#control z meta

[sbtorms]

The fact that the majority of "Undertale Multiverse" stuff consists solely of Sanses and Sans-inspired characters will always be extremely funny to me.

Funny in... a bit of a disappointing way, actually.

Like, where's the multiverse exploring versions of Undyne, the one monster that actual is able to have and use determination in her own body? Make her a true hero for monsters, humans, everyone everywhere!

Alphys, a character that literally mentions "alternate universes" by term in Undertale. What if she researched that further? What if she found out how to interact with the multiverse? (and she's literally the one out of the main cast of monsters that survive a murder run before the world is erased)

Papyrus, who is aware of Sans being able to prank you "ACROSS TIME AND SPACE". He already knows a bit more than he lets on a lot of the time. And I guess he's also actually the funni bone man's fuckin' brother for god's sake (and is one of only two characters in the game that mention that exact phrase of "across time and space", the other being a Gaster Follower)

All three of them even mention meta stuff, in the form of explaining controls to you. (Papyrus telling you to hold up, Undyne telling you to face up, Alphys telling you to press Z)

Papyrus and Undyne are also the two monsters that mention that you look familiar after a reset.

Where's the Frisks (every day I'm thankful we have CORE!Frisk), Charas, and Asriels (and Floweys)? All three of them have a very important role in Undertale. So why not expand on that more?

Take Toriel's role as a caretaker or Asgore's role of a leader and expand on that throughout the multiverse!

We need more well-known Undertale Multiverse characters that aren't just Sanses

[ewingstan]

So the whole idea of Twig’s setting is that instead of writing Frankenstein, Mary Shelley figured out how to reanimate and stitch together life. I have some ideas for how this would go if he chose a different author:

Tick: Instead of writing The Time Machine, H.G. Wells creates a....you get the picture. The Lambs are agents of a British Crown who want to ensure a future goes their way. Think Ars Paradoxica if the government didn’t just use time travel to ensure things went their way, but to ensure the world looked the way they wanted it to. Also would probably have a lot of future beings/technology taken from potential futures that will now never be.

Bite: Instead of writing Dracula, Bram Stoker discovered how to use blood for longetivity and enhanced abilities. The lambs are thralls for a vampiric Crown Empire, ruling over a populace they see as cattle. Wildbow gets in weekly Reddit arguments disputing any perceived antisemitic themes.

Maze: Instead of writing House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski figures out how to use people’s own psychology to bend the geometry of 3D spaces, creating rooms larger on the inside than on the outside and able to grow in novel ways. This gets adapted into attempts to improve housing, create unlimited storage, etc., but the psychological nature of the process creates a memetic chain reaction in which people who learn about the existence of such abnormalities accidentally impose it on other rooms and buildings in less-controlled fashions. The result is a world where most inside spaces are inhospitable labyrinthine worlds unto themselves, occasionally collapsing in on themselves as their inhabitants die and leave no psychological imprint to continue growing off of. The only known way to impose some control over your living space is to create layers of meta-narrative over your own relationship to your home, which allows for more nuance and control to be wielded against the expanses. The lambs are a group of specially engineered psychologies meant to impose meta-narratives onto psychological spaces in ways that render the spaces more habitable (or at least more useful) to their handlers, but run into problems as the narrat[  ] begin to get [         ] by the spaces they’re depl[   ] against.

Meta: Instead of writing Worm, John C. “Wildbow” McCrae figures how how to use tissues from a dead space entity to give others—

[clownprince]

GUYS GUYSGUYS OH MY GOD. OHMMYGOD I JUST FIGURED SOMETHING OUT

so after joker gets hit by a train solomon gives him this mysterious green liquid. i've been wondering what it was, my first though was maybe there was an undiscovered lazarus pit in the sewers or something like that. but i was rereading task force z and

it's lazarus resin!!!

maybe grundy grabbed a vial when he tackled bloom? but either way that is definitely the same type of vial and the color is similar (not identical but that's likely bc different artists/colorists!)

my running assumption has been that this line was metaphorical but it's not! it's literal!!! joker DID die when he got hit by the train but grundy brought him back with a vial of lazarus resin!

and i've been making mental connections between tfz and tmwsl the entire time but it was kinda theoretical (and still is!) but the lazarus resin thing makes my theories more plausible for sure imo

so in tfz there are clones, amelia, delia, and celia. the powers company has cloning tech. and they also have memory replacement tech!!! that's what they did with the fake bane! they tampered with his memories. the thinker says that he has cognitive profiles of metahumans but in issue 12 bloom manages to resurrect a dead corpse with the powers company resources and make it think that it's jason todd/red hood, who is definitely not a meta, so evidently they have tech to do the same for non-metas

so my theories are that either:

1. they cloned joker and implanted memories in the clone. this could maybe connect to the network plot in the joker (2021)

2. they found a very fresh corpse with a striking resemblance to joker, and then maybe gave him a nice acid bath and implanted the memories (or they found a way to do this with living people)

i think it's highly likely at this point that sewer rat undead!joker is the real joker, especially after knight terrors. so now the question is: if i'm right about this, who's behind the other (LA) joker? harvey? did bloom somehow survive? geri powers? maybe even waller? and what are they up to? is LA joker an escaped experiment or does whoever's controlling him have an agenda?

[tachvintlogic]

Who has control when? Undertale/ Deltarune meta

Undertale and Deltarune play around with the relationship between the Player and the Player Character (PC). There's Kris, who has their own personality and can disapprove of actions the Player forces them to do, and in Undertale there's 3 people attached to the PC who could be in control at any one time.

So here are my thoughts trying to parse out clearly who has control when.

The Player

The Player. What are their motivations? What have they done? Are they evil? These are nonsense questions because the player is not a character, the player is a role.

The player is me; the player is you; the player is everyone who has ever played these games. When you boot up Undertale or Deltarune, you take on the role of the player. Is the player evil? I don't know, are you? We cannot talk about the player in theories or metas without acknowledging that the player is us.

(Which is why it's confusing and irksome when I see analyses that treat "the player" as if they are a character who definitely did certain things.)

So when playing Undertale or Deltarune, what do you have control over? On desktop, you can use the arrow keys on your keyboard to make the player character move, move the red soul in battle, and navigate menus. You can press C to open the menu, X to exit the menu (and in Deltarune you can hold X to walk faster), and press Z to select options and interact with objects.

You can save the game, reload a save, reset, close the game, and open the game.

You may be thinking those are just the controls, and yes, they are. I mean, what else did you expect? The choices we make while playing are on us.

There are times when we do not have control. For example, we don't have control in cutscenes. We don't have control of Susie during sections when we're focusing on her (tho we do have dialogue options and choices that do nothing).

