#its because its hard to represent myself as one whole piece

[sucrecube9]

I think part of the reason I find games like Disco Elysium or Slay the Princess so interesting to me is because my brain has always felt a little fractured like that. Little parts, segments different enough that it's like multiple "people" having a "conversation" but they're still part of one whole, not enough to be seperate beings. They're part of the same idea, the idea of you, but they're still seperate. So close yet so far. They are different pieces in the same puzzle. They are different words in the same sentence. They are all different people with the same face and body and voice and idea of a person. I'm rambling here because it's such a specific feeling that's so clear to me because I can feel it but it's so difficult for me to put into words!

When the Voice of the Hero talks, it's hard to say that's not you/the player in Slay the Princess. It's part of you. A fragment. An echo. But the same can be said of the Voice of the Paranoid, or the Voice of the Smitten! They're all so different, yet they're still part of whatever the hell "you" is!

To end this, I generally have become a really big fan of fiction where you can see the seperated pieces that make up a person, taken apart like a computer you're trying to fix, because for a big part of my life that's how I have felt and I am unsure if there will ever come a day when the parts are put back together into one working machine. Maybe I will have to make do with being dismantled.

[hogans-heroes]

Clegan soulmate string canonverse

Wow I was not expecting this much of a response! This is actually my newest idea I’ve just started plotting and we can all say thank you to @heretoobsessstuff for their tags on my post about “married at first sight” clegan

#Bucky was like I’ll tie that damn red string of fate around ur ankle myself if I have to

The premise being that red soulmate strings are attached to people’s wrists and are just wrapped there in a bracelet-type thing until they meet their soulmate, at which time the strings will unfurl and attach to each other. People can see their own soul-strings and their soulmate’s but no one else’s.

Bucky loves his soul-string and what it represents. He’s been tending to it his whole life, learning to love and be loved, which makes the cord stronger and more vibrant. He weaves it with his fingers and heart and hope, it sits in a beautiful braided cord around his wrist and he plays with it a lot.

Cue the first day of flight training when he’s getting settled in his room, waiting for his assigned roommate, when the door opens and suddenly Bucky’s soul-string jerks. It uncurls and soars across the room and Bucky’s heart soars with it. He whirls around to see a wide-eyed blond boy disheveled from travel and holding a single duffle bag, staring at Bucky’s cord as it dances toward him, and then Bucky sees it.

The boy’s own cord is ripped off only a few inches from his wrist. It dangles, shredded, unraveling and dull. It twitches toward Bucky’s string and the two pieces flit around each other for a bit before falling away. Bucky’s cord drifts to the floor but it doesn’t return to wind on his wrist, apparently unwilling to leave its other half. Bucky can’t pull his eyes from the destroyed string. He’s had damage to his string before, tiny little worn spots where his heart was broken or he’d been wounded by someone. Even the smallest blow to the cord hurt terribly, and was repaired before long with care by Bucky and loved ones. But this…

The other boy looks shattered, a surge of longing in his eyes before they go blank and he covers his corded wrist with his other hand.

“Sorry,” he rasps, swallowing hard and looking anywhere but Bucky.

Bucky’s head is spinning. He feels like he’s crashing in flames and he’s never been in a plane yet, but soul-strings be damned, these shimmering blue eyes now mean more to him than the whole world, and he fights through the existential panic to hold out his hands.

“Hey, no. It’s ok,” he breathes, trying to smile encouragingly as he guides the other boy to the empty bed.

———

(Going through canonverse a lot of drama happens, not at the least perpetuated by Bucky manually tying their strings together before a mission. (Soulmates can feel each other through the cord when tugged). Gale feeling broken and unworthy of Bucky because his cord was destroyed by his past, but wanting. Both desperately trying to learn how to fix Gale’s soul-string, and the stalag making everything much, much worse.)

@coastiewife465 @kmk1701d @alienoresimagines @amiserableseriesofevents

[anthrophobixx]

can u share with us why/how you chose the typings for the characters like why karen fairy, why oliver ghost and so on

of course !!

Karen got the fairy type because fairy types are mostly known for being quiet, calm, collected, but also very hard hitting, which I feel like resembles Karen quite well

Oliver got ghost because of the spooky mansion !! At the end of his good route he talks about how the cinema was indeed haunted by ghosts, but he managed to befriend some of them. This was actually suggested by a different tumblr ask, since we originally wanted to give Oliver the electric type :]

Randy got poison, since poison types usually live in conditions that are deemed "poor" by humans, but they're infact optimal for them. That's kinda how they found Randy actually. Bro is also probably a walking hazard so it only makes sense. Not to mention the kind of poison type pokemon that exist that just...scream Randy Jade (eg garbodor, who's actually his strongest guy)

Gabby got electric since she works at a phone shop and her job is to fix phones, printers, typewriters, all that good stuff. Since she fixes items that require electricity we thought electric type was the most fitting. Even if electricity isn't always needed when repairing things, pokemon such as magnemite, magneton and rotom can be useful regardless as shown in the games

Jerry got normal since he is probably the most casual citizen in dialtown. He's just livin his life, got nothing too special going on, he's just a regular guy

Norm got fighting and I feel like it's kinda self explanatory why. Fighting types are known for being angry and aggressive, but also reasonable and kind once they get used to their trainers. Some fighting type pokemon are also known for wanting justice and they fight for whatever they feel is right (eg lucario). Sounds kinda like Norm imo

Mingus got dark because she's a corrupt mayor, but also because the dark type has the most cats. Majority of dark type pokemon are sassy and they all give off this weird mingus energy I can't put into words.

Callum got steel because he works with metal. His arms, legs and his head are made out of metal. There's pokemon that shed pieces of metal when they evolve (aron) so he doesn't only use his pokemon in battle, but also in his workshop, kinda like Gabby. I can't explain it any better sobw

Bunny got ice since he's "cold as ice" iykwim. Tried to give him as many passive aggressive pokemon as possible (and this includes alolan ninetales somehow)

Gingi doesn't have a specific type since it probably ate the gym leader guide book it got from the higher ups. It also doesn't keep it's pokemon in pokeballs since 1. no money 2. the concept of big ass creechurs being trapped in tiny balls terrify it and it doesn't want its pokemon to be "put in ball prison". Gingi also resembles the player in this au thing

Abel got fire since fire does resemble anger, but also power. Abel owns a whole ass funfair and is also part of the minglings !! Bro got plenty of power !! He is also angry at Gingi for wasting his time, bothering his employees and pissing on one of his attractions I totally didn't forget what it was but I remember it happening !! We tried giving him all the passive aggressive fire type pokemon we could find in the dex (he's also matching w his boywife bc love wins)

Mr. Dickens got psychic since psychic types are known for being the wise, knowledgable pokemon. Like fairy types, they're also calm, quiet and collected, but they got a lil touch of wisdom in there. They also represent the power of the intellect, which is pretty mr. dickenscore if I say so myself.

Theoroar got the dragon type, since theo doesn't actually give a damn about building a bond or relating to his pokemon. He wants the rarest, most powerful pokemon under his grasp and dragon types just so happen to fit in both of those categories. His logic is that his pokemon work for him and whatever gets him to the top he will use it

Hobo got all the gods. Dialga, the god of time, Palkia, the goddess of space, Xerneas, the goddess of life, Yvetal the god of death and Arceus the creator of it all and the being above everything. He probably has Groudon and Kyogre in his pc, since they're the god of land and the sea respectively. He got herdier for good measure, it's kinda like Red's pikachu in the johto games.

Tango and Billy are both rocket executives so they don't have a specific type they specialize in, but Billy has a more offensive team no pun intended, while Tango has a more defensive one

Shooty and Stabby well....they obv don't have a type they specialize in since they're pretty much just rocket grunts. Their goal is to become executives one day

[sencubussubs]

Let’s talk VISION BOARDS

hi lovelies <3

I am a little late to the start of the year but let’s talk VISION BOARDS!

oh my gosh i LOVE vision boards. Every. Single. Thing. i put on my vision board last year manifested - and boy i was NOT good at manifesting (i was overthinking, spiralling, constantly dipping out of believing in manifesting and myself.)

Low effort and loads of fun i absolutely recommend vision boards.

I mentioned in a previous post that part of how vision boards work is by familiarising your brain with seeing the people/places/objects etc on your vision board and partly with emotions! feeling like its all yours now.

-

So, how can we put an effective vision board together?

Well first, what do you want your year to look like?

your vision board can be for any amount of time, but i think year long ones are most common <3 (it doesn’t mean the manifestations will take a whole year!)

You can start with a pen and paper (or notes app) and write down what you want the next year to look like:

It may help to have some headings to organise sections of life. for example:

Career

Relationships

Travel

Experiences/ events

Material Goods

Then you can find specific people/places/things you want to manifest such as a specific career, car or ipad. A specific type of love language e.t.c.

-

Second lets get some useful apps:

- Pinterest (of course!)

- Picsart (or any photo collaging app or website)

(OR ALTERNATIVELY you can print out individual photos, cut, organise and glue down your photos on a piece of cardstock/paper or poster board- the world is your oyster baby!)

-

Apps in tow we can move onto the Third step

finding good pictures!

