#What is Organic Personal Care

[spaciebabie]

hi i finished ref sheets for da bruisehouse crew and they're now all up on artfight! the lunatics will be added shortly. i may or may not rb old art of them we'll see

[ineed-to-sleep]

ENDING SPOILERS FOR BG3 AHEAD

Hate that I found this scene kinda hot

[goldkirk]

it’s so scary and so freeing to just be a person.

[rxttenfish]

Hi hello I just wanted to say that I really really like your worldbuilding and art and merfolk and things like that. Where can I read more things you’ve written?

thank you!!!

realistically the majority of my writing is on my main blog, @royalreef, but this is not really ideal for reading, tbh. first of all, because royalreef is a roleplay blog, so what's on there is not only more unpolished and less put-together, but also what's on there is semi-dependent on other roleplay blogs interacting with me (i'm in a dry spell lately, so very little is actually being posted). it also pretty solidly shows my development cycle, so if you go too far back you start seeing things that aren't necessarily accurate anymore or which i've changed over time. most of it is a lot of scrolling and digging through stuff, and while i recommend finding my headcanon tag on there, it's still going to be a lot to dig through.

the much more favorable avenues are by using the #all the care guide says is 'biomass', #miravi.txt, #monster prom, #Monster Prom: Reanimated and #art tags on this blog, but not only is less here, but some of these tags are more or less organized than the others. biomass is my all-purposes posting tag, so you'll see a lot of random conversations too, and my miravi tag is solely focused on the ship, with worldbuilding being included but not the whole focus. in the case of monster prom: reanimated, its a defunct tag that i don't use anymore, but still has enough worldbuilding posts on there for me to point out.

the most focused avenue is my AO3, particularly my newest fic Caecilian, which focuses on the merkingdom and merfolk and that worldbuilding! the problem is that, by far, this has the least content of all methods thus far, and while i'm working on the second chapter as we speak, it's still going to be a wait between chapters (they're pretty long, as you can imagine from the subject!)

i have been considering setting up a patreon for more inclusive worldbuilding posts and being able to share sketches and concepts without worrying about them being polished, but as of posting this, i don't have a patreon up yet. it's in the future plans, but not right now!

and, of course, the easiest method is just sending me an ask of any questions you have! there's certain things i can't answer/won't answer publicly, because i'd like some things to remain a mystery until i can properly reveal them, but if you dm me privately and don't mind spoilers, i have no problem talking about them there!

[dykedvonte]

The Khans - My Introspective

I don't like the Military and I don't support a lot of the actions the NCR does to the Mojave in New Vegas but in terms of the Khans I feel like the fandom infantilizes or diminishes the fact that they are or at least one of the most violent raider groups in the Mojave.

What happened at Bitter Springs was a tragedy, innocent lives were lost and the fact that the NCR swept it under the rug and continued to hunt down Khans that are truly trying to back down and resettle is horrendous, but there is a history to the NCR's aggression towards them.

The Khans first appear in Fallout 1, the main faction of raiders in the game besides the mentioned Vipers (who don't actually appear if I remember correctly). They came from Vault 15 along with the members that would form rival groups; The Vipers, The Jackals, and Shady Sands. They are a very large and foreboding raiding party, known for burning towns and encampments they attack and taking survivors as their slaves or slaves to sell. They are a big reason why the Jackals and Vipers are actually so small in New Vegas, they wiped them out.

Their main targets where Shady Sands and Junker town, the former of the two would be what became The New California Republic. This explains a big part of their animosity towards the Khans, only furthered by the fact the Khans kidnapped Tandi as a young girl, the girl that would go to offically found the NCR out of Shady Sands. When the dweller saved her and killed much of the Khans, this allowed the NCR to develop into what it currently is as they no longer needed to focus on fighting off constant raids.

When the Khans became the New Khans in Fallout 2, they barely resembled the Khans as they were led by Darion, Garl Death-Hand's son (former leader of the Khans). They were smaller and refortified vault 15, still planning to take down the NCR (at this time nowhere near as imperialist as they are in FNV) as mostly a revenge/power ploy. They manipulate The Squat, a group of y'know squatters, that lived in the upper levels, promising and lying about repairing the vault and offering them ransacked caravan resources if they kept the NCR away. Being their only life line The Squat had no choice. Still the chosen one got rid of them and they left New California for the untapped Mojave.

