#tldr the names listed are important you are SO right!! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

decolonize-the-left · 11 months

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This is not a drill

This is IMPORTANT especially if you live in the USA or use the internet REGULATED by the USA!!!!

Do not scroll. Signal boost. Reblog.

Reblog WITHOUT reading if you really can't right now, I promise all the links and proof are here. People NEED to know this.

( I tried to make this accessible but you can't cater to EVERYONE so please just try your best to get through this or do your own research 🙏)

TLDR: Homeland Security has been tying our social media to our IPs, licenses, posts, emails, selfies, cloud, apps, location, etc through our phones without a warrant using Babel X and will hold that information gathered for 75 years. Certain aspects of it were hushed because law enforcement will/does/has used it and it would give away confidential information about ongoing operations.

This gets renewed in September.

Between this, Agincourt (a VR simulator for cops Directly related to this project), cop city, and widespread demonization of abortions, sex workers, & queer people mixed with qanon/Trumpism, and fascism in Florida, and the return of child labor, & removed abortion rights fresh on our tails it's time for alarms to be raised and it's time for everyone to stop calling us paranoid and start showing up to protest and mutual aid groups.

🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨

These are the same feds who want to build cop city and recreate civilian houses en masse and use facial recognition. The same feds that want cop city to also be a training ground for police across the country. Cop city where they will build civilian neighborhoods to train in.

Widespread mass surveillance against us.

Now let's cut to some parts of the article. May 17th from Vice:

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is using an invasive, AI-powered monitoring tool to screen travelers, including U.S. citizens, refugees, and people seeking asylum, which can in some cases link their social media posts to their Social Security number and location data, according to an internal CBP document obtained by Motherboard.

Called Babel X, the system lets a user input a piece of information about a target—their name, email address, or telephone number—and receive a bevy of data in return, according to the document. Results can include their social media posts, linked IP address, employment history, and unique advertising identifiers associated with their mobile phone. The monitoring can apply to U.S. persons, including citizens and permanent residents, as well as refugees and asylum seekers, according to the document.

“Babel data will be used/captured/stored in support of CBP targeting, vetting, operations and analysis,” the document reads. Babel X will be used to “identify potential derogatory and confirmatory information” associated with travelers, persons of interest, and “persons seeking benefits.” The document then says results from Babel X will be stored in other CBP operated systems for 75 years.

"The U.S. government’s ever-expanding social media dragnet is certain to chill people from engaging in protected speech and association online. And CBP’s use of this social media surveillance technology is especially concerning in connection with existing rules requiring millions of visa applicants each year to register their social media handles with the government. As we’ve argued in a related lawsuit, the government simply has no legitimate interest in collecting and retaining such sensitive information on this immense scale,” Carrie DeCell, senior staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute, told Motherboard in an email.

The full list of information that Babel X may provide to CBP analysts is a target’s name, date of birth, address, usernames, email address, phone number, social media content, images, IP address, Social Security number, driver’s license number, employment history, and location data based on geolocation tags in public posts.

Bennett Cyphers, a special advisor to activist

organization the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Motherboard in an online chat “the data isn’t limited to public posts made under someone’s real name on Facebook or Twitter.”

The document says CBP also has access to AdID information through an add-on called Locate X, which includes smartphone location data. AdID information is data such as a device’s unique advertising ID, which can act as an useful identifier for tracking a phone and, by extension, a person’s movements. Babel Street obtains location information from a long supply chain of data. Ordinary apps installed on peoples’ smartphones provide data to a company called Gravy Analytics, which repackages that location data and sells it to law enforcement agencies via its related company Venntel. But Babel Street also repackages Venntel’s data for its own Locate X product."

The PTA obtained by Motherboard says that Locate X is covered by a separate “commercial telemetry” PTA. CBP denied Motherboard’s FOIA request for a copy of this document, claiming it “would disclose techniques and/or procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions”.

A former Babel Street employee previously told Motherboard how users of Locate X can draw a shape on a map known as a geofence, see all devices Babel Street has data on for that location, and then follow a specific device to see where else it has been.

Cyphers from the EFF added “most of the people whose location data is collected in this way likely have no idea it’s happening.”

CBP has been purchasing access to location data without a warrant, a practice that critics say violates the Fourth Amendment. Under a ruling from the Supreme Court, law enforcement agencies need court approval before accessing location data generated by a cell phone tower; those critics believe this applies to location data generated by smartphone apps too.

“Homeland Security needs to come clean to the American people about how it believes it can legally purchase and use U.S. location data without any kind of court order. Americans' privacy shouldn't depend on whether the government uses a court order or credit card,” Senator Ron Wyden told Motherboard in a statement. “DHS should stop violating Americans' rights, and Congress should pass my bipartisan legislation to prohibit the government's purchase of Americans' data." CBP has refused to tell Congress what legal authority it is following when using commercially bought smartphone location data to track Americans without a warrant.

Neither CBP or Babel Street responded to a request for comment. Motherboard visited the Babel X section of Babel Street’s website on Tuesday. On Wednesday before publication, that product page was replaced with a message that said “page not found.”

Do you know anything else about how Babel X is being used by government or private clients? Do you work for Babel Street? We'd love to hear from you. Using a non-work phone or computer, you can contact Joseph Cox securely on Signal on +44 20 8133 5190, Wickr on josephcox, or email [email protected].

Wow that sounds bad right.

Be a shame if it got worse.

It does.

The software (previously Agincourt Solutions) is sold by AI data company Babel Street, was led by Jeffrey Chapman, a former Treasury Department official,, Navy retiree & Earlier in his career a White House aide and intelligence officer at the Department of Defense, according to LinkedIn.

🙃

So what's Agincourt Solutions then right now?

SO FUCKING SUS IN RELATION TO THIS, THATS WHAT

In essence, synthetic BATTLEVR training is a mixture of all three realities – virtual, augmented and physical. It is flexible enough to allow for mission rehearsals of most types and be intuitive enough to make training effective.

Anyway the new CEO of Babel Street (Babel X) as of April is a guy named Michael Southworth and I couldn't find much more on him than that tbh, it's all very vague and missing. That's the most detail I've seen on him.

And the detail says he has a history of tech startups that scanned paperwork and sent it elsewhere, good with numbers, and has a lot of knowledge about cell networks probably.

Every inch more of this I learn as I continue to Google the names and companies popping up... It gets worse.

Monitor phone use. Quit photobombing and filming strangers and for the love of fucking God quit sending apps photos of your actual legal ID to prove your age. Just don't use that site, you'll be fine I swear. And quit posting your private info online. For activists/leftists NO personally identifiable info at least AND DEFINITELY leave your phone at home to Work™!!!

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moonlit-positivity · 4 months

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Healing & Emotional Work Masterlist✨

Hi, my name is Stinky & here's a post introducing myself & my blog✨

Listed below are all individual posts that I have written about my own journey with healing from an abusive childhood✨

As always, take what you like & leave what you don't ✨

Happy healing ☺️

Resources & Coping Skills✨

New To Mental Health? Please Start Here!

How To Find The Right Therapist For You

"Trauma Informed" Therapy vs Other Types of Therapy

What is a Boundary?

How to Recognize When You Need To Set A Boundary

Coping with Flashbacks & Panic Attacks & Overwhelming Feelings

An Introduction to Emotional Regulation

What is Emotional Regulation & Why it's Important (Video)

What is Attachment Theory & Why it's Important (video)

What The Actual Fuck is "Radical Acceptance" and Why Is It So Goddamn Hard (video)

Managing Suicidal Thoughts (shorthand edition)

Tips for Navigating A Crisis Situation

✨Journaling✨: What To Do When You Just Can't Write It Out

How To Stay Organized & Make Your Appointments Through Long Term Dissociation Fogs

An Introduction to Healthy Sexual Boundaries

Feeling 🤬 Destructive? 😤 Healthier Activities for Destructive Tendencies

How to Set Better Goals For Yourself

Facts About Therapy You Might Not Know

Recognizing Abuse: What is Generational Trauma? (Video)

Recognizing Abuse: Trauma Bonding (no, this doesn't mean you bonding with your homies about the same types of trauma y'all share)

Recognizing Abuse: Emotional Takeovers

Recognizing Abuse: Emotional Abuse

Recognizing Abuse: Love vs Control vs Obsession

Recognizing Abuse: Parentification

Recognizing Abuse: Triangulation

Effects of Abuse: PTSD Hypervigilance

Effects of Abuse: Redefining Respect After You've Been Abused

Effects of CSA & SA That Nobody Ever Talks About

Effects of Trauma That Never Get Acknowledged Out Loud

Healing Thoughts: Understanding Grounding & Dissociation on a Deeper Level

Healing Thoughts: How to actually feel ur feelings

Healing Thoughts: How to tolerate being alone with your thoughts

Healing Thoughts: When showering & hygiene is too hard

What the heck is emotional work?✨

Healthier ways to communicate

The root of all healing work (tldr it's ur childhood 🎉)

Attachment theory healing (codependency, enmeshment, & BPD FP attachment)

Attachment & abandonment wounds (BPD FP)

Three short communication tips that can greatly improve your interpersonal relationships

Rejection Sensitivity, Perfectionism, & Abandonment Issues

Am I Being Manipulative? A Checklist of Recognizing Manipulative Behaviors and Taking Accountability

Get To Know The Healing Language ✨

In order to heal you must grieve

What does it mean to "make space" for yourself?

