#They are still sapient beings and need to be treated as such even if they've got a very smooth brain

[nikkisticki]

You're right, but also I think you're wrong. There's a distinct and long winded problem about Americans just not getting the education they deserve and multiple media sources attempting to braindrain them...but here's the problem.

There's a fundamental line where "misinformed but well meaning" becomes "deranged and propaganda addled", and at some point you have to stop blaming their environment and their country and recognize that these are in fact people who reject reality to allow them to live within a false one that fits their desires better, and nothing will ever change their mind.

At that point, you're never going to be able to politely explain to them that they believe in an Illusion, I've tried for years as politely and warmly as I could...but the average terminally online American is entirely beyond connection.

I could argue for clowning on them is more then nothing (as it at least marks the belief as foolish and wrong to onlookers), but honestly after half a decade of speaking politely to the brainwashed masses on Reddit/4Chan/other websites I'm not going to name, it's just a nice form of stress relief and it's functionally no worse then doing it politely as they'll take any form of opposition as proof of their rightness.

I made a post yesterday about a Qanon lie and I've already gotten someone in the comment thingy claiming I'm clearly part of the pedophile ring...They didn't even need more then that. It wouldn't change a thing if the post had also called peopke like that slack-jawed indolents lacking enough awareness that they'd willingly leap into a wood chipper if it was labelled Teleporter.

America needs substantial reforming of their educational system, it's in fact my belief that all good societies should be focused on overhauling it with the times so children are properly equipped, and something I regularly scream about...

But also the people I'm talking about (the 25-35% of the population who loves Trumpism) are the people who want me and anyone in the Alphabet mafia dead. They are long past the point of reason and they will never be reasoned with and made to see the error of their ways.

Society and the general conversation about these topics are long past the point where being polite will change anything, so at that point I'd rather dunk on them then play at falze niceties and explain how if only an engaging teacher taught them basic history then they'd not be a Nazi!

TLDR: I'm bitter and old and don't believe there's a single lick of difference between saying it politely and saying they lick poisonous mushrooms to get high like their intellectual cousins, Deer.

You know Elon probably saw this and was super mad he still can't fire Halli.

[jpitha]

Hospitality

Meandering River and Q'ari sit in the canteen during midday break chatting and drinking some herbal tea. The Humans introduced both the drink and the meal. They call it 'Lunch' and while only the Humans seem to need the calories supplied by the meal, the break and the tea has proven to be a big hit among the other sapients...so long as they stay away from the poisonous teas. There are a lot of poisonous teas. Most everyone can have chamomile though.

The conversation meanders as they do, and eventually, they both come to talking about things they've noticed about the humans, one of the more recent additions to the Coalition. Everybody has their own cultural and biological quirks, but the conversations has been steering towards the humans lately. Everyone is a little too quick to point out that It's not that they're... weird, it's just the differences.

Q'ari puts her tea down with a clink on the small porcelain saucer. "Did you know that the Humans have a whole thing about being nice to visitors? It’s called 'hospitality' and they have almost entire religions about it!"

"What? They have religions about being nice to people you meet?" Meandering River said, as her feathers rustle, reflecting shimmering colors.

"Pretty much! My guess is that living on their world is so hard that they just felt obligated to help people who were passing through their village or peer group or whatever. The idea was that no matter who shows up - even their enemy - you give them a meal and a bath and let them have a nap and point them towards where they need to go if they're lost." Q'ari took another sip of tea. "You weren't even supposed to ask them questions about who they were or what they were doing!"

Meander was baffled. "But that makes no sense! What if the person was going to hurt you or your group? You had no way of knowing. Better to just let them pass by, and not interact."

"Yes, but the idea is the next time it was you traveling, you'd get help from others too." Nancy said from behind them.

Q'ari fur poofed out and Meander's feathers rippled in surprise and they both slid their chairs back to jump away before stopping themselves and sitting down, tea spilled everywhere. Predator/Prey reactions were deeply ingrained in Innari and Sefigans, and Humans were exceptionally good predators, even when they didn't mean to be.

"Sorry! Sorry!" Nancy said, seeing their reaction. "I didn't mean to startle you! I just heard you talking about hospitality. People everywhere don't treat it like the religion it used to be, but it's still a common thing that people do. Here -" she said gesturing on her pad "Let me buy you both another Tea to say sorry for spilling yours. Chamomile, right? I feel so badly about startling you."

"I-It's all right, we know you didn't mean to." Meander says, smoothing their feathers automatically. We were just fascinated by the concept of hospitality. Please, join us." She gestures towards a chair.

