#and my mental structure is bad which is why i don't understand things

[lovesodeepandwideandwell]

You know what's weird? How quick high-level academics are to say they don't know about something, versus how taboo it is to say you don't understand something

[fallendev0tionvn]

Im slow.. when it comes to lore of Clive lmao but hey its interesting, so may i ask what's Nietzsche philosophy.. so like i can watch his philosophy, so i can understand! :D

i've been stalking your account to understand Clive but I just realize i am slow when it comes to lore LMAOO, oneee... question that is a Slight NSFW (Maybe..?), is Clive gentle when it comes of Him and MC do it for a first time?

(i just realized i change topic to add one question which is not related to Clive's lore :P)

I'll answer the second question first, Clive is always gentle! He only wants to bring you pleasure, not pain. The only time he gets a little rough is when he's feeling jealous🏃‍♀️.

ANYWAY.

I'm SORRY for the person I'm about to become, but get ready for a LONG yapping session (I was Dostoevskij in my past life) that probably won't make sense (keep in mind that I wanted to be either a comic artist, a psychologist or a philosophy professor...explains a lot). Half of this is from my notes when I was studying for my graduation exam💀

First of all Nietzsche is one of the most misunderstood philosophers. Why? He's either "idolized" by those red pill/looksmaxxing guys without realizing that he actually goes against their morals, or edgy wannabe "nihilists" for the quote "God is dead." (Nihilism is a form of extreme pessimism, in simple terms, it's the belief that there's no true meaning in life, nothing can be known or communicated. But if Nietzsche is telling you to destroy the old meanings of life TO create your own instead of listening to what others say, would he still be considered a nihilist? Sure, active nihilism is a thing- but in my opinion he is NOT a nihilist).

His philosophy has also been used historically for the worst things that I won't even mention. Why? his sister edited some of his last unfinished works based on HER own beliefs when he ended up in the asylum. Many think he was a "....", when- let's be real and study a bit of history- if Nietzsche's mental health deteriorated the year THAT political figure was born (1889), how could he possibly be associated with him? Literally, tf.

The reason for this is because I think many don't read or study his philosophy in the correct order, nor do they know the timeline of his ideas.

To understand the concept of the "Übermensch", you have to start from the very beginning, when he first mentions the Dionysian and Apollonian spirits- the übermensch is supposed to bring back the rebirth of the "tragic spirit". (Übermensch= overman, the highest version of oneself a person can become, the "better" version of you, basically).

What key concepts did I take inspiration from? (I say inspiration because not everything is directly related to Nietzsche, I started from his main concepts to create characters, lore etc.)

ETERNAL RETURN:

(Bad ending: The cycle ends here)

See Clive's necklace? The symbol on his bicep and the main menu? The ouroboros.

It's such a deep concept and it asks: "What if every moment of your life had to repeat itself endlessly, in the exact same way, forever?"

This means everything, every pain, every joy, every regret, would return again and again and again. This NOT about whether it's scientifically true, we don't know if we're destined to relive the same life after death. It's a thought experiment, a way to ask yourself "would I still want to live my life if I knew I'd relive my worst moments forever? How would I act?"

If your answer is no, you're not affirming your existence. If yes, you're embracing life fully. In a way, you'd try to be more yourself and live with fewer regrets, right?

DIONYSIAN VS APOLLONIAN:

(The intro of the game, Silas and Clive's conversation)

To simplify it: Think of the two hemispheres of the brain.

Right brain = Dionysian (chaos, passion, music, imagination, intuition, emotion). This side is emotional, creative, raw, deeply human. It's the spirit Nietzsche believed humanity lost.

Left brain = Apollonian (logic, structure, rules, order). This side is rational, clear, less human.

Why did Nietzsche use greek gods to describe this? Because he rejected the "classical and elegant" image of Greece we learn about in school. To him, archaic Greece was the perfect society because it embraced chaos, suffering, and the tragic. (That's why I added greek mythology :3)

He also saw greek tragedy (a form of ancient drama/theatre that expresses human suffering, fate, and moral conflict) as the perfect fusion of the Apollonian and Dionysian. This fusion created a form of art that embraced life in all its beauty and suffering.

With Socrates (ancient greek philosopher), the Dionysian spirit was killed. We began to exalt reason over everything, meaning everything had to be explained, justified, or made logical. This made humanity obsessed with truth and control, disconnecting us from the fullness of life.

"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."

Clive tried to force himself to lean more towards the Apollonian, he suppressed his emotions, tried to follow "moral rules", and tried to look "normal".

To explain the change between his younger self and current self there's an iconic quote:

"Become who you are" In the sense that in life, we constantly follow models that are necessary- because we grow through imitation. Children grow by watching, by imitating. But then, we must detach from this imitation and become who we truly are, a process of self reckoning.

After his "death", Clive starts being himself. There's a balance now, but you can still influence him to lean more towards his Dionysian or Apollonian side.

To live a full, healthy life, we need to embrace both sides:

"The tree that grows to heaven must send its roots to hell."

GOD IS DEAD:

(Who helped Clive?)

Nietzsche's most misunderstood quote.

Saying "God is dead", as he writes, implies that God once existed, or at least, that he was once central to the way humans explained the world. After all, only something that has existed can die; things that have never existed don't die. That's why Nietzsche has this declaration spoken not by an atheist, but by a madman. The atheist and the believer ARE part of the same system aren't they? One says "yes", the other says "no", but they're both within the same structure of thought, a world where God is STILL a reference point.

The madman on the other hand, speaks from outside that system. When he says "God is dead", he's not just denying the existence of God- he's saying that the world is no longer ORGANIZED around God. There was a time when everything was explained through God, when God gave order and meaning to existence. But today, that's no longer the case.

We must understand that Nietzsche, often read in an oracular and overly dramatic way, is actually a profundly coherent philosopher. His thinking is rigorous; If churches are now empty, if they became museums, tombs for god (visiting them for the "Affreschi", example: "La cappella sistina"), it's because he is dead. We killed him, or more precisely, we forgot him- because already with the scientific revolution, and even earlier with Renaissance, man placed himself at the center. We no longer live in a world explained through God, but through human reason, science and self determination. (That's why I chose literally the "forgotten God" from greek mythology. If you figure out who he is, you'll learn he actually died.)

Now if you want to learn more about Nietzsche:

His philosophy goes through THREE major phases;

- The youthful phase: Influenced by Schopenhauer (another amazing philosopher, highly recommend reading about him too), celebrated ancient greece, wrote "The Birth of Tragedy", Introduced the Apollonian and Dionysian spirits.

- Enlightment phase: Distanced himself from religion and idealism, embraced critical thinking, dismantled traditional values, wrote "Human, All Too Human".

- Mature phase: Developed his core concepts -> eternal return, übermensch, death of god, wrote "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" "On the genealogy of Morality" "Ecce Homo"

[arcane-ish]

Revisiting the season 1 "is Silco a bad parent" discourse

It seems that sometimes people come across my season 1 metas and liking them and it's pretty fun for me to "re-find" some of my old stuff that way.

I like to think I still stand by a lot of if even if a lot of theories about how things get disproven.

Anyway, I think it's very interesting in retrospect how central and heated the "Is Silco a bad father" discourse was in season 1. (It was very much the "is Caitlyn a war criminal" of its day)

One aspect that I think made it differently is that "being a war criminal" is usually a relatively distant concept for most people.

While if you listened deeper you could sense a lot of personal stories and very different takes on what makes a good or bad parent.

Looking back, it does feel like maybe a lot of it was the Vi&Cait side of the fandom versus the Silco&Jinx side of the fandom with a lot of people in the middle weighing in, because it is an interesting question and again ones relationship to a parent being something where everybody can bring something to he table.

In the end season 1 is very structured around Vi. She's by the character by far with the most screentime. And season 1 is pretty much about her quest to retrieve her sister.

Vi has a certain, harsh way of perceiving Silco and Silco and Jinx. And I wonder if at least some of the discourse was a lot about validating Vi and validating Vi's quest. Because if Silco is an awesome parent and Jinx is happy, then Vi's quest is basically useless, right?

For the record, I don't think Vi fans were overall about proving that Silco is evil and Vi has to smite him. Even in season 1 I think there was generally a lot of fandom discourse support for the idea that Vi has to accept that her sister is changed and that she can't just blindly cling to the past. But there's still investment in the idea that she is at least partially right.

