#I will. Summarize. Add On. Etc.

[sanchoyo]

guys @spectralreplica drew a madoka magica x tm2 design for mira! look how cute this is I am obsessed 😭

[remcadll]

Gen obsessed with how.. *dead* your Jason's color pallete is. Like, that's corpse pale right there. Not a spec of blood left flowing in there (also father Todd's skin being full of color in comparison is a nice touch)

THANK YOU I love making him look a bit ghoulish. Guy who's not supposed to be alive but yes he is. no he isn't <3

[meraki-sunset]

so your crow strider au gave me inspiration for my own au, but i've built up the idea in my brain so much that now im scared to try to put it to paper (oops) did you ever deal with this while making crow strider? (and if you did, how you got over it would be much appreciated thanks fhdjks) also your art is cool :]

Hi, sure, i encountered a few blocks when writing CSAU and other projects. I think my method comes down to a couple rules

You need to know how the story ends from the start, so everything in the story leads to the end. Things can change about the contents of the story as you write it and you change your mind about the events that will transpire in it, but you need an end goal you can build your story towards. Most importantly, this is what allows you to add foreshadowing for said ending and structure the narrative in a clear direction. Otherwise, you might come up with a cool ending too late and regret some choices from past chapters that now don’t help this new ending you want

On that same note (and i’ll proceed to copy and paste from an old post) You need to have a Word document with a rough timeline of the events from start to finish. You need to know how it ends from the beginning and how they get there. It can be really, really vague, but it has to be there. It can go like

. They start the game, the trolls bother them.

.both games go to hell

.scratch

.trip, develop relationships

.new set of kids/teen drama

.old kids they get there

.to hell again

.John retcons everything

.new timeline

.they win

And that's homestuck simplified, Those are your Acts. With them, you will know where you're going and if you need to change something earlier. Everything will be constantly up to change of course, but you will be going from point A to point Z more easily.

From there, you go to every point in that list and create a Word document for all of them. I have them in different folders to have every act separated and in order.

A folder for each Doc for every Act, Numbered, and in each one make more lists like that one telling what happens, for example

WordDoc1 - ACT 1 "They start the game, the trolls bother them"=

.John needs to get his game

.introduce Rose

.introduce the trolls on pester chats

. John gets the game

.introduce Dave

.etc

And those are your chapters. Now you can know the extent of what you want to do and if it makes any sense.

I addition to that, every Folder can contain not only the Word document for the Act but also relevant texts and art that are connected to the Act, so evey folder is all about that specific act and any inspiration for it.

Another piece of advice I can give you is to hint at anything important. That's a rule of comedy; actually, the comedian usually closes the show with something related to the first things they said.

That works for everything, and makes people go, "Oh the thing! The meaningless thing they said earlier, it was a clue all along!"

Interconnect it like a web, and that web will stop the story from falling

Homestuck is so ridiculously interconnected that you lose track of the stuff and objects that repeat that have no way to be where they got to be, songs and people and events that are too similar to not be connected but nobody addresses, things like that make it feel like you're dealing with a universe and not just a line of events.

3. Yet another thing, it's something I'm still trying to assimilate, and is that less is more, sometimes things don't need to be said, specialy not bluntly, and an expression, a gesture, a flinch can summarize them. Backgrounds can be reduced, and ideas can be conveyed.

one example is, In homestuck, it's never said that Dave was raised with lack of food. He never sais it, but it's shown in how happy he was to find a warm bottle of juice in his closet, how there is only weapons on the kitchen and no sign of food, how he later sais he never learned what the purpose of a fridge was until he saw it on tv. If someone is lacking something, don't have them say, "i grew up without X thing" show what filled that space in the absence of X thing.

Instead of some character saying, "My dad was never there for christmas" have them say how they thrited for presents at the local goodwill, payed with their lawn mowing money and put the presents under the tree themselves for their siblings and mom.

4. Something that I always have in mind when writing the dialogs and sketching the scenes, is

"I have an idea; what's the easiest way for someone to get the idea, to get the feelings i want to transmit from the idea?" I made the art something I could handle drawing hundreds of times, simplified the coloring, the aspect symbols, the way I draw backgrounds, the way I write dialogs, etc.

That will save you time and work and could prevent you from getting stuck with a project too big to handle

5. This is the most important one: The first draft’s only purpose is to exist.

Writing is like playing darts sometimes; you only get closer to hitting the center by missing it and learning what not to do. That’s an actual rule on animation and a motto on the Disney office. “Get it wrong as quick as you can,” because when you learn what you’re doing wrong is when you start learnign what doing it right means.

If it helps, title your first draft “the dumb version,” because that’s what it is—the version to get the idea out of your head, and then you built over it.

On the same note, once you write "the dumb version" don’t correct it. Rewrite it. It’s annoying, I know, i know, but fixing and fixing a text only carries the mistakes from the first draft, and everything looks kind of disconnected, because it ends up being a Frankenstein text of all the versions of the story mixed together.

This also applies to art; that’s how I handle both writing and drawing; if it’s not working, hold onto the core idea, new page, restart.

Rewriting it puts it in perspective; it feels like a text of its own, with a clear intent in mind.

I think that’s all I have. Making a story is mostly about managing your strengths and weaknesses, organizing and not being scared of it not being perfect.

Hope this helps.

[ellierenae]

SUPER UNIQUE writing ideas for hobbyists and professionals looking for fun, personal projects to get their inspo back

get a fictional pen pal (ask your other writer friends!) and spend time decorating envelopes, picking out a handwriting style, maybe buying a cheap perfume/cologne that smells like your character to really get to know them and feel their presence. if you have hand tremors or bad handwriting like me, you can choose a handwriting font for them and print their letters out!! more examples: save the dates, wedding invitations, birthday cards, party invites, etc.

use old calendars in character (there are many "expired" planners on sale around the end of the year, usually August) personally, i use them to record major life events like first band tours, trips abroad, holidays, birthdays... even trash pickup days and when they forget to roll out the bins!

sketch floor plans this can be on graph paper if you have the know-how when it comes to scaling down, but there are also tons of simple apps that allow you to both create the floor plan a builder would use and add furniture like an interior decorator. some even let you rotate them afterwards and see the furniture and walls burst to life in 3D! you can think of them as the sims but where everything is actually to scale

make an architectural model if you have some scrap cardboard, paper, and glue, you can easily bring the floor plan you just made to life (you'll need practice if you want to get really fancy with it of course! window panes and railings are the gnarliest part for me, haha)

make a playlist as your character maybe the most accessible one on this list, you can make the playlist your character listens to. sometimes this can be fun and surprising, like when my little guy Possum from Violence Without Plot is covered in tattoos and plays punk music on stage but listens to nothing but spa music to wind down between shows

write something your character can see this one is so weird to summarize but what i mean is like... a school essay for your teacher character to grade. cryptic street signs warning about danger by the lake. a memorial plaque beneath a statue. a character's online blog. a few of the cards in a grandmother's recipe box. a business card for a smooth-talking lawyer. things you can write that make everything feel so textured and real

these are all things i do on the daily, and it makes my life as a writer a thousand times more joyful and fulfilling. so have fun, be safe, and don't forget to unplug the hot glue when you're done <3

[crevicedwelling]

out of curiosity, what would happen if mosquitoes were to cease existence entirely? i've never known what they add to nature. i don't think they're useless, i simply do not know

lots summarized here:

basically: nobody really knows either, that’s a very hard thing to quantify. my guess: various ecosystems experience a drop (how much?) in productivity due to a lack of pollination and food for various aquatic and flying animals that depend on mosquito larvae and adults for food. particularly in areas like the Arctic which have tons of mosquitoes in the short summer, food/pollination would probably be felt especially bad—lots of birds, other insects, bats, etc must eat a lot of those trillions. certainly anything that specializes on mosquitoes (including mosquito-eating jumping spiders and mosquito-eating mosquitoes, plus plants that depend solely on them for pollination [there’s got to be some]) will go extinct.

maybe also creatures that mosquitoes keep in check through competition or disease also change their populations: again, hard to say exactly what will happen.

I think the most important thing with this question though is less about what we can predict and more about what we can’t. beyond mosquitoes, that’s what worries me most about insect declines: all the stuff they do that we don’t know about that keeps us all living the way we’re used to. it frightens me to think of people casually saying (and meaning it too) that all mosquitoes disappearing would be a good thing, as though real ecosystems were toys that humans ought to play with as we please without us and the rest of the world ever suffering the consequences—we all should have learned this lesson by now and taught it to anyone who does not know it

[angelsdean]

Can I just say, I really hate when the "previously" opening bits recontextualize things in their effort to "condense" and often wholly make up stuff and add lines that never happened. Like in early season 3, multiple episodes open with Dean saying:

"Look, Dad's gone now. We have to carry out his legacy, and that means hunting down as many evil sons of bitches as we possibly can." (another variation: "Dad's gone now. He wants us to pick up where he left off. Whadya say we kill some evil sons of bitches and we raise a little hell?")

He never said this! He said, in 1x02, when John was missing:

"I think he wants us to pick up where he left off. You know, saving people, hunting things. The family business." AND "I mean, I figure our family's so screwed to hell, maybe we can help some others. Makes things a little bit more bearable. I'll tell you what else helps. Killing as many evil sons of bitches as I possibly can."

and then in 3x01 he says:

"Whatever. You're alive, I feel good – for the first time in a long time. I got a year to live, Sam. I'd like to make the most of it. So what do you say we kill some evil sons of bitches and we raise a little hell, huh?"

