#like i don't think it can be overstated how big of an impact they had at the time

[thebroccolination]

Playlist Meme

Tagged by @nejineeee!

Rules: You can usually tell a lot about a person by the type of music they listen to. Put your playlist on shuffle and list the first 10 songs, and then tag 10 people.

By Your Side - Jonas Blue, RAYE

Bittersweet Symphony - The Crown Soundtrack (they did a special remix for the trailer and it's all cinematic and atmospheric)

Free Them (feat. Teddy Swims) - ONE OK ROCK

โชคดีแค่ไหน (The Luckiest Boy) Boy Sompob

Somewhere Only We Know (feat. Darren Criss) - Glee Cast

Escape This Moment - Lightscape

Let Me Let You Go - ONE OK ROCK

I'm Alive - Celine Dion

Drove You Away - Fly By Midnight

You Set Me Free - Michelle Branch

[sainteda]

hotd finale spoilers

i think the core issue w the finale scene isn't alicent's willingness to cleave to rhaenyra for mercy as otto once warned her she would or even to recognize that to finally choose a life for herself her sons will likely die (although an 8ep season missing integral scenes like a confrontation w aemond immediately post-s1 or more impact from b&c [given instead to a mishandled alicole plot] is also a big problem), it's the viserys worship ingrained in his every mention or lack thereof. alicent has to recycle an arc of powerlessness she's already endured her entire life, as if to drill into the minds of an audience that was already unwilling to sympathize with her that — actually — she's powerless! who would have thought! because the show refuses to recognize viserys for what he was, or at the VERY LEAST what he did to her, alicent's journey to rhaenyra (and more importantly, away from court) has to be borne of a million new heavy-handed methods the writers have concocted to hit her while she's down, and then hit her again. and again. and again.

alicent can't come to rhaenyra and plead her case while simultaneously reckoning with her anger that this is not new! this is not just her sons or the green council! she was sold off by her only family to the father of the only person she ever chose and it caused her to lose her and she was a child! she never wanted to marry viserys. she never wanted her children. he forced her to have them and then he discarded them and he's lauded even in death for his consideration and judiciousness when he never considered her. why can't she be angry at him!! why bother writing her grief over who she could have been without acknowledging one of the two people who took that version of her away? it's so hollow. the alicent who seeks out rhaenyra on dragonstone is needlessly humbled, lobotomized, and her lines read almost as if she's pleading her case to the audience instead of rhaenyra herself. why can she not be desperate to be heard while the epiphany of not only her lack of autonomy but of personhood itself fights not to bubble over the surface? shouldn't her grief be heaviest now, for not even knowing herself but coming to rhaenyra anyway? rhaenyra who might be the only choice she can remember making? isn't there an inherent anger in that? she could have taken helena and jaehera and gone as far as possible but she's here, before her opposition, grasping at an olive branch she knows is broken, because it's what she would have done the last time she was a person who could choose. it's what she wanted twenty years ago, and what else is there. there's been no alicent since but whoever she had to be to keep herself and her children alive. isn't that fucked up??? hello???

i understand it's a reversal of the scene in the sept so rhaenyra is shutting alicent down but it just makes alicent's path to freedom to look more like a new form of submission. as if her fears weren’t justified. as if her anger in season 1 was petty jealousy rectified once she Saw The Light (rhaenyra). anyways. regardless of hes that she's talking about her and rhaenyra through viserys and aemma, i really don't think i can overstate the wrongness of alicent speaking fondly of him in a scene that's supposed to be about her coming to terms with a lifetime of being used particularly by men — and still continuing to extol a man who quite literally raped her in a scene that is In the show. am i supposed to forget the marital rape of a child bride? the one that they put in the show. on purpose. ??? how am i supposed to view that as anything but disingenuous?

[temperamentalaquarius]

so what do i have to offer to get a post with a scathing comparison of fanon Tim and canon Tim? 😂 this is an official request! the amount of cardboard cutout & self-insert Tim ocs i have found in the fanfics… it’s been really bothering me lately and your “bitch i might wing” posts give me life

I'm glad ur enjoying my descent, I am too ha ha!!

And boy do I agree with you. Tim is juuust white and twinky enough(but not nearly as much as fanon Tim enjoyers seem to think) on first spec for a lot of ppl to project on, so he gets...idk let's call it diluted. Short answer is that canon Tim would drop kick fanon Tim for speaking about Jack Drake the way he does.

Long rambling analysis is that fanon Tim leans into his time as Red Robin(because it's the only Tim comic they've read IF they've read it) which was more supposed to be a story of how someone behaves when they are so deep in their grief that they literally can't see which way is up than a display of how Tim normally behaves and thinks. Everything else is just kind of.. assumed filler based off of what his wiki says. As a result Tim gets written as this shy, spineless, borderline megalomaniac child who is ignored and undervalued when in 85% of canon he's the complete opposite(nu52 Tim is a blight). Where fanon Tim is a genius prodigy, canon Tim is the average smart kid with a big mouth who chose to be a hero. He had to contend with the knowledge and fear that he is not on the level of the other heroes and adapts to it by bringing antagonists to his level instead of meeting them where they are. He's interesting because he literally has to think differently but he's written as Bruce junior for some reason.

Also, unlike most of the batfam, he has(or had) strong ties to his civilian life, and had to find a way to balance them, something that is completely ignored in fanon when that was his appeal in the first fucking place. Instead, fanon warps his parents into these grotesquely neglectful charicatures to justify the truth of Red Robin when again, Red Robin was about grief through the lens of an unreliable narrator. Jack and Janet were just... parents? They were neglectful in the way that any teenage superhero's parents have to be so that they can be a superhero on the DL, and he loved them. Taking that away takes away the impact of their deaths on him, and strips away yet another element of his character. Also, I literally cannot overstate the impact that Steph had in Tim's life. Because ppl want to ship him with other male characters, their formative and thematically integral relationship gets tossed to the side along with all of the nuance that came with it.

