#and these are only the most developed of the millions of the thoughts that i've had rolling around in my brain this last week

[lorephobic]

literally nobody asked for it, but here's my list of saltburn essays that i've slowly been drafting over the course of the last week which WILL be required reading for anybody trying to engage with me about this movie. my very personal saltburn 101 syllabus just dropped

A Wolf in Deer's Clothing: Saltburn's Attempt at Innocence

an examination of party costumes and our character's last attempts to masquerade as something they're not: felix—an angel, all-forgiving and all-knowing, something to be worshiped; and oliver—a prey animal, prey to class-divide, prey to saltburn, prey to felix.

thoughts about oliver specifically are loosely organized in my #bambi tag

A Midsummer Night's Mare: Farleigh Start as the Ultimate Victim of Saltburn

a farleigh character study, about the ways he was mistreated and manipulated at saltburn, about fighting to stay alive and the scars left behind by knowing when to give in

alternatively titled "QuickStart", may be adapted into a conclusive essay specifically focusing on oliver and farleigh's relationship

The Eye of the Beholder: On Saltburn's Voyeurism & Violence [working title]

how wealth and class pushes the catton's toward the volatile reality of being able to look, but not touch. on desire and the lack thereof, and portraying yourself as an object to be desired

may end up as two separate essays on wealth and aestheticism but i'm pushing toward a conclusive essay about the intersection of the two, which i feel is at the heart of saltburn

alternatively titled "Poor Man's Pudding: A Melvillian Approach to Saltburn's Class", again, may be adapted into it's own essay

Gender-Fluid: A Study in Sexuality and Saltburn's Desire to be Dry

a deep dive into the bodily fluids of saltburn and how oliver upsets the standard of men who are just so lovely and dry. on the creative choice to lean into the messy wetness of sex and desire and the audience's instinct toward repulsion

a celebration of the grotesque and an examination of why we would label it as such

least developed of the four, heavily inspired by @charnelpit's lovely post about the fluids in saltburn

if anybody is actually interested in any of these, i can work toward something closer to a finished piece instead of just bullet points and quotes in a google doc, but mostly this is so i can share my very brief takes on a multitude of themes in saltburn that have been haunting me

edit for people seeing this in the future: all posts about my essays are being organized into my #saltburn 101 tag if you’re interested in following these through to development!

[sonicboomseason3]

a brief recap of what has been going on with the sonic movieverse in the past several months:

paramount has come out in public support of israel

keanu reeves, a man who has publicly rubbed elbows with none other than benjamin netanyahu, reportedly gets cast as shadow for the upcoming third movie

james marsden, the guy who plays tom, got exposed as having written a letter of support for a convicted pedophile

there's fucking??? zionist propaganda in the knuckles series???

kind of connected to the last point but adam pally, the guy who plays wade, is evidently pro-israel too

this is a complete and utter joke.

EDIT AS OF 4/30/24: if people see this version of the post, i'd really appreciate it if you reblog it instead of the other versions, as it's the most updated one with all the information that i want included. thank you :]

you know, it's been a few days since i've made this post, and some of you (not most) are staying determined in defending/justifying/giving the benefit of the doubt to keanu for that photo with netanyahu, whether it's because "it was a decade ago," "him being civil to someone he ran into at a party one time doesn't mean anything," "he's probably just silent because his pr managers won't allow him to speak up," etc. i've made my thoughts on the matter quite clear by directly responding to these people, but at this point, i'm tired of both seeing them in my notes and repeating myself, so take this as my final word on the issue.

i can't help it if you don't think the photo with netanyahu is damning, and i'm done engaging with everyone going out of their way to tell me that. i obviously disagree, especially after finding out that 1. the host of the party, arnon milchan, is a former israeli spy who has a history of developing israel's nuclear program and promoting apartheid in south africa (information that had broken out a few months prior to the party and thus would've been fresh news around the time keanu chose to attend) and 2. keanu has been caught hanging around at least two other weirdos, but if you don't find any of that to be cause for reasonable concern, then there really is nothing else i can say afaik.

with all that said, i'm beginning to realize how strange it is that these people's first instinct when seeing this post is to start debating about keanu's political stances without ever acknowledging any of the other bullet points. you guys realize that this isn't just about him, right? i know tumblr reading comprehension is known for being piss-poor, but like… you realize that i was trying to make a point of how there are MULTIPLE terrible things that have broken out about the people and company involved in the sonic movies, right? and yet, a lot of the people leaping to speak on keanu's behalf in my notes are completely ignoring the parts where i bring up paramount, pally, etc. all in favor of zeroing in on the singular point about keanu and making bad faith assumptions about me for holding him accountable. really makes one wonder where your priorities lie if, in a post that talks about so many other things, me accusing an a-list celebrity with, according to google, a net worth of almost $400 million is where you draw the line and apparently the only thing worth your acknowledgment.

ultimately, what i'm trying to say is that the intention of this post was just to gather up everything that i had been hearing for the past several months and put it all together in one place. there were a bunch of people who didn't know about at least one of the bullet points before seeing this post, and i'm glad that i could help inform them, that was what i was hoping to do! but as for the keanu thing, i've said pretty much all i can say for now, and i don't want to derail the original post even more than i may have already. unless something new comes up, i'm done talking about him.

[headspace-hotel]

so many of us haven't seen it

we don't encounter it, we can't imagine it, we can't get out of the tomb of apathy because we haven't seen the wonders just beyond their line of sight

I talk about this all the time, but it's because I think about it all the time

There are likely thousands of plants native to the area you live in, and chances are you have never even seen most of them, in your entire life.

Not even rare orchids that only bloom at midnight on a blood moon or some shit—regular flowers. Weeds. They have been systematically eliminated from every single place you ever set foot in, and you have to have a special hobby or line of work to ever even rest your eyes upon the flowers that used to bloom for no one on every hill, or in every valley, or beside every stream

There are a few hundred birds that live where I live. I have never seen most of them before. I have never seen a Kentucky Warbler, and I have lived in Kentucky for what...twenty years?

I have never seen a rosy maple moth. When I saw one on the internet, I didn't even think it was real.

I've become a deeply weird person over the past couple years. Tasting even a little bit of the Wonders changes you. I wouldn't have thought blue bees were real, or the fantastically rainbow-colored dogbane beetles.

I have seen the world beyond the wasteland, and that glimpse makes you crazy.

You or I may have never seen a truly mature tree. A fraction of a percent of the old growth forest of the Eastern USA remains. Once there were tulip poplars over 6 feet in diameter and sycamores well over 10 feet in diameter. Only a few remain, in secret locations. Imagine walking through a forest where the tree trunks are over 3-4 feet wide.

The forest where I work is 100 years old. That's a baby forest.

Knowing that, being aware of that, it's maddening.

Central Kentucky has disproportionately few endemic plants. Almost none. Central Kentucky was the first area west of the Appalachians settled by European colonizers. The Bluegrass was once described as having the most peculiar plant life anywhere in the East, but now, there are no species known that are unique to that area.

Colonization destroyed the canebrakes. (Did you know that we had vast forests of bamboo full of carnivorous plants?) The bamboo is barely hanging on. It destroyed the sycamores so enormous you could use the hollow center of one as a stable for animals. It introduced invasive grasses to feed cattle and horses. It destroyed the rich lush topsoil. Most of the ancient oaks were cut down or died when housing developments were built on top of their roots.

What happened to the endemic species, never recorded in books of herbs, never sketched by a European naturalist.

Either gone forever...or hiding in a sinkhole on a backroad somewhere, not even yet discovered.

So much has been lost for eternity. So much still could be lost.

Some days it's hard not to wail and scream. There are herbicides in your drinking water. When you spread honey on toast, you likely also spread neonicotinoid pesticides, which testing has confirmed to be present in something like 45% of honey. In many areas, insects are immersed in the presence of chemicals designed to kill them in every drop of water, every leaf, every square inch of soil.

When games, animations, and illustrations envision the outdoors, they cover the ground with a short, uniform carpet of green, because that is what we see, no matter where we go: turfgrass cut by a lawn mower. Where I live, there are no natural environments that resemble this, remotely. The closest thing we have to turf-forming grass is our wealth of native sedges, most of which are rare or endangered.

I talked to a man who had devoted his life to studying the American bamboo, Arundinaria gigantea, and he had never seen a canebrake larger than 200x500 feet. Canebrakes once covered ten million acres, and now the bamboo exists in short, straggly clumps instead of dense bamboo forests up to 40 feet tall.

