#everything about history and culture and sciences. but i can't. i mean that was never a realistic goal of course

[caffeinatedopossum]

I'm still grieving the dreams I lost due to my disability and I just added another one

[hadesoftheladies]

i've been on radblr for a while, and maybe it's because of the specific users i follow being woc or disabled, but recently i've been seeing more ableist and racist radblr users crawl from whatever hole they've been molting in

in light of a recent conversation thread between @menalez and two whitefems, i've come to see the issue other radblr users have been talking about

radblr lacks a culture of intersectionality. there are many white/straight/abled women here who think solidarity means we only cater to their liberation, and they can ditch us whenever they please. it is one-sided support, and isn't solidarity at all. they are used to being centered, used to seeing themselves as default woman, used to seeing themselves as the standard of feminism and womanhood. their problems as more deserving.

i'm not going to use this post to diagnose radblr, but to say why these women are insanely stupid

racist and imperial radfems have been bold in their assertion that their empires are somehow benevolent, neutral, helpful to outsiders. they have endorsed their militaries, asserted that they are genetically and intellectually superior, and that they're oh so tired of stupid, backward women from stupid, backward countries whining about how colonization improved their society. (and some western black users have agreed).

and it's so STUPID because . . . how do you not see you're approving of the structure of your own oppression while complaining about the injustice of it?

you can acknowledge that men have misattributed women's achievements to men, that they have destroyed, twisted, and erased their history. you can acknowledge that the reason there weren't as many women geniuses as men was because of the brutal subjugation and social, economic barriers women faced, or some just had their ideas stolen and died unnamed and unattached to their invention. you understand how women's language, spaces, and philosophy have been hijacked by the male perspective in everything, from religion, to education, to literature. in marxist or materialist analysis, you understand that economy creates culture.

but you can't understand any of that when it comes to majority world countries? you mysteriously lose your capacity to analyze culture when you're at the top? your countries are rich because they're just so gosh darn good at being rich, aren't they? stolen wealth and labor doesn't give you a head start at all! and if money is power, and you have the money, you can get away with stealing even more, but that only applies to men, see? not our nice, lovely, governments! colonization and war aren't actually that bad or brutal and don't have any lasting negative effects! neocolonial systems don't exist! it's not like our beloved empires have anything to do with killing the cultures of billions because they can, they have, and it is in their best political and economic interest to. black people never did anything significant! this is a fact, and has nothing to do with deliberate propaganda from imperial countries! imperialist propaganda, ha! imagine that? african and asian people can't be smarter than white people, because . . . . genetics! whitefems on radblr care so much about science when it comes to transwomen, but their brains turn to mush when it comes to thinking whiteness somehow genetically increases intelligence. biology, everybody!

it's honestly funny. like you're trading one regime for another, congrats! you're anti-revolution! you can get off our backs and stop using our plight as examples of your oppression.

and to the british storm trooper that claimed her intelligence was genetic--if you truly believe that, you've got two options:

consider that this statement is unscientific, racist, and false, or

take an ancestry DNA test and find out if you're adopted :)

[forkaround]

This post is an extension to this post about what can be classified as a BL. I'd rec you read that post first.

I woke up in the morning with this in my notifs and I just....

Anyway, let's break it down:

Does a QL simple mean that the main characters are queer and you go in knowing that?

First of, in my post I say BL is where you know "Boys are kissing boys and girls are kissing girls." If there is no romance (thus the reference to kissing), the show becomes irrelevant to the conversation.

But to answer: What's wrong with that?

That makes literally *anything* centering queer people and queer love a QL

Great! It's QL.

I've seen this pointed out multiple times have these people wondered why they don't want to call something they think is good a QL? What is wrong with the title of QL?

and that imo is somewhat belittling of queer people's existence as in their presence in society as a a given is inherently 'genre'

Yeah, and Pride and Prejudice is a 'straight genre'

If that doesn't make sense, well, that sentence didn't make sense to me. Does making crime shows make the lives of cops and criminals in to a genre??? It's such an absurd statement. Or maybe I'm just sleepy....

this is very different from thinking QL is 'bad'--you'd never call anything with an expected straight romance in it 'romance' by default

Yeah! That's how it works! Romance is romance. Romance is a genre. It's literally the biggest genre there is. There is more romance written, published, made into animation or live action than literally any other genre by a huge margin.

Romance can and is often combined with other genres. Doesn't change that it is a romance.

you'd call it whatever genre it is; when you meet a series of fitting tropes you'd call it a rom-com

What does rom stand for again?

Romance is often used with other genres, from action to horror to contemporary to fantasy to sci-fi.

This I think primarily comes from people not knowing how genres work. It's not a Boolean (as one would say in computer science). It's not a True/False thing where if it's action it can't be romance. If it's romance it can't be political.

As they say: It contains multitides.

shouldn't queer stories be afforded the same discretion?

Moonlight Chicken, Kinnporsche, Old Fashion Cupcake, Bad Buddy, Love in the Air, Not Me, 180 Degrees, GAP the series, HIStory 3: Trapped, About Youth, Mood Indigo, Cherry Magic, I could go on. You don't have to go anywhere else for it. BL already has it all.

So I'll ask again: Why do you feel that 'BL' is a bad word?

Other people have wrote about this with better sources and much deeper understanding so I'll try my best to convey it here:

As I understand the situation, something got lost in translation when yaoi travelled from Japan to the US and people started understanding yaoi to be a 'dirty' genre, that did not depict honest queerness despite it being made up of majorly queer people. It became the genre that was 'for straight women by straight women'. If you look at US the same phenomenon can be observed when people talk, or at least talked, about slash fiction. Mix in some cultural context and yaoi goes from a fun escapist genre to the bane of queer existence genre. Fiction is enjoyed differently in different parts of the world. Nothing wrong with that. Hell, nothing unique or special with that statement either. It's a fact of life. If Shakespeare can't be universal, as many like to claim, we should not expect the same of anything else.

And let's never forget how westerners think their version of queerness is the only real version. I've had personal experience with this and I can say: People need to open their minds and understand that not everything is from their perspective. When I encounter any American thing in a show or book, I simply slide past it because I'm not American. I've never been to America. It doesn't change the story itself, so why bother, what would be the point. If people applied that approach instead of analyzing every detail and expecting it to fit your world view then we would all be happier.

(It turned sappy at the end there. I'm sleepy.)

[bestjeanistmonster]

I recently found your S&T swap au and I am in love. It’s so good! And your art is so adorable you do not understand

Ok, so I had some thoughts while looking through your au.

Are their personalities different due to how their pasts are different?

And, I’m pretty sure, there were like ancient depictions of a form looking like Sonic saving the world and stuff so I wonder if like sonic was “destined” to be the hero but in this case that isn’t the role he had. Meaning Tails has to prove to himself and others that despite what destiny tried to say, he is a hero.

Aww thnx so much 🥺!!!

These are very good thoughts and there are a quite few differences in personality so I’m just gonna do this in sections:

Sonic:

Sonic’s not too different to how he is in canon, I think swap sonic still has like the same demeanour and attitude, like they’re not that different in terms of being pretty chill, too cool for school and generally being a little shit

He leans more into the piloting thing and he likes to fly fast. Do not insult his piloting skills unless you wanna annoy him

no one really expects him to be a super genius they’re always caught off guard by it when says something really scientific just casually (except the people who are just used to it)

He tends a danger to himself most of the time, being sent to the hospital every couple of weeks cuz of of his experiments, inventions or just straight up forgetting he fit the blowtorch on the floor. (A lot of the times is a some dumb stuff that he does for ‘science’)

Zero sense of self preservation and a tendency to just casually play off injuries (“Relax shadow, all the bleeding was internal, that’s where the blood’s supposed to be-“)

filled with lots of energy and from the lack of usage of his speed to let some of it out, always constantly moving. Constant leg bouncing disease and rambling at record speeds (only tails can understand him the most when he’s in ramble mode). He’s also a really fast thinker

When his speed is brought up he gets a bit visibly uncomfortable and changes the subject, pretending that it never happened

Hes bad at taking compliments, he just brushes it off and tries to either discredit himself or awkwardly change the subject. When he was younger he was even worse

The boy would not see sun in days if allowed to hyperfocus on inventing, tails often has to drag his ass outside when that happens

The tornado is his baby

Tails

He’s more confident & independent from doing hero stuff and travelling

He’s a huge history nerd, whenever they go to angel island he ignores sonic & knuckles he goes straight for the ruins.

He knows random trivia facts

He owns many notebooks and has about 6 in total so far

In his travels he loves to learn about different cultures and traditions

Tails’s 8 year old brain at some point just comes to the conclusion that he straight up can't die cuz after everything he's been through he's still alive and so Tails slowly becomes more reckless with his well-being because of it much to sonic’s chagrin

This kid is really curious, you would be surprised how many of his adventures started out as innocent curiosity. He gets side tracked a lot because of it. (Once Sonic asked him to go get some groceries from the supermarket, returned in gold armor with a sword and a country. He forgot the groceries)

He reads a lot of comic books for catchphrase and megamind voice presentation.