What is "inner child healing"?

How to be kinder with yourself

Unlearn what they taught you

Reframe success & failure (if you have a fear of failure then this one is for you ❤️‍🩹)

Reframe your anger

Reframe the process of moving on

Focus on what you can control

Affirmations & things you need to hear (just trust me)✨

affirmations for reclaiming your voice around authority figures

affirmations for RSD

affirmations for feeling ur feelings

affirmations for self forgiveness

affirmations for healing from childhood trauma

affirmations for healing codependency & attachment (BPD FP)

things I wish I knew before I started healing (part 1)

things I wish I knew before I started healing (part 2)

things I learned while healing

things your inner child needs to hear

you are normal

slow down and take a deep breath

you can move now. you are safe.

I believe you

yes it was that bad

your anger is valid

you need to hear this (trust me)

How to start healing? Start with the truth✨

the very first hard reality you need to face

the second hard reality that's gonna hit you like a train

the third and worst hard reality there is

🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸

Looking forward to updating the list as we grow 🪴

🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸

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siffrin-enthusiast · 3 months

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// intro post

[Image ID: A GIF of the In Stars and Time party, created by insertdisc5. End ID.]

hello and welcome to our little corner of the internet!!

more information (including about the music) is below the cut but the tldr is that i'm a happily taken 18 year old, auDHD disabled transmasculine host of a traumagenic DID system currently fixated on in stars and time, ultrakill, and coding. collectively we go by kuiper and he/they pronouns :)

my asks & dms are always open! feel free to draw me an anon picture (checked weekly) or check out the submissions thread!

while you're here, consider donating to palestine to request a commission from a lovely talented in stars and time artist!! check it out at @isatforpalestine!

if you're trying to get the playlist to work, you need to go to your site settings, allow audio, refresh the page, and then play it. It will update itself as you navigate through the entire blog so there aren't any pauses/cutoffs! the good news is once you figure out how to do it, it'll work until you clear all of your site cookies!

interests

there's..a lot!! in stars and time, coding, rain world, deltarune, slay the princess, pokemon, hollow knight, psychology (my college major!), fnaf, inscryption, generation loss, hades, celeste, ultrakill, warrior cats, oneshot, hunger games, moon knight (pirating it), night in the woods, and a good thirty more that i'm forgetting.

tagging system

i do my best to keep it simple because i'm too lazy to do a cool one for convenience! interests are tagged with the name of said interest (#in stars and time), and if they're somewhat newly-out, they get a "spoilers" thrown on the end of it (#in stars and time spoilers). if there's something i post about that you don't want to see, i highly encourage you to block its tag! i won't know or be offended! :)

i’ll tag anything that i think is a common thing to be tagged like death/blood, and i do it in the format of #tw death. if this isn’t the right format or anyone wants me to tag other things that i didn’t think of, just let me know!

there's also a few special tags of my own! asks are tagged with #kuiper important posts for the important stuff (like this intro post), #kuiper favorite posts for my favorites/things i return to frequently, #kuiper asks, posts where i ramble about whatever is #kuiper rambling, posts about my dissociation/system are tagged #kuiper system posting, and posts about my disabilities are tagged with #kuiper disability moment! i also write fic and while i tag them with #kuiper fics, i post most of them over at my fic sideblog!

if there's ever anything that you need tagged, please let me know!!

requests

i'm getting pretty into making stuff so..if anyone ever wants me to try my hand at something, please feel free to ask! this is pretty informal until i set more things up! edits, pfps, icons, stimboards, userboxes, ask games, fic/drabbles, coding, i'm willing to give it an honest shot!! feel free to ask!

any and all requests will be tagged with #kuiper requests!

contact

the best way to contact me here is my dms/asks because my notifications are a. little overrun!!

don't like tumblr? don't worry! i have too many other sites! ranked from most to least used:

neocities

cohost

spacehey

dni

i use the block button liberally, as should you! it's freeing!

basic DNI criteria!

people who don't believe in freeing palestine/zionists

entirely nsfw or untagged nsfw accounts.

entirely ed/sh or untagged ed/sh accounts. i understand if you're struggling with it, but if it is your entire blog, no.

syscourse. post whatever you want on your blog, just don't bring it to mine (asking my opinion, tagging me in things).

blank blogs. i will think you're a bot.

people who are still giving j.k. rowling money. shoo!!!

radfems, terfs, radqueers, transableds, proshippers, stuff like that.

anyone not on that list is more than welcome here!!

credits

theme and the lil cat popup by glenthemes

music player, playlist

the lovely dividers

in stars and time & gif by insertdisc5

siffrin looping gif

#kuiper important post #pinned intro #intro post

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ranna-alga · 4 months

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A very long (and Joel-Miller-apologist biased) TLOU hot take incoming:

I don't want to get too deep into my honest opinions about TLOU2 because even though I am quite critical towards it, I'm sincerely uninterested in engaging in any discourse about the game that has been going on for three whole years. Instead, I'll just talk about one thing that I consider to be a personal nit-pick that I don't see many talk about. This may be a hot take, so if you want to comment on anything, I kindly suggest you hear my side first ♡

[screenshot from MKIceAndFie's gameplay on YT]

One thing I wish was different with TLOU2 involves the scene where Ellie gets the truth of what happened in Salt Lake City, and I'm unsure if the writing is to blame, but I lowkey wish Joel... Defended himself a bit more?? 😭

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely understand Joel wanting to let Ellie be angry at him - she had every right. I found it quite bizarre that such an important scene (or at least the conversation) felt very... short? I feel like maybe it would have been more interesting to not only see Joel acknowledge how hurt Ellie is (again, her reaction is understandable and I'm not trying to say she's in the wrong at all) but also try to at least give his point of view of things, especially on why he did what he did to the Fireflies.

This, plus Ellie, albeit still heartbroken and furious, emotionally exclaiming how she feels, and why getting a cure was so important to her deep down. Or at least as well as she could put it in her current emotional state.

Maybe I am biased in this because I am a Joel Miller apologist until I die before I am my own person. Like, you may as well call me Saul Goodman because I'm practically this man's lawyer with how much I defend him.

In my opinion, he would be justified in saying that even if the operation was a miraculous success, the Fireflies would probably exploit her name by setting a price on the vaccine, or if a war between the Fireflies and FEDRA/other Factions erupts in order to seize it, killing more people than saving them. He would be justified in saying that they never asked for her consent and would wonder if they would still put her under the knife if she refused the offer. He would obviously know she was capable of making her own decisions but would also understand that she has Survivor's Guilt (something Joel may have felt before, especially after Sarah died and he didn't) and how that could affect her mentality/decision-making, especially at just fourteen years old. He would feel justifed if the operation failed and Ellie would have died for nothing, a risk he refused to take.

He would probably tell all these things to Ellie, trying to make her understand at least a little bit. But these reasons likely came to him after getting Ellie to safety. In his mind and heart, he might as well have had only one reason for doing what he did.

That reason being? It's simple. He loves her.

To him, that is more than enough, and Ellie may possibly realise this. Perhaps, after him listing out all those reasonings, Ellie might say,

"But all those things... They weren’t really the reasons why you did it, were they?"

"... No. They were not."

I definitely don't imagine Ellie would forgive him immediately, obviously. I still think Ellie would leave and not talk to Joel for some time, but with this interpretation, I'd imagine she would have a lot to think about in the meantime. Ultimately, I think it would have been a very interesting scene between these two verbally-repressed people who very much care for each other but are at a breaking point.

TLDR; I think there was potential to have this scene be a bit more "fleshed out" in terms of Joel expressing his intentions whilst also acknowledging and recognising Ellie's feeling of betrayal and heartbreak. Almost like a parallel to that "I'm not her, you know" scene in TLOU1.