Because I can't stop talking I also think that fanon Tim is also probably tied with Dick when it comes to suffering from the poor attempt at TMNTing of the robins- i.e. Dick is the face, Jason's the angry one, Tim's the smart one, and Damian's the fighty one while Steph&Duke don't exist because I guess there aren't any more one word traits to assign them. Tim is very smart, yes, but hes not the smartest(because obviously area of expertise is a factor) or the best detective of the Robins- and DEF not the smartest of the Batfam by any measure of intelligence- and it certainly isn't his defining feature like fandom wants ppl to think. He's got other things to him that are more interesting.

I just blacked out for 15 minutes, is this anything?

[circular-bircular]

hello! im currently questioning whether I am disordered or not. I was wondering if you would be willing to share your experiences if you're comfortable or maybe share some good resources about what its like being disordered because im really lost rn. this blog is great btw! take care of yourself <3

Hey there! Glad you enjoy my blog, sorry it took a bit to get to this. This is the first night in like a month that I have any free time whatsoever (and that's cause I'm putting off grades, lol...)

I hope you don't mind a bulletpointer on this one!

Disordered experiences...

Firstly, I cannot overstate how fucking everything about me is impacted by trauma. Physical health? I get sick more often because my body has fought as hard as it has to survive -- it's an actual thing that traumatized people get physically sick more often. Mental health? Shit. Depression's comorbid, anxiety is comorbid, and I've even seen discussions about the connections between autism and DID, and those two do not mix well in me. All of my everything is constantly fucked.

I cannot goddamn sleep. Sleep is a goddamn hellscape. I run from somewhere between 2 to 6 hours of sleep most nights, and have to take plenty of naps just to survive. That makes it next to impossible some days to get the energy I need, or if I did get enough nappies, to get the free-time I need.

In terms of my actual DID... Amnesia is the biggest one. I constantly have gaps. I have to write every single thing down. I have plenty of accomodations, sure! But even those fail from time to time, and then it's just a spiral. Like, today at work, I had a surprise meeting I did not write down, because I just forgot to. I forgot about the meeting until 10 minutes prior, when I got an alert in my email about it. This meant I skipped lunch, and had to try and focus without having eaten since 9am. This made my day harder, which led to...

Dissociation!!! God fuck. It's so hard to focus sometimes. I am so spaced out. Today was one of those days where I had to cling to my phone for survival and grounding. Not the healthiest coping mechanism, but it's better to be writing posts on tumblr during class than forgetting I'm in class at all. And none of the kids snitch on me -- just get a little pissy if I don't call on them quickly enough.

Trauma flashbacks. Ough. If I get stuck in one, goodbye ability to think for awhile. It's been happening more and more frequently at work lately, so there goes my 30 minute lunch spent in the bathroom forgetting I exist because I feel like I'm going to my parents house after school.

That ties into paranoia. I have to convince myself more often than not that, when I get home, my abusers won't be there. I'm 26 and haven't directly lived with them in 3 years, and I cut them off close to a year ago. I still wake up thinking they're breaking in.

That's about all I can think off quick, off the top of my head. Basically... owie owie my brain is a big ol bruise.

[words-of-wolf]

main blog of knifedog-machina here - I have a question! do you have any memories involving scent, and territory markings or prey tracking through that? I've been a bit enthralled with WolfQuest recently, and I wanna know how their visualized scent system holds up for a wolf!

Hello!! I love this question, things like this are some of my absolute favourite things to discuss!!

Gonna put a cut here because I rambled wayy more than I planned. :P

I do have memories of this, yes! It's not a simple answer though, because one problem I run into with some of my memories from other lives is that I don't always have the.. capacity to comprehend them exactly, as a human? It's a weird feeling! I can remember it but some aspects of it are just so hard to grasp.

I think to describe properly how I experience those memories will take some thinking, so I'll stick it on my blog post to-do list and aim to write something more meaningful later on!!

In short, though: I absolutely cannot overstate how central my sense of smell was in my memories of being a wolf. It was like... hm. How humans centre a lot of their understandings of the world and their place in it through our eyes? Like seeing eyes as windows to the soul and all that? Like that, but it was smell instead.

Smell wasn't just a tool, it was a really vital part of how I conceptualised the world and my place in it. I'd say even how I thought about things, and processed things internally, was very focused on smell!

As for your specific question... I've never actually got around to playing WolfQuest yet myself (it's been on my to play list since I was like 16 ahaha) but I watched a couple of videos to see what the scent mechanics in it are like!

Overall, I think they look pretty good! Ideas like scent are always gonna be hard to capture in a game, especially when you've also got to keep in mind limitations of performance and stuff, plus obviously making the game feel actually fun to play.

For the tracking scent mechanic, I really like that they added scent nodes in the air that are influenced by wind! When it comes to tracking something by scent, wind has a really big impact - the way the WolfQuest devs found to make wind relevant without being really taxing on performance is really clever, and interesting!

Territorial markings would be a really difficult thing to represent properly in a game, I think. WolfQuest seems to have a solid solution for that. It's not what I'd call "realistic" exactly, though also they base their game on Yellowstone's ecosystem, which is a very competitive location for wolves. The amount of elk there makes it prime habitat, and that means there's higher wolf density, so territorial behaviours are way more defined and intense than in other places. So some of the things that feel "off" to me, I think also come as a result of that!

It's hard to really articulate my thoughts on territory and marking, I might have to come back to the topic later when I've had some time to mull it over!

Thinking about this got me thinking about how I'd go about making a scent tracking mechanic in a video game... in a fantasy world where I can ignore hardware limitations and how difficult it all would be to code. :P

I think I would format it as a different visual mode taking inspiration from infrared videos. In this camera mode, a lot of visual objects are unclear or ambiguous, particularly anything distant.

And I would use different colours to differentiate three different scent types: yellow would be "uninteresting background scent" - grass, trees, that kind of thing. The stuff you just don't pay attention to. Green would be "distracting non-prey scent" - things that might obscure what you're looking for, or maybe just catch your attention enough to distract you from what you're focused on. Then I'd probably use red as "prey scent".

Things that have a very strong "prey scent" would be bright red and show up from furthest away compared to other scents - for example, fresh deer scat.

Less strong "prey scents" would be harder to discern from further away. These would be things that either are fresh but don't smell as strongly (like the area a deer was resting recently), or older scent sources. These would probably fade to a more orange tone when you're further from them.

