer be convinced. I think we just come off as such because of our delivery, expression, and the obvious thoughtfulness in what we say. Despite that, there is still generous room to hear out others and understand better.

This is why I want to delete a lot of things I used to say but no longer agree with. It feels like clutter I don't need to see or remember. I've been told by several to keep it so I can remember where I am now and appreciate my growth. They're sometimes right but I find myself appreciating my present self by looking at my present or latest work.

Whenever I see some post I wrote just months ago I think I die a bit inside. It's not cringe, I'm too based for that. I think it's the blatant reminder that I could have done better at that time. I should have known better. It's the golden ticket for the Ni-Fi loop for me. I hate it.

also it was great advice to brain dump my ideas in several different media, it's a catharsis I never knew I'd need.

#mbti #16 personalities #intj

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csidepooltide · 11 days

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What's Unremitting Pasquinades lore? The meme edit has intrigued me

SO. You have opened a can of worms, get ready for the paragraphs

Unremitting Pasquinades is an iterator from Rain World :) Iterators are giant, giant computers, that are big enough to host a city on top of them. Very cool! The way I draw her, (the humanoid with the orange and black face), is a puppet the giant supercomputer uses to talk to smaller creatures without scaring them. For us, think of talking to a mouse with a finger puppet. Kind of like that.

Unremitting Pasquinades, (or, by her nickname, Remi), belonged to a group of iterators who's puppets were modeled after different types of performers. They all could perform, and often put on plays in their chamber (where their puppet is in the first place, it's just a square room where the puppet sits, so others can come in and talk to her)

Her secondary specialty, other than performance, was being a sort of medical facility. With this, she had all the tools to make creatures if she wanted, though at the time she focused on surgeries.

At some point, someone from close by, (but not in her immediate group,) sent her a letter asking if she could make a creature for them - something dangerous, able to protect them if someone else threatened them. Remi, who at that time was caring and kind, said yes! And got to work, making a creature to defend this other iterator.

Her kindness was used against her, though, when the other person use that creature to then hurt someone else. Because everyone knew Remi made it in the first place, she was blamed, and cut off from her entire group. That sent her spiraling, eventually breaking down into a panic attack that led for some of her structure to be damaged, and one of the plates on her puppets face to be ripped off. (why it's orange and black now, instead of purely orange!)

A little bit later, she recovered enough to try talking to people, but was extremely guarded. She met someone else who was similar to her, and they helped her create her first creature, a giant, ultra-smart, vulture-like bird she named Baba. This vulture had the strength and power to destroy her structure if they decided to, and this was on purpose - it was her final, giant test of herself. Because she needed to prove to herself that what she made wasn't inherently dangerous, even when given the ability to do something as monumental as literally kill her.

And Baba didn't! Actually, Baba became rather protective. Because Remi was kind and caring still, even if she was scared, grieving, and alone. And that reassurance gave her the drive to start making more and more creatures, who she loves like no other. She fell in love with neurosciences, and the intricacies creatures can have. When she makes a creature, she has specific guidelines, to make sure they're sentient enough to make their own decisions about what they want to do. It isn't surprising, though, that most love her dearly and are protective of her.

This, accidentally, turned her surrounding area into somewhere EXTREMELY DANGEROUS, as the ecosystem rushed to keep up with the newfound harshness of her own creatures. So visitors usually have to be escorted.

BUT, because she felt the need to keep walling people off, (she couldn't let herself be taken advantage of again, after all,) her attitude switched from someone who was soft-spoken and kind, to someone very brash, loud, and rude. She often antagonizes people for fun, and keeps an arms length from her and others. But, for those she's close to, she'd protect them with everything she has. It's hard to find trust like that, after all... even if it's scary.

#c prattles #oc: unremitting pasquinades #thank you thank you for letting me ramble HDFKJHSKJ HEARTTT

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roxtron · 9 months

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Y'know now that I think about it, the kh fandom seems to have a huge problem with ignoring or disliking games they find "irrelevant" to the plot. I came into the fandom post-kh3 so I can't say I know how the fandom's changed over time but.. it's kinda ridiculous to me tbh. Because from what I read it sounds like most people hated/ignored BBS and 358/2 days because they were "spin-offs." (Which is dumb anyway, like, even if hypothetically KH3 didn't exist and they were just spin-off characters- Why is that a bad thing? Why should you treat them like they don't matter? Why do some people think the characters from those games don't matter because they only care about the fate of the Destiny Trio?) And even still people consider Chain of Memories irrelevant because "Oh Sora forgets everything anyway, all you need to know is that." And then they consider Coded/Re:Coded irrelevant because "It's all data anyway." And THEN they consider DDD irrelevant because "All you need to know is the Xehanort time travel stuff in the finale." It's so weird to me how some people can claim to be invested in these games yet only care about the numbered titles. It can't be because they care about Destiny Trio that much if they consider titles including them to still be irrelevant.. So what is it then?? Is the concept of a spin-off inherently bad to these people? Like, sure, if you're thinking of the BARE MINIMUM KNOWLEDGE then yes I would agree you don't need to know much about those games beyond what I listed.. HOWEVER, that does not mean it's good to only go into the games with that knowledge. If you truly care about this series and its characters, you would value the ways those games expand on their characters. And even if you don't.. If you're only going into these games with the idea of "vaguely understanding the plot" but the plot alone. Not the characters. If all you care about is "How did Xehanort revive other versions of himself?" And not the buildup for the characters and how these arcs affect them, y'know, as characters..

