#but i still really would like to hear peoples' opinions on this

[writingquestionsanswered]

I have a small question where I would like to hear your opinion on. My MC died in her original world and was reborn into a new one. So she died at 27 and started back again at 2 years old from the body she took over. She is mentally at the original age. So my hiccup is that the story take place when she is 25 in the new world and I'm having a bit of a hard time figuring out how to have her carry herself. Theoretically, she is mentally in her 50's but 25 physically. How should I go on to write her personality? I don't want to say I want her to "act old", but what are some things that might be different between a 25 year old and a 50 year old and how could I best make her more mature? Should I make her more immature in the beginning (pre-death) So that change could be put in place?

Character is Mentally Older Due to Reincarnation

Here's the problem... there are two things needed in order for someone to mature: physical development and emotional development through experience. If your character died at 27, not only is that about the time that brains stop physically developing anyway, she also does not go through any further emotional development through experience.

Even if she is "mentally 27" when she is transported to the body of the two-year old, and even if we say her mental age somehow overrides the physical capabilities of a two-year-old brain, the kinds of experiences she's having over the 23 years in her second body aren't the kinds of experiences that are going to add significantly to her emotional experience. These are all things she has already experienced and learned in her first life. As a 2 to 25-year-old, she's not gaining a lot of experience in things like career, marriage, parenting, layoffs, career changes, divorce, single parenting, dating after divorce, caring for aging parents, etc. Instead, she's experiencing some of the things (again) that are natural for 2 to 25-year-olds to experience, like going to school, making friends, trying to get good grades, social drama, first kiss, first love, learning to drive, first job, graduation, going to college, first-time independence, getting to vote, serious relationships and serious break-ups, perhaps even getting married and having a kid or two, though not getting very far into that.

So, my point is, your character has to live the life of a 25 to 50-year-old in order to gain the experience and maturity of a 25 to 50-year-old brain.

BUT... having said that, I am speaking to you as a person who has lived the life of a 25 to 50-year-old, and I don't feel mentally different from who I was when I was 25. Maybe a little, but not significantly. I have certainly experienced a lot of things during those 25 years, but I still like a lot of the same things, still do a lot of the same things, still think and feel a lot of the same things. I still wear clothes (sweaters, jackets, and coats, mostly) I wore when I was 25. I still watch a lot of the same TV shows and movies, and like a lot of the same music. But also... I'm sitting over here singing to songs that are popular on the radio, watching TV shows that are popular with the 15 to 30 crowd, and comfortably conversing with family members who are in their teens and 20s.

So, a part of it, too, is that once you get past a certain age (mid-20s, really, when the brain stops developing), there's not always this catastrophic difference between who a person is at 25 and who they are at 50 or 70. I mean, there can be... there are definitely those adults who turn into weird adulty robots who feel like they can only drink wine, eat salmon, play golf, and throw wine and cheese parties, but not everyone is like that. Most people aren't. You'll get into your fifties and laugh that you thought you'd be so significantly different from 25-year-old you. :)

Another issue to consider is this: if your character is a 27-year-old trapped in a 2-year-old's body, does that make her like Stewie Griffin, except that's the way she actually sounds to everyone around her. Do you have a two-year-old sitting in the baby seat in the shopping cart at Target, looking at her "new" mother and literally saying out loud, "Oh, Diane... please tell me you're not thinking about buying that. You know how gluten wrecks your stomach. Put it back and get the gluten free one, would you?" Or, do you have a 27-year-old woman who has to pretend to be a two-year-old, and has to sit there making baby talk and saying things like, "Ma-ma... can get cookie? Pwweeeease?" It's really awkward, to be honest, and I can't imagine how mentally taxing, frustrating, and demeaning it would be for your character.

So... what to do? There are two options that I can see, but keep an eye on the reblogs in case anyone else has a suggestion:

1 - Compartmentalize her adult consciousness from her two-year-old consciousness until she's maybe ten or twelve. So, almost like she's a prisoner inside the body of a child, but she doesn't know what it's thinking and can't control what it says or does. Like they're two independent beings and she's just along for the ride, silently commentating and even trying to get through to the kid to little or no avail. Maybe sometimes, if she mentally screams loud enough, she pops into the child's consciousness as a subconscious thought. Then, for whatever reason, as the child ages, her voice gets through more and more, and she gains control of what the child says and does little by little, until finally she has fully become the child when it's maybe 12 or 15 or whatever age you think makes sense. So, that might look something like this:

Childhood: I'm dressed in my--rather, Bella's--favorite Bluey shirt and a pair of shorts. The birthday party is at an indoor play area called Bounce, and I can almost feel Bella's excitement as she drops her gift off at the table and runs to join the other kids on a giant trampoline. They didn't really have places like this when I was a kid--the first time, I mean. My next door neighbors--the Andersons--they had a trampoline in their backyard, the kind with the net cage around it, but my parents wouldn't let me jump on it except during neighborhood parties when there were lots of parents watching. At least I... Bella... will sleep well tonight.

Teens: "Hey, Bella!" Maxine said as I joined her at the lockers. "Are you going to Brant's party tomorrow night?" Ugh, Brant's party. I had forgotten about that. What an absolute turd. He reminds me too much of this guy Jared I dated briefly in college, in my first life. I'm obviously not going to tell Maxine that. "Nah," I say at last. "I don't like that guy enough to go to his party." "Why don't you like him? I think he's cool!" "Oh, he just reminds me of someone I used to know. Wanna head to lunch?"

