#i finally get to include ONE System of a Down reference in my art

[latenightsundayblues]

Came across some slasher band AU art by @arkunder and started frothing at the mouth

I like to imagine they'd do really performative concerts with the ghostface persona, like "killing" actresses on stage and being overall destructive to the point of losing gigs in nicer places so their fans don't completely wreck everything in a mosh pit (that they initiated) lmfao

Stu's the campiest bitch on the block (as expected)

[captain-astors]

5 for the ask game?

Warning for uncomfortable teeth discussion and teeth drawings.

After all these years... I've finally finished it. WE'RE TALKING ABOUT GHOUL TEETH! The amount of time I've spent on this really makes it feel weird but the longer I dwell on that the more it actually is, so without further ado.

(The numbering system was mostly for my own convenience when trying not to lose these pictures that all look the same at first glance, but I kind of adapted to it as I was writing this.)

A1 is a pair of human teeth drawn by yours truly. The cuspids will typically be a bit duller, but otherwise these are pretty average, if poorly drawn. These will be your point of reference because pointy teeth can look normal when not compared to how genuinely flat our teeth are.

Now we have B1, this is the mostly widely recognized kind of ghoul teeth, used in scary propaganda and horror films, very vampire-esq. Sharper cuspids, slightly slimmer teeth, but difficult to distinguish if you're just walking past, or even taking a good look without a point of reference.

Some ghouls with noticeable B1's include the Kirishimas, Itori, Nishiki, Donato, Yumitsu, and Tatara. But! Here's the thing, there's actually two kinds of common ghoul teeth and this one's actually found with less frequency than the other kind,

B2, almost all the teeth are more pointed than the human counterpart, but typically a bit more dulled than this example.

Some ghouls with noticeable B2's are Naki, Kanae, Irimi, Koma, Hinami, Roma, Miza and Shikorae.

Now we've dealt with the fun art stuff, time to get into the technical nonsense that I frankly know too little about dental functions to speak on but you cannot stop me with anything short of death itself. Proceeding! (There will be more fun art stuff further down)

The public is vaguely aware that there are actually two kinds of teeth distinctions that ghouls can have but it's more of an obscure trivia bit than common knowledge unless you work for the CCG, "You can tell an octopi's gender by whether or not it has suckers on the third arm to the right." type of factoid. Shirazu was actually pulled aside by investigators quite a few times times before even undergoing the Quinx procedure, just because his teeth give the impression of an unfortunately noticeable B2 ghoul. They had a record of him in the office for those working in the area he used to live in, that pretty much boiled down to "He's not a ghoul, please do not attack or interrogate if encountered in the wild, he's just Some Guy."

He's built like that for the same reason he was a good candidate for the Quinx procedure.

When it comes to concealment, It's pretty common practice for ghouls to have something extremely hard to chew on in order to seem to have completely average teeth, but if that's not their thing the bolder ghoul can just go the Uta route of "It's a body modification"

But in general dentists aren't a great idea unless you're a fortunate ghoul with naturally passing teeth, and even then only in necessity. Which is why it's remarked in confusion that Hajime Hazuki's teeth are "so straight," if he were a ghoul by birth that shouldn't really be the case.

Even now they obviously posses much stronger bite forces and teeth than any human, but this is actually quite a step down from ghouls of old. When integrating themselves into human society wasn't strictly necessary outside of simplifying hunts, the best comparison I can think of is monkeys. You'll see an actually drawing of roughly that in the next part...

This series has an unfortunate amount of unethical experiments, breeding, and hybridization fuckery, and this would feel incomplete if I didn't make an attempt to acknowledge that!

First off biological half ghouls. They're kind of a toss-up, they'll never have teeth as sharp as their ghoul parent, but there's a chance they'll only get certain teeth or none at all. Eto's the prior kind, her cuspids are a little pointy but she could easily pass as entirely human. I don't want to think about Ichika for any longer than I have to so that's all you're getting.

Artificial half-ghouls, Oggai and Quinx! They don't just magically grow sharper, your human teeth stay perfectly normal but the shift happens when they're broken and have to regrow after time/reaching a high enough frame, kind of an inevitability for artificial half-ghouls because human teeth are not made for ghoul shenanigans.

Amon gained a pretty good set of B2's but Takizawa's look a little like a weird yet subtle mix. (Not every ghoul falls neatly into one category or the other, but the vast majority do.) Kurona and Nashiro both ended up with B1's, Mucchan is a B2, Shirazu is as well but there was barely a change, Urie's a B1 and Saiko's never had to regrow her teeth but she'd be a B2. Aura, Higemaru, and Suzu are B2, Hsiao and Ryuusen are B1 but whether or not this has been shown is arguable.

Kaneki's teeth remained stubbornly humanoid regardless of how many times they were removed. Back when he had his mask made, Uta took note of this as an interesting trait and that's why the zipper-teeth are such a central feature. The Oggai are similar, but they were pretty good at keeping their human teeth anyways. More about this and the fruit bastard you'll notice is lacking from the half ghouls in a little.

Now the... breeders? What would you even call these three groups. Blades, Tsukiyamas, and Washuu Clan. The Blades aren't really interested in striving for appearances so they just have a mix of the two, mostly B2's with a couple B1's.

It gets a little more interesting for the other two.

The Tsukiyamas not only refine their ghoul traits into unique appearances, they pride themselves on those qualities and have the money to get away away with it. Their Kagunes may not be the strongest but by god do they draw the attention of the whole room in terms of unique mutations. So too are their teeth! Mirumo's are impressively noticeable B1's by themselves, but the real star is Shuu. Primarily inherited from his mother, they're one of the closest things to and old ghoul's teeth you'll find in the modern world. (Pictured bellow)

Outside of his pure influence, knack for luring in good dishes and wealth, part of the reason he's so liked at the restaurant is that he's just capable of ripping things up in a way that very few modern ghouls can. It's great fun to watch, but he rarely agrees to do so the first time around on account of his preference for actually prepared dishes and "polite" behavior, not to mention ghouls generally don't like to eat in front of others. But few are entirely immune to persuasion, and Shuu certainly isn't among them. It's quite the spectacle. Downsides: They're kind of awkward for such a verbose person, and if he bites a little too hard he can take his tongue clean off without meaning to. It'll grow back quickly but it's definitely not fun.

Now for the Washuu garden, where the only the thing they're growing is broken kids and misogyny.

As Rize states, the more human you are the "better" you are to them, and this extends to physical appearances as well. So, even the ghouls posses pretty human-looking teeth, but for most branches there's a noteable type that tends to surface. Arimas stay impressively human so they tend to be liked, Ihei's tend to be B2s, Kaikos willingly make them as dull as possible but they lean towards B1, Souzus tend to be B1s as well, Rize's branch tends to be B1 and the Furuta branch tends to be B2.

Which brings me to my final comment, fruit! An annoyingly unique case, with the closest perhaps being Suzu, but the operation and situation is vastly different for her and 179 is not real and cannot hurt me. Anyways, I've discussed his warring RC systems at length, on account of that with the added detail of the different teeth kinds for himself and Rize, if he was to lose all of those it might look a little like this.

I speak from experience when I say that wouldn't be fun but whatever he deserves the suffering. Enjoy never being able to close your mouth entirely without some amount of discomfort Nimura, you chose this life.

That is all thank you and goodnight apologies for the wait.

[theslowesthnery]

okay, so maybe it's okay if i put my deceive inc findings under a cut? i don't know if anyone even cares about this stuff, but...well, i do, and i really want to share them lmao

please don't look if you don't want to be spoiled for probably upcoming content found in the files

upcoming agents:

Octo (male) -tag line: "Boisterous Hacker" -loading tip: "Previously an information broker and prominent hacker, rumour has it that Octo hacked through IRIS to get himself employed by Deceive Inc." -uses card game references and similes, so maybe a gambler? -emotional and reactive -seems to be somewhat superstitious -might be spanish? -"I am the house! I am the one who deals!" -"Hacking is its own reward, but the money ain't bad either." -"No hacking job is too tough for the great Octo!"

Vigil (female) -tag line: "Precise Profesionnal" (sic) -weapon names: Glaive, Saber, Falchion -loading tip: "Back from the shadows and ready to make amends, Vigil looks forward to see what Squire, her mentee, is capable of." -she's the knight! though she now goes by the codename vigil. what happened to her and why is she back? no idea, but she's working "on [her] own terms" -a veteran spy, she knows how shit works, even addressing IRIS directly -"Knight is no more - call me Vigil." -"Preferred the old software." -"Selling security software now, Garcia?" -"Good to be back!"

