#lots of my stuff isn't necessarily Old as it Could Be but it is From Another Time

[oldmanjenkins985]

TW for pedophila since I mention it very briefly at one point I would like to clarify, with all the Tessa age shit that's been going on, that my intent with this was not to prove that Tessa is an adult so she can go on to be sexualized and shit like that. My intent was to prove it was ambigious by showing all the evidence is circumstantial with explanations that both sides could use. And if you boil down *any* character, ambigious age or not, to sexualizing them, that's a completely different issue and one that very much matters. I very much do not care for that stuff, and yes I did have a crush on Tessa once. I was 17 at the time though, meaning that even if she was as young 15 that'd only be a 2 year age gap, so don't you *dare* try and accuse me of being a fuckin' weirdo or anything. I've moved on to other characters now, that being N and Uzi.

Now then, to go along with that, anyone who is uncomfortable with explicit remarks made towards Tessa or Flesha are *completely* allowed to do that regardless of her age. Whether in ambiguity or if she eventually gets confirmed to be an adult, you are *allowed* to be uncomfortable with that. You're allowed to do that with 40 year olds even.

A lot of you who were saying constantly that Tessa is a minor as if it was canon are yourselves minors. So I completely understand why you'd feel this way. The two examples I can think of are @/nuvimuvi and @/kittydragondraws (Don't wanna ping cause I don't wanna bother you with this crap). Your feelings on this are valid and there's no need for you to say Tessa is a minor as if it's confirmed canon when it's not and even one of the people in the Glitch Inn can't give a definitive answer. I don't care that he's not the end all be all, if he has just as much info as the rest of us then why would he come to the conclusion it's ambigious if he could look and see she's "clearly" a minor?

So basically: You're allowed to headcanon Tessa as a minor and be uncomfortable with explicit content surrounding her and Flesha, but that does not mean Tessa is canonically a minor and that people are pedos for saying stuff like that.

Oh, one more thing since we're here. I wanna touch on the Bite Me music video render to clear things up.

So, I've seen a lot of people saying this isn't a "sexy" pose (sorry for lack of better word), but it just...is. And no, that doesn't mean they're sexualizing Flesha, I'll get to that in a moment.

So if you just look up "sexy lean back sitting" on google, you'll find a ton of pictures of people posed extremely similar to Cyn. I'm also pretty certain I've seen pin-up drawings of when in this pose. And one final example: Widowmaker from Overwatch. *The* character who's sexualization is a big part of her design. Her sitting emote is this exact pose. And for as long as I've known this is just *the* sexy sitting pose for women. I don't know where I got that from, just that it's been in my brain for years now.

Now then, let's get back to what I said earlier about this not necessarily meaning it's meant to be sexual. I just went over how it is clearly sexual, so why the fuck am I saying it's possibly not? Very simple, it could be a joke. I've done the "Sexy pose" as a joke for years now. Even when I was 16, 17, hell even maybe as far back as 15, I've done this *exact* pose as a joke. I'm a man, so a pose like this isn't the "sexy" pose most would think of for males and that's why it worked as a joke because it was like "oh, I'm so girly" Now that doesn't mean you *have* to be a man to make it ironic and funny rather than actually sexualizing. You can just be a girl or say...an eldritch horror wearing a girl's skin. Something that horrid looking could be seen as funny when doing a pose like this since it's not exactly something you expect to see. And an even further way to say it isn't sexual: It just...might not be intended that way. It could very well just be how they had her sit. Like I said before, this is *the* go to sexy pose for women, but that doesn't mean every woman sitting like this is intending for that to be how she's percieved. They could just be...sitting.

In conclusion of that, yes this is a sexy pose, stop saying it isn't, but that doesn't mean the intent is that Flesha is supposed to be attractive. It could very easily be a joke or have no intent behind it and that's it. So once again, like most stuff surrounding this, it's completely up to the viewer to interpret it as it's ambigious.

[optimist-pine]

Bodyguard

Pairing: Daryl Dixon x Reader

Warnings: people are naked, but it's barely even borderline suggestive

Summary: You need a bath, but there's no way you're going alone

Era: Season 1, the Quarry

Your skin practically crawls from the buildup of dirt, sweat, and who knows what else that's managed to accumulate over the past three days. You still haven't quite adjusted to the reality of not having on-demand access to a hot shower and your scalp is all oily, and itchy, and eugh - gross. A little shiver runs down your spine at the thought - well, maybe that's just more sweat...

The bold shades of the sunset are beginning to fade as you make your way to the Dixon brothers' camp. Currently they're the closest thing you have to neighbors, your tent being between theirs and the rest of the group. You're dying for a quick dip and rinse in the pond, but you don't actually want to die for a bath, and you know it's a dumb idea to go alone. Everyone else seems busy though and you've come to the conclusion that Daryl seems to be your only option.

Most of the others actively avoid the brothers, and you can't say you blame them. Merle's constantly stirring up trouble and being a general annoyance, and Daryl's quick to jump to his defense. But, on the rare occasion when Daryl isn't being held under Merle's thumb, you catch glimpses of a very different person than what he usually puts out.

He's sitting in an old lawn chair by the side of a fire when you approach, poking a stick around in the coals. Little sparks shoot off where the fresh evening air hits them, and the smell of woodsmoke fills your lungs.

"Hey." You greet. A spot of doubt begins to arise within you, but you quickly stamp it out. With recent events you were beginning to discover that there wasn't much room left for second guessing or overthinking anymore.

"Need somethin'?" He asks, eyes flicking up to you for a moment before returning to the flames.

You hang your thumbs in your belt loops, fingers tapping against your hips. "If you're not busy, I was hoping maybe you could go down to the water with me? I'd ask someone else but they all seem rather occupied at the moment... and I don't think Shane'd let me go alone." You say.

He looks up, jaw set awfully close to a scowl. "I ain't gonna be yer damn bodyguard." He huffs.

"No- I don't want you to watch me or anything like that- I guess I'm just asking for companionship?" You reply. "You could do whatever you're gonna do here, but just do it down there?" You hike your thumb over your shoulder in the direction of the pond.

He stays silent, but a sudden chorus of laughter flows out from the direction of the rest of the group. You study the way the firelight smooths out his rough edges, and you can't help but wonder if the look in his eyes is just boredom or if it's really loneliness.

"Unless you prefer Merle's company, then by all means I'll leave ya to it." You continue, trying your best to ignore Merle sawing logs in the tent, and erase the image of his hand too close to his crotch from your mind.

He jams the stick into the dirt hard enough that it remains standing when he lets go. "A'ight. Lemme get 'mah stuff."

"Awesome, I'll be over at my tent when you're ready." You smile, pleased and a little surprised that you'd managed to get him to say yes. Admittedly, Merle wasn't so bad when he was passed out, but it was reassuring to know that you were at least preferred company over an unconscious jerk.

---

Dirt and gravel crunch under your boots as the two of you walk, your knapsack bouncing steadily against your back with each step. "Thanks for coming with me. I'm not necessarily afraid of the dark or anything, but there's a lot worse things in the woods now than just coyotes." You explain. "And it's just nice not to be alone."

He simply grunts in response.

Good thing you didn't ask him along for his conversational skills.

When you reach the edge of the water you find a rock close to the shore to set out clean clothes and a towel. You see Daryl settle down, back propped against a boulder as he starts rummaging around in his own bag. "Whatcha gonna work on?" You ask.

He pulls out a whetstone and a couple large hunting knives. "Cleanin' mah tools." He replies.

You begin to undress, but a feeling of uncertainty causes you to pause. "Man, I wish I didn't feel like he's sitting up there right now with those binoculars..."

"Who? Shane?" He asks sounding surprised.

"Yeah." You shudder. "Guy gives me the creeps."

You hear scrape of the knife grinding against the sharpener. "Well, hurry up an'ere won' be anythin' ta see." He says.

"Yeah..." You keep your eye on Daryl while you finish, but he doesn't lift his gaze even once beyond sharpening his knife. "I won't be long." You assure him as the cool water rises around you.

As soon as you're far enough in you dive forward, the rush of water instantly reviving and refreshing your whole body as it flows past. You rise upwards as giddiness fills you and you break the surface with a laugh. "This is heavenly!" You gasp. You continue diving and twirling, every sore muscle and painful bruise easing away.

You pause to catch your breath and a small splash has you immediately alert. You left your knife up on the shore with Daryl, but you hadn't heard any sounds of alarm from him so surely it's not a walker. But when you look to the shore the sight has you almost equally as shocked. Daryl is chest deep in the water - bare chested that is - ripples being sent out across the still expanse as he sinks further in.

"Hey!" You yell. "I asked you out here because I thought you weren't some sorta pervert!" You hope it's dark enough that nothing in the water is visible because he's only getting closer.

The moon is full and bright, and the way it reflects off the water makes him look almost ethereal. "Can't protect ya if I'm up'ere an' yer alla'way out 'ere." He reasons.

"I don't need protecting." You roll your eyes. "And all the weapons are up there, Dixon!" You send a splash of water directly into his face.

He returns the splash. "Looked like I was missin' out on alla fun." He shrugs. "'Sides, ya never know when somethin' might jus'-" he disappears under the surface of the water and barely a second later something wraps around your ankle, tugging you under the surface.

When you're released you bob back up to the top wanting to be stern, but you're too busy giggling and swallowing mouthfuls of water to do so. When he surfaces behind you, you turn and splash him again sputtering, "Daryl you- that's not- I can't-" and end up full on belly laughing while trying to stay afloat.

You think you catch the shadow of a smile on his lips before he turns and floats away, like he's done nothing worthy of retaliation. 'Oho boy is he gonna get it.' As quietly as possible you lower yourself in the water, and using shadows from the moonlight, you swim under his head. Reaching up with both hands you use all your strength to grab his shoulders and pull yourself above the surface while pushing him down as hard as you can. Then you make a break for it.

You hear him gasp for air, coughing and sputtering as you swim as fast as you can in the opposite direction.

"Get back 'ere, woman!" He shouts, his tone highly amused. "Yer gonna hafta pay 'fer that!"

You don't realize how loudly you're laughing until the beam of a flashlight is suddenly shining directly in your face.

"Everything alright here?" Shane questions, standing on the shore not far from your and Daryl's discarded clothes. A few of the others are with him; Dale, Andrea, T-Dog, and Morales.

Even in the chilly water you can feel your skin begin to flush all the way down your neck. "Yes! All good!" You squeak out, squinting in the harsh brightness.

"We heard yelling." Andrea chimes in.