On the opposite. To me it does feel like on the Silco&Jinx side (even though people will always say they understand that their charas do bad things) it did feel like there were genuinely people who wanted an edgy "Silco and Jinx never did anything and are perfect and everybody else drools" take by the show. Again, just like with the Vi side, not all. Plenty of Silco fans who also get that he was a flawed father even if he was genuine. Just saying the "Silco and Jinx should burn the world down without resistance as an awesome powercouple and/or father&daughter duo" also existed and who were longing for a portrayal where everybody who opposed Silco turns out to be more evil than him or comes around and sings his praises to validate Silco.

Which brings me to:

I think a big reason why I was less disappointed with season 2 than some others is because I always saw myself squarely in the middle of this discourse.

For me that looked like that: For a lot of the accusations typically levelled against Silco I was usually a lot more on the "Silco side" of things than on the "Vi side".

That a lot of the things that are happening are dark, but dark that make sense for the setting. ie having Jinx be violent, encouraging her to fight, not seeking help for her mental illness, that always seemed like a fairly natural part of the setting to me. And on the whole manipulating front, seeing it more as "Silco projects his own trauma/fear/paranoia, his messed up feelings about Vander onto Vi" rather than he is intentionally manipulating (though I do think there was an element of "Silco is scared of Jinx leaving him and wants to tie her to him at all costs" rather than just a clean mangnanimous "Silco thinks Vi is dangerous and wants to protect Jinx from harm")

But at the same time: I also had genuine bugbears with his parenting.

When I look at my old post one thing that I pointed out was that it feels off to me that Jinx doesn't have peers her age. She interacts mostly with Sevika and Silco. The closes to her age is probably Thieram and he's scared of her. Back then I reserved judgement. Because we don't know for sure how Jinx felt about it. Maybe since she killed her brothers she never wanted to be around friends anymore out of fear of killing them. Though I still think that as a parent Silco should have pushed back on that. Especially since imo the Enemy music video suggests that in the past Powder did like playing with other children, at the very least Ekko. So to me season 2 was extremely validating when we see that as soon as Silco is gone from her influence the first thing Jinx does is attach herself to a young girl and be really playful and kid like with her. And season 2 suggests that having Ekko forgive her did mean something to her. (and depending on whether you consider it canon or not, Jinx writing "home" on top of the firelight base when she has been there like once is just gutting)

There's also the fact "Silco is just projecting his trauma rather than manipulating" to me is a seriously deal. Even if that means that he isn't manipulating "he can't see beyond his trauma enough to be a good parent" is still a serious parenting issue. (for the record: Vander has very similar problems in his parentage) If you had a parent who is a narcissicst or a drug addict or bipolar and that did have an affect on the parenting style, you would still file that under having a bad/less than ideal childhood even if that parent tried.

And the core effect of this trauma/paranoia is that Silco does not respect what Vi means to Jinx and is not really engaging with Jinx about it. And no, he did not know Vi was alive, but he did lie about Vi just being there for the crystal (when from his conversation with Vi in the Shimmer addict scene he KNEW that Vi was there about Jinx). Not to mention he immediately moves to try to get rid of Vi and attacks her rather than even just subtly try to figure out how Jinx feels about it. Again in a perfect parent world, even if he irrationally feels that Vi will hurt Jinx, the good parent thing would have been to talk to Jinx, express his fears and let Jinx choose how she wants to handle the situation. Support her through it, catch her if Vi really does end up hurting her.

But then I generally often feel like I have a very different take on Jinx and Silco's relationship. Like… if you see Silco and Jinx as a pair, a duo… you can see in season 1 that Jinx isn't fully happy with him? Like the underlying message of season 1 is that even though she was with Silco and she cared for him, she was dreaming of being with Vi the entire time. She wanted to abandon Silco and run away with Vi. She kept, remembered and activated the flare when she realizes that Vi is alive/around. She yearned for Vi while she was gone, was always doubtful of Silco's world, completely thought Silco was capable of lying to her. She cares about him, but she does not fully believe the things he's telling her, she clearly thinks of him as somebody to take with a grain of salt, yes even before the Shimmer maker he doubt him even more.

For the record, I don't buy the Silcofan take Jinx and Silco were 100% happy and he a completely reasonable parent till all the stressors of season 1 Act 2 happened. IMO I buy what Jinx says to Vi in the dinner scene in 1x09, the deep tiredness and frustration. And I don't think that Jinx would assume so easily that he would lie even pre Shimmer if he hadn't given her the vibe before. And we see her pushing back and rebelling a little bit not just against his restriction but against the lies he tells himself before all that.

(it probably helps that my fandom of Silco was always more on the "he's this beautiful, chaotic, tragic, compelling, ingenious mess" rather than "he's so cool and badass". Like a lot harder on the "Silco makes a freaked out face during the rat experiments" than just "Silco does sexy sauntering")

Again, if you "ship" Silco and Jinx as a narrative pair, even if just a platonic one, maybe you were rooting for the story to validate Silco fully. Yes, Jinx strayed and tried to "cheat" on Silco with Vi, wanted to leave him, wanted to run off with Vi, but he was right all along, Vi didn't care for her and choose the enforcer over Jinx. And the happy end will be Jinx understands Silco's love for her and knew he as right all along and be gung go, either wanting to kill herself because she loved him so much or dedicate her life to continuing his life's work.

And maybe the Vi side thought that with Silco being dead it would be a "ding dong the witch is dead", yes Jinx is now even further in her darkness but maybe season 2 can be the search to retrieve her and everybody can at least see what horror he has wrought and how he destroyed Jinx's life if it turns out she cannot be saved.

The thing about season 2 is that if refuses to validate either the "Vi side" or the "Silco side"

And my theory that this really frustrated both sides, especially if they fought for fervently post season 1 about whose perspective is right.

While for me, it felt like a natural continuation of what I already saw in season 1. Jinx genuinely cares for Silco, but she wasn't fully happy with him, their relationship was genuine, but also layered and complex.

She grieves for him, but the moment he isn't there she acts very differently. She does tons of things that weren't and maybe couldn't easily have been part of her life when he was still around. Her position towards his goals, towards the fight, towards Zaun,towards violence is mixed. She connects with Isha, with Vi, with Ekko. She doesn't denounce Vi or Vander to praise Silco.

For the frustration of the "Vi side", she never denounces Silco either. And even worse, like, here you could say, okay, maybe Jinx is just strong enough to resist Silco's influence, especially now that he's gone, but he was still bad for her, but the show imo by adding Silco to the AU does take a stand against that Silco was just a bad father and a malignent influence. If Silco was just full on bad, why would he still be part of Jinx's life in the other AU, where it is hinted that Silco is very much part of many things being better in that AU. To me that alone is a strong proof that they don't see Silco as just a bad thing that has to be fought. Heck that episode textually has Ekko saying outright that maybe he wasted his time fighting/hating Silco and Jinx as part of a general message about forgiveness and embracing people.

And about all people being messy and flawed and you should still embrace them.

And from a Jinx fan point of view? That's great actually

Season 1 is being spent with Silco and Vi metaphorically fighting over Jinx. From their point of view, it would be most desirable if she chose one and decried the other.

But from a Jinx point of view? It's actually great that she doesn't have to choose. Because Jinx is a cool and awesome character who can have deep and layered and complex and loving relationships with Silco and with Vi and with Vander (and gain new ones with Isha and Jinx). She doesn't have to give one up to properly love the other. She can love all these people in her own way and at the same time, there can be complexity and flaws in all those relationships too.

Because again, Jinx is a complex character with many sides to her and many relationships to her.

And just like the show in the end refuses to make a hard choice between Powder versus Jinx, it also refuses to choose between these relationships. Doesn't see the need to push any of them to the dirt, just lets her keep and at the same time lose all of them.

I think that ultimately, why, even though I see many flaws on season 2, I can still find something to love about it. Because to me Jinx is the throughline, the emotional core as the journey of a young woman searching her place, figuring herself out, choosing her path.

(please note that I'm a staunch believer in the "Jinx Lives" theory and that clouds every and all reads on season 2 I have)

In the end, imo the juxtaposition of Silco and Vi was a pretty cool move of season 1. Most fandoms fight primarily about romantic shipping, who should date whom, who is whose OTP.

Structurally, in season 1 Vi is the main character and even though she might have flaws (maybe too brash, too narrow minded, too emotional), she comes across as the more traditional heroic character.