#ranna word dumping #this may be a bit messy im sorry #these two make me sick i love them #the last of us #tlou #the last of us part 1 #the last of us part 2 #the last of us game #the last of us series #the last of us hbo #tlou game #tlou show #joel miller #ellie Williams #joel tlou #ellie tlou #tlou meta #hot take #unpopular opinion

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arizonaraine · 4 months

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SHC: Kevin McCallister, Home Alone

So, I've not posted anything in years. But I am alive and well, thanks for asking :) Merry Christmas to those who celebrate! I recently rewatched Home Alone and have been thinking about my favorite blonde home security system's sorting. See TLDR below if you want a summary.

Kevin starts the movie as a very immature Snake primary. He wants what he wants-- a plain cheese pizza and a room to himself-- and doesn't seem overly concerned with the feelings of others. When he wakes up and discovers his entire family has disappeared, his first response is jubilation. I personally think that a Badger primary would have been pretty disturbed by this sudden lack of community, and a Bird would have questioned a bit more exactly what happened. Kevin, as a Snake primary, goes about living his best life. He jumps on the bed, raids his brother's room, eats a massive ice cream sundae, and watches the movie he was excluded from viewing.

The more time he spends alone, though, the more he realizes that he loves and misses his people. He sleeps with the family picture under his pillow. When making his request to Santa, he says, "I just want my family back. No toys, no presents, nothing but Peter, Kate, Buzz, Megan, Linnie, and Jeff. And my Aunt and my cousins. And, if he has time, my Uncle Frank." Frank, it seems, hasn't made it into Kevin's tiered Snake primary loyalty system.

Another hint at his primary is his conversation with Old Man Marley. He says, "I don't care how mad I was, I'd talk to my dad. Especially around the holidays." His dad is important than being right in whatever disagreement separated Marley and his son. I think a Lion wouldn't have that same sentiment, even if they missed their parent.

Lastly, after he runs home from that chat with Marley at the church, Kevin says, "This is my house. I have to defend it." What makes it worth defending is that it's his.

I think that Kevin has an impressive Bird secondary, though an argument could be made for Snake. The way I see it, Kevin is a planner. In his post-shower monologue, he lists all the things he's done til that point, and then discusses what he plans to do later in the day. He makes grocery lists and clips coupons. He draws up a master plan for the defense of his house, using tools that he's collected up to that point in the movie (micro machines, Christmas ornaments, etc.). He utilizes the mannequins in the basement for the fake Christmas party.

While he's pretty good at pivoting, it doesn't seem to be where he's at his best. At the grocery store, he manages to avoid the cashier's questions (Actor Bird?), but he doesn't appear to take any pleasure in being sly. He uses the movie the trick Marv, but it leads to further suspicion from Harry, which spells trouble for Kevin. When he's caught at the end, he doesn't try to run or talk his way out of it-- he's just stunned. His plan, which had been going so well, failed! Thankfully, his Snake primary saves the day. The connection he forged with Old Man Marley pays off. (The ending scene where he and Marley wave at each other always makes me cry.)

TL;DR

Kevin McCallister is a Snake primary who is alone in his inner circle in the beginning, but realizes how much his family means to him and brings them into his value system. His Snakey connection with Old Man Marley saves him in the end. His Bird secondary enjoys laying plans, clipping coupons, and making lists. He can pivot when he needs to, but that's not the first tool that falls to his hand.

(@wisteria-lodge what's your archetype name for the Snake Bird again? :))

#sorting hat chats #kevin mccallister #home alone #christmas movies #snake primary #bird secondary #merry christmas #happy holidays

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nikethestatue · 3 months

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I've been keeping a list of running theories/justifications the anti-elriels have been clinging to since HOFAS (for my own personal amusement ofc). I think you might also get a kick out of them:

Gwyn is destined to wield Gwydion because it's Truth Teller's "mate" and she is Azriel's mate. And also she is named after Gwydion...bc you know..Gwyn..GWYdion...Same thing with their reading comprehension i guess?

Valkrie headquarters at the dusk court

Gwyn is from the Autumn Court, her dad is Beron probably

Gwyn will help Azriel save Illyria

ACOTAR 6 will be more Valkrie girlboss time

Azriel is getting the next book (because despite SJM saying 4000 times ACOTAR will follow the archeron sisters...Chaol (TOG, different series) got a book).

Gwyn is a MC because she is an Illyrian warrior (do you still even get Carynthian status if you're passed tf out and carried to the top by an actual Illyrian?)

Valkries will ride pegasi into battle

Gwyn's father could be someone super important which would then make gwyn super important

Gwyn will become a spy with azriel because she spied in ACOSF (can you please point to where she did such a thing? Bc I cannot find it in the canon text. Unless they mean when she sat in a tree and monitored the Illyrians right below it....which isn't really spying imo...like homegirl was just trying to survive another day not "spy")

Basically, tldr, they are dead set on thinking the next book will feature azriel, and in a desperate attempt to make Gwyn relevant enough to be his love interest, they are breaking their backs reaching for things to make this girl who cant even leave the library sound important. When the truth is all these plotlines they want with Az, Nesta, Gwyn could be fulfilled with just Az and Elain. But nooo Elain bad, Elain boring, elain plant, elain object to keep precious lulu baby happy!!

They are right about one thing. The next book WILL feature Azriel. A lot. Only with Elain. Ooops.

The funny thing is that it's always--Gwyn is someone's daughter, Gwyn's is someone's girlfriend, Gwyn is someone's mate, Gwyn will get a pegasus from someone and will ride it...Gwyn is always attached to someone. Someone MORE important than her. Because Gwyn doesn't really have a story of her own. Not one worth 800 pages. So it's always, Gwyn will be Tamlin's/Beron's/Eris's/Lucien's daughter. She will be Azriel's mate. She is Nesta's friend.

And Elain? Well, Elain IS Elain, isn't she? Powerful AF in her own right. Doesn't need to be anybody's anything. Just Elain.

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mazyb0i · 2 months

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Other RnM fans?

Rick n Morty fan creator/artist here, trying to make friend brohs with ppl who are also obsessed with the show. I have a hard time reaching out due to my anxiety. (proshippers DNI)

tldr; you're also a neurodivergent queer artist nutjob that makes crackpipe art an shitposts, heavily kins a character at one point or another, and we should be friends because we can be insane together LMFAO

Fav show ships: BP x Rick all day, (I love flesh curtains, and their dynamic is just so yes... I...) Morty x Alaska (i named the vat of acid gf Alaska because the Alaska trip..) Summer x that one girl... Morticia X Jessica, Rickcest/ Rick selfcest is aight, I obsess over Miamicop. I think selfcest in cloning / multiuniverse theory is harmless, but don't come at me with any of that proshipper/inc3st/rickorty shit. I will block you, report you, and put you on a DNI beware list; this is a threat & a warning. That shit is never EVER ok.

if we become friends/wanna know about;

I'm diagnosed Audhd, I'm a transmasc demiboy, I like to be referred to as nonbinary and a transgender male with He/They pronouns. Panromantic Demisexual.

I'm a rick kinnie, just means I identify with rick, in another universe I could be him XD, I relate to him, we share the same personality literally (ENTP 7w8); he's my self identifying comfort character. But my big interest with this show/comic is probably due to some kind of autistic hyper fixation and imprintation.

Hobbies: Crafting, Digital illustration, Fursuit /Costume making, Youtube, 3D designing, Making silly video skits, Writing, Character design, Shit posting, Creating ai voice bots for fun n fandom purposes (will make le memes), Trying to be a youtuber like Imbrandonfarris and Britany Broski, collecting stuff, VRchat, Collecting fluffy soft shit like stuffies, pillows, blankets, and hoodies. I SLEEP IN A NEST OF ALL OF THESE

Personality?: Chaotic, Unhinged, Tired and fed up with this shit, All the Energy AND NO ENERGY, I'm so tired please god help me, i'm an enigma. Ambiverted. If ur looking for a cool crazy cat dude broh who draws weird ass digital art and is always tired but jacked on coffe, adderall, and Naproxen i'm your guy.... :'}

I do alot of art and have alot of burnouts due to my adhd- I've been told I'm innovative, clever, and expressive. I can jury-rig your glasses easily with a paperclip if you're screw comes out and loose frames causes the lens to pop. I'm very detail and idea-oriented, i come up with thousands of ideas, questions, and theories. Because of this, I tend to come up with one idea after another without actually going forward with plans and actions because i get so overwhelmed with my massive brain XD

Even tho I'm socially awkward, I love people, I want to make friends. I like being alone a lot but I hate feeling lonely. :C When I get to know you I'm very very chatty; as long as I'm not too tired or piled with heaps of assignments. I would say I'm pretty laid-back and easy to get along with, I get so stuck up in my personal world up in my head that I lose sight of important things around me, I blame the adhd. I'm an observer, I like to watch and see how things happen, I am a very hands on person.