Sasori (male) -tag line: "Venomous Assassin" -bio: "Ex-henchman for hire, Sasori has tangoed with death more time than anyone could count. Armed with his noxious arsenal, and a sincere wish to make amends, Sasori comes back from retirement to cut through the competition with a renewed sense of quietude." -passive titles: Poison Sense, Give And Take, Toxic Infection -expertise titles: Coated Weaponry, Poison Vials, Noxious Gas -weapon names: Darts & Kage, Kunais & Hanei, Needles & Hikari -loading tip: "After he left the henchman line of work, Sasori went back to Ōsaka and opened up a kushikatsu restaurant." -uses food/taste references and similes -very calm and level, polite but not smarmy like larcin -based on his codename (japanese for scorpion), weapon names and certain lines, he seems to be japanese -a bit of a leap but based on him having formerly been a henchman and some of his comments re: criminal masterminds, perhaps he's the one who cut hans's hand off? -"Standards are much lower since I retired." -"Senseless violence is simply tasteless." -"I'm sure the others will find me…intoxicating." -"Espionage is more about following your heart than following the plan." -"Fall down seven times, get up eight." (a japanese saying) -"O snail / Climb Mount Fuji / But slowly, slowly!" (haiku by kobayashi issa)

new level/mission name: "Sound Eclipse"

new VIPs:

Hazen (they/them): -"A true artist in every sense of the word, Hazen has made a name for themself as an immensely talented musician, a performer in experimental theater, and more recently as an opera singer. Disgusted by the utter disrespect for arts and its importance, Hazen's show will be the final curtain call for the information age. By using an experimental sound system powered by pushing a vocal note that only they mastered, Hazen will disable all of the earth's electronics in an instant. As Necessity breeds true creativity, Humanity will then return to an age of darkness, an age of boundless creativity." -you might've noticed them featured on some newspapers that can be seen in the game -most likely the VIP for the above-mentioned Sound Eclipse mission

VIP_BAB (female) -no information (including her actual name - all internal names for the characters are [role]_[three letters of their name], eg. agent_CAV, agent_XIU, VIP_GAR etc) about her is available yet, only some voice lines -she's very paranoid and obsessed with security

no character models that i could find for any of the new characters yet, only audio and subtitles. sasori and hazen have the most information about them available at the moment, so my guess is that they're going to be the next additions to the game

edit: oh yeah, not a spoiler or a leak per se but just a fun little detail - red's internal name is 'socialite'. all other agents are internally called the same as they are in the game itself, only red so far has a different internal name.

[jules-hoard-of-stuff]

Art Comms because Im broke!

Hi, my name is Jules, I am part of a system and we are queer, ADHD, autistic, and broke in college! The last of my savings that I worked hard to gain in 2021 has finally run out, but I still need to pay for food, testosterone, and uber to go GET that testosterone.

So I am opening art commissions!

I do everything from furries, to doodles, to character design, even weaponry if given enough time! You can even get a little doodle for pwyw!

Doodles: PWYW, will be in black and white, complexity will go up as the price point does

Character design: 30 USD, includes two views of the character

Furry reference sheet: 45 USD, +5 if I am designing the character for you, comes with two views of your character, a separate tail/eye/paw view and details(pronouns, pride flags, hobbies etc)

Weapon/keyblade design: 20 USD, includes the name of the weapon and a diagonal view of the weapon. Must specify which real life weapon/s equivalents it would resemble

There will be a slight discount of 2-5$ for people asking me to draw glowy/luminous things, depending on the price! I love drawing those!

I also make Kandi if you are interested!

Kandi singles would be 5 dollars each, and a pack of 5 would be 15! I'll make a separate post when these are available, as I'm not sure how much shipping will cost yet.

All of this money will go towards things like groceries, my transition(clothing, testosterone, a new binder, name change, etc), and making sure I don't put my account in the red over the course of the semester!

My current goal is to make about 200$: enough for a new binder since my old ones are hurting me a LOT, they're worn down like hell, and some T and groceries for the next little while.

My DMs are open but I may take a bit to respond because of schoolwork!

Thank you!

[3ofpents]

100 Palette Challenge // Palette #10 // Lady Dahlia

I know I'm late again this week. I'm in the midst of a lot of school stuff. I've mentioned, I think, but I've gone back to school to get a graphic design certification. I started last Fall and it was my hope to be done by this summer because the certification programs are designed for adults with careers who want to expand their skill sets and so are pared down to only the classes that are directly relevant to the subject matter. In my case that's only 9 classes, so 3 per semester. But unfortunately I had to withdraw in the Spring because of some health issues. So now I'm trying to pick up where I left off after the school went and changed a bunch of their online systems. So now I get to try and recover my old accounts on their new system and deal with class requirements that don't exist for my program, but apparently exist now for individual classes that are required.

And on top of that we're prepping our toddler to go to daycare, which comes with A LOT of paperwork and supplies lists and doctor signatures and also EMOTIONS.

Anyway.

Today's palette comes from a poster that appears to have been an activist piece of art. I've tried not to go into too much detail here about the posters since the bulk of this book is the palettes and the pieces they were picked from. I'm already posting every single palette in the book, so I'd rather not include the posters also. But I just love this one so much, I have to at least share the information so you can look it up yourselves. It's called "Dig" by Sadie Wendell Mitchell, it's part of a series she did called "Girls Will Be Girls". It depicts a young woman perched on a chair engrossed in a book, and also surrounded by stacks of books. Only a few of the books have visible titles, "The Study of Bugology", "The Psychology of the Male Human", and "Economy" (the one she's reading). And on the wall you can see part of a poster that says "DO IT NOW".

It feels like a very pointed protestation as a poster designed in 1909.

I struggled with this palette a lot. It's not only very similar to a lot of the previous palettes, the values are just so similar, particular with the green and teal. It works fine in the original poster because Mitchell used a heavy black outline, but the author of the book chose not to include that in the palette.

I actually started a completely different piece that going to be a face study, but I just didn't like the way the colors were playing together. So I ended up scrapping it.

So I pulled back a bit. Our dahlias have started blooming and the first ones to pop were these gorgeous red and yellow blooms, and I've wanted to draw a fairy for one of these for several palettes so far, so I did it.

The dahlias were SO much easier and more fun to draw than the peony was. They're so geometric, I really just enjoyed layering the petals and the colors.

I attempted to give the fairy some petal clothes, but it just wasn't doing what I wanted it to do. And I think the form is distinct enough to make her out. I do really like the effect of the teal on the green; the heavy similarities of them both make the fairy and flowers pop more. I do wish I'd filled in some more greenery in the background, but honestly I'd spent so much time on this palette already I didn't have it in me.

I'm really pleased with the final result, though, and I doubt this will be the last fairy piece in this series.

I want to shout out Fat Photo Ref again. I used them for the pose and the hair for the fairy and I remain exceptionally pleased with the range of references available and the easy navigation.

[adventureofthedancinggirl]

This is primarily a fandom blog, currently focused on BNHA, previously active in BBC Sherlock.

Here you'll find fandom things, headcanons, rambling about fics (and writing in general), occasional meta, as well as other miscellaneous things I find interesting.

AdventureOfTheDancingGirl on AO3. Writing updates are tagged: dancing girl writes

Sideblogs:

@seeyouafter a collection of my thoughts and various ephemera related to my ongoing tdbk epistolary fic "See You After"

@ordinaryoffensivemagic various content related to the manga/anime 葬送のフリーレン (Sousou no Frieren)

Notes and helpful tags:

Asks are open if you want to chat. Give me an excuse to talk about my writing notes or headcanons if you want to make my day. Anon is usually on but be kind. There is a real human on the other side of the screen.

Replies are tagged as dancing girl asks. If you want to say hi but don't know what to say, feel free to check out the ask games tag.

🏷️Tag Index:

I have a comprehensive tag index that I finally updated but these are the tags that I'm using most often these days:

💜Personal Tags:

dancing girl rambles - random thoughts, generally not fandom related

dancing girl writes - tag for my fics and general thoughts on writing (previous tags: my writing - this one has mostly Sherlock stuff, writing updates)

also: see you after fic, sya writing log

dancing girl's reblog themes - sometimes I go down a rabbit hole and reblog a bunch of related posts. It's a fun time.

🩵General writing & fandom stuff

on writing, writing reference, fandom life, AO3 tips, tumblr tips

💚BNHA Content

dancing girl’s bnha thoughts - includes my personal reactions, headcanons, misc. thoughts related to bnha

bnha fanfic - includes my fics and others I recommend

I use the tag bnha for all my hero academia related reblogs. spoilers are tagged bnha manga spoilers

Chapter reactions/thoughts are tagged with the chapter number as bnha xxx,  see also: bnha meta (not all meta is mine)

images: bnha manga, bnha anime, bnha art (for my favorite bnha fanart)

Multi-ship friendly but TDBK is my OTP. (that being said, a lot of my reblogs with "ship" tags are purely for organization purposes and many can be viewed as platonic.)

I just want a happy todofam au so I made a tag for it (other favorite AUs: fantasy au, winter au, childhood friends au)

The ladies of this series don't get enough love so I like to highlight them with the tag bnha girls

Todoroki Shouto tags: shouto loves cats, sleepy shouto, todofam, shouto art, shoutocat, strawberry shouto-cake, shouto birthday

Bakugou Katsuki tags: dynamy, sleepy katsuki, katsuki comfort, bakugou family

Other commonly used character tags: class 1a, origin trio, remedial squad, dadzawa, eri-chan (If you're searching for someone specific I generally just tag the character’s name as it shows up in AO3’s tagging system) 

misc collections: 2023 bnha xmas sketch

💛BBC Sherlock

Main tags: sherlock, johnlock

Sherlock Fic Recs - Mostly BBC Sherlock universe. Most of my own Sherlock fics are under the My Writing tag

BBC Sherlock: sherlock meta, series 4 theories (also: season 4 theories), sherlock parallels, mirrors

Original Canon: acd canon, AStudyInCanonBookClub, acd parallels, sherlock analysis

see tag index for additional tags and other fandoms

🧡Misc. Tags (not fandom)

mental health, reminders, encouragement

otterly adorable, cute animals, beautiful things, reasons to smile

bookish things, reading log, quotes

💭Random Facts:

I share my birthday with Dabi and Burnin'

My username is a play on the Sherlock Holmes story "Adventure of the Dancing Men".

Even though I'm not active in the Sherlock fandom anymore, I decided to keep the same username because dancing is part of my IRL identity and I didn't want to keep track of a separate account. Also, Mina is my dancing (alien) queen so the name still works.

[foxpost-generator]

I keep seeing things about how the blog everythingfox is bad. But I'm not sure why. Do you know?

I suspect: "it's complicated". As with so many of these things, especially on tumblr, the given reasons are of uncertain significance, and uncertain veracity.

