#7-ish would be more accurate for 7:20 than ‘around 7’ | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

random-thought-depository · 1 year

Text

Next part of my Blindsight old vampire language post! Here's the first part!

Note: this would be the variant of old vampire that would be spoken by my vampire characters in my Blindsight elsewhere fic, so mostly Anatolia/Syria around 8,000 BCE. The old vampire of other places and eras might not have shared all these traits; "old vampire" was a collection of something like 15,000 unique familects (at any one time) of varying degrees of mutual intelligibility, and it lasted hundreds of thousands of years, maybe more than a million; it wasn't one language any more than "human" is one language!

Figure obtained by assuming a global vampire population of 100,000 (there really weren't many of them!) and an average group size of 7; I think that's probably lowballing the total population and highballing the average group size, but within the ballpark of the "real" number.

Memory, past, and future in old vampire:

“He never uses the past tense,” I murmered.

“Huh? Oh, that.” Pag nodded. “They never experience the past tense. It’s just another thread to them. They don’t remember stuff, they relive it.”

“What, like a post-traumatic flashback?”

“Not so traumatic.” He grimaced. “Not for them, at least.” - Blindsight.

So, I bet old vampire had really weird ways of talking about time, memory, imagination, past, and future!

I think ancient vampire language and culture might have conceived of memory and imagination in a sort of many-worlds-ish way, like they would talk about past times and possible future worlds as if they’re physical places that you physically travel to when you think about them.

An ancient vampire sentence that might be translated as “I think you’d have a roughly 20% possibility of winning that fight,” might be more faithfully translated as “[Speaker’s name] wanders the futureward dream paths in which [listener’s name] battles [name of enemy], and in approximately one in five of the potential worlds [speaker’s name] visits, [listener’s name] is victorious.”

An ancient vampire name that might be roughly translated as Strategist might more accurately be translated as “far-ranging scout of the futureward dream paths.”

An ancient vampire that recently lost a long-term companion and was admitting to a common ancient vampire grief behavior might say something best translated as “[Speaker’s name] wanders the pastward dream paths, seeking past worlds where [dead person] lives, to spend time in [dead person]’s company.”

Personal identity in old vampire:

Something I kind of wish appeared in Blindsight and Echopraxia is vampires habitually talking about everyone, including themselves, in the third person. I think this would make about as much sense as the perpetual present tense, and it would be very on the nose for Blindsight's central ideas! I think it would be very appropriate as a signature vampire linguistic quirk, like the perpetual present tense!

So, since I get to do what I want with old vampire, I'd give it this feature! Old vampire doesn't really have a first or second person! In old vampire, you don't say "I'd like you to drive me to the store," you say "Julie wants Rachel to drive Julie to the store." There's no "I" in old vampire! The closest words to "I" and "you" in old vampire would be placeholder terms for "the person speaking" and "the intended recipient(s) of these words" and a word that would best translate as "y'all" (it would be used to indicate a group in situations where a more specific descriptor would be awkward), but they would not exactly be the same thing as human identity words. In old vampire, the closest equivalent to "I" has connotations of anonymity; it's the way you might identify yourself to a stranger you don't know and will never meet again! It has resonances of hostility or at least wariness or suspicion; an indifferent vampire would probably just use their own name initially accompanied by a sound or gesture that signifies "this is the name of the person speaking," the deliberate decision to withhold your name implies wanting to conceal information about yourself from a potential enemy. In old vampire, the conversational norm is to just use people's names where English uses "I" or "you," with situation-specific descriptors usually used if names are unavailable, e.g. a vampire that didn't know your name might call you something like "Blue Shirt," instead of "you," ("generic person speaking" and "generic intended recipient of these words" are best understood as just another of these possible situation-specific descriptors).

This is a very much like a common linguistic quirk of human children IIRC ("Julie wants ice cream!"), so it may be associated with vampire linguistic capacity being in a sense fundamentally less developed. But it's also in a sense more efficient and even more considerate than how English does things. "I want you to drive me to the store" requires a mental rotation on the part of the intended listener, "Julie wants Rachel to drive her to the store" does not. It's the English version of that sentence that's literally self-centered!

I also favor the idea that old vampire doesn't have gendered pronouns (or at least didn't use them for vampires - it might have gendered pronouns as loan words from a human language and use them for humans), and doesn't draw a pronoun distinction between people and non-people, so "it/its" is probably the best translation of the standard old vampire pronouns. I think habitual use of it pronouns would also be very on-brand for a vampire linguistic trait!

Personal relationships and emotions in old vampire:

Ancient vampires thought of sleep and waking consciousness as kindred states, and old vampire used the same word for both (thus their words for memory and imagination roughly translating as "dreampaths"). They didn't think in terms of the human awake/asleep dichotomy. Experiencing many gradations of wakefulness, they thought in terms of a spectrum with deep dreamless sleep at one end and vivid dreams, hunting, intensive socialization, etc. at the other end. The old vampire word for humans might translate something like "Dreamers," and connote “fully awake a lot” but also “lost in their own heads a lot, tending to pay more attention to imaginary constructs than to the real things in front of their faces.” I think the old vampire word for vampires might translate something like "Kindred"; relatives, but not necessarily near ones.

Old vampire had a very rich vocabulary for talking about physical objects and actions and game theory, but an impoverished vocabulary for talking about emotions. Old vampire had a strong tendency to describe emotions in terms of the physical sensations associated with them; as I said, the ancient vampire word we might translate as "sad" might be a long compound word that more literally translates as “experiencing mild chest pain, mild nausea, mild muscle ache/tenderness, depressed energy/activity, depressed appetite, mild stinging/burning sensation in eyes.” I don't think vampires are alexithymic (situational awareness is very important for them, and that would include awareness of their own internal states and motivations), but I think an alexithymic human might find it therapeutic to think in old vampire for a while!

Maybe the most off-putting aspect of old vampire would be its vocabulary for talking about personal relationships; translated into English, it would mostly sound very cold and, well, sociopathic. The old vampire word closest to "friend" would be more literally and accurately translated as "ally." There was an old vampire word that kinda-sorta meant "close friend," but it would more literally and accurately translate as "very trusted and valued ally." The old vampire word for an old vampire social unit might roughly equally well translate as "alliance" or "family" or "family-nation." Old vampire had a word for killing, but no word for murder; murder implies an unlawful or unjust killing, and law and justice are human concepts that basically didn't exist in the old vampire mental universe (the vampire words closest to "law" would more accurately and literally translate as "cooperatively enforced game theory equilibrium" and "the enforced will of whichever person or coalition happens to have the most power in this situation"). If you wanted to say "I love you" in old vampire, the easiest way to do it would be to use statements that roughly translated as "I might take risks for your sake that would be irrational according to a purely selfish cost/benefit calculation" and "I might allow harm to come to me to benefit you"; a vampire could not imagine a more profound declaration of love!

When Magpie first killed a human, Swift observed certain signs (trembling hands, breathing pattern changes, etc.) and correctly diagnosed that he was feeling guilt. To express this concept to him, she had to use a loan word from a human language. Old vampire had a word that meant something a little like "guilt," but it referred specifically to feeling bad about betraying a member of your own social unit. It would have been almost incoherent to use it to talk about feeling bad about harming a human (or, for that matter, a vampire who wasn't part of Swift's and Magpie's own seven person family-nation). Insofar as ancient vampires had any notion of something even a little like morality, it was like tribal/mafia morality taken to its ultimate logical conclusion: the family was everything, entities outside it weren't moral patients, and it was laudatory and often even mandatory to harm outsiders if it would somehow benefit the family. Old vampire would reflect this perspective too.

I think old vampire's way of talking about relationships might sound warmer with actual old vampire vocabulary? Even when ancient vampires felt real affection for another person, they usually expressed it in this sort of game theory language. I think they might have seen game theory language and affection as much less discordant than a human would. I think even much of human social emotion is an "adaptation executor, not goal maximizer" execution of game theoretic strategies, e.g. friends are usually people who feel safe around each other, trust each other, and have a mutually beneficial relationship. A vampire ability noted in Blindsight is being able to see both sides of a Necker cube simultaneously, as opposed to the "now I see it one way, now another" way a human processes such images. I like the idea of something similar applying here; vampires don't experience game theoretic thinking as pushing them away from affection; when they feel genuine affection for someone, they usually experience game theoretic considerations as part of the affection! The ways old vampire talks about relationships and emotions would reflect this too!

Old vampire assumptions about the universe:

My ideas for the old vampire worldview, which old vampire would reflect:

They didn't really have much of a religion. Being a lot less social than humans, they were much less wired to process the world in terms of human-shaped intentionality. To vampires, it is intuitive to believe that the world is an amoral accident, and old vampires had basically that worldview. They did not expect any kind of afterlife. Relatedly, they didn't have an idea of a soul separate from the body; they took it as more or less obvious that the body is the person and thinking and feeling are like heartbeat and breathing. The old vampire word for death might mean something like "the cessation of movement."

The closest thing ancient vampires had to religion was a belief in "sickness spirits" that caused disease. This belief system was basically about as close as you'd get to germ theory if you had to figure it all out from deduction, without microscopes. They conceived of these "sickness spirits" as like an invisible, intangible version of the tapeworms and other macroscopic parasites they were familiar with. They had a complicated theory of how different sickness spirits entered victims and how to treat them, which corresponded pretty well to how the diseases were actually transmitted and how to treat them. An ancient vampire would take one look at the symptoms and spread pattern of COVID19 and HIV and diagnose, respectively, a sickness spirit of the air spread through sneezing and coughing and a sickness spirit of the interior fluids spread mostly through sex (if they encountered something like HIV in the vampire's original ecological context, make that "spread among humans mostly through sex and spread to vampires through eating humans and among vampires through sex and cannibalism"). I think old vampire often would talk about medical treatment in terms that roughly translate to "killing/exorcizing the sickness spirit," but if you look at the actual procedure it's, like, putting an extract from a plant or mold with antibiotic properties onto the infected dog bites or something like that.

Ancient vampires had very long historical memories. The vampires in my fic (set around 8,000 BCE) will remember the vampire happy time before dog domestication (at least 20K years earlier) in the same way you and I remember the Roaring 20s or the Napoleonic Wars.

The vampire umwelt:

I was going to write a whole thing here, but I think instead it might be more efficient to suggest taking a look at this and this. I think they might be quite suggestive for imagining linguistic features of old vampire!

Vampires see, hear, smell, and feel more than we do and are very aware of what they're seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, and feeling, and I think that would show up in old vampire a lot! It'd have words for a color we can't see and sounds we can't hear and so on. Probably wouldn't have much of a vocabulary for talking about beauty though. Might have a pretty decent vocabulary for talking about tasty food though!

I think vampires might be able to use their superior hearing to detect changes in breathing, heart rate, and (on a longer time scale) digestive system activity and use that to read people's emotions. So old vampire would talk about emotion in ways that reflect that.

Old vampire oral literature:

Vampires have superhuman memory, but even HSAM people don't have perfect memories, so I think vampires would still find mnemonic aids useful. I think old vampire might have had a writing system! But given their technology (Stone Age) and lifestyle (small group sizes, high mobility, huge hunting territories), writing would be an awkward medium for cultural memory for them, so cultural memory was probably mostly transmitted orally. A common mnemonic aid of non-literate cultures is rhyme; this was the original purpose of poetry. Music and singing can be an accompanying mnemonic device, giving a rhythm and making the poetry more dramatic and thus more memorable. So I think old vampire would have had something like poetry and song! It might not have the same kind of content as human poetry ... but I think at least some of it probably would be history! History would be useful for enabling the present generation of vampires to learn from situations that happened before their own lifetime, and for modelling for them a large repertoire of behaviors that worked for their ancestors.

Which gets into the final thing I wanted to talk about: did old vampire have written or oral literature that humans might enjoy, relate to, and/or be moved by, and if so, what might it look like and how representative of their wider body of cultural lore would it be? Check back tomorrow (probably) for that post! You might get some descriptions of an old vampire folktale or three and a sample of "translated" old vampire boundary tree writing, and we might also have some fun looking at the difficulties of translating a phrase like "I'm a transbian" into old vampire!

#Blindsight #project Blampire fanfic #linguistics #conlangs

9 notes · View notes

just-a-honey-badger · 1 year

Text

I posted 417 times in 2022

That's 417 more posts than 2021!

102 posts created (24%)

315 posts reblogged (76%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@an-ungraceful-swan

@frayro-called-frey

@fromthemouthofkings

@shipsgaysfordays

@bitch-is-ace

I tagged 245 of my posts in 2022

Only 41% of my posts had no tags

#bel rants about random shit - 60 posts

#ask bel - 25 posts

#bel gays homosexually - 24 posts

#bel rants about hp - 19 posts

#bel rants about marauders - 19 posts

#bel procrastinates - 18 posts

#asks - 15 posts

#marauders era - 14 posts

#important - 13 posts

#bel writes - 13 posts

Longest Tag: 124 characters

#like 'i don't want to be a woman but i don't want to be not a woman' and assumed i was just. a woman who kinda had to settle

My Top Posts in 2022:

✨the queue✨: a guide

the queue is great! it's helpful if you want to post regularly or if you have lots of posts you want to reblog but don't want to do all at once.

you can queue posts by either a) clicking the reblog button > clicking the arrow next to it once it opens the page where you can add comments > selecting 'add to queue'; or

b) going into settings > clicking on the part that says 'labs' (where tumblr has new features they're working on) > turning on 'fast queue' (this adds a new icon next to the 'reply' and 'reblog' icons where you basically reblog a post but 'add to queue' is the default).

and why would i want to post regularly, you ask? well, the more you post (and the more diverse posts you have), the more likely it is for your posts to reach more people. accurate tags help with this, too. it also helps if you need to post at a consistent schedule for whatever reason, but can't always log on at the same time every day.

if you want to queue your posts at more random times, go into labs and turn on 'queue 2.0'. this enables a more detailed way to schedule your queued posts. i had to play around with it before i found something i liked, and i suggest you do too.

that's it

17 notes - Posted November 30, 2022

15 questions 15 tags

ty @shipsgaysfordays for the tag <33

Nickname: tortilla (from @fruutcake)

Height: fucking short lmao under 5 ft even though i'm fully grown

Last thing I googled: 'chapbook publishers' bc i'm trying to figure out if that's something i want to do

Song stuck in my head currently: line without a hook (she's a, she's a lady, and i am just a boy) <3

Number of followers: with the excessive amounts of porn bots? 47

Amount of sleep: ah. um it's inconsistent but on average 9-ish hours?

Dream job: university professor, author, maybe architect? or artist, i want that gay literature major kinda vibe. probably gonna be a ux researcher or sum tho

Wearing: pjs

Movie/book that summarizes me: anne with an e <3

Favorite song currently: r u mine? by arctic monkeys or dandelions by ruth b

Aesthetic: solarpunk/goblincore/light academia

Favorite authors: rick riordan? i don't read enough

Random fact: when a pig gets a cold or cough they shoot their intestines out of their anus and the farmer has to stuff it back in

no pressure y'all: @fruutcake @bitch-is-ace @frey-the-they @4remus @presidentroarie @too-many-fandoms-to-explore @an-ungraceful-swan @whooshsoohw @kara-night-light @that-bitch-kat3 @ihopeyoubothstaysafefromharm @fromthemouthofkings @adharastarlight @linh-song @xanadaus

(ik i don't interact with half of u sorry i wanted to hit 15)

20 notes - Posted December 18, 2022

writing a new marauders fic where all the marauders in the afterlife react to harry's daily life (not his war stuff but like his cringe everyday stuff)

21 notes - Posted November 8, 2022

new tag game!

featuring: questions i never really see

1. a time period you feel you'd do well in: the 1970s

2. a mythical animal you wish you could be: a dragon

3. your favourite time of day: sunset

4. the main character that's the most like you: anne shirley-cuthbert

5. your favourite flower: sunflowers

6. a universe you would love to be in: the potterverse (without the terf part)

7. the aesthetic you wish you had: downtown girl/skater girl

8. a character you would love to be: beth harmon

9. a character you would be best friends with: anne shirley-cuthbert

10. your favourite outfit to wear: my band outfit; aka a dress shirt and wide-leg linen pants

tags: @fruutcake @shipsgaysfordays @bitch-is-ace @an-ungraceful-swan @too-many-fandoms-to-explore @frayro-called-frey @fromthemouthofkings @4remus @presidentroarie @kara-night-light and anyone who wants to do it!

