#but like with my difficulty suspending my disbelief...

[smile-files]

this is so silly. one of the perks of having goody gardens as a thing is that it gives me an excuse to have like 50 billion fursonas. but then i'll keep thinking "but what about my truesona" as if that doesn't completely defeat the purpose

[gayestpiano]

I really cannot suspend my disbelief enough to accept that anyone, not to mention a goat, would have more difficulty saying galinda than glinda. you're telling me it's hard to add a vowel between two consonants?? I don't know the anatomy of a goat but frankly I feel like it would have a harder time with either g or l than a vowel separating them. I cannot think of an English consonant cluster less fluid than 'gl'

[aetheltrythh]

On the Origin of Dream's Raven Kink

I've finished a new fic, you can read it also on AO3. Thanks to @tryan-a-bex for beta reading :-).

Summary

Dream of the Endless has not always had a raven. Not until he got the raven kink from a cave woman named Lusyjen.

Notes:

With a story like this, every word is a potential trap for some sort of historical inaccuracy, so, kindly suspend your disbelief and let's go!

Prologue

"Dream of the Endless always has a raven," Lucienne says, tilting her head, brimming with concern, as I am about to leave for the Waking again, standing on the pier at the sea of dreams and nightmares.

No, not always. You forget. It has been long.

You were the first one and after you, I could not do without a raven.

Only now, I must. It is a fair story that you are trying to tell me, but  "Jessamy was the last."

I could not protect her. It is as if a part of me died. Yet another part. If the pain of it will ever pass, I do not know, although I am aware that all memories dull with time, even mine. The bond was... strong. I spent much time looking at the world through her eyes. I know what she would tell me if she was here now and discarded her usual diplomacy. That I should get out more. Use my own eyes. That I do not really need her. But I do. Company is a rare thing. I think you are here for something else, I can still hear Hob's voice in my mind. I am loath to admit it but I do yearn for something, someone. Perhaps I should put more trust in Lucienne, if not in anyone else. Though I am not sure whether I know how. Whether I ever have. She told me she did not feel abandoned when the Dreaming started to crumble and the library was lost to her. But she must have felt... lonely. And yet she remained, even if she could have crossed to the Waking.

I must find a way to make it up to her. Alleviate her burden. Otherwise, there may come a day when everything is too much, even for her.

She does not see my hands tremble as I face away from her and the sea parts before me.

Lucienne

45,000 years ago in what is today mainland Greece (and remember folks, this is the Ice Age).

The nights grow longer; another season of cold and snow is nigh. I know that I will not...would not...last through it. My tribe knows that too. Nobody has said anything, but when we arrive in a deep valley wherein lies a cave that I hold most sacred - and therefore, they do too - we stop. Shelters are built among the trees in front of the cave. We... they...will be here for days after....

I am not afraid. Or am I?

When the preparations are done, four of the men carry me inside, where a fire burns already. I can no longer smell the salt and fish in the air from the sea - the great water that one cannot drink - as I could outside. It is not far. Shadows would lengthen for maybe one ell before one would arrive at its shore. I am fond of the sea though it is also dreadful. They lay me down on a flat stone covered by several layers of fur. Many years ago, my mother and I put paintings on these walls. Ravens and wolves. Facing my father's and brother's red deer and horses painted in red ochre. They are still there, but now I can barely see them. My eyes have weakened to the point of not being able to find herbs in woods and meadows, making me rely on my nose. My remaining teeth are worn out. I can only eat, with difficulty, the most tender meat and berries and mushrooms. My joints are painful and swollen when walking from sunrise to sunset. Hunting is a thing of the past. I have lost half of my hair and I know that there is some foulness in my blood. I have lived much longer than most. Perhaps it is a thing that happens when one has seen too many winters. The cold consumes the soul's strength coursing in one's veins. I am the wise woman of my tribe, a wosa, and yet there is so much I do not know.

I thumb the cave lion teeth hanging from a flax string around my neck. They have as many notches in them as all fingers and toes of two healthy people together. For as long as I can remember, I have been making a notch for every time that the snow melted and birches and oaks sprouted new leaves, heralding the spring and the coming abundance of food. My finger stops on the second notch of the oldest tooth, yellowed by time; that was when I first encountered ravens. Magnificent black birds, their feathers shiny like water flowing over rocks. None of us has seen such as them in the land from which we journeyed, in need of more space and more game. Others of my tribe thought them croaking, but to me, they spoke. Not in words, precisely, but in visions and feelings. Two ravens have been following me ever since. The elders did not believe me. I was too young for such things, they said.  A few years later, when I crafted a lightweight spear with an antler tip as I saw it in a vision of other people making it - I observed them as if I was perched on a tree right above them - the elders shook their heads. A child's toy, they said. A spear must be thick and have a stone tip, they said. When I returned to our settlement with a deer so large I could barely carry it, they began paying attention.

A pair of ravens now wait silently outside the cave for my last flight. As usual, they have been given the best meat from this morning's kill in sacrifice. And eyes. They need them for their farsight. I can feel their contentment. They will mourn me but they know that all things must end. As did their predecessors; they are not the first ones. It is only natural and proper. My niece and nephew begin to play their flutes made of mute swan bone. Another notch on the first tooth calls me to touch it. That was the year I first saw the strange man-shaped spirit in my dreams. I have seen him many times after but he never spoke and I never told anyone about him. He would not have approved of that, I felt. But I know that it is he who has been helping me to guide shards of people's souls back to their bodies. It is an easy thing for a soul-part to wander off into the unseen realms after a terror or loss. Not so easy to lead it back where it belongs. I have also been reconciling the malevolent spirits that cause pains and ailments. But that too, has its bounds. I can no longer lure them away from myself.

I open my eyes. The man-shaped spirit stands two steps from the foot of my stone bed as if called by my thoughts. Even though he has never appeared to me outside of the dreamworld, even here, I am the only one who sees him. The others but avoid the space where he is standing. He is nothing like men of the waking world; his face is smooth like a young woman's, skin without a fault, as light as the palest seashell. No one has that, not my kin, not any people I have heard of in the countless trading circles I took part in. And then there are his eyes... I grew accustomed to them and they are kind but the colour is all wrong. Blue as the sea in sunlight. And yet, they are beautiful. He looks sorrowful, more than usual, but even so, the corners of his lips move slightly upwards when he looks at me and nods. I shut my eyes again. 

The men of my tribe approach me one by one, touching my arms and shoulders, then fanning out towards the light coming from the cave entrance. The women do the same, only, they take positions in the opposite direction, heading further into the darkness and its heart; there is a passage there, leading down to a cavern with a lake where rocks hang from the roof like the limbs of the sea creatures that have so many of them. The women are to guide my soul into the shadows before it can enter another world, if the Great Mother wills it so. I would perhaps welcome it. 

A vision that I have had for a long time bothers me as I have never been able to truly grasp it. Perhaps I will when I join my ancestors. I have been making signs, not only on my lion teeth, but on countless bones, on cave walls, on wood, and in the dirt. To mark the passage of the moon and the sun, to imitate what animal footprints and herb leaves look like and thus capture their essence to persist long after I am dead. But what if there was more than that? A way to keep our songs and the stories that we tell when sitting at the evening fire. The earliest ones I have heard are long gone from my memory. I wish they weren't.

I breathe slowly. I am ready. Almost no one dies like this, without much pain. I am lucky. My chest is heavy and I fall into the warm embrace of sleep.

***

When I wake, I know that I have left my body, irrevocably. Sitting up, I look around myself. Still in a cave, but it is different. This one has an even higher ceiling and a large opening through which a myriad of stars are shining. At the sides, several fires are burning, each of a different colour. I touch my feet slowly to the ground. Sand. I look to the far end of the cave.