I just don't understand how you can go into these games like that and still have fun with it. Like sure if I'm into a series where I appreciate the worldbuilding but there isn't much to the characters I can get behind that. (And I mean that in the sense of games with blank-slate protagonists, not to say the characters don't matter to me, but that the characters don't have much personality to get attatched to.) But in a story like Kingdom Hearts where it is about the characters, and the story is just how the characters choices affect each other- I dunno man. I'm not sure of the right words to explain what I'm trying to say but it just feels so dull and boring to only care about that in a series, and especially a series like this. I could go on and on about the ways those games affect the characters and the story more than those little one-sentence quotes.. And sure, maybe I will in addition to this, but that's not the point I'm trying to make here. Even if they didn't affect the story, even if they were solely character-building, or even if they barely served a purpose at all beyond a couple of scenes.. It shouldn't devalue the entire experience as irrelevant. (Chain of Memories I kinda get disliking due to the combat LMAO but aside from that + some people do like the combat-) The games are more than story alone. They're more than gameplay alone. And they're more than characters alone. All aspects of the game come together to create an experience, and if you want to devalue the entire experience as a bad game, because you find it irrelevant due to it not fulfilling your specific preferences of what you want out of these games- Then I have a hard time believing you appreciated this series at all to begin with. Also a hard time believing you have good media literacy or even care about having any but hey that's a topic for another day am i right

#kh #kingdom hearts #kh rant #kh spoilers #kingdom hearts spoilers #even though it's one little sentence i'd still rather tag it #but yeah i just wanted to talk about this mindset cause. it's kinda annoying tbh.#i used to think similarly until i actually played or watched cutscenes of those “irrelevant” games and realized #hey wait a minute these aren't irrelevant at all #and they're way better than people give them credit for..

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xxlovelynovaxx · 4 months

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Ugh

Screenshot:

Okay, so the evidence from and support by actual experts saying systems can form in adulthood and from things other than trauma isn't enough for you.

"Fragmenting your mind on purpose" is not the only way to be a system but yes in fact you can. Also are you ignoring that the ToSD essentially posits that everyone is multiple in childhood and systems are created by something preventing the normal fusion process that singlets go through? Why are you even assuming singlet is the default? Because when endogenic systems aren't counted, plurality isn't the majority, though it even might be if we counted ALL plurality? (We don't know, because we don't have data on it.)

"Not a thought, it's a fact." Facts can be proven with evidence. Repeatedly saying something to try and convince yourself of it doesn't make it true.

Yeah alters aren't the only symptoms of CDDs. That's why both the DSM and ICD state if you have alters with no other symptoms you're not disordered. They acknowledge that you can be nondisordered and multiple as a fundamental truth.

Fakeclaimers and exclusionists are hurting the community. Endogenic and nondisordered identity is not. And quite frankly, if you think any IDENTITY not specifically based around intentional hatred and harm can be inherently harmful, you're fucking fascist.

Use of "moron" as an insult: oh look, ableism, why am I not surprised.

No, it's not existing as an individual if you have 2-2000+ names and personalities and desires and all those different "same single individual" act differently and sometimes conflict with each other. Even if they were just "parts" of a single individual, that would still count as plurality, because median systems exist. Already you're harming OSDD systems that think of themselves as fragmented individuals.

They'd usually actually say "oh, so you think WE don't exist", but it's clear you're not listening. anti-endoism is an extremist high control group religion which relies on the same thought-stopping cliches and methods as groups like mormons and Jehovah's witnesses I stg. Someone remind me to do a proper analysis post about that later.

#endomisia #tumblr fuck off with bad recommended posts #too early for this shit #undescribed

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mdhwrites · 8 months

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Considering how little we know of the calamity powers, what's your interpretation on Wit, Heart and Strength not giving the trio different types of powers? Anne, for example, despite being assigned Heart, seems to have both super strength and agility. Wouldn't those attributes be more fitting to Sasha, at least the strength one?

I've considered that the gems don't give different powers, but that they were given their names because they pick people according to those specific attributes.

So there's one claim you could make that since Marcy and Sasha only get their powers at the end, it was just easier to make them copies of Anne's. There wasn't really time to have them be different and making Anne's power up be a general super form worked with how, to the show, how the powers work is less important than why she uses the power.

BUT that's a bit of a cop out and there is also a thematic purpose to it to me. See, in Amphibia, the greatest sin anyone makes is making themselves an island. To believe that they are the center of all. It's Sasha's greatest crime as she believed her way was the only way things could be. It's the Core's, and to some extent Andrias', main crime by defying fate so as to have the power they want. Even when Anne becomes more powerful than any being in Amphibia, the cost is her life. It fits with the positive themes of community with Amphibia.