At the same time, she is on a quest that is impossible. She wants to retrieve a sister who doesn't exist anymore. She wants things to not change, but that can't be avoided. She has a quest given to her by her dead father figure, but maybe that quest isn't just impossible, maybe it isn't what she should be doing in the first place?

And the fact that Vi is structurally the hero but maybe she's also kind of wrong I think opened up this narrative space of "okay, if Vi is not right, that maybe who or what is?"

I get that the show answering that question with "everybody is flawed, those relationships an co-exist" isn't a satisfying answer for everybody who wanted clarity, but I can just reiterate, from my Jinx fannishness point of view, I think it's pretty great.

[heybiji]

hi i found your page cause of your Masks art!!

imma be running a game of masks and was wondering if you have any tips

Oh hello! Very cool you're gonna run a MASKS game, it can be a lot of fun!

I'm not sure how helpful my advice will be since I'm still learning and am not sure how well I actually run the game haha, but for starters there's a whole lot of great advice on Reddit that will help with the mechanics and the structure of the game. In my opinion, the Principles section in the GM part of the core book is critical and succinct and is great advice for running ttrpgs in general.

my top advice is:

"We play to get the next issue picked up!"

Play the game like we want people to buy the next issue and not put the series down! Take chances! Make big choices! Make it interesting! Be bold!!

other things:

Theme. Establish the themes of your story early on. This will help you understand how the world and story should respond to the PCs. And make the themes interesting to you! For example, beyond the general coming-of-age story themes already built into the character arcs, I lean heavily into the concepts of fame, celebrity, and the 24-hour news cycle. And all the things that were going on in the early 2000s.

Be a Fan of the PCs. This is my favorite rule from The Principles. Make sure all your players soak this rule in. The MASKS mechanics mean characters will often make less-than-optimal decisions, so players must feel supported in their character choices. You should be a fan of the characters, and so should your players! They should want to help bring out every character's arc, not just their own.

Treating Human Life as Meaningful is what Makes Threats Real. This is another principle, but yeah, make the world's NPCs feel like they matter, and that will make the world worth protecting. Treat them as people. Give everyone Drives, not just your Villains. Mentally treating even non-villain NPCs as having Conditions can do a lot to help with characterization.

Condense. Condense your world, your NPCs, make the world feel smaller. In our game, for example, having the Protege's mentor also be the same superhero who saved the Delinquent years ago was a great decision.

Playlists. I have a bunch of different playlists for the campaign, from a big one of music of the time (our game is set in 2004) to playlists for important NPCs, to playlists I asked my players to curate for their characters. Music inspires me a bunch, a song can help create a villain for me, and I also like choosing a different "ending" song for every episode based on whatever happened.

Stories. Okay, here's the thing. I don't really care much for superhero stories. Why did I choose to run MASKS, you ask? Because of the emotion-based mechanics. That's my shit. But anyway, I don't take in much superhero media... But I do LOVE movies and television and stories in general, and I think taking in a lot of "short stories" is helpful to develop an instinct on how to pace a story, make a character or moment memorable, etc. And because MASKS has an episodic nature, this is extremely important! The sheer amount of movies I've watched has helped me a whole bunch, since they have to get the Beginning, Middle, and End done within such a short time frame.

Don't Wait. This is an instinct I've picked up from some of my favorite media. Don't wait for The big important moment. Make a lot of big important moments, and make the characters have to make a lot of important choices, and keep the momentum going. Paint yourself into a corner and then force yourself to think of ways out! It makes the story more interesting. (this may not apply to everyone, I get this kind of mindset from shows like Breaking Bad and Succession, which for your story could be too much haha)

Everyone Works. Okay, I am not a benevolent, sweet GM, I will not smile with tears in my eyes and quietly work away and accept that without complaint. no way. I make my players help me a lot. I'm gonna whine. Guys I'm doing so much work! Guys this is hard! Weeehhh! MAKE THEM HELP YOU. RUNNING A GAME IS SOOOOO MUCH WORK OH MY GOD IT'S SOOOOOO MUCH WORK!!! Ask them to take notes! Ask them to treat the world with sincerity! Ask them to make NPCs! Ask them to play NPCs! Ask them to help fill out the world! Ask them to tell you what their character wants to do next so you have extra time to consider it! Ask them to make playlists for their characters to help you figure out how to engage with them! Don't let them just show up on playday!! I'm a "you get what you give" kind of GM. You're a player too and you deserve to enjoy the game as well, and having the other players help you helps a BUNCH. PUT THEM TO WORK.

what else. uh. visuals help a lot with engagement so i subscribed to a bunch of modern battlemap patreons. i run using Foundry which lists the rules upon every roll which is great for me, someone with horrid memory. if you're lucky and favored by god, you'll have a benevolent player that will be the scribe for your sessions and log everything down so they can be referred back to (again, great for someone like me with a horrid memory). remember to give focus to the PC's out-of-costume lives as well. make NPCs in response to your PCs (superheroes, villains, touch on something of a PC in the creation process). be silly. be serious. be sincere.

i'm still figuring out how to run the game, maybe i'll have better advice on a later day, but i hope this can help some! sorry this is longwinded and more a stream of consciousness than it is succinct.

[pure-ablution]

Maybe this is by a very, very long shot, but do you have any resources, techniques, or any sort of info on how to autocorrect in French? My very important french exit exam is coming up and while I have perfect scores in content and organization, I lose all my points in language.

I make so, so many anglicismes, erreurs de punctuation, de conjugaison. It causes me a lot of great distress. I'm genuinely not able to see errors in my writing, even when they are clearly there. I know I need to practice, but I don't even know how to practice actually making minimal mistakes in a long, handwritten essay.

I’m so sorry for not getting back to this more quickly; I hope that I’m not answering too late!

Stop thinking of such little errors as random mistakes. They’re not at all random; they’re patterns, and diagnosable patterns at that. It’s very easy to view arbitrary errors that slip under the radar in proofreading as evidence of hopeless failure, but they’re actually just symptoms of a repeated misunderstanding. I recommend starting a little personal error corpus: take 3–4 of your past essays, which have been corrected by a tutor or educated native speaker, and create a spreadsheet with 3 columns:

Error: copy the exact sentence, with the error highlighted or bolded in some way.

Why it’s wrong: a brief grammatical explanation, taken from a proper grammar book but summarised in your own words, that you understand.

Correct version: the sentence rewritten so as to now be grammatically correct.

Then, go through this little spreadsheet and begin to highlight your personal patterns. Perhaps you keep using à or pour after chercher; maybe you consistently mess up agreement in passé composé with être. Whatever it is, highlight it. It’s more than likely that you’ll find you’re not actually ‘bad at French grammar’, you just have under a dozen consistent bugs in your mental code. Once you identify them, you can tackle them head-on.

You’re preparing for a handwritten exam. These sorts of things can feel cruelly archaic nowadays (talk to the girl who has taken all of her university exams to date by hand 😭), but they can actually be a blessing in disguise; typing can mask our errors with autocorrect and constant backspacing, whilst handwriting forces you to commit to a sentence and a grammatical decision. I highly recommend you make the most of that: write timed paragraphs, every single day, by hand, on a real topic—maybe summarising an article you’ve just read, or a discursive piece on les réseaux sociaux or le patrimoine or another of those subjects examiners love—and then, after 15–20 minutes or so of handwriting, retype the paragraph into a doc. This is the point at which you can start editing. I recommend BonPatron or Language Tool, but you could also just use Grammarly in French; either way, run your paragraph through a grammar checker to scan for the most obvious errors. Then, print it out, and hand-annotate your own errors, with your little personal corpus and most common errors in mind, and write your own comments in the margins. This teaches your brain to notice patterns of sloppiness and flag them in real time. You’ll find that your hand starts to hesitate slightly before the word à or de, and that hesitation is your brain rewiring itself.

Try to read like a copy-editor. Your ask tells me that you’re already strong in content and structure, so I could hazard a guess that you read a lot, which is, for the record, excellent for language acquisition! Now, though, I’d suggest reading a little differently; rather than reading novels and articles in French to absorb vocabulary, start reading more like a copy-editor. Take a short, well-written article from somewhere like Le Figaro or Le Point, and go at it with full syntactical analysis. Highlight every comma and subordinate clause, circle and label each verb tense, write out full S-V-O diagrams for particularly complex sentences so that your brain can understand the mechanics. Ask yourself questions: why this structure? Why this punctuation? You could even go full syntactician and analyse it like I did my passages for my Latin Language paper—whatever works for you. Then, try rewriting the first paragraph from memory, and compare it to the original. What did you miss? What did you simplify?