You're confident that in all your life you've never been more embarrassed. "That was laughing, guys. I wanted a bath and I asked Daryl to be my bodyguard. We were just, uh, blowing off some steam and I guess we got a little loud... Sorry if we worried anyone." You glance at Daryl who appears to be doing his best impression of the invisible man.

You can make out Dale's hat exceptionally well even in the darkness. "Are you sure you're okay?"

Their hesitation to leave sparks frustration within you - do they really think so lowly of Daryl? Is that what this is all about? Sure, nobody really knows him all that well, but you're all practically strangers and he's done alright by you. The desire to defend him takes over and you snap at the group, "Ah, what're y'all, the fun police? Go ruin somebody else's night and leave us be."

You don't take a good breath until they're all headed back to camp, and it's once again quiet and dark. You sigh, tilting your head back to watch the stars so high above as you float. "Dead people walking around eatin' living people - ya think they'd have bigger problems to deal with than a couple'a skinny dippers." You remark.

A quick exhale of a laugh, not quite a snort, echoes across the pond. "People're always jealous of'a good time if they ain't havin' one." He says quietly.

You pull your fingers through the water, feeling the tension push against them. "So... are ya feeling jealous, or did ya have a good time?" You ask.

"S'pose it wasn't too bad." He says. "But I ain't yer damn bodyguard."

And you grin.

---

Yeah, maybe it's a little awkward getting dried off, getting dressed, and walking back to camp but you sleep more soundly than you have since you arrived. And maybe you're a little annoyed with the way everyone seems to have nothing better to do than gossip, but that new gleam in Daryl's eye when he looks at you wipes it all from your mind. And maybe a lot of things suck, but at the end of the day there's someone who actually likes you, and maybe that's enough.

[megabuild]

mumbo said in his recent video that he sees etho as someone who "doesnt show a lot of positive emotion towards people " and thats why he kept the mumbo statue that he thought etho built of him even after joel said he was the one who built it and said he made it ugly on purpose and was surprised mumbo didnt tear it down . said he nearly cried seeing it. what do u think about etho "not showing a lot of positive emotion" do you think thats true

i don't think it's necessarily true but i can see where mumbo's coming from (with the obvious disclaimer that this is all just my own personal feelings, and mumbo is the guy who actually knows him in person and has for some time).

mumbo and etho's relationship or lack thereof is generally pretty fascinating to me because while they both have been on the same server for a long time they've rarely, if ever, interacted or collaborated. unsurprising given that both tend to keep to their own respective groups. agonising for me as a big fan of them both but anyways. i think it's also important to remember that mumbo started mcyt pretty young and watched a lot of his now friends before knowing them (eg. in the same clip you mentioned above he talks about being a big fan of joel's!) so i don't think it's a stretch to say that despite knowing etho personally, i think he could still be in that stage of mythologising etho that a lot of creators who collab with him have went through in the past... tune into 3rd life, mcc 33, hell the elybeatmaker among us stream. i don't think i gotta explain how many people look up to him as this unknowable figure of old mcyt. factor in that he has his hand in a lot of early redstone developments and continues to achieve new things with it to this day and i think it's understandable why mumbo might idolise him to the point of dissociating etho the redstoner from etho the guy

this also isn't helped but the fact that while etho does show positive emotion, definitely, his positive emotions towards others often come across in a way that can be hard to recognise if you aren't looking for it.. etho is full of snark and callbacks and if you don't understand the context around those they might not make sense, but his way of showing care is also far from obvious. another recent example would be the tour of bdubs' base where he told people how to set their light levels. a lot of people on here freaked out over that but if you step back and look at it it's not really.. that obvious that it's a sign of care and positivity towards bdubs, because he's just stating facts. etho can be very literal and i think he likes to rely on stuff like that to show his affection, but that might not be obvious to everyone.

ultimately while i get what mumbo means i think a lot of it comes down to etho being very particular, and they just haven't spent enough time working together one on one to figure out those peculiarities yet. despite everyone on hermitcraft knowing each other and being friends to a degree it's undeniable that parts of the server are more split into groups than others, sort of like a fucked up venn diagram of common collaborators, and etho's in particular is pretty small. but i hope they do collab properly someday.. i really really hope they do

[hamcakevaletguy]

My thoughts on the Damien situation, from the POV of someone who’s relatively uninvolved with posting on social media:

As a newer fan of Smosh myself (I watched some videos in 2012, but haven’t really kept up since, and only started regularly watching the last year or so), I went through the backlog of content that they have because I enjoyed their more recent videos. Zayna, a newer Palestinian fan, did the same and found this joke in an old TNTL disappointing and wanted him to address it firsthand and make his stance clear.

For anyone saying Damien has already made it clear that he is in support of Palestine: it’s not a given that the fan who brought up the clip would have already known about Damien’s stance on Palestine. Yes, he’s talked about it in a couple of his streams and posted Insta stories about it, but a newer fan of Smosh, not necessarily Damien himself, wouldn’t know about those unless they were looking for it because they are:

temporary (IG stories only have a lifespan of 24 hours unless you take screenshots) or

a few minutes hidden under several hours of game streams on a separate platform (he talked about Palestine several months ago and has streamed a lot since, unless you know the specific Twitch stream and the timestamp when he talked about it or had clips of it, most casual fans wouldn’t know either)

In his defense, Damien himself has recently said that more fandom stuff has reached his timeline than he would like, so maybe he thinks more people know about his activism because of that. However, even if Zayna did know, wanting a straightforward statement apologizing for the insensitive joke (because bringing up the "Israeli-Palestinian conflict" [as it was called back in 2019, not accurate to what has been going on for 70+ years and counting, which is an ethnic cleansing] for shock value, as he himself said, is insensitive) is not an unreasonable request.

More under the cut

When all you have is 240 characters per reply, the things that you do choose to say matter even more. When you parse out everything in Damien's replies, he doesn't come out looking too good. Yes, he did apologize for the original joke. In his replies, he said:

using it as shock value was in poor taste and naive of him,

it was in poor taste back in 2019 and he wouldn't make it now

(in response to his first couple of replies) he is sorry for reacting in frustration and he'll learn from it,

and, in his final reply, his parting words were "With all my heart, I hope for safety for your loved ones. Be well."

However, he also says and does things that undermine his apology in the same replies:

questioning why the clip was brought up in the first place, as if bringing up old content wasn't something fans regularly do with things they're interested about and as if it's not still a public video fans can easily find,

bringing up that the fan in question had 19K followers, a fraction of the followers he has as a public figure,

saying that this conversation could have been done in private, as if an initial DM request wouldn't be buried in his other requests as a public figure, and as if he doesn't have the capability to start a DM himself to clarify things after the initial reply/post,

saying that the original tweets tagging him should have been deleted after his first response when he never asked for that, and just assumed it would happen for some reason,

deleting his replies a couple of hours later,

and blocking Zayna and several others who were only interacting with Damien through quote tweets (I'm not sure how quote tweets work, do they notify the OP?), some who don't even say anything remotely critical of him - in his defense, blocking is not inherently a bad thing, it just means that he doesn't want any further interactions from them for whatever reason. However, silencing any Palestinian voice isn't good, to say the least.

Damien has always been a proponent of “trying to understand and see from different perspectives” so his response here surprised me, personally. I get that he has a fear of being misunderstood, but jumping to the conclusion that the other party is purposefully trying to be incendiary is the opposite of that.

I'm not going to try to make excuses for him. He knows better. He's been a content creator for years. He knows he has more influence than any normal fan would. His autism is not a part of this conversation either. Mental illness is an explanation for behavior, it doesn't absolve you of the consequences of it. If you're citing Damien's autism as an excuse for his behavior, you have to also account for Zayna's autism.

People are also bringing up the possibility of Damien getting death threats as a result of this, which we have no proof of and won't have proof of unless Damien himself decides to disclose that. He has only stated that he is taking a social media break, which has been a long time coming, not necessarily only because of this, because he has been busy and tired in recent months. What we do know has happened is that Zayna has received death threats (weird of people to want the death of a Palestinian when the original argument they're defending Damien for is that he is in support of Palestinian liberation).

This isn’t an issue of cancel culture, it’s an issue of accountability and frankly, hero worship of Damien in the part of people attacking Zayna and other people on Twitter.

When the only people who had spoken about their support of Palestine in their own words, however briefly, are two or three cast members, some people are naturally going to put them on pedestals. This hero worship of Damien has been exacerbated by his image as the most politically correct member of Smosh, and Smosh’s (until recently) silence about the issue.

While we're at it, for people saying Smosh's sudden outward support for Palestine and joining Creators for Palestine is in response to backlash about Damien, or only in response to the block list going around:

It's only been a few days since the Damien's whole ordeal. Smosh is not that fast, and historically, their response to backlash would have been either complete radio silence or unlisting or privating the TNTL that the clip is from, combined with silence.

I’m sure Shayne, Ian and Courtney have been working on it for more than a few days, based on their liked posts, to get everything straightened out with the organization themselves and adding their names to the list of creators.

People have been asking for Smosh to be more public about their views on Palestine. Some of the cast members have said their piece on their personal social media, but their views could have changed. Those posts were made shortly after the events of October 7 brought even more media attention on Palestine and the Gaza Strip, which was not necessarily in favor of Palestine because of the effects of U.S. propaganda. It's been several months since then and people have a lot more information now, and more clarity.

Up until now, the only indication of Palestinian support not from social media is a brief statement from Ian who said something along the lines of "travel watermelon", while they were talking about their rejected roasts during Anthony's Funeral After Show in December, which are codewords that were used in TikTok for Free Palestine. However, this is heavily censored, behind a paywall, and temporary, because of the nature of their live shows. This support of CFP is the bare minimum of what Smosh could do, but the bare minimum is more than they were doing before.

They listed Smosh as the name under their $15,000 donation to CFP, not just Shayne, Courtney and Ian, which could be intentional, referring to Smosh as a whole company, or just referring to the three that have posted about it as a collective. Unless Smosh makes a full statement about it, themselves, it's still up in the air.

The timing of it is unfortunate. Damien has been silent about it so far, making his original posts about Palestine seem performative to some. However, it’s only been a few hours and he is on a social media break. The only thing he has briefly gone back online for is to promote something he's doing with Nintendo, which he could have been contractually obligated to do. He may or may not say something when he fully comes back from his social media break, but for now, that's everything we know. People can make their own conclusions based on all of this.