I also quite like the idea of older and weaker scents being harder to identify, and maybe something based on the idea of focus - an older, weaker scent would be harder to concentrate on than a fresh, strong one.

And wind would influence how strong the scents are, especially over distance! So scents you're downwind from are clearer and more visually distinct, whereas scents upwind are less so.

If I were gonna make a game based on this, I'd say the mechanics would encourage piecing together clues from scent, sound and sight. There would probably be a separate camera mode for hearing focus, and then the default mode would let you see visual cues if there are any - flattened grass, game trails, marks on trees, etc.

Hm! It's a bit of a tangent but fun to think about, hehe. ^u^

I hope this satisfies your curiosity a bit! :D

[nanjokei]

this is a post of me shitting on intsys for what happened to engage, i honestly feel bad for mika pikazo, basically thrown under the bus by intsys from the start, was given very little instruction on what to do and what the mood of the game (engage) will be and it seems like there wasn't much of an editing down phase either. i feel bad she was just handed the paltry descriptions of 40 characters (being instructed to draw "older woman" and then the character turning out to be 30 sticks out in my mind) with not much direction.

im not a big fan of her style these days, more of a 2018 mika pikazo appreciator, but i question why they hired the artist who most commonly draws album covers, magazine covers and alt designs for already existing characters like hatsune miku. i do think the onus falls on intsys for hiring someone who seemingly doesn't fit the job, but i think if they actually gave real direction the designs would not be in the state they are now.

ofc being the nerd i am i object to her art being pejoratively labeled as "vtuber art" because i never understood that label and also frankly i think it's insulting to reduce the style of an artist who has been around for a long time to just one thing. i keep seeing that post explaining it and its like buddy... sorry you keep seeing personalityless twitch indies who overcompensate by overpaying for ugly overdesigned models but saying "vtuber style" is surmountable to "too anime". what does it mean?! i read that post over and over and i feel like the influence of "vtuber" (incredibly vague term that means nothing and changes between whoever uses it because its convenient) and "genshin" (im not a genshin fan and i dont care for the designs in it but is it really that influential as OP claims?) is very overstated... if anything the design in anime and games these days is increasingly influenced by subculture, shit like jiraikei which i actually dislike because THAT'S repetitive and generic. how many times have you seen a design in recent years that's structurally just this to the point of being boring to tears

im seriously not saying this as a "vtuber fan", given the vtubers i watch most often are "elf guy in a suit", "guy in labcoat", "girl in very normal school uniform" but i find that kind of criticism an oxymoron. is it because i don't really interact with twitch stuff? like, whatever. i know being an oldhead who usually just sticks to what ive liked for years impacts my point of view. my point is that mika pikazo is a talented artist, the designs she put out for engage were a massive miss but 1) was she the person for the job 2) did intsys give her adequate instructions and support and the answer to both is no. i think it's fine to dislike the designs, i don't like a lot of them either now that i've seen all of them. but at the same time a lot of people are just extra rude about it (seen in replies to redesigns) and usually i wouldn't find any issue but knowing the context that intsys screwed pikaZ over really really stings. i remember when engage was revealed people were harrassing her for weeks which sucks, she's been nothing but a really positive presence online.

i was gonna say "anyway hire someone who fits" but then i remembered how kusakihara is one of the most overbearing control freak art directors in any game company i've ever seen, hiring chinatsu kurahana for fe3h and then not letting her draw any of the in-game sprites despite being an artist who is familiar with the workflow of visual novels and the like... and yes i can tell it's kusakihara imitating her style. i know the way he renders, especially the way he makes tits look disgustingly oiled up.

interestingly, kozaki was always thrown under the bus in a similar way to pikazo, making similar remarks about how fantasy designs aren't his forte and how he's not sure why they hired him (we now know it's because they wanted hidari for awakening but he had other obligations). kozaki even got the blame for some of the worse designs like camilla, even though that was a kusakihara design. i'll lay my cards on the table: i think kozaki's designs, given he is not a fantasy artist, i feel comfortable in saying that they're bad. he's a comic-like artist that does well with modern day stuff. you let him onto fire emblem and he makes the insane armor designs in fea and fates. and of course all my respect to him, but like pikazo he is not the right guy for the job.

anyway i hope you guys are ready for them to hire kishida mel next and for every girl to be an infantile school girl cause LOL. they really gotta stop hiring super specialized artists (like pikazo who does one off illustrations best, and kozaki who does western movie/comic book inspired realistic designs best). even when they hire "the right person", intsys and the art director and overall director kusakihara are overbearing and take over too much (as seen with kozaki and kurahana, according to the echoes artbook there were hints of him trying to influence hidari as well but hidari was not shaken + hidari was there on a favor so they probably couldn't pressure him more LOL)

but yeah i think people should be blaming intsys way more

[slow-button-off]

I am curious about something and you're the one I trust, so. I've read about how Ferrari has worked on Carlos' car to accommodate him. Did this somehow impact Charles' car, making it slower or harder to drive? The updates they give the cars in a season are set before the season starts or they are figured out as the season progresses and problems start to happen? Or is it all about setups? I think each driver has their own preferred setups, right, or do both drivers work with the same setup? I know the TD fucked things up for them but I don't think it's only about that. Maybe you could shed a bit of light on this, I am slightly confused. Thank you!

Upgrades are a little bit complicated. So this is a long post

The first thing we need to establish is that the engineers are never going to put an upgrade on a car if it doesn't make the car faster. The main priority is always to make the car faster. But they can tweak things to change the balance of the car. They don't always do it on purpose but they can to a certain extent.

They didn't make the entire upgrade to help Carlos but they did tweak them to make Carlos more comfortable. How much and what exactly they did we don't know (the floor shifting the balance to more understeer sounds like that tho). Mekies talked about it and Carlos did so too in some interviews. (If you want me to I can find them again but I keep forgetting which outlet it was)

The second thing is that the teams can theoretically do two completely different things on each of their cars. They don't because of money and time constraints but theoretically they could.

Imo you are right that it's not only about the TD and AMuS agrees. The issues started with the big floor upgrade in France. They wanted to make the car faster by getting more downforce from the floor which would allow them to run smaller wings which means less drag. And they changed the shape of their floor (I can find the pictures tomorrow if you want to see the actual change) and that changed the balance (and stability) of the car.