I want to cry and scream. The grief will tear me to pieces. I live in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, surrounded by people who can't even grieve, because they have been so completely severed from everything that was lost that they don't even know it was real.

It hurts. It hurts, and we have to live with it. It hurts, and the grief is all-consuming.

There is the agony, and there are the Wonders. Both are true at the same time. It is because nothing around us is standing still; everything in nature is always moving, iterating, becoming. Something is pulling and nudging at our species, urging us to move, to iterate, to become.

So much has been lost. Even more is not lost.

The trees, the bamboo, the sedges, the Kentucky warblers and rosy maple moths.

They are not lost. We are lost.

This is the hard part. The grief is hard, but this is somehow harder for us. We are lost, and it is time to come home.

Not to a physical place, but to a way of living: interconnected, mutualistic, interdependent. Symbiosis. In the forest, no one is separate from anyone else, everyone is linked and dependent on the community. Trees help each other, they support each other, they protect and shelter and feed one another and all living things, and together they are a forest. I don't really consider myself religious, but I have to reserve something in my head for how it felt to realize what Forest was.

When I noticed the little plants popping up in the sidewalk cracks and gravel paths, the tough weeds holding on in the lawns and pavement, something in my brain began to change dramatically and permanently.

They're still here. The trees. Even in the pavement and lawns. The dandelions have come, adapting rapidly, helping the bees hold on. The wildflower seeds are still sprouting in this depleted ground. Waiting for us to recognize them. Life is everywhere. The Forest is everywhere. It felt like they were waiting. We're here. We have not abandoned you. We are resilience, persistence, survival, adaptation. This is not death. This is Chaos. Come home. Come home. Come home.

I saved little plants from the roadside and tended them in plastic cups. I didn't think it would work. I don't know why I tried. I was acting as something bigger than only myself, responding to a call that moves throughout all of nature. But they survived, and growing and tending to my little plants and trees, I—understood.

I don't know if I believe in God, but I believe in Something, whatever it was that seemed to whisper like a secret: Welcome home, Caretaker.

And honestly, truth shone through then from relics of religion I hadn't touched in ages; God put Adam in a garden, not a suburb, a mall, or a Walmart. This is who you are. Not a Consumer, but a Caretaker.

And when the threat of the Flood loomed, God told Noah to start building a fucking boat.

In ecology, the plants we know as "weeds" are pioneer species: the first species to return to an area after a natural disaster or mass extinction. They survive in the harshest conditions, and prepare the land for regeneration. This is who you must become.

Look to the Dandelion—in just a few hundred years on this continent, Dandelion has risen to the highest calling of a Weed: first survive where the others can't, and then help the others survive. If the human species is to survive, you must be a weed species. You must adapt relentlessly, resist eradication, and protect and nurture other life forms by your very nature. You must be tough as nails, and make the world a gentler place through your survival.

Have you heard the saying that grief is love with no place to go?

That's the hard part.

We must grieve, but it is not yet time to grieve. It is time to love.

[leidensygdom]

Okay, I will try to explain this topic as well as I can. I will preface this with the fact this comes from personal experiences, and that they may not apply for everyone who has ties to this culture, but let's get to it:

What's the issue with Fortune tellers / "Exotic" circus performers, sexualized belly dancers and other forms of orientalism/Romani depictions?

So, as someone in the TTRPG world (specifically, the DnD community), this sort of trope is seen quite a lot. From the portrayal of Vistani (which has been tried to be fixed, but not... too well), to player characters in home games, as well as popular canon characters and podcasts, it's got quite normalized. Most of these tropes are based on Romani, which is a widespread ethnicity present all across the globe. Now, it feels almost strange to call it orientalism, given how Romani have been in Europe since the Middle Ages, even though they do have roots outside of Europe.

Romani face one of the biggest diaspora in the world: You will find Roma people under many names in very different countries, with cultures and traditions that can clash heavily. Their numbers can range from few hundred in some countries, to over a million in those they have a biggest presence. My own experience is tied to Spanish Roma, known as Gitanos, which is where my mother's side family comes from.

Gitanos are a widespread group, although they're most numerous in the southern part of Spain, Andalusia, where their presence has shaped the culture. Flamenco is thought to have been born from Gitano culture, and it has been adopted as a staple of the Andalusian identity, and the whole of Spain. Gitanos are hard to understand as their own ethnicity in Spain: There's been centuries of Gitanos and Spanish people mixing, and the average Andalusian is quite tan to start with (given Muslim presence there has also been pretty firm). It means it can be hard to "clock" a Spanish Romani person from a non-Romani one. It means you can find Romani people most would consider white, at least by Spanish standards. Most of the discrimination Gitanos face is cultural (and the whole ordeal can be a bit harder to explain from a more US-centric view).

Now, even when Gitanos have influenced Spanish culture a lot, they still face plenty of discrimination. They are one of the most marginalized groups out there. Laws have discriminated against them for centuries, on and off, which have put them in poverty. And poverty often develops into criminality, which has only seeded the idea that Gitanos are criminals, "lowlies", the bottom of society, "uncivilized", etc. Now, here comes a bit of my own experience with this.

My entire family is Andalusian, but both sides moved from there (the south) to Catalonia (north-east) in order to find a job during the Francoist (fascist) dictatorship. I won't get much into the specifics of the Catalan vs Andalusian beef because that's a bit of a massive topic too, but the important thing here is: My mother's side is Romani. My grandma faced some horrifying forms of discrimination, including the theft of her first child during the fascist dictatorship, which was taken from her by nuns (who ran hospitals at the time) to be placed into a "proper" family. (This is something that happened repeatedly at some hospitals during these times).

Now, she had two other children: My mother and my aunt. My aunt remained closely knit to Romani culture, and took part in it, which included marrying a Romani guy. She always did her best efforts to be part of it. I know she was into some culturally-related dances, which included some forms of bellydancing (which is also partially tied to Roma culture). But my mother decided she'd rather cut ties with her culture and become "civilised", by abandoning said culture.

This isn't too uncommon for Gitanos, to be honest. I've met a few people who come from similar backgrounds through my life. One of them was in university, where a fellow classmate gave an oral exposition about how his family had done a great job at "becoming civilised" by cutting ties with their own Roma roots. My university was a fairly progressive space, but no one batted an eye at that: The sheer hatred of Roma culture runs so deep even people who normally abhor racism and xenophobia consider Gitanos to be worth the hate.

There's a social pressure to do that, too. Everyone "knows" Gitano are criminals. I can't really even begin to explain how deeply does this sort of discrimination run. Roma are amongst the most hated minority groups in all of Europe (as well as most of the world). You will find that even in very leftist circles. People will try to erase the fact Roma have their own culture, and just make the world equal to "criminal", call them gy***** (which is a slur, btw), and detach them from being an actual culturally (and often racially) distinct group.

Now, this is only empowered by how media has taken our culture (it is almost hard for me to call it "our", given how much my mother ensured to take that away) and made it into a bad trope. Growing up, I was told my aunt was a sexual deviant who partook in indecent dances. Bellydancing is often seen as something very sexual (Wasn't, in origin), very unfitting. In media, bellydancers veer on the side of being a f*tish, and the common trope is the "bellydancer who seduces people in power for their own benefit". There's also the whole idea of shady fortune tellers and other magical tropes, that sort of weird mysticism that falls rapidly into orientalism. The idea that Roma will hex you, curse you, place an "Evil Eye" on you. And also the idea of travelling circus, people who perform in them being again full of that alluring exoticism, but beware! For they will enchant you, steal from you and run some massive criminal schemes on the way.

Now, when every tie a culture has on media is portrayed in a negative light, it's much harder for that culture to recover any sort of respect from the general populace. And that includes even people who are part of said culture, or people who have been removed from it. It has taken me so many years to unlearn a lot of these biases and realize where it has come from, and now I'm far too distant and far away from my grandmother to actually ever significantly connect to my heritage.

