#i put a lot of value in semantics

[katsdynam1ght]

…? no because the child (touya) did NOT in fact have too much love for his father. what in the victim blaming fuck are you talking about 💀😭 a child should not be able to have too much love for their dad. enji neglecting him and pushing him away when he needed his love and validation does NOT mean that touya had an excess. his strong emotions and the fact he needed help with them does NOT equal ‘an excess’ love. what an insane thing to say. endeavor fans are like the one kind of person where i can’t separate fiction from reality when it comes to how i react to your opinions. because these takes are genuinely always so incredibly concerning when it comes to touya and rei

ok right off the bat, i’m going to assume that you, anon, as an endeavor hater, are not going to put any good faith effort into understanding what i’m saying at all. i am noting now that i do not owe you any kind of explanation on my post, nor on my opinion, and i genuinely could not care less about your inability to separate fiction from reality. in fact, i could not care less about your opinion as a whole.

that said, i do love pointing out when people intentionally misconstrue what i say, so let’s dive into this anyway, shall we? (as an aside, i do think it’s amusing that you sent this on anon. if you really think you’re justified in your opinion and not intentionally misreading my post, then why not come out and say that openly? interesting)

here we go: in my post, i did not ever say touya loved his father “too much”. i think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what i meant about him having “an excess”. let me explain—

as someone with very intense emotions myself (pretty much everything i feel is either 0 or 100 with no in-between), what i mean by “an excess” is a level of obsession and fixation that yes, is harmful. no emotion is healthy when it is felt at such an extreme, ok? even the “positive” ones. an excess of love (obsession) can lead to all sorts of behaviors that do not benefit the giver or receiver.

if you want a different canonical example of this, look at seasons 1-2 izuku midoriya and how he feels about all might. he is obsessive, passionate, admiring, and yes—those feelings do benefit him in a lot of ways, but as gran torino observes during izuku’s internship, that admiration also holds him back. he’s fixated on doing things the way all might does them, on doing things to make all might proud, and as a result, he doesn’t realize his true potential. (this occurs again in s3 when he discovers he can use his legs)

this is also reflected in touya. he loves his father, yes! but there is (in his case) a level of obsession with said father (especially his hero identity) that ultimately harms touya (because it drives his need to be greater which in turn causes him to self-harm via his quirk).

nothing in my post was victim-blaming at all. it is not touya’s fault that enji responded poorly and neglected him. it’s not even his fault that he feels things with such intensity. the tragedy of it is that his intense love was not reciprocated in a way he could understand. as the tags on my original post said, “the problem has always been love mishandled, not missing love”. the love was there—it always has been, but touya did not know how to receive his father’s love, and his father in turn did not understand touya’s own.

beyond the red-flag goggles of endeavor hate, i’m really not sure how you misunderstood my post so badly, given that the central themes of it were A) touya suffered a different kind of abuse than shouto (neglect, not physical violence), and B) enji and touya have always had love for each other, but were never able to have that love expressed or felt properly (because touya’s required validation, and all enji wanted was for him to stop hurting himself).

anyway. if you’ve read this far and are interested in having an actual discussion about this, i’d be happy to talk more. goodness knows i love thinking about the todoroki family. however, if your only intention is to come at this from an anti-endeavor lens and purposefully misread everything i say for the sake of being rude, then you might as well not waste your time. you are absolutely entitled to your opinion, but i promise that there are better things you could be doing on a monday night (or whatever time it is for you) than trying to pick a fight with a stranger on the internet.

thanks for the ask! :)

[luckthebard]

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about storytelling vs. gameplay in Actual Play and finally had some solid thoughts coalesce around it when looking at Worlds Beyond Number and Thresher.

Thoughts after the cut:

This is going to be a hot take but I think, increasingly, Worlds Beyond Number is not an Actual Play but a collaborative audio novel/drama. While the margins between those things might seem on some level semantic, I think they’re really key for thinking about how Actual Play is different from other kinds of storytelling media. WBN was originally conceived of and advertised as “like the games you run in your living room” but as it has gone on the podcast has moved so far away from that that it is no longer delivering on that original conceit. This does not mean it is bad! I think WBN is actually succeeding more on a storytelling level as it sheds more of its obvious gameplay. But it’s gotten to a point where the game mechanics are either edited out and therefore not central to what is heard by the audience, or incidental to the story being told, which is driven far more by Brennan as the main worldbuilding storyteller than by game mechanics or player action. When a supposed Actual Play has a key narrative episode that finishes with almost 10 minutes of story narrated solely by the GM with no gameplay rolls or mechanics mentioned, of an epic, hugely narratively important combat, in my mind gameplay has taken enough of a backseat to the storytelling process that the podcast is no longer an Actual Play.

And I think we’ve seen an evolution over time of a lot of Actual Plays de-centering game mechanics or the conceit of gameplay in favor of more crafted narrative beats, to both the benefit and detriment of the stories themselves. In Critical Role for example, C1 and C2 in many ways felt more like a D&D game than C3, if only because of the presence of incidental, seemingly narratively insignificant combat moments. As late as late C2 with the Mighty Nein in Aeor, the players were rolling random encounters that had no relation to the larger endgame plot. This led some viewers to complain about pacing, but made other Actual Play enjoyers happy to the extent it showcased game mechanics and allowed character moments to emerge from the combat mechanics themselves, the core gameplay element of D&D. Contrast that to C3, which very early in the episode count did away with “meaningless” incidental combat and pushed forward with a very clear endgame narrative. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that fan engagement with mechanics really fell off in C3, with less meta about what spell or feat choices meant for character development. Similarly, the sunsetting of the CritRoleStats project, while certainly because founders were just busy and had put years into it already and were ready to move on, also was at least somewhat influenced by having less to work with as gameplay mechanics were emphasized less and less at the table in C3.

If you were to look at a lot of the more professional and academic study and critique of Actual Play, you might be convinced that a move away from centering gameplay and above table mechanics discussions was universally good for the medium, as an emphasis on storytelling over gaming would make it more universally accessible. I would posit though that at least some of this comes from the loudest, most professionally credentialed commentators on Actual Play coming from literature backgrounds, and therefore valuing storytelling and narrative over gaming for audience appeal. But I think that misses the gaming audience of Actual Play, who are less and less catered to as the medium becomes more mainstream.

There’s often not a lot of understanding of the appeal of gaming itself as an object of, especially curative, fan obsession, even as sports fandom exists as a huge example of the wide appeal. I am, pretty loudly, a baseball fan as well as a ttrpg and Actual Play fan. In many ways, these things hold similar appeal to me. I am interested in thinking about the game mechanics and action economy of certain character builds and how they fit into party composition in the same way I might obsess over a pitcher’s ERA and arsenal, as well as what his role is in the starting pitcher rotation or the bullpen. I find the prospect of a matchup between, say, Shohei Ohtani and Zack Wheeler appealing in the same way I’m excited about a mechanically strong D&D party fighting a Beholder. Gaming has long been interesting to people not only as something to participate in, but something to study and analyze. Win scenarios, optimal builds, and gameplay tactics are engaging to viewers as well as players. And I think, increasingly, Actual Play productions either forget this or, if the prevalence of editing gameplay out of edited AP is any indication, do not think the gameplay itself is of value or interest to the audience. Published Actual Play scholarship, in my opinion, continues to make this mistake as well. This has led to an increase of productions which are labeled as Actual Play and ostensibly have a gameplay component but are so far removed from watching/listening to people play a game that it is hard to argue that they are still Actual Play.

Which brings me to Thresher. Thresher was brilliant at threading that needle between production, radio drama vibes, and centered and narratively driving gameplay. I am someone who often complains about Actual Play production and editing doing Too Much but I actually loved the costumes and some of the editing gimmicks on Thresher because all of the storytelling and narrative was still so clearly grounded in the gameplay mechanics. Uses of drive mechanics and character abilities were clearly defined even as the audience could hold their breath in a tense horror atmosphere. Mechanics like Turn the Tide and Jasper’s move as the GM to allow the players to pass him secret notes were fantastic ideas to center player choice in crafting the narrative, and let the players surprise each other, leading to big and exciting moments a the table. The storytelling was enhanced by Abubakar’s above table exclamation of “what the fuck is this??” at the end, because it wasn’t just about the story that had unfolded but that his fellow players had surprised both him and the GM by using their game mechanic options to change the direction of the narrative and the condition of the story. I would love for more Actual Play to remember the value of the audience seeing that or being in on the extra-narrative elements of gameplay that shape story. Not all Actual Play needs to be the same, but I think we’ve lost something in the medium as a whole recently with a shift away from visible mechanics and toward streamlined, almost audio drama style story that just happens to have scaffolding from a tabletop roleplaying game.

[hoursofreading]

In terms of trying to actively promote depth in your life, start putting on your calendar some appointments with yourself to do deep work. Go a couple weeks out and treat those appointments like you would a doctor's appointment or a meeting with an investor. If someone tries to schedule something during that time, you say, "No, I'm busy from one to three, but here's when I'm available." People understand the semantics around the meetings and appointments. They're willing to work around it. You don't have to explain why. Start with a moderate amount, say three or four hours a week. Have it on the calendar. Have it protected. And during those prescheduled times, maintain the zero-tolerance distraction policy. During those times, not a glance at the internet, not a glance at the phone. The second thing is, take some step to start gaining back cognitive fitness. Most people are not willing, for example, to just blanket quit social media; but I would suggest a couple things. One, take social media applications off your phone. I've had a lot of people who say, "I can give you 19 reasons why I have to use social media, why it's so important in my life," and then they do this experiment where they take it off their phone so it becomes 10 percent more difficult to log in to Facebook or Twitter. They stop using it altogether. They realize, "Okay, wait a second. Maybe I was telling all these stories about the key role it plays in my life, and why I always have to be looking at it, but once I added just a slight impediment, I stopped using it altogether." I think it helps sort of reassess the value, but more importantly, you take the addictive aspects out of the service while still maintaining your access to the information or other value that you get out of it. The third thing I would recommend is starting to schedule the time you do novel, distracting, stimulating things. You could schedule lots of times, but it should be scheduled times. Maybe after work, you say, "From 8 to 10, I'm going to break out the laptop and just go nuts, no holds barred. Social media, whatever. But until 8, none of it." Or, "Okay, at work, I'm going to check my email, check on all of this at this time, this time, this time, this time." All the other times in between, even if you feel like you want to do it, you don't. This is all about just practicing that muscle of "I want stimuli, and I said no." Even if you've scheduled 25 blocks during the day when you're going to look at stimuli, that still gives you 25 blocks between those times where you're going to feel like you want to check stimuli and you say no. Every time you do that, that's helping to break the Pavlovian connection. That's usually how I get people started. Get it on the calendar, start cleaning up your cognitive fitness.

Cal Newport on taking your life back from technology - Vox

[anheliotrope]

Rambling About C# Being Alright

I think C# is an alright language. This is one of the highest distinctions I can give to a language.