In my vision board from 2023 i didn’t think too hard about pictures - i found pictures that represented what i wanted, i whacked em where i thought they looked good, printed that baby out and slapped it next too my desk where i looked at it all the time. Not purposefully because i took the time to, but rather just because i would automatically be pulled to look at the bright colours whenever i went to sit down at my desk (and when i would die in my games and need to look away from my screen :P ).

While deciding to do a vision board for 2024 -only during this process did i check my 2023 vision board and realise everything manifested- i watched lots of youtube videos from people whose vision boards were successful. it gave me motivation and enthusiasm to make my vision board and i learned a couple handy tricks along the way:

due to my copy and paste not working on tumblr for some reason, i am going to list the youtubers at the end rather than linking them.

- Using pictures from YOUR point of view

select pictures where it looks like you are already in it - e.g. wanting to read loads in 2024? pictures of someone (with your skin tone) reading with the book in their lap (example pics at the end)

You can also take this further and cut out your own face and put it over people in pictures - sounds silly but it worked for Tam Kaur! (check her out)

- Find pictures that truly invoke the emotions you want to feel

want to be given flowers? don’t settle for any picture of someone giving flowers, find the one that makes you feel the way you feel when you imagine it happening. The one that makes it feel real and heartwarming.

- Make sure you enjoy looking at the pictures/ layout you use!

you are gonna look at this and ingest it subconsciously all the time, so make sure it looks nice! Hopefully the emotions you feel from the pictures will already help this - but we wanna make sure the underlying subconscious message is “this is all already mine” not “oh god i hate this thing”

- Putting it somewhere you often look

if you’re like me, you might not have a manifestation routine and don’t want to consciously decide to spend five minutes staring at the vision board. I placed the vision board next to my desk and schedule, i looked at it every time i sat down - especially because i liked the photos so much it always caught my eye - and whenever i looked away from my screen. This allowed me to subconsciously familiarise myself with all the people/places/things on there! I also had a wallpaper on my phone with another small vision board so i looked at it even more often :)

- lastly, your vision board is yours - you don’t have to share

Honestly i truly believe in keeping my manifestations to myself till after they materialise in the 3D, mostly because of the stress of having other people think you’re crazy - i know that this is also my fault due to everyone is you pushed out, but i feel like for a lot of baby manifesters this is a familiar feeling. Manifestation is your own journey - do not let anyone take away your belief or chip at your self concept!

I am going to make a post soon about addressing people asking about manifestations! <3

-

Final step: HAVE FUN

Enjoy the process and embody the version of yourself who is receiving all of this, It is done, this IS your 2024!

-

the list:

Here are all the youtubers whose videos i watched while creating my vision board for 2024 <3

- Tam Kaur

- Anila Sita 101

- Hailey gamba

- The Gem Goddess

I hope this helped and enjoy making your vision board!

bye lovelies!

Seeing people’s successes really motivates me so i might also make a post on the things i successfully manifested in 2023 with my vision board <3

[arhapsodyblueblog-blog]

Eurovision: The Year of Broken Dreams

Some time has passed and I think I'm not the only one who needed space and time to process the most political year of Eurovision.

Without a doubt, this is one of the worst years that we as eurofans have experienced. This year more than others, we the fans have had to defend the indefensible, with an EBU unable to do anything. I could not believe what was happening, we were nearly close to see die a song contest that was born as an illusion, as an idea; if you want naive to unite a continent torn to pieces.

I personally lived it as one of the most stressful moments of my life, I could not sleep for a week, is this normal? The answer is no, letting something like Eurovision consume your life is a bad thing, but I love it so much and care enough to write this.

How is it possible to get so low, knowing the EBU it honestly doesn't surprise me, they always find ways to take something away from us the fans, examples? there are plenty: From removing the live orchestra to the backing vocals, because if you didn't know it now the backing vocals are pre-recorded, because nowadays even the song order matters, now it turns out that our voice is worth less that of a supposed professional jury.

Somehow we find ourselves with a '90s Eurovision, where political conflicts somehow mark the process of the competition. Because until not so long ago Croats, Serbs, Herzegovinians were destroying each other in a war after the fall of the former Yugoslavia.

Israel with its Hurricane took the last event we have, where it doesn't matter what country or continent we are from, what matters is our love or dislike whether justified or not for a song. I know that Israel has always been the elephant in the room.

How is it possible that this Song Contes has transformed into a football club, where fans have to be separated and even remove?

This silent contract between fans, press and artists has been broken; just look at the presence of police and snipers in Malmö. I want to be clear on this: The EBU was responsible for removing Palestinian flags, those of the LGBTQ+ community even the flag of the European Union.

They even censored the musical performance of of Eric Saade, who wore a Kufiya, almost removed the rehearsal of the singer Iolanda of Portugal for wearing the nails painted with the same color of (and I hate to repeat myself ) a Kufiya. This organization forced Bambi Thug of Ireland to remove "cease fire" from her/them body, this message was written in a language that incidentally nobody speaks, and that in addition no one would have noticed but thanks to the EBU everyone knew about it.

And what surprises me the most is that the EBU basically gave the Israeli delegation permission to harass singers, fans and the press. Because the personal interests of its largest contributor is worth more than those of the other 36 delegations.

Never in the whole history of Eurovision had the general coordinator of the show been booed, and that to make it worse they did not even bother to hide it, because how do you hide that?

The EBU shattered the dreams of several artists who wanted to represent their country with pride: singers like Silvester Belt from Litiania, Joost Klein from the Netherlands or Nemo from Switzerland. How do you apologize to all of them?

And now what we have a result of this poor management is this huge Joost Klein problem that we will never know the answer, because the police are not called for a simple thing . We have a victory full of doubts, because although Nemo deserved to win. People will wonder, it’s my personal belief that them won by them own right and destroyed every single contestant, that them could find, them won because them fought hard for it, and non the less there will always be questions about them win.

We ended up with a Croatia with its best historical result, which ended up paying the price and lost to make Switzerland win. Croatia with Baby Lasagna came close to winning, and if you ask me, they deserved it. (though second place is just as awesome as first )

Baby Lasgna deserved much more, a boy like him who entered as a replacement at Dora and won, a boy who breathes and lives music and who had given up his dream because in a country like Croatia, there are few who manage to make a living from it.

Now Eurovision returns home and it will be Switzerland's responsibility to repair the relations that were broken. Switzerland, the most neutral of nations, will have the difficult task of convincing the other delegations that it is worth returning.

The only thing I have left to say is that, it is an extraordinary irony, that although Israel almost achieved its goal of subduing Eurovision through its propaganda machine spread throughout Europe and the United States, we were the ones who took control, we said enough and if that were not enough we stop a delegation willing to do anything to destroy the foundations of a contest like Eurovision.

[elatedandexasperated]

So RWRB was a movie with some discourse...

In all honesty, the discourse has bugged me more than any issues with the film itself. I get a film adaptation not living up to personal expectations set by a book is... a response that people have, but the fact some people have been trying to convince people it's not worth watching bothers me.

Don't get me wrong, I've seen all of the love for it too and I know the antis for the film are definitely in the minority. No one can control how anyone relates or who is allowed to enjoy a piece of media, but the sheer hatred I've seen from some of the people on here for the film hurts a bit to see. The arguments seem to be no deeper than "x character was removed" , "there's these plot holes" and "it's too formulaic" that last one of which I feel was kind of the point: it's a formulaic romcom so that queer people can have a fairy tale romance story like the straight ones that get shoved down our throats from a young age by companies like Disney. McQuiston, an NB writer, has gone on record stating that a huge reason why they write is to feature queer identities and make stories that people like them would have liked to read and feel represented by when they were younger.

If this was a straight Hallmark romcom (which tbf, it basically is in terms of story structure, and I low-key love it because of that) it wouldn't have made so much as a blip on most people's radars. But because it features queer characters the threshold for scrutiny seems to have been dropped to the floor (insert "Get Low" joke here). I can get having criticisms of the film, I have a few myself, but the attempt to convince people the film is bad and to disregard it as a whole because of them ignores the positive qualities, what the film means to people in the queer community, what its success can lead to in terms of representation for underrepresented people in the community (Ace, bi, NB, trans, etc.), and an understanding of intricacies that go into adaptation.

At the end of the day, this film was competently made (and in my opinion, well made) by a gay director with an inclusive team and a deep care for both the source material and an understanding of what the film would mean for millions of viewers. It featured experiences and themes that are common to many people in the community with several very poignant messages that actually have huge metatextual implications with the film (The "forced conformity of the closet" quote sticks out in particular to me: the number of op-eds speculating Nick and Taylor's sexualities and how they've been mum about them makes me think a lot of people missed that one; also looking at you, people that forced Kit Connor out of the closet 😒)

The film is a celebration of love featuring characters that people like me and others in the community can relate to. Is it formulaic? Yes. Did they remove some characters to try and create a tighter narrative focused on the main romantic pair? Yes. Is it overly cheesy and so unrealistically sweet that it will give me diabetes? Delightfully so.