I am being very intentional with every single word I say on here, as to not be misconstrued in any way, however, if I missed anything or anyone else has anything to add (constructively, like images of either the actual conversation had by Damien and Zayna, or the cast and crew's support of Palestine prior to CFP, not outright anger and disagreement), please do. If anyone has any genuine questions about the situation, please feel free to message me directly and not bring it into this post, which is supposed to be a civil discussion surrounding more facts and events, less speculation. If I feel those questions have relevant points to add on here, I will add on in reblogs.

[genericpuff]

Why is the art so unappealing in lore Olympus now Persephone looks like a highlighter and maybe it’s just me but the proportions like the fingers in arms are soul over the place I don’t think they used to be this bad. Am I just looking at it with nostalgia or am I crazy ?

Honestly, nostalgia does play a huge part in it, even to this day there are times I look back on old S1 panels and go-

Actually here's a great example that literally just happened yesterday in the ULO Discord that nearly had me on the floor LOL This is from Episode 70:

Like I didn't even believe that that was real until I was told what episode it was from and I was just. Astounded and flabbergasted. The over-shading of the blanket that just makes it look like a really bad edit. Insane.

And yeah, there are a lot of old panels that hit different now that the rose-colored glasses have been removed, crushed, and thrown into the trash compactor.

I think that's why it makes it all the more amusing when people come into my inbox and ask me "wait, why did you like LO to begin with?? It's always been ugly as shit, I think you're just romanticizing it" because like... there's something to be said about art and subjectivity, even if something is ugly to one person doesn't mean it isn't beautiful to someone else. It's why I try not to be too mean towards the fans of this comic for still enjoying it, because while I definitely have strong opinions about how "LO has gotten worse" and what kind of following Rachel has cultivated (cough cough), there are also just as equally valid arguments that LO has never begin good to begin with that I can't necessarily disagree with now that I'm looking back on it with a more critical eye.

That said, there's tons of media that I enjoy that is objectively awful. Like y'all, you don't need to take my opinions about a dumb pink x blue fantasy romance comic seriously, I like Starfox Adventures-

Like yeah it's a badly made rushed piece of shit that was developed right on the ass end of Rare's glory days and was really an original IP (Dinosaur Planet) that got Frankenstein'd into a Starfox game so it could "sell better" for Nintendo, but I don't give a fuck, I love Starfox Adventures and some day I wanna be in the top 10 speedrunner leaderboards for it, which I know doesn't mean much because no one is speedrunning Starfox, but I do and no one can take that away from me dammit-

Anyways. Lore Olympus has, in many regards, always had "bad art". But "bad art" can and should still be enjoyed by those who find joy in it.

And in LO's case, the world it existed in when it launched was a lot smaller than it is now - more specifically, the world of Webtoons. We can look back and see how 'bad' LO looks and reads now because there are genuinely way better comics surrounding it. It was unique and refreshing and experimental back then... now it's just "that stupid blue and pink comic for horny teenagers".

In most cases I would consider that "cringing in hindsight" feeling a good thing because normally it means something has grown and that it seeming "bad" in hindsight would mean that it's outgrown itself and moved onto bigger things. But LO has the more unique problem of "its current stuff is shit and it's making us want the old stuff more, even if the old stuff wasn't good either". In that regard, LO is closer to being like Harry Potter. Remember when The Cursed Child came out at the height of Rowling being exposed for being a TERF and even people who liked Harry Potter didn't like The Cursed Child because it was just objectively worse overall (with or without Rowling's bullshit attached)? It made a lot of people go back and re-read / rewatch Harry Potter with a more objective lens and go "wait a minute guys, I think we only adored these books so much because we were 12 when we read them". Often times it's the good memories we have surrounding certain things that make us have the opinion about them that we do.

Of course, LO is definitely not as politically weaponized as Harry Potter is, so that's where that comparison ends. But my point is that LO is definitely in a situation where it's been riding off the same privileges it had back in 2018 - having an 'experimental' art style while also utilizing tropes and characters that were VERY popular at the time (remember that 2017-18 was when Tumblr was at its height of H x P "Hades was a chill accountant guy who wore socks and sandals and didn't cheat on his wife like Zeus did" fantasizing) - and thinks that those same tricks and tropes will still work today.

Because of this, the art in LO really, really hasn't aged well, even the stuff that we look back on fondly. But I think it's the panels that we specifically think of when remembering "old LO" - the ones that stuck in our memories the most - that are the ones that make us miss or just not care about the panels that don't look good (the panels that make people question why we ever liked it to begin with).

We liked it because of how it made us feel to look at panels like these-

Those genuinely wonderful panels that we think back on the most don't exist separately from the bad panels, they exist in spite of them. Even if we can look back on panels like these and pick out problems in the lineart or the proportions or the color travelling outside of the lines, that can't and shouldn't change how those panels made us feel at some point or another. And that's why when people ask me "why were you even into LO in the first place" I don't have any one answer, because I can't fully explain how something made me feel to justify why it's good to someone who can see from the outside - without rose-colored glasses - that it evidently isn't. It's very much a "you had to be there" type of thing.

Unfortunately, nowadays even the 'best' LO panels in S3 still don't come close to what the S1 panels accomplished - because for many of us, the rose-colored glasses are gone, we can't appreciate the good among the bad because we know now how bad it truly is and so the good just feels like wasted attempts at trying to recreate something it can no longer be. It "came back wrong" so to speak.

LO came back just regular. But our journey to resurrecting it changed us to such a degree that even its closest intimacies are now foreign to us. Sorry dude.

This is still probably one of my favorite panels out of the entirety of S3 for being as close to "old LO" as I've seen since S2, and even it feels like a mistake, an accident, how could a panel like this exist in S3 when so much of it is a dumpster fire? It's like a flower growing in the ruins of an apocalyptic wasteland.

But wasn't that always the case? Isn't that 'always' what LO has been, since the very beginning? A poorly cobbled together mess of writing and panels that, every now and then, manages to leave an impression that makes you feel something? Did we ever truly know LO? Or have we just been relying entirely on an idea of it that we've built up in our heads that when it does do exactly what it's evidently always done (even if not made apparent until looking back on it in hindsight) we think it "came back wrong"?

[tcustodisart]

What are some cute moments that occur throughout the different acts that aren’t necessarily in the game but live in your head rent free?

Oh, this one is going to be a long answer, because there's a lot of squatters in my head and there's a lot to be unleashed. Let's start with this doodle with the boys playing lanceboard at camp and continue under the cut. Lots of cringe and brainrot incoming, so brace yourself.

Act 1:

Connie is constantly bickering with Astarion over him stealing his journal. Gale suggest to cast arcane lock on it, but Connie knows it won't stop that gremlin from reading it so why bother.

This sad pile of rugs is where I imagine Connie sleeps in Act 1. Additional Astarion line: "Damn darling, you live like this?"

During the first romance scene Connie tells Shart about his family, about how he and his brother know the city inside and out, about his parents and the tavern they run, about the trap incident. It's the most he talked to someone who wasn't his family or his crow in years. He wishes that night would never end.

Connie sends letters to his family via Faust, he stops after entering Underdark.

Act 2:

I mentioned it before that Connie is not taking the Shadow Curse very well. He misses the sun, misses the grass, he's unable to contact his family, Shart has distanced herself from him. Karlach notices it and tries to cheer him up. They end up having long talks almost every night. That's the moment their friendship evolves from just friends to besties.

When Connie finds the second warding bond ring, he wishes he could give the other one to Shadowheart, but finds the moment inappropriate. He ends up giving her the ring at the beginning of Act 3.

Act 3:

I have a lot of stuff for this act.

This is inspired by one of Jaheira's lines: "'The Cub and the Crow'- sounds like a cautionary tale. As it probably should." Connie draws her a mock up cover for a kids book. Jaheira sticks it to the traveling chest (I mostly store food there, so to me traveling chest = fridge).

Connie goes through a serious breakdown at the start of this act (after a companion is abducted), he ends up crying and saying that for the first time he doesn't believe they're going to make it, that he'll never hug his mom, never hear his brother sing again, won't be able to tell his step dad that he saw Darkmaw the Wicked. He's being comforted first by Jaheira and then by the rest of his party.

His favorite armor gets damaged one time, he's very upset about it. But the next morning he finds it magically repaired (Astarion fixed it, from the start of Act 3 they become besties).

This wip that I'm very slowly working on happens during act 3. Connie makes some flower crowns and talks about how his mom taught him to do that. I'm not going to say more, because I really want to finish that comic.

Connie has a deal with Popper that he'll pay him double for every night orchid he finds (I actually did that in game, I bantered him more money for the flower than he asked for, I love that little guy so much).

This one is more funny than cute but when Connecticut Tav was younger and still lived in Baldur's Gate he used to visit Sharess's Caress pretty regularly because it was the best way to practice drawing people. He really enjoyed talking with the workers there, he eventually convinced them that maybe creating an union isn't such a bad idea. He ended up being banned from entering the brothel because of that. So when the party approaches it to meet Voss, he's very nervous that the owner will remember him (she does). There's a dialogue in my head but it would work better with some visuals, so maybe one time I'm going to draw it.

In my head, the cottage they end up living in is Connie's old hunting hut. So after the conversation with Shadowheart about her plans for after defeating the brain, he suggest that it would be the perfect place to go. He then draws the house to show her how it looks like, tells her that it's surrounded by a forest, there's a lake nearby, a small stable that can be turned into a barn if needed, and that he's not sure about the quality of the soil, but he did grow some herbs there, so maybe it's going to be good enough to grow flowers.

At the end of the game Connie decides to stay in Baldur's Gate for a while to help his family fix their tavern (which was heavily damaged). He tells Shart to go the house I mentioned before, because he wants her to start her new life as soon as possible + because it would be better for her parents. He stealthily puts his journal in her stuff with a note attached to it saying that he finished it this morning and she can read it if she wants to. He also gives her Faust so she can write him letters whenever she wants to. After 2 tendays he arrives at the cottage with some gifts (night orchid bulbs and a pamphlet about how to take care of them, there was supposed to be another gift, but he wasn't able to find it just yet, but that's for another story).

Epilogue party (because I'm that insane):

It's been sitting in my wips for more than two months, so I don't know if I'll be able to finish it. But during the party Connie and Shadowheart take 10 minute brake to visit the place from the first romance scene. They have a very similar conversation like before, but their roles are reversed now - It's Connie asking questions about Shart's current life. "Tell me something about yourself, but no tadpoles, weird artifacts, petty goddesses. Something about you."