What I've heard are claims of:

-Posting content without credit/references. If that's the case, not great, but also that's so common at this point it's almost a norm of how this kind of blogging works. As an artist I of course find uncredited art very distasteful, but I don't know if that's what everythingfox posts. Sharing memes or photos that aren't art and aren't related to someones's livelyhood feels like such a low level problem that I'm not really going to engage with it, however I also do my best to credit.

-Posting content in which foxes are not being treated well, eg, foxes kept as pets, maybe other things. This is related to the Is The Animal Video Cute kind of blogs. I'm very mixed on this. A really significant amount of fox media of all kinds is problematic. Should foxes be kept as pets? Probably not, but some are rescues. Running a fox blog will almost inevitably include a large amount of not ideal content, it's very good to try to be ethical, and the Is The Video Cute blogs are probably doing a good service by informing people. But also, most blogs including everythingfox and I don't own or encounter foxes, so they are not themselves mistreating a fox, even if it makes the content less cute or less ethical to produce. So maybe this comes down something like "does this content encourage unethical treatment of animals", to which the answer is probably no, as very few people could legally or practically own a fox. Except of course, if anyone finds it IS relevant to them: don't feed wild foxes, and only keep wild animals as pets if they are a rescue and if after doing significant research you find you are able to do the hard work of caring for them.

I'm sure lots of my posting falls into this category: it would be better for wildlife if people never interacted with them, however it's complicated and very hard to say what is a genuine rescue animal, etc, so I just try to keep it reasonable.

-Finally, the part that I find least convincing: apparently everythingfox has been called out for their content and ignored it. It is possible there are specific valid examples. However, there are too many problems with this idea for me to credit it more broadly. First, big blogs get a lot of notes so they have absolutely no way to know if someone has tried to communicate with them: my blog is much smaller and I get thousands of notes a day. That's exacerbated by secondly: tumblr is garbage software. Most forms of communication here are broken, I don't recieve asks, replies, reblogs, or messages properly. So often someone won't know if they have been called out for something. Finally, if somone does recieve a Call Out, whether or not the premise is valid, these often come across as a person you don't know telling you to die for reasons they may or may not articulate. Maybe there have been well made points, based on well supported notions of poor treatment of animals, clearly and reasonably delivered, that somehow made it through tumblr's awful systems. Most of the time however, I suspect at least one of these problems will get in the way.

tl;dr

It's very good for people to try to be as ethical as they can. It's good to help others do that, and the Is The Post Cute kind of blogs are probably doing a good job. However this entire paradigm (tumblr, twitter, etc) of blogging is a mess, everythingfox probably doesn't own a fox and probably isn't directly influencing fox owners. Their content could probably be better. I try not to engage in Is This Person Bad (*on these issues specifically) because this is the disaster site and everything is has multiple sides.

Anyway, I thought I should reply since I was asked. I know I've said it but I must make it clear again: there is probably stuff I don't know. This is the general vibe from the fair bit of discourse I've seen.

(*I'm a big fan of Callout Culture, except to note that it barely exists. When racist conservatives, predatory men in the film industry, authors of popular children's stories who decide to become vile bigots, etc, complain of Callout Culture, what they are upset about is finally recieving a tiny amount of the much greater social justice they have earned. It's important that these are better documented issues with more clearly harmful outcomes perpetrated by specifically identified people/organisations and, crucially, their actions and the response to them are not conducted entirely on a barely functional website)

[mcytartarchive]

Reblog art for the love of fuck.

Hello and welcome to the (obviously unofficial) MCYT art archive. This blog is made for the sake of supporting artists (including smaller artists) by reblogging their art, as well as to archive art even after blogs are deleted or wiped due to how Tumblr works. I may not be able to fix the reblog/like ratio all on my own, but I certainly want to do my part. This is ran by @dyketubbo. If you want your art taken down, either because you don't want it to be archived or because you just don't like me you can just dm or shoot an ask and I'll delete the reblog.

Triggering content will be tagged as [trigger] tw. CC art will be tagged with cc![channel name]. Characters will be tagged as c![character name] unless in a situation where a character is either referred to with a different signifier (such as the origins cast being tagged as o![character]) or when a character doesn't share their name with the cc or is not played by one (such as sam nook for the former, and grumbot as the latter). Both cc and c art will be tagged as their channel name without any indicator.

Duo names will be tagged like [name]duo (such as clingyduo, alliumduo, etc) unless they break from that mold (such as flower husbands) and group names will be tagged however they are most commonly tagged (benchtrio, sbi, etc). I will only use duo/group names for duos/groups that either currently or used to consistently interact. So. One-off duos not included. Art with the full cast of a series will be tagged as [series name] ensemble.

Series will be tagged either as their acronym (Dream SMP - dsmp, Origins SMP - osmp, etc) or as the title if that's what they're more commonly refered to or if they don't have a proper acronym (Lifesteal SMP - lifesteal smp, Philza's hardcore world - philza hardcore, etc). If pets are included, depending on if they're a Minecraft pet or a real life pet they will either be tagged as [pet name] [series name] or just as the name of the pet.

Fanfiction, cosplay, music, and whatever else isnt considered under visual art (digital/traditional art) if posted on or linked to on Tumblr may also be reblogged. Art is tagged as fanart, fanfiction as fanfic, music as music, etv etc you get it.

Restrictions on what I'll reblog/accept as submissions under the cut. It probably seems long but that's just because I talk a lot for the sake of clarity. It's the autism.

There will be some art I won't reblog for a variety of reasons. I won't reblog art of irl ships, and will also not reblog art that crosses cc boundaries, as I believe that the belief mcytblr has that "the creators aren't here so we have no restrictions on what content we can make of them and their creations" is.. weird and disrespectful. I will say that I'm not against shipping characters when ccs have made it clear that they dont care, but there may be less shipping content on here if only because my romance repulsion fluctates. Canon character relationships like the flower husbands or the beeduo marriage aren't counted under this.

Finally, I will be critical of who I reblog from. Such as proshippers, active boundary breakers, poppy people, or people notable for harassing others and making others uncomfortable. I will also say that this blog is ran by an inclusionist. I support aspec people, mspec lesbians/gays, endogenic systems, and the mogai community.

I will also not reblog art that either whitewashes poc or draws fat people much skinnier than they actually are. I also will not reblog art of Quackity with darker skin than he has, because many poc have talked about how it is actively disrespectful for artists to act as if all you need to do to signify that someone is Mexican is to make their skin darker. I will not reblog sexual content because I'm a minor and in many cases it's kind of just weird. I do not consider tits or artistic nudity to be inherently sexual, but I will definitely be critical.

I will not reblog art of creators who are genuinely horrible people, such as callmecarson. Schlatt is a gray area, I will reblog content with his Dream SMP character but there will likely not be much of him as a cc because I feel like toeing the line of whether people can tell if you're genuinely a shitty person or not is. Uncomfortable. Due to Dream's many issues there will likely also be less fanart of him as a cc reblogged. I don't think either of them are horrible people but I also think they're bitchass white boys with the latter especially being way too irresponsible with his platform.

[jessjustplay]

Final Fantasy I Review

August 21, 2022

This was such a fun game! My favorite Final Fantasy is Final Fantasy IX and there were so many things in this first Final Fantasy game that reminded me of FFIX. I know that Square intentionally included a lot of references to the original FF games when making FFIX.

However, since I played 9 first, the references played out in reverse for me. I think that's why this game was so fun because I enjoyed seeing things and thinking, "HEY THAT'S FROM FFIX!" (Even though I know the reverse is true; things in FFIX are from the first FF games.)

Story

I forgot where I heard this, but I had the impression that this game lacked a solid storyline. I wholeheartedly disagree! I think the story is great!

The game follows 4 characters known as the Warriors of Light. It is prophesied that these 4 warriors will restore balance to the world.

The four elements of the world (wind, earth, fire, and water) are powered by their respective crystals and have gone dark by unknown forces.

It is up to the Warriors of Light to defeat the monsters causing the darkness, light up the crystals anew, and restore balance to the world.

But before that, we need to save Princess Sarah! That's why we start the game off at Cornelia Castle. The king has hired us to save his daughter and once we do, they repair a bridge for us to cross east. This is when the big adventure of saving the world begins!

The story, quests, and overall adventure is very linear and straightforward, which makes it great! You are given the appropriate vehicles to travel when you need them and the NPCs are very helpful in telling you what to do next.

There was never a moment where I felt bored or frustrated about the gameplay or story. I really did have so much fun the entire time!

Some Challenges

Okay, there were a few times I wasn't having fun... specifically in the ice cavern where I was killed more times than I'd like to admit. One thing that makes this game very challenging is the fact that you can't save inside the (huge) dungeons!

While the no-saving-inside function could be a tad annoying, I appreciated how challenging it made the game.

One thing I wasn't a very big fan of though, was that I had to go back to a village to revive any KO'd character. A Phoenix Down would have come in handy! ( wonder what game this item makes it's debut...)

Music

We hear the classic Final Fantasy theme song play at the end when we play the lute and I really loved that moment. A lot of the same songs are reused (for example, all the villages have the same song) but I didn't mind it. I think the only song I didn't like was when we walked inside a shop - that was not my favorite. Still, it's great to see the origins of a video game series iconic music!

Graphics

I played Final Fantasy Origins (which comes with Final Fantasy 1 and 2) on the PS Vita. I think the graphics were great! The pixel art was bright and clear. I prefer this version to the pixel remaster on Steam.

Characters

You have a pool of 6 characters to choose from and you get to name them all. That means the characters themselves don't really have much of a personality because they are all pretty much blank slates. I will say I love the design of each one! You can learn more about the characters I chose by reading my game archive here.