"Welcome in my realm and in my abode, Lusyjen." The pale spirit hasn't opened his mouth, but I can hear his words all the same. His first words to me. "Come closer." He sits in a stone seat, several steps above the floor, black fur with long hair from an animal unknown to me wrapped around his bare shoulders, legs covered with a sort of black-hide leggings, the reason for which I cannot understand as his dwelling is summer-warm. No matter, the ways of otherworldly beings are incomprehensible. They have their own reasons for everything and their moods are volatile. Behind him, gemstone crystals are protruding from the wall, larger and clearer than all the stones that traders have ever brought before me.

I come to stand still at the foot of the steps. What he is, I do not know even now. Not a spirit of forests or rivers. Not of the mountains or the sea. Something larger than that still. Perhaps the Moon himself. The pale guardian of night and sleep, clothed in the colour of raven feathers.

I bow my head as he descends to me. Not knowing how to address him properly, now that he has decided to use words, in my mind, I conjure a vision of wolves honouring the night and the moon with their howls, of the silent wings of night owls, and of children fast asleep in their mothers' arms.

He gently lifts my chin and looks into my eyes. "You may wonder why you are here. It is within my power to offer you residence in the Dreaming and my protection, as you died in your sleep." The Dreaming...that's what he calls this other world then. The whole of it is...his? Observing me with curiosity, he sits upright, hands planted firmly on the sides of his seat. Then he leans slightly leans forward. "In turn, I would ask you to be my messenger and my eyes and ears in the waking world."

"Yrshaya," I say; a word for someone of great esteem and status. "It would be my honour."

One does not refuse a call to serve a being such as him.

"Very well." He smiles in a small, secretive way. Something stirs in my chest... I have never had children but I would offer my protection to him too, however insignificant it may be, as I would protect and care for a young one. He is so thin. Like we sometimes are after a season of poor hunting. "You may choose any form that you like. A woman. A man. An animal. Anything in between. You are no longer bound to mortal flesh."

For a little while, I think about it, but I have no real doubt.

"A raven."

And then, I am much smaller and I have wings. Extending them, I look at my new feathers and try to flap them. They lift me into the air and I land on the nearest thing - the spirit's shoulder - which is also a very good place to be. He angles his head towards me and strokes my back lightly.

This gives me the boldness to ask, "Do you have a name, yrshaya? I should like to know, if I am to serve you."

His voice rumbles at the back of my head and when it does, there is no space for anything else. "Not a name like yours. But. I am known. As. Dream of the Endless. The Prince of Stories. And the Shaper of Forms."

Dream.

What Endless might be, I cannot grasp. All things must end, and begin, again and again. But I know now that I have always been his creature. It is right. I am skilled at moving in the dreamworld and bringing back stories to tell men and women to heal them. I know the Waking and the seen and unseen paths of people and animals, even though I yearn to learn more.

I cannot resist carding through his hair with my beak and brushing my head softly against his cheek. Sitting down on the steps with a sigh, he lets me.

Notes

I have done quite a lot of research for such a short fic, but still, there is probably a lot of bullshit. A good things is that no one who has lived in that time is going to read it, so hopefully, no one will be personally offended :D. Unless we have a paleolithic Hob Gadling among us.

The climate was much colder in the Ice Age than it is today, even in the Mediterranean. Hence the concern with winter.

I do not know where the word wosa came from According to ChatGPT, it's not from any known language, so I hope I haven't stolen it from some work of fiction. If so, please tell me.

I set the story at the beginning of the upper paleolithic transition, which is supposed to be the beginning of 'modern' humanity. It looks like we have started to think in new ways and do lots of new shenanigans. See for example this video by John Vervaeke from cca 00:26:00

The common notion is that women in hunter-gatherer societies did not hunt, just gather, but it’s not that clear anymore. They actually may have.

Regarding blue eyes, that would be shocking at the time. Literally no one had that, the trait started to develop from around 10,000 years ago. Regarding light skin colour, it is my understanding that even in people who migrated to northern regions such as Europe and Asia, at this point, it wouldn't have had time to develop. Dream is supposed to look like to the person who sees him, but I did this to emphasize that Lucienne can see his otherworldliness.

I am horrible, I just had to dress Dream in pre-historic leather pants and some spectacular fur over bare chest and shoulders :-).

The question is, when does Lucienne become the librarian? If it's with the invention of cuneiform, she'll have to wait for quite a bit before her vision comes true...

[geraniums-red]

T J Klune - The House in the Cerulean Sea

This felt like a children's book of the sort written in the first half of the 20th century, but with rather queerer romances. It's light and readable, with an interesting mix of magical creatures but with a cartoonish feel that made me struggle to suspend my disbelief.

The two main settings are a dystopian government organisation with grim offices in a city where it rains all the time, and an idyllic island where it is mostly sunny and children and adults have outdoor adventures when not at school. (The British Empire overtones of wearing khaki explorer's outfits and pretending you're on an island with cannibals are never addressed.)

Many of the characters have had tragic backstories, but the difficulties encountered in the book are overcome pretty easily, and those with power all back down when stood up to, instead of using that power to retaliate and ruin people's lives. Some threats are made, but these seem to be forgotten about when the time comes to act on them.

There's also the question of 'if magic is so powerful, why are the magical people not in charge?', but this is a common flaw in magical settings, so is a fairly minor quibble.

[bookaddict24-7]

REVIEWS OF THE WEEK!

Books I’ve read so far in 2023!

Friend me on Goodreads here to follow my more up to date reading journey for the year!

___

132. Garnet Flats by Devney Perry--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

While I really enjoyed this one, I miss that suspenseful mystery that filled the first book and a little bit of the second book. With that being said, however, I LOVED the tension between the characters here and how he has to grovel to win her back.

I'm normally not a fan of second chance romances, but I ate this one up. I couldn't stop reading it and I just wanted to know why he has to win her back in the first place (like, what did you do, dude?)

The twist was a bit...listen, you need to super suspend your disbelief because this was some telenovela twists and turns LOL. But that spice was spicy (definitely spicier than the first book). I know this is probably mid-spice for a lot of seasoned romance readers, but I think there should be a fine balance.

I have started the fourth book, but my brain isn't in the vacation mentality anymore. Will I ever finish it? We will see.

___

133. The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb by R.L. Stine--⭐️⭐️

Sigh.

I never read these as a kid and some of these books make me wonder what 10 year-old me would have thought. This one was just...it feels like a misleading book. I don't know why I expected more LOL. The key is to not expect anything.

___

134. Broken Promise by Linwood Barclay--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I am convinced that every book this author writes will always throw me for a loop.

I picked this one up knowing it was the first in a series because I accidentally read book four earlier this month or last month. I needed to know what had started it all! Of course, there were allusions to other characters from earlier books, so maybe I will never truly be caught up lol.

This one started with a bunch of characters and I'll admit that I was lost at first, wondering if I was going to enjoy this. Then twists started to pop up and I was hooked. Then one of the bigger twists happened and my jaw dropped. Barclay is one of the only authors that will ever get that reaction from me. His books are like a drug for those twisty turns.

I will definitely be checking out the rest of this series, where I will probably encounter more characters from other books I still haven't read by him.

Also, another thing to note is how well Barclay is setting up the rest of this series--especially with that cliffhanger.

___

135. Jude Saves the World by Ronnie Riley--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I am absolutely adoring seeing all of this representation in younger fiction!

I loved the wholesome friendship between Jude and their best friend, and how open they were to someone new who needed companionship and friendship during a hard time. I also think a lot of kids in Jude's position may be able to relate with the difficulty of living with a mask on in order to not offend the family in their life who might not be able to understand the nuances of gender and sexuality.

I think the most important aspect of this book, however, is how Jude uses their voice to give voice to others who might feel voiceless--especially in a community that might not be as open as others when it comes to the LGBTQ+ community. I think it's so important to not only see the kindness and large heart that Jude has, but how they were able to create a community for others of any age who may not have the space to be themselves and speak out about their experiences. It goes to show that age isn't a limit when it comes to wanting to create a space for others.