So ending on a positive note, I just want to run down some things I've loved about it:

- An mlm story with an actual happy ending that features adult main leads! (Credit to youth stories, they're important, but as an adult it's hard to relate to teenage characters sometimes)

- The charisma both TZP and NG just radiate throughout the movie

- Sarah Shahi eating the absolute SHIT out of every scene she's in (Touch her and die)

- Same for Rachel Hilson

- Uma Thurman and Stephen Fry (enough said)

- The acting overall was fantastic

- The care and work put into intimate scenes and inclusion of an intimacy coordinator

- On a personal level, I loved seeing parallels between Alex and Henry's relationship and the relationship I have with my husband. For the first time in my 30 years I actually see a little of myself in an uplifting and happy piece of media and not portrayed as a dramatic tragedy, villain, or inconsequential background character.

Tl;Dr if you didn't like the movie, that's your opinion. I'm not here to try and convince you otherwise. But please stop trying to convince people it shouldn't be watched. Regardless of your opinion, this film means a lot to a lot of people, including the author of the original book! Just let us enjoy this imperfect, but tasty cheese with our w(h)ine ❤️

[randomvarious]

Today's compilation:

Hard Rock Essentials 2000 Hard Rock / Blues-Rock / Arena Rock / Hair Metal / Pop-Metal / Heavy Metal / Adult-Oriented Rock / Progressive Rock / Pop-Rock

God, classic rock really has to be the most over-entitled and over-represented type of music in America, man. I mean, can you think of any other non-contemporary stuff that has a radio station solely dedicated to it in virtually every nook and cranny of this country? It's pretty obvious why it's managed to own so much radio real estate over the years, though—because it's pure catnip for nostalgic white boomers—but if you zoom all the way out and think about all of the music that's come and gone since the 50s, there's really no justifiable reason for this stuff to get so much more airtime than any other type of music from the past. I mean, classic rock is fine for what it is, but it's definitely not leaps and bounds better than everything else.

Take a song like Foreigner's "Hot Blooded," for instance, which is just one of multiple tracks to appear on this triple-disc compilation of so-called Hard Rock Essentials here that happens to deal with the complex subject matter of, *checks notes*, being extremely horny. "Hot Blooded" was a hit in its day, sure, but so were literally tens of thousands of other songs too. And I guess, at the end of the day, I just don't really understand why this song, and so many other ones that are featured on this comp as well, has earned its keep as a fixture of constant classic rock radio rotation. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, is "Hot Blooded" really all that remarkable of a song, so much so, that we need to keep continuously hearing it on our radios year after year? No way!

But, folks, I have to admit that it is actually far too late for me on this front. I am by no means a boomer, but I was, at one point, part of another segment that, like clockwork, fell prey to classic rock radio too: the insufferable tweenage boy subset who grew exasperated with the mindlessness of his own generation's contemporary top 40 fare and decided that "Smoke On the Water" and other songs of its ilk were actually the best shit in the world. Little did we know at the time, and some of us still refuse to see it, that a lot of this shit was actually every bit just as dumb as the stuff that we were trying to so actively avoid. God, how embarrassing.

But I really just cannot help it at this point. As much sense as I've tried to make at the top of this post, I really did have a substantial classic rock phase, and now that shit is just hard-coded into my own DNA. Quiet Riot's "Cum On the Feel the Noize" is not a song that deserves to ever be heard by anyone ever again—it's so fucking bad!—but God damnit, I can't stifle the smile that starts to plant itself on my face whenever that stupid thing comes on. And it's much the same for the vast majority of the other tracks that are on this comp too.

So, while Hard Rock Essentials might be revered as a biblical classic rock sampling for both a certain type of tweenage boy and white boomer alike, for me, personally, it's nothing but security blanket rock. This is music that served me well years ago, and I've clearly outgrown it too, but there are also times when I just love to go back and swaddle myself in it as well 😊. And if I'm with someone who swears by this kinda stuff, I'm obviously gonna fully rock out to it with them too, but then maybe, afterwards, I can make their heads explode with a piece of Philadelphia shoegaze from 1996 that only has 26 YouTube views 🤯.

And I'm not gonna really get too much into it here, but we also really need to have some kind of deep reckoning with this whole propped-up and closed-looped classic rock industry that serves itself with all these nearly identical radio station playlists, cheaply produced TV countdown shows, and countless 'greatest of all time' lists on tons of different websites. I'm not trying to do conspiratorial tin foil hattery, but this whole apparatus really needs to have a stick thrown into its spokes, because it's been dominant as an unchallenged authority on classic rock for far too long. Rather than yet another spin of "Rock You Like a Hurricane," a much more thorough exploration of this vast expanse is indeed possible; I can promise you that.

Highlights:

CD1:

Ted Nugent - "Cat Scratch Fever" Great White - "Once Bitten, Twice Shy" Kansas - "Carry On Wayward Son" Quiet Riot - "Cum On Feel the Noise" Warrant - "Heaven" Judas Priest - "You've Got Another Thing Coming" Loverboy - "Lovin' Every Minute of It" Blue Öyster Cult - "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" Scandal - "The Warrior" Living Colour - "Cult of Personality" Mountain - "Mississippi Queen" Argent - "Hold Your Head Up"

CD2:

Foreigner - "Hot Blooded" Bad Company - "Feel Like Makin' Love" INXS - "Need You Tonight" Damn Yankees - "High Enough" Ratt - "Round and Round" Skid Row - "I Remember You" Black Sabbath - "Heaven and Hell" The Doobie Brothers - "China Grove" White Lion - "Wait" April Wine - "Just Between You and Me" Twisted Sister - "We're Not Gonna Take It"

CD3:

Whitesnake - "Is This Love" Golden Earring - "Radar Love" Joe Walsh - "Rocky Mountain Way" Scorpions - "Rock You Like a Hurricane" The Allman Brothers Band - "Whipping Post" Uriah Heep - "Easy Livin'"

[miochimochi]

The Self as a Whole: Defining Anarchism

( Previous | Next )

Index

Probably should've done this piece first, but whatever. Just want to run through definitions that I'll be using. If you think you have an issue with something I say, you can refer back to this piece to understand what I'm meaning first before responding.

Communication is necessary for any fruitful conversation. Linguistics is a love of mine as well as anthropology and psychology. So when it comes to linguistic anthropology and psycholinguistics, I find myself at home. Part of this would include how language is used within groups. Definitions aren't set in stone, they're simply abstract ideas of what certain sounds we make represent. Dictionaries are only descriptive based off general linguistic observations, as well as the bias of the creators of the dictionaries - don't pretend there isn't any, all humans have biases and they will come through -, rather than prescriptive. So when it comes to actual linguistic application, definitions are to be established first. In both hard and soft scientific fields, they publish their own dictionaries to attempt some level of uniformity and mutual understanding. Even then, you will find many papers, especially within the soft sciences, that will go into defining terms used, even defining them differently than they are defined within the same field. So I have decided to scour the internet (Wikipedia) searching every site (just Wikipedia) in order to find a list of terms used within anarchism (they're on a single Wikipedia article). Rather than reading how Wikipedia defines the terms, I gathered just the terms themselves and put them here in order to define them as I understand them and will be using them.

Definitions all work off the definitions of those words that are used to define. A definition will have an endless branching of defining words that define words. Because of this, you'll find that the definitions I provide will circle back to other definitions, as these are necessary to define things. One good place to start is with usury. Usury is, to put it in the bluntest and most reductionist terms, forced debt. It's the act of loaning with exorbitant interest, so much that it is scarcely possible to escape the surmounting debt short of a collapse of the system that calls on and claims that debt. No greater example of usury than of the State itself. As I know the US best, I will use that as a basis for examples - for instance, the Social Security system. It was originally billed as being a return on taxes payed over one's lifetime, that the government was simply saving their money for them so they did not have to worry about their own savings. This made it easy to sell to the people, placating their worries about the future and thus less likely to put up much resistance, especially tax resistance.

This promise ended up coming with caveats: no one was receiving the money they put in. Sure, they received some of it at first, but that quickly dried up and it simply became a loan given to those who were promised their returns. But loans have to be paid off - they aren't free gains, they're gains in exchange for an IOU. A reasonable person might simply have a small interest rate to make up for the time the gain was out of their possession, but that wasn't what happened here. You see, the government had no social security money - they spent it on other things. With it empty and them giving out these checks, someone had to pay for them. That someone would be the children of those receiving these "benefits". But they wouldn't be able to pay them off, especially with the government continuing its spending, before they too would begin collecting those checks. So then their children too would have to pay. This goes on and on with an ever increasing debt that isn't possible to pay off. This would be an example of usury, albeit the extreme end of usury. One might even call it by another name - a debt trap. This system is inherently unfair and acts against people who had taken no part in the original deal. Usury goes beyond both what is gained and the time it takes to return the borrowed gain, that's what makes it so bad.

Property is that which can be owned, something of which can be deprived of its owner. I already went into property in the first post of this series, but I'll summarize it here. There are three types of property: legitimate, illegitimate, and common. Legitimate property is that which is labored by someone. This property could be held by the laborer or have been given or traded to another, transferring the legitimacy to the new owner. This can continue down a line until it's been so far removed from the original laborer that no one knows who originally created that property. Illegitimate property is that which has been claimed and taken by someone other than the legitimate owner. An example of this would be things like eminent domain or what's been dubbed public property. Eminent domain is the forceful seizure of property from the legitimate owner, giving money as compensation (some have argued that this compensation makes up for it and therefore it isn't wrong - I strongly disagree with this assertion). Public property was achieved by the forceful seizure of the fruits of one's labor (defenders have argued that, because we may use the property created, this does not constitute theft, only payment - I strongly disagree with this assertion). The third type of property would then be common property. This property is that which is unlabored, and thus is unowned. Being that it is unowned, it is available to the commons to use. This would include many things considered public or federal property, such as forests and deserts. All of nature that has not been worked is common property, the State simply restricts access and usage of it, claiming illegitimate ownership over it.