Warning: This post is verbose and rambly and probably only good at telling you why someone might like C# and not much else.

~~~

There's something I hate about every other language. Worst, there's things I hate about other languages that I know will never get better. Even worse, some of those things ALSO feel like unforced errors.

With C# there's a few things I dislike or that are missing. C#'s feature set does not obviously excel at anything, but it avoids making any huge misstep in things I care about. Nothing in C# makes me feel like the language designer has personally harmed me.

C# is a very tolerable language.

C# is multi-paradigm.

C# is the Full Middle Malcomist language.

C# will try to not hurt you.

A good way to describe C# is "what if Java sucked less". This, of course, already sounds unappealing to many, but that's alright. I'm not trying to gas it up too much here.

C# has sins, but let's try to put them into some context here and perhaps the reason why I'm posting will become more obvious:

C# didn't try to avoid generics and then implement them in a way that is very limiting (cough Go).

C# doesn't hamstring your ability to have statement lambdas because the language designer dislikes them and also because the language designer decided to have semantic whitespace making statement lambdas harder to deal with (cough Python).

C# doesn't require you to explicitly wrap value types into reference types so you can put value types into collections (cough Java).

C# doesn't ruin your ability to interact with memory efficiently because it forbids you from creating custom value types, ergo everything goes to the heap (cough cough Java, Minecraft).

C# doesn't have insane implicit type coercions that have become the subject of language design comedy (cough JavaScript).

C# doesn't keep privacy accessors as a suggestion and has the developers pinkie swear about it instead of actually enforcing it (cough cough Python).

Plainly put, a lot of the time I find C# to be alright by process of elimination. I'm not trying to shit on your favorite language. Everyone has different things they find tolerable. I have the Buddha nature so I wish for all things to find their tolerable language.

I do also think that C# is notable for being a mainstream language (aka not Haskell) that has a smaller amount of egregious mistakes, quirks and Faustian bargains.

The Typerrrrr

C# is statically typed, but the typing is largely effortless to navigate unlike something like Rust, and the GC gives a greater degree of safety than something like C++.

Of course, the typing being easy to work it also makes it less safe than Rust. But this is an appropriate trade-off for certain kinds of applications, especially considering that C# is memory safe by virtue of running on a VM. Don't come at me, I'm a Rust respecter!!

You know how some people talk about Python being amazing for prototyping? That's how I feel about C#. No matter how much time I would dedicate to Python, C# would still be a more productive language for me. The type system would genuinely make me faster for the vast majority of cases. Of course Python has gradual typing now, so any comparison gets more difficult when you consider that. But what I'm trying to say is that I never understood the idea that doing away entirely with static typing is good for fast iteration.

Also yes, C# can be used as a repl. Leave me alone with your repls. Also, while the debugger is active you can also evaluate arbitrary code within the current scope.

I think that going full dynamic typing is a mistake in almost every situation. The fact that C# doesn't do that already puts it above other languages for me. This stance on typing is controversial, but it's my opinion that is really shouldn't be. And the wind has constantly been blowing towards adding gradual typing to dynamic languages.

The modest typing capabilities C# coupled with OOP and inheritance lets you create pretty awful OOP slop. But that's whatever. At work we use inheritance in very few places where it results in neat code reuse, and then it's just mostly interfaces getting implemented.

C#'s typing and generic system is powerful enough to offer you a plethora of super-ergonomic collection transformation methods via the LINQ library. There's a lot of functional-style programming you can do with that. You know, map, filter, reduce, that stuff?

Even if you make a completely new collection type, if it implements IEnumerable<T> it will benefit from LINQ automatically. Every language these days has something like this, but it's so ridiculously easy to use in C#. Coupled with how C# lets you (1) easily define immutable data types, (2) explicitly control access to struct or class members, (3) do pattern matching, you can end up with code that flows really well.

A Friendly Kitchen Sink

Some people have described C#'s feature set as bloated. It is getting some syntactic diversity which makes it a bit harder to read someone else's code. But it doesn't make C# harder to learn, since it takes roughly the same amount of effort to get to a point where you can be effective in it.

Most of the more specific features can be effortlessly ignored. The ones that can't be effortlessly ignored tend to bring something genuinely useful to the language -- such as tuples and destructuring. Tuples have their own syntax, the syntax is pretty intuitive, but the first time you run into it, you will have to do a bit of learning.

C# has an immense amount of small features meant to make the language more ergonomic. They're too numerous to mention and they just keep getting added.

I'd like to draw attention to some features not because they're the most important but rather because it feels like they communicate the "personality" of C#. Not sure what level of detail was appropriate, so feel free to skim.

Stricter Null Handling. If you think not having to explicitly deal with null is the billion dollar mistake, then C# tries to fix a bit of the problem by allowing you to enable a strict context where you have to explicitly tell it that something can be null, otherwise it will assume that the possibility of a reference type being null is an error. It's a bit more complicated than that, but it definitely helps with safety around nullability.

Default Interface Implementation. A problem in C# which drives usage of inheritance is that with just interfaces there is no way to reuse code outside of passing function pointers. A lot of people don't get this and think that inheritance is just used because other people are stupid or something. If you have a couple of methods that would be implemented exactly the same for classes 1 through 99, but somewhat differently for classes 100 through 110, then without inheritance you're fucked. A much better way would be Rust's trait system, but for that to work you need really powerful generics, so it's too different of a path for C# to trod it. Instead what C# did was make it so that you can write an implementation for methods declared in an interface, as long as that implementation only uses members defined in the interface (this makes sense, why would it have access to anything else?). So now you can have a default implementation for the 1 through 99 case and save some of your sanity. Of course, it's not a panacea, if the implementation of the method requires access to the internal state of the 1 through 99 case, default interface implementation won't save you. But it can still make it easier via some techniques I won't get into. The important part is that default interface implementation allows code reuse and reduces reasons to use inheritance.

Performance Optimization. C# has a plethora of features regarding that. Most of which will never be encountered by the average programmer. Examples: (1) stackalloc - forcibly allocate reference types to the stack if you know they won't outlive the current scope. (2) Specialized APIs for avoiding memory allocations in happy paths. (3) Lazy initialization APIs. (4) APIs for dealing with memory more directly that allow high performance when interoping with C/C++ while still keeping a degree of safety.

Fine Control Over Async Runtime. C# lets you write your own... async builder and scheduler? It's a bit esoteric and hard to describe. But basically all the functionality of async/await that does magic under the hood? You can override that magic to do some very specific things that you'll rarely need. Unity3D takes advantage of this in order to allow async/await to work on WASM even though it is a single-threaded environment. It implements a cooperative scheduler so the program doesn't immediately freeze the moment you do await in a single-threaded environment. Most people don't know this capability exists and it doesn't affect them.

Tremendous Amount Of Synchronization Primitives and API. This ones does actually make multithreaded code harder to deal with, but basically C# erred a lot in favor of having many different ways to do multithreading because they wanted to suit different usecases. Most people just deal with idiomatic async/await code, but a very small minority of C# coders deal with locks, atomics, semaphores, mutex, monitors, interlocked, spin waiting etc. They knew they couldn't make this shit safe, so they tried to at least let you have ready-made options for your specific use case, even if it causes some balkanization.

Shortly Begging For Tagged Unions

What I miss from C# is more powerful generic bounds/constraints and tagged unions (or sum types or discriminated unions or type unions or any of the other 5 names this concept has).

The generic constraints you can use in C# are anemic and combined with the lack of tagged unions this is rather painful at times.

I remember seeing Microsoft devs saying they don't see enough of a usecase for tagged unions. I've at times wanted to strangle certain people. These two facts are related to one another.

My stance is that if you think your language doesn't need or benefit from tagged unions, either your language is very weird, or, more likely you're out of your goddamn mind. You are making me do really stupid things every time I need to represent a structure that can EITHER have a value of type A or a value of type B.

But I think C# will eventually get tagged unions. There's a proposal for it here. I would be overjoyed if it got implemented. It seems like it's been getting traction.

Also there was an entire section on unchecked exceptions that I removed because it wasn't interesting enough. Yes, C# could probably have checked exceptions and it didn't and it's a mistake. But ultimately it doesn't seem to have caused any make-or-break in a comparison with Java, which has them. They'd all be better off with returning an Error<T>. Short story is that the consequences of unchecked exceptions have been highly tolerable in practice.

Ecosystem State & FOSSness

C# is better than ever and the tooling ecosystem is better than ever. This is true of almost every language, but I think C# receives a rather high amount of improvements per version. Additionally the FOSS story is at its peak.

Roslyn, the bedrock of the toolchain, the compiler and analysis provider, is under MIT license. The fact that it does analysis as well is important, because this means you can use the wealth of Roslyn analyzers to do linting.

If your FOSS tooling lets you compile but you don't get any checking as you type, then your development experience is wildly substandard.

A lot of stupid crap with cross-platform compilation that used to be confusing or difficult is now rather easy to deal with. It's basically as easy as (1) use NET Core, (2) tell dotnet to build for Linux. These steps take no extra effort and the first step is the default way to write C# these days.

Dotnet is part of the SDK and contains functionality to create NET Core projects and to use other tools to build said projects. Dotnet is published under MIT, because the whole SDK and runtime are published under MIT.

Yes, the debugger situation is still bad -- there's no FOSS option for it, but this is more because nobody cares enough to go and solve it. Jetbrains proved anyone can do it if they have enough development time, since they wrote a debugger from scratch for their proprietary C# IDE Rider.

Where C# falls flat on its face is the "userspace" ecosystem. Plainly put, because C# is a Microsoft product, people with FOSS inclinations have steered clear of it to such a degree that the packages you have available are not even 10% of what packages a Python user has available, for example. People with FOSS inclinations are generally the people who write packages for your language!!

I guess if you really really hate leftpad, you might think this is a small bonus though.

Where-in I talk about Cross-Platform

The biggest thing the ecosystem has been lacking for me is a package, preferably FOSS, for developing cross-platform applications. Even if it's just cross-platform desktop applications.

Like yes, you can build C# to many platforms, no sweat. The same way you can build Rust to many platforms, some sweat. But if you can't show a good GUI on Linux, then it's not practically-speaking cross-platform for that purpose.

Microsoft has repeatedly done GUI stuff that, predictably, only works on Windows. And yes, Linux desktop is like 4%, but that 4% contains >50% of the people who create packages for your language's ecosystem, almost the exact point I made earlier. If a developer runs Linux and they can't have their app run on Linux, they are not going to touch your language with a ten foot pole for that purpose. I think this largely explains why C#'s ecosystem feels stunted.

The thing is, I'm not actually sure how bad or good the situation is, since most people just don't even try using C# for this usecase. There's a general... ecosystem malaise where few care to use the language for this, chiefly because of the tone that Microsoft set a decade ago. It's sad.

HOWEVER.

Avalonia, A New Hope?

Today we have Avalonia. Avalonia is an open-source framework that lets you build cross-platform applications in C#. It's MIT licensed. It will work on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android and also somehow in the browser. It seems to this by actually drawing pixels via SkiaSharp (or optionally Direct2D on Windows).

They make money by offering migration services from WPF app to Avalonia. Plus general support.

I can't say how good Avalonia is yet. I've researched a bit and it's not obviously bad, which is distinct from being good. But if it's actually good, this would be a holy grail for the ecosystem:

You could use a statically typed language that is productive for this type of software development to create cross-platform applications that have higher performance than the Electron slop. That's valuable!

This possibility warrants a much higher level of enthusiasm than I've seen, especially within the ecosystem itself. This is an ecosystem that was, for a while, entirely landlocked, only able to make Windows desktop applications.

I cannot overstate how important it is for a language's ecosystem to have a package like this and have it be good. Rust is still missing a good option. Gnome is unpleasant to use and buggy. Falling back to using Electron while writing Rust just seems like a bad joke. A lot of the Rust crates that are neither Electron nor Gnome tend to be really really undercooked.

And now I've actually talked myself into checking out Avalonia... I mean after writing all of that I feel like a charlatan for not having investigated it already.

[mazzystar24]

There is this one storyline somewhere that I think either I watched somewhere, read somewhere, or just dreamt or thought abt but it’s stuck in my head lately and it’s soooo perfect for buddie, that I must share because I can’t write fanfics but I can tell you guys the ideas my silly little brain comes up with:

Three words

Buck car crash

Bonus points if Chris is in the backseat (we are sick and twisted for the fact that ik yall will agree)

Okay but to the actual idea

So Buck’s car crashes but in the end all of them are fine and obviously the jeep has a lot of sentimental value so when he sees the ruins of it it hits him hard and the mechanic or whoever is like cos it’s an old car and had some problems and the damage is so bad it’s better easier and cheaper for you to just get a new one