This was a sweet, oftentimes jarring, and heartfelt story. I loved all of it!

___

136. The Getaway by Lamar Giles--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Listen, a good horror book doesn't have to be gory to freak you out. Giles proves this in his novel, THE GETAWAY. Not only did he create a strangely familiar environment (so we could imagine ourselves there), but he also infuses it with some of the worst behaviours and prejudices (read: racism) in our society.

I didn't know what to expect when I went into this book. The cover was incredible, so I'll admit that this was a complete cover buy. The themes inside the book gave me as much chills as the cover, since the racism and prejudices were unflinching. This made me think of GET OUT if it was set in Disney World. Like...creepy af setting with a super disturbing story of white rich people who are living out their wildest dreams in the face of an apocalypse. Also, a perfect and creepy example of "the good ones" stereotype that we so often see when there is a Black family living among the rich white people.

If you're going to jump into this one, and I highly recommend it, be prepared for the TWs. I'm not kidding when I say that the racism is unflinching in this one. There's the unaliving Black people in a horrible but historical way, and so many comments made that it will make you want to take a breather.

Be prepared.

___

137. Bad Cree by Jessica Johns--⭐️⭐️⭐️

While this book had some entertaining points, in the end, I found it to be just OK. I was neither disappointed, nor feeling all sorts of ways by the end of the book. I just shrugged because it felt like it was missing something.

I kind of almost feel like I was catfished with this book, in a way. I did appreciate the Indigenous mythology and they monster (because THAT was pretty cool). I also enjoyed the familial relationships. My meh-ness stems from the lack of horror I felt while reading this. Sure, there were one or two creepy moments at the beginning, but by the end of the book, I was just patiently waiting for it to end.

I feel kind of bad because so many of my friends loved it, so I know I'm an outlier here. But I just expected more?

Anyway, I recommend it if you want to dive into a spooky book that isn't really spooky. Also, if you want to read an indigenous story but explores familial bonds and culture (highly recommend it for those parts!). In a way, it made me think a little of EMPIRE OF THE WILD and how that one freaked so many people out, but I just felt meh by the end.

___

138. The Visitor by K.A. Applegate--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

After reading the wild twist at the end of the first book, we jump right into the story where the kids are trying to find a way to keep their planet safe. I liked that this one delved into the effects of these aliens taking over the people around them. It also had some pretty heartbreaking moments since the changes are heavily affecting the friend of the mc of this book. (each book changes narrator between the kids in the group).

I will always find it so fun and fascinating seeing their minds when they change into a new animal.

Loving this series so far and also, justice for the one kid whose life changed so much after book one.

___

139. Scorpia Rising by Anthony Horowitz--⭐️⭐️⭐️

One step closer to finishing this series!!

I'll be honest, this wasn't my favourite of the collection. While I enjoyed the later action and twists (even though one twist was like a knife to the heart), I wasn't a big fan of how much we saw of the villain's plans. One of the things I really enjoy about this series is how twisty it can be, but in telling us everything that the villains are planning for Alex, it kind of ruined it for me. I like being surprised, not being shown a map of what's going to happen (and then actually going through with it). It made the beginning of the book a little meh and dragged on.

I'm looking forward to the next books, but while I'm not as excited about this one, like I said before, this one had some fun and typical Alex moments--like the villains completely underestimating Alex. I don't know how this kid is still alive.

I AM curious, however, about how the next books will be after that big twist that just destroyed Alex.

Hopefully will read the next one sometime this year lol

___

Have you read any of these books? Would you recommend them?

___

Happy reading!

[notesofarichlycolorednight]

it's just. the beginning wasn't actually that bad. it was a little goofy but i could suspend my disbelief enough for that

but the more i watch, the more the story and the writing unravels. it reveals major plot holes and contrivances that i'm having more and more difficulty suspending my disbelief for

i love spy shows and movies!! and you can do goofy ones, too!! but this is missing the mark for me in a huge way

i even think you can combine a goofy spy show with the found family trope. but this anime is like a guide on how Not to do it

[fortressofserenity]

On the difficulty of making a Superman game

When it comes to making a Superman game, let alone a good one at that, it’s pretty hard to pull off in reality due to the inherent logistics found in the Superman stories alone. A game developer on a certain forum pointed out that a good Superman game would pretty much be more games in one, each one of them too disparate to mix together cohesively. I also think it’s got to do with how disparate some Superman villains are, that makes it harder to make them fit in a game this seamlessly as possible. If you take Myxzptlk, he’s an imp with the ability to manipulate reality.

Putting him in a game where Clark Kent has to struggle between his work as a journalist and his time as Superman would be really hard to pull off, because he really doesn’t seem to fit in well and would work better as a villain or boss for some other character. This gets more complicated if you add in Silver Banshee, who’s more of the supernatural variety and possibly even harder to suspend disbelief with. So much so that she’s given a more technologically inspired version in My Life With Superman, where I feel it’s one of those adaptations of Superman that could easily lend itself to video games.

An even tougher one, though he’s neither of the two, would be Lex Luthor. Without his armour and other equipment, he’s another human being who would have to survive being pitted against an extraterrestrial demigod that the only way to have him work in a video game is to make him into a protagonist, but it seems nobody wants Superman to be portrayed as a bad guy or antagonist. It would lead to a more coherent gaming experience, but it’s also something that no Superman fan would ever want. The search for a good Superman video game continues.

If a number of Superman villains are too disparate to work together in a video game, then there’s the issue of having to essentially partition Superman into two different characters. It might be possible to do a video game about Superman’s life in journalism, but there are fans who want to see him do amazing feats whilst confronting a colourful cast of villains that unless if a compromise were reached, it would be incredibly hard to do in practise. Spider-Man does seem to have some of the same problems Superman does, but he still manages to star in his own video game series suggest that it’s likely many of his villains aren’t too disparate.

To the point where it would have to be one or the other, I feel there are aspects of both the Superman stories and Superman himself that are too disparate to lend itself to video gaming. There are Superman characters that make it harder to suspend disbelief in, then there are Superman characters who would work as the protagonist far better than Superman would. Then there are certain aspects of Superman that would easily lend itself to video gaming like journalism, but people want him to also do incredible feats and get into fights with otherwise disparate villains. So a good Superman game will be one of those white whales that people want to capture, but can’t get a hold of.

[sevenrs]

in the broadcast nsh says that their puppets' faces don't have articulation at all

and that's the issue here. it is the fact that it is blatantly wrong. the broadcast claims that iterator puppet's faces "[don't] have articulation" when we can see ingame that they do

if you want to believe that they can only blink and can't move their eyelids in more complex ways to represent how we move eyebrows that's fine. doesn't stop this part of the lore from feeling wrong and a lot of people ignoring it. i think a lot of people, artists especially, already ignore the articulatuon part of this broadcast in favor of giving iterators more cartoon-like expressions

i want to preface this half by saying this is my opinion. what anyone else headcanons is not my business nor place to "police" or say why anyone is "wrong" (because you're not!). these are my personal reasons why i cannot suspend my disbelief for spearmaster learning sign language BEFORE the mark of communication

i have an issue w the sign language bit too but it's not because spearmaster and suns are incapable of learning it (though i'm sure there may be some difficulties coming to a consensus, since their anatomy IS different and their "hands" (does spearmaster have hands?) and bodies do not move in the same ways)

the issue w spearmaster being able to learn sign language is that suns never gave it the mark of communication. animal intellegence and super computer (and human) evolved/were built differently

spearmaster and slugcats in general are not unintellegent. they are very smart creatures, but their intellegence focuses more on being a slugcat (finding food, avoiding predators, communicating with fellow slugcats) then being an iterator (coming up with many ideas at once, knowing & using complex words, grammar, etc. to communicate with other iterators and ancients, reading)