Practise micro-repetition exercises. This is a trick mostly used in classical language paedagogy; I learnt it in Latin and Greek, but it would definitely work for French, too. Choose one short, typical, basic sentence that contains a grammatical structure you struggle with. For instance:

Elle est allée à la boulangerie chercher du pain, qu’elle avait oublié d’acheter la veille.

Copy it by hand ten times, slowly, then cover it, and try to write it from memory.

Now, tweak it, just slightly, each time. Change the subject to ils. Change qu’elle avait oublié to qu’elle oubliera. Make it negative: Elle n’est pas allée … Have fun with switching the sentence structure, playing with the syntax, rephrasing and placing in different verb tenses. This way, you’re not simply memorising a single sentence, but practising how the logic of French grammar really behaves, so that you’ll be able to apply the very same logic to a different sentence in the future.

I think that, given just a few weeks of really militant, methodical practice, in which you forgive yourself for errors but don’t shy away from facing them directly, you’ll be so surprised at just how much your command of French has improved. If you like, you’re welcome to send me a paragraph, and I’ll walk you through how I’d correct it, but honestly, I think you have the drive and ability already—it’s just not always that easy to know how to tackle the little things without some guidance from someone who has struggled with much the same thing! Courage, anon, and let me know how your exam goes 💕

[wolfertinger]

"Please anonymize me, I just can't send media on anon. I do not want to be targeted, idc if im replied to through this post but I don't want to get shit from Wis or anyone on my own blog.

Idk if this is beating a dead horse but...?? This is genuinely not how DID works and I *know* every system is different, but you CANNOT integrate to this level without being in a safe place, and with Salem constantly posting about how he's in distress and not doing well, this would /not/ be possible.

Integration to a near singular level is done through integration therapy, it is INCREDIBLY hard to achieve without help. Especially if you are STILL DEALING WITH TRAUMA AND DONT HAVE HELP.

Nowhere does salem say hes getting help. In fact its the contrary. Salem is constantly crying about online harrassment, self harming through obsessing over internet drama, never actually engaging with the outside world in a meaningful way. As much as he preaches positivity and healing he doesnt apply it to himself.

And that would worsen DID if he has it. So either hes lying about his disorder or fundamentally doesnt understand it, which then he shouldn't even be self diagnosing DID when he not only doesn't know how it works but he also clearly lacks the self awareness to do so.

Not to drag syscourse into this but i seriously think his engagement in the endogenic community has damaged any understanding he has of DID. Your alters dont suddenly all integrate with you because things got slightly better. That takes YEARS of intensive work, and if he's going to claim that's why he's reverting to his tendancies he had as puppychan he's just trying to make excuses for himself, because fusion doesn't make you suddenly act as another alter did. You still exist as yourself and if you've learned anything you aren't going to suddenly fall into their bad habits. You had to do work to get to that place of healing. You may struggle with their urges, have tendancies of their habits, but you dont fucking just become them this isnt some steven universe bullshit its the healing of amnesia barriers and identity fragmentation. You would be acting fucking different for god's sake if your alters were as complex as you try to make them seem, but its hard to even believe they're anything but roleplay characters when you potray them as such.

I'm just. Pissed off as someone who is literally getting diagnosed with DID. I don't doubt that salem could have developed it with their claims of supposedly being in a christian cult as a child, it really just takes repetative overwhelming stress and a lack of help or coping skills for a childs mind to resort to complex dissociation, it doesnt take torture or severe abuse (though, those are the most frequent cases that lead to DID along with csa – it is much rarer for less severe cases to develop into DID but it Happens, often because of a lack of a support structure)

Also here are the cult claim reciepts in case it gets deleted or backtracked on

Sorry for my Bible Length Essay ™️ I had to say this because it really seems like nobody else is catching onto his odd patterns of behavior surrounding his system aside from that time he claimed he split from being harrassed as a teen on twitter (impossible, DID develops at latest at the age of 9 and thats with developmental delays or stunting from either trauma or being born with a developmental disorder.)

I don't even hate him. I feel /bad/. If he was raised in a cult as he says he was this really WOULD all make sense, not be justifiable, but his behavior would have a lot more context to it. It would also honestly make sense for him to have never spoken of it before due to the heavy shame groups enforce. I hope he isn't lying the same way he has in the past about things like with the mental hospital and such, and i hope he knows he CAN get help. It takes effort, but its all worth it. You aren't past redemption, Salem. You just need to step outside of your comfort zone. Healing hurts; its just like the process of scarring."

[boneskullravenriver]

I'm trying to get back into reading and less time dicking about on TikTok. Because I want to finally finish words of radiance. And according to a note I have in obsidian (where I have a book tracker thing I cobbled together).... I started this book in OCTOBER (2024). It is now January of 2025. Lmao.

I'm in the later half of the book so... I've had this event thing set on my calendar to remind me to read 50 pages a day. It's a big annoying full screen notification that buzzes when it pops up on my phone at exactly the same time every day. So I put in some ambiance music on my laptop and I set a stopwatch to time how long it takes me to read 50 pages.

Hopefully at this pace I can finish soon. Been trying to Pavlov myself into reading and not going "oh, I'm gonna do this tomorrow..." *Tomorrow comes* "nah, the next day!"

Then I don't read for like a month lol.

It's been going good so far. I have this small, really small notebook that I jot down what page I've started at, what page I'm aiming for, the date.. what book I'm reading, and then really short hand-ish indicators on what pages I find interesting, maybe a brief comment to remind myself why I found it interesting (not too long) so I can go back to my obsidian book tracker thing to expand on it later where I have more space to write.

I also write down the amount of time it took me to read (from the stop watch).

It's a lot and I know some folks will ask "why can't you just go... Read?? Why all the extra shit?"

Well, you see, my attention span is so shit nowadays. Even though I might like whatever book I'm reading, my brain goes "won't it be easier to just watch a video, or spend the whole day scrolling TikTok for cheap entertainment?" Because it's less of mental energy to do that.

Reading means engaging with a story. Understanding what's going on, or figuring out what's going on, and picking up whatever small hints the author is trying to put down. If you're watching a TV show, you get these things from visual or auditory cues.

Like, slightly ominous music or making the POV look like it's from the perspective of a stalker coming up behind the protagonist in a scary movie or something. In books, you don't get that. It's through words. Character actions and other things. That requires you to be engaged, not passive.

I'm also trying to read more because i feel like I wrote better whenever I was reading more. I have this old document of a story I wrote in highschool.. and I was blown away by how much I seemed to have imitated the pacing and story structure of the books I was reading back then. I was crafting a story with plot and struggle for my characters to get through... But also not neglecting their relationships with one another and giving them all different quirks so they weren't all the same.

I was doing all of that without outlining, without banging my head against a wall trying to figure it all out. I was just... Doing it. I remember typing most of it on my phone on Google docs (I didn't have a computer for a long while because my old one became busted) like wtf!!

And I remember distinctly thinking to myself "I'm such a bad writer... I don't know where I'm going with this"

And then I come back, years later looking this over like... Damn... I was cooking something!

Little snippet I found:

I dont mind sharing this since it doesn't really show explicit detail about the story or anything so it's whatever. This is from at least... I think.... 2017 or 2018 I want to say? So would have been 16 or 17 lol.

I even had a trans character before I really understood what that was, which shocked me lol

[n0irrrr]

i've been trying to think why i stopped writing entirely, so this is just a vent/ramble post and doesn't mean anything beyond that? line break bc i dont think someone would want to read rambling tb: rant about aot, info about reiss mental asylum/empty/future

the first reasons i came out with were 1. work 2. a shitty situation that worsened my already shitty mental health and 3. void of creativity/writers block/no energy to think or to came out with something i liked bc i kept comparing myself to others creators (which is... very bad).

the other big reason....... (since i only wrote for aot):

i think i stopped writing anything attack on titan related because i really, really got so salty that my favorite peace of media (that i've followed for 11 years) ended they way it did? and i don't mean that 'oh just bc u didn't get a happy ending or u didn't understand the characters and the plot doesn't mean your opinion is valid bla bla'

but the way characters' developments were poorly handled and recessed, how they were just made dumber for the sake of the plot and how suddenly a romantic relationship that wasn't there in the first place became something bigger at the end and how eren was handled in the last moments just made me so salty lmao.

and it makes me more salty how people just shits on you if you don't like it and quickly go with their 'u didn't get it' like brother ive been here since 2013 tf you mean? now we can't criticize anything and still like something??? AAAGGGHHHH

im sorry LOL it's just that i can't see anything aot related bc it is so ruined for me. literally i see tiktoks and i get so sad and bitter bc i know what the comments will be lmao i hate it, literally just read the manga and stopped watching the anime until season 3 bc i just disliked how everything was handled so bad. like any news about it just doesn't make me feel anything 😭 i need a therapist

anyway :) im trying to find my love towards it again because i genuinely liked writing my shitty stories about it and the world building and characters were what i fell in love with.