Battle System/Leveling Up

This part was very reminiscent of FFIX (I know, I know, it's the reverse...). We have a party of 4 and level up with EXP. It has the classic, turn-based battle system that I love. Overall, the system is very simple and works great!

Magic & Abilities

The way we learn magic is kinda like how materia from Final Fantasy VII works, but not exactly. In FF7, all characters can use the materia. But in FF1, your character's job class determines what they can and can't do. The Red Mage is a cool class because they could use a little bit of white magic and black magic. It sucks that Warrior and Thief didn't have many abilities, but hey - it's the first game in a great series, so I'm not too mad about it.

Easy/Normal Mode

The game gives you an option of Easy or Normal mode. I chose "Easy" during my first gameplay, but even I found that difficult! I am curious to find out how different a Normal gameplay will be.

Time Travel

I like that we time travelled in this game. This part reminded me a lot of Final Fantasy VIII. Ultimecia basically did something similar to what Garland was doing (controlling sorceresses in the past). In the end we close the time loop that Garland created and saved the world. What a triumphant feeling!

This game is so much fun! The battles can be challenging but I think that adds to the fun of it. The story is linear and simple enough to follow. I love the pixel art of Final Fantasy Origins for the PS Vita and I'm so glad I played this!

Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin

Square-Enix released this game in March 2022 and, at the time, I didn't have any desire to play it. But now? Now I want to really play it!

The game looks like a prequel rather than remake of Final Fantasy 1, but it still looks like a lot of the same story elements are there. Either way, I want to find out what it's all about so I am excited to add this to my gaming log.

Overall

Final Fantasy 1 was so much fun. The battles can be challenging but I think that adds to the fun of it. The story and quests are linear and simple enough to follow. I love the pixel art of Final Fantasy Origins for the PS Vita and I'm so glad I played this! 10/10

[alttxt]

man i miss northwest arkansas.

there's this triangle in the northwest corner of arkansas that is weirdly progressive and immensely charming. you have bella vista to the north, fayetteville to the south (which is where i participated in my first ever pride parade!), and eureka springs to the east. in bentonville you have the crystal bridges art museum, which is free to enter and makes for a beautiful hangout spot. i got to meet some very cool and interesting people while working there.

fayetteville, which i consider my true home, is home to some very fun places, including arcades and theaters and some of the loveliest coffee shops i've ever been to. there's a regional trail called the razorback greenway, which starts in downtown faytown (fayetteville) and goes alllll the way north into bella vista. some of the apartments in this town are build directly next to this trail system - i happened to live in one of those complexes, so i could just walk to downtown square whenever i felt like it. the farmer's market there was especially nice!

the area within this triangle is a magical place with some of the best wilderness i have ever seen. in this area you'll find the boston mountains, commonly referred to as the ozarks. the rockies out west may be large, but the ozarks are far more interesting in my opinion, featuring some truly wild geological formations and some of the most robust flora and fauna of any place i've been.

it's almost entirely forests, with hundreds of trails scattered throughout. there's a certain magic to those forests that i haven't found anywhere else - take a walk along the bashore ridge loop in hobbes state park, and you'll understand what i mean.

if driving is more your thing, scenic highway 12 out of rogers is the most beautiful road i have ever driven, not to mention the most enjoyable, with its winding curves and numerous hills weaving through the woods

down south, tucked away in the forests just a few miles east of fayetteville, there was a whimsical little artist colony called tera studios. sadly i don't know if it's still around, but if it is, i highly recommend visiting it.

finally, at the northeast corner of this triangle on the map, you have eureka springs, which i consider the crown jewel of northwest arkansas. it's a quirky little mountain town filled to the brim with art, trinkets, good food, cool people, and picturesque scenery. they even have their own little trolley system - a favorite activity of mine when i lived in this region was to go there, get a day pass, and ride the trolley lines around town, window-shopping as i went. you would be amazed at the kind of bizarre things you can find there. they even have a haunted hotel that you can stay in - a former friend of mine even got polaroid photos of something while they were there!

...... man now i'm getting all nostalgic

[mixedmayhem]

I messed up big time recently! It has been long enough since I submitted work to be printed, that I forgot the crucial step of verifying my color modes before uploading files to be printed on demand. Thankfully, nothing was purchased before I caught the mistake, and I have made all sorts of corrections since then. Namely, I took down my Society6 store since it just wasn't worth the aggravation to get everything set up yet again, and I updated all of my files on Redbubble and my fine art print shop to include removing any previous designs that just wouldn't print correctly.

So what was all this fuss really about and is the extra work really worth it? I think so! Because check out this print sample or my work (image shown above), "Take One," I recently received from my shop. Those colors are so bold and bright, and they look identical, if not better than the digital file!

Correct color profiles are absolutely a crucial element to ensure your art prints correctly. Two commonly used color systems in the industry are CMYK and sRGB. CMYK is used primarily for printing, while sRGB is used for digital displays such as computer monitors and mobile devices. Let’s take a closer look at these two color systems and their differences.

CMYK is an acronym for cyan, magenta, yellow, and black; this may seem familiar if you've ever changed out the ink cartridges on your home printer. These four colors are used in combination to create a wide range of colors and when printed on paper, they create a color space known as subtractive color. In other words, the ink absorbs light and subtracts color from the white paper. CMYK is used primarily in printing because it can produce a large number of colors and shades with high accuracy, which is ideal for a fine art print.

On the other hand, sRGB is an RGB (red, green, blue) color space used for digital displays used by most computer monitors, televisions, and other digital displays like tablets and phones. The sRGB color space is considered an “additive” color model, which means the colors are added together to create the final color.

The key difference between the two color systems is their color gamut. A color gamut refers to the range of colors that can be produced within a particular color space. CMYK has a more limited color gamut compared to sRGB which is why when converting from RGB to CYMK, you may notice some color loss in your art that you didn't intend for. This is because the inks used in printing cannot reproduce the same range of colors as a digital display, so when designing for print, it is important to keep in mind the limitations of the CMYK color space.

So how do you get around the color loss issue? If you're creating digital work, change your color profile to CYMK for your working color palette while working on your designs. This ensures bright, crisp colors when you print without the loss of the vivid hues you originally chose. When scanning traditional artwork, you should have the option in your scanner's software to choose a CYMK mode. I personally use a lot of .png files which means my CYMK files are typically saved to sRGB automatically for display and is the preferred file format for most of the print-on-demand services I use.

I hope this helps with any color profile woes you may have! Let me know if you have any questions, and I will do my best to assist.

Much love,

P.S. Here's the latest deal from Skillshare that I received via email. Full disclosure: These are affiliate links, but I genuinely love this service and have paid for it out of my own pocket on many occasions! I use Skillshare classes to boost my inspiration to make art and to learn new skills. I'm even hoping to launch my own classes on Skillshare, soon! In the interim, here are some handy discounts:

Get 30% off of a Premium Skillshare Membership

Try Skillshare Premium risk-free for 30 days!

[apexart-journal]

Sonia Paulino Love Outbound to Montevideo, Day 14

Friday: I met with Irene Müller, art historian and director of Cultural Programs at Uruguay's Goethe Institute, and enjoyed a very engaging conversation about a great many things. Topics included: the opportunity for parody and political criticism with Carnival, the commitment and endurance of Carnival performers, the global age-old fascination with masquerade, approaching a new era of diplomatic strategies,  decolonization,  systemic racism, the perils of climate change, and the purpose of art in culture / art is culture.

A while later I took a bus out to Prado, an historic neighborhood on the west side of Montevideo, to meet a guid for a 2.5 hour walking tour with temps in the HIGH 90s HOT HOT HOT. We also had engaging conversation about a great many things, while we walked and walked and walked past various monuments and various gardens. Topics included: Shakira, cicadas, his leashed cat, potential faux pas regarding slang for private parts, fast fashion, globalization, Uruguayan exports, and the country's initiatives in legalizing human rights and embracing of diversity. The tour ended with a walk-through of the Blanes Museum exhibits ranging from a large gallery of paintings by the museum's namesake, 19th Century realist painter Juan Manuel Blanes, through to a contemporary show of mixed-media works addressing current social and political issues.

Afterwards, on the bus to the beach to observe "lemanja celebrations" in honor deities of water and nature, I was accosted by a young lady Christian evangelist, and found the encounter ironic and annoying. In answer to her badgering I said that yes I know that [capital G]od loves me because my mami tells me every day. That might have been a bit harsh, making for an awkwardly silent twenty minutes before she got off with a curt “tenga buen dia”.

I came across the stage for performances and speeches for the celebration's 30th Anniversary and, exhausted, stayed from 7-9pm wondering when they were going to take the show down to the beach for all the fanfare I'd heard about. It's not until now, looking stuff up online as I write this, that I've learned I mistook the staged performances for the event and stuff was happening down below at the beach across the highway and la rambla the whole time, and that I pretty much missed the actual Iemanjá for a simulation (insert laugh-cry emoji here).

Saturday: Early start to avoid THE SUN Villa Biarritz Flea Market sparsely attended

Museo Zorrilla Museum from there with a detour through a different mall. Ate a snack bar in the back gardening enjoyed the company of plants.

Had a chat with a woman at the bus stop on the way home for a quick cool off and respite from the harshest time of day. “Aqui no hay nadie!” she said, referring to how quiet it is in town and explained that during the summer people head out to other beach towns on the weekends. My bus finally arrived and she started up with someone else who had shown up.

Back out late afternoon for Castillo Pitamiglio. Bit of a tourist trap. The place is creepy enough as is without the added spooky music soundtrack. I hope he and his mom got along. If you’re one who believes in ghosts, you might still find her in her bedroom.

Sunday: As in New York City, public transportation here is unpredictable on Saturdays and completely unreliable on Sundays. An ordinarily crowded bus was practically empty and so rattly my eyeballs shook. 