Now this part is specifically from the storyline with ambiguous origins not just cos of my hatred toward a certain Thomas but in that story the girl’s (?) bf is like a secret subtle asshole in the dismissive way like he kinda just says like oh the crash could’ve been worse, you should be thankful, it’s just a car, you can buy a new one that’s the same make, all that jazz - so imma honestly say that that reaction tracks for tommy ngl

Okay as I’m writing this I’m realising that storyline may 88% be from a dream so maybe we DO know the origins of it (yes I dream in stories sometimes)

Anyways so buck is like it wouldn’t be the same it wouldn’t have this sentimental thing or this idk sharpie writing or this nail polish stain or this blah blah blah

but ultimately he’s like you know what? okay yeah you’re right and says goodbye to the jeep

And the best friend- Eddie- knows or is there for all this and goes behind Buck’s back and buys the damaged car from the place (I’m just a girl 🎀 is it called a junkyard or do they take it to like a mechanic lot or what?) and fixes up the car in secret and keeps as much of the original pieces as possible and keeps the pieces he can’t salvage to turn into some sort of keepsake like idk cutting parts of the metal and turning it into some sort of trinket (realistic car restoration? Not round here partner not round here🤠)

Bonus points for emotional moment when he has to fix the interior of the car and sees the blood remnants from the crash

Skip forward to a big celebration like Christmas or a birthday or something (birthday is my preference for this plot but Christmas does canonically make buddie gayer so 🤷🏽‍♀️) and the actual boyfriend got a good but generic present like idk a nice sweater (idk what you get boyfriends?) and ofc the bestie has the secret restored car

BUT

The bestie SWAPS WITH THE BOYFRIEND

Big sentimental reaction toward having the car back, thanks exchanged, Eddie looking on yada yada

After the party or maybe just a quiet moment at the party Eddie is chilling outside or whatever and then buck approaches and is like *meaningful look* “thank you” and Eddie is like tryna play it off and be like ah yes ik how much you love sweaters *mental facepalm* and then buck is like🤨 unimpressed cut the bullshit face and he’s like no Thank you™️ (in bold and italics and tm to communicate to you guys the tone) and eddie drops the act and is just like “fuck how did you know?” and then buck is like “I’ve never mentioned half those minor details or their sentimental value to him before” and then Eddie once again tries to play it off and be like “well I helped but it was him” and then cue unimpressed cut the bs look no2 and Eddie gives up and is like you’re welcome (do I need to tell you guys why I’m putting this in bold and italics or can you envision the cow eyes that go with this line?)

*soft smiles from both*

Then the scene literally ends with them sat next to eachother on a bench or wherever they are and chatting abt none sense or maybe over the semantics of actually fixing the car while they do the little head leaning on the shoulder thing

[studentbyday]

{ 08.11.24 } · { 50 days of routine } · { day 10 }

I don't get the first exercise from week 2 of the CBT workbook. It's a “values and activities” form where you have to put in at least 2 values for each of the six life areas (relationships, education/career, recreation/relaxation, faith/meaning/expansion, domestic responsibilities, and physical health) and then come up with at least 3 activities that can fall under each value. And they define values as anything that has no end point AND that is something you enjoy, love, or get satisfaction from doing (e.g. brings pleasure or enjoyment, gives us a sense of mastery or accomplishment, and feels like it’s worthwhile) whereas “activities, in contrast, are specific and have a beginning and an end, though they can be repeated as many times as we wish.” Then they proceeded to give some examples of values which included things like “beautifying my living space”, “spending time with friends”, “enjoying good food”, and “feeling fit and strong.” I suppose I get the last two as “values” but aren't the first two more like activities??? I am confused™. And I'm pretty sure “completing all my schoolwork” would be an activity because it has an end point...BUT IT SURE ISN'T SPECIFIC!!! 😂 I guess a good chunk of this is just semantics. I also skipped ahead and read week 5 last night. The chapter was called “time and task management” and I'm stealing some activities from there 😈

Here's everything else I got up to today! I don't know why I'm using exclamation points!!!

So for the daily activities worksheets, besides listing out everything you do and when, you have to state how enjoyable each activity was on a scale of 0-10, the same for how important each activity was, and an overall mood rating for the day also on a scale of 0-10 and they didn't say how you were supposed to come to a single mood rating for an entire day, so i just took the average of my enjoyment column lol. Anyway, I noticed two things so far: (1) a lot of things that are important are not very enjoyable (ok, i kinda knew this one but seeing it so starkly confirmed my suspicions lol) and (2) shorter study sessions (under 90 mins-2h) tend to increase enjoyment just a bit unless I'm researching smth or writing/making a presentation which are the most likely activities to put me in a flow state. So to help me not feel sad about doing shorter sessions (i.e. not being able to focus that long and that happily most of the time), I need to get Forest plants that look pretty much the same whether I get 1 plant per session or the max of 4 lol. Also, today's overall mood rating was the highest it's been all week (4.7 as opposed to ~4 since I started tracking all this...i think it's because i had more study sessions that were shorter today than in the last few days)! 🥳 I'm so glad this (extremely) tedious activity was not entirely useless!!! 😌

[max1461]

I have a lot of thoughts about epistemology and the nature of procedural knowledge. Studying linguistics really impresses upon you just the sheer amount of human knowledge that is procedural and implicit. Languages are these huge, ridiculously complex systems, and even when it comes to the most thoroughly documented language in human history (English), you can still make an entire career documenting as-yet-unknown minutiae of some corner of a corner of the system. It's very difficult to impress upon non-linguists just how big and ill-understood languages are.

There is no book which explains the whole of English grammar. No one on earth knows the complete rule-set of English grammar. Not even for one dialect, not even for one single speaker. No one on earth could write a comprehensive treatise on English pronunciation. We do not know how English works. We do not know how any language works.

And yet, these systems are, in their entirety, already stored in the mind of every native speaker.

When it comes to synchronic information, I literally already know everything there is to know about my dialect of English. I know the timing of every articulation, the exact rules for verb and auxiliary and quantifier placement, the phonology, semantics, syntax, the lexical variation, the registers, all of it. I can deploy it effortlessly while I am thinking about something else. I can form reams of perfectly grammatical English sentences without a second thought. I can deploy the most arcane rules of wh-movement and quantifier raising and whatever else. With no effort at all.

Tens of thousands of people having been making careers trying to document these things, not for my exact dialect but for varieties essentially the same as mine, for 60 years in earnest. And they aren't close to done. And I already know it all. And so do they! They already know it too! The hard part is accessing it, putting it down on paper. That requires experimentation, systematic empirical investigation—science.

So what this has really impressed on me is how much of human knowledge is procedural. How much of it is known only in the doing. I'd wager that's the significant majority of what we know.

This is related to two thoughts that I have.

The first is about the value of unbroken lines of cultural inheritance. With language, the difference between native speakers and second language learners is stark. I think it's safe to say, per current research, that someone who learns a language in adulthood will simply never have the same command of it as someone who learned it in childhood. There are a variety of tests which consistently distinguish native from non-native speakers. You can get very good at a language as an adult learner, good enough for basically all practical needs (except being a spy), but there's a bar your brain just cannot meet.

The unfortunate fact about language is this: if the line of native-speaker-to-child transmission is ever broken, that language is lost. You can try to revive... something, if you want. Like was done with Hebrew in Israel. But it will not be the same language. And not just in the sense that, by the passing of time, all languages inherently change. In a much stronger sense than that. No matter how big a text corpus you have, no matter how well documented the language is, there is an immense body of implicit, undocumented, procedural knowledge that dies when the last native speaker does. And you cannot ever get it back.

I think, often, about the fact that so much human knowledge is procedural, is used and understood and passed on in illegible, difficult to codify ways. I think about the effect that a rapidly changing world has on this body of knowledge. Is it going to be essential for human prosperity? Probably not. But that doesn't mean that losing it will harmless. Certainly I expect much of it to be missed.

The second thought is about an epistemic distinction that I've had in my head for a long time, a distinction I'd like to refer to as that between a science and an art.

An art is any endeavor for which there is an established methodology, an established set of procedures and rules. These rules can be explicit and codified, like the rules of a game, or implicit, like the grammar of a language. They can be absolute or they can be mere guidelines. But in essence, an art is anything you can get good at. Math is quintessentially an art. Football is an art. Ballet is an art. Painting is an art. An art is any endeavor in which procedural knowledge is acquired and channeled and refined and passed on.

Art contrasts with science. A science is any endeavor in which one is shooting blind. Science is the domain of guesswork and trial-and-error. Sciences are those domains that do not lend themself to practice, because... what would you practice at? You cannot get better at science, because science is not about skill. Science is about exploration. It necessarily involves forging your own path, working with odd and faulty tools and odd and faulty ideas, trying to get them to work. Science only exists at the frontiers; when a path is well-tread enough that a body of procedure becomes known and practiced, that path is now art and no longer science.

This distinction is not a taxonomy. Everything we do involves a little bit of art and a little bit of science. Everything involves both a refinement of known skills and an exploration of new avenues. Of course there's a little bit of science in painting, there's quite a lot of science in painting. Every modern and contemporary art museum is full of it! And there's science in math, every once in a while. And there's art in biology and chemistry. Art and science are two modes of engagement, and different endeavors demand them of you in different ways.

Perhaps science is like a glider (you know, from Conway's game of life?), traveling ever outward, and with enough passes over the same area leaving art in its wake. And I think in some sense that all real human knowledge exists as art, that all endeavors capable of producing true insight are either arts or sciences buttressed by a great many supporting arts. Although maybe I'm wrong about this.

I think history is mostly science, and in large part history as a field seems to be on quite solid epistemic footing. So I don't want to convey the idea that science is inherently dubious; clearly from the above description that can't be my position. Nor is art inherently trustworthy—for instance I think jurisprudence is primarily an art, including religious jurisprudence, which of course I don't place any stock in. But I do think I'm getting at something with the idea that there are a range of epistemic benefits to working within an art that one lacks access to in a totally unconstrained science. This is also closely related to my ideas about abstraction and concretization schemes.

Language is an art, one of the oldest arts, but modern linguistics is more or less a science. Like any good science, linguistics has certain arts unique to itself—fieldwork and the comparative method come to mind—but the most vibrant parts of the field at present are science through-and-through. It's a science whose objects of study are arts, and I think maybe that's part of why I've become so aware of this distinction. Or, language is the ur-example of an art, the art from which (if I were to conjecture wildly) I think the cognitive machinery for very many other arts has been borrowed. But I don't really know.

Anyway, those are my thoughts.

[sineala]

Superheroes and ethics

I realized that I wrote this last month on Patreon and forgot to post it here. I got asked to write meta about superhero ethics with regard to Steve and Tony. I ended up writing mostly about how Captain America's Plot Armor interacts with his principles.

I have been asked to talk about ethics and philosophy with respect to Steve and Tony. Unfortunately, the only philosophy-adjacent disciplines that I know well enough to speak about with any confidence are formal semantics and pragmatics, which isn't really all that useful in daily life unless you'd really like to learn about the differences between entailment, presupposition, and implicature, and also the Gricean maxims of conversation, which are great if you want to completely ruin conversations by violating them as many times as you possibly can.

So I'm not a philosopher, sorry.

But! I can talk more informally about Steve and Tony and ethics.

And I know there's been a lot of meta -- and actual books -- written about their differing views. I have a book here, A Philosopher Reads Marvel Comics' Civil War: Exploring the Moral Judgment of Captain America, Iron Man, and Spider-Man, by Mark White, which I have not read yet but it sounds like this is probably the book you want to read if you want an actual philosophical analysis of this stuff. Judging by the reviews, the author decides to associate Tony with utilitarianism and Steve with deontology. That is probably fun. I am in no way qualified to talk about it. On an informal level, the thing I find fascinating about them is that, when it comes down to it, Steve and Tony are really not all that different.

I have been thinking about this for a while, because the last time I left anonymous asks open on Tumblr, the final ask I got before I decided that this wasn't a good idea was someone who wanted to pick a fight with me by asserting that Steve/Tony was a bad pairing because "they don't think alike, have different morals, different interests, and different emotional issues that the other is not capable of helping out with." This is one of the reasons why I don't have anon asks on anymore. But I thought it was honestly an interesting thing to think about.

So I have been pondering this on and off for a while, and I realized that the thing that really bugged me about it was that their general thesis was that Steve and Tony were bad for each other because they have nothing in common. See, I don't think that's true. I think they have a whole lot in common. But I am also willing to acknowledge that canon likes to put them in situations where they're at odds with each other and it seems fairly easy to come up with circumstances that will cause them to want to beat the stuffing out of each other. But, crucially, this doesn't mean they have nothing in common.

(I also think they actually have a lot of similar interests and are actually very capable of helping each other with their emotional issues, which canon demonstrates multiple times. But that'd be a different essay.)

For me, one of the reasons why Steve/Tony are so compelling as a pairing is because they are so similar. Let's call it, like, 95% similar. They are remarkably like-minded when it comes to their values and how they view the world. It's just that then they can fight, bitterly, over the remaining 5% of differences.