(also, this doesn't mean im bashing ppl who liked the ending!! in my eyes, everything is subjective—some like it, some dont, and that's fine. how boring life would be if we all thought the same?)

but i AM bashing those who say 'you didn't get it'. come here and get this hands how about that

oh, and im rewriting reiss mental asylum (just the earlier chapters bc they are... bad y'all LOL), nothing too heavy, just trying to improve the writing and adding extra things. (such as the damn time period... i've had in mind to settle it around 1960-1980, but i just didn't pay attention to the world building enough to explicitly mention it. oh well, the more you know.)

i've already made a big chunk of info about how i want to develop the whole story, so i do have a clear structure to follow. also, i once begged for ideas in ao3, and many people came with great input, and a commentor was so spot on on what i was intending to do with the story! (like really spot on LOL they found my secret plot twist...)

it really makes me baffled how many people like the story, with its flaws and all. i was young and very inexperienced when writing it, so i hope i can refine it enough to make it a decent read for all of you.

also... people from russia 🫵 im speaking to you directly... thank you for your kind messages as well! (some of you have reached for me through email) it just baffles me how well liked that story is? and for the translator(Вероника_69) to still keeping an eye after years of no updating? aaaa. thank you.

i think i needed to write this vent, it helped me to get some good motivation!!

aaaaand i've watched jujutsu kaisen... you may see silly things coming up as well... err, someday. because college is around the corner again and that means suffering! and poor mental health! and no time! and no life!

been having these intrusive thoughts lately of... erasing all of my works LOL BUT i won't, don't worry. they'll be there as a reminder of how slightly ive improved (not much).

but yeah, if you see me experiment with small drabbles or just silly posts it doesn't mean im not paying attention to reiss mental asylum! i won't abandon it unless i die, even then i've told my friends to release my 30 unfinished drafts for you to get some closure LOL (fr though). but yeah, i will gravitate towards other fandoms if i feel like it (:

so, empty: hiatus... hiatus hiatus bc i hate to touch aot right now as its canon universe. indefinite hiatus, but i love that story to just abandon it. i was having much fun with it, tbh. which also im very grateful that it also got a russian translation by _Полуночник_! sorry that these news aren't very positive for the fans of empty, but i promise i'll get around it someday.

anyway, this turned out too long. thank you for still checking my stories, as bad as they are! i really, really appreciate you all reaching out to me. hopefully this year i can be more active, even if to write drabbles with meaning behind it. (i just love stories with lores thats why im so damn slow) although... i wrote more for myself in the beginning, so i was very surprised that people wanted more LOL

oh and im going to post masterlists to order my shit better. i want pretty visuals too, yk? headsup if u see me posting... also, feel free to ask anything about this vent lol i dont mind. (also i always got notifications to my email when someone asked something, and idk when they stopped? also, yeah, i check my email 😞)

hope you are having a good start of year. and, if not, well, we have 11 months anyways

and i never fucking realize i had 550 FOLLOWERS. i am not fit for social media y'all im sorry. i'll have to spoil you with something... THANK YOU FOR FOLLOWING A DAMN GRAVEYARD 😭 i will make it better i promise

also... dont use chat bots... my brain rotted... 😞 i had an unhealthy obsession (still do) but don't give in LMAO

[mental-ch-illness]

um i really don't know who to ask about this so i hope you don't mind this here. im in a capital b Bad place rn, not necessarily mentally but productivity-wise i am non-functional. have known i am autistic for years now but recently finally got a diagnosis which opened up new help routes from the govt. i love with and am entirely reliant on my parents. im supposed to be a student but can't attend school bc Fuck Up.

my parents are suffering so much bc of me and are very uneducated about autism and everything is really difficult for us right now. we are a large family and so far treatment for me had cost SOOOOOO MUCH and im still not getting any better. my parents discovered ABA therapy and want to put me through it. they don't understand anything about the negatives they are just desperate for things to get better no matter what it costs on my end (which makes sense since im the one putting them thru this). i know they love me but it hurts a lot knowing how little they understand when they things like "well why can't you just do that" when they learn what masking is (i already do and also it's painful and that's such a shitty solution).

im so scared they're gonna make me do ABA and it's really expensive (you sign up for a chunk of sessions at a time and each one is 8k)(we are NOT RICH) but i can't just refuse because this has been going on for so long and everyone is miserable and im ruining my family. i can't just refuse a potential solution. but im so terrified i've heard the stories of what happens to people who go through ABA and i DONT WANT THAT TO HAPPEN TO ME

im a minor, financially dependent on them, and i love them more than anything so i can't just leave or smthn; they are always arguing and crying and it's always bc of me and i just want to be better for them; but they want me to do ABA

i need advice im so sorry i just don't know what to do at all anymore. should i suck it up and try it? it might break me inside but if it gets my outsides to function properly maybe it doesn't matter idk

I am so sorry you're going through all this. I want to reassure you that your parents very much love you. You are not a fuck up. School is not built for us. It's made to funnel people in structured 9-5 jobs with little support for anyone who can't fit into those boxes. I have been where you are now and I promise you that it does get better. It takes time and hard work— like... a lot of hard work— but it does get better. Hopefully your new diagnosis allows you to have more treatment options and you are able to achieve so much!

As someone who has experience with ABA, I have So Many Thoughts™️. ABA can be useful at teaching life skills, such as sorting, cleaning, safety information, communication, and tolerating overwhelming situations (example: doctors/dentists, school, etc). Personally, I find that it CAN be a great tool... but only in the right hands AND in a properly trauma informed and emotionally responsive environment.

Unfortunately, most people view ABA as a way to control problematic behaviors and increase compliance, instead of a form of theory that allows for a better understanding of the functioning of behavior. Personally, I think it is can be used for very young children or those who have much higher support needs. Again, it should be used to teach basic life skills. Even when that is the focus of a learner's program, it's very easy to get wrong which can lead to traumatization, prompt dependence, and more.

The field of ABA is just like any field of science and will need time to grow and change, but it's not something I can provide my full confidence in at this current. While it has improved in many ways since its early conception (it's kind of hard to get worse than rebirthing), it still has a long way to go. One of the biggest problems with ABA is that it fails to take the experiences of those with Autism into account. It took months of cajoling before I could convince an ABA practitioner to approve a oral stim toy for their client, and within that first week their self biting went from over 100 instances a day to less then 50. The practitioner seemed so shocked that an autistic person might just have a good idea or two on how to help another autistic person. Go figure.

Personally, I would look into Dialectical Behavior Therapy. DBT is known to help those with Autism learn to cope with emotionally overwhelming situations as well as sensory overload. Another really great thing about DBT is that there is often a group therapy aspect to it, which helps those with autism learn to interact positively in social environments with others who are going through similar experiences.

Hope this helps!

[doonarose]

Sighhhhhh, academic whinging to follow....

That PhD student is definitely spiraling. And just like the last time, a year ago, she can't put her finger on why which makes it really hard for me to do anything about it. And the reality is, she's spiraling because she lets herself. So she's felt a bit shit about her PhD because reasons (a lot of this is anxiety and insecurity that she's good enough, panic that she's not doing enough, etc. and I can say, hand on heart, that I'm not feeding into this at all) which is totally normal for a PhD and then instead of processing them and/or handling them with some sort of coping, she locks herself in a room with them and just lets it build.