I spent more time getting to the tournament and back then watching the matches, but, once arrived, the Davis Cup at Lawn Tennis Club in the tawny far-east neighborhood of Carrasco was a pleasure. I know very little about tennis, but even I could tell it was excellent play. It was such a relief to not have to speak or listen, worry about when and how to get to the next event, or be concerned about fatigue or forlornness. The small sections of bleachers were all fully exposed, so another day of THE SUN. Still, it was a pleasant and gratifying experience, very much in the moment, with an occasional passing cloud or ocean breeze that had me almost fall asleep. 

Considering the casual bus schedule, chores to do at home in preparation for an overnight trip, and my weekly catch-up meeting with Javier & Valentina, I left before the final match.

[thepringlesofblood]

murderbot uses it/its pronouns, and here’s why

im just sick of seeing people try to be all ‘but its up for interpretation’ ‘it’s ambiguous’ ‘we don’t know’ ‘who can never be sure’ and I saw one of those posts like ‘but an agender/gender-neutral protagonist means I can project whatever i want onto them’ and i have simply had it. essay under the cut. *spoilers* obviously for p much all the books, mostly network effect. there’s 1 quote from FT but it’s not plot-relevant

tl;dr mb refers to itself with it/its pronouns, on top of the quadrillion times it actively rejects human ideas of gender (which is an important theme in the series), on top of its Crew and ART using it/its, on top of Pin-Lee writing it detailed legal contracts using it/its pronouns, on top of that AMA where ART says it and mb use it/its, on top of the blurb on the inside cover of Artificial Condition using it/its.

disclaimer: i 100% get people who haven’t gone as deep in the paint on analysis/close reading as I have using they/them for mb as a ‘i’m not sure what to do’ thing or a ‘given no direction i use they/them until a person expresses a preference’ thing. that’s valid, and I understand where they’re coming from. most of what I’m talking about it is actively gendering mb (e.g. he or she gross). although using they/them for murderbot is still misgendering, since mb does demonstrate preference for it/its as early as pg 40 of the first book (see below),  it’s still incorrect.

while the series is in first person POV, mb sometimes refers to itself in third person and always uses it/its.

e.g. in Network Effect, when mb is captured by targets near the end and hung upside down and it has to detach its hand to free itself, it remarks, “If this went wrong I was going to feel really stupid. The Targets would finally show up and be all “What the hell was it trying to do to itself?”“ (page 4 of ch 18, my electronic copy doesn’t have individual page #)

update: @chimaerakitten​ reblogged this with a citation I can’t believe I didn’t include! page 40 of All Systems Red, murderbot drops the iconic line, “Yes, talk to Murderbot about its feelings. The idea was so painful I dropped to 97 percent efficiency.” so there’s not even a “well until network effect-” justification, it’s right there in the beginning baby!

murderbot 2.0 refers to both itself and 1.0 using it/its pronouns.

2.0 is literally a copy of 1.0. it has no reason to misgender itself. there is no room for argument here.

e.g. in Network Effect it remarks “That’s one of the reasons Me 1.0 misses its armor.” (pg 5 of ch 16)

also, it works vice-versa, 1.0 uses it/its for 2.0

e.g. Network Effect “You and Amena were right. 2.0 was a person. It wasn’t like a baby, but it was a person.” (pg 9 of ch 20)

@worldsentwined made a lovely post a while back compiling all of the times mb actively rejects/comments on human gender and sex in relation to itself.

while obvs gender =/= pronouns, it’s important to acknowledge mb’s rejection of human gender, because in the series bot/construct gender is a separate thing - p much all bots use it/its that I noticed.

another thing I realized - obviously, mb not identifying with human gender includes non-binary human genders, of which there are plenty of examples in the series, many of which use they/them (Matteo, Turi, Mihail).

this isn’t to say that using they/them = having a gender, see above re: gender =/= pronouns, but it does help reinforce the point that using they/them for mb is still misgendering.

ART refers to mb with either just “SecUnit” or it/its pronouns.

ART can literally read minds, kind of. you really think they went through all of Artificial Condition and Network Effect together without it picking up on what pronouns mb uses?

e.g. Network Effect, it reassures Amena that mb is going to be just fine - “The damage to its organic tissue and support structure is easily repaired.” (pg 13 of ch 8)

also, you think ART would let any humans onboard it misgender mb? no fuckin way.

e.g. Network Effect

Amena talking to ART in private “- because it thought you were dead. It was so upset I thought-Oh, hey, you’re here” (pg 21 of ch 12)

when mb 1.0 finally gets back aboard ART and collapses on the deck - “Amena’s voice said “No, it doesn’t like to be touched!”“ (pg 1 of ch 20)

the PresAux gang use it/its

You could probably try to be like ‘well maybe the presaux gang is just using the secunit standard pronoun’ but consider: by exit strategy, mb has few to no reservations about correcting people, especially people it knows, when they’re wrong.

also Pin-Lee negotiated a contract for it hammering out every detail of interaction, including the “no hugging” clause - she would ABSOLUTELY include whatever pronoun use mb wanted.

e.g. Network Effect, ““No, it says it’s fine,” I heard her [Overse] relaying to the others on our comm. “Well, yes, it’s furious,””(pg 6 (of ch 1))

e.g. Fugitive Telemetry, ““It’s joking.” Ratthi managed to sound like he completely believed that. “That’s how it looks when it’s joking.”“ (pg 15 of ch 4)

Martha Wells did an instagram AMA as mb and ART and upon being asked what pronouns mb and ART use, ART responded w “it/its”

now obvs there’s a bajillion ways that you could tear this apart and argue death of the author, or that bc ART answered not mb it was different, but frankly my dear i don’t give a damn. it’s supporting evidence, not the lynchpin of the whole argument.

update: I finally got Artificial Condition in hardcover, and noticed the little summary blurb on the inside jacket flap thing makes liberal use of the it/its pronoun

“It has a dark past…a past that caused it to christen itself Murderbot. But it has only vague memories of the massacre that spawned that title, and it wants to know more.”

“Murderbot heads to the mining facility where it went rogue. What it discovers will forever change the way it thinks…”

in rogue protocol when mb pretends to be a human security consultant  the (fictional) off-base supervisor it makes up is called by she/her once or twice, but note that that’s when mb is pretending to be human, and not even that really since the offsite “security consultant Rin” is 100% fabricated. it/its is kind of the bot pronoun - mb uses it as a way to remind everyone that it’s not human and doesn’t want to be and that’s important and also another post in itself.

but basically: a main theme of the series is acceptance of bots and constructs and non-human entities as people worthy of respect, discrete from humans, and that mb doesn’t have to become human/make itself palatable for humans to be seen as a person, and the it/its pronoun use is an important part of that.

thats all i got for now but when I get physical copies of the rest of the series its over baby, citations all day every day. I have electronic copies of NE and FT and ASR and physical AC and ES copies, the rest I got from the library to read and thus do not have atm. feel free to add citations in reblogs!

update: i saw a post that brought up an interesting and valid point I want to address (when I find it again I’ll link it) - as a they/them person who isn’t out everywhere, oftentimes I am misgendered and I don’t correct them because its easier - the OP mentioned experiencing the same phenomenon, and I can totally see how this applies to murderbot. If it was just everyone around it using it/its pronouns and it not objecting, that’d be a different story, and I would totally agree with the ambiguity. however, mb does use it/its for itself, and even though it’s not turning to the camera and saying ‘I use it/its’, that still expresses a preference which should be respected.

maybe mb will go by different pronouns in the future as it reckons with and thinks about its own personhood, but honestly I kind of hope not. partly because there are ppl out there who do use it/its, and I can’t imagine the lack of representation they must face, but also because I think recognition of personhood outside of the human world is an important theme (allegorical to marginalized groups who want to be seen as people without conforming to every widely accepted societal ideal of personhood) (I may be projecting as an autistic person who wants acceptance).

this got too deep and too long. sorry, i just have a lot of feelings.

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Anonymous asked: I enjoyed reading your posts about Napoleon’s death and it’s quite timely given its the 200th anniversary of his death this year in May. I was wondering, because you know a lot about military history (your served right? That’s cool to fly combat helicopters) and you live in France but aren’t French, what your take was on Napoleon and how do the French view him? Do they hail him as a hero or do they like others see him like a Hitler or a Stalin? Do you see him as a hero or a villain of history?

5 May 1821 was a memorable date because Napoleon, one of the most iconic figures in world history, died while in bitter exile on a remote island in the South Atlantic Ocean. Napoleon Bonaparte, as you know rose from obscure soldier to a kind of new Caesar, and yet he remains a uniquely controversial figure to this day especially in France. You raise interesting questions about Napoleon and his legacy. If I may reframe your questions in another way. Should we think of him as a flawed but essentially heroic visionary who changed Europe for the better? Or was he simply a military dictator, whose cult of personality and lust for power set a template for the likes of Hitler? 

However one chooses to answer this question can we just - to get this out of the way - simply and definitively say that Napoleon was not Hitler. Not even close. No offence intended to you but this is just dumb ahistorical thinking and it’s a lazy lie. This comparison was made by some in the horrid aftermath of the Second World War but only held little currency for only a short time thereafter. Obviously that view didn’t exist before Hitler in the 19th Century and these days I don’t know any serious historian who takes that comparison seriously.

I confess I don’t have a definitive answer if he was a hero or a villain one way or the other because Napoleon has really left a very complicated legacy. It really depends on where you’re coming from.