[pointless-discourse]

homestuck characters as related to trans stuff

head canon

JOHN EGBERT

closeted repping tgirl who will likely not realize she's trans until after 16

avoids mirrors, unhappy with appearance but tries to avoid looking at it

gets dressed in the dark

once she comes out she's gonna dress like the most hideous anime girl for the first few months

like goes HAM

her fav nerd shirts paired with a weird fucking skirt but eventually it looks really good just because of how much time she spends on it now that she likes how she looks

DAVE STRIDER

cool cis guy that will respect the pronouns

will treat people the same regardless of transness

goes down the transfem nonbinary any pronouns route in mid 20s

unfathomably chill

JADE HARLEY

divisive subject. either cool nerdy tgirl or closeted trans guy

tgirl jade puts a lot of effort into dressing for the sake of mirrors

doesn't necessarily look GOOD (ultranerd furry island social recluse) but she looks intresting

however tgirl jade doesn't voicetrain and not only is her voice kinda clocky but also very hoarse from lack of use

closeted transguy/transmasc nonbinary jade is very online and performative feminine stuff until he realizes in his late teens he's trans

does not learn what trans is until late teens, very in sheltered parts of the internet despite being very online

was out online years before he came out irl

third option: chill cis girl who, during

ROSE LALONDE

terf

no hate to rose she is one of my top three characters in all of homestuck but she is very terf vibes

she spends a lot of time "debating" with trans people online (harassment) and frequents a lot of terf forums

i think that after a few years of earth c and maybe meteorstuck she grows past it and eventually to her it's not a fight she's proud to be the lead general of but a phase she's really embarassed of, much like her other silly 13 year old traits

i also really like tgirl rose, not for character basis but i think its cool and i (obviously) love trans headcanons

KARKAT VANTAS

i am very divided between ftm and cis guy.

cis guy karkat is cool, he's very much just some guy who's comfortable in his "girly" hobbies and, while isn't really tied into his physical appearance, isn't dysphoric and is just a little insecure

however: humanstuck karkat will always be trans in my mind, just for the persecution bit, although i would also buy ethnically-middle-eastern adopted into a white american family karkat

he'd be a truscum or just kinda shitty to nonpassing trans people i think, we've seen how many alternian empire boots he licks so conforming to the status quo as a pick-me minority is not above him

again i think he would grow out of it in his later teen years/early 20s (like in the comic) but i don't ever see humanstuck karkat escaping the eternal shame that kind comes with being trans

ARADIA MEDIG0

ily weird unnerving tgirl aradia she is like so that to me. she reminds me of the boymoder NEET memes i see chronically online trans girls on reddit posting

but also i do equally enjoy weird girlboss cis girl aradia

either way she is far too etheral to be bothered with gender stuff

like you could come out to her with sixteen hard to pronounce xenos, pass so badly you unearth masculinity/feminity so prominent it burns to the touch, and she would not give a single fuck. and she would never mess up with pronouns and shit

tAVROS nITRAM

i see her as a hardcore deep deep in the closet repper tgirl as like a core part of my interpretations and yet i can never imagine her coming out

like i just see her boymoding forever

not really? like i think it would happen eventually i just can't visualize it

hypothetically i could see her being one of those cool goth girls named lilith but it seems very removed from the original starting point

2OLLUX CAPTOR

repping tgirl or amab nonbinary or just plain cis

either way still horrifically greasy and that will never change

there is no self reflection that will even vaguely incentivize sollux to maintain his hygeine

:33< NEPETA LEJION

cis girl

maybe comes out as ftm in 20s? if trans, i could also see nepeta repping till death

like just a weird cis girl who is like "oh, you're trans? just like in my warrior cats rp discord server!"

again, gives more of a fuck about gender than aradia but it is close

she just cares if you will listen to her talk about her ships and art

nepeta is the type of person where it might take her a while get the new name and stuff right

"HER PRONOUNS ARE THEY/THEM!"

but she would be your staunch defender

KANAYA MARYAM

eh? nothing strong here, i don't really have a hc for her

but there is a lot of mtf symbolism in the comic and i do enjoy that

like a socially awkward youngshit who's not out to many people because she can't really bring herself to correct people in public but still has a really passing voice even after first coming out

bad facial dysphoria

do like her as intersex. feels right

TEREZI PYROPE

nonbinary

no genders, all the genders, new genders, old primal genders, everything

both simultaneously afab and amab but not intersex?

the living embodiment of androgyny

probably has a very long list of neos/xenos but is any pronouns

you cannot misgender her. hes too cool.

VRISKAAAAAAAA SERK8!!!!!!!!

transgirl transgirl transgril

literally not even a headcanon at this point vriska is a trans girl and that is that!!!!!!!!

if you disagree im kickng your ass so hard it comes out of your mouth. your days are numbered and that number is 0. (not 8 :( )

EQUIUS

option one: cis gymbro chaser.

he sleeps with trans men to steal their t shots

in the streets he'll occasionally say the weird shit but i know he'd be crankin his hog to futa/cuntboy shit by night

option two: trans girl

never comes out because of insecurity but indulges in long hair and the occasional skirt in private and then feels really bad about it

option three: insane roided trans man

t gave him big muscles and big sex drive

option three poiont 5.

racist sexist homophobic nonbinary

like drops the most despicable shit in conversation and finsihes it off with "my pronouns are actually they/them), like one of those nazi femboys

GAMZEE MAKARA

does not gaf

cis (? idk) guy who is fine with any pronouns and crossdresses for fun

i guess not technically cis? but still identifies as a man when it comes down to it. like barely guy

FEFERI PEIXIES

cis girl who is a little infantilizing

if you're transfem she will give you makeup tips

but still a little hugboxy

"oh no you totally pass even though you're 8'100 and have a full beard! women come in all shapes and sizes!" (not shitting on the made up trans girl here, passing is fucking hard and it has no bearing on personal worth)

JANE CROCKER

jane is a repping/closeted trans man and you can pry this from my cold dead hands

the mustache? the projection onto only male figures?

also i think its fun with jane's ties to the girls-only fuchsiablood club that he ends up a dude

also st4t janeroxy my beloved

DIRK STRIDER

gonna be honest here no strong leanings

i am a firm believer that estrogen would save her but i dont really think of dirk as anywhere on the gender spectrum

maybe just cis dirk? i could buy cis dirk

JAKE ENGLISH

one one hand i would like the transmasc rep being not restricted to hairless twinks and i would enjoy ftm jake that way

transmasc nonbinary jake is an insane concept to me but i do find myself intrested

a little iffy on the trans headcanons (especially transmasc) because a big part of the concept of jake english is that he's a big strong man who takes on the literary role of an objectified girl character and having him be

ROXY LALONDE

ex twinkhon femboy now BDD gigapassoid

literally one of the most gorgeous trans women you will ever meet

creating e substitutes in her laboratory since age 12

again not even those most immersed in trans culture and the ways of clocking would be able to tell thats how good she is

her speaking patterns hail solely from those cutesy minecraft/unboxing youtubers she religiously watched as a small child

however she is fully convinced that she doesn't pass for shit so she believes that every genuine complement and people treating her like a woman is just them being nice

she'll attempt to boymode and go "stealth" in scenarios where she doesn't want to be visibly trans but it fucking backfires because everyone assumes she's ftm

DIRK STRIDER

trans man with literally no basis because my dirk-themed friend is also a trans man

4channer transman robotics nerd dirk my beloved

DAMARA MEGIDO

transfem ig? or cis woman

very girl adjacent

idk i dont think about the dancestors much

RUFIOH NITRAM

cis man

MAYBE trans man

i am also cool with that

MITUNA CAPTOR

cis man

MAYBE transfem nonbinary

KANKRI VANTAS

trans man because very few cis men were tumblr "SJW"s

and he reminds me of of some chronically online trans guys i used to hang around

also hes very fuckign petite and girls and feminend and twinky dinky and im just projecting my dysphoria onto him sorrie kankri fans

MEULIN LEJION

cis fujo girl

when she discovered trans men she was like 'YAAAAAS MPREG'

will respect your pronouns and shit but is VERY HORNY

lowkey chaser that will also date cis people

PORRIM MARYAM

two choices: cool goth transbian or lesbian terf

cool goth transbian is the nice one. first off, she looks a lot like some transfem transition goals ive seen online.

second, cool feminist could also be trans rights and trans people are kinda forced into being political

third, being flat as a board could also be interpreted as her just not having tits (tho she does seem like the type to DIY HRT)

TERF porrim (correct): first, a lot of "feminists" turn out to be bitchy to trans people

second, her activism for groups she's a part of and groups she likes is good, but she really infantilizes kankri, and considering that's the beforan equivalent of hemoracism, if trans people didn't fit her motto she would not hesitate to shit on them

LATULA PYROPE

cis girl. maybe she/they

ARANEA SERKET:

trans girl serkets trans girl serkets

would also buy cis girl that makes you wonder if she's actually a repressed ftm because some of her actions are a littttttttle suspicious

HORRUS ZAHHAK

cis man who ends up hanging out with a lot of trans women anyway due to shared intrests in hyperpop and furry stuff

again very respectful, very small chance that he's chaser-y

KURLOZ MAKARA

i honestly do not know and this isnt because i dont really care about his character, it just evades me

transcends gender

could be cis woman, fuck if i know. i'd buy that

all and neither a gender above our human comprehension

CRONUS AMPORA

trans man that proves tboys are real men because they can be just as creepy and awful as cis men

thinks him being trans means he's immune to all types of discrimination

uses it a pity point/to get out of stuff

MEENAH PEIXIES

maybe tgirl? idk

may just be cis

possibly transmasc nonbinary

tho i lean mostly towards cis woman whos gnc and actually cool with trans peopel (be aware she will still groom them tho)

equal opportunity grooming

CALLIOPE

technically transfem anyway because her body isn't sexed so shes kinda intersex

but even if she wasnt a cherub she would still be transfem anyway

chronically online transgirl who spends most of her time in internet spaces with cis girls of her same age

warrior cats fan

humanstuck calliope hung around the warrior cats girls since elementary and never left

CALIBORN

evil trans man

transmasc for same reasons as calliope

humanstuck caliborn avoided all female socialization because he didn't socialize and instead spent his formative years on 4chan

the nature of the /lgbt/ board probably gave him some shame about being ftm

DAD EGBERT and crocker as well, very similar people

cis man who is a staunch ally

MOM LALONDE

cis ally

she's trying? can't say anything more

will occasionally and unintentionally say some out of pocket shit about trans people she knows when drunk

will mess up the pronouns a lot because very scatterbrained

GRANPA HARLEY:

cis man who lowkey fetishizes trans people

straight but fucks non-passing transmen because he doesn't see them as men

trans women are some exotic fetish

if jade came out he would repair his ways tho

NANNA EGBERT

transphobic

not even a terf because she has beef with feminists

but again if john or jane came out she would badger them at first but her love would win out and she would change her views

BRO STRIDER

personally i see him as a cis man but i think trans man bro strider is cool and also an icon

DIRK'S BRO:

cis bisexual man who is cool with trans people

ROXY'S MOM:

cis woman who is in a fucked up evil messy situationship with a transgirl

will trans rights

GRANDMA ENGLISH:

either a. elder trans woman

or b. cis woman (a little nonbinary) who is accepting

does not know the terminology

"oh so you want to live as a woman now? alright, i suppose. i had a friend like that back in college"

HIC:

evil elder trans woman who has an illegal diy hrt empire

will sell out the trans community if it benefits her

grifter

LIL CAL

i dont know it s scary

[dhmis-autism]

im new to dhmis tumblr do you have any dhmis blogs you recommend i check out?