2 - Give the adult consciousness a bit of amnesia and have her start to remember things over time. In this sense, there would still be some compartmentalization early on as far as being a separate consciousness from the child's, but in this sense she would be less like an adult imprisoned in a child's body, along for the ride and commenting from the peanut gallery, and more like a faint awareness that is more distant, but becomes more aware and close as time goes on. That might look something like this:

Child: Bella is wears her favorite Bluey shirt to the birthday party. She is such a happy, friendly child. The other kids welcome her with smiles and open arms as she joins them on the trampoline. I wonder if I went to parties like this in my first life?

Teen: Bella's friend--my friend--Maxine greets me as I join her by the lockers. "Are you going to Brant's party tonight?" My stomach sours at the thought of that guy, though I don't know why. Perhaps I knew someone like him in my past life. The name Jared suddenly pops into my head, and I briefly wonder what this guy did to past life me that I carried dislike for him into my second life. Not wanting to get into all that, I make an excuse about having to help my mom wallpaper the guest room. "See you on Sunday, though, so we can study for the test?" "Yeah, see you then," Maxine says, closing her locker. She smiles, but I can tell she's a little salty. She knows social gatherings exhaust me, though. Sometimes I wish I could tell her why--that I've been through all of this before, not even that long ago. But she wouldn't understand.

So, in either case, you're not really worrying too much about the nuances of maturity, but rather a general "adult" perspective as it relates to this child whose body it's inhabiting.

Anyway, I hope that helps! Edited to add: see a related question here.

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[picnokinesis]

if you would be interested in sharing your thoughts about the star beast, i would love to hear them!!

Ooh okay, so - well, first, just to start off: I think The Star Beast is a really important episode, and was very much a needed episode. The current climate in the UK regarding the trans community and their rights is getting extremely rancid, to put it lightly. Having an episode of Doctor Who with an explicitly trans character, having the other characters around her be affirming and supportive - that was awesome. Extremely awesome. And I'm really glad that RTD is loudly putting himself on this side of the whole 'debate' (which isn't really a debate, because it's just straight up bigotry from the anti-trans side, and we need people like RTD outwardly speaking out against that bigotry).

When I talk to cis people offline about this episode, that is pretty much what I say and also where I stop.

I'll put the rest under the cut hahah - there's a bit of negativity here, just as a warning for all the hardcore RTD stans, but I think it's well-founded and not vitriolic at all, just like, miffed hahaha. Also, I know there were a few trans folks who found this episode really affirming, so just to be clear: this is just my opinion, personal thoughts, and also influenced by the conversations I had with other trans people that I know and care about about the episode.

When I talk to trans people - offline or online - about this episode, I go in a lot deeper, because whilst it was a very important episode, it was somewhat flawed. It also came off the back of several things RTD had said and done that really ticked me off, and so I wasn't really in the interest of being entirely uncritical about what, to me and a lot of trans dw fans that I spoke to, thought was a very "cis" trans story. And when I watched it, I thought 'oh geez, is this how poc feel when white people try and write poc stories with good intentions but don't really get it right??" because like. Ho boy.

The thing about this episode was that RTD wanted to write an affirming trans story, and mostly did that, but also, imo...doesn't actually understand what gender and transness actually is. I think my main gripes were definitely with the climax scene - the whole 'we can let go bc we're women' thing literally made me go 'what' out loud at the screen because...well, it's just gender essentialism. Trans inclusive, sure! But trans inclusive gender essentialism is still gender essentialism. Women aren't better than men. There's actually an exceptionally good essay written by a trans woman who was still in the closet about her experiences in queer spaces that had a very prevalent anti-men attitude, and I've seen it myself irl too. It's not helpful - it's harmful, in fact - and it leans on this strange mysticism about women that is fundamentally anti-feminist, in my opinion. Women aren't "innately better at emotional and intangible, instinctive things" (and it's unspoken counterpart - "thus men are better at logical, rational things" - is also untrue). Women aren't magically better at 'letting things go' than men are - I reckon you could make an argument about men being socialised to not be emotional, and that would be an interesting conversation to have, but that was not what was being said - especially with the Doctor being raised in a society that didn't even perceive gender in the same was as humanity.

Also, the thing that REALLY got me was 'if you were a woman, you'd get it' - first of all, no. Thirteen never let anything go in her life and repressed to the max, if anything she was WORSE than tenteen at that lmao. Second - and this is the more salient point - I think it's a strange thing to suggest that tenteen is fully a man, at this point? Like, regardless of what he looks like, regardless of how he identifies or how thirteen identified, he just lived a lifetime in a body that looked like a woman, and thus was treated as such by the rest of the universe. He wasn't going to forget all of that. I actually really liked how the Chibnall era approached thirteen's gender - or, rather, her complete ambivalence to it, where it seemed like gender was more of an annoying thing that kept happening to the doctor that she kept having to remember, rather than something she felt - however I really REALLY wish they'd actually dug explicitly into the transness of it all, and so when they didn't, I'd hoped that RTD would do that instead. Especially since we KNEW Yasmin Finney was in it and we knew we were going to get a trans character!! I was like, this is the PERFECT opportunity to get the Doctor to actually talk about their gender and how it, fundamentally, doesn't really change between bodies, just how people REACT to it changes. But instead, the episode seems to present the doctor as having flicked a binary switch - once woman, now man - and thus made sure to remind us that every time thirteen was mentioned, it was framed around the fact that she was The Woman Regeneration, but also that tenteen was Now a Man Again. And even if that WAS THE CASE, it still wouldn't mean that tenteen came out of that experience completely mindwiped of everything about 'womanhood', right?? Like he lived as a woman! He was a woman 45 minutes ago, but now you're telling him that he couldn't possibly understand anything about this because he's a man now? Like first of all, his physical body's characteristics have nowt to do with his ability to let things go, second, it's just....okay, it reminds me of the dichotomy between all these detransition horror stories the anti-trans folks like to spew out, versus when you talk to actual detransitioners, who are quite often gnc and extremely positive about the trans community, and whose experience within that community and transitioning impacted how they view the world.