Nancy sits down, and wipes away some of the spilled tea with a napkin. "Being polite to strangers is just something that's taught from an early age. It's not done everywhere, and it's not done the same way, but it's still done. It's... complicated though." Nancy said, as a serv platform came over with two fresh cups of tea. After it had left, she continued. "Codifying being nice to strangers and offering them a place to stay and food to eat is a way that people could travel in the time before money and hotels, but also, it could be used as a shield against forming real friendships."

"What do you mean by that? If you're inviting strangers into your house, wouldn't that help make friends?" Meander said, blowing on her tea to cool it slightly.

"Well, it could. But if the whole process is ritualized and formal, then you could use it to keep 'foreign' people at arms length. Sure, you'd invite them in, let them sleep, bathe, eat, but you'd send them on their way in the morning and that would be it. There would be no connection, no friendship. There is a long, long history of being nice without being friendly."

"It's all very confusing." Q'ari said. "There seems to be a lot of implied connections, and ritualized actions that on the surface appear kind, but may - or may not - be, depending on thousands of different things."

Nancy nodded. "Hey, things are never black and white. There is always nuance. I'm sure it's even the same way between you and your people. Q'ari, you're not originally from Sef, the homeworld, right?"

Q'ari's teddy bear shaped ears waggled. "That's right. I grew up on Llamanian, one of our middle tier colony worlds."

"And even though you are a Sefigan citizen, when you go to Sef sometimes you get treated like an outsider, right?"

"Well, I suppose a bit, yes." Q'ari's finely laquered claws slid out of their sheaths, just a centimeter. "They say that my gelbin isn't the same as on Sef. Er, that's a traditional vegetable dish." She adds, for their benefit.

Meander's crest slides up and then back down. "I've had your gelbin Q'ari, it's delicious! What could possibly be wrong?"

She shrugs, a decidedly human gesture. "The spices are wrong, they say. We have different versions due to the ecology and soil of Llamanian, even if I were to use the exact same spices in the exact same proportions, it wouldn't taste the same."

"It's not just humans. Everyone has things that are different, and people - no matter which sapient group they are - will use those differences against them sometimes." Nancy said, taking a sip of tea. "Knowing that it happens, and keeping an eye out for it, and having some understanding, can go a long way. But, that doesn't mean we shouldn't be nice to strangers when we meet them. After all, they might be the Gods in disguise!" Nancy's eyes sparkle when she said that."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you see a people called the Greeks believed that..."

[crossdressingdeath]

Okay, not gonna lie. I know the Life to Love ending is about moving on from grief and how escapism can be unhealthy and it's not a way forward and all that, and it is very emotional, but it kind of leaves a bad taste in my mouth because it very much glosses over the fact that... in-universe the people of the Canvas aren't characters in a game or a book or a movie or whatever that Aline and Alicia got unhealthily attached to. They are at least as far as we're shown real, sapient people, and they are people who got dragged into this family drama through no fault of their own, and if you go the Life to Love route they are all killed for the crime of happening to live in the world that Verso painted and Aline got overly attached to. And even when Maelle brings that up and points out to Verso that doing this will kill them he just... glosses over it? His response is "Sciel was right. Grief blinds us. All you see are walls", but the "wall" Maelle is seeing is the fact that her father will destroy the Canvas and kill her friends the second she leaves! It does muddy the message a bit, is what I'm saying, because while it's played as Alicia being too attached to the Canvas to the point where she can't move forward the reason she gives for wanting to stay is "Papa will destroy the Canvas the second I leave", which is... very reasonable, in fact. She doesn't want any more of her friends to die for her family's grief after most of an entire world has already done so. This is in fact a very rational, healthy response to the fact that her father intends to kill them (to protect her and her mother from getting hurt, sure, but he's still going to kill them—the few of them he hasn't already killed, that is—when they've done absolutely nothing wrong). Maybe it's just me, but I think a stronger ending would be Alicia getting to fix the damage her father did to the Canvas but not being able to stay; letting her friends live in a world where they can make it past 32 with everyone who died over this brought back, but having to put aside Maelle forever and never getting to see them again (maybe the painting is locked away somewhere completely inaccessible, a sealed vault or something) or at most only getting to see them occasionally; it keeps the theme of having to leave the world she escaped into behind in order to move forward with her life without the slight complication that this entire world of living people dies for it.