People often underestimate him due to his age and adorable appearance and he uses it to his advantage

Cusses frequently

Does not hold back on insults. Someone could be debating whether or not to fight this eight year old but then he opens his mouth and they’re like “nah, the kid deserves it.” And squares up

Destined hero thingy

Tail’s definitely did have to prove to others and himself that he was a hero despite it not being destiny, and sonic had to prove that just because he was ‘destined’ to be a hero doesn’t mean that has to do it it in a way that’s foretold of be a hero at all

But despite this Tails does have a bit of imposter syndrome and feels like, despite all that he’s achieved, he doesn’t deserve to be called the ��hero of mobius’.

He was just a little kid who wanted to help

But sonic called bullshit on that and told him that’s exactly why deserves to be called a hero, a little kid standing up against seemingly impossible odds and challenges over and over again just because it’s the right thing to do.

I’m thinking that maybe the prophecy will come into play later down the line but I’m still deciding

Thanks for the ask!!!

[scintillyyy]

I can’t believe I had followed you this long without realizing you had a whole >100k word fic you were working on. I spent the past few days reading My Baby, You are a Gift, One I Will Cherish.

Your writing is honestly so amazing. I can’t remember the last time I read something that long from start to finish in such a short time. The characterizations, the reinterpretation of canon events; so many things were just incredible. It really shows how much work and care you put into it.  

It’s so nice to have a story that puts so much effort into fleshing out a character like Janet Drake. Was there anything in particular that inspired you when you were writing her?  

hahaha, yep, that's me! that fic is my baby lol. thank you, i get very bashful about my writing lmao. im glad the characterization had been decent, i'm always so worried about that. anyways, this answer might get a little long so i'm putting it under a cut lol

as far as anything in particular that inspired me? uhhh, well i guess i'll have to go into something that you're basically almost never going to see me talk about ever on the internet if i can help it so i'll still keep it vague-ish: i actually have a young child of my own. (i mean. if it wasn't super obvious already. people usually don't get into attachment science on a whim. they do it because it's 4:37AM and someone has only slept in half-hour increments since 11:30PM and they've been crying off and on for the past 2 hours desperately hoping that the someone will just fall asleep for 2 hours please and all they do is research everything about parenting obsessively because that's the absolute only thing they can do-). so i have spent a lot. and i mean a lot of time in parenting spaces. i'm part of my local area moms group in all their glory (they're very, uh, special), and i personally know a lot of other parents, and i'm basically immersed in a very interesting and complex culture (marriage and parenting culture). and i have seen my fair share of conplex, not great marital dynamics. and now that i have a kid that's what the majority of my patients talk to me about, so i get to hear a lot about different views and experiences of parenting from a lot of different viewpoints.

so anyways after the batman came out and my husband and i went on a date night to go see it, i ofc got the itch to get back into reading dcu fanfics and comics after not doing it for years since the nu52 (i also saw that they rebirthed tim's original history back, so i forgave dc a tiny bit), so i got myself the dc app so i could re-read all my beloved post-crisis comics. and it was a nice hobby to pick up again because it was very easy to pick up and put down in 20 minute increments and work around, you know, child care. i was devouring all the most popular fics (which 90% are fanon, lbr) while re-reading old storylines, and while the absolute disconnect between fanon and canon was fine for me at first because it's all fiction and i really didn't care that much, i eventually started to personally get a bit...discontent at fanon in general and the fanon drakes, especially janet (but jack too. like it or not, he does have an established characterization!). like. i read the comics!! she wasn't necessarily a great parent by any means, but the five panels she got prior to being fridged for tim to officially become robin basically showed her being physically affectionate, caring, and generally supportive of her son. who was this weird, cold woman who never once held her son and didn't care about his well-being at all?? she was unrecognizable to me. and as i started to make my way through post-crisis, i also became a bit mad at dc for killing her for tim's character and then basically making her a non-entity that barely got mentioned. despite her failings, tim was legit devastated when she died (and he later said he can't let himself drown in his grief for her--he clearly must have loved her so much) and then they did nothing with it. what was their relationship?? who was she?? why was she a generally loving mother yet left with jack?? did she think tim was okay?? what were she and jack constantly arguing about?? why did jack say to tim that his mother wouldn't want them to be so far apart?? did she maybe have some misgivings about traveling, did she not necessarily like being far away from tim?? how does this woman become the mother she does?? what were her intentions?? she deserved to have more character development in my mind! why does this woman basically get flattened into the worst mother ever? i know a lot of imperfect mothers who are in complex marriages and are just trying and not always succeeding. what exactly did that look like to me? how do i marry the two ideas?

another thing that interested me immensely was the idea of a difference in perception from tim and from his parents regarding tim's childhood. obviously, we know tim's pov. but what did his parents think? did janet think everything was going fine?? did they have a rosier picture of tim's childhood than he did? and thus, the first fic was born. me blathering for 27k words trying to showcase janet as a parent who was trying her best, who was semi-isolated by life circumstances, but was simply unable to balance work, kid, marriage and was unintentionally making tim feel abandoned by her, something she never would have wanted if she had realized. and that was going to be it.

and then i got sad about her, because janet as i view her (i like to think a lot of tim's good traits come from her) i think would have done a lot better with a second chance with tim than jack did! like, she, as a mother, might have a very different response to the tragedies and loss of her husband and try to focus more on her son than jack did. she as a widowed mother would also face very different judgments than jack did (society is obsessed with the idea that boys need a father figure--so she'd probably be more likely to let tim hang out with bruce rather than jack fighting their relationship at first because "it's good for him" to have an older man he can look up to) she's more supportive in her appearances, after all, saying that tim could be just like dick when he grows up. i think that she'd find out a lot sooner. and i think her surviving wouldn't have changed any of the big events, and i became obsessed with the idea of "but how would she deal with this canon event vs jack". she is, after all, a different character who deserves her own internal feelings and motivations. the drakes weren't great, but i don't think they're that irredeemably bad. and i think tim would want them redeemed too!

and nobody else was writing the canon-but-with-janet fic in my head that i couldn't stop thinking about, so i figured i'd give it a shot just in case there was one other person who felt the way i did and wanted to see it lmao.

anyways tl;dr a lot of inspiration comes from the fact that i am a mom and have spent way too many hours dissecting parenting in my head and the fact that i know a lot of moms who are very complex, imperfect humans and i just like stories about motherhood and allowing mothers to be nuanced and to redeem themselves.

[lily-orchard-gossip-blog]

Can you please make a very long speech post about Isekai? I want to learn about its history and it’s first appearance related to the modern-day definition in any culture. Please? For me.

Well... Alright, since people are interested in it.

Isekai quite literally means: Another World.

It comfortably sit in between Portal Fiction, Fantasy and Science fiction, in terms of genre, and it's its own thing.

So, Isekai does have roots in ancient mythology.

Namely the myth Urashima Tarō, whch involves a fisher man saving a turtle and getting wisked away into, well, a heavenly space (or another world.), before returning and dying. Fun stuff.

But it's easier to look towards Portal Fiction as being the starting point, because it includes... well, portals to another world.

Portal fantasy is when a character crosses into another world through a portal of some kind. (Often leading to a fantasy world.) The big distinction between Portal fantasy and Isekai, at least to me, is that in Portal fiction, the character who crosses into this other world will always go home at the end of the story . But in Isekai, the main character will always stay in the fantasy world.

(It's been argued that having a coming of age narrative is also vital to the Portal Fantasy genre, but I'm being more simplistic just so it's easier to understand).

Basicly, think of Inuyasha. The Kagome goes through the well to feudal Japan, have adventures, and then returns to the real world through the very same well. Other examples include Alice in Wonderland, Caroline, and The Wizard of Oz.

Now, All that being said, that's just backstory. There are elements we associate with Isekai, but it isn't Isekai.

That actual FIRST isekai novel, that has elements of what we know of as Isekai today, comes from:

Isekai no Yūsha (Warrior from Another World )

Look, Isekai is in the title and everything!

It's a short fantasy novel about a high-schooler named Ryoji, who's summoned to take up a magic sword and fight against the demon king Gandar Boa.

The Book is out of print, and information on it is rather scarce. However, I do know it came out in 1979,making it one of the earliest examples of modern day Isekai…. I think.

Okay, look, I haven't read it, it's never been published outside of Japan, and it's name is so generic that it's hard to find much about it. But multiple sources told me it was the first notable example, so I'm rolling with it.

But I know what your asking. What about the first Isekai anime? Well, I've got you covered on that.

The first Isekai anime is

Aura Battler Dunbine (1983)

The Summary, that I totally did not just steal from My Anime list, goes as follows:

Shou Zama is an ordinary 18-year-old from Tokyo who finds himself summoned to the medieval fantasy world of Byston Well. Upon arrival, he is put into service under the ambitious lord Drake Luft, who seeks to greatly expand his power. Those like Shou who come from "Upper Earth" possess strong aura power and are ordered to pilot "Aura Battlers," insectoid mecha designed by a man named Shot Weapon, who also came from Upper Earth.