But neither of these are a sentiment he held following John's death, which is what the made-up abridged line in the s3 intros suggest. And Dean never says anything about wanting to "carry out his legacy."

In s2 when John died Dean very much wanted to stop hunting. And he expressed this multiple times. While Sam was the one who kept wanting to hunt because it's what John would've wanted.

2x02:

SAM I'm having second thoughts. DEAN Really? SAM Yeah. I think. Dad would have wanted me to stick with the job.

2x09:

DEAN I'm tired, Sam. I'm tired of this job, this life . . . this weight on my shoulders, man. I'm tired of it.

Meanwhile in the previous episode Sam says:

SAM Evan Hudson is safe because of what Dad taught us. That's his legacy, Dean. But we're still here, man. So we gotta keep going, for him.

Dean getting back into the whole "what do you say we kill some evil sons of bitches and we raise a little hell" in s3 has nothing to do with John or wanting to honor his legacy. It's because he's going to die in a year and he wants to make the most of it, stop as many monsters as he can and save as many people as he can before he dies.

Like it's not that he doesn't express the sentiment or even use those exact words ("kill some evil sons of bitches" etc etc) it's the way the intros re-frame these moments into being about "honoring John's legacy" and doing what John would have wanted that is just wrong and frustrating. That is NOT what is motivating Dean. Not after John dies and not in s3 either. In s1 sure he wants to "pick up where Dad left off" and he is largely saying all this to convince Sam to stick around and also to actually hunt and save people instead of just going on a revenge quest.

But by s3 Dean has grown completely disillusioned with John and his "mission." He's bitter. S3 is the same season we see him crash out and get the iconic "My father was an obsessed bastard" scene. Ever since his death he has become increasingly more critical of John, while Sam has done the opposite.

So it's a little bit infuriating that the intro for most of s3--which serves as a way to summarize and catch up casual viewers--puts the idea in the minds of these viewers, who likely are not paying attention or thinking deeply about these things, that it's Dean who thinks they should be honoring John's legacy after his death. When it really isn't.

[atwhughesversion]

daily “why won’t jim rutherford just stfu” roundup:

from his appearance on the 100% Hockey podcast that i listened to so you don’t have to, and summarized so that it won’t just be sportsnet 650 hosts picking and choosing the most negative things

started off w rutherford waxing poetic abt tocchet and basically saying that it was hard to hear, he’d thought they were trending in the direction of tocchet coming back, etc.

metey helped the leadership shift in a positive way when he was added

“the media’s pretty serious here, they weren’t sure whether they were supposed to smile or laugh or not, but i wasn’t gonna speak any further until i got a little chuckle out of them” — in regard to his jokes abt the hughes brothers, practice facility

they can’t find an empty lot for practice facility, and they can’t work w existing rink to add, but are going a different route right now that seems like it might work

quinn:

they control quinn for “a year and 2/3s” but are hopeful that he’s here to stay; he’s the captain and face of the franchise

when quinn called rutherford back rutherford opened with “i hope you were golfing,” and quinn said he’d been golfing AND his phone had died

quinn was close w tocchet but he “understands how the sport works and he’s all for going forward with the changes”

“has quinn ever mentioned [wanting to play with his brothers]?” “no, that’s just been out there, people say that” 💀💀

new coach:

moving along w new coach probably in next couple weeks

has not yet approached malholtra abt the HC job but he’s done a good job preparing the AHL players for the NHL

riftgate (sorry):

“things seemed to be fine in training camp, and right that first week of season, the thing blew up with the two players. it started to affect pretty much everybody in that locker room; got to a point that we knew that we had to make a change, even to the point the players involved talked about making a change.”

“you can’t just make one call and make a trade; it’s going to take a month or two and i think based on the circumstances we acted quickly…both players understood that they could get traded to resolve this, or possible both players could get traded.” — doesn’t think they dragged it out, rather that they acted as soon as they realized what was going on

after a few weeks miller came and said he’d really like a fresh start and that’s when things moved even more quickly

two personalities that were “totally the opposite” and that’s why they had a tough time

got to that point where it “consumed everyone”

people that were directly involved had “meetings after meetings…meetings to see when the next meeting was going to happen” and references that tocchet did a good job communicating with them, but they’d have a meeting where they’d agree to work it it and then a week later it would flare up again

“i will stick up for [miller] — certainly there were some things done that he may have liked to do different, but even after it flared up at the start of the season i believe that he was working hard to figure this out. i would not blame one person; it involved two people but over time it started to involve more people.”

off-season:

still open to brock coming back; if he goes to july 1 the door is still open: trying to be cautious w length of the contract whereas brock wants long-term

a lot of players are looking to go to other places instead of vancouver; they have “good fortune” with european players who have figured out how to get around heavier taxes here and find that vancouver reminds them of home

willander:

tom willander.” “yeah?”

“i probably shouldn’t say this because i don’t like negotiating publicly” then don’t SAY ITTT

willander has been offered same as what 11th overall pick got last year — “we think we’re being fair”

“[willander’s] gonna have a good, long — as long as he’s injury-free — career” and added he thinks he can play in the NHL next season

doesn’t have to get done until training camp

demko:

“you still believe in thatcher demko?” “oh yeah, very much so.”

demko/lankinen are 1A/1B and deployment is up to the coach; joked that they hope that they just “don’t start slow at the same time”

demko has changed up his training plan and we saw it in how confidently he made insane saves when he came back from injury (rutherford joked he’d be thinking “oh no, he’s not gonna get up”)

off-season, pt. 2 (i’m just posting this in chronological order)

they’ll consider trading their 1st-round pick for a centre

feel good about their defence, especially because they have so many young defencemen developing

“pettersson—the defence—young pettersson, the defenceman”

“if we re-sign boeser and suter we may not add another winger, if we can get the right centre and get petey going”

petey:

“[petey] is working very hard;” rutherford says he got an unsolicited update from their strength and conditioning guy that he was working hard

he’s gone back to sweden now (or is at least not in vancouver) but rutherford doesn’t actually know when he is

“if [petey] prepares this summer, there’s not gonna be a problem — he’s got the ability”

petey “doesn’t like what happened this year — he doesn’t like getting beat down, during this season, for not having the year that he’s capable of, so he’s got a lot to motivate him and i believe he’ll do it.”

“i believe the situation that flared up the first half of the season affected him mentally”

final pieces:

ideally chytil’s best place is 3rd-line centre

watches a lot of playoff hockey and appreciates living in vancouver’s timezone

wouldn’t predict winner of vegas/edmonton (c’mon jim, all you had to do to endear yourself to this city i’d say you think vegas will be the one advancing)

[fairuzfan]

I believe the word Palestine was first written in 5 BCE to refer to a part of Syria specifically. So I was curious about you saying how "Palestine" as a nation goes back 4000 years? From what I've read, the land was called Judaea in pre-biblical times, and then was renamed Syria Palaestina when it was corporated as a Roman province. The people who are from what is today variously Syria/Jordan/Lebanon/Iraq and migrated to the land only began to identify as Palestinian in the 1960s for the national resistance movement (because it had been known as Mandatory Palestine in the 1900s under the British) -- however even pre-British rule, under the Ottoman Empire it was referred to as "Southern Syria" by many who migrated and lived there over hundreds of years, and/or had varying names because the land (known as "Palestine" now) was divided with no one centralised administrative control. I'm in no way saying this delegitimises the liberation struggle for people known as Palestinian today obviously (and I grew up with a friend from there, whose family fled from Israel, who identified as Palestinian + Lebanese simultaneously for political/personal reasons which adds to my understanding of this) Saying Palestine has 4000 years of history seems to me like saying any country has 4000 years of history just because the land existed at all, even though the term is relatively recent & was only ever first used within the common era, and the land had multiple other earlier names, even during the Ottoman rule right before the British gave the name of "Mandatory Palestine" to specified territories within the last century.

This is not true actually, palestine was referred to as palestine in Assyrian transcriptions and among greek scholars. I really recommend reading "Palestine: a 4000 year history" by nur masalha. It dates the use of the word Palestine and describes how zionists often manipulate archeology to align with biblical stories. He also goes more specifically into the names of different regions (Gaza, Askelon, etc) and describes their relevance to identifying Palestine.

Now I feel like I was misunderstood a little that Palestine was a "nation" because in arabic there are 2 words to describe this, "watan" which is more contemporary and used in the 18th century i believe and "balad" which is far far older. Both terms have different implications. I can't exactly describe it but when I say "nation" I'm not speaking contemporarily. Masalha discusses this too.

But yeah he also discusses how Philistines were not a seafaring people as commonly thought but archeological finds suggest that we're indigenous to the geographic area of Palestine.

There's more but even just the introduction summarizes the history of the word "Palestine" and the colonial implications of denying its relevance. Really recommend a lot of Masalha's books actually.

[yuurei20]

Is it okay to ask for the second half of this translation now that 7-8 released in EN?

https://www.tumblr.com/yuurei20/755749918978752512/will-you-write-an-in-depth-detail-or-summary-of?source=share

Hello hello, thank you for this question! 🐉🦇

What a wonderful idea, thank you so much! The second half has been prepared 🥳

(For reference: there was a "spoilers-ok talk" between Malleus' Va Kato Kazuki (🐉) and Lilia's VA Midorikawa Hikaru (🦇) back in July 2024 (YouTube Link), and as this account pretends that Main-Story content not released to EN does not exist, the summary provided here only went up to Book 7-4, as that is where EN was at the time.)