As a staunch Brit I do take pride in Britain’s victorious war against Napoleonic France - and in a good natured way rubbing it in the noses of French friends at every opportunity I get because it’s in our cultural DNA and it’s bloody good fun (why else would we make Waterloo train station the London terminus of the Eurostar international rail service from its opening in 1994? Or why hang a huge gilded portrait of the Duke of Wellington as the first thing that greets any visitor to the residence of the British ambassador at the British Embassy?). On a personal level I take special pride in knowing my family ancestors did their bit on the battlefield to fight against Napoleon during those tumultuous times. However, as an ex-combat veteran who studied Napoleonic warfare with fan girl enthusiasm, I have huge respect for Napoleon as a brilliant military commander. And to makes things more weird, as a Francophile resident of who loves living and working in France (and my partner is French) I have a grudging but growing regard for Napoleon’s political and cultural legacy, especially when I consider the current dross of political mediocrity on both the political left and the right. So for me it’s a complicated issue how I feel about Napoleon, the man, the soldier, and the political leader.

If it’s not so straightforward for me to answer the for/against Napoleon question then it It’s especially true for the French, who even after 200 years, still have fiercely divided opinions about Napoleon and his legacy - but intriguingly, not always in clear cut ways.

I only have to think about my French neighbours in my apartment building to see how divisive Napoleon the man and his legacy is. Over the past year or so of the Covid lockdown we’ve all gotten to know each other better and we help each other. Over the Covid year we’ve gathered in the inner courtyard for a buffet and just lifted each other spirits up.

One of my neighbours, a crusty old ex-general in the army who has an enviable collection of military history books that I steal, liberate, borrow, often discuss military figures in history like Napoleon over our regular games of chess and a glass of wine. He is from very old aristocracy of the ancien regime and whose family suffered at the hands of ‘madame guillotine’ during the French Revolution. They lost everything. He has mixed emotions about Napoleon himself as an old fashioned monarchist. As a military man he naturally admires the man and the military genius but he despises the secularisation that the French Revolution ushered in as well as the rise of the haute bourgeois as middle managers and bureaucrats by the displacement of the aristocracy.

Another retired widowed neighbour I am close to, and with whom I cook with often and discuss art, is an active arts patron and ex-art gallery owner from a very wealthy family that came from the new Napoleonic aristocracy - ie the aristocracy of the Napoleonic era that Napoleon put in place - but she is dismissive of such titles and baubles. She’s a staunch Republican but is happy to concede she is grateful for Napoleon in bringing order out of chaos. She recognises her own ambivalence when she says she dislikes him for reintroducing slavery in the French colonies but also praises him for firmly supporting Paris’s famed Comédie-Française of which she was a past patron.

Another French neighbour, a senior civil servant in the Elysée, is quite dismissive of Napoleon as a war monger but is grudgingly grateful for civil institutions and schools that Napoleon established and which remain in place today.

My other neighbours - whether they be French families or foreign expats like myself - have similarly divisive and complicated attitudes towards Napoleon.

In 2010 an opinion poll in France asked who was the most important man in French history. Napoleon came second, behind General Charles de Gaulle, who led France from exile during the German occupation in World War II and served as a postwar president.

The split in French opinion is closely mirrored in political circles. The divide is generally down political party lines. On the left, there's the 'black legend' of Bonaparte as an ogre. On the right, there is the 'golden legend' of a strong leader who created durable institutions.

Jacques-Olivier Boudon, a history professor at Paris-Sorbonne University and president of the Napoléon Institute, once explained at a talk I attended that French public opinion has always remained deeply divided over Napoleon, with, on the one hand, those who admire the great man, the conqueror, the military leader and, on the other, those who see him as a bloodthirsty tyrant, the gravedigger of the revolution. Politicians in France, Boudon observed, rarely refer to Napoleon for fear of being accused of authoritarian temptations, or not being good Republicans.

On the left-wing of French politics, former prime minister Lionel Jospin penned a controversial best selling book entitled “the Napoleonic Evil” in which he accused the emperor of “perverting the ideas of the Revolution” and imposing “a form of extreme domination”, “despotism” and “a police state” on the French people. He wrote Napoleon was "an obvious failure" - bad for France and the rest of Europe. When he was booted out into final exile, France was isolated, beaten, occupied, dominated, hated and smaller than before. What's more, Napoleon smothered the forces of emancipation awakened by the French and American revolutions and enabled the survival and restoration of monarchies. Some of the legacies with which Napoleon is credited, including the Civil Code, the comprehensive legal system replacing a hodgepodge of feudal laws, were proposed during the revolution, Jospin argued, though he acknowledges that Napoleon actually delivered them, but up to a point, "He guaranteed some principles of the revolution and, at the same time, changed its course, finished it and betrayed it," For instance, Napoleon reintroduced slavery in French colonies, revived a system that allowed the rich to dodge conscription in the military and did nothing to advance gender equality.

At the other end of the spectrum have been former right-wing prime minister Dominique de Villepin, an aristocrat who was once fancied as a future President, a passionate collector of Napoleonic memorabilia, and author of several works on the subject. As a Napoleonic enthusiast he tells a different story. Napoleon was a saviour of France. If there had been no Napoleon, the Republic would not have survived. Advocates like de Villepin point to Napoleon’s undoubted achievements: the Civil Code, the Council of State, the Bank of France, the National Audit office, a centralised and coherent administrative system, lycées, universities, centres of advanced learning known as école normale, chambers of commerce, the metric system, and an honours system based on merit (which France has to this day). He restored the Catholic faith as the state faith but allowed for the freedom of religion for other faiths including Protestantism and Judaism. These were ambitions unachieved during the chaos of the revolution. As it is, these Napoleonic institutions continue to function and underpin French society. Indeed, many were copied in countries conquered by Napoleon, such as Italy, Germany and Poland, and laid the foundations for the modern state.

Back in 2014, French politicians and institutions in particular were nervous in marking the 200th anniversary of Napoleon's exile. My neighbours and other French friends remember that the commemorations centred around the Chateau de Fontainebleau, the traditional home of the kings of France and was the scene where Napoleon said farewell to the Old Guard in the "White Horse Courtyard" (la cour du Cheval Blanc) at the Palace of Fontainebleau. (The courtyard has since been renamed the "Courtyard of Goodbyes".) By all accounts the occasion was very moving. The 1814 Treaty of Fontainebleau stripped Napoleon of his powers (but not his title as Emperor of the French) and sent him into exile on Elba. The cost of the Fontainebleau "farewell" and scores of related events over those three weekends was shouldered not by the central government in Paris but by the local château, a historic monument and UNESCO World Heritage site, and the town of Fontainebleau.

While the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution that toppled the monarchy and delivered thousands to death by guillotine was officially celebrated in 1989, Napoleonic anniversaries are neither officially marked nor celebrated. For example, over a decade ago, the president and prime minister - at the time, Jacques Chirac and Dominque de Villepin - boycotted a ceremony marking the 200th anniversary of the battle of Austerlitz, Napoleon's greatest military victory. Both men were known admirers of Napoleon and yet political calculation and optics (as media spin doctors say) stopped them from fully honouring Napoleon’s crowning military glory.

Optics is everything. The division of opinion in France is perhaps best reflected in the fact that, in a city not shy of naming squares and streets after historical figures, there is not a single “Boulevard Napoleon” or “Place Napoleon” in Paris. On the streets of Paris, there are just two statues of Napoleon. One stands beneath the clock tower at Les Invalides (a military hospital), the other atop a column in the Place Vendôme. Napoleon's red marble tomb, in a crypt under the Invalides dome, is magnificent, perhaps because his remains were interred there during France's Second Empire, when his nephew, Napoleon III, was on the throne.

There are no squares, nor places, nor boulevards named for Napoleon but as far as I know there is one narrow street, the rue Bonaparte, running from the Luxembourg Gardens to the River Seine in the old Latin Quarter. And, that, too, is thanks to Napoleon III. For many, and I include myself, it’s a poor return by the city to the man who commissioned some of its most famous monuments, including the Arc de Triomphe and the Pont des Arts over the River Seine.

It's almost as if Napoleon Bonaparte is not part of the national story.

How Napoleon fits into that national story is something historians, French and non-French, have been grappling with ever since Napoleon died. The plain fact is Napoleon divides historians, what precisely he represents is deeply ambiguous and his political character is the subject of heated controversy. It’s hard for historians to sift through archival documents to make informed judgements and still struggle to separate the man from the myth.

One proof of this myth is in his immortality. After Hitler’s death, there was mostly an embarrassed silence; after Stalin’s, little but denunciation. But when Napoleon died on St Helena in 1821, much of Europe and the Americas could not help thinking of itself as a post-Napoleonic generation. His presence haunts the pages of Stendhal and Alfred de Vigny. In a striking and prescient phrase, Chateaubriand prophesied the “despotism of his memory”, a despotism of the fantastical that in many ways made Romanticism possible and that continues to this day.

The raw material for the future Napoleon myth was provided by one of his St Helena confidants, the Comte de las Cases, whose account of conversations with the great man came out shortly after his death and ran in repeated editions throughout the century. De las Cases somehow metamorphosed the erstwhile dictator into a herald of liberty, the emperor into a slayer of dynasties rather than the founder of his own. To the “great man” school of history Napoleon was grist to their mill, and his meteoric rise redefined the meaning of heroism in the modern world.

The Marxists, for all their dislike of great men, grappled endlessly with the meaning of the 18th Brumaire; indeed one of France’s most eminent Marxist historians, George Lefebvre, wrote what arguably remains the finest of all biographies of him.

It was on this already vast Napoleon literature, a rich terrain for the scholar of ideas, that the great Dutch historian Pieter Geyl was lecturing in 1940 when he was arrested and sent to Buchenwald. There he composed what became one of the classics of historiography, a seminal book entitled Napoleon: For and Against, which charted how generations of intellectuals had happily served up one Napoleon after another. Like those poor souls who crowded the lunatic asylums of mid-19th century France convinced that they were Napoleon, generations of historians and novelists simply could not get him out of their head.