They work well together most of the time and it's just the bits where they almost work together that are so agonizing and provide so much material for fandom. Because it's not like they don't understand where the other one is coming from, what they want, or why they want it. They do. They just don't understand how the other person can come up with a different path to the answer given their shared goal and shared values. Steve doesn't understand how Tony is willing to do something that Steve thinks is wrong, and Tony thinks, I don't know, that Steve's ideals are too naive for the real world. Tony thinks Steve's plans are unrealistic and Steve thinks Tony's plans are unacceptable.

There's also an additional complication, which is that Steve as a character has a lot of plot armor that Tony doesn't. Steve decides what he thinks is moral and what he thinks is immoral, and he simply does not do the immoral thing. And the thing is that the narrative helps Steve out with this. It's fine if he's idealistic! It's even okay if his ideals are naive! He almost never has to go against them. I am saying this as a big fan of Steve. The story really helps him out.

For example, Steve thinks that killing is wrong, so he doesn't kill anyone, generally speaking. (Depending on the retcon you believe in, he may have in fact killed zero people in World War II, which is kind of ridiculous.) But in situations where the best of the options involves killing someone, someone pretty much always ends up dead. It's just that someone else does the dirty work. Steve surrounds himself with a lot of spies and assassins (Bucky, Sharon, Natasha) and those people kill the people who need killing.

In Civil War, Steve believes Registration is wrong, and he never has to change his mind. He probably still believes it's wrong. Instead of going on trial, he dies; he never has to face the consequences of any of his actions. The narrative shields him from that. When he comes back to life, Registration is gone and he gets a pardon from the president. It's all taken care of. He causes a lot of damage, and he doesn't even have to say he's sorry for trying to bash Tony's face in, in public, with witnesses, after having destroyed what looks like several city blocks.

So Steve never compromises his principles, because he has the luxury afforded to him by the plot so that he almost never has to be in a situation where he'd have to decide whether he should compromise his principles, say, for the sake of the greater good. He doesn't have to make that choice, because Marvel's not interested in writing stories where Steve has to make that choice. So it just… doesn't come up. He almost never has to put his ethics to an actual test. If you hand Steve the trolley problem, he'd just say, well, I'd save everyone. That's not an actual option in the trolley problem. But he's pretty much always going to be in a plot where he gets to do the right thing and save everyone.

Tony, though? Tony has to do terrible things for the sake of the greater good all the time. He doesn't get to opt out of the decisions. Even on a personal level, he has to do terrible things to himself. He has to decide probably at least half a dozen times whether he should wear the armor even if wearing the armor is hurting him -- say, when he decides to take on the LMD in the arc where he gets his first artificial heart, or in Armor Wars II, or in that storyline in the middle of Busiek's run after he gets beaten up by the Mandarin. And he always decides to wear the armor no matter what the personal cost is to his body. He ends up in a lot of fights where he has to take pretty bad damage to save the world -- and while Steve would also make that decision, Steve's going to heal up and be fine, like in his recent run where Bucky shoots him in the shoulder. He has a healing factor and he's fine in a couple weeks. Tony breaks his back in order to save civilians and then gets addicted to morphine and ruins his life for a good long while. That kind of stuff, with lasting physical consequences, just doesn't happen to Steve. Let's not talk about Streets of Poison.

It's pretty obvious when you look at their biggest fights (say, Civil War and the incursions) that Tony believes that the ends justify the means, and Steve doesn't. However, Steve doesn't exactly have usable alternate suggestions. The plot armor helps him out there. Steve espouses extremely noble ideas, life and liberty and all that… that are not actually workable plans.

And because of how the narrative treats him, he doesn't really need to have workable plans, either. It's not like he actually uses them. Because he's just going to be fine. (Except in the incursions, but everyone came back to life afterward so it's all fine.)

Steve doesn't like the SHRA. Okay. Fine. He believes it's an unjust law. His plan is apparently to just… keep fighting Tony and anyone else who tries to take him into custody for not registering. What's his endgame? Does he have one? His plan appears to be "be on the run from the government forever." As far as I can remember, he would prefer the situation to go back to the way it was but he does not, to my knowledge, ever propose a way of achieving that. He's not out there saying the law itself should be found unconstitutional or anything.

Similarly, with the incursions, after the Gauntlet breaks, the Illuminati have no solution for an incursion that isn't building bombs and destroying the other Earth in the incursion. Either they act to destroy the other Earth, or through inaction, both Earths are destroyed. Big ol' trolley problem. Steve refuses to play. Steve says he can't countenance that. Excellent moral stance. It's very him. He says, "I believe we'll find a way to stop it." He doesn't have any ideas besides "not the thing Tony is doing," which appears to also be his stance about the SHRA. If they'd let Steve stay in the Illuminati… what would he have done? I suppose the possibility exists that if he managed to flip one of the scientists to his side he'd get them to think up an alternate answer. He could have suggested that everyone evacuate Earth. But he doesn't actually have an idea, personally for what to do. Other than "nobody should die."

(That isn't even what happens, in the end. Of course, by the end, Steve is trying to hunt Tony down and kill him, so you could argue that he's not really behaving much like himself there, and neither is Tony.)

Anyway. When you think about it, what Steve wants and what Tony wants, in both scenarios, is pretty much the same thing. They have the same values and the same goals; it's just that the paths they're willing to take are different. But when it comes down to it, they both actually want the exact same thing. Like they do most of the time. They both want to save the world. Except now they're fighting about how to get what they want. The fights are about the details. At least in 616.

We can contrast 616 Civil War with MCU Civil War. I have actually only watched CACW once, so this is going to be fun and possibly inaccurate. The 616 SHRA and the MCU Accords are, very broadly speaking, about the same general topic: government oversight of superheroes. In the MCU, after the disaster in Lagos, the UN decides that they can't just have the Avengers running around wherever they want, exploding things and getting people killed. Tony agrees with the need for UN oversight. Steve does not; he feels that the Avengers should be able to go wherever they need to go without getting caught up in red tape. Here in the MCU, Steve and Tony not only disagree on what the right thing to do is, they disagree on what the right outcome should be, and the reasons for that. Steve wants things the way they were. Tony would be okay with some amount of oversight. They both have different visions of the way the Avengers would look and operate, because they value different things; Steve wants autonomy and Tony wants accountability. The fight isn't just about the details. The fight is about everything.

This isn't the case in 616 Civil War. No one is fighting for (or against) "I, a superhero, should be able to go wherever I want for superhero reasons." UN oversight is one of those things that all the Avengers, including Steve, have agreed about for years; there are panels of Steve asking to get UN clearance before the Avengers zip off to Russia to save Tony. What happens in 616 is that an inexperienced superhero team gets into a fight they can't control, destroying a school in Stamford, CT, with massive casualties. The SHRA is a US bill saying that all American superhumans (which is probably thousands of people) should register with the government, receive training if they want to be heroes, and provide the government with their real names.

Both Steve and Tony are opposed to this, before Stamford. Then, when Stamford happens, Tony realizes the SHRA is happening no matter what and decides to support it. Even with the SHRA in effect, both Steve and Tony think there should be superhuman oversight; Steve just thinks it should be the teams training people up, the same way as they've always done. They don't even disagree about that; Tony also thinks they should be in charge of oversight, but he means himself (and Steve if Steve would ever join him). The people training superheroes would in fact still be them, both of them, no matter which side wins the war. Neither of them trust the government to handle Registration well. Steve's answer is to object to the very idea of Registration and to stay away from the government, and Tony's answer is to get in there and keep the superhero database in his own head so that Gyrich won't get the list of names and start sending Sentinels after everyone.

So they both massively distrust the government's presumed right and/or ability to safely do this, and want to protect superheroes from government oversight as much as possible. That's basically the same stance. Steve just thinks no one should get anywhere near the government, and Tony thinks if he gets in there he can make it less bad. He can be the guy doing the oversight. People who don't register might get arrested but at least they won't be killed by Sentinels, because he can stop that from happening. Steve isn't willing to imprison his friends at all, probably because he doesn't believe Tony when Tony says the only other option is death (i.e., they can't go back to the way things were -- although of course that's eventually what ends up happening, albeit long after Civil War is over). He probably thinks there's a secret third option, because for him there usually is. But what they basically want is the same thing. Tony's just willing to go a little farther than Steve is to get there.

Sure, Tony's plans aren't perfect. But he does have them. Sometimes they're really lousy, because sometimes there is no good solution. I acknowledge that he does a lot of things in Civil War that are actually pretty rotten. I am saying this as a fan of Tony. He does some bad things. He starts a war with Atlantis. He manipulates Peter Parker into unmasking, which has terrible consequences. He builds a prison. He imprisons a lot of his friends. But none of these things involve the government massacring superhumans. The one really, really bad future he's afraid of doesn't happen. (And we know, thanks to that one What If issue, that that's exactly what would happen if he weren't running Registration.) Other bad things happen, yes. But not that, which is the worst.

Steve doesn't want anything bad to happen. Steve just wants the good solutions, with no moral or ethical compromise on his part. and he usually gets them eventually by narrative fiat. Sometimes he has to die first -- which is, of course, what happens in Civil War -- but, eh, whatever, it's comics. That's not really a major drawback for superheroes. And eventually he gets what he wants, because comics return to the status quo. Everything goes back to the way it was.

It's the same thing with the incursions. Neither Steve nor Tony want their Earth to be destroyed, obviously, but Tony is willing to build bombs to destroy the other Earths in case they can't find any other solution. Steve says he thinks there will be another way. And neither of them want to use the bombs! Tony doesn't want to use them at all! The Illuminati don't actually find themselves in a situation where they have to decide whether to bomb a populated Earth until the Great Society incursion, and Tony refuses to be the one to do it. After Namor does it, Tony is distraught and says he thought they'd find another way -- which is the exact same thing Steve said to him except nobody kicked Tony off the Illuminati for saying it. They both have the same attitude. They want the same outcome. They don't want to use the bombs. It's just that Tony's willing to build them. They're pretty much on the same side here about everything (including the desire to not bomb other planets) except the lengths to which Tony is willing to go to have a backup plan. Just like Civil War.

I suppose I would say that, overall, comparing Steve and Tony's relative ethics seems hard to do in a way that is fair to both of them because Steve is so often given the ability to stick to his beliefs in a way that Tony isn't. "What does Steve do when he actually can't do the right thing" is one of those questions that doesn't seem to get explored all that much, except possibly at the end of Hickman's Avengers run, in which everything was going to hell anyway, and it wasn't like he got to be in Secret Wars to try to fix it. He does also tend to quit being Captain America when he doesn't like the government, although I think in that case that's more that doing the right thing at that time is Not Being Captain America.

(Secret Avengers is also a pretty good look at a Steve who has to do bad things and really, really doesn't like the things he's doing. He doesn't handle compromising his own values all that well. I think that would be a whole other essay.)

But anyway, yeah -- I think 616 Steve and Tony are on the same side when they fight, more than you might think they are given how many panels we have of them dramatically punching each other. Tony believes that the ends justify the means, and essentially, a lot of their fights are because Steve disagrees with Tony's means -- but he is very often 100% on board with Tony's actual motives, which I think is a fact that often gets lost when we start talking about their conflicts, because at that point we… want to talk about their conflicts. But I think they really do agree with each other a lot, which is what makes their conflicts so interesting and painful.

[iphigeniainaulis]

Hello, everyone! 💛

Wishing you a happy New Year! It doesn’t really matter, whether it’s snowy or not, cold or hot — I just hope that you’re surrounded by people who cherish and value you for who you truly are.

I know, I’ve been very inconsistent with posting here on Tumblr. Without going into details, let’s just say that the reason behind it is tied up with some sort of technical issues rather than me being busy in real life (though, I am). 

To my surprise, I’ve also found out that I no longer follow so many of my mutuals I was subscribed to (or I thought so). Please, don’t take it personally. Probably, it’s just another technical issue Tumblr gave me as a present. Or somebody is simply about to activate Fish Dory mode (again). 

Anyways, don’t mind me if I appear on your dash with a friend request. Also, it’s completely fine if you’ve already unfollowed me. Life goes by, our interests and hobbies shift gradually. It’s fine.

Speaking of interests. For the last months I’ve posted almost nothing related to the Ikemen games, but it doesn't mean that I no longer associate myself with the fandom. 

(My interest in the Ikemen series, especially Ikevamp, has waned, though. And, to be honest, I put the blame for this matter on Cybird who'd been using the game as its cash cow up until the end of pandemic and then cast aside like an old glove. Ikevamp merely has new events, major of them are repeats. The so-called Act 2.5 is just a filler which contributes neither to the plot nor to the further development of characters. At the same time, Ikeprince, the game that appeared on the international platform later, already has Act 3 on its way and lots of sequels. Not to mention, the general quality of recent arts in Ikevamp is less than satisfactory. And we’re talking about the otome that once was the most popular among all Ikemen games.)