I'm constantly learning, i love science with a passion. I got hyperfixated on evolution of different animal clades a while back. I am immensely curious and focused on understanding how the world operates and functions. I'm looking for mental and intellectual stimulation, lettuce skip casual conversation about wheather- whats your favorite dinosaur? (fuck ignore my dyslexia) and before you say a pterodactyl let me stop you right there- they aren't dinosaurs. if you like understanding the world through learning various things about science, technology, or culture, I'm your guy. but I'm also just a silly hoo hoo aah smart ass.

god this is finally done... I've been writing this for an hour......

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rivstyx · 1 year

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riv styx's rec list

(say that five times fast!)

this is gonna be really, really long, so i'm putting it all under the cut, sorted alphabetically and categorized by rating. if there's something you'd like to add, just reply, rb, or send me an ask!

General

Amo, Amas, Amat by Verecunda

1502 words. Jed just doesn't get this whole Latin thing.

Finishing (Touches) by flowerdeluce

4255 words. After escaping Kahmunrah's hourglass, Jedediah has a problem that's worse than non-functional guns: as it turns out, sand baths exfoliate more than a hand-painted miniature cowboy can afford. Octavius takes it upon himself to make everything better.

Forget-Me-Not by EwokRae22

17437 words. Octavius is the first to come down with it— and discovers all too quickly what it means to cough up flower petals, yet is unwilling to guilt his best friend into loving him just to save him. Jedediah ends up infected too, in his effort to help his best friend— who he secretly loves. OR: A Hanahaki au, but it begs the question. If Hanahaki were a real disease, how would it have effected world history?

Hold My Hand by hoc_voluerunt

2683 words. "I'll take that hand now." Focused on the end of The Secret of the Tomb. Jedediah and Octavius come to a realisation on their final night alive in New York.

Listen to the rhythm of the falling rain by clumsyghost

1548 words. Octavius misses the rain. Jed attempts to cheer him up.

Manifest Destiny by clumsyghost

5780 words. “What do you mean,” Larry repeated numbly, “that Rome is gone?”

Overworked by MaidenofIron157

1317 words. Octavius has been a bit run down lately. Jed has just the solution.

The Sanctuary (Any Weather series) by EwokRae22

15338 words. On a lucky break from McPhee, Larry brings the exhibits on a winter vacation north of New York. He has everything prepared, or at least that’s what he tells himself. Because nothing can stop Jedediah and Octavius’s useless and oh-so-tiny longing for each other, not even the snow.

Teen

Ain't No Prince Charming by Merlin Missy (mtgat)

4270 words. When his very best friend in the world gets stolen from the museum, Jedediah sets out to rescue him.

All This Bad Blood by doorrepairgirl

1898 words. 50 years of rude neighbors, territory disputes, and grudges repaid with new grudges. No way all that’s gonna go away overnight, right?

Cacoethes by Anonymous

4478 words. A deeper look into Jedediah and Octavius's experiences during Battle of the Smithsonian, and a look at what could have happened after the end.

Glimpse of us by rice_enjoyer

5311 words. He finds it thrilling to fight Jedediah like this, to tear into each other until they’re both panting messes, hair disheveled and skin blossoming with purple bruises. Octavius subconsciously loves the small in-betweens where they catch their breath. Having Jedediah laid out before him, shirt rumpled and red handkerchief skewed out of place. He feels an almost possessive pride seeing the marks they leave on each other, claiming one another, even in the name of rivalry. For what is hatred, if not a twisted form of fascination? tldr someone on tumblr said jedtavius makes more sense as bitter exes and i haven't stopped thinking about it since

He Loves Me Not by orphan_account

25820 words. Jed stumbles across a stack of unsent/unfinished love letters from Octavius to an unknown person in the museum. Jed sets out to find out who. Not because he’s jealous. No, not all.

if this was a cowboy movie (i'd give you my boots) by Liviapenn

10180 words. There are secret articles in our treaties with the gods, of more importance than all the rest, which the historian can never know.' -- Henry David Thoreau. This hour I tell things in confidence, I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you. -- Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"

Kingdoms Of Clay by Historical_kitten

31675 words. The tablet is at the museum to stay and all the miniatures are pleased. In celebration, the museum has made several changes, including installing a new diorama. Unfortunately, the new exhibit contains historical figures that Octavius knows all too well. The Roman general's life is turned upside down when he encounters an old enemy who is not content to leave the past in the past. Jedediah has Octavius' back as always, but when his enemy discovers the cowboy is his weakness, Octavius will have to scramble to save everything he loves. Will Octavius survive the reappearance of an old rival while keeping Jedediah safe? Will he tell said cowboy how he truly feels about him? Or will we see the second fall of Rome? You'll have to read to find out!

On Every Horizon by flowerdeluce

15551 words. After discovering how lucrative ‘publicity stunts’ are for the museum, McPhee organises a series of art exhibitions in the museum’s gallery. The installations are refreshed weekly, leaving Jed and Octavius only brief windows of time to explore each one.

One Minute I Held the Key; Next the Walls Were Closed on Me by woolesbeano

19336 words. Ahkmenrah understands human nature. He knows how this works. It’s a simple tradeoff, one he’s familiar with. Compliance and subservience grant him freedom from his sarcophagus. Mistakes result in punishment. It’s human nature. He’s used to it. Then why does the museum seem different?

Paper Planes by SugarGlassShards

4372 words. Saving the day is easy. Surviving the morning evening after the night before — not so much.

promise a future I can come back to by Riv_Styx

31,127 words. A story about two men, second chances, and destiny - or, a mostly-pre-canon soulmate AU, featuring matching scars and a healthy dose of gay pining.

The Barn Raising by PoetryInMotion

7463 words. The Old West's barn has been demolished by a fetch-related accident. When they get a new one, the Western denizens throw a good old-fashioned barn-raising party. Jedediah decides to invite Octavius (and both secretly hope that they can kindle a romance between the do-si-do and the two-step).

too much green to feel blue by HearJessRoar

3177 words. In which Octavius decided that if he was going to die in Pompeii, like hell was he going to die without kissing Jed first, and well. They didn't die. Now what.

Mature

i don't want to live forever (i'm afraid i'll go to heaven series) by HungryOnMain

3418 words. Jedediah and Octavius don't make it. The exhibits prepare for stasis for what may be the last time. The two miniatures awaken in a strange place, before a strange being. Judgement comes.

While Rome Burned by csi_sanders1129

10265 words. In which a new addition (Emperor Nero) to the Roman diorama causes serious trouble for our two favorite miniatures.

Windowsill by bisexualsolidsnake

5417 words. Larry knew their favourite date night spot well, since he’s the one who always had to retrieve them when they inevitably stayed there too long. For once, though, he knew where they would end up tonight weeks in advance. Shameless proposal fluff.

Explicit

As A Man by orphan_account

2894 words. "I think it's pretty darn simple. You're lookin' real temptin' down there, an' I can't help but think ya would look even prettier if I just-" His thumb slips lower, until it catches on the edge of Octavius' lip. He just looks up through his lashes at Jedediah, who seems to be waiting for the roman to tell him to stop. He should. He should tell Jedediah to remove his hands. That it is unsightly, even atrocious, for a man of his status to be on the ground before him, but all Octavius can think about is how much he wants to rise up onto his knees and take the cowboy into his mouth. If he was a man with even less control than he already is, he could easily drool at the thought. or: Octavius comes to terms with the fact he might like being submissive, sometimes

Evening at the Archive (series) by HungryOnMain

19079 words. A collection of stories that take place in the Night at the Museum universe, most of them explicit.

Not Rated

Everybody Knows (Except Them) by impulserun

2224 words. 4 times Jedediah and Octavius (well, mostly Jedediah) were oblivious, much to the pain of everyone around them, and 1 time they finally wised up.

in sickness and in health (to love and to cherish) by zhingweii

8403 words. in which Jedediah gets darted - and it turns out to be quite the enlightening experience.

Oh My Moon by bitter_lemonade

8912 words. New dioramas appear at the hall of miniatures! Everything is great intill Gio comes along…

Taking The Blame by GayGothicFanboy

384 words. Kahmunrah takes the blame for his mother's crime.

