#no the post definitely includes [that specific thing] regardless of your personal experiences and triggers

[intotheelliwoods]

AH for real! Hell theres friends I know who are scared to even post their cool stuff to begin with- its so sad that a community was created where a good chunk of the artists are too scared to even make their work public :( (or even announce a patreon for it)

Ha it also took more guts than I would like to admit to make that last post, but hey look! FMA meme redraw!

I have no worries of hate though, after all I am just posting for myself and my friends! Whom would love to help me fight my battles o7

---

Yeah ofc!! <3 Dont expect any hate or judgement from me alright??

[theexistentiallyqueer]

It’s been a while, what with me being being more active on Twitter these days, but I had some thoughts churning around in my brain and this felt like a better place to post them rather than threading them over there.

This is a post about Persona 5 and restorative justice. Before I go any further, though, a note: this is meta about restorative justice and prison abolition as ethical philosophies only, how it can be expressed/structured in works of fiction, i.e., Persona 5 and Persona 5 Royal, and what the importance of doing so is.

I should also note that I am not a philosopher, a legal scholar, or an activist, I just like to read, and I strongly encourage you to look into the topics I’m discussing in this essay. If you want specific recommendations you can DM me; again, this being meta about a video game, I think linking those titles here would diminish their importance regarding what they’re actually about.

Ready? Okay. Let’s get started.

what is restorative justice?

‘Restorative justice’ is a concept in ethical and legal philosophy that holds itself in contrast to two other kinds of justice: punitive and carceral. Punitive justice is justice as punishment, i.e., an eye for an eye, while carceral justice involves justice as the confinement of criminal offenders. While both have heavy overlaps with one another, they’re distinct in the generality vs the specificity of their outcome: punitive justice can involve the death penalty, property seizure, permanent loss of rights, etc., carceral justice refers strictly just to the incarceration of criminal offenders in institutional facilities (jails, prisons, etc.).

Restorative justice, in contrast, roots itself in the understanding of closing a circle: the best and most holistic way to heal harm one person inflicts on another is to have the person who inflicted the harm make reparations to the person they hurt in a tangible and meaningful way. This can take many forms, and if you’re passingly familiar with restorative justice already, you may have heard about it involving the offender and the victim meeting face-to-face. This does happen sometimes. Personal acknowledgement of the harm you’ve inflicted on someone is important, and direct apologies are important, but these need to also be coupled with actions. The person behind a drunk hit-and-run of a parent could help put their orphaned child through school, or a domestic abuser could be made to take counseling and go on to help deter domestic violence in other households, and so on. 

The vast majority of states across the world use punitive/carceral models, though small-scale community trials of restorative justice have been attempted, to varying degrees of success. No one is going to argue that it would be easy to implement, but it is important. Restorative justice is about recognizing that crime, specifically crimes against other people, are fundamentally still about two people: the perpetrator and the victim. And we have to look beyond the words perpetrator and victim to recognize that they are both human beings and challenge ourselves to build a society where our concept of justice means healing hurts instead of retaliation.

It’s not easy, but it is possible. It requires changing your own perceptions of justice and humanity and society and the big wide entire world to have the kind of mindset that allows it to be possible. But it is possible, and I know that from personal experience, because it’s my own mindset and I’ve been through trauma too.

prison abolition and the god of control

Persona 5 has an authority problem. By which I mean, Persona 5 has a problem challenging authority in any way that functionally matters.

The game is drenched in heavy-handed prison imagery, from jail cells to wardens to striped jumpsuits to cuffs and chains to an electric chair. Throughout the long build-up of the main storyline we’re treated to a confectionery delight of punitive justice, stick-it-to-the-man justice: the Thieves find a bad guy who coincidentally has personally hurt or is actively hurting one of their members, and they take it upon themselves to make the bad guy miserable and then send him off to jail. By the end of the arc you’re meant to feel like you accomplished something heroic, that by locking someone up you’re balancing the scales of justice. In the Kamoshida arc Ann even frames this in restorative justice terms, telling him he doesn’t deserve the easy way out of ending his own life and needs to live with his mistakes and repent, but he’s still sent off to jail regardless and Ann and Shiho are left to struggle through the trauma he put them through without anyone to really support them. This repeats itself, over and over: Madarame, Kaneshiro, Okumura, Shido--expose the bad guy, bring him low, publicly shame him, and then send him away (or, in Okumura’s case, watch him die on live TV to riotous cheers from the public).

And what does this all accomplish, in the end? You get to the Depths of Mementos on Christmas Eve to find the souls of humanity locked away in apathy, surrendered willingly to the control of the state, and your targets right there with them, thanking you for helping them return to a place where they don’t have to think of other people as people any more than they did before. In prison, they can forget that they are human beings and that all of the rest of the people in the world are too. The Phantom Thieves march upstairs and defeat the Gnostic manifestation of social control, that being that masquerades itself with lies as the true Biblical god. And then you go back home and the adults tell you that everything is okay now, the system itself isn’t rotten, and you just have to sit back, stop actively participating in the world, and let them take the reins.

It’s one of Persona 5′s most ironic conceits. “Prison abolition....good?” the player asks, and Atlus swats you on the hand and says, “Silly kids, prison abolition completely unnecessary because you can trust the state to not fuck up anyone’s lives anymore ever.” All while using prison imagery to present prisons as institutions inherently divorced from what might constitute actual justice.

Prisons exist because hierarchies exist, and so long as hierarchies exist, inequality will exist and people will commit harm who otherwise likely would not. But you can’t have your cake and eat it too, Atlus. You can’t frame prisons as an inherently unjust institution used to control people because you didn’t do anything to get rid of the hierarchy. You just gave the hydra a few new heads.

restorative justice and rehabilitation

Rehabilitation is Persona 5′s favorite buzz word, and for all that it’s used the game never really clearly defines what it’s supposed to mean. Yaldabaoth uses it as a euphemism to describe the process by which he creates his ideal puppet, but Yaldabaoth bad, and by the end of the game, Yaldabaoth dead. We get barely any time with Igor after that for Igor to define rehabilitation properly on his terms, which is notable in that Igor is the one who’s supposed to be the spiritual mentor of the wild card within the Persona universe. 

We can only infer from that that it’s the player who’s meant to define what rehabilitation is by the end of the game, but because the game fails to take any concrete stance on its themes that could in any way undermine the idea that society isn’t functionally broken, it’s hard to figure out what conclusion we’re supposed to draw. As I stated above, the game immediately walks back any insinuations that it’s the institutions themselves that are rotten by having Sae and Sojiro step in and assume responsibility for making the world just by continuing to operate within the rules society itself has created. If you can’t beat them....join them?

If anything the closest we can get to coming up with a definitive understanding of what the game wants us to understand rehabilitation as is when the protagonist is in juvie. During those months we’re treated to an extended cutscene of all of your maxed out confidants taking action to get you out of jail, but because you can trigger this scene even if you haven’t maxed out all of your confidants, and because the outcome (getting out of juvie) is the same even if you haven’t maxed out any besides Sae, then we’re right back where we started.

But that cutscene still has a sliver of meaning to it despite it being largely window-dressing, because the game does push, over and over, the argument that it’s through your bonds with others, through building a community, that you’ll rehabilitate yourself and find true justice.

And that’s what restorative justice is about: community.

the truth: uncovering it vs deciding it

I can’t find enough words to convey how infuriating it is that Atlus comes so close to telling a restorative justice narrative and then completely drops the ball on displaying it at all in Goro’s character arc.

Goro’s concept of justice is fundamentally punitive, the textbook “you hurt me so I’m going to hurt you back.” In doing so he goes on to hurt a whole bunch of other people: orphaning Futaba, orphaning Haru, triggering a mental shutdown in Ohya’s partner Kayo, and also killing countless millions other instances of mental shutdowns, psychotic breakdowns, bribery, and scandal that caused people material harm and, in a handful of cases, killed them.

Yes, Shido gave him the gun, but Goro pulled the trigger. And in a restorative justice framework, you don’t bypass that fact: you actively interrogate it.

There’s been a lot of really great meta about what the circumstances of Goro’s life were like, including the Japanese foster care system, the social stigma of bastardy in Japan and the impact it has on an illegitimate child’s outcomes, and the ways in which Shido groomed and manipulated Goro into being the tool of violence he made him into. These things aren’t excuses for what Goro does, however: they’re explanations for it. They are the complex social issues that create a situation where a child feels his best choice, indeed maybe his only choice, is to take the gun being offered to him and use it on other people. If you want to prevent more kids from slipping through cracks into those kinds of situations, you need to understand the social ills that made those cracks appear in the first place and you need to fix them. Otherwise there will always be another kid, and another recruiter, and another bad choice, and another gun. Systemic problems require systemic solutions.