take koko the gorilla. she probably didn't know sign language. the study on her was pretty flawed. the researchers observing her had a very oral view of a non oral language, which, despite having "american" in the name, ASL has its own seperate grammar and syntax from spoken english. words that sound similar in spoken english do not look/have similar signs in ASL. claims that koko used similar "sounding" words to mean different things is a bit. sketchy considering all of that. koko and other apes taught to use sign language lacked context and grammar when signing as well, displaying less an understanding of the language and more "if i move like this, i get a reward." koko would often resign, changing how she moved her hands and fingers when prompted, until she got a reward

for a more in depth look at this, i would watch why koko (probably) couldn't talk by Soup Emporium on youtube if anyone is interested

slugcats and iterators are not real creatures, nor do they likely speak and interact in real languages, but when rain world tries very hard to make you feel like an animal in an ecosystem, i'm going to assume that spearmaster and other slugcats are comparable to animals

the mark of communication changes things, as it allows a live translation of what the iterator is saying to be comprehensable in a way the slugcat can understand. here, i can understand suns and spearmaster being able to develop and share a language that they can both use

but before the mark of communication? spearmaster is on a completely different level of intellegence from an iterator. i don't really mean ~less intellegent~, but DIFFERENT. again, going back to iterator brains and slugcat brains being used for different things.

i cannot really imagine spearmaster being able to understand what suns wants from them. a dog can associate certain words with certain actions, but it doesn't actually know what a sentence means, or how to communicate one, or how to structure one

slugcats may have evolved to recognize pictures (see gourmand's memories and gourmand's ending, with the slugcat colony drawing on walls, as well as spearmaster's own doodling)-- they are receptive to symbols that iterators point them towards

but words and sentece structure, grammar, syntax, context from a species different to your own? without a square that live translates it in your language? a bit harder for me to believe

tl;dr i think that before the square spearmaster wouldnt have any idea what suns wanted them to understand because slugcat brain and iterator brain are different

my least favorite downpour lore is that iterators dont have face articulation

pebbles blinks in artificer... moon closes her eyes when she dies or gets hurt

[smile-files]

(insane person voice) this teardrop gjinka. THIS teardrop gjinka. yes this one will be the good one

[xantchaslegacy]

MoM story is off to a really fun, really strong start with these first two chapters but I am still not quite at peace with

the scale at which the phyrexian's are operating and (related)

how sort of...dismissive? the current story is of the individual planes

Granted, we don't know the larger timescale that MoM will take place over; quite possibly the level of success we see the phyrexians achieve on all the many many planes they're attacking will happen over the span of years for this set. If not though, I think it's fair to say the ability of the New Phyrexians to mount simultaneous attacks that (based on previews like the dual lands we've seen and some of the language we've seen in the MM material so far) seem to be quickly overwhelming and subverting the entirety of the extant societies on said planes feels a tad on the narratively undeserved side.

Like, the *Multiverse* has all but fallen? The infinite expanse of worlds, many vast and potent in their defenses, has all but fallen? Even accounting for hyperbole it's a bit much, and feels like an escalation of stakes which, while not inconceivable (it's fiction, after all, and one thing I don't want to do is put an occasional difficulty suspending disbelief between myself and a potentially great story), it does strain credulity in the grander scheme of things, and feels unnecessary re: establishing the phyrexians as a credible threat.

Now to be fully fair, there's a lot of ways for the things we're seeing to be the result of a successful initial strike on these planes; surface level gains that could be convincingly reversed. But the feeling I get from the set so far (and which could very well be wrong) is that we're looking at a resolution that comes *after* phyrexia has overwhelmed and (to quote the above) all but conquered the known multiverse, which as a grumpy old vorthos, seems like an upping of the stakes for shock value that really sells short all the planes this IP has developed, and suggests a capacity so far beyond Old Phyrexia (and it's considerably larger pool of time and resources) as to beggar belief.

tl;dr the ability of the New Phyrexians to assault the whole of the known multiverse on this scale feels a bit dismissive of alllll the planes in said multiverse, and feels like it shrinks the boundaries of the MtG world to its detriment.

In any case, I don't mean to make this an attack on the story or anyone who's enjoying it, because I certainly am having a lot of fun so far, but sometimes these silly little thoughts need to leave my head. I'm more than ready to be impressed ;)

[mental-illness-bingo]

Content Warning: Venting about ableism against ADHD and Autism in a book; mentions of emotional abuse, repeated mentions of elitism within the autism community, "corrective" surgery for mental health disorders, demonizing of medication, encouraging young adults to refuse their medication etc. Note that I haven't finished the book yet, but I intend to, so I suppose it could get better, but what it's done already is abhorrent, and I'm grossed out.

Book in question: The Love Letters of Abelard and Lily by Laura Creedle

This. Book. Is. Killing. Me.

I saw this recommended as a "really good book about autism and ADHD" from someone but I *really* hate it so far (I'm on Chapter 27, about 2/3 way through the book) and it's honestly just blatantly ableist in so many ways. I do not know if Laura Creedle is autistic or has ADHD, but if so? Internalized ableism everywhere. If not then yet another neurotypical asshat who wrote an ableist ass book.

Context: Lily is diagnosed with ADHD and Abelard is diagnosed with "Asperger's".

And let's start there. This book was written in 2017, years after the switch from that N*zi doctor's name to Autism Spectrum Disorder. This is problem #1, and the reason is not that they use that word for it. I can and have enjoyed books while suspending my disbelief around the fact that they maybe didn't know because a significant number of people still don't in 2023.

However, Abelard is the poster child for elitism. He is this super smart kid who just so happens to have trouble with verbal conversation, being late, and sometimes being touched. He is worse than the savant trope because he is literally talked about like a genius. He is inhumanly good at chess, robotics, old literature, video games, just everything he touches, really. In fact, despite him supposedly having serious communication difficulties, when he is texting, he is suddenly able to communicate just like anyone else, with occasional long pauses between texts being the only issue he shows.

And his sole meltdown that has been shown is honestly so toxic and borders abusive to Lily. She is late to their date due to her ADHD, something any of us with it can relate to, and Abelard knows about her ADHD in advance as well as having had seen her symptoms multiple times in person. There is 0 way he didn't know about her having ADHD. Anyway, she's a little late (I think 20 minutes or something but I can't remember tbh with you) and he is visibly angry with her, and she immediately apologizes, explaining that her ADHD causes her issues being on time. Rather than be understanding of his girlfriend's disorder the way she has tried to be with his, he pretty much ignores her. His mother babies him about it, working on setting up everything for him and getting them into the movie wherein he seems to relax (but only after forcing his mother to go get popcorn right this instant because they're watching a movie and he needs popcorn). Then, after a bit, his father is trying to explain the movie to Lily and its history and Abe does NOT like people talking during movies. He yells at his dad, who continues to try and talk, and then has the meltdown in question. Lily tries to touch him to help comfort him and realizes immediately she shouldn't have when he makes a noise as though he is in pain. He begins slamming his head off the table, which is reasonably off putting to Lily, and she asks his father for help. His father mentions his mom would usually be here and that Lily "shouldn't have been late", basically accusing her of causing the meltdown even though he kept pushing when his son told him they were watching a movie. Lily panics and exits to the kitchen because she feels helpless and upset that she can't do anything for him.

All of this is relatively understandable behavior, I guess. I don't really love that he yelled at his father and mother both in this scene for normal things because it paints autistic people as unreasonable and irrational, but it is true that sometimes meltdowns are caused by people continually doing normal things that happen to really get under our skin. His parents should know his triggers and avoid pushing them because they are his parents. Lily, on the other hand, is a child and one with her own neurodivergent struggle, and should never in any way have been strapped with the blame both because it is not her job to tiptoe around a boy she has been dating for a few days with triggers no one warned her about, and because the issue at hand is a symptom of her own disorder and is equally as in her control as Abelard's reaction to her being late is in his.

