#confirmation bias (not actually called confirmation bias probably)

[tennessoui]

Do you have a preference for top Obi-Wan or top Anakin in obikin? And if so, why? I'm new to the fandom and ship, and it seems that top Anakin is very popular. I've always imagined him bottoming more often for Obi-Wan, although I like to think they switch occasionally

i very much do not have a preference or an opinion on this! i read and write either - the important thing for me is that they're recognizable to my understanding of the characters and i don't see either of them as massively frail, demure, twinky, etc so that's usually the stuff i don't read or interact with (and i've moved away dom/sub stuff currently) though more power to you if that's what you like! to me, their sexual positions in bed do not make up a big part of their characters, so i really can switch between both and enjoy it all.

it's just not the interesting part of a story for me, and honestly (and i know this is controversial or what passes for controversial in a fandom lol) i don't tend to tag my explicit fics with who is topping and who is bottoming if there's penetrative sex involved - especially for longer fics because the story isn't about that in my mind. it's a very small aspect of it and the least important part

i do think i've seen a lot of conflating dom/sub with top/bottom lately and that's a trend that comes and goes like waves and also a trend i very much dislike. i definitely have stronger views on conflating dom/sub and top/bottom than i have on who should top and who should bottom LOL

[sailorblossoms]

Baz's raised eyebrow:

(yet another "Simon identifies as 'Baz-sexual' for very good reasons' post)

few things have annoyed me more with these books than when people do not take Simon's "I don't know anything about anything but maybe I'm just a Baz-sexual" comments seriously (dismissing it with a combination of not paying attention to what he's putting down and good old confirmation bias). He even says it in less "goofy" ways with lines such as "he's the only person I have ever wanted" (in the context of thinking about having sex) (note the emphasis on ever) (yes, it's one of the clues saying he didn't want to have it with Agatha, in case it's not clear)

"Like Baz has only ever wanted Simon, Simon has only ever wanted Baz," is necessary to bring up before I get to my point here. I have seen Simon being read as in love or attracted to Agatha ("he must have been or else how they had sex?"... I mean, Simon tells you why it happened without attraction, but even if he didn't, we could make an alphabetized list of reasons it can happen without it, the desire to fit in is no joke) or the idea of Simon liking all sorts of girls, including the girl he pointedly doesn't notice despite her being obvious to others, for the sake of drama and conflict. I have wondered if they don't believe the characters, or if they find the highlighted sentence here boring. "It's boring if the characters only want each other," "in real life people want multiple people" – indeed, but not everyone is wired the same (and why are we stuck on "real life" so much anyway in stories about half-dragon and vampire boys falling in love). But it's not like this sentence is without conflict. Note Baz's eyebrow...

In CO, when Simon says Trixie is cute, Baz's reaction is a boyish "I'm going to puke" comment, which is likely part of how he dealt with jealousy and thinking Simon was straight for years: masking his feelings with "harsh" or sort of "edgy" jokes (probably not the right words to use, but getting too hung up on precise wording is the reason I never finish these posts). In awtwb, Simon calls Pippa cute, and Baz raises an eyebrow...

By those reactions, we could say the idea of Simon calling someone cute because he finds them attractive crosses Baz's mind – or is something he feels in some way, even if the thought doesn't explicitly cross his mind. It's something the reader might assume as well... however, I don't think the way Simon uses cute – which can be used in many different situations – says anything about attraction for him. I mean, a gay man can see a girl being cute or gorgeous as well – Baz certainly does! (attraction is portrayed in these books as thoughts derailed, repetition, sentences being cut off, fixating in a detail no one else notices like they do – you see it with Baz and Simon, Agatha and Niamh, Shepard and Penny. Shep doesn't just call Penny cute – he loses his entire goddamn mind for a whole page about her cuteness and her knees. It's not just a passing comment).

I don't think those scenes when Simon says "cute" is highlighting something about him, other than the fact that he's able to note cuteness. I think it's saying more about Baz's insecurities (I know I once posted something long about it somewhere...) Baz brings attention to it in a way with his reactions... because he's bothered by it. It's something that's sort of hidden and sort of contained, but it's there.

Baz doesn't find himself desirable, partly because of his vampiric nature. But part of it is also about the complicated and messy fear that perhaps... Simon has a problem with being with a man (I know I have unpacked this in other posts, finding them though...). Perhaps "a girl would be better" (It's messier with boys than with girls, it's a thought that comes out before he catches himself with "I don't actually know anything about being with boys or girls".... "I don't know anything about being in a relationship," he says, while still being able to catch there was something wrong with Agatha and Simon's relationship when Simon talks about – because Simon will process things he would rather avoid when it's about opening up to Baz, he wants Baz to know things that would help Baz understand him better, even if he himself would rather not understand... still Baz can't let go of the programming of all those years believing in the golden couple – he has spent a longer time believing that than dating Simon, after all) (Agatha is alive and beautiful, the sort of beauty that's used to "embody" "desirability".... and Baz is "not alive"...) (as a side note, have you noticed the idea – or the actual action – of sex with Agatha is used both with Simon and Baz to indicate a lack of desire toward women?)...

While Simon thinks of Baz as the only person he has ever wanted – Baz is as desirable as it gets for him – Baz struggles with feeling desirable at all. Baz doubts and wonders and has to catch himself – even if he doesn't notice he's doing that. Even if he doesn't conciously think "a beautiful girl who is alive is more preferable than me, a gay male vampire." That is a far more interesting conflict than Baz having legit reasons to be jealous, I think. The fact that he has truly nothing to feel jealous about, and yet... he just can’t help it. It's hard to go against years of programming, of going against the idea that everything about yourself is undesirable and it's better to hide it – another way he matches with Simon. They also match in their insecurities, with small differences: Baz is so amazing and attractive while Simon doesn't feel like he's good enough for him, he can do better than him, etc... while Baz clearly only has eyes for Simon, Simon feels like Baz is merely stuck with him. And the conflict here is that you think "they need to TALK and voice their thoughts for the love of god, what do you mean Baz doesn't know Simon sees him as the love of all his lives??"... talking is not enough. That Simon and Baz only have eyes for each other is not without conflict. Sometimes we need to keep hearing some things, and even then... the fears and insecurities don't go away. Especially when we have spent a really long time believing ourselves to be unwanted, undesirable, something to be hidden. When we have been exposed to things that confirmed those beliefs for longer than we have been exposed to things that challenge them

[jae-bummer]

The Intervention

Prompt: Hi ✨ I just found your blog and I'm reading through My Idol s2 after finishing s1. It's so much fun! Can I request prompt #16 with Monsta X?

16) Going out to dinner with your bias group and it is growing increasingly obvious that someone at the table has a crush.

Pairing: Monsta X SURPRISE x Reader

Genre: Fluff

Song rec as you read: Got My Number - Monsta X

.

"Y/N," Hyungwon said solemnly, guiding you toward a seat. "I didn't want to be the one to say this, but-"

"I'll say it," Changkyun gasped. "We hate your boyfriend. This is an intervention."

"I-" you paused, your mouth falling open as you actually took in Changkyun's words. "You what?"

Hyungwon pushed you into the chair and patted you lightly on the shoulder. "Let's get you a drink."

"Hold on," you said furrowing your brows. "What do you mean you hate Jun? You said you liked Jun!"

"We lied," Kihyun said shortly, shoving a complimentary chip covered in salsa into his mouth. "Next question."

"So...you brought me...to a restaurant...to tell me you hate my boyfriend?" you hissed, trying to tap down your annoyance.

"We thought it was best to pick a public place," Jooheon nodded. "So there wouldn't be a scene."

"This isn't real," you grumbled. "You ambushed me."

"They'll have a strawberry margarita," Minhyuk confirmed from your left as the waiter reappeared. "Sugar instead of salt, probably best if you make it a double."

"And a water," Kihyun piped in. "You should stay hydrated."

"Thanks," you managed, teeth barred. "So considerate of you."

"I thought so," Kihyun hummed with an award winning smile. "Salsa?"

Shaking your head, you heaved a sigh. "What exactly do you not like?"

"Oh, ripping the band-aid right off then, okay," Changkyun said, straightening. "Well, first off, he's fucking weird."

"Oh, if that's not the pot calling the kettle black," you muttered.

"No, I'm weird in a quirky, artistic way," Changkyun insisted. "He's weird in a, I wonder if there's a woman being held captive in his basement, type of way."

Your eyes widened. "What is that even supposed to mean?"

"I thought it was fairly clear," Changkyun huffed.

"Shownu," Minhyuk said, poking the leader of their small gang of bullies. "Are you going to contribute anything?"

Shownu looked up from the menu, a bit lost. "Have you noticed that he smells mildly like kimchi? But like...not in a good way?"

"Okay, I'm leaving," you snapped, slowly sliding your chair away from the table, only for Hyungwon to catch the back and hold you in place.

"Nope," he said, shaking his head. "You're not allowed to leave until you hear our solution."

"Before there is any type of solution," you hissed. "I'm going to need some valid reasons for why I should not be dating him."

The silence around you grew heavy. It seemed like none of them wanted to break the news to you.

Taking a deep breath, Minhyuk took your hands into his. "Y/N, love, you don't even like him."

You opened your mouth only to close it again. He wasn't entirely wrong. Jun was not the easiest person to be with and he was a bit odd. In general, you had fun with him, but there wasn't a whole lot past that surface level.

"I'm happy!" you found yourself arguing nonetheless. "I'm totally happy!"

Minhyuk quirked a brow.

"It's fine," you grimaced. "Totally could get better in time."

"I know you've only been dating for like five minutes," Kihyun sighed, crossing his arms. "But it may be best to cut your losses."

"Why do you guys care?" you groaned. "You haven't interfered before!"

"That you know of," Hyungwon muttered. Spinning around in the opposite direction, you eyed him.

"Don't look at me!" he gasped, shooting a look toward Changkyun.

You directed your gaze toward the youngest man.

Making a point to look away, he cleared his throat. "There may have been that one time."

"Changkyun," you whispered, using his name as a warning.

"It was for the greater good!" he gasped. "I promise."

"And what exactly is this greater good? And who was it?!"

"Well, if you insist on getting the truth today," he muttered, crossing his arms. "One of us-"

"We just want to see you happy," Jooheon cut in, giving his fellow rapper an elbow to the side.

You furrowed your brows. "But-"

"Which brings us to our solution!" Hyungwon chirped happily. "Minhyuk, if you will?"

"So our solution," Minhyuk said, radiating excitement about their master plan.

"You date one of us," Changkyun interrupted, nodded proudly.

"What?" you croaked.

Looking to each boy in turn, they all wore proud expressions, as if this was the best possible idea you could be presented with.

"I'm sorry," you groaned. "I think I just hallucinated."

"Kihyun was the first to volunteer," Minhyuk nodded. "But honestly, a few of us are willing to step up."

Your focus switched over to the boy in question, the tips of his ears a bright red.