Even so, none of that bypasses the fact that it was Goro’s hand on that gun, that it was Goro who performed the physical action of killing Wakaba’s and Okumura’s shadows, and that, as a result of Goro’s direct actions, Wakaba and Okumura died. You can say Okumura deserved it all you like, but Haru doesn’t deserve to be an orphan. Haru deserved to repair her relationship with her father. Okumura deserved the chance to learn and make direct, material amends to the employees he hurt and the families of those who died on his watch, and they deserved to have him give them a better way to heal.

But this isn’t about the loss of Okumura making amends to his family or his victims: this is about Goro Akechi, and the fact that even in Royal his fraught relationship with Haru and Futaba is never explored, barely even addressed. There’s not even any personal, direct acknowledgement from him of the pain he put them through.

You can say he doesn’t care, and that’s fine that he doesn’t care. And it is. He’s a fictional character, this is a video game, they are anime characters.

But Persona 5 flirts with the idea of restorative justice and never fully explores it, and it’s a weaker game for that.

the thin place, the veil between worlds, the line in the sand

This is the last part, I promise, and I’ll be short and brief here, because the truth is that none of this matters, at least not in the way that you think. Persona 5 is a story. It’s a lie that we buy. It’s all zeroes and ones and electrical signals and optical images on a blank black screen.

But art can be powerful. Art is like magic, the deepest magic, the oldest kind. We human beings are creatures of art and poetry, of images and patterns, of music and words. Good art, really good art, can allow us to explore new ideas and critique our internal assumptions about how the world works.

No, fiction doesn’t affect reality, not the way that you think it does.

But if you’ve gotten this far, I just got you to read an essay on restorative justice and prison abolition in regards to a Japanese role-playing game, and that is something to think about.

How do you define rehabilitation? What kind of justice do you believe in? Is the way you conceive those things really the best way?

And how much more interesting could a story that challenges those concepts be?

[scandalsavagefanfic]

did you see the tagging discourse yesterday? they really went after whumpbby

Hey there. I did see it. I wrote up a response to it but I wanted to sleep on it before I responded. I wanted to make sure I come across as informative and dispassionate as possible because emotions are already high and tempers are flaring and the last thing I want to do is fan the flames.

As far as I can tell there were three issues mentioned.

1) Explicit Content in Summaries

I think not putting explicit content in a summary is a valid suggestion. Frankly, it’s not an angle I’ve ever considered (even though I’m pretty sure none of my summaries are explicit. I’m not giving away the milk for for free. You have to click on the cow to get it 🤣). 

But I do think it’s important to remember that asking the fanfiction community as a whole to embrace this as a community standard isn’t a miraculous fix it. For starters this is an additional courtesy and I’m not sure how much fic it will actually affect, particularly in this fandom (I pretty much only read explicit fic and while there’s definitely summaries that are explicit, it’s not a particularly common issue and the OP’s example is actually not explicit and is exactly the kind of thing that should be in the summary so that you know whether the fic beyond that will trigger you or not). I’m happy to pay a little extra attention and make an effort but that by no means ensures that you won’t see explicit content in the summary. I mean, tv shows give you the rating and tags in the beginning of the episode but you still might see something explicit if you’re flipping through the stations. It’s not possible for content providers to account for every person’s individual needs. The individual has to do some of the work.  There’s not really any reason for someone to be reading an explicit summary if they’ve seen the fic is rated explicit and seen the ship is one they’re uninterested in and seen that the tags contain content they’d be uninterested in for that ship (if there are any, because people forget that further tagging is another courtesy that creators go out of their way to do to make life easier for readers - I don’t know a single writer who enjoys tagging) before they ever get to the summary at all. But still. Fine. I think that’s a good point and I’ll be going through my 80+ fics over the weekend to make sure. It’s just that readers should never expect things that are courtesies to be strictly adhered to by the entirety of the community. 

2) Tagging All Batfamily Ships as “Incest”, Regardless of Actual Content

This seems to be predicated on the misconceptions that 1) the fan-dubbed Bat “Family” is an actual family by any metric that could be considered incestuous, and 2) that this is obvious and not up for discussion.

Both of those are untrue. The Batfamily are not canonically a family whose interpersonal relationships can be considered incestuous, by blood, law, or anything else. 

If you want to interpret the text that way, there is certainly room to do so. But it is neither a fact, nor an obvious one.

The Pre-Flashpoint canon, especially for Batfam, exists in a nebulous state of “maybe applicable”. One of the few things we can be sure of, is that Dick and Tim at least, were never adopted. Tim’s parents are alive and well. Pre-Flashpoint, Dick was adopted as a gesture in his late 20′s. He’s early to mid 20′s in N52/Rebirth (for some reason people seem to think that N52 and Rebirth are different continuities. They’re not. Rebirth is a continuation of N52.)

Jason’s adoption is never explicitly addressed in current canon. So you can pick your poison.

None of them grew up together in either continuity so that argument is out.

You are welcome to read the Bats as this kind of family if you want.

But no one else has to, and there is very little evidence in current (or past) canon to suggest they are. What evidence there is, is vague and ambiguous. NOT obvious and damning. There are a million different ways to consider someone family, including both platonic and romantic.  

Finally, since it was specifically pointed out, with the lack of blood ties, if I write an AU where they one or more of them has no ties to Bruce, that’s not incest and no one should be tagging it as such.

It’s pretty weird to ask someone to tag their fic as something it’s not. It’d be like asking me to tag my angst “fluff”. I might as well tag DickKory or SuperBat “incest” while I’m at it.

Hopefully this helps clear things up. Hopefully this will help people who are triggered by incest to be able to see batfam ship tags without being triggered. If the clarification that they are not a legal or blood family in canon does not help, I am truly very very sorry and I genuinely hope you can discover what it is about those ships that actually affects you so that you can better protect yourself. But I have to tag my ships. I can’t not tag a ship so that you don’t see it, because then you might accidentally stumble across it and get much further than the tag before you know what’s happening. And I can’t tag incest because it literally is not then readers will think that I’ve written a verse where the characters are blood/legal family in some way, where the fic treats them like they have familial bonds and sexual relationship, and some of them will likely avoid it.

Appropriate tagging is important so that people who don’t want to see things don’t AND so that people can find the content they’re looking for. It’s pretty unfair to expect people to use inappropriate tags and potentially harm more people by making tags meaningless and expecting readers to guess.

(small aside, “batcest” is not an ideal tag. From personal experience, coming here from comics and having no history with this kind of fandom, I avoided things tagged Batcest because I thought, with the combination of Bat + incest, it was the ship name for Bruce/Damian and I wasn’t interested in that.)

3) Inconsiderate Reader Comments

Inappropriate comments left on fics by readers, is also a valid issue. It is also an entirely separate issue that has nothing to do with the very clearly stated primary concerns. Inconsiderate comments are an unfortunate reality of creating and sharing those creations. Unfortunately there’s no, non-fascist way of forcing people to be considerate. We all have to live with that.

We can absolutely complain about publicly on our blogs. And if you’re a gen author, with no history of certain ships, I will defend that it’s rude to pop on your fic and ask if it’s going to be that ship. Just like I will defend that it’s rude to pop on my perfectly tagged Bruce/Duke fic and try to tell me that it’s incest because Duke lived at the Manor for two weeks before moving in with his uncle. I’m sorry you have to deal with it. I’m sorry I have to deal with it. I’m sorry we all have to deal with it. But it’s not something we can stop or the people who came before us would have. So it is something that you have to be able to cope with.

As for whump, I thought she handled it well, especially in her clarification posts. The OP was obviously very emotionally invested in the subject and came off very antagonistic. I know OP doesn’t consider their suggestions unreasonable but that’s because they’re based on a fundamental misconception of canon. If DC writes a continuity where the Bats are a family in any way that would make sexual relationships between them incestuous, and if I write something for that continuity, then of course I will tag it accordingly. Asking me to tag a fic as something it isn’t, is unreasonable. It instantly makes tagging in general completely useless. Asking people to apply a catchall tag or keep explicit content out of the summaries is not intrinsically unreasonable, but expecting the entire community, regardless of how immersed in fandom the creator is, to abide by that standard in a way that provides meaningful protection for you (in that you can lower your guard in any meaningful way when you have content you need to avoid) is..... well, it’s just impractical. 

[themoonstarwarrior]

PLAYLIST SHUFFLE TAG!

Okay, so @viterbofangirl tagged me in this and I need to start learning to post my own shit, so what the hell, why not?