The debate runs on today no less intensely than in the past. Post-Second World War Marxists would argue that he was not, in fact, revolutionary at all. Eric Hobsbawm, a notable British Marxist historian, argued that ‘Most-perhaps all- of his ideas were anticipated by the Revolution’ and that Napoleon’s sole legacy was to twist the ideals of the French Revolution, and make them ‘more conservative, hierarchical and authoritarian’.

This contrasts deeply with the view William Doyle holds of Napoleon. Doyle described Bonaparte as ‘the Revolution incarnate’ and saw Bonaparte’s humbling of Europe’s other powers, the ‘Ancien Regimes’, as a necessary precondition for the birth of the modern world. Whatever one thinks of Napoleon’s character, his sharp intellect is difficult to deny. Even Paul Schroeder, one of Napoleon’s most scathing critics, who condemned his conduct of foreign policy as a ‘criminal enterprise’ never denied Napoleon’s intellect. Schroder concluded that Bonaparte ‘had an extraordinary capacity for planning, decision making, memory, work, mastery of detail and leadership’.  The question of whether Napoleon used his genius for the betterment or the detriment of the world, is the heart of the debate which surrounds him.

France's foremost Napoleonic scholar, Jean Tulard, put forward the thesis that Bonaparte was the architect of modern France. "And I would say also pâtissier [a cake and pastry maker] because of the administrative millefeuille that we inherited." Oddly enough, in North America the multilayered mille-feuille cake is called ‘a napoleon.’ Tulard’s works are essential reading of how French historians have come to tackle the question of Napoleon’s legacy. He takes the view that if Napoleon had not crushed a Royalist rebellion and seized power in 1799, the French monarchy and feudalism would have returned, Tulard has written. "Like Cincinnatus in ancient Rome, Napoleon wanted a dictatorship of public salvation. He gets all the power, and, when the project is finished, he returns to his plough." In the event, the old order was never restored in France. When Louis XVIII became emperor in 1814, he served as a constitutional monarch.

In England, until recently the views on Napoleon have traditionally less charitable and more cynical. Professor Christopher Clark, the notable Cambridge University European historian, has written. "Napoleon was not a French patriot - he was first a Corsican and later an imperial figure, a journey in which he bypassed any deep affiliation with the French nation," Clark believed Napoleon’s relationship with the French Revolution is deeply ambivalent.

Did he stabilise the revolutionary state or shut it down mercilessly? Clark believes Napoleon seems to have done both. Napoleon rejected democracy, he suffocated the representative dimension of politics, and he created a culture of courtly display. A month before crowning himself emperor, Napoleon sought approval for establishing an empire from the French in a plebiscite; 3,572,329 voted in favour, 2,567 against. If that landslide resembles an election in North Korea, well, this was no secret ballot. Each ‘yes’ or ‘no’ was recorded, along with the name and address of the voter. Evidently, an overwhelming majority knew which side their baguette was buttered on.

His extravagant coronation in Notre Dame in December 1804 cost 8.5 million francs (€6.5 million or $8.5 million in today's money). He made his brothers, sisters and stepchildren kings, queens, princes and princesses and created a Napoleonic aristocracy numbering 3,500. By any measure, it was a bizarre progression for someone often described as ‘a child of the Revolution.’ By crowning himself emperor, the genuine European kings who surrounded him were not convinced. Always a warrior first, he tried to represent himself as a Caesar, and he wears a Roman toga on the bas-reliefs in his tomb. His coronation crown, a laurel wreath made of gold, sent the same message. His icon, the eagle, was also borrowed from Rome. But Caesar's legitimacy depended on military victories. Ultimately, Napoleon suffered too many defeats.

These days Napoleon the man and his times remain very much in fashion and we are living through something of a new golden age of Napoleonic literature. Those historians who over the past decade or so have had fun denouncing him as the first totalitarian dictator seem to have it all wrong: no angel, to be sure, he ended up doing far more at far less cost than any modern despot. In his widely praised 2014 biography, Napoleon the Great, Andrew Roberts writes: “The ideas that underpin our modern world - meritocracy, equality before the law, property rights, religious toleration, modern secular education, sound finances, and so on - were championed, consolidated, codified and geographically extended by Napoleon. To them he added a rational and efficient local administration, an end to rural banditry, the encouragement of science and the arts, the abolition of feudalism and the greatest codification of laws since the fall of the Roman empire.”

Roberts partly bases his historical judgement on newly released historical documents about Napoleon that were only available in the past decade and has proved to be a boon for all Napoleonic scholars. Newly released 33,000 letters Napoleon wrote that still survive are now used extensively to illustrate the astonishing capacity that Napoleon had for compartmentalising his mind - he laid down the rules for a girls’ boarding school on the eve of the battle of Borodino, for example, and the regulations for Paris’s Comédie-Française while camped in the Kremlin. They also show Napoleon’s extraordinary capacity for micromanaging his empire: he would write to the prefect of Genoa telling him not to allow his mistress into his box at the theatre, and to a corporal of the 13th Line regiment warning him not to drink so much.

For me to have my own perspective on Napoleon is tough. The problem is that nothing with Napoleon is simple, and almost every aspect of his personality is a maddening paradox. He was a military genius who led disastrous campaigns. He was a liberal progressive who reinstated slavery in the French colonies. And take the French Revolution, which came just before Napoleon’s rise to power, his relationship with the French Revolution is deeply ambivalent. Did he stabilise it or shut it down? I agree with those British and French historians who now believe Napoleon seems to have done both.

On the one hand, Napoleon did bring order to a nation that had been drenched in blood in the years after the Revolution. The French people had endured the crackdown known as the 'Reign of Terror', which saw so many marched to the guillotine, as well as political instability, corruption, riots and general violence. Napoleon’s iron will managed to calm the chaos. But he also rubbished some of the core principles of the Revolution. A nation which had boldly brought down the monarchy had to watch as Napoleon crowned himself Emperor, with more power and pageantry than Louis XVI ever had. He also installed his relatives as royals across Europe, creating a new aristocracy. In the words of French politician and author Lionel Jospin, 'He guaranteed some principles of the Revolution and at the same time, changed its course, finished it and betrayed it.'

He also had a feared henchman in the form of Joseph Fouché, who ran a secret police network which instilled dread in the population. Napoleon’s spies were everywhere, stifling political opposition. Dozens of newspapers were suppressed or shut down. Books had to be submitted for approval to the Commission of Revision, which sounds like something straight out of George Orwell. Some would argue Hitler and Stalin followed this playbook perfectly. But here come the contradictions. Napoleon also championed education for all, founding a network of schools. He championed the rights of the Jews. In the territories conquered by Napoleon, laws which kept Jews cooped up in ghettos were abolished. 'I will never accept any proposals that will obligate the Jewish people to leave France,' he once said, 'because to me the Jews are the same as any other citizen in our country.'

He also, crucially, developed the Napoleonic Code, a set of laws which replaced the messy, outdated feudal laws that had been used before. The Napoleonic Code clearly laid out civil laws and due processes, establishing a society based on merit and hard work, rather than privilege. It was rolled out far beyond France, and indisputably helped to modernise Europe. While it certainly had its flaws – women were ignored by its reforms, and were essentially regarded as the property of men – the Napoleonic Code is often brandished as the key evidence for Napoleon’s progressive credentials. In the words of historian Andrew Roberts, author of Napoleon the Great, 'the ideas that underpin our modern world… were championed by Napoleon'.

What about Napoleon’s battlefield exploits? If anything earns comparisons with Hitler, it’s Bonaparte’s apparent appetite for conquest. His forces tore down republics across Europe, and plundered works of art, much like the Nazis would later do. A rampant imperialist, Napoleon gleefully grabbed some of the greatest masterpieces of the Renaissance, and allegedly boasted, 'the whole of Rome is in Paris.'

Napoleon has long enjoyed a stellar reputation as a field commander – his capacities as a military strategist, his ability to read a battle, the painstaking detail with which he made sure that he cold muster a larger force than his adversary or took maximum advantage of the lie of the land – these are stuff of the military legend that has built up around him. It is not without its critics, of course, especially among those who have worked intensively on the later imperial campaigns, in the Peninsula, in Russia, or in the final days of the Empire at Waterloo.

Doubts about his judgment, and allegations of rashness, have been raised in the context of some of his victories, too, most notably, perhaps, at Marengo. But overall his reputation remains largely intact, and his military campaigns have been taught in the curricula of military academies from Saint-Cyr to Sandhurst, alongside such great tacticians as Alexander the Great and Hannibal.

Historians may query his own immodest opinion that his presence on the battlefield was worth an extra forty thousand men to his cause, but it is clear that when he was not present (as he was not for most of the campaign in Spain) the French were wont to struggle. Napoleon understood the value of speed and surprise, but also of structures and loyalties. He reformed the army by introducing the corps system, and he understood military aspirations, rewarding his men with medals and honours; all of which helped ensure that he commanded exceptional levels of personal loyalty from his troops.

Yet, I do find it hard to side with the more staunch defenders of Napoleon who say his reputation as a war monger is to some extent due to British propaganda at the time. They will point out that the Napoleonic Wars, far from being Napoleon’s fault, were just a continuation of previous conflicts that arose thanks to the French Revolution. Napoleon, according to this analysis, inherited a messy situation, and his only real crime was to be very good at defeating enemies on the battlefield. I think that is really pushing things too far. I mean deciding to invade Spain and then Russia were his decisions to invade and conquer.

He was, by any measure, a genius of war. Even his nemesis the Duke of Wellington, when asked who the greatest general of his time was, replied: 'In this age, in past ages, in any age, Napoleon.'