"Not in any kind of permanent sense," Jooheon rushed out. "Just enough to create the ruse of a love triangle and give you reason to break up with the guy."

"I dunno," Shownu managed around a mouth full of food. "I think Kihyun thought it was in a permanent sense."

"No," Kihyun chirped. "I mean - If it were - I mean - I"

"I also volunteered," Changkyun nodded. "But so did Hyungwon and if you want to really make a guy feel bad about himself, you should leave him for Hyungwon."

"He is the ideal physical specimen," Minhyuk nodded solemnly.

"And I'm not?!" Kihyun gasped, a hand on his chest. "I think I'm incredibly easy on the eyes."

"Obviously you're good looking and approachable enough to become an idol, but -"

"End the sentence there please," Kihyun snapped.

You sat in stunned silence.

"Y/N?" Kihyun asked, unfurrowing his brows as he looked to you. His eyes softened. "Are you okay?"

"I'm not fake dating one of you," you snapped. "That's-"

"Then real date one of us," Jooheon said simply.

Maybe you were slow on the uptake. "Huh?"

"Real date one of us," Minhyuk repeated. His eyes swept from Hyungwon to Kihyun and then finally landed on Changkyun.

"You say that like it's the easiest thing in the world," you exhaled.

"Isn't it?" Changkyun said quietly, avoiding eye contact. "I know...one of us..."

The room suddenly felt much too small and the air much too thick. You could tell that the guys were speaking to you, but you couldn't hear a word.

Okay, so maybe you were on board with breaking up with Jun. You recognized that if it took this small of an argument for you to consider it, it likely wasn't meant to be in the first place, but...

Date one of them? One of your best friends? Changkyun alluded to someone in the group having a crush on you for some time, so how did you not see it? Did you just ignore the signs all of these years?

How could you date one of the monstas without the fear of something going wrong and messing up the whole group dynamic? No, it was much safer being totally platonic.

"I can't," you broke through your thoughts. "I'm...I'm sorry guys."

Before anyone could stop you, you pushed away from the table and slid around Hyungwon. His narrow frame attempted to block your exit, but you managed to sidestep away. While heading toward the door, you couldn't ignore the sound of breaking glass behind you.

The waiter had finally returned with your drink...just when the boys had surged forward to follow you.

Well, shit.

Unsure if you were going to laugh or cry, you made the safe choice to continue outside in case it was the latter. Turning the corner, you nestled yourself in an alley between the restaurant and the shop next door. Heaving in deep breaths as if you had been drowning, you leaned against the cool brick building. The cold cut through the thin fabric of your top, causing you to shiver.

"Y/N!" you heard several voices call. "Y/N?"

Closing your eyes, you tried to focus on your breathing. They would find you and then what?

"Y/N," a familiar voice huffed, relief evident in its tone.

Peeking out of one eye, then the other, you slowly tilted your face up to address a margarita-red and dripping Kihyun.

"Hey," you said softly, feeling a smirk tug at the corner of your lips. He looked ridiculous.

"You can laugh," he grinned. "Our waiter has exquisite timing."

"Apparently," you chuckled, shaking your head. This whole thing was insanity.

"Y/N," he sighed, the grin on his face replaced with a stern expression. "None of us wanted to pressure you. Usually when we bring up an idea you don't like, you shut us down, tell us we're idiots, and we all go about our day. Why was this any different?"

"Because this wasn't a plan to skydive in our underwear," you muttered. "This was me DATING one of you."

Kihyun winced. "Well, when you put it like that."

"Yeah," you grumbled. "See where I'm coming from?"

After a few moments of silence, Kihyun pursed his lips. "You could've said you don't have feelings for me. It would have sucked, but I would've been able to take it."

Your attention shot back to his face. "I'm sorry, did I miss a chapter?"

"I...I thought," he trailed, tilting his head as his brow furrowed. "I thought Changkyun and Shownu's comments made it pretty obvious-"

"No!" you gasped. "At no time during that lunch did I assume it was you, Ki."

"Oh," he chirped, his face turning a nice shade of pink. "Well...uh...in that case...um...disregard all of that?"

It was Kihyun. Kihyun had a crush on you, and you had never seen it...

You tried to go into your brain's way back machine and think back to any intimate moments the two of you had shared. Sure, you had cuddled a time or two on a movie night, but which of them hadn't you cuddled at this point? He teased you, he made sure you were taken care of, and he cooked for you constantly. You thought he was just being nice.

Glancing toward Kihyun, you considered him - like, really, considered him. He was absolutely adorable, you had always known that. It was the way the tips of his ears turned red when he was embarrassed. Or the way when he smiled, his cheeks dented a little bit with unique laugh lines you had never seen before. Or maybe it was his smile itself that was so refreshing. Earning a smile from him was better than any compliment you could receive.

It was more than possible to fall in love with him and the fact that it had snuck up on you like this...was terrifying.

"Okay," you said quietly, nodding more to yourself than to him.

"Okay?" he asked. "We're good?"

"Yes," you hummed, still trying to parse out your thoughts. "I mean no, I mean...yes we are good, but no, not in that way."

He crossed his arms. "Explain."

"Okay," you said simply. "Let's do this."

"Do what...exactly?"

"Date," you nodded. "But if you mess this up Yoo Kihyun, you do not get our friends in the breakup."

"Guess we just won't break up then." he said, a smile now fighting to overtake his lips. "But Y/N...just one thing?"

"Hm?"

"You should probably break up with your boyfriend first."

[allamericansbitch]

The drama about Taylor using a private plane is over done like she has to use it and maybe has had to use it less since she lost the overseas boyfriend but it's like a must and I will be critical of Taylor and her art and her fans for lots of things but I can forgive the private jet and thought it was odd she even reponded to the allegations

the private jet article was riddled with false claims and was so highly misrepresentative. like just for the rundown because this pisses me off so much

it got all it's 'evidence' from a random celebrity jet account on twitter

the article used language that suggested it was naming taylor as the biggest user of private jets out of all celebrities but it wasnt, it actually only claimed her as the biggest user out of the small pool of celebrities they could find the information about... so there's probably a shit ton of celebrities that use it way more but they just didnt find anything about.

the numbers they said she used were found to be literally impossible. she would have to be flying nonstop 24/7, no time to refuel or even land/takeoff.

the authors previous work includes a bunch of political propaganda and anti-vax rhetoric so... not a person basing anything on fact really...

the timing of that article was weird to me and this is less of a fact and more of an opinion... but remember a few days before that very well researched article about how the kardashians use their private plans to fly within california and to simply go the grocery store... and then everyone was mad about that until a random article from an author and wesite no one heard of made that article about taylor... idk seems weird to me. like a distraction of the kardashian mess.

anyway heres a link to a lot of this information that called the article into question

[audhdnight]

This may have been a bad idea but I was never actually allowed to watch the Ken Ham vs Bill Nye debate, despite every adult I knew as a child ranting at every chance about how Ham “absolutely destroyed” Nye and how it’s such a good example of apologetic science blah blah blah

So I’ve decided to watch it now at the age of 21 as a deconstructing ex Christian evangelical fundamentalist to see how much of what he says is the exact same word for word bullshit I was taught growing up

I’m not even all the way through Ham’s beginning presentation and I’m already fed up. He keeps calling naturalist science a “religion” (which it blatantly is not by any definition) and saying that teaching children to approach science outside the lens of religion is somehow indoctrination and teaching them not to think critically.

Also, y’all probably can figure this out on your own but the issue with creationism is that when you *start* from the Bible and try to make the facts fit it, of course that’s what is going to happen. It’s called confirmation bias. When you go into a situation already assuming that you know what happened, you are going to see every bit of evidence as somehow in support of your theory even when it isn’t.

The difference with non-religious science is that they go in already assuming that we don’t know what happened, and they build the theory from the bottom up, not the top down. They take the evidence and learn from it, not force it into puzzle piece spots where it doesn’t fit.

[stusbunker]

Spotless: Eco

Chapter Eleven

Featuring: Dean Winchester/Reader, Dean/Bela

Other characters: Bobby, Bela, Dick Roman and Kobe Bryant mentioned (look, he wasn't supposed to be here but I did my research and well, he had to be), Anael, faceless paps

Word Count: 1683 with pictures

Warnings, etc: Mutual pining, tour planning, brunch and shopping with Bela, unbeta'd

Series Masterlist

“Okay, well the official schedule from the touring company arrived, so I have maybe a week to set up the promo interviews before they announce it publicly,” you said over the phone.

“Yeah, with Crowley it’s probably gonna be sooner. Annie’s gotta find someone to step in for the whole year with this so she’s already interviewing. Let me know if you need anything, because I’m just sitting on my hands until we’re actually rolling out,” Bobby replied solemnly.

The give me something to do, please, was implied.

“Check with Benny and his boys, I know the label is supplying some guys too, but I trust you to secure the crew and security schedules,” you said as you made another note on your ever increasing list of to do’s.

Two months may have seemed like a long time, but it was the shortest turn around you’d had for a tour since taking over as publicist for Phantom Traveler and you’d be damned if you fucked it up.

“With the holidays coming up, we’ll be in a pinch to get everything nailed down. But all the commotion with Bela and everything, people will be chomping at the bit to get actual news,” you added, staring unfocused at your computer monitor.

“And he’s got that interview coming up you said, just Dean for that one?” Bobby asked.

“Yeah,” you sighed. “I really hope Meg doesn’t eat him alive. But it’s his chance to give his side of things and for people to see where his head is at now.”

“The sassy little brunette, right?”

“The very one.”

“Is it going to be a tit-for-tat thing? Is Cas gonna be next for a tell-all?”

“Bobby, I don’t think Cas would do an interview and talk bad about Dean even if they paid him. He’s moved on.”

“If you say so, Dean didn’t exactly play nice.”

“He must have had hundreds of offers for the dirt since leaving the band. And everything I hear about him now is just about the kid he’s working with and how they’re creating something unique.”

“I just know how that reporter liked him— the last time.”

“I’m sure she’s going in with the bias against Dean here. Time will tell if she can be swayed,” you admitted. “Plus, Dean won't be alone. We made sure there'll be a few of us there to make it easier.”

“To keep him from making a damned fool of himself you mean.”

“Basically.”

Bobby sat on the other end of the line with his gruff silence before continuing, “you going home for Christmas?”

“Yeah, got the usual stuff with my folks for Christmas Eve then I’m helping Ellen on Christmas day. I’m flying so I won’t be gone more than a few days. Probably end up spending half of it at airports with my luck.”

“Okay, just checkin’.”

“You guys have any plans?”

“Just service on the night before and maybe something with Annie’s cousins. Might just be a train of open houses.”

“Wow, I’m impressed.”

“Hey, I didn’t say I’d enjoy myself.”

You laughed and wrapped it up with a promise to touch base before you left town. The next two days were a whirlwind of emails and phone calls. You put off confirming brunch with Bela for Sunday, but relented from guilt, as she now had regular visits from paparazzi outside her townhouse due to her and Dean’s night club-hopping. You finished up your Saturday errands and plopped yourself onto your stationary bike in a last ditch effort to fend off your restlessness until it was a reasonable enough time to crash.