OH HIIIII HI HI HI OKAY SO. I HAVE A LOT OF FRIENDS IN THE LIL. tumblr dhmis sphere and theyre all great and lovely and I'll introduce you to them all and YOU can decide who you want to follow okay? OKAY!!

First up is my lovely friend Lulu @lulu-draws-stuff who has a cute very crayony pastelly style! :] They also have a keen fashion sense and love drawing the guys in new and fun outfits! They also have some very cute funny comics in there that I very much reccomend -v- )b

Next is my good friend Sodie.. @mtsodie who also runs the account @dailydogdadduo and he has a very textured, experimental style with a lot of variety! Very fun! A lot of his pieces like, you could swear were by different people if you didnt know better, that's how good he is at it!

Also my friend @its-mayo0 draws a TONN of great DHMIS stuff, their style is very loose and colorful! It's extremely funny stuff and I love the way they mix cartoonish antics/proportions with sincerity, their stuff is SOOO FUN!!

theres also @carehounds which is run by my buddy Fio! Theyre most well known iirc for spurring off the little fandom thing of people making their own versions of the trios? Though if you're new you might not know that. Good stuff, esp if you want to see a new spin on the old guys!

There's also all these great pieces from other friends of mine who aren't necessarily DHMIS centric blogs!

On the more written side of things, one of my friends Pere ( @marsupials-of-mars ) is actually writing a pretty good fanfic atm that's still currently updating- but they also do art as well if youre SOLELY looking for that.

Then there's Am @gnomeniche who I believe is mostly well known for their DHMIS analysis posts, they break down a lot of different aspects of the characters and the show (usually with a twinge of meta in the analysis) and, like Pere above, also make fanart on top of that! Though I will warn you a bit that their analysis is very… academicy? Lots of complex concepts and big words that you might not fully get on the first go round. But thats okay! Theyre lots of fun to reread! ^_^ )b

Also in the analysis sphere is my friend Gray @yellow-pig! They also do a pretty good job breaking things down and they talk often about theories and parallels and reoccurring elements in the show, some that I didn't even notice myself! Very fun. As with my other analysis friends, they ALSO draw some! Isn't that wonderful! How the love of this show supersedes mediums!

Also on the writing side but more on the funny side I would say is definitely Roswells' DHMIS blog @joepelling , lots of headcanons and jokes and fun info about the people BEHIND DHMIS. Their side blog, @dailythreeofthem is also really good if you want references for drawing the main three yourself!

I hope this was helpful and I hope it was a good start!! :D

[brucewaynehater101]

"If it's closer to fanon Tim, he would feel guilty for Jason. Closer to canon Tim would either be indifferent to Jason's troubles or he'd feel glad (maybe even a little spiteful) that Jason is facing the consequences of his actions. He would, however, feel guilty for how the revelation affects the street kids."

I have to say I disagree with this. Firstly; with the whole post you're framing this as though Jason beat up a child... which like, true, but also Jason is hardly two years older than Tim. I know comics make him seem aged up, but its simply not the case. (dont @ me if u know this cuz u probably do know this already)

Secondly, Canon Tim.... doesn't hate Jason?? Like, really not at all. If there is any dislike, I'd see it as when Jason is acting particularly villainous, he treats him like any other rogue. Though they don't necessarily interact a lot when Jason is in his villain moments. It's other bats who take care of that, so there's really no beef there.

When Jason isn't having an evil moment, honestly a good word for what Tim feels for him is either pity at worst, admiration at best. With the admiration, I'm not talking about Tim liking him as Robin 'cause that's honestly pretty fanon, I'm talking about how Tim admires his tenacity and determination to keep going even when he feels like everyone is against him. And Tim wants to support him! He sees Jason struggling a lot and wishes Jason would accept help- hence the pity.

I sincerely doubt that Tim would ever feel glad or spiteful towards Jason. He's gotten him back for the whole 'beating the shit out of him' thing. Which really, wasn't really about Tim? Plus its far in the past at this point.

Not to mention Tim is one hell of a badass, he doesn't wallow in self-pity, and I don't think he'd want to interfere with RH's stuff and would probably stop the information leak himself, or even deny the rumors with something like "Oh that? It was just a disagreement/misunderstanding lol the rumors got out of hand,"

Sorry if this was too much, I like ur blog and the things u say, this one just felt really misinformed.

Thank you for letting me know. Reading the post back, I can see how I worded it wrong. I appreciate you giving me the chance to correct that and clarify.

Yes, Jason and Tim are close in age. However, Jason's age (as far as I'm aware) isn't known to civilians. Because of his helmet and bulkiness, a kid would view Jason as an Adult. If they knew his age and then the fight with Robin, that would probably be an acceptable level of violence for them. That's just two kids beating each other up, then. From their perspective, though, Robin is a Kid and Jason is an Adult. A possible solution to gain back their trust could be to disclose how old they were at the time (they might not even need to disclose any details or reasoning with that).

Later in canon, Jason and Tim start getting along. If the reveal happened at that point, Tim would not feel gleeful and spiteful. He'd feel bad for Jason. That is entirely my bad for not making that distinction.

Tim is, undeniably, an asshole at times. He wants to do good, tries to help people, and overall is kind. He's badass and I love him, but he can be an asshole (particularly to Steph). He, especially his inner dialog, sometimes makes asshole comments. This includes Jason. To add on, when Jason was beating him up and demanding Tim to answer if he thought he was good (skill wise), Tim answered yes twice. To me, this seems like a petty/spiteful response. That or Tim is just being honest af about his feelings, not giving a shit he's taking a beating.

However, Tim would not hold this grudge against Jason. One of his better qualities is to not hold grudges against most people (even those that he arguably should). It's why some villains/rogues/enemies become his allies or end up becoming fond of him.

Tim may feel glad that Jason is experiencing the consequences of his actions, but not for himself. This would be during his time as Robin exclusively. Red Robin would not feel this way.

Spiteful, though, was the wrong word to use. Tim, as the loveable asshole that he can sometimes be, might be sort of happy that Jason, in his villain era, is being shown the effects of his actions and possible wrongs in his ways. Happy also seems to not match, but the emotions wheel isn't really giving me an alternative.

Tim would, despite his feelings, hate the effect of this on everyone. The street kids, Jason, and the batfam would be negatively impacted by this, and Tim would try everything he could to stop or mitigate the outcomes. He would never release this information willingly nor stand aside to let it happen. Robin may internally say some shit about Jason and the situation if it blew up in their faces, but you're right that he wouldn't purposefully make shit worse. He would actively work to fix the entire mess.

I really am thankful that you helped me articulate this.

It's 100% my bad that I dropped the ball so hard. If y'all see me fuck up like that again, feel free to let me know. As long as you're not mean about it, I appreciate constructive criticism.

Imma edit the previous post this is about and link it to this one so that I fix the mischaracterization

[rosen-dovecote]

@autisticslp asked (on the old blog):

So a lot of cooking advice that people tend to give that seems very basic honestly comes from decades of experience; there's a post that floats around Tumblr sometimes, actually, that talks about how a lot of "cooking from intuition" isn't actually intuition at all. It's deeply ingrained memorization about the "laws of cooking" that we've learned over time, that feel like second nature to us to the point where we no longer have to think about it or physically reference recipes or tutorials anymore.

In essence: We're good at "taking what we have on hand and making a meal of it" because we have a lot of practice! We've built up a skill! A skill you're lacking in. And that's not a bad thing! But it also means that you shouldn't be too hard on yourself because you don't know or can't seem to grasp this stuff that seems so "second nature" or "easy" to a lot of the cooks you know. You're still really new at this! And with various disabilities and mental illnesses, cognitive issues, etc? Of course you're going to struggle harder at it than "most" seem to, to you!

As a secondary aside to that, you mentioned growing up on a farm. But farming and gardening, and the various forms of food preservation that frequently comes alongside small family subsistence farms, is a very different skill set! Knowing what's seasonal in your garden doesn't necessarily inherently translate into cooking it, and building a full meal up from scratch unless you also had someone who had that skill as well to teach you that.

I know my Husband's mom sure as hell didn't. He grew up on a farm like that, and she could can all day ... But Lord. She couldn't cook to save her life. She attempted to impart neither of these skills to my Husband, either ... I grew up on one, as well. But where my mom couldn't can or garden to save her life, she was a damned good cook and imparted those skills to me. Now I'm passing them on to my Husband decades later, because his mother failed to.

What you're ultimately missing is a fundamental set of basic skills, and a knowledge set built up over time and practice. And the good news is, those are really simple skills to learn. The bad news is, it does take a while to learn them and to build up that pool of knowledge. Most of it's experimentation, though, and not a lot of it's super difficult.

For basic knowledge of cooking science and spices, I'd recommend The Science of Cooking and The Science of Spice- both by Dr. Stuart Farrimond. I own both and love them dearly. They'll debunk some common myths, and give you a basic understanding of certain food sciences that are honestly really helpful.

When you feel like you're ready to actually sit down and experiment with spices, I love The Encyclopedia of Spices and Herbs: An Essential Guide to the Flavors of the World by Padma Lakshmi. It has information on various spices, tells you their cultural contexts, mentions what they're usually used on in those contexts (vegetables, which meats, etc), and even gives you some common cultural spice blends (though doesn't provide measurements). It's a thick boy, but it's a really fun one to work through if you have no introduction to spices or idea how to use them.

Past that, something you need to build yourself is a well stocked pantry with staple basics. I can't tell you what those are for you. That's something you have to figure out for yourself based on what you cook, how often, etc. But my minimum has always been at least 2 months worth of food in my pantry at any given time, across a broad enough spectrum that I can pick just about anything out of a recipe and only really need to shop for the fresh or immediate-need ingredients each week.