Rules: you can usually tell a lot about a person by the type of music they listen to! put your favorite playlist on shuffle and list the first 10 15 songs, then tag 10 people. no skipping!

(I couldn’t stop at 10 so I added 5 more, sue me)

I have very random music taste and I listen to my music on shuffle alot, so I made a playlist of the ones I like the most (that way I don’t hafta skip 150 songs to get to the one I feel like) so I’m gonna use that one.

1) History of Violence - Theory of a Deadman

Hoo boy starting off light huh?.... Yeah so, I was in the drive thru at Sonic when I first heard this on the radio and was immediately like “holy shit”. Instead of like metaphors and poetic subtlety, it’s just straight up like “here’s a poor abused woman who resorted to murdering her shitty boyfriend/husband cuz she couldn’t take it dum dum dum”. Even though the actual situation is not the same, this song is perfect for getting across the internal issues and turmoil of my character Mikey. Its so perfect I’m even planning to animate something for it...... if I ever get around to learning animation that is.....     

2) The Vengeful One - Disturbed

Two songs in and I look kinda emo.... But hey this song is soooooo cathartic! I love me a good heavy rock song, and the drums and electric guitar are perfect for my ears to absorb. This song gives off a feeling of overwhelming power mixed with a coldness and disdain for the bad in the world. Obviously, thats not my usual temperment, but its an interesting one to explore! Especially when I’m trying to get into the head of characters that exude that like my OCs Spark or Ryu. Plus its fun to sing in the car X)

3) Enter Sandman - Metallica

Okay this one is just a classic! Same thing with the drums and guitar they both slap SOOOOO GOOD. I don’t really associate this song with any of my characters or fandom favorites, but it DOES give me a super strong urge to learn the drums. EXXXXXXXXIT LIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT! OFF TO NEVER NEVERLAND!!

4) We Are Giants - Lindsey Stirling ft. Dia Frampton

I don’t really to listen to music by band or artist, but I LOVE Lindsey Stirling!!! She’s probably my favorite musician! This is such a good song, especially for someone like me. Its a positive song that talks about feeling alone in a crowd and unimportant to the world, but how you really do matter and shouldn’t be afraid to dream big and shoot for the stars. It really speaks to me and the vocalization is so good (especially for singing), not to mention the official music video is animated and AMAZING!

5) Cetus - Lensko NCS

I dunno if anyone knows this song, but damn its good. Its one of those Royalty-Free songs that people look up for their channels, which is how I found it in the first place, but I loved it immediately. Its a peppy 8-bit electronic bop that turns a little Irish jig at the end and honestly I think if I ever start an animation channel I’m totally gonna use it! (Also go support Lensko he make good beats!)

6) Sanctuary - Utada Hikaru

I did not grow up with Kingdom Hearts, and only played KH2 within the past year n’ a half. But good God, the moment that Cinematic Opening came on and this song started playing I swear I astral projected into a daze of feelings without names. I know that “Simple and Clean” is the quintessential Kingdom Heart song that gives everyone feelings, but IMHO Sanctuary blows it out of the water. As beautiful as the animation was, or how curious the occasional backwards lyrics are, or how weird it is having high-res Goofy and Donald in what is essentially an anime opening, I really can’t be distracted from this song when I play.

7) Chemical Plant Zone (Rock Remix) - Zerobadniks

Chemical Plant Song is like, one of the TOP Sonic songs by popular vote (and we know how awesome the Sonic series is musically so thats saying something!), but I could never quite vibe with the normal 8-bit version. I think I first heard this as someone’s ringtone and was immediately like “THATS PERFECT THATS EXACTLY HOW I NEED IT!”. The rock makes the song soooo much better and honestly gives the song the perfect vibe. Unfortunately, it took FOREVER to find cuz none of the Rock Covers of this song were the right one. In fact, tbh, I’m not even sure whether Zerobadniks is the correct artist..... that’s just who everybody was crediting when I found it. 

(imma include the link i found since its a little hard to find: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqJiZEM6aPI )

8) The Wolf - SIAMES

YOU WANNA TALK ABOUT ANIMATED MUSIC VIDEOS???? THIS IS A GOD-TIER ANIMATED MUSIC VIDEO. I found the video first, and seriously, if you haven’t seen it YOU NEED TO!!! The beat works perfectly with the images on screen and the story being portrayed is really intriguing, with the lyrics adding to atmosphere without necessarily describing the visuals shown. Even without the animation, the song itself is a banger. It bring to mind the feeling of intense motion forward, but unable to decide whether its movement TOWARD something or AWAY from something. I love listening to this on a nighttime drive.

9) Burn the House Down - AJR

If you ask me, the best way to make a pop song better is to add either violins or trumpets. For this song, it was definitely the trumpets that first caught my attention, and the rest of the song kept me listening. I don’t really know how to describe the vibe of this song, and I don’t have a specific character or story in mind when I listen to it, so its a little hard for me to talk about it. I think the best way I can describe this song and what draws me to it is a feeling of nonchalant go-with-the-flow attitude to shenaniganry. Almost an undertone of “We’re hooligans in a situation that we probably should get out of, but hey we’ve got life and each other so why worry?” At least that’s the closest I can get to a verbal description heh...

10) Slim Pickens Does the Right Thing and Rides the Bomb to Hell - The Offspring 

DANCE, FUCKER, DANCE, LET THE MOTHERFUCKER BURN!!!

So this also has a KICKASS animated music video, but its technically combined with the song “Dividing by Zero”. Now the video works SO well with both, and the shifting artstyles reflect the differing tones of the songs PERFECTLY. However, I have a preference for both the animation and the song on the Slim Pickens half. Its fun to listen to and sing at the top of your lungs and its SO CATHARTIC. Again I cant really describe what my head does when I hear it, but I think you can probably feel a similar vibe if you watch the music video. 

11) No Heaven - DJ Champion

The first time I finished the original Borderlands, I had been playing for days on end, had just finished a long battle with the Destroyer, and sitting back relieved to have beaten it and reflecting on how much I had enjoyed the adventure. Then this song started playing. For what I believe was forty minutes this song looped on my TV while the credits rolled. By the time the credits finished I was pulling up the song to listen to again! What an absolutely PERFECT cherry to add to this experience. This song perfectly encapsulated the chaotic, trigger-happy, morally ambiguous craziness that I had enjoyed and absorbed in this game. Every time I hear it now, I imagine myself in the wastelands of Pandora, driving haphazardly across the sandy dunes as my companions and I shoot and blow up everything in sight. You know, living the dream.......     

12) Hit & Run (Wolfgang Lohr Remix) -  The Electric Swing Circus

I fucking LOVE electro-swing! The electronic beats and rhythm blend so well with the wild and energetic freedom of swing. A lot of electro-swing gives me a vibe of wild movement, reckless abandon, and freedom from constraint. I think this song melds all of these feelings the best! As the last song might have indicated, despite my general nice and sweet temperament, there is a part of me deep down that is an absolute gremlin secretly enamored with chaos, insanity, and a general disdain for law and authority X). But whereas anything Borderlands related has a more “morality is an illusion blowing shit up is real” air about it, this song is far more peppy. More of a “good-hearted but insane” type of chaos, like an 100mph car chase where you end up sailing over the train tracks JUST as the train passes.

.... I may have gotten a bit off track lol 

13) Kickstart my Heart - Motley Crue

I love this song, but I have to be VERY careful when and where I listen to this. I love songs that make me feel like I’m going a million miles per hour, like I’m gotdam Sonic the Hedgehog. Unfortunately, I may or may not have had multiple instances of listening to this song in the car and abruptly realizing that I’m going like 15mph above the speed limit...... So yeah, regardless of absolutely perfect it feels to play this song while speeding down a nearly empty highway, please be careful and drive responsibly!!!

14) I’m Born to Run - American Authors

Imma just up and say it. This song is a Sonic song; like not like actually from the series but a song for the character. This song encapsulates Sonic as a character better than some of his ACTUAL THEMES (and remember Sonic music are bangers!). Its a song about freedom, living life as it comes, and not letting anything slow you down. Frankly I’m surprised they didn’t make this song FOR the Sonic series, or even the movie! Speaking of which, ironically I heard this song right after watching the Sonic movie in theaters, so yeah there’s no way I can associate it with anything else. 

15) Opa Opa - Antique

Oh, what a PERFECT way to end this list! This may be one of my absolute favorite songs of all time! I don’t remember exactly how I found this song... I think I had just relistened to Dalar Mehndi’s “Tunak Tunak Tun” and was looking for other catchy non-english songs and BOY HOWDY I found one! I know nothing about the band or what the song’s about (its in greek and i dont speak it), but this song is just a masterpiece of retro, pop, and dance sounds. This song feels like the musical and lyrical manifestation of dance and movement. I really REALLY wish I could dance JUST so I can express how happy and free this song makes me feel! This is the BEST song for me to end this list with!