And I think it fundamentally comes down to RTD not really understanding either womanhood or transness. He actively speaks out on both of these things, which is great, but I don't think he understands them fully. I think the fact that he didn't think that David Tennant could wear a t-shirt, braces, trousers and coat because they were "women's clothes", and that when he cast David Tennant that was one of the first things he immediately decided is kind of telling.

There's also the whole 'male-presenting timelord' thing, which, again, I just don't think RTD really understood what that meant, like I'm not sure what his point was there, genuinely. Like, on a technical level it's acknowledging that the Doctor isn't necessarily male, just looks like a man (correct) buuuuuuuuuut the full line was saying 'you'd never understand this because you're a man' SO LIKE...okay? So he's not actually a man, but actually because of his male-adjacency, he's incapable of coming to the same conclusion that a woman did? So he's still...defined by his maleness? Hm. Strange sentence to write coming out of a trans woman's mouth.

What would have been better? I wish they'd just had Donna and Rose say 'because we're human', or maybe 'because we're the Nobles'. I also know a lot of people really didn't like the misgendering scene with the kids on the bikes - I think my personal feelings on that are a little more complicated, as a trans person who is not out irl and functionally uses my birthname almost everywhere, but also isn't triggered by it. It's not a deadname, more like a paperwork name rather than my preferred name, right? But I know for a lot of trans people, deadnaming is like psychological warfare and it's really awful, especially when done with malicious intent (like shown in the scene with the boys on the bikes). However...I do understand why RTD included this scene, and actually kind of agree with him. Because the boys on the bikes are the sort of people who are also watching the show. And so then seeing that kind of thing being condemned by the narrative by a key, beloved character, is probably something that's actually helpful. On the other hand though...in the Doctor Who Unleashed (or whatever the behind the scenes thing is called now), you've got this interview with Yasmin Finney saying that it was actually a pretty triggering scene to film for her and genuinely affected her, and I'm like....okaaaaaay then I REALLY hope they had someone she could talk to on set. Like, fundamentally, I think telling these stories are important, but, yknow, not at the expense of the actual actress' mental wellbeing, right? So that concerned me a bit.

I also think that the scene between Sylvia and Donna in the kitchen talking about Rose was brilliant. And this is because it was about cis people trying to understand and support trans people whilst not completely getting it and making mistakes, but also trying their best!! Which RTD does understand, very well!! And it felt so real. It was fantastic. There's also the part with the whole 'did you assume the meep's pronouns' whiiiiiiiich I have mixed feelings about? I think here, RTD was trying to poke fun at the people who do say that sort of thing to make fun of trans people, and having the Doctor be like 'actually this is a good point we should be checking this sort of thing'......however. I don't think I've ever heard 'did you assume my pronouns' come out of a trans person's mouth. It's always been a cis person mocking our community. So it felt a bit...incongruent. And all that needed to be changed was having Rose say 'how do you know the meep is a he?' - like that was all it needed!!! Also, it was a shame that after the delightful moment of the doctor being like 'SAME HAT' regarding the meep's pronouns, that.....we then had NO OTHER DISCUSSION about the doctor's gender!! Like, Russel, dude, you're really gonna have Rose hear the 'male-presenting' guy say 'oh yeah I do that with pronouns too!! :D' - have her NOT REACT TO THAT AT ALL - and then you're gonna have her say by the end 'oh you don't understand bc you're a man :)' after her non-binary power move moment? Sighs. Yeah.

I think another important thing to remember here is that there were no trans folks in the writer's room on this. Now, this is a tricky one because I think people who aren't part of a certain community should be writing stories outside their own knowledge and experience, and should be encouraged to do so!! I don't think that you need to have everything rubberstamped, and even something written by someone in a certain community isn't going to resonate with everyone in that community. Actually, I think it's unhelpful to start getting into the politics of 'who is allowed to write what' - I think anything written with care and good intention is valuable, especially if the writer is willing to listen to constructive criticism and learn from any mistakes that are made. But I think, as a writer myself, if you are going to write a story about that community, it might be worth 1) talking to them a bit more than I think RTD did - but, to be fair, I don't actually know how much research he did, but, well, see above on the fact I don't think he really got what he was writing about - but also 2) not dismissing writers from that community (and others!), which RTD did in an interview not thaaaaaaat long before the episode aired. Again, to be fair to him, he has since then been like 'oh, we need to mentor and encourage the new generation of trans writers and writers of colour', which, great! But also, sir, then why were you saying that all the scripts you got from minority writers were all awful, angry, and lacked any love for tv like skksks SIR. SIR. The thing that gets me about that comment in particular is that, as someone currently starting out in script writing, I know exactly how hard it is to get at all noticed. It takes a lot of effort, a lot of passion, a lot of hard work and a lot of skill - and a lot of luck too, granted, but not luck along. So, RTD, if these writers got their scripts to your literal desk, as showrunner of Doctor Who...I think they have some love and passion. They HAVE to, to get to the point where he is reading those scripts. Also maybe RTD should unpack the fact that he thought the scripts were bad because they were too angry - I mean, I haven't read them, so I don't know, but maybe, sir, feeling uncomfortable about the anger in a script isn't a bad thing. Not every story is meant to be an easy pill to swallow. There are aromantic stories I want to write about romance as horror, romance as a virus, romance as a destructive force, that I think a lot of alloromantic people will find uncomfortable. Does that mean they're bad? Maybe, lol. Mostly they're bad because they're not written yet lmao, but I don't think the anger and discomfort in them makes them inherently weak. In fact, I think often anger can make a story stronger.