The Great Khans, the most current iteration, continued in the path as the original Khans, regrouping and gaining information from the Followers who hoped they'd use their new medical knowledge to heal themselves. They gained more members and a substantial part of Vegas territory before they were run out by the three families. They were pushed to Bitter Springs where they first and foremost continued to pick off and attack NCR settlements, most of which consisted of caravans, towns, and camps as they saw them as easy like in their old days. It was the killing of four influential Republic members (non-military) that brought on Bitter Springs.

Bitter Springs was the result of years of hatred and animosity and likely the goal to send a final message to the Khans. It does not excuse the fact that innocent men, women, and children were slaughtered with few survivors. It does not excuse the fact that the NCR has yet to make amends for this and continues to try and persecute the Khans even in moments of surrender.

This post is not to defend what happened but to give a quick rundown of the Khan's history and their history with the NCR. It's to remind people that the NCR is not just their military power but an actual group/settlement of people that were also attacked indiscriminately by the Khans. It's to point out that the Khans were not a band of indigenous people (no matter the comparisons) driven from their homes but raiders who fed into the brutal cultures of the west coast wasteland and were in turn treated to the same things.

My frustration comes from the fact that FNV has so many comparisons to indigenous struggles but the groups it chooses are not comparable at all. Their oppression hinges on not being familiar with their past, which explains why they have the reputation they do in canon. The "tribes" are often not even groups of minorities or have goals/desires out of acquisitions of power and I feel like it is important to both acknowledge that this is bad indigenous rep because it is not supposed to be. It is supposed to be a comparison of the in-game groups and how they all do the same things and justify it in their own fucked up ways, some better at it than others.

FNV of all the Fallout games (in light of it being heavily Western based) distastefully uses indigenous imagery and theming for groups that are sad mimicries of American indigenous cultures at best and outright offensive at worst.

[doctorwhoisadhd]

hmm thinking about the idea of love songs. i think the idea of what a love song is that we have in our culture is inherently a little bit flawed because we have the idea that any song written about romantic feelings is a love song and im thinking thats not exactly true because there is a difference between "romance" and "love". what i'm saying is not that love is a broader category and applies to things that are not romantic in nature. this is in fact true, but it's not what makes the important distinction here. the true distinction between "romance" and "love" is that romance is a societally defined type of interest in another person, whereas love is, essentially, a promise that you make when you build a relationship.

as such, what i call "love" here might be better defined as "care", as that implies more time and effort, but that's a different suitcase to unpack and largely unimportant to my point here, which is more about the societal conventions of what we call love songs. the point is, relationships can be built with other people, yes, but also animals, places, organizations, ideas, so on and so on, whereas romance requires another person, hence the difference between the ideas of "romance" and "love".

with that in mind, there are two types of songs we in western, english speaking, society call "love songs":

1) songs that are about a person's romantic interest in someone that is either definitively known to be unrequited (existing monogamous relationship, sexuality that doesn't align, etc) or simply not requited (aka romantic interest being unknown); and

2) songs about an existing relationship (keeping in mind my points about relationships not just being with people, but also places, things, etcetera) as is.

(some examples of the latter category: mountaintop by relient k, which defines the relationship in question as non-romantic; or i miss my mum by cavetown, which is - as the title implies - a song about the singer missing their mother.)

now, the thing that makes distinguishing these two difficult is the fact that songs about an existing relationship CAN be about wanting certain aspects of that relationship to change. in these cases, determining that a song is one or the other will hinge either on a) authorial intent or b) whether the song is more about what the singer wants (thereby implying #1) or the lack thereof in that relationship (which would imply #2).

to get back to the subject at hand: the term "love song", as we think of it, is an umbrella term that include both of these two categories, and i think that perhaps it is reductive to do so. with that in mind, i think perhaps it would be more appropriate for "love song" to mean only the latter, whereas the former is a category of its own. WHICH is not to say that the two can't overlap — just that if a song is about a person with whom the singer has no relationship, it cannot be considered a love song due to the fact that it is a song about infatuation, not love.

(another interesting wrinkle this provides is the fact that a song might start out in the first category and, as the writer develops a relationship with a person, might move into the second category as they write more.)