The new floor generates more downforce but specifically in the rear of the car and that means more understeer because the rear has more grip.

And because it makes the car faster they run that floor on both cars. (There has been another minor floor upgrade since)

That doesn't make the car slower or harder to drive as such.

The drivers have different preferences when it comes to the balance of the car. In general all cars are a bit understeery and everything else would be unsafe but some drivers like understeer a lot and others prefer a bit more oversteer.

All the cars have their own general characteristics. The Ferrari had a stronger front end at the start of the season so it was a little bit more oversteery just based on it's general design. The drivers then work with their engineers to get the right setup for them. But there is only so much you can do with the setup because you have limited options in general and you need to keep the general speed and tyre performance in mind as well. So if the car itself if really understeery you can't make it oversteery just with the setup and vice versa as well.

The drivers often run similar setups in order to get the best out of the car but they can also run completely different setups compared to their teammate if they feel like it.

When it comes to Ferrari I'm pretty sure that Charles always has a lot more front wing than Carlos because Charles likes more grip at the front.

The "new" F1-75 with the new floor became more understeery than it used to be. Carlos is a driver that prefers understeer which is also why he didn't feel comfortable in the car at the start of the season. Charles on the other hand prefers a bit more oversteer so he's not liked the car much lately. But with the new floor they had to push the setup a bit more to make Charles more comfortable and that's made his car a bit twitchy at times and that can be more complicated to deal with. But that comes from compensating for the general balance shift.

So it didn't make the car harder to drive but just made it behave in a way that Charles doesn't like all that much. And there is only so much they can correct with the setup and still have a fast and driveable car. He is still very fast! But he doesn't feel 100% comfortable.

On the upgrade timeline:

This always varies from team to team and their car design tbh.

But in general some upgrades are set before the season starts but most of them are figured out while the season progresses.

This season for example Ferrari brought no upgrades from first testing to I think it was Saudi. While other teams brought their first upgrades already to Bahrain testing.

But this season was also special because it was the first season of completely new regs.

A lot of the upgrades are figured out "during" the season because they only really know where exactly their car is lacking in comparison to the others. If it doesn't have a fundamental problem like Williams with a car that generates like no downforce.

So for example the France floor was a reaction to the RB straight line speed. The team realised they had to work on that or they'll be sitting ducks and so they did.

They probably figured out that that was an issue in like Bahrain in the first race but it takes a while to develop and test the upgrade and then to also produce it.

A new rear wing like the one that Ferrari brought to Saudi is a pre-planned upgrade because that's just track specific and they know what they'll need beforehand and can develop that before the have the actual comparison to the others.

Or weight loss upgrades can also be planned ahead of time as soon as they know how heavy their cars are.

They have rough upgrade timelines but what exactly the upgrade is isn't planned out before the season starts.

Ferrari didn't start the season with their upgrades planned to make Carlos more comfortable. That was something that happened after he struggled.

Because ideally you want your two drivers to be close because it helps A the team result and B it gives more strategic flexibility.

[stillness-in-green]

What's your opinion about eri? I mean, she's cute and pitiful, but does she seem... bland, at some points? I don't know how to put it in words but, like from writing good characters point of view, rather than the good, nice person point of view, or something?

She’s boring. Boring! My god. She’s cute and all, but with only very rare exceptions, she’s cute in the way that a stuffed animal is cute—harmless, an object to be acted upon, something to be plucked, somewhat worse for wear, out of a garage sale and taken home and cleaned up, then put on the bed to sit there and look cute and be periodically cuddled.

That’s overstating things somewhat, obviously, but I think Eri was at her most interesting when she was at her most difficult—and she was never really all that difficult.

(Hit the jump for more about the wrinkles Eri introduced in the "saving" narrative, her parallels with Shigaraki, and the impact of her powers on the story.)

So, as I said, Eri was never really all that challenging for Deku personally, but at least back in her origin arc, we had the idea that she was difficult for the heroes to reach because she couldn’t bring herself to believe that being “saved” was a possibility for her, because Overhaul had firmly established himself in her mind as just too strong to fight. She tried to run away, of course, but she never confronted him directly, because doing so was useless, so that was the mentality she had when anyone else confronted him as well.

I liked the approach that before heroes could save her, they needed to make her believe that saving her was even within their capabilities. I liked even more that, even after they got her out of there, they immediately ran into the problem that just because they got her out didn’t mean they’d addressed her trauma. There’s fantastic nuance to the idea that a hero can get someone out of immediate danger, but if the person they saved is just dumped right back into a bad situation, or into a freefall with no social safety net, the hero has done nothing but stave off an inevitable situation where that person gets themselves into trouble again—maybe a trouble they need once more to be saved from, or maybe a trouble that now involves saving others.

The big problem with Eri is that she was just so…Easy Mode. She was easy to sympathize with because she was little and cute and wounded (but in a clean way). She wasn’t angry and disillusioned like Kouta was. She was never creepy and covered in blood and smiling in a weird way like Tenko was. She was tattered and hurt-looking enough to make viewers want to take care of her, but not so much so that she became uncomfortable to look at. Possibly because Overhaul is a clean freak, she was never dirty or grubby; she had those big doe eyes and a perpetually sad or scared face, rather than being angry or—what seems more likely for her situation—completely shut down emotionally. There’s basically no one who could reasonably look at her and think, “I don’t know; I don’t know if trying to rescue that person is worth our time and effort.”

Compare this to victims like Tenko: also a child, but one who looked off-putting enough that people kept shying away from him. Or try Bakugou instead: older, less sympathetic, so he got hints dropped by a reporter that he might have gone villain already and no longer needed to be “saved.” This scales all the way on up to e.g. the Noumu, the all-out villains, the masses of the PLF, and so on.

One of the things that strikes me as most interesting about Eri from a narrative perspective is how clearly saving her serves as a prelude to saving Shigaraki. From manifesting (alleged) quirk mutations that lead to them killing their parents, to being picked up, abused and manipulated by villains, all the way from rejecting heroes’ attempts to save them despite how obviously they need it down to their very coloring, Eri was obviously a dry run for Shigaraki. She therefore serves as a highly useful comparison point for how things are liable to go with Shigaraki.