*Note: text below is just paraphrasing/summarizing and not literal quotes except for one place where the original Japanese has also been included just in case. No Main Story spoilers, has all content has been released on EN as of this post :>

7-5

Malleus’ egg is at Wildrose Castle, with his mom.

🦇: Egg-sama 🐉：Sebek was funny. 🦇：I’d never heard someone add “-sama” to "egg" before. And he is so serious.  🐉：That seriousness is what is so funny about Sebek. And they continue to the castle, with Lilia and Baul’s bond deepening.

Maleanor appears

🦇：Voiced by Fukami Rica, voice of Maleficent. I did not expect her in this role. I thought she would have been Maleficia. 🐉：Maleanor and Lilia’s relationship… 🦇：From long ago. I’d like to hear their story, from the past. The time when the three of them were together. 🐉：I think there are a lot of people who would enjoy that. Lilia proposed to Maleanor. 🦇：I want to stay here a little while longer. 🐉：Want to go deeper into that, please.

🦇：Lilia really improved in his child-rearing. 🐉：He was just suddenly put in charge of Malleus. Picked up the lullaby from Maleanor, Maleanor singing it to Malleus when he was an egg. 🦇：That’s really the only connection they have, Malleus and Maleanor.

🦇：Doing the voice of Lilia searching for Silver was difficult. I did an older man voice because of how much time had past from his younger days and I was told “he isn’t that old yet!” But thinking about the Lilia that comes after it, the hazy point in the middle…that was difficult. If you don’t separate recordings into “this era,” “that era,” etc., it is difficult to perform. That was hard.

7-6

🐉：Even just remembering this part I feel like I might start to cry. I think that might be true of a lot of the players. 🦇：I didn’t really know their…Lilia’s position, I didn’t really understand it, but he is different from the dragons, so that revelation…if you were to say it then I would think “yes I can see that,” but…he worked so hard! 🐉：Lilia worked so hard to hatch Malleus! And everything in the past—and the senate had nothing to do with any of it! 🦇：What did they even do? 🐉：They didn’t have anything to do with anything. Seriously. Everything was left up to Lilia. “What is this? Explain this! Malleus will die!”  🦇：It had been a few hundred years before but there was the promise he made, and Baul…but he really worked so hard for so long. 🐉：I’ve thought about it. And things are happening over hundreds of years. It’s different than for humans, but still, hundreds of years—that is intense. That will break a person. 🦇：And it was his own child, too. There is love there. He might not have realized for himself it yet, but... 🐉：Maleanor-sama said as much. “Our child--it is impossible for you to not love him.”

🦇：What surprised me was how he started rejecting Maleficia’s energy. I wondered about that. 🐉：I didn’t realize that Malleus would be so picky. 🦇：And this is where Lilia’s love of travel came from, going from here to there. That hits pretty hard. After that, you’ll be happy to receive a pennant and you’ll display it, for sure. Usually you’d be like “…a pennant?”

🐉：I cried when Malleus was born. Just remembering Lilia’s weeping…I am the voice of Malleus, and if it hadn’t been for that Malleus wouldn’t have been born, so I felt a lot of gratitude towards Lilia here. 🦇：He tried so hard, and he did it (he starts speaking in Lilia’s voice here and it is so great) 🐉：And baby Malleus is so cute. 🦇：So cute.

🐉：And this is where Malleus learn the secret of his origin. Malleus’ rage—this was the first time I’d done a voice like that for Malleus. The loudest I have ever been for Malleus. And he got so angry so suddenly. I realized that even Malleus has that degree of emotion inside of him. And his grandmother hid it from him, too. That loneliness, that sadness…

🦇：We don’t know if Maleficia-sama shared the views of the others about “bat energy,” but it’s possible that that resulting in Malleus’ birth is one of the reasons why she thought it would be better to hide it. And Lilia overused his magic, connecting back to his health. That was a rough scene.

🐉：I heard that, for this chapter, you and 🐊 recorded together. 

🦇：Shared recordings are increasing recently. And there was so much pressure with this one. We have been doing this together for so long by now, both as rivals and as members of the same team, so coming together again after so long…I was worried that he would think “Ah, so this is what 🦇 has become these days.” Just my own, entirely my own thought. So there was a lot of pressure, but I think it was a good atmosphere.  🐉：That section was amazing.

🦇 Quote: 「『マレウスが孵化した際のリリアの泣き演技でスタブースで号泣していたそうです』と書いてあるんですけど、号泣は行き過ぎじゃないんですか？ 🦇：It says here that during the performance of Lilia crying after having hatched Malleus, people were sobbing in the sound booth. Is “sobbing” not going a little far? 

🐉：If I’d been there, I would have sobbed. It wouldn’t have been just tears. Hearing that scene raw, during a recording—it was hard enough for me just playing through on my phone. But that is the peak emotional moment. I am kind of envious, actually.  🦇：They got to hear it before anyone. 🐉：I wish that could’ve been me. 🦇：I’ve done a lot of crying scenes. The pressure is intense. People go in assuming it will make them cry, and I want to make them cry even harder than they’re expecting. I am glad if that is what they took away from it. 🐉：Everyone clap. I cried in another place as well, when Maleanor, as a dragon, and the Knight of Dawn…I was so sad. 🦇：Didn’t want to fight. 🐉：He had his own things, too, but thought he had to do it, and while he was fighting Maleanor I couldn’t do it. I put the phone down. I knew that if I continued…this isn’t good.

🦇：It is such a serious thing, but the battles are done with chibis. They’re cute. But you have to perform in a way that keeps up the feeling of the scene. 🐉：If someone asked me to play through the part again I wouldn’t be able to do it. 🦇：She's mom, after all. 

7-7

🐉：It was pretty fun how everything suddenly shifted gears. I enjoyed the game of tag with Ortho.  🦇：Ortho taunts people more than I’d expected.  🐉：I was surprised that he was like that. 🦇：And Malleus doesn’t pick up on subtlety, so their interaction was funny. Until now Malleus had never really been taunted like that.  🐉：But eventually he turned it back on Ortho. Kind of like “oh, he’s actually mad, then.”

🦇：The newest technology against the world’s strongest magic—that is interesting. 🐉：It was very Shroud for them to approach from the new angle, the unforeseen perspective that they did.

🦇：Ortho was very busy—so many Orthos. The humanoid Ortho, the RSA Ortho, the phantom Ortho…and they all speak slightly different. That was amazing. The red-haired Idia came up in the story for the first time. I was surprised by that, seeing him move. That’s when I realized that it has only ever existed in that one groovy. That was neat. And Idia and Ortho’s battle… 🐉：It gets you worked up, makes you cry…Phantom Ortho, saying goodbye, that he’s waiting… 🦇：That was great. And his resentment over his mother seeing inside his computer was great.  Mama didn’t say anything, though. Just kind of, “Mm…” 🐉：A child at that age, having their parents look inside their computer… 🦇：And despite all the locks that he put on it. 🐉：Don’t know what she saw, though.

🦇：”That” in part 8 was great. 🐉：For a moment I thought it had become an entirely different game. Just as a video it was funny. I watched it three times. It makes you want Idia to just regularly do streaming.

Then goes into talk about Chapter 8’s release, SSR Savanaclaw Rook, looking forward to who else is coming and what they will look like, the upcoming Chapter 9, etc. 

🦇：It’d be great if they could do more recordings like this right after a new release when we are bursting with things we want to talk about. Over time we start forgetting smaller details. It would be nice to be able to be able to do something like this again, a bit lighter, having snacks and chatting about this and that within the game. I’d like that. We never have any opportunities to get everyone together.

🐉：And maybe being able to interact with players in real time, being able to hear people’s opinions. There are definitely perspectives out there that we’ve never considered, and it would be interesting to have an opportunity for that kind of communication. 

[jesncin]

we need to talk about dc pride 2025-

PURELY from a consumer perspective!! I'm not writing this in an antagonistic way just because I'm part of the DC Pride fanzine (which I'm very proud of, you should check it out)- I just really want to talk about it and I feel I'm entitled to an opinion as gay book king of 2025 so HERE WE GO

To catch you up to speed, the DC Pride specials are usually anthologies with a handful of short stories highlighting and celebrating DC's canonically queer characters, with an all queer creative team (as is tradition). They're ordinarily self contained stories. This year though it looks like they tried to be more ambitious- and the stories are all connected to a bigger plot. In my humble opinion this was a huge mistake.

It's the nature of anthologies to have hit and miss stories! You've got a huge pool of creatives and some of those writing styles or stories aren't going to vibe with you. But that's no biggie, because you can just hop onto the next story and start fresh. It's what I've come to enjoy about anthologies! And I found this an accessible way to learn about DC's queer characters through these short stories.

BUT THAT'S NOT THE CASE FOR THIS YEAR'S SPECIAL. The overarching plot that all the Pride stories are under follow a magic plot where all queer characters across universes are trapped in a fantasy world (where they supposedly have all their desires granted) and need to snap out of it to get back into the real world. A character named Ethan Rivera, a trans man who served in the war, is usually the one to snap people out of it. This Pride Special serves as a backdoor-pilot style origin story for Ethan.