25 notes - Posted December 24, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

okay, but what if peter didn't exist and regulus was in his place and james and remus took sirius and regulus's last name and the marauders were all the blacks and they went to see walburga and were like 'hey mom!' and walburga fucking flips

173 notes - Posted September 23, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review #redoing this because last time i did it was november

4 notes · View notes

meimae · 3 years

Text

Language Learning Through Immersion: One Year Japanese Update

11/03/2021

I did it, you guys! I’ve successfully reached my very first year of Japanese language immersion! I honestly thought that I would have given up by now, but this really has been a fun and ultimately rewarding endeavor.

Studying the language has been at the back of my mind for years since elementary school, I just never really knew how to go about it before, and I always thought that I could learn it in a classroom setting someday. That someday for me was in two elective courses in university, and while those were fun as well, it did not give me the same gains that I have achieved in this past year.

It’s probably easier to quantify learning a language in a classroom setting, especially when going through a program to earn a language degree. Learning through immersion, however, I had to really consider what my goals should be on my own. Eventually, I stumbled upon an article saying that for an English speaker, Japanese was exceptionally difficult to learn and that at least 2,200 hours must be spent with the language to reach a certain level of proficiency. So I said to myself, “well okay internet, if you say so!”, and set that as my long term goal going forward.

Spoiler Alert: I did not hit that goal in my first year. I am not crazy and will never listen to Japanese in my sleep regardless of what Khatzumoto (the creator of All Japanese All the Time) says.

I did, however, hit a total 1,226.65 active immersion hours in my first year, so I guess I’m still a bit nuts. That is 874.96 hours of active listening and 351.69 reading hours. I also did 270.59 hours of passive listening, also known as the time in the very beginning of my immersion where I was using Japanese subtitles (therefore not really concentrating on listening alone). That’s a cumulative 1,497.24 hours spent with Japanese. That’s more than halfway towards my goal!

To further break that down for curious animanga fans out there, that’s 973 episodes from 109 anime, 765 episodes from 33 dramas, 7 movies, and 967 chapters from 107 volumes of manga (21 series). Here’s my anilist and mydramalist to see what I’ve read/watched.

During all this, I was also doing my daily Anki reps and now I have a 530 day SRS streak (includes the time prior starting immersion and only doing RTK and some vocabulary cards) and a total 8,857 sentence cards. I’ve been averaging 406 cards daily (because I’m trying to cure my leeches) and I spend about an hour per day doing reps and learning new cards. I don’t really track my time on Anki, but I do have a set timer that goes off after 1-1:30 hours.

What I haven’t touched upon at all is output. I have not gone out of my way to find a tutor or a language partner. There’s still plenty of input out there to immerse in before I even consider outputting.

Graphs, stats, and more thoughts:

Here's my current card count in my main deck (minus the cards in my new/learning queue and leeches I've been relearning which are in separate decks):

That one day in 2019 where I did not do my cards because I was seriously doubting whether I can actually stick with language learning this time around will forever haunt and inspire me to keep going everyday.

Workflow and Tips

You might be wondering, how do I have a lot of time? I started this whole endeavor in the middle of a pandemic, which eliminated the option of me going to a language school, and a slew of other things I were considering doing last year became impossible (and if anything, very scary to do in a pandemic). All I can say is that, things work out eventually if it is His will, and if I can learn a skill before everything properly settles back down again, then why not?

I wake up at 5 in the morning everyday to either do my Anki reps or read until the time when I need to get up and I listen to compressed audio throughout the day. The biggest tip is to switch the time you spend watching/reading in your native language to your target language instead. Listen to a podcast during your commute, watch an episode during lunch break, read before going to bed, do your Anki reps in the bathroom if you have to.

But, if you’re feeling burnt out, there is no reason for you to not take a break! I have been watching a lot of Among Us streams before bed, and I chat with my friends from time to time. Language learning is not a race.

More Stats

Here are a couple of grids of the kanji characters that I have encountered at least once in my immersion and how well I have answered them in my vocabulary/sentence cards.

It's interesting that after almost 9000 words, I have yet to encounter every single character from the Remembering the Kanji 1 (RTK 1) book by James Heisig, which teaches you the most common use characters that are part of the 常用漢字. Which brings me to the question, was writing down every single character being taught in RTK worth it every time it came up in my reviews for the first 3-ish months I was reviewing them? Maybe, maybe not. It certainly removed my anxiety whenever looking at blocks of text in Japanese, but the longer I think about it, the more I feel I should have switched to Recognition RTK earlier. Still, being able to write in proper stroke order is cool I guess, and it also helps me when looking things up in the dictionary.

Here’s the same grid but in JLPT order:

I clearly need to grind those N2 and N1 level cards! Speaking of which, I have apparently almost covered every single character that could possibly appear in the JLPT (except for the N1 which I have only covered half of) in just a year's time. If the JLPT word frequency lists I’m using are accurate, I have about 2,000 words more to go to to cover most vocabulary that could appear in the test. This makes the "10,000 sentences/words to fluency" argument a reasonable milestone to aim for for Japanese learners if said aim is only to pass the test. That said, 10,000 words is just that, a milestone. It's more akin to a comfortable level of comprehension, but not my own concept of fluency which is being able to read with ease, speak articulately, and write comfortably.

READING IMMERSION GRAPHS

My biggest motivation for tracking my stats is for the purpose of seeing whether my reading speed is improving over time. Reading speed is also easier to measure than listening comprehension which is kind of subjective, so I had a lot of fun making these. What I found is that for the first volume or chapter of whatever it is I’m reading, I always take the time to get used to the writing style of the author. My speed really improves whenever I keep reading the same topic over and over again. On the other hand and quite obviously, looking up many new words in a row and trying to parse sentences slows me down.

Manga: Reading Speed Progression per Volume

I clearly love ちはやふる and I am not ashamed to admit it.

I need to start reading longer manga. When I do, I’ll probably split this graph into less than and greater than 20 volumes. Imagine if I start reading something ridiculously long as 名探偵コナン or ワンピース, these graphs will start breaching the bounds of time and space.

Novels: Time Spent Reading per Chapter

#neverforget the time I read chapter six of Norwegian Wood for 9 hours when it took me less than half that time in English RIP. Also, my interest in Kitchen plummeted LOL. Still planning to finish it don’t worry.

I also need to start branching away from manga and start reading more novels and light novels, too just so I can make more pretty graphs.

Visual Novels: Time Spent Reading and Daily Word Count

Also known as images that clearly show that I’ve already spent several days only reading the prologue of Island. I’m not sweating. 切那 needs to stop using words I don’t know in succession. More thoughts on this VN far into the future.

Thoughts on Immersion

I can’t really say anything else other that that it works for me, and needless to say if you’re considering this method, remember that the SRS is your friend but immersion should be your one true love.

Prior to all this, I couldn’t even read a sample paragraph from Genki without being confused to my very soul. Yes, I know, it’s embarrassing, but that’s the truth. I was way more scared of failing my Japanese classes than my actual thesis for my bachelors degree, I kid you not. I would quite literally spend all my free time in university trying to understand grammar, memorize vocabulary, and answer my workbook exercises with little to no success.

I tried so hard to get all the grammar “formulas” into my head for 1.5 years and it only brought me more confusion. I’m never going back to traditional classroom study for language learning, but I will still refer to grammar books when I need to, and not because I feel like I need to answer 4783342 different workbook exercises like my life depended on it.

I still can’t believe it, but with immersion this statement is actually true to a point, don’t try shadowing anime/or calling your boss anime language slurs, use your common sense:

study anime to understand Japanese > study Japanese to understand anime

Future Goals/Plans

2,200 immersion hours was my initial goal, but honestly I feel like that number could be much higher. There’s still a lot of stuff I don’t understand (news, politics, sciences, etc.), so I’ll make attempts to cover more of those things in my immersion.

I’ll continue reading more, because that’s a natural SRS in itself. Try to read longer manga, more novels, visual novels, and light novels, and maybe news articles.

I’ll try to mine as much “JLPT vocab” as I can before making any attempts at taking the JLPT. I noticed that a lot of the words I know don’t appear in the JLPT word lists as much, even though they appear a lot in media/daily conversation.

Continue mining all words I don’t know because all words are useful anyway. There is no such thing as useless words. I never really understood mining only “interesting words” or words that “pop up” in your immersion. As I said in my previous blog post, 美人局 is an interesting word and I certainly caught it being said in my immersion, but in the three languages I know, I wouldn’t know when I would be able to use such a word, as compared to something like ジャガイモ which is a significantly less interesting word, but is certainly useful to know.

I have managed to talk up a storm, but if you have any questions regarding my process or recommendations for new immersion material, please feel free to send an ask/reply to this post. I love hearing about other people’s language learning/immersion journeys.

See you on my next post!

#language learning #japanese language #language acquisition #study blog #langblr #studyblr #graphs #language immersion #japanese #visual novels #manga #novels #anime #dramas #movies #youtube #podcasts

125 notes · View notes

cicadabooks · 3 years

Text

Nitpicking on time passage in Psychonauts 2

Can someone explain how much time passed between events and people’s general age in the in-universe game? It’s throwing me off.

Ok so first the Psychic 7 were getting together and doing brain stuff, then some years pass, then Lucretia goes back to her homeland, then at some point she’s Maligula (after more years pass?), then Maligula is taken down and skip 20 years to present events. Or did I miss anything.

It looks like Raz’s father Augustus is... Going backwards in time, still a short little kid as depicted in the quilt level, when Lucy and him meet as “parent and child”. Let’s say 10-15yrs. Dion is... older than Raz, age unsure, I feel like I read 14yrs somewhere but wriggle room is fine. Ok, so let’s say August is 15yrs, and 6 years later at 21yrs, he has met Donatella and the two have baby Augustus. Kind of early to me but moving on. 14 years later, Augustus is 35 yrs old and has 10 yr old Raz and 14 yr old Dion? I guess?

More persnicky details, esp about Lucy. So she’s kind of the oldest looking member of the psychic 7 tbh. I mean, granted, she could have aged a lot, which would be fair. But that slight quiver and apparent forgetfulness, and delicate looking rendered old person’s skin (nice detail!).... I kind of vibe idk 70′s or 80′s? (I’m not very good at people’s age). So 20 yrs earlier, in her 50′s, she was reigning terror as Maligula? (Which ngl is kind of cool, narratively.)

(I’m being completely subjective in this part.) Although the game narrative mentions her being a young woman when she went back to Grulovia. IDK what “young woman” could be, but let’s be broad and call that uhhhh 20-35? 40? Although I kind of want to age her up when she met Ford and was doing Psychonauts stuff. (18-20 yrs old is baby to me, for that. Edit: belatedly, I forgot she lost a husband before meeting the early Psychonauts. So mid 20′s, 30′s or older in my mind.) Also, again, she seems like she might have been one of the older ones in the group, at least at the end when she appears with everyone else. Ok let’s say she went back to Grulovia at.... idk 30-35yrs. 15-20 ish yrs of Maligula work? Her Maligula career, if you will?

Look, otherwise there are some giant time leaps between “Young country woman” to “Nona the very old, quivering, forgetful adorable grandmother that is clearly same or older age as grey haired Ford” and 20 yrs is not enough for that. So I’m going to put some buffer time when she was in Grulovia, and also I’m headcannoning her as actually one of the older Psychic 7 members. Although Maybe Otto seems older tbh.

I can’t tell how old Ford is at any point, but tbh the “I was writing love letters!” era + his dark hair could be 25-50 and I’d believe it. The constraint of the dapper dark hair style of his stamp image (and other impressions from time vault images) would put him more in the middle of that age range? Otherwise, love letters are eternal and all ages imo.

Also Ford looked like he might have aged dramatically after the astrolathe (in the memory vault images), so again, ages are kind of out the window in this game. Maybe Lucy is actually like 50 or 60 in the game in current era, just really aged. Who knows.

Honestly Bob looks the most accurate vibes of “oh yeah he was idk 30′s or older and happily married with Helmut but worried about Lucy; cue Maligula fight around then; and then 20 yrs later he’s a bit of scraggly mess at 50′s or older with grey in his hair. He’ll clean up with a haircut.” Like the timeline flows fine with that character.

Also, what year is it in the psychonauts universe. Who knows. I read somewhere “hippie 1960′s + 20 yrs = 1980′s” but again there’s that buffer of Maligula years, and also the technology and time line of the universe is “?”. The computers do look a little retro. Apparently no one has cellphones. (Edit: except... Hollis’s phone?) Who knows.

#psychonauts 2 #psychonauts #ages #years #time passing #spoilers #ford #lucy #lucretia #maligula #bob #helmut #augustus #raz #dion #rambling

10 notes · View notes

jess-rewatches-prodigalson · 3 years

Text

Sun and Fun (S2, E12)

I can’t believe FOX has cancelled this absolute masterpiece of a show. I’m devastated. I’d like to think we’ll get picked up by another network for season 3 but I’m a pessimist and I don’t want to get my hopes up. I’ll be hanging around the fandom either way though.

My time-stamped thoughts for this episode are below. As always I reference Malcolm’s mental health. A lot. So if that’s going to be a trigger for you, don’t keep reading.

SPOILERS AHEAD:

0:20 - Malcolm losing it in Martin’s cell? *chef’s kiss*. 1) excellent performance by Tom. 2) This is the Malcolm mental health content I subscribed for. This is Malcolm feeling overwhelmed, helpless, worthless, and frustrated all at the same time. This. Is. Wonderful. And. Realistic. This is what overwhelming anxiety (especially if you have an anxiety disorder) can feel like. It builds and builds until all of a sudden you’re consumed with all this nervous energy and frustration and it all turns to rage in an instant. But you’re not angry at other people. You don’t want to hurt anyone. That rage is just self hatred because you hate that you feel this broken and your stupid brain won’t function normally.

0:33 - annnnd then when the excess nervous energy is spent but that feeling of self-hatred, despair, and fear still remains - you’re physically exhausted and 7/10. times you cry. Again, crying because of how stupid you feel for your little rage outburst, for how stupid you feel for feeling this terrible all the time. Malcolm is depicting a severe anxiety episode perfectly (in my experience) and THIS is why FOX is moronic for cancelling the show. The gorgeous and accurate depictions of mental health in Prodigal Son is unprecedented, truthful, and heartbreaking. It’s like nothing else on television.

0:50 - This kind of hurts. Look at how cautiously Dani enters the room. Almost as if Malcolm is a wild animal she doesn’t want to scare. It makes sense given the state of the room she just entered and how completely openly and uncharacteristically vulnerable Malcolm is. I will say this though, despite how cautious she is, it’s obvious that she cares about Malcolm more than whatever happened before she walked into the room.

1:03 - “So all eyes are on his head case son right?” This line is a direct quote from Malcolm’s anxiety disorder and depression. This is how you feel about yourself when in the middle of an anxiety episode when you’re also depressed. BUT OUR GIRL DANI!!! <3 This girl looks confused and concerned to hear Malcolm diss himself like that. The fact that she tries to comfort him when he’s in this state, makes her an absolutely A++ friend.

1:11 - “No one cares about that.” “I CARE. I can’t live like this.” This scene resonates with me so so so much. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been 100% aware of how irrational my anxieties are and simultaneously 100% unable to do a damn thing about it because I’m too scared of who I’d be without the fear. Because I’ve defined myself by my anxieties for so long that it’s become the only definable element of my personality visible to me. I’m getting that vibe from Malcolm. I’m sure that’s exactly how he’s feeling right now.

1:30 - “That’s not what scares you. What scares you is living the rest of your life without your father in it.” Dani knows and I felt personally called out. THIS EMOTIONAL WHUMP IS GIVING ME LIFE. <3

1:39 - Look at our floppy haired, devastated boy. :( <3 I’m genuinely shook that he didn’t have a full mental breakdown this episode (but it’s coming....it’s inevitable at this point :) ). ALSO the look of absolute love and concern Dani is shooting towards Malcolm? Absolutely perfect. <3

1:51 - I genuinely find it so interesting that Malcolm keeps referring to “The Surgeon” as “Martin”. If you read my thoughts on 2x11 you know I think it’s because Malcolm has separated ‘Martin Whitly’ into three separate people in his head. “The Surgeon” = the serial killer who traumatized him and ruined his childhood. “Dad/Father” = the man who loved and cared for baby!Malcolm. But “Martin” = unknown. Malcolm doesn’t know who Martin is yet and it scares him.

1:58 - “For once in your life slow down and acknowledge what this is doing to you.” !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I love this line. So. So. SO. MUCH. <3 <3 This is the kind of comfort Malcolm needs. SOMEONE needs to tell him that he’s breaking, it’s not his fault, and he doesn’t deserve to suffer for Martin.

2:07 - annnnnnd Malcolm has gone full crazy-person string murder board. He’s right but he’s still acting like a manic crazy person. Like, a real one. Not his usual manic behaviour. This is straight up - this boy needs medication, a nap, therapy, and a doctor. Now.

2:34 - Ugh. This whole cop/Vivian scene made my skin crawl. So gross. So creepy. I hate Capshaw. So much. This woman is manipulative, evil, and so so creepy. The cop was also gross. But I 100% thought she was going to kill the cop because this felt like an opening scene to Criminal Minds.

4:38 - “THEY WERE HAVING SEX.” hhahahahahahaha holy shit. This is both hilarious and really upsetting (not just because Martin/Capshaw is NASTY). Malcolm is manically, yelling about his theories in a room full of people who love him. He sounds crazy. He’s acting crazy and Dani, JT, and Gil are just staring at him with a mixture of disbelief, concern, and sympathy. <3 It’s heartbreaking. Malcolm is an inch away from a mental breakdown. I’m here for it.

4:49 - “TMI bro.” <3

5:05 - Ugh. This breaks my heart. The team doesn’t think Malcolm is crazy. They just know he’s at the end of his rope. The looks they’re exchanging aren’t based in anger, contempt, or a lack of trust. They’re based in concern and I LOVE IT.

5:21 - LOOK AT OUR BABY. He’s breaking. He’s so close. :( Look at how desperate he is to find Martin.

5:35 - “That’s exactly what it means.” “Gil, please. You know how much I need this.” THIS HURTS. Gil isn’t angry here - he’s frustrated and scared for Malcolm. And Malcolm? This boy is toeing the line of a full breakdown in front of 3 of his favourite people - that’s out of character for him. Despite the shaking hand and general mania - Malcolm usually refrains from raising his voice in front of Dani and JT. He tries to stay calm-ish so he doesn’t get labelled as ‘violent’ like his serial killer father.

5:39 - “StOp. I am scared.” Dani knew exactly how to diffuse the situation. Malcolm can be manipulative and dysfunctional but he never wants to scare people (at least, not unless they’re suspects or obstructing justice).

5:46 - “I’m not ordering you this time. I’m begging you.” Papa!Gil’s seen Malcolm like this before. SO WHY IS NO ONE HUGGING MALCOLM?!?! The boy is clearly coming apart at the seams.

5:48 - Malcolm’s reaction to Gil sending him home is gorgeous. He looks sad, betrayed, and resigned. It’s as though he’s convinced himself that the team doesn’t trust him or care about him anymore. He doesn’t walk out angry. He walks out sad and determined. Head held high but eyes full of grief.

5:54 - I’d give anything to have heard the conversation between Dani, JT, and Gil after Malcolm left the room. ANYTHING.

6:02 - “He thinks I’m a liability.” No. Not exactly. He thinks Malcolm is in the throws of a mental health crisis and that he shouldn’t be responsible for catching his serial killer father. Again.

6:15 - “I support Gil’s decision. That does not mean I want your father dead.” #coparenting but also, true. I honestly don’t think Jessica wants Martin dead. I think she wants Ainsley and Malcolm to be happy and free from Martin but not dead. She knows that Malcolm might never recover from Martin’s death with all of his unanswered questions and suppressed childhood trauma. She also knows that Ainsley would always resent being prevented from bonding with her father. I think Jessica still loves Martin - well, the man she thought she married. Jessica doesn’t care for Martin Whitly. But she loves the man he pretended to be and even though she knows he wasn’t real - she doesn’t want him to die. I think she wants him to disappear (maybe get transferred to a prison in a different state?) but she doesn’t want him dead. That would make her no better than the serial killer (in Jessica’s mind anyways).

6:25 - “You have become consumed by this Malcolm.” Check out the side eyed look Ainsley gives Malcolm. She’s jealous. Her brother is on the verge of a mental breakdown but she’s jealous of the attention he’s getting from Jessica. I get it - Jessica hasn’t been the best mom to Ainsley. BUT GIRL, gain some perspective. Don’t you care about your brother?!?! That should trump the jealousy for a few minutes at least.

6:35 - “I love you.” <3 <3 <3 I’m going to cry. This might be my favourite Jessica+Malcolm moment to date. So precious.

6:43 - THIS. “I love you. Both of you. More than I hate him.” This is why Jessica doesn’t want Martin dead.....but she also doesn’t care if he lives. I know that sounds like a contradiction but it’s a real thing and if you’ve never felt that way about someone - I pray you never have to.

7:06 - “Then she’s a victim.” .....I disagree. Capshaw had a (weird and manipulative) consensual relationship with Martin. She has as much of an agenda as Martin (although, Jessica didn’t know that here). Capshaw isn’t a victim. She’s not being compliant with Martin as a form of self-preservation or fear. She’s doing it because she’s a manipulative crazy person who is in love with a convicted serial killer.

7:45 - I’ve never felt this unsettled while watching Prodigal Son. Capshaw showing her true colours is so so so disturbing. This woman is insane (with all the stigma). The dress. The martini (Jessica’s favourite drink?). The fact that she dressed Martin up in a suit. The music. The weirdly elegant wheelchair. The lovey way she’s talking. It all makes my skin crawl.

8:33 - OMG. What’s wrong with me? Why do I feel bad for Martin Whitly?!?!?!

9:55 - JESSICA AND MALCOLM doing a rich person ambush tag-team IS AMAZING. <3

9:57- How sad is this? 23 years and Jessica still can’t walk into a room without people whispering and judging her behind her back. :( This woman keeps her head held high - despite the pain she must be in - she’s a superhero. Change my mind.

10:30 - "Malcolm Whitly? You're.." I have this headcanon that the general public assumes Malcolm is dead. He changed his last name and fell off the grid. People treat Jessica like a social pariah so she wouldn't be able to tell them otherwise. And sure, Ainsley referred to Malcolm in the present tense during her Surgeon interview but how many people actually watched it actually paid attention to that little tidbit after Martin went full blown psychopath on camera? Plus, no one really cares about the Surgeon's son enough to look him up 23 years later. At least, no one who matters.

11:25 - Like mother, like son. You can't change my mind. They have the same manipulation style. It's justice based and determined. Ainsley and Martin's style? Vindictive and self-serving.

11:30 - Oh look. ANOTHER CONTINUITY ERROR. WHO PROOFREADS THESE SCRIPTS?!? I CAN’T KEEP OVERLOOKING THESE. For God’s sake. Send copies of the script to fans who sign NDAs or something. At least we know what happened in previous episodes.

12:33 - "Gross." I'm with Ainsley on this one.

12:45 - "My assistant." "Long suffering". hahahha omg. I love this for two reasons: 1) it's hilarious 2) it's true. Malcolm literally disposed of a body for Ainsley. He's her assistant and he's suffered for it.

13:05 - Yo. This dude is whack. Like this is some serious Stockholm's syndrome going on here. Vivian is his hero?!? .........I can't.

13:55 - Why do the gifts Vivian sends Zeiger look like human bones? Damn this is twisted. This is like some sort of twisted serial killer pseudo-trophy situation?

14:52 - "I don't think Vivian is the victim here. I think our father is." Yikes. This is not going to help Malcolm's mental stability. At all. He's been trying to fully accept that his father is a serial killing monster who was literally never capable of loving him for the past 23 years. BUT NOW our boy has taken the role of 'good son' (prodigal son is you will) and has returned to his 10 year old mentality "I love dad. Dad loves me." and 'dad' is in trouble. Malcolm is trying to save his serial killer father and the emotional and mental hoops he's jumping through are terrifying, complex, and hauntingly realistic. <3 It's gorgeous.

15:04 - "I'm not used to this type of confinement." I love this line because of how deeply it rings true. Martin isn't used to confinement. Sure, he's been chained to a wall for 23 years but he's been relatively happy about it. He's been able to manipulate Malcolm and the other inmates. He's been given TV time, phone time, consultations, books, music, free food, and a massive private cell (seriously that cell is as big as the bachelor's suite I rent for $900 CAD a month). The man has been living a life of luxury (given his crimes). His only 'punishment'? He's stuck inside his cell and he's not allowed to kill anymore. THIS is Martin truly suffering. I kind of feel bad for him (which I never thought I'd say).

15:20 - Damn. Michael Sheen is incredible. He's genuinely making me feel concerned and scared for Martin.

15:32 - Something tells me a man hurt Capshaw in some way throughout her life. This has to be deeper than the whole "I didn't fit into the 'boys club' of surgery". Her issues with men are aggressive and alarming. This woman is nuts. This woman is why I hesitate to call myself a feminist (I generally think we should drop the titles of feminist/misogynist/racist/homophobe... and just treat people with respect. I think the titles and groups just further divide people.)

15:50 - "You're finally free." Yep. Capshaw is a nutcase. She actually believes that she's committed a perfect crime.

16:09 - This place has virtually no furniture but I’m expected to believe someone is paying the phone bill?!?! Nah.

17:08 - That. Smile. This woman is a devil. Like, I think I hate her as much as I hate Umbridge. But unlike Umbridge, Capshaw is downright terrifying.

17:12 - Was anyone else kind of surprised that Martin called Jessica? I mean, I guess she was a safer choice than the cops but still...

17:20 - As creepy and this whole ‘Martin is a victim’ thing is - it’s kind of nice? Like - I just keep thinking “How does it feel Martin?!?! This is how you made your victims feel. Do you like it?” and then I realize I’m a terrible person.

17:55 - Ainsley’s in on this. I swear, she’s somehow involved with either Capshaw or Martin.

18:18 - Oh look. Martin is shackled to the bed. Just like Malcolm shackles himself to bed so he can sleep every night. .....I keep oscillating between being vindictive toward Martin and feeling bad for him. That’s what makes this show incredible. The ‘villain’ is human and 3 dimensional.

18:44 - Oh God. The psychopath is jealous. This woman is UNSTABLE. How has no one locked her up yet?!?

19:43 - She’s crying. She’s actually crying. Even the rewatch of this scene is painful. I just feel so uncomfortable (which was probably the intent) and I hate both characters. They’re both actively trying to manipulate each other and it’s so creepy. Damn.

20:15 - Holy. Shit. This woman is by far the scariest villain Prodigal Son has given us.

21:17 - ..............I have nothing to say. My brain has short circuited. I can’t get past how horrifying this scene is. She’s a maniac.

21:57 - No one will make eye contact with Malcolm. :( They all think he’s losing it but they’re not scared of him. They’re scared for him.

22:10 - “A trusted member of my team has a theory I run it down.” THANK YOU GIL. SUBTLY TELL MALCOLM THAT YOU TRUST HIM. That’s what he needed to hear. He was doubting that anyone cared. :(

22:45 - “Do you HeAr yourself?!?” Ouch. Gil’s right - Malcolm sounds nuts. Unfortunately, Malcolm’s also right (more or less). Look at how sad Malcolm is - he honestly looks like he’s on the verge of a panic attack. :( Malcolm thinks Gil doesn’t trust him anymore. Malcolm thinks Gil thinks he’s crazy. It’s heartbreaking. SOMEONE HUG THIS LITTLE CINNAMON ROLL.

22:54 - JT, buddy. Not the time. You’re making this worse. :( Malcolm is two breaths away from crying.

23:40 - “Dani, you up for this? Cause he sure isn’t.” Gil is losing it. Look at him. Gil is watching the boy he considers as his son unravel and Gil can’t do anything about it.

23:45 - “Either way, he’s going there. I’ll keep an eye on him.” I love Dani for this. Brightwell or not - the fact that she’s willing to chase smoke in an attempt to keep Malcolm from having a full mental breakdown makes her a hero.

23:48 - JT, hug Gil! He needs a hug!

24:16 - Martin is screaming while shackled to a bed.....where have I seen this before?

25:39 - “I did this for you because you needed it.”....”Dani, I respect you.” Excuse me while I go sob in the corner. Malcolm just uttered the words “I respect you.” and my heart exploded.

26:11 - “You don’t care. None of you care if my father lives or dies.” No, Malcolm, you’re wrong. They care. They all care so so much. Not about the life of the Martin Whitly though. They care about how Martin Whitly will continue to torment you if he’s caught alive. They care about how badly you’ll grieve if he ends up dying. They care about how this will affect YOU. because they love you.

26:22 - “You would be free.” SAY IT LOUDER DANI! He’d be in enormous pain for a while, but Malcolm would heal.

26:56 - “Let him go, Malcolm.” <3 <3 Malcolm is listening to Dani. He’s opening up about his fears. This is good (for Malcolm’s mental health). I am happy.

27:04 - WOW BABY! That kiss was......passionate? I mean, we all knew they were going to kiss (thanks previews) but I honestly didn’t expect a kiss this long or passionate? They’ve both been clearly denying their feelings for each other for a while though so I guess it makes sense?

27:20 - We all know Dani was going to talk about how they could make a relationship work for them and/or how she loves Malcolm but thinks he should focus on his mental health before they start dating. BUT MALCOLM? That boy thinks he just ruined his friendship with Dani and I’m heartbroken. Look at his sad little face. :(

28:31 - sooooo when exactly did Malcolm’s phone call drop? I feel like Ainsley had more access to the conversation that just what she shares with Dani in a couple of minutes.

29:08 - Look at this sad, scared little boy. He genuinely thinks that saving Martin will earn Martin’s love. I’m heartbroken.

29:22 - THIS. Malcolm is so desperate for Martin’s love that he essentially consented to being kidnapped, tortured, and potentially murdered. :( This is bad.

30:06 - Malcolm took unknown drugs from a crazy person. UGH. The stress of loving this unstable man-child is going to kill me. I’m so worried for him. ALSO WHO THE HELL CHEWS PILLS?!?! That’s disgusting.

30:24 - Dani thinks Malcolm is being a typical guy - terrified of relationships/talking about his feelings. She’s hurt. The Brightwell ship has encountered another storm.

30:35 - Anyone else get major flashbacks to 1x11 when Gil shows up to the townhouse to tell Jessica that Malcolm’s been kidnapped? You know, when he walks past all the reporters?!

30:50 - Ugh. :( Poor Jessica. That call from Capshaw gave her quite the emotional dilemma. As she said earlier, she loves her children more than she hates Martin. Soooo does she tell someone about the call, save Martin, and let Martin continue to torment her children? Or does she let Capshaw kill Martin, compromise her morals, let her children grieve for a while - but ultimately heal? It’s an impossible choice.

31:13 - “I know why you’re anxious Jess.” UGH. Get yourself a man you looks at you the way Gil look at Jessica. So much love. So much concern. If Gil wasn’t fictional and I wasn’t asexual (and 24) I would marry that man.

31:23 - “He has become convinced that his father is a victim in all of this.” Gil is so upset. He’s angry - at Martin for having this much power over Malcolm so many years later. He’s angry that Malcolm is still suffering so much because of his father. He’s upset because Martin is still hurting the people Gil loves 23 years after he was initially arrested.

31:33 - “There’s no good outcome here Jess.” Thank you. Gil is a man with awareness into Malcolm’s psyche. He knows this is going to hurt Malcolm no matter what happens. He’s scared and he’s bracing himself for impact. I love him. I want more people in the world who love people this deeply.

31:50 - “It’s okay to hope for that you know.” THANK YOU GIL. THANK YOU. Someone needed to tell Jessica that she’s not a monster for wanting the reason her children continue to suffer to disappear (even if tha means he dies). It’s not a malicious, evil thought toward Martin. It’s a hope for her children’s wellbeing.

32:04 - “And in my weaker moments, I want him dead too.” <3 I’m imagining Gil praying that Martin is killed by an inmate after he comforts a teenage Malcolm from a nightmare. I’m imagining Gil praying Riker’s finally kills Martin as he watched Malcolm spiral into Martin’s grasp again last year. I’m imagining Gil crying himself to sleep because he’s so damn tired of watching Jessica and Malcolm suffer because of Martin. I love him for it. <3

32:15 - “Maybe things could be different.” .....I’m sorry. Does this mean Gillica is off again?! The flirting and dancing from 2x9 meant nothing?!? It was a hoax?!? I’m furious.

32:35 - “It’s the actions that matter.” Damn. Gil is too good for the nonsense that is the Whitly family. Doesn’t he know that life isn’t always that simple?

32:46 - Annnnnd now Jessica will convince herself that she’s a bad person because she didn’t tell anyone about Capshaw’s call. She will also convince herself that she’s not good enought for Gil. AND I will cry myself to sleep.

32:55 - That hug <3 Sooooo Gillica is still on? I’m hella confused.

33:05 - There it is. Dani is still upset with Malcolm. The Brightwell ship is taking in water my dudes.

33:52 - Wow. He looks pretty in that makeshift hospital bed. Sleeves rolled up. Shirt half unbuttoned. Glazed, disoriented look about him as he wakes from a drugged sleep. <3 I’m in heaven.

34:30 - This is why Malcolm can never let Martin go. There are moments when Martin absolutely convinces Malcolm that he loves him.

34:50 - “Because he also happens to be my father.” THIS. IS. THE. MOST. REALISTIC. PORTRAYAL. OF. ABUSIVE. DADDY. ISSUES. Take from someone who lived through an abusive Dad. You hate him. You know he’s messed up. You don’t like or respect him. But a part of you will always love him. Even though you hate that part of yourself.

35:12 - “I want all of you.” .....I’m terrified. This woman is crazy. Crazier than the Surgeon. Is that possible?

36:05 - “You want him to love you. But he can’t.” Have you said that to yourself Malcolm? You know that logically but you don’t feel that in your heart. ....and the writers don’t know that because we’ve seen that Martin loves Malcolm? Sort of? Unless the writers are playing some sort of weird long con on us.

36:50 - This is whump content I signed up for. This crazy bitch just killed Malcolm. We saw the terror in his eyes. BUT HE LIVES. So. I’m. Here. For. It.

36:58 - Martin’s devotion to Malcolm is so so interesting to me. Martin is a psychopath - he’s not supposed to be capable of love. But he clearly loves Malcolm. How? Why? It makes no sense but I love it?

37:47 - Malcolm’s little wheeze when Vivian starts mitigating the embolism. <3 So cute.

37:53 - “I can do without the mansplaining.” I’m getting PTSD. There are too many real women who are this crazy about feminism and mansplaining (this is coming from a woman). Martin isn’t trying to ‘mansplain’ he’s scared and he’s trying to save his son. That’s not mansplaining. He’s not explaining something because he thinks Vivian doesn’t know it. He’s explaining something in a desperate attempt to remind her of the severity of the situation.

38:16 - HOW THE HELL did Ainsley and Dani know where Martin, Capshaw, and Malcolm were? Either 1) Ainsley is somehow working with Capshaw, or 2) they were able to trace Malcolm’s cell (assuming Capshaw didn’t trash it), or 3) Ainsley knew her mom was lying about that phone call and they had it traced?, or 4) this is a convenient plot thing.

38:34 - This bitch is devious and I hate her.

39:30 - Martin Whitly is the hero of the episode. What alternate reality are we living in?

41:15 - Malcolm struggling for breath. <3 The whumpers are being FED.

41:17 - “Run.” This is 23 years of guilt for turning his own father into the police surfacing.

41:31 - “Where’s my family?” I honestly don’t know how I feel about this line. It bothers me but I can’t figure out why.

41:43 - This ending sequence is a work of ART. Malcolm is in physical and emotional pain. Dani (without backup) trying to save Malcolm from Martin. The epic music. The shot of Dani seeing the blood-filled syringe next to the makeshift hospital bed+restraints. Martin Whitly. Driving. A. Boat. And. Laughing - completely elated - with Malcolm passed out (and looking adorable) in the aft seating. The fact that the ONLY house you can see on the shoreline is the house the just escaped from.

THIS EPISODE WAS EXCITING, STRESSFUL, AND WONDERFUL. I’m excited for the SEASON finale and I pray we get a season 3 from a network other than FOX.

34 notes · View notes

black-rose-writings · 3 years

Text

Some thoughts on Winx characters’ ages

From youngest to oldest, more or less

Characters discussed: Miele, Roxy, Daphne, The Earth Fairies, Faragonda, Griffin, Griselda and Valtor.

This is very long and I’m very sorry.

1) Miele (Flora’s sister)

She has been aged down in season 8, so I’m no counting that into her age.

She seems really young in season 3, mostly because she is so much shorter than the Winx in a lot of the shots (though her relative height compared to them seems to change a lot - sometimes she’s up to Flora’s waist and sometimes to her chest. Ugh, inconsistent art is the worst).

In seasons 6 and 7, she looks like she could be in her early teens, like 15 at most (and most of her classmates fit that age range, too).

She doesn’t have an official age, as far as I could find, but I’m headcanoning her as being 10(ish) in season 3 and 14(ish) in season 6.

Final headcanon age: 10 (season 3), 14 (season 6)

2) Roxy

Roxy does actually have a canon age, but I’m chosing to ignore it, because it doesn’t feel accurate.

Roxy is supposedly 15 in season 4, but the thing is, she doesn’t feel that much younger than the Winx, who are at least 19, 20 in Stella’s case, possibly even a bit older (the time skips between seasons aren’t exactly clear). Like, don’t get my wrong, she does feel younger than the Winx, but not by 4-5 years. I’d put her at like, 17(ish) in season 4.

One more reason I headcanon her to be older is simply because the younger she is, the more plotholes there are in the whole “The magic on Earth has been gone for a really long time” thing (especially if you could the later seasons and the Selina plot, but that’s a rant for another day). To sum it up, if Roxy was 15 in season 4, it would mean she was born when Bloom was 4 or 5, already on Earth and that Morgana would have been captured around the same time Eldora took Selina under her wing (aka, Bloom and Selina’s magical power were already noticable) and that’s assuming Roxy was just 1, when Morgana was captured. Which would raise the question why the Fairy Hunters, who have spent the last several centuries hunting down fairies, wouldn’t notice two other fairies living a few blocks away from Morgana.

Aging Roxy up makes the timeline make more sense as most of the plotholes created by season 6 are eliminated if Roxy is closer in age to the Winx.

Final headcanon age: 17 (season 4)

3) Daphne

Daphne, again, doesn’t have a canon age, and, in fact, her seeming age changes a bit here and there. Both her picture in the book of Fate (1st movie) and her voice in the (probably fake) memory in season 2 make her appear to be younger than in any of her other appearances, but since the first is from a movie (which have questionable canonicity, especially, when it comes to details), the other is most likely fake, and both of them are at odds with everything else we know about Daphne’s story, I’ll just ignore them.

The youngest I’d go for her is 18, at the time of her “death”, with the oldest I’d go being like 23.

Honestly, I’m very tempted to headcanon her as being 18 or 19, because, like, do you see the angst potential? I mean the whole Domino resurection is an untapped angst mine, but like, having Bloom be the exact same age as Daphne was, way back when? It just adds a bit of something, you know?

It would also be kind of fun to have Daphne be physically younger than Bloom, once she’s resurected, too. Bloom is 20(ish) when she brings Daphne back, possibly older (again, time skips aren’t really clear between the seasons).

I’d also like to add a friendly reminder that, regardless of her physical age, Daphne is around 40 chronologically, when she’s resurected.

Final headcanon age: 18 (at the time of death)

4) Faragonda, Griffin and the others

The others being mostly Griselda and Kalshara, since all of these characters are meant to be roughly the same age, give or take a year or so. And I guess Saladin and Kalshara’s brother, though those two aren’t really confirmed to be around the age of these four.

Faragonda has a “100 years of being a headmistress of Alfea” party around the start of season 6. Even if we say she had become a headmistress right out of school, she’d be at least 120 at that time, though she’s probably at least a decade older than that.

Since Griffin, Griselda and Kalshara have all been in school at the same time as her, it’s most likely they are about the same age as well.

This does give us a lot of insight on the lifespans of people in the Magical Dimension. Griselda looks middle-aged, despite being at least 120. Griffin barely looks human, so her age is hard to guess, but she doesn’t look terribly old either and neither does Faragonda, if you think about it. Kalshara and her brother have that wild magic thing going on, so I’m not really counting them in.

Also, the flashbacks on the old Company of Light show them looking really young, when they would be a least 100, when Domino fell. So, if we exclude continuity errors as an explanation (even though that is the real exaplanation), we’re left with either:

A) 100-year-olds in the magical dimension just look like they’re still in their twenties

B) They’re all vain bitches that make themselves look younger using magic.

C) The Company of Light goes a lot further back than we thought.

Or any combination of those three, really.

And, again, this calls into question how long do people in the magical dimension live? I’m thinking at least the same as wizards in Harry Potter universe (who live to be like 140 on average, apparently).

FInal headcanon age: 130 at least

5) The Earth fairies and the Wizards of the Black Circle

All of the names Earth fairies from season 4 (with the exception of Roxy) have been around since at least the medieval times, as have been the Wizards of the Black Circle.

So, we can assume all of these character are at least like 600 years old.

But

Morgana is strongly associated with Morgana le Fay (literally: Morgana the Fairy) from Arthurian legends in the show - assuming that this isn’t just a reference, but she actually inspired Morgana le Fay in the Winx universe, she’d have to be over 1100 years old at least (since the first recorded version of the legends comes from the 9th century), most likely closer to 1500 years of age (since the legends are set in the late 6th century). That is on the low end, so she might be even older.

As for the other major fairies

Diana has quite strong paralels with the roman goddess of the same name. She is incredibly powerful, so it is quite possible, that she was seen as a goddess by the ancient humans and became the inspiration for that particular goddess. That would make her go at least as far back ar 6th century BCE, if not further. Her temple isn’t much help, since pyramid-like things have been some fo first permanent things humans built and are being built to this day.

Aurora does have some links with the roman goddess of the same name, but those are pretty weak, so I’ll not dive into them much.

As for Sibylla, well, Sibylla’s cave and the Sibyllini mountains are things IRL, named after the Sibyl prophetesses (who are heavily linked to the oracle of Delphi, which you probably know of). Earliest record of those is in 5th century BCE.

To sum up, the Earth fairies are old as sin, and probably don’t actually age.

Which probably means Roxy is also going to be ageless. Now that would be an interesting thing to look into.

6) Valtor

Valtor has a canon “at least this old” limit, if you count season 8 info.

That is, he is at least 1000 years old. We know he wasn’t born, but made, so he might have theoretically been just a few weeks old, when he tried to catch the wishing star last time.

We know the spark that Valtor came from was “lost” around the same time as creation (I’m just now processing that creationism is canon in the Winx universe. Great). The Ancestral Witches were supposedly first evil creatures to exist in the Magical Universe, so they probably came in shortly after. And then they created Valtor, at some point.

So, Valtor could literally be almost as old as the Magical universe, however long that is.

Final headcanon age: Who knows, certainly not me, and since 1000 years is the lowest possible age, I don’t actually want to know.

#winx #winx miele #winx daphne #winx roxy #winx earth fairies #winx valtor #winx faragonda #winx griffin #winx griselda #winx kalshara #winx morgana #winx diana #winx aurora #winx sibylla #long post #sorry about that

34 notes · View notes

byamylaurens · 3 years

Text

On Structuring Plot: A List Of Useful Resources + My Recent Process

I was asked on Instagram last week how I go about structuring my stories, whether there’s a set way I like to do it, or if it’s different for every story, or what. I promised an answer last week, and that didn’t happen, but hey! It is this week and now I can answer! 😀

The truth of the matter is, I feel very self-conscious about plot structure. It’s the area of writing I’m least comfortable with, and so my attempts either end up with me just writing and ignoring structure entirely (A Fox Of Storms And Starlight), or else plotting everything else in meticulous detail, usually with the help of Liana Brooks (How Not To Acquire A Castle, as evidenced in our epic plotting video).

And then there is everything else, which tends to fall in the middle. Honestly, it depends on the book, and the mood, and how much of a concrete, specific handle I need on the story before going in.

Because that varies widely, too. When Worlds Collide, the final book in the Sanctuary trilogy that won Best Children’s Book 2019 in my state? You’re reading the first draft, prettied up with some proofreading for typos. The first book in the series, on the other hand? That’s the …eighth, I think, draft? And again, everything else falls somewhere in the middle, though generally speaking I plan my novels more than my short stories, and things that feel “fast paced” more than things that luxuriate more in the prose. Though even that’s not entirely true. And it overlaps with the length tendencies.

SO. Rather than continuing to ramble about my actual processes (variable), I thought I’d share with you a range of resources that you might find useful (if you’re a writer) or simply interesting (if you’re not, or even if you are I guess).

1. Liana Brooks’ Outlining Sheet

Liana, who you probably know is my writer-buddy and co-conspirator with regards to Inkprint Press, is excellent at plot. She does developmental edits for a really reasonable rate, and is absolutely stellar at what she does. So it’s without shame that I recommend first up her outline sheet, which is a take on the Lester Dent Plot Formula (google it).

2. Beat Sheets.

For when a general outline with key touch points isn’t detailed enough, there are beat sheets. The best ones I’ve found came from Jami Gold, and you can download them here. I’ve also converted them to word docs with scenes numbered for a 40-scene/chapter book and a 20 scene-chapter book, and you can grab those here (word docx download).

3. MICE Structure.

I posted this video on Friday, but Mary Robinette Kowal’s MICE theory has been hands down THE most useful plotting resource I’ve encountered for me personally. I’ll elaborate on this a little more below, where I’ll talk specifically about a project I’m working on right now.

4. Brandon Sanderson’s Plot Lectures.

I listened to these nearly a year ago, then relistened recently and was interested to discover I’d done something similar with Moon Shot, the project I’m currently plotting. Definitely worth a listen. It’s a little more general in scope than the preceding resources, but very necessary for a sound understanding of what your plot should be DOING.

You can also check out the posts I wrote on plot structure years ago, starting here.

Okay, now to the specifics. On Tuesday, I posted the following to Instagram, which is what precipitated the question that resulted in this post:

This is me working on Moon Shot, and it’s the first time I really used the MICE process on a longer work very deliberately, and I LOVED IT.

So I thought I’d quickly delineate for you here exactly what I did. (ETA: Quickly, ha.)

Worldbuilding. I had a giant conversation with Liana about the worldbuilding for the world, and how the main sci fi element works. She took notes and emailed them to me.

Brain Dump. I did a stream-of-consciousness dump into my notes just rambling through things roughly sequentially, and stopping to research the sciencey stuff I needed.

List Of Questions. From this, I listed out on my small whiteboard (A4-ish size) all the questions that would be asked and answered in this book. Will they escape? Why can’t they go to Earth? Who are the kidnappers? Etc.

MICE. I then colour-coded each question according to it’s MICE category: milieu, inquiry, character, event. If that doesn’t make sense, go watch Kowal’s video first (resource 3 above).

General Plotting. I broke out the bigger whiteboard (A2 size?), separated it roughly into quarters across the ‘page’, and added every question to the board. Some questions are asked right at the start of the story, so that’s where their coloured line started, then I estimated roughly when the question would be answered in-plot, and ended their coloured line there. This was hands-down the most useful part of plotting, because it let me see a bunch of things in macro: I’d overloaded the third quarter with too many answers, and there wasn’t enough in the second quarter. Certain questions COULDN’T be asked until other ones were answered, and if I left the answering too late, the next arc would be too squished before the end of the book. And so forth. So I played around, adjusting arcs until I got a fairly even spread of questions and answers across the book, with little clusters at the 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 marks. I also looked to make sure that I had enough strong questions asked in the beginning that weren’t answered until the very end.

Specific Plotting. For each arc, I now knew WHEN in the book it had to be. So I grabbed three A3 pages, taped them together in a long line, divided the page into 25 columns (see point 8 for why), and wrote headings with the basic beats of a story. Call to action, midpoint, final puzzle piece, act 2 antagonist, and so forth. See resource 2 above. Then I took my MICE arcs and started filling things in: this scene needs to answer this question and raise the next one. This scene needs to answer this question. That sort of thing. Not the specifics of what the characters are doing, but the underlying bones of what the SCENE needs to be doing.

Conflict! Once the beginnings and ends of each MICE arc were in place, I referred back to the MICE principle to figure out what kinds of conflict I needed to add. For example, one of the opening MICE arcs is a milieu question: How did the kids escape? Knowing that this is a milieu, I know I need to add points throughout the story where they run into dead ends in their attempts to escape, all the way until they actually make it out. Another MICE arc revolves around a mystery, so I knew I needed to throw red herrings and misleading information in there to influence the decisions the characters are making. I used different coloured highlighter to mark the main long-running arcs to make sure I was sprinkling them evenly throughout the book, and not accidentally ignoring one for too long.

Point Of View. I now had a really good idea of what was happening in each scene, so on to POV. Most books wouldn’t need this step necessarily, but part of the POINT of this book is that it has POV scenes from all 25 of my Year 8 students from a couple of years ago (you have not LIVED until you’ve tried this, oy, my head). AND on top of that, every character has one of eight different superpowers. So I wrote out all the character names on sticky notes, colour coded according to superpower. Then I played around. Which superpower would be useful in this scene? Which would lend an interesting lens to the events? Post-its meant I could test things and swap them around easily, until I got an order I was happy with, with the superpowers kind of evenly sprinkled throughout the book (as much as possible; they’re based on Myer-Briggs personality type, which, yes, most of the students were kind enough to do the test for me so I could allocate their powers accurately, HA, but it means some superpowers are more common than others).

Text Type. One of the only ways I could think of making this book hang together cohesively was to tell it via epistolary, which means including a bunch of other text types as well as narration (or instead of). So there are story bits, but also emails, letters, maps, interviews, transcripts and more. So once I had everything else in place, I figured out which scenes were going to be which text types so that again, there was a balance of them throughout.

PHEW. What a process. Still, overall it only took me about three hours, and it was SUPER FUN AND SATISFYING to do. I’ll DEFINITELY be doing at least steps 1 – 7 for a couple of future books, because it was just a really inherently enjoyable process for me, and makes me confident going into the book that the scenes will do what they need to do.

Here’s a sneaky peek at what some of the final outline looks like… 😀

On Structuring Plot: A List Of Useful Resources + My Recent Process was originally published on Amy Laurens

#Amy Laurens #Australian author Amy #beat sheets for writers #before you write #Brandon Sanderson #Canberra writer Amy #how to plot a novel #How to Write #Jami Gold&039;s beat sheets #Mary Robinette Kowal #plot plot plot the book #plotting masterclass #structuring stories with story structure like a well-structured story with structure #writing #writing resource #writing workshop #you too can write a story woo

37 notes · View notes

mortisbane · 4 years

Text

I made an outline of the Thrawn books along side with important Rebels events for all your fandom needs. I hope a lot of people can use this for fanfics or whatnot, but if you think there should be more information included or I made a mistake somewhere let me know and I can update it if need be.

I tried to make this as accurate as possible, but it’s come to my attention that Del Rey has a vague book timeline which contradicts this timeline, but below the cut I will explain why I think they’re wrong haha.

Please don’t repost to other sites without my permission.

While reading through Thrawn (2017) again, I realized that there is only one instance that has a proper place in the galactic calendar other than the end which is in 2BBY.

When Pryce goes to Tarkin asking for the Governorship of Lothal, he mentions that the position would be opening soon, by which he means Ryder Azadi’s arrest. We know from Rebels that Ryder was arrested with or shortly after Ezra Bridger’s parents, which we also know happens when Ezra is 7.

Since Ezra is born on Empire Day, he’s a decent measurement for time progression after the rise of the Empire, Seven years after the rise of the Empire (19 BBY) is 12 BBY. So Ryder’s arrest happens 12 BBY.

In the book, Pryce receives her position of Governor about a year after the position opened up, which would be 11 BBY. Along with her position of Governor, Pryce manages to fulfill her second promise to Thrawn, which is get Eli his long overdue promotion. Along with Eli’s promotion, Thrawn gets promoted to Commodore and they are both assigned to the ISD Chimaera. We can assume this happens not long after Pryce becomes Governor, so also in 11 BBY.

Now we have a cemented event in the book tied to Eli and Thrawn’s journey. Lucky for us, Zahn explains the amount of time that progressed in the book up to Eli and Thrawn moving to the Chimaera.

3 months at Royal Imperial Academy

18 months on the Blood Crow with Captain Vergilio

3-ish months on the Blood Crow with Captain Rossi

1 year on the Thunder Wasp with Commander Cheno

1 year on the Thunder Wasp with Captain Thrawn

Then they’re transferred to the Chimaera

~4 years in total.

If they move to the Chimaera in 11 BBY, and it takes 4 years to get there in the book, then the start of the book must be around 15 BBY. And since Eli was almost done with his 4 years of schooling at the start of the book, that means he enlists in 19 BBY.

There’s no concrete timeline in text for their time on the Chimaera. But we know they spend the first year with Thrawn as Commodore and Eli as Lieutenant Commander, then after that year Thrawn is Admiral and Eli is Commander. We also know that the book ends in 2 BBY, which means they spend 9 years serving on the Chimaera before Eli is sent away to the Chiss and Thrawn becomes Grand Admiral.

The time for Alliances past and present are more of a guess as they aren’t perfectly cemented, but Alliances (present) takes place in between Thrawn (2017) and Treason, which is 2 BBY and <1 BBY, so Alliances (present) most likely takes place ~1 BBY.

Alliances (past) happens towards the end of the Clone Wars since Ahsoka already left the order by the point Thrawn and Anakin meet, so I placed it around 20 BBY.

I feel this is as accurate as I could be with the limited time progression information we have, I hope I didn’t make any mistakes and this can be helpful to you all! <3

Stay Wizard

~Mortis

#thrawn #grand admiral thrawn #eli vanto #rebels #ezra bridger #ryder azadi #governor pryce #arihnda pryce #a new dawn #timeline #clone wars #sw #star wars #swtcw #mortisbane

172 notes · View notes

candyradium · 3 years

Photo

Finally got around to typing up my Technoblade D&D build!!! I’ve been working on making these for a lot of the Dream SMP characters, and I thought it would be fun to have him in stat block format, so you too can throw c!Technoblade at your players as a final boss! (Disclaimer: I don’t know how accurate the CR level is, I just set it to 8 since the build is a lv8 build PC build.)

Image description and explanation/rambling below the cut!

[Image ID: A D&D stat block for Technoblade. It reads:

Technoblade

Medium humanoid (firbolg), Lawful Neutral

Armor Class: 18 (Half plate, defense fighting style)

Hit Points: 72 (8d12+24)

Speed: 40 ft.

STR: 18 (+4)

DEX: 14 (+2)

CON: 16 (+3)

INT: 14 (+2)

WIS: 13 (+1)

CHA: 6 (-2)

Saving Throws: Str +7, Con +6

Skills: Athletics +7, Intimidation +1, Perception +4, Survival +4

Damage Resistances: bludgeoning, piercing, slashing

Senses: passive Perception 14

Languages: Common, Elvish, Giant, Goblin

Challenge: 8 (3,900 XP)

Innate spellcasting. Technoblade's innate spellcasting ability is Wisdom (spell save DC 12). He can innately cast the following spells, requiring no material components:

1/short rest each: detect magic, disguise self

Speech of beast and leaf. Technoblade has the ability to communicate in a limited manner with beasts and plants. They can understand the meaning of his words, though he has no special ability to understand them in return. He has advantage on all Charisma checks he makes to influence them.

Powerful build. Technoblade counts as one size larger when determining his carrying capacity and the weight he can push, drag, or lift.

Unarmoured defense. When not wearing any armour, Technoblade's defense equals 15. He can use a shield and still gain this benefit.

Reckless. At the start of his turn, Technoblade can gain advantage on all melee weapon attack rolls he makes during that turn, but attack rolls against him have advantage until the start of his next turn.

Great weapon master. When Technoblade scores a critical hit with a melee weapon or reduces a creature to 0 hit points with one, he can make one melee weapon attack as a bonus action. Additionally, before Technoblade makes a melee weapon attack with a heavy weapon that he is proficient with, he can choose to take a -5 penalty to the attack roll. If the attack hits, he adds +10 to the attack's damage.

Warrior of the Gods. If a spell, such as Raise Dead, has the sole effect of restoring Technoblade to life (but not undeath), the caster doesn't need material components to cast the spell on Technoblade.

Divine fury. While Technoblade is raging, the first creature he hits on each of his turns with a weapon attack takes extra necrotic damage equal to 1d6 + 3.

Action surge (1/rest). Technoblade takes one additional action on his turn.

Combat superiority (4/rest). Technoblade can apply the following maneuvers using his four superiority die (d8s):

Feinting attack: Technoblade expends one superiority die and uses a bonus action on his turn to feint, choosing one creature within 5 feet of his as his target. He has advantage on his next attack roll against that creature before the end of his turn. If that attack hits, add the superiority die to the attack's damage roll.

Menacing attack: When Technoblade hits a creature with a weapon attack, he can expend one superiority die to attempt to frighten the target. He adds the superiority die to the attack's damage roll, and the target must make a Wisdom saving throw. On a failed save, it is frightened of him until the end of his next turn.

Trip attack: When Technoblade hits a creature with a weapon attack, he can expend one superiority die to attempt to knock the target down. He adds the superiority die to the attack's damage roll, and if the target is Large or smaller, it must make a Strength saving throw (DC 15). On a failed save, he knocks the target prone.ActionsHidden step (1/rest).

As a bonus action, Technoblade can magically turn invisible until the start of his next turn or until he attacks, makes a damage roll, or forces someone to make a saving throw.

Greatsword. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 11 (2d6 + 4) slashing damage.

Heavy Crossbow. Ranged Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, range 100/400 ft., one target. Hit: 7 (1d10 + 2) piercing damage.

Multiattack. Technoblade can make 2 weapon attacks.

Rage (4/day). As a bonus action, Technoblade enters a rage that lasts for 1 minute, ending early if knocked unconscious or if Technoblade's turn ends and he hasn't attacked a hostile creature since his last turn or taken damage since then. He can also end his rage on his turn as a bonus action. While raging, Technoblade deals +2 damage, has advantage on Strength checks and Strength saving throws, and has resistance to bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage. Technoblade cannot cast spells during a rage.

End ID.]

Okay. Rambling time.

Holy SHIT I loved making this. I tend to play spellcasters or dex based characters, so it was a lot of fun to make a str character for once.

Stats first. As a barbarian/fighter and also as a force of nature, str is his highest stat. I could have made it 20, but I have a weird aversion to writing up characters with maxed out stats for some reason? Anyway, that’s what he has. He can always boost it if he takes another level in fighter. I also decided to give him pretty high intelligence and wisdom, which are rare in barbarian characters, since, y’know, their main point is to hit things very hard. But Techno is so, SO resourceful, and one of the main reasons that he’s so good at fighting is because he does his research and acquires the best items for it and puts himself in the right place at the right time. Hence the high-ish int. I feel a little bad making his charisma so low, but cha represents several things, most notably the ability to talk to people and force of personality. Also known as: how hard it is to be swayed or controlled, magically or otherwise. Remember what happened at the festival? That’s low charisma. Also I had to give him a low stat to balance the fact that he’s insanely good at so many fucking things. Why.

As a side note, when picking his proficiencies, I was using the homebrew rule that you can use your strength modifier when you roll for intimidation. So his Strength (Intimidation) check would actually have a +7, which is MUCH better than the Charisma (Intimidation) check of +1. Big strong characters are absolutely scary, damnit, and I will die on that hill.

Next up: race. I HAD to make him a firbolg. They’re connected with nature and are often portrayed with animalistic features (e.g. Caduceus Clay from Critical Role), and it means we can have both pig Techno and anime Techno, since firbolgs naturally have the disguise self spell. I just think that’s neat. They also get the ability to turn invisible! Which Techno has been doing a LOT recently! Sure, firbolgs can only do it for a turn, but it still fits.

Onto classes. Barbarian was a dead certain for Techno, honestly - his battle prowess, how he acts when he fights, it just fits so well. Even his use of potions - he gets a lot of buffs from them, increased damage and damage resistance being the two most notable and the two that best translate to D&D rage. Even speed potions - barbarians get +10ft movement speed at level 5. And barbarians are made for two-handed weapons, so obviously I HAD to give him a greatsword. The Orphan Obliterator is a deadly weapon. He also still favours swords even when axes are better in the newest version, so a greatsword was a must. Also I just really like greatswords.

I wavered a bit when picking a subclass, to be honest. I’m not really a big fan of any of the official subclasses (they don’t really fir my playstyle, which is why I homebrewed an entire new subclass for my barbarian character, but that’s a post for another day), but looking through, there were a few that could work. Originally, I picked Juggernaut - this was because of how he fought during the Dream battle, moving Dream around the arena into a more advantageous position for Techno, which is the Juggernaut’s 3rd level ability in a nutshell. They also can’t be knocked prone, and both of these things work INCREDIBLY well for skywars/bedwars style combat - staying put on this island and knocking off your opponents.

However, in the end, I decided to go with Zealot. It was inevitable after he REALLY started building his character on the Dream SMP, which is what this is mostly based on. Zealots have two main points: they follow a God, and it’s very, VERY hard to kill them.

Sound familiar?

Techno isn’t just a barbarian - he also has three levels of Battlemaster fighter. The barbarian/fighter combo is one of the best there is for sheer combat power (bested only, in my opinion, by barbarian/moon druid - those characters are actually unkillable) and the choice of Battlemaster specifically opened up so many options in combat. I had debated going with champion, just for the crit probability boost, but ultimately decided that Battlemaster was infinitely more fun. The three maneuvers were picked for a combination of reasons - they’re all incredibly useful in combat, but I also just thought they were thematically accurate and/or funny. I just had to give him Menacing Attack, because one of the few constants in Technoblade’s combat is people running the hell away from him during competitions. Feinting is for pure combat ability, and Trip is just. Really funny to me. It worked better when he was Juggernaut and literally couldn’t be knocked prone, but I just like the idea of someone using their full action to try and knock over this eight foot tall firbolg (they’re so fucking tall! This bitch is massive!) Technoblade just. Looking down at them before knocking them clean off of their feet with one swing of his Greatsword.

And finally, weapons and magical items. The magic ones didn’t actually make it onto the stat block, because I wanted it to be purely basic character building, but I absolutely had some ideas. Some of these were rolled on loot tables, some were completely homebrewed to fit Techno’s canon weapons. Guess which ones lmao.

magical heavy crossbow (use charge to fire 3 bolts simultaneously, using only one arrow, rolling an attack for each. Each target must be within 10ft of each other. 7 charges per day)

explosive bolts (10ft radius, double dice of the weapon it’s fired from, dex save)

mithral half-plate

ring of feather falling

trident of flight (attunement) (30ft swim and flight speed, 120ft flight speed when its raining)

upgraded cape of the mountebank (8 charges, 2 for misty step, 4 for dimension door) (yes it looks like his normal cape)

bag of holding

sword of life-stealing (attunement) (I don’t know why I added this except Techno’s canon sword would be VERY hard to homebrew and also he can do enough damage with a normal one so he could literally just have like a +2 or something. Do what you want)

#candy posts #dream smp #technoblade #dnd #dream smp dnd builds #ive been working on these fucking things for MONTHS i cannot wait to post more #i have dreams stat block made too and i have a lot of other builds finished that i just havent typed up yet lol

33 notes · View notes

ks-caster · 4 years

Text

The 100 Season 7 Episode 4 - Post-Liveblog Recap

Okay, so I liveblogged an episode for the first time - and it turned out to be a nice way to stay focused through the commercial breaks. Might continue to do that for the rest of the season.

But TBH I started doing it just so I could bitch about the CLEAR AND BLATANT LACK OF A SCENE WHERE SANCTUM!KRU REALIZE THAT BELLAMY AND ANOMOLY!KRU ARE MISSING. That was an important scene that the whole fandom, more or less, has been waiting for the entire time for various reasons.

How do the characters react? Who figures out that something’s wrong first? Does Clarke sense Bellamy’s absence because they have a bond? Does Emori go looking for her space sister to comfort her other space sister only to find her missing?

(Actually, she does. That’s my headcanon and I’m sticking to it. Might fic later. Accounts for Emori’s complete absence while her bestie Raven is falling apart.)

Edit: here's the fic!

Anyway, back to the episode - whoever was in charge of editing really really dropped the ball. Missing realization scene, poorly ordered Raven and Clarke scenes. The music during the Dev-and-Hope montage was a nice touch but just too loud enough that I really had trouble telling what they were saying - and the pacing would have felt better with just one show of teenage!Hope before we got 20-year-old her. The cut from Orlando agreeing to train Anomaly!Kru to 5 years later was WAY too abrupt for me to get a feel for the character and relationship development that they were trying to shoehorn in in order to create conflict at the end. I got where they were going with everything, but in a I’m-reading-a-newbie-writer’s-fanfic-because-I-love-the-story-concept-and-want-to-support-them kind of way and not in a I’m-watching-a-show-made-by-experienced-professionals-and-paying-for-the-privilege-in-ad-revenue kind of way. Disappointing.

Jumping around here for a bit: I gotta say I’m loving the makeovers this season! Hair and makeup did a great job on bringing back the old Raven without losing the maturity they gave her, giving Murphy and Emori their Gucci Royalty Vibes without losing the feel of their individual styles, and making Hope look like she can’t find quite the balance between feral forest girl and innocent shut-in who can’t bear to take a life (which is accurate to her character, of course).

And Echo! So I really, really didn’t like her makeovers in seasons 5 and especially 6, because it felt like they were trying too hard to make her look pretty in a 21st Century kind of way. She looked softer, more vulnerable, which really contradicted her character traits - but I thought that might’ve been on purpose, to show a change in her (that she did indeed allow herself to become softer and more vulnerable for her family). And her post-time-skip (not that one. Or that one. The other one. There’s a lot of those. Bah.) look feels like a return to herself; she’s beautiful but in a no-nonsense, don’t-forget-I-can-cut-your-throat kind of way. (Is this because I just really love the butch look on woman and am myself a butch woman? Maybe. But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.)

Side note: Where the hell did they get clippers on Penance? Those haircuts were entirely too even to have been done with scissors. I’ll buy that Gabriel and Orlando shaved their heads and their perfect round cuts were growout, but Hope and Echo? Electric clippers. Like I said I like the looks, but guys, there’s no way.

I liked that I got a better feel for Hope’s character this episode - she’s trying so hard to be like her mom and Aunty O and all the heroes they told her about when she was a child, but the truth is she’s been in one real battle, she froze, and her best and only friend died. And since her only role models were these incredibly strong people who didn’t give up, back down, hesitate, that wouldn’t be an easy thing for her to get over. (Given that Diyoza was pregnant with her for two entire seasons, I’d really like to have more time developing Hope’s character - or even the same amount of screen time but go easier on the timeskips, lol. She keeps having growth/maturity/life experience spurts so it’s hard to keep up with the development that we’re shown.

So, 5 (7? Wasn’t she 22? There’s still 2 years we missed right?) years after watching her friend die, and 5 (7?) years of blaming herself for freezing, she’s put into the same position, and she stabs some lady in the neck. Kid didn’t steal her coping mechanisms! All joking aside thought, the kid basically relived her trauma in real life - honestly her reaction was 100% valid.

I’m sure I’m supposed to be upset by Echo’s choice to kill the remaining gold-head people. But I think the only reason that’s supposed to bother me is that she promised (ish - she was real explicitly clear that she’d do what was necessary to rescue Bellamy and them were the breaks) Orlando that she wouldn’t. I think I’m supposed to care about the fractured relationship between AnomalyKru and Orlando.

I don’t. I don’t know if it’s the super-fast timeskip (it was weird enough to see the changed dynamics in SpaceKru when I deeply knew all of the characters AND we got time to see the changes play out) or the fact that I didn’t really get to know Orlando in a way that made me super sympathetic to him (I’ll get to that in a minute) or if it’s just that he was smart enough to know he was being played from the start (see Navy SEAL mom didn’t teach you how to swim and Echo again being 100% clear that killing people might still happen) and walked right in anyway. Either way, his betrayal wasn’t enough of a motivator for me as an audience member to be bothered about how things ended between him and AnomalyKru. I kind of shrugged and moved on.

More on Orlando... So The 100 has had several plotlines that center around people doing dangerous, terrible and downright ridiculous things because of their religions; see the kidnapping and conclave of freaking children killing each other to become commander, Gaia’s whole character arc + starting a new religion around Octavia/WonKru betraying that religion to go back to their old one centering on Madi, WHO IS GODDAMN TWELVE, all of Sanctum and season 6, the Sanctum conflict here in season 7, and now this goddamn Bardo Disciple shite.

Now I’m not dishing on real life religion or religious people - I happen to have one of those myself - but the plot of some-people-take-their-religion-way-too-far-drink-the-koolaid-and-hurt-people-around-them has been done and done and done on this show. And now here we have Orlando, who was a high-ranking member of his religion, drank the koolaid, cast out, still a true believer and therefore dangerous because his perspective is fundamentally skewed. I don’t know anything about this religion but that it’s militarized (they can arrest people) and think that sentencing people to 10 years of madness-inducing Geneva Convention violations and then bringing them back to their families two days later is okay. I don’t really want to know anything else, because I’m worried that the show is going to work hard on making this religion scarier than the Sanctum one (needing to one-up themselves with the big bad, of course) which just keeps making the commander religion look humane in comparison.

Which it wasn’t. But I digress.

So Orlando was kinda’ cool, but getting in too deep with a fundamentalist who was complicit in his own abuse by said religion (and so who knows what he thought was okay to do to other people) and then it ended badly.

Cue shocked Pikachu.

Moving on. Clarke. Baby. After the harrowing experience of the radiation destroying the radio so you couldn’t say goodbye to your mom when you were supposed to go to space, then missing your time window and getting left behind on Earth, and the radio broke them too so you couldn’t even be sure your friends would leave in time until they blasted off, and then calling Bellamy every day when you knew he couldn’t hear you, and ALL OF THE FREAKING LAST SEASON WHERE YOU WERE POSSESSED AND WOULD HAVE GIVEN ANYTHING TO LET YOUR FRIENDS AND DAUGHTER KNOW BOTH THAT THAT WASN’T YOU AND THEN LATER THAT YOU WERE ALIVE and THEN your MOTHER getting possessed and you had to check to see if it was really her and it WASN’T. Clarke.

After all that terrifying inability to communicate.

You leave Gaia behind to warn everyone of the danger. INSTEAD OF CALLING THEM ON A PIECE OF HANDY TECHNOLOGY OR TAKING A QUICK TRIP BACK YOURSELF. TO TELL YOUR DAUGHTER WHERE YOU WERE GOING. YOU DON’T THINK THAT MAYBE MAKING EXTRA SURE THAT EVERYTHING GETS COMMUNICATED CLEARLY AND IMMEDIATELY MIGHT BE A PRIORITY.

And then Gaia gets kidnapped. Honestly, cool! Not ‘cause I’m rooting for Gaia to be hurt (I don’t care all that much about her tbh) but I LOVE Indra and I want her to have more screen time and development this season - and or the chance to cut people up with her sword - and kidnapping her daughter seems like a great way to facilitate that.

*Looks at list* Oh, right, Jordan. I forgot you were here. Honestly I can’t figure out what the fuck is going on with you, and since I’ve had a whole season of not connecting with you because the story was too busy focusing on external plot... I don’t see that changing any time soon buddy. Sorry.

Oh and that FrEaKiNg PrOmO!

My garbage boy! My chaos gremlin! My excellent-at-impersonating-a-deity-even-if-it-goes-against-his-programming! What are they doing?!

I’m torn between NO DON’T HURT HIM and YES HURT HIM BECAUSE CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT AND BRAVERY BWAHAHAHA. At least I know there’ll be Murphy and hopefully Memori content in the next episode. That’s the good shit. It’s the only thing left about this show that still feels “pure,” not that I didn’t know what sort of darkness I was signing up for when I started but just because he and Emori are sort of the last light in the darkness, and it’s nice to get a break periodically.

21 notes · View notes

maxtothemax · 4 years

Text

Hawk Annotations

It’s been some days since Hawk came out so I figured I’d post my stupid annotations on here. Putting it all under a cut because, obviously, there are so many spoilers, and I had a lot to say.

Started reading: 7/6/20

The 10th Maximum Ride book

It just came out today and I just got it in the mail so let’s see what this dumpster fire is all about.

2 – well! the world building is already bad

3 – I do sorta like the narrative voice though

8 – there’s so much swearing. wonder whether she’s allowed to say fuck though

she says “feck”???

11 – how is there an even remotely functional government like 15-20 years post-apocalypse

13 – why’d she wait the extra half hour?

15 – “my kids” I’m going to assume this is more of a flock situation than a teen mom situation?

19 – so much exposition :/

23 – I’m really not invested in any of this. Ugh, and I have 400 pages to go… [well, okay, it was more like 375. My hardcover copy was long.]

26 – for someone who doesn’t care about her parents, Hawk sure does bring them up a lot

37 – oh, that’s probably Fang, isn’t it

39 – is that a fucking smiley face? [It actually had J in the narration. What??]

40 – “Anytime I heard the word ‘experiment,’ my ears perked right up” okay just call me out like that I guess

43 – that would make sense

46 – black lab coat? [the future of lab fashion?]

67 – hmm this is weird, I don’t like it

69 – she didn’t really seem like she was into that

72 – …but apparently she was?

77 – I WAS RIGHT

78 – well that escalated quickly

82 – I don’t know how to feel about this

84 – WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT HAPPENED???

85 – has Max been in solitary for 10 years? What the fuck?? [It wasn’t solitary confinement, actually, just regular prison.]

87 – none of this world building makes any sense

101 – this is incredibly poorly written. Barely even follows the rules of reality

102 – It’s also very dark, edgy, “Life sucks deal with it” flavored and I’m not a fan

General note: this is reminding me of Witch & Wizard in all the worst ways. Especially page 105. [It’s been brought to my attention that Gabrielle Charbonnet also co-authored at least one book in that series, so that’s probably why.]

106 – Why does McCallum sound exactly like Trump? [The most shocking part of reading this book was finding out that Jimmy Patterson apparently disapproves of Trump.]

108 – so we’re not ignoring the “he was like a brother to me” thing?

109 – JP has torn this series apart so thoroughly. I hate him.

116 – Fuck this. You killed her after giving her maybe 2 minutes of page time. There’s nothing meaningful about that!! Nothing!!

119 – oH SHIT OKAY

121 – that didn’t make it any better, actually

Everything feels so pointless here

I don’t even want to read this but it’ll bug me if I don’t :/

127 – At least this book is better about describing characters

129 – HOW COULD HE POSSIBLY TELL?? Isn’t Ridley enough to prove it?

Side note: will we ever find out who Rose is?

130 – multiple sets of what now?

133 – HOW DO THEY FOLD TWICE???? [Their wings! Fold twice! How the FUCK does that work??]

138 – I’m sorry what

141 – Okay yeah McCallum is definitely a Trump stand in

145 – that’s not gonna happen

147 – I know Jeb is dead but I would be totally unsurprised if McCallum turned out to be Jeb. [Spoiler alert: he isn’t. Evidently Jeb’s still dead. Good for him.]

148 – Okay that line was actually good [the line was: “I’m Maximum Ride, you son of a bitch!”]

149 – Max ALMOST said fuck. Very nearly.

[God just let her say fuck, she deserves it the most]

153 – well this is fucked

154 – you’re not allowed to judge anyone’s names, you named yourself Hawk

160 – It doesn’t even really feel like the flock is older. Except Nudge, probably b/c she keeps calling Hawk “sweetie”

163 – why is Freak capitalized?

164 – “We try to keep the body count low. Part of our personal growth.” I’M SCREAMING NUDGE IS SO FUNNY

173 – OH SHIT

181 – Crismins? Did they change the word for Christmas?

183 – As usual, Nudge is the only one here who I respect

190 – Nudge would be an amazing mom

I’m actually so happy about Nudge’s characterization so far, I love her. Nudge stan for life.

[In the original series: Nudge who? I don’t know her.

In Hawk: Nudge is everyone’s favorite person.]

193 – “You want a wing! Find yourself a goddamn brain first!” that’s so fucking good actually

203 – Are you fucking kidding me

205 – OH GOD DAMMIT

209 – savage

215 – this just in: horses aren’t real

Hey also where the fuck’s Angel? Did she finally start a cult or something?

221 – “he’d put his dad wings on” that’s… quite a phrase

When did Fang become such a hardass? [Edit: actually he was focused on rescuing Max so I guess that’s justified.]

225 – “eyeless Rain” are we doing the blind mentioning thing again? Really? [JP has a bad habit of traumatically removing characters’ vision and then always bringing up that they’re blind as though that’s their only character trait, and I for one think he should be banned from writing for that alone.]

234 – well that escalated quickly

237 – way to avoid describing Gazzy or Iggy’s wings lol

246 – seeing Max call Fang “my love” is very uncomfortable

247 – Okay, that’s cute. [Cutest scene in the whole book, actually.]

257 – Nudge does have curly hair!!! See!!! [@ Narae Lee: take some fucking notes.]

259 – Gazzy’s environmentally friendly bombs. He should make a business.

269 – “forking”? Excuse me sir this is [definitely] not the Good Place I’m sure you can just say fuck

271 – Oh god I don’t want to think about how old the flock is now

HAWK HAS TATTOOS??

272 – These Ride girls are really prone to fainting I guess. Real convenient for transitions between scenes.

278 – I’m still so pissed that the flock was separated for ten years. Not even in a heartbreaking way—it just feels like there was no point to it

Also: how did they find out what happened to Rose? [Also: why use a random character you just made up instead of characters we already know? Hello? Wasn’t Fang’s gang still around post-apocalypse? Weren’t they all friends by then?]

283 – Oh god, is it Angel?

284 – YEP! And holy shit did Total have a kid or something?

285 – Okay so I was this close with the cult leader thing

287 – TOTAL’S ALIVE??? and remarried?? where is he? [I still want some fucking answers, James.]

295 – what the fuck is with the spelling here? Did Angel really just say “staaaahp”?? [As in “stop” but the 2010 internet way of saying it.]

Did she just say “LOL” out loud??

301 – this feels like when you’re in the car with a friend while they’re having an argument with their parents…

This all feels so pointless. The whole first series was about building a better world, and things somehow only got worse.

306 – wow it really doesn’t take much to set Hawk off

307 – you know what, Max is right

The fact that it’s been 10+ years and the flock still has to save the world is really dissatisfying. [It’s passed off as a “it’s what we do” sort of thing, but that shouldn’t be their fucking lifelong job.]

315 – Breaking news: Hawk is introduced to the concept of daddy issues

320 – wait when did Ridley get here??

323 – why are there so many mentions of wearing ponchos to hide their wings? [There have to be better ways]

333 – this was the only major spoiler I got but even though I had warning I’m still mad about it

355 – “Could that could be sky?” has to be the worst mistype I’ve seen in here

365 – Okay this is super uncomfortable

370 – “200 km per hour” I don’t know the metric system but I’m guessing that’s not accurate [it’s 125-ish mph so… I don’t know enough about flying speeds for this, okay, that’s the author’s job]

375 – How would Hawk know what a geocache is?

378 – so she’s just leaving him to die?

381 – okay, zero foreshadowing on that one

396 – so Pietro lived

397 – so actually everyone lived except for Clete :/

399 – “More Epilogue”??

Finished: 7/7/20

I… have no idea what to say about this one. It was a lot. Some parts were decent, others were boring, and it didn’t really feel like a “new generation” book, just an excuse to show the old flock as adults.

I was pleasantly surprised with Nudge’s characterization, and I really liked the “drop the Phoenix” scene, but that’s pretty much all I liked.

[Additional note: the book had no plot. Zero. Like… there was an attempt, but it didn’t really come together.]

#they speak #maximum ride hawk #hawk spoilers #long post #very long post #annotations #i thought i was done with those god dammit

18 notes · View notes

shiningliive · 4 years

Photo

7th Stage Set List Speculation

Tumblr hates tall images so please click to see in higher quality!

I put way too much time and effort into thinking up a possible set list for 7th stage, and I’m sure it’ll be way off, but I’m curious how close I can get. Some clarifications, other ideas, and explanations below the read more. Be warned, it’s very long.

*This is not an official set Utapri 7th Stage list, just speculation.

Basic Layout:

1. This is all assuming they want something similar-ish to Maji Love Kingdom, plus solos and other recent songs. I didnt want to just copy the Maji Love Kingdom set list and whack some solos in there

2. Another order I considered was similar to the 5th stage layout where they did ‘character 1 solo, character 2 solo, character 3 solo, song they did together.’ I do think this is definitely possible for 7th stage, and if they do do this, it could be, for example, Tokiya solo, Cecil solo, Yamato solo, Colourfully Spark. I mainly didnt use this for my primary example because I figured it might be odd if they arent doing Quartet Night Solos.

3. Not very notable, but I also placed the solos in the order the boys are usually in (Otoya, Masato, Natsuki, Tokiya, Ren, Syo, Cecil) with the matching Heavens order.

4. I did my best to not have too much focus on one group to the point where you dont see another at all until the second half or later. This happened with 6th stage with Heavens not even being introduced until an hour and 45 minutes in. There is a bit of a gap without Quartet Night as Heavens and Starish do their solos, but I feel like this is a bit unnavoidable, and tried to counterbalance it by having the shining masterpiece songs (no heavens) before the solos.

5. Of this speculative set list, I consider Setsugetsuka-Michibiki Hikari to be the first half, and Up Down Up-Welcome to Utapri Kingdom (just realised I wrote welcome to utapri world in the graphic but you get me) to be the second half. This doesnt matter too much, but it could be split this way across discs or have an interlude inbetween. There are less songs in the ‘second half’ but it does end up being around the same length when you consider we usually get about 2 20 minute talks at the end.

Explanations:

1. I didnt include Quartet Night songs for a few reasons. Mainly because they dont have any new ones released lately and there have already been two QN only lives with qnlf being the most recent main live since 6th stage. It’s certainly possible that they might include some repeats of older QN solos, but this set list is already at the same length and amount of songs as 6th stage, so it would add enough extra time to make 7th stage too long.

2. Obviously I didnt include a Nagi solo because Wingu isn’t able to attend 7th stage. I assumed this would not affect other song selections and that they will likely have other members fill in for his parts in group songs.

3. I was unable to figure out which new set of solos for Heavens and Starish they would use. I didn’t decide the ones used for any particular reason, so I wouldn’t at all be surprised if different solos than I wrote are used.

4. I used Setsugetsuka as the opener song, because I thought it would not only allow for special outfits to be worn by Starish and Quartet Night that could be chanegd after their introductions, but it also saved time (instead of having one starish song and one QN song, theyre combined). It’s not quite an exciting booming start to the live, but it is a very well loved song by the fandom that hasnt been performed yet, and the first few notes are very recognisable. I can also imagine it fading nicely into a Heavens group song I’m not sure about this choice, but I couldnt quite shake the idea, so I kept it. Wouldn’t be surprised if they started with the same three group songs as Maji Love Kingdom though.

5. In general, I tried to consider things like outfit changes, the time of each song, having a first and second half that can be split onto two discs for dvd/bluray release, and most importantly perhaps, not having the same seiyuu perform too many times in a row to avoid them getting too exhausted.

6. I found it very hard to place Encore. Unlike a lot of the other Mamo songs, it isnt exactly a hype, exciting song to start off a live (after the initial group songs) but it also doesnt really work in the middle after the solos, or towards the end. Having the song be called ‘encore’ and being played during the credits of Maji Love Kingdom really give that vibe that it should be an encore song.

7. I don’t think they would want 4 Quartet Night+Starish joint songs without Heavens (as it would cause a bit of an imbalance) so I figure they might do either the Shining CD 2 songs or the upcoming Black/White songs that are released shortly before the live. For now I’ve gone with Wonder Rondo and Dancing Over Night because we dont know the length of the Black/White songs.

“Things that would be cool but probably won’t happen”:

1. I placed Encore towards the start of my set list, but theres something that I would love to see, no matter where its placed. If the song starts with Mamo singing, as expected, until about 30 seconds in when slowly all other seiyuu would walk on stage and join in. This would allow the song to be used as an encore with all seiyuu, or just help build variety and excitement to an otherwise (albeit intense) but slower more emotional song. It also lines up well with the songs build itself as well as the MV that slowly includes more and more people.

2. More special outfits for Setsugetsuka and the Shining Masterpiece songs and more special outfits/performances in general. I think this is the reason why previous performances like Koizakura and other Shining Theatre songs are so memorable.

3. Pretty sure this one is almost 100% not happening, but, I want Sawashiro Miyuki as a guest to sing Maigo no Kokoro, Haru’s solo song from the first season of the anime. It’s so often forgotten, but its a beautiful song. This would also serve as a nice interlude for the boys to have an outfit change or change staging etc.

4. I feel like there should maybe be a third encore song, but I couldnt choose a good one. It feels odd to not have 1000% or 2000%, so a version of them with all three groups is possible. If they are going to have a new version of an older song, I feel like a Mirai Chizu would be a great choice. Not only does it suit an encore (emotionally and lyrically speaking), but they haven’t performed it since 1st stage, and I feel like it could work really well with all groups together. Or it could be some kind of new medley or song entirely.

5. Of course, there are 3 big things we’d all like to see announced at 7th stage. These being: a 5th season of the anime or some kind of sequel, Dolce Vita news, and a large scale update to shining live (eg, adding Heavens.)

Stats of my set list:

1. The total song time of my set list is 2 hours and 20 minutes with an hour and a half of extra time including a shining dancers or other interlude, introduction video, talks, about 5-10 seconds inbetween songs, audience encore call, and goodbyes.

2. The final time of this set list would be about 3 hours and 48 minutes.

3. For the performance on the 18th for example, doors open at 2pm, and 7th stage begins at 4:30. With this set list, it seems like it would end at about 8:15-8:30pm which allows for enough time to exit the dome before 9:00pm.

4. There are 33 songs in this set list (one talk is incorrectly labeled as an extra song in the graphic) which is the same as 6th stage.

For anyone who’s gotten this far, thank you. This is literally essay length and I wrote it in 50 minutes. It was a lot of fun thinking up this set list, so I’m excited to see if im at all accurate, or 100% wrong. Either way I’m so excited to see the actual set list.

#not shining live #utapri #uta no prince-sama #utapri 7th stage #7th stage

98 notes · View notes

theladylovingcrow · 4 years

Text

New Places, Friendly Faces (Sanny) Pt 1

Author (As known on Various sites): Lady Lover- Rockfic, Luluthechoosingcrow - AO3, theladylovingcrow - Deviantart and Wattpad, @sammy_bluebells - Instagram, @imacrowcawcaw - main Tumblr, @theladylovingcrow - writing/art Tumblr, @insannywestan - Sanny shipping Tumblr

Fandom: Greta Van Fleet

Pairing: Sam Kiszka/Danny Wagner (Sanny), lil bit of Danny/Ronnie but he's quickly swept away with Sam

Length: about 2k

Warnings/Tags: Alternate Universe, Diner AU, No band AU, fluff, some angst, awkwardness, first dates, you know the ones where person A's date is failing and person B comes and sits with them, sorry i forgot what its called but that, hand holding, flirting, Sanny

Summary: Danny was nervous; he had been building up the courage for *weeks* to arrange a date, and now.... He wasn't quite sure what to think of the situation he found himself in. The night certainly wasn't going as he had expected it to - and his emotions had never ridden a roller coaster this fast. Hell, the beautiful angel holding his hand wasn't even the one he had arranged to meet 2 hours ago.

Author's Notes: I don't know what inspired me to do this but I'm very very happy with how it's turning out (and I've never written a longer-ish multi chapter story before, so this is interesting!) I would hate for Danny to not know the Kiszkas growing up, but hey I think I made their first meeting pretty damn cute!

Also, just FYI this is set roughly in late January of whatever year, so the twins are supposed to be 20, Ronnie is 18 I think, Danny just turned 18, and Sam is 17 (I think I did all the math right but idk) HOWEVER it wasn't until I finished that I realized I absolutely did not make their appearances congruent with what they would have looked like then.... Sam and Danny look like 2018 ish but the twins also look like their high school selves :( Idk sorry

Also, because Sam is 17, this will not be posted on Rockfic and will be marked as underage, though I'm not planning for it to get dirty

---------------

Danny had been taping his foot for the past fifteen minutes.

He usually didn't do that, it wasn't his nervous tick of non-choice, but Michelle hadn't showed up yet, and it was nearing eight.

Checking his watch, Danny watched the hand tick to 7:58 and then looked up, peering around the restaurant he was in.

Diner, he corrected himself. It was a homey, 1960's American diner, a little more exposed timbers and bear carvings than checkered tiles and jukeboxes, but that's what you got in Michigan. The building was low and sturdy, a log structure with a river rock chimney over the grills in back. Every single wall was decorated with various signed pictures of celebrities that had passed through, local newspaper articles about Gerald and Fern's Homestyle Grill, old handsaws, vintage pop signs, and a million other trinkets and posters chosen by the owners (Gerald and Fern, he assumed, though they'd probably passed on considering how old the place looked to be).

It was a nice restaurant, Danny thought; the atmosphere was welcoming and calm despite the occasional clamor from the kitchen, and the decor was very interesting to look at. Plus, the waitress that had directed him to a window booth and brought him some water was just gorgeous.

'Don't think that! You're on a date, idiot' Danny scolded himself, shaking his head. Well, he was technically waiting for the date to start, seeing as she hadn't showed up yet. But, he still shouldn't be admiring another girl like that when his wasn't there - that would just make him an asshole.

But maybe Michelle was a little bit of an asshole because she said she'd meet him at 7 o'clock and it was now 8:06- 'Stop. It.' Danny scolded himself again, mentally smacking himself upside the head.

'Didn't your mother ever tell you to assume the best of people?' One voice asked.

'Of course!' Another Danny answered.

'Well, then, she probably got stuck in traffic, or her dog threw up in her car, or she hit a bad pothole, or her mom made her go to the store, or-'

'Okay, I get it! She probably doesn't mean to be so late,' Danny conceded, concluding the conversation he was having with himself. Maybe the waitress was right and he had been sitting there by himself for a little too long.

Of course, being the nice girl she was, the waitress - Ronnie her name was Ronnie - had stopped by periodically whenever she had a minute to chat with him or finally bring him some coffee after he had given in to the craving.

Danny looked down at the small bouquet wilting on the table and sighed. Looked like this date was a bust, just like the few others he'd attempted, and he'd actually been very excited to see her. In fact, it was Michelle who had suggested this Gerald's Grill when he had shyly asked her out in Biology.

He had finally made up his mind to just stop wasting Ronnie's time and go home when a group of boys came trouping in, wet from the snow but in exuberant spirits and, apparently, "In great need of some refreshment, Ronnie dear!"

That made him want to pack up and get out even faster because, honestly, he didn't need any more knowing looks or judgement right now, but the last boy to walk in made him freeze with his coat halfway on.

The kid looked about Danny's age, roughly the same height but a whole lot skinnier. He had on skin tight jeans, scuffed hiking boots, and a red woolen coat. When he turned to talk to Ronnie, Danny could see the Tom Petty hoodie beneath the jacket and some silver necklaces.

'Nice,' he thought, 'seems like a cool guy: good taste in music and fashion.'

Also, 'Fucking gorgeous'.

What made him pause his leaving, though, wasnt the guy's body but his face - his sculpted brows, insanely high cheekbones, pink lips, and long lashes; all framed by the healthiest looking head of hair Danny had ever seen, second only to his own, or possibly one of the guy's he had come in with (the one who yelled for Ronnie) that had rather impressive, long curls styled to look like 70's mutton chops. There was something naggingly familiar about his features, but Danny couldn't place it.

Ronnie rolled her eyes and pointed the group of boys to a large table in the Eastern corner of the diner.

She snagged some menus and followed behind them, though another guy, this one also with long hair (he was having some competition here) grown out Justin Beiber style (okay, maybe not) said; "We don't need those, Ronnie, I'm pretty sure Sammy here has the whole menu memorized by now. Right, Sam-a-lam-a?"

The intruiging boy nodded, starting to recite off what sounded like a very accurate, detailed account of the diner's menu, prices and everything. Danny was surprised at the slight raspy, smokers quality of his voice, but it was pleasant, in a way.

After the fourth item or so, Ronnie stopped "Sammy" with a swat to the shoulder, shaking her heading and muttering "stupid genius" under her breath. He grinned up at her, wiggling his eyebrows and asking for a round of Vernors, pretty please, Ronnie-kins.

Holy shit, they were siblings! That's what had been buzzing at the back of his head for the past couple minutes; those mouths and cheekbones, seductive eyes, that lovely hair. The guy was Ronnie's brother (and no wonder he was so beautiful then).

Squinting, Danny watched the party in the corner. Two of the other guys, 70's hair and Justin Beiber (though he felt bad calling him that since he seemed cool and, hey, he'd had the same 'do when trying to grow his out) were laughing at something Ronnie said, leaning on each other and behaving the exact same way, down to their blinks.

Twins! Danny could tell because he had two cousins, also twins, that acted exactly like that. Wait, though.... they looked awfully similar to-

More siblings?! Jesus, how many kids did this family have? He hoped the four were all, for the sake of their parents.

He guessed that the twins were a little older, so either "Sammy" or Ronnie had to be the youngest, though they all looked awfully similar in age.

'Seriously, how do their parents handle that?' Especially with the attractive, flirty twins, beautiful daughter, and the super smart supermodel - it had to be several handfuls raising a house like that. Danny suddenly felt a bit more sympathy for his parents, even with just having to deal with him and his little sister.

Ronnie sashayed away, calling over her shoulder for the boys to keep it down. They all hooted and hollered in response, seeing as Danny was the only other patron to bother at the moment.

Danny slowly sat back down, curious as to what interesting conversations he would hear from the group. The twin with curly hair was currently talking to a larger guy on the other side of the table about the "carefully curated sensuality" of Led Zeppelin's Prescence, which alone made him want to stay.

Not to mention, he could continue to observe the hot guy that was immediately fascinating him like few people did. Danny wasn't deluded enough to think it was love at first sight - though it was definitely a fair amount of lust - but there was something about the other boy that made him want to track his every move down to the blinking of his eyes.

"Woah there, creepy much? Chill out, he probably doesn't even like guys anyways," Danny muttered to himself, hoping that his staring wasn't obvious enough to make "Sammy" aware of it. He loved to people watch - and admire, but hated the uncomfortable confrontation of acknowledging that he had been doing so.

Supermodel boy twisted in his chair, looking at one of the many things on the wall - though it made Danny's breath catch because, could he tell? - when he caught Danny's eye. He smiled at Danny, making him smile a little tightly and nod in return.

At that moment, Ronnie came out of the back with a platter of glass pop bottles and a notebook tucked into her apron pocket, using her hip to close the swinging half-door to the area behind the counter. She smiled at Danny as he passed, murmuring a soft "I'll be right back with you," before continuing on to her brothers' table.

Gorgeous boy laughed - a surprisingly obnoxious, though maybe endearing, braying one - and reached out a fine boned hand, plucking a bottle from the tray before she could set it down. He took a long swallow, throat visibly working and eyes half closed, head tipped back. Danny quickly averted his own eyes unless he started drooling onto the tabletop.

Ronnie came over to him after a minute, refilling his coffee and insisting that she get him a piece of pie, on the house. He didn't have the heart to tell her no, not after more than an hour of sitting there pitifully, and especially not now that he knew her gorgeous brothers (or at least one of them, the prettiest, too) knew he was there. It would be incredibly embarrassing for them to know that he was stood up and alone; Danny wanted to give off a good impression, for some reason.

Ronnie walked away again, hips swaying, and disappeared into the back. "Sammy" laughed at the table in the corner and Danny's eyes shot to him, watching how he played with his straw between those two pillowy lips.

He started sweating a little bit, considering who he thought was more attractive (not like either of them would be interested in him, but). Ronnie was curvy and kind and beautiful, but Sam was lean and charismatic and had the most lovely facial structure Danny had ever seen.

'Ugh, bisexual problems', Danny thought. No one else would have know what he was talking about if they were there, though, since he had never mentioned it to his parents nor his few friends.

He wondered, idly - because he really was out of their league and it would never, ever happen - what his family would think if he brought either of them home. Ronnie would be sure to elicit absolute delight from his mother after her admonishment for getting a girlfriend in the first place (despite the fact that he was allowed to do what he wanted now that he was 18, Danny's mom still saw him as her little boy). Ronnie's brother, he wasn't sure; it's not like they were homophobic, but Danny was certain that him bringing home a guy out of nowhere would be quite the shock.

They'd warm up to Sam (he didn't want to call him "Sammy"; it felt too familiar to he polite, though he did like that), he was sure. His parents would be impressed by his intelligence and be charmed by his jokes, and tell Danny that they were glad he had found such a nice boyfriend.

Danny drifted off into a daydream of what it would be like to date Sam, to take him to family holiday meals and go out hiking with him and cuddle up on a late winter afternoon like this one. He rested his head on his hand, letting his eyes go unfocused as he envisioned the imaginary world in which he had an 11/10 boyfriend.

"Hey, I've got your pie. Mind if I sit and eat mine with you?"

-------------

@satans-helper @okietrish @lazingonsunday @bigthighsandstupidguys @karrotkate @oblvions @lantern-inthenight @mountainofthefleet seriously PLEASE tell me if anyone else wants to be tagged in Sanny and I'll add it to my list because I guessed these peeps last time and got it right but I can't remember if there's anyone else

20 notes · View notes

theliberaltony · 4 years

Link

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

The COVID-19 pandemic has been equally defined by how much we don’t know as how much we do. That vacuum has been quickly filled with bullshit. The United Nations secretary-general has warned we’re living through “a pandemic of misinformation,” and the head of the World Health Organization said it’s an “infodemic.” In the midst of battling a global health emergency, we find ourselves fending off another scourge of conspiracy theories and misinformation.

It certainly feels like there’s a lot of fake news swirling around about the coronavirus, but how does it compare to another major misinformation magnet: the 2016 election? Research on coronavirus misinformation is largely limited to public opinion surveys and preprint research that has yet to be peer-reviewed. But when we compare those preliminary findings to research on the 2016 election, they suggest that more people are seeing — and believing — misinformation now, and it may have something to do with the challenge of understanding a new disease.

Measuring exactly how much bunk is out there to begin with is a challenge, in part because so much misinformation is shared through social media, said Gordon Pennycook, a behavioral psychologist at Canada’s University of Regina who studies fake news. It’s possible to measure, for instance, the number of tweets linking to specific fake news websites, but no way to see every instance a particular false claim is made on Facebook, especially when those claims can take many forms, including memes, Pennycook said.

An easier measure is how many people recall having seen fake news. A Pew Research Center survey conducted in the second week of March found that 48 percent of Americans reported seeing at least some made-up news about the outbreak. Only 20 percent of respondents said they had seen no fake news; the remaining 32 percent said they had seen “not much.” In a preprint paper from researchers at Cornell University, respondents were simply asked if they remember seeing certain claims about coronavirus, some of which were true and some of which were false. About 7 percent of respondents accurately recalled seeing a false claim.1

But just because you’ve seen fake news doesn’t mean you believe it. I’ve seen plenty of bogus claims on my Facebook timeline, myself, and I haven’t started drinking bleach yet. So far, research indicates the number of people who actually believe these ideas is dependent on the claim. In that Cornell paper, the percent of respondents who both recalled seeing fake news and believing it ranged from 14 percent to 19 percent. This represents a higher percentage of the population actually believing fake news than we saw in 2016. One study published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives found that only 8 percent of Americans both recalled seeing and believing a piece of fake news about the 2016 election.

“So, on average, double the rate of people recalled and believed in fake news in the COVID context compared to what we saw in 2016,” said Douglas Kriner, a government professor at Cornell and one of the authors of the preprint.

Other studies have found a wider range in how willing people are to believe in something. A preprint from Pennycook asked Americans2 in late March whether they believed specific claims about COVID-19, without indicating whether they were true or false. The percent of Americans who said they believed false claims ranged from less than 1 percent (the claim that eating garlic can cure the coronavirus, even though it cannot) to just over 20 percent (the claim that seasonal flu was just as dangerous as COVID-19, even though the flu is far less deadly). And a survey from Pew Research Center conducted in mid-March reported nearly 3 in 10 Americans believe the coronavirus was created in a lab, either accidentally or on purpose. (The evidence heavily points to the virus emerging naturally.)

Many Americans are also having difficulty discerning accurate information. For example, in the Cornell paper, when shown headlines about treatments for COVID-19, 40 percent of respondents, on average, judged real headlines in this category to be true, and the remaining 60 percent were “almost evenly divided between identifying the headline as false or acknowledging that they were unsure.”

“If people are unable to discern and say that true information is true, that is a real problem from a public health perspective,” said Sarah Kreps, a government and law professor at Cornell and a co-author of the paper.

In another preprint co-authored by Pennycook, respondents were able to distinguish between accurate and false information about COVID-19 pretty well when prompted to. But when asked only whether they would share the information on social media — and not if they believe it to be true or not — more were willing to share fake news.

“They still only believe true content like 65-ish percent of the time and the false content they believe like 25 percent of the time, so not great but at least there’s a difference,” Pennycook said. “If instead you ask them which ones they would share on social media, they’re terrible at discerning between them. They don’t, basically.”

One of the reasons we might be seeing more people falling for misinformation is the knowledge gap that comes with an emerging disease like COVID-19. There’s a lot we still don’t know about this virus, and that lack of understanding can create a vacuum that is all too easily filled by conspiracy theories and misinformation.

“An analogy that might be helpful here is autism: science still doesn’t have a clear explanation of why autism occurs,” said Brendan Nyhan, a government professor at Dartmouth College who studies disinformation. “That’s created a demand for explanations of why children develop it that anti-vaccine activists have taken advantage of. They’ve provided a simple story of why children develop autism, taking advantage of the coincidence in time between when autism manifests and when children get vaccines.”

So what do we do while we wait for better scientific answers on COVID-19? Social media sites, for their part, have enacted measures to limit and remove false information about COVID-19. Facebook, YouTube and Vimeo, for example, all removed the viral video “Plandemic” that claimed a shadowy group of elites was using the coronavirus to gain power. But an analysis from the nonprofit activist organization Avaaz found that it can take up to 22 days for Facebook to label fact-checked COVID-19 misinformation on the site, and that it can spread to millions of users in the meantime. And MIT researchers have found that misinformation peddlers can get around Facebook’s efforts to quell fake news by using an archived version of a URL via the Wayback Machine.

Studies have also found mixed results when it comes to issuing corrections on misinformation. One study on disinformation around Zika and yellow fever outbreaks in Brazil, published earlier this year in Science Advances and co-authored by Nyhan, found that priming people with a factsheet of accurate information had no significant impact on people’s beliefs in subsequent false claims.

One of Pennycook’s papers suggests that merely prompting people to think about the fact that not everything online is true can be enough to reduce the amount of misinformation they share. But each of the researchers I spoke to expressed concern about people’s ability to discern accurate information in a pandemic, and what impact the deluge of bunk might have on making sure the truth gets communicated.

“The problem is we can’t say how much fake news is reinforcing beliefs and entrenching beliefs and causing people, almost, to enter this domain of nihilism where they just throw up their hands,” Kreps said. “They don’t know what to believe, so they’re not going to believe anything. Not believing anything can be as pernicious as believing fake news.”

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Kaleigh Rogers

1 note · View note

autisticlassiedog · 4 years

Text

Questions from this ask meme: https://thecaffeinatedkansasbabe.tumblr.com/post/165163508337/random-questions-for-queer-ladies-wlwask

SEXUALITY & COMING OUT: 1. How do you define your sexuality? Grey/demiromantic, grey/demisexual, bi leaning 2. What pronouns do you use to identify yourself? Any are fine 3. At what age did you first suspect that you are sexually attracted to other girls? 23. 4. At what age did you come to terms with your sexuality? 23. 5. Did you have an “aha I like girls” moment or was it more of a gradual realization? I had an “aha, I like THIS girl” moment 6. How did your sexuality make you feel before you came out? I’m still not really out, but I’m out in most online spaces I’m on.....mostly it made me feel like I had to keep it secret. 7. How did you become comfortable with your sexuality? Honestly that wasn’t too hard for me. I guess having LGBT friends and being familiar with that kind of stuff, + already having come to terms with orientation from a theological perspective, helped a lot. 8. At what age did you first come out? 23 9. Who was the first person you came out to? How did they take it? Well, my brother, and he kinda reacted badly, like “ew, that’s something I didn’t want to know”. But then, a few years later, he realized he was bi! 10. Do your parents know about your sexuality? HELL. NO. 11. How out are you? Only a little 12. Do you now identify as something different than when you first came out? Instead of bisexual I identify as being aroace spec with biromantic leanings, now 13. Was anyone surprised when you came out or did people seem to already know? I don’t know. 14. Has coming out lost you any friends? Maybe. Idk. 15. How soon after meeting someone do you usually tell them about your sexuality? I don’t, typically. 16. How difficult do you find it to sympathize with straight women? Eh. I just feel odd when people assume I’m straight, lol. 17. Have you ever wished you were completely straight? Not really. 18. Agree or disagree: Everyone is at least a little bit gay. I actually do think it’s likely that a lot of people are at least somewhat bi. 19. If you are not a lesbian, about what percentage of the time do you find yourself attracted to other girls? Less than 1% of the time, but the same goes for men. 20. Do you think it is possible to be a true 50/50 bisexual, or is the percentage always skewed towards one gender? Maybe, but I think more often than not it leans one way even if only a little. 21. How often do you find yourself trying to sneak a peek or stare at a cute girl? Not really. 22. How accurate is your gaydar? Meh.

GETTING SERIOUS:

109. What does equality mean to you?  Equal opportunities and rights 110. Do you consider yourself a feminist? No. 111. Do you eat meat at all? Yup. 112. Are you religious at all? Very. 113. How do you feel about the terms “woman crush” and “girl crush”? I mean......lots of words in the English language have different meanings than they do at face value. 114. How do you feel when platonic female friends refer to each other as girlfriends? Confused, like are you gay or just friends 115. How do you feel when people use the word gay to mean things such as stupid, dumb, boring, or idiotic? Meh. I’m not too concerned with it. 116. Are you comfortable with terms such as lezzie, lesbo, dyke, homo, or tranny? If people of those identities want to use them, then let em 117. What are your views on gender identity and bathroom use? Trans people been using the bathrooms of their choice for decades, it’s only an issue now because trans people are more visible than previously. 118. Do you have any opinions on LGBT people in the military? Eh. For trans people on hormones and stuff who have to take injections, maybe there’s a valid reason for banning them, cuz like....diabetics can’t serve in the military either cuz medical reasons. But I don’t know much about it, and feel free to correct me. 119. Have you ever been called a gay slur? Yes. 120. Have you ever been queer bashed? Yes. 121. Have you ever been discriminated against because of your sexuality or gender identity? If so, please explain. I actually had a sitch just recently where I was threatened on account of my sexuality.....basically, since I’m bi-ish, there was some people who felt I shouldn’t be allowed around children, and they were threatening to call my church and out me to the church elders. 122. Does it really get better? Idk. 123. Americans: How did you feel on June 26, 2015? It was a good time 124. How accepting of LGBT people is the city/community you live in? No idea. 125. Have you ever tried to “pray the gay away”? No, never felt I had to. 126. How annoyed are you with how heteronormative society is? Meh. 127. What LGBT stereotype do you most disagree with? The. Hecking. Pedo. One. It burns me up! 128. Is there anything about the LGBT community that you wish you knew before coming out? They aren’t very accepting of us side B ppl 129. What advice would you give to a girl who is struggling to figure out her sexuality? It’s okay not to be straight, God doesn’t love you any less, and it’s also okay not to be sure. It’s also ok to if it turns out you are straight! 130. What advice would you give to a girl who is struggling to come out? Only come out when you are in a safe place to do so tbh. Other than that, idk, cuz I’m only a little bit out myself.

#ask meme

1 note · View note