God, your life was so exciting.

Bela poured you another glass from the endless pitcher of mimosas. “Anyway, I guess Dean got us tickets to the Lakers’ game tomorrow night, like I actually care about baseball.”

“Basketball,” you corrected, taking a sip.

“Exactly,” Bela smirked.

“How good are the tickets? He doesn’t really follow it either,” you continued, worried they’d be in an embarrassing section.

“I think he said something about getting the label’s box for the game?” She tried to play innocent.

You almost spit out your drink. “The entire box?”

“It’s not floor seats’ exposure, but it will be worth it at least. I think he said he called in a favor with Dick?”

“Dick Roman is giving Dean access to his exclusive luxury box at the Staples Center?” You were floored, you opened your phone and googled who they were playing. “Holy fuck, they’re retiring Kobe’s number tomorrow. It’s going to be insane. There’s no way that box isn’t gonna be packed, but at least you can bump elbows with the uppity ups.”

“Kobe Bryant, yeah? He was quite prolific,” Bela seemed pleased. 

“Uh, yeah, played his whole career here,” you added, but put your phone away. Unwilling to text Dean a ‘wtf’ text while you still had another hour of drinks and foodstuffs to get through. “What are you going to wear?”

Bela slid her most compelling face on. “I was hoping we could find something together. It’s been ages since we drunk shopped. Plus, it’s the holidays so I will need to be a bit tipsy if I want to deal with the crowds.”

You had literally nothing left to buy for Christmas, but drunk shopping was a time-honored tradition between the two of you. Plus, it was fun watching Bela work her magic and pull a stunning outfit together out of seemingly discordant pieces.

“Three stores and I’m getting my own ride home, missy,” you warned with a firm pointer finger.

“Of course!” Bela chuckled and tucked into her eggs, eyes flitting back to you with conspiratorial delight.

You finished off your mimosa and finally saw to your french toast.

Bela’s driver took you to all of her favorite haunts and naturally she weaseled her way in to see the best stylists, at least those who were actually on hand on the Sunday afternoon before Christmas. At Sister Jo’s boutique, the owner herself greeted Bela with a double cheek kiss and hug. 

“What are you doing here? Wait, don’t tell me, you need an outfit asap because your little rocker boy toy needs arm candy,” the woman, who was actually named Anael, teased.

“You know me too well,” Bela replied. “This is my dear friend, Y/N, and we’re a bit on the tilt from brunch, but I simply had to come see you. I need something casual and sexy. It’s for a basketball game.”

You waved as she nodded in your direction, not wanting to break the momentum.

Anael frowned and looked Bela over, with much consideration. Then she hummed before asking, “how do you feel about hats?”

Nearly two hours and a top off on champagne later (to keep your buzzes going), you and Bela walked out of the shop with a bag each and a receipt ensuring Bela would be back in the morning for the alterations on the remaining garments.  

“Well, I’d say that was a successful outing,” Bela said with pride, the pink in her cheeks the only hint of her lingering inebriation.

“I’d say,” you agreed, opening the back door of her pre-ordered ride. “I still can’t believe they had something that would work for me for New Year’s.”

Bela waited on the curb until she could slide in the other side, but continued your trail of thought. “Anael is good people, if she likes something, she carries it. Doesn’t matter the size or price, she is all about how an outfit makes you feel,” Bela explained.

“Well, it worked, because I just spent more on myself than I have the entire year because of how good it felt on, so I get it,” you said, patting the bag at your feet.

Bela confirmed your address with the driver and then hers, thanking them for going out of their way in a way that she wasn’t actually apologizing for being a burden.

“You got eyes on you lady,” the driver warned, pointing towards the corner where a camera lens was trained on the car.

“Ignore them, they’ll find someone else before they follow us very far,” Bela promised and you could see her almost glaring at the rearview mirror for the driver to get the lead out.

You sat on the couch in your robe and sleep pants, hair still wet and wrapped on top of your head. You had crashed for a late afternoon nap after shopping and had rebounded with a blissfully long shower and skincare treatment. Now you watched mind numbing television and plotted out your schedule for the coming week. Even though it was cut short with holiday travels, it was full-to-bursting with things to get done.

You sighed and dragged out your suitcase from under your bed, dropped it on the couch and unzipped it to start packing. At least you could watch something while you organized. 

Just after ten your phone buzzed with a text message. You ignored it for a minute until you could find the remote beneath your pile of socks and paused your Lord of the Rings rewatch.

You stared at the conversation with the movie still paused, dumbfounded. One, that Dean sent you a goodnight text of all things and secondly that he was going to willingly give Bela his phone to post on social media about them. Because it’s not official until they’re both posting each other, or so they say. This was going to be big for the fan girls. You already knew Becky would be emailing you the second she saw it. But as far as fanclub presidents went, she wasn’t the worst. Then again, she would be more than a little bitter if Sam and Madison were the ones flaunting their relationship.

You put a reminder in your calendar to cover an extra sweep of SM while you were waiting out Dean’s interview Tuesday morning and then you tossed your phone back amongst your clothes. You were done for the night and so you shoved your half-packed suitcase on the floor and restarted the movie.

Tagging:

@deans-spinster-witch

@mrswhozeewhatsis

@cosicas-cuquis

@fics-pics-andotherthings-i-like

@suckitands33

@ladysparkles78

@deans-baby-momma

@stoneyggirl2

@sassy-pelican

@leigh70

@globetrotter28

@winharry

@lastactiontricia

@rockhoochie

Chapter Twelve: Hook

[altocat]

Ever Crisis: The First Soldier CHAPTER 5 Recap

Now that Sephiroth has joined the game, expect a lot more rambling/inane bias.

We open back up in the cave. The trio is resting when Sephiroth whistles to them to round them up. Glenn is pissy at the idea of them taking orders from a kid.

We meet up with Seph, where he tells us we'll be cutting through Cawpine Caverns. He said he spotted the Rhadorans there, so he thinks there's probably a base. He's got a mind to go run in there and kill shit.

Glenn keeps calling him a "cyborg", though he said he'll accept Seph's leadership since Seph is a big hero. He also threatens to kick Seph's ass if he whistles for them again. Seph pouts and trails unhappily behind them.

The group walks along a long trail thick with Mako. Seph holds them up and APOLOGIZES about whistling before, saying it was rude. He didn't realize. He admits he hasn't really had many opportunities to actually interact with people. This is his first real field assignment. Sheltered lab rat Seph confirmed??

Seph says him being a hero is a LIE. He said Shinra made him the face of the program and manufactured all of his "achievements". It was all one big recruitment ploy. He doesn't think he's a hero and he doesn't WANT to be one.

Glenn warms to this slightly and tells him now's his chance to prove himself to be a REAL hero. After all, he's freakishly strong in combat.

Seph doesn't want to be a hero. He says he just wants to live a normal life. But he mumbles it so the others can't hear. He said it's "never going to happen anyway". My heart is actually breaking??? OW.

They move to a waterfall. Natural materia has formed here. We have a very familiar Nibelheim-esque callback scene. Matt infodumps some familiar dialogue and Seph practically winks at the camera all "HUH NEAT".

Glenn reveals he got into trouble a lot as a kid, acting out how often he had to apologize for screwing around. Seph...doesn't understand him acting goofy. But it actually makes him laugh a little. AWWWW.

Oh god here we go. Sephiroth very awkwardly shows them a PICTURE of HOLY FUCKING SHIT LUCRECIA IT'S LUCRECIA OMFG. He calls her "Jenova". Seph asks if they've ever met or seen her before. It's a really detailed Remake Trilogy-esque pic of Lucrecia.

He said HOJO gave him the picture, but wouldn't tell him anything about her. That's surprising. Now Seph goes around asking everyone he meets if they've seen her.

Anyway, monster time. I finally get to fight as Seph! Little baby boy is so weak and pathetic compared to my way over-leveled FS trio lmao. His model is also very smol in comparison to them. Runty Seph!!! I'm gonna have to max this boi out.

After the fight, Glenn asks if Seph showed them the photo because he figured they'd die before he got to ask. Seph says no, but giggles about it. Precious angel baby boy.

Seph says that talking to the three of them must be what "having fun" is like. And that he enjoys it. Guys, I'm gonna die. I'm fucking crying. AND LUCIA PATS HIM ON THE HEAD GUYSSSSSS.

They enter the base. Seph tells them they are to eliminate all monsters and Rhadorans. He said this includes kids and old folks, rationalizing for both--SEPH'S also a kid, and the old folks could be veterans. YIKES Seph. He spouts some propaganda about this island belonging to Shinra. The boy is brainwashed.

With that said, they're keeping him pretty balanced so far. He goes between being genuinely sweet and endearing to ruthless war weapon. As he should be. I like morally gray Seph.

I attempt to navigate the base with a severely under-leveled Seph. Thanks, Square. Lots of Rhadorans and filler monsters slain. Many sections have annoying gates you have to unlock.

This caps off with a fucking STEAMPUNK MECH weapon thing. And of course it's a somewhat hard fight so it's grinding time with Seph.

After the fight, Sephiroth runs ahead in pursuit of the Rhadorans. He tells the group they should split up in different directions. When Glenn protests Seph going off by himself, Sephiroth says it's his "cyborg instinct". So he's still sore about that brief bit of bullying. Aww.

While the trio is tangling with the Rhadorans, who shows up but fish-goblin STAMP! He keeps following the trio and tears into the fray.

The whole place starts to fall apart thanks to explosives. Our trio books it, where they find Sephiroth outside, a huge pile of Rhadoran bodies all around him.

Here we go. The emotional climax of the chapter. Sephiroth says they were trying to evacuate everyone who couldn't fight, which Seph evidently took care of. Glenn asks if this violence was necessary and Matt equally says that they could have been used as bargaining chips.

Seph says they have to kill. SURPRISINGLY, Seph managed to get hurt! The so called "kids" Glenn mentioned earlier apparently had some combat training and backstabbed Seph.

Seph says that people make assumptions about himself as well, so he tries extra hard to prove them wrong. He says that his training proved to him that he needs to be strong, smart, and ruthless in battle, a hardened heart. It's kill them before they kill you. Obviously Shinra brainwashing. But also, Sephiroth has obviously seen a LOT of trauma at this point.

To which Glenn steps towards him and gives him The Hug. It's life or death out here. But Sephiroth has nothing to prove. He only needs to show compassion.

Sephiroth sadly shakes his head and is either crying or having something close to a mini-breakdown. To which he whispers the heartbreaking finisher of all finishers: "...I'm not a cyborg."

Glenn gives him another hug while Sephiroth stands there and cries. FuCK. I'm dead. Like, absolutely gutted. Jesus christ.

Sephiroth murmurs "I never wanted to be." A cyborg, obviously. GAME CALM DOWN I CAN'T KEEP CRYING LIKE THIS.