The story serves as a spiritual sequel to Alan Scott's recent solo comic. Years ago, Alan and his ex carved a heart onto this wall in a gay bar, unknowingly imbuing it with magic. In modern times, the wall and the bar its in are going to be turned into a parking lot, another gay monument lost to history. Suddenly it's doing some cosmic horror stuff where every queer character is sucked into a fantasy and regroup there.

(this dialogue is so....uh trite and on the nose I'm sorry afasdf)

This might seem like a new fun way to shake the Pride specials up- you get an overarching plot and everyone gets to interact with each other. There's a main character to help follow you through the action, theoretically giving you the opportunity to explore more depth in conflict than your usual short self contained Pride story, etc.

But no. It did the opposite for me. The overarching plot put some serious constrains on the writers, forcing them to essentially write the same plot over and over again.

Character is in a fantasy, something is off, Ethan snaps them out of it, and they all end up in a "home base of operations" where they get exposition dumped and caught up to speed with the magic shenanigans happening.

Interesting at first but very quickly overstays its welcome!! I couldn't escape the loop. I wasn't granted the freedom of a fresh start to read a new story, it was the same plot. Again and again and again.

I can sense some writers really trying with the limits they're given. Vita Ayala's The Question segment was among the stronger stories! And I felt a sense of this character's personality and history way more than the others.

Other characters weren't so lucky. Connor Hawke has been done so dirty this year. Not only was he whitewashed in a Pride illustration (that accompanies this collection), with half his face covered to add insult to injury- but he got a meager 2 pages of backstory before being cast to the side. And the writing was among the worst of the collection. Tragic.

(these panels summarize all these stories' plots. Just the same thing rinse and repeat)

Lowkey hate that the ace character's "celebration" this year is getting smooched on and then cast aside for a bigger plot. Justice for Connor.

Quick roundup of stories I want to talk about- sorry if I don't include your fav! This was just such a repetitive read that they all sort of melt together in my mind.

Any Apollo and Midnighter fan can go in more detail over how these complex morally grey characters get watered down to being sanitized Pride ads every year, so I'm going to review this on just the basic storytelling level. The premise is that the fantasy these two husbands are stuck in is a tongue-in-cheek respectable sitcom. "vigilante justice" is "legalized" but whenever someone violently threatens the gay couple, Midnighter can't really kill them. They turn into confetti.

I can sense this is trying to poke fun at respectability and censorship but it lands flat for me. Why are there people threatening them with slurs and guns if it's an escapist paradise? I've never seen a cute sitcom have that. It doesn't help that this idyllic fantasy is literally a desire for Apollo. That the reason they're stuck there is that one of them actually likes it there. If they went a more WandaVision route where they were stuck in a censored reality where they can't boink and have to dress as respectable sweater-wearing neighborhood gay dads, this could've poked fun at the company's own problems with softening edgy queer characters. Just a fascinating case study of attempting rebellion within a company.

Quick note for Harley's story. It basically says that all her modern motivations boil down to wanting a girlfriend. If that isn't a summation for how these characters lose all depth after being canonized as queer I don't know what is.

We need to talk about the Blue Snowman story. Or what I like to call, "this year's contender for "Pride is a Party""

Summarized perfectly by Dizzy on twitter as

The Blue Snowman's fantasy is that they're outed by Wonder Woman when she uses the Lasso of Truth on them. Forced to come to terms with their fluid gender identity, they imagine being graciously accepted and defended by the world against Wonder Woman, with her labeled as "Not An Ally". (we'll talk about how Wondie's canonically queer later in the conclusion)

I get that it's a joke, that the Blue Snowman is self deprecating, insecure, while also being egotistical enough to frame Xanthe Zhou as an "unimportant trans person"- who is inspired by the Blue Snowman to be queer. But it's not funny. And reads like a conservative "the gays are so fragile" comic. Again, this is presented to us as the Blue Snowman's secret desire. Much like the Apollo and Midnighter one, any commentary it's trying to make doesn't land.

Xanthe and Blue Snowman only "reconcile" in a quiet sequence of panels where Blue Snowman begrudgingly holds Xanthe's hand. The one time this comic decides to shut up, it does this. Justice for Xanthe because they barely get stories outside of these DC specials, and the one time they return it's to be insulted and barely apologized to.

The Blue Snowman story is the most trans focused narrative out of the entire collection this year (outside of Ethan exposition dumping his origin story). And this is what we got.

In between everyone's stories, we see Ethan in a dreamscape fantasy realm that is very beautifully rendered! Props to A.L. Kaplan!!

Even though I visually love these pages, I did find them disruptive to the flow of stories. It didn't help that Ethan sort of intrudes on everyone's stories to snap them out of their fantasies- I just found it all annoying to read. I couldn't really get into each character because they were mandated to follow a specific structure. In the end I still don't have a grasp of who Ethan is as a character either, despite all that screen time.

Ethan just tells us his origin, we don't experience it with him. He explains to us how he feels about everything. He is entirely a tell not show character.

He'll even explain what the metaphors represent to the reader. "Because it feels as though everything I've done since then has involved a transition of some kind. It's like I'm always transitioning. Like this place." "It's a beautiful tribute Alan. And look what you started! These carvings, this wall...it's like a monument. it represents everything you and so many others were feeling." This is real dialogue. He literally tells us what the wall represents like we're too foolish to know.

The dialogue in general was a pain to read. Everyone sounded like a Joss Whedon character. They'd say the most obvious on the nose thing, in a weak attempt to hide it as quirky charisma. It was not working.

(just because you lampshade your writing by showing characters being bored of exposition doesn't mean it's suddenly good writing!!)

It got exhausting to read hope speech after hope speech of characters talking in corporate prideisms that I found myself wanting to skim through the pages because I felt I wasn't learning anything new. And when I say these characters yap, I mean they YAP.

Godspeed to the letterer team because what the heck!!

All this text and for what? More cosmic red lantern magical nonsense.

Anyway the interconnected story ends abruptly. After yelling at the cosmic image of Alan's ex, Ethan returns to the graffiti wall in the gay bar with all the other queer characters transported back to where they came from. And the ending is...surprisingly passive about its conclusion.

There's a strange resignation to the characters. Despite being literal superheroes who have attachment to this gay bar and graffiti wall that houses generations of queer expression, they just kind of give up on saving a queer historical monument. They don't even try.

This is all lamp shaded under a "the fight never ends" speech from Alan. But like, again- y'all didn't try. You didn't fight for the place. You are just telling me that you are. "It's always been that way, and it always will be. That's what we get right? That and the privilege of hoping that, because of what we do, the next generation and the next may get more." A bit of an oxymoron to say it's always the same and hope the next generation will get it better.

I understand what this collection is going for. Deeper, interconnected conflict for its queer characters that you wouldn't normally get in its typical anthology format. It's even trying to end in a more somber note. They don't save the gay bar and its graffiti wall. They move on.

But it's lacking nuance in its garbled hope speech by the end. I understand that "It gets better" can become an irritating platitude to hear when historically, we know it doesn't always get better for marginalized people. I think if the story ended with "Things don't always get better. It can get worse if we're not careful, that's why we have to keep fighting." And show your characters being active instead of just accepting queer erasure when it happens, that could be really resonant with the current political climate. Instead we get this passive resignation. Anti-hope disguised in hope speeches.

Quick review of the Jenny Blake auto bio in the end. It's cute, though I have some thoughts. Inevitably when these collections feature an auto bio comic, they feel more authentic because they're about a real person.

I do find it ironic that Blake starts this comic by saying "just as no two human beings are exactly alike...no two lgbtqia+ stories are exactly alike" when it's featured in an anthology about queer characters experiencing the same "I'm in a fake fantasy, whoa time to wake up into the real world! What going on? Someone exposition dump me please" story over and over and over again. I had lost a lot of my patience by the time I made it to the end of this collection. And this felt like a punch in the face in the funniest way. Amazing lack of self awareness.

I have a nitpick for this later part though. Blake says "Evil reared its ugly head, and my country descended into cruelty and madness. Playing it safe was no longer an option. I needed to represent as my true self. I would not hide in the closet waiting for the bigots and transphobes to come find me!"

It's very cloying in its delivery. But I take issue with framing closeted people as shameful cowards who won't live their truth. Just "waiting for bigots to come find them". If things are hard for you in Texas (or anywhere for that matter) as a trans person, being in the closet doesn't make you any less queer. You're just protecting yourself the way Superman does when he's being Clark Kent.

NOW FOR BIG CONCLUSION FEELINGS

The DC Pride anthologies are always interesting to me for the wrong reasons. I'm fascinated by them like it's performance art. They're an annual celebration of the company's queer characters and staff. But they're also Pride ads. Sometimes there's little gems in the collection, but for the most part its watered down and corporate. I love dissecting all the ways they represent respectability, assimilation and the struggle between art and commerce.

This collection's existence is proof- evidence if you will- that queer writers don't always make great queer stories. Because they're human beings.

So this year's collection showing ambition to break away from the celebration-style writing to be more interconnected and somber, but still managing to feel corporate is a case study that my brain can't stop chewing on. Despite its deviance from the norm, it still follows DC's limitations with queer rep.

DC has so many more queer characters than those that show up in their Pride specials. And they even have huge mainline queer characters that mysteriously never show up in Pride.