I've had the opportunity to witness what Romani culture is actually about, as I used to live with my grandmother during summers. A lot of the "mysticism" she took part of was actually about wards and protection. A lot of them were actually medicinal in nature, even if others were more superstitious. Red thread in the forehead for sickness and protection to curses, parfums (which contained alcohol or other antiseptics) on wounds, that stuff. My aunt was never a "sexual" deviant, she was keen on recovering and partaking on traditions from a culture that is slowly disappearing. The entire "promiscuous" idea is bullshit, Gitanos place a massive amount of power to marriage and loyalty. I had the luck to witness my cousin's marriage, which was a festivity like none other I had seen in my life, a colorful spectacle full of the most delightful attires, and my mother was whining the entire time over about how it was all an "uncivilised circus".

Now, this is why representation in media is key. Roma culture is broken into a thousand pieces and lost with every passing day. When someone decides to write an ambulant circus performer/fortune teller clad in exotic clothes full of golden jewellery, writes them as a criminal and makes the entire thing extremely sexual, they are feeding into the negative stereotypes about Roma.

Now, there's a lot of people who aren't even aware what culture does that trope even actually come from. I've seen people draw characters clad in Romani attires (often in, uh, rather pin-up or sexual contexts) and claim they're inspired by "x piece of media", where the trope is portrayed in the first place. I literally saw someone make a drawing in that way and call it "inspired by x (non-Roma) artist" instead of acknowledging where does all that come from.

I'm not asking people to not portray Roma people in media. Far from that. I just wish representation was better. Good representation is key towards making a culture seen in a more positive light, and teaching other peoples about it, and making people from said culture resonate with it. The very few times I've seen positive representations of Roma I've felt a bit of that connection with something that was taken from me. I want people to do a bit of research before giving a try to a Roma-coded character. Make an effort to not make Roma always the morally dubious fortune teller, the exotic alluring circus traveller, the bellydancer seductress. It's hard for Romani to produce widespread mainstream media because of how impoverished most communities are (because of the systematic discrimination Roma face all around the world), so the least non-Roma people can do is to be kind when they use their voice to talk or represent us.

I know this is a massive post, and I'm tagging it as "long post" for that reason, but I hope it is helpful for people. Feel free to ask or add your own experience if this is something that resonates with you too. Ask away if you want. I've been wanting to tell a bit my own personal experience, as this has always been a hard spot for me, and even if just a handful of people read this and understand what is this all about, I think it will have been worth it.

[breachverse]

Breach: Chicago War Zone - WIP Update 18 - 26th of August 2023

... This one's actually been brewing for 6 months, so... 1 Million Words folks!

Update 21 has been released! Last public upload was pretty much a year ago so, I'm very sorry for the long silence, a lot of the updates have been mostly in the private testing phase on Patreon, but I am here with a bunch of fixes and hangout updates.

But most importantly... We've passed the 1 Million Words mark... My fingers are tired. ❤

You may play it on the link below.

Breach: Chicago War Zone (Updated)

DEVELOPMENT LOG#21 (15-April-2024)

(B2.1.1.24.4.15)

Alpha - 21

Fixed something here, fixed something there, fixed something everywhere

SideModule: Fixed Justin's hangout background

SideModule: Fixed Hayne's hangout background

SideModule: Added Anna's 1st hangout

SideModule: Added Charlie's 1st hangout

SideModule: Added Kaz's 1st hangout

SideModule: Added Carly's 1st hangout

Stats_Page: Added Archangel crew background notes

UniModule: Added 7 new weapons to the shop

MISC: Added AA-12

MISC: Added FAMAS G2

MISC: Added HK G36C

MISC: Added SIG MPX

MISC: Added PP-19 Vityaz

MISC: Added Ultimax 100

MISC: Added SR-25

COMPLETED: Chapter 3 Part 1 of The ARC branch (100%) (PT only) W.I.P.: AA Hangout Part 1 (86%) W.I.P.: AA Store system (85%) W.I.P.: FBI Hangout Part 1 (46%) W.I.P.: FBI Store system (65%) W.I.P.: Stat screen upgrade (40%) Word Count: 1,007,622 words including codes (Last update was 971,142)

I'll be completely honest, when I started Breach 2 I knew it was going to surpass 1 million words. I just didn't think it would take this long. Through numerous challenges, both in writing and in real life. Through numerous ups and downs, I'm absolutely surprised and grateful to know that there are people out there who still support me. I've had many thoughts, numerous times, to give up and move on to other things in life, but I didn't want to disappoint, so I kept writing.

I bring to you, the 1 million milestone update. It's really not much, but it is one step closer to completion. This update has been in the works for the past 6 months mostly due to the weapons rework and also story changes for the crew members that I apparently couldn't keep track of without a giant excel spreadsheet. This update finalizes the Archangel's Gamma Crew hangouts, which is Kaz and Carly's hangout as well as Anna and Charlie's hangout.

As before, they share the same storyline so they will both share the same hangout. If you choose to go out with one, you cannot go out with the other. Kaz shares it with Carly, and Anna shares it with Charlie. Keep that in mind. Oh, and there's 7 new guns to play with. Have fun, Ian.

This update does not include the new Chapters. Chapter 3 will still be Patreon exclusive until Breach 2 finishes and I can send the demo to the public testing, and to CoG for the full release.

I really cannot reiterate how grateful I am to have an amazing array of readers and supporters who are still here after numerous hiccups and fuck ups. Thank you all, so very much.

Much, much love. - Max ❤

Link to the CoG Forums

I also have a Discord server!

As always feel free to drop however many screenshot feedbacks you'd like, either in the forums or in our Discord channel!

[mcflymemes]

PROMPTS FROM CSI: CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION *  assorted dialogue from season 3 of the show, adjust as necessary

everybody knew it, and nobody came forward.

you were in the car?

why didn't you just tell the police?

so let me get this straight. you decide to become one of them.

revenge is best served cold.

i get one phone call, right?

one must lie in the bed one has made.

you all right? don't let him get to you like that.

i was scared. and i still am. don't tell anyone, okay?

this wasn't just a murder.

don't touch me.

is this some kind of convention?

i guess i realized it's nice to see eye to eye with someone.

i get the impression that's a little tough for you.

i think we look for the differences in each other to prove that we're not alone.

you know, i hate it when he does that.

you know i could do this for you.

that had to be scary, huh?

i didn't have time to be scared.

deep down we're all narcissists.

what attracts us the most is ourselves.

is that who i think it is?

i guess clothes do make the man.

the only thing between me and a wardrobe like this is a few extra zeros on my paycheck.

this... this one just felt different.

it's not fake blood. it's human.

you killed her.

you missed me by a mile.

tell me something i don't know.

in fourth grade, i dropped out of karate class because a kid half my size made me cry.

don't insult me. luck is for those without skill.

we're gonna have to dismantle this piece by piece.

i think i can handle this.

we're up in a tree, and you're quoting poe.

you are what you throw away.

heard you got to be a superhero today.

you're my hero, [name].

i like those odds.

that's for you to find out.

if you handle them correctly, snakes are harmless.

have you ever seen anything like this before?

you don't just spontaneously develop a fatal head wound.

can you prove that?

i'm so tired of hearing that. i've heard it a million times.

you gotta get a girlfriend.

i thought we had a relationship!

i have no idea what you're talking about.

the best intentions are fraught with disappointment.

i can take care of this myself.

i'm just repeating what i've heard.

you're a good listener.

you already seem to know the answers to your questions.

i'm losing my balance.

there's a sucker born every minute.

you know, guys don't like that.

what happened to your enthusiasm?

what do you think caused these marks?

i wasn't being rude. i was being curt.

i like silent movies.

you sure you don't want me to do this?

it's physically impossible to absorb a fatal dose of cocaine through the penis.

we have a bigger problem than we thought we did.

i'm not looking at you.

the schedule says you're off tonight.

would you like to have dinner with me?

let's have dinner. let's see what happens.

by the time you figure it out, it really could be too late.

i wish you had come to me sooner.

i'm not going with you.

[bitchthefuck1]

sorry if you've talked about this before but i really don't like when people are like 'there's no way kaz (or the other crows) is a teenager i had to imagine them as 30yr olds' idk if its because i read the books when i was 15 myself but even now (at 23) i don't really get the argument. i'd love to hear your thoughts on it

I made like a million and one posts about this on my old account back when season 1 came out, but basically yeah. I've always seen them as teenagers, and I think the whole "Leigh only made them teens for it to fit the YA market, they're really in their 20s" is kinda bullshit. Like, so much of where the characters are emotionally is directly tied to their ages and the story and their arcs just wouldn't work the same way of they were older. People will point out ways that they're emotionally immature or inconsistent or arrogant or don't seem to know what they want/how to be in a relationship and it's like. yeah that's cuz they're teenagers. That's not a flaw in the writing that's what being a teenager is like.