A bit later, the trio and Seph spot the other island in the distance. Glenn says there's someone who lives there who is "kind of like" Sephiroth. There's those parallels.

We cut to a brief scene of Rosen and his dog, lighting the chimney. White smoke. Lucia points out that when all the Rhadorans are gone, it will just be Rosen by himself.

This chapter was agony. Pure, undiluted agony. Almost up there with Zack's death. Almost. It's somewhere in the top 10 FF7 tearjerkers. FUCK.

[tallerthantale]

What Does Aziraphale Actually Believe, Part 1: What Does it Mean to Believe Something?

To a large portion of the fandom, there has been a struggle to process many of the things Aziraphale has said and done. We look for ways to make sense of how he acts, and get frustrated by how the things he says contradict themselves. For someone with a background in cognitive psychology, the self contradictory nature of Aziraphale is not particularly surprising. 

This is the first of a series of ten posts. Most posts will be going through the events of the story in chorological order. This first post is extra long and entirely psychology foundation, but I would strongly recommend reading through it, and if you can find the time after, I'd really recommend going through the links as well.

We are going for a bit of an adventure through about 3k words on the nature of consciousness, optical illusions, the dress, memory, false memories, unconscious bias, autism, trauma, cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias, conspiracy theorists, propaganda, and deradicalisation.

This is from the perspective of cognitive psychology not clinical, it will not improve your mental health, and it has the potential to induce an existential crisis or several but it is worth it. Knowing how our minds work has a lot of utility beyond understanding Aziraphale, though making sense of him is hopefully a fun motivation.

Because I really am this much of a pedant, I’m going to quickly address the elephant in the room: Aziraphale does not have a human brain. However, since his behaviour lines up with real life human behaviour I’m going to approach this as if his mind essentially runs the way a human brain would run a mind, because that is how the story is written. 

What is Consciousness?

Most of what our minds perceive, judge, interpret, think, remember, feel, ect… occurs in a mental space we have no perception of, often called the subconscious. Most people will have heard the term before, but I think most people misunderstand the scale of it and the power of it. The ongoing questions about consciousness vs. subconciousness aren’t in the form of ‘is the subconscious really a thing?’ No, the modern question is to what extent is consciousness really a thing?

Consciousness is an experience. What we think of as ourselves, the ‘central executive,’ the entity that we perceive ourselves to be, is a conglomeration of memories, thoughts, judgements, perceptions, and feelings that the rest of our mind produces for us to have at that moment in time. Much of it is approximately real, much of it is wholly fabricated to suit the moment. This is because there are major gaps in how much we can realistically perceive, understand, and remember at any particular point. It would be outrageously burdensome to actually process and load all the information for real, so our minds make up short hands and approximations for expediency, and feed that to us in a manner we experience as if it was directly perceived reality. That's a lot to throw at you, so I'm going to break it down.

Perception is an Assumption

To help get across how blended the construct of our experience is, let's consider the visual field. That is the representation of what we are seeing, or what we experience ourselves as seeing. Only a very small area in the centre of our vision is able to sense detail. The rest is only sensing vague cues of large scale changes. But we don’t perceive it that way, because we remember the detail that was there the last time the centre of our vision passed over that space, and our minds guess what details were probably there if we haven’t looked for a while. When something changes in an area we are constructing from memory and inference, we don't notice. The parts of our visual field that we are seeing in real time, and the parts that our mind constructs based on what it assumes is probably there are in no way distinct within our conscious experience, and that lets us navigate the world much more smoothly. The vast majority of what we visually perceive is constructed from memories and guesses. If those constructions weren’t incorporated into our vision, we would be massively visually impaired. 

Even for things we are seeing with detailed vision, we rely heavily on contextual cues that make assumptions we don’t realise we are making. (If you only follow one link in this post, follow that one, it's a 43 second video.) Consider that objects that are a solid colour are not a solid colour in terms of the wavelengths bouncing off of them, as they get hit by light sources and have highlights and shadows. The distinction between seeing blue because that is the wavelength that hit the retina, and seeing blue because the greyish blend that hit the retina was coming from a sunny patch, and you can infer that the object was blue from the context, is seamless. Unless the context is missing, and that grey might actually be a white object in a shadow. Then it might be all seamlessly white in the visual field, just as if it was white light entering the retina. And that's how millions of people saw a blue and black dress, millions of people saw a white and gold dress, but very few people saw a grey and brown dress. Yes, the actual dress was blue, but my point is that the pixels weren’t. Bluish grey light hit all our retinas, but half of the viewers had a dark blue object appear in their visual field and half had a white one appear. 

It is important to keep in mind that the vast majority of the time these context cues, assumptions, inferences, ect… put together a construct that works really well. The amount of resources required to keep our minds running is enormous and the size of our heads is a serious safety issue for people giving birth, even with all the energy saving assumptions and shortcuts. Given how much of our experience of reality is effectively an educated guess, we really are getting it right most of the time. Our minds are really good at what they do, these processes exist because it is adaptive to have them. Try to remember that, because it is going to be hard to hold on to that perspective as I move on from sensation and perception.

Working Memory

Our conscious experience is constructed for everything. Our thoughts, opinions, memories, that we have ‘with awareness’ is limited to what is, in that moment, loaded into a conceptual mental workspace called working memory, that can typically load about 7 things at a time. We can bring things from the larger library of remembered things into working memory by asking the part of our minds outside of our conscious awareness to give us the thing, and most of the time it will. But recall doesn’t always work. If the parts of our mind outside of awareness don't feed a thing into working memory, we can’t experience it, and they can feed something into our working memory if we want it there or not. The edges of what we think because it represents a coherent well considered world view consistent with our principles and values, and what we think because our minds fed it to us out of expediency or habit are just as seamless as the construct of our visual field. 

Things that do enter into our awareness are often altered by the time they get there by influences that are not reported to our conscious experience. Most of the shifts are within the category of cognitive bias, and are not considered to be pathological, because allistic people have most of them to a substantial degree as a default.

There is a long list of identified types of cognitive bias. Learning about cognitive biases doesn't stop people from having them, because it isn't the conscious mind that has the bias. The information we perceive as the raw facts has already been edited by the bias before it is loaded into our working memory awareness.

We often give ourselves the impression that when our thoughts, opinions, and ideas are moved out of working memory, they are preserved for us in an archived state, and returned to our consciousness later as we left them. There is no basis for that. Memories are incomplete, fade over time, and are reconstructed to appear whole through inference the same as our visual field every time we recall them. Each recall reworks them a bit more, and with the right sort of nudge, they can be substantially altered.

Autistic people are resistant to cognitive bias, but not immune. In the field of psychology that resistance is often referred to as autistic people having a 'failure to engage top-down processing' which makes me roll my eyes into my skull, because that is essentially saying 'a failure to be cognitively biased.' The irony of that is not the whole picture though.

Just like how optical illusions happen due to the fact that the visual field is constructed mostly out of really good guesses because we can't process the full information in real time, cognitive biases exist because of the shortcuts we take that make quick thinking possible. Autistic people think more accurately, but we do it by processing a mountain of information exhaustively, and that doesn't happen in a timely fashion. When I say exhaustively I mean it in every sense of the word, and we can't turn it off for expediency even if we wanted to. There are life situations where that really is disabling, particularly when we are exposed to mass sensory information.

So far we have been talking about non pathological biases, errors, and limitations. Pathology is not required for us to end up with a heavily distorted picture of reality, and when mental illness is involved it is exaggerating the downsides of cognitive mechanisms that are present in everyone generally. These are differences of degree, not of kind. Predictable patterns of biased perception and thinking associated with symptoms of mental illness are referred to as cognitive distortions.

As much as our minds can feed us altered things to believe for expediency, they can withhold others. If it isn’t helpful to have this particular belief right now, or this particular value in this situation, our minds can fail to load it into our awareness at all, particularly if it goes against an active self-schema, (interpretation of the self.) The various ways this can happen are referred to as motivated forgetting by the more clinical style psychologists. For the purposes of understanding Aziraphale, I’m mostly talking about relatively short term motivated forgetting, conveniently not recalling a particular fact at a particular moment. 

More deeply repressed memories that get wholly buried for years can be a thing…. But… The validity of long term motivated forgetting should not be taken as an endorsement of the practices that purport to retrieve those memories. Those practices can make you remember more things, but those things are unlikely to be true. Just as there is no dividing line between what we see in our visual field because light hit our retina and what we see in our visual field because it was there last we checked, there is no neurological difference between a real memory and a false one. That means if you use hypnotherapy to ‘recover’ memories of a trauma that didn’t actually happen A) there is no way to separate the false memories out later B) you have given that person trauma that is just as real as if those things had actually happened. 

If we have features of ourselves that we aren’t at peace with, the mind can refuse to allow knowledge of that into conscious awareness. If what was expedient to believe now isn't expedient any more, the new iteration of the mind doesn’t need to load the memory of the old beliefs existing. If a previous experience conflicts with our current experience, the memory of the previous experience can be altered such that consciousness preserves the perception of continuity.  (Link is a short video, waaatch iitttttt.)

Cognitive Dissonance

Technically 'cognitive dissonance' refers to the discomfort of perceiving yourself to believe contradictory things, or perceiving yourself to be acting in a way that contradicts a belief. Generally people bring up the term to describe the behaviour and thought patterns people engage in to avoid that feeling. To put it simply, people reconcile behaving in a way that is inconsistent with their beliefs by changing their understanding of the world to suit their behaviour more readily than they change their behaviour to align with their beliefs, and people will creatively reinterpret information to prevent their beliefs from contradicting their sense of self. The Wikipedia page has many examples establishing these patterns. I want to emphasise a point here that is often overlooked; these are the entirely typical behaviours of mentally healthy people. Cognitive dissonance and the associated behaviours are not a pathology.

The deeper explanation of why these patterns occur is hard to swallow. ‘What we believe’ isn’t a real thing in the first place, at least not in the way we like to imagine. Just like consciousness, it is a temporary constructed experience. It would more accurately be described as what we are currently telling ourselves we believe. (But what about confirmation bias? Doesn't that mean people are rigid in their beliefs? Oddly, no. Hold that thought, I'll get back to it later.)

The phenomenon of our beliefs changing to accommodate our behaviour is described as ‘belief follows action.’ In the world of psychology, thinking a thought counts as an action. We act, and then afterwards construct an experience of having decided to act, along with the supposed basis. Our conscious experience represents the order the other way around, even in controlled settings where we can measure the actual order electrically. We do what we do, observe what we are going to do, or think a thought about a situation, then form an idea of what we believe in order to make sense of it after, and then construct a memory of ourselves having had the belief first. The actual reasons for our behaviour are not directly observable to us, and are more the realm of behaviourism than cognition.