As Shou finds himself fighting alongside his new comrades, they put their lives on the line to prevent the villain from taking over Byston Well before it's too late.

Mechs, fantasy, special powers only people from our world possess? Can't be any more anime than that!

It ticks a lot of the boxes that we tend to expect from most Isekai anime, but it is missing one thing. Where's the video game mechanics? Where's the video game worlds?

Well don't, I've got you covered. The first Isekai with video games being a proud feature is:

Super Mario Bros: Peach-Hime Kyushutsu Dai Sakusen! (1986)

(For those who want to watch it in beautiful 4k)

Yes, that's right. Mario got there first.

The Mario Bros. get sucked into their Famicom game, and must now rescue Princess Peach from King Bowser Koppa.

This Mario Film is notable for being one of the earliest Isekai to involve a video game world, and mild usage of video game mechanics.

For more information, I would highly recomend this video here:

For Mother's basement, as he goes a lot more in depth then I could in a blog post.

But yeah, that's my Isekai speal. I hope you enjoy it.

[loominggaia]

(I just read Age of Grupphound) so if Alaine is 1/4 Gildfolken what about the rest of the FGG?

I'm not sure if you're asking how many of them have Gildfolken ancestry, or just asking about their racial heritage in general, but I'm going to kill two birds with one stone and assume the latter. :)

But before I answer this, I want to start off by saying two things:

One: "Race" doesn't mean quite the same thing in the LG universe as it does in the real world. Looming Gaia has a wacky creation theory that isn't based on real-world science.

Two: It's extremely rare for modern peoples in the LG universe to be "pure-blooded" anything. At this point in history, peoples have intermixed so much that even those who claim to be "pure" this or that, probably aren't.

That said, characters identify their racial makeup based on their place of birth, their own appearance, culture, and what they know about their family history. These histories can only be traced back so far, so characters are never 100% accurate when reporting their own heritage.

For example, in "Lost and Found", Evan was able to trace his lineage on his father's side back several generations, but everything before that is lost. So we only know so much about his true ancestry and the rest is just assumptions. That goes for all the other characters too.

Evan: He talks about his ancestry in Age of the Grupphund. In his own words...

"You probably can’t tell by looking at me, but my parents weren’t from the same tribe either, and neither were their parents. My mama was Skylind and Gildfolken, and my papa was Skylind, Grisa, a fair bit Westlander, and Gaia knows what else…"

So, there ya go. Evan might look stereotypically Skylind at first glance, and that race probably does make up a good chunk of his genetic makeup, but he has a lot of other things going on in his bloodline too.

Lukas: I can't remember if Lukas ever talks about his heritage in the series, but when I designed him, I took his family history into account. His father's family has been living in Matuzu Kingdom for a very long time, while his mother's family hasn't. His father descends from the region's native Lagaal people, and his mother's ancestors were likely Westlanders/Balxee who immigrated from Lamai Nation.

Long story short, Lukas' heritage is a big melting pot, which is the story for almost all Matuzans. He's definitely Lagaal, Westlander, and Balxee, but given his home region's history, he likely has a significant amount of Odazi and possibly Skylind blood in there too.

Glenvar: Glenvar's ancestry probably isn't "pure" Gildfolken, but he believes it is. And to be honest, given how isolated his home region is, he might be as close as it gets to that. Halostira has historically been visited by traders from Noalen and Evik, so it's likely he has a small amount of Skylind and/or Moorenock heritage somewhere far back in his bloodline.

Alaine: Alaine claims to be 3/4 Moorenock and 1/4 Gildfolken, stating her mother is full Moorenock and her father is half-Moorenock and half-Gildfolken. This is probably accurate for the most part, but she likely has a little Solra and Skylind in her too. This is a pretty safe assumption when you take the history and demographics of her parents' native regions into account (The Arcadian Plains and the Kingsfall Swamp).

Jeimos: Like Glenvar, Jeimos is another one of those rare cases where their racial makeup actually is damn near "pure"--to the point that inbreeding is almost a guarantee in their not-so-distant lineage. Red elves are an unusual case under unusual circumstances though, considering most of them have been trapped in one small area for centuries. They haven't had the opportunity to spread out and mingle with other peoples like everyone else. Of course, all red elves descend from the Boanningwad elves, who had a lot of interaction with the Faefaras and Tanyel elves back in the day.

So, I'm going to say Jeimos is probably 99% red elf and like 1% Faefaras and/or Tanyel, possibly.

Isaac: Several other characters have referred to him as an "Odazi boy", but they're only basing this on his appearance, because no one even knows who his parents are. He looks stereotypically Odazi, and considering the FGG found him in the Odazi's native region, I think it's safe to say that particular race makes up the majority of his heritage.

We, the audience, know that he was made from the blood of Karenza and Darshaan, who were both ancient peoples of Odazi heritage. Given the isolated region and early time period, they may have very well been full-blooded, but there's a chance they might have had Lagaal and Grisa ancestry too.

Linde: Between "Steel Knuckle Squad" and "Body Hopping", we get a pretty good picture of Linde's family tree. In short, her mother is Ela and her father is Marienna. Or at least, that's how they identify themselves. In reality, her ancestry is probably more complex than that.

I'm willing to bet her mother had some Faefaras and possibly Tanyel in her bloodline, and her father likely had Aiya in his. Once again, I'm just basing this off the histories and demographics of their respective regions.

Balthazaar: Balthazaar never discusses his heritage if I remember correctly, but we can extrapolate it using his appearance and the history of his hometown, Rodanga. Rodanga was populated by the continent's native humans, the Lagaal and Odazi, early on. But they were joined by an influx of Solra immigrants later, who now make up a large portion of the town's population. Balthazaar has pretty light skin for someone of Lagaal or Odazi descent, but it's right in line with the Solra people. On the other hand, his hair is way too dark to be Solra. Its color matches the Odazi, and its texture matches the Lagaal.

All that said, Balthazaar likely has a pretty equal mix of Lagaal, Odazi, and Solra in his heritage.

Skel: Skel was born naturally in Kelvingyard. I say "naturally" because Kelvingyard is a massive Evangelite slave yard, where certain slaves are forced to breed in order to produce more valuable offspring. As seen in "Unbreakable", this typically means pairing slaves with other slaves of similar ancestry. Skel's parents weren't part of this forced breeding operation, his conception just kind of happened with no oversight.

Going by that fact, combined with his appearance, Skel is most likely of Oprezka and Vankza ancestry.

Javaan: Judging by his appearance alone, it's obvious that Javaan descends from the Ebony centaurs of Deepridge. But if you also take the region's history into account, he likely has some Dappleback blood as well. Javaan himself knows very little about his own ancestry.

Elska: In "To Fight the Fog", Elska claims to be a Shaghoof, and also claims she's never seen another centaur that didn't have golden or ashen hair, meaning she has only been exposed to other Shaghoofs. Her father claims that her people have lived atop their isolated mountain "since the beginning of time", but this probably isn't true. There's evidence that her tribe migrated there from a more western location long ago, and it's possible that they had contact with the Patchback centaurs at that time.

I'd say Elska is mostly Shaghoof, but might have some distant Patchback in her lineage too.

Mr. Ocean: Though he looks stereotypically Teetaktee and identifies himself as such, Mr. Ocean likely has a fair bit of Kakee and Eepopkee blood in him as well. He was born in the (in)famous and very ancient city of Tekee, which was frequented by foreign Aquarian traders all throughout it's long history.

Zeffer: We can't extrapolate much from Zeffer's location, because elves aren't even native to the place he was born. His home region of Southriver Wood is populated almost entirely by the descendants of immigrants from many foreign lands. So, all we really have to go by is his appearance.

His father, Adel, was a white-haired elf. That alone tells us he had significant Ela ancestry. But he was also described as "bronze-skinned" which is more of an Aiya trait, or in some cases Marienna. Meanwhile his mother didn't get much of a description beyond "copper hair", suggesting she was at least part Tanyel. Zeffer himself has hazel eyes, which is exclusively an Aiya trait.

Going by all this, we can assume Zeffer's ancestry is a diverse melting pot containing Ela, Aiya, Tanyel, and possibly a bit of Marienna.

*

Questions/Comments?

Lore Masterpost

[opinated-user]

LO saying "Native genes" are a thing is peak cringe because day one of my anthropology class we established race isn't real, it's a social construct, and you can't have the genes of a particular race. You can have traits people associate with people they perceive to be of a specific race, but race isn't real, and there are no Native genes, white genes, etc. "Race" isn't even a term used in modern anthropology and sociology a lot of the time, as ethnicity and culture are more relevant in most contexts and a lot of the "science" behind race is based in racist eugenicist research from over a century ago.