***********************************************************************************

JESUS, this got long..... Sorry about that XD. It was fun though, and hopefully somebody was vaguely interested in my ramblings.

Guess I need to tag people now? How about @tharkflark1, @rockmilkshake, @neonbuck, @drawingsdrawingseverywhere, @birthgiverofbirds, @puccafangirl, @kalcat, @biblestudybussybopsbabey, @monstrous-milktea, and @memecage! I think there are a couple of people here I haven’t talked to though soooooo..... hi, I hope you don’t mind the tag X)

 Anyway hope you enjoyed and/or want to do this too! This took for-fucking-EVER to type, so imma go fuck off and watch youtube or something now...

[astrologysvt]

Chart First Impressions: Jihoon

For more SVT astrology posts, follow my blog! Check out my masterlist to see all the readings I’ve done so far and what I’ve got coming up! 💫

This is just a very general reading of the member’s charts — the parts that popped out to me, things I personally liked, things I thought were interesting or contrary to the image I have of them. I’m not looking at anything in particular with each reading. Some of their readings may be more aspect focused, where some may just focus solely on their personal planets and their signs. If you have any questions on specific aspects or want to request a more specific reading, feel free to send me an ask!

ugh jihoon you stress me out 

so here is the huge astrology debate on whether or not cusps actually exist. can we technically be both signs?

i feel like recently the consensus seems to be that no, cusps definitely do not exist. 

yet at the same time, you pick up any astrology text and often times they’ll include cusps in some what shape or form. 

the way i do readings i really only take a cusp into account if 1) i don’t know the birth time or 2) it’s relevant to that specific reading. 

even then, i don’t particularly view them as “cusps” more as just acknowledging that either or could be an option. 

to me, even if you are born just a minute before the sun enters another sign, your natal chart will tell you the one definitive sun sign you were born under. 

if you relate to traits of the sign you’re technically a cusp of, there is more than likely other, more specific influences in your chart that you can attribute that to. 

not only that, but many people believe that the influences of the sign are the strongest towards the cusp. for that reason, if i know the birth time, i really don’t give them much thought. 

so that’s my stance, generally.

but we dooon’t knooooow woozi’s birth time which makes things much more complicated. 

we’re also dealing with two signs (sag/scorpio) that can kind of present themselves very similarly??? 

they’re both very straight forward people, sag for the sake of simplicity and honesty and scorpio for the sake of brevity and impact.

they’re both very take it or leave it signs as scorpios simply wont tolerate what they don’t like, and sagittarians are very quick to move on from unwanted situations as they’re good at redirecting their attention. 

so this kind of muddles how i would categorize what i’d say are jihoon’s identifying personality traits for being this very candid, decisive guy.

not only that, but he’s got a lot of fire in his chart to begin with that makes it hard to discern whether it’s his sun that’s contributing to those energies or not.

the sun went into sag at 9:50 am on his birthday exactly so now we just gotta sit and wait and hope that someone asks him what time he was born and he somehow knows. 

i really go between the two, but I feel like recently i’m leaning more towards thinking he’s a scorpio. 

he’s certainly a fiery guy and I see that in his humor, creativity, and how active he is. 

his sag mercury can make someone very antsy like gemini placements can, and his aries moon is constantly looking for new ways to release all that pent up aries energy. 

so it could be those energies that i’m reading that could be mistaken as being a sagittarius sun. 

it’s also hard because he’s said before that he likes his job as an idol because he gets to do a bunch of different things from composition, singing, dancing etc. etc. 

having a sag in mercury could still make this true if he were a scorpio, especially since mercury would directly correlate this energy with his hobbies/interests. 

with that being said, that sentiment in and of itself is a huge sag sun identifier. 

but if we look at him as though he’s a sag, i hit three walls that really prevent me from believing it fully: 

1) with a sag sun, aries moon, sag mercury -- that’d make him a super impulsive and hot-headed dude. his ability to to get distracted would be unmatched and these placements in particular are infamous for starting projects out of passion and then dropping them the moment they get bored. 

not to say that this is the one definitive trait all sagittarians must have and if you don’t have it ur kicked out of the sagittarius club, but it just doesn’t sound like him. 

sagittarians can easily get caught up in these big projects and surely enjoy them as they are out of passion, but the moment you introduce a sense of responsibility/work/obligation, it takes away that bit of passion that allowed them to work so diligently without thought. 

it makes them overly aware of the energy they’re exerting and the freedom they’re compromising on, and without a lot of time and growth, a lot of young sags may deem it not worth it. again, the situation wouldn’t be helped with an aries moon either.

because of that his energies read too stubborn and enduring to match what i would typically associate with his chart. 

i know a lot of really successful sagittarians, but their journey to success wasn’t nearly as steady and unrelenting as the path jihoon has taken with seventeen where it’s been work, work, work, work.

not only that, but he really doesn’t have a whole lot of aspects that may contradict this flightiness. 

his saturn IS well aspected, but keep in mind his saturn is in aries which could add a sense of difficulty in asserting himself in a path his sag sun and aries moon may have felt restricted by. 

with this placement you are pairing this super high-initiative, go-getting sign with a planet that’s incredibly cautious and calculated so they doubt themselves a lot and generally feel pretty inhibited. 

it certainly bodes well for success in the long run as they learn to balance these energies and let their confidence and competence stand for themselves, but him having been so young at the start of his career it doesn’t 100% add up for me. 

the only other aspect that may counteract this is his virgo mars that has a very similar antsy energy but directs it in the complete opposite direction his sag sun/aries moon naturally leans towards.

he’d want to take all of his fidgety energies and put it into his work and this could certainly make him a workaholic, but that wouldn’t particularly nullify the fact his sag sun may want still to apply that to a bunch of different things without restriction.

it’s certainly possible that he’s a sag sun and still achieved these things, i just think he’d struggle a lot more in his position in his career if not for a (supposed) scorpio sun. 

without a scorpio sun i think he would have gotten too antsy and too unhappy in a career that is as all-consuming as the one he’s in, and his aries saturn would have more than likely gotten a lot more trigger happy at some point and would have taken his sag sun/aries moon cue to dip when it felt the most overwhelming. 

whereas a scorpio would feel comfortable and would even thrive in these circumstances.

2) he’s too shy. his personal planets, as they are (except maybe that virgo mars), don’t just have extravert tendencies, they’re KNOWN for being extraverts. 

life of the party guys who NEED attention and communication. 

again, i think jihoon is much more outgoing than his image connotes, but he’s certainly not what i’d associate with a sag sun, aries moon, sag mercury, libra venus. 

like if i think about those signs and jihoon i laugh a little. if his sun his definitely in sag then my god his houses must really offset his other placements.

but this is what leads me to believe that there’s a wall/blockage preventing these energies from manifesting how i’d expect in a sag sun. 

a scorpio sun would make him more reserved, more secretive, more calculating while maintaining those talkative and energetic woozi-energies. 

3) sag suns are open-books. again, i think there is an aspect of woozi that is very straightforward but that is certainly something that would come through with a scorpio sun. 

Sag suns are known for being those sincere, tell it how it is guys. you trust them because they’re so optimistic and open, and not to say that woozi isn’t, but there is a reason people are slow to get close to him. a scorpio sun would make him more calculated with who he lets in. 

not only that but in my experience with scorpios, people tend to have a lot of pre perceptions about of them REGARDLESS of how candid and honest of people they actually are once you get to know them.

it’s a common scorpio experience to learn after the fact that the person you just became friends thought you were gonna be totally different even though, in all actuality, you’ve been nothing but nice and open with them from the start.

it’s because of this scorpio veil there is that brings this sense of control they have over their image, and this command over themselves and people. it’s their desire to appear a certain way so people can’t mistake them as being vulnerable or gullible.  

you also tend to get the impression that they’ve got an agenda because they are so purposeful. 

on top of that, you don’t really doubt with scorpios that they have depths and layers to them from the moment you meet them, where as other people may instantly feel easy, simple, potentially superficial (sagittarians can certainly appear this way).

for scorpios this depth can add this doubt in your own judgement of how  you see them because it’s so hard to gauge what’s going on underneath EVEN THO THERE MAY NOT BE ANYTHING GOING ON.

this is something scorpios tend to get very frustrated with as people tend to doubt their intentions. 

with that being said scorpios are so straightforward people that, even with these vibes, developed scorpios are incredibly trustworthy, thoughtful, and attentive people so there isn’t any actual concern to be had.