Remember how the Blue Snowman comic joked about Wonder Woman not being an ally? Well. She's not. Because Diana's a canonically queer character. But DC doesn't market her that way. To the general audience, DC wants you to believe that Nubia is the queer Themysciran, the queer member of wonderfam. Despite Wonder Woman being a queer headline Trinity member, DC wants you to remember that Diana is for the boys. So they can't have her in the Pride anthologies.

Same with Selina Kyle, she may be Catwoman, she may have kissed a woman, but she's for the boys. So both her and Diana have a magical restraining order from the Pride Specials. A Lasso of Lies if you will. Catman can be here, though. Allies like Nightwing can be featured too.

Bi representation in DC is very bi-nary (pun intended). When Harley Quinn was canonized as bi, she's written like a lesbian character. Modern Harley solely hits it up with women, and has no feelings for men. Even in this collection she's being creeped on by a dude and has to reject his advances as she chases her girlfriend. It's as though DC resigned and said "fine, Harley's for the girls".

When Tim Drake came out as bi, he's virtually been written as a gay man. All his previous relationships with women are written off and discarded. Highlighting his gay relationship as the true relationship.

When Jon Kent came out as bi, he never says the word "bi". And is written to be a gay character. Yeah he's in dramatic love triangle right now, but we can't have our biggest multi-flag wearing mascot cheat and feel complex about this. That would be a bad bi stereotype! We can't have that.

The luckiest we get is bi characters like John Constantine. Who flirts constantly with men- but only has deep, character-defining romantic relationships with women. That's as good as it gets. He'll get bi jokes tossed at him though. We can't have everything.

That's only one out of the many ways corporate mingling messes with these characters. How it stops them from being truly transgressive. Because this Pride Special, for all its ambitions, just has the same foundational problems of the collection's usual offerings.

Only this time, in my opinion, there was no standout or good story. Because they were all the same story. They were forced to be. Which is deeply ironic for a Pride special.

[charmedreincarnation]

Hey guysss! A lot of people have been asking for me to make a challenge for a while now. I honestly didn’t want to, not because I’m against them or anything but because the law will be different for everyone. Sometimes, it feels like tumblr needs a reminder - you are the only person who knows what you need to do to succeed. I wish I could imprint this realization on everyone's minds. I’ve also gotten so manyyyy asks about things that genuinely just feel like your doubts repeating in your mind constantly so I’m gonna talk abt my beliefs bc y’all are spiraling really hard. I get it you want your desires for Christmas and new years. It’s okay take a breath, you're alive and will be okay.

Firstly: at the beginning I used to spend countless time spiraling into depression, constantly changing my methods every time I saw a new success story, and every time I found a new foolproof' tumblr method. Methods that were supposed to guarantee results in a day so when they didn’t I felt rlly useless. It was annoying, to say the least, and I don’t want to help others do the same thing, but really all I can do is reiterate what I always say and hope you apply it to everything!!

A lot of you guys wanted something that didn’t involve the void state, so that’s what this will revolve around! But feel free to make this void orientated if you desire, and I’ll also add a void section so all my babies can eat!

Ok so you’ve over consumed, you have dropped the void, and now have switched to just assuming and knowing that you would wake up with your dream life - embracing states. Great! At first, it will seem like you're doing nothing but you aren’t! For example, I knew I was dwelling in the state of wish fulfilled when I went to work without shedding tears, when I looked in the mirror and didn't think I was ugly because, well, I'm beautiful! I didn't care abt not performing well on a test because I could revise my past etc. this isn’t to say ignore the 3D: don’t do that, please try and make sure you’re safe and okay. But know life is malleable. Slowly, things that used to bother me—my parents, grades, anxiety, self-deprivation—started to fade away. Even though my dream life hadn't reflected in my 3D yet, I felt the switch. That's when I decided, I know what to do.

I also remember finding this cute website a long time ago that I want to share that summarizes it in such a great and simple way.

So Before I knew or understood what LOA was, I found this gem of an article on I am Love'- "How To Shift Into A State & Stay There". I think I have a post abt it somewhere on my blog but I’m too lazy to find it so here it is again.

Basically it explains that the essence of shifting into a desired state and staying there. What resonated with me was her choice to dwell in the state of knowing that her desires are hers, no matter what.

The way she used colloquial language made the content relatable and easy to understand. It's like having a conversation with a friend who's guiding you through hard concepts with “dumbed down” language because at the beginning states made 0 sense to me.

Posts like this really helped me particularly because when I discovered Neville, it required three attempts on my part to not only intellectually grasp his teachings, but also to truly comprehend him as a whole, given his non-contemporary speaking tbh.

I recommend it if you find yourself stuck or not really grasping the law yet (which is more than okay) but, if you're looking to understand the loa better or just learn more give this article a read.

There’s also a particular quote from Neville that really got me to dive into his work after finding this article and it was- “The being that you really are, descended to the weakness of the flesh, causing you to experience the state you are now in. Contemplate another state, and the same being who brought your present form into being will restore and make alive the other state, the state desired. This he will continue to do until his purpose is fulfilled. That purpose is to follow a certain pattern back into the unity of being. You see, in the beginning we were drafted. We did not volunteer to fall into these states. We were made subject into futility, not willingly but by the will of him who sent us. But when we return we will discover that we are the very being who subjected us. We are now the sons, destined to return as God the Father!”

Now that you understand and are ready to apply state, Here’s a routine I’ve created to hopefully help you guys! It is very simple and not time consuming at all.

Scripting and writing: I love writing and feeling like the author of my own story, literally bringing my creation to life. I would write when I felt like it. Whenever I wanted to dwell in my state, I would simply write, "I have my dream life." It's so simple, yet it embodies everything I need. If you’re more of a picture girl, use Pinterest instead. Or both if you prefer it doesn’t matter.

Edward arts' "I am creator meditation": Again, do this whenever you like it. It's one of the few meditations that didn't bore me to death and seemed to work with my ADHD. I also love reading, so I would read his pdf whenever I felt like it and take mental notes. Reading his work was a reminder I was doing everything right, it resonated with me very well.

During doubt and overstimulation: When things get overwhelming, close your eyes and let the emotions pass. They’re just thoughts! repeat the words "I am" until your heart returns to its normal rhythm. It's a simple yet powerful way to ground yourself amidst the whirlwind of emotions. And guess what? You can use this technique for doubt too! So the next time you're feeling overwhelmed, remember the power of "I am". It's a gentle reminder of your existence, your resilience, and your capability to be whatever you want despairs any emotional turmoil.

Thank god: (yourself!!) When reminded of your desires. Thank you god. When you see your desires, (eg:Pinterest, online or you’re just reminded) thank you god! When you see an image of your desires, thank you god! When you dream or think about your desires. Thank god! Always thank the person fulfilling it aka you ;)! If you’re religious just thank the god you actually follow.

Nightly reflections: At night, ask yourself , "What would I do if I woke up in my dream life right now?" repeat this question throughout the night. Then, imagine whatever scene you want. What would you do if you could not fail? What would you do if you had all the money in the world right now. What if you looked in the mirror and saw the most ethereal being and it’s just you? What about if you woke up in your dream house with your dream family and pets? This is inspired by one of the first shifting methods I created that helped me fulfill my imagination before I knew what that meant. When you’re ready to sleep just remind yourself it is done, and drift off into your desires.

As I've always said, I've been a great daydreamer. I knew exactly what I wanted my life to look and feel like. I envisioned my walk-in closet filled with luxurious outfits, waking up in my dream room on a soft mattress with my pets purring nearby. I saw the decor reflecting my personality in every corner of my large, and pretty room. I imagined walking into my bathroom, seeing all my cool Sephora products lined up for my skincare and shower routine. I love taking care of myself because I know I deserve it. I saw myself looking in the mirror, knowing I'm "that girl" who turns heads wherever she goes.I visualized going downstairs in my boujee dream house,and seeing my family stress-free, smiling, and eating well. I saw plans being made on my phone, my friends were excited to see and talk to me. I went to my kitchen, filled with expensive ingredients ready for me to cook meals for my loved ones - because I love cooking. I saw myself checking my bank account and seeing multiple seven figures in my savings, checking, and investment accounts and opportunities easily presenting myself to make more if I wanted. I saw myself running errands in my car, shopping, getting Starbucks, having expensive lunch with friends, and making a trip to Target. Despite the simplicity of the day, I would come home and be like, "Ugh, what a long day!"like that one khloe kardashian meme. What if all this happened today? Visualize and feel the scenes so clearly that it felt like it's already happening.. not just in your imagination.

Most importantly: Define the law for you! Stop parroting bloggers and intertwine your own beliefs with the law. The only principle of the law is that through persistence assumption will harden into a fact. Other than that anything goes except for facts that are wrong.

Here’s old notes I found in my phone lol just so you know what I mean by define the law for you: ignore the writing I was kinda dumb and new to the law 😭😭

Now this is for my void babies if you made it this far.

Read this post.

This is it copied bc the links are wonky sometimes

“My previous method is based on the persistent assumption, which a lot of people don’t know how to do right and it might take some time even for those who have the right self-concept and the mindset, so today I was in the process of manifesting this method.

And I was successful!

This method is for everyone. It’s the easiest Void method.

Do you know that you get into the Void state at night automatically? At that time the whole perceived world disappears for you. Every single perception and assumption you have disappears while your consciousness in the calm and natural Void state.