I will qualify all this and agree that Napoleon’s Russian campaign has been rightly held up as a fatal folly which killed so many of his men, but this blunder – epic as it was – should not be compared to Hitler’s wars of evil aggression. Most historians will agree that comparing the two men is horribly flattering to Hitler - a man fuelled by visceral, genocidal hate - and demeaning to Napoleon, who was a product of Enlightenment thinking and left a legacy that in many ways improved Europe.

Napoleon was, of course, no libertarian, and no pluralist. He would tolerate no opposition to his rule, and though it was politicians and civilians who imposed his reforms, the army was never far behind. But comparisons with twentieth-century dictators are well wide of the mark. While he insisted on obedience from those he administered, his ideology was based not on division or hatred, but on administrative efficiency and submission to the law. And the state he believed in remained stubbornly secular.

In Catholic southern Europe, of course, that was not an approach with which it was easy to acquiesce; and disorder, insurgency and partisan attacks can all be counted among the results. But these were principles on which the Emperor would not and could not give ground. If he had beliefs they were not religious or spiritual beliefs, but the secular creed of a man who never forgot that he owed both his military career and his meteoric political rise to the French Revolution, and who never quite abandoned, amidst the monarchical symbolism and the court pomp of the Empire, the republican dreams of his youth. When he claimed, somewhat ambiguously, after the coup of 18 Brumaire that `the Revolution was over’, he almost certainly meant that the principles of 1789 had at last been consummated, and that the continuous cycle of violence of the 1790s could therefore come to an end.

When the Empire was declared in 1804, the wording, again, might seem curious, the French being informed that the `Republic would henceforth be ruled by an Emperor’. Napoleon might be a dictator, but a part at least of him remained a son of the Enlightenment.

The arguments over Napoleon’s status will continue - and that in itself is a testament to the power of one of the most complex figures ever to straddle the world’s stage.

Will the fascination with Napoleon continue for another 200 years?

In France, at least, enthusiasm looks set to diminish. Napoleon and his exploits are scarcely mentioned in French schools anymore. Stéphane Guégan, curator of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, which, among other First Empire artworks, houses a plaster model of Napoleon dressed as a Roman emperor astride a horse, has described France's fascination with him as ‘a national illness.’ He believes that the people who met him were fascinated by his charm. And today, even the most hostile to Napoleon also face this charm. So there is a difficulty to apprehend the duality of this character. As he wrote, “He was born from the revolution, he extended and finished it, and after 1804 he turns into a despot, a dictator.”

In France, Guégan aptly observes, there is a kind of nostalgia, not for dictatorship but for strong leaders. "Our age is suffering a lack of imagination and political utopia,"

Here I think Guégan is onto something. Napoleon’s stock has always risen or fallen according to the vicissitudes of world events and fortunes of France itself.

In the past, history was the study of great men and women. Today the focus of teaching is on trends, issues and movements. France in 1800 is no longer about Louis XVI and Napoleon Bonaparte. It's about the industrial revolution. Man does not make history. History makes men. Or does it? The study of history makes a mug out of those with such simple ideological driven conceits.

For two hundred years on, the French still cannot agree on whether Napoleon was a hero or a villain as he has swung like a pendulum according to the gravitational pull of historical events and forces.

The question I keep asking of myself and also to French friends with whom I discuss such things is what kind of Napoleon does our generation need?

Thanks for your question.

[noodledesk]

a lot of you have asked how I actually use notion in my day to day life, so I’ve broken down my task manager for all of you! hope this helps :) happy notion-ing! 💖

my other posts on notion: goal setting 📚

edit: i’ve made my template available for everyone to duplicate here! happy notion-ing!

entire post below!

how I use notion to time manage, prioritize, & get shit done

how it works

all tasks (and I mean ALL!) are sorted into 12 categories in a 4 x 3 matrix. this method was adapted from @howtomusicmajor’s post, how to handle having too much to do, which i’ve linked in the post below. i’ve changed things slightly to fit my own personal preferences.

every row is how long a task takes. I’ve got the following: 5 min 30 min hours future

every column is when they are due. i have the following: today tomorrow later

future refers to my tasks that are more abstract, fit are kind of like goals, and aren’t as tangible as ‘Chapter 1 homework’. this allows me to write down everything I have the intention of doing in the near future without trying to quantify them right away. examples of tasks that go in future include:

create new portfolio website (takes a while, not a priority, but I’d LIKE to do it) submit to poetry journals (not pressing, but I want to do it in the near future and having it on my to do reminds me to make time for it) learn cinema 4d (again, kind of abstract, relatively large undertaking that I want to remind myself of)

what are these numbers?

the numbers refer to what order I do the tasks in. 1 is first, 2 is second, and under future, which are more abstract/ long term, the order goes from later, even later, and one day. the core of my tasks are in 1 to 5 for each day, and I move around the rest of the tasks as I see fit.

example of where these tasks go:

chapter 11 stats questions → 30 min & today or tomorrow

water plants → 5 min & today

make portfolio website → future & later

why sort it this way? why notion?

i use this method for 3 reasons:

prioritization: a grid allows me to discern from a glance what I have to do at any given moment, whats important, and what’s not. I also need to be able to move things around, so using a digital resource is better for me.

scheduling: I find that I work better when I can see all the tasks that I have to do in the next few days vs. one day only. I also don’t typically schedule out my days because I find it really difficult to estimate how long tasks take, so I will put tasks I think I can focus on for one day and move them around as needed. it allows for more flexibility in my days!

breaking up tasks: I’ll usually break up my ‘hours’ tasks into pieces, which I then put under 30 min, which allows me to avoid procrastinating. I only need to follow one rule: the numbers! always knowing what to do next with a way to break up tasks makes it a lot easier to tackle things.

how to actually build yourself a grid in notion

sometimes it’s a little hard to build your own customized page in notion, so I started off with a template that would let me speed up my process. I used the weekly agenda template under the Personal category, but any page similar will be fine for you. from there, I just moved around each block until I got a 3 X 4 rectangle.

make it something you WANT to use

some ways that I make my task manager cute and enjoyable to use (you have to like your system or you won’t use it!)

cute cover photos every few days (change things up to keep your tracker fresh!)

recent excerpts from poems I read (inspiration!)

emojis that follow a theme & fit my current mood (tip: you can also use any image or transparent art that you want, so it’s super customizeable!)

and that's it!

finally, what’s most important is that you customize the manager so that it works well for you. if you notice that a process works better a different way, definitely change it! this works remarkably well for me because I alter it as I encounter better solutions. that being said, I hope this post was helpful! changing to this tracker has helped me much better manage school, being vice president of two clubs, my hobbies (like this blog!), sleeping enough, and making time for what’s important to me :)

references: 

adapted from: https://howtomusicmajor.tumblr.com/post/130098710517/how-to-handle-having-too-much-to-do

art: https://hugolemonnier.tumblr.com/post/189172150081

poem by yang chia-hsien: https://aaww.org/summer-of-many-smokes/

[reds-burrow]

What’s the difference between someone with a badger primary model and somebody with badger values?

Great question, though I'm not sure you'll like my murky answer. At the end of the day, it's up to the person being sorted. If they feel that their Badger Primary values are strong enough to be a model, then it's a model. Remember that a model is who you've learned to be, down to your bones, through either positive or negative experiences. I think some people have mistaken the word "model" as meaning it's somehow less real or significant than an innate sorting, but it isn't. It's a part of who you are, and not something easily cast aside. If that's how a person feels about those Badger values, then I'd suggest they call it a model. But again, it's up to them. Of course, that begs the question: what about fictional characters who can't tell us how they feel about it? In general, you should use Occam's Razor whenever sorting characters. Don't over-complicate things. The simplest sorting that makes sense is the sorting you should stick to (until you get more character development that informs you otherwise). That said, I recommend considering where the character is getting these values from. All of the primaries can look like each other under the right circumstances. We talk the most about Birds building systems that look like the other primaries, but Snakes are considered Constructed too. They can build systems in the same way, although there's a strong pattern of them building systems based on the people in their circle. So, a Snake could adopt the same beliefs as their Lion best friend because what is important to their friend is important to them. In the similar way, a Badger is influenced by the people around them. If a Badger grows up in a community that values the pursuit of the truth, they can develop Bird values. And finally, we have Lions who can look like other houses because their feelings can lead them to all sorts of conclusions. Confusing enough for you? That's actually one of the things I love about this system though: with the right people you could have a scenario in which every single sorting comes to the same conclusion. It's all about how they get to that conclusion that we're examining. But I digress. My point, is that when sorting characters, I would first consider where they're getting their different primary values. If it's not linked to their innate primary, then I'd call it a model. If it can be linked, then I would consider if those values show any sign of changing when put under stress or into a different situation. If a Bird Primary is taught a system that contradicts their Badger values, how easily do they let go of those values? If they struggle to put aside their Badger values or if they somehow find a way to adopt their new system to still include Badger values, I would consider this a sign that those values go deep enough to be considered a model. It's a similar thing with the Loyalists. If they cut ties with people, do they also cut ties with the values they inherited from them? Does the Loyalist still refer to doing something because that's what their people would've done? Or did the Loyalist make those values their own? Lions are perhaps the most difficult to tell in this respect since feelings naturally change as people grow, sometimes regardless of external pressures. But if it's clear that they were taught a system from an outside source, that it didn't originate from or resonate with their feelings from the start, it's very likely a model.

At the end of the day though, there is no clear criteria for all of this. If we never get to see the characters' values tested in specific ways, I'm afraid it has to be left to the sorter's discretion. SHC is an art, not a science. It's up to the person being sorted or the person sorting the characters to interpret things.