Landlordism is a product of the upholding of illegitimate property. A landlord claims ownership over a property that they generally do not labor to maintain. Their tenants put most, if not all, labor into upkeeping the property. As a result of this skewed labor input, the tenants are the legitimate owners. Landlordism says otherwise - it maintains that all labor put into the property by the tenants is simply further payment for their living there. The landlord then collects tribute from those renting the property they labor. Were this an anarchist society, the tenants would be recognized as the legitimate owners. Under a statist system, however, the government interferes in the market to the benefit of the landlord. A landlord's property may even be left abandoned for years as a tax write off. This abandoning of the property would leave it open for any homesteader to labor were it not for the government maintaining the illegitimate claims to that which the claimant does not labor.

Capitalism has been defined various ways by various people. The definitions can converge on one thing: a system of the individual accumulation of capital. But I find this simplified definition to be lacking. The biggest reason is the term capital. It's variously defined as a stock, possessions to bring in income, goods meant for producing other goods, net worth, and gain. Okay, so far it sounds like capitalism can be either statist or not. The non-statist variety would fit well within market anarchism, which is where Murray Rothbard and his subsequent Anarcho-Capitalists took the term, as a result of the Austrian school of economics. Rothbard even distinguished between Capitalism and State Capitalism. The pure capitalism of Rothbard is a system of voluntary trade without the State's interference, which would include the State's upholding of illegitimate property claims such as the State's own claims. But other Anarcho-Adjectives haven't taken issue with Anarcho-Capitalism for no reason - that reason is in the definition of capitalism.

Rothbard is viewed as having co-opted both the terms Anarchism and State Capitalism. Having read his works, I can see where this view is coming from. He's an outsider in Anarchism, he came at it from a different baseline and took with it his own language. When he went into Anarchism, terms used by the Austrian school were incompatible. But rather than abandon the language he used, he adapted it to his newfound politic. For him, State Capitalism wasn't a form of Capitalism for the profit of the State itself, but rather a shadow of a copy of Capitalism. Capitalism to him is a free market - that is, completely free, everyone owns what they work and the State does not exist to benefit any one person or group above any other. This redefining of Capitalism would make it fit more easily within an Anarchist framework, putting him closer to other Market Anarchists.

But Anarchism has traditionally been an anti-capitalist politic, and the reason is again down to definition. Just as Rothbard distinguished between Capitalism and State Capitalism, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon - considered the father of Anarchism - distinguished between Socialism and State Socialism. So perhaps we should look to socialists and how they have defined Capitalism. Louis Blanc had defined Capitalism as, "the appropriation of capital by some to the exclusion of others." But that also wouldn't work for a modern definition of Anarchism because of, yet again, the word capital. Gain, one of the various definitions of capital, is subjective - a toothbrush could be seen as a gain and there is no reason to not allow the exclusive ownership of it. But there's more to this, as to appropriate didn't simply mean to make exclusive. You can see this in various dictionaries that the oldest definition - sometimes the first definition, sometimes the last - for the verb form to appropriate is to take and use without a legitimate right. In other words, it's theft. This is where Louis Blanc's definition might be closer to what we're looking for - it's not the gaining and holding of capital that's bad, but the appropriation of it.

To translate his definition into modern terms, you could say, "the theft of the capital of others to the benefit of the few." Both Traditional Anarchists and Anarcho-Capitalists would agree that what this term is describing is wrong, they would simply put different names to the same definition - one being Capitalism and the other being Statism (or Corporatism). I will stick with the more traditional naming convention in these posts and call this definition Capitalism. A Capitalist, then, would be one who engages in and benefits from this theft of capital.

Statism is a term I frequently use to refer to the overall system of government and all that stems from it. As a system, statism is predicated on usury and the initiation of force against those that the ambiguous State, being those systems defined by statism and those within the inner functioning of the systems, deems to be its subjects. The State is akin to gangsters. The head of the mafia is the head of state, the enforcers are the police and military, and the right hand men are those officials doling out decisions on behalf of the head of state. Just as the various mafias operate themselves differently, so too do the various States, but the underlying structure remains the same. A king has his council and men-at-arms, a president has his congress and police and military.

Taxation comes with this as well - that is the forced tribute to be paid to the State to stave off any consequences the State might bring if the tribute were not paid. Various States would issue this tribute in various ways throughout history. Traditionally, this would be in a portion of the crops grown, the cattle butchered, or other such goods. This would evolve into coinage, which would be produced both through the State and through individuals with the resources being used for coinage. China would be the first to issue paper currency and also the first on record to do what is most widely spread today - devalue the currency by tying it to the existence of the State. This is called fiat currency - that currency which cannot on its own merit be exchanged for an equivalent value in coinage or goods.

Fiat is currently the global standard of currency. In the US, the fiat system truly became established in 1933 with the decoupling of the dollar to the value of gold domestically, expanding that to the value of the dollar on the global market. How the dollar functioned before this was that 1 dollar was equivalent to a fixed amount of gold, so when the gold changed in market value, that 1 dollar would still buy the same amount of gold. But the dollar as we know it is a result of the Federal Reserve Bank, created in 1913 with the Federal Reserve Act. This wasn't the first attempt at a central bank, but it was the most successful attempt. Before this, banks were privately run, with various banks offering their own bank notes. People could bring in gold and silver and receive bank notes which could be exchanged to others who would then be able to cash in these bank notes for the listed amount of gold and silver. This would also mean that, should the bank face its demise, the gold and silver would still be there to be used by the rightful owners, taken to another bank or simply held onto. Gold and silver aren't the only things that have been, nor could be, used. Whatever a society values could be used for exchange and a bank can hold onto the exchange goods.

Beyond these concepts, there's a concept that has been greatly talked about within Anarchism, to the point that many cannot define Anarchism without mentioning it. Hierarchy is the structuring of power between individuals. Traditionally, Anarchists use it to specifically speak of forceful socioeconomic power, what some modern Anarchists call unjust hierarchy. The government is part of such a hierarchy, having a power differential between the State and the people as a result of repression. The distinction of just vs unjust hierarchy has been a contentious point among Anarchists, some holding to hierarchy always being unjust and so such a distinction is invalid while others would describe what they view as hierarchies that are voluntary systems, no force whatsoever, and thus they are indeed just hierarchies. The distinction comes down to, yet again, a disagreement on the definition of a hierarchy. This definitional agreement I don't see as very valid, given the vast agreement of the definition of hierarchy, between various definitional organizations looking at the term's use within society, placing authority and subordination as essential points to the term. So here, we can more specifically define hierarchy as, "the forceful structuring of power of an individual or a group over another."

After all of this defining, we come to what its all been leading up to. Anarchism is defined mainly by its opposition to Capitalism, Statism, Landlordism, and usury. But simply defining something by what it's against doesn't say what it's for. That is where it gets a bit more tricky as Anarchism isn't one wholly unified politic. All Anarchists are unified in their opposition to the State, all Anarchists are unified in their opposition to Capitalism, all Anarchists are unified in their opposition to Landlordism, all anarchists are unified in their opposition to hierarchy. Even if each of these is replaced with an equivalent word of the same definition in another linguistic framework, the result is the same. What Anarchists want as an end goal and how they achieve it, though, is wildly different, and thus is where unity breaks down. For example, the Primitivist and the Transhumanist are on opposite ends of the spectrum and, as a result, that clash when they would meet in an argument. You can't both have a hypertechnical society and also have it be a primitive society in rejection of modern technology.

Such a thing is where Synthesis Anarchism and Anarchism Without Adjectives (AWA) come into play, believing that disparate Anarchists should work together towards a common goal and then we each can live in communities structured the way we like, leaving other communities to their own structuring. Synthesis Anarchists and AWAs come at this with two approaches. Synthesis Anarchists take the approach of unity in division - we cannot deny the differences of Anarchist thought, so we continue to label ourselves as various Anarchists but stand in unity despite the differences. AWAs, on the other hand, find Anarcho-Adjectives to be unhelpful, that until we reach the minimal goal of Anarchism, that we are all simply Anarchists - adjectives are seen as too divisive and thus makes us weaker than if we were unified. Personally, I find myself more in agreement with Synthesis Anarchism, but I also understand where AWAs come from. Too often do I see our differences divide us, but at the same time we can never be truly unified if we deny the adjectives. We should be seeking to learn the beliefs of our fellow Anarchists and come to appreciate our differences. Agorists and Syndicalists certainly have their differences, but an Agorist-Syndicalist alliance has been a topic of discussion since Konkin. A Pan-Anarchist alliance would certainly make for stronger movement - we can argue amongst ourselves as to what class theory is best, how we should organize our communities, what Anarchist philosophers are dumb or not, or what color of black flag is better, but as long as we can set that aside and stand together as Anarchists first and foremost when it's needed, then we can be a strong united front.