Use it to your advantage. Now that you know about the Void that you enter when you sleep, the perfect state to manifest anything that you wish to perceive, with no “resistance”, no illusions of annoying solid things around, you only need to remember your scripted starting point in your DR and practice watching it all coming out of the Void.

Practice that scene with your eyes closed, say to yourself:”That is what I perceive. Next time I’m in the Void, I’ll experience this”. You won’t even need to be fully aware of yourself that way when you get into the Void while you are asleep. Your subconscious would do all the work as it now would have the instruction and a clear image of you expecting it.

Personal experience: as I was receiving information on this method, I almost stepped into my DR! I wasn’t even in the absolute void state, I was only creating the scene for this method and I felt it materialise with my senses!

I have great feeling that it’s going to give fast results for others! Try it, teach your subconscious what it needs to bring forth while in the Void, let it do your work for you!”

Lastly, I’m gonna talk abt my beliefs real quick bc the fear of shifting vs manifesting makes me sad for y’all. I understand you don’t wanna leave behind the people you love and that’s not fear to feel ashamed of having! I personally hate the npc mindset a lot of have people have adopted. The only thing we know for sure is that assumptions create realities, and consciousness is the real reality. Everything else boils down to assumptions, except for principles. For example, shifting is not lucid dreaming, even if you assume it to be. That is the principle. I’m just going to copy what I told my mutal bc I’m lazy and need to finish Christmas stuff 😭😭 but Our imagination and the 4D realm are products of our consciousness, which is indeed real. Our view of reality is shaped by our consciousness, since we can't experience everything all at once.

Unless, of course, you shift into a super omnipotent god. Even then, you’d probably still struggle with the concept of infinity because, well, infinity is infinite. And it’s constantly a never exnding expansion. As humans, we're finite beings, and our understanding of the infinite is naturally limited. Because you can’t and won’t ever experience everything at once, infinity is always expanding. Our awareness can be thought of as fragments of consciousness; it's like being a drop of water in a massive ocean. Even though our perception is limited, the infinite is always there, always existing. We simply adjust our awareness to perceive this infinite reality.

And through our consciousness, we are able to tap into other realities or 'multiverses', which give us a broader understanding of existence. This exploration of consciousness and the multiverse is a significant part of my journey into the world of manifestation.

The law of consciousness explains why, when you "shift" or change your perspective, you don't physically move. It's all about altering your state of awareness. This is also why time doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. You can become aware of any time or day you want, as long as you choose to be aware of it. It's like having a mental time machine. This law is why infinite universes exist. As long as you can be aware of it, you can assume and embody the state of that person. Whether that's someone with a billion dollars on Earth, or a person who lives in the Attack on Titan world, it's all about your awareness.Our awareness is just a fragment of the larger consciousness – hence the idea of the multiverse. Each universe is a different fragment, a different state of awareness. And we have the power to “shift” into any of these states, therefore shifting into any of these universes.

I’m telling you this bc there’s no need to be afraid of manifesting or being in a reality with robotic versions of the people you love. Ariana grande and Marilyn Monroe for example talk about loa without acknowledging it and we see their success. Neville Goddard and his followers saw each other’s manifestions and I manifest for my friends and they mnaifest for me.

Take a deep breath and let go of the tik tok clone mindsets y’all have they don’t exist. You can manifest and assume anything you want in your imagination. Y’all literally want to manifest things like millions of dollars, revising deaths, living in new countries, having immorality in your waiting rooms, and never aging which is all possible of course. So be for real, why assume and know that you can achieve all that, but it won't manifest exactly how you want? I've also wondered about what happens to the "old version" of people when they manifest their dream life. As far as I'm concerned, they dont exist because you choose not to be aware of them.

I really want to talk about this too, as I've received similar questions and, oh my god, I thought I was alone. I've always been a bit delusional and lived in my head, but when I became conscious of the law, did anyone else feel a sense of self-embarrassment? I don't know what that was, but I'd genuinely feel my soul wanting to throw up envisioning my desires that aren't mine, even though I've always been a daydreamer. It's kind of like when you feel you can't have them or it's strange to envision yourself with something you can't have, so you just purge yourself. 😭

I was thinking back to why that happened and laughing at myself because we need to be serious right now. Why are you getting sick by your own mind? Imagine if Van Gogh, anytime he pulled out a canvas and held a brush, was jump-scared by the brush. Picture him holding out the brush and just staring at the canvas crying because "well, the painting is going to suck 😐," "I don't know what to paint☹️☹️," "I already know it won't be like what I envision in my head 😡😡." Like, bro, the canvas is blank, just fucking paint. That’s why I really like his quote that's like...

“If you hear a voice within you say you cannot paint, then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.” So If you’re scared of failing, if you’re scared of your desires, or scared of how it will come to fruition, for that reason alone is more so to and manifest it anyways.

But happy holidays guys! make some tea, scroll through Pinterest, read a good book and watch some Christmas films and remember if you can imagine/think your desires you can embody them bc where are you getting it from??

Here are some helpful documents I have read plus a cute vid I saw on insta reels : (let me know if the links are being weird)

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[magnusunpopularopinions]

I'm not sure how unpopular of an opinion this actually will be but let's go:

I think people over inflate how bad of a person Elias actually is, and in comparison, treat characters like Basira, Nikola, Gertrude, etc much more softly. Don't get me wrong, Elias isn't the best person and his morals are questionable, but they're questionable because he hasn't been human in a good 150 years. His behaviour is in line with every other avatar we see, if a bit more held back violence wise. He only purposely hurts anyone if he feels it interferes with his plan (Which many Main avatars we see attempting a ritual don't do, like Nikola or even Peter in his day to day), or alternatively, puts Jon in an awkward position information wise. The way he handles Jon's ascent into becoming the Archivist isn't even that manipulative. It's less straightforward, yes, but he has his obvious reasons for it (Wanting Jon to Know and See and Understand without having it be explained to him, which would end with him relatively weak and vulnerable). The reasons themselves aren't Great for Jon, but otherwise, he handles himself in a very passive and socially acceptable way. He doesn't go through with doing anything about Not!Sasha, not because he didn't want to, but because there was literally no way he could have fired her or done anything to her without it being a tiny bit suspicious and causing a bit of an Archival uproar. Not doing anything about Prentis was his own fault, I'll be real, but I think he may have genuinely underestimated the amount of worms there are and I doubt he actually considered that the table may house the Not-Them, as he seemingly didn't expect Sasha to be taken. On top of that, him being all 'mysterious' during the Unknowing was just him having issues trying to figure out what he can or can't give Jon to help him figure things out because he genuinely can't Know these things due to the conflicting nature of the Stranger. Otherwise, all of his points of interest are very Avatar based. He eats, he works towards his ritual, and he works with others to make it happen. All things that other avatars do, that don't get overinflated into being fully 'evil'

TL;DR: I'm an Elias enthusiast and think he's just following his nature as an avatar, even if that mainly affects Jon and the archival team (Saying this as I'm relistening and nearly done with s4 lmao)

Thanks for sharing! Let’s chat!

I see what you’re saying, but may I also remind anon of… well:

“Apologies for the deception Jon, just had to make sure you were reading….”

and

[BPM]

and a couple other incidents I could probably come up with after I’ve published this.

Now, I’m not trying to ignore the ESSAY anon submitted full of evidence to back their point. I’m rocking with it- I’ll agree with you that Elias was simply doing his avatar job and withholding info, but I must say, I disagree with you on one point: Elias is a violent man.

Yes, his violence has a “purpose” but we must remember that even though Elias isn’t human, we are. The other characters (for a while and to an extent) are. The violence we do see from Elias is cruel and unfeeling. You can blame it on his avatar-ness all you want anon- and in fact you did an excellent job proving that he’s just an avatar doing avatar things- but the violence…. Elias is, imo, a very cruel being.

So, to summarize: I agree with anon on certain parts- Elias’s actions throughout the series reflect for sure that he is definitely not human. He’s an avatar working towards a goal. But I’ll disagree with anon when they say Elias isn’t that violent of a person/that the fanbase hypes up how evil he is.

In fact, I think the violence backs up anon’s point even further- the fact that he IS so cruel proves that he hasn’t been human for a while.

Hope that made sense- again, thanks for sharing and keep your words kind!

-E

-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•

Edit: Hey gang! Wanted to add a few words here just to further state my thoughts on the matter and I’ll leave it with anon after that :)

Elias is a very complex character! Boiling him down to his avatar-ness or violent tendencies was not my intention, just my response to the gist of what anon was saying! I agree with a lot of the conversations being had in reblogs and replies!

I can’t say for sure what anon meant when they said that characters like Basira, Nikola, and Gertrude get “treated softly” VS Elias, but I do find it interesting they chose that set of people! All three women (feminine?), but not all avatars. I’m not sure if anon meant to do this- compare only women (feminine characters) or compare a mix of avatars and humans- but it is how it’s being received: with the focus on anon’s mentioning them.

In my own personal experience, I see quite a bit more about Elias than I do Basira, Nikola, or Gertrude, and when I do see them, it’s typically because they are with other characters. Basira especially.

I will agree again with myself though- Elias is a cruel and violent guy. I think he quite often is more violent than he should be (but that is the scary part- the fact that he IS so violent and ok with it.)

And I will agree with myself again- Elias was working towards total global domination and frankly, even if you are fond of him, I think there’s still plenty of reason that the fanbase may not treat him “softly.” He’s not a particularly squishy character.

