#and pretend they're where they are out of skill exclusively

[jade-curtiss]

People with a supportive background when they're successful: my courage and my efforts paid off and everyone is free to do everything they want, sky is the limit.

[captainuranium543]

Fairy tail headcannon a nobody wanted at all😊

- most of the dragon slayers+erza eat bugs regularly and it's gross AF to everyone

-Natsu because he grew up in the woods and they were like the number one abundant source of food, same for Wendy but she stopped for a while because Carla told her it was nasty (as soon as she joined the fairy tail guild she reverted so incredibly fast)

-gajeel pretends to thinks it's gross but secretly he really likes the taste he just doesn't wanna have that in common with natsu

- erza and Erik because in the evil slave tower where everyone was starving if you found a bug you ate it before anyone else could grab it from you.

- sting did not do that growing up but started when natsu told him it was good, he does not agree but does it anyway so natsu thinks he's cool

- rogue only tried it a couple times because frosch wanted to try it to be more like a frog and rogue is nothing if not supportive

- laxus grew up normal and thinks all of them are disgusting

- Lucy has the WORST financial skills. Legit they are awful. Everyone thinks she's always broke cuz of the tpd (team property damage) constantly making them lose their reward to repair bills but (while that is a factor) when Lucy sees smth cute that would look great in her apartment she just cannot help herself. Lucy will be so careful trying to save her money then she'll see a new set of stationary and goes "haha rent what rent"

- the hand me down game at fairy tail was fucking insane when they where kids. For levy and lisanna basically everything they owned had been passed down like 6 times already

- that red shirt natsu wore in the flashbacks? Before him it was erza's, and before her it was canas, and before her it was laxus.

- gray wears almost exclusively white jackets because jackets are expensive and if he loses them he would rather they be easy to spot so he can find them again rather then have to buy a new one

- sometimes people will invite erza places for the scary dog privilege when they dont want to be bothered by strangers. Erza has no idea thats the reason she just thought people really liked walking with her through rough parts of town in the middle of the night.

- Carla and lilly have insane beef, for no damn reason. Like both of them are fairly polite so neither will say it openly but every conversation between the two is the most passive aggressive petty insult battle you could imagine

- freed, levy, Lucy and later jellal have a book club where they all meet up and talk about whatever they're reading and play Scrabble and talk a lot of shit about their annoying ass friends.

- happy sometimes comes but he is under no circumstances allowed to bring natsu(he knows what he did)

- when erza met seigrain/jellal in the magic counsel she first tried to attack him, when that proved to be a bad idea she later started specifically destroying stuff under his jurisdiction to make sure he had to deal with as much paperwork as possible

- for her modelling, Mira used to use a very light spray of holy water to remove body hair because it burns it off💀

- wendy romeo and chelia are actually best friends like they are constantly hanging out together just to go do stuff

- erza and Erik hate each other for no reason at all. Like over that year that she worked with crime sorciere they where ALWAYS BEEFING. Every time they were near each other erza was thinking insults she knew he could hear and Erik was fighting for his life not to strangle her to death.

When erza became sclass she used to sit on the 5th step of the stairs because Mira wasn't allowed on those stairs yet and it really pissed her off. She was like, just barely out of reach, so Mira would stand at the bottom the stairs yelling death threats at her and erza would be like "whattt I'm not doing anything I don't even know what your talking about in literally just sitting what are you so mad about"

- when Warren invented cellphones, despite all of them looking like modern smartphones, freed somehow managed to get one that looked exactly like a Blackberry and refuses to get a different one

- Mira used to cut her siblings hair and because she didn't know any good haircuts yet her 2 options where 1- bald or 2- bowl cut. Hence lisannas horrifying cut as a child

[tainbocuailnge]

fgo is backpedalling on a feature for the first time lmao they'd expanded the append skill system to add one that increases crit damage and one that lowers the cooldown of the first use of each skill(!) but they all still cost the same amount of super rare servant exclusive currency so if you want to unlock them all you need to roll 8 copies of your bond 15 5* servant AND also not have used their excess coins on the feature they'd already introduced to turn spare coins (that now retroactively are not spare) into grails

compensation is 120 quartz (lol) and promising they're going to refund all the coins you put into grails (which they tracked apparently?) (why not retroactively hand out coins for amount of storylocked 3* then) and make it possible to swap levels from one append skill to another (bandaid solution to the real problem being that this coin system is bogus gacha bait to begin with) (they'd promised servant-independent coins ages ago)

i do think it's interesting that this is evidently where fgo players are collectively drawing the line and making enough noise that lasengle actually has to backpedal on it. I don't have any hard statistics on player activity but my anecdotal experience is that fgo is bleeding players at this point so I wonder if they'd still have backpedalled (and with such a sizeable sum of quartz) if player retention wasn't as much at risk lately. pulling out so many collaboration characters in an unusually short timespan and an incredibly long anticipated unit like summer ereshkigal with a literal affection meter mechanic and anti-ntr features that make it so you can never use her optimally if you don't roll her yourself feels like a real desperate move on their part to get people to come back. hey you left fgo to play real games like samrem and mahoyo and tsukire right look we have water saber and aoko and ciel please come back!!

fgo has been running into the limits of its fairly basic gameplay engine for years and rolling out various bandaid systems to pretend to add more depth for as many years without addressing the real issues but since there's so many other fate games getting (re)releases lately people have less reason to care about fgo specifically, because they can just pay for one of those other games once and have a complete story experience without having to do time-limited chores about it. I joked about oberon killing fgo earlier but I think realistically it's the combination of lb6 being a story high they haven't been able to reach again + samrem releasing and mahoyosweep picking up around when people were realizing fgo wasn't gonna reach that same high again. there's less and less reason to stick with fgo because there's real complete games coming out that will give you a very similar story experience and won't make you do various time-limited chores about it

ideally this will scare lasengle into making more intensive changes but they've been so stubbornly blind to the actual problems with the game for so long I'm not counting on them actually fixing those

[peachipeachy]

cool with you ☆彡 - ch. 01

(gojo satoru x fem!cupid!reader) based on the "cool with you" m/v by new jeans.

warnings: bow and arrows, slight mention of toxic relationships, use of (y/n), heavy denial of the reader being in love lolol, high school era gojo.

word count; approx. 1.5k

previous part here!

masterlist

-----

act i; accismus.

n. a form of irony in which a person feigns indifference to or pretends to refuse something he or she desires.