This is enough necessary defining of terms, I would say. Any other definitions in later pieces will be brought to when needed. Writing out this piece has helped me quite a bit to tighten up how I define things, as I was still a bit finicky on that front at times. It's also pointed out for me various future pieces I should work on, including developing a class theory that makes most sense to me, one that I can consistently apply to any time period (I agree most with Wally Conger's criticism of the oft cited Marxian class theory). For now, though, thank you for reading.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Anarchism n. A politic in opposition to Capitalism, hierarchy, Landlordism, Statism and usury

Capitalism n. A system based on the theft of the capital of others to the benefit of the few

Capitalist n. A person who engages in and benefits from capitalism

Fiat Currency n. A currency which cannot, on its own merit alone, be exchanged for an equivalent amount of coinage

Hierarchy n. A system of forceful structuring of power of an individual or a group over another

Landlordism n. A system in which the property claims of an unlaboring landlord are upheld by force

Property n. That which can be owned, divided between legitimate, illegitimate, and common property

Common property : that which is unlabored and thus is owned in common by all without any one rightful owner

Illegitimate property : that which is held by a claimant to the exclusion of the rightful owner

Legitimate property : that which is the rightful property of its laborer or gained through voluntary exchange or gifting

State n. An entity defined by statism

Statism n. A system in which a group claims authority over a population, upholding these claims by initiatory force

Taxation n. A system of forcefully collecting tribute, known as a tax, by a State in order to facilitate that State's functions and pay the State employees and rulers

Usury v. The act of loaning with exorbitant interest

[kuwdora]

for the ao3 wrapped writers ask game: 17 and/or 29 pretty please!

17. Your favorite character to write this year?

Mmmm, this year?? Vilgefortz. I had a very Specific Itch to scratch and golly, I sure did indulge myself—and @reinvent-and-believe and @sidprescot too, mwahahaha. The TWN Thanedd episode came and went with Vilgefortz. His scenes with Geralt worked me into a froth because I absolutely needed more because how much I loved their book scenes. And honestly it’s not right how truncated Vilgefortz' dialogue is in the show. And thus my brain overheated and Ouroboros happened. It really was that saying—write for that group of like 3 or 5 people who are gonna lose their minds. And they did. I think @littlestsnicket's brain melted and I'm not sure @sidprescot will be the same lol. It was great. I winked so hard at my readers that my eye fell out and @reinvent-and-believe picked up my eye, cleaned it off and handed it back to me and @sidprescot is just foaming at the mouth and brain the whole fucking time (ilu all). I also managed to post more about writing/drafting this fic than anything else I’ve written in the last few years, lol god. I have 15 million witcher thoughts at any given time (mostly about yennefer and yennskier and geraskier) but this is what i manage to post the most about, sdflakjsdf. I love Witcher canon blending and riffing on themes, okay. My blending is not to everyone's tastes, but yeaaahhh I had quite the time writing Vilgefortz this year. All the Continental art history was so much fun to weave throughout the story.

29. Favorite line/passage you wrote this year?

Here’s my favorite passage from chapter 1 of Ouroboros, it’s about 900 words. I loved starting the fic off with the TWN characterizations and then running with it back to some book vibes and all my feelings about all the canons and aaaand and…lots of things. Love this whole passage. Indulgent.

“Doesn’t appear to be much glory in this gallery,” Geralt said, gesturing at the vertical diptych he was studying.

Vilgefortz nodded and strode closer to point out the relevant details. There was a curious furrow to Geralt’s brow that made Vilgefortz more confident in encouraging Geralt to voice his thoughts.

“This one is called Ships in a Desert and it’s a very controversial piece with multiple meanings. Each canvas represents a different interpretation of First Landing and encourages the viewer to engage with different possibilities. This bottom artwork is clearly not historically accurate because as you can see the ship and its wreckage is strewn across a desert landscape rather than the coast of Redania. The artist Yona Skanfall also intended this scene to subvert Ithlinne’s Prophecy.

“You can see in the foreground a future where the Continent’s water has dried up and its inhabitants are boiling their own skin as a direct result of humanity wielding Chaos. People did not take kindly to this kind of heresy against the prevailing narrative about the White Frost. But there were those who were ardent defenders of this piece because it held true to the original prophecy’s themes of a calamitous end by humanity’s hubris. But Aen Ithlinnespeath was a sacred elven prophecy and any minute deviations from the story caused an uproar. Yona certainly made no friends by implying the Hen Ichaer died before they could save the world—note the desiccated seed pod in this dune. If this scene alone had not gotten Yona banned from two kingdoms for smearing elven canon and laying waste to the kings of her day—see the scattered crowns in the sand here and here—her choice to depict Jan Bekker as a woman gave others all the more reason to ostracize her.”

“Why were people offended by Jan Bekker as a woman?” Geralt asked.

“Why indeed? Vanity. Sexism. Most primary sources and historical records suggested that Jan Bekker was actually quite a hideous man. In the early days of the Brotherhood mages had not yet mastered the art of cosmetic transformation. Many saw their ugliness as intrinsic to their character, especially those first survivors who bore the scars of scurvy from their journey. To remove that element and depict Jana Bekker as a buxom heroine was antithetical to their view of history.”

“You’re telling me mages are superficial in more ways than one? Color me surprised.”

Vilgefortz laughed and found himself warming even more to the witcher. He bit the inside of his lip and stepped closer, brushing against Geralt’s elbow.

“There have been other interpretations of Jana over the years. I myself have collected several woodcuts of her and Nina Fioravanti in mid-coitus from a series called Ars Orgasmica. I could show them to you, if you’d like.”

Geralt didn’t verbalize a witty retort, though Vilgefortz could sense the words propositions and pornography floating on the surface of his mind. Geralt turned his attention on the other painting from Ships in a Desert. He gestured. “Tell me about this one.”

Vilgefortz tore his gaze away from Geralt, carefully gathering his words. “This painting depicts a slightly different interpretation of her original interpretation. The wreckage of First Landing is in the foreground and the bodies of the ship's crew are barely visible in the sand. The emphasis here is on the future that was lost. Notice the verdant hills in the background, never to be discovered by the first mages. Perhaps if there was a lighthouse in this desert sea, these two ships would not have crashed and fallen to the dunes and become lost to memory. Perhaps they could have met, shared resources, and survived in spite of the hardship. They could have thrived and built a new world together.”

“The hills are better off without the mages,” Geralt murmured.

Vilgefortz turned back to Geralt and nodded solemnly. “A solid interpretation. The commonality amongst these pieces is suffering. Yona depicted it well.”

“Your lot is notorious for causing suffering.”

“Truer words have never been spoken.”

“Truth is something this ball is in short supply of.”

“Tonight there’s so much more on offer,” Vilgefortz said.

“If I wanted to have my fill of lies and subterfuge, I would have stayed downstairs eating from the bottomless pit of illusory caviar.”

Every one of Geralt’s conversational parries aroused more desire in Vilgefortz’s chest. He’d hoped to keep the witcher’s attention for more serious matters tonight, but the wry humor was an unexpected delight. Enticing and novel in a way that Vilgefortz had known others had been charmed by, but never believed he would also find so alluring. He wanted more of Geralt.

“I agree. Stay with me. At my table we would feast upon spiced boar and toast to our communion. No illusions, only the boundless companionship of two men appreciating art and history together.”

A grimace passed across Geralt’s features, like Vilgefortz’s words were little more than indigestion. The firelight from the braziers cast a warm glow upon Geralt’s face, and there Vilgefortz saw a world beyond the staid neutrality that Geralt wore like a tattered cape. A place where two outcasts would be respected and admired. A time where Vilgefortz could lose himself beneath the witcher’s broad hands and taste Geralt’s scars for the first time.

“If you’ll excuse me, I need to go take a shit. Must be the caviar.”

read on ao3

ask game - ao3 wrapped

[waitingonthewind]

Out of all your characters (from games or otherwise), which one do you think is the most like you? In what ways? Was it intentional, or was it an accident you only noticed after the fact?