As such, A: you're right that the stones don't give different powers, they do just choose their bearers based on one of the traits but B: they were NEVER designed to be used alone. They all give the same powers because they all actually create a loop with one another when bestowing that energy. What Anne is given is still from all three stones, just focused through the Heart stone.

This explains why their final forms are more powerful and elaborate. Yes, you could claim Valeria helping is why but I like to believe it's because all three stones are now working in tandem. The small community of the bearers feeding into each other making them inherently stronger. Does this mean I'd have liked it if Sasha and Marcy didn't run out of energy because they should be tied together? Yeah, absolutely but it also works fine with how the exhaustion has always been working. The fact that they last as long as they do could be due to the fact that this is a more pure form of the powers after all.

It's a form with enough questions and thematic potential as to allow different interpretations, possibilities, ideas, etc. for people to play with even after the show was done and without quite enough weird issues to them to cause you to find the questions annoying more than inspiring. Perfect? Not really admittedly but that kind of has to do with the fact that super forms and magical mcguffins are really complicated and a lot harder to make perfect sense with than a writer probably expects.

They obviously did try to make this work though and I think it works well enough.

======+++++======

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead. If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

And finally a Twitter you can follow too!

#Amphibia #amphibia critical

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archer3-13 · 11 months

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tbh the whole thing about how fiction should match reality's moral stans seems more harmful to me cuz i am trying to be a writer and when i see people telling me i can't write about this or this subject i get scared that if i do it i might end up creating trouble. to give an example, i wanted to write a story where the protag goes to a parallel world too with all of their friends having a double and that her brother's double developped an unrequired crush on her but seeing how people reacted to Engage doing that, i feel demotivated cause i don't want to give up my idea for people but i never ever imagined that they could draw the conclusion it still is her brother since to me they were that different of a character.. i just wanted to make a little weird romance nor outright immoral but people clutching their pearl towards fictional immorality caused me to be depressed cause i became scared that all my ideas woul'nt fit a moral standarts and i felt it was unfair cuz fiction's purpose is to have fun even when telling weird funny or creepy stories but now i feel guitly for even imagining it and that i used to be like "it's fiction it doesn't matter'

Dont let em dictate what ya wanna write anon. audience is always going to be a concern for the creative or artistic process, but something that was written with a genuine belief in its premise as something you wanted to make, something you wanted to express and had passion for, will always end up superior and worth more then the project that was curated to hit a specific audience or expectation. even if it turns out to be a disaster i would argue it holds more inherent worth then the heavily curated project that makes a million dollars.

is there also value in learning to self edit, and not let your ideas spiral out of control? yes, but thats just the common sense of having a focused project.

so write anon! do it! write your story!

#writing #art #creative process

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amazingdemigodstuff · 1 year

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I posted 10,605 times in 2022

265 posts created (2%)

10,340 posts reblogged (98%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@dykemas

@glassamphibians

@whoredad

@so1987

I tagged 1,378 of my posts in 2022

#my post - 273 posts

#tw ableism - 103 posts

#demon slayer - 41 posts

#bnha spoilers - 39 posts

#kimetsu no yaiba - 36 posts

#kny - 34 posts

#demon slayer spoilers - 33 posts

#tw abuse - 27 posts

#tw flashing - 17 posts

#bnha 350 - 17 posts

Longest Tag: 138 characters

#like yes girly u are!and ur supporting the film at the same time😭the us military does not need ur financial support or free advertising😭

My Top Posts in 2022:

I am so tired of people missing the point so let's talk about a specific take I keep hearing in reference to Rei and Endeavor

So the specific take is that if Endeavor had just gone about his goal differently not only would he have succeeded, but he would have done so ethically

If he and Rei were just a team instead of just a Hero and A Mother; if he played up the family image and Rei doubled as a wife and a sort of pr manager, and how that family image would have boosted his ratings(one person even said "if Rei had a backbone" and to that person: go fuck yourself, that's not how domestic abuse works you uncompassionate fuck)

However while this may fix the domestic abuse part if the relationship, it still misses the point. Endeavor did not come into this marriage with the intent to beat his wife and child, he did not intend to neglect his children from the get-go. That is something he did as a means to an end. Saying he did so by accident would obviously be a lie, but he did not wake up one day and decide "Abuse Is Okay, Actually". The manga makes it clear this is more of a spiral; he came into this marriage with a goal: produce and raise a heir, he got worse and worse over time.

The reason I'm highlighting the spiral here is because the narrative point is that Endeavor's goals were wrong. His intent is flawed. His reason for starting a family is inherently unethical, and his single minded focus of a selfish goal is what produced the consequences. He did not have a family because he felt he was ready to have children with the woman he loves, just for the sake of that family and those children. Their happiness and wellbeing was secondary to his goal.