So then, I think The Star Beast left a sour taste in the back of my mouth, despite all the positive aspects of it, because of that. I think that comment also kinda left me frustrated about Dot and Bubble, even though I think that was a fantastic episode and genuinely really well done, and very effective - and I'm genuinely loathe to criticise it at all because I think it was so important - but. Having RTD talking in an interview about wondering how long the audience will take to notice that the cast is all white (and, thus, the depicted society is racist) whilst sitting in a writers room that's all white iiiiiiiiiiis uh. I don't think he thought about that SKKS. I think a lot about Sacha Dhawan talking about how you can be as inclusive on screen as you like, but if it's all 'white behind the lights' then how much does that inclusivity actually mean?

RTD definitely had good intentions and wrote a mostly good story. But he definitely fell down in some regards, aaaaaand well. I don't know. My personal opinion is that he's kind of arrogant and thinks he's infallible as a writer (and I may feel this way bc of the way parts of the fandom seem to put him on a pedestal, if I'm honest) - but I think that he's just human. He doesn't get things perfectly right all the time, and that's absolutely fine, but I think it's interesting and important to discuss those pitfalls, and I just wish he'd stop making it feel like he thinks he can write trans stories better than, yknow, actual trans people, and then write the most cis trans story I've ever seen SKSKSKSK

(AND ACTUALLY - sorry, this is getting long, but it's kind of indicative of the whole industry at the moment? The industry is calling for more diverse voices, more diverse stories - but they also want stories that can appeal to the widest possible audience, the common denominator, and thus "trans stories by trans people for trans people" doesn't actually tick that box. This didn't hit me until I wrote a trans horror script that got shortlisted for a script call, but when I spoke to the (cis) producer and director (who were LOVELY, the producer had a gorgeous dog called Biscuit HAHA) I very quickly realised that they did not get it. They didn't understand. "Why do we have to kill the mirror demon that's the girl part of this trans man?" they asked. "She should get to live too!" But: "She was never a part of him," I had to say. "She was the idea of him that everyone around him thought he was, and thought it so strongly that she became real. It was her or him." They didn't really understand, but on the plus side it did highlight to me what was unclear in my script that none of my (trans) proof readers had picked up on (although my transfemme friend made the HILARIOUS comment that maybe the mirror demon could go and find a nice trans girl to possess? WHICH SKSKSKSKKSKSK I MEAN -))

Anyway. -gestures nebulously- I feel like my thoughts were a lot more concise and well constructed in the week after this episode actually aired hahaha, but I didn't want to throw my hat into the ring back then. I did find it amused how the majority of my cis trans-affirming friends were like 'GREAT EPISODE, RIGHT?!!' and the majority of my trans friends were sending me the grimace emoji in the week after the episode aired LMAO

[cozymochi]

oh nooo... mochi I have just now realized you've combined my childhood and current hyperfixations and

I don't think I can recover 😬😬 ANYWAY I have too many questions about Tia and her life before and after isekai-ing so here's a few

-granma and lottie characters names?

-gramma based off mama Odie?

-how did Tia react to her first culinary crucible?

-her opinion on Crowley?

-and I don't typically like reading character reactions to yuusonas/MCs/OCs, but I genuinely want to know how Tia interacts with the characters? I love her so much ahhh🤩

adios y gracias mochi!

AAAA yay! Well im gonna see if I can address each of these.

-granma and lottie characters names?

Granma’s name is “Eva Dumarais”, from her father’s side. Tia’s middle name is named after her! Granma prefers to be addressed by her name “Eva” or literally anything else. I was intending on including that in practice, but I didn’t want to confuse anybody.

I actually drew up Tia’s friends for my own self reference over HERE!! (The info is still mostly accurate since posting.) But, the blonde girl (that is, yes, very much an intended allusion to Lottie) is named Lisette. A.K.A “Lizzie.” She was Tia’s longest friend. This is them in an old drawing I don’t remember making.

-gramma based off mama Odie?

Not necessarily, however I can see how that allusion can be made. It’s an easy train of thought to have! So, I’m not opposed to it and if anyone thinks that, that’s totally fine. Then I took her eye out for no reason other than it looked cool.

Pretty much every person from Tia’s home-world doesn’t really show up anyway since they’re just people from Tia’s previous life. Not that they don’t have influence on her, but in the grander scheme they aren’t too significant. So I suppose it doesn’t matter either way! I had a drawing of her not in her sleepy time getup but I may have deleted it on accident. WHOOPS!!

-how did Tia react to her first culinary crucible?

SHE ATE IT UP!!!! Probably the most in her element course she’s taken— but Tia always wants to learn new things so I’m sure she went all in. However, she and Grim are counted as a single student. Take that as you will. Total aside, I feel like I’m the only person who takes that into consideration at all 😭.

-her opinion on Crowley?

She screamed and threw a plush monkey at him when first saw his face. As if the talking cat-like monster wasn’t enough. (Context? Who needs it)

Okay AFTER all the initial shock in being transported, magic, coffins, getting shoved into Ramshackle, being the only girl on the entire campus, and god knows what else (which is a story in itself)—-, Tia finds Crowley to be unreliable and capricious.

Tia is a lot more pressing about trying corner the guy about how to get home and question him, but Crowley will usually weasel out of it or pretend not to hear altogether. (It’s sillier in practice)

Besides, he makes her fix issues at the school and deal with it its students, then regularly blackmails, and guilt trips if she has any refusal, so it’s not exactly positive.

On the other hand, Crowley finds Tia really inflexible (and depending on the day, that can be bothersome), but!! On the bright side that can translate into someone just PERFECT for getting these students in line!