The trouble for me is that there’s no middle ground there. Eri is the version of Shigaraki who’s nice and sweet and easy to save, who doesn’t lash out, whose ignorance or warped understanding of morality and social norms goes no further than the extremely on-the-nose “doesn’t know how to smile.” Her issues all basically get resolved in the space of a school concert, with no further plot time dedicated to e.g. her long-term housing situation, her schooling, or her upbringing outside of training her quirk.(1)

That by itself makes her not as interesting as she would be if the horrific situation she was rescued from were allowed to influence her in more realistic, ongoing ways, but it’s particularly annoying because it makes her—well, not even much of a dry-run for Shigaraki, either.

I’ve seen people suggest that Eri isn’t the preview for Shigaraki, but rather the Good End of Shigaraki: the version that suggests that children like Tenko are not beyond help if they’re helped in time. I don’t think that’s Horikoshi’s intent myself,(2) as there’s far too much of the series’ overall tone riding on the matter of saving Shigaraki, but I can understand why some people who don’t care about the villains might get to that conclusion, because there’s so little bridge between them, so little that points in the direction from Eri towards Shigaraki.

Deku is thick-headed. It’s clear at this point that he doesn’t see this stuff until it’s shoved in front of him while someone yells in his ear about it, ideally while crying. I suspect that’s why we have Crying Inner Five-Year-Old Tenko, because Deku and/or the narrative has been so bad at establishing a continuous line between where Eri was when heroes saved her and where Shigaraki is now. Thus, instead of a line that points from Eri to Shigaraki, Vision!Tenko becomes a line that points backwards, as if Deku hasn’t matured in his understanding of how to save people at all.

I wish it didn’t have to be that way, and one way we might have had a Deku who didn’t need that psychic vision would have been an Eri who was a little bit farther down Shigaraki’s road to begin with.

On the other big consideration with Eri, her power and the role it will play in the narrative, I have less to say. I used to be extremely concerned that she would be used to rewind Shigaraki back to his child self (which is, to quote a webcomic, “just a complicated way of annihilating the person [he] is today”), but I don’t really think that’s on the table at this point. Her ability to rewind people is tied to her horn, a finite resource, and going by how much it shrank when all she did was rewind Mirio six months, the amount of it growth she would need to rewind Shigaraki 16+ years is just not something I think is feasible.

Also too, there’s been no indication thus far that people who get rewound lose their memories of the intervening period, and what has it actually fixed in Shigaraki’s psychology if you just put his current mindset back in the body of a five-year-old, probably against his wishes?

That just leaves the prospect of healing fatal wounds, and while that’s possibly an option, it would be so time-consuming that you’d quickly run into the same problem—if she had a good build-up she could help a number of people whose injuries were all relatively recent, or one person who’d been out of commission for some time, but until the heroes figure out what her accumulation condition is,(3) they’re stuck waiting for her horn to build up naturally. She might have one more major play in the story, but it’s going to have be either saving one person on very recently injured with the little horn she has available right now, or it’s going to be in the epilogue, and either way, I’m not expecting her to come in and handwave Shigaraki back to harmlessness.

That, of course, is setting aside the fact that keeping Eri around for no reason but that her quirk is potentially convenient for the heroes is only less dehumanizing than what Overhaul was doing to her because the heroes aren’t literally enacting medical torture on her in the meantime. Seriously, let that girl find something—anything—else to do with her life. It’d go a long way towards helping flesh her out as a character beyond the sad waif who needs to be made to smile again because no one likes it when cute girls aren’t smiling or the heal spam button whose only relevance to the plot is who she’s undoing consequences for today.(4)

Aside: ...I am, it must be said, somewhat annoyed at the idea that Mirio needed his powers back to be a hero. Jesus wept, guys, he’s a third-year high school student who fought Overhaul solo for five full minutes while protecting a helpless child, possibly still under the effects of a quirk wreaking havoc on his sense of equilibrium, and quirkless. I’m not saying it’s bad for him to want his quirk back, or bad for Eri to want to restore him, but why in god’s name was someone that good at fighting ever pulled out of the Hero course? Fuck’s sake. He could never have gotten his quirk back at all and he would still have been, exactly as Nighteye predicted, as fine a hero as any.

Thinking about it takes me right back to one of my early objections to the entire premise of Deku as a character: "Wait, why would he need a super-power to be a hero? Hasn't the author ever heard of [long list of American superheroes who fight crime with entirely mundane talents and abilities]?" I got past that question for Deku because the legacy power plotline is more interesting anyway, but I shouldn't have needed to get past that question for Mirio because Mirio would have been a goddamn amazing way to address the entire setting's belief that people are defined by the quirks, for better or for worse, and a great way to challenge Midoriya to continue deepening his understanding of what it means to be a hero.

---

1: I mentioned this once before in, I want to say, one of the MVA In Memorium posts, but it’s striking that Eri is reassured by even the main character that her quirk is kind and gentle, rather than Deku reassuring her that she is herself a good person. Person and quirk are completely conflated, and while I’m sure it was a nice thing for Eri to hear in the moment, what with Chisaki having tried to pour so much poison in her ear about how cursed her quirk was (more, one suspects, to keep her easy to handle than because Overhaul himself believed such spiritualistic nonsense), it becomes a lot more problematic when you consider that Eri is staying at the school entirely on the understanding that Aizawa and the rest are helping her train her quirk. Absolutely no mention is given to the rest of her development as a human being and citizen of the world.

2: Largely because, “Every victim has an expiration date, and if they don’t get saved or somehow manage to save themselves before then, too bad; now they have to die,” is a monstrous read on the material and its genre.

3: Hmm. I wonder if there’s someone the heroes could ask about that. Someone they have in custody and who has something he very badly wants that it wouldn’t hurt anyone to grant him in exchange for his knowledge of the workings of Eri’s quirk. No? Oh, well. Guess everyone’s just going to have to suffer in the meantime.

4: RIP all lasting consequences of the Overhaul arc; you were nice while we had you.