(Feel free to delete if it feels too personal 🙈)

@undead-potatoes aaaaaa thanks so much for the ask!!! i don't love doing self reflection (i have a hard time in identifying things about myself and often rely on other people to Tell Me Who I Am) but i love talkin about my ocs so this ended up really big

ill pop the majority of this under the cut but here take an unfinished doodle of my first attempt at a fursona in this the year 2023 bc i finally had some insight into What That Might Be for me its a leafy sea dragon bc as a kid i loved dragons and also leafy sea dragons specifically and as an adult i love fish and plants and the colour green ok basics covered here we go

its a really tough one, especially since all my characters have huge parts of me in them (u point to one of my guys and there's a 99% chance they're queer and a 95% chance they're autistic), and the majority of my characters infect me with Their personalities and traits (speech mannerisms especially... i went about 3 years peppering the word gotcha into every other sentence bc of ollwyn. in terms of it being intentional, usually only one or two bits with each character. i try my best to give characters personality traits and interests that differ from my own, or at the very least mix and match bits and pieces.

sometimes i'll try and make characters that are so so different from me but then it backfires because it means that im far more likely to pick up that character's traits (i didn't swear at All in my whole life until i tried making a character outside my comfort zone who Did swear a lot and now fucking look at me). i also don't like doing my Research so going for interests that i don't know a lot about means i don't. know anything about them lmao.

i think it's impossible to have a character that isn't at least Somewhat like you, we draw from our own experiences and ways of seeing the world, after all. i know i put little pieces of myself into every character and it's hard to say if there's any One character that embodies me most.

almost none of my characters really look like me tho

all that being said i've narrowed down my entire list to three of note. all three are dnd or other ttrpg characters bc they're the ones that i find myself having to think most about in terms of how they Think and Feel in any given situation and over time would notice stuff about myself or about them that i didn't realise were related.

i think these days ollwyn wins out personality wise goofy, indignant, lonely, desperate for approval, and loud. they're stubborn and enthusiastic, needs to be centre of attention but doesn't want to take the lead. they don't have many friends but latch onto those they do make. i re-realised my rat dreams because of them. i made em a bard bc i was obsessed with music as an aesthetic.

i made em a half-elf because i didn't wanna be Too out there with character creation (back when i was a terrified lil new rp-er who hadn't touched dnd before and felt i hadn't Earned anything more interesting yet). then magic and stuff happened and they got all the over-the-top design elements i was too nervous to implement initially and even that feels representative of my Own growth in being more Out There with my aesthetics and personality (i.e. completely shutting off my social filter, not toning shit down so much anymore)

oh i know i said none of my characters really look like me but i almost never draw ollwyn with their mouth fully closed and i only realised like years later that it may have been just a mild lil projection of a habit. i got big front teeth and breathing issues and i find it uncomfortable to close my lips Most of the time lmao

my poor unfortunately named aasimar (it was 2018........ i promise...............) takes the cake when it comes to suffering the brunt of my neurodivergence and sensory issues, and represents a significant portion of the judgy parts of myself that i try not to let myself be. strong opinions, blunt, tone issues, big issues with food and touch. comes across as, and often is, very critical. the biggest difference between me and them is that they don't feel bad about those aspects of themself lol

where i spend every moment of my life either desperately concentrating on my wording so as not to come across as rude, or feeling shitty for coming across as blunt/aggressive in tone or phrasing (where 99% of the time i absolutely don't mean it that way im autistic pls im autistic if i wanna be able to get the Right words out the tone doesn't match and vice versa), corona just says what they want or what they think, and if people get offended, that's People's fault for not trying to make more of an effort to understand the way they talk.

sal is my Top Oc Of All Time and as such takes on a lot of random aspects of myself (skin picking, fidgeting, latent anxiety, All of the visual aesthetics i Wish i could pull off, my love of birds, my tendency to Mr Burns Posture my way through life. she's also very very australian), while also inflicting things on me lmao ive learned more about my gender from the years of playing her in her rp campaign than in the rest of my entire life. a lot of her experiences and dynamics with her friends and family reflect a lot of aspects of my own

i only want good things for her and constantly put her through fucking hell

anyway they're all So Much Weirder as people than I can really put on paper and in (relatively) different ways but i just know it all stems from the Who I Am of it all

bonus shout out to beki:

she was my homestuck fankid and first proper oc, which also meant that she was only about two steps away from a self insert. because i made her as a teenager, i feel the distance between us more each year, but im still very fond of her, in the same way i am for my teenage self. i wanna pat her head and tell her she's cool and not annoying and that her friends don't hate her and that things will be okay

i think it says a lot about me that all four of these guys fall somewhere on the aro/ace spectrum (almost in order of least to most aggressively aro/ace. ollwyn's a demiromantic greysexual, corona is demi + grey on both romantic & sexual orientations, sal's pretty much only interested in the One Guy Ever, and beki is sex repulsed, 100% aro/ace) lmao

[theirrepressibleheiress]

goddamn i really do want to ask everying. i will restrain myself to 🌅, ⚔️ and 🧍‍♂️ though.

🌅 — Do they miss the Surface? What was their life like up there?

[Cont. from a previous ask]

The Heiress's brother died while they were in their last year of schooling. He was on a relatively routine business trip to the Neath. Even before any evidence of foul play, they did not take the news well - their performance in school plummeted and they become increasingly reclusive even while more pressure was placed on them as the new heir. This continued for long enough that it became a bit of a sore spot for the family as a whole, forming a rift between them and their parents.

That rift doesn't have time to widen too much, because shortly after they left school, more news reached the Surface about their brother's fate. It didn't even really suggest foul play. At best, it sort of apathetically shrugged and said "maybe" to the notion that he was murdered. The Heiress drops everything, burns what savings they have, and buys passage on the first boat heading to Italy. By the time they reach the Canal, they're almost broke. In a moment of surprisingly successful folly after realising this, they start picking fights with zailors at the Neath side of the Canal. They don't relent until they're detained and shipped to New Newgate.

⚔️ — Do they have a particular fighting style/signature weapon?

The Heiress is a Monster-Hunter in spirit as much as just profession. Their harpoon is lovingly maintained despite its age, with only the most stubborn ichor and fiercest scorch marks allowed to earn their place on it. In battle, especially above the waves, they lean hard into "winnowing the lesser terrors from the true". Their stained weapon, murky reputation, and willingness to strike at times and places unexpected, all combine to induce paranoia and convice their foes this isn't worth it.

While this is backed up by substantial fighting skills, a harpoon isn't really a great weapon in a swordfight. For that, they do have a backup option, though it's one they don't particularly like using. A Knife of Lost Sky, acquired when they first came to the Neath and fell into the tail end of the Game of Knife-and-Candle. It strikes with all the fury of the Sun above, bringing the threat of permanent death with every strike.

(In actual fact, the blade is a forgery - it's a genuine Knife and Candle piece but it's simply designed to look as like the sky as possible - there's nothing special about it beyond that. The Heiress still feels unpleasant using it, given the weight of legend behind it. Even knowing the legend's false, it feels incredibly hypocritical. Besides, if they're forced to use it enough that the lie is revealed, then it would become little more than a shiv with value to collectors.)

🧍‍♂️— What stats would they provide as a companion? Where would you obtain them?

This one took a little bit of thought and trying to eyeball balance numbers, so I'm not 100% sold on them, but:

Dangerous +10, Dreaded +2, Monstrous Anatomy +1.

As for where you find them? The sensible, fits with existing game mechanics, answer, is probably Hallowmas. The weird and fun idea that just came to me is that there are two ways you can get them:

An option on the A Chelonite Hunting Ketch card while at Zee, requiring 5 Revolutionary Favours and Revolutionary Renown 25.

An option if you die at Zee with a Silent Stalker. I think this is either a one time thing where the crew's log mentions watching the corpse of the monster that ate you float to the surface, dead. When you pick it, you also get a quality representing a calling card or something similar stuffed into a pocket. Once you get back from the Fathomking and being dead, you can go chase them up.

I was thinking about a card in somewhere linked to the Revolution and the Liberation of Night which requires Docks renown and favours (to mirror the Chelonite option) but the only place I can think of is the Nadir and that feels like it doesn't have the right vibes?

[purposelynana]

What Did I Watch: #33

This week, I watched it scrambled like a fucking egg. Happy Eid btw. International dates for Eras Tour is out. I'm dead.

Perhaps I'm too used with people in their 20's acted like they were in their 30's and it was total cringe-fest. Or people in their 30's tried to convince me they were still college students. (Yeah you see where this is going). I don't know about Thailand entertainment industry but one thing, somehow they just don't have fucking clue how to cast someone. But at least from casting division I could really tell, people behind Step By Step were in fact adults with working jobs. Not some kind of teenager getting paid for making fan fiction in visual media.

I came to an understanding that Step By Step will be slow as fuck. I think this was a deliberate move by Tee Bundit. Because you deal with a potential HR violation in which could turn into catastrophic effect to both Pat and Jeng's career. You just can't make them kiss by episode 5 and called it done. But this brought new potential disaster that I didn't see it coming in the first 8 episode. Clearly this show doesn't have a seasoned editor and most importantly, but rarely people mention it, a script supervisor.

Because it has unclear timeline, jumpy transitions between scenes, and weird storylines that didn't push the narrative. It felt like it has so many great scattered ideas but not one conjoined constructive story.

In the article above, it explained that script supervisor responsible to maintain the continuity of its script. There were just too many continuity errors and it's such a pity because it already has the idea and goal, yet the journey seemed taking us to too many places.

I could go on and on about how not having a script supervisor could potentially ruining a series. But Step by Step is not finish yet and fucking let's hope it could stick the landing. It's going to have a rough landing but fingers crossed. (I just saw the preview for ep 12, it is a rough landing indeed. Prove me wrong universe.)

Oh god this little show. What a gem.

I have so much heart and love for Our Dining Table. If this was person, I'm going to hug them until I'm shattered to pieces.

It was hard to be an adult, lonely as fuck, having family but not really felt their presence. I have so much love for this show and yet it doesn't feel enough.

I'm almost 30, and yes I'm fucking tired to just watch myself never get to be represented correctly. A lot of these actors are on the same age as me and yet the story seemed never going anywhere. High school students, college students, barely office romances, and damn even I couldn't even get period dramas without having to deal with censorship (dammit China). When you got older, you resent everything, you became critical with everything. Even I'm no longer consider My School President is that good after I praised it earlier this year. In the end, series that I deemed good is the one that I felt so much connection to it. My emotional investment has to be in all time high. Like what I felt towards this.

The scene that breaks me into million pieces. You just need one person to tell you, you have done enough.