Her bringing up skin color is also baffling - the issue is she is culturally and officially NOT a member of a tribe whose symbols she is borrowing from. Having haplotypes in common with other Cherokee people is not enough to entitle her to use their symbols. "Native genes" are both not really a thing and show a willful refusal to understand the history of Native Americans in the United States. Native activists have fought against the government's usage of blood quantums and appearance as means of classifying who is and who is not Native for CENTURIES. There are a lot of Cherokee people on my campus and none of them would be okay with people talking about Native genes and LO citing her hair as proof of her Native-ness or her saying people are only not counting her as Cherokee because of her skin or her wearing a feather earring she has no right to. It goes against everything they've fought against in terms of stereotyping and blood quantums all their lives.

If she were learning more about her ancestral cultural background and wanted to become a part of the Cherokee tribe, she wouldn't be saying what she's saying or have an avatar that looks like her avatar looks.

the way LO brought up her supposed "native gene" was so bizarre too because she was talking about how her mom (who never tried to make her children part of the Nation, keep in mind) always wanted her to be darker for some reason (despite she herself being a very pale woman) because "i was the only one of her children who had the native gene" and then everybody just accepted this little anecdote to move to the next subject. but you're absolutely right, though. Native American Nations didn't survived genocide and fought for their own self determination for an outsider like LO to claim she has all right over their culture and identity for the sake of some gene, only to be reduced to it's barest of elements and serve as decoration for a sexy avatar.

[scentedchildnacho]

She asked me why I didn't have housing so I told her I am a poor lady that favors social decisions so I had to rent and the criminal problems turn everywhere you go into house arrests and I was criminally punched struck till I had internal bleeding in my left shoulder and that was enough for me willa cather to never give landlords anything and go ahead and let them be profiled belligerently bullying dumb with greater financial means then others....

Because I only have to let register bully prostitutes get away with it to me and people don't have to have a lot of respect for that landlord anymore

I prefer to be as intensely persistent as landlords as long as ya train her to be a dumbass drug bully without science interactions at her register computer I'm going to keep baiting you to do it

Pretty much everything I do is filed a subsidized issue and yet those people get at banks like you wouldn't believe they want banksies like no other though it's persistent that banksies can't provide the fleeing needs required

And that's jobs helps people enjoy and France finally sent us more naval troops and the mean icky rude occupation finally couldn't go out just to ruin some bodies day

That and it's been over and over in many scenarios that anything poor and social has been called a criminal arrest enforcement so I've gotten use to having to move all the time because his gross fuck baby male fighters are going and state troopers train off calling them a felon on the run a lot of people show up just to learn urban combat and so I try to find ways to not have to be around prostitution

Jobs are prostitutes she acted like a dumbass and took money off me about subsidized issues and now they will make her earn it in a public stripping punishment

Uhm it's so males can have their jobs and do gay things here....and that's me if I have to be homeless and occupied all the time here then finally french ships to reinstill independence values

Well I do work if I at least show up to a mental house a transexual who tells me they isolate may look into my ally history and meet people better then that situation

All these attractive people who all tell me they do lonely desperate things too

I am social I can see how upper class whites feel sympathy for felons I am a neglected adult so I see neglect in a lot of criminal problems but it's that these upper class people who don't have discrimination in their educations and their families didn't have casualties and they have insight into their childhoods having been abused it's all this upper class obligation to view felons as a house arrest issue not a jail issue and yet it's the poor taking the burden of these decisions then the slander for allying police

After seeing what happens to criminals under house arrest I admit prefering rank authority as sanitation instead of spoiling the problem

Last house respite one tried to push me down unaware after feeding on meat in ways that disgust me I have a sex trafficker that's really really verbally abusive its look i had a bed there and enough to eat and i apparently wouldn't have sex for poor meals and a used bed im sorry but it costs much more then that

She wanted to know why people did it to me so I told her I don't have any representation I have to go with the information I can aquire and it's policies to ruin people's sex life all the time and make fun of them for making do with culture as it manifests for them

Candombes...it was a dance original to black artists here and now just gone with the people also

And people who stole a lot from that people the way jobs does then went to Europe not realizing Europeans would be offended by them to black people

And the Europeans told them if your focus was making fun of that poverty then that's your experience learn it and do it and now there is tango and those thieves were stolen from there made fun of and their people just gone

The clue indigenous people give me is it's not a personal lawsuit for me.....I am a white person....im one of em...and to not get caught up in personal litigation and sue environmentally for the collective

Urban warming stopped in pleasant social ways is more beneficial to my case instead of believing a white would ever have wealthy litigation

I get misinformed my life is an anachronistic glitch in an otherwise normative system instead of pennhurst my make and model of Them has never been seen as a labor right above yogin standards and abusively managed and it's having to prosecute for Them and It in small increments and achievements

I don't think there is any history of my make and model was called in possession of its physical faculties and if I had more money I would get called a drunk....just reading at leisure was a huge thing to give Me

He did really have to downsize if reading became a leisure not rank reefer dictation

I could I think get really really assaulted or killed at home still I think so I view homelessness as a slow project of calming my behaviours down to see if my make and model could better manage an apartment

It takes a long time to grow a child it takes a long time to figure if humans can survive environmental stress in the box normally

I just left the house respite he tried to push me down and so I left so the upper class mental workers finally had to get involved and do their job with him instead of stalk my poverty with him

Its no you people take pay here you interact with him

Uhm I also just don't like all genders I did get really sympathetic the transexual issues cannot just largely at certain times be around their transexual friends and homosexual partners....all genders doesn't work to actually socialize anyone

No one actually group therapies or comes to an understanding of very mixed personality structures

I noticed about housing that I get pretty light headed still and could have hyper active falls what were you thinking about I don't know I just had a random ecstatic movement

Comanche maybe

I do really really really want a two week vacation where I do nothing and think about nothing but sleep and eat and bathe

[n1kolaiz]

"You want to know what death is? I'll tell you. Death is the loss of life. Despite everything doctors like me attempt... a patient's life can still fall through our fingers. You think death lies in the apex of science? Anyone with such little regard for life will die by my hand."

Character Analysis: Yosano Akiko

Age: 25 || Ability: Thou Shalt Not Die

BSD CHAPTER CHAPTER 65-66 SPOILERS

table of contents:

1. Author counterpart.

2. Yosano's history.

3. 'Angel of Death' defined.

4. Yosano and Atsushi.

YOSANO BRAINROT!*(#&!*@#($

1. Author counterpart.

Having been given the “Sho Ho” at birth, Yosano Akiko’s counterpart—the real-life author—was known for her zealous take on both feminism and pacifism.

Side note: Once again, to avoid confusion, I will use the name Sho Ho in reference to the real-life author, and Yosano in reference to the BSD character.

Sho Ho's writings were pretty much out-of-the-ordinary in her time, and despite being suppressed by the social norms of gender hierarchy, she sought to reform society’s view on the cultural perspectives of women and their sexuality (She expressed her love for a woman in one of her poems, but many still argued on whether she identified herself as queer or not.)

"Thou Shalt Not Die," Yosano's ability, is actually named after one of Sho Ho's most famous, controversial poems. She wrote it for her brother, who was a soldier in the war between Russia and Japan (1904-1905). In her poem, she expressed her general distaste for war and how her brother was a part of it.

O my young brother, I cry for you Don't you understand you must not die! You who were born the last of all Command a special store of parents' love

Would parents place a blade in children's hands

Teaching them to murder other men Teaching them to kill and then to die? Have you so learned and grown to twenty-four?

- excerpt from Sho Ho's poem, "Kimi Shinitamou Koto Nakare"

Her words were blunt enough to inflict guilt on her brother's conscience, as she wasn't afraid to express her disapproval over how her brother took part in the typical violent bloodshed and manslaughter of war. Such opinions perturbed the authorities, and her work was eventually banned from the public for a period of time. Later on, it was used as an anti-war statement.

2. Yosano's history.

Now, as for the character in BSD, Yosano is seen to be generally strong-willed, and later on, we see that she is terrifyingly compassionately ambitious in the way she treats her patients. She treasured life itself, and hated the thought of losing a patient.

Yosano had developed her relations with Mori Ougai back in the Great War, when she was just 11 years old. Her ability was a great benefactor in saving lives. Realistically speaking, she was used for her ability to heal injured soldiers and diminish the effect of any casualty acquired.

Initially, she wasn't aware of this, until one of her close friends pointed it out by subtly accusing Mori of manipulating her to participate in the War under the close-to false pretence of 'saving lives.'

As much as her ability did save lives, it also forced soldiers to return to the frontlines and suffer injuries over and over again. The soldiers were never given the opportunity to return to their families because of her ability. This obliged them to carry on in the war without any excuse, inserting them into a vicious cycle they had no escape out of.

Metaphorically speaking, Yosano's hatred for Mori sort of mirrors Sho Ho's disdain for war and fighting, don't you think? The way Kafka materialised Yosano's past was quite interesting because he used chapters 65 and 66 to explain Yosano's dislike for Mori, reflecting how Sho Ho used her poem to explain why she condemned the idea of war and how her brother was part of it.