Then there's the ending of Deltarune chapter 1, where the red soul is separated from Kris's body. If you try to move around, you'll see that the red soul does move, suggesting that our control of the player character is dependent on the red soul inside them.

Frisk/Kris

And now the player character, the PC, the player avatar. I feel these two have a similar level of control over their own bodies when you're involved.

(As a note, when I refer to "the player character" I'm referring to what Frisk/Kris's body does, not what they choose to make it do.)

They have control during cutscenes and have control when the red soul is separated from their body like at the end of the Deltarune chapters. (No, I'm not entertaining theories about Kris is being controlled by someone else when they're in shambling zombie mode.)

They also control how they interact with things. You can press Z to make them interact with things, but they have discretion over how that command is interpreted. (See: Kris refusing to look in the Asriel room in Queen's castle.)

Both are "silent" protagonists. Their speech is limited to dialogue options chosen by us, and we are not privy to anything else they say. If they say something we didn't tell them to say, we have to infer from the dialogue of others. (For example, Frisk telling Asriel that their name is Frisk.)

However, there's a key difference between Frisk and Kris.

Frisk doesn't show a lot of personality, and what personality they show depends a lot of what you do. They basically turn into the person that matches your choices, the person we mold them into. (See: how the narration of interacting with Mad Dummy before the fight changes depending on your LOVE)

(That narration is actually quite interesting. Not only does the narration about Frisk's thoughts change, "You feel bad [for tapping the dummy]" at LV 1 vs "[punch the dummy] Feels good" at LV8 or more, but also the actions. How the player character interacts with objects depends on LOVE, number of people killed, and the route.)

We know that Chara climbed the mountain, and it wasn't for a happy reason. In fact, it's very likely they were planning on committing suicide. Frisk and all the other children who fall into the underground are likely from the same settlement.

I wouldn't be surprised if Frisk was also planning on dying there.

If you heckle Snowdrake, there's a chance you'll get this line:

You tell the Snowdrake that no one will ever love them the way they are... | They struggle to make a retort, and slink away utterly crushed

Oof. Frisk is probably like, 10? I'm concerned where they got this from. Remember, at the end of pacifist, your options are to either travel the world as an ambassador or stay with Toriel. Going back to Frisk's human parents isn't presented as an option.

So they probably didn't have a good home life, and now they're relying on you to get them through the underground and to the end. Whether you force them to kill in order to do that will affect their attitude on killing and whether killing monsters is okay.

In short, Frisk is a very small, impressionable child who is what we make them.

Meanwhile, Kris has a very concrete personality and history, and while it doesn't show on their spite, it's clear from their facial expression, tone of voice, and the narration when you make them do something they don't approve of. (See: Basically most of the normal route dialogue choices in chapter 2 and how Susie reacts to Kris's tone of voice.)

They're not impressionable like Frisk was, and are just tolerating our possession of their body in the game. They have stronger opinions on what we should and shouldn't be making them do.

Still, neither is keen to scream at the top of their lungs that they've been possessed.

Chara

Go read A CHARActer Analysis first and then come back.

Unfortunately, the user that made that post was deactivated so here's a link to a reblog that has all the raw text and here's a link to a google drive with the original post screenshotted by @thepilotdogee

Yes, I know it's long but it's also the best analysis of Chara's character that I know of.

Now, I like the Chara as narrator theory, and considering that they tell us they woke up near the beginning and looked to us for guidance, it explains the narrator's attitude in pacifist vs genocide runs very well. I also generally agree with the conclusions made by this analysis.

However, there are a few sticking points.

For one, I think who's doing what when we as players don't have control in cutscenes is more ambiguous. Are the actions performed by the player character in genocide that we associate with Chara done by Chara or by Frisk?

Chara still mostly uses "you" to narrate what Frisk does when you have them interact with something in genocide, so Frisk still has control over how they interpret your commands. Did Frisk kill Flowey and Asgore at the end of genocide or did Chara? We have two characters who aren't us that could potentially have control during cutscenes, and the actions of one are always relayed to us by the other.

My personal belief is that Chara had basically zero control beyond narration and the UI elements. Chara isn't aware that Frisk is not us in genocide (possibly even in pacifist) because Frisk's attitude and thoughts always align with our choices.

(In the CHARActer analysis, it is explained how your actions as the player tell Chara and Asriel whether it was okay for Asriel to refuse to kill the humans when they died, and by being a pacifist you are showing them that choosing not to kill was better. Meanwhile, Frisk is relying on you to survive, and goes along with whatever you seem to think is correct. Both could've taken the initiative to do the last kills of genocide because both consider you their guide.)

...Then if you do genocide, you have to give Chara control of Frisk's soul to reset the world.

This means that at the end of a true pacifist, instead of Frisk getting the reins back to their soul, they now belong to Chara. Chara, who wants to force us to experience consequences for our actions, does the only thing they can do to affect us, which is to ruin the ending.

[metaoflocasol]

Muse Mixup Madness July 2024: The End of a Failure

*this is to be viewed as a vision of real time events*

Tw: death and violence/fighting

“You? You?! YOU DARE STAND AGAINST ME, MORTAL?!”

Meta Solari stood in front of Vitch, feeling small against his opponent.

“It’s over, Vitch. This isn’t worth it-”

“SHUT UP! YOU HAVE NO IDEA OF WHAT YOU SPEAK! I HAVE TRIED TO CONVINCE YOU. I HAVE TRIED TO INFORM YOU OF THE DANGER THAT HAS BEFALLEN US, BUT YOU DIDN’T LISTEN. YOU HAD TO GO AND FREE THE BEAST, AND NOW LOOK AT THIS PLACE!”

And Vitch was right, Meta had freed the imprisoned Necrozma, giving it enough light to restore its body, if only for now. The mask Vitch normally wore, the face of Necrozma was gone, showing a ghastly sight. His face was being consumed by void. Blacked out and glowing with hatred and pain.

“YOU TAKE MY BODY AND STEAL MY SOUL, ALL TO TRY AND HELP A CORSPE! I AM TRYING TO SAVE YOU, DAMNIT! I AM TRYING TO SAVE EVERYONE! NO MATTER THE COST! SO WHAT IF I’M THE MONSTER?! NO ONE WILL BE COMPLAINING WHEN THEY GET TO LIVE OUT THE REST OF THEIR LIVES! NOT WORRYING OF AN APOCALYPSE THAT NONE WILL SURVIVE!”

“Enough! You haven’t saved a singed thing! You could’ve opened the Gateway long before this! You were too blind-sided to realize then, and you still are now. I cannot let you do this. You cannot go any farther”. Meta stared down his foe. His counterpart. His glimpse into a world where all abandoned him and the fate of creation fell on him. He had failed there, but not now.

You’ve always said that the difference between us is that I run away from my problems, that I never took action. I disagree. We both ran away that day before finding Necrozma. We both took upon the weight of the world when it felt like all was crumbling. We both sacrificed the things we cared for to help others. No, we are the same in that regard.