#night at the museum #night at the museum fanfiction #night at the museum fic #natm #natm fanfiction #natm fic #fic recs #riv recs

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ieatmarbles · 9 months

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Introduction

Heya folks, nice to meet you! Welcome to the unorganized chaos of death that I like to call my Tumblr page. Here, you can find content of my OC's, rambles, written things, and a bunch of other stuff that I'm sure I'll lose track of. But before I get into the logistics, let's do an introduction! You can call me Mar! I'm a 19 year old college student, I use She/They pronouns, and I do a lot of things in the creative department: writing, digital art, music composition, singing, video editing, world building, you name it! My main story I'm focusing on right now is called Our Unspoken Bonds. While I'll definitely still talk about other OC's and worlds I've written, just be ready to hear a lot about this specific one! It's one I hold very close to my heart. If you'd like to read more about said story, you can find content under the tag #ourunspokenbonds . If I talk about other stories, I'll be sure to update the information here to create a list for future reference! If you'd like to hear some more information about me, I'll put it in the read me. Thanks for stopping by! TLDR: welcome to my personal hell <3

Some of my friends and family know me by the username @declineofmysanity, and that's still me! But because that account has been on hiatus for who knows how long, I thought it'd be a bit weird to just suddenly hop back on it and throw out random OC stuff when I had only been posting Steven Universe AU content at the time. Therefore, I decided to make this side account!

While I'm definitely no professional when it comes to writing or story telling, these things have always been huge passions of mine ever since I was little. I mentioned that the main story I'll be talking about on here is Our Unspoken Bonds, and that was actually the first story/set of OC's I ever made! While their story has changed quite a lot, I'm happy to see that these characters of mine still hold such an important place in my heart. I hope that they can make an impact on you, as well. When it comes to my other stories, I have a LOT of them. None of them are as developed as OUB (abbreviation for Our Unspoken Bonds), but they all have their own characters, worlds, and stories to tell. I might talk about them someday if I ever work up the courage! Overall, you can thank my sister for my reappearance back here. She's always been one of my biggest supporters when it comes to my writing and characters, even when I felt like they weren't that important. It's definitely a big step for me to start sharing a lot of their stuff publicly, but my sister gave me confidence to give it a shot-- so here I am. (Speaking of my sister, you should check her out: @my-cursed-prince , she has some SICK writing and stories that really delve deep into the painful realities of the world and the fight to change the parallels present in this fictitious story)

If you've read this far, I applaud your attention span! Thanks for giving my stuff a listen, and I can't wait to share these characters with you!

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water-mellie-seeds · 2 years

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Bestie rank the wizard siblings from favourite to least favourite and give me a paragraph per blorbo explaining their ranking

This is my lifes project.

1: Crispin. Shocking from tumblr user Crispingender i know./s It is NOT only because i have a crush on him!!!!! Shhhe is also the most interesting to me. Hes s mechanic?? He got so upset about no one celebrating his bday that he ran off to the circus for YEARS. And literally everything he owns is clowncore its so based. He has a clown themed tow truck. He fixed bees bike and said he wouldn't make it weird and clowncore but he lied and made it so fucking clowncore. His voice puts him up in #1 too. I want him so bad.

2: Deckard. My favorite before we knew that much about his brothers,so it's only fair i give him 2nd place. He has heterochromia and can cook. But not bake,and i also can not bake. At all. He has a hard time pronouncing certain words,which endeared him to me from the start bc i do that.

3: Cas. I love her. She's such a good character. She's got the same voice actor as enid mettle,she's wlw(heavily implied to be)she's a programmer ,she can kick ass,she imports her energy drinks from a different island,she will pretend to use the bathroom so her siblings don't talk to her on her day off. She's iconic. She's named after a she-ra character(castaspella) who is ALSO wlw(in spop at least). She's based.

4: Wesley. Puppycat thinks he's so cool and hot and he's right for it. I'd tie him with cas if i could but alas,i have to pick favorites according to this assignment. His voice is VERY nice. He keeps all his fish in the bathroom(SO MANY. I cant find any pictures but So many)and he uses a lure that wont hurt them(special kissing lure) when he fishes them out of the water. There was an extended period of time in one ep where he just wore an apron and boxers. I would do this if society let me,so he's based for it. He went on a date with someone and didn't know it was a date.

5: Howell. He opened a cat cafe but he cant cook. He's vain as hell and it's probably because his name is meant to parody howl pendragon but he's right for that. He knows he's very pretty and his voice is VERY soothing to listen to. Even when hes pissed off. He fired bee for napping but when she came back to eat at their restaurant to help with business (she convinced deckard to leave to culinary school and hes the only one who can cook so...business was Not booming) he was intending not to charge her for the meal. He wants to cook wes' fishies :/ but he's got a good heart i think and did i mention he's gorgeous

6: Tim. He's probably the one i have the least to say about out of them all. Not because i dont like him but because he hasnt had a focal episode. He thought that since Deckard was wearing pants instead of pajamas that he wasnt depressed anymore LFSHCKDHH he's a little silly.

#7: last but not least,Merlin. He's fine i just don't feel super connected to him compared to the sibs higher up on the list. He's got cool glasses,he got cas' rival toast pregnant,(long,very funny story. Tldr: she was living in their walls) went to med school but didn't finish it,is overall quite a funny guy but i have to give him last place. Sorry merlin,you have to work harder to beat tim/lh

#wizard siblings tier list #bee and puppycat spoilers #<3 #pregnancy mention

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uncle-cucky · 2 years

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OH QUESTION: in clip studio how do you make the tweening squash and stretch like that? I'm pretty new to the animation part of the program so forgive me if it's like, very obvious where it is but Ive never seen a way to squash/stretch a layer like how your animation does, I've only seen how to resize a layer

SURE I CAN DO MY BEST TO HELP!!!

Just know that I am very new to this as well and this something here PROBS has a better way of doing it, but IDK THAT WAY SO. Here's how I did it.

First off I have the big boy clip studio idk if the cheaper one works with this so just know that.

MY BADLY MADE TUTORIAL TIME!

(Will also link video tutorials at the bottom that I used to help me! So if you don't wanna read my ramble explanations just skip to that LOL-)

((Also things will be broken up into like- chapters? as I don't know how much you know and want to help cover some bases that I learned that you or others may not know! But Know I am still learning so feel free to try and do things your own way! :D))

STARTING BASICS

So to start off I use the Project:Animation option in clip for this, there are preset sizes for things, which i suggest using first trying things out. I didn't really mess with anything on the right side sense tbh starting off all you need is on the left, being canvas size and the amount of blank space you want.

If you don't know what blank space it's like... A little secret place you can scribble down notes for animation to keep in mind, and won't show up in the animation when you're done exporting it.

This is also useful to overflow the things you want to tween as they don't get chopped off awkwardly. See how I drew her skirt and ear going past it? That's why.

So I can move them freely without fear of it ending suddenly! This is something I learned was a good tactic to do for when I did my vtuber models as it is also a type of tweening!

TLDR: Everything in the box will be seen, and everything outside of the box wont!

and if you want to change any of the blank space to add more or less go to Edit>Canvas Properties... It should be near the bottom of the list!

Correcting speed!

Clip studio does NOT actually show you the correct speed of your animation by default! To make it go closer to the actual speed of your animation go to Animation>Playback Settings>Prefer Speed! As by default clip has it set to prefer quality, which is just it trying to keep it looking nice while playing but may skip some frames! So that is something to check!

You can add music to clip studio animations!

Select the frame you'd like to add music onto, go to File>Import>Audio. BUT- make sure the audio file is a WAV file not a MP3. While MP3s work they are more likely to become off sync, while WAV's stay on sync.

Clip doesn't keep transparent backgrounds with gifs idk why but it's cringe.

---

PLACING YOUR TIMELINE

(I closed my brushes and some things to help be less distracting :D )

Personally I like to keep my timeline at the bottom of my screen as it allows the most space.

If for some reason your timeline isn't showing or you accidentally deleted it just go to Window>Timeline and it should appear! You can make it appear on non animation projects as well.

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ANIMATION FOLDERS

So if you used clip for animating there's a good chance, your timeline may have looked something like this.

Which, isn't bad. But it's not great. (I know because I did it like this until yesterday BUT GOOD NEWS, YOU NO LONGER NEED TO DO THIS STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN. (tbh it feels more like hell but w/e)

BECAUSE WE HAVE ANIMATION FOLDERS.

Now while this just sounds like a normal folder, it's very specific and will allow you do edit things with tweens! But it can also let you turn that stairway to heaven into a hallway!