(I do like Elias, he’s an interesting character and lots of fun to think about (I’d like to imagine sometimes that he lives a lot like Jim from the American Office TV show does and just deadpans into non-existent cameras when the staff does something or his printer runs out of ink or his coffee spills, etc.))

I just think that there are layers to anon’s thoughts and that there can be both an agreement and a disagreement on different points.

And please, even if you disagree with an opinion, try and keep your words kind! You guys have been a lot of fun to talk with so far and I’ve loved the discussions I’ve had with you all!

Thanks!

-E (again)

[brucewaynehater101]

Okay so I saw you say space emperor Tim gives new planets PowerPoints so …

For his first world the power points are a nightmare. Tim, once a normal school kid, has unfortunately gotten used to Bat slide shows which are 900 pages and contain every piece of information known to man. YJ have become slightly desensitized to the pwr points (they just space out whenever Tim starts) so they don’t think to call him out on his insanity before

Tim sends every citizen a power point explaining ALL of their rights and new social services as his subjects explained in detail (it’s like 500-1000 pages)

In addition to another PowerPoints for any government employees or people with political power explaining what is and is not acceptable for them to do (a healthy bonus 1000-2000 pages)

People are impressed by his enthusiasm, but a little terrified of him because of this

Tim did not mean to terrify his populace with a power point…

He must DO better next time to ensure populous is not terrified…

How do you make a PowerPoint that is not terrifying to the average person but still conveys the necessary information…

Tim doesn’t really know anymore

Cassie is the only one who has any idea what a “normal person” power point looks like (Kon never went to school/only knows scientific “we’re making a clone” power points from imprinted memories + Bart is beyond PowerPoints in the future)

So Cassie and Tim team up to hella compress Tim’s power points into short but meaningful summaries (Bart and Kon still try to help as test audience)

With each planet they add Tim gets better and better at normal people PowerPoints

Repeat leave planet accidentally becomes experiment ground for improving power points (it’s the same info but Tim actually gets a chance to do better at the presentation)

Tim’s PowerPoint eventually become beautiful near works of art that perfectly summarize what people need to know (and tell them where they can get more info if they want it cause Tim still wants desperately to give them every piece of information they could possibly need)

Maybe a planet with a people that respect the art of presenting information/educating others join Tim’s empire because they see his work and just wanna get a great power point presentation too :)

This also accidentally sets him up to be the best ceo/high ranking employee from the Wayne family that WE has ever seen cause for the first time in 40 years someone cares about the wellbeing of the company and can make a normal length presentation (Bruce could never)

With his new PowerPoint skills I also think Tim sends out PowerPoints for anything official news worthy that a planet might have to deal with. It ranges from built a building! to new social service! to new planet yeah! to we’re going to war and everything is going to be fine don’t worry about it! and so many other official statements as PowerPoint presentations oh my

So yeah, PowerPoints :)

Tim Drake, the PowerPoint King.

After he masters the PowerPoints, I'd love to sit through one of them. The "So you've decided to join the Timpire" one would be so intriguing to hear about.

What policies are in place? Rules, regulations, restrictions? What do people need to fill out, add to their planet, get rid of, etc.?

He'd also need to set up webpages with all the information (I hc internet is free everywhere in the timpire... though, idk how the internet and being in space work).

[literaryvein-reblogs]

oh my god :((( i saw your academic/scientific writing post and thank you! my lecturer keeps telling us to 'comment' on paragraphs or papers and i just have no idea what she means??? I've tried looking at other papers and i just don't understand?? i was wondering if you or any of your followers could help? xxx

It sounds to me your lecturer might mean annotating to add your own comments/opinions on the article you're reading.

Writing Notes: Annotation

Annotation - to actively engage a text by pausing to reflect, mark up, and add notes as you read.

The simplest way to annotate:

Mark: Key words; Phrases; Passages...

...By: Highlighting; Underlining; Bracketing; Placing symbols

Steps to Annotating a Scientific Paper

Locate each of the components (Abstract, Introduction, etc.)

Identify unfamiliar words in these sections that are important to understanding the research.

Define the unfamiliar words.

Annotate each section by summarizing the main idea or paraphrasing important sentences.

Ways annotating improves reading:

Avoid having to re-read as often

Monitor and improve your comprehension

Remember what you’ve read

Reasons for writing notes in the margins:

Identify key ideas and help you remember them

Comment on what you are reading

Question what you are reading

Answer guide questions you previously wrote

Take notes for a class, prepare for a presentation, book club or any other occasion: You can make your annotations as simple or elaborate as you want. For instance, you can use different color highlighters or sticky notes to color code the text for different things such as:

comments and questions

observations

text you want to quote

use of themes

vocabulary words to look up

Reader Annotations

You can go beyond marking up text and write notes on your reaction to the content or on its connection with other works or ideas. A reader might annotate a book, paper, pamphlet. or other texts for the following reasons:

a student noting important ideas from the content by highlighting or underlining passages in their textbook

a student noting examples or quotes in the margins of a textbook

a reader noting content to be revisited at a later time

a Bible reader noting sources in their Bible of relevant verses

an academic noting similar or contradictory studies related to their article or book

Tips for Paraphrasing

Read the passage until you understand the meaning.

Purpose. What will you do with this evidence?

Look away from the passage to write the main points of what you read.

Imagine & write. Imagine explaining that main point to a classmate. Write down your explanation.

Check & cite. Double check your wording against the original. Cite the source.

Other things you should do as you read and annotate text:

Paraphrase important information

Write down thoughts and questions

Write down key terms

List and look up new vocabulary terms

Identify other articles to read

Here's an example of an annotated academic article (with steps and more details). Another example:

Strong readers often mark texts and this visual work is deeply linked to the reading experience. Considering annotation as a critical and creative activity, we can design and practice this skill in a multitude of ways. And, once again, as we link student’s visual experience into their ever growing language arts skills we strengthen their ways of interacting and communicating with the world. –James Shivers

Sources: 1 2 3 4 5 6 ⚜ More: References ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs

Thanks for your kind words. Hope this helps! (Do ask your lecturer directly though for further clarification on what they actually meant!)

[socsurveystuff]

Big Radqueer Survey Results

This is going to be pretty long. I may in the future take sections from this (+ maybe elaborate) and make them their own posts. Disclaimer that any viewpoints discussed below are not necessarily my own and that I am trying to approach this from a place of pure curiosity and am not including my own moral stances. Thank you everyone for taking the survey. We’ll get started under the read more!

Alright, so immediately we’re working with a large radqueer majority audience, so keep that in mind! There is some diversity overall, but this did end up being a very pro-radqueer heavy population. Fairly normal age distribution compared to the rest of tumblr, I’d say, though I would take note of the majority 13-18 population and significant under 16 population.

Big piece of data here!! Interestingly enough, about 76% of responders identified as plural or part of a system. Based on written responses, it appears like a lot of people cite their plurality as a reason for having certain transIDs. I got a few responders who stated they were answering as multiple alters and therefore there answers may be contradictory. There seem to be a minority of endogenic systems, with most people either answering ‘traumagenic’ or that they’re unsure/nuanced about system origin.

—TransIDs: Racial, Age, Abled—

I believe the visual charts for these look a bit busy, so I will summarize the main points I got here:

Out of being transabled, transage, and transracial—being transage is the most common according to responders. Most transage folks identify as being younger, but age sliding/experiencing several ages depending seems to also be common. Compared to the other types of transIDs listed, more people seemed to identify as transage due to trauma (others seemed more related to atypical dysphoria + wanting the label for fun).

For transabled people, identifying with both physical and mental disabilities is most common. Besides that, mental is more common than physical. More people reported being transabled ‘for fun’ compared to the others (though again, atypical dysphoria was majority reported). From what I’ve seen, identifying with life-long disorders (developmental, intellectual, chronic, etc) is more common than identifying with temporary conditions.

The majority of transracial people reported being bodily white, though not by a wide margin. Based on general tumblr demographics, I’d say there’s not really compelling data there to say whether bodily white people are more likely to identify as transrace within radqueer spaces than others; though, as one might expect, it seems that bodily race/ethnicity can have an influence in the different nuances as to *why* someone might identify as a different race/ethnicity.

I don’t have anything in particular to add to this graph, I just wanted to include it here. It’s surprisingly pretty evenly split.

—TransIDs: Harmed/Harmful—

Responses to these were actually really fascinating and helpful. I could write a whole other post on it, honestly.

I’ll do my best to summarize here.

The majority of people who identify as transharmed/harmful fit both labels. You can see this in the chart. Besides that, transharmed seems more common than harmful.

Based on written responses, it is very clear to me that identification with these labels tends to stem from trauma. Though some also claimed they take them on for fun or for sexual reasons, many *many* people specifically talked about wishing their trauma was worse. Over and over again I saw sentences like, “I feel like my trauma wasn’t valid”, “I feel like it should’ve been more severe”, “people would believe me if I was more traumatized”, “I wish people would take my issues more seriously”.

This is a very common mindset among people struggling with trauma and/or mental illness. Many responders reported having these feelings about past experiences with grooming and childhood abuse. Feeling like something bad should’ve happened to you when you were younger is also often a sign of CSA or other traumatic memories that one might’ve blocked out; in other situations, it may also come from a lack of support for already existing issues.