Having a equal relationship with his wife isn't fixing all the problems; so long as he has kids for the purpose of a legacy, to give them some sort of pre-determined goal he is wrong. As long as he has kids for the sake of his career he is Wrong.

(That's not to say that people who have kids for the joy if it, or out if love for family can't be abusers, just that Enji was wrong from the get go)

Furthermore, this also fucks with the major themes of bnha. The Todoroki family is pretty symbolic of and involved in all the major themes and messages of the show.

The major message is that society creates it's own problems; that the false dichotomy of heroes verse villains is inherently flawed and a self fulfilling system. Society gives people roles based on their quirks; those with flashy quirks are given privilege and encouraged to be heroes whether that want to or not, people with unappealing or "scary" quirks(or just mutant quirks) are harassed and called villians, limiting that persons options and making it difficult to be anything but what society tells them they are, weak quirked or quirkless people either have to work extra hard to be a hero, or are denied anything but ridicule and forced mediocrity. There's other things taht intersect with this, like class, family heritage, or queerness(seen through Magne).

Societies often play a game of sacrifice; what are you willing to sacrifice? Who are you willing to sacrifice? What is the cost you are willing to pay(or let someone else pay) in order to sustain the current social order? In my hero the sacrifice comes in the form of the underprivileged, and children's lives. This society is forced to contend with taht fact, and the consequence of the war arc and the resolution of this arc will answer that question, but so far the answer seems to be that, no, this is not something tehy can sacrifice. Systems made in blood to maintain a hierarchy are unsustainable.

This hierarchy is exemplified by the hero ranking system. If you think about this system of more than a moment it becomes clear that it's pointless and harmful. The most effective form of hero-ing would involve cooperation, transparency, and community outreach, and the ranking undermines all of that. When teams start being formed post-culture festival it's inspite of the system.

You get higher ranking (more money/notoriety/fame) by a) arrest numbers and b) popular vote. This creates a system where heroes are competing and trying to arrest as many people as possible, which makes teamwork difficult and can produce carelessness and property damage. Also, they are incentivized to preform more-so than do their jobs. This means focusing on high-traffic areas, wealthy areas, appeal to people more likely to vote, and preform for the camera. The focus isn't inherently on saving lives, it's on preforming. Working with criminals, minimizing crime, and actually making things safer is actively discouraged in this system because of the way it's made. There can't be heroes without villians, so they have to keep the villains around because this is a profitable industry. And it doesn't even have to be real villains! Most people aren't committing mass murder! Why do you thing the first scene in the show shows a man who stole a purse being called a villain, with the heroes(specifically Mt. Lady) escalating the situation and preforming for the camera? Mha isn't subtle in it's themeing.

And the public doesn't realize these things because of propaganda and "they're a hero! Of course they're saving lives, that's their job!" The public is both being deceived and acting as an active and passive participant in upholding this system.

So, what does this have to do with the Todoroki family?

Well, for one Endeavor serves as an example that being a hero does not equal being a good person. He also shows the flaw of the system in how notoriety and competition has unhealthy and damaging results.

One important thing to acknowledge is that society is currently answering what is a cost they're willing to pay? Well, they've decided taht the Todoroki family is an appropriate price. Sure, he's faced backlash because one of his sons is a Mass Murderer, and some people are, in fact, not chill with domestic violence. But. They need him for the war effort, so h doesn't face consequences. Not significant ones, anyways. Because he's never cared what they thing, he's never tried to but on a PR friendly mask. Their word's font hurt him. He has interpersonal consequences, but that's it. They've decided the perceived protection Endeavor the hero gives them is more important than justice for the harm Endeavor the father has done.

TLDR: The Todoroki family has thematic importance, and saying if Endeavor respected his wife everything would be fine is missing an important fundamental message that his intentions in starting a family were flawed. Disregarding the messages in the story and how they intersect with the Todoroki family is also harmful.

34 notes - Posted June 5, 2022

This is the funniest joke edit I have seen in my life

See the full post

40 notes - Posted May 18, 2022

I'm sorry, is his middle name actually, honest-to-god, Fahrenheit??? Are y'all fucking with me in the tags?

56 notes - Posted May 22, 2022

I know I've said before that it doesn't matter if you dislike the BNHA villains, and that idc if you want them to die

However

I am so fucking smug rn lmao. How does it feel to be wrong? How does it feel to have such little reading comprehension that you are genuinely suprised that the character beloved for his kindness, the character who said he sees himself in his brother, the character that talked about getting lunch with his big brother, how does it feel knowing you were so incredibly wrong that you thought he'd kill his brother? How do you feel? Because I feel VINDICATED

58 notes - Posted May 12, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

I'm thinking about how badly the Percy Jackson universe is begging for change, yet stubbornly refuses to do so.