What we have in our memory is a library of things we hypothetically can recall, can think, can know, that our minds draw from in order to put together a temporary construct of 'what I believe' that best suits explaining our actions to ourselves at that time, with little regard to if that explanation is accurate. That gets loaded into working memory, and we experience it as our worldview. Since cognitive dissonance is a feeling produced by having an experience of contradictory ideas and actions in our conscious awareness, and resolving cognitive dissonance is about eliminating that experience, often the easiest way to resolve cognitive dissonance is to simply not load a belief while a contradictory belief or action is occurring.

Nothing stops us from storing massively self contradictory beliefs in the library. It's fine as long as they aren't both bumping around our working memory space at the same time. Working memory capacity is generally only about seven things, so avoiding loading the contradictions simultaneously is actually pretty easy if none of them contradict our sense of self. When we load an opinion, we don't need to also load the basis for the opinion. So if someone believes in abolishing all taxes because no government organisation can ever be trusted, and also believes we should hero worship the police, because they say they serve and protect, they can load "abolish taxes" and "hero worship the police" simultaneously without having an experience of cognitive dissonance.

Do they really believe no government organisation can ever be trusted? They believe it when they need to rationalise hating taxes to themself, or hating a particular organisation. It's an option that can get retrieved from the library, and when it's in working memory it is everything we imagine a belief to be. When it isn't in working memory, it functionally doesn't exist to the conscious mind.

It's fun to take these shots at conservative politics, and there are reasons conservative politics is full of obvious examples, but I'm going to emphasise; beliefs functionally not existing if they aren't in our awareness is not a pathology. This is the normal behaviour of a typically functioning healthy human mind. Mental illness does not equal when people's minds do things we don't like, no matter how good our reasons are for not liking them.

Confirmation Bias, Conspiracies, and Cults

The fact that the library can contain contradictory things, and our minds can pick and choose in motivated ways what gets represented in consciousness when, doesn't mean the options are limitless. We usually need some degree of justification to put something into the 'things I can believe' library, though when it comes to miscellaneous factual information 'I heard some one say it' is enough of a justification an alarmingly large amount of the time.

Confirmation bias is the tendency to retain beliefs in the face of contradictory information. People often describe it as people being impervious to having their beliefs changed. I think people describe it that way because they aren't on board with belief follows action yet. If you want to change what someone believes, motivate them to change their behaviour first. Belief will follow action. It's not that we haven't studied it, it's that we don't like it.

We want the solution to be that we change people's minds with evidence. It doesn't work, because giving them the evidence, even if they fully absorb it, just gives them options for potential beliefs, and it won't go into their 'what I believe' construct without an incentive, especially if their social context incentivises against it.

Confirmation bias can prevent us from tossing out beliefs prematurely. If we see something that looks like it disobeys physics, we might look for magnets or wires before we decide gravity is fake. That is an adaptive feature, but like most adaptive features, it has limits and it has downsides. The biggest limitation is that it doesn't do a whole lot to stop us from adding new optional beliefs to our collection. The biggest downside is that the power of confirmation bias relates to how much the belief has to do with your sense of self, and nothing to do with how well supported it is by evidence.

When we are talking about intrenched political beliefs, or other ideas that heavily relate to our sense of self and community, things get relatively fixed as to our broad conclusions. However, our broad conclusions are only a small portion of what we believe. When people think about a person prone to extreme confirmation bias, they often imagine it being a matter of rigid inflexible thinking. But it isn't. Coming up with new reasons to discount seemingly contradictory evidence, reinterpreting older evidence, finding new ways to reach the same conclusion based on a new set of facts, ect..., is all very creative and fluid. Conspiracy theorists are known for this. What makes the conclusions different to the supporting evidence it that our conclusions are tied to or actions and our sense of self. For a conspiracy theorist, maintaining the gist of the conclusion preserves their identity and their place in the community. Everything else is changeable.

Remember, belief follows action. If we participate in an opinionated community, we will believe what makes that make sense. If our survival depends on continuing to be involved in a social circle, we will believe what makes that make sense. Deradicalisation (from hate groups) and deprogramming often requires providing people a whole reboot of their life while they are still in the very early stages of working on themselves. No matter what new information you expose them to, even if they absorb it into the library of things they can believe, as long as their life is dependent on the communities that radicalised them (to hate) their minds will be highly incentivised to keep rolling back to forming 'what I believe' constructs that validate those connections. Not because they consciously decide it's better, because the part of their mind outside of their awareness that constructs what they believe doesn't include all the options. Most of the time it only includes the SAFE options. Being willing to help get people out by offering community support BEFORE they have reworked themselves is the only way to make deradicalisation happen at scale.

Propagandist news uses the Firehose of Falsehood because most people are relatively limited in what rationalising beliefs they can spontaneously generate for themselves. A network spewing dozens of self contradictory reasons to keep your political affiliation provides viewers an array of optional opinions to keep in the library. It doesn't matter that they can't be true at the same time, as long as they aren't in working memory at the same time. The more options you have of what 'what I believe' can be, the more tools you have to rationalise staying on the team, and staying in the community.

Individual Differences and Differing Individuals

For most of us, our behaviour is pretty consistent, what we are willing to believe is moderately narrow, and therefore our constructs of ‘what I believe’ can get remade as more or less the same thing over and over. However, if you have a mind that can believe quite a lot of different things, is prone to whimsical behaviour, and / or spent formative years needing to act a certain way to survive, it can learn to produce quite a lot of very different constructs of ‘what I believe’ in order to rationalise a wide range of behaviour. 

While extensive and empirical cognitive psychology underpins how it is conceptually possible for people like that to exist, the actual patterns of rotating belief systems and what causes certain people to have them more than others is a topic that it is hard to look at empirically. There are logistical issues when it comes to measuring beliefs that flip in and out of conscious awareness based on context even with participants who would enthusiastically and honestly participate, and in many cases these patterns show up in people who would never willingly subject themselves to treatment or evaluation, which would make it impossible to have decent data on them even if we had a good way to measure it.

Because of that, much of the discussion of these patterns falls into the realm of psychoanalysis, which is a mixed bag of philosophy that sometimes likes to represent itself as a science, and has a lot of problematic history. Having spent a lot of time around survivors of severe childhood trauma and being one myself, I do think modern psychoanalysis gets some things right. However, I do want to be transparent about the fact when I talk about what causes some people to be particularly susceptible to unstable beliefs, rationalisations, and motivated forgetting, and when I discuss how that plays out, we are leaving the realm of science and entering the realm of ‘this is what some people are like according to the people who have thought about it a lot.’ 

For most people our sense of self identity will contain the generated constructs of what we believe toward a relatively fixed-ish core set of very similar ‘what I believe’ options, though fixed core beliefs cause problems of their own. For people with certain trauma responses, the sense of self can be the source of tremendous instability. If the sense of self is fragile, threatened, terrorised, split, ect… the mind can get pretty cavalier about changing out beliefs, memories, and opinions to protect itself, and even switch out the sense of self. We can end up having wildly different self-schema in different circumstances. This self can't cope with this situation? New self.

The library of 'things I can believe' can contain things that would cause cognitive dissonance if paired with one self-schema, but works fine with this other one. An extreme form of this can present as dissociative identity disorder, however that is very rare and not what I am getting at. Most of the time differing self-schema or self-states aren't that partitioned, and share access to most memories.

With an unstable sense of self, ‘what I believe’ can end up being a tool on a Swiss army knife of possible belief systems that get taken out as needed, all while the conscious experience of the central executive maintains a seamless perception of a coherent and stable worldview. When people are like this, it is far more noticeable from the outside than it is from the inside, and that is by design. Having awareness of how unstable your own beliefs are wouldn’t be expedient, it would be cognitively dissonant, so you don’t know about it. 

This pattern is a big part of what is going on with Aziraphale. There is a very broad set of things he can believe, but it’s down to the individual situation if he believes a specific one at a particular time. He won’t see it as him picking and choosing his beliefs, whatever he believes in that scene looks to him like the only thing he would ever believe, no matter the fact that he will believe something else the next day. There are also certain things outside of his awareness that he knows but won’t perceive, because they are dangerous to his sense of self, but those things can still impact his behaviour. 

Thank you for reading though! The future posts will be a lot more to do with the story, and probably about half the length each.

Post 1/10

End Note: This post is the most likely of the set to be revised in some way. That is because the concepts I’m seeking to get across here are very hard to digest even for people within the field of psychology. Finding ways to more effectively communicate these aspects of how our minds work is a bit of a passion project for me, so if you see areas that are confusing, bits you want more elaboration on, questions that are unaddressed, ect…, please let me know. I am very interested in working out more methods of getting these ideas across. 

If you are interested in reading further into the subject outside of my internet ramblings, Wikipedia pages, and think piece articles, I would recommend getting ahold of a cognitive psychology textbook as a place to start, the internet has ways.

[lmk-aus-galore]

Cinema Sins/Wins Rip Off of Lego Monkie Kid.

Yeah yeah I’m back folks, I just decided to take a looong break.

Inspired by @satansaidmyturnintheh3||scape

Rules:

-I won't be counting Animation Mistakes, because Idk how to do that, and I myself am a beginner animator (more like incredibly amateur, to the point I'm asking my sister for help) Unless of course the Animation is obviously and clearly having a mistake for me to watch.(Or it is said in the wiki) The other reason is because I don't want to keep repeating a scene just to check for an animation mistake.

-!This is mostly for entertainment purposes, sorry if I sound too mean!

-I also won't be counting flashbacks as 'mistakes' because most of them are based on bias.

-I'll be formatting it like this

-Neutral

-Sin

-Win

Let’s get started.

——————————————-

-Intro.

._.

-Love how you can see where Mei, Sandy and MK are in this scene.

-On the other hand why does Pigsy have a random game machine beside his shop? I know there are apartment buildings on top of said shop but in Season 2 he actively has authority to remove it.

-Secondly is MK currently on break at the moment or is he just, ‘slacking off’ judging by his clothes he should be currently working.

-Dragon Horse and Stone Monkey.

-Ah yes the underrated trio. Sandy, Mei and MK. Please tell me this group has a name.

-Bad time to call your daughter.

-The way Mei is so nervous to talk to her mother and the way she talks as if her mother doesn’t even give her enough time to explain, like I think Mei’s Mother is cutting her off at times here and it’s not really okay. It feels like Mei is talking to her boss than her Mom.

-Sandy for the win.

-The finishing move is a spin of the staff and a hit to the leg…wow MK.

-I really love how Sandy is just casually friends with these guys. Like these guys just met Sandy a few weeks ago and all of a sudden they said ‘Let’s be friends’

-Ok MK you should really get social cues…or at least let Mei get a word in-

-‘I always wanted to see Mei’s secret Dragon House full of secret Dragon stuff’ makes me wonder why no one believes in the Monkey King stories. Either that or why Mei isn’t being worshipped like a deity by now.

-Also MK, kinda creepy…but to be fair Mei put cameras on all of you…

-BRO THIS BULL CLONE HAS EVERYTHING ON HER?!

-Why does this Bull Clone pull out the same Two Pictures twice?

-Mei doesn’t smile in her photo, along with the rest of her family :(

-In fact she looks kinda restricted.