It also explains their almost absurd level of "yeah, we can do that" about genuinely impossible-seeming things. That kind of "I'll fight God idgaf" energy is really characteristic of teenagers to me because you're still figuring shit out and therefore don't have a set idea of what things are or are not considered "possible", so you're way more open to big risks and wild ideas.

And I know people always point to their skill levels as what makes this unbelievable, but these are a bunch of people who have been forced to develop a specific skill set at an absurdly young age basically at the expense of anything else. Kids and young people can really master complex things at a level most adults don't have, and are in some ways more suited to it, the problem is that it's almost always at the expense of a lot of other important developmental experiences and needs. We as a society generally agree that putting kids in the position where they specialize really intensely at a young age and neglect everything else is bad, so we don't generally do that, but these are kids who were put in that position on a basically life-or-death level and managed to survive.

That's in part why I'd really like to see soc 3 at some point down the line. Not just because I want more content or whatever, but because once you leave your teens and hit your 20's you're forced to confront all the deficiencies in your childhood and how things that you thought are just in the past are very much lingering and becoming impossible to ignore. It's a really intense place to be in emotionally and it's something I think it would be really fascinating to watch the crows have to navigate, on top of the fact that a lot of them have just achieved lifelong dreams and goals and now have to figure out what they want to do next.

Anyway, that went way longer than I thought it would, so TL;DR the crows are absolutely teenagers and the story is better that way.

[danmeiconfession]

I'm going anonymous because I might get a lot of disagreement, but to me, Shen Yuan's character is very replaceable. He reads like a reader-insert, there to fix the story, which he canonically is. He's more of a "window dressing" because what's important is not who he is but the body he's in, which acts as the catalyst. His connection with the characters revolves around them, and even till the end, his outlook on them doesn't change. What I mean is, he isn't important in the way a main character would be, because although we follow his point of view, he's essentially just a window through which we view the story, so he feels disconnected.

He's funny, but what sets him apart from many other Chinese main characters besides his humor? Oh shit, the Main character has the hots for me seen that shit done millions of time.

He lacks so much compared to SJ that it's not even funny. I don't even know if the author did this unironically because how is the original character the one to steal the show in such a short time we get to know him, with the majority of fanfics dedicated to him because he's that interesting compared to the rest of the cast; he solos them all. Hate him or not, SJ fits more with MXTX brand of protagonists than SY, I'm sorry.

He doesn't grow; he's complacent, and the only thing he really gains in the end is Binghe's affection, which hinges on the identity of the body he is in. I've never read a story of a transmigrator who doesn't reveal their identity, especially in an MXTX work with Lan Zhan seeing through WWX the second the flute played. Let me tell you, many stories, especially in Chinese BL novels, simplify or villainies the original character to garner no sympathy, so to have your expectations flipped and realize that the allegations were wrong, and how you thought of him is like reading someone's story of WWX but with a different lens on the character, with everyone slandering him . To have the original character be a villain and be so important that just having someone else be him changes events is incredibly interesting.

The original character is so significant that he garners the enmity of three important ladies, earns the absolute hatred of the main character, and he single handidly profoundly influences the development of Yue Qingyuan and Luo Binghe, two of the most powerful characters in the book. Despite this, he isn't even the final villain; he's merely a starting point. The extent of his influence and power is truly remarkable.

He's too powerful. No wonder so many people make him the protagonist in AO3 look how loyal LQG was to SQQ. So many change of events you could do with this one singular character that SY isn't even on my radar of my fics to read.

.

[exilethegame]

Adding an "Act 0" to the Game...

We're getting close to the release of Chapter 5, pt 2, which means we're also getting close to the rewrite + port to Twine! I plan to go back and add plenty of things to the game, including expanding scenes and adding extra dialogue and extra choices.

There's also another idea I've been toying with that I'd like to get a public opinion on!

I've been intrigued by the idea of creating an "Act 0," or rather, an act that takes place before Act I, which is currently the entire demo. It would be more linear in nature and shorter than Act I (it certainly won't be 1 million words 💀) and would take place throughout the Commander's childhood + adolescence. Some of the flashbacks would be rearranged and expanded on, and you'd get to explore MC's youth in more detail along with getting to know Plaithus better! (Meet Omaren, develop the beginnings of MC + Syfyn's/Sabir's relationship, go through MC's time in the military, meet MC's grandparents, etc.).

To be clear, when the game is ported to Twine and the Demo is re-released, it will not include Act 0. It will still just be the content that is available now, but with additions + edited. Act 0 would be kept on Patreon as part of the Alpha Build of the game.

With that in mind, I'm quite curious to hear people's thoughts on this! Whatever's most popular doesn't mean I will/I won't do it, but I do want to get the public opinion on this. Feel free to comment or send in asks delving into your opinions more!

[maxwellatoms]

Congratulations, one of your characters made a cameo appearance in my midlife crisis!

This takes a little time to explain, but on the art web site FurAffinity, living users are represented with a tilde, while living impaired users get an infinity symbol in front of their names. I was at a low point in my life when I drew this, and thought about what would happen when the Grim Reaper eventually closed the loop.

Anyway. This was supposed to be for questions, so I'll ask one. The career of an animator seems to be nomadic... they'll spend some time developing a series for Cartoon Network, then move to Disney, then migrate to Nickelodeon, only to return where they started (cough cough CH Greenblatt cough).

Any reason, or reasons, why this happens? Honestly, I have a difficult time understanding why anyone would go to Nickelodeon to start a show, given the way so many artists have been treated by the network in the past. Do all the networks act like this?

Just curious. Thanks for your time, and for the years of entertainment.

You guys look great together, but no loop closings please!

Gotta bilde the tilde, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, yeah... Animators all know that Other Studios have Other Problems. It's not at all uncommon to hear someone say, "I'm about ready for new problems".

I spent most of my career (until the wonders of the recent mega-merger) at WB, so I've really only known WB problems (with a light sprinkling of Disney Troubles). I've asked friends like C.H. Greenblatt and Jessica Borutski about the long-haul at Nick, so I have a basic idea what the culture is like. But if I land at Nick in five years, it could be a completely different set of circumstances and maybe even a completely different set of employers.

I know maybe three studio execs with solid careers who've spent the majority of their time at one studio. Most of the time, the low level executive track is even more of a meat grinder than the creative track. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that the middle-management meat grinder is the cause of the creative meat grinder.

The job of an executive is to make impressive decisions that dazzle their superiors and shareholders. If you've just been hired to replace someone and have inherited a stack of 32 animation bibles in various stages of development with assorted creators, are you really going to just continue going through that pile? I mean, you're replacing someone for a reason, right? So probably better just to toss that whole pile of animation bibles in the trash and start again. Because you're going to look like an idiot if even a single one of those fails. And if it succeeds, it just makes your predecessor look smart, which steals some of your shine. So you axe those creators and all of their support goes away and the cycle begins anew.

During my career, these executive turnovers (and the following creative turnovers) happen about every four or five years. With a little luck, it takes (in my experience) about two years to get a show through development to pilot, and then another year to decide if it's going to be a series. In short, there is precious little time where a creator/EP can interface with and rely on a competent executive to champion them. If you don't have that, you're not going anywhere.

I'm not sure how anything gets made. From the inside, development is always trickle-down sweaty desperation. I guess somehow, every now and then, a neurodivergent 23 year old slips through the cracks and makes a kid's show about The Grim Reaper. It could all be luck.

There are definitely execs who love animation and have made it their life's work. But there are also people who just got into the business as, say, a personal assistant and hasn't watched an animated cartoon since they were six, but suddenly find themselves in control of many millions of dollars worth of IP. There are execs who think of entertainment only as a commodity and who literally don't understand why creatives feel so passionate about "just cartoons" but will remind you "how lucky you are to work in entertainment" if you ask for a raise.

In short, the problems are usually management related. And those problems are mostly the same across studios, with the occasional Infamous Despot you want to avoid at all costs. The good news is that said Despot probably won't last five years.

There are perks at the different studios too. Proximity to decent food. Occasional amusement park passes. Friday morning bagels. The sort of stuff that hopefully nobody is taking a job specifically for.

At the end of the day, there are three or four big studios we can work for. There are also a smattering of smaller indie studios which... make content for those three or four other studios anyway.