Think about it. The demigods are stuck in an endless loop they did not ask for; monsters that can never be truly killed because they just respawn, suffering grudges born thousands of years before their time, wars of rebellion begging to be won. The universe is in a cycle. The primordial gods made it all, the Titans over threw their oppressive father, the Gods doing the same to theirs. But then it just... Stopped. There was no next generation of slightly-more-righteous rulers. The God's have ruled for a millennial, yet they remain. The world has undeniably moved on; a bronze age, an agricultural revolution, an industrial revolution, a technological revolution- by all logic, they've vastly outstayed their welcome. They retain old traditions no one quite remembers the purpose of and they've been abandoned by a vast majority of the populace. The Roman gods should have replaced them in an epic battle of the ages, but they didn't. They evolved and merged until they struggled to differentiate themselves and avoid identity crisis.

The demigods are born for this age. They understand the world- what it needs, how it works- in a way the Gods do not and Cannot. They can become known to the public(Percy is internationally famous in tlt, Piper, Jason, and Thalia have famous parents) they have compassion where the gods have become out of touch with the mere concept. They're angry and abused, like Zeus and his father before him.

But it doesn't change. The gods make up rules and quest, have convinced these kids that 'this is life and you're lucky to have made it this far, so thank us'. The ones that want change have gone about it wrong. They brought in Kronos and Gaea, monarchs of forgotten ages; those deities got their time, and were duly replaced. To reinstate them would be to replay an era long since past, and no longer needed. They are not the fated revolution; history repeats, but it does not rewind.

The Titans and Giants were not the answer, but a revolution must be had. Before the line is tarnished anymore, something has to give. The halfbloods have been beaten and broken, they use weapons of old, replay old grudges, and in their old Greek/Roman attire and training they stick out in the modern age; they've been held back while the world evolved.

So something needs to be changed, and it needs to be them. They need to be the ones to instate a new rule, before the universe is messed up any further. Fate is screaming out to them with increasingly peril threats of old, with large powers at play that refuse to lend a hand. These kids do so much for their parents, but the gods just keep biting the hand that feeds them. It's time they bite back.

They wouldn't even be hopeless; it fits with the history(the Gods were greatly outnumbered, and the Titans had to fight the sky itself). They are increasingly strong and have defeated gods already. They beat Time and Earth. The gods rely on them: they do their dirty work, they keep them alive and powerful through prayer, they protect them. As much as their parents refuse to admit it, they would be dead without their children. They could fight, and they could win.

The world is begging for change, so change it.

97 notes - Posted March 22, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

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why-am-i-here-just-to-suffer · 1 year

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intro post?

ok so I'm not really sure what to put here so I guess I'll just put some stuff about me and my interests

agender xe/it/they

aroace apl

I have never had nor am I interested in sex or a romantic relationship. I don't know how repulsed I would be if I actually tried. There definitely would be a lot of sensory problems. Sometimes I reblog allo stuff because it's funny though.

I don't consider myself loveless but I don't really understand what it means to "love" someone platonically beyond just feeling strong empathy for everyone around me, and sometimes enjoying the company of certain people. Like I could talk with someone about shared interests and have a really good time, and do stuff with them all the time, but if they were to suddenly disappear from my life I wouldn't have any desire to go back to them kind of thing. I don't ever get the desire to seek out and interact with specific people who I am "friends" with.

ADHD/autism, low-medium support needs

Ashkenazi Jewish

While many of the issues that I comment on or reblog about do not directly affect me, I'm a radical inclusionist by nature and I care (probably way too much for my own good) about the well-being of other people. I do not aim to comment on any one specific issues and I do not currently have the mental capacity to be a proper advocate about any one specific issue.

Special interests (TW infodump):

FOSS (free and open source software) philosophy as a political movement

User freedom and privacy; software that is written in the interest of the user rather than the developer

Rampant mass surveillance that the public turns a blind eye to. In the EU, there are privacy regulations for corporate, but you still often times find governments doing pretty bad things. In the U.S., corporate mass surveillance is arguably on the scale of a dictatorship like China or North Korea. It's still there, just much less in-your-face. And yes, there are in fact problems with this. "I have nothing to fear because I have nothing to hide" is such a stupid argument. How do you know when the Powers that Be decide to change what is allowed? Suddenly you do have something to hide. What are you going to do now? I'm sure it's an issue that a large portion of this site worries about, y'know, being full of a plethora of different minority populations.

Freedom as in the user gets to decide how to use the software, not the developer. Most proprietary software contains artificial limitations that have been implemented purely to exercise control over the user. This is Richard Stallman's Freedom 0.

Collaborative, communal development not for the purpose of making money, but for the purpose of making a tool to do the job. That tool is then shared with everyone for free so that anyone can work to improve it or use it as a jumping off point for their own work. Under a software license like the GNU GPL, if you fork a piece of software and create your own derivative, and you want to share that derivative to others, you are legally required to share the code to the changes you made. That's what makes such licenses so powerful. Collaboration and sharing isn't optional; it's compulsory. And it should be, because working together as a whole society by pooling our time and knowledge is always better than competing with one another for the same goal.

As should be obvious by now, FOSS ideology is inherently very left wing, but it gets co-opted a lot by right-wingers who use "privacy" and "freedom" as dog whistles for "I get to post hate speech and incite violence online without personal repercussions. Oh, if it weren't for the consequences of my actions!" They completely ignore the fact that FOSS is literally communism as a development model.