-Also Key detail, looks like Mei’s little green hair things are dyed!

-PIF confirms that Sha Wujing’s spear and Zhu Bajie’s rake are Celestial Weapons that later tie into Season 4

-We also have the Calabash, PIF’s fan, Wukong’s staff, Nezha’s spear and two of the Samadhi Fire Rings…though I think by this time of development this probably is Nezha’s little ring thingys in his shoes? Not really sure. The only one we don’t know about is the unidentified sword and the random rope.

-Also is she implying that her own fan is a powerful artifact? I guess that makes sense…?

-Why does PIF’s animation always stretch her or squish her I can’t take her seriously XD worse that it’s usually the face.

-Mei wanting to be a normal child is so sad. On the other hand why don’t we have more fanfics of Mei and her family dynamic? Come on people the angst is right there!

-When you think about it, the High-Tech security might’ve been the reason Mei became the ‘Tech Girl’ in the group. Since her family dabbles in High-Technology it’s only obvious she grew curious of that stuff.

-On the other note, what’s with Ancient families and suddenly getting a grasp at handling High-Technology? Like bro Red Son and Mei have so many parallels to each other it’s insane.

-MEI THIS IS WHY YOU DONT LEAVE THE DOOR OPEN.

-You know Red Son you might need to double down in calling Mei a peasant because uhh…wow, the place is huge.

-Mei’s room doesn’t have a door, which shows how shitty these people actually are.

-Also Mei has a lot of rock aesthetic posters, including one with a spider meaning Mei canonically had a rock phase. That or a goth phase so goth Mei is probably canon.

-Why I thought of rock is because of the two sets of guitars she has, one being an electric guitar.

-Mei also has a skateboard indicating she used to skate.

-She has an indoor TV with two game controllers (Why didn’t they just play in her bedroom?)

-And finally she has some things I think her parents would’ve given her such has the pony statue and the meditation carpet on the floor.

-Also apparently she plays the piano? Or is that even a piano?

-The legend of Mei’s sword is kinda cool actually.

-WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO TOUCH IT?! HOW DO YOU DECIDE WHO GETS TO WEILD IT THEN?!

-I have a feeling I know why no one has been able to hold that sword in like…ever (They all look so mean)

-‘You two boot up the old TV!’ What TV? There is literally no TV there? Is there a TV off-screen? Even so where would you put said TV? And again, why not your room?

-MK control your strength- how the hell does that even happen?

-Bull Clone literally just yeeted his hat at him.

-Said Bull Clone took the precious Dragon Sword despite the fact that he was struggling to get it off the statue

-Mei calls her Motorcycle like a horse, get it? Dragon Horse?

-Okay now I don’t blame MK I think that pinball machine is old. BECAUSE HOW DOES THAT JUST HAPPEN?!

-Mei this house should at LEAST take up a whole acre, HOW BIG IS YOUR HOUSE?!

-Mei fixing her bike is while she is chasing the Bull Clone is badass as hell. We do not talk about her enough.

-Pro tip: Never mess with Mei.

-This is why we need to give this family some doubt, okay if literally all her ancestors are dissing her and insulting her to her face because of the way she acts then maybe you shouldn’t turn a blind eye.

-‘You know what I am part of this family! I am Mei! Descendant of the Great Dragon of the West Sea, this is mine! And this is my House!” You go girl, show these guys a what you’re made of!

-A very good take on Mei accepting who she is despite her family’s expectations on her. She’s part of the family but she knows that she needs to stand up for herself. Good bravo.

-IS IT JUST ME OR IS THAT THING BIGGER THAN NORMAL?!

-I wonder what the parents’ reaction was, Holy cow this might’ve been QUITE the sight.

-Yep that Bull Clone is straight up dead.

-MK I think that machine is really just old.

-Lol, Sandy making sure MK doesn’t lose focus.

-‘Somebody forgot our luggage’ then she stares directly at the dad and said dad doesn’t give a damn.

-The fact that Mei has to apologize first before getting praised is messed up as hell. If someone is trying to steal a really powerful relic such as that, then obviously it’s gonna be chaos, but the fact she has to apologize first before they acknowledge she did something good is messed up.

-But to be fair I think they do love Mei, really, but the way they parent just icks me.

-And Mei’s mom sounds like she pulled that whole talk out from google.

-Mei’s dad sounds…familiar hold up-

-KNEW I HEARD THAT VOICE SOMEWHERE. (Also apparently Mei’s mom is the same VA as Mei, so Stephanie Steph is just talking to herself)

-Poor MK…

[beardedmrbean]

The stance by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on face masks has taken many twists and turns throughout the COVID pandemic.

After initially claiming face coverings weren’t necessary, the CDC changed course in April 2020, calling on all Americans — even children as young as 2 years old — to mask up. 

That September, then-CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield said during a Senate hearing that “face masks are the most important powerful health tool we have,” even suggesting that they might offer more protection than vaccines.

Those recommendations likely played a large part in 39 U.S. states eventually enacting mask mandates.

Now, a new scientific review — led by 12 researchers from esteemed universities around the world — suggests that widespread masking may have done little to nothing to curb the transmission of COVID-19.

Published by Cochrane Library, the review dug into the findings of 78 randomized controlled trials to determine whether “physical interventions” — including face masks and hand-washing — lessened the spread of respiratory viruses. 

When comparing the use of medical/surgical masks to wearing no masks, the review found that “wearing a mask may make little to no difference in how many people caught a flu-like illness/COVID-like illness (nine studies; 276,917 people); and probably makes little or no difference in how many people have flu/COVID confirmed by a laboratory test (six studies; 13,919 people).”

Next, the review compared medical/surgical masks to N95 respirators (or P2 respirators, which are used in Europe).

It found that “wearing N95/P2 respirators probably makes little to no difference in how many people have confirmed flu (five studies; 8407 people); and may make little to no difference in how many people catch a flu-like illness (five studies; 8407 people), or respiratory illness (three studies; 7799 people).”

The 78 studies looked at participants from countries of all income levels. 

Data was gathered during the H1N1 flu pandemic in 2009, non-epidemic flu seasons, epidemic flu seasons up to 2016 and the COVID-19 pandemic, the study authors wrote.

Doctor says review had some key limitations

The new findings seem to call into question the CDC’s enthusiastic embrace of widespread masking.

However, Dr. Marc Siegel, professor of medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center and a Fox News medical contributor, pointed out a key limitation: “The researchers focus primarily on randomized trials, but most of the studies that have been done on masks are population studies,” he said. 

“There are very few randomized trials on masks.”

In a randomized trial, researchers place participants in different groups and observe the results in a controlled environment.

By contrast, population-based studies measure outcomes in a “real-world” setting.

The study authors did admit to some limitations and a risk of bias, including the low number of people who followed mask guidance and the wide variation of outcomes. 

“The results might change when further evidence becomes available,” they wrote.

‘Be sure of consistency’ 

Dr. Siegel said he has never supported mask mandates. 

He believes that while masks might be effective on an individual level, they don’t work as well on a population level.

“If you’re going to mandate something, you’d have to be sure of consistency across the population, and that’s never happened,” he said.

However, the physician pointed out that the CDC never actually mandated masks — with the exception of a public transportation mandate in January 2021. 

“It was the state and local authorities that took the CDC’s recommendations and implemented the mandates,” Dr. Siegel said. 

“The recommendations may have been wrong, but the CDC doesn’t deserve the blame for everything. I think they were aware that masks may have value on a personal basis, but they got carried away with the politics.”

What do you think? Post a comment.

As of right now, no U.S. states have mask mandates in place. 

On Sunday, New York dropped its state-wide mask requirement in hospitals — leaving the decision up to individual facilities. Many healthcare facilities are currently still requiring them. 

[cutter-kirby]

malevolent theory time!

in which I got too excited when the new episode was called ‘the deal’ and spent the entire runtime looking for vague hints at our favorite little force of chaos’ existence

alternatively: detective noel is probably connected to kayne in some way and I can’t prove it but I can point out fun little hints

-he’s referred to as the stranger until we learn his name, much like kayne. this isn’t actually evidence it's fairly normal but I wanted to point it out

-the second thing he says to arthur is that he’s "golden." much in the way kayne says "golden boy" and suchlike. HMMMMMM.

-maybe it’s just me but I get the vibe he knows exactly who arthur is. my first guess for who his character would be was a detective for parker’s death, but it fits kayne too

-noel in general is just Very kayne-like in his mannerisms. just the way he speaks and gestures (walking around a lot, snapping, sucking air through his teeth, "woah woah woah") and makes allusions and switches from topic to topic is just so kayne. also he has pet names like "darling" and "doll"

-"believe me, I know [Arkham]" okay buddy

-the way he's constantly trying to lead arthur to a conclusion and guiding him along with his plan is very kayne.

-he doesn't really react to arthur not knowing where the window is other than pointing it out, maybe to suggest he already knows about arthur's blindness but this could just be me overthinking it

-this is the big one:

don't think i really need to explain this. the fact that he says it "wryly," like an inside joke, just really makes it

-the way he says "shuffled off this mortal coil" is, again, him making allusions much like kayne would

-noticed this in my reread:

he uses john's words. he responds to john. it could be a coincidence, but still......

-experienced with the supernatural

-“I’m a friend” HM. HMMMMMMMM. at least not arthur's only friend anymore!! yippee!!!!

-this is weird:

-this is VERY KAYNECORE:

-to my knowledge "noel" means born on christmas. like a certain jesus christ who is present and accounted for!

all in all, whatever he ends up being, this guy is fucking weird. just to be clear i'm not totally convinced he IS kayne, but my best guess would be a pawn or a meat puppet. but he really could be whatever! let me know if anything else about him struck you as odd!!!

is this an actual substantial theory or complete confirmation bias!?????? you decide !!!!!!!!

[palin-tropos]

If I had to explain how to grasp the Ignus Nilsen lore to a new DE player obviously I’d say you have to play the Communist political vision quest, I think you get quite a bit already from reading the infra-materialism book, you need certain skills like Encyclopedia to chime in for extra information (for instance it can tell you about his famous war crime, the Forest of Spears).

He, more so than Kras Mazov, is really the source of the wacky supernatural ideas that the quest explores. You have to have at least 30 communism points to get a cheeky little confirmation that there is something to the theory of “plasm” after all, although I think Nilsen himself didn’t elaborate as much on the details of plasm as his followers did, and you don’t have to take every claim at face value. It’s a reified metaphor, but Elysium is full of those.

The music that plays at the secret book club meeting is called “Ignus Nilsen Waltz”, which I think is neat.

If by this point the impression you get of him is of a weird nerd with a propensity for violence who may have had a gay thing with Mazov then that is also what I was feeling at the end of that quest. Perhaps you took note of Harry, self styled Kras Mazov impersonator, trying to egg Kim on into admitting they have a similar “special bond”. You may have also passed an Authority passive check that implies Harry sees “the most ancient power dynamic” in Steban and Ulixes, “one leader and one follower” (which is admittedly Authority’s bias, but it probably is meant to describe Kim and Harry too—technically Harry does outrank Kim and is the one leading the case).