Though, because he intentionally gets under her skin for various reasons, that just makes her wanna prove herself more. So in a weird way, she wants to be recognized as capable to him but also is somewhat aware that she’s probably being strung along.

THERE’S A LOT, I FIND TIA AND CROWLEY VERY FUNNY, I just never actively discussed it or showed it much.

-how Tia interacts with the characters?

Given that there’s 20+ characters there’s no way I can feasibly answer this individually in the detail I would like to without making the longest post ever. Cuz, I do have answers!! Pretty much every base universal status quo is still the same, but. Y’know.

But if someone can imagine a generalized Tiana “base” character starting point, and put her near any of these guys— someone could probably make a feasible guess and be mostly on the money, give or take a few details (cuz there are a few things different overall…). There are characters I didn’t think Tia would gel with, but as she came into her own it sorta fell out of my hands, in a way. Lol.

——

As for not being into how other people’s MCs and the sub-categories and how they respond to characters, I just wanna say… I’m the exact same way. It’s exceeding rare for me to do the same. So don’t worry, I feel you. It’s pretty much why I don’t bring up Tia unless I’m posting a drawing with Grim on it OR if somebody asks first jfjdjdhrub so thank u!!! That just means something resonated enough!!

[moonlightdancer26]

I'd love to hear your thoughts about Percy! What is your opinion on him in general? Do you like how his character arc was handled by JKR? What are your thoughts on popular fandom takes about Percy (him being a terrible disgrace to the Weasley family for siding with the Ministry/Voldemort; him being a secret hero of the rebellion who deserved better; etc)? And your thoughts on Percy ships? Who, if anyone, do you ship him with?

I think he’s wicked awesome and way too hated, I will genuinely defend him with my life. If my family treated me that badly I’d tell them to fuck off too, he was literally so excluded from his family because he wasn’t some Quidditch-loving jock and actually preferred to study and stay indoors. And he got mocked consistently just because he wanted a bright future. Sure he may appear a bit stuck-up to those who don’t know him well, but his family?? Plus after he legitimately got the job of his dreams, his father’s immediate reaction was to tell him he didn’t actually earn it and that it was all just a ploy. I would actually be so hurt. Like sure Arthur did end up being right, BUT YOU COULD’VE SAID IT A BIT DIFFERENTLY?? A simple “you earned it anyway, son” or “I’m proud of you” would’ve sufficed, alongside an explanation of why Percy MIGHT have gotten the job. He went about it way too harshly, if I got shut down like that after getting the job I’ve been working for my whole life, I’d have done a lot worse.

And I totally get Percy’s resentment, he felt as though his father wasn’t reaching his full potential due to his proud showcase of Muggle-fangirling. And since he (Arthur) was basically the sole provider in a large family that lived in poverty, I can see why Percy would feel frustration towards his father. Plus why do people act as if Percy was always “so horrible” even before he “abandoned” his family? He literally went RUSHING to Ronald when he got out of the lake in GoF and refused to let go of him, and he loved Ginny to death. He was protective of his younger siblings and was pretty funny imo, it’s hard not to sympathise with him when he has siblings like Fred and George.

He genuinely deserved so much better, he was constantly shut down for his accomplishments and cared so much for his siblings despite their mocking, plus he still came back to apologise to them and then proceeded to see his baby brother die in front of him????? How could you hate him after DH?? I don’t think he’s a disgrace to his family at all, sure he was shitty to Molly but, with what he must’ve been going through at the time, I get it. And any resentment he felt towards his family was completely and utterly justified. Plus he literally apologised, so even if you disagree with what I’m saying and think he’s scum or whatever, he legit still apologised to them? He still redeemed himself? Whatever he’s supposedly done that you hate him for, he redeemed himself for it. And I feel like people forget how young Percy was when all this happened? He’s only like 4 years older than Harry and was still 18/19 when all the family drama occurred, and he held a huge responsibility in the ministry. And having grown up as the lone middle child with the burden of knowing his family isn’t respected much must’ve had a tremendous influence on someone as ambitious as Perce. People should really see things from his perspective sometimes. Imo the only genuinely shitty things he’s done is 1. his treatment of Molly 2. his letter to Ron about Harry (but even then, I completely understand why Percy said what he said), anything other than that is usually just exaggerated by his haters.

One character he’s always reminded me of is Alex Dunphy from Modern Family (*tries to summon Modern Family fans*), she was also the odd one out in her family because she was super studious and introverted. And she had a desperate need to prove herself and was very ambitious, much like Perce. Her meltdowns and extreme studying was treated as a joke to the viewers and her sister Haley constantly made fun of her for it. She reminds me a lot of him tbh, which is why I love both characters so much.

lol this was supposed to be a quick short ask explaining why I love him and who I ship him with, and it resulted in a whole rant 😭 that’s usually how I get whenever his name gets brought up. Also Nonnie, I ship Percy with Oliver :D and I think he and Penelope Clearwater really deserved more screentime, they were such a delightful couple imo.

And thanks for the ask btw, I missed talking about him!!

[rotisseries]

tired of people who want pjo movie references in the disney+ show. "logan lerman should've been-" i don’t care. "poker face in the casino-" actually i hope ms. gaga keeps her entire discography miles away from it. i don't care move on

[cozylittleartblog]

∠( ᐛ 」∠)＿ya boi made washi tapes, please consider Purchasing them. at cozylittleartshoppe on etsy. good print, good sticc, i am obsessed

[expectopaatronum]

the ballad of songbirds and snakes initial review/reaction

(spoilers ahead)

okay first of all. i absolutely loved it and thought it was very truthful to the book and covered all the main elements. francis lawrence just knows how to bring these books to life. tom blyth is just incredible as a young coriolanus snow and i can’t wait to see where his career takes him. i already loved rachel zegler after her performance in west side story, but it just felt like lucy gray was meant for her. her charisma, vocals and acting were just beautiful. the scenes where she’s singing with the covey really just brought those scenes from the book to life. the movie was fast paced and generally entertaining to watch. it felt so good to be back in this world that suzanne collins has created so exquisitely.

the only things i think were lacking, and i did think this when reading the book itself, is that the story feels a bit disjointed. like you’re jumping from place to place. i think the third act should be more fleshed out- more of snow’s time in 12, particularly the events leading up to his betrayal of lucy gray and sejanus. i’d like to see a bit more build up and suspense to those actions. i feel like they feel a bit too impulsive and sudden in line with the overall story. also the end scene at the cabin didn’t make as much sense without him founding out on the morning of running away about his transfer to district 2 imo. bc that felt like his motivation for turning on lucy gray, whereas in the movie he knows about that a lot earlier ?? i also think some scenes could have packed a bit more of an emotional punch? especially some of sejanus’ scenes that felt a bit cut short- like his reaction when marcus is hung up in the arena and his death scene. in general i feel like sejanus’ character and his relationship with coriolanus could have been more fleshed out in the movie.

overall i really enjoyed it and i can’t wait to see it again. it feels like a valuable addition to the franchise. i just don’t feel like it packs that emotional punch that the original trilogy does - but obviously there’s a lot less time to build up the storyline and character relationships in one movie/book. i’m also glad i reread the book before i saw the movie, bc i could hear people whispering around me when they didn’t understand certain things that were going on.. this feels like a movie for the fans, and i don’t know if it will resonate with general audiences as well

[bugdogg]

if i ever seem brave for some of the stuff i admit on here, just know its cause idk how to keep shit to myself. i cower at the thought of judgement and then proceed to expose my whole ass to tumblr anyway, because i dont have a working filter

[dmclemblems]

man, imagine just... letting people have their own opinions of gw and not making fun of people who did or didn’t enjoy it.

people in this fandom are so aggressive.

you can talk about your opinions and even hate or love as strongly as the human heart allows! just... don’t say things like “people are stupid for thinking xyz”. you do realize you may have mutuals or even friends following you that see that and are now apprehensive to talk to you, especially about this game, right? that you might be offending your own friends and acquaintances with insulting terminology and you don’t know a friend feels that way because they’re too anxious to even tell you now because you’ve made it clear that you think everyone with xyz opinion is some insulting and hurting term?

it’s one thing to say things like “this is the best/worst route between both games and I love/hate it more than anything”. it’s another to say something like “everyone who loves/hates gw is an absolute retard who didn’t understand claude’s character in houses in the first place if they loved/hated gw”.

no, I’m not quoting anyone specifically, but I’m trying to iterate to you an example of the sorts of things I’m seeing people saying as if under the assumption that every single person in their space agrees with them and that they’re not risking hurting someone with their words.

yeah, you can hate the route or love the route with every fiber of your being. I’m just personally not sure that’s worth being hateful toward every single other human being who has the opposite opinion as you, or worth making people apprehensive about checking their social media every day because they follow people who are very likely to insult entire groups of people based on their likes/dislike in a fictional universe.

like, yeah, I didn’t enjoy the second half of gw... but you know what’s cool? I’m still close friends with someone who liked it and feels the opposite way that I do about the writing and about claude.

[phantomrose96]

If anyone wants to know why every tech company in the world right now is clamoring for AI like drowned rats scrabbling to board a ship, I decided to make a post to explain what's happening.

(Disclaimer to start: I'm a software engineer who's been employed full time since 2018. I am not a historian nor an overconfident Youtube essayist, so this post is my working knowledge of what I see around me and the logical bridges between pieces.)

Okay anyway. The explanation starts further back than what's going on now. I'm gonna start with the year 2000. The Dot Com Bubble just spectacularly burst. The model of "we get the users first, we learn how to profit off them later" went out in a no-money-having bang (remember this, it will be relevant later). A lot of money was lost. A lot of people ended up out of a job. A lot of startup companies went under. Investors left with a sour taste in their mouth and, in general, investment in the internet stayed pretty cooled for that decade. This was, in my opinion, very good for the internet as it was an era not suffocating under the grip of mega-corporation oligarchs and was, instead, filled with Club Penguin and I Can Haz Cheezburger websites.

Then around the 2010-2012 years, a few things happened. Interest rates got low, and then lower. Facebook got huge. The iPhone took off. And suddenly there was a huge new potential market of internet users and phone-havers, and the cheap money was available to start backing new tech startup companies trying to hop on this opportunity. Companies like Uber, Netflix, and Amazon either started in this time, or hit their ramp-up in these years by shifting focus to the internet and apps.

Now, every start-up tech company dreaming of being the next big thing has one thing in common: they need to start off by getting themselves massively in debt. Because before you can turn a profit you need to first spend money on employees and spend money on equipment and spend money on data centers and spend money on advertising and spend money on scale and and and

But also, everyone wants to be on the ship for The Next Big Thing that takes off to the moon.

So there is a mutual interest between new tech companies, and venture capitalists who are willing to invest $$$ into said new tech companies. Because if the venture capitalists can identify a prize pig and get in early, that money could come back to them 100-fold or 1,000-fold. In fact it hardly matters if they invest in 10 or 20 total bust projects along the way to find that unicorn.

But also, becoming profitable takes time. And that might mean being in debt for a long long time before that rocket ship takes off to make everyone onboard a gazzilionaire.

But luckily, for tech startup bros and venture capitalists, being in debt in the 2010's was cheap, and it only got cheaper between 2010 and 2020. If people could secure loans for ~3% or 4% annual interest, well then a $100,000 loan only really costs $3,000 of interest a year to keep afloat. And if inflation is higher than that or at least similar, you're still beating the system.

So from 2010 through early 2022, times were good for tech companies. Startups could take off with massive growth, showing massive potential for something, and venture capitalists would throw infinite money at them in the hopes of pegging just one winner who will take off. And supporting the struggling investments or the long-haulers remained pretty cheap to keep funding.

You hear constantly about "Such and such app has 10-bazillion users gained over the last 10 years and has never once been profitable", yet the thing keeps chugging along because the investors backing it aren't stressed about the immediate future, and are still banking on that "eventually" when it learns how to really monetize its users and turn that profit.

The pandemic in 2020 took a magnifying-glass-in-the-sun effect to this, as EVERYTHING was forcibly turned online which pumped a ton of money and workers into tech investment. Simultaneously, money got really REALLY cheap, bottoming out with historic lows for interest rates.

Then the tide changed with the massive inflation that struck late 2021. Because this all-gas no-brakes state of things was also contributing to off-the-rails inflation (along with your standard-fare greedflation and price gouging, given the extremely convenient excuses of pandemic hardships and supply chain issues). The federal reserve whipped out interest rate hikes to try to curb this huge inflation, which is like a fire extinguisher dousing and suffocating your really-cool, actively-on-fire party where everyone else is burning but you're in the pool. And then they did this more, and then more. And the financial climate followed suit. And suddenly money was not cheap anymore, and new loans became expensive, because loans that used to compound at 2% a year are now compounding at 7 or 8% which, in the language of compounding, is a HUGE difference. A $100,000 loan at a 2% interest rate, if not repaid a single cent in 10 years, accrues to $121,899. A $100,000 loan at an 8% interest rate, if not repaid a single cent in 10 years, more than doubles to $215,892.

Now it is scary and risky to throw money at "could eventually be profitable" tech companies. Now investors are watching companies burn through their current funding and, when the companies come back asking for more, investors are tightening their coin purses instead. The bill is coming due. The free money is drying up and companies are under compounding pressure to produce a profit for their waiting investors who are now done waiting.

You get enshittification. You get quality going down and price going up. You get "now that you're a captive audience here, we're forcing ads or we're forcing subscriptions on you." Don't get me wrong, the plan was ALWAYS to monetize the users. It's just that it's come earlier than expected, with way more feet-to-the-fire than these companies were expecting. ESPECIALLY with Wall Street as the other factor in funding (public) companies, where Wall Street exhibits roughly the same temperament as a baby screaming crying upset that it's soiled its own diaper (maybe that's too mean a comparison to babies), and now companies are being put through the wringer for anything LESS than infinite growth that Wall Street demands of them.

Internal to the tech industry, you get MASSIVE wide-spread layoffs. You get an industry that used to be easy to land multiple job offers shriveling up and leaving recent graduates in a desperately awful situation where no company is hiring and the market is flooded with laid-off workers trying to get back on their feet.

Because those coin-purse-clutching investors DO love virtue-signaling efforts from companies that say "See! We're not being frivolous with your money! We only spend on the essentials." And this is true even for MASSIVE, PROFITABLE companies, because those companies' value is based on the Rich Person Feeling Graph (their stock) rather than the literal profit money. A company making a genuine gazillion dollars a year still tears through layoffs and freezes hiring and removes the free batteries from the printer room (totally not speaking from experience, surely) because the investors LOVE when you cut costs and take away employee perks. The "beer on tap, ping pong table in the common area" era of tech is drying up. And we're still unionless.

Never mind that last part.

And then in early 2023, AI (more specifically, Chat-GPT which is OpenAI's Large Language Model creation) tears its way into the tech scene with a meteor's amount of momentum. Here's Microsoft's prize pig, which it invested heavily in and is galivanting around the pig-show with, to the desperate jealousy and rapture of every other tech company and investor wishing it had that pig. And for the first time since the interest rate hikes, investors have dollar signs in their eyes, both venture capital and Wall Street alike. They're willing to restart the hose of money (even with the new risk) because this feels big enough for them to take the risk.

Now all these companies, who were in varying stages of sweating as their bill came due, or wringing their hands as their stock prices tanked, see a single glorious gold-plated rocket up out of here, the likes of which haven't been seen since the free money days. It's their ticket to buy time, and buy investors, and say "see THIS is what will wring money forth, finally, we promise, just let us show you."

To be clear, AI is NOT profitable yet. It's a money-sink. Perhaps a money-black-hole. But everyone in the space is so wowed by it that there is a wide-spread and powerful conviction that it will become profitable and earn its keep. (Let's be real, half of that profit "potential" is the promise of automating away jobs of pesky employees who peskily cost money.) It's a tech-space industrial revolution that will automate away skilled jobs, and getting in on the ground floor is the absolute best thing you can do to get your pie slice's worth.

It's the thing that will win investors back. It's the thing that will get the investment money coming in again (or, get it second-hand if the company can be the PROVIDER of something needed for AI, which other companies with venture-back will pay handsomely for). It's the thing companies are terrified of missing out on, lest it leave them utterly irrelevant in a future where not having AI-integration is like not having a mobile phone app for your company or not having a website.

So I guess to reiterate on my earlier point:

Drowned rats. Swimming to the one ship in sight.

[kethabali]

i can finally like have that semester where i dont have to think about school all the time its only 40% of my thoughts

[starlit-mansion]

i still keep getting recommended posts about the james somerton debacle (unsurprising) and i swear to god, at this point i've spent more time trying to remember what my reaction was to watching his yoi video a while back while half-sleep deprived or smth than i a) spent watching the video and b) spent thinking about any other creator i watched one mid video from and ignored after

[inkskinned]

i think a lot about exactly 1 thing from the roman empire: the concept of bread and circus. the idea was that if your population was fed and entertained, they wouldn't revolt. you are asking us to give up our one small life, is the thing - for under 15 dollars an hour.

what would that buy, even. i am trading weekends and late nights and my back health. i am trading slow mornings and long walks and cortisol levels. i am trading sleep and silence and peace. for ... this. for what barely-covers-rent.

life really is more expensive right now. you aren't making that up. i make almost 3 times what i did 5 years ago, and despite an incredibly equal series of bills - i am still struggling. the most expensive line item i added was to own a dog. the money is just evaporating.

we were okay with it because it's a cost-benefit analysis. i could handle the customer harassment and standing all day and the manager's constantly changing temperament - i was coming home to hope, and my life planned in a blue envelope. three hours would buy me my dog's food for a month. i can give up three hours for him, for his shiny coat and wide, happy mouth. three days could be a new mattress, if i was thrifty. if i really scrimped and saved, we could maybe afford a trip into the city.

recently i cried in the car about the price of groceries.

business majors will be mad at me, but my most inflammatory opinion is that people should never be valued at the same place as products. your staff should not be a series of numbers in an excel sheet that you can just "replace" whenever you need something at that moment. your staff should be people, end of sentence.

it feels like someone somewhere is playing a very bad video game. like my life is a toy. like someone opened an app on their phone and hired me in diner dash ultra. they don't need to pay me well or treat me alright - they can always just show me the door. there is always someone more desperate, always someone more willing.

but i go to work and know i could save for years and not afford housing. i am never going to own my own home, most likely. i have no idea how to afford her ring, much less the wedding. my dog doesn't have his own yard. everything i love is on subscription. if i lose my job, i have no "nest egg" to catch my falling.

this thin life - they want me to give up summer for it. to open my mouth and throat and swallow the horrible hours and counted keystrokes. they want me to give up mountains and any non-federal holiday. to give up snow days. to give up talking to my mom whenever i want. to give up visiting the ocean and hearing the waves.

bread and circus worked for a while, actually. it was the kind of plan that would probably now be denounced by republicans as socialist commie liberal pronoun bullshit.

but sometimes i wonder if we should point them to the part of the history book that says: it worked until it didn't.

[kaijuposting]

"Saw traps for people with moral OCD" is a phrase that has embedded myself into my brain because, well, Saw traps for people with moral OCD are everywhere.

Stuff that basically amounts to...

"You have to listen to my opinions on [issue], or else you don't care about [issue]. (Constantly talks about how people like you are the absolute worst.)"

Anything that's functionally like, "you have to let me tear you down over things you can't control or you're a bad person."

Anything that's functionally like, "you have to let me vent to you whenever and however I want or else you're a bad person."

"If you enjoy X media/trope, you just hate Y people."

"Everyone knows that X thing is harmful/hateful; if you engaged in it, it's just because you were fine with perpetuating hate/harm."

"You should have just known better/should know this already!"

This thread over here talks about the inherent issues of putting this kind of stuff out there. The TL;DR is that it really only works on people who are mentally unwell and have poor boundaries, while just pissing off everyone else. It really doesn't matter if you're technically correct; you're still attacking people, and that means they're not wrong to block you.

I think that many of these Saw traps are created when people effectively write posts directed toward people who don't want to help, rather than the ones who do. Like, if you catch yourself writing an angry, shame-laden post, ask yourself: who are you writing it for and what are the odds you're going to change their minds? If your mental image is some smug fuck or angry reactionary, you're writing for the wrong person. Write for the person who's curious, who's willing to learn.

Also? Work on figuring out how to transmute negative feelings into positive, encouraging rhetoric. EG:

"Why is there no X positivity?" -> "Let's hear it for X!"

"No one cares about Y problem!" -> "Hey, we need more recognition of Y problem" or "I haven't seen many people talking about Y problem, so here's some info on what's up."

"If you don't reblog this, you don't care about [group]" -> "Please reblog this, it would mean a lot for us [group]."

And if you're really super duper frustrated and want to vent with a lot of nasty words and sentiments? Consider taking it to a private vent channel or a journal or somewhere that a stranger with moral OCD/scrupulosity isn't likely to run across it.

Remember, most people don't want to hurt anyone. More people are ignorant than malicious. People naturally want to do the right thing, so if you feel like you have to guilt them or shame them into it, there's probably a fundamental communication issue somewhere, or they simply lack the context to understand why what you're saying is so important.

[sexhaver]

ive made this post before but a good chunk of the dumb takes on this site (and irl, but especially on here) stem from laypeople assuming they are smarter than an entire field of research. it goes beyond the Dunning-Kruger Effect and starts veering into outright contempt for intellectualism. like, to use a specific example: there are people still talking about "poisoning AI training datasets" with Nightshade and its ilk three months into 2024 (as if the training datasets still need to be scraped and AI research companies hadn't immediately figured out how to defeat it by applying a 1% Gaussian blur within the first week). hearing someone parrot this talking point instantly lowers my opinion of them for two reasons: first, they just don't know what they're talking about and refuse to learn, but secondly... you really think that little of the developers behind these AI art models? you really think they would just throw up their hands and go "ah shucks guys, they started poisoning the datasets, time to pack it up". like at this point my brain automatically interprets 99% of AI art criticism as "i am so monumentally self-centered and egotistical i think i know more than every expert in this field despite refusing to do any research"

[mrfoox]

Uh.... Love how.... Instead of gently reassuring me or such whenever I say something really bad about myself Oliver just sigh loudly/grunt and then go to argue against me and finally gently tell me the opposite :')