(where a cupid refuses to acknowledge her growing affection for the earth's strongest sorcerer.)

"the job of a cupid is a sacrifice. you are their rose-tinted glasses."

january, 2006.

three students sit underneath a large tree, using its size to protect themselves from the cool, winter wind. two boisterous boys, animatedly arguing, and a girl who couldn't care less.

"who gives a crap if you lost one pair of sunglasses?" geto suguru, the boy with long, dark hair and a cold glare says, "you have extras anyways,"

"it's not the same, suguru!" the snow-haired boy - gojo satoru - retorts, cheeks puffed and lips pouted, "those were my favourite pair!"

the bored girl, ieiri shoko huffs, removing satoru's glasses from her face.

"how did you even lose them anyways?" she asks, handing the pair back to its owner.

"i don't know! i took them off for one second, then the next thing i know is they're gone!" satoru whines.

lies. satoru gojo was lying off his ass here. in reality, he had taken them off to admire the various taiyaki he had bought. after reading about this exclusive pop-up store in shibuya from a magazine, the second-year student couldn't help but become giddy at the thought of tasting these so-called "heaven-sent taiyaki". and thus, amid his excitement, hadn't realised he had knocked his own glasses to the floor, only to be passed through kyoto's foot traffic and miles away from its owner.

placing the new glasses back onto his nose, satoru huffs.

"look, maybe you can retrace your steps tomorrow?" suguru offered, noting his friend's low mood on the topic, "it could still be there, or maybe some model citizen handed it to some nearby shops?"

"i guess..."

-------

despite being on good terms with each one of the cupids here, (y/n) still felt nervous. maybe it was because all of them were the ten high-rank cupids - the best of the best. and here she was, barely 16 years old but skilled enough for all of them to take notice of her. honestly, being that she was trained by the higher cupid, kalila, she wasn't that surprised that they called for her, her dedication to her job can attest to that. but still, (y/n) was nervous.

"what we are trying to say is simple, honey," haerin, the higher cupid on her left spoke, "we find that you're skills are advancing impressively, maybe in a few more years we could have an eleventh higher cupid at this table," despite haerin's sweet smile, (y/n) couldn't help but scoff internally. the job of a cupid is barely work. simply put, all they had to do was detect the romantic quickly and then act fast enough to initiate it before the moment passed. plus, it wasn't like the bonds she initiated were important. soulmate bonds - a human's final romantic bond is carried out by the higher cupids. the job of a cupid is simply a game of glorified snap.

contrary to how she felt, (y/n) smiled, bowing her head and thanking haerin for the compliment.

another higher cupid, alexei, moved to speak, "as well as that, (y/n) has had no issue with any distractions. its refreshing to see a cupid so young and so dedicated to her job," alexei spoke with a frown, his voice deep and intimidating, "we've seen too many of you fall victim to human love,"

(y/n) stiffened, suddenly extremely aware of the black-tinted sunglasses sitting at the bottom of her satchel as memories of a familiar pair of blue eyes played in her head. She had heard the stories of her peers - young cupids who become infatuated with human love, initiating romantic bonds between any humans passing by - not caring if they were compatible or not. no, these foolish cupids were simply obsessed with watching the spark of love over and over and over again, leaving harmful, rushed and dangerous relationships in their wake. and she was not like them at all. she was different; better. and the sunglasses at the bottom of her bag meant nothing to her...right?

-------

lost deep in her thoughts, the meeting flew passed, ending quickly. and the next thing (y/n) knew, she was back on earth. by herself. once again.

it was ironic, really. despite being messengers of love, a cupid's job is incredibly lonesome.

cupids rarely ever interact with one another, nor do they have any way to contact each other. that privilege is exclusively for the higher cupids only and is generally used to alert a lower cupid of a soulmate bond they are responsible for.

atop a building rooftop and soaking wet in the winter rain, (y/n) surveyed the moving crowds by shibuya station. sure, it was a bit more difficult detecting bonds through raindrops and herds of different coloured umbrellas but (y/n) is nothing short of a prodigy, and wasn't going to let water and a couple of thin, plastic barriers stop her.

bingo.

she felt it again, the beginning spark of a romantic bond. one red umbrella walking towards a yellow one. like clockwork, (y/n) took her stance, raising her hands as her trusty bow and one arrow materialised.

just as she's about to release the arrow, (y/n) feels her heart stop. a familiar mop of stark white hair stole her focus, and through the sea of umbrellas and raincoats, she noticed his eyes - bare, with no black-tinted barrier between them. now! she could give back his glasses now!

however, her dominant arm wobbled, and she suddenly remembered where she was. on a rooftop. with her bow and arrow. staring at red and yellow umbrellas. shit.

quick as a fox, her eyes tracked the red umbrella, letting the arrow fly as soon as she found it. and she did...seconds after it had passed the yellow umbrella. time stood still around her as she watched the red umbrella miraculously turn back around to face the yellow one.