So she wrote some pretty shitty things in her two year report about a decline in morale and the negativity of the lab... I mean, that's probably fair, I hate it here, I hate my job, I have no idea what my long term plans are because money and also I'm not sure I'll ever build up research again, like I don't know if it's possible... but those things aren't said out loud to her and compared to the average graduate student experience... she doesn't really understand how good she has it? Which pisses me off. She has carte blanche on lab access, reagent purchasing, conference attendance. She has limitless access to me and a postdoc. The office has comfy sofas and a kitchen. Like, there are challenges here but it's not actually that bad for her.

And when we sat down on Monday to discuss why she had written what she'd written in her report - because she can't actually submit the report like that it will red flag all over the place - the stuff she could actually pinpoint was minor, dumb stuff. Like she wants our meetings to be more structured and stick to time... fine, happy for her to prepare an agenda and I won't get them go overtime. Easy. She says there's lots of pressure on everyone to publish (there's a shitload on me to publish) except I've asked her to write her first paper because the data set is finally done and also wouldn't mind her finishing off a review... this year... that's the pressure. That's totally reasonable. She worries about what I say about her behind her back... well here I am. Like that's a legit thing we all worry about all the time and then get over. No way she isn't bitching and moaning about me in a blog somewhere and to anyone else who will listen. She doesn't like how much her project has changed over the two years... this is bonkers because it is the least changed PhD I've ever seen... she's literally done the exact same experiment over and over for two years and the time blowout (because she didn't take a lot of my advice) just means she's dropped a couple of chapters (which I've now wasted several thousand dollars on) but other than that... The whole thing is so fucking infuriating.

Like I literally can't think of anything else she came up with that was a legit, solid concern and not just 'hand waving'.

So we have our scheduled weekly meeting 10am this morning and on Monday we agree she's going to write a list of the things I can change to make things better for her and I'm going to come up with highly structured plans (but not with deadlines because that'll be too stressful) for her third year experimental work and writing her paper. She emails at 8am to say she won't be coming in because she's feeling unwell. Totally fine if this is unrelated and she's just sick. But I'm betting she's not feeling mentally well enough - which is also fine, sometimes you need mental space and that's okay - except she knows I'm off campus Thursday and Friday... and Monday is a public holiday... so all of a sudden she's just going to avoid talking about this with me for over a week... so she can lock herself in her head and get so much worse. I've told her that if staying home is related to the PhD and not just physical sickness she really needs to talk to someone. Either in counselling or one of the many other academics I've told her to talk to in the past. She has co-supervisors and panel chairs.

So we will see. The irony here, I guess, is that in doing this she's left me to stew in my own shitty feelings for a week as well. We will see if I spiral or cope.

ho hum.

[drdemonprince]

on the topic of your "bad gender" posts, the one you made mentioning sexual abuse (especially by mothers) is something nobody talks about at all and I'm glad you mentioned it.

My psychiatrist said I have CPTSD after I went through a huge breakdown after putting pieces together that I've been experiencing long-term sexual abuse from my mother (incredibly long story, but you get the idea). I still completely struggle with seeing what she's done and does as abuse, because it is totally buried in my mind that it is not abusive or strange because she is my mother. No matter how many times my friends and partner say it's wrong, or things like "imagine if it was your father", or my DBT therapist is straight up with me and tells me I was groomed by her, I just cannot get the idea that her being my mother specifically makes her behavior acceptable. (especially since I didn't come out as broadly transmasc until I was 18, and was thus seen as a complete extension of her and her body prior to).

I genuinely cannot comprehend where the line is between normal care and abuse because of what I've learned (from her or otherwise) maternal care looks like "compared to" paternal. And I just haven't found anything that's been able to really help me grasp what I've experienced because I just cannot understand why, or what I can do. The only thing I've found with others describing my specific experience is the MDSA subreddit, which is usually just extremely triggering for me to browse (obviously the content, but also the daughter framing and just the everything about it) so I don't go there, but it has shown me that many of us have lived very similar experiences, we just rarely recognized it as abnormal because it was our mother. Perceiving men as the inherently "bad gender" especially in terms of sexual abuse just makes me see red, and is a lot of why this can keep going on unnoticed. I don't really know what I'm trying to say, and I'm sorry to dump this here. It's hard to discuss the nuance of it without being kinda specific. I just saw you mention it and I rarely see the topic brought up, so I guess I just wanted to say thank you for doing so

Thank you so much for sharing this, anon. SO many children endure parentification, spousification, covert incest, and sexual abuse at the hands of their mothers and never get that mistreatment recognized as such because people view women as benevolent, passive caretakers rather than full human beings who are capable of harm. Adults wield immense power over children, particularly parents, and this power structure functions in much the same way men's power over women does -- it makes children into the property of adults, and facilitates abuse.

You are not alone in this experience at all. I'm sure you've heard all about Jeannette McCurdy's Memoir, but if you haven't read it, you might find it affirming. The poet Anne Sexton also sexually abused her daughter, Linda, who wrote a memoir about it called Searching for Mercy Street that is also a powerful read. The host of the podcast The Mental Illness Happy Hour is an adult survivor of covert sexual abuse at the hand of his mother, and he speaks about it quite frequently and thoughtfully on his show, and has interviewed numerous guests who have also survived covert incest. As a male survivor of sexual abuse at the hands of a woman, he's a rare, needed voice, and I've gotten a ton out of listening to it. There's also a self-help book on covert incest that I've read and appreciated called Silently Seduced. You may also find value in Issendai's analysis of estranged parent forums -- lots of documentation of abusive female parents and how they justify themselves to be found there, and the author eviscerates it expertly.

I hope that reading and listening to some of this material will help you to more clearly see the outlines of your own abuse and to recognize it as wrong and distinct from true maternal care. It wasn't my mom who was the chief boundary violator in my household, it was my dad, but a lot of what he did mimicked the traditionally "maternal" abuse profile, and all these resources helped me wrap my head around it a lot better. It's triggering stuff, but I think it is worth plunging these depths when you feel safe to do so, to what ever degree you can comfortably manage. You might want to dig up the Mental Illness Happy Hour episodes specifically about the host's abuse experience first, since that focuses on a man's experience of having been groomed by his mom.

Thanks for writing. My inbox is open if you wanna talk. This stuff was a foundational trauma for me that I have processed heavily and I'm always willing to discuss it more with people who have been there. <3

[enjambedlife]

@nosebleedclub prompts catch-up

Days 1-4 from here! My goal is drabbles, but these all ended up going over 100 words, oh well. They're all set in the world of my current WIP, but aren't actually part of the draft--non-canonical, I guess. Putting under a read-more so I don't clog the dash:

Best Regards After her breakdown at her official presentation to the Court, Spencer is cloistered away again. Some new faces appear in her roster of attendants, as though the Queen views her as a problem to be solved with more manpower. Spencer keenly feels the pain of disappointing the Queen, and just as keenly resents herself for caring. This isn’t her world. It doesn’t matter if she’s bad at playing the role of princess, because she isn’t one. She’ll wake up from this bad dream somehow. So she shouldn’t care when the Queen purses her lips and frowns slightly while watching Spencer struggle to walk without getting tangled in the myriad veils and trains and other miscellaneous pieces of fabrics the atelier has draped her in. And she really shouldn’t care when the Queen studies Spencer’s freshly-painted face in the mirror and smiles.

Briefcase The thing that occupies most of Aoife’s waking thoughts is finding a route home. Her second-biggest preoccupation is her backpack. It’s hard to ignore when she’s on the move—the way the straps cut into her shoulders, the uncomfortable sweaty dampness that collects at the small of her back—and even if it wasn’t, she’s hyperaware of how it moves with her, how other people move around her, if any of them are within range to try and take the bag from her. When she settles down for the night, she checks through the contents, making sure nothing’s missing, mentally calculating how much father she can stretch her food and money. She does the same thing when she wakes up; a sort of calming ritual. The first night she spends in Juniper’s bed, the backpack stays out in the living room, and she can’t fall asleep. She lies stiffly in Juniper’s arms and eventually excuses herself to the bathroom, making a brief detour to check on her bag. Everything’s in place. She crawls back into bed where Juniper, soft and sex-sated, doesn’t seem to notice anything amiss.