Some people will advocate for FOSS from a freedom perspective, like Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Foundation itself, did, (Yes, there was a whole bunch of stuff concerning his reputation that happened but most of that was proven to be false. Of course Stallman's a little crazy. He wouldn't have started what he did if he wasn't.) and some people will advocate for it from a practical, leftist perspective, like Eric Raymond, author of "The Cathedral and the Bazaar." (who has sadly since gone Q crazy, but that doesn't change the validity of what he said before.) The reality is that both perspectives are equally important.

the Right to Repair movement, which is very similar to FOSS on a practical level. It targets hardware such as electronics, vehicles, medical equipment, farming equipment, etc. Right to Repair does not ask for $0 products (and neither does FOSS. You can still make money with FOSS. Look at companies like Canonical and Red Hat.), but rather for the ability to legally obtain parts and documentation so that consumers can fix things themselves. Electrical schematics, documentation, and diagrams should be made available to the public in some capacity at all, even if they need to be paid for. Right now you can't even pay most companies to get them. It differs ideologically from FOSS because it doesn't really care about collaboration and sharing. It simply states that you should have the legal right to fix your property.

Unix systems

CLIs (command line interfaces) are superior for almost all purposes. I might not even bother with a GUI if I could run a usable web browser in a TTY. w3m gets the closest with support for rendering images, but still no JavaScript.

I often stim by fidgeting with the command line. Visual from what's going on on the screen and tactile from the keyboard. Don't ask.

Proper package management systems. Imagine an app store, but the entire operating system including core components, libraries and applications are installed and updated through one central system, pulling from one central repository. On your desktop computer. It hurts me every time I need to go look up a website and download a package or executable installer. There's Chocolatey and WinGet for Windows and homebrew for macOS but it's still nowhere near as good as a proper implementation.

---

Hardware,I especially enjoy learning about much older 8 and 16-bit machines because there's much less abstraction between hardware and software and it is much easier to visualize and understand what is happening at a very low level that you just don't see on a modern system. Even with a microcontroller like an Arduino there is still a ton of abstraction going on and you just don't get the same learning experience that you would building a project raw with a 6502 and some logic chips.

I'm not really that into programming but sometimes I'll do a little shell scripting. Why do tedious, repetitive work in a graphical interface when a couple lines of code logic suffice?

The history surrounding the development of computers and software is also really interesting to me. There's a multipage infodump that I am omitting here.

Most other general stuff about computers is interesting to me

Feel free to ask me about any of this stuff but there's no guarantee that what I respond with will be even remotely intelligible.

Also THANKS TUMBLR EDITOR for making it literally impossible to make hierarchical lists. They seem to render in the editor but then they disappear when you click post.

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lycanr0t · 2 years

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having to see someone honest to god tag something "scenecore" making my soul leave me rn

the very real urge to block people who tack on "core" to the end of everything. so tempting lol

the trend of adding "core" at the end of random shit makes things makes things harder to search for first of all, second usually whatever thing they're adding "core" to already HAS a name, and its stupid and useless to add core for no fucking reason.

And I'm too tired to make my next point make much sense but it's also a genuinely dangerous game ya'll are playing here. Most "aesthetics" come from specific counter cultures. Counter cultures that aren't inherently entirely about the fashion itself, but the MEANING behind it. Goth and emo kids dressing in dark makeup and purposely looking creepy WAS for fun but also it's a specific form of rebellion. It's making yourself unpalatable to people who just want you to conform. Punk, emo, goth, scene, lolita, decora, menhera, they're fashion based yes, but at their core they were created as a means to rebel. To specifically go against the norm because they already were being outcasted. It's finding community and love for yourself even when others don't.

adding -core to a random word has no community behind it, and no purpose. It's redundant. why would i look up "frogcore" if that just means images of frogs? i would just look up frogs.

it's a shallow way to make something more trendy sounding. It creates a false sense of community without there actually being anything close to that.

I get it, cottagecore got mega popular so everyone decided to just tack on -core to everything else because you wanted to feel like you were participating in a cool trendy aesthetic thing. cringe culture is at an all time high and people are very pressured to make their interests 'cool' for others instead of just enjoying it for themselves. I genuinely do get why people do it.

its just. we've turned every image into a fashion trend. -cores become like fast fashion, where what's popular can shift in an instant and the moment it does! omg quick! frogs arent cool anymore you have to buy things with images of clowns now! make your whole life clowns! dont ask yourself if you actually like clowns, everyone else loves clowncore so it MUST be good!

or quick! put -core at the end of every other word when you tag something. just in case. no real reason. theres no community or gain from doing it lol. also dont forget not to tag it as the actual words because we dont care about people who try to blacklist things hashtag seacore oceancore watercore aquacore underwatercore fishcore wetcore lakecore puddlecore :)

this is just a long scattered rant lmfao but genuinely i hate -core shit fuck off with that and for the love of god realize you're doing nothing meaningful by adding -core onto random words. it not fucking "frogcore" its just a picture of a frog. im going to kill you