BUT THEN while panicking in the kitchen, Lily breaks something on accident as she often does and tries to leave and Abe's mom makes a whole thing out of it. She becomes physically intimidating to Lily, smashing a glass on purpose to "help" the situation, which obviously makes Lily uncomfortable, and half-threatens her to go back into her son's room even though she wants to go. Throughout the entire next scene Lily mentions in her narration wanting to go home and while I think it's important that Lily learns coping skills outside of running away, it is equally within her right to be too stressed by Abe's reaction to her being late and choose to break up with him. Lily is not required to stay with Abe just because she's the only girl he has brought home, and intimidating her into staying is disgusting.

To Abe's credit, he mentions that his mother used his sob story to make Lily stay. Then he loses 100% of that credit in the most entitled scene I've read in a long time where Lily is pressured to not only stay in that house and in that relationship, but also promise to NEVER be late again even though it is a symptom of her own disorder. She mentions that this seems to be the only way to make him happy and that "promising to try harder is not enough". So, more or less, she is in a relationship where she cannot ever show symptoms of her disorder without him giving her the silent treatment, yelling at everyone around him, and smashing his head into a table.

No one ever mentions at any time during this or after that Abelard also should be learning positive coping skills or teaching her how to help with his meltdowns or anything like that. She should just be expected to never show a symptom of her own disorder so that he doesn't react in a very toxic/honestly kind of abusive way. Cannot stress enough that he does not treat her kindly again until she promises she will literally never be late ever again. Not try - NEVER late again.

Abe strongarms multiple people like this throughout the book. His mother with the popcorn, his father with talking during a movie, his robotics teacher where he literally stands there and repeats "I invited my girlfriend to robotics" over and over again until, despite safety concerns, the teacher gives up and allows Lily to stay if she signs a waiver (which she doesn't read and is not the legal age to sign anyway), and Lily when he wants to tell her something but tells her she is not allowed to speak until he has finished then gets visibly angry (as noted by Lily) when she answers a question he asked her out loud. His meltdowns are used as a threat of sorts to the people around him and a manner of controlling them. It is worth noting I have only in my entire life met one autistic person who did this and surprise surprise, they were abusive and had a history of using meltdown threats to R word multiple people. That is not autistic behavior. It is abuse being hidden behind the excuse of autism, and it's gross in every context, including this book.

So, onto Lily's ADHD. Lily is constantly breaking things, constantly late, runs out of any even slightly uncomfortable situation, does not care about the emotions of her mother or her sister, and is overall a really gross ADHD stereotype. But that's okay! Why? Because she will be fixed via corrective surgery. Yes, you read that right. But let's go into why medication didn't work for her first.

Lily lists throughout the book her hatred of her current and all past medications, of which there is a number she lost count of. Because the author treats this ADHD character like a goldfish who was just given access to a human body for the first time and therefore cannot remember anything (or walk two steps without smashing something valuable), that number could still be relatively small. The book doesn't treat it as a small number though, so we're going to assume she's tried most ADHD medications, and is currently taking an antidepressant as a manner of treating ADHD which is so far in the past as far as treatment goes that I don't even know which medication they're talking about.

The typical antidepressants (SSRI's) are not used to treat ADHD at all to my knowledge, and SSNRI's are only really used if every other form of ADHD medication has failed you and even then are rarely used as far as anyone I know with ADHD. Why? Because there are actual medications that help ADHD, and a good amount of them. Realistically, the concept that 0 of them worked for Lily is statistically improbable. The only antidepressant really used to treat ADHD actively is Bupropion, but the emotional blunting the surgeon Lily sees says is a side effect of her medication is not a side effect associated with Bupropion. In fact, Wellbutrin/Bupropion is often used for people either in combination with or as a replacement for other antidepressants to counteract the emotional blunting they cause.

The demonizing of medication in this book is dangerous. Lily hates every medication because all of them have stripped her of her ability to feel anything positive. The book does not mention any other ADHD character that tolerates medication well, or even speak about it as though it is just not working for her. It does not explain that if Lily went to the doctor and told them her side effects, that they would *immediately* taper and remove a medication that is causing emotional blunting and sui thoughts. The book doesn't mention that this is an abnormal side effect - in fact it's says it's a common side effect of antidepressants. It also treats medication as some sort of weird muzzle that is put on people with ADHD so their loved ones (in this case Lily's mom, sister, and teachers) can tolerate them. The book does not mention any positive effects of any medication for ADHD at all. I hate to think how many kids were made afraid of or resentful of their meds by this book.

The book details specific ways to avoid taking your medication, and even how to hide it so you can (tw sui mention) take them all with vodka to hurt yourself. This is not something Lily attempts in the book, but was just thinking about, and therefore did NOT need to be described in detail. The book even acts like sui watch is stupid and unnecessary, and does not detail the dangers if Lily were to take all of these medications at once with alcohol. So basically they wrote in a non-precautionary sui method for kids with ADHD that also involves months or years of medication non-compliance. Great. /sarcasm

But like I said, that's not the worst of it. What upset me enough to write this whole rant is the next part. Lily's mother finally giving up on the neurologists (which... weird because everyone I know with ADHD was treated by a psychiatrist not ever a neurologist), and going to a literal brain surgeon for some sort of electrodes to be placed in her brain that is supposed to permanently change how her synapses fire.

This is the ableist buffet, and for a while Lily feels the same and by a while I mean 2-4 pages. Then she decides that she will see the doctor if her Mom does something for her, and forgets all about the upset of having her mother feel the need to cure her.

In fact, when Lily meets the doctor, it takes him almost no time to convince her that she not only needs but also wants the corrective surgery, spouting about how she could go to college right now if she does it, when college would not have even been an option before.

It is gross on every single level and I looked up this surgery and ITS FAKE ITS NOT EVEN REAL. This author literally made up a fake corrective surgery for ADHD, I wanna puke.

I literally do not even want to read this for the story anymore I just have to know how much worse it can possibly get. If it's bad maybe I'll reblog and add on to this.

Edit: HOW could I possibly forget Lily's Dad? A total deadbeat who cheated on her mother and ran off to Portland, who was only able to interact with his daughter while actively drinking when he still lived with them, who is constantly switching what he wants to do in his life to the point that he can't hold a job, and who refuses to talk to let alone see either of his daughters in the years since he's been gone because he "can't keep a phone". And why is he like this? As the books tells you very explicitly about 2/3 of the way in, he is like this because he also has ADHD. Lovely. He had this apparently entirely inspired, amazing, never-been-done idea for his dissertation in college. But then he more or less got bored and overwhelmed with the idea so he just dropped it, left college and his family, and ran away to Portland. All because he has ADHD, because the author thinks that's what this disorder is - an inability to have any responsibility or finish anything ever no matter what it is or how important. The author treats ADHD like it's a lobotomy and I hate it here.

Maybe don't read The Love Letters of Abelard and Lily.

Edit: see reblog. It got so much worse, not better.