If this sort of thing is catnip to you and you’re rolling around in it, then it would be a good next step to at least skim @revacholianpizzaagenda’s Sacred and Terrible Air chapter summaries. Then you will find out about possibly the craziest thing this man did (become an increasingly actual ghost after being a guy’s imaginary friend/Fury. it’s like if Harry’s Rhetoic was like yes I am the real ghost of Kras Mazov now). Also he also genuinely wanted to save the world from the Pale but it’s too late :(

So now that you know he can do that spooky shit you are ready to unleash the Communism Demon on your blorbos.

EDIT: And I suppose you’re wondering what he looked like if you want a mental image and I don’t know much but he is Vaasan so Scandinavian-ish, and Encyclopedia informs us that Vaasans are “beautiful and impossibly blond”. He probably also has some elements of his appearance in common with Kim and Ulixes (round spectacles makes sense) given that Harry and Steban have got a resemblance to Mazov. One might also suspect a dual resemblance to Engels and Trotsky since there are clearly parallels to both.

[dearweirdme]

The discourse is something else today. "jkkrs don't actually believe that jk goes live only when jimin leaves, cause he obviously does lives even when jimin is in korea, but they noticed a fun pattern and are playing with it. like this is the fourth? fifth? times it's happened and a lot of them even saw it coming hours (or even minutes) before it did." It's called apophenia, which is looking for and finding a patterns where there are none. They've noticed it happened four or five times, and he's gone live 29 times this year. I guess they don't acknowledge the lives they can't connect to this "pattern". A commenter pointed out that some Taekookers play around with the same theory, and probably have just as many examples they think proves it. It's confirmation bias, all of these weird theories are. You know who also has a similar theory? Taennopes. And they push it super hard even though they've been wrong the vast majority of the time. 😂 This kind of thing is a playground for people who are the most desperate to believe in something. It's sad really.

Hi anon!

It’s so unnecessary imo. Just look at real interactions, those actually tell us things about real connections. But I suppose for Taennopes especially that’s a bit hard since there is only one real interaction in the last two years that they have to go on 😂.

I suppose Jkkrs are constantly disappointed, and the only way to keep their ideas alive is to allow for stuff like this.

I know there’s tkkrs doing the same thing, which is a bit weird to me, because we have actually gotten quite a bit of real stuff.

[shihalyfie]

Seems like someone translated the now unavailable stage reading from DigiFes2022 and i'm shocked about some things like, the twins not being all lovely around each other (a very common fanbase's interpretation/guess) and how Kouichi does not seem to be a shy (??) person like Ken (another fanbase guess regarding him)

Any thoughts? 😗

There is so much to unpack here. So much. So, so, so much. I thought I was going to answer this quickly, but then this post got too long because I had so much to say, so I'm going to tuck the rest under the cut, but my goodness. I'm actually offended this is from a "vanishable" stage reading (and that the official stance is even that the contents are meant to be disposable and not taken as canon -- to hell with that, material like this, let alone for Frontier, is too valuable to let go of). I don't know about other people, but this checked off all the boxes for things I wanted to see addressed or confirmed, moreso than even The Train Called Hope from 2019 (which I did still like, but to be honest, this one felt more like it was "at home" in a sense).

Well, let's start with stuff about production background (skip to the bullet points below if you don't care about this). This script was penned by Yamatoya Akatsuki, who was an episode writer for Frontier, and was presumably brought on because he's also working on The Beginning right now. But despite working on Kizuna and sometimes being advertised as a member of original staff, Yamatoya was actually very minimally involved on Adventure or 02...and on the flip side, he was a regular writer for Frontier and wrote quite a few of its landmark episodes. In fact, he may be right behind Frontier's head writer Tomita Sukehiro in terms of how significant he is to Takuya's characterization. Him writing for this is arguably more at home for him than Kizuna/The Beginning are -- not to say that he isn't doing amazingly with the Adventure and 02 characters, but I imagine Seki has probably been doing a lot of intervention with them, and while it may just be mental bias, there's a certain sense of comfort that just especially works here with this stage reading's dialogue for the Frontier kids, since Yamatoya was personally responsible for building up these characters to begin with.

(If you're wondering why Tomita wasn't the writer, he retired from anime writing in 2011, so any Frontier content "with original staff" has to be done by one of its episode writers. This sounds like a bad situation at first, but this is where I have to remind people not to get too hung up on auteur theory; Adventure, 02, and Frontier already had drama CDs partially or wholly written by episode writers, and said episode writers deserve way more credit for their influence than people give them. Please reference my posts on Adventure/02 and Tamers staff for more info...actually, I really ought to make a Frontier one too if I have free time, huh... (edit: okay, now I did)

However, our last bit of post-canon Frontier material, The Train Called Hope, was written by a different writer, Masaki Hiro (who also was an episode writer for Frontier). Because of that, and especially because these two "dramas" were written in reverse chronological order (The Train Called Hope takes place in their high school years, whereas this one takes place two years after Frontier's finale), I do have to admit I feel a little dissonance, especially in regards to the portrayal of the twins -- a lot can happen in several years, but it does feel weird to think about the fact that two years later they'll be close enough to bicker with and troll each other, but in high school they'll go back to being a bit more awkward...? Of course, it's very easy to reconcile both portrayals at once -- humans are very multifaceted creatures after all -- but from a writing perspective it's a bit weird. But between the two portrayals, the new drama's interpretation makes a lot more sense to me, and is also just a lot more satisfying in general, so I'm honestly very relieved to have this solidified, and judging from reactions on Twitter I can tell a lot of twins fans were also very satisfied.

(Disclaimer before we go forward: I'm afraid of giving the wrong idea, so to be clear, I do like The Train Called Hope quite a bit, it's just that this current drama was a lot closer to my personal preferences in terms of what kinds of details I wanted to know about the kids' futures. Given that Tamers 2018, which came out in the same batch as The Train Called Hope, was said to have been explicitly inspired by tri., I feel like they were kind of on a kick of trying to give the Tamers and Frontier kids the tri. treatment of big timeskips and future stuff, and I certainly don't mind it but I also felt a little sad at the fact that the character dynamics were a little thinner and we didn't get to see much of the group as a whole because they were busy trying to cram in so much info about everyone's career prospects.)

I already wrote about Ken and Kouichi last year, and this is especially prominent given that Yamatoya wrote both this and the Kizuna drama CD, even using similar story formats, and yet it's very clear that they (and their respective groups) are very different. This stage reading may be one of our most valuable resources for Kouichi lovers, because unfortunately during the series itself he was a little shy with the others due to the circumstances of how they met, and Izumi even admitted that she felt she didn't know him very well at the time (although to be fair, she also admitted she understood Kouji even less). But there were multiple hints within the series that Kouichi was normally very open and sociable, arguably even more so than a good chunk of the rest of the group, and more similar to Kouji in temperament than you might think at first -- so this is the one time we basically got hard confirmation of that. And it was exactly as I said: now that we're seeing Kouichi outside a very stressful situation where he had a lot of things to be worried about with this group, it turns out he really isn't very different from his brother after all (at most, he's a little more down-to-earth...just a little).

Anyway, bullet-pointing the other things I found to be of interest (I am frankly amazed at how much information Yamatoya is capable of conveying in only short lines of dialogue):

We finally get an answer to the question of whether the Shibuya train station elevator is still connected to the Digital World, and the answer is that, at least as of two years later, it’s not there anymore. My impression is that the implication is that it only supernaturally manifested in Shibuya Station at all due to the events of Frontier, and now that it was no longer “needed” it vanished. But the restaurant that replaced it apparently has a connection despite that...

The Frontier kids are confirmed to basically be on “penpal” status. The Train Called Hope made it clear they were still in contact, but to what degree was unclear. So as of this one, it’s confirmed that they don’t see each other super-often and still have to catch each other up, but they also do seem to contact each other regularly to the point it’s a given they have each other’s contact addresses and have rough awareness of certain things ongoing in each other’s lives. (I imagine once smartphones are invented, they might make a LINE group like the Adventure kids have in Kizuna...if they can bring themselves to swap out their phones.)

Izumi has a junior who likes her! (Well, likes her in some way.) I think that’s a pretty good sign that the whole making friends deal has been working out for her.

The group certainly has an interesting perspective on Kouichi, in that apparently they’re aware he’s not the type to throw random uncalled for surprise parties, but also Takuya seems perfectly capable of imagining him as some kind of action hero.

Speaking of which, while the entire group seems to be devoid of any brain cell whatsoever (if anything they might be in the negatives at this point), Takuya seems to be the most “pure-hearted” because he easily believes whatever theory he’s hearing at the moment. Since all of the kids are showing equal degrees of chaos, I like those little things that stand out.

On the other hand, Tomoki has now become genuinely terrifying with his ability to become deadpan at the most unnerving times.

Kouji stopped calling Kouichi “nii-san” as far as we can tell, which is in line with Things I Want to Tell You and The Train Called Hope, as with the portrayal of the twins here as significantly more rough with each other than they were back in the original series. As Izumi points out, the fact they’re so rough with each other is conversely a good sign about how comfortable they are with each other as actual brothers now.

The twins go to the same middle school. I cannot emphasize enough how much of an incredible bombshell this is. This cannot have been an easy feat to pull off, since the twins didn’t live in the same area at the time of Frontier. While it’s not stated in the drama itself, I have to imagine that at this point all three parents are aware and on board with this (possibly even directly assisting with it), because there’s no way the twins could have pulled this off by themselves, but hey, maybe their parents decided to help them to make up for lying to them for eleven years. (Okay, we’re getting into real headcanon at this point.)

The twins look alike enough that they can be confused for each other by appearance alone (basically, it’s confirmed that they have the same hairstyle at this point). I think headcanons were split as to whether both would want to look like each other or stick with their own individual styles, but I do know it’s a popular Japanese headcanon that Kouji only had long hair in imitation of his supposedly deceased biological mother (therefore favoring the idea he’d cut it after the series as a sign of moving on and as a way of looking more like his brother), so I think a lot of people were feeling very validated on that end. I am kind of amused at the fact that their voices are canonically considered to be different in-universe (I’m not sure if that’s actually possible in real life, but it’s definitely a meta joke).

Kouichi apparently has a girl who likes him (whose feelings he doesn’t reciprocate). Well, I mean, the twins are very popular among real-life audience members, so this isn’t really surprising...

Not only have the twins gotten a lot closer, Kouji is not above just completely messing with his brother for the hell of it. I’m not sure if this is a voice actor joke (Kamiya and Suzumura are close friends in real life, and Kamiya is infamous for being a troll who pranks Suzumura quite often), but at the same time Takuya also specifically singles out Kouji as being more on the antagonistic side. Right now this may be the one key difference between the twins in terms of temperament, since it’s otherwise clear that they are incredibly similar now, and it’s probably a byproduct of how Kouji started off with thicker social boundaries than his brother’s and is thus is a little behind in in having a more active social life.

