#and to the extent that it is the same/different i'm seeing how that correlates with how related the two species are

[smile-files]

i've been working on a research paper for my butterfly tutorial and the one thing i know for absolute certain is that eco-devo lepidopterists are absolutely obsessed with nymphalids

[weirdmageddon]

ok. let's finally talk about this thing i've been wanting to go public with for ages

so i am not a fan of needing THC to help me curb the embarrassment i have in being happy talking about my real realll special interests, because perceived rejection of my interests feels like rejection of myself since i put so much of myself (my time) into them. i anticipate rejection from others because the stuff i find myself occupied with is detached, abstract, highly technical, or niche, and i'm aware of the surrounding cultural assumptions. some of them, and the level at which i am in involved in understanding them, are really specialized or esoteric, so even opening up about them is like "fuuuck im gonna be made fun of or it’s gonna be too technical that they zone out and dont understand why this is so meaningful to me" ive even posted about that feeling before.

see if i start accumulating too much self-context made in my own mind without sharing it i start to feel more and more isolated from other people around me, that they’re not seeing the full extent of what im seeing myself. i don’t share it, because i fear rejection or superficial judgments in other people’s eyes (probably because it’s happened to me and i’ve seen it happen to others). but at the same time it has to be shared with more people around me or else i feel like i have an intestinal blockage in my mind. what happens is my mental colon explodes from all the shit accumulated over time and vou get a post like this. i’m sorry for that mental image btw. anyway back the point of this post

anything where i can systematize archetypes in real, everyday situations has always been my strong suit. so when people ask me my hobbies im like ... uhhh what am i supposed to say? i analyze stuff about the world and rotate it in my mind. when carl jung wrote there are “as many archetypes as there are typical situations in life” i know exactly what he was talking about.

i’ve been toeing the line to really talk about this thing for two years, so let me tell you about socionics. if you already know what im talking about i love you. if you don’t (or even if you do, keep reading there’s probably stuff you don’t know in here), it is part abstract cybernetic model, part jungian concepts, part philosophy of information exchange. it classifies how people communicate and exchange information. it was created in eastern europe in the late 70s, developed primarily in the 80s-90s by other authors and it’s been an endlessly fascinating, elegant, and reliable tool for me.

usually people dismiss personality typology systems because the mbti became so watered down and pop-culturally saturated that people seemed to collectively take a stance of not taking anyone that genuinely cares about it seriously, or at least that’s the impression i got.

(btw — i need to go on this brief rant — i will never forgive 16personalities for being the big five rebranded and people thinking it's mbti. 16personalities gives you your big five type. they explicitly state on their website that they don’t borrow any concepts from jung. -A and -T don’t exist in the mbti and correspond directly to low and high neuroticism respectively. i figured out myself they mapped each letter dichotomy to the other four measures on the big five: extraversion (I/E), conscientiousness (P/J), agreeableness (T/F), openness to experience (S/N). which is stupid and it’s false advertising. take 16p and a big five test see for yourself how they match up. your personal mbti type can be different from its correlated big five type. the actual mbti using jungian concepts as a base is alright though. oh, and the best neo-jungian mbti stuff is by far michael pierce’d takes on it. if you actually fw that heres a carrd i created a few years ago about the cognitive function axes.)

but i always end up going to the bottom of the iceberg in anything i get really into, and i basically integrate it into my own understanding of the world around me for a while. maybe it was because i had a bad experience genuinely talking about it a few years ago from some people who made superficial judgments about it that made me sort of quiet about my interest in typology systems. i assume it’s because myers and briggs used the tool towards racist ends; it acquired negative connotations, bullshit intuition supremacy, and left the study of psychological types tainted in the united states. even if the individual’s study of the system is neutral, unbiased, out of pure curiosity as a way to classify and relate different personality structures to each other, as was the case with me. in addition to 16personalities being an invalid “mbti” test that bought their way to the front page of google, and rampant superficial information at all levels of study, finding anyone who was into it like me was basically impossible. the reason i have a preferred interpretation of jungian + mbti concepts is because i’ve tried different ones on and sensed how well they conform to reality as a way of describing phenomenon, ditching old ones that werent as clear. michael pierce’s i’ve found are the closest to what i sense jung's intentions were. (actually quite likely this is something i would attribute to being because all three of us are types LIl (and also all infj too, how about that?) brain-to-brain communication LII (carl jung) to LII (michael pierce) to LII (me)). so i felt like michael pierce kept the things that worked in real life and ditched the things that didn’t, leaving behind his elegant integration of the concepts.

anyway, i was under the assumption that anything that could be mistaken for it—which socionics often is at a glance—would be dismissed out of hand, even though it’s entirely different. plus, there’s all the context i’d need to clarify about how “it’s different from the “fun” unserious pop-psych mbti and also absurdly more technical” and what's the point in doing that if they don't respect you enough to hear you out anyway? so it just made me closed off.

they share a common ancestor though. the concepts are still based on carl jung’s book ‘psychological types’ which is why there is some shallow overlap, but the scope, structure, and application of it is different. i feel like this system is a lot more “living” and relevant to real interactions and communication between people in our everyday lives. i am always seeing specific examples of these concepts in play in real life and in characters depicted in media. it’s also been more empirically studied and successfully implemented over in eastern europe, and has gone under constant development and contribution. while since the 50s, mbti had crystalized and become stagnant with diverging interpretations to the point where it’s become basically meaningless to try to talk about because nobody can agree on concepts or semantics; there are virtually no distinctions between “schools” or “models” to differentiate interpretations — (although i have my preference for what i think are the most meaningful and reasonable one; as i said, that goes to michael pierce.) eastern (not so much western) socionics is incredibly more well put-together than mbti or kiersey for squeezing the potential from jung’s original ideas, and goes much deeper. that said, i will ALWAYS advise self-studying typlogy concepts over taking a test. the algorithm of a test can never possibly know you and your individual biases in interpreting the meaning of the words better than the knowledge you just have about yourself. if you learn the theory underlying it you will actually learn about yourself and others and it will actually mean something to you instead of a being an empty decoration for your profile.

here is a comparison chart i translated into english so you can get some idea of where these systems actually differ.

Букалов, А. (2019). On the advantages of socionics over other post-Jungian typologies. Socionics, Mentology and Personality Psychology, (6), 5–7. Retrieved from https://publishing.socionic.info/index.php/socionics/article/view/2603

for me it’s been super insightful applied to real life. it is like a toolkit for interpreting why some people just rub me the wrong way and our communication feels disjointed. or why some people pass my vibe check to enter my personal inner circle and i feel like talking with them is easier and not an uphill battle. who i feel drawn to and want to get to know better. to deconstruct why i and other people interpret information in the world the way they do, and how that explains the kind of people i end up curating in my life. it has put into words the concepts i haven’t been able to find the words for beforehand, and thus enables me to retrospectively pinpoint exactly what unconsciously makes people feel more at ease or why communication is just easier with some and why it’s harder with others, regardless of any other factors. there are other factors of course, that are the result of unique circumstances—nurture, culture, and upbringing—and i of course account for those, it’s not as pertinent to me as the framework that provides the skeletal structure regardless of those individual variations that are simply already a given for me. that was actually the whole point of its creation.

the system gives me a common language to communicate these ideas with, at least to the few people i talk to who have learned it, but i can adapt the concepts in how they relate to specific circumstances and convey it to a lay audience. i’ve been doing just that to explain why, of the people who have been made aware of the hs rarepair john-aradia, i have seen no one object to it, and instead, everyone i saw found it intriguing the more they thought about it, even when they initally thought was “so random”. and i realized, “hey wait! i know how to explain that!”, but that's in another post i've been working on.

[i was actually originally writing this post in the middle of said aradia and john analysis but i felt like there was way too much i wanted to talk about as its own thing. i figured people are going to be reading that post for john-aradia explanation, not public updates about my mind. i just didn’t want to rewrite this to account for the context because the point i made was still relevant]:

but now i’m thinking okay… i’m talking to a bunch of homestucks. why am i prostrating myself here? why am i so defensive? they’re probably creaming their pants at the idea of another symmetrically divisible system of classification to get their hands on. homestuck itself is founded upon a bunch of ideas with symmetrical divisions and classifications (divisible products of 2). aspect dichotomies, quadrants, cards, black-white, yin/yang and literally countless other abstract systems. if there is a common word to refer to these sorts of things, please let me know.

but in socionics terms, all of this sort of stuff i’m refering to would be within the domain of extraverted/black intuition (Ne) information, and classifying or positioning someone within those frameworks would be introverted/white logic (Ti). you can read more about these “elements” here. homestuck has familiarized you with notionally irreducible aspects present in everything, dual yin/yang forces permeating everything, so if you understand all of the sorts of abstract classification systems in homestuck you’re basically already 75% the way to fundamentally grasping model A socionics. it is way more structured and stable than the typologies in homestuck though. but you will perceive there to be similarities in the need for archetypal/thematic sense skills.

if you want to learn socionics, for the love of god start here. there are many weak places out there to start out with that will set you up with a faulty and loose understanding, but school of classic socionics is the best foundation to start with. i saw it emerge from the beginning when it was founded, having been part of it since late 2022.

this is an introduction to SCS, what makes it special, and and how differs from other socionics schools. i find SCS to be the most comprehensive, and i’m active within a side discord to discuss theoretical constructs related to model A. i’ve helped find the links between some concepts in model A that weren’t fully substantiated in augusta’s original works, specifically the importance of the asking/declaring reinin dichotomy, how it fits with regard to the rest of model A’s structure, how it underpins the ring of social benefit (which was missing from her writing), and how it can be used as an information element charge just like positivist/negativist can (i.e. all process types have positive asking Ne (+Ne? and all result types have negative declaring Ne (-Ne!). i’m still working on transfering my essay on that to a document.)

i know the intricacies of this system like the back of my hand but yeah i never post much about it because it’s so niche and i dont know who would even want to hear it besides people who i already know would, like in that small specialist group, but they actually been quiet lately even though i’m still active in there sharing things i realized. and i even feel alienated in most casual socionics discussion groups, especially larger ones. i need people who can match my freak about it.

because i have nowhere else to talk about it i’m starting to feel guilty yapping my friends’ ears off about it when i deconstruct everything i come across in light of this system like i’m being annoying about it. but at the same time when im doing that i am constantly reinforcing the merit of the system in successfully finding some dynamic i see in the drama of real life in connection to some idea from the model. i can immediately lock on to the core principles that are at play in any situation, validating the patterns that have been observed by others. by what measure do these people / characters / groups relate to each other, how do we define the specific “feeling” of the energy between them together? i could do a socionical analysis for anything that captures my interest.

it’s also been incredible for self-insight. i can now accurately explain my thought process.