Lastly, I want to talk La Pluie. I don't know where this show's going. I'm scared. Because it could turned out to be great or it could end up like anything else, standard. The whole shenanigans about soulmates, love and everything in between got me thinking. Soulmates is definitely, most certainly, not fate. It's constantly changing, depends on your situation, your willingness, and your effort.

The characters in here, they were learning that they couldn't treat soulmates as if it were fate. As if it something already defined by God.

It is not. So I could understand Lomfon weird reaction on his newfound illness. Because he heard Tai's voice during rain, Tai must be (undoubtedly) his soulmate. Dude sounded like a kid, who wants to know reasons behind everything. Somehow I could sympathize him a little bit more, if the actor knew how to enhance his emotions. It wasn't bad acting, but yeah it kinda dull time to time, to the point I was out when he's in the screen. But yeah it's pulp, what can I expect? People acted like their life depend on it?

[kieuecaprie]

So... I finished the main taskline (for now) for Toontown Corporate Clash. I won't say too much about the end but it was definitely a journey to get through, especially when the server started having issues and districts had to be reset which made making and finding groups a bit of a drag.

So, I figured it'd be nice to have a little collection of screenshots I took over the course of my journey. Of course, I won't dump all of them, just a select few I found neat.

There may be spoilers but I think most of the screenshots I'm about to post are just out of context stuff anyhow so... I'm gonna give you a fair warning anyway!

I believe I posted this a while back effectively saying that I have been playing TTCC and wanted to post this screenshot. I managed to catch the tailend of the St. Patrick's Day code event so I was able to snag some stuff, including the clover that became a mainstay on my deer.

I think this may have been the first of many buildings I would take on by myself over the course of doing the main taskline so I guess I took this screenshot to comemmorate my first building (plus it was in Toontown Central, where buildings are kind of a rarity even on private servers) and the fact I barely made it out alive.

This was before I learned the power of Prestige Throw, btw, that little prestige gag carried me pretty hard with its self-healing properties.

I just liked visual bugs and this one kind of tickled me. You can still get on the elevator, it's just bugged for some reason. No idea if this was a server thing or the behavior of the base code of the game that it ran on.

Funnily enough, BB was the first playground I got to the final kudos rank-up task for just so I could go see Rainmaker, who would otherwise be known as Misty Monsoon if you searched through some ARG stuff (or read the wiki, I guess).

Her fight was an ordeal the first time through and was frightening and was definitely a step up from the easy gameplay of the babby game that came before it.

I spared her, in case you were asking. Fortunately, my group decided to do the same.

I hated going through YOTT even though I liked the vibe of it all. The dialogue was painful to read but this one with Seymour in particular was chuckleworthy. Kind of appreciated that. Keep at it, TTCC writer's team!

I think this was taken during my runs through Sellbot Factories for the Sellbot parts. I admit, it was a little nervewracking at first to utilize the group finder because, up to this point, I was just using it to set up groups for battles I absolutely needed to do (Derrick Man, Land Acquisition Architect, Public Relations Representative). No idea why this screencap in particular, maybe I just found the name "Medieval Pheasant" on the Turkey toon to be quite amusing.

Fishing was my first activity I'd end up maxing on this server. As customary, I grade games based on how fun their fishing is. I'd give the Toontown fishing, as a whole, a decent 7/10. Fish Bingo is a nice sidegame and casting and reeling is super quick, also a good source of currency and ended up filling my bank to the brim.

A screenshot from... some attempt at mity, I don't know the number tbh. Tried the old "befriend a cog" trick during the mist phase and my heart shattered into a million pieces afterward...

Going through Mezzo Melodyland (At the time of writing, I have the rank-up task available to go from 9 to 10, gonna hold off on that for now but I'm coming for you, DAVE BRUBOT!), and I run into a taskline about a kazoo maestro who wants me to go find someone who is the kazoo kid. I already knew where this was going but I didn't think they'd actually go through with the bit.

Good one!

Shut up and leave me alone.

The only screenshot I ever took in a Cashbot Mint. Honestly thought it'd take a while to clear out the 4 Coin Mints, 4 Dollar Mints, and the 2 Bullion Mints but they were snap compared to the Lawbot and Bossbot facilities... especially in wait time, yeesh.

Come on, you had to break into Reid's van at LEAST once! I hope she didn't mind me coming in, I mean, I do pay her a ton of jellybeans, after all!

My first capped track was Throw, predictably. And I think Lure followed soon after and then it took a while before Sound, Squirt, Zap, and Toon Up would join them. Still got Trap and Drop left to go and I don't look forward to levelling Trap again.

This wizard really wanted the... ahem... minglussy. iamsosorry

Lawbot Lawfices... They were kinda fun but waiting was a bit of a drag. Although I think at one point, someone pointed out that you could play Toono on the couches. WHY COULDN'T BOSSBOT HQ HAVE SOMETHING LIKE THAT?!

Speaking of, here's a screenshot from a Bossbot Cog Golf Course. Don't tell me which one because they all felt the same to me, and it was at that point that I really felt the drag. This part was probably one of the biggest hurdles imo and I don't blame anyone for not really wanting to do anything related to Bossbots unless they ABSOLUTELY had to. (Speaking of, if any friendos wanted to do cog golf courses, I'd gladly run it because I don't want them waiting half a century for a group.)

Short detour into the High Roller stuff for MAYpril Toons event. I was sad that I couldn't fight Sads but the High Roller fight was definitely something else. And if they could pull that off for a permanent, non-canon joke of a manager, what could they do for 2.0? Gosh, imagine. The next few are also High Roller related, I had to grind for a bit to get the stuff out of him. (I still need one more item from him, barring another update that adds yet another goalpost, but it takes a while to beat him even with optimal strats.)

Holy meh, Toriel Toontown real.

This one is from one of the CEO fights. I took this one because the game was taking its sweet time waiting for everybody and found the cogs with their hands in the same position as the grief kiwi sticker to be quite funny.

While I was doing the DDL taskline, I ran into this where Featherbedder and a bunch of cogs were just... snoozing. And there was literally nobody fighting them. Guess they just wanted a slumber party, huh?

Hehehe... yeah, game show. Would be crazy if there was one in Mezzo Melodyland hosted by a robotic green duck who is a fusion of two cog managers that we've previously fought, right?

And the end of the road, for now. It feels... weird now that I have ALL FOUR task slots to fill up but it'll be a great boon when grinding out those kudos tasks! I'm not quite done yet with TTCC and I don't think I will be for a while, after all, I have drops to collect, suits to perfect, departments to experience fully, and a couple other stuff left unfinished.

I will say that I absolutely enjoyed my time in Toontown Corporate Clash and I wish the team good luck as they push onwards because this is probably the most polished Toontown experience I've ever... erm... experienced.

[loganofthenorth]

Puzzle Piece

It's a cruel kind of irony,

That the puzzle piece is used to represent,

The struggle to fit in disorder.

It's even more ironic, for me,

Because of how I present,

Because of my lack of rules,

Lack of resentment,

Lack of interaction or tools,

Lack of culture.

See, my mother's great grandfather and grandfather were indigenous.

Her great grandfather was a residential school survivor

Both of them were drunks.

Her father was raised as white

He was also a drunk,

but unlike the other two he stuck around with his family

Or... tried to

It's a whole mess of complicated really

My mother's family tree is a chaotic mess

We aren't strangers to adoptions,

Divorces,

Multiple marriages

It's hard to know who's related to who

Especially when there's thousands of people with our last name

See Johnston is a last name that was given to my Mom's great grandfather

Because they couldn't pronounce his real name

We don't know much about him

We don't know much about them because they were never around, and the other members of the family didn't like to talk about them.

So, we might as well be white.

My Mother is more indigenous in appearance than I am

She was raised with religion, but it never made sense to her.

It's funny really

I don't think anyone was there to teach her the spiritual beliefs that indigenous people had

She just came to the conclusion that she wanted to believe in that on her own

But she doesn't know the rituals, the rules, the culture

She just does what feels right for her.

And that's great

And she taught me to do the same, to decide for myself what I believe

So the only thing I know about religion is from what pop culture tells me

What I know about Angels comes from fantasy stories

I thought Elves were just humans with pointed ears that lived longer

But apparently there's something religious involved

I thought Fairies were just humans with wings and magic

But Fae are more complicated, and again, religion is involved

The more I learn about Fantasy, the genre I love to write, and the more I learn about politics and other cultures,

The more I become overwhelmed wondering

What am I allowed to write?

See, when I first heard about cultural appropriation, it upset me.

It upset me that people would get upset with you if you did something from a culture that didn't belong to you.

I wasn't sure why it upset me so much

I dismissed it as being an ignorant white girl that needed to dismantle my beliefs and rebuild them

I know what oppression feels like because I'm disabled. I don't want to accidentally be oppressing someone else by stealing their culture

But, the more I learned about other cultures, and all their rules, and all the every day things that had to come from somewhere

The more I realize how much culture is tied to everything

And the world is not a free for all where you can choose what you want to believe

If you want to be part of a culture you have to learn and follow all its rules before you can apply anything from it to your daily life

At least that's what it seems

And that's all so overwhelming to me

Because as an Autistic Person learning basic social rules was already a traumatizing struggle

I do feel a calling to spiritual beliefs

But my skin is white

My features are Scottish and French

My eyes are light coloured

And I can't learn other languages for the life of me

I feel like I'd be intruding if I tried to learn the indigenous culture

And I'm not saying that anyone who holds such strict barriers to their culture is making me a victim

Nor am I saying my Mom was wrong to not teach me a religion

If I were taught the Christian Religion, the one that I suppose is appropriate for a white English speaking person to learn, knowing how I was as a child I would have become extremely committed to it, to the point where both religious and non religious people shut me out.