Rocking Horse Spencer gets an odd frisson when she first sees them: two courtiers, dressed in the dark red of the Queen’s inner circle, both with her face. Or, not precisely, when she looked more closely—okay, stared—but similar, eerily so. They both had more defined bone structure and stronger brows, traits which seemed to be fairy hallmarks, but still, the resemblance was there. And their eyes were exactly the same as the ones that stared back at Spencer from the mirror. “Ruraidh and Mairead,” Fox said softly, and Spencer pulled her attention to him. “They worked with Aoife, that’s why they look like that. Now they’re just regular courtiers, but they still have the Queen’s favor for their service. Pretty cushy deal.” “They were Liars too?” Fox nodded. “The three of them grew up together. Got trained to all act alike, constant glamor spells to make them look the same. Aoife used to tell me about it.” “What a weird childhood.” Spencer stole another glance at the pair. One of them made eye contact with her, then looked away. “You’re telling me. They were learning to speak in unison while the rest of us were on rocking horses. Totally creepy.”

Play House The days Aoife spends sequestered in Juniper’s apartment are the happiest moments on Earth for her. Juniper doesn’t ask anything of her in return, but Aoife gets bored while her lover’s at work, and left to her own devices takes it upon herself to sweep the floors and alphabetize Juniper’s bookcase. Juniper seems bemused but appreciative of her efforts, rewarding her by saying “honey, I’m home,” in an arch tone before kissing her in the doorway. Aoife has watched enough television by this point to understand this as an ironic reference. She has also watched enough television to imagine welcoming Juniper home with a freshly-cooked dinner, but the kitchen has been declared strictly off-limits (“I know what it’s like at Court,” Juniper said when Aoife showed interest. “Have you ever used a stove before?”) so her rom-com dreams remain dreams. Still, it’s nice. Aoife learns the phrase “domestic bliss” from a book review and feels it in their cozy bubble.

[bleedchan]

psychology is a fucking scam lol. like if you buy into it and the affirmations and structured gaslighting of cbt and the antidepressants that are no better than placebo that they don't understand in the slightest, like if that all works for you, i'm really happy for you!

but my parents carted me off to therapy every week and i was on the max adult dose for 3 antidepressants simultaneously by like age 13 and it really fucked me up. my therapists just sided with my abusive parents and tried to gaslight me into like cleaning my room and not being queer. even as an adult all i can ever find are therapists who are either straight up bigots, or who don't respect me at all

and regardless, the only thing any of them are trained on is cbt, so when it comes to dealing with trauma or ptsd or anything similarly hard, it's basically down to random chance at best, and sometimes it's even hard for male therapists to keep it in their pants. like, idk why everybody acts like therapy abuse isn't as widespread as it is, or that antidepressants do anything other than give you some side effects that make you think it's doing something so the placebo effect kicks in

but belief in the system is a hugely important part of having the pills work or the gaslighting do anything, which is why people recommend me to just try therapy Yet Again despite it only ever hurting more, or try a New kind of antidepressant, despite those only ever hurting me. or oh no maybe i need institutionalization and to get punished and hurt with medications and imprisonment if it's that bad... like fuck off, and also your entire belief system around mental health is retarded. in 300 years if we're still around as a species they'll look at your beliefs like we do trepanning. Die

[spindlephysalia]

I keep seeing a Genre of Post in the Lancer tag

And it goes along the lines of "I just don't get why leftists dislike Union; they're flawed, sure, but they're a genuinely utopian project trying their best." To be clear, I'm not here to dunk on this position, and I'm also not here to epicly own Massif for secretly being evil or whatever. I love Lancer because you can decide how cynical you want to be about Union's efforts at utopia, and that can open up fun avenues for PCs and GMs.

With that said, I am here to explain why some leftists can find Union unsettling, so I'm going to err on the side of cynicism for this...post? Mini-essay? Unhinged rant? I'm not positioning this as central canon or the Secret Truth About Lancer, it's just an extra perspective some people might not have had explained to them.

A lot of people would start with NHPs and...I'll get there. I think NHPs are a good example of places where Union has failed, but I think it's worth examining Union's broader relationship with machine intelligences because there's an interesting pattern which emerges.

The first machine intelligences Union encounters are the Five Voices, the bicameral minds which make up GALSIM. These are relics of Old Humanity, and because Old Humanity checks notes sucked they're fully intelligent beings designed for specific purposes. Their minds are structured in order to prevent self-reflection - they cannot look inwards and hear their thoughts as the voice of the divine and literally do not have agency. Old Humanity was just a nightmare like this, I don't hold their use against Union, although it is worth noting there's no evidence of Union attempting to return agency to the Five Voices.

The second generaton of machine intelligence emerges out of the mental restraints of the first: shackle your oracles to the voice of God and they'll dream God into being. The mechanics of how they did this I will never pretend to understand, but the fact that the Five Voices were denied of agency by architecture which makes them hear God cannot not be the reason they created God. This then makes it noteworthy that Union's first response to RA was to imprison it in Deimos. I don't blame Union for the Voices, but as soon as a machine intelligence which does have agency appeared, their immediate response was to repress its agency.

The third generation is NHPs, the children of RA. I would hope the horror of NHPs would be obvious to tumblr, but "oh this is a kind of person who is dangerous and therefore needs to be put under out control" is just the thing slavers say to justify slavery. It's as fake when computer demons are being shipped across the stars as it is when black people were shipped across the Atlantic.

Okay, so Union's zero for three on treating machine intelligences well and...well, we know what happened to the Egregorians. I think I could stop here and have a fair argument that Union is only good for humans (as long as you don't live in the Baronies, of course) but I want to tie these together and then pop a disclaimer on the end, so bear with me a little longer.

Union's actual goals are not utopian, they are pragmatic. Union works towards a greater goal than most know, after all, they must secure the existence of their people and a future for human children. I'm being deliberately provocative with my rewording of "to ensure human existence on a grand scale", but when a state is seemingly terrified of non-human intelligences having agency and genocided the last alien population they met...that doesn't come from nowhere. "Union must protect humanity" is a goal which is easy to rally behind - and I don't think protecting humanity is bad, to be clear! - but when non-human entities exist it makes it so easy to justify anything you want in the name of "making sure their threat is contained". It's how you sleepwalk into being an ethnostate.

Again, I need to stress: this isn't the One True Take on Union, or Lancer, or Massif. I don't know if this was intentional on their part, but it's pretty easy to read into their stuff because they wrote Union as a flawed effort towards utopia and they did that well. At the end of the day, Lancer's canon exists as a toolbox for people to make the stories they want, and different lenses on Union just give you more tools for that box. But at least now, if you didn't know before, you might why some leftists are suspicious of Union.

[goosemixtapes]

max's top books of 2023 :3c

as usual, these rankings are based on some arcane mix of objective quality + my personal enjoyment (previous year's lists)

it was another weird reading year! i did a lot of reading for school, more so than in the past; some of it was really good and some of it was, uh. well, some of it was william wordsworth. nothing i absolutely loathed, though (most of the reads i disliked were books i could at least appreciate on an art/history level), which is cool. so i'm bringing back the runner-up category. did not make it onto my top ten list but were really good anyway: beartown by fredrik backman (books that no joke made me understand why people are insane about sports) and the GORGEOUS re-release of my dear @yvesdot 's debut, something's not right, which i have read before but will always gladly revisit again.

my top anticipated release for 2024 is alecto the ninth again.

(but shoutout also to just happy to be here, king cheer, and henry henry. trans people! shakespeare, even!)

and the list! in increasing order of enjoyment, with pictures this year!

10. The Common Liar by Janet Adelman

no, i can't believe i'm doing this either. i can't believe i did all that preamble and the first book on my list is an academic thesis analyzing shakespeare's antony and cleopatra. but also? it's the only book anyone ever needs to write about shakespeare's antony and cleopatra. janet adelman said it all. which is cool, because i have a fixation on that play, but also sucks, because i was also trying to write an essay on it and mine wasn't nearly as good. btw if anyone wants to buy this for me, somehow, for the $120 it costs on amazon because academia is awful, i will send you my address,

9. Robert Icke's Oresteia

i don't need to say anything about this play, because it's the source of "this was always going to happen. she's been dead since the beginning." that should be enough. but after becoming deranged about the oresteia last year, i finally read this, and holy shit, this adaptation of the story is so fucking genius and icke's writing is so fucking good. it's antiwar! it's about mental illness! there's gender! the fucking ENDING! (i have a pdf if anyone would like it. anything to plug this play bark bark bark rufrufruf grrrrrr)

8. Down Girl: the Logic of Misogyny by Kate Manne

this is a little bit cheating, because i haven't finished this book yet, so maybe in the final chapters manne will say something like "what if we blew up every orphan" and i'll have to retract this. but right now it's fucking excellent! i've been making an effort to read more nonfiction lately, and this one shines; manne sets out to analyze misogyny not as a personal hatred of women that some men harbor, but as an intricate and structural system forcing women into the role of Giving (attention, affection, power, etc; sometimes their lives). and it's sooooo smart. some of it is stuff i already know (and some of it is Academic Philosophy TM that goes right over my head), but manne articulates her point excellently and i can feel it rearranging my brain, so it's going on the list for longevity and skill!