"thank god," she whispered under her breath, that was too close of a call. she was almost distracted.

her arms fell back to her sides, brushing against the soft material of her satchel. oh right! his glasses! (y/n) rushed onto her feet, fingers digging through her bag. she will give back his glasses today...not because she wants to see him or anything! it was just the right thing to do. at least that's what she hoped.

-------

gojo satoru has a sweet tooth. even through wind, sun, heat and in this case, a rainstorm, he would never give up his daily sweet treat. so that's how he found himself outside a cafe on a rainy january afternoon, just a minute's walk from kyoto station, waiting for suguru to meet up with him. well, that and his unsuccessful search for his favourite sunglasses.

eyes shut, he held his flip phone up to his ear, "yes, suguru, i already asked if they had them,"

"and what did they say?" suguru's voice rang through the phone.

"they said no, and then i ordered some cheesecake to go," satoru replied, ignoring the way suguru groaned in response, "any luck on your end?"

"no," suguru replied, "maybe check around you, they could've ended up anywhere,"

"i doubt--"

his words died in his throat as a familiar presence entered his atmosphere. that girl. It has to be. his eyes flew open, darting around to find her.

nothing.

curious, satoru stood straighter, ready to start searching. he still felt her so she couldn't have gone far. before he could even take a few steps, a sudden rush of wind blew past him, almost knocking him off his feet. what the hell?

"hey! satoru! are you even listening to me?" suguru's distorted voice snapped him out of his confusion.

"yeah, yeah, what did you say?" he replied, half paying attention. he couldn't sense that girl anymore.

another sigh left suguru, "i said, i'm almost there, and that you should look around for your glasses if you're so determined to find this damn pair,"

satoru frowned, annoyed by the loss of both his glasses and that girl, "nah, i think i'll just wait for you," he took a step back, searching his surroundings before suddenly tripping over something.

frustrated, he turned to look at what it was - an arrow. sticking out of the ground. centimetres away from where he stood.

sure, being almost shot by an arrow was strange, but honestly, that was hardly the most confusing part about this. what stole his attention was the pair of sunglasses hanging from it. more specifically, his most cherished and most certainly lost pair of sunglasses attached to the arrow.

"what the hell...?" he muttered into the phone, bending down to pick up the arrow. it felt light, too light - like it could disappear at any moment.

"what? what happened?"

"nothing-- just get here as fast as you can, okay?" not waiting for a response, satoru hung up, inspecting his found glasses. did that girl have something to do with this?

-------

little did satoru know, that squeezed behind the trunk of a large tree stood a cupid, heart racing and missing one more arrow from her quiver.

a/n; hi!!!!!! okay so honestly im just throwing caution into the wind and writing this lol. thank you for reading this far and i hope you enjoyed it!

[dinosquad-central]

Okay, longer post about a headcanon that is completely integral to my enjoyment of Dino Squad. (Largely copy/pasted from my rant on the Discord server)

I think Caruso might actually be very smart. Genuinely, classically, academically smart.

I know that sounds like a crackpot theory, but hear me out!

He's in the same science class as Rodger (the guy who's explicitly stated to be the smartest kid in school), as well as Fiona (who's also clearly very intelligent), Buzz (maybe not top marks, but since it appears to be a biology class, and Buzz is especially interested in animals it makes sense he'd be in a more advanced bio-class). Max may not be a genius, but most schools require members of the school sports teams to maintain a certain GPA, and he’s on the football team, so he can't be a complete idiot either.

And Caruso is in the same class as them and therefore it's implied that he's at the same level as them in that subject! Because of this, and the fact that the classroom is a lecture hall and not a regular classroom, I also headcanon that it's an AP bio class, or at least honors.

Plus! When Caruso told his parents he was dinosaur, their one insistence was that he not neglect his studies meaning A) his family cares about his education and B) he probably gets at least relatively good grades already.

AND! It's shown in the show that Caruso regularly and *easily* manipulates his friends into doing his homework for him (episode: “who let the dog out”). He also manipulated others during the show, including a TV producer or show host, I can’t remember which (episode: “Zoom in on Zoom” I think). You can't be that deliberately manipulative and a complete idiot like Caruso appears to be.

ALSO Caruso has a line of beauty products which he both invented, and markets/sells himself (episode: “Scents and Scents Ability”), meaning he must also have a small company/business that he personally runs, and the quality of his products are good enough to have a whole spa treatment devoted exclusively to them, which is named after him/his product, meaning the products themselves must be well known and trusted enough to attract customers. This demonstrates that Caruso has some level of skill with chemistry and botany (iirc he made herbal moisturizers but it's been a while, so that detail may be wrong). In addition to that he must have a good sense for business, finance, and marketing.

But wait! There's more! When they were trapped in a cage with seemingly no way out, it was Caruso who came up with the plan to use misdirection and social engineering to trick Veloci into not only letting them go, but also donating a sizeable amount to a local charity as hush money (episode: who let the dog out”). It wasn’t genius Rodger, or leader Max, or competent female character Fiona, it was Caruso, “the dumb one”. This indicates that he can also think on his feet and come up with quick solutions to difficult problems.

Furthermore! A lot of highly intelligent people learn to act like they're stupid because when people know how smart you are, they have high expectations of you, and that's stressful to the point of traumatizing sometimes. There's also an interesting type of stigma around intelligence where people tend to think you're pompous or unapproachable when you're highly intelligent and become intimidated or resentful, which, since Caruso highly values his popularity, would be extremely distasteful to him. Given his fixation with fame and popularity, I don't think it's a stretch at all to think he'd dumb himself down, even around his friends, to avoid that stigma.

So yeah, there you have it. That’s all the reasons (that’s I can think of at the moment, anyway) why I believe Caruso is a big fat liar pretending to be an idiot so he doesn’t have to be responsible for anything. I hope I’ve managed to convince you all because I am 100% committed to this theory lol.