i can change my perspective of the scope of my thinking on different levels. depending on the urgency of a situation developing around me and my respect for other people’s time, i can expand my reasoning from splitting hairs at the smallest pedantic specifics—although i prefer not to, to the most holistic global hard binary 0/1 (no/yes) judgment.

it’s fractal-like; once i know how to classify and compare the features of something to another, everything else with overlapping logical relationships instantly rises up in the same way, which of course is what leads to me having insights that reinforce the potential inherent in the things around me, because my way of thinking is isomorphic. i also experience strong animated mental imagery accompanying my conscious thoughts about these systems, minimalist shapes or lines of the barebones motion happening. i feel like my mental activity and what i actually write down is trying to capture what im seeing in my head.

i prefer to be brief, but that requires sharing contexts with someone. once i've established similar ways of talking about the same thing with someone so that we’re on the same page, our messages basically become exchanging code words with each other. all of the potential densely packed into these efficient little terms.

the effect is that i am reducing the amount of time and energy i have to spend trying to explain things to someone. i just want to communicate easily and be understood by the people i talk to so that i can enjoy my time with them. this is why i felt like such a long, clarifying, in-depth post was necessary, which would rip the bandaid off and pull it all up at once, instead of on a private, individual-to-individual level. i had to have it engraved somewhere i could just point someone to instead of repeatedly having to explain the same thing over and over cause that’s a waste of time and energy.

in fact, that revelation i had about myself just now can be explained by model A too! my own type is LIl and this type’s id block houses the information elements +Te! → +Ni?, which aushra describes as “The quality of deeds and actions and the efficient expenditure of energy in work—only performing for what is truly necessary—leads to peace of mind in the future.”

or, for example, coming at it from another angle, here is an older post i made before i was even aware of socionics. i was already talking about my experiences, patterns of thinking and self-awareness in a way that was so on the nose for a socionics analysis.

is that not the clearest example of phase 2’s sensitivity (for me it is information about sensorics)? -Fi? → -Se! superego block, anyone? and did you see how much i gave attention to the time i spend working; +Te! -> +Ni? id block? [information element descriptions here]. you could also derive the progression of the information metabolism stages in my own psyche (phase 1: Ethics -> phase 2: Sensorics -> phase 3: Logic -> phase 4: Intuition).

(from The Characteristic of SLI)

so through socionics it’s like i can find an explanation for just about everything i observe in others and myself just because i’ve extrapolated the logical relationships from that system and can isomorphically apply them to anything.

and i don't say that lightly! i'm not saying anything in this post lightly. like i have a degree in biopsychology from an honors college (ncf; yes, the liberal arts college desantis got his soulless hands on because it was “too woke"). having taken courses in statistics, research methods in psychology, and others, i know all about proper research design (and designing them myself). and of course i ended my four years there with my undergrad thesis, examining temporoparietal synchrony in autistic individuals when working alone and together, where for months on end i was doing nothing but reading and interpreting the validity of research papers. i even deconstructed poorly designed psychological constructs commonly used in autistic research in mine.

i also took personality psychology as a course during my time there. i got a birds eye view of most of the popular paradigms and still felt like i was more knowledgeable in the discourse behind some of the topics we glossed over since the course material was more of a broad comprehensive thing than an in-depth one for anything specific. in totality, all of the models i read about in relation to each other seemed so fragmented into different cuts and perspectives in trying to understand and find the patterns in people’s mental life. and yet none of the models i read about hold as as great of an everyday explanatory power as socionics does for explaining ways of thinking, people's proneness to certain tendencies, and the energetic tension that happens between certain people.

people can say otherwise that it’s pseudoscience. even though there are numerous studies built on real-world observations, the large-scale statistical data like from victor talanov. there's school of system socionics who emphasize its practice. it would be impossible to add all the evidence i can to support my claims to this post but you can see for youself - there are still countless new articles being published from different authors. regardless of that, even if it isn't accepted within the rigors of “scientific canon” i really dont give a fuck since it absolutely does indeed have explanatory and predictive power, and that’s all i care about. i’m confident in this not only through firsthand experience, the ability to frame what i know to be true about the real world within it and have it successfully describe those things, as well as talking to other people about my observations.

additionally, i see people make conclusions about interpersonal dynamics where they unknowingly repeat information that can be derived from socionics concepts.

something i noticed a LOT and ive repeatedly thought about and come to the same conclusion multiple times is that i think i naturally might "embody" the most optimal ways of interacting with other people for myself. it gives me insight into the nature of the personal relationships that i already procure in my life, but it’s not really a self-fulfilling prophecy because i dont use socionics to prescribe who i "should" be friends with. that's silly. thats a silly thing to do because people do have idiosyncracies that don't perfectly align with a system if you rigidly adhere to it, so you're bound to be set up for failure if you try to force that and you will be disappointed. it's better to let these feelings happen naturally without pretense, because that's where the observations that fuel my insight comes from.

i have a subconscious sense for who i will be able to get along with in the long term almost instantly without the need for any kind of system, just based on their actual mannerisms and “vibes”, but that alone is not good enough for me, i want to know why. socionics just gives me tools to figure out why so that i know what im dealing with and its not just ineffable energies, but i can put a name to those energies to think and talk about it and compare and discover patterns in what ive curated in my inner circle over my life, what i feel drawn towards. and indeed i do find plentiful amounts of recurring patterns. the simplification and abstraction is not to destroy the soul and expression of individuals but to wrap my head around them and understand them deeper in relation to everything else, including myself.

i am aware it can be confusing for many people which turns them away. but if theres any questions you have or youre confused about any concepts i can answer them

but yeah um, i’ve really only scratched the surface of this cognitive cybernetic tool. if you are genuinely interested in what i have to say and want me to talk more about it please openly tell me since i’m not a mind reader! i assume disinterest by default.

anyway if you got to this point thanks for reading. i wanted to just put it out there for context about any posts i make in the future. just stating my honest thoughts and whats been occupying my mind for the past two years.

be on the lookout for the john and aradia analysis soon where i’ll use it in practice to deconstruct some things about those characters. and if you’re coming to this post from that analysis after ive posted it, i’m sorry this post is so long in the middle of an already long-ish post. i just thought the context was important.

[clownshifting]

I usually do this with reblogs so posts don't go kaput.

This is a response to @abyssal-werewolf's anti-pshifter post. This post includes additional links, so you're lucky!

____

As I said in a post before this, we usually have this conversation over shifters every 4 months and it gets tiring to see the same rhetoric. Usually, I just block, but right now I'd like to talk - no fighting because I'm too old for that. Okay? Okay …

by @/thefirstfamilypack: "We are not people with lycanthropy [CLCZ], we are actual physical shifters. This is a totally different community than those who have clinical lycanthropy or mentally "identify" with someone that's not "human" such as otherkins. We never claimed to be that, that's a whole different thing." "If you don't have the genes for it then sorry you're not a shifter." by @/h-micideinthemirror (apparently deactivated, found a reblog of a post by them): "I'm so fucking tired of seeing therians talk shit about actual nonhumans […] I'm not delusional […] I'm just a person, who happens to be a wolf." by @/harloqui: "However, I 100% agree with the message towards delusional alterhumans. […] What shifters can do you cannot […]"

Let's start with this. I took all three quotes, why not, you quoted one of my friends and I think that's silly but it's okay, because you left out the multiple times shifters and CLCZs themselves have spoken about the correlation.

Harloqui, P-shifting vs. Delusions, https://www.tumblr.com/harloqui/715717991189315584

Harloqui, On the whole debacle, since it's revving up, https://www.tumblr.com/harloqui/739653834144661504/jfc-let-me-touch-this-before-some-weird-conspiracy

Bearwithme, Answering an Anon, https://www.tumblr.com/bearwithmeshifting/697488181905473536/skeptic-here-much-of-the-explained-process-for

Minkewhale, Ahoj Aethetikins, https://www.tumblr.com/a-minke-whales-tale/773746753742749696/ahoj-aethetikins-i-can-to-some-extent-at-least

Minkewhale, CLCZ and P-shifters, https://www.tumblr.com/a-minke-whales-tale/764242117170167808/clcz-and-p-shifters

Endelculture, Those who physically shift, https://www.tumblr.com/endelculture/775140278272245760/endel-culture-is-wishing-there-were-more-love

Evrymori, What is a p-shifter, and whats the difference?, https://www.tumblr.com/evyrmori/762891873865121792/what-is-a-p-shifter-and-whats-the-difference

Bubblerings, Part of my identity, https://www.tumblr.com/bubble--rings/775789174481682432/physically-shifting-and-transforming-is-a-huge

Yorkiegregg, I guess discourse is inevitable, https://www.tumblr.com/yorkiegregg/779773684507394048/i-guess-discourse-is-inevitable-online-but-i-want

Whenever this correlation is brought up (delusions and shifters), there is a 100% chance that everyone immediately says "we are not the same," not because they see delusions are inherently bad or lesser or weaker but because it is a reactionary response to what otherkin and therians have been saying for the past decade; "if they're claiming it, they're either delusional or lying," as seen here...

https://www.tumblr.com/gibdokin/741638765624377345/psa-i-just-saw-pshifters-in-the-kin-tags-yall?source=share

The reactionary response of "we are not delusional" is a fear response to how delusional oftentimes means "not real" in alterhuman communities, not set up by pshifters (because you claim we're basically out of the picture by being deactivated on most of our accounts (unless we're pulling strings??)) but by alterhumans themselves against endels. In the time I've been in shifter circles (2019-present), I have not seen any shifter actively disregard CLCZs and if they had done so, I'm pretty fast to speak up about it, and so are others to correct bad behavior.

2nd screenshot link; https://www.qfeast.com/poll/c7SVpq/What-is-your-opinion-on-otherkin (2017)

In conclusion: p-shifting originally referred to tangible, Real physical shifting, while vocally, aggressively excluding delusional folk and looking down on them (and otherkin as well).

Untrue, given what I showed and what I said but okay. Please go back to 2017 and before in the tumblr search or of multiple prolific alterhuman accounts and you'll find talk about endelity and how most of the skepticals were not shifters. This is a collective effort and everyone is at fault for being ableist, but by far, alterhumans have dominance and have spoken their peace about how they feel about CLCZs and endels.

This is by definition not possible with the term p-shifter: in order for delusional folk to reclaim this term, it would have had to be a deragatory word to describe delusional folk, which it never was.

In smaller cases the term pshifter has been used against endels and CLCZs, you just didn't account for that. So yes, many do reclaim the term but know the muddled history. Also, we aren't reclaiming the term, we are using it as it was intended; meta/physical shapeshifting. No additional definitions or restrictions needed.

As Harloqui says, "Reclaiming a term: if by "reclaiming" you mean "using it in a way that isn't abusive" then actually yeah, I don't have an issue with that. Which is what I've seen most who want to reclaim the term want to do so for."