Staple Grains like Rice, Lentils, Cous Cous, and Quinoa.

Pasta Noodles of various types- like Elbow, Rigatoni, Bowtie, Penne, Fettuccini, and Spaghetti

Potatoes in the form of Mashed Potatoes and Scalloped Potatoes both, as well as a "fresh" bag each of Russet, Yellow, and Red Potatoes

Onions. I keep a mesh bag each of Red and Yellow (or White; whichever's cheapest at the time I'm shopping) on hand at all times.

Boxes of Stock (Chicken, Beef, Vegetable, and Protein Broth when I can find it)

Canned items that I use a lot of, like Diced Tomatoes, Tomato Sauce, Tomato Paste, every kind of Bean (Cannellini, Great Northern, Dark Red, Light red, Black, Pinto, etc), and Chickpeas; plus canned fish (Tuna and Salmon, Sardines, etc)

Condensed Creams Of (Chicken and Mushroom are the two we use most often)

Spices. Of every kind. You literally do not want to see my spice box. It's insane. Yes I'm proud of it. But it would make the average person cry with confusion and fear.

Frozen Veggies in the freezer (Green Beans, Brussel Sprouts, Broccoli, Carrots, Squashes, etc; personally I prefer the frozen to the canned)

I'm sure there's stuff I'm forgetting. But ultimately when you have a full pantry and only have to buy your fresh or immediate-need ingredients? It not only massively saves your grocery bill each week, but it also makes it so much easier to "make things with what you have on hand". Because a large part of the trick is, honestly, having things on hand to make stuff with in the first place. And that's really the big secret that goes unspoken in a lot of circles. But it really shouldn't be an unspoken secret, because it holds so many people back.

Another secret is just knowing basic cooking methods. What is chopping vs dicing? How do you pan fry? What's a dry fry vs a wet fry? What about baking? Broiling? Boiling? What happens if you stew an ingredient instead? How big does it have to be for each of these methods? How does it perform with rice as opposed to cous cous? How is it raw- if it can be eaten raw? Other than that, just knowing recipes is really going to be the big key.

Unfortunately I don't have a recommend for learning any of these ones, since I learned all this the hard way. I do see some cook books that could be useful (like Veg-table: Recipes, Techniques, and Plant Science for Big-Flavored Vegetable-Focused Meals by Nik Sharma; or Vegetables: The Ultimate Cookbook Featuring 300+ Delicious Plant-Based Recipes by Laura Sorkin). I can't personally recommend them, however, because I've never read or used them. But there's a lot of information out there on youtube that can be very helpful, especially for methodology since it's a visual medium- which is, I think, the best way to learn some of these skills in particular.

Personally, I did the recipe thing by looking at cuisines from regions where those foods or ingredients were really popular. So take your Eggplant for example. Eggplants feature a lot in Mediterranean, Levantine, and Middle Eastern cuisines. So when you want to learn how to use Eggplant and build up your knowledge about it? Looking at the people in those regions who use this ingredient a lot already is going to be really helpful to you. They know what they're doing with it!

When you've made those dishes a few times, you're going to get an understanding not only of how to prepare Eggplant for various methods of cooking, and how to cook it for those methods. But you're also going to get an understanding of what flavors pair well with it. And after a while of doing that, you're naturally going to start thinking "what if I do x instead?" and start experimenting on your own. Play with them. Get to know the ingredient on the most foundational level. And yeah, throw some herbs on it if you're comfortable! See what meshes with what flavors. What do you like? And yeah, some of those are going to be flops. But by the time you start thinking "what if" your skills are usually further progressed than you'd think to give yourself credit for. Just ask my Husband, ha!

As for the stuff regarding disability, mental illness, and cognitive function, I gotchu, babe! One of the most distressing things for me when I became disabled, started suffering really bad from cognitive decline, and started dealing with memory loss, was looking at the potential of never being able to cook for myself again. And that scared the piss out of me, because cooking is my joy. And so my Husband and I sat down and prioritized cooking and making it disability friendly for me. Here's some of the stuff we did.

First step: Get your butt a stool that's a comfortable height for your counter height. Once acquired, sit as much as you can in the kitchen. It conserves energy and lets you use more of it to focus your head.

Second: Get yourself all those fun little gadgets you think look interesting or helpful. Personally I have a fruit slicer (that works on more than just apples), a slap chopper microplane thingy, and a few others. Mostly I got these because occasionally my body loses my hands and has no idea where they went and it's safer for me. But I can't tell you how nice they are even when my body knows where my hands are, ha; they speed up prep, keep your fingers safe (usually), and leave more room for the brain to do its thing.

Third: Make as many lists as you can! I have a list on the inside of all my pantry doors of the staples that are in that section. When something needs refilling it allows me to put a mark there so I know to put it on the grocery list. But it also provides a quick reference when my brain's tired; it's so much easier for me to read a list than try and decipher box labels with various colors, font sizes, etc. Make lists wherever you need them and always keep them accessible.

Fourth: The recipe box. Yes. A good, old fashioned, classic recipe box. I have mine filled with tried and true recipes that I know for a fact my Husband and I love, that I know we have at least 90% of the ingredients on hand for at any given moment. So if all else fails and I can't think of anything? I can just go pull something out of the box and have him jot down to the store for anything we don't have.

Fifth: Keep easy meals on stock, because some days you really can't cook. Your brain won't let you, and that's ok! That's fine! But you still gotta eat, right? So we keep stuff like bagged Blackened Chicken Alfredo, Dirty Rice, Mongolian Beef, Jambalaya, Broccoli Beef, Red Beans & Rice, etc, on hand in the outdoor fridge. If at any point I just can't do it? We grab some of those instead.

And the good news is, you can spruce up a quick meal! Making Dirty Rice? Throw in some bread and butter, and a side of boiled Green Beans from the garden. Blackened Chicken Alfredo? Throw some Bell Pepper on in there; you can bulk this stuff up easily with your produce, and it takes even less effort most of the time.

As for the Covid sense of taste / smell? Keep trucking. It does get better; I suffered bad from Post-Covid Parosmia for nearly 2 years after I caught Covid the first time- bad enough to the point I couldn't bathe myself because of the smell of our water being nauseating to me; couldn't eat anything with Corn, or Wheat, or Onion, or Garlic in it for a year, either. the second I tried, my body auto rejected it. Bananas tastes like Iris flowers smelt ... I feel your pain so hard.

But it does get better. Your system is just rewiring itself completely from scratch right now. And Lord, it's so unpleasant. But the more you give it to taste, and smell, the better it does and the faster it rewires itself. Don't force yourself to eat things that are nauseating or unpleasant. But do branch out. Experiment. Even if it tastes left of how you remember it, keep going! I can't promise you'll get everything back (Lord knows there's still some things that aren't quite right for me, even 4 years later now). But it gets better!

I hope any of this helps- even if it's not as helpful if you'd like it to be. Hang in there, love.

[bubblesxo]

(harvey bullock in the batfam)

okay, so this post is to elaborate on something i was talking about in tags the other day etc. etc.

so basically, my whole point was that bruce is a little chaos gremlin. he has so many bad habits and does so many illegal activities completely nonchalantly that it sometimes can make people question his mental state.

of course, this all originated from his childhood and the way that he was raised. we know from the gotham tv (which this post is specific to) that bruce was close with his parents, though his father did have secrets that eventually killed him. nevertheless, bruce was raised well for the first 12 years of his life. very well, in fact. he was rich, he had a butler and two loving parents---he had a good life.

and then his parents were shot in front of him.

12 years old and bruce is reborn. bruce after isn't the same person as bruce before. after the shooting, bruce has a purpose and a meaning to life. he knows what he needs to do---protect gotham and her people. make a difference. (though i won't get too ahead of myself.)

it starts out small. thomas wayne (bruce's dad) made alfred promise to never bring bruce to a psychologist if he and his wife were killed. alfred kept this promise and never did, even though that was definitely what bruce needed at the time.

bruce coped badly, especially at first. he had no appetite and stopped eating. he started burning himself, cutting himself, and holding his breath underwater so he could "test himself" and "overcome fear" (which is actually a recurring theme in the show). he went to the roof of his house and stood on the ledge to make himself not fear heights.

it was obvious then that bruce needed help, but he didn't get it. instead, he got alfred (who i love!!). however, just because i love alfred doesn't mean i can't acknowledge that he is one of the main reasons bruce ended up the way he did.

it's no secret that bruce is a little messed up. we all know that, right? anyway, alfred did a lot of crazy stuff in his time taking care of bruce, which is understandable, because he wasn't expecting to one day be going about his day and suddenly find himself a single father. he was definitely going through it with guilt and despair after his bosses were killed. didn't help that he had to find a way to care for their son.

anyway, alfred is also a bit odd. he has a strong opinion on what it means to be strong and also a strong opinion on bruce being safe. once, bruce sprained his ankle hiking and alfred let him crawl up a hill for half an hour. however, he followed that up with honoring one of bruce's prized family traditions. alfred frequently was a bit rough when teaching bruce to fight, which, admittedly, bruce didn't seem to mind, but he once did punch bruce in the nose after purposefully distracting him to make a point about him not being ready.

i don't think learning to fight is harmful, of course. i just think that the way those two went about it was... interesting. and pretty cool. they have a great bond and i love that for him.

anyway, alfred never pushed back against him. thomas also told alfred to let bruce choose his own path like all waynes did, which is why bruce has way too much control over his own life way too early. (again, not blaming alfred per se. the man was grieving and following the order to the letter.)

this led to bruce doing more and more reckless things over time and learning way too much for his age. his gets involved in vigilatism around the age of 15 (i do believe? my timeline there is fuzzy) and, while alfred makes his disapproval known, he doesn't stop him.

alfred teaches bruce that he needs to be strong. he teaches him to always expect the worst. he teaches him to always be on guard and to never give up when facing opposition. these are not necessarily bad things.

then, there's jim gordon. jim was the first person to really talk to bruce after his parents were killed, and he promises bruce that he'll find the man who was responsible. over time as this is revealed to be much more complicated than expected, jim does not grow apart from the family. if anything, it just seems to make them all closer togehter. their lives are completely linked.

now, when jim talks, he has the crazy ability to make persuasive speeches. it's one of his things, a motif of his in the show---he always gives speeches, especially when motivating people. now, as a kid, freshly orphaned, bruce needed motivation. jim tells bruce a lot of things that could be misinterpreted and come back to hurt him. he also, however, draws him in closer to the mess that is gotham and it's crime world. this encouragement only makes bruce more determined to get involve over time.