Basically what I'm saying is the writers did too good a job. The Canvas feels real, the people feel real, Alicia has as many memories of being Maelle as she does of being Alicia, and then in this ending all of that is just thrown away and everyone we've come to love and everyone we thought could be brought back is dead because apparently this one family (whose grief led to all the pain and misery and grief of the characters we spent the whole game coming to know and love) moving on necessitated it. Which is made especially frustrating by the fact that from what I understand—this is the only ending I've seen so far, I actually ended up flipping a coin to decide, and honestly I suspect I won't have the heart to go back and play the other one for a while; maybe I'll watch it on youtube later—this is set up in a way that suggests it's the "good" ending of the two (for lack of a better way of putting it, it's a complex game). I think either the characters in the Canvas needed to come across as less real and more artificial (maybe don't let them become aware that they're in a painting, for one) or the ending that symbolizes moving on from grief needed to not involve destroying the Canvas and killing them, basically. I don't think Alicia staying in the Canvas and staying as Maelle is a good ending either, she absolutely should accept what happened and move on, but this just feels... kind of cruel to all the people who are being treated as pawns and obstacles in the way of the Dessendre family's recovery that need to be removed when all they want to do is be allowed to live.

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

I had an idea for the goblins of my urban fantasy world and I like to share it and see if it sounds any good? That idea being of having goblins be pest animals and not an actual sapient race. Having them play off the fairy tale and modern fantasy idea of goblins being mischievous pest/low level trash mobs by making them be literal pest animals

Goblins in my urban fantasy realm are animals, closely related to bats yet have intelligence closer to primates. They’re smart enough to create complex tools, weapons and structures and frequently scavenge/steal human trinkets to repurpose for their own usage. All known species are nocturnal and form large colonies that reproduce rapidly, though the exact social structure depends on the species. All human civilization (my world runs off Shadowrun/ Dungeon Meshi logic that all the humanoid races elves/ dwarves/ orcs/ etc… are collectively referred to as “human”) see goblins as dangerous and destructive pest.

As a pest animal goblins are like a horrifying combination of rats and monkeys that are smart enough to wield scavenged pocket knifes. They regularly scavenge human trash/ steal food and trinkets/ full blown rob people with makeshift weapons/ infesting and destroying homes/ and generally causing chaos wherever they go. It’s not to uncommon for people to find a goblin colony nesting in their attic or infesting abandoned buildings, often becoming a danger for urban explorers.

Okay, so, the first problem I see here is that you're trying to make goblins pest animals while still giving them people-level capabilities with the complex crafting skills. It's fine for animals to build their own structures, we know birds, insects, and rodents are all capable of making some pretty complex homes for themselves. But complex tools and weapons do kind of cross a line, in my opinion.

The fact they also actively plan and execute what sound like muggings and home robberies also doesn't help. Real life monkeys that are used to humans may get bold enough to snatch things out of people's hands or pockets, but it is primarily an action of curiosity. Your goblins feel like they cross the line away from "pest animal" and into "early stage humanoid sapience" with all these more "advanced" people treating them like trash, which is uncomfortable.

I think if you're going to make this work with goblins as pest animals, you have to take it down a few notches on their tool crafting and thievery. Maybe remove that skill altogether. I don't know what your plan was for their home structures, but make sure it doesn't end up looking like anything people would make, because I can easily see it turning into "basically a homeless camp" if they're good at using found objects to build up shelters between buildings and such. And you really don't want your "pest animal" goblins to come across as evil little homeless folk out to rob the city blind and attacking everyone they meet. Which is a little bit how they read in your current description. It's a city, so they shouldn't need to do too much to make their own shelters. Nothing more than nest piles in back alleys, or on rooftops, etc. They're already surrounded by structure, they won't need to add much to it to make it comfortable for themselves.

I would suggest going for more of a raccoon angle with their intelligence and thieving. Their primary intention should be to find food and their boldness in approaching people should be from the urbanization of the environment. Maybe even show some wild goblins outside the city who live in the trees and aren't so used to people. They'd be more inclined to run off instead of approaching anyone. And instead of crafted weapons, your goblins should only attack with their natural ones, and only if they're provoked, or desperate. Since they've become so accustomed to people, they will be bold enough to walk right up and start grabbing food they find even if someone is holding that food, but they should still show some hesitance and fear, preferring to run first and attack as a last resort, as most animals do. The may even sneak into houses, but make sure they're not actively picking locks. Opening unlocked doors may be feasible though, a lot of animals are capable of messing with door handles.

All of that should help bring them down from too-people-like to actual pest animals, and it won't take away from the danger they present to the people of the city. Good luck with your project! It sounds like a fun one!

[alpinefrsh]

Alright, couple of mcyt fics (I could look for more, but it was late when I was writing this and I have an appointment to prep for today) 'that's, like, a hundred miles' https://archiveofourown.org/works/28401570/chapters/69592806 Bedrockbros-centric fic where Tommy, who'd been stuck living with Dream for years, runs away to find his brother who he hasn't seen or spoken to in forever (three guesses as to why Tommy feels the need to run away from Dream, and the first two don't count). I always love me a good bedrockbros fic, even if I do have complicated feelings about them in dsmp canon. There's also the series '3 weeks, 41 critters, 1 human' https://archiveofourown.org/series/2377099 Alien sbi run a smuggling business, one of the critters they happen to be smuggling is a very human Tommy. They've got no way of communicating with him (nor do they really realize that he's sapient-- they figure things out eventually though). Surprise Stranger Things fic rec 'Midwest Shooting Star' https://archiveofourown.org/works/40949073/chapters/102621330 Chrissy Cunningham-centric because even though she barely got any screen time before being killed off, one of my favourite characters from that show o7 It's just too bad it's so hard to find good fics where she's the main character that aren't also shippy :/ After dying, Chrissy wakes up three years in the past, coincidentally, so does Max Mayfield. Time travel fix-it, baby. Also predominantly platonic with only one canon relationship between Max and Lucas. Because while I am not personally the biggest fan of Stranger Things, I do love Chrissy Cunningham (and also ultimate babysitter Steve, though I haven't included any of those here because I'd have to go searching and, again, it's late) Okay, a few Ace Attorney fics; 'The Phoenix, and Other Early Birds' https://archiveofourown.org/works/34539196/chapters/85972813 Entirely platonic, found family, takes place right around the point that Phoenix Wright gets disbarred, a young Apollo Justice is present during the case where Phoenix gets framed for forgery and senses BS (also, he's a big old Phoenix Wright fanboy). He tasks himself with proving Phoenix Wright's innocence. 'end with the truth' https://archiveofourown.org/works/58722607 A shorter one, fully platonic, found family, Apollo feels homesick and decides that the Wright Anything Agency is more home than anywhere else. Just a nice little hurt/comfort hug fic y'know? 'undeniable you (the currents pulling me onward)' https://archiveofourown.org/works/26345545/chapters/64160671#workskin This one is a ship fic (Apollo Justice and Klavier Gavin), but, more importantly, it's a case fic, my beloved. I love case fics, they're so much fun. Anyway, Kristoph Gavin (Klavier's incarcerated older brother) is found dead in his cell with Klavier as the prime suspect. Apollo Justice flies in from Khura'in to defend him. Alright, last up, two DC fics, one of them being a Spiderman crossover. 'let me help you fly this nest' https://archiveofourown.org/works/39161592 A little bit of crack treated seriously, Harley thinks the new Robin (Tim Drake) is being abused by Batman, so her solution is to kidnap him mid fight and buy him takeout. Only ship is Harley and Ivy, not the central focus. 'Set Naked On Your Kingdom' https://archiveofourown.org/works/46408882/chapters/116846806 You can tell this one's good because the tagging is nonexistent /hj. This one's the DC Spiderman crossover, I read it whenever I still had zero knowledge on DC (and, let's be honest, I don't exactly have much knowledge on Spiderman either lolol, neither of these places are really my fandoms), but I remember being very happy with Spiderman's vibes and characterization here. Wish I could have suggested more crossovers, but it's hard to find good ones. Hopefully at least one of these was new and interesting to you, thanks for stopping by! o/

Hello!- this is a follow up ask! ________________________

My tastes tend to be really broad, so I'm up to read whatever-- as long as it's interesting ^-^ Though, if I had to list some preferences… Found family, hurt + comfort, angst (of any variety-- but existentialism and or someone being forced to confront their personal ideologies are probably my favorites), redemption arcs, crack taken seriously, character studies…… Crossovers, specifically, are especially fun. . .. As for fandoms-- unfortunately, most of the ones I'm into are kinda obscure / dead, or just don't have many fics even if they're popular. MCYT and ROTTMNT (obviously hh)-- then there's Sonic, TOH, and Tangled… I can give a more comprehensive list, if you really want-- but the stuff listed above are really the only ones that A: I think you know- and B: that have notable activity. . .. ... Again, though, I'm really up for anything-- regardless of fandom or theming.