[yessoupy]

you didn't ask for this take, but i'm offering it anyway.

i started watching michael phelps in 2000. i distinctly remember the day i found out that he'd gone pro at 16. my swim coach had us all guess who he was talking about and when he said it was michael my brain went, "that kid from last year???"

the athens games in 2004 came around and the kid from sydney was now 19 years old and dominating. he won 6 golds and 2 bronzes and whenever anyone made comments that he'd "failed" with those two bronzes (one in the 200m free when he lost to IAN THORPE AND PIETER VAN DEN HOOGENBAND, THE BEST and the other in the 4x100 free relay where the south africans just came out of NOWHERE and surprised EVERYONE), my reaction was "what the fuck???? he's third in the biggest meet there is???? that's not failure!!! your expectation that he achieve perfection was unrealistic! don't blame him for that." i've been fiercely protective of olympic athletes since a very young age -- i was 10 when i learned about greg louganis and his struggles. that made a big impact on me.

when mike was pulled over for rolling a stop sign back home in maryland and blew a .08 on the breathalyzer? my mind went right to all of the stories i'd found about olympians suffering from post-olympic depression. (were there a lot of stories? nope! but there were enough that it was something i knew about and worried about for my favorite athletes.)

then it was 2008 and mike was going for EIGHT GOLDS IN EIGHT RACES and the media was all over him and his face was serious and i wasn't watching those olympics live, i don't know if i could handle it. (my family had moved to hawaii and the first week of the olympics was the week i spent in texas before heading back to college. i also went to 7 baseball games in those 7 games, and my friend and i watched the prime time re-run every evening......)

the fact that mike was able to accomplish that feat was pure dumb luck. his finish that won him the 100m fly against mike cavic was the worst way to finish a race and every swim coach CRINGED but had he not taken the stroke he'd have lost. i can't even talk about the 4x100 free relay -- that gold was EARNED by jason lezak. EVEN IN THE SHINY SUIT ERA NO ONE BEAT HIS RELAY SPLIT.

but anyway. imagine having all of that pressure in 2008, when twitter was a thing but not really, managing to muscle through a grueling 8 days of racing at the highest level of your sport, being on every talk show and cereal box and magazine and on and on, and then you go home, where you swim AT a university but aren't a student, and you go to a party and hit the bong and a picture gets out and you have to apologize for letting loose because America made you a role model.

Then it was 2012, and that was supposed to be it. He'd retired. But he had no idea what to do with himself.

He didn't know what he was if he wasn't a swimmer. So he went in and competed again in 2016. Imagine being in THAT situation! The only thing you know how to do is swim 10km a day.

Now you see him on commercials for mental health apps, and I think I've seen his interview about Simone Biles' decision like 5 times without even looking for it. He's the greatest Olympian of all time, hands down. (There are some arguments someone COULD make about other athletes, but it's not like he was only swimming freestyle for all those medals .....) The fact that the greatest Olympian of all time is out there saying to the American people that we need to prioritize the mental health of these athletes, and that he supports Simone in her decision? Whether you like the image of that or not, the reality is that that means the WORLD in this space. It's HUGE for him to be on American media and speaking about this to the American public.

And what Simone has done in speaking about her mental health and taking a step back? That's HUGE for the athletes themselves. It's one thing for Mike to be out there talking about what he went through, it's another for her to be out there talking about what she's GOING through. The positive impact that she's going to have on the mental health of other athletes cannot be overstated. "If Simone Biles could make this decision for herself at the Olympics, I can do it too."

I know that Mike is ~problematic. The swimming world is a small one, though, and I've been part of it for 20 years. To me, Mike isn't just that Olympic athlete who's around every 4 years to win some medals. He's the guy who put my sport on the map and whose athletic feats inspired a new generation of swimmers (Katie Ledecky, Joe Schooling, Chad le Clos, the list goes on!). Mike's the guy I almost ran over in the parking garage because he doesn't pay attention in parking lots/garages (this was not the only time; there are multiple stories from multiple people). Mike's the guy who'd always sign autographs for the kids whenever he wasn't actively swimming --

Mike's a human being who's made mistakes and hasn't always been the BEST ambassador for the sport, but you know what? I was proud of him each time he won a medal, but I'm more proud of him now for what he's doing outside of the pool.

[casperthinks]

Triggered

An exercise

⫷⫸

If you don’t understand why everyone is making such a fuss about this word and you would like to, this post is for you.

If you think that there is no possible good explanation and that it’s all about oversensitive snowflakes, this post is not for you. I know that you won’t listen to me, but I want this to serve as reassurance for the people I am talking to that your interference and derailment will not be tolerated. Furthermore, I will be basing my judgement of what you believe on how you act, and not what you claim.

⫷⫸

I’m not going to explain the mechanics of trauma, because it’s possible you’ve been misled into believing trauma is a flashy word that people use to overstate their case, and you won’t take me seriously if you see it again.

This is also not going to be a display of how much I know stuff, at least not if I do it correctly. I would simply like to lead you in an exercise of self-reflection. It could get rough, so I’d line up a friend to talk to, but if you don’t have one, please talk to me.

⫷⫸

The examples in this segment will not apply to everyone. Cooperation with this exercise looks like making an active effort to substitute a personal example and extrapolate from there. There are building instructions that can work with any color pieces.

If you don't feel like collaborating with this exercise, that is okay. They're not mandatory. I hope you enjoy the next post down.

⫷⫸

I would like you to think about the worst thing that has ever happened to you. Not the thing other people would agree is bad. The one you can least tolerate the feeling of. And I know that this is vulnerable, and difficult, and personal, and shameful, and maybe even humiliating. But I’m not asking you to share it. I’m asking you to consider it.

Maybe it was an assault, or a robbery, or a house fire. Maybe it was abuse in your childhood, or later, or if, for reasons of self-preservation, you refuse to call it that, maybe a chronically distant or constantly angry parent. Maybe it was being poor for years. Maybe it was your dog getting sick because you didn’t know how to care for a dog, and the crushing realization that this was on you. Maybe it was military service.

Maybe you don’t want to admit to me, or to yourself, that any of those things had an impact, or even that they happened at all. Because that would be weak. I have to say, if you insist on using that framework, that true weakness would have to be hiding from what the truth can teach you about yourself.