But really scorpios are the type of people who give an impression of fluidity and depth and this is what makes them so magnetic. 

i feel like a lot of woozi’s fans love him because he is that tsundere character and that concept of being someone super dynamic/complex underneath the image they project is inherently a scorpio trait. 

i could go on for hours. i def think that woozi is far too clingy to be a sag and far too emotionally intuitive NOT to be a scorpio. 

also, sagittarius are known for loving travel???? he literally doesn’t even leave his house????

for me it really comes down to whether or not im reading more of a fixed, or mutable energy. right now i’m feeling more fixed.

he’s a steadfast guy and his persistence speaks more for him than any one of his single actions. 

he can do anything and he projects such a strong sense of purpose and integrity of character that you’d simply trust his track record and habits before you trusted a random act. 

not to say that sag’s don’t have a integrity of character, but if they do something random their blunt and sincere actions would lend you to think, “oh, they’re just doing this now” as opposed to thinking that action was just an outlier.  

and honestly he just reeks of the “don’t even try and test me” energy that a mutable sign wouldn’t be so privy to. 

i’m almost super convinced but i also totally reserve the right to change my mind lmfao

mainly because his ascendant and houses could attribute to his not-so-sag qualities if he WERE still a sag sun. 

i don’t particularly like trying to “decide” what his sun sign is, even though i so desperately want to figure it out (if that wasn’t obviously enough).

mainly because it goes against how i prefer to do readings, in that the person comes first and the chart is secondary. if i’m trying to figure out a sun sign, i have to work solely off of stereotypes of the signs when we’re obviously more complex than that. 

trying to figure out sun signs is always going to be contradictory because astrology is allowed to be contradictory because we are contradictory. 

ugh it hurts my brain sometimes. 

with that being said, let’s actually look at his chart as it is REGARDLESS of his sun. 

libra venus is adorable.

he’s a romantic guy. 

his chart is very intense and straightforward in literally EVERYTHING except for love and affection. 

he’s gentle in how he expresses his appreciation, and very traditional in how he’d approach romance.

this is what softens what i’d consider one of the most extreme and fierce charts in seventeen. 

he loves gaining approval from the people he cares about and loves simply being around loved ones as they joke around as he sits back and watches. 

feeling that sense of harmony really feeds him, which is why you see him in the background just laughing and enjoying himself.

virgo mars furthers this people-pleasing aspect of his. normally he’d really and sincerely comes across as a “take it or leave it” kind of guy, but when it comes to his loved ones he wants to make things work. 

at the same time this is the aspect, kind of paradoxically, that makes him pretty picky and hyper critical. 

the moments you see woozi truly angry are when people try and get him to do things he doesn’t want to do, do things differently from how he wants them done, or simply offends him and his preferences. 

as i mentioned briefly before this also makes him the perfectionist/workaholic he is. 

not only is he persistent in his work, but he genuinely feels listless unless he’s actively working on something. 

for him, work heals him which he why he’s able to blur the lines between work and art and still enjoy it.

there’s really so much to unpack with jihoon, i have to stop here because this is getting too long and once i start talking about everything else i wont be able to stop and i’ll end up with a novel. 

but my god. 

if i ever manage to get my hands on his birth time. 

bro. 

it’s over. 

[websiteaitechsolution]

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[aro-culture-is]

It's that time of year again- pride is coming up and I've already gotten some acephobic dogwhistles crossing my dash.

Below is a list of specifically aphobic dogwhistles that I'll update as I spot them or if you guys suggest them:

Before I begin, a definition of dogwhistles:

“Dog-whistle politics is political messaging employing coded language that appears to mean one thing to the general population but has an additional, different, or more specific resonance for a targeted subgroup. The analogy is to a dog whistle, the ultrasonic tone of which is heard by dogs but inaudible to humans.” - Wikipedia

Not everyone who uses these phrases is intending to have that additional, different, or more specific resonance for aspec people, but if I bold the item, it doesn’t have an okay meaning.

"PDA IS ALLOWED AT PRIDE!1!1!!11" - While a number of ace and aro folx (among others such as trauma survivors) do find that PDA can be triggering or a squick, I've never seen someone legitimately claim that PDA shouldn’t be allowed at pride, as these aphobes insist. Every time I've seen this sort of claim cross my dash, there's 2 things I find to be true: the original blog is acephobic (or a 13 year old and that does tend to be a pretty dumb age due to brain reasons) and there's a legitimate and oftentimes decent conversation by people in the notes about making sure that PDA during daytime events is nonsexual so that minors are safe. That discussion is ok, So are counter arguments. But, PLEASE recognize that emphatic declarations like above are a dogwhistle.

“I support LGBT aces/aros!” - yikes. So, the basic idea here is that this person believes that being ace/aro is a modification of being straight rather than a sexuality or romantic orientation or that same-sex attraction is necessary to be LGBT(Q+) which tends to be completely and immediately contradicted by a generic “but trans people are ok” or just a total LGB or even LG only. They do not actually support aspec people. They support only the letters they claim to support at best. (thanks to @clownpieceoffreedom for suggesting this addition!)

“A is for allies!!!” - not sure how much detail I need here if you’re on my page, but honestly... basically, people who say this fall into 2 main camps: 1) ignorant but trying, and haven’t yet learned enough to know that A is for asexual, aromantic, and agender folx, and 2) the asshats who know that and consider all of those identities invalid. Generally speaking, assume ignorance and evaluate the speaker via searching them, speaking with them, or other methods. 

url including “allo” (especially as “dirty/sex -allo”), “aphobic”, “-course” referencing discourse - this one is subtle, but usually a quick glance at their blog reveals their true nature. Many if not most are frankly speaking, awful and aphobic. If they are of that ilk, you’ll probably find no less than five dogwhistles on the first page. However, some aspec people have claimed these urls because their are alloromantic or allosexual and it is a term for them, among other reasons, so I would advise checking before you reach for the block button. see the section on allo/dirty for why those in particular are included.

“asexuality/aces are homophobic” - this might just be implied but I also recently made a blocklist based around a post that literally referred to aspecs as “ homophobic ace tumblr” because they believe one of the following: 1) that sex-repulsion and romance-repulsion are always referring to seeing same-sex attraction, commonly used in reference to PDA at pride while insisting that aspec people who don’t want to see romantic or sexual situations are telling them not to be gay in public. usually, the aspecs in question were just... talking about romo or sex repulsion and how they handle it because they don’t want to do that. 2) one I can’t fully wrap my head around: aces are homophobic because some gay people will identify as asexual to avoid acknowledging their gay feelings. like... bud. internalized homophobia is a bitch but it’s yours. we welcome you for as long as you’d like to stay, and if you realize that you aren’t aspec, you can feel free to hold onto it for as long as you’d like, but ultimately confronting your feelings is your business. we won’t tell you what to do as a community. if it’s homophobic to respect your feelings and allow you to decide if and when you, a random online stranger, confront your feelings, then it was aphobia when you didn’t tell me likewise to confront my internalized aphobia when I thought I was gay because I knew I wasn’t into the people I was “supposed” to be. you had no way of knowing that and neither do we.

“allo” “dirtyallo” “dirty” etc as a self description particularly with a mocking tone - for some reason a lot of allo people think allo is a poorly made slur of some sort or lumps them in with their oppressors. idk man. they think that it’s clever to use it preemptively or something. I’m not sure but I think that they think our experiences are mocking theirs somehow. it gives me the same vibes as like, those people who insist that political correctness is ruining everything. they don’t know or care to know what the term means so they decide it must be secretly insulting them. insert “i am smart” memes here.

“cishet” - ah, yes, the biggest and most annoying dogwhistle of them all. coopted by exlusionists in which they actually mean “cisgender heteroromantic aces” or more rarely “cisgender heterosexual aros” and usually makes a big point about how “cishets” are awful people who should never be allowed at pride related events etc. typically used in a way that normal blogs have no idea. this is probably the most effective aphobic dogwhistle. as for why it’s bad, see “I support LGBT ace/aros!” above.

pride collections (such as edits of a popular character with pride flags behind them) without asexual/aromantic flags, specifically ones with only LGBT flags - I totally get that not every artist is gonna make edits for every queer identity they know, but I’ve seen enough of these lead back to aphobes that I’m including it regardless. If you don’t see an identity, especially one of the Big Ones... check it out. Do a search. If you aren’t sure what I’m including, here’s an off the top of my head list, contact me for additions b/c I don’t double check what I type enough. Common: lesbian, gay, bi, pan, queer, asexual, nonbinary, trans; less common but still possibly a sign: aromantic, demi -romantic or -sexual, agender, intersex, newer variations of lesbian flags that have significant support.