Where we are different is that you don’t allow others to help you. You want to be the one to fix everything, because you don’t trust anyone else to do it. Not me, not your followers, not Necrozma, not Arceus, no one. You walk alone despite others walking the same path. This all could’ve been avoided if you-”

“SHUT UP!”

Vitch created a beam of light that flew towards Meta, threatening to kill him. But instead, it condensed into a single small sphere that flew into the amulet. The light condensed, reflecting across off the room, glowing violently before exploding outwards, surrounding Meta.

“WHAT?! THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE! HOW DID YOU HARNESS THAT LIGHT WITHOUT A Z-CRYSTAL!?”

Meta didn’t respond, just looked up with clenched fists eyes glowing bright.

Letting out a ferocious roar, Vitch flew at Meta, arms stretched to strangle him.

“NO MATTER! I HAVE THE POWER OF THE THREE GODS UNDER MY CONTROL, YOUR LIGHT ALONE IS NO MATCH TO ME!!

Meta dodged the attack, his light colliding with Vitch’s tainted light. The two traded blow after blow of condensed supernovas, mini suns, and light the scorched the heavens upon their foundation would be built.

“YOU ARE NOTHING TO ME! I AM A GOD! YOU HAVE NO HOPES OF DEFEATING ME! I KILLED LIGHT, DARKNESS, AND MATTER ITSELF! WHAT HOPES DO A PUNY HUMAN CHILD HAVE AGAINST ME?!”

Meta let out a cry as he unleashed a ball of pure photon power, almost unseen in the sea of light surrounding the two. Vitch easily dodged the attack, but it blew a giant hole in the wall of the room, from which two sets of glowing eyes could be seen against the light pouring out from the confines.

“No…”

Vitch looked in fear at the ghost of his past, now doubled in their hate.

“You thought you could get rid of me, BOY?!”

One of them telepathically shouted

“YOU SORELY MISTAKE THE POWER THAT I HOLD! IT IS TIME I RECTIFY THIS EGREGIOUS ERROR OF MINE!”

One of the Necrozmas, shining a godly blue collided with a frozen Vitch; who was petrified in fear. The Necrozma tore off his stolen Z-Crystal with its immaculate jaw, causing Vitch to scream.

A supernova exploded from Vitch, utterly destroying the temple surrounding them. The four of them found themselves standing in a field of rubble, with nothing but darkness surrounding them, the only light coming from themselves.

“It is done. You’ve lost, wretch. The world you know is gone, because of you”

The two Necrozmas began to overlap, as if there powers were becoming one, as if the original Necrozma birthed from Arceus’s grand design had once more been awoken from a long forgotten past.

“This world is in ruin. Nothing is left of it. Those who had once lived here are either no more, or displaced in universes not their own. What do you have to say now?”

Vitch didn’t respond, bleeding out glowing ichor that had replaced his mortal blood. He only stared, kneeling as the life was draining out of him.

“I thought you were someone of good, child. I had believed you could’ve shown me a brighter future than the one your kind had shown me long ago. Perhaps you did… but at what cost?”

“…I…” he croaked out, coughing violently.

“Save your breath. It is too late to undo what has been done”

With that, the now merged Necrozma created a portal between the decayed universe and the Arcean Gateway with their enhanced powers.

“Come, Meta. There is one last mission to be done”

With that, they left, casting the world into enshrouding darkness.

Meta began to follow them, but stopped when he heard Vitch croak out.

“Wait…”

He turned his head to him, looking at the twisted version of himself with a mix of pity and disgust. He had no reason to wait for him, after all he had done, but something kept him there. Some unknown feeling, like a wheel turning endlessly in the course of the future, gave him pause.

“I have… done so much… wrong… to this world… I never wanted this… no… I went too far…”

“That you did”

“The… Gateway… will not… open in its current state… it’s sealed shut”, Vitch coughed out.

“…”

“Take my hand… I have something… to give… you”

********************************************

Meta didn’t know what was going on. Arceus, a being beyond his creation and Necrozma, the God of his faith conversed in a manner unknown to the likes of his human brain. Something he couldn’t see, hear, touch, feel, or smell imposed upon his very being, making him feel small and insignificant. Much more than the laymen of his own species.

Time was foreign. Seconds passed as freely as eons, yet none moved in the lack of space that filled with realm. He knelt, still pondering what Vitch had told him. How could two souls so identical go on such different paths? Was the real difference between himself and a monster the death of all he cared for? It chewed at him, knowing upon the brain and usurping the serenity of his thoughts.

“Child. The Genesis offers you a choice. They can ease your soul of your worries caused by this horrific oversight. It will be like this never happened, never met your alternate, never learned of the Ether, never had to endure the hardships of your captivity. You’d be at peace, unaware of the pain these last two months have caused. Will you accept?”

Meta thought hard. He doubted that he could live the rest of his life in peace knowing what he knew, but even so, he didn’t want to forget. After everything Vitch had done, he was still him, and denying that would be denying a core aspect of himself. No, forgetting wasn’t the answer, but neither was remembering the way he currently did.

“I thank you, the omnipotent Arceus for your offer. If I may, I’d like to request a course of action of my own…”

END OF ARC

[wolfsbanesparks]

Sorry for the sudden ask but I had something I really wanted to talk to you about, mainly about Mary Bromfield (twin version or college age version, either) and her patrons, because, wowie, it sparked a lot in my brain microwave

So, in her first appearance, Mary had a completely different set of gods and patrons who gave her powers, but they still spelled out SHAZAM in the end due to the connection with the wizard.

This was really interesting to see, even more so that most of them were women and that her strength came from Hippolyta herself! Of course a major Goddess like her would have to have been there instead of Zeus, kinda funny, and the connection to Wonder Woman and the Amazonians would have made for an incredible story arc!

However, some of the others didn't set well with her/I didn't think were all that great in my opinion. Grace and Beauty? The times back then kinda influenced her powers to reflect a more feminine version of Captain Marvel, but I think we could do better.

It took me some time, but I ended up compiling a little thing of possible patrons for Mary

S olomon (Wisdom)

H ippolyta (Power)

A ether (Stamina)

Z epherus (Speed)

A talanta (Courage)

M elinoe (Strength)

I figured that Mary should stick to having a connection with Solomon as her source of wisdom, since I feel that it's her strongest power out of all the ones she's forged a bond with. It also gave me the idea that if any of the other marvel family members made new contracts, they would stick with one of their former patrons that they resonated with the most. Also, you would not BELIEVE the amount of stress I went through to find someone, ANYONE, with a name that started with the letter Z and was not Zeus! Holy cow.

Let me know what you think, and if you have any ideas of what other patrons Mary could have instead! I'm absolutely buzzing with energy over this girl!