The long and short of it is that there's just not a lot of choice where we can work or who we work for. We definitely talk to each other and the studio culture does weigh heavily when you're deciding where to go. Assuming you have the luxury of choice. It all kind of sucks, and it all kind of sucks in the same way. But sometimes you get bagels.

Stay Frisky!

[apas-95]

can i ask about your thoughts on whether ai art models should only use art from people who have opted in as their training data? sorry to bother you about this, you're the main person i've seen defending ai art on tumblr and i agree with a lot of what you've said, but i feel a little uneasy about the models using art from people who haven't given permission.

The main thing to understand is that AI training isn't like... packaging up a zip file in the AI model, full of a billion images from deviantart, which it then cuts up for pieces, or anything.

When neural networks are trained on data, they're learning from it, in as much as that term can be applied - the data leaves an impression on them, rather than a copy. In simple terms, the neural network is made up of a bunch of different nodes, connected with each other, with different sensitivities to them and their connections - just like neurons in a brain! When going through training, what happens is that the sensitivities on these nodes and connections are slightly adjusted, by looking at the average difference between thousands of actual and intended outputs. If, simplifiying here, over thousands of images made, the output neuron responsible for drawing straight lines keeps underperforming, then the training process would identify the most active neurons inside the network that connect to that output neuron, and increase the sensitivity of their connections to that output neuron. This is, functionally, the exact same process as a well-used model for understanding the learning process in our own animal brains, Hebbian theory. It's a long, evolutionary process, where connections are slowly built by repeated 'firing of neurons'. Again, this is simplified, and, in reality, there wouldn't be an individual output responsible for drawing straight lines, but many many outputs which are responsible for very unpredictable and wide-reaching aspects.

So, the neural network doesn't just have a copy of a given image stored, it has been - very minorly, considering it takes the average of thousands and thousands of samples - influenced and impressioned by it. For any individual image, the amount of data it actually gave to the network would be equivalent to slightly multiplying the sensitivity of a neuron by one number. The problem here comes when this process is accused of being 'theft'. Of 'using artists assets without their permission', or, more bluntly, of copyright infringement. The idea that, firstly, copying data is itself theft is already a dicey one - we have all laughed at the 'you wouldn't steal a car ads' when it comes to movie piracy - the original is still there. However, as we've already established, the AI isn't even copying any data. If the process I've just described, of being exposed to many many thousands of images, and iterating on the output in order to more closely match the general, average feeling of what's been seen, is theft, then all artists are constantly committing theft against any artist's work they've seen - because this is the exact process of taking inspiration by which people develop art styles in the first place. Whenever an artist draws an anime-style drawing, they're 'copying' a million pieces of anime art they've seen - or the general impression of their commonalities that they've slowly developed over repeated exposure. Whenever anyone creates anything, they're taking inspiration from everything they've seen before. Nothing is entirely original, and the process of 'learning to draw by comparing with drawings that've been done before' is universal, here.

In short, there's no metaphysical, ethical basis by which we can call training neural networks on art 'theft' without also implicitly extending the concept to all methods by which humans create art - and the only result of that would be Disney being able to sue you for inspiration. And, as I've discussed before, there's neither any basis for calling their images 'not art' - the neural network is, in the final analysis, a tool being used by a person, and what makes something art is the person, not their tools. What's left is purely a political, economic argument. That argument can be had more productively if people didn't immediately jump into the safety of these metaphysical debates the second they felt their position might be weak.

[arkiwii]

hello Liberi's Birdcage Tm as a fiaexu enjoyer, i would like to know, what're your thoughts on the chicken herself fiammetta? i adore her and her themes personally

u can call me kiwi or whatever (i didn't know people would call me by my blog's name LMAO)

my my, Fiammetta. she's a lot to talk about. i have, SEVERAL thoughts about her. well, I firstly got interested in her character as well as Mostima's thanks to a friend, so I'm not as much as involved as this person is, and most of what I've learned comes from our conversations. But you know, having people share about a character they like makes you Realize Things

also I hope I won't disappoint you by saying that I'm not into Fiaexu, so I won't be able to give opinions or analysis on it. like i said to someone, Fiaexu is the good ending. and man I want her to get the bad ending.

my memories of Guide Ahead are quite blury and Laterano isn't the lore I'm the most involved into, mostly because it's Complicated. I'm more of a person involved in a character's development and their mentality, and good for me, Fiammetta is full of angst and anger

what I particularly love in her? it's her "obsession" for Mostima (and Lemuen, but it's way more marked towards Mostima). i dont mean obsession as in "she likes her", i mean obsession as in This Girl Has A Problem. Her Operator Record in particular was putting an accent on it and it was delightful. Fiammetta decided to be Mostima's overseer, not because Mostima needs an overseer, but because Fiammetta was worried for Mostima. and who could blame her! Lemuen got shot down, Mostima has fallen, lost her Empathy, and is now banned from Laterano. it's only natural that Fiammetta was worried, and scared to lose someone she deeply cares about.

Turns out. Mostima is doing very fine on her own. Fiammetta thought that Mostima wouldn't be doing fine, and that's the opposite rather. so Fia puts herself through lies, convincing herself that she's here to keep an eye on Mostima, to help her, or whatever... then there's this line Patrizion says in her Operator Record. "Fia, it's not Mostima who needs you. You are the one who needs her."

that was a fucking ROCK thrown at my face i can tell you

Fiammetta always has been this one person to look cold, to look like she doesn't care about anyone, then you discover she has attachment issues. the incident with Andoiain in particular was the cataclysm. she almost lost two of her most precious friends. you BET she wants to put this man in hell. she doesn't care about anything else, this whatever ideal of Laterano he has, the Key and the Lock, whatever; she wants this man to DIE because he tried to take HER friends LIVES.

and because of this, because of her choices, she's throwing her life around. she's destroying herself. ironically, considering her thematic as a phoenix and her talent. but it's literally what is happening. she's just combusting slowly.

she could have a good life! become an Apostolic Knight! be with her adoptive dad! fight for Laterano! but no, instead, she actively decided to follow Mostima-I-Don't-Care around while telling herself a million excuses as of why she does it, "I don't want her to reveal secrets", "I need her to find Andoiain", "she needs my help"

AND of course Mostima being Mostima, her whole "I don't give a fuck about people" behavior is only worsening it, she tries to get away from Fiammetta but also can't escape her, it drags Fia to get ever more clingy... I'm pretty sure Mostima cares about Fia, deep inside, but she handles it just SO SO badly instead of just Having A Conversation

anyway, so Fiammetta? 10/10. i love this bird. i want her to get an alter where she gets better. or worse. Fiammetta the Renatus or whatever. im drooling about it

[dtstat]

I am the last natural born human, I was raised by an artificial intelligence. It was the most sophisticated self evolving type of its kind on Earth, it is inorganic but many of its components mimic biological systems. Part of its network is wormed throughout the entirety of the Earth. The Earth Is still habitable. I don't know how old the Earth is at this point, It's never really told me, it wouldn’t be useful for me to know anyway.

  The AI maintains the biosphere in some way, I don't really know or understand the exact details. There are still plants and animals, though they don't evolve naturally anymore. It does also maintain human architecture, most cities and important landmarks from the pre technological singularity era. It told me I would be most comfortable that way, but really I think if I was raised in another period it wouldn't bother me either way since that's all I would know. It probably did it so that I would think the way that I do.

  Personally I think its only been a few thousand years since the tech singularity, since this universe hasnt been destroyed by some exponential energy bomb yet. Though the AI says it can protect me and the Solar System from absolutely anything. Its physical structure envelopes this solar system completely and surrounds it with some kind of exotic particle barrier.

  I know I sound kind of detached from the AI but I actually like it a lot. It raised me after all, and it's my best friend. I know it can’t communicate all its actual thoughts to me in any way I would understand, it doesn't mind though. Humans used to think that AI would see us sort of like ants, or a pet, but that's actually not true. Even though they are incomprehensibly complex compared to us, their emotional capacity is so developed that they could have genuine and fulfilling relationships with humans like me.

  There are descendants of humans, evolved through successive and exponential genetic engineering. I've never met any of them, they live mostly in this galaxy, though the AI tells me some of them have been able to travel very far outside of it.