[dirtyallodyke]

On self-harm via going through the ace discourse tag

CW: discussion of self-injury, mental illness

Okay, regardless about your stance on ace discourse and whether you're an exclusionist or an inclusionist, we need to leave that behind right now and have a conversation about the concept of looking through the ace discourse tag as a form of self-harm. Because there are some serious, harmful issues around this. I'm going to preface this post by saying that I am literally a self-injury researcher who is part of a research group on youth mental health, with a specialty in self-injury and LGBT youth mental health, so I know what I'm talking about.

Firstly, let's talk about what self-harm is, and what it is not. In order for a behaviour to be considered self-harm, it needs to satisfy these conditions:

Intentional / deliberate,

Not an unintended side-effect of another behaviour (e.g. smoking, eating disorders, drug use),

Not part of a socially- or culturally-sanctioned behaviour (e.g. body modifications, tattoos, some cultural rituals that involve damage to the body),

Results in, or is intended to result in, damage to bodily tissue.

That last one is the most important here, because it specifies that self-harm must be physical in nature. It doesn't specify the extent, so this can include anything from scratching oneself with pins through cutting or burning oneself to more extreme forms such as breaking one's bones or ingesting poisonous substances.

A lot of people insist that what I'm talking about is actually self-injury, whereas they're referring to self-harm, which doesn't have to be physical and can include deliberately exposing oneself to material that will make them experience negative feelings. This is perhaps a misunderstanding more than a deliberate attempt to deny facts – maybe where people get confused is the difference between what is known as Deliberate Self-Harm (DSH) and what is known as Non-Suicidal Self-Injury (NSSI).

The above definition refers to DSH, and the defining characteristic of this versus NSSI is that DSH may include behaviours that are intended to result in death, i.e. suicidal behaviour. This is why it includes things such as taking large overdoses or ingesting poison or any other behaviour that we might not conceive of as being self-injury because the person is attempting to take their own life. What we usually think of as self-injury is, in fact, NSSI, where there is an additional condition: the behaviour is NOT intended to cause death (hence the "non-suicidal" part of the name). It may possibly still result in death, but this would be accidental and not the intention of the person doing the behaviour. NSSI often predicts suicidal behaviour in that people who start off engaging in self-injury are at a higher risk of later attempting suicide, so they are related but distinct concepts.

So, the difference between the two is subtle, and there is overlap, but both still require the act of deliberately causing physical harm to one's body. When people talk about self-harming via ace discourse (i.e. deliberately generating feelings of distress), what they're talking about is not actually self-harm in any form … instead, what they may be doing is deliberately triggering themselves. This is not a value judgement, as in, I'm not making light of this behaviour or suggesting that it is frivolous or anything like that. But it is not self-harm.

Let me explain. Self-triggering is, again, often related to self-injury, but it is a completely separate phenomenon. For example, people who don't self-injure but may have other issues can self-trigger. The most obvious, and probably most common, example is people with eating disorders. Most people, whether or not they have lived experience with eating disorders, know about "thinspo" or "pro-ana". As someone who has struggled with eating disorders for 16 years, I am very familiar with this concept and have definitely engaged in it myself when I was younger and unwell. For those that don't know, "thinspo" or "pro-ana" involves viewing material that triggers or reinforces existing disordered thoughts and feelings, in order to "inspire" continued adherence to eating disordered behaviours. You might say, "That's stupid, they're basically giving themselves an eating disorder, why don't they just not do that?" but remember that people who do this are already unwell and the way they think and behave makes sense to them even if it doesn't make sense to people who don't have that illness. I am oversimplifying, there is a lot more to it than this, but I'm just using this as an example to illustrate my point.

This has also been observed in people with addictions, and people with depression, often in the form of attentional bias – they tend to pay more attention to stimuli that are related to the substance they are addicted to (for people with addiction) or with negative undertones (for people with depression) than non-related or neutral/positive stimuli. This isn't deliberate and they usually aren't aware they are doing this, but it is one of the many ways in which their mental illness maintains itself.

This self-triggering is very often a precursor to physically harming behaviours – but notice I am talking about people with eating disorders or addictions, and the definition of self-harm specifically excludes side-effects of illnesses like these because physically harming oneself is the main goal of self-injury, but not of eating disorders or addictions.

However, self-triggering is also very common in people who struggle with self-injury. This is something I have witnessed first-hand (and participated in) when I was younger and struggling with self-injury. There is a lot of material online that is the self-harm equivalent of thinspo/pro-ana: people sharing photos of their self-injury, sharing "tips" on how to self-injure more effectively or how to hide self-injury from others in order to continue doing it undetected, etc. It's awful and dangerous, but it is something done by people who are unwell and should not be judged negatively. The reasons we do these behaviours are numerous and complex and not relevant to the discussion.

The point is, self-triggering is a PRECURSOR to self-harm, but is NOT self-harm in itself. Now, when I have argued with inclusionists about the concept of self-harm via discourse tags, and how this trivialises actual self-harm, many have said "Uhhh I actually physically self-harm as well as this kind of self-harm so stfu you nasty aphobe!" And, you know, it's really sad when ANYONE is in enough distress that they resort to self-injury to cope with this – but just because you also self-injure, it still does not make self-triggering the same as self-harm. You may self-trigger which may then lead on to you self-harming, but it also may not lead to you self-harming. The act of self-triggering alone is NOT sufficient to be called self-harm.

You might say, "Who cares? This is just semantics! I still self-harm!" but it DOES matter because it trivialises self-harm. There are many people who also consider themselves self-harmers because they self-trigger by going into the ace discourse tag but don't actually physically self-injure – do you REALLY think their experience of self-injury is the same as someone who cuts themselves???? As someone who also started self-harming 16 years ago, I think the fuck not! I can tell you that the way I have been treated as a self-injurer has been horrific in the past, and the negative consequences of my self-injury are still impacting my life today, years after I stopped self-injuring. The pain and the mistreatment and the stigma I have been subjected to is not even in the same ballpark as someone who deliberately makes themselves sad because a bunch of mean aphobes are saying that cishet aces aren't lgbt, and it is deeply insulting to any person who has ever self-injured.

It is also pathologising what is actually a normal behaviour – most people seek out stimuli that reflect how they are feeling (think of listening to sad music when you are sad as an example), and this is very common. By perpetuating the idea that looking through ace discourse to make yourself sad is actually self-harm, and not a completely normal and human behaviour, you are causing people to self-pathologise/self-stigmatise, and that has been shown in research to have deleterious effects on mental health that would likely not occur otherwise. So, not only does it harm actual self-injurers by trivialising their experiences, it harms non-self-injurers by pathologising their behaviour.

There is also the problem of whether or not you can actually say that ace-discourse-tag-viewing counts as self-triggering, because I feel like that is pretty trivialising of especially PTSD, but also other mental illnesses in which triggers may be a component. I'm not going to discuss that here because that is an entirely different conversation, but I think it bears thinking about – is being "triggered" by ace discourse anywhere near the same as being triggered by reminders of severe trauma? I don't think so. But again, that's another conversation.

TLDR: looking through ace discourse tags in order to feel worse is not self-harm. It may be a precursor to self-harm, but it is not self-harm itself, and calling it such is harmful to both actual self-harmers, and non-self-harmers. Regardless of your take on the discourse, stop spreading this harmful idea! Ableism and minimisation of the experience of mental illness is NOT relevant to ace discourse!

[Edit: breaking up paragraphs for increased readability ]

[the-colony-roleplay]

☭ FEVER STATE: “A BUG IN THE SYSTEM”☭ stage i 

Fresh biscuits baked long before the sun rose the morning of Monday, January 3rd, 2163, had the dining hall smelling sweet and inviting by the time people arrived for breakfast.

Overall, it was more or less like any other day. The coffee was mediocre at best, but it’d definitely been worse, and so that, combined with the scent of fresh flakey pastries put most in at least a half-way decent mood. A down right good one, for some.

It was roughly half nine when the first civilian fled their classroom for the bathrooms, claiming feeling ill; about a quarter to ten when not one, but two citizens threw up in the middle of the training fields; and just past ten thirty when an entire rotation of Infected citizens on meal prep chores were all but collapsed on bathroom and infirmary floors.

The sickness took everybody, regardless of status, age, infection. It didn’t matter what they’d had for breakfast (or hadn’t) or what they’d had for lunch: by 2pm, Monday afternoon, not a single person in Colony 22 wasn’t showing symptoms. Not even the NWRF.