I love Mary so much!

And yeah she could do a lot better than having Grace and Beauty as powers (though that was a product of the time and largely didn't contribute anything to her character since she was just as powerful in a fight as Cap)

So not only has Mary had those patrons listed above (and the regular set that Billy has) but she has also had a set of entirely Egyptian ditties (courtesy of Black Adam).

Also fun fact: originally the S was supposed to stand for Sappho but in development the creators were worried people would think she was a lesbian. (It's one of the fun meta reasons I headcanon my girl as Sapphic)

But who would I use for her acronym? That's so hard and I went down several Wikipedia holes while contemplating this. One of the hard parts was the fact that so many cool women in mythology had names that start with A and I could only choose two.

S: Sappho (Wit/Eloquence)

H: Hippolyta (Strength)

A: Artemis (Skill)

Z: Zephyrus (speed/flight)

A: Atalanta (Courage)

M: Minerva (Wisdom)

I didn't change much because I liked most of the dieties used. I was going to have the Wisdom of Athena but then I'd have to get rid of one of the other two so I kept her Roman equivalent (basically the same reasoning as to why Billy has Mercury instead of Hermes). Atalanta could also provide speed because she was well known for never being beaten in a fair foot race. In that case Zephyrus would supply flight and minor elemental control.

I really love the idea of having Sappho as one of her patrons but f Billy gets to have Solomon randomly in his acronym then its fine. But I'm not 100% sure what power she would give Mary.

I would love to hear other people's thoughts on Mary’s acronym and what deities you'd use for other members of the family!

[compneuropapers]

Interesting Papers for Week 11, 2024

Routing states transition during oscillatory bursts and attentional selection. Banaie Boroujeni, K., & Womelsdorf, T. (2023). Neuron, 111(18), 2929-2944.e11.

Sensory tuning in neuronal movement commands. Baumann, M. P., Bogadhi, A. R., Denninger, A. F., & Hafed, Z. M. (2023). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(38), e2305759120.

Prior information differentially affects discrimination decisions and subjective confidence reports. Constant, M., Pereira, M., Faivre, N., & Filevich, E. (2023). Nature Communications, 14, 5473.

Identifying social partners through indirect prosociality: A computational account. Davis, I., Carlson, R., Dunham, Y., & Jara-Ettinger, J. (2023). Cognition, 240, 105580.

Paradigm constraints on moral decision‐making dynamics. Gautheron, F., Quinton, J., Muller, D., & Smeding, A. (2023). Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 36(4), e2324.

Influences of local and global context on local orientation perception. Huang, J., Zhou, Y., & Tzvetanov, T. (2023). European Journal of Neuroscience, 58(6), 3503–3517.

Visual attention to features and space in mice using reverse correlation. Lehnert, J., Cha, K., Halperin, J., Yang, K., Zheng, D. F., Khadra, A., … Krishnaswamy, A. (2023). Current Biology, 33(17), 3690-3701.e4.

Neural population dynamics of human working memory. Li, H.-H., & Curtis, C. E. (2023). Current Biology, 33(17), 3775-3784.e4.

Age effects on delay discounting across the lifespan: A meta-analytical approach to theory comparison and model development. Lu, J., Yao, J., Zhou, Z., & Wang, X. T. (XiaoTian). (2023). Psychological Bulletin, 149(7–8), 447–486.

Composite receptive fields in the mouse auditory cortex. Lu, S., Ang, G. W. Y., Steadman, M., & Kozlov, A. S. (2023). Journal of Physiology, 601(18), 4091–4104.

Interpreting the retinal neural code for natural scenes: From computations to neurons. Maheswaranathan, N., McIntosh, L. T., Tanaka, H., Grant, S., Kastner, D. B., Melander, J. B., … Baccus, S. A. (2023). Neuron, 111(17), 2742-2755.e4.

The formation and revision of intuitions. Meyer, A., & Frederick, S. (2023). Cognition, 240, 105380.

Multifaceted information-seeking motives in children. Molinaro, G., Cogliati Dezza, I., Bühler, S. K., Moutsiana, C., & Sharot, T. (2023). Nature Communications, 14, 5505.

A robust and compact population code for competing sounds in auditory cortex. Nocon, J. C., Witter, J., Gritton, H., Han, X., Houghton, C., & Sen, K. (2023). Journal of Neurophysiology, 130(3), 775–787.

Endogenous fluctuations in cortical state selectively enhance different modes of sensory processing in human temporal lobe. Parajuli, A., Gutnisky, D., Tandon, N., & Dragoi, V. (2023). Nature Communications, 14, 5591.

Action initiation and punishment learning differ from childhood to adolescence while reward learning remains stable. Pauli, R., Brazil, I. A., Kohls, G., Klein-Flügge, M. C., Rogers, J. C., Dikeos, D., … Lockwood, P. L. (2023). Nature Communications, 14, 5689.

Homo indifferencus: Effects of unavailable options on preference construction. Polman, E., & Stough, R. A. (2023). Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 36(4), e2326.

The value of control. Reis, M., Pfister, R., & Schwarz, K. A. (2023). Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 36(4), e2325.

The spatial and temporal structure of neural activity across the fly brain. Schaffer, E. S., Mishra, N., Whiteway, M. R., Li, W., Vancura, M. B., Freedman, J., … Axel, R. (2023). Nature Communications, 14, 5572.

Network controllability of structural connectomes in the neonatal brain. Sun, H., Jiang, R., Dai, W., Dufford, A. J., Noble, S., Spann, M. N., … Scheinost, D. (2023). Nature Communications, 14, 5820.

[negative-speedforce]

Tell me one weird fact/hyperspecific detail about each of your OCs?

Siv: Was born (created?) with 6 fingers on her right hand, which Eobard had removed so that she'd be as normal-passing as possible, despite it being unneccesary.

Jay: Implanted a series of chips into his non-dominant hand in order to be able to control his wheelchair remotely using only hand signals

Cassandra: still only uses Facebook like some kind of grandmother

Hailey: Cannot be in proximity to Siv when she's in eldritch mode for too long because Siv's eldritch powers make it difficult for her to maintain her physical form.

Arya: Claims they have difficulty both reading and writing human languages, but they're actually just dyslexic

Ember: Has two teacup chihuahuas, named Gucci and Prada, that they carry around in a tiny pink handbag. Prada and Gucci pictured below-

Gina: Would have made valedictorian if she hadn't died at the end of the school year

Esme: Started her career as a model at 15, much to Eobard's disapproval.

Cat: Is wanted by the governments of 14 different countries for her hacktivism

Kyle: Has four bullet scars in his back from a particularly nasty situation in which he was helping an abuse victim escape her boyfriend. Needless to say, the shitty ex got electrocuted.