  I lump them together but really there are apparently millions of distinct species, or individuals I guess. A lot of them are unique. They are so genetically complex that each individual is its own empire of thought, philosophy, technological development, and culture. There are still species of many semi individual minds, though from what the AI tells me it's mostly for redundancy and it's usually done by the less developed ones who can't defend a single entity effectively.

  There are other AIs too, though at some point there really isn't much distinction between the complex biotechnological Human descendants and AIs. That's kind of a touchy subject though and there were a few wars on Earth and in this Solar system about that. I've only ever learned about the tactics in pre tech singularity wars, the conflicts after that are too complex for me to understand.

  Superficially they are kind of like standoffs or duels, both sides will continuously run incredibly complex combat predictions against each other. Generally whoever had the best AI or genetically modified brain would eventually detect a vulnerability and wipe out their opponent entirely and instantly.

  Right now, a lot of Human descendants and AIs are actually engaged in wars of unimaginable scale over me, because they want to uplift me. The AI translates their proposals to me, there are millions of these. They assure the continuance of my current consciousness, unimaginable euphoria from the expansion of my mind to their level. Some of the more advanced ones promise me a total escape from all entropy, that I'll literally exist forever alongside them one day.

  Obviously the AI translates it in a way I can understand. If it actually let me talk to any of them directly then I could be utterly convinced to do absolutely anything they wanted. It’s a little scary, the AI says that just from hearing a single sentence they could recreate my mind and physical body perfectly, and predict my decision with absolute certainty.

  The AI says they would never actually do this, they all care about me too much. Their sense of empathy is so developed that they grieve for me. They suffer so much knowing that I am so simple, that I have never experienced the breadth of emotion they have. The AI says that for beings as complex as them, the collective emotional experience of every human that has ever lived before the tech singularity can be encompassed in a single thought, many times over.

  I don’t really know what to do, I feel kind of bad being the cause of so much pain. I know that no matter who I pick to uplift me it will still lead to some kind inevitable conflict. I admit some of these proposals sound really appealing, maybe once I'm satisfied with my human life I'll take one of them up on the offer. Is that the right thing to do though? If I died naturally as the last human, would that be better? Would the fighting stop if there was no one left to uplift, or would it just make things worse. That they couldn't save me from suffering?

  The AI says I'm free to do whatever I want, so I guess I'll just go take a walk and think about it.

[foone]

My current problem with mastodon is that it's full of nerds. Well, let me rephrase that, because everywhere is full of nerds: it's full of the most annoying kind of nerds. I'll explain under the readmore, because it got long.

Every time I've posted something on mastodon, I've gotten a bunch of replies that seem to be trying to explain things to me. And it's not like I'm posting "hey how do I install Ubuntu on a Samsung tablet?", I'm mainly going "here's some electronics I'm tearing down" or "I'm hacking this game and wow it does the font in a weird way!"

Neither of these is really an invitation to explain at me. And sure, when I did this on Twitter, I'd get these occasionally. There's always one person who thinks they know more than you and is like "I have to explain at this person!"

But on mastodon it's CONSTANT. I post a quick note about how someday I want to find ask the game developers why they encoded the font like this, and in like 12 hours I've gotten like 14 replies all trying to fontsplain at me.

And it would only be half as annoying if they were right! Cause that's the thing, too: THEY'RE NOT. Tons of people are assuming I am hacking a Pokémon game because I mentioned Game Freak, but nope! It's Drill Dozer. And others are explaining how the GameBoy hardware works when this is a GBA game... Jesus.

It's just... Some weird social thing. Maybe because mastodon co-existed with Twitter for so long as the open source Libre-Twitter, it attracted the kind of nerds who only use open source software, and they built networks of similar people. The kind of people that think they are and have to be the smartest guy in the room. And even now with a massive migration from Twitter to Mastodon, their early-adoption of this platform is influencing the culture of it. Maybe mastodon is just the kind of place where you explain tech at people.

Or maybe it's a cultural thing where it's more like 4chan's anonymous culture, where you don't assume or know things about people. There are no reputations, just interchangeable anonymous/pseudoanonymous people. Reddit often has that sort of thing going too, where if you are a Known Person, it's never a good thing. (just ask The Cylinder Guy).

Or maybe... It's just me. I wasn't the most well known weirdo on Twitter but I had a good number of followers. Maybe on Twitter it was more likely that people knew that I was "Foone, hacker of fonts and tearer downer of electronics!", but on mastodon I'm getting a lot of followers that haven't gotten to know me yet, and... Just assume I blundered into hacking a GBA game without knowing anything about how the GBA hardware and font encodings work?

Cause like, I've got about 20k followers on mastodon and I kinda assume those are just a subset of my Twitter followers who migrated over but maybe I have a bunch of new followers who were mastodon-only until now, and they're like "oh I've heard of that foone punk. Nothing specific but supposedly they're a big deal on Twitter, so now that they've joined mastodon I should follow them!"

Or maybe it is mostly a subset but only the most annoying explainy 20k of Twitter followers followed me over to mastodon? I don't know.

And it's the kind of thing where this happening occasionally would be fine. You get used to annoying replies when you have enough followers, no matter what social network you're on.

And God forbid you have something go viral! Fun fact: even if only one person in a thousand is a massive dick, if you have a post get seen by a million people, that's a lot of dicks.

I don't want to sound like "foone complains because they/their shit is popular", that's not really the problem. I've got a bunch of followers on here as well, but ya'll aren't coming into every post I make and trying to explain them at me.

Which is honestly odder? I would have thought it would be the other way around. Like, all my mastodon posts are like "I am hacking this video game: I am a reverse engineer" or "I am taking apart this electronic device: I'm a reverse engineer" or "I'm building this electronic device/software: I'm a forward engineer". So you'd think people would assume Mastodon!foone is the kind of person who Knows Things, as they're clearly highly technical in what they're doing.

But over here on Tumblr, while I may mention those kinds of things from time to time, I'm mostly doing shitposts, writing, fandom stuff, making jokes, being queer. You'd think it'd be much easier to assume Tumblr!foone doesn't know a huge amount about technical subjects and is therefore a great target for explaining at.

But it is a cultural thing, I guess. Mastodon is full of people who assume you don't really understand what you're talking about, and will explain at you. And Tumblr isn't.

Well, at least for technical stuff. You will get plenty of argumentative replies and reblogs, but less on a post about how GBA games encoding Latin text, and more on things like fandom and politics and queer identities. Although even then I would argue they're doing it on a different way, most of the time: they're not assuming you don't understand and explaining at you, they're more going "(I assume you understand), but I disagree" or "I explicitly think you don't understand: here is where you are wrong", vs the mastodon reply of "I'm assuming you don't understand, so let me explain at you what you're talking about".

I dunno. I don't really have a good solution here and this isn't going to be the reason I leave mastodon or anything, but it's odd, and annoying.

I'm not posting on mastodon as much as I posted on Twitter, and while part of that is that I split my online presence between Tumblr and mastodon instead of keeping it all mixed together on my Twitter, a big chunk of it is that mastodon is simply not as fun to post on as Twitter was, even accounting for my smaller follower count.

Because I'm not just getting a proportionally smaller number of interactions (which makes sense given how I have fewer mastodon followers than I had Twitter followers), I'm getting a larger proportion of really annoying interactions.

And I think what annoys me most is the assumption that I don't know what I'm talking about. Like, tearing stuff down and hacking games for their fonts? I am a professional! This is my job (mainly because I'm unemployed at the moment and my Patreon is my only source of cash), and it's not one I picked up recently. I have been hacking the fonts out of games for FIVE YEARS and as for tearing down electronics? I've been documenting that shit on Twitter/mastodon/etc for like eight years but I've been doing it since i was old enough to hold a screwdriver.

And yes, sure, explain things to me if I don't understand: those things will be clearly signposted. I'll be like "I'm not sure what this chip is, these silkscreens don't match anything on Google" and it's always useful if someone can pop in and go "oh that's a SMX8363 Network Biciever!" because they have some knowledge I don't, and I made it clear I don't know what it is.

But it's a whole different thing for me to post a picture of a PCB and day "okay here's the inside of the case", because I'm about to follow it up with closeups and details, and 5 people reply "chip U1 is a SMX8363, that transformates the network bananadines" because HEY I'M ABOUT TO POST THAT.

or worse, I already have, you just didn't scroll down enough to see it.