[eldritchwyrm]

season 4 episode 14 ("goodbye iowa"):

oh we're doing frankenstein now. the practical effects must have been really fun to do

the difficulty with killing off prof walsh is that a mad scientist, to me, is a much more interesting villain than a monster? i do love a good practical effect tho.

whoever made that post a while back about clutter in film/tv sets was so right. the spaces in this show are so wonderfully cluttered! panning through xander's (mom's) basement, you see all sorts of random stuff -- some crutches behind the blocky tv, crates with clutter... it's supposed to be a messy space, but there's an implied story to all the stuff that i often feel is missing from productions in the last few years.

on the other hand, there's always the possibility that this impression is totally off-base and is just sort of a media nostalgia thing? the vintage feeling of the sets and the more colorful, brightly lit interiors (as opposed to the frequently mocked ultra-shadowy aesthetic of contemporary film) might be pinging bits of my brain and making me feel it's more cluttered when it isn't.

um. why does xander have a shirt with "i <3 dirt" written on it?

on that note how come riley and co have a poster labeled "Balls." that just has photographs of various sports balls on a white background. how come that's a thing they keep putting in front of the camera every other scene.

why are black characters in this show almost always inexplicably evil............

on that note, how come this fictional uc campus is almost all white??? like????? has joss whedon ever BEEN to a uc campus? i'm suspending my disbelief on the basis that southern california has seen a lot of immigration & resultant demographic change over the past two decades, but even with the time difference factored in, it's deeply weird to not see any brown people on a uc campus?

nooooooooo not spike's tv set omfg....... the casualties of war....

season 4 episode 15 ("this year's girl"):

i think i'm just in a bad mood rn because this episode is not hitting for me at all, despite being fairly well written. there's lots of good stuff: faith is here again, buffy is being evil in dream visions, buffy's side of her romantic dialogue is competently written and sweet in a very realistic way. but it's just not hitting for me. hmm.

in this episode willow wears a dark t-shirt over a light long-sleeved shirt and a floor-length skirt. i know this is just late 90s/early 2000s fashion but i can't help but think of it as "roselalondecore"

season 4 episode 16 ("who are you?")

i put the show down for a few days and returned to it and NOW we're talking. this is THE GOOD SHIT. actors pretending to be their own character who is secretly another character pretending to be their own character. the watcher council is doing something fucked up. faith is vriska.

the motif of faith mocking "because it's wrong!" turning into "because it's wrong /srs" at the end was well-written

tara got to be helpful! and not as a team, but on her own!

the tara/willow development is very good

season 4 episode 17 ("superstar"):

this ep feels like it's partially a commentary on self-inserts and maybe the way people interact with fiction more broadly?

makes me think about all the wild stuff i've seen in self-insert fanfiction. in one longfic from [redacted fandom] i saw several years ago, the self-insert protag was a mary sue of the old breed, and in addition to being extremely good at saving the world, she would take time off to be a world-class figure skating prodigy. figure skating did not exist in the original canon setting and no explanation for the worldbuilding change was given.

and tbh that's GUTS. that's SPIRIT. it's easy to laugh at from the outside, but in truth, that's a deeply honest and sincere approach to writing and i can really respect it.

honestly i need some of that energy in my own writing. i think it was cat valente who said that in order to write a novel in a month, you simply can't afford to waste time not believing you're a genius? gotta internalize that

season 4 episode 18 ("where the wild things are")

spike continues to be delightful. his "well this might as well happen" expression is very good

tara/willow development is deeply charming

i want anya to be just a liiiittle bit weirder than she is, i think. just a liiiiittle bit wackier, meaner, stranger, whatever, so long as it's more.

aww giles gets passionate about treating teens right, that's cute

further reactions to btvs season 4 episode 7 ("the initiative"), previous liveblogging here, and also this is the link to the beginning of my season notes

the transition/reveal for TA guy's secret was really well done, it was perfectly paced, just, the slooooow realization set in and i was like nO. NO WAY OMFG

and. THE PROFESSOR TOO??????? ASJDHFKASJDFKAJSDF ASJFKASJDFKJASDFJKASJD

this episode is unhinged holy shit

buffy and the not-so-random TA are from different genres

spike has spent this whole season running pathetically from various dangers. i am HERE for it.

season 4 episode 8 ("pangs"):

me when i realize this is a thanksgiving episode: oh huh maybe it'll be cute! or ironic!

me when i realize they're centering the plot around a chumash artifact: uh. i am not sure i trust joss whedon with this material

at one point a character says "the chumash used to be indigenous to this region" WHAT DO U MEAN "USED TO BE" there were chumash kids who went to my high school lmfao shut the fuck up

i guess that answers the question of which uc campus "uc sunnydale" is supposed to be.

i really want to concentrate on spike's tremendous poor little meow meow impression in this episode but joss whedon is making it REALLY HARD

i'm scrutinizing this mission interior shot like "is this the [redacted hometown location] mission or were the spanish just chronically uncreative"

season 4 episode 9 ("something blue"):

y'know i was just thinking "hm it's been a while since we had a willow-creates-a-magical-mishap episode"...

me muttering to myself: secondhand embarrassment is the fun-killer

impeccable. no notes

season 4 episode 10 ("hush"):

i had to google weetabix. i've heard of it many times via pop culture but i didn't actually know what it was. i'm distressed by the fact that wikipedia is saying the phrase "breakfast cereal" but showing something that looks distinctly milk-less. it looks like a brick?

poor giles needs a break

did? they say? tara? is that? THE tara?

oooh i KNEW the vocal recognition thing would come up in a later episode, hello everyone it is i, the plot anticipater

lotta great gags so far

i enjoy the blocky monitors and futuristic-for-1998 aesthetic of the underground organization; this episode has a number of quick cuts between them and the main characters that enables parallels and contrasts between the futuristic paramilitary aesthetic and the aesthetic of "we're at giles' house wearing graphic t-shirts and dusty ancient tomes are strewn across the table"

this episode is fun because it highlights how incidental dialogue is to much tv. viewers tend to prioritize dialogue in some ways, but often the dialogue is just filler, or telling audiences what the visual language is already shouting.

periodically this show is like "hi. we would like to remind you that giles has game. it's very important to recall that giles has game. this has been a psa"

[starlitangels]

I was watching Sam play Super Smash Bros again and…

Like sure on the one hand I can just suspend my disbelief and understand that Sam “just bought” a Switch and Smash Ultimate and magically has all the characters (including the DLCs he was griping so much about) without unlocking them or buying them because it’s Erik’s game and Erik has all the characters and couldn’t be bothered to make a new profile on his Switch and play on that profile to start it fresh

But on the other hand it’s so much funnier to imagine that Sam bought the Switch and Smash, and Darlin’ maybe with the help of Vincent lol just blitzed through the character unlock campaign thing and got all the DLCs without Sam knowing so he’d have all of them

Because if Darlin knows the boys’ mains and that they’re better than level 9 CPUs, that means Darlin’ probably plays Smash, pays attention to their packmates, and is proficient enough with the game to know what they’re talking about with the difficulty system which could also be why they find Sam’s overconfidence in his reflexes and whatnot so funny

[script-a-world]

Submitted via Google Form:

I'm writing many species in my world and yes that does include humans. But there's one thing I'm stumped on is how can I do transgender people in non-human species. It's easy for humans to pass with hormones and clothes. But let's say deer or cow species where males have horns females do not or have them much smaller. So I'm thinking horns would be super important, adding horns might be easier to do artificial ones, but removing them is harder and is completely unhideable if you don't. Sure there might be individuals who don't care about passing and I do know irl trans men who do not bind and you see a massive chest along with a very clear dude face. But that's a choice. There is less of a choice with choosing to display horns or not. How about bird species where males have very colourful plumes and the females do not? That isn't something hormones can change either right? Plucking feathers would be painful, fake feathers would be a big surgery or idk a wig? (not to mention possible difficulty in getting them flight worthy but then again I'm already chucking out some realism in having flight on huge species but extra stuff like this might turns heads - hey what if they needed to fix a broken wing and now have a metal plate in them - trouble flying too? So yeah injuries might be an issue for flight. Doesn't even have to be a bad wing, if they have a bad leg and got artificial legs... That itself will be an issue for species with flight.) Again, gender differences are a difficult thing to choose on your appearance. My species are mostly humanoid animals but there are others closer to human like and some that are definitely alienlike. My world may be a bit high tech but there is certainly no magic. Though there are species that can like shapeshift (werewolf, merfolk, original alien winged species that can completely disappear wings when not in use). Perhaps outward appearances can also be altered with holograms? But they can be faulty, maybe poor people can't afford good ones, etc. But hologram or not it doesn't change what is actually on you.