It would have become my special interest,

But I probably would have been deeply hurt and betrayed by those who took the message of 'Love Thy Neighbour' and instead spread hate.

If I were raised Christian, I would likely see a large percentage of my religion as a traitor.

And I would feel expected to shun that religion completely in order to feel accepted by communities that also reject those people

So I would be alone regardless.

That's why I'm always trying to find the right label to use for my sexuality

Because I don't feel properly connected to the rules of each label

I don't feel connected to the LGBTQ+ community because they all seemed to know their identity from the beginning, where I never did because I was so busy trying to understand what normal was that I didn't even know being gay was a thing.

Then at around 10-13 I learned what that was and thought I was a straight ally (which, only knowing LGBTQ things from pop culture made me a terrible straight ally, as I know now looking back. I thought it was enough to just want to accept people for who they are, because that's what I knew I wanted, but I didn't know any of the rules so I often got myself into a lot of conflict.) because I didn't have any crushes on girls

I'm still trying to figure out my sexuality really

Still trying to figure out if any of my crushes were crushes or if I just wanted to have a crush so I made one up and turned it into a special interest

Still trying to figure out if the co dependencies I always formed with my friends were me having romantic feelings for them or if I just have really strong romantic love

I'm not sure if I'm aro/ace because I can feel flustered, and I can be attracted to people but it comes and goes

And when friends talk about people they find hot I just become a deer in headlights

And I tend to have trouble writing romance on my own

But that could just be because I don't have enough experience in romance?

It's hard to say...

I grew up in social isolation, on top of all that

My Mom had really bad social anxiety,

And between that and my Autism we didn't attend social events often

And we didn't have enough money for anything outside of school

There was the one year where I had ballet classes, that was the first year I had a real birthday party, with friends and games and cake and everything. I was twelve.

I grew up in an Autism Program

Six kids per classroom, most of them were boys, I was lucky if there was another girl in the classroom, and if there was the teachers would always mix up out names

We only saw the mainstream students when they were misbehaving in the halls or when we went out for recess

Most of the kids in the program were satisfied with just staying friends with others in the program

Not me

I learned social skills from television, and was extremely extraverted

I wanted to be ✨popular✨

What a sad dream that was

I wish I had just been satisfied with befriending the other weird kids

Then again, the weird kids often found me annoying too

See, I could never fit in with Autistic people either

I'm always trying to find out what about me makes it so hard to fit in

The extroverted Autistic with ADHD and severe anxiety, as well as C-PTSD and depression due to trauma.

The white girl with hair too thick to run my fingers through, and thick black hairs found all over my pale skin

With eyes that change colour, from green to brown to gold

With a button nose and round face and crooked teeth and eye teeth that grew in wrong so they look like fangs

Too poor to go to the dentist regularly, but I have a house and a family that can support me in adulthood so I'm technically privledged

Mentally ill but hates horror movies and gore and is sensitive to a good chunk of the things mentally I'll people like to talk about

Doesn't help that I'm an empath

Doesn't help that watching a tv show is extremely draining for me

I'm the white girl with a speech impediment that sounds like an accent

With flapping hands and buzzing sounds I make that people repeat back to me

With a stutter that my brother and father criticized constantly

I talk too fast and too much or I don't talk at all

I get overly attached to things and to people, or I don't care for them in the slightest

I'm not cynical enough to be an athiest

Not faithful enough for religion

Talking about my experience is hard and traumatic and I hate it so being an activist is hard

This was supposed to be a poem but it turned into a rant

Because I always write poems about things that upset me

It's hard

It always feels like I'm doing something wrong

I can never get the rules right

And I've tried not caring about what anyone else thinks

Now I spend my time in the basement of my parents house in the middle of nowhere, writing books that I hope one day can give people the community I didn't get to have growing up

Maybe I'll get a community too for it one day

I have a community now, kind of. People I can share my stories with, who tell me about theirs, and I love that

And this rant isn't because I'm not grateful for that

My life has just been a difficult path to navigate

And I know I should consider myself lucky

For having paths at all

For having food and water as I make the journey

For having shelter along the way

But that doesn't change all the mountains I've climbed

The storms I've walked through

And now I still feel like I'm getting nowhere.

Hopefully, one day, I'll find out where I fit

Until then, I just have to hope that I'm not just the last price of the puzzle that someone lost one day

And will never be found again

[joeknows4]

Representative Work 

This painting done by Marcel Duchamp is a fascinating piece of art which is one of my favorite pieces of art. It is quite often called The Large Glass and was worked on from 1915-1923. This art piece is suspended vertically and measures 109.25 in x 69.25 in. It also consists of two glass panels, the entire composition is shattered and it is in between the pieces of glass. It is set in a metal frame with a wooden base. This piece is beautiful and it should be spoken more of. It has a great mix of objects and falls great in the romantic category.

The Bridge Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors is a perfect example of a three-dimensional art piece that is essentially the same as 3D. It pops out more than a typical painting on a canvas which is another reason why I love this piece of art. Unfortunately, the Large Glass broke during the transport but was carefully repaired by Marcel Duchamp. At first glance, I found this artwork hard to understand and the concept of the whole idea. But as I did more research and kept viewing the art piece I quickly realized that it was about love.

The details that appeal most to me would be the cracked glass throughout the sculpture and the colors that were chosen specifically gold. I think these details are important because gold is a sign of material and the cracked glass shows how broken men are because of women. This work speaks to me because ever since I was a kid I have always been into romantic movies or novels. I love to think and assume certain outcomes and this art piece made me think about its meaning. This speaks about me in a manner that is relatable for the simple fact that I myself have tried to get with women and I know how hard it is and how one can get let down. The theme this work raises would be to not be let down so bad by women and to work together and be fair because they need each other. Although men and women can be without one another it is a lot better when they are together.

The reactions towards his work were very controversial. Some people thought it was even stupid. Later on, the meaning became more known and was taken into depth but the first reaction was not all great. It is a very abstract piece and does not require an objective appearance alone to be a very precious and beautiful piece. Everything about this art is brilliant and at some point even genius. The message behind the work is essentially what is called the “love machine” and it is an art piece that interprets a total of nine bachelors all for one woman. It shows the obsession of men towards women no matter the price and how women have so much control over men. Also how hard it is to really satisfy a woman. This artwork is a very special piece that has a lot of little details and beautiful touches to it.  

[dumbbitchfrommars]

you want him because in your mind hes the only possible person who might want you too.

the reality is EVERYONE WANTS YOU. even that guy at the gym that you couldnt make eye contact with, wants you. and he was huge and beautiful. and he wanted you to notice him.

JUST BECAUSE THEY ARENT SAYING IT AND YOU CANT SEE IT, DOESNT MEAN PEOPLE ARENT SECRETLY LOVING AND OBSESSING AND CRAVING AND NEEDING YOU!!!!!!

im bored and wanting a distraction in the form of a boy. and the only one i know of and that satisfied and attracted and excited me ever before was my ex. no fucking wonder hes the first person that comes to mind whenever i feel a little lonely. ITS NOT HIM. it what he represents to me.

i am a divine ethereal addictive and sensual being. i am the prize. everyone wants me. everyone needs me. everyone DESIRES ME!!!!!!

im slaying. i slay. i am worthy of love.

see ! i just needed to ride the wave. in silence, i rode the rollercoaster and i made it out the other side in one piece. i just needed to get it out there. i dont need someone else to vent to and confuse my feelings with. i just need to get it OUT so i can get on with it.

i am a gym girlie now. im literally ticking off every check box and goals ive had in my whole life. the last few years worth of manifestation is becoming reality. and it makes me SO HAPPY AND PROUD. bitch, you think youre proud of him? what about ME!? i am so fucking incredible and inspiring. i work so damn hard and i make everything i dream a reality. soon im going to get this job at mecca and my life is going to start accelerating ever faster. like are you even serious?!? what is there to be sad or worried about, when god has got my back? god is literally betting on my success! god is on the sidelines cheering me on! god always wants me to win!

now that ive manifested (almost) everything i put on my list. theres one last major thing i have to prioritise as my next manifestation goal. and that is true, loyal, real, passionate, unconditional, fiery, overflowing, magical, inspiring, creative, heartwarming, safe, protective, LOVE1!!!!!!!!! 1111111

first for myself. then for someone else, from someone else, with someone else. with my PERSON! with the phil to my vivian. the edmund to my violet. the mr darcy to my miss bennet. the anthony to my kate, the zayn to my gigi, the jaden to my monet, the flynn to my rapunzel, the beast to my beauty, the prince to sweep me off my feet and the caretaker to remind me of my softness. anyways. please god let my dreams come true when the time is right. i know its worth the wait and i am willing to wait until i am ready.

i am worthy of love. i am worthy of love. i am worthy of love.