The main problem for me is the lack of available resources I can read and watch in order to stay in tune with the fandom news even during periods of inactivity. Sadly, I can no longer count even on Tumblr as there’s always this uncertainty about whether it’s gonna load or stop working for hours. I’m not trying to excuse myself or beg for your pity (I don’t need it, really). But I ask for understanding, if possible. I can’t write|reblog posts as often as I used to, but even those you see take a lot of time. It may seem unimportant, but I do pay attention to details. Do the posts correlate with each other in terms of color, meaning, message, atmosphere? Haven’t I forgotten to mix texts with pictures? Do the pictures reflect what’s been written by the author of the previous post? Is there a semantic, symbolic chain between the posts?

On a more positive note, during the last few days Tumblr’s been working without delays. So, I hope (I hope!) to be more present and thoroughly thank you for your hard work and endless support.

For you see, it’s such a strong yet fragile feeling — to feel and be loved. 

See you again!

With love,

Iphi

P.S. Please, take this picture of the cinnamon rolls I baked. Wish I could give them to each and every one of you in person, but as for now let’s have a small tea party here, the place where beauty brings peace and poetry wins it all.

[scampir]

Another cohost repost

So the question is, can a dungeon be designed that can be explored in a way that is not imperial. To beat semantics out of the gate, I want to say that the Dungeon is a game artifact (toy) of an unknown place broken up into serial, self-contained rooms (though exceptions are made to subvert expectations). For Imperial, as an adverb, I want to throw out a definition from Tom Nairn and Paul James' Globalization and Violence: where Empire can

"extend relations of power across territorial spaces over which they have no prior or given legal sovereignty, and where, in one or more of the domains of economics, politics, and culture, they gain some measure of extensive hegemony over those spaces to extract or accrue value"

I'm using this definition because I think it aligns well with critiques of the use of "dungeons" as this kind of toy framework in ttrpgs.

Maybe i'm wasting my breath here, but there's a trifecta of verbs that's tied to the og dungeon crawl that I argue fulfills this definition, where we can say that we're playing at imperial relations. It's to Explore (which is not obligated to be but can be read as creating an encounter with an imperial "other"), loot (which is to say, to take regardless of who it belongs to), and to fight, which is to say to use physical violence to overcome obstacles that get in the way of the former two verbs.

Empire can seem too big an organization to apply to a band of haggard thieves who could die to a stiff breeze. With the backdrop of AD&D's lore being tied to a civilization v savagery conflict of law vs chaos it's a lot clearer, but even if you ignore or simply never touch the lore things are happening at the table that make a game out of the imperial relation. So, consider this shitpost allegory:

Dungeon Wildcatting

Let's say that instead of gold for xp it was Oil for xp. By the barrel. That's right. The more barrels of sweet elven crude you get on your character sheet the faster you get your next hit die. Here we are, trying to follow a rumour to where an untapped well of oil might be located. What happens when people are already there who disagree with your goal of setting up a derrick?

What if this is an NSR game where the pcs are in debt? Does that make it interesting? I'm all for compromised characters but I think it's a touch too charitable to forgive violence for economic gain because someone was in debt. It reads very pretty but spoils under scrutiny. In this light, debt as character motivation was really only revolutionary in that it was a way to victimize a player character and make their choices more sympathetic.

You know the A to B from here. It's been in the discourse for like, 6 years now and beyond. This is the dungeon as we know it, as some of us enjoy it, and as some of us critique it.

And now, the Dungeon as Prison

Dungeon is such a misnomer for what the toy is used for. Dungeons are prisons. They lock people away and control them. It's a different kind of game when you go into a prison, because your freedom is what's at stake. This is what I tried to achieve when I ran The Bureau by Goblin Archive in Robins by Coffee as "The Brut". An exercise in trying to scratch away and find a new kind of dungeon politic.

Let's posit this: Is it an imperialist politic when the "dungeon" is a prison complex for a government that persecutes you (in this case a Robin) and others like you, but would happily divide your community into groups that could be bent into useful purposes and those that were too dangerous to even see the light of day? Can you even sell the ritual knives you find in vaults that grow stronger the more blood it drinks? When making sure the best-made boot to put on your neck is their 9-5, are you actually encountering the other, or is this someone in your society that you understand very well actually? When you trespass around a government blacksite, is this actually replicating the colonial adventure just because we use similar verbs? Or does the political context of this imagined oppressive state actually matter? Is there enough substance to connect walking through shared office space or well-funded research labs to connect the two to the point that we can say they are the same or are they different?

I wanted to ask that question and I had been asking it for the 7 months that I ran that megadungeon. What I found was that the players never went in with the plan to make money; only to find out how to stop the place from harming them further. It was all very para-brechtian, and, I am going to say that I'm very happy with myself for at least trying to run a dungeon in a different kind of way. For three design choices I made for this dungeon:

The reason that the game revolved around exploring the dungeon and mapping it was because a state organ built to persecute, assimilate, or exploit Robins built it (or rather, dreamed it) to resist infiltration.

The reason that you have to use violence is because the dungeon was a centralized hub of information used to persecute Robins.

The reason that there are objects of wealth in the dungeon is because there is profit to be made by the state and it's collaborators in rendering the Robins into an underclass.

It's still violence. I didn't let the players forget that the people working in the facility were people too, but at the same time, I am not satisfied playing devil's advocate for fascists. Does this mean that the Dungeon is a container for the dehumanized? That's something I've tried to develop while running ICON 😜. For Robins (playtest version) It was more about reflecting on that dungeon artifact. Toy.

[quietbluejay]

Dark Imperium #8

it's the Make Ultramar Great Again bit PLUS the beginning of Guilliman vs Divinity

okay he says a bunch of nice things about ultramar and then it's on to his current pet cause "i made a mistake by reducing ultramar" yes here we are it's the make ultramar great again speech

Lore: Like father like son. He chooses 4 Space Marines instead of 4 High Lords Civilian though. If that sub-plot of Guilliman becoming a god gets followed through with, maybe he gets to be god of all Space Marines while the Emperor is the god of humanity.

Bluejay: guilliman: since you people didn't do what i asked you to, i'm no longer giving you an option, you're now getting ruled by space marines and you will like it

Lore: Y'know this is completely in character when you think about how the Codex Astartes was put into place. Nobody would reject it because of the IMPLICATION. It's always "I'm giving you a choice, but the other choice will force me to put my boot on your throat."

Bluejay: yeah haley can do some good character work when he wants to unfortunately he did NOT want to with The Lost and the Damned

blah blah blah he's appointing the tetrarchs

hee hee hee hee

hehehehehehe

good for her!!! woman: you deal with semantics good for her!!!

guilliman then talks about how he's very disappointed in everyone for getting hung up on the point that he's breaking one of his own most major rules, come on guys, make me stop being disappointed in humanity

Lore: It's good to see some consistency in the way he refutes or rebuts arguments, especially when he is wrong/hypocritical.

Bluejay: again i can really see how if you go into this book with certain preconceptions, it could have you nodding along with guilliman (especially because most of these people do legitimately suck, lol) people ask what happens to the governors

yeah that's a lot! Guilliman: this is an offer you should not refuse and then Calgar thinks, without a trace of irony…

Guilliman: hey calm down! this is going to make your lives better!

also, Calgar is determined to read everything Guilliman says to him as telling him off

Sky: Honestly not too broken up about this Yeah, Guilliman is being a hypocrite, but the Imperial Governors are all unelected oligarchs so Guilliman is just replacing them with other unelected oligarchs

Bluejay: it really is an ESH situation lol and the depressing thing is, it probably will make a lot of people's lives better

man this really was setting up for that one scene in…i forget which of the next two books it's in the bait and switch scene that slapped me the one that makes it absolutely clear that guilliman is unable to fix the imperium because ultimately, he shares the same mindset

though also sometimes with this book especially, sometimes i wonder if im reading too much my own ideology into it maybe haley isn't doing this on purpose and i should take things at face value

Lore: I dunno. I mean, it feels pretty out-there already in terms of blatant autocracy and the Imperium being a failed state. I at least read it as such, and BL authors and editors have voiced the same sentiment so that reading is probably the more literal one.

The fanciful one would probably be to ardently believe that this is a story about hard men making hard choices, and that brings the greatest amount of good for everyone. (Ignore the billions of sacrifices. Look at my chiseled jaw line and gold trimmings!)

ok back on topic and guilliman also returns to the topic (of the war) his strategy

blah blah Mortarion has The Heart of Darkness that he got from Abaddon and that's how he's doing this so how did guilliman get this info

ynnari mention for once lol

Lore: "do not take their words at face value" proceeds to go with what they said literately without pointing out which parts he thinks are false. tbh, this is just a hail mary attack. Like, this is literally Soviet WW2 style, attack on all fronts and keep attacking until the enemy dies. Divide and Conquer would require baits, feints, delaying tactics, or something. This ain't anything like this.

anyways the device has several sub devices that they have to hunt down and destroy and he's going to go to Espandor first chapter ends there

it's the battle for Espandoria Tertio and it's full of mud and also Primaris they're going after the last of Morty's devices and they have no clue what's ahead of them more of Guilliman politicking, heh some people wanted an orbital bombardment but he said no because hdu kill the imperial citizens that might be alive he later tells felix he doubts anyone will be alive and a big reason for doing it on foot is to make sure the device is actually destroyed

but back on the ground, things aren't going well "unspeakable slurry" Felix steps into quicksand, whoops this is mostly bolter porn tbh, but Felix is once again leeroying it up, if to a milder extent than he did before oh, lmao Haley: slaps book Haley: to go with my Tolkien references, I'm going to have some WWI references

anyways, it's complete chaos oh i remember this bit Felix is vs two Plague Marines

i remember it because i was wondering how tentacle finger man was gripping his weapon

how is he even holding the gun with his writhing, vermicular fingers such are the blessings of nurgle i guess

perhaps a hot take, but if a Plague Marine called me a "pretty little" something I simply would not get within stabbing range

who could have guessed this would happen Felix survives this somehow despite getting strangled and nearly stabbed with a morghul blade lol because a bunch of centurions (?) show up to save him they're from a different chapter but they're all buddies today anyways the Imperium won this one, quelle surprise they came with overwhelming firepower but they still lost a lot of people the centurions adopt him as their new commander and felix keeps picking people up lol there's still fighting going on inside the city

you know, given the nature of the imperial truth, "troubled" is a very mild reaction they head for the central cathedral, there's bodies everywhere etc a solitary bird flies overhead and someone is like "wholesomeness returns" felix: the primarch is gonna fix everything!

Lore: He likes seeing the Emperor everywhere, so it probably balances out. Religion was seen as bad, but obedience to the Emperor is good so Felix is probably put-off by the way the Emperor is glorified as opposed to whether he is glorified or not.

A mob comes out of the cathedral, Felix and co kill them all in 10s flat felix feels no emotions about this Guilliman shows up not long after with his entourage and then goes into the cathedral alone Felix feels like he should go in there to protect him, which he knows is a ridiculous sentiment lol wait he didn't go in alone, the victrix guard and the Sisters went in with him

next up is guilliman grappling with the emperor's divinity

mwah mwah haley's at it "if only they knew," guilliman thinks anyways, the cathedral has been desecrated in a spiritual as well as physical way Guilliman considers the worship of the Emperor to be as pernicious as the efforts of Chaos and…I might be off but I'm kind of getting a feeling that in this series Haley is drawing a comparison between the warping effects that Chaos has and the warping effects that Emperor worship has there have been a load of "not so different" moments so Guilliman is once again doubting his conviction that the Emperor isn't a god, lol

Lore: not sure if Lorgar would be laughing or fuming at this

this is very funny to me right now because the next bit?

librarians: ??? u ok there? guilliman: guilliman: yes where's mortarion's device also Guilliman knows the Sisters' sign language, natch and the device is of course on the altar once again looking like something straight out of steampunk and man me saying Morty had steampunk vibes was here all along, wasn't it

there's a note about Guilliman re-establishing the Sisters of Silence because there weren't many of them before he came back and that he's weirded out by how they worship the Emperor now "Not for the first time, he thought of his brother Lorgar" Lorgar is living in Guilliman's brain rent-free, lol

mwah mwah

the clock is still exterting a mental effect on Guilliman and only the Sisters standing around him are saving him from it, essentially, but it's still breaking through Morty knows what he's doing, huh Guilliman: so this is what Mortarion is up to these days huh Guilliman: does anyone else remember his speech at Nikaea? because I sure do they all figure at this point that Mortarion isn't here which disappoints Guilliman because he wants to fight him

Sky: …does Guilliman actually understand that he's the admin-specced Primarch, not one of the combat-specced ones?

Because I'm starting to think he doesn't actually realise this Like you'd think he'd have figured it out after Fulgrim crippled him

Bluejay: I think he knows but also: 1. he's really stressed 2. he's really stressed and depressed 3. see above, and violence is an outlet for him 4. he's the only primarch walking around and he's been doing pretty well in fights recently

Guilliman gets ready to destroy the device with the Emperor's sword when there's an interruption Mathieu is at the door and wants to come in Guilliman: sure, let him in, this is his church

Mathieu isn't wearing any protective gear Guilliman internally: whoops Guilliman: it's not safe here for you Mathieu: well you're not afraid so why should i be Guilliman: Guilliman: I'm a primarch, Mathieu