Like say you want to do a simple jumping gif?

Put all of the separate layers into the animation folder! it'll show you only the first layer at first, don't worry that's normal.

Right Click next to the Layer 1, and select the layer name of the frame you'd like to add next! And continue until all your frames are down! And

*pretend this is a gif*

Congrats!!! You did it!!! You have a little animation!!!! You did it!!!

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TWEENING/KEYFRAMES

(Im going to be using the Sweet Pea waving as my example here!. And to note after i drew her body parts separately, I copied it, and merged the the limbs with the lineart to their colors to make the process easier.)

So. You know how I just showed you how to put things together in animation folders? We're not doing that anymore, Unless you want 2 things to move the exact same way.

Instead your going to put each moving part into it's own animation folder.

Have everything in? Good. Now what your gonna do is on the right where the layers are select them. Then you are going to press this button that looks like a zooming square.

This will allow you to add keyframes onto the layer. Note. You will not be able to draw on those layers with this on so if there is something you want to fix, you can turn it off the same way you turned it on.

There are 3 types of keyframes, yellow - hold, green - linear, and Blue - smooth. I only used blue here so that's all I'll be going over with. TLDR it does what it says, it keeps the animation from key 1 to 2 smooth.

And with keyframes this is where your going to be able to squish and move things freely and how you move things is you'll click this.

and from there I suggest moving your anchor point (the crosshair) to the base (say I'm trying to move her head so I would place the crosshair where her neck is as that's where it would be anchored to the body!)

And Im going to assume you know how to place keypoints. but if you don't click on the timeline and move the head to where you would want it to be at that time, and it will appear automatically!

And once you have those down NOW you can get to the squash and stretch!

These red and green lines will be pretty much how you handle everything! They're how you can edit your keypoints by changing position, scale ratio, ect!

if you want to focus on one thing you can click the XYV to remove that color of lines, or click the eyes to view only certain types of movements!

and youll really want to just play around with slightly tilting and moving the keyframes here to try and get the tween motion you want! It's a bit tricky So i suggest starting small!!!

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ENDING

and yeah thats pretty much it! (also tumblr wont allow me to post more image references so- hard for me to get into too much detail but hoped this helped!!! If something I said doesn't make sense or you need more detail on please ask! I'm always open to helping people out when I can!)

There are alot of resources out there to help you out and I'm happy you let me be one of them! :] Good luck!!!

AND AS PROMISED HERE ARE 2 VIDEOS I USED THAT HELPED ME OUT ALOT (and pretty much said everything I said here) but I'm a step by step learner so- this is how I explain things LOL-)

(x) - this video has some swearing but is very funny and useful!

(x) - light but straight forward!

#tutorial #uncle helps #clip studio #animation #im sorry im autistic so i write alot when i really couldve just given you the videos LOL

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sanpape · 2 years

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Okay wait hold up, I NEED more info about the haunted houses… what kind of haunted are we talking about? Like, things that were kind of weird but mostly harmless, or things that were Concerning? Did any of them have a history or were they just randomly haunted?

When I was in college there were a couple of rez houses we believed to be haunted. I lived in one where we think there was a relatively harmless ghost that we named Frank. It was all minor stuff like cupboards opening mysteriously, or if you fell asleep on the couch and your hand was hanging off you might wake up with it in a cold spot. But there was another rez that felt much more sinister - I lived there for a month one summer and had the worst nightmares of my life, other people who lived there had housemates start screaming in their sleep, or woke up with bruises, or they’d lock the doors when they went to bed and they’d be wide open in the morning. Sometimes they would think they heard movement in the basement in the night, so they started locking the basement door and putting furniture in front of it, and sometimes they’d hear a crash in the night and in the morning the basement door would be wide open. It was super freaky and people kept going to admin about it but I think they thought it was a prank.

I hope I’m not over sharing or anything, I’m just super fascinated by haunted houses bc of that experience!

Oh holy shit??? The second one sounded like, actively dangerous, that's freaky as hell. Ours ranged from benign to kind of spiteful, but they were never particularly dangerous I think.

This is gonna be kinda long so I'm going to chuck it under the cut

a bit of background: I grew up in Singapore in the early 2000's (this point is kind of important for historical and social context later on). I lived in 3 apartments over the decade that I was there and Every single one was its own special flavour of haunted. I guess I'll give a tldr for the first two houses and a more thorough explanation of the third cause that one was definitely more interesting lol

House 1: probably the most benign of the three I think? We never actually saw anything, it was mostly just something walking through each room triggering baby monitors and (weirdly enough) motion sensitive toys around the house. We didn't have any pets or anything, and none of the baby monitors were connected to the electrical grid so my parents ruled out power surges. Admittedly I was mostly unbothered by whatever this was on the account of me being like 3 years old.

House 2: I don't think the house itself was haunted so I'm reluctant to refer to it as a Haunted House™️ The ghost was a nanny who had passed away elsewhere, but she'd come back to visit my little brother and I occasionally. This one was far more comforting than scary imo, she'd usually sit on the edge of our bed to make sure we were sleeping alright.

House 3: this one was???? definitely the most malicious. The area was definitely historically haunted, the apartment complex itself was incredibly close to a mass grave in WW2. If my memory serves, there was also a handful of (comparatively) modern deaths there, mostly accidents. To spice things up I'm adding a bullet pointed list of weird things™️ this complex had going on:

There was this little gassy knoll right outside the complex, I remember walking home from school and seeing this funeral procession going on, body in a white sheet on a table, a dozen mourners and a grave that was already dug by the time I'd gotten there. I remember thinking the location was really odd but I was 10 and I wasn't about to stick around and ask questions so I just headed back up to our apartment. I walked past the spot the next day and it was completely normal, the ground was completely undisturbed and there weren't any signs that people had been there at all.

Once I was reading in my room with the door ajar and I watched as this old ass lady's hand slipped through the crack and pulled the door shut. I remember genuinely freaking out over this one purely because of how close it got to my face lol

The neighbor had a full on poltergeist. You could hear stuff being thrown around his apartment at night. It got bad enough that he had to move out.

I think the freakiest incident was when I walked into the kitchen and there was just this tall silhouette walking around. it had this really uncanny quality to it. It was like whatever it was was genuinely was not meant to be there? Everything else I'd seen felt like previous occupants who just didn't know they were dead yet. The thing is, I'm not sure if this one was ever human to begin with? if that makes sense? Idk.

Anyway, we moved to Malaysia after that and I've never had anything weird happen since 🤷🏼‍♀️

#asks #if this breaches containment i'll delete it lol #aside from the whole ghost situation i really enjoyed living there

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experimental-intellection · 2 years

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Sorry for the TLDR nature of this but File Under: Deconstruction has its benefits.

First: To set this up let's go all the way back to a fresh faced 18 year old self and sitting down and having several heart to hearts with the old man before shipping off to the old blue and gold of the US Navy!

For those of you who have gotten to have such talks it's a surreal thing. It takes having a parent who chooses to be heartfelt and who puts all the character building and disciplining they are called to do aside for a smidge and really decide to spend time with you as the adult you are about to be. It takes laying down all the years on the table and explaining to their child why they did this here and where they honestly regretted doing that there.

And crying, quite a bit of it... and apologies and forgiveness given along the way...

It takes (with maybe a stiff drink or two in the process) a commitment to be open with the person whose now fully grown. The person that they first met when held in their arms when they were a fresh faced kid themselves and just a few years out from under their own folks...

I thought I got the significance of those talks all that long ago but I don't think I really did till tonight.

Second: We skip ahead a couple of years to 20ish year mr, only just recently paying taxes and still way too naive, and sitting in someones living room in Portland, Maine with a bible in his hands and a discipleship handbook in his lap, crying over Matthew 27:46, and a pastor who was asking him to list his sins... (And yes kids, I'm looking at The Cross study right now if you must know) ... and feeling the abject weight of the personal inequity he knew all too well to be inside of him.

What was the common element of both these settings?

In both I felt like I was being witnessed. All the good things I was, the wanting to serve and wanting to matter... but also the entitlement and the attachment and undiagnosed depression and anxiety and ADHD (although the less than ideal parts of myself would not be named or diagnosed till much later)...

I was witnessed in both instances. First being acknowledged and treated with respect from the person I most desperately wanted respect from, and then second feeling as if I was acknowledged by a creator and being called to lay myself down for something greater.

However, the difference between the two was while the first was an emotionally trying experience toward understanding and a form of reconciliation, the second was (at least in part if not in whole) a fostered and cultivated emotional crisis towards the goal of conversion and unquestioning belief.