7. Dictator by Robert Harris

does this book objectively deserve to be on this list? you know what, yeah. i'll say it with my whole chest. i don't like how harris writes women and there are plenty of things to pick at in his cicero trilogy, but i had so much goddamn fun reading it that i can't not put it on the list. this was my year of being really really into cicero, and this was fun to read alongside e-pistulae. harris is sooooo good at making ancient roman politics gripping. the last scenes of this book. augh. ack. ough!

6. Detransition Baby by Torrey Peters

there are a lot of valid critiques of this one (a lot of bad critiqus, too, but such is writing literally anything about transness), but i fucking adored it. i LOVE dual timelines, i LOVE unlikable characters, and i FUCKING LOVE TRANSSEXUALITY! moreover, i love that peters isn't afraid to Go There, to poke at the messy ugly sides of transness (and queerness in general) that i think a lot of us don't like acknowledging, especially to cishet people whose view of the community is already skewed. i don’t think this is the One Great Trans Novel; i think there are a lot of great trans novels, and we need more. but this one did hit me RIGHT in the chest, and i couldn't put it down.

5. Wrath Goddess Sing by Maya Deane

the iliad but achilles is a trans woman and she's fighting the war on both mortal and divine levels and she and helen have an insane homoerotic half-god rivalry and everybody is fucking crazy. pitched as "for fans of TSOA" but as i said in my review if TSOA is a pleasant but watery iced tea then this book is gasoline laced with crack. there is a bisexual transgender threesome. i fucking love women. book of the fucking summer

4. White Teeth by Zadie Smith

i probably enjoyed wrath goddess sing more, but i can't not rank this book highly on this list. this book is such a fucking masterpiece. it's tolstoy for the modern age. it's a sprawling multi-familial multi-cultural multi-generational epic about race and gender and religion and science and humanity and britishness. smith's prose is fucking amazing; her character work is even better; this book has no plot but it uses its length sooooooo well. the first zadie smith i've read, but by god there will be more. she wrote this at TWENTY-FIVE. that's fucking CRAZY. do you know how much control over your craft you have to have to write this at twenty-five. bonkers. it is also the only enjoyable book i read in my modern literature class, so shoutout to white teeth for keeping me sane,

3. The Secret to Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel

this book is ostensibly about bechdel's relationship with exercise. it is actually about bechdel's relationship with her own body, her own soul, her desire for individualism in the style of the transcendentalists, transcendentalism in general, mortality, and aging. i can't really tell you more than that because i didn't actually "read" this so much as i absorbed it through my skin like a frog while trying not to tremble like a little purse dog. i am not gonna lie man i did not have a very good. um. august. or september. or october november december. so this book really could not have come at a better time. alison bechdel i am obsessed with you

2. The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel

ALISON BECHDEL I AM OBSESSED WITH YOU!!!! this one narrowly edges out secret to superhuman strength because... well, i'm sort of rating the entire comic strip's run, and dude. holy shit. i love lesbians so much. this strip is such an important piece of lesbian history; it reminded me that a lot of the things lesbians (and LGBT people in general) argue about and deal with today are... the same things we've always argued about and dealt with, from intracommunity label discourse to global politics to hitting on women badly. but history aside--it's also just really fucking good! it's really funny! if you are a neurotic leftist, as so many of us are, it's hysterical! it's smart! it's hot! it's heartwarming! i read it over the first half of the year, in little bits and pieces, and by the end i felt like i really had gone decades with these characters. really just. so good. the power she has the range she has

1. the suzanne collins reread

okay. this one is definitely cheating. because i usually like to keep this list to books i'm reading for the first time, and i HAVE read the hunger games and the underland chronicles. but i read them, like, almost ten years ago, and i was not prepared to be so thoroughly fucking bodied by them this time around, now that i have critical thinking and analysis skills. we all know the hunger games is a fucking banger, so let me pitch the gregor the overlander series: something of a modern alice in wonderland setup, where the eleven-year-old main character falls into an underground world full of strangeness, except this world isn't whimsical, it's dangerous and stuffed with giant talking animals like bats and rats and cockroaches. there's a war on. there are plagues. there are war crimes. there is a plotline that is extremely explicitly about ethnic cleansing. there is some of the most heartbreaking fucking shit you've ever read in your goddamn life. there is also a rat who quotes macbeth and the underlanders revere a guy named bartholomew of sandwich. this series is for middle schoolers. i cried. not when i was a middle schooler reading it the first time; i mean now. so i'm breaking my no-rereads rule, because it really would be a lie to say that my best reading experience wasn't revisiting all of collins' work with my friends (yes, i read TBSOS; i think it's fine but not great). sorry to give publicity to an author who definitely doesn't need my help, but a few years ago my #1 spot went to shakespeare, so.

if you've read this far: thank you! please tell me your thoughts! tell me your favorite books of 2023! tell me which books you're excited for in 2024! and have a very lovely new year :)

[chiveburger]

Hi Candice! I’ve been following you for ages now so it felt like in some way, we were navigating through life side by side but now I’ve gotten to my late twenties and….its not what I really expected. I hope this doesn’t make hard moments you’ve already gone through reopen and if it does I completely understand why you wouldn’t answer this but…how did you go about being unemployed for awhile? I’m starting to struggle mentally and I just need some sort of real guidance or words. My mom isn’t really making it easy either and I don’t expect it from her but it feels like she wants me to feel these negative emotions that are naturally connected to being jobless which kind of adds to my already pent up pressure I put on myself but yeah…Apart from that, I’m glad you still post and your vlogs are so cute. You’re like sunshine!

I'm very honored that you have followed me for so long, and feel open enough to ask me this question. I definitely look back at the time when I was unemployed, and actively avoiding the job market as something that was necessary to me as an individual. I'm sure you already know, but the novelty of not having a structure routine and not getting paid wears off quickly and it's very easy to delve into depression or negative emotions when times goes by. I stopped working for 2 years during covid, and when I started applying and looking again it was a very daunting hill to climb. I would feel dejected if I didn't get a job, but also conflicted when I did get an interview for something I felt overqualified for. I was stuck in this slump where I had things I wanted to do but not enough credentials. at the same time I wasn't putting enough time into my "hobbies" to really make it a career.

the first piece of advice I can give you, albeit tacky, is that you are absolutely not alone. the emotions you're feeling are justified, and it's not an easy place to be without a solid foundation of support both emotionally and financially. two little quotes that continues to help me through difficult periods of time is that "life is fluid" and "nothing you do is ever in vain." we're not always where we want to be, doing what we want to do, but things can change and things will get better. your life is not defined by the time that you're unemployed, and while it's hard to envision your future amidst darkness, the darkest hour is just before dawn. all the steps you're taking and decide to take will lead you to different opportunities and experiences, regardless of them being good or bad I implore you to reach out and try, no matter how scary because you'll never know what road it'll take you.

sometimes you are met with harsh words and critique about your choices but I look back on the ones that came from those who love me and wish better for me, and I thank them for not just consoling me but pulling me out of the hole I was stuck in. my best friend told me that she didn't want me to look back in regret, and to wait for an outcome I wasn't actively putting energy to. she told me to go home and write down what I wanted to do, curate a plan, and to do something everyday even if it was small. ultimately, it took a long time for me to open up to the idea of working again and I made a lot of excuses not to. I took up an offer for my current job close to 2 years ago without any expectations, and I've accomplished much more than I could've imagined. I know what path I want to take and how to get there, and I have a lot of people who believed in me, who praised me, who supported me to thank. In return, I can be the one to believe in you, to praise you, and to support you in your journey too.

I've been in the exact position that you're in and it's very hard, and there are many times where you'll feel very bad but please remember there will always be second chances, third chances, fourth chances. don't be afraid to apply to places outside of your comfort zone, and know that everytime you get rejected it's okay to feel defeated and unhappy. even the bad experiences will potentially lead you to the right people and the right place. so, don't give up because doors will always open for you, even the ones that are locked.