[matchandelure]

binge read all of kaiju no 8 a couple days ago :::) and im all caught up w the anime now too i am hooked holy

[drinkingdeadpeopletea]

i think what's really getting me about kozma claiming to have blown up the moon and also claiming to "be" the breach and basically equating "breach collaborators" and "my allies" in the same speech is that. the breach operative we've known since season one, the person who "is" the breach as far the story's concerned, is saskia. and midst is saskia's HOME! she built the black candle with her own two hands (metaphorically, at the very least), she LOVES it there and she loves those people :( and if we take kozma's story at face value, she just threw the "centerpoint" (according to imelda) of her own operation entirely under the bus and endangered the lives not only of innocent people but also of a bunch of her own operatives without their knowledge just to destabilize the trust and frankly that makes me kind of hope she IS telling the truth simply because that's the kind of betrayal i find absolutely delicious,

[badolmen]

I think one of the hardest things for privileged leftists have to learn is that they can’t just automatically agree with the majority. They can’t just automatically agree with the opinion of the POC, the queer, the Jewish person they’re interacting with in the moment because ‘they’re the experts in their own life.’ Which is true! But there is no monolith. POC and queers and religious minorities are not some mystical pure hivemind that always agree on everything and have correct opinions all the time. People are people. What one person finds offensive another might not care about.

I feel like it’s very evident these days where you have some people of a minority saying x is bad and some people saying x is good. Which is correct? Well, you have to educate yourself and make a critical assessment of the arguments before coming to your own conclusion. But now you have leftists who are desperate to be the most agreeable person in the room with the ‘right’ opinions who waffle and fail to organize in any meaningful way because they refuse to let the subject at hand have meaning for them, personally. They’re so busy ‘listening’ to minorities they’re not actually thinking about what they’re hearing, they’re not processing the biases underprivileged people can still carry, they’re not critical of reactionary politics or propaganda so long as it’s what the people immediately around them agree on.

Grow a spine, pick a side, and actually have a framework for your political and social involvement other than ‘let’s be real niceys with everyone :)’

[emangel2718]

Political rant in tags.

[kirinoha]

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[terrorbirb]

People have never been meaner than in the comments on cleaning channels like ?!?! Why do you guys care so much about other people saying "thanks this helped!" In the comments? I am a known hater when it comes to messes (technically it's organizational OCD) and I don't respond that way to people in real life that cause me panic attacks over dishes not being done.

[rxttenfish]

tbh tho this is EXACTLY what merfolk relationships look like

and they just keep track of this. in their heads. all the time.

[spotsupstuff]

Read the snippet *cries*

That last writing with Tarrow is beautiful. In my mind was playing Farewell by Bernth and is was a struggle to not cry in public.

I just fell in love with Orion! I love his gentleness, how he just want to give comfort and just AHHHHHH!! That last paragraph just with the hope that Tarrow will see the family that still has is just gets me.

On the side note (and to laugh a little after that beautiful mini story), Crows still is a background character.

OOOOO hey i know that song!!! yeah i can imagine how that'd make it hard to exist in public with some dignity JGDLKJLCMKSL

hah, another Iterator found a way to worm its way into your heart JGKSLLCKMLKS stars, same- the gentleness but also in the contrast of what he's gone through, what that kindness and sweetness had to endure. and he's stern and strict and some would call him a little scary when he talks to them like to some soldiers- promising that if this time around (in the off string au) someone will be caught neglecting their responsibilities like some have done with Mission Self-preservation he will be able to deal with them Personally this time. Notos won't be the only thing they'll have to worry about now. and sometimes he's a little insensitive as a result of that trauma, too. but ultimately? oh gods, ultimately he only wants everyone to be okay and taken care of as they deserve

GSLJKMCKLS fucking Crows.... leave it to the One og character i have in Moon's group to do me a favor and stay as she is meant to be

[astriiformes]

Me, gritting my teeth as I do my best to ignore the fact that I have been battling my own brain particularly intensely (a mental health crisis that is ongoing, due to life circumstances that cannot be changed) and the many other responsibilities that have been stressing me out as of late so I can instead throw myself into the middle of a complex, inflammatory conflict between two groups I care about that is threatening to have a horrific amount of emotional collateral in part due to the fact that no one else has been willing to step up as a mediator: Wow, just like in Pentiment

[zoekrystall]

Saw certain tweets and here once again a reminder which a twt mutual luckily wrote shorter than I could (plus public so I can rb bc no way I do that myself on that site)

Also

And if you want smth I wrote myself which is longer and not just abt that here you go