All of this entered my mind tonight while my daughter and I burned through every tissue and napkin in my car as she talked about the outcomes of having my inherited mental health gifts and all the wonderful combinations and depths of self-doubt and lack of self-worth that they were generating for her...

My 14 year old had her own breakdown tonight similar to so many others I've had over the years at altar calls and midnight studies around the back cove... but as I held her hand and rubbed her back I saw the arc of her life not as undiagnosed and misunderstood like mine but as a journey that was healthier and more self-aware from the start.

I remembered my father sharing his heart and I spoke to her in the same tone... I found myself explaining how she has never been a burden, that she has never been alone, that her feelings have always been valid, and that she has always been loved.

But most of all that she was seen by a father who saw her importance.

I told her that I had been through what she had but through the lens of chasing salvation and hoping (among other things) it would quiet my mind.

I found myself taking all the best elements from my fathers own heart and from the misguided emotional appeals of the ministry and putting into words that her depths could be fostered and understood and not just explained away by biblical passages here and there or throwaway religious platitudes.

Ultimately my daughter and I will have more conversations, but I have more hope than I did before that she will be better equipped than I was to identify manipulations and agenda filled appeals for her time and loyalty. She will receive the help that was so full of stigmas and denied me when I was a her age and she will have a much better grounding when it comes to her worth and learning from the adversity my less-than-ideal family genes have given her.

And in time, and the Lord willing, she will learn mercy and discernment and wisdom in a way that I was never taught. As well as obedience and fidelity to herself first, and with appropriate boundaries in place, provide mercy and care to those around her.

There is value that can be pulled from my years woven into the church. There is meaning that can be passed along to my daughter from all the parsing and pulling apart of my life desperately seeking acceptance from higher powers and life partners and peers.

The germ of my faith as it stands now is that we are lovable and redeemable as we are. That we can hope to form bonds with others who are also putting in the work to understand and build something true. Its a faith that I am hoping she can learn from whether she decides to adopt it in the way I have or not.

There is a future after what we've experienced in the church. There is still something worth building on...

...one final thought. If you've considered your own heart to heart with your own children put in the work on yourself to be thoughtful and soft-hearted. Put aside the time and make the room for reconciliation where its needed. Being present for your child doesn't have to be perfect but make it vulnerable and without hubris. Because it's not just a conversation you are having with the child in front of you but a conversation they hopefully feel inspired to pay forward to their own.

Also, just to be clear, I'm not crying you are crying...

#deconstruction #generational trauma #international churches of christ #evangelical recovery #ex evangelical

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ullerrm · 1 year

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Time for the self-indulgent personal top ten list! This is just my favorites from what I played this year, not necessarily 2022 releases. Game names and specific what/why for each game are past the fold!

TLDR: Heavenly Bodies. Metal: Hellsinger. Blasphemous. Deathloop. Cult of the Lamb. Ghostwire: Tokyo. Horizon: Forbidden West. TUNIC. Pokemon Legends: Arceus. Vampire Survivors.

I’ll probably do a follow-up post with some honorable mentions as well. (And yes, Elden Ring is on my radar, I just haven’t given it a proper try yet.)

10: Heavenly Bodies (Dec 2021; Steam, Playstation)

WHAT: It's QWOP in space, with goals: Left/right thumbsticks waggle your arms around, LT/RT close or open left/right hands, and bumpers kick your legs. It's broken up into levels, each of which has a list of tasks to accomplish: wrenching on things, managing airlocks, unpacking things from crates, piloting a shuttle, etc.

WHY: Part of it is the usual physical comedy of zero-G and shitty controls, bouncing off walls and flailing and looking for handholds and leverage points. I usually bounce off games that have difficult controls for the sake of difficulty alone (e.g. Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy, or Jump King), but it’s made better by adding short achievable goals to accomplish with those controls -- it feels like fun in small doses, instead of just feeling hard. The sound design is great, and it has a really lovely streamlined art style that uses detail sparingly to call out important parts of the environment.

9: Metal: Hellsinger (Sep 2022; Steam, Playstation, Xbox)

WHAT: A first-person shooter with rhythm and score attack elements. Firing your guns or doing melee attacks in sync with the beat deals more damage, and earns you more points. Some actions (finishers, etc.) can only be done on-beat.

WHY: The soundtrack sells the game -- If you like metal, here, listen to Mikael Stanne, Tatiana Shmailyuk, and Serj Tankian growl at you while you blow things up. If metal isn't your thing, you might still like it; it's a lot like Bullets Per Minute, but with fixed levels and leaderboards instead of procedurally generated levels. That said, while it’s fantastic, it’s VERY short -- finishing all levels (both main and optional "Torment" side challenges) on the second highest difficulty took five hours.

8: Blasphemous (Sep 2019; Steam, Switch, Playstation, Xbox)

WHAT: High-difficulty 2D Metroidvania, with a fixed melee attack and an assortment of spells. Souls-esque “recover your corpse to regain lost XP” on death. Lots of backtracking to get to inaccessible parts of levels once movement tech is unlocked. Extremely awesome but creepy pixel-art style summed up as "Spanish Roman Catholic Guilt: The Game."

WHY: It's beautiful, and challenging but satisfying. The controls are polished, the bosses are hard but telegraphed and fair, and there's a ton of collectibles and other bits to do. ~25 hours for 100% completion.

FYI, if you picked this up after launch and haven't touched it since, consider trying it again with the new DLC, which adds new bosses, NG+ and an alternate True Ending. Also, a sequel is now in development for 2023.

7: Deathloop (Sep 2021; Steam, Playstation, Xbox)

WHAT: “What if Dishonored had replayable levels and a meta-puzzle?”

Deathloop is first-person "Groundhog Day," but in the 1960s and with more murder. Each day is split into morning/noon/afternoon/evening, and for each time period, you pick one of four locations to go to, each of which has varying content based on time of day and how far you've progressed in the meta-plot. Your goal is to kill eight different people in a single day, and the bulk of the game is planning that out: through trial and error, figure out who is where during the day, and how you can encourage people to be in the same spot at the same time so you can kill several of them in one shot.

WHY: Sure, it reuses the same four areas four times each. But each of them feels fresh, and it’s really fun to figure out the differences in each area over the day -- what doors are open when, who is where, etc. The investigation UX always has a good hint about what to check out next, or where you left off, without spoiling it for you. Like Dishonored, the levels are structured to give good options for both stealth play and going in guns-blazing. Voice acting and audio in general is fantastic.

It had a Souls-esque multiplayer component where other players invade your game as a competing time-looped character, trying to kill you (or at least prevent you from carrying out your murdered), but it didn't really work well. The single player content holds up though.

(FYI, a recent patch ended an epilogue cutscene for the Golden Ending. Catch it on YouTube if you beat the game prior to it being added.)

6: Cult of the Lamb (Jun 2022; Steam, Switch, Playstation, Xbox)

WHAT: I’m pretty sure everyone on Tumblr is familiar with this one, even if you haven’t played it. It's a cartoony world inhabited by cute animals and insectoid eldritch gods who slaughter them. As the last living Lamb, you're given immortality by an Ancient Imprisoned God and tasked with creating a cult to gather power, defeat the lesser gods that wiped out your kind, and release your god from its prison. The game alternates between a small community sim (give your worshippers tasks to accomplish, keep them fed and happy, etc.) and a Binding-of-Isaac-like dungeon crawler.

WHY: The dungeon crawling is solidly implemented. The sim part is okay; I wish you weren’t permanently locked into Cult Doctrine choices, especially when they have such large effects on gameplay (e.g. the sim part gets significantly harder/more annoying in the late game if you don’t take Fasting Ritual early on in the game, or Brainwashing late in the game). But, hell, you can brainwash people into eating poop, and that has to count for something.

I spent a lot of time playing this, which is why it’s on the list -- and I’m a sucker for games that attempt to merge or straddle between different genres. However, it’s probably the game I’m most conflicted about on here. There's about 20 hours of decent game in here, a bit more if you're interested in grinding out all the "get everything unlocked" achievements. It's fun at first but wears out its welcome fast.

5: Ghostwire: Tokyo (Mar 2022; Steam, Playstation)

WHAT: First-person action-adventure with parkour elements. A mysterious fog rolls into Shibuya, turning everyone it touches into spirits and leaving behind only piles of clothes. You play one of the few survivors, now sharing a body with a paranormal investigator, and try to find out what happened and deal with the hostile spirits now running wild around town.