now, i made a post saying that these two basically coparented bruce, and i stand by this. alfred did all of the day-to-day stuff and helped really form bruce as a person, but jim was the one who really imparted his morals and hope on bruce.

jim taught bruce that everyone can be redeemed, and anyone can be saved. just like batman believes.

jim and bruce talk about darker and more complicated things as time passes. for example, they once talked about how you sometimes need to let go of your own pride in order to take care of other people (which ended up with a lot of bad results)

this leads to jim killing someone and bruce's brain being changed. he gets most of his morals from jim most likely, and jim is not necessarily particularly "good" often. he violates police procedure and the law frequently to help people.

now, jim's partner is harvey bullock. while he and bruce aren't the closest in the canon material for the show, they did have a few notable interactions and i believe that we can really extrapolate here.

before, i said that harvey would freak out at the realization that he's old. i stand by this. however, harvey also knows that he's getting older and will eventually need to leave the force in jim's hands.

harvey is a very blunt man. he knows how to lie but he doesn't really ever do so unless his life depended on it. when he talks to bruce, the two of them really click. despite harvey having committed so many crimes and broken many, many departmental policies, it is shown that he is still a good man deep down.

harvey tells bruce stories all the time. he talks to him about the legal AND illegal things that he has done both on and off the job, and bruce picks up on way too many of him. he gets /ideas/. he has the money, after all. he can learn how to do that stuff.

bruce really just wants to make life better for the others tbh. that's like his life goal. harvey basically teaches bruce how to emulate the more gritty parts of batman---torture in interrogation, breaking and entering, gathering information, how to break the law without getting caught, etc. etc. of course, some of his terms really rub off on bruce.

i'm imagining bruce calling someone "putz" as an insult. it's just so funny to me

i was falling asleep while writing this so i'm gonna snooze now and maybe add more later bcuz that was a bit lacking in harvey sorry!!

[dingodad]

you can link to it if youve already answered it, but how do you think lord english “runs” his empire? by the way you talk about alternia, it sounds to me like you imagine he did play a role as some kind of shadow political leader that made active decisions in the structuring of alternia. is that the case? i think thats really interesting, i always wondered what his rulership over the condesce actually looked like. iirc lord english has only ever shown been screaming and destroying things so i’ve always struggled to imagine if he would even be lucid enough to make decisions or do anything other than mass murder. does doc scratch have some way to implicitly understand his desires and then deliver orders to the condesce on his behalf? or was the caliborn that the “kids” fight at some nebulous time in the “future,” the one who’s soul dirk rips out, not teen caliborn but an actually fully realized adult cherub caliborn who had already been fucking with alternia? idk if that makes sense, the part of the comic where the beta kids are described by caliborn to have been sucked into the juju has always been a little weird for me to wrap my head around. i always imagined the battle happened between them all as kids still but now that im trying to imagine a lucid lord english im realizing they could very well all be adults because we still havent “seen” it actually happen aside from caliborn’s claymation right? anyways. very interested in what your thoughts on caliborn’s active influence on alternia looked like

lots of really great questions! i'll try to get my thoughts in order here.

to start at the beginning of lord english's story: yes, it is an important point that we have no idea "when" caliborn's masterpiece actually takes place; how old caliborn is, where the kids who beat him up even came from... and I think this is because the details in that story don't necessarily matter. while i certainly believe there is a point in caliborn's timeline where a gaggle of teenagers show up and stuff him into a puppet, what we see play out on his claymation stage is a mythologised account of something that happens to him over and over again in many many different ways over the course of his time loop.

so while i wouldn't call that caliborn "fully realised", necessarily, i think we are supposed to see him as "caliborn-as-lord-english"; he has the peg leg, he has mastery over the felt, he's finally obtained the rainbow magic eyes, and while he certainly hasn't encountered the trolls yet, no, he has had loads of practice at being the puppetmaster of his own world as he hones his homosuck craft and uses the terminals left to him by his session to influence homestuck itself! (i don't think whether caliborn is ultimately "teen" or an "adult" is hugely relevant, because caliborn's specific circumstances mean that he doesn't really "grow" or "mature" by aging the same way a human does; he gradually acquires power in different ways.)

related to this, i tend to use the names 'caliborn' and 'lord english' interchangeably. which i know not everyone will agree with, but i think it aligns with the hussie's philosophy that act 6 is about the kid versions of the comic's grownup characters; while, yes, the lord english contained within lil cal also contains sprinklings of equius, dirk and gamzee, these characters are ultimately caliborn's servitors, and i would argue that subsuming weaker personalities into his own is kind of part of caliborn's Bag as a dominant cherub.

anyway, all that is just to say that it's important to be aware that lord english DOES act like caliborn, and isn't just a mindless, speechless force of destruction - at least not all of the time. when damara tries to escape his captivity, he speaks to her in caliborn's voice, and perhaps more importantly, tells us the one thing you must never forget about lord english: he is ALREADY HERE. never be fooled into thinking lord english only showed up at alternia's death and then fucked off into the furthest ring to hunt his sister - his first act was to travel back to the beginning of alternian history and become its architect. notice how as soon as lord english speaks, two things happen: first, the cursor changes into english's reptilian hand; second, we see the puppet hole in doc scratch's back - he was the literal puppetmaster behind scratch's actions the whole time!

so yes, lord english was an active participant in the shaping of the alternian empire, though i think "political leader" is probably the wrong description; he certainly never had any face-to-face conversations or gave any direct orders to any trolls, at least within modern troll history. but that's not what he's about: as the cuestick, and with scratch as his cueball, english's manipulations are more about lining up the perfect shot, executing a precision strike, and then letting events play out exactly as planned.

probably the most influential of these precision strikes was establishing the subjugglator cult, who worship him and his puppet as twin mirthful messiahs; while we don't know exactly how he did this, it's not hard to imagine it had something to do with appearing to them as an all-powerful angel at the very dawn of their society. compare this to how the condesce makes cordial visits to every planet she passes on her journey through the stars, then fucks off to let her army of trolls decimate the place. after all, scratch operates in exactly the same way: he doesn't waste his time constantly relaying orders to his proteges, but rather grooms them when they're still young, turning them into his unwitting soldiers so that when he finally does intervene he's only telling them to do things that "deep down, they already know they want to do." (commentary from Homestuck: Book 4, p. 216)

while the condesce formally becomes english's puppet when she kills the handmaid - inheriting both the rustblood's curse and essentially taking up scratch's role on earth - it's not like she was ever particularly hands-on when it came to helming the metaphorical ship herself. in porrim's words, she was "the Lo+rd's slave all alo+ng [...] thro+ugh manipulatio+n by his cunning emplo+yee", but what the condesce enjoys doing most is delegating! on alternia she gave most of her authority to the subjugglators, and then did the exact same shit again on earth. remember meenah never wanted the responsibilities of heiress, and ran to beforus' pink moon to escape them; the way i see it, the condesce rushing off into space to explore the galaxy instead of overseeing the planet she's responsible for is just a repeat of the same behaviour, and doing so left a power vacuum for english to essentially insert his own guys into. (possibly thematically relevant, since lord english's role is fundamentally to shoot balls into unfilled dark pockets.)

in short, english is cleverer - or at least, more competent - than we give him credit for. it's just that rather than a chess master who moves each piece to its proper place individually, he's playing pool; if you line up just the right shot, you only need to make one move, and the balls will play the rest of the moves off of each other. looked at another way, as the Lord of Time and master of the alpha timeline, english makes his moves by controlling inevitability itself. he engineers things so that events can only play out in the exact way he wants them to, and all other options are doomed. and to do that, he only needs to be present at key moments in alternia's history - most importantly its very beginning and its very end.

[olderthannetfic]

I have a question. I’m new to the discourse around fanfiction & censorship, so I was curious about what the general consensus regarding fic about underaged characters in live action media was. Underage is my biggest squick, but I feel pretty neutral about how people write/draw smut of cartoon characters, as they barely register as human for me. Characters played by actual child actors though… I guess I’m just wondering what’s going through the heads of people who write that stuff? Or minor rpf for that matter. What is appealing about it? I’m willing suspend my disbelief & accept that they don’t actually want to abuse kids, but like, what is fulfilling about that fantasy? I’m not in favor of censorship or arresting anyone over a fictional story, but I just can’t wrap my head around it.

--

That's quite a failure of imagination there, anon.

Other people are not you, and they don't necessarily have this squick. That's the main answer.

From people who don't try to problematize this, there isn't really any discourse. Fiction is fiction.

Cartoon characters register as people to plenty of viewers. (And moron antis think cartoon characters count just as much as live action ones when it comes to screaming about problematicness.) Actors playing teenagers are often in their 20s. Coming of age novels dealing with sexuality have been normal all over the world since forever.

--

But let's start with some low hanging fruit:

If you're 17 years + 364 days, you're below the age of consent lots of places. Do you, anon, honestly think it's weird to be into someone one day before their 18th birthday but not the day after? What if you live somewhere where the age of consent is 16? Is it still weird to be into 17-year-olds from places where the age of consent is 18?

Most people remember being teenagers. They may feel nostalgic. They may want to imagine the nice teenage experiences they never got to have.

Lots of fic writers are currently teenagers. Not as many as ageist online spaces think, but still quite a lot. Is it weirder for a 15-year-old to have a crush on a 15-year-old than a 40-year-old?

"They looked 18, Your Honor" is a weak-ass excuse for fucking underage people in real life, but that's not the same as finding characters on your tv hot. Not only are the actors usually above 18 because filming underage actors is a fucking nightmare logistically due to work constraints, but a lot of younger actors are often made up in ways that make them look like they could be way older. People also vary widely in how they look at various ages.

If you can accept that lust exists and is valid, you can accept that lots of people will see some teen and think they're hot. There isn't some specific categorical difference in how all teenagers look and how all 20-somethings look.

Doing something about it in real life and doing something about it in fiction are different.

--

Now, as for "child actors", that term is used for a wide variety of ages, but let's assume you mean Stranger Things wank, like most people moaning about underage actor RPF do, so we're talking about tweens who genuinely do look pretty young to grown-ass adults.

The first thing I have to ask you is why the fuck you would imagine that writers identify with some adult fucking these kids? It's far, far more likely that they identify with the characters themselves or the actors.

Why would they identify with them? It could be anything from working through their own trauma at a similar age to just liking the vibe of a character because of how the show is written.