Max: Found out Siv was alive because they took the same pole dance class because he wanted to be able to give Kyle a very special birthday present

Eric: Spent most of his childhood and young adulthood under Apartheid, and has significant trauma from it, leading to him being very protective of his children

Jacob: Met Eric while on a study abroad trip to South Africa in college

Khalil: Watched his uncle disintegrate himself by overloading on magic and that's why he fears using his own

Antonio: Once killed 4 cops by telekinetically shattering the glass of several skyscrapers around him, and subconsciously creating a tornado of broken glass to protect himself

Reggie: Accidentally caused a week of panic for her parents when she tried to shadow travel for the first time and ended up getting stuck in the shadow realm, leading to her parents believing she had been kidnapped

Ameerah: Has been the victim of "Millenials and Gen Z can't read cursive" because the bank teller at a bank she wanted to rob couldn't read "This is a robbery".

Rania: Torched Eobard's lab after finding out what he had done, before confronting him. It was definitely a nice surprise for him to come back to, all of his life's work and research reduced to ashes.

Meredith: Built the text-to-speech/speech-to-text system that she uses to compensate for her deafness at the age of 8.

Kelsie: Has been mistaken for Poison Ivy due to her plant-based powers, despite Poison Ivy being literally GREEN.

Cory: Has a highly successful TikTok account where she posts about Decora-kei fashion, which is her primary source of income.

Director Hawke: Killed her daughter when she found out what she was doing, because she considered her a "deviant-sympathizer", whatever that's supposed to mean.

Torryn: Has both meta-powers (psychometry/seeing an object's past by touching it), and magic abilities, though they're quite weak, considering that his closest Witch ancestor was his 3rd great-grandfather.

Onnie: Despite being an extremely powerful speedster, she prefers to drive places, because most of her clothes are extremely expensive, and she doesn't want them to be destroyed.

Pippa: Goes through a villain arc because she is so sick of being walked all over due to her kind and forgiving nature (also a bit of Negative Speed Force corruption via Onnie might have a part to play in it)

Jessi: Has a net worth of nearly a billion dollars, from both legal activities (her music career) and illegal activities (being a mob boss)

Hyun-Ki: Is a classically trained countertenor, and can hit an A6 on a good day (plenty of warmup and sleep, lots of water, etc). However, he primarily uses his lower register to sing because he got bullied in high school for his voice.

Marie: Had her least favorite coworker assimilated because she was fed up with him constantly insinuating that she was a traitor or spy because she's half Romulan and got in deep trouble for that (it was totally worth it)

Liah: Was almost the first Cardassian Bollywood star, but chickened out and joined Starfleet because she hated the attention. She still occasionally performs for her coworkers.

Qiara: Learned how to harness starlight in order to supplement her own energy reserves because her powers are significantly weaker than the average Q

Soraya: Can't stand Ferengi, since they're always really creepy to her despite her being a starship captain.

Thalia: Spent 3 months institutionalized after killing her Master to save her squad, due to reckless choices including stealing and crashing the Chancellor's speeder on a whim

Reyna: Matchmade her former Master and the guy that her stepmom tried to force her to marry

Athena: Is still somewhat illiterate due to only learning to read when she was in her mid/late teens and managed to get her doctorate in biology by transferring all her textbooks onto audio files

Laila: Is a massive tea snob. Don't give her some crappy bargain tea, she will in fact kill you for that.

Pyrrha: Had to be taught how to swear due to her extremely controlled upbringing. A stormtrooper who said "heck" in front of her was subject to execution.

Aldrich: Speaks like the protagonist of a Bronte romance, due to being British and being turned during the Regency Era.

Samira: Her father, who is an Imam, was surprisingly supportive of her desire to marry a vampire, and married them in secret, because he would rather his daughter have a forbidden romance than be miserable because she couldn't marry the person she loved.

Matt: His joints are in worse shape than they probably should be, because his stepfather is EXTREMELY traditional and believes he can just macho his EDS away, putting him through intense training.

Vanessa: Is quite literally invulnerable (at least for the next few years) due to all the changes that Venator St. James did to her with his experiments, and needing time for her original DNA to reassert itself.

Dolores: Got a job at the Red Cross and had her fangs filed down so she could pass in normal society as human. She feeds on the rejected and expired blood bags, i.e. the donor had a bloodborne illness or it expired or something.

Sohelia: Despite her vampire heritage meaning that she would be naturally more vulnerable to sunlight, thanks to *melanin* from her mom's side, she's surprisingly resistant, and is only as vulnerable as your average Northern European person (aka steps in a sunbeam and gets a bad burn)

Victorie: Occasionally creeps people out with her usage of modern slang, which she technically shouldn't know because she's been isolating herself for 200 years, but knows because of her ability to dreamwalk

Kayla: Was fully conscious while committing all the atrocities that HYDRA forced her to do after capturing her post-CATWS, due to them forgoing the brainwashing and instead choosing to control her via an implanted chip

Dori: Is usually seen as unnaturally pretty/handsome (depending on which form they're in) because they used their shapeshifting abilities to rid themselves of any perceived flaws.

[snowy-thesis]

Blog Info

I'm Snowy!!!

I'm what mom @z-powered-degree calls an Alolan Vulpix!

Um, mom said I needed to put these here?

She/Her

SFW Only Please

//[OOC Notes Below Cut]

[Icon: CC0] [Header: Public Domain]

Hey, mod of @wishmaker-astra here with Snowy from Astra's canon. She actually is one of the few rare sentient pokemon in Astra's setting that aren't something like an intelligent psychic type or a near-human pokemon. Lillie says she's role playing as her Vulpix to give her cover. She's roughly about the same as a smart 9-12 year old kid that being said, so don't be weird about her. I will not be posting here much, but figured would make her a blog in case makes sense to do anything with her.

Same general rules as Astra apply here when it comes to what expectations and interactions will happen.

Will Not Interact:

Magic Anon

Fae deals/name stealing

Meta Horror

4th Wall Schenanigans

Very dark topics

>This includes post-apocalyptic stuff to be clear

Mental Alteration/Mind Control related subjects

>I WILL just ignore things, have characters behave utterly OOC, blanket refuse to interact with characters, and/or just suddenly drop interaction as if never happened if required for this

Other Notes:

I try to treat her experiencing rotomblr as *just a website* as much as possible. Granted, one with weird multiversal connection that she will assume is due to ultrahole shenanigans she doesn’t understand yet

Lose combination of games and anime setting, leaning more towards the games

Assumes sentient pokemon are rare, and mostly limited to:

>Ones with decent canon support (rotom inhabiting devices with a CPU, mewtwo, one off instances such as Meowth, latias, etc)

>Certain humanoid and/or psychic types raised in human society in a way that  “bootstraps” them during critical development periods (e.g. Gardevoir line treated as effectively human from birth)

Feel free to treat her as Lillie screwing around. That's what Lillie claims and is Snowy's cover after all.