this reads like trying to convince your youngest kid to put on a snowsuit because look, sunny, your older sisters have one on Mathieu: eh i'll be fine, i haven't worn one all day and nothing has happened~ he is, indeed, fine Mathieu prays for a bit and then asks "where do they find such hate? how could they want to become this? they have made themselves monsters" mathieu have u forgotten the teachings of your own church on hate

maybe i'm reading too much into this, but is it possible he's also speaking about himself, at least partially? (re the last bit) I think Guilliman feels pretty conflicted about Monarchia Mathieu is kind of weirded out he's speaking so mercifully about them Guilliman: don't get me wrong i'm going to kill them

you know reading this scene, it makes a lot of what happened in the throne room pretty clear even before we finally get to see the flashback though i'm reading with hindsight so maybe that's why it feels like it should have been obvious to me before Mathieu: did He really lie? Guilliman: yeppp. He lied about the nature of the warp "I deduce he wanted to keep my brothers and I from temptation, but instead ignorance left us vulnerable to it" you know, I'm thinking now, if the Emperor had told the primarchs about Chaos (and not just cryptically, lol)…I'm not actually sure it would have stopped most of the traitors, lol the ones it would have helped the most were the loyalists who were way out of their depth like the main one I can think of is Fulgrim, but he could have quite easily been like "yeah i can handle this" I think Lorgar getting drawn into the Chaos gods' orbits was relatively inevitable as long as the Emperor was the Emperor, like, as long as he worshipped the Emperor, Monarchia or something like it was going to to happen Magnus is honestly also arrogant enough to think he could handle it, Morty's daemonic research…I'm not sure. I think it depends on if you're going with Swallow!Mortarion or Wraight!Mortarion Horus also didn't really have much of a choice Angron didn't have a real choice either and probably wouldn't have cared that much if he had well he'd have cared if he had basically full knowledge of what would have happened to him but he's not gonna have that in this scenario

next time we'll continue with the meat of the scene! man this is the best bit of the book

[rosencrantzsguildenstern]

my pandora hearts playlist! i decided to go for something a little different than the existing ph playlists, at the cost of excluding some good songs. the theme here is "hype bangers"—songs with fast bpms, and specifically, i'm focusing on songs with weird energy and circus energy (while not valuing that over lyrics). like all my playlists, it's got a chronological outlook with sections! brief (and i actually mean brief, otherwise i will go insane--okay no it's not brief but i'm still restraining myself) breakdown under the cut :) (spoilersss)

wonderland (neoni) -> circus (stray kids): introductory songs to set up the vibe and the themes. ideas of distrust, lots of fitting lyrics, and undead setting up the main trio and big plot points while wonderland and polkadot politics have "welcome to the show" vibes.

"This is a question of semantics, not of right and wrong!" / A pretty picture in a most disturbing way / You'll find me where you lost your mind / (Where is that?) / Oh my… / A slight conviction, contradiction has been standardized / You lack the evidence to prove you're not insane / Obscure, ambiguous, your lies / Oh my… / Criticize, you close your eyes / Pretending not to realize that you're the one to blame / Say your prayers for the new generation / Grieve for those who have to fold to the times / Shine your light upon the degeneration / Why? / Oh my…

bitter choco decoration: oz

I try not to hurt anyone, / Not to pick on anyone, not to kill anyone/On the other hand, I try not to let my hypocrisy be seen,/ Not to get on my high horse

I try not to forget to add in a few light-hearted jokes and a touch of lip service / I try to smile and show off my charisma whenever I can

Bitter Chocolate Decoration/Eat it all without saying a thing/Bitter Chocolate Decoration/You're such a picky eater, you really need to fix that

wonderland (caravan palace) -> i DO what i WANT: alice

Baby I am just/A bad girl with an ego/Can’t help living In my own world,/Call me evil/Gotta get along/With no one,/Y’all are no fun/No fun no fun

slipping through my fingers: gil

Schoolbag in hand, she leaves home in the early morning/Waving goodbye with an absent-minded smile/I watch her go with a surge of that well-known sadness/And I have to sit down for a while

dancing around in circles until my little feet fall off: instrumental transition with our lovely weird mochijun vibes

butterfly knife -> anti-queen of hearts: vince

So I feel like a freak, and I know that I'm not/But I'll stay feeling weak till you get what you want/Do you mean what you say when you are far away/Regardless of if you do or not, you can cut my heart out With a butterfly knife/I won't put up a fight/Chop me up and tear me down and throw me to the fucking ground/Where you'll find my brain, a material plane/And I know someday you'll find me in the sand and the grain and say/Nothing's ever ever felt so good

midas touch -> DNT TRN ME UP: vince and ada

I'm tryna figure you out, catch a vibe/Tryna see other sides of your mind/Open your eyes, never know what you'll find/You told me it's time, babe/Ain't no waiting/Don't wanna complicate it/Just know I'm yours

take me to clown church: instrumental transition to past arc!

god-ish: establishing the past trio

Love ends in breaking up or there something close/Your life ends in dying out or something close/Man, it's so damn interesting 'cause I wouldn't know/Only guessing the story's end here's how it goes

#brooklynbloodpop! -> finale ii: jacklacie, jack individually, lacie individually, and whatever the hell they were doing

A problematic desire/I'm just a gun with the hire/I'll pop your skull and your tires/I want your feeling and everything in your fiber/Uh, uh-uh-uh-uh-uh/Munchin', popping on bubblegum/Yeah, I feel you on my tongue/Lick across the clip of my gun/Am I, am I in love?/Or am I off the drugs?/Your girl say I fuck like a thug/She wants kisses over blunts/Let the chains hit her face/Gunshots feel like a blade/Swerve the car make me race/Suicide's a mistake/Snipers chill with berets/Push you off the edgе (brooklyn blood pop)

The tightrope falls, broken by others/What a lady, she’s gonna jump/towards the light and shatter humiliatingly/That’s her future/High and without care I’m lonely, lonely/From their idle words, the clown becomes a prisoner/It’s the same love as always, no way I’d have regrets (love ka?)

hotel for clowns -> housewife radio: alyss after all that

Oh my god, is that girl insane?/Something must've broke her brain/Oh my god, will she be okay?/Cyanide and candy canes

self medicated -> casino: elliot and leo

Memories/Keeping pace with a sneer/Reply in moderation/The perpetrator is still you today/Loneliness is simple/Don’t hit, bullets /Avoid them and you’ll be respectable today too In the mud Te Ta Ta/Drop the needle Te Ta Ta/Being judged for nothing Te Ta Ta/Keep your mouth shut Te Ta Ta/Hold your breath Te Ta Ta/Break your ears Te Ta Ta /Both red and black are Te Ta Ta/God’s whimsy

amygdala's rag doll: oz; as well as some elliot and leo, glens, and the general escalation of plot

Say we take what had been torn apart/Say we mend any patchwork discord/Turning eyes to the trypo-puppeteer/I can't exhale anymore/So, one, two, three, and we'll tie the tourniquet/Pull my skin and swallow ichor/Fire burns, and the rags are torn apart/I can't inhale anymore Day by day and day after day, I'm causing trouble anyway/Pull the fire alarm, I never meant any harm/Never meant any harm/Well, say my limbs are torn apart, and all the stuffing falls out/Let the toy wind down, it should've never been wound/I never meant any harm

masquerade: everything's a story and we're all fucked!

This world is a Masquerade/A ball of masked, dancing souls/Eyes merely reflecting our true embrace/My destiny is collapsing

aura: resolutions; summary, emotional resolution, meeting alyss in the abyss

I'm defined by guesswork analogies/Documenting daily life Tell me, I'll be alright/Open-eyed, entangled in absentees/Stories of a child's past, autopsied broken glass/My aura shines at last

命に嫌われている/"hated by life itself": emotional resolution, main trio, the ultimate ending of pandora hearts

We who were but youths at some point start to change into young adults./Growing old, one day we rot away like fallen leaves, with not a soul in the world knowing of our existence.../Obtaining an immortal body, and living our whole existence without dying…/… I'm just daydreaming about these kinds of science fiction situation.

I couldn't care a bit if I die,/but I'm wanted alive by the people around me,/living on carrying such contradictions...I think I'll get yelled at.

"Things that are "correct" should stay "correct"."/"If you don't want to die, then live."/If we're going to end up sad and if that's fine,/then you gotta laugh alone forever.

dog years: the bpm finally slows down for gil's sake, as he waits alone for one hundred years.

Not in vain/We'll still stay the same/Inside your mind/For all of time/Singing, ooh/We will be alright/In the afterlife/In the afterlife

I count my time in dog years, dog years, dog years, dog years, dog years/We will be alright (dog years, dog years)/We will be alright (dog years, dog years)/In the afterlife (dog years, dog years, dog years, dog years)/Singing, baby, we will be alright (dog years, dog years)/We will be alright

[carmenlire]

Semantic Error Omegaverse AU

Been back on my Semantic Error bullshit the past week and I can NOT stop thinking about how perfectly these two would fit an omegaverse au like i'm obsessed!! Jaeyoung is obviously an alpha, however, a lot of people assume that Sangwoo is a beta but he is, in fact, an omega! So enjoy 4.5k words of me describing in excruciating detail what I would write if I wrote this fic <3

I can't decide between making this a world where everyone wears scent blockers/is on suppressants or letting Jaeyoung know immediately that Sangwoo's an omega (because betas don't have to wear scent blockers so wearing them would be a dead giveaway but I could make the sleight of hand work with suppressants HOWEVER I think a core part of this au would be that people who look at Sangwoo see a cold, driven man and just assume he's a beta).

Obviously, I would make this au deliciously tropey and fit in ALL of That Good Shit but I am very taken with the idea/exploration that Sangwoo actually enjoys being an omega. I think masking his subgender would be useful to him but when it's just him or his friends/family, he is very comfortable with who he is-- he obviously does not believe in any of the stereotypes/misconceptions that paint omegas as inferior or needing protecting or only good for one thing or whatever cliche you wanna throw in there.

Alright, we'll say unmated people are expected to be on suppressants so that solves that issue-- this comes with the caveat that omegas/alphas still have two cycles a year in order to keep everything properly maintained (compared to idk the regular 4 cycles a year). I'll hc that it's like a daily pill and it wears off toward the end of the day and that's when individuals may choose scent blockers if they're going to be out longer but obviously in this au, like going to a club with a scent on display would be like The Whole Point in trying to attract someone so i'll digress.

ANYWAY like I said, Sangwoo is very driven and still comes off as very cold so most people assume he's a beta. That suits Sangwoo just fine. He's in no mood for romance and finds alphas fucking insufferable-- always posturing, acting like they're god's gift to the world (to omegas specifically) and he doesn't have time for distractions. however, and I personally think this is important to tie his personality into this AU– he actively enjoys being an omega. 

His parents knew before he presented that he’d be an omega– he enjoyed nesting with his father and if he cares about someone, has a habit of doting on them. Sangwoo knows and values the importance of biology right so it fits that when he does have free time, then he indulges shamelessly in his nature. So, for this AU, I love to think that his bed is a very warm and inviting nest, that he enjoys baking (like I’ve written in previous fics, it fits his analytical mind AND he was a sweet tooth and for this, it’s a way he cares for people). 

And while he’s never had a partner for his heats, Sangwoo does enjoy them. With an acknowledgement that this could get a little messy re: subgenders/biology, this is first and foremost a pure fluff fic and so–

I think heats, particularly for this verse, can be both sexual (need to procreate) and simply biological (need to bond with mate). Again in keeping with the show, Sangwoo puts an abundance of meaning on biology. So while he doesn’t have a mate to bond or produce offspring with during his heats as an unmated omega, there’s still something about them that is deeply meaningful to him.

I hc that they’re less sexual for him (until Jaeyoung lol) and serves as more of an opportunity to connect with his own inner omega. He spends a few days every six months resting in his nest– or broadly, his apartment, where he allows himself to not think about homework or anything. It’s just him being. He bakes, sleeps, watches tv, reads… it makes him feel incredibly centered. And yes, he does own a knotting toy and it is ONLY during his heats that he begrudgingly admits that maybe alphas do have a use after all lmao.

To bring Jaeyoung into it and get this AU started properly, Jaeyoung figures Sangwoo’s a beta– though, the instant before Sangwoo opens his mouth and flays him alive, Jaeyoung does have the thought that Sangwoo has to be an omega– small (much smaller than Jaeyoung at least even if he’s a tall omega), beautiful, and there’s just something about him that compels Jaeyoung.

Of course, after that first conversation, Jaeyoung is compelled by Sangwoo, alright– to be an absolute menace and get his revenge. Lol.

The two get closer, following canon, and Jaeyoung doesn’t realize that Sangwoo is actually an omega until after he saves him from the Quickst asshole. In this AU, Sangwoo wanted to leave because the guy was being a dick, yes, but also because he was well aware that it was getting late and his suppressants were about to wear off– hence, his scent would start to escape.

He refuses to admit that Jaeyoung stepping in kinda make his omega preen– they’re in tune but Sangwoo still thinks that his omega can be a bit baffling (though, he’s only started to really think so since Jaeyoung stepped into the picture).

That’s also mostly the reason Sangwoo doesn’t want to let Jaeyoung into his apartment. He doesn’t let people into his apartment because he’s private yes but also because he knows his scent is undeniable. Still, he’s not an asshole (and, both he and his omega trust Jaeyoung for…. Some reason) so he does end up letting him in.

Jaeyoung is immediately overwhelmed as soon as he steps inside Sangwoo’s apartment. He’d thought, for a minute when he grabbed Sangwoo’s hand and dragged him out of the bar, that he’d caught the faintest edge of a mouthwatering scent but he’d been preoccupied. It becomes glaringly obvious now, though, that it was Sangwoo. That vague scent from the bar is nothing compared the rich, overwhelming scent he’s confronted with now.

If I lean into the trope, I guess I’d make it something that could be sharp– citrus, maybe, that can be sour and sharp but turns sweet and soft when Sangwoo is comfortable. I think that would fit his personality. For Jaeyoung, definitely something earthy, complimentary to citrus– though I’m not sure what that would necessarily be lmao.

Anyway, Jaeyoung is reeling but Sangwoo is business as usual though Jaeyoung swears he sees the shell of his ear turning red. Jaeyoung is a gentleman, though, despite how he’s acted with Sangwoo and he doesn’t comment on the scent (it would be declasse and Sangwoo is actually helping him, he’s let Jaeyoung in and– especially now that he knows he’s an omega– it’s an incredibly meaningful gesture that Jaeyoung and his alpha appreciate).