Before the effect of her ability was fully understood, however, every soldier praised and thanked her for what an angel she was. One of the soldiers she had befriended and gotten close to even kept a tally of the number of times she had saved him. He was the one who gifted her the butterfly hairpin she wore all the time.

The weight of the truth that her ability was a curse rather than a blessing fully dawned on her when her soldier friend ultimately committed suicide, because the fact of being indefinitely trapped in the throes of war agonised him until his spirit gave out. This drove Yosano to loathe her ability, or rather, how it was used.

In the time she participated in the War, Yosano was given the alias 'angel of death' due to the control she retained over the battlefield, but I thought that perhaps Kafka had a reason behind giving her this title, so I did my research.

3. 'Angel of Death' defined.

Side note: I wouldn't want to disrespect any culture or religion, so if my citations are inaccurate and/or disrespectful, do feel free to correct me/let me know! I did research out of pure curiosity, and I don't intend to twist the significance of any of the interpretations.

I had to grow up learning about the basics of religious stuff, so it's kind of nice to study something out of the box, and very much against my father's rigid belief system :D

ARCHANGEL ARIEL

(archangel: an angel of higher rank)

I came across the few characteristics of angels/goddesses and their roles, and the one which really caught my attention was the female archangel, Ariel, the angel of nature.

[ source ]

In Hebrew, the name Ariel means 'altar' or 'lioness of God,' and her role is to heal. In addition to that, she is also recognised as a helper to another one of the seven main archangels, Raphael, whose role is to provide physical and emotional healing, too.

She is the protecter of the environment and the animals therein, and is bestowed with the duty to oversee the order of heavenly bodies as well as earth's natural resources. She assures the sustenance of food, water, shelter, and supplies of human beings, much like how a nurse is to a patient I suppose.

In relation to Yosano, I think this part is pretty self-explanatory, or perhaps this is blown out of proportion HA, so take this as a suggestion rather than a fact, because I'd like to believe that Kafka had a reason for giving Yosano a title as such.

In the past, I've come across the angel of death only to perceive it as a female grim reaper of some sort, so it was pretty cool to find that the word 'angel' and 'death' made up a title of a someone like Ariel, one of the purest forms of humility and compassion.

GREEK GODDESS PANAKEIA

For my beloved (wannabe/or not) students of Greek mythology (much like myself, let's make a cult!), you've probably heard of Panakeia, the goddess of healing. Medicine finds most of its vital significance in Greek history, and in its mythology, Panakeia is actually known for her ability to heal any kind of sickness.

[ source ]

Her name means 'panacea,' which is actually defined as a remedy for all diseases. Terminal diseases and injuries lead to death, right? This would bring us back to Yosano's ability to nullify any injury's effects on a person, keeping them from death itself.

Now, we know that in order for Yosano's ability to work, her patient, or victim, has to be in a near-death condition in order for her treatment to take effect. This can't exactly fit into the description of resurrection, but it can be described as some sort of rebirth.

GREEK GODDESS PERSEPHONE

So another goddess which reminds me of Sho Ho/Yosano, is Persephone, the goddess of spring and rebirth. Before Hades, the god of the underworld, fell in love with Persephone to take her to live with him, Persephone lived a happy life.

Hades, with his nature of darkness and the like, was captivated by how pure Persephone was, and stole her away from her former life to live in an environment which differed sharply from her natural aura of purity.

[ source ]

Remember when Yosano's friend left a note behind before he killed himself? The note said nothing except for, "You are too righteous." Take that as you will, but figuratively speaking, you could say Mori takes the role of Hades in the story, while Yosano can be portrayed as Persephone.

Sho Ho can also be a parallel of Persephone, in that she had to adapt to the realities of war and disharmony, while Persephone had to adapt to the raw darkness of the underworld with Hades.

Sho Ho stood against society's norms and decided to reform it, making her one of the most well-known feministic pacifist in history, while Persephone managed to escape from the underworld to return to her former position, earning the title the 'Bringer of Life,' or the 'Destroyer of Death.'

Furthermore, the way Sho Ho's anti-war poem took its effect later on, reflects the way Persephone restored balance in the world after returning from the underworld.

4. Yosano and Atsushi.

chapter 66; Yosano: "It's my fault that those close to me died... Is there some place where it's okay for me to live?"

chapter 8; Atsushi: "If I have any chance of saving them all, of returning them home safely, would that mean it's okay for me to keep on living?"

I couldn't help but think of Dazai and Atsushi back when I was reading through these panels. Ranpo (my beloved), along with Fukuzawa, accepted Yosano as she was, despite how her ability was a cause of despair and misfortune.

Ranpo looked past her mistakes and the entirety of how dark her past was to welcome her into the Armed Detective Agency. Dazai, on the other hand, knew who Atsushi was and what his ability had made him do before anyone else, and still decided to provide a safe place for Atsushi to find his sense of belonging, journeying with him as he learned to use his ability properly.

For more info about Dazai and Atsushi's dynamic, you can check out the analysis I did for Dazai :D

Atsushi desired to save people to prove his right to live, while Yosano made her wish to achieve the recovery of all her patients the reason for her existence.

Others would prefer to accuse both Yosano and Atsushi of having a saviour complex, but the reason why they pursued to save people with utmost dedication, stems from the nature of what their past was like. You know the saying 'from broken to beautiful?' Yeah, it's something like that.

The way their pasts were written out gave them a desire to change, which was, I daresay, initiated by the people who took them in: Ranpo and Dazai. Their abilities were demonised because of how they were used, but once they broke from their abilities' effect over their lives, they honed their skills to control them for the right cause instead.

In a less cynical point of view, I believe both Yosano and Atsushi stood for what was right, and wanted nothing but to achieve peace and harmony in whatever way they could, even if it meant risking their own lives to save others.

So yeah, that's it for my rants today. Thank you for reading, and if you have anything to add, go ahead! I'm open to discussions ;)

[celestialnocturnes]

a message to my youth (reply 1988 thought dump)

warning: this isn't meant to be a coherent review or commentary on reply 1988. i literally just finished the kdrama a few moments ago and i want to preserve what i'm feeling through this entry. this is only a cathartic attempt to show how the kdrama had impacted me in so many ways. also, spoilers!

--

to the things that are already gone. to a time that has already passed, i want to say a belated farewell. goodbye, my youth.

watching a kdrama wasn't in my top priorities this year, but things that used to be a part of you would demand to be revisited sometimes. i'm glad that i did, and i'm thankful that it was reply 1988.

taking a nostalgic look at the year 1988, this kdrama tells about the story of five families in a humble block in ssangmun, seoul. for someone born 12 years after the setting, the plot is something strange, a history lesson in the lens of simple households. for someone in the limbo between careless youth and adulting, and someone born in an asian family, this kdrama will feel like home.

culturally speaking, reply 1988 was a beautiful exposition of how asian households run. what got me hooked to continue the drama was the endless saga of giving dishes to neighbors in the first episode. funnily enough, all families ended up having a feast of each house's dinner on their tables.

from a mouthwatering display of korean side dishes, to the trends of 1988 korea (back when jyp himself was a hit lolz jk), to the endless neighborhood gossips, to the flawed and conservative views on politics, and to the tight-knitted family dynamics — one would find this hilarious and relatable, informative even.

reply 1988 was a lot of things, but its casts hold a special place in my heart. the gang had so much love between them and it was so beautiful to see a pure friendship evolve through the years. i wish i could still have loud dinners and drunken nights with my friends when we get into our careers. I would love that.

sung deok sun, the optimistic figure in the group, was a ray of sunshine to me even as a viewer. i love deok sun because her spirits were never faltered by her failures and her status in life. my personality is sooo far from deok sun's, but she was relatable to me when she said she didn't know what to do in her life. she doesn't have a dream, i have a lot of them. even so, the uncertainty is there. i guess we all figure things out in the end. deok sun became a flight crew and was able to earn money for the family. i can't wait to figure out my own path, too.

dong ryong, being deoksun's self-proclaimed soulmate faced the same journey. despite not getting into a prestigious university, it's amazing how he was able to establish his own restaurant and even expand branches! makes you really think that not everything in life can be solved by good grades. honestly, i wish i have his street smarts and wisdom. what a powerful person i would be, then.

jung hwan was the man of few words in the group. he showed his affections not through words, but through his actions (and teases for deok sun). his love language would definitely be acts of service! i love jung hwan. he was a good son, brother, and friend. i aspire to have the kindness that he has. but oh dear heavens i would kill just to see how his love life would unfold had he faced the courage to confess to deok sun. i mean, come on! just be straightforward! they would honestly make a good pair, the ray of sunshine girl and the cold guy.

choi taek, the professional go-gamer, was the baby of the group. like jung hwan, he was a man of few words, except that taek was actually shy. his growth through the series was perhaps the most apparent. his innocent image was eventually changed by the way he picked up curse words from the gang, to his smoking, and to his openness of affection for his family and later on, deok sun. also, his character made me fall in love with park bo gum and his smile!