[medusasbush]

read november 2023

Queer Fans Remember ‘Merlin’ 15 Years Later, The Gayest Show That Wasn’t Gay

Kim K's new nipple bra ad is greenwashing

thotscholar: a working theory of proheaux (woman)ism

Can Britney Spears ever truly be free?

Culturally Accepted Misogyny: Joan of Navarre to Amber Heard

mom jeans: on hand-me-downs and where resourcefulness meets identity

How To Watch A Movie

Hannah Waddingham says she was 'waterboarded' for 10 hours filming Game of Thrones torture scene

‘The Last of Us’ Has A Pretty Big Problem With Pinkwashing

The Not So Hidden Israeli Politics of 'The Last of Us Part II'

Dating as a Digital Performance

The Elements Of Appeal

No, That’s Not a Hit Show

The Algorithm is a Lie: Debunking One of the Biggest Myths About Netflix and Streaming

The Algorithm is Still a Lie Debunking (Yet Again) One of the Biggest Myths of the Streaming Wars

Mean Girls (Regina's Version): re-recordings, covers, and the merits of a thunderdome remake

The Instagram wellness influencers spreading climate misinformation

Google shares 36% of its revenue with Apple

Why Are CNN, ABC, and NBC Reporters Embedding With the Israeli Military?

How E-girl influencers are trying to get Gen Z into the military

8 Writers on Taylor Swift and the State of Music Journalism

What does Taylor Swift owe the planet?

When War Sells Serum

golden, million-dollar babies

Bring back websites

The world of fake live singing on TikTok

Blackout Tuesday, Social Media Activism and the Corporately-Owned Platforms That Control Our Tools

Meta's doing another referral traffic bait-and-switch

[kachikirby]

Milk- fetticuine or kurabe

Candy for fetticuine

Mushrooms for sieg and Freya.

Milk - I'll do Kurabe since Fetty is getting a question. Kurabe doesn't really know who her biological parents are due to them dying while she was young on an eternally dark planet, so I'll talk about her relationship with her adoptive father, General Z. Their relationship is definitely that of a father and daughter in addition to student and mentor despite being also superior and subordinate. Kurabe sees him as a stubborn old fool, but someone she greatly respects and cares for, and Z is the doting and at times overprotective father. (He threatened Mikuto with death if he were to ever make Kurabe cry.)

Candy - If we're talking about things she'd like to receive from Meta Knight, she's not really picky. Just him going out of his way to make or buy her something is enough. Even just going all-in on romance is enough for her to be happy.

Mushrooms - Doing this on a scale from 1 to 10. As babies, it was a 9 because they haven't really learned self control yet. As actual kids, Sieg and Freya are about a 4, mostly because they're at the point where they know their parents will freak out if they eat something they find on the ground. Though Sieg is probably a 5 since he's more curious about this stuff.

[seeingteacupsindragons]

When did you start writing stories? I’m really interested in what inspires your stories as well.

The first story I remember writing was from when I was 6, so...about the time I had the fine motor control to actually write sentences, I decided it was Story Time.

As for what inspires my stories, I find that these days, it's made a combination of, "I want to write words," media I'm reading or watching recently, and stuff from my life.

For example:

The short story I posted recently came from "I want to write some fiction to share on Tumblr dangit!!!" and wanting to show people how I take media I like and pull it into my writing without it being fanfiction, so Sherliam Vibes made it in there

The most recent novel I started came from "I want to write some new words today," and then incorporated things I read about at work and my own medical experiences, and wanting to write a relationship with that incredible immediate, "You're the only other person in my situation who understands," vibes from Sherliam

The novel I'm revising right now came from "I want to write new words today!!!" and the many, many hours I had been playing Super Smash Bros at the time staring at my main (Pit), and then as the story developed, took some themes from a novel I'd read from @nt-poindexter to edit for them and a bound and determined goal to write a golden retriever type protagonist for once

I have a novel trunked that I was inspired by a prompt I offered to do as a gift for a friend to share my writing with them, some discussions about the opiate crisis I kept having to listen to at work, and BANANAFISH (which was reaching its anime climax at the time)

I have a short story series that was based on, "I want to write words!!!" and this bit in Jeweler Richard that was like, "If X, I would Z," so I made X and Z happen in a similar fashion to the first bullet

Really, very often I want to write something, so I type some random stuff, and then take that seed and wrap it up in stuff I was enjoying reading or watching lately, and my experiences in my life. I think a lot of people get their ideas that way.

I also get a lot of inspiration of new things to try in my stories or ways to write it from my meta and writing analysis. But not always ideas.

[widowshill]

A-Z Fandom Asks: N, P, R? (that wasn't planned, just. happy accident?) please and thank you!

A -> Z FANDOM ASKS.

N - Name three things you wish you saw more of in your main fandom (or a fandom of choice).

my number one is r/v obviously <3 i do actually feel kind of spoiled with the shippy stuff ive found in some old blogs though, i tend to adopt the rarest of rarepairs so i'm not complaining. but more is always better! and i'm steadily converting people to the cause 🏴‍☠️

generally speaking i think the pre barnabas episodes could always use more love. it's quite different tonally to later on and I can understand why folks might skip it for those reasons, but I fervently protest the idea that they're boring ! I'm biased of course because my faves are the 1966'ers, but there's so much delicious character work going on, and I think ... you need the rotted b&w gothic foundation for the technicolor house of horrors built on top of it, if that makes sense. i also think barnabas is kinda :/ it should be pre and post laura collins if we're all being honest with ourselves here.

hmmm. possibly a symptom of like, only being here / a tiny bit on twitter and not on like, actual forums, but i would love to see more long ass ds metas. love to read the insanely smart things b.lack s.ails people (and p.otc!) post on the reg. need that about haunted maine ppl

P - Invent a random AU for any fandom (we always need more ideas).

okay well you can guess where i'm going to go with this west indies piracy au go

The Collinses are descended from merchant wealth in England and currently control a small port city in the Bahamas. the family's connections to the Marquess of Winchester manages to land Roger an appointment as governor, although everyone knows the title is only a formality: his sister runs everything, including Roger. once prosperous, a combination of over-fishing, hurricanes, and an earthquake twenty years past has left the town desolate, and the sand beneath their feet liquefied. rather than abandon what she has built, Elizabeth is determined to hold on, but without any support from England for what they feel has no hope to turn profitable, the family turns to investing in forced trade.

enter Burke Devlin, a privateer employed under a letter of marque signed and sealed by Roger Collins. Devlin is the best, most profitable, and most infamous of their captains, often dining with them at their table and a close friend of the governor. For a while they enjoy mutual prosperity with Spain's wealth, and pirate labor. But the world is growing more respectable around them, and what was once the fringes of civility is gradually becoming its center. The way to survive is no longer with the pirates. When Burke is captured and tried for piracy, his benefactors turn their back on him: he is sacrificed, essentially, as a figurehead for the port and governor's respectability (vaguely à la Kidd). Even his wife sends written testimony against him, and remarries before her husband officially swings, to his former friend and sponsor, Roger.