He doesn’t bring it up until Sangwoo is tending to the cut on his arm and this is the conversation that turns the tide. Jaeyoung is tentative but undeniably curious, asking Sangwoo why he hides his subgender, letting everyone assume he’s a beta. Jaeyoung is surprised, yet again, when Sangwoo matter-of-factly tells him that he doesn’t hate his subgender, actually enjoys it. It isn’t an inconvenience or whatever. It’s something Sangwoo likes about himself.

They’re both stripped down in the quiet of Sangwoo’s living room and come closer to reaching that middle ground. Through it all, Jaeyoung can’t stop thinking about how delicious Sangwoo’s scent is and how he was right to make that long ago guess. It’s so obvious, especially now that Sangwoo isn’t wearing a hat– his lush mouth, delicate features, making it so clear.

Jaeyoung had a red hoodie and leaves it at Sangwoo’s that night. He might not realize it at the time but it’s, obviously, his alpha’s way of staking a claim on Sangwoo, placing his scent in the omega’s space.

Jaeyoung figures Sangwoo will return it to him the next day and forgets about it when he doesn’t.

Sangwoo for his part, closes the door behind Jaeyoung when Yuna calls and slumps against it. It was so late and Jaeyoung’s own suppressants had started wearing off. Sangwoo had never cared for alpha scents, despite supposed biological compatibility– they were too aggressive, altogether unpleasant and stinging in his nose. 

Jaeyoung’s, however, was different. It wasn’t dark or musky but something lush, deep with just a hint of sweetness that made Sangwoo inexplicably want to bury his nose in Jaeyoung’s neck to tease it out further, until it was all he could smell, surrounding him.

He’d expected Jaeyoung to be an ass about finding out he was an omega. While Sangwoo didn’t hide it, he let people make their assumptions. Jaeyoung had surprised him, though.

When Sangwoo finally straightens, his eyes immediately lock on the red hoodie laying over the arm of his couch. He frowns deeply, glaring at it. He should return it to Jaeyoung tomorrow. 

He doesn’t.

And a few weeks later, when Sangwoo’s preheat starts, he’s heading out the door when his gaze snags on the hoodie, still in the exact same spot. It’s Thursday and he’s glad that his heat won’t disrupt his classes this time around. Thanking the fact that he always has a buffer in his schedule, Sangwoo reaches out for the hoodie and raises it to his nose. Jaeyoung’s scent isn’t nearly as present as it was that night but it’s still detectable when he buries his face in it. Something in him calms, preens a little at the scent of an alpha who Sangwoo can admit he… doesn’t quite despise.

It is fall, the morning chilly, Sangwoo rationalizes as he takes his backpack off to put the hoodie on. Plus, Jaeyoung had told him just yesterday that, unfortunately, he had a meeting with an advisor and wouldn’t be able to annoy him today, so there’s no chance that Jaeyoung will find out that Sangwoo is wearing this monstrosity of a hoodie.

As soon as he slips it on, Sangwoo finds himself letting out the quietest purr. It’s oversized, hanging down to mid-thigh, and feels like it’s wrapping him in pure warmth. Lifting the hood to cover his hair, Sangwoo feels content, like going to class during preheat won’t be so miserable after all (for all he enjoys being an omega, it is sometimes inconvenient– like when he’s just in preheat, hoodie able to hide the scent blockers, and has to go to class because there’s a quiz).

It’s just his luck that he leaves class, hoodie still over his head, to run into a wall– that turns out to be Jang Jaeyoung. Startled, Sangwoo’s head whips up and he immediately stills at the look in Jaeyoung’s eyes.

Jaeyoung, for his part, wrapped his meeting up earlier than expected and found himself on the way to meet Sangwoo almost subconsciously. If he thought his need to bother Sangwoo was bad before he found out he was an omega, it’s been downright awful now that he knows. Jaeyoung finds himself seeking Sangwoo out even more often, anytime he has a free moment and knows where Sangwoo is. Yuna calls him a whipped alpha and Jaeyoung can’t even defend himself. Now, seeing Sangwoo in his glaringly red hoodie– seeing an omega he can’t stop thinking about in his hoodie– Jaeyoung’s alpha wants nothing more than to press Sangwoo against the wall and scent him, cover him completely so that no one can see how cute Sangwoo looks while at the same time wanting to preen that Sangwoo deigned to wear something of his in public, at all really.

Sangwoo stiffly replies that he wore it because it was cold this morning and it was sitting right there on the couch. Jaeyoung has his Sangwoo Smile on his face, the one that’s so wide it has to hurt, eyes crinkled in pure delight. They’ve grown closer the past few weeks, guards/defenses inching down, and so Jaeyoung warns Sangwoo, “I’m going to touch you now,” and lays a surprisingly gentle arm over Sangwoo’s shoulders.

To his surprise, Sangwoo doesn’t shake him off. Instead, he leans into Jaeyoung’s warmth– just a little but Jaeyoung, of course, notices. Something in him growls, protectively, happily, at the action.

Sangwoo doesn’t notice the stares as he and Jaeyoung make their way across campus. He knows he aced his quiz but a headache is building behind his eyes, a dull ache starting up in his middle. Typical preheat symptoms but still annoying. It’s cloudy, wind chilly, and he shivers deeper into Jaeyoung’s side, sleeves covering his hands and arms wrapped around his middle.

Jaeyoung looks down, frowning. Sangwoo looks even smaller like this and it’s adorable but unlike him. Looking closer, he sees a flush on Sangwoo’s cheeks.

“Sangwoo,” he asks, “Are you feeling okay?”

Sangwoo shrugs and explains matter-of-factly that his preheat has started.

Jaeyoung’s eyes widen though Sangwoo doesn’t see his reaction.

Jaeyoung isn’t sure what he’s feeling– there’s surprise, that Sangwoo just admitted his heat was right around the corner. He doesn’t know why, but Jaeyoung thought he’d be shy about it. There’s his baser reaction which he isn’t necessarily proud of but can admit, at least to himself– he has the immediate desire to be Sangwoo’s heat partner. Jaeyoung has a need to see what Sangwoo is like during his heat– is he as demanding as he is regularly or does it turn into neediness, edges softened?

Jaeyoung would like whatever way Sangwoo acts during his heat, he knows, but his curiosity is suddenly ignited like a wildfire. And yes, there’s the sudden visions of Sangwoo under him, eyes blurred with want.

But Jaeyoung’s also driven with a need to protect, to care for– and it’s this that he acts on. He steers Sangwoo off campus after asking when his heat will hit in earnest and Sangwoo replying the morning. It’s lunchtime now and Jaeyoung takes Sangwoo to a nearby restaurant.

Sangwoo doesn’t display his usual stubbornness, prickly exterior melting into something more agreeable as he seems willing enough to let Jaeyoung lead the way. It’s a nice change of pace, Jaeyoung can admit, but he knows he’d miss Sangwoo’s mulishness if this was how it always was lol.

They sit at a small table in the corner and Jaeyoung knows the ahjumma who runs the place. She coos over Sangwoo and Jaeyoung’s surprised, again, when Sangwoo lets her.

She returns with hearty portions and teases them both– something about Jaeyoung finding the cutest omega in Seoul or telling Sangwoo that if Jaeyoung proves to be a useless alpha to let her know and she’ll straighten him up.

The food is hot and smells delicious and Jaeyoung doesn’t even think before he reaches for the first mandu and lifts it up to Sangwoo’s mouth. Sangwoo, for his part, does spare a moment to think about shoving Jaeyoung away. 

He rolls his eyes internally, thinks of Jaeyoung as an overzealous alpha– just because he knows he’s in preheat doesn’t mean he has to feed him what is this, the joseon era– but Sangwoo’s omega is closer to the surface than usual and all he really feels after a pinprick of annoyance is warmth. He feels a little miserable and he trusts this alpha– like him too, he can admit to himself if not aloud yet– and he accepts the bite of food from Jaeyoung’s chopsticks.

Jaeyoung’s lips part in surprise at Sangwoo’s easy acquiescence. His alpha and him watch Sangwoo chew carefully, pride and satisfaction in his eyes. The meal continues like that– Jaeyoung feeding Sangwoo the best pieces of chicken, the crispest bites of vegetables– until Sangwoo finally waves him away, full.

Jaeyoung swiftly finishes the meal off and it’s only when the check comes that a hint of Sangwoo’s usual snappishness reappears. He insists on paying, then at least paying half, but Jaeyoung doesn’t have any of it.

Sangwoo rolls his eyes at Jaeyoung being an annoying alpha but Jaeyoung doesn’t pay it any attention, just returning his arm to where it was resting over Sangwoo’s shoulders as he guides them out of the restaurant with a cheery wave to the ahjumma.

They makes small talk on the way back to their apartment building about a new movie or the upcoming deadline for Veggie Venturer. Sangwoo doesn’t even notice until they’re at his door that Jaeyoung had carried his backpack from the restaurant.

At Sangwoo’s door, Jaeyoung finds it even more difficult than usual to turn to his own door and leave Sangwoo. Sangwoo’s leaning against his door and Jaeyoung stands just in front of him.

They watch each other for a moment and Sangwoo has an urge to ask Jaeyoung something but it’s foolish, too much he knows. But still he wants it and so does his omega. His usual defenses are softened by preheat and by Jang Jaeyoung. He’s already learned that’s a devastating combination.

“Hyung,” he asks voice quiet and unsure.

Jaeyoung hums, eyes flitting from the fullness of Jaeyoung’s cheeks, to the way his hoodie sleeves completely cover Sangwoo’s hands. It’s too soon, Jaeyoung thinks, to look at Sangwoo and see him as mine.

“Will you scent me?”

That was not what Jaeyoung was expecting and his gaze snaps up to meet Sangwoo’s even as his alpha preens.

It’s not even a question and Jaeyoung hates the way Sangwoo’s gaze is shadowed with uncertainty, a hint of insecurity. It’s the first time he’s ever seen that look on Sangwoo and he never wants to see it again– displeased that it’s this question that would bring it out, like Jaeyoung wouldn’t love to, like he isn’t fighting the urge to immediately bury his face in Sangwoo’s neck.

He leans down and watches enraptured as the flush on Sangwoo’s cheek grows deeper. “Are you sure, Sangwoo? If this is the preheat talking, if you wouldn’t ask otherwise–”

“I’m sure,” comes Sangwoo’s voice, quiet but sure. He bites his lip, looking away. “I don’t know what it’s like for other omegas but I don’t– I’m still in possession of all my faculties. I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t want it.”

Jaeyoung is still for a moment before exhaling. He smiles, something softer than his usual smirking grin. “Then I’d love to, Sangwoo-ah.”

He goes to lean down just to be stopped by Sangwoo’s hand on his chest. Confused, Sangwoo just shakes his head and gestures to his door. “Not out here, hyung. It isn’t decent.”

Jaeyoung’s nodding along distractedly before the words catch up and he steels himself.

Because seeing a Sangwoo in preheat is a lot. Being asked to scent Sangwoo makes his head spin. But getting to scent Sangwoo in Sangwoo’s apartment– did he mention he’s in preheat? Omegas are notoriously protective of their spaces when they’re in heat and Jaeyoung knows the simple fact of Sangwoo asking him to scent him should have been clue enough but Sangwoo inviting him in, sends his heart skyrocketing.

As soon as the door opens, Jaeyoung inhales sharply. It isn’t overwhelming but it’s present– Sangwoo’s scent is deeper. Nothing like it will be during actual heat but the hint is there, something headier in the usual mouthwatering scent that Jaeyoung has only caught once.

Sangwoo closes the door, leaning against it again, this time inside the apartment. He peels the scent blocker off with little fuss, stuffing it in his pocket. He then reaches out, wraps careful fingers in the soft material of Jaeyoung’s sweater and pulls him closer, gently, like he’s afraid Jaeyoung doesn’t really want to come.

How preposterous, Jaeyoung thinks.

Before he can even open his mouth, Sangwoo is offering, “You can touch me, hyung,” and Jaeyoung spares a moment to wonder how he’s going to survive this.

Slowly, Jaeyoung wraps an arm low around Sangwoo’s back, stepping closer. He leans down and Sangwoo’s scent makes him dizzy already. It’s sweet, calm, and Jaeyoung has the overwhelming need to let it soak into him, wants to cover it with his own scent and see how they mingle. It’s made all the better by the fact that Sangwoo clearly wants this, too, that he asked Jaeyoung for his scent– that he wants Jaeyoung’s scent on him, at all but during his heat.

He can’t help the quiet grumble as his nose makes contact with Sangwoo’s neck. He takes his time, carefully presses against Sangwoo’s scent gland, and thanks to how close they are, Jaeyoung can feel Sangwoo melt into him.

Sangwoo tilts his neck to give him easier access and Jaeyoung lets loose a little more, touch firming up, incessant. He can smell the way his own scent intertwines with Sangwoo’s– something fresh and bright.

It takes him a moment to clue in but Sangwoo’s started purring, a hand lifted into Jaeyoung hair to keep him in place like Jaeyoung would want to be anywhere except right here, mind clouding over with Sangwoo’s scent.

They lose track of time but eventually Jaeyoung pulls back, dazed, just to see Sangwoo looking like he’s about to melt into the floor, pliant and soft.

“Thank you, hyung.”

Jaeyoung’s voice is low, hoarse. “Anytime, Sangwoo.”

Jaeyoung leaves just a few minutes later, taken aback but not at all unhappy when Sangwoo suddenly calls out and darts up to kiss his cheek before slamming the door in his face.

The weekend is torturous knowing Sangwoo’s in heat on the other side of the wall they share. He leaves food for him outside and tries to focus on a project he’s working on with Yuna.

It’s early the next week before he sees Sangwoo, who comes bearing a tray of brownies he made to thank Jaeyoung. And Jaeyoung doesn’t know it yet but Sangwoo baked them at the tail-end of his heat, still clearheaded but mind a little gooey at the edges. His focus at the time– the entire duration of his heat, really– had been Jaeyoung. He’d wanted to give Jaeyoung something, made with his own hands. He watches, more anxious than he lets on, as Jaeyoung’s obviously delighted by the unexpected treat. He immediately tries one and moans at how good it is, his usual goofball self. Sangwoo scoffs at his dramatic reaction but inside, his omega is deeply satisfied.

Jaeyoung starts courting Sangwoo a bit more overtly– really, he’d been doing it since the beginning, though he hadn’t realized. Again, this is pure fluff so a lot of his “revenge” was him backwards courting Sangwoo lmao.

Moving on, the first time Sangwoo lets Jaeyoung into his nest has got to be A Moment. Maybe it’s late at night and they just finished working on Veggie Venturer. They’re a couple in all but name only– Sangwoo has accepted all of Jaeyoung’s courting, though he might not necessarily realize it!! He wears Jaeyoung’s clothes, accepts his gifts, enjoys their time together in the same bone-deep way Jaeyoung does. Jaeyoung, for his part, is just content to take it at Sangwoo’s pace and take what he’s given. He knows the path they’re on and he’s in no particular rush as long as they heading the right way.

So it’s late at night and Sangwoo is tired and leaning against Jaeyoung from where they’re sitting on his couch. He says it’s time to rest and Jaeyoung rouses himself to head home but Sangwoo stops him, asks if he wants to spend the night.

Exhausted, Jaeyoung says sure, assuming he’ll be on the couch but then Sangwoo takes his hand and starts leading him into his bedroom and Jaeyoung can’t believe it. Suddenly wide awake, Sangwoo turns him toward the bathroom to get ready and he does in a daze. When he comes out, Sangwoo’s in bed– no, in his nest, and Jaeyoung’s heart simultaneously turns over and goes into overdrive.

The nest is surprisingly full, though maybe Jaeyoung should finally stop being so surprised at evidence that Sangwoo indulges happily in his omega nature.

Just in a tshirt and boxers, Jaeyoung stands next to the bed, unsure. It’s wellknown that absolutely no one is to enter an omega’s nest without their permission and sure, Sangwoo said he could sleep in his bed but what if he’s changed his mind–

His thoughts splinter when Sangwoo looks over his shoulder. “What are you waiting for, hyung?”