[sunnysssol]

Changed my pfp because i miss my sweet honey bear sugar vanilla cinnamon bun beautiful bean suzie 😔😔😔 and alfred too ig 🙄 also because someone brought the gakuen hetalia thing i did back into my notifs and i !!!! I'm getting fluffy and silly goofy thoughts... as much as I love angst and historical stuff for AmeSuzie, i'm a sucker for their potential for little shoujo anime-esque shenanigans jdjfkkc

Anyway.

Suzie packing lunches for both of them, not because Alfred can't cook or whatever, he just steals off her food anyway 😭 In return, Alfred cooks an entire feast for her birthday and is just absolutely embarrassing about it. "Heyyy Suzie! Happy birthday, Suzie!!! I made all your favorite food, Suzie!!! 😃🗣📣‼️". Suzie pretends they don't know him. Alfred Jones? From the Americas Class? Who the hell is that? I've never met this man in my life!

Like all the other AUs I have wherein they're young and silly goofy, these two are like... only vaguely romantic in this AU ? They will hold hands and cuddle all day and make jokes about being already married but would still be like "Nah, we're just best friends!" Absolute clown behavior. Clown-to-Clown communication.

When they first met, Suzie's hair was vv short, like this!:

— And while it was growing out, they'd keep tucking it behind their ears and just be sort of annoyed with it since it was at an awkward length where you couldn't tie it yet. Alfred goes on and gets her a bunch of little hair clips and is just like "Here, since you won't stop messing with your hair so much!" ... Again, not just exclusive to this AU but mirroring the behavior of all my other Alfreds, I think about him being quietly thoughtful. Yes, he does the "extravagant gifts in large quantities" thing that's associated with him (consumerism moment), but he also does little things like this. Anyway, back to the AU– Suzie is touched and is honestly more than a little flustered, but she thanks him and still wears the clips to this day. Alfred thinks it's sweet and she looks cute with them on, but he keeps this to himself because he doesn't want them to think he's being mushy and "uncool" 🥴

I like to think the Hero Club is like, the academy's broadcasting club, so Alfred and Suzie do the morning announcements and all that! Very fitting, knowing that both of them are far too talkative hshshs But anyway! Besides that, I have this HC that Alfred likes to doodle and while it's not a very utilized skill in Nationverse, in this AU it is and he often makes little comics for the Newspaper Club to publish. He's kind of a jock whenever in school AU-type settings, so I don't think he liked to talk about this passion for art much until he met Suzie. They encouraged him to keep improving and to eventually publish his comics. I think he still gets quite bashful when people ask about it, but he's a little more open to talking about it now 👉👈

[bluegekk0]

my favorite pastime is imagining my blorbos playing minecraft. what kind of player would they be? what would they enjoy doing the most? idk what it is about minecraft but it can tell you so much about a person

fpk would primarily do redstone stuff. he's not very good at combat or exploring, he's a bit slow and his small hands don't mesh well with a keyboard, and he doesn't have the artistic creativity for building. but with redstone? he could build insane farms, or advanced mechanisms, he'd be the mf to spend all night making a working redstone computer within the game

grimm complements fpk's redstone skills insanely well. he has the eye for aesthetic and enjoys decorating fpk's base to make it look prettier. all those crazy mechanisms fpk builds? grimm will create the most impressive looking outer shell to make it more pleasing to look at. will always offer to decorate your house, and spends most of his time making the area around everyone's base look good

hornet is an explorer, she's the one lagging the server by loading hundreds of chunks every time she's on. she doesn't need a map to find specific locations, she memorizes where they are and can easily track them again after returning home. she would also be pretty good at combat, though her lack of patience means she often dies in very stupid ways. also, she loves bullying zote. asks fpk for redstone trap advice just so she can build a tnt trap under zote's house

holly almost exclusively makes cute little farms for animals and spends their time fishing. they stay away from combat (though they're surprisingly good at it) and instead choose relaxing activities. if anyone builds a strip mine, you'll often find them mining in peace. whenever anyone needs a lot of cave resources, or wool, or a shit ton of wheat and potatoes, holly is the one who has it all, and they will always let you take all of it

zote kind of sucks at everything, but, of course, pretends otherwise. he will challenge hornet to combat (loses), he will try to fight the zombies that surround his house (dies to a random creeper) and he will go mining for diamonds (drowns in lava). if the server had a death counter, he would be at the top, and of course would boast about it. whenever he's not attempting to fuck over hornet's house, he chills at holly's farm, and he will accidentally let all of their sheep out of their pen

lewk is still very young at this point in the au lore, so he mostly just watches either of his dads play. after getting his own account, he would just run around and check what the others are doing, offering to help them around (even if he doesn't really know what he's doing or how all of it works. he is a baby after all). he would particularly enjoy joining hornet on her adventures, and every time he dies, hornet teleports him back to her, despite being against using cheats. he also gets free stuff from her that she gave him using commands. their little secret. how did that baby get a fully enchanted netherite sword? clearly he's just that good

i know this is a bit random but i just felt like talking about the blorbos. your honor, i love them. they are everything to me ❤️

[bfpnola]

Why Imagination is Vital

Copied excerpt from the transcript:

With these systems of systems corrupting our humanity, compounded by the psychological manipulations of the social media era, and with a general consensus that we’re hurtling towards a horrible future, how do we break free? I believe it starts with a recognition of the importance of imagination.

We’re not going to be liberated by techno-hopium, by green consumerism, or by politicians. We can't wait for governments and we can’t do this on our own. We are a social species. The only way we get free is together. But one of the first steps is the cultivation of our imagination. Imagination is an essential skill we must all work to foster. Things can change for the better, and they can change very quickly. Imagination is central to empathy, to creating better lives, to envisioning and then enacting a positive future. We cannot let this most critical tool languish.