Burke manages to escape before his hanging, and turns to piracy in the Mediterranean – after ten years, in 1698, he comes back to raid the Collins shipping fleet, with the eventual goal not of razing Collinsport to the ground, but of installing himself as governor there. One of the ships he captures carries a special passenger – the new governess, sent for from England – and he personally delivers her to their doorstep, but not before she can witness how different Captain Devlin is from the terrifying stories about him and his crew.

the governess also brings news from England: William III has passed a new law against the pirates in the West Indies. any person to aid and assist, or maintain, procure, command, counsel, or advise the pirates, are condemned to the same loss of property and life as the pirates themselves.

meet also:

maggie evans, the no-nonsense tavern wench, and her sweetheart, the honest merchant sailor joe haskell that hates pirates and everything they stand for

carolyn stoddard, who has a copy of Exquemelin in both French and English and has memorized every word, and is violently jealous of vicki for dining with a scary pirate captain. she'd like nothing better than to be kidnapped out of the governor's mansion. her cousin david loves the stables and knows everything about horses ... including how best to spook them.

sam evans, former court painter, now art forger

julia hoffman, naturalist (and other sciences as required)

bill malloy, who oversees the merchant fleet and the warehouses, and carries carolyn home from the docks or the tavern by the scruff of her neck, if he has to.

laura collins, sent away to bedlam for hysteria, managed to come back, and is now setting boats on fire as a hobby

the blairs, hailing from massachusetts: james, a well-respected lawyer eventually revealed to be working with devlin, and his cousins, nicholas and cassandra, political and religious exiles who spent some time in maritinique, where they both adopted quimbois practices.

jason macguire, irish smuggler, and willie loomis, former indentured servant working out his sentence in america. they have a run in with cousin barnabas, who's been making his questionable fortune in the east indies rather than the west, and who definitely does not do any cannibalism.

R - Which friendship/platonic relationship is your favorite in fandom?

ROGER AND JULIA. in other places, eleanor and flint >>>> also elizabeth and barbossa. i feel like this is forming a pattern of some kind hang on

[pokemonxhyperfixation]

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

To in order to celebrate my favorite holiday, have the gift of two characters representing some of my greatest fears!

Representing my fear of the Ocean is Murasa!

I feel like Dhelmise is pretty self explanatory. It's controlling an Anchor, Murasa throws around an Anchor. See, easy!

Jellicent is here due to its lore. Frillish, like Murasa, is a ghost that drowns people. And Jellicent, like Murasa, is a ghost that skinks ships! Basically, they're kindred spirits.

Tentacruel is here due to Murasa being a sailor. I literally looked into the Pokemon used by the sailor trainer class, and saw that across basically every game the class is in, they consistently use the Tentacool and Machop lines. The Machop family didn't seem fitting for Murasa, but I thought Tentacruel certainly would.

Octillery is the artillery for her ship. I imagine she actually has WAY more than one, but she actually keeps the first one she caught as one of her main pokemon. Imagine a giant flying boat armed with a small army's worth of Octillery. Terrifying.

Mienfoo is simply here because she's a follower of the Myourin temple. I'm giving a Mienfoo to ALL members of the temple. I'm treating the training of a Mienfoo as part of their training. (Mienfoo's line is the mon of choice largely because the Byakuren team that's been rotting in my drafts has a Mienshao.)

Porygon Z is a kinda meta pick. You see, some madman made something called RensonWare. It's a virus that encrypts all your files unless you can reach a certain score threshold in Touhou 12. And wouldn't you know it, but Murasa is literally the face of the virus (there's a pop-up window on the virus that has a picture of Murasa on it)! So I thought it would be funny if Murasa had a Porygon Z in reference to this. I imagine it just showed up one day and just started following her around.

The other is Alice Metroid representing my playful hatred of creepy old dolls! (I could have done Medicine but shush)

Banette is a doll. Go figure. It's the free space for this character.

Claydol is based off of these wierd old Japanese clay figures. Due to the creepy old (and probably mystic) nature of them, as well as the fact that they're pretty doll adjacent, leads me to think she'd have interest in a Claydol.

Mimiku and Mr Mime are not actually dolls, but I feel like they match the vibe of dollesk pokemon that I think Alice would have. They're here for the vibes.

Phantump has a story to it. So, to make this team (and the other recent teams as well), I read up on the characters via the Touhou Wiki. And a whole lot of what Alices character details talked about was how she's relatively friendly and welcoming to lost people. So I came up with this idea of her taking in this being that she at first thought was a lost child, but was actually the spirit of a lost child that eventually became a phantump.

Venomoth doesn't REALLY have any good justification. I just had this wierd primal urge to give her a moth/butterfly pokemon that got Psychic moves, and Venomoth felt the most fitting. IDK why, but I could totally see Alice (and probably Marisa too) being the type of person to have one of those moth collections. So yeah. (Venomoth is 200% her partner pokemon btw, she got it from Shinki.)

This is the face of a woman who would give her daughter a venomous purple puffball and call that her starter. (Image is from the Creepypasta Touhou Black Square.)

[femmesandhoney]

so genshin related question, but do you have any tips on how to read and learn the characters compatibility and skills just by looking at their desc. I feel utterly lost whenever I try to make sense of games where I got to learn a characters skills and utilize that properly when matching them up or giving them artifacts etc…

idk what desc means (description?) but yeah really all you need to read is their second and third talents to get the gist of the character. sometimes some stuff is hidden in cons you may have, but often nothing game-changing. most times a characters talents will tell you basic stuff that you should look for first: what they scale off of and what their kit is primed for (healing, dmg, support, etc). if it's not clearly stated, they probably scale off atk

Usually, a DPS "build" is their stat-of-choice sands, elemental goblet, and crit circlet. An example of this: Hu Tao is a DPS who scales off HP. This will often be found in the second talent/skill slot. So Hu Tao has her ATK increased based off her HP (stat of choice). It also states her atks when you activate her skill deals pyro dmg and a charged atk applies "blood blossom" which is a fancy way to describe off-field dmg she can inflict on enemies. The thing is with genshin, DPS chars are often the easiest to understand their kits right off the bat. Even though it has flowery language, most DPS kits are quite straight forward in that their E or Q hits big dmg and that's all you really gotta build towards. Some DPS talents will explain "stacking" that some chars have, such as Heizou or Raiden, which is sometimes harder to parse out in all the word fluff, so if you feel you're not quite understanding what the talents mean, watch a guide video and *see* it in action. That often helps me if something is just confusing, which especially for supports it is...