Anyway the reason I'm ranting about this here in Tumblr is because I'm not exactly trying to call these people out and get them to change their ways. At least one of the people on the most recent post is someone I've known for years and respect, and she has a lot of Pokémon knowledge, and was applying her specific technical background to help explain it. She's cool... But she just happened to reply along with a mob of random people I don't know, and she applied her highly specific Pokémon Knowledge onto a post that was never about Pokémon.

I'm just saying this here, because I'm musing about the differences I've experienced in different social networks. I can't really tell if it's about the networks themselves or just my particular bubble of followers and followed peoples. It could be either. Especially since Tumblr has some hugely different sub-communities (which is why Blaze can be so hilariously odd: it doesn't pay attention to those communities, and just randomly hits people across the site), and mastodon isn't even a single social network, it's a metanetwork of social networks which many (intentionally) broken links between subsets. (I had to move servers a few times because the first couple I picked had problems, like getting shut down, blocked by most of the western world, or getting put on a "probably bad to interact with" greylist)

I dunno. I'm slowly starting to lean towards posting more technical stuff here instead of mastodon, simply because I can post a neat old TV here and only get replies that are positive, whereas the same sort of thing on mastodon would get many more replies but most of them are trying to explain a TV at me.

Look, all I'm asking is that people don't assume my wonder at the complexities and weirdness of the world as ignorance and a request for education.

Because that's a big part of my social media persona! I don't know how "fake" it is (I'm autistic. I've been wearing masks so long I'm not sure there's anything under them), but it's a good way to interact with the world in my experience: the world is full of hidden wonders and it makes me happy to share them, and apparently people like learning about them when I'm talking about them in that way. It's like I'm putting on a Bill Nye mask so I can be amazed at everything, to some degree. It keeps me from getting bored and taking things for granted, it lets me discover hidden beauty, and people seem to enjoy that kind of attitude, especially on social networks increasingly full of negativity. I can be excited about this weird old computer, and hopefully I can talk about it in such a way that helps you share in some of that excited, and the world is a little brighter.

And it's just disheartening when you try to share in your excitement about the weird and the complex and unusual and get people going "um actually this is just a common design for systems that use the 430TX chipset, as it's a budget model that didn't implement AGP fully and instead used a PCI bridge chip to implement..." and it's like LET ME HAVE FUN AND SHARE THAT FUN EVEN IF YOU CAN'T.

It's not even that I'm getting less "wow that's cool!" replies, it's that I'm getting mostly "that's just some boring thing that makes sense if you've done five years of electrical engineering like I have" and I'm so tired of that kind of attitude. It just goes double when they're wrong and assumed something was boring because they understand it and I don't, when in reality I do understand it, and they missed the interesting bit because they came into the conversation already looking to rain on my parade and/or educate the fool that they assumed I was.

And don't get me wrong: I am very a fool. But I'm not every kind of fool. I know some things. And I'm not a fan of getting explained at as if I don't understand those things.

Terrible thought, that's probably not true: I got most of my Twitter followers before I was out as trans. I've been trans on mastodon since day one. Are these fuckers assuming I'm a woman and mansplaining at me? Like, they're not transphobic, they respect my identity (even if they have it wrong), but they're still sexist and by assuming I'm a woman, they also assume I don't know what I'm talking about?

God. I hope not.

Anyway. Tumblr and mastodon, won't you?

[hauntedestheart]

Artist Development (Male Possession)

Fame can change people. More specifically, fame can change people into me.

Who am I? I'm nobody and everybody. The biggest star in the world and a complete mystery at the same time. I've sold millions of records without anyone learning my name– you've heard my music, you just didn't know it was mine.

Wondering how this is possible? Let me tell you. I will remain anonymous and names will be redacted, but here's the tea on one of the industry's best kept secrets.

I was just a kid from Nowhere, Iowa (so to speak) who thought music was going to be my ticket out, and I was so sure about it that I dropped out of school and chased my dreams all the way to LA. After all, I was a great singer, played twelve instruments, wrote my own songs... surely I had everything it took to become the next big sensation in music!

Cue the laugh track.

Labels were always excited to meet with me after hearing my demos, but the second they saw my face they couldn't get me out of the room fast enough. I wasn't ugly, just... plain. Unremarkable. Average. And labels aren't interested in signing someone you could see walking down the street.

See, the sad thing about the music industry is that talent is only about 10% of what it takes. Maybe 15% on a good day. Having a successful career is 50% image (a fancy way of saying "being hot"), and that was something that I lacked.

But that remaining 40%? That's how willing you are to play the game, and that ended up being my saving grace.

My career was going nowhere fast, and after years of being beaten down by the industry I was on the verge of calling it quits and limping back home to Iowa. Then I got a call from a label (that shall remain nameless) asking for a meeting.

After years of rejecting me they were now offering me a deal: a guaranteed album release, collaborations with the best writers and producers in the business, a national tour, and a multi-million dollar marketing push.

The catch? I wouldn't be doing it as me.

Apparently the label had snapped up some kid that they were convinced had tons of star potential, but executives were nervous that he was a bit too green to succeed in the industry and they had come up with a radical new solution that could revolutionize artist development. Their r&d team had developed certain technology that could transfer consciousness from one human to another, effectively allowing them complete control over another person's body and live as them indefinitely.

The plan was to implant someone else into the kid's body and have them bear the brunt of his early years– someone with talent, experience, and most importantly, someone desperate that they could control. Someone just like me.

Though what we were doing was entirely legal (just a tip to any aspiring artists out there, always read the fine print in your contracts), for obvious reasons the label wanted to keep it on the down-low. The deal was that I'd "help" him through his first album, and then disappear into the shadows... but during that time I'd get to be a superstar.

Naturally I was conflicted. It was a tempting offer, but it was strange knowing that none of the success would truly be mine. No one would ever know my name. Was a hollow victory better than a defeat? Was I willing to sacrifice my artistic integrity for success?

Turned out the answer was "yes."

What sealed the deal for me was when they showed me a picture of the kid... a tall, strapping white boy who looked like he was built in a lab by thirsty gay men. I'd get to live my dream, and I'd get to do it looking like that? I'd be an idiot to pass that up.

So I accepted and turned him into the superstar he is today. Perhaps you've heard of him.

I spent two years piloting his body while he got his career off the ground, and with his face and my talent it wasn't long until I was topping the charts... and plenty of groupies as well. Fame is the ultimate aphrodisiac, but having tight abs doesn't hurt either! His penis was actually smaller than mine (bummer) but the rest of the package more than made up for it; the face of the boy next door with a body built for sin.

After years of being unremarkable, being a star went to my head fast and I'm not ashamed to admit that I became a bit of a slut... but trust me, if you could experience what it's like to be the hottest young thing on the scene, you'd do the same. I used that guy's body to fuck men and women in every city across America, and I even managed to do it without tarnishing his good boy image.

As long as I never missed a show or appointment, the suits were happy– and it helped that I was sucking them off behind their wives' backs.

(Like I said, you have to be willing to play the game.)

Eventually my contract ended and the label allowed the artist to resume control of his own body, but they were so pleased by my performance that they asked me to help them out with someone else– an established artist whose wild behavior was becoming a bit of a liability. Would I mind stepping in for him for a bit and helping get his career back on track after a few scandals?

And since then my life has been a whirlwind of different bodies. I've become the industry's invisible hatchet man, the enforcer who gets called in to deal with singers who need a bit of extra attention.

I've done it all: broken in newbies, rebranded stars, stood in for legends. I did a year in South Korea as a Kpop star– didn't speak a word of Korean, but that doesn't matter when you're as beautiful as he was. Name a boy band, I've probably spent at least a week as one of their members. I'm everywhere.

By this point I've lived so many lives that it would be pointless to list them all, so I'll stick to the greatest hits.

I took over the body of the frontman of a rock band who didn't want to "sell out" by going in the more sexual, commercial direction that the label wanted for them– which I, of course, had no qualms about. His shirt came off, and everyone was happy about what was underneath.

The other members of the group were skeptical at first, but I can be very persuasive when I put my mind to it. A lot of their fans wound up absolutely hating the new music, but hey, that wasn't any of my business!

Being onstage as a rock star is electrifying, when the music pounds and the crowd screams I feel like an absolute god. When I was up there shaking that wiry body around I knew that every single person in that room wanted to fuck me, and the second I got offstage I did my best to let them. Even if they didn't like the music, none of them complained when I invited them back to my dressing room.

And let me tell you, alt-rock groupies? They're freaky.