In some cases, seemingly more commonly in those who identified with the transharmful label, people might seek out this transID to cope with or mitigate guilt from intrusive thoughts. It can be an outlet for anger, some reporting that they find a type of relief in fantasizing about hurting the people who hurt them, or hurting people in the same way they were once hurt. For many, transharmed/harmful was also related to plurality—specifically the existence of fictives/introjects and their own memories of their source material.

Though some expressed distaste for the way the general radqueer community seems to have conflated transharmful/harmed labels for kink and the want to seek out conabusive relationships, there were several people who said that they identified with these terms for specifically erotic reasons.

There was also a common theme of gratefulness for a space to express commonly taboo desire in a way that minimizes potential for harm. Especially for people who were once abused, being able to experience these things in a controlled environment was important; the desire to return to abusers themselves is considered common, so the want to recreate some aspects staying away from actual abusive situations was noted as incredibly helpful.

As some did point out in the survey, the similarities between conabuse and (sexual or nonsexual) BDSM are very apparent. Consent was consistently reiterated as necessary to many of these people, though a few also expressed concern with the way conabusive relationships have played out specifically in online spaces.

The majority of responders were positive or nuanced towards the concept of conabusive relationships. The question of minors engaging in such relationships seemed like it really depended on the individual situation for many. Maturity especially was a big factor.

—Contact Stances for ‘Big Three’ + Incest—

(TW for… all the stuff that’s involved in discussing that)

Just to preface, the reason I including the ‘regardless of consent’ answer was mostly for the section on beastiality, necrophilia and pedophilia—online, I have rarely seen the opinion that engaging sexually with beings that do not understand or relate to our societal concepts of sex (or are… corpses) cannot be harmed by it. I am also aware that some people simply don’t care about committing harm. I included it here for consistency.

Consensual incest was definitely one of the more accepted ‘taboo’ acts in this survey, with a majority of ~59%. Although, it’s important to note that for many people the pre-existing relationship of those involved would make a difference in their opinion.

Necrophilia was overall the most supported (adding up both the red and blue sections of the pie chart there). In written responses, I also saw people claiming that conditions such as relationship to the deceased and likelihood of contracting illnesses would also be relevant to their opinions. Interestingly, there seemed to be a higher percentage of anti-contact here than for incest; some who chose such an option mostly highlighted the issue of dead bodies not being able to revoke consent during the act, and therefore not having the ability to be fully consenting at all.

Zoophilia was not supported by the majority (71%). ~25% of responders believed consensual contact with animals was possible; out of those who did, the belief that animals can consent if they initiate contact was most popular (followed by perceived enjoyment and intelligence level). Interestingly, I got several responses from people who labelled themselves as either pro or anti contact zoophilia who claimed that they believed sexual contact with animals *could* hypothetically be done ethically, but that the vast majority of people do not have the knowledge of animal behavior and biology to do so.

Pedophilia/Hebephilia was considerably more divisive. Comparing the pie chart here with the data below, I believe it would be accurate to say that we have a majority (~59%) of people who believe youth cannot consent to adult advances, and others whose opinions seem to be more situationally-defined. Keep in mind that not everyone who answered the first part answered the second.

According to written responses, those that were pro or nuanced on the issue tended to prioritize maturity level and sexual education for minors. Some people claimed that kids of almost any age should be able to express consent to (a few specified: non-penetrative) sex in a society that better educated children on their bodies and relationships. There seemed to be a group of people who agreed that, philosophically, children have the capacity to say yes or no to sex in the same way they would for anything else—most of these people, though, agreed that this would not work in our society due to the prevalence of CSA and lack of protections for children.

I found it interesting that more people identified as anti-contact for zoophilia than pedo/hebephilia. I saw two or three responses that claimed it was mostly an empathy issue (more for animals, less for children); but a more common outlook seemed to be that—while some minors have the ability to communicate what they want and understand the culture we have around sex—animals cannot meaningfully consent within the framework of our society.

As we can see here, the majority (62%) of people would feel comfortable interacting with people who had one or more of the ‘big three’ paraphilias, but have not engaged in them. For many people (~35%) there is the additional caveat of being anti-contact.

For those who *have* engaged in any of those paraphilias, comfortability interacting falls significantly. There’s still a majority of people willing to interact (adding the yellow and red sections together), but most of the people in that category (~41%) would only be comfortable if they considered the other persons’ contact consensual. ~43% of people would not feel comfortable interacting at all.

I don’t have a ton to say on this chart, but I thought I’d include it here.

—CENSORSHIP—

I have less to say in this section, but I find it notable that (admittedly, by a small margin) people found the ethics of AI child pornography featuring real children’s faces (but not bodies) more disagreeable than fully real images of children. Also notably, ~27% of responders believe children can consent to keeping sexually explicit images/videos of themselves available. Based on written responses, I believe some or most of this percentage comes from people wanting it to be acceptable for youth to keep/potentially distribute nudes of themselves without fear of legal repercussion.

Here we have a majorities for not banning sexually explicit writing or animation portraying children. As I expected, writing has a little more support than visual depiction.

—CONCLUSION, NOTES—

Again, I want to thank everyone who participated. The survey will continue to stay open if you haven’t taken it and want to add your own perspective.

I still have some questions, particularly regarding the diversity in definitions of consent I saw, as well as some of the more… ‘cosmetic’ (?) based TransIDs that I’d be interested in understanding the thought behind.

I feel like I have a much better understanding of some of the psychology behind a lot of this, at least. I won’t go into any ultimatums here, because I believe they might be influenced by my own ethics, but I’ll just say that much of this community is very understandable if you take an empathetic approach. It’s interesting that an online culture so focused on being able to identify as ‘other’ in a very individualistic way seems to have also brought many people into community that they were seeking. There’s quite an emphasis on the shared solidarity between different “deviancies” (as societally-defined), and for better or for worse this has led to the public broadcast of the many diversities of opinion these people have on some of the most taboo subjects one can think of.

[ven0moir]

S4 Mike was playing a risky game - PART I

You choose how much of this to ✨ Believe ✨

At the conclusion of this exercise I will be trying to piece together what the hell Mike's thoughts were in the van scene, how much he picked up on and what his 'next move' might be following the show's context clues and ideas.

One of the first things we see this season is kids playing games in a rainbow room. This is one of the first show themes the writers want us to stay with.

Next we see El's room. We see her Mike shrine, etc. No games.

When we see Will, we see games + we also learn that he's been painting a lot and El says it is for a girl that he likes because he's been acting "weird." This is the exact information that Mike has.

Then it cuts to Mike and we see games in his room as well.

The objective of Yahtzee is to roll dice ( luck ) to get the highest total score & to get the right combination. Whereas a jigsaw puzzle is based on observation + trying out the placement of each piece to put together the bigger picture.

Bowling, which we see underneath, is about aim & precision ...

Yikes. Important to note that he got so caught up reading El's letter that he lost track of time.

Does he hope the painting is for him? 100%. Does he genuinely believe it is? This is Mr.

We're talking about here. The Worst Assumption, the Worst Case Scenario for Mike is: there's someone that Will likes, and it's A Girl. Will is Straight.

But he can't acquire more knowledge until he is in California, so meanwhile he's probably wrecking his brain re-reading El's letter to see if he can make any new 'connections' that could reveal to him if it's him or not. ( That Dungeon Master strategic brain working overtime when you have a crush and things are out of your immediate control huh, he's so me )

The episode progresses with Mike being moody downstairs because he's currently wrecked with doubt ( talk about meta ) and then Ted says this to the audience ( Karen ).

Ironic, considering Mike saying in S3 that 'women act on emotion, not logic' so his dad hinting he's not being reasonable = Mike is acting weird.

The scene continues. Suzie is using her smarts to help Dustin change his grades, which is something that later wracks her with guilt.

Next we have Robin and Steve, and the conversation is literally them talking about Vickie's queercoding, which according to Steve she 100% is but Robin refuses to believe because she has to be cautious and cannot take a risk unless there's some sort of textual evidence. The comment she makes connects back to Mike through the labyrinth poster in his room, right above his head when he bends down.

Mike, like Robin, can't just act on their feelings because they don't know if they'd be confessing to the 'wrong' person.

Why does this not fit Will? Because Will is deciding to give Mike a painting with a heart on his shield. He's confident enough to make that move. At the start of the season, Will is optimistic that the thing with Mike might be real, whereas Mike is pessimistic that the thing with Will might've been a figment of his imagination.

Anyway, let's continue. I'll summarize what happens next with 'Mike is moping all day at Hawkins High'. Of course, other things he cares about happen that add to this mood, like Lucas ditching him and Dustin to play at the basketball game.

Speaking of games, we have that sequence of the DnD game vs the basketball game. Both games end in victory so we know in the end the good guys will win. But it also means that Mike and Will are going to, inevitably, get together.

Here's the formula their romance follows according to my Byler Master Doc that I'll finish & post one day lmao:

With this in mind, let's go back to Mike ...

PART I CONCLUSION:

Mike starts off the season assuming the worst: that Will is painting for someone he likes that isn't him because he's straight. But a small part of him deep down is hoping it is for him. He decides to acquire more information before deciding how to proceed but at the airport, he was trying too hard to be indifferent when the truth was that he cared a little too much, and self-sabotaged by discouraging Will from giving him the painting.

He succeeded in making Will believe he didn't care. But at what cost?

He failed to acquire the item he needed/wanted: the painting.

Now in Part II we will explore what happened that gave Mike ✨ Hope ✨