Lots of people's brains barf out dark scenarios 24/7 without them ever having experienced any major trauma and without it meaning anything much. Some people channel that into fiction.

If you are a boring person who has both a vanilla brain and no imagination, this might seem surprising to you, but it shouldn't.

--

Moreover, your ask implies that underage fic is highly sexual or maybe coercive or something, but you haven't actually stated that. Are we talking about rapefic of 5-year-olds or about someone writing the Stranger Things characters holding hands?

Are you just not sexual at all, anon? Personally, I went from zero to MEGA HORNY at thirteen and a half. It was like a switch flipped. Sure, I wasn't getting any action because I was a zit-covered and socially incompetent 13-year-old, but I was definitely interested.

It's not strange that an artist or author of whatever sort would explore puberty in their art. It's not strange that they'd remember their own sexual awakening or that this awakening would be long before age 18.

It's also not strange if people write super dark shit about small children because it being extreme and taboo and horrible is often the point of art.

--

You're "willing to suspend disbelief"? How magnanimous! How generous!

Seriously, anon?!

The way you've phrased this question makes it sound like you have a brain the size of a walnut.

Would you ask such a stupid question in such an offensively loaded manner about all the coming of age novels that are considered Great Literature™? Would you ask why YA exists?

And if you wouldn't, why is it that amateur writing by women and sexual minorities makes you nervous when mainstream-approved things don't?

[thydungeongal]

You seem to hold dungeon crawling in high esteem. Do you know a system you could recommend for those? I'm thinking about Dungeon Bitches but that one isn't *exactly* about the crawl itself, I don't think. More about the whole narrative, symbolic and direct, behind it.

I've previously recommended Old-School Essentials (a clone of the old Moldvay Basic/Expert set) and Basic Fantasy Roleplaying, both of which are fantastic games that capture the simplicity of older editions of D&D and which are particularly conducive to dungeon-crawling. They don't have a lot of deep mechanics but they have all the stuff I consider important for a dungeon crawl: easy time-tracking, moving through the dungeon space itself is important, combat is quick to adjudicate, and most importantly the systems have built-in mechanics for stuff like reaction rolls, evasion, and morale, meaning that not all encounters will necessarily end up in combat and even if they do they're not going to necessarily end up as fights to the death. The first one has a free SRD, the latter is completely free.

I've also been recently looking at AD&D 1e again via PDFs found on the Internet Archive as well as the AD&D retroclone OSRIC and seeing the design lineage from 0D&D to AD&D makes me appreciate the latter more even if it still won't make me like the late Gary Gygax as a person and a writer. AD&D is less focused on the dungeon crawl in and of itself and that's why I prefer the aforementioned, simpler games, but AD&D has its stand-out moments.

Into the Odd and Electric Bastionland are both very good examples of minimalistic games that support dungeon-crawling very well. They are a bit too simple for my tastes, but I appreciate what they are doing.

Then there's Errant, which I pretty much consider the best modern dungeon game out there: Errant is a very cohesive combination of a bunch of stuff that I love about dungeon crawling and it adds a lot of neat mechanics into places where I didn't think I wanted it, including lighting! Like, making the number of lights the group has on an important tactical decision with actual mechanical effects is fantastic! Errant has a free PDF version available that has the entire rules text and simply lacks the art. I highly recommend checking it out.

[bossbutch]

halfway thru chapter 1 of umineko. idk how meaningful it is to speculate this early, The Real Umineko hasnt even properly started. these arent fully thought out and organized it's just scattered thoughts

battler's gender politics are entertainingly weird. he's like "when i meet a woman, even if she's my cousin or my servant, i NEED to make a big show of grabbing her tits so that she can hit me and everyone will laugh at the Classic Gag and it'll lighten the mood" which is just ridiculous enough to be something a rich teenager in the 80s could convince himself is okay. and then he sees the dinner seating and he's like "damn my family's so patriarchal. thought gained: inexplicable feminist agenda". i'm assuming this is a genre deconstruction thing. also lol that he is right next to maria in grandpa's tier list

maria is awesome btw i hope she gets to infodump about magic a lot more. some goon in the SA thread said the umineko author was once a social worker, so like. even if they don't use the word because it's japan in the 80s she's gotta be Intended as autistic

kinzo's room is so telegraphed to be a locked room mystery. he's entertaining too but i kinda zone out when he's talking about how his magic system works. i get the basic of more risk = more magic power but i worry it's the kind of thing that has Important Clues that my brain autofills with [arcane rambling]

battler constantly gasses up how good george is with kids and then george sees a family member repeatedly hitting their 9 year old disabled child and says, out loud, "not my problem"

assuming the epitaph is a puzzle intended to be solved and not the kind of puzzle that frames all the other puzzles and isn't solvable til the end: until the first butterfly i thought all the death and traveling was metaphorical. it still could be. like the six chosen by the key could be objects. the hands of a clock may be involved because that's in all the promo stuff and chapter start art. kinzo acted like the riddle was totally solvable by the doc or kanon or any of his kids. but if it was unsolvable until People Started Dying, it seems kinda pointless to have put the painting up years ago? but beatrice is a Dramatic Bitch.

Who Took The Rose?! no idea, but i'm sure it's important. if there's a 19th person, definitely them. totally possible the wrapper fell off but they'd still recognize the withered rose i reckon

Who Gave Maria The Umbrella?! again, if there's a 19th person, it's them. if not, natsuhi was my prime suspect because her alibi didn't have any witnesses but everyone else's did (if you really count grandpa and the doctor, like doc could easily say "i was with kinzo" and no one would verify that with kinzo). but then there was a scene right after from natsuhi's pov (migraine and can't sleep without meds, literally me) where she speculates who did it. so either the narrative is heavily fucking with me, it's gramps or the doctor, or it's someone with an accomplice

the narration is from battler's pov except when it's not and it's strange. it even isn't from his pov in some scenes that he's in, like the letter reading scene. this is the type of thing that could Mean Something way later but is just a little confusing sometimes right now

kyrie saying there's a contradiction in beatrice showing herself to maria but hiding from everyone else, failing to consider beatrice may be a Dramatic Bitch. i think there's probably a 19th person even if they are not necessarily a witch with magic powers

the furniture being totally able to break promises but can't disobey orders is the kind of exact words semantic sillies that umineko memes made me expect

goes w/o saying that the way the servants are treated is supremely fucked up. going to servant school and then working in the mansion at age six... george proposing to a girl that he has so much power over is lol. it's nice that umineko cares who the servants are and why they're there, and other logistical human things like how kinzo made his money and what they're all doing with it

at midnight, where was the doctor?

they drop some hints that the non-shannon, non-krauss bodies have their faces disfigured and Could be other people but that is pretty ridiculous and there's no reasons to consider that yet

i wish the LP used the doughy original art but that's the price i pay for convenience

[ihopesocomic]

Do you think bullying is considered a type of abuse? Does "bully redemption" trope can also be considered a abuser redemption? I can't like this kind of narrative at all. Not even "A Silent Voice " could convince me.

The thing is with bullying is that it is often committed by children and the overreaching fact is that hardly any adult is going to look back on their actions as a child/young adult and say yes, that totally was not cringe of me. This further compounded by the person's home life and/or if they're dealing with personal issues.

I was a pretty huge asshole as a kid and it's not like I mellowed out the moment I hit 18 either. I was dealing with a lot of stuff (i.e. such as undiagnosed autism/schizophrenia and psychologists refusing to take me seriously) and I dealt with it in a shitty manner by being this "edgy badass" online and just getting into online fights whenever I can because being deemed intimidating and scary online made up for the fact I was an insecure outcast offline.

I truly regret how I conducted myself back then. Regardless of what I was going through, nobody deserved to have to deal with me lashing out at them. It was also just embarrassing behaviour to boot.

But I do think bullying can certainly be counted as abuse and it certainly begets abusive tendencies (points to self, who was bullied throughout elementary and high school). But in that vain, I feel people respond to depictions of it in a manner that isn't exactly constructive and is borderline abusive itself, like the desire to outright commit assault or murder on said bully being depicted. lol

Because I also feel this question is also in reference to Rose and her behaviour and while I can't give much away on how we're going to handle her arc, I feel like people demanding she dies or whatever is just... Yeah, let's not. It's essentially 'I hope Vicious dies, particularly at the hands of her abuser' all over again.

It's clear Rose is growing up in a pretty unhealthy environment and is being groomed to take on a position of authority in said unhealthy environment.

I've seen the same kind of reception to irl children of cult leaders and the intent behind Rose's character is to deconstruct the fact that people - particularly children - are very much influenced by what surrounds them and will respond accordingly to it. We're social animals at the end of the day. Same goes for (anthropomorphic) lions. Not to mention what goes on in a cult that may seem alarming and disturbing to us is not necessarily the case for those within it... because they've been brainwashed into thinking it's OK. Rose is very much not exempt from this and her being groomed to become Queen by her father has only made things worse.

Anyway, my apologies, this thing got pretty long and also kinda personal and it probably also doesn't make a whole lot of sense but feeling that bullies cannot be redeemed? Totally get that. Responding to the depiction with unhealthy thoughts of child abuse or murder? I can't really get behind that. If there's room for growth and a chance for them to change rather than becoming outright established abusers as fully-fledged adults, I feel we should hope for that. - RJ

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Like everything, it depends on how it's done. I don't know what A Silent Voice is, but some things are just too far past forgiveness or redemption. Cuz at that point its not "bullying", it's hazing. If it's teasing, or there's mutual sass happening, or heck even if one person thinks the other is bullying but it was a misunderstanding (Amity calling Luz a bully in The Owl House), and its not full on harassment, or stalking, I don't see the harm in allowing someone to better themselves and liking how they've changed, especially if they're young. And I don't see a problem with a friendship beginning at a place of conflict and grow into something strong and meaningful. I don't even think forgiveness of the bullying itself is a requirement to move on? Maybe I'm just old so I handle things differently than like a teenager would, but certain stuff just stops bothering you. People I'm still friends with to this day weren't exactly pleasant to me early on in our relationship or vice versa, but we never "forgave" the infraction and we've all just moved on because the infraction in question was never done again which is something I personally care more about. I've actually had someone from High school see me years later and apologize for how they treated me. It was just all water under the bridge at that point. But what I think about how things are handled in media is not the same thing as real people. What might not be a big deal to one person might be a big deal for someone else. Again bully redemption is something to be done with care and more often just excuses abuse which is gross. But I've seen it done right, but I wouldn't exactly call it commonplace. - Cat