before i go to the next two characters that i associate myself with, i would also like to comment on the household parents of the block. the fathers here have different personalities, but their identities as providers of the house defined the way they act. they keep a tough act and may be distant to their children, but the love is there even though they don't really know much about the household.

and the mothers, oh dear, the mothers. my mom is not a working entity, but i've seen her struggle through the years. i think her burdens are even heavier than that of my dad's. the way this kdrama portrayed the stories of the mothers touched my heart so much that i couldn't stop my tears. never underestimate a woman's strength, i tell you.

from these figures, i learned so much about adulting and marriage. our parents miss their parents, too. our parents would always worry about us, no matter how old we are. our parents are trying to keep everything together, so they put up a tough front. our parents' wishes are devoted to their children. our parents just want the best life for us. not only us are growing old, but our parents, too. our parents want our attention, too. our parents do not have the perfect marriage, but they would do anything for their children. our parents love us deeply.

okay, here goes my reflection in the kdrama — sun woo and sung bora. initially, i was planning to write an entry only about bora, but i realized that i am in many ways alike to sun woo as well. both characters are the eldest children of the family and they face a lot of pressure in their respective families. both characters sacrificed their dreams because they are limited to what their families can afford. sung bora took math education despite her dreams as a prosecutor. sun woo took medicine because that was what his mom wanted. as for me, i chose a course that would promise a stable salary. i dreamed to work in the field of science or writing, but both paths have unstable pays in this country. i do not come from a well-off family, so i have to set my dreams aside.

bora and i do not share the same personality. hers was aggressive and frank, mine was the opposite. even so, i found a piece of my soul in her character because she was steadfast in her goals and was very understanding of her family's situation. she was the cream of the crop in the siblings, the only one who became a student in the premier university, the talk of the neighborhood. she had strong political stances that made her own parents almost disown her, but she was never sorry for it. when it comes to little things, bora had so much privacy over her things that she would get mad at the slightest unauthorized touch of it. oh dear, if that wasn't me.

sun woo, on the other hand, was nearing my male counterpart. he cares so much about his mom and his sister that he hated the thought of the former working. he was the model student, the one with the straight a's, and the one who acts professionally even with the internal turmoil of emotions. he never opposed his mother's wishes and he loved his sister dearly. he would always hold his feelings in, but gets weak in the arms of a loved one. based on his upbringing and firm values, you would also see how he respects women. i love it.

these two never worked out at first because they prioritized their dreams above romance, but i'm so, so happy that they got together in the end.

reply 1988 was perhaps one of the best slice of life shows that i've ever seen. i wish i had watched this when i was younger, because it would teach you so much about family, love, dreams, friendship, and growing up. the pacing would feel kind of slow because of its movie-length episodes, but i swear it was worth it.

to the youth that i was, thank you for building the youth that i am.

to the youth that i am, enjoy the uncertainty and strive to be a better version of yourself.

to the youth that will be, may you never lose the spark inside your heart no matter how old you are.

i will hear your reply in time.

most ardently,

grace

[leam1983]

On Linguistics

If you're familiar with Quebec, you know we have two official languages, and a recent strong push to add at least one third out of the handful of major Native American dialects spoken between the Saint Lawrence River basin and the upper North Coast. Unofficially, we have tertiary and, well, quarternary languages like Spanish and Mandarin.

The funny thing about my native language - French - is that Quebec's native speakers never really stepped off of a certain victimhood complex. I'm all for defending my native tongue, but I'm still a far cry from claiming that we're one or two generations away from ending up like certain Louisiana parrishes, where French is the focus of hyper-specialized classes attended by a nigh-on-invisible minority. We've got major Francophone news and media outlets, we can be served in French on a day-to-day basis, and being bilingual is, in many ways, more of a fun aside than a necessity.

More below.

Where I'm sort of confused is when my father prints out an article from Le Devoir that carries an editorial by Gérard Bouchard. For those who don't know, Bouchard is an author, a linguist, an essayist and a Postgrad professor that's focused on the particularities of French as spoken in Quebec. The article in question is titled Le Québec langue, which you could translate as meaning "Quebec as a language".

Said article is an exxagerated simulation of all of the anglicizations we use on a daily basis, and then ends with a sardonic note: the narrator is worried he'll have to pick up English for his new job, when he's spent twelve paragraphs with a roughly 50/50 ratio of French and English words in the same sentence.

The article doesn't pick sides, it simply illustrates a point. My father wags it in my face and says "See?! This is what your job is doing to you! This is how all of you Millennials sound; you can't find the right words for things in French even if not finding them would kill you!"

I look up from my script draft for Eastern Ontario - Kanata and the like - and realize I'll call a chunk of the country where a different set of roots for different idiolects of French has taken shape. Our English loan-words aren't the same in Ontario, and Franco-Ontarians have a deep history with so, used outside of its normal grammatical guidelines. It never implies a relation, but rather causation. "J'étais fatigué, so j'suis allé me coucher."

I ask my father to name one language of which the structure hasn't been altered by emergent technologies or new cultural trends. I tell him one springs to mind. He waffles for a bit, then admits defeat.

Latin. Latin is fixed in place. Latin doesn't shift, follow trends or alter itself to fit different regions. Latin has stripped itself of everything that isn't of scientific or religious importance, and only now are modern linguists attempting to piece it back together to the extent that it becomes a modern and complete conversation vector.

For all of the efforts of modern Latin schools, Latin is a dead language. The percentile of people who speak it at home is minuscule. The percentile involving everyday speakers is just as small. I remember seeing YouTube's Luke Ranieri pop-quiz deacons around the publically-accessible parts of Vatican City, and the only one who could hold a beginner-level conversation in Latin was Ugandan. The Italian, British and French deacons gave up after a scant few words.

That isn't the case for French. Millions of people use it everyday. It covers prose, everyday discussion, poetry, science, mathematics, emergent technologies, matters of faith and politics alike - it's alive. Just as alive as English is, and both languages are rife with new additions and subcultural plug-ins. You only need look at this freaking hellsite to see it for yourselves. This is the only place where saying you're writing a drabble on your scrunkly scrimblos wouldn't possibly raise eyebrows, and where you'd receive nods of understanding.

Of course, some purists see this as language being corrupted. I don't. French is alive precisely because it makes room for Anglicized words without rejecting its own French constructs. It's alive because I can speak to my IT colleagues in that language without feeling that there's a language level that's missing, in regards to, say, the need to reinstall Kubernetes or some colleague's missing credentials. I don't need to switch to a pidgin if I have to help out a colleague from the call center, and I also don't need to shoot for excessively formal constructs, either. Living languages are flexible. Latin isn't.

Predictably enough, however, this doesn't do it for my father and his dyed-in-the-wool Separatist roots. French is always under threat, as far as he's concerned, because we're geographically close to a basin that doesn't give a shit about our own culture - or so he believes. I always remind him that we're an annoyance to everyone in the ROC - who wishes we could just stick to English to make things easier for everyone - and a curiosity to people down south. To Americans, I'm a Budget Frenchman; a funny guy who gets American points of interest but who sometimes articulates them in a language that's rooted on the other side of the Atlantic.

As this brings up another thing: my French isn't even the "proper" French the Académie Française tries to drill into our heads at a young age, it's the French of colonists who left the Old Country in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. My French is the French of deported criminals and pardoned thugs, of provincial prostitutes and uneducated guys and gals tossed halfway across the globe on vain promises of royal cash and an allotted plot of land. My French is to French what Texas' drawl is to Elizabethan English, or what Ottawa's vaguely-Celtic consonants are to Australia's open vowels.

So what is there to defend, here? Do we cling to some arbitrary definition of a "proper" idiolect and insult everyone between myself and my fellow Cajun speakers between Montreal and Biloxi, or do we accept what linguistics teaches us, and that all signs, all signifiers, are arbitrary? Languages just can't evolve without that central aspect, that understanding that those who make up the sounds and structure of a language are its speakers.

[villainsandvictimsalliance]

Thank you for ranting to me, Shan. Don't get me wrong, I understand why the whole talk no jutsu may not be for everyone, especially when the villain the hero is trying to talk is confirmed to be irredeemable. But what's wrong with Deku's kindness and desire to save Shigaraki? In a society like ours, kind people are worthy of respect and kindness and it's time to be grateful for them. And don't worry, I'm doing great, just using you as more motivation to finish my schoolwork ^^

I mean, of course the whole talking is not gonna work in some people. But the thing is that the kids are trying to save as many people as possible, and they don't decide beforehand if something is gonna work or not. They try.

I find so funny when people call some heroes stupid for trying, even if everyone knows it's not going to work. Because!!!!! They tried!!!! It fills my heart with admiration. The fact that they won't stop trying even if everything is against them. Because sometimes it's not going to work, but they don't know.

That keeps me going.

Will they accept me for the job? Unlikely, but I'll keep trying, just in case.

Could I get a good grade on this exam or work? I don't think so, but I'm going to try.