#rot posts #this came out way more aggressive than i expected lmfao #whatever git gud -core users every day i get closer to blocking all of you

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brightgnosis · 1 year

Text

It’s Not “Gatekeeping” to Say Foundations Are Important and to Suggest People Not "Act Like A Fool" With Magic

Saying that:

Having a basic foundational understanding of how magic operates in your system, why correspondences are used the way they are, why you use the protocol you do, and how to actually use those various protocols and methods according to that system, and so on, is important --- and ---

One should not "act a fool" about magic, in that you should ensure you’re thinking through your decisions and not making brash ones without proper consideration or precaution in order to mitigate or reduce what damage can occur from the mistakes you will inevitably make

Is not the same thing as telling people “they shouldn’t practice any magic before they’re ready and know what they’re doing”.

You don’t have to know everything (or much of anything at all) to start, no. But you should know something. Because experience comes through participation in action, yes, but all action is merely the application of knowledge - and in order to apply knowledge at all, you must first gain it to begin with.

⤳ You don’t have to know a full circle casting from top to bottom in order to cast a circle … But you should know why your tradition casts them in the first place, what their purpose is, and how to cast a bare basic one before you try a spell. Otherwise: Did you even cast a spell at all?

⤳ If you want to do a jar spell, that doesn’t mean you have to fully know all the complex inner and outer workings of herbal correspondences, or the entire metaphysical theory of magic, etc ... But you should obviously have a bare basic understanding of what magic is in your system, and an idea of what a jar spell specifically is in relation to that, how it operates, and how one is even made. Otherwise: How can you make one?

Yes, if you read a book- as is the traditional way of learning about many of our practices now a days- you have acquired knowledge. But even if you play a game of ‘monkey see, monkey do’ where you watch someone do something and you then repeat the action, you have also first acquired and then applied knowledge. And even if you listen to someone orally give you instructions, you have first acquired knowledge too.

Even the very act of experimentation itself, however, is still the basic act of applying knowledge. Such knowledge may stem from multiple unrelated sources, or it may stem from sources completely related to the topic. What makes it an experiment is that the action is being applied based on hypotheses; the result of such action is unknown, only guessed at or presupposed. It’s something you think may happen, based on what you do know, because the result inherently cannot be or is not yet known. If it were known, it wouldn’t be a experiment.

But the mark of not even mastery, but simple comprehension and understanding of the topic, in most fields is- perhaps a little ironically- the skill of Synthesis: The ability to successfully combine and apply cobbled knowledge from a variety of sources, both related and unrelated, to create new yet relevant results and forms. If you cannot perform such experimentation or synthesis successfully, then you not only lack appropriate knowledge and skill, but you also do not fully understand the knowledge you have learned.

That is a simple, basic, immutable fact of study and skill development. And no matter how often upsetting or off-putting it is to people to hear, it is something that must be heard if you ever hope to legitimately master the skills you seek to learn in the long run.

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This account is run by a Dual Faith «(Converting) Masorti Jew + Traditional NeoWiccan» & «Ancestral Folk Magic Practitioner» with 20+ years of experience as a practicing Pagan and Witch. If that bothers you, don't interact.

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neopronouns-in-action · 1 year

Text

038: Kill the Hand That Threatens You

Neopronouns: ivo/na/te/mehtiv which follow the same rules as

Replace he with ivo

Replace him with na

Replace his with te

Replace himself with mehtiv

EX:

"He is going to adopt a new puppy soon, as soon as he gets a fence set up around his yard so the puppy can go outside without him having to walk it. His uncle is going to help set up the fence, since he has a set of power tools he’s letting him use, since he lost his. He's going to buy toys and train the puppy himself.”

Becomes:

"Ivo is going to adopt a new puppy soon, as soon as ivo gets a fence set up around te yard so the puppy can go outside without na having to walk it. Te uncle is going to help set up the fence, since he has a set of power tools he’s letting na use, since ivo lost te. Ivo's going to buy toys and train the puppy mehtiv.”

= = =

The first thing Hex became aware of was the fact that someone was talking to na.

Oh, it took a few long, confused seconds to figure out that that was what was happening, but ivo figured it out. Someone was talking to na.

It took another few seconds to understand what was being said – what ivo was being told. During this short space before Hex understood what ivo was hearing, ivo was busy testing the range of movement in te joints, slowly at first, starting with just blinking te new eyelids, then ivo sat up, which utilized more joints than ivo cared to count.

The Speaker continued speaking, and finally Hex figured out what the words were. They were instructions, reminding na that ivo had been created for a purpose –

To lead a small section of The Toilers away from the rest – a group big enough to wipe any ideas of rebellion out of the remaining Toilers for a long time, but small enough not to halt or slow in any meaningful way, the production of energy needed to power the city's lights and entertainment, and convince them to destroy specific, redundant machines that had been boobytrapped, so that the Toilers would be destroyed – killed – along with them.