But I don’t want to use that framework. I just want you to pay attention.

⫷⫸

Perhaps, even though the assault or the house fire or the robbery or the dog, or the abuse, or being poor, or war, didn’t have any effect on you whatsoever, you may still notice that you are jumpy or frustrated around people who are larger than you. Maybe you get annoyed when people walk up behind you and touch you before you know they’re there, and then you just can’t seem to unwind for a while.

I want you to think about whether you have a lowered tolerance to the smell of smoke, or the sound of fire alarms. Maybe there’s a zero tolerance policy for candles on birthday cakes that people think is silly. Maybe you don’t get why people find wood wick candles soothing, because the crackle drives you mad. Or maybe you’re intensely preoccupied with the state of your electrical wiring, and it takes up more of your time and energy than it feels like it should. Or maybe you think your friends are crazy for not being kept awake at night by this.

Maybe home security is of more importance to you than anyone else you know. Maybe you wake up multiple times over the course of one night to check the doors are locked. Maybe you start fights with friends over kitchen knives being left lying about, which they don’t seem to think is a big deal. Maybe you get really upset when people slam doors, or stomp around, or raise their voice. Maybe it makes you very angry when someone passive-aggressively performs a chore at you because they think you should’ve done it. Maybe you feel like a fight is about to break out whenever your partner sighs and then says nothing else. Maybe you’re distant from people and protective of your interests, or maybe, conversely, you seek interaction all the time and find it very hard to be alone.

Maybe you’re finding it difficult to connect to or care about animals now, or maybe they make you anxious. Or, in complete opposition to that, perhaps you are now concerned with the fate of every stray dog on earth, and get super worked up about everything you see on the web that even looks like it might imply bad pet ownership.

If you were, or more likely, are poor, are you particularly concerned with exactly how much food you buy? Are you stressed about wasting it, or feel like you failed in some way? Do you get angrier than your friends when an object breaks, sometimes even if it belongs to them and not you? Have you ever picked a fight about someone else’s frivolous spending because you were trying to help them? Do you feel guilty when you turn on the heat if it’s any warmer than ten below zero outside?

Can you even comfortably inhabit a room if you don’t know where all the exits are? I want you to ask yourself if your relationships seem to be degrading. If you feel more disconnected and less well understood than before, and if that isolation makes you feel resentful, sometimes, about stuff other people think is totally fine.

⫷⫸

I’m not going to judge you for these feelings, experiences and reactions. I just want you to really look at them. To really sink into this awareness of their impact on your behavior and emotions. Of their effect on the life you get to live, and how you live it. I want you to really internalize every time you’ve had the passing thought that none of this makes any sense to someone who doesn’t live in your head. To notice how big the leap is between the house fire and the cake. Notice how the awareness doesn’t fix the feeling. how it just incentivizes you to deny and conceal it. How you never get to talk about the event, and how you maybe wouldn’t want to even if it were guaranteed to help.

Go back to the feeling.

Now imagine that someone comes along and compares it to being annoyed about bad movie adaptations, or instant coffee, or a stupid joke. Even if you believe that your feelings should have zero importance in a public forum (and you don’t believe that, unless you’re being actively dishonest), I’m sure you understand how the comparison, the disrespect and dishonesty, the deliberate obstruction of it, is infuriating and absurd.

⫷⫸

That’s why we get upset about people trivializing triggers. Because triggers are things like the scenarios I have just asked you to consider. They are events that cause a visceral, disorientating reaction (to an event highly similar to, but other than, what you are directly experiencing), that even you cannot always reliably connect back to the source. They are a pain response to a memory of intense unease, discomfort, insecurity, suffering, or fear that refuses to be relegated to the past tense because the brain has no reason to believe it will stop happening.

If it ever seems like the left uses this term trivially (aside from the disingenuous attempts to turn the concept around on the right, which are trivializing and which I disapprove of), it’s because you don’t have an accurate sense of the event it links back to, or the impact of it.

Another reason it can seem trivial is this: Society doesn’t like it when people are aware that events have had lasting detrimental impacts on them. Because that tends to call the status quo into question, and it might lead people to interrogate the structure and purpose of the military, or the damaging ideas about child-rearing that we hold, or hell, even capitalism. And a lot of people have a lot of money to make off the status quo.

So, for their benefit, you are being sold the following piece of fiction:

1) to be strong / moral / good / patriotic / [any arbitrary value that is in vogue right now] is to convince yourself, and then act as though, no event, circumstance or system can ever have an effect on you that is not expressly and exclusively your fault. It follows then that everything everyone else is having a hard time with is also exclusively their fault, and thus,

2) any discussion or criticism of the effects of such events or systems on people or groups of people are the ungrateful whining of a generation that has never faced any adversity.

Now watch the magic happen. Not only is that enough to convince you to dismiss the Left out of hand as a group with no political legitimacy, but it’s often enough to make you resent us based on the notion that we are trying to convince you to adopt a victimhood mentality.

And now you’re not listening to anything that we have to say, even when it’s a legitimate critique. Because we have been reduced to a strawman fundamentally incapable of legitimate critique.

I call that The Conservative Tranquilizer.

You don’t have to fall for it.

[digitalmark18-blog]

Teen Social Media Use Is Skyrocketing. But Don't Panic, New Research Says

New Post has been published on https://britishdigitalmarketingnews.com/teen-social-media-use-is-skyrocketing-but-dont-panic-new-research-says/

Teen Social Media Use Is Skyrocketing. But Don't Panic, New Research Says

Teens’ use of social media has exploded over the past six years, while their preference for face-to-face interactions with friends has markedly declined.

But the sky does not appear to be falling, according to the results from a new national survey of teenagers by the nonprofit Common Sense Media. 

Surprisingly, the group found, teens on the whole say using social media makes them feel less lonely, less depressed, and more confident. They also say they’re aware of social media’s potential to distract and manipulate them, even if they sometimes struggle to moderate their own use.  

“It’s not all bad news,” said Common Sense senior research director Michael Robb.  “Teens’ social media lives defy any simplistic judgments.”