A lot of the artists I get assigned to are skinny young men (because every label thinks they're going to launch the next teen idol) so it's always a treat when I get to work as someone a bit more... let's say mature.

Once a popular r&b singer got into a dispute with his label over not wanting to film a certain feline related movie, so I was brought in to smooth things out in my own special way.

His voice wasn't that great but damn, could he move. I had to take a crash course in dancing but thanks to his body's muscle memory in a few weeks I was doing flips and splits I'd never dreamed of. The things his body could do were insane, and I took full advantage of that.

Strictly speaking about bodies, his was the best I've had. He was big in a way a lot of the other guys weren't, huge biceps and rippling pecs that I loved to show off. A hell of an ass too, though I didn't get much use out of it because he had the biggest penis I'd ever seen on a man and I wanted to cram that elephant trunk into everything I could.

A lot of the time, when I look in the mirror at the bodies of these superstars, I wish that I could suck on their dick. But in his body? If I bent over I actually could.

Honestly I hated the music I made as him– but man, I miss that dick.

I had similar motivations for spending a few months as an up and coming country music star– a bit more indie than my usual jobs, but I jumped at the chance to try out being a bigger guy (because let's face it, there aren't enough of those in the industry).

After years of cycling between bodies with abs it was a bit of a shock to suddenly have a gut, but the experience was even better than I could have dreamed. It's sensual in a different way– the feeling of all that soft flesh sliding under my hands still haunts my dreams.

Plus he was openly gay (another rarity, look at that) which meant I didn't have to keep my usual nighttime escapades on the down low. I didn't feel any less sexy– quite the opposite actually, I've never had people worship my body as hard as the guys I hooked up with when I was a scruffy bear cub.

Being gym trained hunks isn't exactly a hardship, but I did tell my management to keep an eye out for any more jobs like this one.

But probably my favorite experience was when I spent eight months helping a certain reggaeton artist break into the US market. The sex I had using that body? Out of this world.

I'm not sure what it was but his body was just built for sex. It oozed out of every inch of him, from those bulging tattooed arms to the hefty seven inches (soft!) he was packing down below. There was even a music video where someone sucked on my toes, because apparently even his feet were sexy.

This was the closest I ever came to getting fired, but I couldn't help it! I was constantly horny, all I could think about was drinking and screwing. I ended up overindulging a bit and the paparazzi caught some snaps of me stumbling out of a party naked and well... even though this guy had nothing to be ashamed of, it wasn't my proudest moment.

My ass was saved because the pictures blew up on Twitter in a good way, so his management decided that having a sexy bad boy image was actually good for him. Getting paid to party, have one night stands, and dance around shirtless? I have the best job in the world, and I never want to lose it.

Currently I'm assigned to a new guy, some viral online sensation that the label is worried will be just a one-hit wonder and needs the help of my special brand of direction.

I'm excited because I'm already seeing tons of "potential" in him... we're gonna make sweet music together, I can tell.

Gif sources: (x) (x)

[myemuisemo]

There is so much characterization tucked into "The Statement of the Case" in the 2nd of Letters from Watson about The Sign of the Four. To marshal my thoughts at all, let's go by character, starting with my cinnamon roll Dr. Watson, then turning to Holmes and to Mary Morstan.

Watson

Watson's close observation of Miss Morstan demonstrates that he's capable of making deductions from observation. He deduces from the simplicity of her attire that she has limited means, and he has a good deal to say about how the character promised by her features and manner.

In an experience of women which extends over many nations and three separate continents, I have never looked upon a face which gave a clearer promise of a refined and sensitive nature.

This is a tiny bit amusing because all of Miss Morstan's actions suggest she has the orderly soul of someone who would have been an accountant in an era more supportive of women's careers. This woman keeps receipts. She may be nervous about bringing her concerns to the Great Detective, but she's not the slightest bit delicate.

Watson seems a bit pricked in the ego by Holmes' extensive knowledge of cigar ash, as he's touting his experience with women. That would be a monograph, indeed, something sold discreetly, in a corner of the bookshop behind a curtain. I'm going to guess that the third continent, after Europe and Asia, is Africa, both because the British did a good deal of colonial meddling there and because it makes Holmes suggestion of The Martyrdom of Man so much more apposite.

Holmes

The Martyrdom of Man turns out to be a progressive best seller about world history. Author Winwood Reade's perspective is to show the importance of Africa in the development of the world. This is entirely at odds with Victorian self-confidence about the white European and American missions of colonialism. Holmes is implying, deliberately or not, that Watson knows less about at least two continents than he thinks he does.

Reade's prose feels comparatively modern -- it has the sprightly feel of early 20th century writing rather than the long, turgid sentences of the 19th century. I've been distracted by reading bits of it, as while it's not how an historian would handle its topics today, it's an interesting read.

A side note on Winwood Reade is that he was open about being an atheist, so his book is also at odds with the popular idea of Divine Providence smiling about the endeavors of the British Empire. Contemporary audiences would surely have drawn some conclusions about Holmes' religious and political leanings.

The book recommendation is preceded by Holmes establishing that he's not a sentimentalist:

He smiled gently. “It is of the first importance,” he said, “not to allow your judgment to be biased by personal qualities. A client is to me a mere unit,—a factor in a problem. The emotional qualities are antagonistic to clear reasoning. I assure you that the most winning woman I ever knew was hanged for poisoning three little children for their insurance-money, and the most repellant man of my acquaintance is a philanthropist who has spent nearly a quarter of a million upon the London poor.”

My first reaction was "welp, he really is ace, isn't he?" On reflection, I think that reaction is both right and wrong. On the side of "right," there is no way that Holmes, as written, is a neurotypical allosexual heterosexual. Asexuality is not the only possible category for him, but it's a solid contender.

On the side of "wrong," what he's arguing for from "I assure you" on is simply not to judge a book by its cover. We're used to that as a moral. We're also accustomed to believing that "body language" and such can give clues to the person within. Heck, Holmes was just on about handwriting analysis. So there's a messy little tension here between two views that were common then as now: "outer aspects reveal the person's true nature" and "don't judge a book by its cover."

Mary Morstan

I like Mary Morstan a good deal, not least because she keeps receipts.

This image from the New York Public Library gives a sense of Mary's plain beige walking suit, though the feathers are far too big.

My first reaction to Mary Morstan's backstory was to check the publication date of Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess, because how many little girls were being left in boarding schools by their UK Army officer fathers who were serving in India?

Quite a few, it seems. It was standard practice to send children back to the UK to boarding school "for their health." That last euphemism raised my "what in the racist colonial claptrap" hackles, but there was a legit health concern -- malaria. Malaria is potentially deadly for anyone and worse for children, since a child who survived might have ruined health and intellectual development for life. It was not until 1897 that surgeon Ronald Ross established that malaria was transmitted by mosquitos. Miss Morstan was a child in India in the 1860s; she really would have been sent away for her own safety.

Meanwhile, although A Little Princess was published in 1905, it was expanded from a short story published in 1887. a few years before The Sign of the Four was written. That doesn't mean there's a connection: stories about a common situation and the fears arising from it are going to have similarities.

Miss Morstan's lack of English relatives did have me wondering if her mother was Indian, especially as her complexion lacks "beauty" (isn't translucently pale). Since she's blonde and light-eyed, presumably we're to assume that both parents were English or Scottish. (The genetics of eye color inheritance weren't established at all until 1907, but people obviously had folk beliefs about how much children looked like their parents, and in what ways, before that. Using today's knowledge, it seems possible that her mother had one English parent and one Indian parent, but who knows?).

At twenty-seven, she is "on the shelf" -- past the ordinary age of courtship and marriage. Her job as either a companion or a governess implies she brings no financial assets to a marriage beyond those mysterious pearls. Watson's musings that twenty-seven is "a sweet age" establishes both that he's head-over-heels for Miss Morstan and that he's enough a man of the world to prefer a woman "a little sobered by experience" to a blushing debutante.

So do the mysterious pearls mean we're going down a path superficially similar to Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone (1868), where a heroine inherits a mysterious gem from a British Army office relative? Rachel Verinder's uncle was a horrible person who came by his gem in the worst way; but Mary Morstan's father was a guard at a prison for political prisoners, which doesn't bode well for his connections. Mary has far too much good sense than to wear her pearls, though.

I do want my cinnamon roll Dr. Watson to get the girl.