First and foremost, because imagination is vital to our health.Particularly our mental health. In our brains, we have a pair of seahorse-looking blobs called the hippocampus, and it is the HQ of our imagination. Among the hormones it receives, the hippocampus is particularly vulnerable to cortisol, the stress hormone. Cortisol is the hormone responsible for fight or flight and can be very useful, but in high doses, such as in late-stage capitalism, cortisol can damage our hippocampal cells, reducing the hippocampus’s size and volume and setting off a deleterious cycle of events. The more damaged the hippocampus, the more stressfully and pessimistically you experience reality, which results in even more damage to the hippocampus, and on and on. Capitalism is a mental illness generator; the policies and structures it upholds serves to weave stress, trauma, alienation, inequality, inadequacy, and anxiety throughout the social tapestry. The worse things get, the worse things look, and it becomes harder to imagine a way out.

You’ve heard of capitalism killing our imaginations, now get ready for climate change killing our imaginations. Global CO2 concentrations are currently at around 413 parts per million, and they're projected to reach 1,000 ppm by the year 2100. Researchers estimate that such a concentration would reduce human cognitive ability by 21%. Even the 660 ppm by 2100 goal put forward by the Paris Climate Agreement would put us at a 15% decline in cognitive ability.

But the greatest imagination killer alongside climate change and capitalism, embedded in capitalism, emerging from capitalism, whatever, is the contemporary education system. Or rather, “contemporary” “education” system. Little has diverted from the damaging Prussian Model of the 18th and 19th centuries. While imagination seems to come more easily for children, it has been banished to their domain exclusively and, through the school system, suppressed, removed, redirected, or re-educated as they age. Many children these days don’t have an outside to play in, where they could create their own worlds and games and stories, but such freedom to roam is vital for their psychological well-being. When youth liberation advocates argue for the freedom of children from the domination of schools and parents, it is with the understanding that freedom, and especially freedom to play, which children are being robbed of more and more, is as essential for their potential development as learning to speak or walk. Without it, we’re left with stunted and traumatized adults. Free, spontaneous, and unstructured play teaches social skills, cooperation, creativity, resilience, and conflict resolution, and in my view, it should be a robust and well-incorporated element of our organizing. I believe we should play-pretend about the future to explore different possibilities and then bring them to life. But it’s hard for many adults to engage with play. I get it. School has done a number on people to devalue, undermine, manipulate, and drain our imaginations in order to maintain order and conformity. The education system is globally competitive at this point, and in an effort for colonized countries to keep up with the demanding standards of the so-called first world, they must recreate the standard of sickness corroding our societies and our planet. Imagine if we actually committed to the project of learning. Imagine if we discarded its antithesis. Imagine if we availed learning to all, and refused to restrict it to one set time in one set place in one’s life. Imagine if children were actually able to learn and to direct their learning and develop their skills and passions and selves in a dynamic, diverse, and delightful environment. Imagine if we nurtured whole persons, rather than limiting them to the confines of profit and hierarchy.

For this task of revitalizing our imaginations, I believe nature can and should guide us. After all, the environment we evolved in cultivated our imaginations in the first place. When we speak of peas in a pod, when we speak of running like the wind, when we speak of the bravery of a lion, when we ask “How deep is your love?” It’s like the ocean. Because human creativity, human language, human thought, is tied to the natural world. The separation we maintain with it now is artificial and in many cases detrimental to our wellbeing. The war against nature waged by industrial colonial capitalism is a war against ourselves and an affront to our imaginations. Imagination needs diversity to feed it, but monocultures, monopolies, and other monotonies strip us of that diversity. When we can draw from a palette of possibilities, marked in our memories, we’re able to muse from the magnificent muse of the natural world. So if you want to spark your imagination, start by getting your hands dirty. Literally, soil is about as diverse as it gets.

We can further inspire and energize ourselves with the power of art and the stories it can tell. Humans are storytellers and we cannot afford to underestimate the power of stories. Whether we hitch ourselves to God’s plan, Elon Musk’s vision, Solarpunk, or Desert by Anonymous, narratives shape our lives, our identities, our perceptions, and our actions. Stories may be inaccurate, incomplete, immature, or intransigent, but they are potent. Facts are not enough to change hearts and minds. But stories can. The way I see it, we cannot cede the domain of imagination, of narratives, of stories, to dystopia. There may be constraints on the future, but we should not assume that such restraints require the special brand of “pragmatism” put forth by certain capitulators to the status quo. In fact, with limitations come opportunities. Haiku poetry may be limited to 5-7-5 syllables, but so much beauty has come out of it over the centuries. The same can be said for the stories we can generate from present conditions and future possibilities. Stories that can bring the future to life and help people let go of the past. Stories we can distribute and popularize over a wide, wide variety of media. Stories that inspire boldness and brilliance in community action to aim for a world we can thrive in together.

This video has been inspired by and built upon the book “From What Is to What If” by Rob Hopkins. While I have my critiques of some of the constraints that underline the author’s line of thinking, I highly recommend y’all give it a read. It’s chock full of examples, studies, and case studies that can provide inspiration in this journey.One of the concepts that Rob Hopkins has generated that I want us to reflect upon is The Imagination Sundial, which I’d like to borrow from and push a bit further. The model is split into four sections: space, place, practices, and pacts. 

Space involves creating, well, space. Carving out mental and emotional space and time to imagine more, do more and act more. Connecting with others to share burdens and care, whether alloparental care, group meditation, peer support, or reading discussions. The Space Section cannot be divorced from other elements of the Imagination Sundial. Part of creating space must involve organizing to gain power over and minimize the monopoly of work on our time and energy.