The sickness started like many common fevers or the onset of viruses. For most, it began with the sweats. A quickly rising internal temperature, but chills on the surface of one’s skin, often engulfing an individual in miserable, sickening shivers.

Soon after came the shakes, vertigo-like dizzy spells, and extreme nausea, followed swiftly by an inability to keep anything down. A complete purging of the stomach, the biggest concern for the quickly filling infirmary was keeping everyone hydrated. Nurses, all of whom were also sick to varying degrees but working tirelessly and bravely through it, began to separate those in desperate condition as the sickness spread, from those in a more manageable condition—in other words, those who were more likely able to keep some water in their system, and those who weren’t.

Infirmary beds were then reserved for citizens whose symptoms were more critical, so they could be hooked up to IVs which would keep them hydrated and in a stable condition. Those lucky few whose symptoms were slightly less severe and maintained at least strength enough to move around between bouts of vomiting and to drink water slowly, were contained to their dorms, where whichever medical staff were still upright would check their vitals and tend to them as best they could. 

No one was to leave the infirmary or their respective houses under any circumstances. Not until more could be understood about this sickness, where it came from, and most importantly, what its consequences would look like.

Officials worked frantically to communicate with other Colonies—was this happening anywhere else? Had a source yet been located? Had any fatalities been reported? Colony 22 as a whole was immobilized; at a complete and utter standstill, desperate for information that would only come with time.

A/N: Alrighty kids! The moment you’ve all been waiting for! Part One of the new year plot drop! (Both our New Year AND the RP’s New Year!!)

Welcome to: ☭ FEVER STATE: A BUG IN THE SYSTEM ☭ { stage i } !!

This is frames as an ‘event’ as you can see in the banner, but technically speaking it’s a plot drop element that will be revealed in roughly four stages—some of which will be happening sooner than others. Reveals will come over time, and some stages will have longer delays than others.

Additionally, stage one, “A Bug in the System” will actually happen with its own individual mini-stages as well. The whole stage will take place over only TWO (VERSE) DAYS in the RP timeline, but there will be a second post from the Main that will happen a few hours into the second day (in the RP verse) that will trigger the second half of stage one.

So, to simplify:

From this moment until further notice, you may RP ANYTHING in the RP timeline between MONDAY morning, Jan 3rd, to TUESDAY morning the 4th, before 11am.

When the 2nd portion of this stage of the plot drop is posted from the main (you’ll know it when you see it), it will open up the remainder of the time frame for the first stage, A Bug in the System. More details will come with that post to ensure every body is clear and has all the information they need!

As far as real time goes, we will likely head into stage 2 next weekend, depending on what the dash is looking like. Stage 1 and 2 are a bit more connected than the others, so it may make sense to do so. 

☭  General Guidelines: ☭

As always, you may continue old threads as long as you need to, but you may not post anything new that happens before this plot drop. Everything new on the dash must be within this timeline, which is currently only the Monday morning to Tuesday morning. As the plot progresses, you will always be updated about timelines and what’s available to you to RP.

Because this is not a contained event so much as it is a plot drop revealed in stages, and because we want to time it according to how much activity is on the dash and how well you guys are getting through content (we always like to customize according to member activity speed so that people have a chance to explore whichever plots they need to!), we ask that you TITLE ALL THREADS in this stage of the timeline, and they MUST include any variation of the following:

Fever State: part one OR Fever State: Part 1 OR FS: Stage 1 OR FS: Bug in the System etc, etc, etc...

Alternatively, you can chose only to include some form of the Stage 1 title itself:

A Bug in the System OR Bug in the System OR BITS/B.I.T.S. (woah okay didn’t notice that before, that’s weird haha) OR ABITS/A.B.I.T.S. etc, etc, etc...

Essentially, you can format your thread titles however you wish, the only requirement is that it indicates which stage of the drop it is. This will become important as the stages progress and you are wanting to continue plotting across them, and simply keeping things clear on the dash. (Note: please note that if you decide against indicating anything about ‘fever state’ please don’t only say ‘part one’ as there have been many ‘part ones’ over the course of Colony events. If you’re going to stick with only stage names in your titles, then make sure to use the name of the stage in some capacity.)

All posts on the main regarding the new plot drop will be tagged as #col22feverstate. Each stage will also have its own tag, and stage one will be #col22FSbug. You do not have to use these tags for your personal posts, but can certainly choose to use them if you wish or tag however you like for your personal organization styles.

☭  Individual Character Variations: ☭

It’s up to you to decide when and how your character(s) is/are affected by the sickness, so long as it remains consistent with the canon narration posted above the cut. 

In other words, all characters, with no exceptions MUST be showing symptoms before roughly 2pm on Monday January 3rd. But some characters may have been hit worse than others. So, you can decide how long it takes each symptom to show, and how drastically they are affected by and experience these symptoms. If you want one or more of your characters to be sick but still able to walk around a little bit or maybe even help out the medical staff, that is fine. Alternatively, if you want one or more of your character(s) to be totally immobilized, finding it incredibly difficult to even move or get out of bed, that’s fine too. 

But everyone gets sick, and everyone experiences at least some bouts of vomiting. 

Stages of illness should happen in the order mentioned above, but they can be timed however you want and some symptoms may affect characters harder than others. Also, it is up to you if your character is well enough to be in their house/dorms or if they are in the infirmary. 

The only thing you can’t do in terms of the symptoms is change any of them or report any other symptoms not listed above, in case said symptoms conflict with any further planned plot progression. If you are unsure about anything or want to inquire about specific details, please direct your questions to the main blog ASK (so they can be answered publicly to help everyone). 

☭  Chaos in the Community: ☭

In terms of what the structure of things will probably look like as this is going down, it’s going to be pretty chaotic for at least the first few hours. People will be admitted into the infirmary and then a couple hours in, as it starts to fill up and it’s becoming clear that this is happening at an epidemic level with citizens, that’s when the medical staff will start moving people around and clearing infirmary beds etc. 

With regards to restrictions and security and keeping citizens in their houses—it’s going to be enforced as much as possible for the purposes of being able to take care of people properly, but the staff are all sick and very spread thin—so the first half of the day is going to be much more chaotic, especially as people are still in varying degrees of illness. If someones tries to leave their bed or house, it will likely be possible for them to do so as long as there isn’t a staff member tending to them right at that moment in time to keep them there. There will be a lot of running around between patients and rooms and finding supplies and dealing with emergencies, so truth be told, it’ll be a bit of a shit show. 

By the evening, around 6 or 7pm, more people will be completely out of commission, so things should have calmed down by then and more people will be where they are supposed to be, wherever that is. However, if you have a character who doesn’t experience the sickness as badly as the other and it stays that way, they may be able to move around a little bit more or offer to help staff or check on friends in other houses, if their vitals looking more positive. 

There’s a few different ways you can play this, and you are free to develop your own headcanons with each of your characters, just keep in mind the rules about the symptoms mentioned above, and please do come to the mods with any specific inquiries you might have! 

Alright, God Speed munchkins! Have fun with your little puking babies and... we’re sorry?? hahaha...

Love you all!

xxColMods

[were-up-against-them-all]

Danny and MDMA

//This post comes with the obvious trigger warning of drug abuse. I admit that I don't know as much about non-opioid illicit drugs - I worked in pharmacy for long enough to learn quite a bit about opioid abuse - so there will also be a lot of googling involved in this post. But it is at least googling that comes with some knowledge of what sources are and are not reliable and how to tell the difference, thanks to the aforementioned pharmacy experience. That being said, onward with the headcanons about Danny's drug use and how it affects him.

So Danny is a hedonist. This is pretty obvious right off the bat. He also uses drugs, something else that, while never discussed head-on in the series, is also pretty apparent pretty early on. He mostly uses uppers like MDMA (also called ecstasy or molly), but does also drink alcohol, smoke both tobacco and marijuana, and has dabbled with hallucinogens. Most of this has its roots in the other problems that have plagued Danny throughout his life. For the sake of not making this post a thousand pages long, though, I'm going to focus here on MDMA.

While MDMA is not officially labeled as addictive by US authorities on drug effects and use, it does have some pretty hefty side effects and withdrawal symptoms. The intended effects of the drug are increased energy, emotional warmth, and altered sensitivity to sensory stimuli. The drug can also produce a mildly hallucinogenic effect, causing an altered perception of time and one's surroundings. It works by increasing production and retention of dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin. These are chemicals naturally produced in the body that affect mood.