Tex: Well. This is certainly a politically-convoluted question. What definitions might be had in a human perspective on trans humans might not be an identical overlap for a non-human perspective on non-humans.

To take a well-cited example: seahorses reproduce by the females depositing eggs in the males’ pouches until the eggs hatch (Wikipedia). Does this make a female seahorse cisgender, transgender, something in between or something else entirely? Does the same rhetoric apply to male seahorses? From a human perspective, the female seahorse is female because that’s the one carrying the eggs for reproduction, ergo: cisgender, even if they’re not the ones giving birth (for a given definition of a mode of reproduction).

Deer and cow, to borrow your example, have a form of sexual dimorphism (tw: link has a section on spiders) that is quite visually geared for signalling who is what. They are also not species that are capable of leveraging their genetics to change their reproductive organs at a whim, nor to my knowledge are either a species that has exhibited some observable form of dissatisfaction with their body image (Wikipedia).

Animal characters with anthropoid characteristics are, for the sake of suspending disbelief, likely prone to the same quirks as humans and thus your audience can probably accept human social mores and nuances of physiology being reflected onto these species. As for “more alien-like”, I’m not entirely sure how to interpret that in your current scope. Are these aliens also resembling humans in physiological and social characteristics, or something closer to non-human animals, or a third kind of species that might be more evolutionarily progressed than humans?

How do your shapeshifting species shapeshift? That’s very resource-intensive, and can put a lot of stress on the body to effectively dissolve and reform limbs and entire organs at will. I imagine that it might be easier on them to stick to one form at a time, and only change when there’s some social convention requiring or allowing it (courting behaviours, official functions, etc).

Humans do quite a bit with what are, at the end of the day, scraps of cloth and ground rocks, but this is because most of human gender is cultural signalling rather than a biological function such as feather colour or growing of horns. I suppose non-human species might have adapted with their own interpretation of clothing, jewelry, and make-up, and likely that the according evolution of gender presentation will fall in line with their historical relationship with such objects and how they’re used.

Licorice: You made reference to your various species altering their appearances using surgery or some other, often quite painful, physical means. You’ve also spoken of these species as being animal-like - feathers and antlers are two things you mentioned. So my question is, do the species in your world have the kinds of hands or appendages they would need to carry out such complex and intricate surgery? If they don’t all have hands or something like hands, it seems there would need to be a lot of inter-species trust, cooperation and communication, so that species which lack the hands to operate on themselves can put themselves into the hands of species that do. 

Utuabzu: I'm going to repeat what I said in another ask (which may or may not have been posted yet) - peel off the skin and scoop out the reproductive organs, and most of the time you'll have a hard time telling the sex of any given animal. Secondary sexual characteristics are just that, secondary. They develop after birth/hatching/whatever in a process triggered and controlled by hormones. Much like how trans women grow boobs in response to high estrogen levels and trans men get hairier in response to high testosterone levels, lions develop manes in response to high testosterone (there's actually been cases of older female lions growing manes due to a shift in their hormone balance, and neutered male lions losing theirs).

Even primary sexual characteristics develop due to hormonal triggers, evidenced by conditions like Congenital Androgen Insensitivity, which is a condition in which a person's cells are unable to respond to androgens (masculinising hormones), resulting in persons with XY chromosomal sex developing as if they had XX sex chromosomes. Physical form is not reliable evidence of chromosomal sex, nor does it really have anything much to do with gender, which is a social construct that varies between cultures and which non-humans might not even possess.

All the features you mention are secondary sexual characteristics. A species that grows horns in response to masculinising hormones will do so regardless of whether the hormones are endogenous (coming from within) or exogenous (introduced from outside the body). Undoing these changes can be easy or difficult, depending on the structures involved. Small soft tissue changes like fat distribution change easily, while structural changes like bone thickening or large soft tissue structures like breasts won't go away due to hormonal shifts and would require surgical intervention to remove. Something like feathers are likely more like the former than the latter. Horns are likely the latter. But most 'horns' that we are familiar with in the animal kingdom are actually antlers and are deciduous - they fall off in response to a hormonal trigger, usually after the mating season, and regrow in response to another hormonal trigger. In that case, just blocking the hormonal trigger for regrowth would be enough.

Wootzel: I have some good news for you about your feather conundrum--if the feathers work the same way as Earth birds, and molt periodically, they will probably react to hormone changes and grow accordingly. Hormone therapy could very plausibly cause a feathered alien to change plumage pretty dramatically. Since most Earth birds molt every year in order to replace damaged feathers, you could easily apply this to your feathered aliens too. 

It’s a pretty well-documented phenomenon that older hens of livestock species occasionally go through hormonal changes and stop laying eggs. This is sometimes colloquially called “henopause.” Usually, when the hormones change and egg production stops, these birds also change to male plumage! Here’s a tumblr post with a bunch of pictures of peafowl going through henopause. Most of them look a bit scruffy, but there’s one picture that looks like a regular peacock! I don’t have experience with this personally, but I would guess that it takes more than one molt for the plumage to change completely. 

Just as with humans, the developmental stage at which an individual starts to transition would probably change the outcome. Stopping horn growth (with hormones or via surgical bud removal) before the horns get large would be easier than surgically removing full-sized horns, but it would probably be possible anyway! This might be a big decision for your trans horned character, and the societal impact of having horns vs removing them is up to you. 

[andtheyweresiblings]

I like that moment when Mirabel sings about the family and she brings up Bruno, the villagers are like we don't talk about him, but she ignores them and tells the kids his powers anyway. It's cute how committed she is to talking about her family that she doesn't even care, but I think it's also that she's used to being ostracized, so maybe that makes her care less for their opinion?

Hmm, I never thought about it that way. I was thinking about it in the sense that she is singing the exposition song, so it was a way to establish that Bruno is estranged, what his gift is, how it plays into his estrangement, and then of course, a little foreshadowing of what's to come. I have difficulty suspending my disbelief when it comes to exposition in stories, but you raise an interesting point. I also imagine that since she doesn't really remember him, the taboo to talk about him doesn't have that strong of hold on her because she does not remember what it was like in that transition period for the family.

Although, this does get me thinking about what that transition period for the family was like just after Bruno left. What was the fallout, and how quickly did he become a taboo subject?

[randomidiocyncrazies]

finally sat down to watch He and I are Both Grooms, a 50 minute-film about LGBTQ issues set in Japan (specifically, about same-sex marriage and homophobia).

I think it was very earnest, and it feels like the people behind it have good intentions. I do appreciate the short film touching on the difficulties of coming out in a conservative society (and to homophobic parents), and the more emotional aspects were evocative even with a somewhat farcical premise—MC is getting married to his boyfriend BUT fails to tell literally anyone in his wedding party about the fact that he’s marrying a guy, and verything that can go wrong does go wrong (homophobic parents, jealous exes, miscommunication etc), but in the end it all turns out okay, etc etc.

But...

Even knowing the premise going in, there were still parts where I couldn’t suspend my disbelief, which i know is completely subjective. Coupled with a few key misses (again, entirely subjective), I feel like it’d be a much stronger narrative if it had been feature-length rather than just 50 minutes.

With the limited run-time, I thought they did a good job with establishing the couple’s relationship—we see how they meet, and we know their general dynamic and the important moments in their courtship. while a little more would be nice (like, in a feature film there’s probably going to be a flashback of them planning the wedding etc), the stuff we have paints a pretty clear picture. the point of the film isn’t really about their relationship anyway—it’s about MC’s struggles with coming out to friends and family in a conservative environment, and I’d argue that MC’s relationship with his homophobic dad takes center stage (...not that they actually have that many scenes together, but the whole thing is sparked off by MC being scared to come out to his parents, then having to prove to his dad that people will be happy for a gay couple like them, while the dad is afraid of what he doesn’t understand and thinks society will judge his kid etc etc.)