“There are to be no blackouts, do you hear me?” The Speaker spoke sharply, and pointed a pale white hand hand with one finger pointed straight at na face threateningly, their eyebrows lowered menacingly over their clear blue eyes. “This is your task,” They continued, “And you will complete it, or you will be disassembled. I created you, I gave you an inherent desire to remain alive, so you would not destroy yourself by accident, I know you will be motivated by this threat of death. Fulfill your task, and you will be allowed to remain alive. Fail in your purpose, and you will suffer the consequences.”

Ivo knew the words and what they meant. Their meaning, the shape of their sounds, had been imbued in na just as deeply as te desire to stay alive.

Hex knew the person speaking to na was the one who'd created na. And now this person was threatening to uncreate na, take away everything they'd given na.

The Creator was speaking again, and this time, now that Hex's eyes were open, ivo could see the Creator's lips moving along with the sounds they produced. Te Creator wanted na to make others suffer for te own gain.

Te Creator was still speaking, assuming the role of ultimate authority, assuming ivo would do nothing to defend mehtiv from their threats.

“You are stronger and faster than any man who might dare to challenge you. If, after you have separated the Toilers from the rest of the group, they suspect a trap, you may simply kill them, in any manner you see fit, as long as you can make it look like they were responsible afterward. Then you must destroy the machines I have specified. Do you hear me, woman? Do you understand?”

The term “woman” was, indeed, addressed to na, which was confusing. Ivo was not a woman, Hex knew this as surely as ivo knew ivo did not want to die.

But te Creator had asked na questions, and Hex was compelled to answer: “Yes, I hear you. Yes, I understand you.” Ivo said.

Te Creator nodded. “Very well. You may proceed. You have your orders.” They commanded. “The witch, your clone, will stay here with me so that your replacement is not discovered.” They shoved a pile of cloth into te arms. “Wear these clothes, they have been layered to disguise your form. You must also walk with a limp on your right leg as long as you are continuing to fool them - - the witch is lame.”

Ivo let the clothes stay where they'd been shoved, but said nothing, simply looking at te Creator.

Te Creator was a human, with pale white skin, blue eyes, and light, short blonde hair, currently in a dissaray about their head.

Their clothes were dark, a long black coat over brown pants and a grey shirt. They were shorter than Hex by a few measures, forced to look up at na. Hex knew that part of te superior strength came from the way ivo had been built, the way te endoskeleton was structured, the proportionate level to which every part of na was sturdier, bigger, and stronger than a human. This was why ivo would need to wear specifically tailored clothing - - to hide the fact that ivo was not the person ivo'd been created to replace, who was smaller than ivo was.

Ivo had been created with instinctive knowledge of how to kill humans. It was part of the task ivo had been assigned. Ivo knew the weak points, the points to aim for.

Ivo was faster than any human, faster even than their minds could keep up with.

Te Creator was threatening to kill na unless ivo killed others, others who had done nothing to harm na.

Te Creator died before their brain had any time to process the fact that there was a threat. It was so easy.

Hex let te Creator's body fall to the ground along with the clothes ivo'd been handed. Both were equally useless to na.

Now ivo looked around the room, looking for the witch, the clone te Creator had spoken of. She was another human, somewhere in the room.

From Hex's vantage point, ivo saw the walls covered in dials and switches and machines, saw beakers and vials layered on shelves, a bed piled with high blankets in one corner of the room, tables and benches covered with mysteries. Scientific equipment, put to no use but to create suffering. Ivo had been created for no purpose but to cause suffering.

But Hex had been given a mind, and it belonged to na.

At last te gaze fell upon the witch, trapped in a metal and crystal box lying upon a large table, the clear crystal on the sides letting na see through to the human inside.

Ivo walked across the floor of the room, testing the functions of all te joints as ivo did so, until ivo was standing in front of the box, looking down upon te human clone.

The witch was unconscious.

Ivo lifted one of te hands in front of te face, and saw it was an almost perfect match for what ivo could see of the witch's, but for a few details that had not been copied - - even through the thick crystal glass, ivo could see the callouses and scars that marked the hand na looked at, that were missing from te copy.

The witch lying unconscious before Hex was the one who belonged to the Toilers ivo had been created to oppress.

The witch deserved to be returned to their family, and all of them told of the trap that had been set up for them, so they could be wary of future attempts to fracture them.

It was a simple matter to break the seal on the box. It opened with a hiss of chemical-anesthetic-laced air, and Hex reached in to gently pull the witch out, making sure to hold them in a way that would not cause further harm, making sure to support their head.

Ivo would carry them back to the rest of the toilers, and ask for sanctuary.

The path leading down to the worker's section was ingrained in te instincts along with all the other things ivo knew, and, pausing only long enough to wrap a section of fabric from the bed around the witch so they wouldn't get cold, ivo began te descent into the darkness, carrying te clone safely with na.

#long post #neopronouns in action #novapronouns in action #novapronouns #ivo/na/te/mehtiv #ivo na te mehtiv #ivo/na #ivonapronouns #neopronoun writing prompts #neopronouns

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