Hello! I tried to respond last night, but Tumblr kept giving me error messages and it was already two hours past when I'd intended to be in bed lol Anyway, here's what I managed to put together last night;

 I'll start with the bnha recs just because I've already got my small list handy

'Why Are We Here Again?' https://archiveofourown.org/works/25749178/chapters/62529709 A quirkless Midoriya Izuku fic where class 1-A are villains (criminals and vigilantes, really) who get brought into UA for a rehab program to become heroes. All platonic, found family for the win. I remember really liking all of the fics from this author, so if you end up reading and liking this one, there's a good chance you'll enjoy the others too. The other one is 'Yuuei Survival Guide' https://archiveofourown.org/works/35515399/chapters/88533172 Midoriya can see ghosts in this one, and one of those ghosts happens to be Oboro, the dead friend (and past hero student at UA) of his teachers, Aizawa and Hizashi-- not that Midoriya knows that relation. There's more to it than that, but I'm not the best at explaining plots. Predominantly platonic/found family, with background married Aizawa and Hizashi This one's also really cool 'Q. A. B.' https://archiveofourown.org/works/27665101/chapters/67697743 Midoriya basically accidentally starts a cult (through Tumblr and Discord) he's quirkless, doesn't go to UA, but does post his analysis online as well as helping other people with figuring out their quirks. A minor romantic pairing between two background characters? But it's not exactly central. It's also just really cool in that it's a super html heavy fic, so all of the websites and social media used in the fic look accurate. Very impressive. Optimally viewed on mobile. That's all I'll list for that-- most of my fic recs for that fandom are just the works from the author of the first rec, lol. Anyway, I feel like it's pretty likely you've already read this if you're in the Sonic fandom, but I really like 'Sometimes the Picket Fence isn't Perfect' https://archiveofourown.org/series/3205752 It's a series of fics focused on the dynamic of Sonic and Tails (primarily the fact that Sonic just about raised Tails), it's very sweet and I like it a lot. There's also 'Relative Dissonance' https://archiveofourown.org/works/56807623/chapters/144426502 by the same author, Tails winds up in the Sonic Underground universe and winds up staying with Sonic, Manic, and Sonia while he tries to find (or, more accurately, create) a way back home. Once again, I've really enjoyed just about all of the Sonic works from that author, and they post fics pretty frequently too, so there's decent odds there are some things there you haven't read yet. Okay, it's still giving me errors, so I'm cutting out a chunk of the recs and just going to reblog it with the other stuff in a sec o7

[acreaturecalledgreed]

Would it be weird to have a main character in a story that eats pretty much exclusively humans? They're not human themselves, and anything else they can eat is too rare to rely on. I'm just not sure how to keep them likable when they've straight-up murdered people to consume their flesh

i mean thats a tricky matter of what you’re going for

you can make a character a murderous cannibal and still have them be likeable

lad russo (while not a cannibal) from baccano spends almost all of his screen time committing mass murder and cackling like nobodies business and he is a TREASURE and a delight of a character

but he’s eons away from being a morally good character/person

its very hard to make a character come across as good when they  consume another sapient being on the regular to survive, even if they themselves are not human

if your character has a humanish way of thinking or morals, its very hard to see them as a good person in this context. having to eat human meat is one thing, having to kill humans to get it is another. depending on the story’s setting, there are ways they can get that meat without killing someone. someone who chooses to kill when they have other options, simply because its easier, does not come across as a good individual.

(this is why many of the ghouls in tokyo ghoul -at least in the amount i read of it- piss me the holy hell off. b/c being given and option b/t murder and alternative methods, many of them still choose murder, and the narrative treats them as good and kind despite this.)

you could make your character be so inhuman that they have a way of thinking/morality that is completely incomparable to humans, it makes a bit more sense for them to read as “good” while still being, well, a homicidal maneater. id compare this to, idk, Moro from princess mononoke

(who we know blatantly from her own mouth has eaten humans, though she does not do so exclusively, and while she isnt a Heroic character per say, you can’t really call her Evil or Bad anymore than you can most of the characters in that film and she’s certainly very likeable)

the problem THERE is that if you frame it wrong, it can come across as a very heartless mindset of “humans are disposable”, which will always make your story take on a very cynical, “humans are cattle and unimportant/inherently bad/weak” tone, which is irritating, overdone and frankly depressing and frustrating (ex: THE VAST MAJORITY OF VAMPIRE FICTION WHICH IS WHY I DETEST MOST VAMPIRE FICTION ALKFKLDFSDF)

you could also have your character eat some humans without issue but still like, be fond of, or appreciate other humans, which can avoid the “humans are cattle” trope and also give you the chance to explore the very clear cognitive dissonance your character is dealing with (”these humans are my friends and they’re different than the humans i eat haha b/c i try not think about the humans i eat haha”)

you could go the route of your character only consuming humans when they lose control as well, which usually involves a lot of guilt, angst, and self loathing, but at least makes your character very sympathetic

theres not really any right or wrong way to do it and it all boils down to your person preference, and how you set the stage, tone, narrative, etc

NOW if you’re just worried about your character being likeable but you dont give a rats ass about them being a good person, you dont gotta worry about it haha

im not sure how coherent this was so feel free to ask me to clarify anything if you need me too