These world is so used to resignation. "Don't try it because it's not going to work". Half of the things I've done in my life, I thought I couldn't achieve them. But I tried. And many times I did not achieve them, but sometimes I did.

And that "sometimes I did" makes me believe is worth being alive. Because what if it works.

We're used to apathy and resignation, frustration and sadness, rage and sorrow. What about climate change? What about cancer? What about the global economy? What about politics?

Just because it's unlikely that we can change it, doesn't mean we should stop trying.

Through history, humans have always used art to carry their hope to the next generations. This is a message that will never stop playing and replaying, as long as humanity exists.

The entire human race is based on this fact. All our cultures and myths and stories and legends, works of science fiction or just real works, romances and poems, studies and creations. We hope for things we can't see yet, that's faith, that's even the base of science. We believe, before anything, we believe.

That's the most powerful message of them all, if you ask me. That's the message that you're going to see in must shounen mangas. That's why you almost all the time, you have a character that decided to believe in something as the center of the story.

There's no logic in seeing Deku try and think "he's dumb". No, he's kind. His first time as a hero was when he saved his bully from getting murdered in front of everyone. No one else ran towards Bakugou, but Izuku did. Because in that moment, he blindly believed in something. It was an impulse. "I can rescue him, I can help". He followed All Might because he believed, he rescued Uraraka because he believed. Again and again, he faced all the odds with determination. Nighteye told it himself, that the faith of Deku and all his friends were changing the future. Unlikely. Impossible. And yet.

The final battle of bnha is going to be surrounded by with the idea that even when it seems impossible, that the good side can win, that the hero can defeat the villain, the hero will always go raise against the challenge (go plus ultra) and defeat the odds.

There's no place for something as irredeemable in this manga, because if Horikoshi wants he can even magically "cure" AFO and "wake him up from his evil behavior" and reunite him with Yoichi in a sibling embrace. Because this is a shounen. The only things that are or not possible are the things the author thinks that are or not possible.

Anyway, I'm glad your finding inspiration in my rants lwhdksudndjhf. I should be working on my thesis but I have a sudden meltdown and felt the need to rant. It's nice to have someone to talk to tho. Thank you so much for your company, really 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺

[sereniv]

Yes, this again lol

I've talked about this so much so I'm putting under the cut to not be annoying

but like

veganism is about avoiding animal exploitation as far as is possible and practical- and I like to add necessary

But the very original idea of veganism was to do your best to avoid animal exploitation and products- and that of course usually extends to humans to bc its all very intertwined

But I add in necessary bc though I grew up with no culture or anything really, I know what culture means. I know what religion can mean

and though religion and culture as a whole are not justifiable reasons to, I never know how to phrase this. bc I don't want to say bad bc thats subjective. Basically there's things in religions that people are changing or finding alternatives for bc in this day and age its seen within the community as outdated. I've seen this been done, so in those situations people saw something they agreed was outdated or "wrong" in their eyes and decided to change it or fight to change it

I have no idea how to condense that some one pls help me. But just like saying it's your religion to discriminate isn't a good justification even though ones religious freedom and culture should be respected

Anyway, culture and religion are intertwined and Indigenous cultures have a history of genocide and integration (?)

So if you have someone, native, grew up in their culture and eating a dish like caribou or participating in a parent or festival that is skinning a seal connects them to their culture, that is necessary. because you take that away and idk how to describe but its just continuing colonialism. you are harming them.

is it practical? Yeah it CAN be done. that person can just stop participating or veganise the dish.

is it possible? Yeah maybe they choose to do it because they do actually feel conflicted

But is it Necessary? Necessity is there's no other way for you. you have to. Anything else will not work no matter how much you want it

For someone in this person's position, maybe it's not necessary. The food they eat can be veganized bc its the community, the idea, the symbolism behind the food or the pelt or the dance.

But maybe for this person they decide that stopping skinning seals in a competition or eating caribou or wearing a pelt or otter ties or anything, it's not just symbolism. that the spirit in the real meat and fur from the real animal is crucial.

And you can't take that away. Because then you are saying that the connection, the spirituality doesn't make sense to science.

I always hated when ppl talk about sustenance hunters, bc it always made me feel like ppl are saying like

ur on thin ice and I KNOW that's not the intention at all, but I never see anyone talking about what I talk about ever and maybe bc I don't branch out and not on other social media

but I add necessary in kind of in retaliation? not really idk the word. but to the sustenance hunters

bc ofc if you need to survive you need to survive. but sustenance hunters aren't just surviving. they are participating in their religion and their culture.

if you gave them an abundance of food and everything they need there's no guarantee that there would be a shift in animal use. so to focus just on the survival part feels

idk lol

but anyway this is why i say culture and religion as a whole

it's all about the individual ppl.

I always make this analogy(?):

2 siblings grow up in the same culture. both wear a pelt/head/etc for a dance.

One feels that the animal parts are symbolic and they themself can use fake versions and the dance still have the effect and they still feel connected

the other is exact opposite. Feels that the pelt has to be real bc of the soul/essence/etc of the animal and the dance really is nothing without that, and thus if stopped would feel disconnected

they both are right and both can be considered vegan.

not obviously every culture and religion are different and sometimes it's a requirement and not up to debate and thats when it's not possible or practical to change

I forget what I was writing about

lol I get so emotional so easily

[ironmoneyhandsathlete]

Why the arts and humanities?

I asked a lot of people about the importance of the liberal arts. One that shocked me the most was my teacher's answer. He thinks science is much more important than liberal arts. In addition to him, many people believed that unintelligent people would study the liberal arts. There were many liberal arts classes in the curriculum in my high school and middle schools, such as music and art. However, I rarely took these classes, all replaced by the so-called main courses, such as math and English. My teachers explained that these arts are minor subjects, "don't you want to spend more time on the main subjects for the sake of your final exam score? These minor subjects won't matter anyway." People always praise the importance of science. Chinese parents always say, "If you learn STEM well, you will go anywhere." But I think science and arts are both fundamental. Science keeps the world moving forward, while the liberal arts guide the world to move forward in the right way.

Pleasure body and mind

"You don't have to Scarface your interest in music or art to be a good scientist." I've been looking at PISA scores, a global research project that measures students' overall abilities. According to the data research, the first educational problem in China is that studying outside school is the longest, but the learning efficiency is low. This problem stems from parents' rising enthusiasm for cram school, which is attributed to children's lack of time and proper ways to relax. When my elementary school, there were eight cram classes a week. Although most of those are piano, tennis, the high-pressure condition makes me lose the carefree good time with friends and family. Also, cramming education efficiency is not high. I did learn a lot of knowledge, but I didn't have enough time to digest it and transform it into a comprehensive ability.

What's more, in China, most parents don't think liberal arts are necessary. My friends around me have lots of cram classes only in STEM. Although they are very good at STEM, if I ask them how to relieve stress when they are depressed, they will be silent. Although my childhood was not easy, thank my mother, I have my own really like things. When asked to perform, I have skills to show. The way to release is what most Chinese students lack; they don't even have a way to vent under tremendous pressure. Whenever I am stressed, I will immerse myself in music, whether composing songs or playing the piano, helping me forget the sorrow. My best friend relaxes by painting oil paintings. When she interprets her feelings with different colors, the knot in her heart will be untied. The arts offer people a way to enrich themselves even when they are lonely.

an open mind leads to the ability to cooperate

The beauty of liberal arts depends on the perspective's inconsistency, like a hundred flowers blooming. Authors can't write valuable works most of the time. Still, once one-day, immediate inspiration can lead them to make outstanding results because the creation of the liberal arts doesn't need to follow the rules. They can find their work according to their creative thinking. The audience can put forward different points of view; there is no right or wrong. But science is based on facts to prove correctness; right is right, wrong is wrong.

In the PISA results, another education problem is that Chinese students' cooperation ability is inferior. The ability to cooperate depends on whether they like to have different viewpoints produced. Due to the lack of emphasis on liberal arts, Chinese students are accustomed to having only one answer to all questions. Therefore, in group discussions, they dare not stand on different ideas or even think of other solutions. I applied to the College of Liberal Arts because it paid more attention to the communication between people and the collision of ideas that I had never experienced before. Liberal arts focus on free-thinking, so it dramatically improves students' ability to cooperate.

the root of everything

The liberal arts provide values. Science does not necessarily benefit the world without a correct set of values to guide it. I have heard the phrase "science of conscience" before, which means a clear understanding of the impact of their work on society. We need to know every aspect of this community operation to make a wise judgment so that our ideas can be better accepted and realized. How can we get less liberal education such as history, law, psychology, and sociology? Without that knowledge, we might be smart but not effective. An effective person is good at making their idea works. Without understanding other fields, these scientists can hardly have the big picture to make their research run, failing many good ideas and technologies.