Place involves creating and transforming places that can allow us to bring together our imaginations, organize collectively, and implement the worlds we want to see, like food forest permablitzes, street art events, squats and occupations, block meetings, maker spaces, libraries of things, skillshares, and even virtual collaborations. 

Practices involve connecting us with each other and changing our frame of possibilities. International solidarity allows us to come together and share stories and case studies of what’s possible for everyday people committed to change. We can be inspired by and learn from the strategies and tactics of liberatory projects from Brazil to Mexico to India to Kurdistan. “Yes And, What if?” practices allow us to exercise our imagination and engage our hands and minds in the process of making the future. 

Pacts are about making agreements to get things done. Our projects should not suffocate in isolation but should strive to thrive in the company. Worker cooperatives, housing cooperatives, farming cooperatives, unschooling cooperatives, alloparenting networks, student unions, tenant unions, workers unions, abolitionist movements, permaculture movements, mutual aid projects, artist collectives, especifist units, neighbourhood assemblies, and more can and should convene, confederate, and catalyze action. I’ve spoken in the past about permablitzes, but I can see that style of one-day or weekend focused event action being directed elsewhere too. 

These future blitzes can, for example, create what Jason Roberts called “Better Blocks.” Over one weekend, Roberts and a group of others transformed an abandoned block in Dallas into a vibrant block with sidewalk gardens, bike paths, outdoor seating, historic lights, and more. Guerilla bottom-up place-making, as he calls it, helps people execute the changes they want to see in the places they inhabit. Communities are able to come together, imagine collectively, and tell their stories about their environment and their future.

Conclusion: We seem to face insurmountable challenges, but as we rethink the stories we’ve been told and forge new ones, with a renewed sense of resilient imagination, I believe we’ll find many new paths to overcome our obstacles. Imagination is a fundamental component of our humanity; we just need to cultivate it. We can create what-if spaces for why-not action, and we can do it today. 

Peace.

[dont-call-me-algernon]

Hello, hello!

Do you have any fluffy and/or silly headcanons for Falsepretensesshipping (Grimsley x Colress)?

P.s. I hope you're having a great day! ^°^

As a matter of fact, I do! I've wasted so much time thinking about these two in the past few years, so have four very specific headcanons for them:

1. They're the entire Alolan teenage population's honorary Cool Uncles. Grimsley has become sort of famous among the locals for both his Mantine Surf and magic card tricks and his willingness to teach them to anyone who might ask him to, while Colress is the eccentric but polite resident scientist who always rewards trainers for helping him collect research data (which basically just involves having a battle with him or allowing him to take a closer look at your pokemon) with very useful items. They have let runaway young trainers who had had a big fight with their parents/guardians/whatever sleep on their couch before, for as long as it took to settle their disagreement.

2. The reason why they rarely (if ever) bet on the outcome of a game of cards and prefer to put both silly and more serious stakes on pokemon battles instead, is that it would be terribly unfair. How? Well, Colress' poker face is literally non-existent. Or rather – his expression is just blank enough not to betray him, but he has so many other tells (from shaking his head, to fixing his glasses, to clicking his tongue) that even a rookie player would be able to tell when he's bluffing. He beat Grimsley one (1) time at poker and that was it. And even then it was a massive, massive case of beginner's luck.

3. On at least one occasion, Grimsley infiltrates an exclusive scientific convention Colress has been invited to speak at, for no other reason than to see how long he can keep the charade going. He borrows one of Colress' lab coats and boring suits (Grimsley's exact words) and spends an entire evening chatting up other scientist, pretending to be "doctor G, pokébiologist". He's a good enough liar and has absorbed enough scientific vocabulary just from passively listening to Colress ramble about his research that he actually does pretty well, and it takes several hours for people to get suspicious. When he's inevitably escorted out, Colress pretends not to know him.

4. Somewhere down the line, they end up co-owning a Deino. Colress is the one to procure it because he was always fascinated by his previous employer who shall not be named's Hydreigon and wanted to study whether being raised in a more comfortable environment would positively influence its behaviour or whether it's just an extremely violent and aggressive species by nature – you know, the old nature vs nurture conundrum. The best way to do so, of course, would be with the assistance of someone who's already used to working with dark types. Which is where Grimsley comes into play. And he's more than happy to help out, too, since Deino is one of those infamously difficult species to train that any dark type specialist wanting to prove their skill has to tackle, sooner or later in their career. Turns out that a properly trained Deino is indeed less destructive... which does NOT mean the little fiend doesn't rip half of Grimsley's furniture and wardrobe to shreds before learning to answer his commands.

(Thanks for the ask btw! I always love an excuse to ramble about my current favourite ships/characters!)

[tri-punisher]

the state of canon and sid and LR's relationships while they're all at the eye as it appears in my mind palace

sid

has been at the eye the longest out of himself, wolfwood, and LR, arriving there very shortly after the caravan that his family was travelling with was destroyed by raiders, his parents along with it. a scared, traumatised and orphaned child promised sanctuary and all the necessary skills he would need to ensure no one could ever hurt him again.

used to be one of chapel's prime students until he was eventually deemed far too recalcitrant and unruly as he grew older, especially as a potential punisher candidate. he has never liked being told what to do and how to do it.

was introduced to razlo at a young age and the two of them bonded quickly, largely because razlo wants to please people and sidney was very easily pleased by what he was giving him--attention and constant stimulation in the form of a back-and-forth routine of violence for fun, only exacerbated and pushed further and further past the extreme when they were both given their healing augments. razlo quickly becomes the only person who can keep up with sid.