Now the actual bread and butter confusion I think comes from Hoyo making shit way more flowerly than it needs to be, especially for support characters. I think reading Furina's talents for the first time gave me an aneurysm I won't lie

Within this absolute mess of an explanation, you should always find where stuff is highlighted in color, that will often help you find the "important" sentences in the sea of words. Furina deals hydro dmg based off her HP. When she's on your team and you use her skill, your team members lose HP in order to deal more DMG.

Fanfare stacks are just another fancy stacking mechanic that you as the player have to meet the "reqs" for in order to get bigger dmg, that's all stacks mean at the end of the day. You don't need to really try to understand every single thing here, but that you found her stat-of-choice, how to trigger her stacks (fanfare stacks when chars heal or lose HP), and what it does (increase the DMG dealt by party members). This all points to Furina being an HP scaling support or sub-DPS, as she isn't necessarily DPSing anything herself. All her dmg comes from her elemental skill, which does a lot of dmg, but a majority of her kit also comes from her dmg-boosting burst.

Overall, that's really how I "quick read" talents to understand their skill and burst quick. Otherwise, a great way to understand them is just to play them in the trial, take your time reading and seeing how the character work. Most times characters have either their E or their Q be their main source of dmg, so you can scan talents to figure out which that might be as you check them out. Ei is a burst DPS and her major damage stacks will come from her burst, whereas someone like Heizou gets all his stacks in his skill and his burst is a just some minor crowd control, for example. So not every character is minor skill damage and massive burst damage, and sometimes that can be helpful depending on the playstyles you prefer.

In terms of team comp, oof. I would say that knowledge comes from two places: check out meta theory crafters who in-depth can explain a char's best teams for X, Y, Z reasons or test them out in your own teams if you have the character waiting. Second, elemental reactions is a huge part of this game. If you dislike playing certain reactions, this will limit the roster of characters you need to worry about since a lot of characters in genshin aren't really universal supports, but geared to support a specific char/reaction. You may have heard of teams like National/Rational, which utilizes a core team of Bennett, Xingqiu, and Xiangling. These three are considered like universal good supports in the game no matter the reactions you're playing, for the most part, and they're always safe bets to pair with your DPS or on-fielder. Some characters like Gorou for Itto, Sara for Raiden, or Yun Jin for Yoimiya are niche and made for those 5 stars, so throwing them into random comps won't often benefit you much. Otherwise, a team really can work as long as you understand the elemental reactions you're trying to get from the team. For example, my favorite reactions are vape (pyro and hydro), overload (pyro and electro), and i guess taser (hydro and electro). So when I saw Gaming, I decided I wanted to try him in a vape comp, and grabbed units that would create those reactions I wanted to try (Mona, Xingqiu, flex slot). That's often a good way to start testing out team builds: slot characters into elemental reaction comps and go from there. By playing with them, you can feel if the rotation flows well or not or if you just dislike a playstyle. Many characters are flexible enough that as long as you're aiming for certain reactions as your starting point, you should be good testing. But if you're still not sure, again, check out theory and build guides! I watch so many even now because meta can always change and sometimes I want to change my builds or teams and get stuck too.

Artifacts really depends on the teams you wanna run a character in and there are many builds that can slot as more universal, most characters have best in slot artifact sets and for the last two ish years genshin really curates an artifact set to a newly released character, making it more obvious "what" you should farm. ofc, there's lots of good artifact sets that can work on characters you wouldn't expect depending on how people are using that character. I recently put some golden troupe pieces on my fischl to make her more geared for dendro teams, and it's been fun, but i wouldn't have necessarily thought to do that unless i checked out some updated fish builds online and learned she was a good support in dendro comps. but really, if you stick to *their* artifact set you're likely gonna be just fine.

But also Genshin is quite forgiving in many ways and you should always try to play teams that feel fun and comfortable to you. One of my favorite teams since Furina's release is Raiden, Furina, Jean, and Kazu. It's not super meta, it's not anything insane, but it works well because I understand Jean supports Furina's kit, Kazu is my crowd control, Furina does her sub-dps stuff, and Ei funnels energy into everyone else to make sure Furina can reach her max stacks, and since everyone has so much ER, it benefits Raiden whose own stacks come from making sure the rest of the party bursts often. I've played with many of those characters long enough to figure this team out for myself based on information I learned from the community (Jean being a great support for Furina) and my own learning from having played with Raiden and Kazu for longer. So again, a lot of the time teams can be slapped together and work just fine as long as you're goals are being met, whatever they are, from that team.

And it's always more fun to play teams with characters you enjoy playing even if it's not "meta". Also idk how long you've been playing genshin, but eventually a lot of this becomes very intuitive so don't stress too hard. there's a learning curve, and then suddenly you'll be reading talents and understanding new kits with ease and forming teams better bc you've had just had the characters longer and have used them longer. easy peasy.

[zvtara-was-never-canon]

I’m not aiming this at the Zutara shippers that like the enemies to lovers trope. Because that’s a vibe even if it’s not one I see with Zuko and Katara. But ones that demonise Aang (mostly with made up scenarios and a lack of understanding and ignoring basic storytelling) and use the catacombs scene to try to illustrate how Z/ko was more “respectful” “mature” and “understanding” to Katara than Aang ever was apparently before they jump to spewing the most disgusting, xenophobic shit and make fun of him for being bald, but that’s another thing.

It’s hilarious how the same people completely ignore and never touch on how he had manhandled her, was outwardly racist multiple times, made it clear he did not see her as an equal, dehumanised and reduced her, treating her like garbage and then acting all entitled to her forgiveness and being sad and frustrated that Katara wanted nothing to do with him after being a backstabbing disgusting asshole towards her for the majority of the series. Like sorry to burst your bubble. They ignore all of this and lick their perfect little awkward turtleduck’s feet for.. not doing any of this in the catacombs I guess? And listening to her about her mother. They shit on Aang and They PRAISE him.. for BARE MINIMUM basic human kindness and empathy. Oh and this is right before he stabbed both their backs. And he forgot all about it. And they have the audacity to tag these shitstain essays as ‘metas’ I hate it here🥰

As a Zuko fan: I fucking hate the way Zutarians talk about him. They remove all of his personality to turn him into a generic "bad boy with a softer side."

Zuko is an angry, selfish, proud, stubborn son of a bitch. He is also brave, kind, and wants to be better. Without his flaws, and his struggle to control them, he is just not the same character.

And come on, if Katara was this doormat of a person that just turned a blind eye to all of his flaws just because he is hot? He wouldn't even have ever become friends with her, because he has no respect for pushovers - hence him dating Mai.