#I don't actually have an opinion on what is the correct answer here I'm genuinely curious what other people imagine vs what I always think

[pangur-and-grim]

This is a genuine question! As a person who is into cat breeding and cares about animal wellness, I trust your nuanced opinion a little more than biased articles I keep seeing.

The short/blunt whiskers that Devon Rexes or other curly breeds are known to have: I've read some articles that say the cats don't notice/aren't bothered, while others talk about how a stunted sensory organ is detrimental to their health. I want to know what is more "correct" or true. I know the answer will be beyond a binary, so there's no real question other than; do you have more information about the general well being of cats with short/blunt whiskers.

I wanted to ask someone who is more attuned to the ethics of cat breeding! You were who I thought of first.

(If you don't want to answer this publicly, feel free to answer privately!)

it's not detrimental to their health for a cat to have blunted whiskers, but it's also not ideal.

you've actually asked a very interesting question! different people draw the line at how detrimental a trait can be before they consider it unethical, and I suppose blunted whiskers are within the hand-wiggling realm of 'not the best, but not the worst either' for me.

as another example, sphynx, peterbald and donskoy cats are in that hand-wiggling category, but they're a bit too close to the line for me. cats spend so much of their time grooming, and rely on fur for thermoregulation, so I wouldn't be comfortable purchasing a hairless breed. but other people view it differently, and still more people might have that same level of discomfort with breeds that have fragile whiskers like the Devon Rex!

for this reason, rather than splitting hairs (haha, get it?) on the hand-wiggly breeds, I'd rather keep my crusade targeted against breeds that are unquestionably unethical, like Scottish Folds (which have cartilage deformation that leads to painful arthritis) and Exotic Shorthairs (which have neurological problems due to their small brain cases, and also just.... can't breath).

I'm also being selfish here, as my allergies to animals have gotten worse over the years, and the rexed fur mutation that gives Devon Rexes their name reduces how much they shed into the atmosphere. that (plus their tendency to produce less of an allergy-inducing protein in their saliva) will help me live a lot more comfortably with my Boy!

[luigiblood]

Why Nintendo 64 - Nintendo Switch Online is shit

I have been very critical of Nintendo 64 - Nintendo Switch Online since the beginning, not only the very noticeably broken graphics emulation was certainly a case that everyone understood, but it did certainly make me completely avoid the Expansion Pack subscription entirely for a year because that was genuinely shit in 2021.

Now how is it in 2024? Well, it's not that much better. They did fix a lot of problems during that time for sure, and that's something that we do need to acknowledge to do at least something resembling fair criticism.

Current context

That one Dark Link room in Ocarina of Time was fully fixed, as the fog and even transparency emulation was just outright broken, somehow worse than its Wii U Virtual Console counterpart (which was already not very good), it also affected other games like Super Mario 64 where the fog was actually not correct, but oddly enough, it's not as much of a problem in Super Mario 3D All-Stars, and I'm not entirely sure what happened between that and Nintendo Switch Online for it to have such a massive emulation downgrade.

I've done some analysis of the software, though not a ton because I don't have that much time to waste reverse engineering emulators. Through that, I found out that iQue was responsible for the Nintendo 64 emulator on Wii U and Switch, because of the emulator framework, named "TRL," being 100% identical to their NES and GBC emulator for 3DS, confirmed to be iQue through leaked source code among other things, and the debug menu is seen on Wii U if you have more than one game ROM in the folder, and it's just like the 3DS one.

The Wii U Virtual Console N64 emulator was already seen as worse than its Wii VC counterpart, mainly due to the dark filter, but that thing has nothing to do with the emulation quality it was providing, aside from apparently some additional slight input lag on top of the already massive input lag which I find mindboggling, the graphics emulation was already considered worse than on Wii, a lot of issues that people saw on NSO were already on Wii U VC, which turned into a massive mess of complaints because, yeah, it turns out the Wii U was just not successful, but the Switch is, making obvious complaints very much more important.

The Dark Link room just happened to be using a bunch of graphical features at once which made it very noticeable when they don't work as intended. When I discussed this with other people, I couldn't help but feel terrible at the answer I get: "It's good enough."

This response annoys me to no end, but in truth, yes, the games are playable, nowadays graphically you probably wouldn't tell the difference from the real N64 with an untrained eye, and in fact, so am I at times too. But the problem is that it now becomes an actual history rewrite of how the game actually was, and you could still say that you would prefer the N64 games now than before with better framerates, better resolution, all that.

Better performance is always better?

Now this is still more of an opinion piece so here's my opinion about better framerate and better resolution: It's fucking misguided. Doing better framerate and better resolution works a lot better for games after that generation than the 32-bit and 64-bit era of the mid 90s to 2000, because the graphics looks a lot better for it and the standards are closer to the current era that we're in.

For N64 however, simply running the game better does not work as well as it should most of the time, and, frankly, seeing big polygons in 720p does not work as well as it should for most games. 2D games especially suffer from this and get some really weird filtering that just bothers me, especially in games like Yoshi's Story and Harvest Moon 64, where the emulator seemingly can't decide whether the graphics should be almost pixel perfect, or become vaseline.

Speaking of vaseline, where's the anti-aliasing? The N64 is very much known for its blurry anti-aliasing! While I'm pretty much immune to aliasing myself, I can still see it's not really respecting the original N64 very well about that, and it only deepens one of the biggest history rewrite of the N64 nowadays, where most people is more likely to look at badly emulated footage of a N64 game than seeing the game running on the original system, and this really bothers me that when you have every single other system on the service to care about this to the point of having a CRT screen filter, and even outright and pretty faithful reproductions of the Game Boy series' screens, N64 is the only one that forces you to play in its uglier HD resolution with no actual option to play games in their original resolution with some CRT filter or not, and that is just a real evidence of a lack of care to me compared to the rest of the systems.

When it comes to better framerates however, as much as I love that (Pilotwings 64 on NSO is actually one of the few experiences I can recommend on it), a lot of the games' speed are tied to the framerate, potentially making games harder than they should due to its speed being more accounted for the actual system, and sometimes, causing actual desync problems that iQue had to implement ways to manually slow the framerate down in specific moments of games just to account for it, but this only works for games that can run faster than intended. A lot of games sometimes have their framerate completely capped and doesn't run any faster.

But emulating the N64 lag is genuinely complex, and it's a problem that's not fully solved to this day even on unofficial N64 emulation, because there's way too many factors to take into account that it would probably take too much performance to figure out where it should take more time to process or not, so, on this one, I have a bit of sympathy about that as a developer, but it is still possible to roughly approximate that, even if the result can be weird; but I don't seem to notice any legit attempts about that.

Besides, a lot of people would be annoyed about the N64 lag and bad framerates, but to me if you want better framerates, in my opinion, it would be done differently, and unofficial emulation absolutely can deal with it in ways that isn't intrusive to the game's performance: If you played the N64Recomp PC port of Majora's Mask, you would know this, as RT64, the new graphics plugin powering this port (and hopefully emulators soon), actually handles interpolation between frames, allowing better framerate without sacrificing the game's performance to be better or worse than intended, and it makes for some real impressive results while still being relatively low in cost. For me this seems like a potential avenue to attempt to ease in comfort with N64 games.

Is N64 emulation really that hard?

…frankly, if you asked me this question 10 years ago, I would have said yes, at least to my understanding back then, but also now. But if you ask me this same question now, the answer is no, mainly because of brand new standards that actually makes a huge difference in how to handle N64 emulation in current systems, even through unofficial emulation.

I know it's very easy to mock unofficial N64 emulation as relatively hard to play, and this I would agree with, but this problem is purely user faced now. The old problem of unofficial N64 emulation was mainly that not many people were doing work on it and their time is just not infinite, but that is very much changing nowadays.

The Nintendo 64 is actually a well understood system, additional research are still being done, but for the most part, we can understand the N64 to a decent degree. The actual bottleneck of N64 emulation was actually how to emulate it on current systems, when we were stuck to older graphics API standards like OpenGL and DirectX 9.

However, a shakeup happened since with Vulkan and DirectX 12, allowing deeper GPU control. This, is actually one of the most important events of computing that actually unlocked bigger N64 emulation potential and finally get rid of problems that plagued N64 graphics emulation and it started with an adaptation of THE most accurate N64 graphics plugin as Parallel-RDP, and its extremely good, but its pretty much asking on performance and requires a decent GPU (no need for the latest stuff though).

Unfortunately, not much happened since on that field, due to as I said before, a lack of developers, but now RT64 exists, and is made to be extremely performant, and especially made to be accurate without relying on any game specific code for it, which is extremely impressive and shows a lot of potential for the future, while providing tons of new features that allows enhancements like frame interpolation and more. RT64 was fully enabled because of Vulkan and DirectX 12, else it would simply not exist!

Now why did I talk about this stuff that's seemingly unrelated to NSO? Well remember that Majora's Mask PC port I talked about earlier that uses RT64? I saw that thing running on Nintendo Switch, seemingly perfectly fine, with enhancements as well.

This makes me look at N64 NSO differently, and with even more criticism than before. Instead of making good graphics emulation through Vulkan, they seemingly instead just ported the graphics emulation from Wii U VC's GX2 API to Vulkan. That isn't without effort, but it is quite frankly lazy, and means that whatever they're doing, they're not using the technology at their disposal to the fullest, especially since Vulkan is a standard that applies to pretty much every current GPU under the sun now, whatever the work is done here, it would likely work on the long term, especially the next systems after the Switch. Why Nintendo did not allow that is just sad, and a waste of time. RT64 was done by mostly a single developer, and while it took many years to be developed, these years could have been reduced a lot more if it was handled by a team fully dedicated to this, with possibly even more cutting edge to it. The ingredients are there, but the recipe was just botched.

Genuine trust issues with the quality

But aside from all this stuff I just talked about, if you didn't understand much of it, hopefully this part should help you understand other issues that I have with N64 NSO.

Remember that the first version of N64 NSO was graphically buggy, and while they did fix that over time, new games sometimes were outright buggy and possibly game breaking:

When they added Paper Mario to the service, while the game did actually receive some improvements over the Wii U VC emulator, the game, somehow, was more prone to crashes. If you game over with Watt as a partner, the emulator crashes, and you lose your progress. If you have the curiosity of hitting trees with your hammer, one of them in the snow town actually crashes the game too! Thankfully both were fixed, but you still needed to wait months! If you had no idea why crashes could be caused as Nintendo just never warns about that stuff, that is genuinely inconvenient.

When they added Kirby 64; the western version actually had a game breaking bug that makes you softlocked if you get hit in a particular way underwater. That is genuinely a terrible bug that could affect just about anybody playing the game. Thankfully, they fixed it the next week, but that REALLY shouldn't have happened to begin with!

There's also the smaller problems like Yoshi's Story's boss, Inviso, where the point of the boss is to be invisible. Except he's very visible at all times making the point of the boss moot and any respect to the original game gone. For some fucking reason, they took more than a year to finally fix it, and that's just a huge shame.

There's also how Jet Force Gemini had a worse widescreen mode and somehow thought it was good for release, thankfully fixed 2 months after, but you still had to wait 2 months!

And then F-Zero X still has genuine framerate problems to this day where the game just runs worse over time. That game is known to run a perfect 60 FPS on the original system, so there's no excuse here.

I could also mention Goldeneye and Perfect Dark, but just look up Graslu's videos on them, he has done a full comparison, showing what's wrong with them with enough detail.

For these, I just mentioned the glaring issues plaguing several games, but a lot of times these issues just comes on their addition to the service, and then only gets fixed months later; and for me, that's an actual disrespect to the player. I understand the developer is doing their best here, but frankly, what that looks like to me is a legit constant: they visibly seems just scrambling to get games to work to a "good enough" state. I am NOT accusing iQue of this, however I accuse Nintendo to not have taken any measures to stop having these kinds of problems to begin with.

To speak better of iQue, they seem to be good at reverse engineering, as they do patch games to fix issues, or sometimes just modifications like anti-epilepsy measures or other kinds of hacks.

The controls

I had some really bad things to say about the controls, but it got partially invalidated when I played Perfect Dark on the service to see how bad it got. I think I simply overthought about it.

Now I have an opinion about the controls of Goldeneye and Perfect Dark that will not please people: They're… fine. The default controls I mean. I know people have some real aversion to FPS that doesn't use a double stick, but frankly I dare say those controls didn't age as badly as you'd think. Some people say it's best played on a N64 controller but I don't agree about that, it's also okay on a regular Switch Pro Controller.

Turok however, oh boy, the default controls can be a double stick FPS… except it's reversed. That's where the ability to remap controls would be very useful here, or possibly just one moment where better forced control setups would be actually nice here.

Or how Pokémon Stadium has minigames that uses actually both the D-pad and the Stick, it could be great if the right Stick acted like the N64 Stick at that moment on a Pro Controller instead of the C Buttons!

Instead, I sometimes get told it is an excuse to get the (frankly expensive) N64 controller. Fuck no. I should not be forced to buy that, and I actually dislike using that controller, and I played tons of N64 games through emulation with different controls without having serious issues either, so for me, this isn't an excuse. Wii U VC also provided button remapping!

The forced use of ZL as the N64 Z button, and L for N64 L button for every game, also bothered me. I know they care about consistency, but then, I got actually curious to check how they handled Z and L on Wii and Wii U VC… and holy shit. They handled it right from the start. On Wii they actually just used the L button for the N64 Z button! But, the N64 B and A buttons do correspond to the B and A buttons on the current controllers regardless. Though, on that one, for most games, it's not as much of a bother, but if you're playing games like, let's say Wave Race 64 or F-Zero X, this is particularly worse.

F-Zero X has the use of strafing left and right, so I'll let you imagine how worse that sounds if you use ZL and R. NOT ZR, that's for C Buttons macros on the face buttons. It feels horrible and unintuitive, but also there's how the B and A buttons on N64 are vertical, and you just use your thumb on both buttons, making it easy to boost or to soften bounces on waves in Wave Race 64, which is a pretty darn important thing to understand, but instead you have to handle it on horizontal B and A buttons, making it a slight bit more annoying to your thumb, physically speaking. It just feels unintuitive and actually bad for your thumb, frankly.

It's where I wish games would actually make either ZR or R buttons to be swapped depending on the title, to be the R button and C button macro, and also offer an option to rotate the face buttons so that B and A would be placed on Y and B instead, corresponding more to the actual feeling of the N64 controller.

Sin & Punishment is oddly enough the only game of the bunch that comes with slightly custom controls, more adapted to the game, and I'm sorta glad that they bothered.

Just to go back to the N64 stick emulation, I also wish the sensitivity of it was managed better on current controllers. It really seems like when some games run faster than intended, added with the fact the stick isn't reproduced faithfully, some games are a lot harder to play, especially with Joy Cons if that's your only and basic options, where for example, turning the camera is way faster and you just keep wanting to reposition all the time.

Missing features

Man, imagine emulating the Controller Pak for the ability to save in games that only uses it instead of battery backed save memory in the cartridge, but then, literally never use it, ever.

Well that's what happened to Wii U VC and N64 NSO. iQue has actually emulated it, but for some reason, they never use it, and I just do not understand why, especially in games where the Rumble Pak isn't supported.

Speaking of the Rumble Pak, it is emulated, but there's one thing I just do not understand: Why isn't there code to automatically swap the Controller Pak and Rumble Pak? They have the best ways to actually handle this in ways that is pretty transparent and unobtrusive, but somehow, they don't bother with it, and it's just very strange. I know the N64 games are weird about it, but some outright allow to swap them, sometimes they even bother to remove the No Controller Pak message in Winback, but in other games they don't even bother removing the Rumble Pak swap message. It's just inconsistent and weird.

We don't have Transfer Pak emulation unfortunately, but that one, I can partially understand, it's definitely a bit messy, but it would still have been cool to play Mario Tennis and Mario Golf with your GBC characters and to level them up on the N64 games. Instead, in Mario Tennis GBC, you actually get the Transfer Pak content unlocked from the start, which is still pretty cool of Nintendo to care, and a mere reminder that they do care about these details in other apps. But in Mario Tennis on N64 NSO, the Transfer Pak courts are yet to be unlocked.

Then there's the wish to see 64DD emulated, which they initially did some work towards that back on Wii U VC, but then simply never touched in years, and then removed the code after I noticed they tried to support the fanmade cartridge ports of them. It's probably just for testing though, I don't really care that they do it like that, but I would think it's particularly crass had they used them officially on the app. This has yet to be seen again, so I don't have my hopes up. Here's hoping the Nintendo Museum made them care though, considering Doshin The Giant 64DD actually showed up there.

The future

I think I pretty much said what I wanted to say the most in one place. It might have been a little hard to read, but I really wanted to make my points very clear.

When I look at N64 NSO vs the rest of the service, I just cannot help but see how worse it is in general, I have genuine trust issues as it is very badly managed as games get added but then doesn't run properly, only to get resolved, if it does, only months later. It just makes me want to put off for later any time I wanna play a N64 game on that service, and I really want to love that service, I want to recommend y'all the biggest N64 library so far that Nintendo has given us that surpasses both Virtual Console libraries on Wii and Wii U, but I just can't.

Unfortunately, I don't see the future to be that bright. I see no reason to believe Nintendo has done any big efforts to allow a better N64 emulator, and of course, Nintendo has never really addressed complaints, and I partially blame the "good enough" feeling. When I read ArsTechnica to make an article just to complain about the borders after the N64 NSO ordeal, it just makes me feel like no matter what, this bigger complaint of mine across all of N64 NSO just cannot be seen seriously. It's a much bigger problem than borders (though, I agree, they should allow more, including pitch black borders).

I don't see any reason for Nintendo to read this either, but that's my full impressions of N64 NSO so far. Nintendo 64 NSO is just shit, and disrespectful to the legacy of the N64.

I outright accuse it to force people to buy a N64 controller just to play it correctly, which definitely worked as it definitely was out of stock several times, but if that's truly what they aimed for, then it's an app that doesn't know what audience it wants. If it aimed to be played by casuals, they'll be put off by the controls. If they aimed for the hardcore, they'll find problems, no matter what.

And it really cannot be helped when the emulator is clearly designed for the developers to manually fix problems per game instead of having a better emulator overall.

[elekinetic]

hi! i was just wondering what your opinions are on hopper, like, as a character? i've just seen so much slander for him and i was wondering about your own thoughts on it since you seem to have a good grasp of the show's characters. also, no pressure to answer if you don't want to, i'm just genuinely curious :)

hi!! i am so honored you asked!

so. hopper’s a shithead. i love him.

no but actually so, i think hopper is one of the most interesting characters in the show, and i think a lot of the hopper slander (and character slander in general) comes from having fundamentally different approaches to the show. and I don’t think there’s any one correct way to watch the show, but there’s a difference between looking at characters as people who are accountable for their actions and characters as vehicles for communicating themes and ideas.

(I wanna start with a disclaimer that I’m not really gonna touch how he exists as copaganda, especially as a character, who really does not subvert the hero cop trope. That’s a separate post and a whole other conversation — one that’s important when contextualizing our discussion of hopper, but for now I’m just gonna focus on his characterization and behavior within the context of the show. alright, moving on.)

hopper is not always the nicest person and doesn’t always make the right call, but he is so caring and protective of the people he loves, and he believes in goodness in the world. i think it’s really interesting to see that over the course of the show, part of his journey is relearning that there are good things, and that even though it’s painful, those things are still worth protecting. (it’s less so that he’s learning that those things are worth protecting and it’s more so that he’s learning to be okay with the pain of it.)

after losing sarah, hopper shuts everything down and everything out. and like, obviously. of course he would. there’s this really interesting part of his spinoff novel that talks about how when he was in the war, he was stationed in an area that exposed him to chemicals that could lead to birth defects or infertility in the future. and then he comes home and has sarah anyway, and then she dies of cancer. obviously he feels really guilty about that. I think it’s really really important to remember that that is a key part of his experience when it comes to analyzing hopper and considering his behavior.

i was re-watching the first couple episodes of season two with abby strangeswift and bats demobatman, specifically el’s conversation with him about wanting to go out for halloween. and i was really frustrated, right, because here’s this girl that’s been trapped in a lab her entire life and just wants to feel normal, and there’s really no end in sight to this new kind of confinement. but then abby and bats were talking about how there’s really no other choice and especially after losing sarah, he is not willing to put el at risk.

I think this haunts him through the next couple of seasons. he becomes so blinded by his need to protect and keep el safe that he loses nuance. especially with a kid as extraordinary and as hunted as el, hopper is so on guard all the time. and that’s frustrating! because then we see him as the reason el loses out on experiences that she should get to have. she should get to be a normal kid and do normal things like go to the mall and kiss her boyfriend etc. etc. but hopper is so keenly aware of the fact that el is not a normal kid and the world is not safe for her. he’s not willing to be the reason another daughter dies.

like i said, i think hopper makes bad decisions and doesn’t always consider the agency of the people he loves, but i think the reason that we see so many parallels between him and mike is because they are both protectors. fundamentally, i think their arcs are the same. it’s them learning they don’t always have to be the protector, that they can trust the people they love to love them back without being a defensive force. learning there’s a way to be protective without being overbearing or imposing on agency. 

and listen, hopper fucks up a lot. I don’t think the way he speaks to Joyce season three is OK and I think he owes her an apology. and I think he and eI will need to have a real conversation about why he acts the way he does and why he put the rules he does in place. (I don’t think people understand just how much danger el is in even when the upside down shit isn’t happening.)

hopper makes a lot of sense to me and his inner conflict is really, really interesting. if you’re looking at him as a person, then, yeah, it gets a lot harder to excuse his actions because they do cause harm, tangible harm. but i read an article recently that i think articulated really well why our progress as a society about discussing mental health hasn’t really solve the problems we need it to solve; that, despite introducing these therapeutic terms and emphasizing boundary setting, we still center ourselves in our experience of the world. (when you fuck up, youre learning—when your friend fucks up, they’re a narcissist, kind of thing.)

so let’s let both things be true. that hopper is not always making the best decisions and doesn’t always say or do the right thing, that he should apologize for that (which he has on occasion).  but he’s also learning and he should be given the space and grace for that. and yes, he’s 40. but people don’t stop learning and growing when they’re 40. you don’t hit 25 and suddenly you’re a perfect person. and this is a man who has been through a war, lost his four-year-old daughter to cancer he is sure he caused, struggled with addiction and depression, and at this point has been literally tortured by russians for months. 

but then again, hopper isn’t person. he’s a character. hopper does not exist to be accountable to his actions. he exists to convey a story, to communicate ideas. stories like this aren’t interesting without complicated people. he adds complexity to the plot and the relationships between characters. he informs el’s relationship with society and adults in her life. he gives joyce the space to be taken care of, to not be the mom, the hustler, the protector of her own family all day everyday. he fills out hawkins as a three-dimensional place, where not everyone is a wheeler-esque suburban wet dream. he shows that there is a path out of grief and depression. he shows that it’s important to lean on people and that isolation will just lead to further suffering. It shows that protecting other people is important, but so is moderation and communication. how do we learn those lessons without a character making mistakes that hopper does?

anyway, those are my brief scattered thoughts on hopper. i think he deserves more grace than he’s given by people in fan spaces, but i understand peoples hesitation to treat him as a beloved character the way they would treat el or lucas or will. he’s a very real character and doesn’t really fit the schema of a fave, i think. and i think the way people communicate their appreciation for his character doesn’t fit easily into the way people show their appreciation for other characters in fans spaces.

I hope this makes sense. 👍

[anonzentimes]

Hello hi I noticed ppl just say stuff abt Nagito here and u answer them in such a nice way like u're genuinely interested and its so sweet so I wanna share a THEORY that's been rotting in my head for long and I WANNA SPEAK IT OUT FOR OTHER SDR2 ENJOYERS TO TELL ME ABOUT THEIR OPINION

SO we noticed how Nagito and Sonia look STRANGELY alike like bruh maybe the danganronpa art style has like, same face syndrome or smthn idk but like cmon pls Nagito and Sonia they almost look like twins which I love bcuz they're both honestly so well designed anyway

In my very personal headcanon, they're actually siblings. That's what I think and I'm gonna explain my theory below

So we know abt Nagito's good luck bad luck cycle. And I thought, what if Nagito is the first child of Sonia's parents, and since they live in a castle and in this royal like environment they'd have a sort of tradition running in the family and whenever a new child is born, they'd go to a sort of fortune teller or clairvoyant like those ppl who see in a crystal ball or idk ANYWAY

So they go to their personal clairvoyant guy idk bruh and the person tells them about Nagito's misfoturne cycle. Like he's born with it it's unfair it's sad but yeah poor little Nagito

So Sonia's parents are like omg no this can't be happening we love our son but who knows what his cycle may cause to us?!?! Only God knows!!! What if because of him the castle like burns or something or something very bad happens so they're like yeah we love you bby boy but you gotta go we're so sorry and they like, give him? Idk what correct terms to use excuse me

So they give him to a wealthy family still bcuz like yeah poor Nagito he's born in a royal family then better keep him on a high social statu yknow so yeah they give him to another family and made sure to try and find a first, WEALTHY family and second, with parents who kinda look like him like at least the mother and they did don't ask me how but they did they have like contacts in Japan bruh idk my theory's not very elabored anyway

So little Nagito, who's still like, a few months old like maybe 4 or 5 months bcuz finding a new family takes time gets given away to a wealthy family AND I have another headcanon and its that Nagito's father (adoptive one so) is the founder of a designer/luxury brand so thats why he's rich and he already had contacts w Junko's parents anyway we're getting carried away

So yeah some time later Sonia's parents have Sonia and still have Nagito in mind and they're feeling super guilty and with Sonia looking awfully like him its not helping so yeah I think they'd keep like letters they'd write to Nagito to send him when he'd get older and signed anonymously yknow? Like "we hope you're growing up in good conditions and in a nice environment, we love you Nagito" stuff like that, and It's signed anonymously at the end

And then Sonia and Nagito meet during the game and notice the very visible not only physical but also the similarities in their personality and behavior like idk they're both a little silly its so cute and they're like "lol hold up" and it'd be cute if the other students would (lightheartedly) joke abt these two being siblings WHEN IT'S THE CASE

ANYWAY tysm for reading my rambling hope it entertained u 🫶

haha it did entertain me, this is a fun interpretation and headcanon. I don’t fully see it myself but I think it’s a fun idea and food for thought. Maybe in those turn of events it would truly be good luck in the end since Nagito’s biological family in this interpretation didn’t have to die due to his talent. ALSO THE IDEA OF ANONYMOUS LETTERS IS SO FUNNY NAGITO’S JUST LIKE “man who in the world is sending me these letters expressing affection” LMAOO

[deepfriedpaddymayne]

who, in your massively correct opinion, is the hottest sas boy? i can never tell if i think they're hot or i want to steal their gender

anon. before i start answering this, I need you to know that I went at this the most ridiculous way possible. just so you know, before you embark upon this journey.

imagine you are me. and you are a lesbian. and you think everyone on rogue heroes looks like Some Guy. and then you get this question. you might come up with an idea, make a joke, and move on.

OR.

you could choose to apply the scientific method. objectively quantify hotness in the Objective opinion of a lesbian. except, obviously, hotness depends on a series of factors - just because someone is attractive, it doesn't mean that they are Hot, you get me? you gotta keep their personality into account, too. AND on top of all of that, we need to account for gender envy. so you do what I did. and you open excel. and you start grading the boys depending on fuckability, dateability, and whether or not you want their gender. cool, now you have an Objective, Correct Answer. because obviously everyone's opinions on attractiveness are subjective and therefore all valid, BUT my subjective intepretation IS a little more correct than other people's. anyway, you have done all this. you have your answer. except you also have a visual memory and don't love numbers. and you might choose to chart it all out.

if, for some godforsaken reason, you had followed all of these steps, then you would find yourself with something like this.

and you would conclude that, if we exclude gender envy that might skew results, the hottest Rogue Heroes boy is Eoin McGonigal. which is ironic, considering he's in the cold, cold ground now.

I'm actually putting a cut here not to clog everyone's dash with this, but here are some little explanations on why I gave my score and clarifying some slightly confusing things about the chart:

Everyone is listed by surname to make sure they were all identifiable without clogging up the chart too much.

I do think most of them look, like. Fine. not, like, fiiiiiiine, they do genuinely just look. like some guys. half of them I wouldn't look at twice if I met them in tesco, you get me? anyway. I stared at so many pictures of these men trying to determine if they were fuckable. I think I am losing my mind.

Jordan, Cooper, and Stirling are actually all on the same point, they are just vaguely scattered around to make the labels readable. I had to install a whole new r package for this.

now the fun part. my completely Objective and Correct Judgment on each boy

-Stirling - his swagless looks and cringefail personality might have captivated Eve, but they are not enough for me. he looks mostly average, but he gets extra points because I am an Unusual Nose enjoyer

-Paddy - with all of my love for him he also does just look normal in my opinion (very pretty eyes, though). like, he looks good, but in a pretty normal way. and then on top of that there is his personality. (both of his scores turn into 10s if you have the highly specific brand of mental illness that Augustin and Eoin both have. get better soon pal)

-Lewes - Jock would absolutely make the best boyfriend out of the main trio, this is basically canon. he's also kind of pretty in a haunted doll way but again I do think he looks mostly Fine.

-Riley - not sure how to justify why his scores are so high tbh. but he seems very confident which is kind of attractive, I guess? also no idea why I want his gender. but I DO.

-Almonds - I just KNOW that Almonds would be such a kind and caring boyfriend. I had originally given him a 7 for fuckability but then I realised that if I was a gay man I would be all over his bear charms in a matter of seconds.

-Reg - Reg gets extra points for being kind of a malewife and also his massive tits but other than that I do think he's pretty average. I would be his friend though. I think he'd be a big lesbian ally in the same way Thor is.

-Kershaw - his fuckability is that high because he exclusively joined the SAS cause he loves killing fascists so my friends and I have an ongoing joke that he fucks like a freight train. that's it.

-Wee Johnny - a little Too Blond for my taste. also, I am sorry, but he is VERY young and I think at the point in life he's at, he'd be a little too self centred to be a good boyfriend. that said my man looks like a he/him lesbian and I'd steal his gender like a fae if I could.

-Fraser - I just KNOW he'd be the kindest, most gentle boyfriend on the planet. absolute sweetheart of a man. that said, he does just look like your run of the mill twink.

-Sadler - really don't know what it is about his odd as hell vibes that makes him so fuckable to me but there is SOMETHING. that said those odd as hell vibes do probably make him into a Not Ideal boyfriend.

-Eoin - I'm sorry, he's got it all. he cooks? he's sweet and understanding but can also be a bit of a little shit? buff but not massive? gets dimples when he smiles? AND he's got freckles and curly hair and an Unusual nose? he's literally perfect and undefeated winner of this contest. rest in peace sweet prince

-Augustin - he has very pretty eyes and face but his lankyness and weirdass way of moving (affectionate) does bring his fuckability score down a little. he's also Insane and while I do think he's very good at hiding it, you would eventually notice while you are dating him and go "huh!" (this, once again, does not apply if you are Paddy). oh that said I don't know what it is about his weird skinny puppetlike limbs that's so gender to me but. yah.

-Bergé - gonna be honest here, he's only included because I felt bad about Augustin being the only Frenchie on there. I like his moustache and his funky hat.

[borom1r]

2, 3, 7, 8, 9, 12, 14, 18, 20, 22 for lotr from the violence ask meme 😈

OK i have answered 2 already but lets do this thing fuck yea (thank uuuuuuuuuu!!!!!)

3) screenshot or description of the worst take you’ve seen on tumblr

look its not really a "take" but the amount of people who just post variations of "I don't like Boromir, he's the worst" IN THE BOROMIR TAG is genuinely insane to me. like have ur (incorrect) opinion but keep it out of the tag worstie

7) what character did you begin to hate not because of canon but because how how the fandom acts about them?

uhhhh no one thank the gods. ive always disliked Denethor Because of canon. but i will say stumbling across the file index of an old LotR fansite + clicking on files w/ no preview only to find graphics thirsting over Denethor did cause massive psychic damage lmao

8) common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about

idk 😭 i dont interact w/ the broader fandom really. i do find the way ppl reduce Pippin to Just a joke character in fanon insufferable tho

9) worst part of canon

BOOK!FARAMIR + HIS MIDDLEMEN SHTICK MY WORSTIE.

also ngl i do find the Aragorn/Arwen romance....... Weird. like I'm far from averse to "love at first sight" so long as it comes with the recognition that it's really more infatuation + true love takes work. and there's the fact Aragorn fell head over heels for an image of Lúthien, and Arwen's heart did not turn towards him until Galadriel dressed him up in elven finery. not to mention she was "not yet weary of her days" when Aragorn dies + has to die "whether I will or I nill" like she. wastes away? slowly alone in Lothlórien.

like idk [Aragorn kinnie voice] that's my sister, man but all that aside I do think.. Arwen deserved better? I like that the movies made her more active + I do wish she'd actually been there at Helm's Deep bc it would've been fun to see her and Éowyn bond but yeah. the vibes were off with that whole situation imho

12) the unpopular character that you actually like and why more people should like them

huh. does Théodred count? i feel like he's kind of a blank slate so fandom can just kinda run wild with him but i do genuinely enjoy writing him + find that there are solid implications for at least a friendship between him + Boromir (if not more). i mean, Boromir got a Rohirric shield from someone

14) that one thing you see in fics all the time

ok th implication here bein its sth that bothers me which thankfully i pretty much only read Aramir or Faramir/Éomer fics soooo theres not much??

i think the only things that RLLY get to me + they aren't THAT popular trope-wise (or ive been rlly good at avoiding them lmao) are fics that 1) make Boromir overly aggressive or 2) completely woobify Faramir

+ tbh the Faramir one bothers me more actually. that is a grown ass man and captain of the rangers of Ithilien.....................

18) it’s absolutely criminal that the fandom has been sleeping on…

HRM. again idk :3 <- blissfully not interacting w the broader fandom + only interacting w/ ppl w correct takes on Boromir + Rohan

(tentatively i need to start following more ppl i see some of yall in my notes + i shld follow. sorry im like a nervous dog u need to coax out from under the porch lol)

20) part of canon you found tedious or boring

side-eyeing my copies of the Histories. i need to finish those. eventually.............

22) your favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores

ignores?????? nothing i think (thankfully lmao) but i will say there is SO much detail in the films that it makes me INSANE. ik we literally just talked abt this in DMs lmao but i could sit n talk abt LotR costuming for fucking HOURS the films were SO stunning and the clothing alone reveals sooooooo much abt the characters i think its a super underrated vehicle for character analysis :3

[friendsofmedusa]

Genuine question: what exactly do you think intersex is?

Hey nonny!

Mh, I'm not sure whether I like the way this question is being asked: I have no "opinion" on intersex conditions, it doesn't matter what I think. What matters is years of medical reasearch. Which is what my knowledge of intersex conditions is based on?

Still, I'll pretend your question was asked in good faith so I'll give you an introduction.

Disclaimer: I am no doctor, if anything I'm about to say is incorrect, please DO correct me. The last thing I'd want is to spread misinformation.

Intersex conditions are known in the medical field as DSDs: Disorders of Sexual Developments.

The name says it all, actually: these "are conditions with an atypical chromosomal, gonadal or phenotypic sex, which leads to differences in the development of the urogenital tract and different clinical phenotypes." (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6976999/#:~:text=Disorders%20of%20sexual%20development%20(DSD,tract%20and%20different%20clinical%20phenotypes.). This, in everyday language, means that the fetus might present ambiguous external and internal gonad configuration, and/or an atypical karyotype (ie, genes).

Debunking myths about intersex conditions: ambiguous genitalia are actually pretty rare!

Studies shows that instances of ambiguous genitalia happen in about 1 every 5,000 live births, putting them at a solid 0.02%. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7845444/)

Don't get me wrong, though.

They DO happen, and doctors absolutely DO perform unnecessary cosmetic surgeries on newborns with ambiguous genitalia. This is horrific, to say the least: unless there was a medical need for the surgery to take place (eg, tissue partly covering the urethral opening), there is NO reason for a newborn's genitalia to be altered. Intersex activists have been campaigning for years to raise awareness about the topic.

Moving on.

DSDs, contrary to popular belief, are 99% of the time sex-specific: this means that they can only occur in one of the two sexes, and only some of them can occur in both.

For example, Klinefelter Syndrome (XXY) targets genetical male babies (who present a Y chromosome), while Turner Syndrome (X0) targets genetical female babies (who do not present a Y chromosome).

People believe that intersex conditions undermine the notion of a binary sex system, but they actually reinforce it: even if some people are born with just four fingers on their right hand, it doesn't negate the fact that the standard number of fingers for humans to have on their hands is five.

The medical impact DSDs have on a person varies greatly from person to person.

Men with Klinefelter Syndrome may have no issues related to it whatsoever, or may develop gynaecomastia, hypogonadism, and infertility issues.

This is why a considerable number of intersex people find out they are intersex well into their adult age: not having ambiguous genitalia, or any major medical issue, it just goes unnoticed.

Debunking myths about intersex conditions: that infamous paper and the 1.7% statistic.

Dr. Sterling's paper has been long debunked. 1.7% of the general population is not, in fact, intersex. Dr. Sterling ended up with that number by including illnesses like PCOS in intersex conditions. (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12476264/). Some doctors put the estimate at 0.018% of the population.

I'll stop here before we go into a full medical breakdown of what intersex conditions are. I hope, whatever you reason for asking me this was, you got the answer you wanted.

[stormblessed95]

Okay, why do you people get so upset when the question is about Tae kook. Same like when the question is about Jikook, all you have to do is clarify what you think happened. Yes, "I think I heard Jk's voice". Or "no don't think it was his voice". As simple as that. Or whatever else.

You guys are so scared to debunk any ot7 or Tae kook stories now.

Some people probably just genuinely didn't understand what was told, since there many translations and ot7s spreading information.

I've done many posts in here about the causality of my inbox. Please go find them or just for a second imagine what my inbox looks like after any moment ever. From both tkkrs, jkkrs, anti shippers etc. The ones yall see are rhe tip of the iceberg. You don't want me posting everything. I promise. It's 1. Hateful shit, and 2. A waste of everyone's time to constantly repeat myself.

So no, I'm not scared. I'm fucking exhausted. And I don't give a fuck anymore. If you don't watch content and don't form your own opinions about shit, it's not my job to do it for you. And for you to tell ME of ALL people that I'm scared to debunk moments/information/stories is laughable. That's so much of what I do here. I have a whole section of my masterlist dedicated to correcting misinformation. But it's not my job. Want me to care more? You are welcome to pay for my services. Otherwise, I'm just going to enjoy BTS content the way it deserves to be enjoyed and let everyone else go fuck off into lala land if they want. Because who the fuck cares what tkkrs are saying? If they want to say taekook live together and had a board game night with their friends over and JK was hiding behind the door but we still heard him over vlive, great. Let them. Who cares. It's not my job to make people actually use their brains here. I do it anyway ALOT. SO MUCH I STEP PEOPLE THROUGH THINGS AND HELP THEM THINK FOR THEMSELVES. But I'm exhausted and I don't care that much about everyone's insecurities or confusion. I gave you the exact quote of what was said. And the ability to decide what that means is up to the individual. My opinion is not anymore important or factual than anyone elses.

And if you don't like how I answer MY asks, don't send any then or you can just...

You don't own my time and I don't owe you or anyone else my time or my opinions.

[alatismeni-theitsa]

I swear I remember seeing your critique/opinion on the Hades game at some point but now I cannot find it. I've scrolled through so many of your posts and tags and I still can't find anything in relation to it. Despite remembering your name attached to the post, I'm starting to convince myself that I saw someone else's post and not yours.

In any case, I would really like to know your thoughts on it. I'm not Greek but I am a casual player of the game, and recently (thanks to a friend of mine who is Greek) I've been interested in how Greek people view the way Greek mythology is being used in western media. So far I've only seen rants on Lore Olympus, which is admittedly a story I've always disliked. Even without the context of it misusing Greek mythology and spreading misinformation about the culture, it is still in general just a bad story with equally bad characters. The fact that it IS bastardising Greek mythos is the cherry on top, but without it it can't stand on its own two feet. It's literally relying on the content of Greek myths, otherwise it would not have gained the positive attention it still has today, yet it still has the audacity to treat the context of Greek myths and culture so poorly. I have a lot of beef with Rachel Smythe because of this. It's why I'm anonymous, I don't want to get harassed by her fanbase if they see this 😅

Hades, on the other hand, is a game I enjoyed a lot, and because of that I want to challenge myself and possibly learn a thing or two from an actual Greek person. I don't want to just agree with someone when it is something I already dislike and then completely ignore them when it has to do with something I do like but possibly has problems.

If you haven't shared your thoughts yet, I'd really love to see them. If you've already made a post or more about it, I would appreciate you directing me to them or to the tags where I can find them, cause I'm genuinely lost (how does Tumblr work???)

I'm sorry for the long ask, I understand you spend a lot of your time answering questions and dealing with ignorant people. It must be tiring. Thank you for your time ❤

Hello! Thank you for the asks and the supportive words 💙 here's the tagged posts :) the tag is #hades game . (Tumblr doesn't make our lives easy, does it?)

TL;DR for those who won't bother to look: Game looks fun and I'm thinking of playing it in the future but it's far from "Greek representation" and "Greek culture". It has some references to Greek mythology; some quite obscure (so they can mess canon things up without being called out xD) and others very superficial, like when someone might think of cowboys when thinking about the USA.

While nobody minds some creativity regarding the Greek myths, and we all enjoy a fun game, it's also good to know when a "Greek myth" product is not what it sells itself to be. To be fair the game itself never said it's going to be accurate, but almost nobody checks for accuracy anymore and they assume that what they see is correct, so the game doesn't have to put a disclaimer "we are inaccurate" to begin with.

[trashpandacraft]

With regards to modern coal tar dye: is the production of it safe for the factory workers? What about the environment, in terms of waste water and petroleum processing, etc? Just curious.

i think this is a really good question, and one that deserves an answer. it's also not a question that i can answer comprehensively.

i want to be up front here that—again—i'm not a chemist or a scientist. i'm just a guy on the internet who is super interested in food processing, food history, and dye. in real life, i'm mostly an editor and sometimes a writer and researcher. because of my specific life, i'm arguably more comfortable reading government regulations and material safety data sheets than most people are, but i have no expertise here. if someone does have that expertise and feel that i'm misrepresenting things in this post, they should please 100% correct me.

but so: is the production of modern coal tar dye safe the factory workers? the first and biggest problem with this question is that these dyes are made in a lot of factories. there are a ton of chemical manufacturers out there, and many of them make food dyes. for the dyes to by approved, they have to be batch tested to meet quality parameters, so we can be pretty sure that the end products are all approximately the same. does that mean that the working conditions in the factory are good? no, it doesn't. i assume that working conditions vary as much from one chemical manufacturer to another as they do between other factories. as far as i'm aware, there's no way for an end consumer to tell what factory made the dye they're eating or putting in their hair or whatever.

i'm guessing that's not what you meant by safety, though, and you're asking more about the petroleum-specific aspects. and again, honestly, i don't know this about dye specifically. however, we as a global society are incredibly dependent on petroleum products—and there are a lot of them. (more on that in a sec.) but petroleum is used in so, so many things. it's used in asphalt and aspirin, dish soap and deodorant, mascara and mineral oil, plastic and paint, toothpaste and tires. it's what we make plastic from. it's genuinely almost impossible to overstate how many things in our lives are created with petroleum products. but we don't think of most of those things as threatening or toxic, and we often don't really worry that the materials themselves are going to be hazardous to the workers who are making them.

i don't know enough about the specific bits of petroleum used to say which, if any, of these products are more or less hazardous to the people making them. hopefully none of them are; probably some of them are. given how incredibly broad the overarching category of 'made at least in part from petroleum' is, though, i'm going to guess that dyes, specifically, are at least not hugely better or worse than the other things on that list.

part of why i'm comfortable saying that is because most of these dyes have actually been around for quite a long time! by the 1930s, six of the seven coal-tar dyes currently in use in the united states were already being made and regulated by the fda. (source) so we've had at least a hundred years of these specific dyes, which is generally plenty of time to realise if they're going to give everyone who works with them cancer. a hundred years of non-controversial production and usage is, in my opinion, a pretty decent safety assessment.

but let's back up some more. we know that they're ok for the end consumers, and we know that they're probably ok for the people who are making products with them. but 'petroleum' is kind of a weird word that encompasses a lot of things, ranging from crude oil fresh out of the ground all the way on down to some of the products that are made with it. mineral oil is petroleum. gasoline is petroleum. but they don't come out of the ground like that.

here's another place where my knowledge falls apart a little. my understanding is that crude oil is split into different parts through a process called fractional distillation. the oil is heated until it vapourises, and then components of the vapour condense at different temperatures and are split out like that. i have to reiterate: this is my very baby-level understanding of it. i've fact-checked myself and it seems that at an incredibly basic level, this is correct, but feel free to google 'fractional distillation' or 'fractionation' to read about it yourself.

i have no idea how bad this process actually is for the environment, and there are—obviously—strong incentives for corporations to conceal this. there's also a human urge to blame things on 'that new plant'. i used to live by a cracker plant, which both fractionates and processes the ethane created by the fractionation process. i had neighbours who worked there and seemed happy enough about it. i also had neighbours who swore up and down that it's the sole cause of pollution in that area, that the smells and air quality are terrible. (worth noting that because of the nature of this kind of plant, i can't differentiate between 'pollution etc that is directly related to fractionation' and 'pollution etc that is from the cracking process', though my understanding of the matter is that the latter is a bigger problem than the former.)

having lived there, i know full well that the plant wasn't the sole reason for the bad smells and air quality—there were other, different plants that definitely helped. did the cracker plant make it worse? in my opinion, yeah, it did. but did it have to make things worse? was it worse in part because of lax regulations and regulatory enforcement? was it worse in part because the company was given waivers and legally permitted to release pollution over the normal legal limit? (this part i know—it was.)

could regulations negate any pollution from the plant? i have no idea; i honestly don't know enough about the process to say. could stronger regulations (and stronger enforcement of the regulations, and not giving companies regulatory waivers because they ask nice) make that plant pollute a lot less? it could. is there the political will to do that? certainly not where i was living, but possibly in other places.

so the plants aren't great, but they could be made better, at least. i'm not aware of any unique health and safety concerns for workers at those plants, assuming that things are up to code and they're wearing appropriate ppe, but my source here is a couple guys i know who worked at one. would someone who's studied chemicals say differently? i don't know.

that's a little ambiguous! how safe is it for the workers? safe enough that the factories exist and are able to be in compliance with the health and safety requirements of many countries. could they be safer? probably. are they meaningfully less safe than working in factories that create other types of chemical? i don't have enough data to say for sure, and i don't really know how to get it, either.

ok we're almost done, but let's back up one more step. coal-tar dyes were originally made from coal, and are now mostly made from petroleum. but coal and petroleum have to be extracted, so what about the people who are extracting them?

and here we're into a whole different kind of difficult topic. how safe is mining? how safe is working on an oil rig? not very. they're both industries that are notorious for being ruthlessly profit-focused, no matter what the human cost of that is. they both have high mortality rates, and depending on what list you're looking at, they're consistently considered very dangerous.

but a lot of people take those jobs anyway, either because they're the best option on offer or because they hope the payoff will be worth it. i have an uncle who's worked his whole life in the mines and has the physical damage to show for it. his son turned eighteen and went over to the same mine to see if he could get a job. (he did, eventually.) i don't especially like this uncle or this cousin, but they're not stupid men. they looked at their options and figured this was the best one. i've known people who worked on offshore oil rigs, people who chose that job on purpose, who felt that it was worth the tradeoffs and risk. and maybe for them it was! i wish no one was making the choice of 'is the increased risk of death worth the increased rate of pay', but i wish a lot of things.

how safe is resource extraction for people who don't work in it directly? again, i think that most of us will agree that it's not very safe. fracking isn't good! our horrifying single-minded reliance on extracted resources is slowly killing us all! i don't think anyone's ever shouted for joy because the local mining company bought all that forest outside of town and they're gonna raze it. no one's thought that it would just be really cool to have an oil well in the back pasture just for the aesthetic value.

on the other hand, what's the alternative right now? i don't mean in an ideal future where we've done sensible things like converted everything to renewable fuel sources—what's the alternative right now? short of some sort of global cataclysm, i don't think there is a viable alternative right now. i think that a lot of very smart people are working very hard to create alternatives; i think that a lot of very wealthy oil executives are working very hard to make sure that those alternatives will fail before most of us ever hear so much as a whisper about them.

so ultimately, are coal-tar dyes safe? yes and no! yes in the sense that consuming them isn't going to hurt you. yes in the sense that i can't find any particular reason to think that they're riskier to make than any other product being made. yes in the sense that their production is in compliance with governmental health and safety regulations. and also no in the sense that resource extraction is inherently damaging to the land, water, and people of the world. no in the sense that it's not environmentally sustainable.

this is a really long answer to say, essentially, 'it's complicated'. but also: it's complicated. the closer to the consumer end of the chain you get, the safer things generally become. farming is more dangerous than cooking is more dangerous than eating; using hair dye is less dangerous than making hair dye is less dangerous than extracting the resources from which the hair dye will be made.

i don't know if this answers your question. it's a hard thing to wrestle with, for me. how safe does something have to be for it to be safe enough? where's the cutoff? is there anything where enough is known about the entire supply chain that we can accurately say that nothing and no one is harmed by its production?

honestly, probably not, at least right now, and i don't really think that it's mentally healthy for us as individuals to dwell on that for too long. the world is imperfect, and we make the best choices we can with the information we can get. in the specific instance of coal-tar dyes, i think we can probably say that they're not causing an unusual amount of harm, or more harm than most products do, and that's probably about as good as it'll get.

[bbygirl-aemond]

i want to write an hotd fanfic so bad… i’m watching the early GOT show too as well to try and wrap my head around the lore but i fear that my fic will still be very amateur and show that i don’t really have that big of a grasp on the lore and worldbuilding and language around me.. can you give any advice onto how to tackle this? any specific ways i should research or how to remember every little thing to make the story as accurate and correct as possible?

hi and welcome! don't worry, i have been through this exact process within this fandom haha. i was the queen of sparknoting my way through my lit classes in college when i didn't have other time, so i think i've kind of perfected the art of making it seem like you've deeply read something, even if you haven't.

let me give my usual disclaimer that i don't recommend reading fanfic to get a sense of characters or worldbuilding in a new fandom. that's because to a fresh eye, it's impossible to tell what is the author's invention/headcanon (which may be incorrect/ooc) and what is actual canon. fanfic writing should be about indulging yourself and your creativity, not about trying to cater to the most popular opinions even if you don't agree with them. so i really do recommend sticking to canon as much as possible, and being very deliberate about where and when you use fanon as a reference.

i create a tumblr blog for every fandom that i'm planning to write in to serve as a repository for my research and notes. this blog is unusual in that i forgot to make it private and then had too much fun engaging with y'all to go back. but my first posts were all specifically for stormbreak purposes. if you're nervous about putting things out there, you can password-lock your blog, so you're the only one with access. being able to sort with tags for characters, houses, etc. will be super helpful. another good idea is to take notes in google drive, since you can also search for things there and use the outline feature to navigate. the goal is to have one or two places where you compile all of your work that are easily navigable.

a really good starting place for research is this particular asoiaf wiki. i do not recommend any of the others, especially the ones based on individual shows, because those often do not include details that are in the books. i genuinely cannot tell you how many hours i've spent on this wiki. start your research here- look for dates, places, events, houses, relationships, appearances, etc.

meta analysis is also a really good idea to gain knowledge. tumblr or reddit are the places to go for this. it's really important to seek out posts that are both sympathetic and unsympathetic towards characters or houses. the goal is to get a sense of the different opinions within fandom, and decide which ones make sense to you. on tumblr, you can search a term, select for text posts, and scroll until you find big walls of text. (as an aside: if you're doing this, blocking tags related to fanfiction, imagines, xreader, etc. will help streamline your search and filter out headcanons in favor of meta)

lastly, and be careful with this one since it is fanon but not canon: memes! twitter and tiktok are great for these. they're great for getting a sense of vibes, but not for actual canon facts about a character. remember, fanon can sometimes be very distant from or even contradictory with canon, so take these with a grain of salt. i do still find them useful for forming opinions about personalities, mannerisms, and attitudes of different characters.

if you want more info about how i actually planned out stormbreak, i've answered an ask about it here!

[fancyshooting]

ocelot and love has been a topic I've wanted to write about for a long time. hope neither of you mind if I answer you both together. I want to make it very clear that the only reason for my scepticism is because we're talking about ocelot, my favourite character of all time in anything, ever. I feel like I dreamt him up sometimes. it does not come from a place of malice. I want to have the most thorough understanding of my fave and I don't want to misinterpret him. I also wouldn't show doubt without having a canonical basis for it. I'm only interested in what we are told in canon

it's undeniably true that the driving force of the series is ocelot's love for bb. you've given examples like the mgs4 kiss achievement literally saying the word "love" in japanese. since I've only ever been concerned with cold hard evidence like this, I used to believe ocelot was in love with bb, too. back when I first got into mgs, I was convinced that he was gay. shipping has never really appealed to me regardless of the series/characters but I actually liked bosselot. I used to read fanfic, something I don't usually do. I even wrote some of my own (that no one will ever ever ever be allowed to read). once I really started to think about ocelot, the way I saw their relationship/dynamic changed. my thoughts on that are probably clearest in the post I made about the westerns mentioned in mgs3, which is the first game we learn about the "true" ocelot, rather than the persona he adopts. we learn about his abduction as a baby, his oppressive upbringing, his connection to the boss and why bb is so important to him. obviously I've spent a tragic length of time writing about ocelot, so I'm no longer content to condense everything about his character into "he was in love with bb". I know this is a wildly unpopular opinion to have, especially on tumblr, but I'm only sharing it because I've been asked. I don't think ocelot being in love with bb is clear cut canon, like the anon before said. it is a matter of interpretation and I do not mean that to sound dismissive

there are multiple instances of the word "love" being used in relation to ocelot and bb. here's a list:

• the emblem for the "you're pretty good" trophy in mgs4 is "love" in japanese

• kojima describing the relationship between snake and ocelot as part of his commentary on mgs3:

「スネークとオセロットはひと目会ったときから、お互いに気になっているんです。純愛です」

"Snake and Ocelot have been interested in each other since the moment they first met. It's a pure love."

• this line after ocelot praises snake for surviving the colonel's torture in the novel (not strictly canon but kojima-approved):

「それは皮肉などではなく、本物の親愛の情動だった。」

"It was not sarcasm, but a genuine, affectionate sentiment."

• mgs3 leaked casting doc description of ocelot:

「常にしのがれることの畏怖に、オセロットはスネークを尊敬し深い愛情を抱くようになる。」

"In the awe of constant shunning, Ocelot comes to respect and develop a deep affection for Snake."

I've always been hesitant to share this because although I find it interesting, I do NOT understand japanese and I always make that clear when I post machine translated text. mgs is a japanese game series, originally written in japanese, so the connotations of certain phrases will be lost on non-native japanese speakers. there will be cultural references that we will not understand and nuances we are unable to comprehend. the explanations and translations I post here are inadequate and should never, ever be taken as fact. I rely on machine translation, online dictionaries and forums. this is based only on my own understanding after minimal research and I am ALWAYS happy to be corrected.

every one of the above examples uses one of a multitude of japanese words for "love": 愛 - pronounced "ai". translated directly, it does mean "love" in english and it can be used romantically. however, it's a term used to convey other forms of love too, many of which I believe are overlooked in favour of romantic love. this explanation is talking specifically about romantic love but the depth of feeling fits ocelot imo:

there's also this from an article by journalist based in japan in which he briefly describes the same phrase kojima uses in the mgs3 commentary:

those two examples were both romantic lol... but I'm using them because of the way they explain "ai" love as being all-consuming and selfless. it seems to be a charged word full of nuance and depth. this is the type of love mentioned in every example of ocelot being "in love" with bb. it's not an exclusively romantic word and changes meaning depending on context

"fallen for him?" and "in love with the legend" are not as simple in japanese as they appear in english either:

「伝説の英雄 に惚れ込んで いるだ。」

"She's in love with the legend"

「 惚れたのか?」

"Fallen for him?"

this is from the interview with kojima in mgs3: the countdown:

「スネークを追いかけるうちに、ほれこんで しまう。」

"As he chases after Snake, he falls in love with him. "

these examples all use variations of the word 「惚れ込む」, pronounced "horekomu". direct translations to english give "to fall deeply in love". the following screenshots are explanations from people who are japanese and/or based in japan, i.e. people far more qualified to explain this than I am:

(x)

(x)

(x)

I'm well aware that this the most pedantic, joyless post but as I said, I want to have the fullest understanding of ocelot's character and this is part of that. for me, a lot of indecisiveness on the exact nature of ocelot's love for bb comes from reading about "horekomu" in particular, especially since the above screenshot mentions allegiance to a boss. my thoughts on their relationship are all over this blog, so I'm not going to write more of the same here. imo there's not enough solid canonical evidence to entirely convince me that ocelot is romantically or sexually attracted to bb. there are lines or actions that can be interpreted as such but those have valid alternative explanations, too. his feelings are deep and nuanced and I don't think the english translation can convey them properly

thanks for the ask x2

[marengogo]

hi!!

i have some questions regarding the cake issue, i'd ask chikooritajjk, but i'm honestly terrified of them 😞

did the other members get a cake for a pre release track?

ik jin got one for 'astronaut' and jk got one for both 'dreamers' + 'seven', but those are both singles...

so imo it's a little weird that the company would get tae a cake for a 'love me again' and 'rainy days' and not just wait for his album

also i saw them talking about wasting cake, but isn't there a thing where they can have the bakery frost styrofoam so it'll look like a cake? plus the members are given cakes on their birthday and sometimes they don't eat them...

don't want to cause issues btw! if jimin really didn't want a cake, i'm fine with it bc that's his choice, i'm just confused about some things

if you don't feel like answering, you don't have to!

ik you (and other bloggers) are not chikooritajjk's mail box and if i was able to come off anon without causing myself a anxiety attack 🙃, i would definitely just ask them directly! but i also like your thoughts and opinions as well on bts and jikook related things 😊

sorry for bothering you 💜

so i see my ask was taken the wrong way 😞 just want to clear up a few things i don't hate chikooritajjk, i honestly think they're lovely and are very helpful with explaining things (streaming, bts, jikook, queer topics ect), so it does make me sad that it came across that way i'm scared of them bc i have social anxiety and really want to talk to them about things they discuss (i know, it's a me problem, got that 🫡) and trust me, it took a lot to even send that ask bc ik people don't always like answering asks concerning other bloggers wasn't trying to sabotage your friendship with them either, i follow both your blogs and love BOTH OF YOUR POSTS i sent the cake ask bc i'm genuinely confused and had some questions, and like i said ik it was more so an ask for chikooritajjk, but you have been interacting their posts and agreeing with them and i also wanted to hear YOUR OWN thoughts on it i don't mind being corrected or told i'm wrong btw, as long as someone isn't rude or disrespectful (which neither you or chikooritajjk have been btw!!) i do fear that this interaction has only reinforced my issues with interacting off anon with jkkrs though, after this i'll leave you both alone (won't send anymore asks), as that is probably you want so sorry for bothering you both, i truly did not mean to cause any discomfort or issues with my ask and probably this one.... hope you both are doing well and can't wait for more of your insightful posts! — a lost anon

Hello 🎂-Anon,

Hope you don’t mind me calling you like this, if you do please let me know.

I’ve been sitting here trying to figure out the best way to tackle your Ask as I think I’ve kinda already addressed your second ask in my post this morning. See, the thing is, whoever “baked” this particular conspiracy was so successful that many are now really so convinced that the absence of said eggs, flour & milk are actually a substantial part of a lot of the evil surrounding JM. 

But let me start with the easy part of the Ask. “did the other members get a cake for a pre release track?” Namjoon didn’t get a single slice of cake from Hybe, be it pre-release or release don't worry about what the tweet says, just want you to check out the type of cakes Joonie received, if you are interested!:

Two of the cakes were given to him by separate groups of his own friends and one was sent to him by the production team of “The Dictionary of Useless Human Knowledge”.

Now, to get back to the “source of evil” topic, it is very much an issue with the way that Chapter 2 is unfolding. It’s not about eggs, flour & milk, but about the people who found a way to make you believe that eggs, flour & milk are part of the problem. It’s about not being aware of what kind of space your SM environment might have turned into, such as not knowing that Namjoon also didn’t receive a cake, because the same people who are guiding your perception are also, shaping your environment and trying to create narratives that heavily aid in hindering the gravity of real issues that the boys might be facing.

So please, if you can, forget about the cake 🎂-Anon! It’s not about wastage or the performative act, or whatever. Did JM want cake from HYBE specifically? Unless he tells us, we can’t know, I mean if you ask me, he seems to have planned his FACE WEVERSE live to a T, I really don’t think he wanted any. Anyways, what we do now know though, thanks to Tae, is that there is a high possibility he might have not wanted it. Same as Joon.

The mishandling of Chapter 2 is so Ugh! Quite literally it is as if Pandora’s Box was opened and all sorts of shit just came rushing out 😩😩😩. BUT I will address all of these in the post I mentioned that I am working on, so for now, If I could please ask you to take a second and think about the boys real quick. MEGA-Celebrities who have been in the game for 10 years (without counting pre-debut) and not only that, they are part of the biggest group on this planet, they are BIG-big, with big money, and big problems … do you see them losing sleep over eggs, flour & milk? 

Should we be? 

Hope this answers your question and I really do hope you’ll be looking forward to my post, cause, ONCE AGAIN, I REALLY CAN'T STRESS THIS ENOUGH: There is soooooo much in Chapter 2 that needs to be address for-real-real 🤡. 

Always respectfully yours 💜🫰🏾,

Marengo.

[zingaplanet]

While I am personally horrified by the people Djokovic has associated with I am not sure I would call someone who often talks about peace and the need for education (and seemingly puts money into it too, if you don't trust his words) a genocide supporter? I have seen people from his home country and the neighbouring countries (on different sides of the war in question) express very different opinions on whether his actions are problematic or not. Can you share on what basis you formed that opinion? (which you are obviously entitled to, I'm just curious)

Hi! Yes of course, I actually like genuine scientific inquiries like this, I’ll do my best to answer it (and I’m going to answer this seriously because genocide is a serious topic). This is going to be a long answer, perhaps even separated into several posts (and i'm going to treat this like a scientific research cos i'm bored lol sorry), so bear with me. Now before I start, I’d like to point out that I don’t have a background in psychology, that being said I can’t scientifically prove nor deny whether certain words/actions indicate his support on the genocide in absolute (unless he explicitly said it on record) but I did my master’s research on genocide and have studied to a certain extent the Srebrenica massacre and I'm going to approach this from a political science perspective.

Let me start by saying that I am also not Slavic in any sense, thus resources available to me are those written not in the native tongue of their primary sources. But even in the most rigorous scientific research, you can never fully eliminate researcher’s socio-cultural bias, and for specific emotionally sensitive topic such as genocide, a third-party perspective is sometimes more beneficial for a detached overview free of personal affiliations.

Firstly, what you’re saying about Djokovic’s explicit statement about peace is to a large extent correct. For instance, he has publicly appeared in the UN General Assembly (the only tennis player to do so), to condemn the US military strikes against Syria (see here: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tennis-open-djokovic-syria-idUSBRE98101W20130902). He even said, on the record, “I’m totally against any kind of weapon, any kind of air strike, missile attack”.

The reason I was willing to give him the benefit of a doubt (as we should actually always do to every person) is to go beyond what he explicitly has been seen as consciously doing (such as making statements on the record or public actions that can be picked up or traced by media). And this is because, public figures very very rarely actually tells the truth unprompted about sensitive political issues that are PERSONAL to them or that they are involved in (Hannah Arendt wrote a book about this! Called On Lying and Politics, it’s awesome check it out). To put it simply, it’s survival instincts and self-protection. This is why in political science we rarely ever found what is called the “smoking gun evidence” (this came from old detective stories where detectives actually found a gun that is “smoking” meaning it’s just been shot and behind the barrel, voila the undisputed murderer!), or the indefinite, absolute proof of someone doing something. You also cannot treat a statement that the suspected person CONSCIOUSLY made in presence of the public media (as in the case of his statements on the war in Syria) as indefinite grounds for his stance as they can very easily be pre-empted.

In political research, what we mostly found is non-definite, guiding evidences (called “straw in the winds”, "hoops", and other very pretentious terminologies if you wanna get technical lol see here) especially if it concerns very sensitive closed-door matters such as genocide. But I mention this because, if you find enough of these evidences, methodologists say that they can in a way substitute as strong enough convictions combined together (this of course needs more rigorous tests unapplicable here but the general logic is applicable everywhere, the method is called process tracing).

Now the reason this whole controversy about Djokovic started was because people simply started stalking him for his extreme nationalist political views. Now everyone is of course entitled to their own political beliefs and it is not my intention to go into a moral debate on the idea of nationalism itself (this is actually a branch of political philosophy that is still highly debated). But there is solid, ground evidence that political ideologies that are too extreme (left or right) induced dangerous policies threatening to human rights. One of the most prominent examples is far-right nationalism (or ultranationalism). The rise of this in 1940s triggered fascism with notions such as racial supremacy in WW2. Now, without going into detail into the history of Yugoslavia or the Bosnian war, political scientists have noted the rise of fascism in post-yugoslavian states. Far-right parties took power most notably in the newly formed Republic of Serbia. Far-right organizations also acted as paramilitaries and they committed crimes of humanities during the Bosnian and Kosovo wars. 

Now Djokovic was very little when the war occured and was only 8 when Srebrenica happened, how is it possible that he might show support or be associated with it? This is because the prosecution of war crimes in the Yugoslav wars didn’t happen until much later, and the political tension in the region hasn’t actually been fully resolved until now. That is to say, as you rightly state, the region itself is INCREDIBLY divided, with talks of race and ethnicity often a taboo, and genocide deniers are not hard to find, and far-right ideologies are still prominent in Serbia until now. And Djokovic, unfortunately, has demonstrated a lot of credible signs over the year (mostly unconsciously when he’s out of the public eye or actions that would not be understood widely outside of his region) that he is leaning towards this ultra-nationalist ideology and this far-right group.

First point of evidence is his clear stance on the Kosovo war (which is part of the larger Yugoslav war). After larger protests broke out in Belgrade over Kosovo’s declaration of independence in 2008, Djokovic famously recorded a video saying “We are prepared to defend what is rightfully ours. Kosovo is Serbia.” After the Serbian national team won the ATP Cup in 2020, Djokovic, together with his teammates, sang nationalist songs, including “Vidovdan” — a common tune about Kosovo that featured prominently during the wars of the disintegration of Yugoslavia.

The Kosovo war is highly controversial but it was initially started as an insurgency movement to fight the Serbian prosecution of Kosovo Albanians (With around 9000 kosovar Albanians missing and 900,000 displaced during the war). Serbia never fully recognised Kosovo’s independence. In 2001 a Supreme Court, based in Kosovo and administered by the United Nations, found that there had been "a systematic campaign of terror, including murders, rapes, arsons and severe maltreatments", it was also a significant example of repressive Serbian ultranationalism. Asked in 2011 whether he regretted his actions, Djokovic told German magazine Der Spiegel “it is the birthplace of my family and, indeed, of Serbian culture itself.”

At the time, his father Srđan came to his defence with a controversial statement. “Novak is a nationalist, of course, and so am I,” 

There is thus no doubt that he is a fervent nationalist, but is he really an ultranationalist to the extent of tolerance towards mass killings in the name of his country? As I said, there has never been explicit statements, but there are enough background evidences that can point us in the right direction.

Now onto those people he was 'photographed with'. In 2021, Djokovic found himself criticised for his visit to Bosnia after photographs surfaced of his meeting with a commander Milan Jolovic of the “Drina Volves”, a unit that took part in the 1995 Srebrenica genocide where more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were summarily executed for their nominal Muslim faith. Jolovic has never been convicted of a war crime but he actually earned his nickname "The Legend" saving the life of former war criminal Ratko Mladic. In 2017, Mladic was convicted of war crimes and genocide (along with the Drina Volves) by independent international courts for his time as a commander in the Bosnian war during the 1990s.

The Drina Volves and the figures mentioned are prominent public personas in Serbia, their accolades and the international court ruling are available out in the open and well-known.

Secondly, far more convicting than being photographed together, Djokovic was reported and recorded associating, singing, and dancing alongside Milorad Dodik at the wedding of Nemanja Majdov, the Serbian athlete. Dodik is former chairman of the presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina and a well-known genocide denier in Serbia. He has publicly and widely been known to described the Srebrenica massacre as a "fabricated myth".

Bear in mind that Djokovic was not under scrutiny for simply being "in the same event" or even "in the same room", he also wasn't "photographed with" in the loose sense of merely standing side by side by chance as tabloid media often likes to exaggerate. He was recorded and photographed in action of INTERACTING with them (e.g., the photograph was taken on what was clearly a discussion in a civil dining table) which he chose to do so freely.

The third and perhaps most indicative notion of his stance on the genocide is his acceptance and public posting by himself on the pride he has in receiving the award of the order of the Republika Srpska, the highest order given by the region. Now bear in mind that the Republika Srpska is a separate entity from Serbia and is instead a predominantly Serbian region inside Bosnia and Herzegovina that housed most of the Serbs migrating from the Bosnian war after the Croatian and Bosnian massacres.

The problem was that this award has ONLY ever been given to those considered to have significantly contributed to progressing Serbian nationalism, and unfortunately this means 80% of the recipients are party to the war. Amongst others they include CONVICTED genocidaires Slobodan Milošević,  Ratko Mladić, Radovan Karadžić. Even its most progressive recent recipient Ana Brnabić, PM of Serbia since 2017 and the first OPENLY GAY woman to hold the office has consistently denied Srebrenica as genocide. This award ceremony is a big PUBLIC event, and its recipients are not in any way closeted.

Although there is always the benefit of a doubt that Djokovic as a public figure is simply at the wrong place at the wrong time, that he was ignorant of all this historical background, this seems incredibly far-fetched, if not impossible. It is difficult to imagine that someone from the region (especially one who grew up DURING the war), and who regularly travels and has access to international media, unless they CONSCIOUSLY choose to be misled over skewed historical information, does not know about this. Most of the war convictions were common knowledge, widely reported, and certainly something that people in the region would have heard about. The more plausible explanation is (as is the case with many ultranationalist party arguments at the moment), that possessing the knowledge, he CONSCIOUSLY chose not to believe or agree with it (either the conviction or the views over the mass atrocities during the war).

I admit that I might have used the word “supporter” liberally, but the repeat of association also supports the explanation that Djokovic did in fact at the very least TOLERATE or ACCEPT the mass atrocities committed as unproblematic, enough to repeatedly associate himself with the companies mentioned. As mentioned, a collated group of un-explicit, “straw in the wind” or “hoops” evidence that point to the same direction is relatively conclusive enough to determine his stance.

Here are the known facts: He's a self-identified fervent nationalist in support of far-right nationalist ideas, he chose to associate with the genocidaires repeatedly AND without showing remorse nor response towards the very public media criticism. If we go further by the plausible assumption (after eliminating the less likely presumption that he doesn't know anything about the people he chose to associate with), his acceptance of the award and clear pride of it can even indicate a conscious acceptance to be honoured in the same name as those he considered worthy of honouring, which sadly in this context are mostly genocide deniers and war criminals. This all builds up towards his "loose" moral stance on the genocide at least in the name of his nationalistic beliefs.

After this, judgment is left to each person’s moral compass but personally for me, in the face of atrocities as horrible as genocide, where human beings are treated like numbered animals to be slaughtered for “the greater purpose”, no matter what this century’s chosen purpose is, there is NO neutral stance, because silence or not condemning is equal to allowing these people to die.

Of course, this argument is in no way seeking to oversimplify the intensely complex conflict in the Balkan regions nor to deny the genocide that has occurred towards the Serbians during Ustashe regime. But condemning one genocide does not mean delegitimising another.

All I’m saying is, one should simply not assume that a certain person’s attitude towards a certain aspect of a larger issue (such as peace and human rights) implies a similar one to all other parts of the issue. Just like Djokovic’s stance on Srebrenica and the Bosnian war shouldn’t automatically denote him a peace-hating person, I think we should give him a much larger benefit of a doubt that his public statements and actions do not automatically cleanse him of his controversial views in genocide denial and ultranationalism, and even more possibly, taking into account the evidences, of his support for them.

Now I can’t put link sources to every single thing that I said here but if you are curious about any of them send me an ask and I’ll give you the source. Sorry for the long answer, but there you go!

[paperstorm]

I dont know the others the anon is speaking about, but I've seen both Natacha and Brian sharing posts and liking stuff that's very pro-Palestine and criticises Israel government and the apartheid. Even Brianna has shared stuff, imo theyve shared enough to show us what they think, so I disagree to say that no other cast members has shared anything except Rafa, but that's his right.

Okay so this is a question I genuinely have for people. (and this isn't your fault specific anon so I'm sorry your post is going to be turned into this.) I have been called out for answering asks in which the person who sent the ask said something that was ... not an outright lie but maybe exaggerated, or maybe speculative opinion, or used hyperbole to make a point. None of us are writing a disserataion here, people are regularly going to say things to express a point of view that they don't mean literally. And I am upfront about the fact that I don't have Instagram but also, a lot of these asks are talking about 24-hour stories that disappeared days or even weeks ago, that as far as I know haven't been archived anywhere, so I have no way of independently verifying whether or not they actually existed.

Is that something people are expecting? I guess I sort of see anons as more of a conversation between me and that person, I don't see them as me making like a public announcement in which the act of answering the question defaults to me endorsing everything the other person said. I'm always as quick as I can be to correct something when someone lets me know it's not factual. And given that I literally can't fact check the existence of an Instagram story from two weeks ago, I am replying more in a "if true, here is my thoughts on this thing" way than I am putting my stamp of "yes this is absolutely true I have verified it" on them.

If I can't fact check every single thing an anonymous person said, which would be the case for most message I'm sent, do people not want them answered at all? I'm not sure how I feel about that but I'm curious what others think.