The new report, titled “Social Media, Social Life: Teens Reveal Their Experiences,” was released Monday. It’s the first update of a 2012 survey by the same name, creating a unique window through which to view the rapid, dramatic shifts in how teenagers communicate and relate to each other.

Among the most striking findings: 

70 percent of teens now say they use social media more than once a day, compared to 34 percent of teens in 2012. 

Snapchat is now the most popular social media platform among teens, with 41 percent saying it’s the one use most frequently.

35 percent of teens now say texting is their preferred mode of communication with friends, more than the 32 percent who prefer in-person communication. In 2012, 49 percent of teens preferred in-person communication.

One-fourth of teens say using social media makes them feel less lonely, compared to 3 percent who say it makes them feel more lonely.

Nearly three-fourths of teens believe tech companies manipulate them to get them to spend more time on their devices and platforms.

For K-12 educators and administrators, many of whom say they’re struggling to keep up with students’ social media use, the new survey results offer both solace and insight, Robb said.

While often highlighted, the experiences of young people who have had the most problems with social media do not appear to be reflective of teens as a whole, he said. And it’s increasingly evident that parents and educators have a clear role to play in helping teens learn to limit and mold their own social media use.

“The number one biggest thing is to understand your students’ social media lives,” Robb said. 

Facebook Supplanted by Snapchat, Instagram 

Back in 2012, Facebook dominated the landscape, and social media was something for teens to periodically check in on.

In 2018, though, “social media” is no longer a monolith. Teens now communicate, express themselves, share experiences and ideas, rant, gossip, flirt, plan, and stay on top of current events using a mix of platforms that compete ferociously for their attention.

The ephemeral-messaging service Snapchat is particularly popular, Common Sense found. Sixty-three percent of teens say they use Snapchat, and 41 percent say it’s the platform they use most frequently. 

Instagram, meanwhile, is used by 61 percent of teens.  

And Facebook’s decline among teens has been “precipitous,” according to the new report. Just 15 percent of teens now say Facebook is their main social media site, down from 68 percent six years ago. (Softening the blow: Facebook owns Instagram.)

All told, 81 percent of teens now use social media, and 70 percent use it more than once a day.

Nearly three-fourths check social media almost daily, Common Sense found, including 38 percent of teens who do so “constantly” or “a few times an hour.” More than one-third of teenagers post their own content to social media daily. Older teens and girls tend to be the heaviest social media users.

Because these new technologies have so quickly become integral to most teenagers’ lives, Robb said, it can be easy for adults to focus on what is being displaced. 

That’s not entirely misguided—teens’ declining preference for in-person communication is particularly worth noting, he said.

One question to conside, Robb said, is if that trend reflects a vicious cycle in which the quality of the face-to-face time teens do have is diminished because their friends are more interested in their phones than in each other. The survey data suggest that could be the case: The proportion of teens who say social media “often distracts me when I should be paying attention to the people I’m with” has grown from 44 percent in 2012 to 54 percent in 2018.

But it’s also important for parents and educators to ask what they might be missing out on, Robb said. 

Almost a third of teens consider social media “very” or “extremely” important in their lives, the survey found. For many teens, social media is the primary vehicle for organizing and participating in their social lives. And the teens who score lowest on measures of happiness, depression, self-esteem, loneliness, and relationships with their parents are the most likely to say social media is important to them, Common Sense found.

Before rushing to discourage social media use, Robb said, grown-ups should think twice.

“You don’t want to accidentally cut off a major source of support and connections for teens who really need it,” he said.

Overstating the Social Media Threat?

And big-picture, teens themselves don’t seem to feel that social media is nearly the threat that it’s been made out to be by parents and popular culture.

Overall, teens are not more likely to self-report feeling lonely, depressed, or unhappy after using social media than they were in 2012, Common Sense found, in fact, that 20 percent of teens said using social media makes them feel more confident, compared to 4 percent who said it makes them feel less confident.

In addition, the researchers found almost no connection between the frequency of teens’ social media use and their social-emotional well-being (by asking teens whether they agreed or disagreed with statements such as “I like myself” and “Compared to other people my age, I feel normal.”)

And despite popular fears, the majority of teens surveyed said that getting new friends, followers, and likes on social media is not particularly important to them.

Such findings may come as a surprise to many educators, who often describe a losing battle to keep up with their students’ social media use. A recent survey by the Education Week Research Center, for example, found that more than half of U.S. K-12 school principals are ‘extremely concerned’ about their students’ social media use outside the classroom.

Robb said the takeaway is not that everything is hunky-dory, but that there are specific areas where grown-ups can help.

Digital distractions, for example, are clearly a problem, and teens have a “decidedly mixed track record” at regulating their own social media usage, Common Sense found. 

Fifty-seven percent of teens agreed that social media distracts them from homework, for example, but fewer than one-third usually turn off or silence their phones during homework time. Similarly, 44 percent of cellphone-owning teens said they regularly keep their phones on and active at night, leading to sleep that is sometimes interrupted by calls, texts, and notifications.  

On that front, Robb said, parents can have an immediate impact through such basic steps as insisting that teens charge their phones outside of their bedrooms at night.

Educators can also target their supports better by recognizing that students who are the most socially and emotionally vulnerable also appear most likely to experience feelings of missing out or low self-worth as the result of using social media, he said.

And there are steps the companies behind the most popular social media sites can take to encourage healthier use of their products, Robb said.

Nearly two-thirds of teen Snapchat users, for example, say they’ve participated in a feature called Snapstreaks, which rewards friends who communicate with each other over the platform every day. More than a third of teens who’ve tried the feature find it stressful, Common Sense found. 

It’s a great example of why so many teens believe they are being manipulated by tech companies, Robb said. And the adults around them shouldn’t take for granted that social media has to present them with such powerful forces to resist.

“It’s low-hanging fruit that [Snapchat] could address by making design choices that don’t deliberately put undue pressure on teens to use a platform when they don’t have any internal need to,” he said.

Photo: Bill Tiernan for Education Week. 

See also:

Follow @BenjaminBHerold for the latest news on ed-tech policies, practices, and trends.

Source: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/DigitalEducation/2018/09/teen_social_media_skyrocketing.html