livio

doesn't get along with sid at all, never has, never will. thought from day one he was a nuisance--loud and brazen and argumentative, while livio was trying his best to keep himself out of trouble.

relatedly livio disdains him for being as technically skilled as razlo is, but holding zero of the reverence razlo and himself have for the eye, and especially for chapel and his teachings, while livio submitted himself wholly to the eye and worked twice as hard to get to where he is. he very much feels like he's earned his place amidst the ranks of the eye's best, but sid couldn't care less about serving the eye, he only wants to use what he's been taught for his own means.

is almost entirely unaware of the way sidney behaves with razlo as razlo shields livio from having to deal with him as much as he can. livio only becomes aware of the full extent of sidney's abusive behaviour years after the fact, when the two of them have gotten much better at the whole communication thing, and sidney had left razlo in a hole so deep he needed livio's help to pull him out of it.

razlo

fronts more frequently than just in situations where he is required for combat and to protect livio and has a more realised idea of who he is as a result, but his personhood still almost exclusively revolves around the wants and needs of everyone else in his life and how immediately useful he can be in fulfilling those wants and needs.

views sid as his responsibility and has for a very long time, which is a big part of why he refused to share anything about how sid was treating him with livio. the faculty--and in particular chapel--explained to him as much once it became clear sidney had long since become a sunk cost to them, his unruliness and irreverence worthless, and ultimately only remaining within the organisation because razlo insisted--begged--for him to be spared. but it was made clear to razlo: if ever sid steps out of line or causes problems for the faculty, it would always fall back on razlo. razlo never tries to argue.

sometimes pretends to be livio to avoid having to deal with sidney, with varied success. sidney knows livio is entirely off limits, it's the one line razlo has drawn between the two of them of which he will always enforce, and he will not lend him his usual temperance if he decides to fuck with him. sidney knows razlo well enough he can sometimes pick up on when it is or isn’t him based on certain mannerisms. lockjaw is also tellingly more responsive when razlo is fronting, which sid looks out for. sometimes razlo can will her to ignore him, other times he can't.

[my-misplaced-stew]

My headcanons for each of the mercs + Miss Pauling

I'm not in a very writing mood so take some of my personal headcanons!

TW: Ask to tag

Scout

So you know how he drinks pretty much exclusively Bonk! ? Imagine what it does to his teeth! So to prevent his teeth from rotting out of his head he brushes his teeth at least 3 times a day, just to be safe. His ma definitely told him off if he went to long without brushing his teeth as a kid. She raised 8 kids! And dental care is expensive as all hell.

Pyro

They're like a crow when it comes to finding shiny stuff on the ground. If they see something glistening in the sun they will put it in a pocket to display in their room later. Doesn't matter if it's considered "trash" or not, if he likes it he will put it in his room! No if, ands or buts about it!

Soldier

Raccoon armys need to be prepared for anything! And they can't be prepared for anything is they're covered in dirt and trash! So Soldier gives all his raccoons a spa day every now and then. At first he tried to give them showers in the community showers but was swiftly banned from the showers with any animal. So he bought [and by bought I mean took from the display outside the store] a little plastic pool just for his raccoons. He fills it up with a hose then let's his little army play in the water.

Heavy

He's skilled at polishing all of his guns, not just Sasha. Sure he might not name all of his secondary weapons but that doesn't mean hes going to neglect them! Knows all the ins and outs of his weapons so he can take the best care of them. Finds the most efficient and quickest ways too. Over all the guy you want to go to if you need some help cleaning your gun, that is if you're close enough with him.

Engineer

So it's already canon that he can play the guitar. But I like to think he can play a few other instruments. Mainly stringed instruments, like the banjo, but he can also play the piano pretty well! Depends on what kind of mokd hes in but he can play a range from old saloon style music to some classical music. Doesn't play the piano very often because where the hell is there a piano in the base?

Demoman

Hes a huge fan of horror movies and horror stuff in general. He already enjoys stuff about cryptids so it makes sense that he loves the horror. Prefers to read as he can find places to stop incase he is interrupted, which is often. But sometimes he just likes to sit down with a bottle of scrumpy and watch a cheesy horror movie.

Medic

He has the skeleton he stole on display in his lab. Why would he even steal a skeleton if he was going to do something with it? It took a while for him to get it standing for the display but he eventually got it! Everyone thinks it's just another plastic skeleton because no one really put two and two together. That is until he mentioned he put the skeleton on display in his lab.

Sniper

It's so so tempting to just say he smokes weed cause it's funny but I wont. I promise. As a child he would go off into the surrounding forest around his house and not come back home until dinner time. He would just walk around, climb trees, poke dead animals with a stick. When he was 10 his parents got his his first bow so he would at least have something to fight with if worst came to worst. He would usually just shoot at the nearby trees until the sun came down.

Spy

He usually just sneaks into town to get stuff done, since there wouldn't be a way to keep a whole dry cleaning service hidden from everyone else. So he disguises himself as a normal citizen, hides his suits under some normal clothing, and then bribes the cleaner to hide the suits and to pretend he never existed. Comes back after a day or two to pick up his clothing, usually disguised as a completely different person. Always makes sure to switch up which dry cleaning business after a few times so no one can track him. He has a very strict plan everytime he needs to go into town.

Miss Pauling

Ok since there's no background info on her I kinda made her on myself. So I like to think that a relative of her's had a run in with the Administrator. Said relative did something bad enough for the Administrator to have them hunted down and to be killed. As kind of a olive branch to spare they're own life, they offered up Miss Pauling to become the Administrator's personal assistant. I believe Miss Pauling was around 17 during all this. The Administrator agreed to taking her in only to kill the relative after the deal was made. She had Miss Pauling trained and taught what to do. Fearing for her life, Miss Pauling pushed herself to her limits which worked in her favor. Now she works for the Administrator for the rest of her life because of a stupid mistake an even stupider relative made.