That said, I am sorry to anyone who hoped the twins would be among the more sensible members of the group, because at this point they might actually be the most unhinged. The two of them happened to get in a bickering match this time, but them both ganging up on Takuya at the end makes me really scared of what they’re capable of if they do start conspiring together the way Junpei theorized they were doing.

Katsuharu is still close with Tomoki (this is consistent with The Train Called Hope), but he’s since fallen out of contact with the others.

The twins seem to perceive Izumi as the most sensible of all of them (operative word: perceive)...

The Frontier kids are utter idiots. I say this with all the love I can muster, and I mean this in a way that the Frontier kids truly are uniquely chaotic and borderline unhinged in a way other Digimon groups just can’t match. I already pointed out earlier that there was a difference between how the 02 and Frontier groups handled their chaos, but this is now pretty much as clear as you can get between Yamatoya’s takes on the 02 kids in the Kizuna drama CD and the Frontier kids here -- both follow similar formats of zany comedy followed by a sentimental conclusion, but while the 02 kids were mostly just getting out of control because they were too excited, the Frontier kids actually accusing each other in a game of whodunnit with increasingly absurd justifications is just on another level. This is truly the fun of Frontier in a nutshell -- the shamelessness, the misfit nature of the cast, the chaos, and just the lovable sentiment of it all.

By the way, I really, really love this fanart. If you haven’t seen it, you should. I think combined with the script, it really feels like I finally got to see these kids again after so long.

I basically only have two real complaints, and both are shared between this and The Train Called Hope. The first one is that I feel like they really haven’t figured out what to do with the Spirits, and they feel a little like an afterthought at this point; I know they’re kind of in a tough position because they’re simultaneously the kids and also not, but I would have liked to see a bit more thought put into what kind of relationship they have to the kids besides just vaguely connected guardian spirits. The second is that there is a terrible lack of Bokomon and Neemon, who should be at least hanging out with the Spirits back in the Digital World (I wonder if Sugiyama Kazuko wasn’t available...). They were important too! Don’t forget them! In fact, if anything, this new drama may have indirectly confirmed that Bokomon was possibly the main reason the kids didn’t completely go off track and actually managed to get anywhere in the Digital World, because without him they risk being extremely unhinged. Please give your thanks to Bokomon for saving the Digital World.

[seanicornspoice]

Surprised myself by writing an extremely meta character study abt Mytho, who is apparently my favorite of the main cast haha.

It's not everyone's cup of tea, but it's abt names and roles and identities and what exists for Mytho beyond 'happily ever after' (disclaimer: it's also extremely Mytho/Original Tutu-centric, though she is only mentioned)

Check it out if that sounds like your thing hehe!

Long rambly thoughts & spoilers, both for the show + the fic, under the cut (warning, might not be fun for those who enjoyed the og show's ending):

I think with the themes the show was trying to tell, it's impossible to allow Mytho self-actualization beyond his role as a prince and how he contributes to a 'happy ending'.

As a narrative device (the McGuffin we're collecting, the corrupted innocent to be saved, the shining prince who defeats evil and asserts what is good), he is brilliant. He works well as a motivation for the entire main cast....while having very few desires himself

As a character, I think he doesn't get the same narrative of breaking free from his destiny/role as the other characters.

Perhaps that's intentional, as the only true fictional character, he's first presented as a blank slate that others project onto (even Ahiru arguably), and when he starts to gain his own agency, this is quickly overshadowed by the Raven's blood, which calls into question how much of it is really his own wishes vs the influence of the Raven.

Even when his heart is (mostly) returned, there is very little time spent for him to reflect on his identity and the person he is after his new experiences. Immediately, he is Mytho no longer, but the Prince and all further action taken reflects as such.

He defeats the Raven bc princes defeat monsters and live happily ever after. He chooses Rue bc princes choose princesses at the end of the story.

His act of choosing Rue, to me, speaks less of his own agency, and more of him fulfilling his role. As the archetype of the prince, his choosing Rue is her happy ending, confirming she is worthy of love and happiness as the embodiment of essentially everything good and kind in a story.

However, it makes me wonder if Mytho would have still made this choice had he considered his own wants and desires, simply beyond doing what is 'right' and 'good'.

Very rarely does Mytho get the chance to express desires free from external influence, or from the role of the prince who loves everyone and will always protect the weak and helpless.

It's interesting to me (and certainly my bias) that more often than not, so many of Mytho's choices of his own volition are tied back to Princess Tutu.

His request for Fakir to repeat the part abt Tutu disappearing. How he keeps trying to seek her out and get closer to her/know her better. How he is awakened from Kraehe’s forceful shard snatch bc of Tutu’s dance. Even Fakir comments that Mytho wanting to regain his heart is probably bc Tutu is the one returning it to him.

For me, Princess Tutu is at the centre of Mytho's story and agency, and his self-actualization is tied to her, be it as Mytho in present day or Siegfried of the past.

Tutu embodies hope, but it goes much deeper than that for Mytho.

She literally represents both a shard of his heart, as well as genuine desire on his part. We are told explicitly that very existence of Ahiru's transformation into Princess Tutu represents Mytho's own desire to have his heart returned to him.

His love for her, what she means to him, for me, I can only see Tutu as the very core of Mytho's own free will.

For him to love her represents freedom from his role and the story.

Princess Tutu, the original tragic minor character, was never meant to have a happy ending. The Prince will never, could never, choose her, that's simply not what his archetype would do.

Choosing Tutu is selfish and impure, it serves no one but Mytho himself.

However, in choosing her and choosing to love her is where he is most human. It is not a love earned through hard work or sacrifice, as the stories go; it is simply his own wish, his own desire, to meet someone so dear to him.

I think it's impossible for Siegfried, the Prince, to choose this path.

As his archetype, as his role, he will never act selfishly, he will protect the weak and helpless, he will reward the good and punish the wicked. It makes perfect sense that Rue is chosen as his princess; there is no one else who has suffered more, who deserves this ending more than she does.

You could make an argument that Ahiru perhaps also deserved this role (though the strength in Ahiru's arc comes from bringing hope as herself, as a duck, without needing to be a princess at all), but again just like Rue, she will be chosen as a princess to a prince, not as Ahiru to Mytho.

Mytho is rarely seen as himself by anyone, and even rarer still is he understood by anyone.

Even Ahiru, the most vocal champion of Mytho's agency and happiness, does not necessarily understand him, whether it is as herself or as Princess Tutu. Likewise for Fakir, who is intimately familiar with the heartless Mytho, but does not understand or know Siegfried.

To want to be known and understood are not things Princes wish for. Princes fight for the greater good, for their princess, and are beloved by all. Why would a Prince need such a mundane, ordinary thing like that?

But that's exactly why it is so crucial for Mytho.

To be known and understood as he is, for someone to meet him on his level, is to make him whole and human.

No longer an archetype who will always do the right thing; instead, to become someone good and kind who is also selfish, whose wants may not always align with the greater good, who will try his best to bring some light to the world anyway.

And again, it comes back to Princess Tutu.

This selfish love is what makes him human, this unreasonable longing and wanting and loving brings him down from selfless perfect Prince into a mere human who simply loves, cares for another, consequences be damned.

When I wrote this fic, I realized that the part of him that is Siegfried would Never abandon Rue or the story. He embodies his archetype too strongly to even consider that for a heartbeat.

As I thought some more, I realized his names bound him too tightly to external forces (as Siegfried, the Prince; as Mytho, the blank slate) and with a soft spot for names and identity, I realized for Mytho to reclaim himself and be free from his role, he had to be allowed to choose a completely different name and path.

Long story short, that's how Swan came to be.

It's a little embarrassing bc this is not at all how I usually write fanfic. I honestly never imagined myself to be this sort of writer. I rarely challenge or want to change characters on such a fundamental level, outside of fun shipping things.

However, for me, it felt like the best way to write him, and the most interesting narrative to explore.

What does it mean for Mytho, only meant to exist as a pure archetype, to choose to live as a human?

I think I'll be writing more about Swan, along with his journey to find Tutu/self-actualization. He's such a wonderful character, and I realize while my viewpoint may be biased/flawed, I hope I can do him justice.

If you read this far, WOW, congratulations, gold star for you. Hope you have a lovely day!

[aeriedwelling]

ok you said you know a lot about deli meats, do you have any favorite fun (and/or upsetting) facts about it? :)

most over the counter fresh-sliced meats (idk what to call them) are going to be roughly 10 slices per half pound when sliced on a 1

there's going to be some variation because not all meat slicers are built equally, and "Deli Slice" and "Sandwich Slice" is going to mean different things depending on who is slicing the meat but it's roughly: 1/4 lb is 2-4 slices 1/2 lb is about 10 3/4 lb is like 12-15 1 lb is 15-20

if it's a fat, round chub then it'll probably be closer to 8 slices for 1/2, 2 slices for 1/4 and like 12 slices for a lb.

if it's a tiny little chub (like pepperoni or salami) then it actually weighs about as much as cheese!

cheese is a lot lighter than meat (idk why people dont seem to realize this lol) - so if you're getting the same thickness of cheese then ask for half of the meat weight and then work up from there

because. 1/4th of a pound of cheese is anywhere from 6-10 slices 1/2 lb is like 20-25 slices nobody asks for 3/4ths of a pound of cheese dude i have no idea 1 lb is like. 40 slices. im not kidding i've counted so. many. times.

never ever be afraid to ask for a number of slices instead of weight, most folks don't mind counting slices (we're probably counting anyway even if you don't ask. or maybe i just count because i'm autistic who knows) - i've had people ask for two slices or ten slices and i'm happy to do it when they're polite about it

i've yet to have anybody ask for 100 slices. don't do it. that's going to be multiple chubs worth of meat and no fun for anyone involved so don't do it,

uhh more words. there's guys who come in and get meat for their dogs it's very sweet :3

also if you ask for the heel/round end bit of the chub (idk if that's what it's actually called but that's what i call it) then we'll usually toss it in for free because the alternative is throwing it away but that might not be true for every deli you go to lol

i dont really know any upsetting facts i guess? something that upsets ME more than the customers is the fact that salami turns gray faster than most meats so people think it's bad when it isn't. salami is good for like 20 days after you open it, and if it's unwrapped then it'll turn gray in like five days.

but only the outside does. if you cut it open it's still perfectly pinkish red on the inside and it's FINE. it's completely fine. you can ask to taste it and it's fine it just looks bad but i promise it's fine.

so i get out here and i start slicing the PERFECTLY FINE SALAMI and some lady is out here like "oooh that doesn't look very good :\" and she asks to taste it. which only adds to confirmation bias cause she already thinks it's bad and she hasn't had salami in a while so she thinks it's bad when it isn't and asks me to open a new one even though i opened this one TWO DAYS AGO AND IT'S LITERALLY FINE,

but other than that. yeah :thumbsup: