#me and my arbitrary tagging system

[thatonefreemanversefic]

Happy Cicero Sunday! How are u? ^_^ -⛄

I'm a day late!! Noooo!!!

To answer your question, I am doing fine :D I know this blog has been silent for a while now and the fic has been on a brief hiatus, but rest assured I am working on it still!! My goal is to get an update out sometime between now and this Saturday o7

[quohotos]

I'm totally hooked unraveling the mysteries of Hole

[katakaluptastrophy]

Masterpost of TLT metas

This is mostly for my own reference, as tagging doesn't seem to guarantee something being findable on Tumblr...but if you like wildly overthinking lesbian necromancers in space, enjoy!

Overthinking the Fifth House:

What is a "Speaker to the Dead"?

Actually, Magnus Quinn isn't terrible at sword fighting

Imperial complicity: Abigail the First

Pyschopomp: Abigail Pent and Hecate

Did Teacher conspire with Cytherea to kill the Fifth?

What does the Fifth House actually do?

The Fourth and the Fifth can never just be family

Cytherea's political observations at the anniversary dinner

Abigail Pent's affect: ghosts and autism

Were the Fourth wards of the Fifth?

Abigail probably knew most of the scions as children

Magnus Quinn's very understandable anger

Fifth House necromancy is not neat and tidy

Are Abigail and Magnus an exception to the exploitative nature of cavaliership?

"Abigail Pent literally brought her husband and look where that got her" (the Fifth in TUG)

The Fifth's relationship dynamic

The Fifth's relationship is unconventional in a number of ways

The queer-coding of Abigail and Magnus' relationship

Abigail and Palamedes, and knowing in the River

Was Isaac the ward of the Fifth?

Did Magnus manage to draw his sword before Cytherea killed him? (and why he probably had to watch his wife die)

How did Abigail know she was murdered by a Lyctor?

Fifth House necromancy is straight out of the Odyssey

The politics of the anniversary dinner

Was Magnus born outside of the Dominicus system?

Overthinking John Gaius:

The one time John was happy was playing Jesus

Is Alecto's body made from John's?

Are there atheists in the Nine Houses?

Why isn't John's daughter a necromancer?

The horrors of love go both ways: why John could have asked Alecto 'what have you done to me?'

Why M- may have really hoped John was on drugs

What is it with guys called Jo(h)n and getting disintegrated? (John and Dr Manhattan)

John's conference call with his CIA handlers

Watching your friend turn into an eldritch horror

Why does G1deon look so weird? (Jod regrew him from an arm)

When is a friendship bracelet not a friendship bracelet?

Why did John have G1deon hunt Harrow? (with bonus update)

The 'indelible' sin of Lyctorhood and John's shoddy plagiarism of Catholicism

Are John Gaius and Abigail Pent so different?

What was Jod's plan at Canaan House?

John and Ianthe tread the Eightfold path

The Mithraeum is more than a joke about cows

When was John Gaius born? (And another)

John Gaius and the tragic Orestes

John and Jesus writing sins in the sand

John and Nona's echoing chapters

John's motivations

Overthinking the Nine Houses:

'No retainers, no attendants, no domestics'

Funerary customs and the violence of John's silence

Juno Zeta and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad time

The horror of the River bubble

Every instance of 'is this how it happens' in HTN

Feudalism is still shitty even if you make it queer and sex positive

How do stele work?

Thought crime in the Nine Houses

The Houses have a population the size of Canada

What must it be like to fight the Houses?

You know what can't have been fun? Merv wing's megatruck on Varun day...

Augustine's very Catholic hobby (decorating skeletons)

Necromancers are not thin in a conventionally attractive way

Matching the Houses with the planets of the solar system

Why don't the Nine Houses have (consistent) vaccination or varifocals?

How would the Houses react to the deaths at Canaan House?

How does Wake understand her own name (languages over 10,000 years)

What pre-resurrection texts are known in the Houses?

Camilla and Palamedes very Platonic relationship

The horrors the Cohort found at Canaan House

Do the Houses understand the tech keeping them alive?

Overthinking House religion:

What do the Houses believe about death?

Was M's nun a Franciscan?

Cavaliership and arbitrary socio-religious structures

Ritual scarification

Sacraments and sacramentals

What did Silas think god wanted at Canaan House?

In defense of Silas

There's no such thing as a 'good' necro/cav relationship

Veiling and shaving in Ninth House cult practice

Tongue-in-cheek thoughts on Eighth and Sixth religion

A very long deep-dive on House belief and practice

Overthinking Harrowhark Nonagesimus:

'The meat of your meat...belonged to god' and 'that is how meat loves meat'

The horror of parental touch: Harrow, John Gaius, and Abigail Pent

Why is Harrow so obsessed with Abigail's hands?

Frontline Titties of the Fifth and transgressive necro/cav relationships

Harrow, Wake, and permeability of the soul in HTN

Bible studies for weird queer necromancers:

Epiphany: revealing god's child to the wider world

The Holy Innocents and the creche massacre

The Virgin Mary and Commander Wake

John Gaius and John the Baptist

Instantiating the Trinity and the Second Resurrection

What's the significance of Paul?

St Paul's theology of gender and sexuality and the House theology of cavaliership

Maundy Thursday: consuming another for eternal life

Harrow and the Harrowing of Hell

[ceasarslegion]

Anyway if you followed me recently because of my election results post there's a few things you should know about me:

-im a boring left-liberal who works and believes in electoral democracy and doesn't believe in the viability nor the morality of a burn-it-all-down revolution, you won't find any of that here.

-I genuinely like mark carney as a politician and worked for Rachel Notley's provincial election campaign, when I celebrate his win I'm also celebrating him as PM, not just the conservatives losing.

-im a trans man in Bible belt Alberta who grew up a third culture kid in a middle eastern dictatorship, so i do know what it's like to both be systemically oppressed and what its like to live in actual dictatorships. It's because of these life experiences that I'm a boring left-liberal who doesn't take my right to vote and criticize the government for granted and do not ascribe to burn-it-all-down revolutionary politics. I do not believe these things from an ivory tower of suburban isolationism, I believe them from personal experience.

-I work airport security so, if you're going to loop me in with cops and shout ACAB at me for that this is not the place for you

-i believe in solidarity among oppressed minority groups where we have to unite on common ground to tackle all of our systemic oppression as a single force, I do not believe in being divided among arbitrary lines of who is the most or least oppressed.

-i don't tag for content warnings. Not out of meanness, it's just logistically difficult for me to remember everything when I have my own ways of categorizing my blog.

-i enjoy many media properties that have been classified as problematic and irredeemable. I also openly think sex is cool and fun, that fanfiction is not reality, ship wars are stupid, and if it's not harming real actual people that it's not harming anyone. What consenting adults do in the bedroom or the club or the ao3 tag is their own business.

If all of this sounds Coolio to you, welcome aboard. If not, you're probably not going to have a good time here and for your own sake I suggest you step out.

[sainteclectic]

on the note of jashipping can i say that i am also severely tired of every Platonic interpretation of CCCC being read as siblings. because nobody even cares enough to tag them as such. like there are fics tagged as "platonic bond" or "platonic coliving" that are actually just about them being siblings and you wouldn't know until you read it (i am avoiding sibling interpretations for personal reasons). so in the end it feels like you should either see them as siblings Or have them in an explicitly romantic relationship which is just annoying to me idk

NO YOU'RE SO RIGHT IT'S INFURIATING. I personally can't stand the sibling interpretation, no hate it's not my thing, and the fact that so much "platonic" content is familial. as though romance and family are the only ways people can be close to each other. I understand being uncomfortable with jashipping if you read them as siblings, but don't tag it only as platonic and not specify AUGH

it's just an extension of the amatonormative relationship hierarchy combined with the perception of family bonds being more important and deep than anything else. and I'm not saying people are intentionally perpetuating these ideas, but it's something that really should be unpacked.

it's become a very binary system. if hms are very close, you either think it's because they're siblings or because they're in romantic relationships. they can't "just" be friends - and god how I hate the specification of "no they're just friends" whenever jashipping comes up. why is them being friends lesser than a romantic connection? why is friendship something that needs to be justified as "not counting as much" as romantic relationships?

and don't even get me started on relationships that fall outside of the arbitrary romantic/platonic binary. it's so dire out here

[voxofthevoid]

Would you do a fic without any tags? Like "CNTW" and "caveat lector" - and nothing else?

Destroy the weak, cull the herd, etc.

Y'know, my first, unthinking reaction was "I'm sure fucking tempted sometimes," but upon further consideration—no, I wouldn't. Not because I can't see the appeal of that tactic but because if I'm ever driven to that point, I'm far better off ditching that ship, fandom, or even Ao3 itself. There are always greener pastures; plus, there's a point where the spite starts to hurt me rather than fuel me, and I'm very invested in avoiding that.

I loathe how a vocal subset of Ao3 users wield its tag system as a cudgel against anyone they deem as not conforming to their arbitrary ideas of tagging etiquette, but I love the tag system itself. I love the freedom it offers authors first and foremost, which is why the aforementioned vocal subset pisses me off.

The process of tagging is something I enjoy a lot. Finding the right tags, inventing new ones, arranging them in all in a way I find both accurate and aesthetic—I love all of it. If people piss me off to the point that I decide to ditch the whole thing, what's the point in staying on the website?

This April 01 marked the 11th anniversary of my Ao3 account, and in that time, there have been three major alterations to my tagging behavior, all prompted by outside factors—namely, people being obnoxious.

I stopped tagging who tops and who bottoms. This happened sometime around 2017, when I got active in the Yuri on Ice fandom. I can't remember if I started out tagging top/bottom and later axed those tags or if I'd developed a distaste for it by the time I started posting for YoI at all. Regardless, the reason was hypocrisy: Fans expected one specific dynamic to be the default, while the other was considered a deviation to be warned for. If an untagged fic had top!Victor, no one would bat an eye, but if it was top!Yuuri, people would be up in arms. Noticing that double standard made it impossible to ignore, not just in YoI but across fandoms. Sure enough, it's still very much there—I have more comments than I can count from JJK and especially goyuu readers doing precisely this. Even discourse around it shows how so many people seem fundamentally incapable of grasping their own hypocrisy.

Sometime in the early 2020s, I permanently switched to using Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings. I also went the extra mile and changed the main archive warnings on my old fics to this. There are still a few No Archive Warnings Apply fics on my profile, but I'll mass edit those too one of these days. This was prompted by seeing one too many aggressive dumbasses argue that using CNTW is anti-social and anti-accessibility and other such nonsense. The arguments essentially dismiss CNTW as a valid warning because of its broadness—when that broadness is very much the point. And the more people elaborated on why they think CNTW is a "bad" warning, the clearer it became that it was about entitlement. They don't want to filter out CNTW because it may cost them fics they may like, and they don't want to go to the trouble of manually doing more extensive vetting to see if a CNTW-tagged fic is safe for them to read.

I stopped accepting tagging suggestions, period. There are exceptions, like my backlog clearance where I tell people I have no clue what's in the fic and they can suggest tags if they'd like, but on the whole, whatever I slap on a fic is all that's going to be there. I tag carefully and accurately, but exhaustive tagging isn't something I offer or aspire to. And I've found that being too accommodating will backfire more often that not—been there, done that, no thanks. That said, I don't expect people to read my profile, so it's cool if anyone asks for tags via jokes, idle suggestions, or even polite requests. But the moment it crosses the line to become a demand or an accusation of negligent tagging (my least favorite flavor, especially in relation to top/bottom tagging), I'm biting off a head or three.

These are all already major changes, and none of them were made out of warm and fuzzy feelings. I don't regret them though, especially because these are all aimed at selecting for more responsible readers. Assholes and idiots still pop up, especially in conflict-prone fandoms, but overall, I'm happy with my current tagging practices and their results.

...This got way too long 😂

[autisticandroids]

I was thinking about tma and I have a thought about it but idk if maybe ppl would think it's kind of??? A cop out??? Idk but like my thought on this is like tma hinges on Smirkes 14 which- I strongly agree with you- is a patently stupid system of organizing the fears but tbh I feel like that stupidity strengthens tmas themes of cosmic horror and its critique of the philosophical ripples of 1. Enlightenment era ideas of empiricism and the resurgence of those sorts of attitudes in Victorian times (aka slotting all data into taxonomies regardless of their actual accuracy- for example in the real world Race Science comes to mind an inaccurate, arbitrary, stupid, harmful taxonomy developed out of whole cloth to harm and exploit the vulnerable. I consider smirkes 14 to be analogous to that sort of thing- the human impulse towards pattern seeking taken to the logical extreme of applying arbitrary and harmful taxonomies as though they have any internal accuracy when they just dont) 2. Entrenched English systems of power that assert themselves thru institutions- in this case aristocracy and academia (Jonah magnus, the magnus archives itself, the fairchildes, and the Lukas family explicitly. In terms of metaphor I consider those that serve the fears to sort of be metaphorically resonant w those irl who uphold unfair hierarchies such as monarchy or aristocracy. It even kind of plays out in the granular interpersonal workplace dynamics of the archive wherein martin - working class bg- had to fake his cv to get a job and is subsequently mistreated by his boss for not being competent or how Sasha was passed over for a promotion a she was clearly better suited for by a man who was not as qualified)

I don't think this is just a watsonian reading of something poorly written btw (tho tma definitely has its flaws and this interpretation still doesn't necessarily have to retroactively justify this writing choice.) I think it was intended to be understood this way since there are allusions in-text to the Christian parable of the blind men and the elephant and at another point someone (I think it was peter Lukas?) describes Robert smirkes 14 fears as analogous to an ants perception of a human hand descending upon it (paraphrasing here but like something like "would an ant perceive these massive separate appendages descending upon it as a single entity- fingers on a hand- or would the shear massiveness and incomprehensibility render each finger a unique tormentor, separate and independent, all torturing the ant.")

Sorry to be out of the blue but ur one of the few ppl I see critiquing the tma pantheon on the grounds that it's bad (which it is) and I was curious what u might think of what I had to say here

ok this is aggressive haterism so i'm not putting it in the tag and if you are super super super into the magnus archives this isn't meant as an attack or whatever this is just me doing criticism for fun.

so okay. i get wanting to view it this way because if you are trying to work with the text to come to an interpretation that is like. good. then this makes sense. so like this makes sense as an interpretation, but it doesn't really work for me because my critique is more doylist and also less willing to give the benefit of the doubt.

so part one is. in the end. i just think that the fourteen fears make the stories themselves worse. like i think that real human author jonathan sims is "writing to the fears" as in, he is writing horror stories to slot specifically into these little categories. which make his horror stories less interesting. both because he tends to invent cliches for himself and then double back to them and also for more reasons i will discuss later. so on a very basic "i want [MEDIA PRODUCT] to be good (as in fun and enjoyable to consume), and this is making it bad (as in kinda boring)" level, i think this isn't really a justification, you know? like you can say you made the thing bad on purpose but it's still bad. very occasionally a thing being bad on purpose as a self-reflexive critique makes it good, but not as often as just being good in the first place does.

and then part two is. i think you could argue that tma is a critique of the victorian urge to categorize and rationalize things but it's also just. an example of it. the fourteen fears make the individual stories hostile to analysis because they attempt to pre-chew and pre-analyze the stories, assigning them preexisting meanings so that they are already made-sense-of. this hampers them as horror (see part one) because for really good horror you need a sense of otherness a sense of uncanny and if you're like oh this one is the stranger and this one is the eye and etc. it lends a fundamental knowability that just. deflates them. but then also it means you can't analyze them and it's like.

okay. case study. so did you guys remember that tma has a mummy curse episode? i do. it's like flabbergasting to me that tma unironically has a mummy curse episode that's like. you know that's old school racist. are you serious? but like okay. analytically. the episode comes *pre-chewed*. because we know which power this is. this is terminus. this is death. so the underlying fear in this story is the fear of death. that's how we are *meant* to understand this tale. but like be serious. any idiot with half a brain can like, comprehend the underlying anxiety of The Mummy's Curse: it's a story about what if all the tomb raiding, the grave robbing, the mummy eating, in short all of the colonial violence done to things, which is only possible because of all the colonial violence done to people, came back to bite you. it's the anxiety of the colonizer, manifest guilt about what they have done to the colonized. and as much as jonny sims is essentially just copying his influences, those victorian stories he loves so much, that's still what it's about. hell, sims knows this: the reason the woman in the story is so unlikable, so greedy and grasping, so unsympathetic is that jonny sims is soothing his own anxiety: "well i want to write a mummy curse episode, but what if people think i, a white british man writing a mummy curse episode, am racist? what if they think i don't know colonialism is bad? better put a little 'colonialism is bad, mmmmmmmmkay?' opener in to make sure no one thinks i'm racist." but of course the other thing he does is he attempts to gut the story of that unpleasant little meaning. oh it's not the anxiety of the colonizer. it's not about the violence of the victorian era. it's just about death. well, phew, i'm glad i don't have to think about that.

and i'm using the mummy curse one as a case study but that's EVERYTHING. that's EVERYTHING. oh this story about being trapped in an infinite factory where you work isn't processing the horrors of work or of the violence inherent in every product under capitalism that you will never seen or of alienation or of bodies, this is just the fear of slaughterhouse animals. oh this clone of the most dangerous game isn't about colonialism or about dehumanizing people into animals it's just about the fears of literal animals. oh this fucking guy marrying a bug isn't processing any anxieties about sex or our bodies it's just fear of disease. like it flattens everything. the meaning of horror is super overdetermined, i'm not even saying that the mummy curse, which has a pretty obvious meaning as the anxiety of the colonizer, necessarily means only that! it's can certainly also be about death and about a thousand other things. stuff has multiple meanings. but the fourteen fears method rejects overdetermination, meaning bounces off these stories. and that makes them a lot more comfortable: you don't have to deal with the miserable, horrible, sick, reactionary underpinnings of horror stories, the way they (all horror stories, really) function to guard the boundaries of our sick society with slavering hateful jaws, if you just pretend they're about fear of heights or whatever.

like to be clear my argument here is that it's kind of impossible to make horror without reactionary elements so i'm not really criticizing jonny sims for Not doing that, and i'm also not arguing that jonny sims intentionally tried to build an anti-critique wall into his stories by inventing the fourteen fears, i'm just arguing that he kind of did and that makes the stories worse. and i think the way it rejects meaning is unconsciously self-protective from having to see the more unpleasant meaning of the work. and is therefore in itself kind of reactionary.

and i'm also criticizing him for writing a mummy curse episode because come on man, are you serious? but that's not as related to my larger point. though i do think his critique-proof wall shields him from noticing the implications.

part two point five: also i will not give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he was trying to kind of fix this issue with season five because season five was worse. guy who learned about progressive politics from twitter last year type understanding of systemic critique. guy who writes every character arc as a kind of Very Special Episode about Important Progressive Topic Of The Day but mostly only because he's scared of getting cancelled on twitter type critique. like horror is overdetermined. "My Horror Show Now Only Does #Issue Episodes Where I Make Systemic Critique For Babies" is a dumb way of reflecting on the way your overarching premise is kind of unintentionally an attempt to make your horror stories critique-proof. not that i necessarily think that was why season five was like that, i just think he got swept up in trying to make Progressive Media, but if it WAS it wouldn't be adequate.

part three: i think the "fingers of a hand" thing was a post-hoc justification because he sort of noticed his fears are a bit stupid. and i think, circle back to part one, that it doesn't solve the fundamentally doylist problem of the stories being written to the fears.

part four: on a very basic sort of ancient greek philosophy type level i just think the fourteen fears are not beautiful and true. quite frankly mister sims, if i was trying to divide all the world's fear into knowable categories, i would not make fucking fourteen of them! that's simultaneously too many and too few! and it's not even a nice number! i would not for some reason collapse together the fear of spiders and the fear of mind control! i would not split the fear of disease from the fear of the fact that we are all bodies with flesh! i would not make the fear of otherness mostly about clowns!

i would not different the hunt from the slaughter from the desolation you FUCKING BUFFOON.

^directed at jonny sims.

anyway thank you for the ask that was fun. i feel like i exorcised a demon out of my body.

[disorganizedkitten]

It has come to my attention that while I am not technically any less unhinged on tumblr than I am on discord, it may look like that because writing my own posts takes forever

Hi, in case you don't know who you followed here's the tea

I'm Apple. I think serial killers are fun and I have an ao3 tag for "someone in this fic is a serial killer but that might not be plot relevant, idk yet"

The tag in question is "DK's obligatory warning for background murder"

I also add sibling relationships to anything that happens to lack them

See my tendency to turn WBWL aus into 3-7 children aus

I rank my fandoms on an entirely arbitrary house system, wherein you can ask me "are you in this fandom" and I can tell you if I'm in the kitchen, living room, secret passages, basement, backyard, or watching from the neighbor's house with binoculars

Fay Dunbar is my baby, JK Rowling does not get her back. Yes you will find posts tagged with her name and no other context.

I can unironically respond to the question "how many siblings do you have?" With "legal, emotional, or biological?"

No I did not invent that meme, tragically, but I love it

I absolutely love writing fluff. It lures you in, because the rest of my drafts are Such Dead Doves.

I started an entire hp au because I was reading Hannibal fics and didn't like how they set up the ship. The characters weren't unhinged enough. It's so petty. It's so fun.

Softest spot for Dark Fluff but more likely to write shenanigans

Legally published author who has made money off her stuff. This is only relevant when someone tries to put themselves down and I can swan in with "in my professional opinion, you're doing great sweetie"

Came into fandom during the Miraculous Hiatus, survived seasons two and three. My ego will never recover from Thomas Astruc telling us "if you think you can do better, do it"

Thank you, I did

"And we are children of empty graves" is also a tag on my works and blog. I think it's self explanatory.

I love answering asks but dms make me anxious

At any given point I am avoiding homework.

[gallusrostromegalus]

ok so AEIWAM question bc i just read a tag “kido is a reverse chinese room” on one of your responses and now the AI scientist in me is dying to puzzle this out, but also it’s like 1 AM so holding all the pieces isn’t quite working.

as best i can picture, a reverse chinese room would be the rooms operator writing random words from their symbol book, passing them to the outside, and receiving an intelligent response to the fully articulated question in chinese that they unknowingly asked.

if i’m sliding this metaphor right, would that mean that kido incantations are basically gibberish being fed by casters into the God Machine that just so happen to be successful requests to run Lightning Bolt.exe? if so, how’s the random running of arbitrary system files squaring with the God-Machine’s previously-mentioned energy crisis?

You've got it exactly! All the Kido Spells in Bleach are... random strings of poetic nonsense. They're random strings of words that just so happen to activate specific Universe Cheat Codes!

Aizen is, canonically, GREAT at Kido! He can cast while taking invocation shortcuts, or even coming up with new spells! He thinks it's because he's GREAT at math- so far as Aizen knows, he has been using really advanced statistics to catalogue what random phrases the universe will react to, and what chains of phrases will cause what effects!

Orihime, Intelligent: ...bitch that's just grammar. This is a language? A Learnable Language???

As for the Energy crisis: there's less than a thousand humans that can use Kido with any sort of effectiveness, and the demands they make are laughably small. Every Kido Spell cast since the invention of Kido has taken less energy than rendering every species of Bat does for five minutes.

Granted, there are A LOT of bats, in terms of both species and total population but my point here is that a handful of humans using the occasional cheat code is NOTHING compared to the background data processing that goes into rendering- The Life Machine actually took Reality down a couple notches in simulation processing, because it needs to conserve power- that why it's all anime-style now, with it's limited color palette and simple polygon shapes to make up the characters and heavy reliance on Shonen Tropes to keep the stock character AI simple.

[magmaticmachine]

also started playing JoD recentlyyyyy I won't be putting this in the game tags because. very mixed opinions. Still can't say that I love the whole reboot thing, but I am really enjoying the game so far. despite my constant bitchin' lol

anyways damn. I think A-ranking the NiD steam port has made me real fuckin good at this flying business. Either that or this game is, uh, very kind and forgiving in comparison lol. I'm inclined to hope I'm Actually Kind Of Good but like...you don't even get to do bonus laps? which feels kinda weird. fuck that boat level though lmao. C-rank 😔 My WOUNDED PRIDE...I haven't done the Growing Wings analogue for Will yet, only just started Helen's story. A-ranked uh. Splash Garden 2. I've spent maybe only a couple hours so far, didn't check the exact number

also it seemed neat at first but I don't...really...love the mask system? They gave me a rocket mask and I'm not sure I've seen anywhere to even use it...and Suddenly NiGHTS Needs These To Do Stuff, Including Swim, Which Was Something They Used To Be Able To Do No Problem. it feels...really arbitrary. They can turn into a boat and a coaster with rocket boosters in the same game, without those masks!

The exposition-dumping owl muppet's dead, empty eyes continue to haunt me, and I really need him to say less things to me with his horrible beak!!! also the tutorial does not feel good. No real agency, too many stops, you HAVE to suffer it At Least Thrice (both stories + the dreamdrop). I don't love the redesigns, they feel cluttered, and the new bosses and their arenas often feel overwrought, not to mention how many of them feel like a retake of a NiD boss. Between the awkward mocap, too-detailed visuals (texture and design), and incredibly stilted dialogue, it feels real "sonic 06" up in this bitch. Not to mention NiGHTS' characterization just....feels. like a Nicer Sonic. Right down to the awkward Silent Thumbs Up moments. I really don't love that. A lot of the dialogue overall is just exposition or reiterating events rather than...having characters actually interact or learn anything. There's some interesting lines, but it never really cuts deep enough. I do really like some of the third-level designs though!! [to the intonation of "nasa peepo"] nasa Seapo :)

the gameplay itself is solid, and I'm surprised by how varied the minigame levels are. Simple, but they work nicely enough. Flying's pretty smooth since it's the main draw of course, the walking levels are...fine...I just wish they were a little more interesting to actually DO? I do love that the weird little octopus guy lives in utter terror every single moment though. I wonder if I just...never start a link...if those missions will let me just wander around doing stuff forever. either way, I've gotten some decent links going. Getting 180+ does make you feel Pretty Damn Good at the game.

The Nightopian Grass Square Void Dimension is...fascinating. Terrain being influenced by your little guys is neat but getting anything done seems...very time-consuming. also it could've used some like...surroundings, maybe? I'm glad paraloops don't kill nightopians anymore (formal apology to the denizens of Mystic Forest. you were in my flight path.) I'd love to have like an army of Seapo though, I...don't like the wii nightopians very much. I did also get some sort of weird chandelier lamp, kind of looks like the Girania lamps so I think it's maybe from A-ranking that stage? I don't know how I got it. makes me wish I had furniture customization options tho

[every-character-ever-poll]

The entries themselves cause harm on sight. By being publicly visible, they can therefore suddenly and unexpectedly cause harm to people who are susceptible without giving those people advance warning and the choice not to see them. Blocking tags is inneffective because Tumblr does not have enforcement of tags being standardized, or even present, meaning people who are susceptible cannot block everything that is dangerous to them.

That's a fair point, but I don't really see a way to warn for every potential trigger. I was under the assumption that someone opening the form was agreeing to potentially see a character they do not want to see. I am the 'Every Character Ever' poll blog, there is an understanding that there will be a wide range of characters from a wide range of medias.

On tumblr, you're also right that the tag system is not the best. I too have tags I block and still end up seeing things I'd rather not, but that has more to do with the fact that many people tag with several varieties of the same tag, making it difficult to cover everything. I use a very specific system of '"#character" "#media"', with no censoring the name of either thing. If someone wants me to tag something a particular way, I'm more than happy to oblige.

I understand that you're concerned about seeing something you don't want to, but respectfully, I don't really see what else I can do, apart from removing arbitrary characters, which I am not going to do. I've done my part to make this blog as accessible and easy to navigate as possible, but if you don't like it, you can block this blog and move on. I apologize that I'm not able to help curate your tumblr experience, but at a certain point, you need to understand that is just not how I do things here.

I hope you have a good day, and I wish you all the best in the future. I'm sorry that this blog isn't what you wanted it to be.

[starglasszodiac]

Hey everybody, I am thrilled to tell you that Starglass Zodiac is now launched! And on the project’s 9th anniversary too :D

I'll put more of my ramblings under the cut below, but here's the gist of what you need to know:

The first two pages are now live HERE

The next page is scheduled for July 22nd, 2024

The dates for future page uploads will be announced on this blog and on the site's homepage as each new page is released

The upload schedule itself will be determined at a later date, as I’m going at my own pace for the time being

The comic site is self-made with only my basic knowledge of website coding, so I will be improving it gradually over time

A cover for Chapter 1 is in the works, so stay tuned for that!

As for this blog specifically, I have the following planned in the coming days:

Updating the pinned post with this new info

General cleanup and updates to old posts, the tag system/list, links, pages, etc.

Checking for posts I forgot to reblog here and tagging them

I will be tagging the majority of prior posts/art with the tag #SGZ spoilers so you can blacklist it if you want to go into the comic completely blind. Note that some posts with this tag may not actually be spoilers anymore depending on how the project/story lore has changed since making them, but better to cover all the bases anyway

I'll decide soon how I will reblog the update posts, as I can do so on either my art blog @akysi or my personal blog @sweet-star-cookie, but I doubt I'll do all three to avoid it getting excessive for those who follow all three (thank you for that! <3)

As I said above, I’m going at my own pace with this comic to ensure that I’m satisfied with every page at my current skill level. That will likely mean a slow pace for uploads, and I am sorry for that ^^’ But, I’ve had this as a passion project for a long time and I want to give it the time and attention it deserves.

I’ve also realized recently that I’ve been subconsciously holding myself to arbitrary rules about how and when I distribute my work when it comes to comics, especially with prior attempts to launch this one. Knowing I don’t actually have to do that has been quite freeing, and I’m excited to go at my own pace like I do with my other work. I do hope to increase the frequency of uploads later on of course, with the ultimate goal being multiple times a week, but trying to do that right away just isn’t feasible right now. Regardless, I am SUPER excited to finally be doing this again, no matter how long it takes!

With having this project for nearly a decade, working on it has gotten me through many, many tough times. The amount of support and enthusiasm that I’ve received from all you lovely people over the years has been nothing short of heartwarming, so thank you all so much <3 I hope you like what you see, and look forward to more. :D Thanks for reading, friends!

[anameistoohard]

Hi, my name is Kassandra and recently I've become interested in systems, how they feel and how they form.

I don't think I am one but I would love to learn more about that, partially out of curiosity (I hope that's not a rude thing to say) and partially because I want to better understand others and what they go through.

Do you have any links that might help me learn more? I tried looking into ot myself but I'm not sure which sites are trustworthy and which spread false information. I was hoping you might have a better grasp on things.

Again, I'm sorry if what I said is rude, finding the right words is often hard for me. Please be assured that I have nothing but respect for you

Hi, sorry for the late answer ^_^'

I don't think I am one but I would love to learn more about that, partially out of curiosity (I hope that's not a rude thing to say) and partially because I want to better understand others and what they go through.

Not rude at all! And in fact, that mindset was exactly what led us down the path to discovering our system (I wanna make a comic about that eventually ^^)

We mentioned in our pinned post that we're not very good at keeping track of links. But I remember The Rings System on YouTube being a good jumping off point, and that they tend to link stuff in the description of their videos.

(@fleepadeep tagging you because this answers your ask too)

My main bit of advice is read the diagnostic criteria in the DSM-5 and/or ICD-11 for Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). As well as Other Specified Dissociative Disorder (OSDD) (look at OSDD-1 specifically) in the DSM and Partial Dissociative Identity Disorder (P-DID) in the ICD. OSDD-1 and P-DID are similar just the different manuals' take on it. DID, OSDD-1, and P-DID are all types of disordered plurality.

It's important to familiarize yourself with the diagnostic criteria because it's the easiest way to know when someone's bullshiting you. People turn stuff like "DID is heavily associated with childhood trauma." into "You have to have experienced the arbitrary severity of trauma that I set in order to have DID!"

Also the DSM and ICD specifically exclude certain forms of plurality, thus acknowledging their existence. People like to claim only people with DID are "real systems". Which is demonstrably untrue. Steer clear of people who are not willing to acknowledge the existence of non disordered systems.

And just generally, if someone speaks in absolutes take what they're saying with a heavy helping of salt. People like to claim they know how plurality forms, but they don't, no one knows for sure. People take speculation and treat it as fact.

Those are some of the major pitfalls.

Oh and I'd recommend diving into the science side of things first and getting a basic understanding of things before delving into places like r/plural on Reddit. Once people start bringing their spiritual beliefs into things shit gets confusing fast. That's like, hard mode.

You need to have a basic understanding of the vocabulary used in plural spaces in order to understand what people are talking about and not get lost. But once you have that, I'd start trying to hear personal experiences from as many systems as possible. Every system is different, so you don't want to fall into the trap of thinking one person's experience is true for everyone.

Oh and if anyone has resources they'd like to share feel free.

Taylor's better at this shit. Where is she :/

-Konnor (he/him)

[self-loving-vampire]

I don't really want to reblog your post saying this because I feel like that could be annoying but I've gotten a lot into gacha games (specifically Bang Dream, Project Sekai, D4DJ, Blue Archive, and now Zenless Zone Zero, in that order) as a 25 year old plural trans failgirl and despite enjoying them I know they are bad for me and it is my policy to not recommend them

and basically every time I find myself posting gushing over their stories or whatever I feel the need to asterisk myself with "this is a gacha game so I'm not really recommending you check it out". And like, I don't know, I feel like I should say it and it's necessary but it also feels a little tedious I guess. Like, everyone who I follow and who follows me knows this already so aah. But also then again I thought I already knew that the psychological manipulation and gambling was bad and etc and I still ended up getting super OCD over it and losing a lot of time and money to them and I would not wish this condition on anyone else. Which I guess is a more than good enough reason to continue the asterisking even if it's tedious in the same way it's tedious to say "content warning" or "spoilers for _____" or tag anything bothersome so people can filter it and sometimes you might forget to but you gotta do it anyway.

Anyway I uh. I do have like fifteen years of game playing experience prior to the gacha games where I played no gacha games. So if that counts for anything my favorite games of all time (and these are all non gacha singleplayer games) range from like,

Psychonauts (1 and 2), Milk Inside a Bag of Milk, Subahibi, killer7, Night in the Woods, VA-11 HALL-A, Tsui Yuri ~Okaa-san ni wa Naisho da yo~ (the incest yuri visual novel), Shadow the Hedgehog, if found..., Kindred Spirits on the Roof, Dishonored, Gunpoint, Jet Set Radio Future, and most importantly Senran Kagura (but not the gacha one), and many others but I'll just stop typing them now

Also I recently played the System Shock remake, which is kino and beautiful

Anyway I hope this confession is allowed. I really like your posts and your ask box has a very confessional vibe to me sometimes so I still feel compelled to it. Um, yeah. I guess, play those games. And not necessarily any gacha games. (Do that at your own risk, but also probably, really, seriously don't)

I've been trying to write a more formal essay on how gacha games can have good things in them but unfortunately still suck but ironically it hasn't yet come together because I've been distracted playing the gacha games. Hopefully I figure out that problem... Maybe with drugs or something (please)

Yeah, I don't think they are entirely bad (I still look at and reblog horny pictures from some of them often) but I wouldn't play one of those again even with full confidence that I won't fall into a gambling addiction because even putting morality and financial risk aside the very fact that they are trying to push players into it ends up worsening the rest of the game design.

Games these days (not even exclusively gacha) are sometimes deliberately made more tedious and inconvenient just for the sake of selling a solution to these invented problems. Paying to remove some arbitrary limitation or to skip a grind, for example.

The controversy around the new Star Wars Battlefront 2 contrasted with the original game highlights this very clearly. Things that used to just be a part of the game included by default are now things you have to either gamble for or play for an unreasonable amount of time to unlock. It really did not have to be that way, as demonstrated by the original game.

I think if you have been playing them and noticed all the issues it might be worth it to ask yourself if you're actually enjoying yourself on the net. Not just if the games have something in them that's worthwhile but if they are actually a fun way to pass your time. Is it play, or is it a chore you put up with to avoid falling behind or missing out on the things you do like? Would you be missing on much if you engaged with the story through youtube videos instead of playing the game yourself?

And if you do end up deciding you could be having more fun with something else, it's not like there's a shortage of other games, especially if you look into older games. Many of these are free or easy to emulate.

Looking at your list I think we have different tastes but if you enjoyed things like System Shock and Dishonored then you could maybe look into the first Deus Ex, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, or Arx Fatalis.

(Also this is a confessional now? I guess it gives people an excuse to picture me dressed up as one of those ero anime nuns even as I maximize blasphemy and apostasy.)

[safety-pin-punk]

Hello!

I wanted to start off by saying that I'm new to punk, and you have helped me continue to learn about the culture and truly appreciate and love it with all of my being. So thank you, I really appreciate the work you've done to teach and welcome others into punk culture!

This may come off as a stupid question, but I was wondering, how do you know what music is punk and what isn't? I've seen a lot of arguments over certain bands, with some people saying they aren't punk enough and others saying they are. Is there a way to tell?

Love,

-A confused baby punk :)

Sorry answering a bunch of asks at once with this one

Well I know what my next big project is gonna be (I gotta finish my ren faire outfit and I have a dj gig first though)

Long story short, at the moment, I do not have a guide or know of one for different types of punk subgenres. BUT! I can tell you there are. A LOT. Personally, Im not much of a hardcore person, though I do like the occasional song. Other subgenres include ska, post punk, folk punk, pop punk, riot grrrl, anarcho punk, queer core, crust punk, horror punk, the list GOES ON. So if you dont like one, you are bound to like another

But as far as ‘how do you know what is or isnt punk’? That is a harder question. Really. Music genres are so arbitrary and subjective, its why I hate the whole ‘you have to listen to punk music to be a punk’ think. Because what even is punk music? I’ve made a post about this before (probably under #mail tag or #add to masterlist), but really the arguments like ‘is Rage Against The Machine too metal to be considered punk?’ Idk man. Does it even matter? They dont like the system, I dont like the system, good enough for me. Its the same deal with emo, pop punk, and punk. It just. Makes me mad

So as a DJ, my answer to you is simply the lines between music genres are fake and as long as their songs have some punk ideals sprinkled in, its a punk band. Cool? Cool. (Also I am so glad my blog has been helpful to you!!)

[circular-bircular]

It drives me up a wall that ppl argue “anti endos are the only harassers!!!” And yet the past few days the sys course tag has been nothing but going against anti endos for? Some reason? Like just outta nowhere I started to see posts going on and on about how anti endos are sooo horrible and how dare they want anti endo only spaces like hello pot??

It’s just… infuriating to see it all bcs why the hell would anyone even consider looking at a different perspective if the first thing they see is people bashing anti endos (and often CDD systems in the same breath) and using that to uplift pro/endos like you can’t seriously claim to want anti endos to listen when everything is about insulting/shaming anti endos in a number of ways some less subtle than the last

I’m neutral on it all but if I was still anti today and thought “well maybe I should try to understand their side” and saw all that then?????? Hell no

Hell even being neutral I’m still not favorable to interactions bcs I don’t want that kinda energy in my space

Sry I’m just so GAH about it all and saw your post on syscourse stances and the harassment thing and was just “finally”

(Ough I’m so sorry I’m rambling hard on this one)

I fully agree that anti-endos aren’t the only harassers. But I also agree that endogenic systems are going through a lot right now. It’s easy for me to not see, but that’s because I’ve got a lot of folks blocked. There really are a lot of anti-endo assholes popping up each day lately, and I’m sorry for all the Endogenic systems dealing with that hatred. I’ve been there. It fucking sucks. I also am sorry for the CDD systems suffering through hatred currently, regardless of syscourse stance. It’s all hellish sometimes.

In my eyes, the way a lot of pro-endos tackle things isn’t beneficial. It’s either bait to encourage anti-endos to rage (which is often triggering to boot), or it’s just vocalizing hatred into a public space. Neither of these things are needed, especially if the goal is to make it so that anti-endos “aren’t a thing anymore.” Anti-endos fall into this same trap; many are trying to protect their disorders, but they do so via harassment, mockery, or similarly vocalized hatred. All in some attempt to “make things better for ‘real’ systems.”

It feels like many people in syscourse are doing something I like to call Aimless Activism. They know something is wrong (fakeclaiming, bad sources, ableism, etc), so they rally against it loudly and boldly, because That’s The Point. You’re Supposed To.

I’m guilty of this myself honestly. But… you need a goal. You need to have a point beyond This Is Activism, because if you don’t have an actionable goal, then you’re not actually working toward anything. You’re just shouting.

My goal on my blog is to share my personal experiences and talk about things that interest me. That’s it. I’ve tried to be an Aimless Activist for awhile now, convincing myself that it’s activism to argue online. And I don’t know, maybe to some, my blog fits that description. But at this point, I don’t… think it matters. I’m tired of playing in this giant sandbox where everyone is kicking the sand in each other’s faces while I try to build my sand castle.

I think a lot of other people are too. Has anyone else noticed how many new faces there are here? How a lot of the old faces have gone away? People are tired of the sandbox games where everyone kicks around sand. People want real things, real conversations, real connections — regardless of some stupid arbitrary label.

And that’s where it comes back to. “Stupid arbitrary label.” The ones who care about the labels are still playing in the sandbox and they’re gearing up for another round of fighting with “the other side.” Meanwhile, they don’t realize that the sandbox is only one tiny part of an enormous playground, and I’m over on the swings with friends I made in the sandbox, laughing about how nice it is to no longer have sand in my eyes.

I wish folks the best for getting out of there.