[slightlyaggressiveaffirmations]

Can I get some affirmation on my writing / writing skills? Sometimes I don't think that they're the best. I think i'm getting better, but when I see others work, that thought quickly goes away. I feel as though I won't ever be as good as them. (I write fanfics btw. I have tons of fun writing them. I also roleplay at times.)

I can 195 612% do this!!! I used to teach creative writing, so prepare for my #1 most awesome excellent professional important opinion:

LITERALLY FUCKING NO ONE IS A BAD WRITER!!!

First of all, it’s like me and the Talent Tiger say about everything - frond, you ain’t getting worse at that shit by practicing. No one ever did more of something and got worse at it in the process.

But also, writing is about putting your voice down onto the page. The nearest anyone comes to bad writing is trying to use a voice that isn’t their own and failing at it, but this is “writing badly” not “being a bad writer”. Putting your voice onto a page, once you understand that this is what you’re supposed to be doing, is not something you CAN do badly, because... it’s you. You can’t do you wrong.

Yeah, there are ways you can improve as a writer, and the more you do of it, the better you are going to get. Reading more, getting more feedback from others (and genuinely recieving constructive criticism and acting on it) and experimenting more are all things you can do to make you a better writer, too. But I can absolutely assure you that you are never ever starting out from a place of badness.

While you might see other writers’ work and think you’ll never be as good as them, the truth is you will never write their stuff as well as them. But they can’t write like you do either. And there’ll be stuff they can learn from you and vice versa.

Now, some HOT TIPS (which don’t apply exclusively to writing, either)

1. Read back over your old stuff. I LOVE doing this. I will sometimes (every few years) read something I wrote when I was 15 (I am 34). A lot of people say they could never do this, it’s too cringey. But when I see my old stuff, I can say “Oh wow. This is bad. I can do so much better now. And if I could improve between then and now, I will keep on improving.” It makes you see that you have progressed, and shows you that you are not stuck stagnant in one place - you’re evolving all the time. Also, sometimes you’ll find something and you’ll think “Oh. That���s actually quite good!” It might be a single line of dialogue, or a clever piece of foreshadowing (or if you’re an artist, maybe the way you did the left hand). And then you think “Oh, I was only how old when I did this? Wow, I had a little talent, look at that!” And that makes you think, oh, maybe I am cut out for this after all.

2. Work to identify and improve what you’re bad at. It took me forever to discover how shit I was at descriptive writing, because teachers and adults always gave me positive feedback: “I love your characters”, “You write such mature dialogue”. Yeah, but my description was either non-existent or very vague. I had to be older before people could see I was serious and start being helpful about where I was weak. Even then I had to DEMAND they tell me. Now I know, and I have worked my butt off at writing good description.

(Slightly relevant: When I found out about aphantasia, that thing where you cannot form mental pictures, my whole writing style made a lot more sense, because I have it. I need an image for literally everything I want to describe and work off that - I didn’t know the value of description in books, because I had no idea most people use them to actually picture the scene in their minds.)

I go through my drafts and identify where a description should go. When someone reads my drafts and tells me something needs description, I take that but also, just for example, my friend commented on a draft that she was surprised because she was picturing a bigger dog and I’d suddenly explained the dog was very small - OK. Time to take that comment and make sure to describe that dog earlier on. Always be working to compensate and improve that weak spot.

Which brings me to:

3. Constructive Criticism. Very important. People will tell you a lot about how you have to learn to take constructive criticism and recognise it for what it is and be mature and so forth, so you don’t need that from me. But in terms of confidence as a writer - it’s also important to recognise when criticism is NOT being constructive. As a fanfic writer, you’re going to see a troll from time to time! Anyone who is rude, aggressive, cruel, etc is NOT being constructive. You don’t have to take that criticism on board. You don’t have to listen to that. That’s not helpful and it’s not intended to be, even if they pretend like it is. Even if you feel like there’s a little bit of truth to what they say! Someone might comment on my work that I’m a dumb bitch who doesn’t know how the fuck to write description and needs to give up forever - just because they’ve picked up that description is my weak point, doesn’t make it constructive. I’m not going to listen to the “give up forever” or “dumb bitch” part - one tru(ish) part doesn’t make the bullying legitimate!

4. Is it fun or is it work? Think very carefully. If writing is what you want for a career, than maybe you need to work super hard on being the absolute best you can possibly be. If you want to be published or famous, or even just see a few extra coins out of it than you should be taking that seriously. But if you’re just writing fanfic for some fun and you don’t really have any intention of ever pursuing writing in a serious way? Fuck it. Have fun with it! You don’t need to be as good as whoever you’re admiring. There’s no limit on how many fanfics can be published, so you’re not trying to win anything and there’s no standard you have to reach (as if fiction had any objective standards anyway). So, you can just have fun and write what you want and if you’re not as good as you could be, that doesn’t matter. Maybe you’re just telling a story some people on the internet are enjoying. That’s fucking awesome, even if it isn’t the best story ever written! Or you could choose to make it the best story ever written, also. If fun for you is being your absolute best! My point is not to let it become UN-fun because you’re worried about how “good” the writing is.

Oh.

And.

FANFIC IS REAL FUCKING WRITING!!! PEOPLE WHO WRITE FANFIC AND NOTHING ELSE ARE REAL WRITERS AND I’LL FUCKING DIE ON THAT HILL!!! A REAL WRITER IS SOMEONE WHO WRITES WORDS FOR PEOPLE TO READ, FUCKING FIGHT ME, I WILL GO!!!

Good luck and happy writing!

- The Slightly Aggressive Affirmer