Yes, the community looked down on delusional people, but the term itself actively excluded CLCZ and similar beings. Generally speaking, the term was never a slur used for anyone, it was always a positive and self-choosen term, created by the community for themselves. You cannot reclaim this term by definition.

First sentence, no they haven't, it was a reactionary response to many alterhumans calling shifters delusional, which becomes "I'm not delusional!" Second sentence, it isn't a slur so why are trying to "let it die"? Third sentence, no one is reclaiming it nor have they said they are..? Okay.

a-dragons-journal: "[…]using the word is still making it sound like you're making a physical claim. […]

Because we are. Shifters are meta/physically shifting. They have been doing it for centuries, this not anything new ever. It is a physical claim because it is a tangible, physical experience due to subjective beliefs and identity. It is crafted, it is perfected, it is executed, and then displayed as being shapeshifting. It is a craft, it is an art form - shifting is not required as a shifter but as an identity one must feel that physical urge beyond species dysphoria and beyond pre-established ideals.

who-is-page: "[…] You can't erase the history of the term […] and the ways in which it's been used (and, most importantly, continues to be used!) to hurt others. […]

Silly. No one is doing this nor has any shifter ever said "this term has no bad blood." But okay, I guess. We're saying that our identity can be shaped and changed regardless of terminology, but this terminology has been so deeply engraved that we can't do anything. Hey! Shifters have even used shiftomorph and etc.

P-shifters have harmed and continue to harm delusional folk, spit down on them, disrespect them and put themselves above them. Why on EARTH would advocating for the usage and acceptance of this term be a positive thing? How would that help?

Hi, Holothere was made in conjunction with multiple shifters in court. (https://www.tumblr.com/clowncaraz-journal/774795408055697408/terms-and-stuff-rambling-about-holothere-as-a?source=share) The holothere symbol was made by two shifters. The physical nonhuman community was shaped around the influence of shifters (https://www.tumblr.com/shifternortheast/757840741472026624/sounds-good-to-me-the-anchor-is-pretty-unique-and?source=share) and the perception of their existence - even their name has been used to bash endels and CLCZs on a scale far greater than the identity itself - please do not tell anyone ever for the rest of your existence that shifters are "spitting down on them" when half of the hate had bloomed from the refusal to accept delusional identity in the form of shapeshifting. Shapeshifting claims that began with shifters. Shapeshifting is a common experience in endels and CLCZs. The claim of shapeshifting is the reason most alterhumans had gotten on endelity and CLCZs. That's what you may not understand that beneath the surface, it isn't black and white as they may make you seem. Everyone is at fault.

Unlike subjective reality, you (technically) need to provide proof to claims you make that refer to Reality.

Sorry, I believe you also took the approach of seeing pshifters as those claiming an objective reality and not a subjective one. Which.. isn't what you're supposed to do when analyzing the differences between old vs new in relation to reclaiming terminology and the usage of it. Shifters have explained this and here is the Shifters: A Guide (https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1pfibt8ECchsoEaKhHp9BagrYyNsQcCuarq1J8Z1m_hg/mobilebasic) document I made that goes deeper into what shifters are. p.s, shifters don't even use "pshifter" unless they're making you upset, wink wink.

The rest usually claimed it was based on DNA. I don't know percantages on this, but from what I have seen, I would say at least half of them claimed to be able to teach (or claimed they learned from someone, which supports the same stance from a different pov).

Funny. This is just in time I get to pull the harloqui card just as you have and link to this post (https://www.tumblr.com/harloqui/779397664448086016/the-mathematics-of-shifting?source=share) where they talk about the mathematics of shapeshifting regarding pshifters. While not "proven science", it's one of the many types of way shifters have gotten out of their way to discuss scientifically how their shifting may work.

Now, let's look at your sources!

Swiftpaws

This is one that discusses psychosomatic changes while saying physical shifts are impossible. Physical shifting includes psychosomatic shifting.

"The phenomenon can be explained by the mentality, just a changing of the energy, and the body wanting to express the animal side more clearly.

Physical Shifters wiki page

"Shifters, often referred to as "P-Shifters," are individuals who subjectively experience or believe in the possibility of literal, physical transformations into non-human or mythical entities."

I revamped this wiki page actually! It also includes the document I made and multiple other links of information that shifters have built.

Anyway. Subjective is in the definition. We don't believe objective reality can align with our identity when none of us have been investigated, but we can assume that our identity is subjective and vast and won't be explained to be "Real" enough for others.

As for everything else, it's where you got the quotes from and I've already talked about that, haven't I? No need to drag it on.

Want to know what I think? It's in this post, it's in previous posts, it's in the way I hold myself and talk about my identity. Shifting is in my blood, in my ability, etc. No one is going to take away my ability to speak about it. No one is going to tell me that my terms need to "die". I didn't write and I didn't make art and start a convention, etc to bring together a community just to be told that we don't deserve terminology.

Shifters and CLCZs and Endels don't deserve to be harassed because anti-shifters are targeting groups that like to understand others. There's understanding. Can you learn this too?

Here as some stuff you should read in order to learn more about shifters. We genuinely just want to shapeshift and enjoy our nonhuman lives. The ones who give us a bad name aren't even active, don't know about this new community on Tumblr, and have been denounced from our wider communities.

https://www.tumblr.com/a-minke-whales-tale/764242117170167808/clcz-and-p-shifters?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/bearwithmeshifting/697488181905473536/skeptic-here-much-of-the-explained-process-for?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/clowncaraz-journal/777434480816308224/no-hate-to-the-original-commenter-asking-me-this?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/harloqui/699159136396607488/so-this-is-surprisingly-relevant

https://www.tumblr.com/clowncaraz-journal/773569728519323648/i-basically-had-introduced-some-basic-rules-to

https://web.archive.org/web/20090830090430/http://geocities.com/LanceFoxx/thesasebopshift.html

https://pshifting.carrd.co/

https://forum.monstrous.com/index.php?topic=7062.0

https://forum.monstrous.com/index.php?topic=2477.0

https://rayne-vandunem.livejournal.com/27502.html?es=1

https://www.tumblr.com/were-link/750851820070535168/hi-i-saw-you-were-looking-for-a-pack-for-physical

[geekeryisafoot]

I am endlessly fascinated by how different metrics of popularity do not always correlate with each other and tell different pieces of the big picture. Take, for example, Birds of Empire

Look at those subscriber and listen numbers on Castbox, then look at the number of reviews on Spotify. On tumblr, this podcast has a grand total of 13 posts in its tag. 13. You can scroll to the end of its tag in 30 seconds.

Now let's calibrate our scale by looking at those same numbers on the same platforms for other podcasts

The Magnus Archives, one of the juggernauts of audio drama, has a fraction of the subscriptions, a differences in play counts that makes sense given the number of episodes in it's feed backlog, and a RIDICULOUSly dwarfing number of reviews. I don't need to describe the scale of fandom to any soul on tumblr.

Compared with Old Gods of Appalachia, a giant name for those into podcasts but that didn't break containment to the extent that TMA did. If you ask for podcasts recs on this webbed site, this will be one of the first ones literally anyone mentions. Once upon a time (like 4 years ago) when patroen numbers were public, I also remembered them having MASSIVE numbers, even more than I'd expected at the time

Compared to The Silt Verses, which imo rounded out a triumvirate of wildly popular horror podcasts for quite a while...

Until Malevolent showed up on the scene and made it a quartet

And just to round out this scale, let's include Not Quite Dead. To me, this podcast feels mildly popular with a dedicated if relatively small fandom. Like, the tag moves consistently if not quickly

I'm just so endlessly fascinated by these different numbers compared to how active each fandom is. Like, what the hell could possibly explain Birds of Empire DWARFING these other super popular podcasts when literally no one talks about it? Has it simply not caught on on tumblr but has on other social media or social circles? Is it normies who are listening and not talking about it where I can hear/see? And why do the numbers indicate high listener counts specifically on Castbox but not the most common podcatcher that is Spotify? Who other than me is actually using Castbox?????

[starshower1215]

Hange Zoë Loose Song Analysis: "Primadonna"

(Levihan included at the end so you may skip if desired)

"Primadonna" by MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS reminds me so much of Hange. It's the lines in the chorus, like "All I ever wanted was the world/I can't help that I need it all," "You say that I'm kinda difficult/But it's always someone else's fault," and "You can count on me to misbehave."

The atmosphere the music creates also correlates to their personality to some extent. It's kind of electropop or dance pop, something you'd play at a big party with a large group of people; It's impersonal. Hange looks to me like someone who's easy to see but hard to know. They always jump from one thing to the other, they are always absorbed in something else, it's difficult to get their attention on you. Almost like a celebrity. They have a facade that makes them seem untouchable, but underneath, they're still human.

This idea also corresponds with the partnering of the lyrics and music. Again, it's dance pop, but Marina uses lyrics like, "I'm sad to the core.../Every day is a chore," "Fill the void up with celluloid," and "I get what I want 'cause I ask for it/Not because I'm really that deserving of it." It has the same clashing attributes that a dark joke has. So, again with the impersonal exterior covering a sensitive interior.

Similarly, in reference to the title, a prima donna is literally in Italian a first woman; basically, someone who acts like the star of the show. This in itself suggests the presence of insecurity, because someone who does this is often also green-eyed and vengeful, but envy and vengeance usually stem from their insecurity of not being enough. Now, Hange isn't particularly vengeful, but acting like the star of the show seems right. They have no idea what they're doing as commander; we see this when they ask Erwin why he chose them and when they're visibly upset when Eren asks, "Hange, what can you actually do?" Every time they stand up to act like a "proper" commander, they hide themself behind Erwin's cold, calculated exterior.

Actually, all of this can be summed up by another line from MARINA's "Oh, no!" which goes, "I feel like I'm the worst, so I always act like I'm the best." Which is not specific to Hange, but it was worth mentioning.

[Levihan Bonus]

It also reflects my idea of how Levihan would work out. Hange appears to be a big tornado of a human, and Levi is just caught up in the gravity of their storm, ensnared and bewitched with their destruction and unable to leave their side. So the other lines, such as "You say that I'm kinda difficult/But it's always someone else's fault/Got you wrapped around my finger, babe," and the demanding lines like, "Would you do anything for me/Pop that pretty question right now, baby" would highlight this thing I imagine they have, where Hange wants something and Levi pretends to hate them, but really, he'd topple empires to give it to them (given that it doesn't conflict with his morals). It also mirrors that line Hange said to Armin when he became commander: "Also, Levi is your subordinate now, so manhandle him as you will." I have no doubt that Hange teased Levi about their new ranking differences. For them, the sole saving grace of being promoted to commander was bossing Levi around.

So yeah, I really have a new appreciation for this song after an analysis on it.

[astrxlfinale]

Okay! So this will have spoilers tied to it, but this is another lore sample that I just want to have stored here.

So mind the warning! Keep looking at the warning and avoid it if you ain't done!

SO OL' HOOLAY RIGHT?

That Heart of his basically slammed open doors to what feel like a whirlwind of concepts for me. From Rahu's formation, and at large, what those under Yaoshi's blessings run the risk to actively growing into. Through the power of Abundance, the elemental of genetics are heavily explored. One bit at a time however!

I'd like to discuss the matter of a potential correlation with Rahu and Hoolay's heart. As within the current quest, they've actually did a frame showing through visuals of an event in Hanya's character story.

Now we didn't get to see what this could've done once unveiled, as Feixiao was quick to immediate suppress it. Though, as for the 'crimson star' giving this visage?

Hoolay EXPLICTLY calling this Crimson Moonlight? (Matching the nightmarish moonlight and LITERALLY being a beating heart.)

'Voraciously consumed and gave birth to countless offspring.' Now we've SEEN Hoolay not only go and eat a person outright, but there was an important scene that matches with this excerpt as well.

I genuinely find this to be no coincidence. I believe that this act stems all the way back to the age of when the Borisin and Foxians came to be. Their shared ancestry upon that original world will proceed to cycle all of this around. The ability of this 'Crimson moon' implanted within him allows him to freely manipulate that matching genetic strand. It's less of a spiritual and more of a divine DNA type of manipulation I say.

Now comes the idea that this excerpt proceeds to give me here. The planet they were on was a living planet, one of Yaoshi's creations to begin with in statis. You could picture the long made Lupuswinter as measure similar to cryogenic freezing, keeping it from 'heating up' to the extents that you'd see phenomenon on Vonwacq's lore bits. What I want to propose is that on this day, all humans that drank from the Redspring became an extension of the planet's original gene, it altered them to take the form other living lifeforms upon it.

What I see Hoolay utilizing was the original gene that's been made as a more powerful manifestation within Borisin Warheads. There was a moment of time he drew a conversation about it with Jiaoqiu.

Now, there is some differences here to take note of here. That's natural, given how Duran/Tushan are legendary figures within their time on this world from different cultures. Yet, they also could potentially be one in the same person from how the artifact set decided to make take emphasis on this.

Which in concept isn't even wild to imagine. As we've seen Feixiao herself as living proof of a life who managed to bring both of those genetic sides to life.

This only brings a connector back to Yaoshi as the progenitor. Blessings of the Abundance seem to hold this as matching vein, as we can easily infer the descriptions to a similar Abundance based area; Vonwacq.

Just to give a lil touch of lore about this locale!

That said? I believe that this Crimson Moon of Hoolay's is just a more empowered seed of what created a living planet that Shuhu did with Rahu. While I'm not sure how it ENTIRELY spans out. I'm assuming that during the revealing of the Redspring, this was a collective of not only the people who died and returned to the earth (blood being soaked in too), but all animals, beings, organisms.

Borisin and Foxians just happened to be the result that won out with them. I REALLY can't wait to come and see more they unravel and reveal with this plot thread. It's been one of my most curious perspectives within the Xianzhou personally.

Also as a fun ending bit here--

This is why the exact core of tearing these hearts away from sustenance is so important. And in kind, I believe this is ALSO what happened to that living planet they once lived on. It reached a point of either status with Lupus winters or genuinely became unable to continue. It'd be Duran's actions that managed to create not only a important discovery, but also begin an offshoot of Shuhu's work.

[flavroftalkin]

little ted talk:)

I didn't think I'd ever post on here again or use this app, BUT since I NEVER want to use Twitter to speak on something (bc I'm scared of them lowkey), I am just going to do it here.

I have been attuned and have taken a liking to manifestation and the loa community for quite some time, and it has been a weird journey of knowledge over the years about all these ways people interpret the Law of attraction or the Law of assumption. Some people say that it is just a theory or that it can be backed up by science, that it's magic, or even a religion, to some extent. From my days of overconsuming the SHIT out of every different coach I come across and some ounces of the spiritual community, I just wanted to offer some reassurance to some who cannot get these nagging doubts and inner debates they have on whether this is true or not, and maybe even offer me some peace of mind too.

A lot of people believe in books from thousands of years ago with no correlations or mention of science in them, rely on their faith and upbringing, and are persistent in their belief. Nobody is telling them that they're crazy or delusional. They're just religious, and they have a right to believe in it just as much as we have a right to believe in anything we want to. Whether that is tarot cards or affirming till we see a change in reality, it is no different than a Christian praying for god to grant them their blessings. I grew up in the church, and from my perspective, all of these connect in one way or another. What led me to talk about this was that someone was commenting about how they try to take a realistic approach to loa and how circumstances matter. how people die, and we can't just manifest them back out of thin air or how some things just won't happen, and they're okay with that.

Although I do agree that the circle of life is just something that happens and we can't control it, there's always a possibility for things to work out, even if you can't see it or if you can't believe it now. Pastors always talk about "having faith," so have it. Say that it is done. Whether that is the job you want or the life you want to have. Know that you're capable of having it. It's not about bending the world to make it work for you, as it just starts with you. The universe isn't against you because it wants to see u win. It is not about what rules the coach told you because there is none other than telling yourself that you expect it, will have it, or have it already. It is not about how much you "affirm" or how "highly aligned" you are with your desire for it to conform. It's what you make of it and how you approach your desire. It will come in its due course and when you are ready for it, so just live and don't let it disturb how much abundance you already have around you. Everyone's perspective of the world is different and not everyone will have the same assumptions as you or me. But, I know this experience will resonate with a few of those who know what it is like being so confused by the amounts of different information overcomplicating everything about manifestation. Affirm or visualise and script to your heart's content, but just know that it is done and that you shouldn't have to worry. The methods are a way of getting you to your location: your desire.

[ideahat-universe]

Surreal, but not incomprehensible.

A lot of people are getting into ENA and seem to really enjoy it, which is GREAT. But what I don't like to see from people is the Single Core processing that takes place with understanding ENA.

I can't even tell you which one is worse, so I'll just list all the bad takes.

How many drugs did the artist take?: None, for the artistic process. This is a correlation fallacy. Artists are sometimes suffering with mental illness or stressors due to a variety of different factors, and take drugs to cope with those factors.

But they typically do not use these drugs to tap into the creative part of their mind.

Really think about it. Imagine you spent years honing your craft and seriously creating a unique style for yourself, only for people to think that the key to your success isn't hard work. It's narcotic usage.

I need to observe this high: This is as bad as the previous one. For starters. We have a drug addiction problem. Please stop passively promoting it by suggesting that what you or anyone else should be doing is consuming mind-altering drugs for the sake of watching a cartoon.

Weed smokers, I'm looking you straight in the eyes with this one. Smoking weed impairs cognitive functions. It slows your ability to process things and shortens your memory capability.

Humor is often dependent on the element of surprise as well as sharp timing with gags. If you are constantly high on cannabis, you are processing at an extremely slow speed, which means comedy at a moderate pace is much funnier and absurdist jokes hit harder because your comprehension is weaker.

If you need to be high to enjoy something, you're basically insulting it because when high, you have lower standards.

ENA makes no sense. It just vibes: NO, NO NO, Common mistake, but sad mistake. Just because you can't understand everything in ENA doesn't mean that the ENA series is entirely incomprehensible. We can't speak about the full plot of Dream BBQ because we have to see the future chapters, but the story of all the other ENA episodes are straight forward.

Auction Day: ENA visits an auction, and it's a real auction (also the auction day shows up at the end of Dream BBQ with much of the same characters).

Extinction Party: is ENA going to a party (that she technically wasn't invited to) just so she can give a compliment to her friend Moony.

Temptation Stairway: Moony and ENA race to get a seemingly magical wish granted.

Power of Potluck: ENA misunderstands the directive of ding-dong ditching as a way of having fun, with the idea of just having fun in general.

None of that required Matpat to make a three parter video essay or a Video Essayist to make a 5-hour break-down, and it didn't require a content creator sitting down to dissect every musical note used in every scene in ENA to figure out what the plot of a given ENA episode is.

It's all the little things that don't make sense. We don't know if it's taking place in a digital world or in some afterlife/purgatory or some strange combination of those two. We don't understand the design ethos of most if not all characters. Furthermore, we don't understand why they talk the way that they do, and we don't understand various little things like doors, genies, blood IDs, Mannequins, or even ENA as an entity.

Or do we?

ENA's universe just is. There is no bread crumb trail, there is no lore dump in the form of various audio recordings. (well, there are audio recordings, but it's not exactly a lore dump) there is no fish out of water or a newbie to have the world explained to them. Everyone in the ENA series understands their universe to such an extent that nothing needs to be explained, even though so much of it doesn't make clear sense.

It is like going to a foreign country and trying to figure out what people are doing when you don't understand anything about them. Which is funny because half the cast of ENA speak a variety of different languages that are all understood by every other character but is not understood by the audience across the board.

There is consistency in the madness of ENA's world (or worlds, as the case may be)

For instance;

Blood ID, seems like a strange thing. Is it actual blood? Not sure, but blood can be used to identify people in real life, and it functions that way in game as well. In Extinction Party, ENA is expected to offer a blood sample to enter the party. In Temptation Stairway The Shepard gives ENA a blood ID to pass inspection in a future area and sure enough Mariya checks the ID and recognizes that it's not ENA's blood. It's someone else's identification. Blood is needed to attend the Purge event, and bus stops in Uncanny Streets require a blood ID to use.

It really is just identification.

Doors have been a consistent feature since Extinction Party. Light blue buildings or objects that can take a person to a different realm.

Doors require an owner to govern it. Temptation Stairway explicitly shows off the realm of the Great Runas who governs their door, Ulysses says that the door is fully closed. What is the door? The light blue mannequin that Runas, ENA, and apparently Moony traveled through.

At the end of Dream BBQ, the Uncanny Streets takes on a very pale and gray aesthetic with most characters and creatures replaced with talking gravestones. This environment matches the look and has a similar sound to Auction Day.

In the grayed out, Uncanny Streets, you can find the phone number of the Auctioneer who was selling the Hourglass dog in Auction Day.

With this it can be assumed that Auction Day is not a singular realm but the result of a realm being sold off.

The currency? Chocolates. Chocolate coins have been the currency of this universe since the Auction Day video, and comes up again in Dream BBQ.

Speaking of something not being singular.

There are many, many mannequins in the worlds of ENA, and they vary between moving around and seemingly having sentience to being lifeless dolls littering the environment.

Temptation Stairway shows that there's a link between the mannequins and ENA, and Dream BBQ shows ENA becoming a mannequin to escape the remnants of Uncanny Streets and warps to the mannequin seemingly placed in the hub world strategically.

Season 1 ENA and Season 2 ENA are seemingly different people, with the witches referring to the motherboard item as a gift another ENA gave her and Kane referring to a group of ENA's.

Additionally, in Temptation Stairway, the Shepard refers to ENA as if they were a group and the NO ENA sign at the crowd door is there to forbid any iteration of ENA from entering the realm.

There are multiple ENA's? Where are they? If the Shaman is anything to go by, they are inactive. Multiple instances of the same person can create a disorientating effect, where the thoughts of one are transferred into another person. A theory that ENA asserts as true by saying it along with him in synch as if it was common knowledge, even though the Shaman's words and actions are treated as spurious and bizarre.

The Shaman uses the pool to duplicate a perfect clone of himself and ENA can do the same or alter the form based on a variable we haven't discovered quite yet, but we know that all ENA's are essentially Mannequins possessed by whatever ENA truly is.

There are many mysteries to ENA's worlds, but it's worth considering that most things are just visual and auditory gags, and that a lot of designs are based on mythology, culture, and occasionally random internet references. Sometimes very obscure ones.

This lends to the absurd and surreal nature of the series design, but it's not incoherent. This is not Dadaism.

What baffles me the most is how pervasive this idea that ENA is untouchable when it comes to being understood, that most people don't even try. Where is the Night mind videos breaking down the world of Joel G? Why is there only a GT Live of ENA, even though far less popular games and shows have earned a game theory (or film theory) spotlight?

Why are there channels dedicated to dissecting the plot of Deltarune, even though Deltarune is not a mystery and will not have multiple endings to dissect?

Why are there still people trying to figure out the plot of FNaF even though it's been demonstrably thrown together and ret conned seven hundred thousand times and in all iterations of the story it's just bad man kills children?

ENA is way more consistent than FNaF. And maybe this is like asking for the Monkey's Paw to curl, but again, I think it's insulting to look at ENA and just shrug at how weird it is and only define it as "that crazy weird series that no one understands." But then turn around and make a multitude of videos covering a random ARG where the plot is that a demon is killing people and treat something very straight forward as if it were a complex mystery waiting to be thoroughly solved?

This is exactly what drove David Lynch crazy when he was making Twin Peaks. Make something that requires effort to understand. Everyone writes it off as a quirky, drug infused nightmare that you need to watch while high. Meanwhile, the bland, straight forward serial murder mystery is slurped up like so much creamed corn in a can.

I'm not asking people to roll around in cold sweats at 2:00 AM, wondering who Unforgiven Frank is. I just think something this well put together series deserves actual reverence and shouldn't be mined for Wacky Zacky internet thumbnails.

[hexedrosel-arts]

Too many thoughts head full, time to ramble and say things

- Hall monitor being older brother to the kindergarten kids(Thought about him getting second job to save for college; and also to get the kids ice-cream if they behave; he mostly saves it though)

- Carla and Buggs friendship

- Ozzy and Buggs friendship

- Buggs dynamics with other ppl in general

- Penny X Carla X Monty (wanna write but have more important stuff than this rn :,])

- Kidd, just a lot of ideas about Kidd

- Ozzy, he plagues me daily

- Ozzy and Felix, but what if enemies to friends to lovers mutual pining and angst

- My OCs; specially the one who has her arms replaces with ribbons and she has a tank of poison inserted into her spine, she also now has a gun that shoots said poison and she refuses to die.(Also the angry spirit that follows her around and has knives in that surround him in the form of angel wings and halo)

- Kidd with ram horns(Kidd w/ sacrificial lamb imagery is something weirdly on my mind)

And surprising the one time my English teacher saw an image of Buggs I drew and called him a she(now thinking of butch fem Buggs)

Big thought below where I can't explain it in bullet point form

Honestly, I can't really bring myself to hate any of the Kg and Kg2 characters that aren't the adults. It sounds stupid but I just can't.

The reason is rather simple, they're five year olds. They don’t truly understand what they're doing, like at all. They may be the smartest 5 year olds ever, but they're still 5.

They can kill, harm, and just be the worst ppl ever. But they're glorified toddlers who barely understand that they're hurting each other. A sibling of mine visited our grandfather when he was dying and that stuff slipped over their head, and they were 4. Heck the stuff didn't make sense to myself and I was 7ish.

Felix may want his brother dead, but he might not understand that when his brother dies, he's not coming back. His father knows why he wants this to happen, but Felix may not know in the slightest, or at least not to the extent of that his father does. It's not an exact excuse for Felix’s actions, but I can understand why he has no empathy or care about what he is doing.

I'm using Felix as an example because I did hate Felix before. I hated that he wanted to kill his brother, that he was cruel, he was well Felix. I talked with my sibling about the game(it's been an obsession for a while), when my mom overheard me talking about Felix. She pointed out the exact reason why Felix is innocent in his crime to a degree, he's 5. He doesn't grasp murder or death or what an assassin is. He's smart for a 5 year old, but he still understands the world in the way a child does.

This doesn't just apply to Felix. But to all the kids and all of their little crimes. They don’t understand what they're doing, at least not on the level we do. Cindy and Buggs might understand that bullying is bad, but they don't know how badly they're affecting Lily and Nugget. Jerome doesn't understand that Lily didn't kill his father, he's only correlating that Lily hated his father, Billy went missing, and Billy was found when his father died.

More about Jerome. He's a smart kid yes, but I can't blame him for acting the way he does in Kg2, he's emotional because he found his father's body parts, and Lily found her brother around the same time. He wants revenge because he didn't know what we do. He just wants closure for what he believes was the death of a good man, his father even. Kg2 also takes place the day *after* his father's death, so we take an a child who is still *grieving*, who found his dad's dead body, and has moved to a different school, that's too much for a child to handle. Of course the child is emotional.

Jerome understands death more than the other kids because he experienced in the games first hand. We see the result, he knows his dad isn't coming back, he's upset, and he's not thinking straight. He's in smart class for a reason, but clearly he should have time to process his father's passing. In things that go boom(? Carla's misson), he acts irrationally upon seeing Lily because that's how a 5 year old would react, he found his father's supposed murderer and wants revenge.

When he finds the truth you know what happens? He cries harder, he apologizes to Lily and Kidd in that misson as well. He accepts that father was bad, which is a lot more than mature than he should be at that age, and moves on. He perfectly shows how these kids, while much smarter than regular 5 year olds, they still act like kids and behave.

(Note: I found it weird that a lot of the older wattpad fics charactized Jerome as always hating Lily even when they got older. But I can't blame them, we see Jerome as clearly being in the wrong, but we don't think to look at this in Jerome's perceptive)

In the end they're kids, glorified toddlers even. Death doesn't phase them because they don't understand it. They know things at a basic level, yes they are uber smart for 5 year olds, but they are still 5 year olds. I can't be mad at these kids for being- well kids. Yes they're mean and cruel to each other, but they're still kids. They don't understand that killing each other means they won't come back, to them maybe death means they won't see that person for a while.

[thelittlepalmtree]

I disagree with this. I think we often make the mistake of thinking Media causes the violent tendencies when the reality is (in my opinion) that it is a reflection of what people already think and feel.

It's like a thermometer. There is a correlation between what's on the thermometer and the temperature of the room. If you didn't know what a thermometer was you might think that the thermometer itself was causing the room to get hotter. But it is really just measuring how people felt.

In my opinion, that is what media is, it shows what people are already feeling. The reason first person shooters in Levant countries became popular after 9/11 was because after 9/11 a lot of Americans wanted to fantasize about killing people in those countries. That's the same reason there are a whole subset of action movies following the same topics. If these pieces of media were actually transforming viewers they wouldn't be so popular initially. Like when you put a pot on the heat, the water doesn't automatically start boiling.

The one exception to this is children. Adults generally have a stable sense of self except in very few cases. I'm not saying people don't change after becoming adults, I'm just saying that they aren't easily changed. It would be pretty normal for a five year old to absolutely love giraffes one minute and beg to have a pet giraffe and want to go to the zoo and see the giraffes every day but completely lose interest the next week. It would be pretty weird for an adult to genuinely love giraffes for an entire month and then completely lose interest.

However even though children are incredibly susceptible to the influence of media they are overwhelmingly more susceptible to the material and social conditions around them. If a child watches a movie they can understand that highlights kindness as an important character trait, but then engages with adults who actively discourage kindness and consistently get punished (in the behavioral sense) when they show kindness, even if every piece of media they consume promotes kindness, they are very unlikely to become kind adults.

Video games are more influential because they are not just media but also systems if reward and punishment in and of themselves. However, there are many different video games out there, and if you don't enjoy the media of the game, you're unlikely to choose to play it. For example, I love stardew valley and animal crossing but I couldn't get through Legend of Zelda because I don't like combat. In my experience as a teacher, I see what games my students are addicted to. While COD and Fortnite are popular I'm waaaaaay more likely to catch a kid playing a sports game or a game like paper.io where they're just building territory. However when I worked at an alternative school where most of the students had a history of interpersonal violence, the overwhelming favorite game was a first person shooter game.

Does this type of media reinforce already held beliefs? Perhaps, but not to the extent everyone believes. It's much more likely that violence and dehumanization values are reinforced by the experiences of the people that have them. And that is much harder to address or call out.

I rly hate the Satanic Panic & the moral panic surrounding violence in video games in the 90s, coz it's now impossible to talk about the social implications of violent video games in a realistic sense.

No, violence in video games does not create serial killers in the way most people imagine it would.

However, it's very important to notice how after 9/11, a lot of violent video games pivoted their content from silly gratuitous cartoon gore to more realistic military shooters set in the Levant from a US American lens. It's also important to notice the connection of these games & their toxic online multi-player voice chats to Gamer Gate in 2014.

It's obviously not as black & white as it was presented in the 80s & 90s, I dont think everyone who played early Call of Duty games is a white supremacist who wants to join the military to kill people in the middle east, but I think it's dangerous to pretend like video games or any media can't have an impact on the way people think about violence.

I think what makes all the difference here is how that violence is portrayed, what the message behind it is, what the motives are behind the people who crafted that message, who the victims of that violence are, how they are portrayed & the greater cultural context that surrounds it.

[ericvilas]

Arguments about AI need to be actually separated. It's many different things, and I'm gonna try to separate them out as best I can. I came up with 5 different arguments, and responses to them:

Copyright: you have no right to use my art in any way

Consent to use data you put out there in ways you didn't intend

The "humanness" and "emotion" of art

Automation makes people lose their jobs

"People giving an AI instructions aren't actual artists"

#1 is. Not really an argument unless you wanna side with Disney. Nobody wants to side with Disney. Just don't. Derivative work is fair use.

#2 makes a bit more sense, but here's an example to see why it kinda falls apart: If I wanted to make a scientific paper to analyze what color pallettes are more or less commonly used, should I not be allowed to search through all of DeviantArt and go "this is the distribution of how common each color is, and what colors tend to be correlated with what other colors, and how often each pallette is used"? I feel like that's not something you should be able to object to. You might say "okay, but pallettes are basically averages, you lose a ton of data" and... sure, but if you can make one study about color pallettes you can make a different study about, say. Subject matter. Or style. Or a histogram of the RGB values of the top-left-most pixel. It's not like the program actually extracts that much data from the different pieces of art, anyway. The vast, vast majority is redundant information. (Also there's the argument of "why could I use your art to make similar art inspired by it but not to help program a bot to do it?")

#3 I just feel like it's just the same story over again: sure maybe a machine doesn't have feelings when it produces art, but there's so many things in the world that people were like "oh only a human can produce it" when actually kinda turned out to not be the case? Why is art any different? Are there no artists who just draw shit they're told to draw just cause it's their job? Do they not count as artists? Why is it any different from any other job getting automated? (Also, it's not like people will stop enjoying art-made-with-love, it will simply become a niche much like hand-knit clothes or other artisanship.)

#4 is very true. It's a real problem, but not one that's gonna be solved by stopping automation. Automation is good, and the workers should be compensated for the machines that take their jobs. However, I feel like these are two separate statements. In my opinion, which is not shared by most people I know, automation is good even if it does take people's jobs away. This is a highly controversial statement and I definitely do not speak for anyone but myself. But I do believe that automation of all jobs is important and good. I also think that we should allow people to not have to work for a living. These are two separate, complementary statements and ideally we would have both but personally, I don't care which one we get first.

#5 makes sense. I definitely agree that I shouldn't be credited with "creating" art that the AI created with my prompts, and would even go so far as to agree with the position of "AI art should be distinctly labelled as such". However, I don't know to what extent this is enforceable. (There is nuance to be had wrt the usage of AI to assist in art creation but I think that's not really under discussion, nonetheless I do think that AI-assisted art should still be labelled as such)

....whoops I accidentally spent over 40 minutes on this lol. I just. Feel very strongly about this and I wanna put it out there.

[sizzlingpatrolfox]

Bighit released a statement it seems

I'm a couple of days later but yeah, they released the same repetitive tired statement they've been giving since 2019, or even before. It doesn't confirm nor deny the photos, or the dating like they did in previously reports. Not to even mention that there's nothing "ill-intentioned" in dating rumours. They also don't make it clear who they're going against. My opinion is that they're not going against anybody. Nobody is getting sued by hybe, no sites are being closed, no legal notices are being sent.

Maybe it's too crazy for me (us) to have strong opinions on something we don't know the 100% of, and obviously none of us know how lawsuits work in hybe or who are they suing to begin with, but shouldn't there be some visible results by now? Why are they always giving out statements about suing people and dealing with the hate, but there's never... literally never been a statement about the hate actually having been dealt with.

Because this happened recently, it came to mind when I was talking about this with another army.

Translation of the statement:

They say that person has been making malicious posts against IU since 2019. This is what I mean when I say that we don't actually know how these lawsuits work, or when did they start the process, because it's been 3 years since 2019 and just now there's been results. Maybe we'll see BTS antis getting a sentence in 2025. I just really really really doubt that hybe is doing anything. I don't believe them anymore 🤷‍♀️ it's a "the boy who cried wolf" situation.

Either way, this is not the first or only time that I remember seeing statements like this from IU's firm. I was looking for more but there are so many tweets about her, and I suck at finding stuff. I came across this tho.

And Heechul is not the only idol who thinks this way of her.

Also, while I'm at it and because there was another ask with a link to a twitter page against Jimin, not the death threat one, it was a different one. I wanted to say that I won't post anything that's just mindless, blind hate. Towards Jimin or towards any member. I can and I even encourage criticism, like I couldn't care less if you think a member is ugly or lazy or arrogant or whatever. I would probably be the first to call them that lmao. But with Jimin, things have been out of control for years and it won't stop. Jimin and Jungkook haven't been seen together or actually interacting since April and yet, taekookers, taehyung stans (the two are the same group of people btw) and to a lesser extent, jk stans are all still running their mouths and working harder on trying to defame him and his family. His family wtf!! So I hope it's even clearer for jikookers especially that it was never a "jikook anti" thing; they only hate Jimin. They don't actually gaf who is Jungkook sleeping with or not. Fortunately, Jimin doesn't seem to see any of it because he doesn't go online.

It was actually what Heechul said that made me think of that. He says that it doesn't matter how much help you get, you get brainwashed by reading the hate comments against yourself. As much as taekookers and the like talk on twitter, Jimin has never really had anything "happen" to him like what happened with his unpaid health insurance thing. And when that happened, even if he was releasing music at the time, he went MIA. I don't know if it was a coincidence, or not. But let's say it wasn't a coincidence. Many people even think that he told the members to not show support for the song the same way they did with everyone else on Earth. I disagree with this, but let's consider it for a while for the point I'm trying to make. Jimin is one of the members that's the most targeted in online communities, for whatever reason. Coincidentally, or not, he's also the only member who has talked about not going online at all. I can't know for a fact if there's a correlation between him not using social media and the hate, but I can make assumptions because he actually stopped being so active during the time the hate was getting worse. I know JK was MIA for a while too after some of the things about him people turned into scandals. Tho to be fair I do believe 2022 Jungkook doesn't deal with it the same way 2019 would've. Latest he's said is that he "monitors everything."

Now, on the other hand you have Taehyung who is comfortable enough to be on weverse 24/7, to browse twitter enough to find fanarts with less than 2k likes, to come online when there are photos of him and his girlfriend being leaked, to start a live in his own living room with his poster of a movie that many find very disturbing. He even said in 2020 that weverse was the place the went to looking for people's affection. And some people were sad about him, how he's so brave for smiling to fans and acting like nothing is happening. Have they considered the insane idea that maybe... He doesn't care at all? That maybe there's nothing he's scared of?

Maybe it speaks about the way each of them handles the things they have to see being said about themselves, or maybe it just speaks about the kind of things people say about them in the first place. For some it might've come to a point where they realized it's not even worth it to try and see what people are thinking about you, while for others they might've never actually come across anything that would make them step away completely. Maybe there's no correlation at all between all these events and I'm just seeing things where there isn't anything. But one thing I know is that nobody has ever trended #HappyBirthdayGorilla in Korea for Taehyung's birthday.

Either way, even if the whole thing about Jimin is all hypothetical, what Heechul said it's true. Jimin is not the only or the first and definitely won't be the last celebrity that doesn't use social media. Even people like Taylor Swift don't look up for people's opinions online. You get conditioned to thinking the worst of yourself if you're exposed for too much time to those type of comments. It doesn't even need to be online hate, it could be from your own family or friends or teachers.

Anyways, I don't really know what prompted all of this but that tweet about Jimin actually made me feel disgusted and kind of sad, and it's been a long while since I felt like that. I wouldn't even care if I thought people had actual, real reasons to hate him or call him the names they call him. But the sad thing about it is that they don't have any reason to. Everything bad they believe about him is in their heads and not anywhere else.

[aquaaquila]

We had this conversation before, but I'm joining it again. I wouldn't call myself an Avid Creek hater, because while I don't like him and am annoyed with him, I also don't care that much about him, so I don't wish for him to suffer needlessly. So I'm not satisfied with his death, but I'm also not moved by it, and let me explain why.

Now I absolutely agree that Creek indeed didn't have any other choice as he was pretty much doomed, and his other hideous actions regarding his betrayal can absolutely be excused due to it being a "decision made at the gunpoint" kind of deal. I'm not actually bothered by him selling out his village, but rather his approach regarding it. It's precisely his attitude during all of it that rubs me the wrong way and what I think ultimately makes his actions not excusable.

Bro you did not call him autistic for his reaction💀. Half-joking, half-serious, but I want you to apologize to the autistic community as a whole, as what Creek did with Poppy was sadistic, not autistic. Now, autistic people absolutely can be sadistic, but their sadism is not caused by autism. Those are not correlated. Like seriously, if you told someone that the reason Creek acted the way he did was because of autism you would either make someone ableist or be accused by someone of ableism.

I mean, I do think I found this on your blog as one of many proofs of why Branch is autistic by his wanting to reduce eye contact, and it's not uncommon for autistic individuals to struggle to hold it. But here Creek looked Poppy dead in the eye while telling her he sold her out. Autistic individuals may struggle with how they should respond in social interactions as they really just don't know what to do at times, but Creek knew exactly what he was doing. His reaction wasn't inappropriate because he couldn't read and replicate social cues, it was inappropriate because Creek was being a jerk.

Creek was straight-up taunting Poppy. By no means was he genuine when he said he wished there was a better way. Creek didn't care if there was a better way, as long as he was safe, any method would be fine with him. And that's the thing, Creek proved to be both selfish to a harmful extent and a fake friend. One does not boop someone when telling them they're going to die if they truly care. Heck, he pretty much gaslighted her into believing he indeed is doing it for her, when even Poppy knows that he pretty much doesn't.

If Creek really did want a better way but there indeed weren't any, he'd still be upset. He absolutely would refuse to look Poppy in the eye as he betrays her, his friends, his family, his kin, everything. Not only would he restrain himself from grabbing Poppy's cheek while gaslighting her that he's doing it for her good when what he actually is doing is throwing her under the bus, regardless of whether or not he would have any say in throwing her under the bus.

And like legit, what if his parents/caretakers/siblings were among the trolls in troll village, what about them? Creek literally doesn't seem to care about that, he never mentioned trying to negotiate (even if it would be pointless, a good person would still try to do anything). When he appears in the troll village he shrugs and smirks. Like wow, at least show you really don't like this idea pal. Creek didn't need to be brave, Creek needed to just care, but he betrayed his kind with premeditation.

Heck, Creek doesn't even act differently while selling out everyone, he's pretty much the same personality-wise, which also goes to prove that he just doesn't care about anyone and that he never really had. We can see this right away in the movie by giving Poppy very toxic advice and turning Branch down, which is particularly petty and rather not the first time something like this happened.

Branch doesn't hate his brothers. They failed him and he's upset with them over it, but he never hated them, he still chooses to love them and cherish the memories with them, the good and the bad. Don't treat them like Branch was in an abusive relationship with them, the thing that went wrong was that they left, and we all know that even if they intended to return in less than 20 years they wouldn't be successful with the troll Village being hidden and Branch in particular hiding in his bunker. How were they even supposed to find him anyway? And I think only Bruce was the one who actually never bothered to look for him. JD confirmed he did, Clay probably was on his way until he ran into Viva and then had to co-lead Putt Putt Trolls with her and Floyd could've done the same as JD.

So of course he doesn't strangle them, even though he's upset, but Branch himself never had a base to like Creek to begin with and both he and Creek just couldn't get along, with Creek turning him down while being toxicly positive about it. Heck Creek might as well be evil Floyd which could be an insult to the injury for Branch imagine going through hell and back just to save him only for him to throw you under a bus. Of course, he would be pissed and Poppy was pissed too when Creek rather than immediately explain himself or apologize, just bluntly tells her he's selling them out, like "the fuck you mean you're selling us out!"

Of course, after that Poppy isn't angry anymore as she may understand that Creek just broke, but at the same time, he's willingly stealing her cowbell to use it to endanger everyone, he's booping her on her nose as he also stabs her in the back, and emphasises more on him not getting eaten, like no shit but if he had decency he would not directly mention it, just stop at "I have no choice". Goes to show that his friends were never his consideration. And you know Poppy is upset because she put everything and everyone on the line just to save him and leave no troll behind, but in her eyes she made a bad call and failed spectacularly, losing all her colors.

People hate Creek for a good reason. If it wasn't for his betrayal, or solidarity with Branch as we all had toxic friends that pretended to be nice but then double-crossed once it was convenient and unprompted (like Creek was friends with everyone for a while now wasn't he?), but he also broke our precious sunshine and wasn't particularly sorry about it, we all know he wasn't, we all can tell.

I guess maybe not you, and I don't mean this in bad faith, but I'm concerned that it would be too easy for you to end up in a toxic friendship like that 😬💀

Both Branch and Creek are foils of one another, as at the beginning of the first movie, Branch doesn't care about other Trolls. Unlike Creek though, he's justified by being an outcast and the only one who remembers vividly what kind of threat Bergens truly are which puts him at odds with all the happy-go-lucky fellas. Branch in particular isn't all too pressed about Poppy's friends being abducted, or even sorry for Poppy's loss of them. Snack Pack was sorry for Poppy's loss over Creek when everyone thought he was eaten. It's not until the course of the film that he grows to care about everyone involved and in the end he properly helps them instead of only reluctantly. Branch goes through growth in the first film undeniably, but it also happened in days at most. Meanwhile, you have Creek who had years to cherish his friendship with everyone and had everything with them worth fighting for, and the moment he has to betray them, he does so without shedding a tear or anything like that.

Even f he tried to justify himself, he would be way more frantic about it as no decent person would be ok with doing something like this, even if they have no choice at all. But Creek sure as hell would be sleeping peacefully the night after Trollstice for all he knows.

TL;DR: It's not about Creek being a coward, it's about Creek being fake. He was fake through the friendship with everyone and through the betrayal. He sold everyone out with no regrets whatsoever. His death while extreme, ultimately comes down to how Low Creek was willing to stand to prevent it only for the karma and irony don't cut him any slack on that. Harsh, I know, however I'd say that Creek would gladly do everything you accuse Brozone of doing.

If you don't regret doing something wrong and harmful, you just are a bad person. Even when someone is justified, if they're a decent person they still feel bad, but Creek doesn't so he gets no love from the majority because of this.

in Defence of Creek ( warning if your an Avid Creek Hater you may not want to read this 😂😂 )

ps. Branch will Hair strangle some guy he Barely knew who he didn't even care about for betraying them but doesn't do the same to his Jerkass Brothers who let him down his whole life 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️.

anyway onto the topic at hand 😂😂😂😂

Creek gets an unfair Rap in my opinion sure he technically betrayed the village but when you examine the story of the first film he literally had no other choice.

as there's no other scenario that didn't end with him being Horribly Eaten as soon as he was picked by Chef for Gristle Jr to eat and taken out of the cage his fate was sealed.

unlike the rest of the snack pack he didn't have the option of sitting around waiting on the off chance Poppy would Rescue them.

we see in the Betrayal scene he was literally in Gristle's mouth before he finally played the only card he could and said he'd do what ever they wanted him to do.

and from then on he was kept in Gristle's locket around his neck which I have to say was Horrible poor guy was stuffed in their with no space or light or even air given how tight it was.

and he was kept there until eventually being moved out of the locket and put into Chef's waist bag just before the snack pack got the Locket from Gristle and were then captured by Chef.

and from that point like Creek himself said there was literally nothing else he could do that wouldn't result in him being killed straight away by Chef.

this is what rubs me the wrong way about the movie trying to make him into a villain he has no real agency in the betrayal it'd be a little easier for me to Judge him.

if he was kept in the cage with the Rest of the Snack Pack so he had the option of just having faith in Poppy someone he claimed to care about.

coming to save them but instead he took the more cowardly action and offered to sell everyone out early on in order to save himself then I feel it'd work a little better.

but having him be plucked from the cage early on and literally only betray everyone when he was on the verge of being eaten just makes him a victim in my eyes.

like I'm sorry but he can't be blamed too much for anything he does at that point he's just a normal civilian who's life was put in danger by negligent leaders ( cough Peppy cough ).

he technically wasn't obligated to die then and there and the whole situation with him selling out the Village is a classic Trolley Problem sure its easy to Judge.

from the outside but when we're on the verge of being gruesomely murdered who's to say what each of us would do in the moment to stay alive.

basically its Chef's actions and she's the one to blame not Creek dude was a literal Hostage who had been kidnaped Humiliated by being shoved in a taco and sprinkled with spicy stuff.

and then nearly eaten and then crammed into a tiny locket for presumably Hours and then crammed into a waist bag like how is this guy not the victim here?

and some people do like to point to how he behaved about the whole thing telling Poppy he's doing it for her but I'm sorry that doesn't change anything in my eyes.

sure its an unusual reaction but its also an unusual situation and I see it more as him weakly attempting to justify it to himself since he does admit he wishes there was another way but is promptly reminded by Chef that there isn't.

his Reaction isn't Great but it doesn't change the situation and make him some pure evil person.

a little autistic maybe? given the weird response to an emotional situation he has but yeah it doesn't make him worse in my eyes.

basically to end things the film as well as the fandom that villainise him seem to basically be saying that he should have just laid down and accepted his gruesome fate the first time.

and the movie even ends on a cruel irony of still being eaten along with Chef.

which for Chef is ironic in a karmic way but for Creek its just kinda sad tbh so the film's saying his death was decided at the start and he's a villain for not accepting it the first time.

and as punishment he meets the same fate in the end anyway.

I thought this was a Trolls film not a Final Destination film lol.

anyway even tho its separate cannon I was Happy when he was Revealed to still be alive in TBGO sure I feel his Return could have been written way better.

but Regardless I'm Glad he's still alive he didn't deserve to die and also the movie cannon never contradicts the tv show cannon in Terms of Creek's survival.

so yeah he could very well still be alive in the movies as well sorry Haters 😅😅😅😅.

[afishlearningpoetry]

Hi! I've loved Sherlock since 2012 but I'm new in the Johnlock fandom. Your meta is one of my favorite! I totally agree that S4 is John's story/blog/alibi etc, but I wanted to ask you: if this time Sherlock is working with John to take Mary down, why is John jealous? How can he think Sherlock has feelings for her, if Sherlock wants her dead? Also: how do you think John faked his suicide? Is there a body? Maybe it's David's? I really hope it is all John's plan! It would be so smart and badass.

Hi, thank you so much.

It's funny you ask that first question because this (John's enduring jealousy) is a thing that was established the series 3 finale in 2014, and the particular scene in which it culminates is so convincing that it's not an exaggeration to say that currently almost no one knows what actually happened in it, which is in large part due to how manipulative Sherlock acts to John in the latter half of that episode, and also how people believe Mary's stated intentions (especially after her death, which was supposed to make her look like a saint, which definitely worked on viewers) and and underestimate John's intelligence.

Just to recap for anyone else: John's jealousy is conceived when Sherlock and John enter Magnussen's office and Sherlock deduces that the smell of perfume is Claire de Lune, which is the perfume Mary uses. This also comes right after the scene outside the elevator to his office, where Sherlock manipulates Janine into letting them in. John says, "But Sherlock, she loves you," and Sherlock says, "Yes, as I said –– human error," as John looks on, terrified. Later in the episode, John confronts Mary and says that the first thing Sherlock said when he woke up was her name. When Sherlock disappears from the hospital after being shot, in part because he doesn't want to be questioned by the police after who shot him, because he's trying to protect Mary to protect John, Lestrade asks John why he would disappear, and who he would be protecting from whatever happened in Magnussen's office. John asks the same thing, and then looks at Mary's perfume, which is sitting on the table next to him (he doesn’t even consider Sherlock is protecting him). To summarize, he assumes Sherlock is protecting Mary because he secretly loves her and that they had an affair, which in his mind is only confirmed later in the episode when John learns Mary was (is) an assassin, because John draws a correlation between him assuming Sherlock loved Irene and now Mary, to Sherlock being a sociopath and only being able to care about other sociopaths who enable him, which also means he could never love John. He says during the loft scene where they treat Mary as a client, “You two should have gotten married.” There's some comfort in the idea that Sherlock isn't capable of love to begin with, it's another thing to see this. (Something cool about its shape is it's echoed in Mary's wedding earrings, which are hearts with a hole in them, as well as the coin she shoots; "I will burn the heart out of you.")

So there are a couple explanations why John would still be jealous, even after him and Sherlock team up to stop her. The most simple is that it doesn't even matter to John that he's trying to kill her now, because he's convinced he's a sociopath for the majority of series 4, so he doesn't have any lingering feelings about turning against her now because he doesn't care about other people in that way. John isn't jealous to the extent that he wants whatever their relationship was (at least consciously -- there's a lot to talk about how he makes his subconscious insert of Eurus into a brazenly over the top sociopath that Sherlock has to learn how to love, but even then, John still locks himself into a sibling relationship where he's caged up and they can only see each other when there's glass between them to stop him from attacking him), so much as that there was any initial love/connection or sexual affair between them. Throughout TST, Sherlock follows a trail of breadcrumbs he thinks will lead him to Moriarty, but actually leads him to Mary, so the real events of that episode involved him realizing the two of them are working together (if he didn't already realize this at the end of TAB -- there's debate whether he is or if it's still subconscious, but either way he's right on the edge).

So John wants to stop Moriarty, or Mary for working for him (she's working with him, but they wouldn't know this yet, because it's being saved for the series 5 reveal), which compounds his anger at her betrayal, but he doesn't know that right away. He already has enough motivation before that because he still thinks they had an affair. Sherlock doesn't have sex with Janine, but John thinks he did. John doesn't even understand what that kind of relationship would be like, if there are any emotional feelings involved, which is why he asks, "So how does it work, you and the woman?" at the end of TLD. His jealousy is also magnified by the idea that he fell for a sociopath in Sherlock, so a lot of it is just swelling self-hatred that John can't escape, that keeps growing and growing until he's choking on it by series 4, so it still doesn't matter Sherlock is trying to kill her now. In the teaser for series 4 they were both drowning.

If anything, their covert mission being focused around her means that John probably can't stop thinking about it. If Sherlock loved her then he could he do this now?

Then he looks at himself, and he starts thinking about how whether or not he ever loved Mary to begin with, and then he thinks about how Mary was supposed to be different, and oh John actually fell for a sociopath for a second time just like Sherlock, so is he any different? Of course he should know that he is, even if he's wrong about Sherlock, but then he starts thinking about how his love for Sherlock actually makes him a monster, and that his love for him isn't real either because it could never be the same thing as him loving a woman, or maybe he could never love anyone to begin with, not really, and that maybe John himself isn't real either, maybe he isn't even a real person, or a person who should stick around at all. But no no no, first he has to stop Mary. He has to stay around to stop Mary. His goal for the first two episodes of series 4 isn't about trying to fuck Sherlock anymore, it's all about stopping her.

Of course we know that he can't stop thinking about it, because not only does he write Mary and Sherlock having a perfect relationship that doesn't exist where John is considered more worthless than a dog (calling back to Moriarty calling John Sherlock's pet by the pool in TGG), the cheating subplot established two episodes ago (and clarified by Sherlock in TAB, which is another explanation, but he isn't even aware that John thinks they had an affair), isn't addressed at all, even on the surface text/blog level in series 4. It's just dropped completely, which went over the heads of most viewers watching because they didn't even pick up on or remember it from before (fitting because it's not mentioned in John's blogs in series 3 to begin with iirc). John does this to absolve both himself and Sherlock, because there's no way he could resolve it without offering motivations for either Sherlock or himself to kill her. He finds ways to sublimate it though, because he has to make them flawed so it's a believable event. So to answer: John's jealousy is a huge, invisible, growing monster sitting at the heart of series 4 and everything that happens in it. It's largely irrational and trying to ask him why he would even think any of this would just make him retreat further into denial of the truth: that Sherlock loves him, which he's deeply afraid of.

When Sherlock manipulates John into thinking that Mary shot him non-fatally in order to cover for herself while saving his life, he's lying, because he literally died lmao. But he decides not to let John in on the secret, which is a huge mistake, and John can see through what he's doing and that Sherlock is using him, but he plays along in order to take Mary down. Sherlock underestimates John, so it's only fitting that Sherlock underestimates John again when he fakes his suicide, because John doesn't let Sherlock in on his secret, in part so he can know what he felt during and after the fall, because all of this is about the fall (and John tries to communicate with Sherlock while Mary is manipulating him, as we see at the end of TST with John’s note that is also dropped from the plot completely) (Sherlock does let John in on their plot to stop Mary sometime after the loft scene, but by that time John's already operating on his own to some degree, because Sherlock still isn't letting him in on the biggest secret of all that would explain everything to John). So because John is mastering the level of deception Irene, Sherlock, Moriarty and Mary (and Emelia Ricoletti) showed him over the course of the show, he would also leave a body behind. He would have planned it extensively, and part of that is by manipulating public opinion. He even gets really blatant with his prose and has himself sitting in front of a carpet of blood (calling back to how Sherlock sees the pile of blood before Mrs. Carmichael, explained here). You already saw this post but he would also need a body to draw Mary out of hiding by making the suicide convincing, which he also does by writing so many suicidal themes into series 4 so that when news gets out and people in-universe (and real life) react to his death, they put the clues together, which is like a double deception in order to make it seem impossible that he could have faked it. (#tw suicide)

So these plot points have been ongoing for seven years now lol and they’ll be key to series 5.

[thattimdrakeguy]

Omg yes.

The way people will take something completely out of context and then act like they're right.

You're right alot of people want to be angry. They want to have problems. And its so wierd. Like why? Live life. Have fun. Stop arguing with people on the internet.

Yh I don't I really argue my opinions on the internet either unless someone drags me into the argument. And even then I only argue when it’s something racist, xenophobic, etc.

Like I am a Talia fan (Pre-Morrison Talia). And as you might imagine I get alot of shit for it. Now I don't actively find people with racist takes on Talia and argue with them. But when someone comes to me and starts bullshitting her and my love of her. That's when I get defensive.

Onto the flat opinion thing. Yh that's irritating I don't mind if you have an opinion. I don't mind if you want to discuss it. But you have to be willing to Discuss your opinion not just argue and call names.

Being on the internet is so much easier when you lay back and have fun. More people should try it

There's times where I wanna argue, but then I realize, it's not a fun process at all.

And nearly every argument I've had on this site, like proper argument, not discussion, but argument--It had been powered by someone that didn't even comprehend what I was trying to say. So I have to cipher through like, 12 paragraphs or something to figure out what the fuck they're even talking about.

And my brain will try to respond to what they said, but half way through I realize "Wait, why am I even arguing about this? THAT WASN'T MY POINT", but despite the fact that they didn't even comprehend what I meant to begin with, they'll keep being so dismissive acting, and just cocky. And it's so so groan-worthy and gives me second-hand embarrassment. Like these are fictional characters, what on Earth do they think they're even proving if they can barely read without having to take the most negative interpretation out of it, even if they have to stretch all logic to get to that point?

When it comes to Talia, like holy shit. I didn't believe too much of it at first, because fandoms are typically "WE ARE LIBERAL SO VERY LIBERAL", like in the way where they're probably not as liberal as they think, but they want to use it as an excuse. So they'll overuse buzzwords and stuff. Like I'm liberal myself, but using buzzwords to get attention is just shitty, and treating someone disagreeing with you as a hate-crime is a mockery of real tragedies. So many people will say things are racist when there's no correlation.

But then I took a peak at Twitter, and saw in some random YouTube comment sections, all by happenstance, and I saw some of the most horrific takes on her, and it was incredibly strange. I knew there’d be some, because their always will be sadly, but I didn’t think to the extent I saw it. I don't know jack about Talia, honestly. I really really don't.

Yet, as someone who only really knows her because she's a character in the same world as my fav, and she was in Arkham City and Dark Knight Rises (where she did jackshit as a villain and then died). I know damn well how bad Morrison was with her. Morrison's Batman run is so weird, because people either seem to love everything, or hate everything. It's bizarre.

A lot of stuff I seen, I would know no other way of how to respond to do it, but being defensive lmao

Seeing all the different bizarre people. Like, the faux-brainiacs that are clearly grasping at straws, and stretching any logic to make a point, or the ones that are clearly only saying stuff for a bias--but yet will actively try to portray themselves as being very smart on the topic, are very annoying.

But I also think, I've learned to just let it go more often. Sometimes I'll be so baffled I have to say something, but emotionally I'm at a stage where it's like "Man, that block button is tasty" and act like it doesn't exist. Because if I acknowledged every aspect of reality I'd never know the scent of happiness for many reasons.

[grison-in-space]

Yes, I know that re racism. I have spent a significant chunk of my career challenging pseudoscience revolving around sexism and racism, both formally and informally. I promise you, I'm annoying enough about it to have experienced profound social consequences for not shutting the fuck up. I'm fairly confident that I'm not missing hidden racism when I say that the problem is broader than unstated political values and implicit beliefs can be given credit for.

My point is actually that you see the same failures to appreciate the, uh, low understanding yield of these kind of approaches in venues that are much less politically fraught, too—including in use cases that are not immediately parsable along political lines. Gene ontology studies, transcriptomic analyses, proteomics: these kinds of studies cover immense topical ground, including ground that doesn't interact with conclusions about human social hierarchies. But we still see the lure of this approach captivating people in those fields, too.

It's not just psychiatry, although that's where I happen to be sitting today: the thing that you gotta understand about me is that I started out as a population geneticist, and then I got completely captivated by mechanisms of plasticity—how individuals adapt to their environments—and then I wound up having to abruptly make a change in field. So I've watched these themes play out across a number of disciplinary contexts, some of which are really interested in questions that are not all that applicable to humans. Sure, everything is political to some extent, even if the politics revolve around petty local status disputes among academics, but for quite a few of these topics you're really making one hell of a stretch to attribute the motivation to political beliefs. Not that everyone buys in—not even close—but the critical muttering of scientists who point out the lack of understanding secured by this kind of data-first high throughput approach certainly hasn't decreased any enthusiasm for funding it, even when the frameworks spend actual decades "five years away" from meaningful insights.

Additionally, while there's a strong sunk costs aspect to saying "actually this stuff is valuable because uh otherwise we wasted our money," I can't emphasize enough that these techniques and approaches have been heavily funded and supported for much longer than the measly little decade I've been personally observing them. At some point you expect people to try something different.

To be clear, also? I also work in large scale data analysis. My major project right now entails using pose estimation to compress a lot of reviews animal behavior data and pull out changes. So I'm not inherently opposed to high throughput large scale data approaches; rather, the critique I'm making right now is a more limited critique of the belief that you can compensate for sloppy or incomplete measures with a sufficiently big sample size.

Maybe I'm just burned by the three years in my PhD randomizing stimulus presentation orders to rule out order effects while getting highly inconsistent data that was... drumroll... being mediated by the extremely strong and aggressive order effects of the system I was working in. My broader point is: if there are strong correlations in your data and you aren't asking questions that get at those correlations, you're fucked when it comes to interpretation. Being careful about the political aspects of your work is no real defense against the threat of failing to ask the right questions.

look computational psychiatry is a concept with a certain amount of cursed energy trailing behind it, but I'm really getting my ass chapped about a fundamental flaw in large scale data analysis that I've been complaining about for years. Here's what's bugging me:

When you're trying to understand a system as complex as behavioral tendencies, you cannot substitute large amounts of "low quality" data (data correlating more weakly with a trait of interest, say, or data that only measures one of several potential interacting factors that combine to create outcomes) for "high quality" data that inquiries more deeply about the system.

The reason for that is this: when we're trying to analyze data as scientists, we leave things we're not directly interrogating as randomized as possible on the assumption that either there is no main effect of those things on our data, or that balancing and randomizing those things will drown out whatever those effects are.

But the problem is this: sometimes there are not only strong effects in the data you haven't considered, but also they correlate: either with one of the main effects you do know about, or simply with one another.

This means that there is structure in your data. And you can't see it, which means that you can't account for it. Which means whatever your findings are, they won't generalize the moment you switch to a new population structured differently. Worse, you are incredibly vulnerable to sampling bias because the moment your sample fails to reflect the structure of the population you're up shit creek without a paddle. Twin studies are notoriously prone to this because white and middle to upper class twins are vastly more likely to be identified and recruited for them, because those are the people who respond to study queries and are easy to get hold of. GWAS data, also extremely prone to this issue. Anything you train machine learning datasets like ChatGPT on, where you're compiling unbelievably big datasets to try to "train out" the noise.

These approaches presuppose that sampling depth is enough to "drown out" any other conflicting main effects or interactions. What it actually typically does is obscure the impact of meaningful causative agents (hidden behind conflicting correlation factors you can't control for) and overstate the value of whatever significant main effects do manage to survive and fall out, even if they explain a pitiably small proportion of the variation in the population.

It's a natural response to the wondrous power afforded by modern advances in computing, but it's not a great way to understand a complex natural world.