WHY: On one hand, this is your bog-standard Bethesda action-adventure collect-a-thon: run around a gigantic map, do a ton of sidequests, fight baddies, get bored about 40 hours in and make a beeline for the end of the story. The magic-based combat is novel but not that good; once you unlock a bow, you'll probably do 90% of your combat with that afterwards, and just use fire magic to clean up what’s left once you’re out of arrows.

That said, it mixes in bits of horror, weirdness, and just generally nails a sense of alienation that's rare in this genre of game. The story and mood are outstanding, and manages to carry what is mechanically a somewhat clunky game. (It feels like they made the bulk of the game in 2020, and then spent two years polishing the graphics, which are admittedly outstanding.)

Also, more personally: I love Shibuya, and it was lovely to see so many places recreated fairly faithfully.

4: Horizon: Forbidden West (Feb 2022, Playstation exclusive)

WHAT: Picks up where Horizon: Zero Dawn left off, with Aloy heading west in search of a backup for the GAIA artificial intelligence in the hopes that it might stave off a collapse of Earth's ecosystem. Third-person action-adventure, go hunt gigantic robots with bows and small arms and explore ruins.

WHY: Overall, it's a significant improvement on the first game; in particular, the story is considerably more competently portrayed this time around, even if it's partly spent establishing that Aloy is a gigantic dork that tries to do everything on her own. The combat has some highs and lows. There’s more variety in robots, and you've got a lot more strategic options to use; the formula of "shoot armor plates / weapons off, plink at soft squishy weak spots" still works and is still fun. The lows all come from Guerilla handling the power creep problem by adding a lot more enemy attacks that temporarily stun you -- and there are no I-frames on stuns. Fighting multiple combatants can mean being juggled for 5-6 seconds at a time, which can be profoundly frustrating and heavily encourages drawing off single combatants at a time from a pack to handle in isolation.

There was a lot of blurf in the press about the length of the game; I didn’t feel overwhelmed by the amount of stuff to do, but there is a lot. If you're the type of player who likes to wander around finding random shit to do, looting everything, and getting around to the plot when you're good and ready? Then, it's got about 100 hours of content, and you'll be dramatically overpowered by the time you finally do the story missions. If you follow the missions more tightly, there's probably about 60 hours of game here, but some of the late-game fights might be frustratingly hard without top-tier gear.

(I usually don’t like to talk about the length of games, but H:FW is one of the main excuses atm for buying a PS5, so there is some bang-for-buck to think about.)

3: TUNIC (Mar 2022; Steam, Switch, Playstation, Xbox)

WHAT: Zelda homage with a low-poly isometric visual style, and some beats from Souls games. Cute fox with sword tries to save the world.

WHY: The game’s all about discovery and feeling adrift in a world you don’t fully understand. The main gimmick is that as you play, you unlock pieces of the game manual (which looks like an NES game manual from the 80s, complete with some previous owner’s hints/notes in ballpoint pen). However, all the game content and all of the manual is written in a constructed language, so you have to intuit directions and solve puzzles based on context. Often, you've got no idea what to do, and just wander around seeing what you can get access to and where you might find the next item.

Some of the optional puzzles can be extremely obtuse, especially if you're going for the Golden Ending. The final boss on the non-Golden route is impressively hard. Some of the combat in general needs good reflexes. But this was still one of the best games of the year just from the sense of confusion and discovery and just playing with items and areas to find out how they work.

(Also, the descent into the Quarry is probably the creepiest gaming experience I had all year. Absolute props to the sound designers.)

2: Pokemon Legends: Arceus (Jan 2022; Switch exclusive)

WHAT: It’s a Pokemon game, ffs. You run around and collect them all. Maybe you do some side quests.

WHY: I've been playing this series since you shoved it into the back of a grubby gray Game Boy, and I honestly thought I was done with Pokemon games in general after Sword/Shield. But Arceus honestly managed to breathe a ton of life into what felt like a stale property, enough for me to go full Living Pokedex on it.

The graphics aren't great, but they get the job done, and the gameplay is surprisingly polished. The need to actually observe Pokemon doing things to fill out the Pokedex was a great idea, even more so than the “capture a Pokemon without fighting it” changes. About my only complaint was the sheer amount of running around needed, up until you get the ability to fly.

The story is a bit predictable but is enough of a fig leaf to keep playing.

1: Vampire Survivors (Dec 2021 EA / Oct 2022 for 1.0; Steam, Xbox, and mobiles)

WHAT: Horde defense. You control a character using only a thumbstick, and they constantly autofire all weapons they have. Dodge and damage waves of enemies, collect XP gems, adding more weapons and upgrades with each level-up. After thirty minutes, death inevitably comes. There are no vampires, and no survival.

WHY: For starting out as a $3 kusoge with reused Castlevania sprites, this has probably been my most revisited and frequently played game this year. Sure, I've probably sunk more hours into H:FW or Destiny 2 -- but VS has been the "put on Youtube and brainfart, throw bibles at enemies, watch numbers go up" game that's delivered the most bang for buck of any game on this list. It's not demanding, it's simple, it's fun, it has ton of little hidden secrets and unlockable bits.

One of the recurring high points of this year has been seeing a new VS patch come out, and know my previous 100% achievements is now 90% or whatever, and that I’m going to put down whatever I’m playing and spend the next three days finding and unlocking all the new things they’ve added.

While it wasn’t the first single-stick shooter, its’s success has basically kickstarted a genre. There's a ton of VS successors now -- Rogue:Genesia, Brotato, Spellbook Demonslayers, etc. -- that suggest that they've actually exposed a still-novel space in gaming to be explored, rather than being just a one-off great game.

Edit: Honorable mentions list!

#videogames #top ten 2022

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redvisionsproductions · 2 years

Text

This is going to be a long explanation but TLDR: I’m writing a story set in a fictional version of the Old West that centers heavily around Native American culture and I need help making sure the concepts it tackles (the negative impact of racism, the preservation of culture and the importance of unity and community during hardship) aren’t problematic or offensive. My biggest concerns are listed at the bottom of the comment. Thanks in advance for reading.

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So for the past two years, I’ve been working on a series of movie screenplays which will be converted into graphic novels (I’m better at writing film scripts than comic scripts - they just make more sense to me and it helps with my illustration process if I do it that way).

The premise revolves around a version of the Old West that has dinosaurs as the animals. The overall story, and the first story arc in particular, revolves around two main characters (a white woman - Emma - and a Native American man - John) living in a small Western town, and whose fathers are murdered by corrupt lawmen. It’s up to Emma and John to find out why they were murdered and get justice for their fathers’ deaths.

Here’s where I started to doubt myself and why I’m here today, writing this:

The reason why these two men were murdered is because there is a village hidden in the woods just north of the western town. This village serves as a refugee camp founded by and for a small collection of Native Americans of different Nations who survived and fled from a brutal war years ago, and are trying to live the rest of their lives in peace. (They’ve chosen to live together because, strength in numbers - I’ll come back to this later)

These men who were murdered were the previous lawmen of the Western town, who were helping *another character* to keep this camp a secret from people who wouldn’t like the idea of refugees living so close to their home (and don’t like POC in general).

Furthermore, one of the main characters in the overarching story is a young Native American man named *Harold*, who is the next stage in human evolution because of his ability to use vibrational communication against the dinosaurs - which helps him protect himself and others from the hostile world they live in. (I'll come back to this as well)

So as you can see, I’ve already spent a lot of time and effort on this story. But I don’t want to move forward with illustrating and publishing if it is problematic. I want to tell a story that takes a firm stance against racism, and encourages unity, justice and freedom.

I’ve done research on how best to avoid using racist stereotypes and reworked the story multiple times so that the story stays as progressive as possible without sacrificing its logic or entertainment value. But to make sure I've done it right, I need help from anybody who can provide an answer.

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My biggest concerns are:

1. Is the depiction of different Nations coming to live together problematic, unrealistic or in any way offensive? From what I understand, these Nations didn’t always get along and I was wondering if it would be considered offensive to depict them as cooperative with each other?

2. Because many of these Nations were never anglicized in this version of history, how would I go about naming the characters that are members of these Nations without entering offensive territory?

3. Is the character of Harold problematic despite being one of the central characters and not a tool used by any "white savior" character? (Please note: I understand that there is a racist trope in literature called “The Magical Native American”. I should clarify that his powers aren't tied to his race or religion - there are multiple characters in this story of different backgrounds with the same powers, who show up in later story arcs.)

Any suggestions/criticism are greatly appreciated.

#writing poc #writing #writing advice #need writing advice #POC

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