My brother was in CS major. Last year he took part in an innovation and entrepreneurship competition. Because he was in a science class in high school, he had little knowledge of liberal arts. At the very beginning of choosing topics, there was a problem. He did not know what the central contradictions of society were. Later, a sociological friend joined him and helped him choose a hot educational topic. They planned to run the APP to attract consumers, but APP he made was very dull and lacked a sense of design. At this point, an art student friend helped him plan the page and attracted many users. Later, psychology students joined in to help them add some programs to attract and maintain users. In the end, their team won first place. Only then did my brother realize the importance of liberal arts. Without these friends, he had no idea how to use his technology to benefit society.

As a school, we should guide students to have an interest in learning, have fun, and learn without pressure, instead of limiting children's enthusiasm and fantasy for new things. To create equal opportunities for students to communicate, the school should develop a culture of "cooperation over competition." Students can dare to participate in the collaboration, stimulate their talents, and create different ideas.

As students, we should pay more attention to our lives' quality, put down the outside world's prejudices to pursue what we like. In busy work, we also have to leave some time to ourselves and don't be lost. At the same time, we should also pursue multifaceted development. Each subject is not limited to learning specific knowledge, mainly to improve overall ability in more aspects.

[elbiotipo]

Ok so elecciones time en Argentina, and I have a the feeling you know more than I. I was considering the FernándezX2 formula, but I honestly can't take out of my mind the fact that they supported Maduro and probably still do, what proof can we have that they won't go down that route? what do you think of the other candidates?(if you're not comfortable answering its ok just ignore this!!! It's just I heavily distrust like, every single candidate)

(Sorry for the long post, I just REALLY like to talk about politics)

I understand. Elections are a wild time, especially here on Argentina. (I will answer in english because the ask is in English).

I don’t support Maduro either, despite (in fact BECAUSE of) my leftist leanings. I know Cristina and many Kirchnerists supported him, and I think that supporting him based on the legacy of Chávez, while the Venezuelan people suffers and cries for freedom is wrong. However, I also believe that any solution for Venezuela MUST start with dialogue, by the simple and pragmatic fact that Maduro still holds power there, despite the opposition.

Also, Alberto Fernández has took a more pragmatic stance on this. You can read his opinions here: https://www.infobae.com/politica/2019/07/05/tras-las-criticas-de-macri-alberto-fernandez-reconocio-que-en-el-regimen-de-maduro-hay-abusos-y-arbitrariedades-del-estado/

He isn’t alone on this. Uruguay and México have also called for dialogue, as well as many other countries. Now, I think even with this, he is too soft in this, but I also think the current strategy of the Lima Group of cutting all dialogue with Maduro has evidently failed, and another approach is needed.

…

However I will be very clear and strong on this: the Argentine right-wing is using the real suffering of the Venezuelan people as political manipulation and it’s disgusting. The fear of “Becoming Venezuela” is being preached 24/7 in an attempt to spread fear and division. It’s unfounded, stupid, and uses an actual humanitarian crisis to manipulate public opinion. It humilliates the Venezuelan people and does not help towards a solution. They don’t really care about Maduro or Venezuela; only the political points they can extract from it.

We cannot “Become Venezuela” because we are, well, Argentina… Venezuela is the classical example of a single-export nation, in this case oil, that has little local industries and mostly imports all other things, from food to consumer goods. Argentina, meanwhile, has a midly diversified economy; while our main production and exports are indeed agricultural products and food such as soybean, we also have (for now…) a consumer industry, and we produce all of our own food.

Compare and contrast; these are Venezuela’s exports by renueve in 2016:

And these are Argentina’s:

Brown is oil and fossil fuels, yellow is foodstuffs and associated products. The rest are various industries: services, consumer goods, automotives, construction, industrial parts, and so on.

Now, exports don’t mean everything a country produces, but they give us a pretty good idea of the complexity and nature of a national economy. Argentina is a net food producer with a relatively good national industry (again, for now…). Venezuela is a oil-exporting nation that is sensitive to changes on the trade of that commodity. Normally, that wouldn’t be a problem: Oil-exporting economies can grow and work very well, but Maduro’s incompetence and corruption has ruined the nation to an unprecedented state in history, and that’s why the crisis has become so deep.

But no nation is inmune to political mismanagment, and certainly not Argentina. Even with that, could we come to a point like Venezuela with the return of Kirchnerism?

From me, the answer is a confident no.

Why? Simply because the Kirchnerist era was a lot more moderate than what media sells us.

Neoliberals and “economists” tells us the catastrophic tale of rampant spending, national intervention, closing of trade, lack of employment, and other disasters encompassed under the scary word “populism”. If you believed them, you would think Argentina was a Soviet-bloc country that needed to liberalize and privatize everything to refloat again (and go ask them how it worked there…)

In fact, while there were many economical missteps like the “cepo” and the INDEC manipulation (that Alberto has already recognized and will not repeat), Argentina… had a quite moderate and coherent economical system? Tariffs were high, sure, but it’s normal to have high tariffs in key exports to have higher income (and the rich agricultural owners can certainly pay it). Protectionism in key industrial and high-tech industries is necessary for a relatively mid-level economy like us, and is, in fact, one of the reasons economies like South Korea and Japan had their amazing successes once they developed critical size for those industries. The so feared by the economists mass nationalization didn’t happen either, except for YPF, some trains, and Aerolíneas, and I believe there is little argument against our oil resources being back in hand of the state (and Macri is certainly enjoying it thanks to Vaca Muerta, one of the few industries currently growing). Taxes were high and yes, some social plans were mismanaged, but Argentina has an important public education, healthcare, science, social, cultural, and public works sector (not to mention the salaries of the massive police/gendarmerie forces, which nobody wants to talk about apparently…), so obviously relatively high taxes are needed. While I admit some things might be better, I don’t know about you, but I (well, my family) have gotten my taxes back through education, health, roads, and I am proud that my country has, despite all, such a strong scientific and cultural tradition. And of course, labor rights are *strict* (depending where you look…) thanks to a long legacy of worker’s struggles, but are we really gonna lower them just to bring foreign megacorporations to take advantage of us? I think not, thanks.

In fact, besides somewhat high taxes and tariffs, and of course corruption (but that’s a whole other deal…), Argentina during the Kirchnerist years wasn’t the insanity they say. Maybe not an investors paradise, but wasn’t the socialist (lol, another scary word) mismanagement disaster the media sold us, and still sells us. And even in those years we had investments from all over the world. 4 years of Macri and economic “liberalization” and there have been no promised “lluvia de inversiones” for all the destruction of our own economy.

I believe you could compare your own quality of life in those years with right now, but that depends on the particular case. I KNOW my quality of life has descended since Macri took power.

Now, with the current inflation, desindustrialization (there has been a record THREE YEARS of industrial decay on Argentina, and the few factories still open operate at less than 50%), primarization of the economy (the main winners of this economic model are big agribusiness and financial enterprises), historical debts (some to be paid A CENTURY from now) and a nation dependent from the IMF and thus the whims of USA politics, which economic model has brought us closer to collapse, in even less years?

Tarea para la casa.

…

As for the other candidates:

I believed I explained plenty why I never voted for Macri and I won’t vote for him this time either.

I think Lavagna is out of touch, and couldn’t even keep his coalition together, so I doubt his leadership skills; his “centrism” offers little to me. The other progressive parties have no managed to make a coherent option either.

 I sympathize with Del Caño and the Left, but they don’t have the leadership and support to make their promises come true, their parties are always fighting between themselves, and I can’t afford to vote for them, not in this crucial election.

Espert is a neoliberal flirting with anarchocapitalism, defending the worst of the Menemist era, his response to our problems would be accelerating privatization, “liberalization” and the destruction of the economy. He’s also a misogynist pervert, and inmature like his followers. I have a strong dislike for the guy.

I would also take this opportunity to say RIP Unión Cívica Radical (1891-2015). While they were the greatest rivals to Peronism and I never voted for them, I have the outmost respect for those radicals who fought for democracy and civil rights. Unfortunately, the UCR joined the right instead of keeping to its social-democratic ideals (did you know the UCR is an official member of the Socialist International? no, no es joda), and the PRO has chewed and spit them. A sad ending for such a party.

The other far-right and far-left parties are irrelevant, but I hope bazofias such as the Frente Patriota get as few votes as possible.

And of course, there’s Romero Feris, a corrupt, nearly feudal character who those from Corrientes know well, who has used necromancy to revive the Partido Autonomista Nacional, the party of Julio A. Roca. No only it’s corrupt, regressive and racist, it’s also probably haunted and I don’t want ghosts running around my goverment.

I’ve always been a zurdoperoncho, but as it stands now, FernándezX2 is the best option. Alberto is a coherent, disciplined and skilled man, who has proven himself during the Néstor presidency as a good leader, he’s even a little too moderate for my tastes, but the rest of his coalition balances that. Regardless of what you might think of Cristina, she’s the most important political figure of Argentina, and her prescence and leadership is needed for a sucessful progressive political project. The rest of their coalition (except for Massa, who I hate) also have the support and ideas to make their goverment sucessful.

Like with all politicians, I have my objections to some of their positions, and I don’t think they are saints. But I think they are not only the least worst, but indeed the best option we have. I will vote for them with conviction.