As the plot hinges on the concept of “closeted man having a gay wedding but literally nobody in his wedding party knows he’s gay until the ceremony”, i can accept that the MC—a meek people-pleaser—lost his nerve trying to clear up the issue when his homophobic parents assumed he was marrying a woman. I can accept that, instead of telling his enthusiastic boyfriend (the LI) about the misunderstanding (thus dampening his spirits), MC chose to tell LI that his parents are fine with them getting married, trapping himself on both fronts. I can accept that MC’s mom was so excited about her darling boy’s upcoming nuptials that she told everyone she knew about it, leading to childhood friends that the MC has fallen out of touch with to ask for invites (and MC is too scared to clear up the misunderstanding, probably in fear of it getting back to his parents).

Likewise, the MC’s profession as an elementary school teacher informs his fear of coming out, even though there was no explicit correlation within the film itself. It’s no secret that bigots love to target LGBTQ people whose job is working with kids—the whole “but think of the children!!!” crap is often deployed to stir up outrage against minorities. I also think MC is written as a closeted man both to create contrast with LI’s openness and supportive family, and to illustrate the pressures of coming out in a conservative society. While the fact that MC has no peers, aside from his boyfriend, who knows about his sexuality feels a little off to me, I concede that it works thematically as a representation of the intense isolation of feeling like you have to keep a core part of yourself secret. (...tho i don’t think this particular character detail is meant to be that Deep™️.)

But like. Why the heck did MC ask his work supervisor/employer, who thought he was marrying a woman, to give the wedding toast??? How did MC think that was going to go? Why not have someone in LI’s wedding party give the toast instead, back when they were still putting this thing together—like, MC knows that nobody on his side would know it’s a same-sex ceremony until they’re in the middle of it, so he could’ve just... made up an excuse and tried to get LI’s family/friends to handle that part too? If he couldn’t get out of it for whatever reason, it’d be nice to see how MC convinced himself that it’s all gonna go well (especially if it’s used to juxtapose how quickly it went off the rails during the actual toast).

Just... idk, the fact that MC had specifically asked for his supervisor at work to give the wedding toast, without giving the guy a heads up about the fact that he’s marrying a guy, which leads to the guy writing a speech that references MC’s “wife”, and this misconception isn’t cleared up until the wedding’s already started is... a little too absurd for me, BECAUSE I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHY MC THOUGHT IT’D GO FINE WITHOUT A HITCH. I don’t know why this particular detail bothered me so much, but it does.

(I do really like the moment where the supervisor basically goes “i have no problem with your relationship”—which, y’know, is the bare minimum—after finding out the “bride” is a “groom” at the wedding, and MC’s face frickin’ lights up as he profusely thanks his supervisor for being sooooo kind and understanding (a.k.a doing the bare minimum)... that entire interaction tells us SO MUCH about MC. Like... MC grew up with that kind of dad, so he assumed everyone would have a negative reaction to his homosexuality, which contributes to why he’s so so so afraid to come out to people in his life.

I also thought having the supervisor still display some knee-jerk casual homophobia when he was actually giving the toast, despite saying he has no problem with the MC’s relationship, is interesting and could’ve been explored a bit more—homophobia isn’t just the openly belligerent comments that the MC’s dad makes, but also the casual assumptions and micro-aggressions that other characters make subconsciously.)

there’s also a minor complication when the MC’s female childhood friend confesses that she’s always had a crush on him, which he is completely oblivious to. She kinda accuses him for not telling her about his sexual orientation, and tells him that she’s been waiting for him to ask her out all this time. the MC isn’t demonized for it, but i do gotta say that nobody is entitled to someone else’s coming out, and I thought it’d be nice if the film could make that a bit clearer. (then again, the entire thing that drives the film’s central conflict is that the MC is too scared to come out, to the point where it’s his wedding day and he literally told none of his guests about who he’s actually marrying.) i guess it also bothered me a little that a version of the conflict with her would’ve still happened if MC was straight (she still “wasted” all this time waiting for him, only for him to fall in love with someone else), but because of the limited run-time it feels less like “this is a conflict that would’ve come up regardless of MC’s sexuality” and more like “we need more drama, so let’s have a straight woman crush on the MC and then be upset he didn’t tell her about his sexuality/his relationship”.

I also thought it’d be nice if we had more time to explore the dynamic between MC and his dad, as well as MC and his in-laws. this is mostly a time-constraint problem though, and the parent-child dynamics are already pretty clear between MC and his dad. Since we see MC in a photo with all of LI’s family, though, it’d be nice if we got a clearer picture of his relationship with his in-laws before the wedding—the brief comment MC makes about LI’s dad being a “great father” really makes me want them to have an actual dynamic before the chaos of the wedding happened.

(also, MC’s family seems to... not care about meeting the in-laws, or even their son’s partner, before the wedding??? it’s kinda brushed off as “well you’ve finally shown us a picture of the person (girl) you wanna marry, so do as you like”—which i interpreted as an implication that MC gradually tells his parents less and less about his life after moving out/getting a job bc of the dad’s bigotry—but given how overbearing MC’s parents are, it seems a bit odd that they didn’t try to squeeze more information out of MC?) While there’s dialogue indicating LI (and his family?) had wanted to meet MC’s family beforehand, we don’t get that impression from MC’s family about wanting to meet the in-laws at all.)

speaking of the in-laws, there’s a part where LI asks his supportive dad to “accept MC’s homophobic dad as he is”, and there’s a segment where the supportive dad apologized to the homophobic dad for, essentially, not tolerating the latter’s homophobia. (I think the writers might have intended the scene as a more general “sorry for fighting with you and ruining our sons’ big day”, but the dialogue comes across as LI’s dad apologizing for not tolerating the homophobic bs that MC’s dad spouts at the wedding of his gay son.)

While the rest of the film is definitely pro-LGBTQ and MC’s dad is portrayed as a stubborn old man who is in the wrong (though with his own hangups and interior life that gives sympathy to him), this scene veers too close to “everyone hold hands and sing kumbaya” for my tastes. Bigots are not willing to tolerate the minorities they target, except as “second-class citizens who deserve to suffer” at best (most of the time they go straight to eradication/genocide), so being tolerant of the intolerant does not actually work.

These two dads are also on a completely different level: one of these dudes makes his son afraid to tell him anything of substance about his life, and takes every opportunity to put down his own son and his son’s fiance/the in-laws/the ceremony due to his homophobia (MC’s dad, the instigator of the feud between the two dads), while the other is nothing but supportive of his son and rightfully fought back against the other’s father's petty pot-shots (LI’s dad). IMO the only thing that’s salvageable in this exchange is the sentiment of “whether you personally accept homosexuality or not, you should support your son on his big day.”

The homophobic dad changes his mind in the last scene and give the couple his blessings—it’s a happy ending, but I personally think he changed his mind a bit too abruptly? I think it’d flow better if the emphasis is on him still coming to terms with his son’s homosexuality, but promising to learn more about LGBTQ issues so he could better support his son and new son-in-law; it’d be a more natural continuation of the “whether you personally accept homosexuality or not, you should be there for your son” conversation that happened between the fathers. So while they’ve nailed the broad strokes (i.e. homophobic dad accepts that his son is marrying a guy and gives them his blessing), the speech he gave about “diversity is beautiful” was not self-reflective enough imo. like, at least throw in an apology to the couple and a promise to do better in the future lol

Over all, it was a fun film that did its job within the 50-minute run, with moments of pathos here and there. While I probably won’t rewatch it, I think it’s an entertaining drama that highlights the difficulty of coming out, especially when one had grew up with authoritarian parents/a conservative society. However, the narrative would really benefit from a longer run-time to deal with all the subplots, and the “oh both sides are wrong” treatment in the reconciliation scene between the fathers was a low point in an otherwise pro-LGBTQ/same-sex marriage film.