And, well, okay.

Gently, Jaeyoung climbs into Sangwoo’s nest. And fuck, if he thought Sangwoo’s scent was overwhelming before, it’s nothing to this. Sangwoo’s scent is concentrated deep into the blankets, surrounding them, and Jaeyoung feels lightheaded.

He lays down, breath shuddering as Sangwoo wiggles back into him, as he takes Jaeyoung’s arm and lays it over his waist.

Jaeyoung’s overwhelmed but still so exhausted and he falls asleep almost immediately.

The next morning, Sangwoo wakes up with his head on Jaeyoung’s chest and, still mostly asleep, finds himself searching for Jaeyoung’s scent gland. Jaeyoung’s scent mingled with his, in his nest, makes Sangwoo purr with satisfaction.

He never really understood when omegas talked about how satisfying it was to find a partner and figured it was just biological compatibility. Sangwoo feels that it’s more than that, though, that he does get it now. It makes his omega feel safe and warm. It makes Sangwoo happy. And it’s illogical and too fast but Sangwoo knows that his omega and him are starting to consider Jaeyoung his mate. Not now, but eventually.

Still half asleep, Sangwoo shifts until he can bury his nose in Jaeyoung’s scent and Jaeyoung wakes up to his omega, his Sangwoo, scenting him. He’s happy, giddy with the thought that Sangwoo is staking a claim on him, finally. That might not be his goal or even on his radar but it is undeniably a fact.

I might imagine that this is their first kiss– or first time depending on how the relationship has progressed to this point.

Then we get into Sangwoo’s heat (so this fic takes place over maybe 8 months?) and I’ll HC that this time around, Sangwoo asks Jaeyoung to be his partner and Jaeyoung absolutely melts. It turns out that Sangwoo is very soft and needy– not demanding at all, just very pliant. It’s also, like I said in the beginning, not just sexual. The sex they do have is very slow and gentle and overwhelming but they spend just as much time just being together– they cook dinner together, watch a movie with Jaeyoung’s head resting on Sangwoo’s stomach, making out with Sangwoo in Jaeyoung’s lap. Jaeyoung has a thing for marking Sangwoo and when they’re knotted together, they’re both so happy and giggling as they talk, Sangwoo surprisingly rambling about some silly topic and Jaeyoung so, so found as he listens.

And then, of course, there’s an epilogue with them mating and Sangwoo pregnant and them having kids <3 literally just all the fun fluff parts of an omegaverse AU I literally think it would fit them so, so well!!!!

[heyjude19-writing]

An observation I've recently had I'd love to share and get your take on. As we both love drarry and dramione fics to death.

I feel like Hermione requires for her pairing to work, a mature version of whomever is going to fit as her love interest. Someone who is academically brilliant, who is intelligent, someone who is enchanting and brilliant. She greater than life bc she is as well to the public and in her group of friends. Which requires more from Draco as a pairing, in order for him to fit the bill. So when we read Draco he often puts away his childish antics as a relic from the past and doesn't let the semantical petty stuff.

Vs. with Drarry it seems that Harry only rubs salt on those traits further. that Harry sometimes being a childhood rival and maybe someone who regresses Draco back to his silly ways and so the arc for redemption is harder and longer bc for Drarry to work, Draco needs to be exposed to Harry in order for it to work. Harry and Draco might have had a crush and soft spot for each other in those states growing up so Harry doesn't require Draco to step up and become impressive in Hermione's eyes. Harry is a lot more simple and requires of Draco less. But through exposure, we see a great payoff with Draco's redemption we took for granted in dramione bc Draco must normally be already putting his ways to the past in order to progress romantically with Hermione.

What do you make of this? I'd love to know your take.

hi anon!

this was a fun thought exercise :)

I do think hermione requires someone with intelligence, or who at least values intelligence, for sure. I don't know that "brilliance" is a req for her, but someone who will at least appreciate her intellect and not dismiss it and can hold their own when conversing with her. and yes it's fair to say for a dramione dynamic, draco should have done a lot (A LOT) of work pre-relationship on himself or she's unlikely to even consider him as an option. he's unlearning all the bigotry first.

but i think not holding harry to that same standard does a disservice to both his and draco's character. while yes, i do think his and draco's antagonistic relationship is rooted more in the personal and petty rather than ideological, i don't see harry interested in someone who would refer to his best friend and his own mother as a slur. in a drarry dynamic, i do see their disagreements being petty and immature and i think they're both quick to regress to that state with each other, but i wouldn't say that harry requires less of draco in a romantic relationship.

[eldritchsurveys]

1291.

Do you have any travel plans? Any recent travel? >> No travel plans. It may be a while before we see any new vistas. Our last trip was to Frankenmuth, which is only a couple of hours away.

Have you read anything good lately? >> I've been reading Warhammer 40k novels lately and they're quite interesting to me. Have you watched anything good lately? >> I saw The Monkey which was neat. I'm really enjoying Riverdale s6 although the fact that Percival Pickens makes me soooo mad is vexing to me, a known villain enjoyer. I shouldn't want to punch him as badly as I do, but my god. And I have given Neon Genesis Evangelion another try, for the third time, and I finally seem to be the right version of me to enjoy it. Well. "Enjoy" may not be the correct word for a show like that, lmao, but you get it. What type of music do you like listening to? >> I like listening to the kind of music that sounds good to my earballs. There's really no other way to answer that, because what sounds good to me is not restricted by genre or any other easy method of categorisation. Have you been to any good restaurants lately? >> Just Bistro (forget what the full name of it is), earlier this month, but what I had this time wasn't as good as what I had the first time I went, sooo.

Have you cooked anything good lately? >> Everything I cook is good to me, which is why I cook it :V Wouldn't put in that effort for something I didn't really want. I haven't been making anything complex lately (been favouring lighter meals), but I did make some eggs with frozen spinach in the other day that I enjoyed.

What’s your go-to drink? >> I barely drink at all anymore but since I mentioned Bistro, they have a lavender negroni that tastes like it was created specifically for me.

Do you have any pets? >> I don't, but Sparrow has a cat. He's their pet, I just happen to live with him.

Which area of your town do you live in? How do you like it? >> The northwest area just above downtown. I don't like this city at all but there are some things about this part of the city that I value (proximity to bus lines, proximity to downtown, lots of side streets to take strolls on).

Where did you grow up? >> New Jersey.

What’s your astrological sign? >> Scorpio ascendant, Gemini Sun, Gemini moon.

What are you most looking forward to tonight? >> Uh... going to sleep?? That's what I do at night. Sleep.

What’s been the highlight of your year so far? >> Sparrow's tax return, which was bigger than usual because of something related to being a student, I don't know the specifics. I got to buy some nice things.

Who do you like spending time with? Are you close? .

How did you end up living in this city/town/area? >> I was in an internet-based LDR with someone who lived here and eventually circumstances (finances, mainly) aligned to have us live together.

What’s something you’ve accomplished recently that you’re proud of? >> It's hard to pick out a single accomplishment because it's not individual things I've done that I'm most proud of, but the ways I am learning to interact with myself. Not very quantifiable, but very keenly felt.

What’s something new that you’ve recently tried? >> Microdosing psilocybin.

If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live? >> Well, not here, is all I can say right now.

Do you have siblings? Are you close? .

What would your life look like if you had unlimited money? >> I don't think that's something I can truly imagine. Like, unlimited? As poor as I am, I still don't think I'd want that. I'm fine with limited money. Just much less limited than it currently is, is all.

What would yourself 10 years ago think of you now? >> I don't know, man. That was a whole different person, and I don't mean that metaphorically.

Do you identify as an extrovert or introvert? >> I don't identify as anything of the sort. Those terms mean nothing to me personally, and even less now that they're so embedded in casual parlance (and with the usual amount of semantic drift...).

Are you indoorsy or outdoorsy? >> Yes.

Are you religious or spiritual? >> Yes.

How do you celebrate holidays? >> There are none I celebrate, yet. I haven't found resonance with any except for ones that are inaccessible to me (ain't that just the way).

What were you like in high school? >> Traumatised, high-strung, suicidal, and also really obsessed with a few rock bands to the point of absurdity (affectionate).

If you could invite anyone to a party, living or dead, who would it be and why? .

What’s your go-to karaoke song? >> I don't have one. I had a few when I did live-band karaoke, but that was many moons ago.

What’s your guilty pleasure? >> None of my pleasures make me feel guilt. What’s the most regrettable purchase you’ve made lately? . What’s something random that lives in your brain rent-free? .

Would you produce your life story as a memoir or a musical? >> I would not.

Are you good at an accent? >> I am not.

What are you into and why? >> This is such a wildly vague question, I don't even know where to begin. Also, "why"??? Why is anyone into anything, man.

What are you excited about? >> I'm not excited about anything right now.

What are you proud of? .

What's the hardest thing you had to do this week? What's the easiest? >> The hardest thing was just getting through some of the days this week. The easiest was... hmm. Playing video games.

What do you like about school/work? .

What’s something you wish you could change at school/work/home? >> I wish I didn't have an upstairs neighbour.

[yourtoradorasextendedwarranty]

Bad Takes

So a number of you on here probably know who Asmongold is. And for the most part even when he is off the mark I can understand where he is coming from. Except for on 2 points that I will not concede.

The first is a bit from this video early on that happens in the first 3 min of the vid. Feel free to watch it but I'm going to go on a tangent. Here's the video however for reference.

Asmon here says that "If you threaten someone you should get a ban 100%" And my stance is that NO you should not. And I can articulate why easily.

If you receive a threat, you report it to the police. In the recent case of the guy saying, "Would you like to be r***d", yeah he was being an obnoxious shit. But she muted him earlier on in the game and was talking MAD shit prior to her video. Several people also confirmed that she unmuted him for content and to try to go viral. Which she did. And she baited the entire thing. And I might hear you say, "That's not an excuse" and you are correct. It's not. But if you have a threat levied against you, and you are REALLY that bothered by it, no matter how BS it is, then go through the legal applications of the law.

Now why do I say no to a ban? Simple reason? Theft isn't ok. Now I'm not going to get to specifics because people will argues the semantics but if a game bans you, or you get console banned, a company has effectively deprived you of a product that YOU purchased in a legal manner. IE: If they take away your ability to play the game at all that IS THEFT! I will not be convinced otherwise. And if we open up that avenue as that "Allowed option" more companies can exploit that. What's the extreme version?

Imagine that you buy this fridge.

When you purchase it, you unknowingly (by purchasing it) "sign" a TOS that says that this fridge can be taken back at any time if the company feels you do not "Stand for their values". For a person like Asmon, that might not mean much, because he's loaded. But for the rest of you, You can't just go out and buy a new fridge on the fly. But that's the logical result of this line of thinking. You OWNING NOTHING. Fun fact. People will argue that "Well it's in the TOS" yeah I'm aware. But I also know that the legal system is FUCKED and that when software cases have been ruled on often it's in favor of the consumers. Even against Apple. Who are known to have tried to put people in jail for jailbreaking their own phones.

Fact is if a person well funded actually went to court over this most TOS's for games would be overruled by a judge as illegal and not legally binding. What's more, terms like "Purchase" and "Buy" imply ownership after the transfer of the funds takes place. These companies in fact SELL games for PURCHASE. Not for lease. The only issue we have faced with this not having precedent put to it is because these companies have A LOT of money and will often pay a person off just to settle the case. Because they can't afford to have it ruled on the merits. I will stand by the fact that if you get banned from a game, no matter what the reason why, it is theft.

Having said that, I will say that I can ultimatum. I'm pro, "Mute the people you don't like or block them". And contrary to what the lady said in the video it's not victim blaming. Reality is a harsh and cruel place. You will NEVER sanitize it enough for the Puritan cult on either side of the isle. EVER. Should the world be an unsafe place? Not a question I can answer because I live in reality. And short of living in the injustice universe at the moral whims of a tyrant dictator in the form of Superman and Wonderwoman, the world will NEVER be "Safe". Whatever that means to whoever you ask.

The next clip is this one. Around the 7:30 mark.

More or less it's a short statement of, " the outcome of this election won't affect you".

Eggs are insanely up in costs

Gas is only down a LITTLE bit because Biden is selling off ALL of our reserves to try to win over voters

Biden has imported over 400,000 illegals from countries that do not care about us and have lost track of a LARGE number of terrorists that the found had crossed the border

Rent has skyrocketed since Biden took office

Biden has only managed to RAISE inflation because he can't actually get it down do to insane ECO policies that are based on BUNK "science".

People are living paycheck to paycheck more now than the years under trump

We are facing actual fears of WWIII

Biden, the day this "verdict" was announced approved Ukrainians to use US firearms in their fight against Russia. A fight they have been losing, all the while we burn money sending it to them.

So this bullshit of, "This election won't affect you" is a crock of shit. Normally Asmon is good about keeping his takes grounded because he started out from relatively humble beginnings. But this trial was a fucking sham. Every single trial has been a sham. And every single step of the way everything has been unprecedented. Up to and including the instructions to the jury that stated, "It doesn't matter what crime you think he is guilty of so long as you think he is. With a veiled threat from the prosecution, and a trial by a judge whose daughter is funding democrats off the trails meaning it was a conflict of interest, and the instructions to say, "It does not have to be unanimous so long as you think he's guilty of something".

If this was happening to literally anyone else, ESPECIALLY a non-white democrat, the media would be demanding action by the national guard and antifa to burn down the courthouse because of this GRIEVOUS abuse of the law.

Fact is we are poorer as a country than we have been in decades. Our money is losing it's worth by the day, and Asmon is to blinded by his wealth to understand what the stakes are. Which makes me honestly pretty sad.

His other points in the videos are off and on but those are the two I wanted to cover the most.