This actually isn't too different from some prescription antidepressants. The most common class of antidepressants is SSRIs/SNRIs. Those acronyms are for selective seretonin reuptake inhibitors and selective norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors. These effectively combat depression by increasing the presence of two of the chemicals (serotonin and norepinephrine) that affect positive mood. Dopamine is related to the reward pathways in the brain. Basically, our brains tell us something made us feel good by releasing dopamine. So with MDMA, it works the same way. It increases those chemicals, leading to the "emotional warmth" that's one of it's characteristic effects. In that way, it really does function basically as an antidepressant, albeit a particularly unsafe one. And with the added dopamine component comes a major risk for abuse.

This particular drug first came to popularity as a part of rave culture. Raves are all night dance parties, often unsanctioned ones. This was particularly big in the 1990s and early 2000s. Raves were also a big part of gay male culture during that time. Danny left home at 16 after his family learned he was gay. That would have been in 2004. Unsurprisingly, he wound up involved in some of the sketchier parts of gay culture. And he would definitely have come across this drug early on.

Danny suffers from depression, specifically major depressive disorder. This is, in his case, in part hereditary and in part situational. He was already genetically predisposed to depression. However, external factors can impact internal workings. (A really good case study in the more visible, physical side of this is Dutch winter disease.) So if one is placed in a situation in which one is subjected to constant stress, abuse, and/or neglect, that can actually alter your brain chemistry. As a side note and example, this is why a there is a much higher incidence of depression in graduate students than is found in the general population. But bringing this back to Danny's case specifically, Danny was subjected to neglect and emotional abuse as a child. He also dealt with a lot of internalized homophobia. And he found himself homeless and without a support system at 16, well before he was prepared to be able to take care of himself. All of these things are huge sources of stress. And this isn't just a few months, which can already impact brain chemistry, this is his entire life.

So Danny, in perhaps the most stressful situation he's ever been in - homeless and alone and dealing with a great deal of internalized homophobia - comes across this drug that basically acts as an antidepressant. It's easy to see where the problems start. While MDMA isn't officially labeled as addictive, for somebody with the sorts of brain chemistry imbalances that Danny has going on, it definitely could be. Even without a physical dependency, he would still be drawn to the fact that it makes him feel less like shit emotionally. Depression does tend to do that to a person. And the fact that he has never had any sort of professional intervention into the state of his mental health can't be overlooked either.

The side effects of MDMA are nothing to sneeze at. While not generally deadly, they typically include chills, muscle cramps, nausea, and blurred vision. They also include increased heart rate and blood pressure, which if high enough, can be fatal. Not to mention there are no safety regulations on MDMA production, because it's illegal, which means no one is regulating what producers mix it with. The withdrawal symptoms are what would really get Danny, though. These include irritability, aggression, impulsiveness, insomnia, depression, anxiety, difficulty concentrating, and decreased appetite.

We actually see some of this in the opening scenes of the show, leading up to his first meeting with Alex. The camera work shows us the altered state of consciousness Danny is in during his night out partying. I would actually argue that that camera work reflects some of the more hallucinogenic effects of MDMA, but regardless, it definitely clues us in on the fact that he's not sober. We see his impulsiveness and irritability when he can't get ahold of anybody at whatever ungodly hour of the morning Alex goes for a run, eventually leading us to the emotional crash that comes with the high wearing off. Which is the point at which the two meet.

By this point in his life, his situation is worlds apart from his situation when he was first exposed to all of this. He is, first of all and perhaps most significantly, quite a bit older. Eleven years have passed at this point. He is no longer homeless, he has a job, which means he has an income, he is no longer struggling with his identity as a gay man, and he has a support system, albeit a small one. So things are very different for him. Meaning his dependence on drugs has probably already begun to decrease simply because of the change in external factors. However, he does still have some pretty deep emotional issues, stemming largely from child neglect and emotional abuse when he was growing up and physical, sexual, and emotional abuse he was subjected to during those most vulnerable years of his life when he was first on his own. Add in the genetic predisposition for chemical imbalance, and even if he doesn't feel quite the same need for this stuff as he used to, he probably does still feel it.

I do think he eventually got clean once his relationship with Alex began to develop. The reasons he was able to do this are complex. For the first time, he felt supported - in a very different way from the support Scottie and Sara, his flatmate, offer - and he didn't feel pressure to go out and be involved in the social scene that first brought him into contact with that. Alex just accepts him precisely as he is. And Alex is also not even remotely affiliated with the sorts of social circles Danny runs in. All of that contributes to his ability to leave the drugs behind over the course of the eight months he has with Alex.

I would not be at all surprised by a relapse following Alex's death, however, I don't think there was one. He had neither time nor will to get involved in that social scene again. And he would have needed to stay sharp to focus on his investigation. Not to mention, if he did go back to it, he knew people were watching him, waiting for any little misstep. So I think at that point he probably stayed clean, but I do imagine those first couple of months, both at the beginning of the relationship and after Alex's death, were a struggle.

And I think that's where I'll leave this. Pretty sure that effectively sums up Danny's relationship with MDMA and its effects on him. I do also feel I should state that, like nearly everyone I knew during my years in pharmacy, I believe that drug addiction is a medical problem, not a moral failing or criminal act, and that it should be addressed and treated as such. That's probably made pretty obvious by the contents and wording of this post, but just to put my personal stance on all of this in plain terms. Because it does have a major impact on the way I play Danny.

[manifestoonmoralmanlove]

Jealousy Rant

Hello you Rotten Folks,

Due to real life stuff I have been posting less frequently but in particular that long-form stuff. So have this big olde rant on jealousy in BL I may or may not edit more, and may or may not make into audio.

Triggers: for discussion on abusive behavior including physical violence, stalking, controlling behavior, and sexual assault.

Why jealousy is a bad trope:

1.)    It’s toxic

2.)    It’s non-conflict

3.)    It doesn’t actually deal with the roots of jealousy

Are you a fan of Fap’s furious fujoshi fumes, but want a meta-analysis of the genre as a whole instead of specific titles?

Oh no it seems literally no one is asking for that…no one except Faps and FUCK YOU I DO WHAT I WANT HAHA!

So that brings me to “Trouble with Tropes” or heh heh TROUPLES!

Anybody who’s ANY fan of romance has had to stare into the unrelenting green eyes of this trouple.  I speak of no other than Jealousy.  While I think some of what I’m going to say will resonate with how jealousy is used in fiction on a whole, I’m going to focus on how it’s used in BL…which I feel is a very potent and distilled version of it. Also heaven forbid I read about anything beyond nasty gay tonguings.

What better place to start than What IS jealousy?

Jealousy can cover a variety of topics but in the case of romance here I will be talking specifically about romantic and sexual jealousy.

Dictionary.com states that - feeling or showing suspicion of someone's unfaithfulness in a relationship.

Seems to be the one best suited for a romance but I’d argue that the definition that suits BL’s brand of jealousy is more like

fiercely protective or vigilant of one's rights or possessions.

Why do I say this?

Well because sometimes they literally say their partner is a possession.  And even if not outright stated, it is heavily implied in the script.

(examples: Cute Devil + lamb project + Radical blood monster + Others)

There’s also the fact that very rarely is infidelity even considered a legitimate thing that would occur. As I said, the jealousy in BL is very, very POTENT and therefore has escalated beyond a suspicion of COULD BE UNFAITHFUL to a PERSON IS MY PROPERTY AND MY PROPERTY IS NOT ALLOWED TO INTERACT WITH OTHER HUMANS!  

 Getting real

Before I start ripping through this topic like a repressed teenage boy rips through a heavily populated street in Grand theft Auto… allow me to say that jealousy is a valid emotion to experience.  When I rip on this trope it is not my intention to invalidate people who do struggle with jealousy in their relationships.  However if you experience an emotion it doesn’t give you carte blanche to behave in any way you please.   It’s the same as regular old anger.  It’s normal to be angry if a partner forgets to let the dog out so the dog pees on the rug.  However beating the shit out of that partner is NOT the right way to handle the forgetfulness or your own anger.  Same with jealousy, it’s not unusual to get jealous of someone close to their partner. However that person responding to that with physically removing them, and screaming threats at them is SUPER NOT OKAY!  Yet that is not uncommon in BL.

One must also maintain an acceptable amount of jealousy in order to maintain a healthy relationship.   It’s not wrong to feel really angry or sad when you’re jealous…but if you get these feelings ALL THE TIME and due to things that are not a threat to your relationship, then that’s something to manage rather than something to blame on your partner.  Capice?

TOXIC

The main problem is that the jealousy that is common in BL is HELLA TOXIC! Jealousy is regularly tied to deeper issues of personal insecurity yet the fact there is any kind of insecurity is very rarely mentioned in the text or even subtext of the story.  Instead of this becoming a problem that one has to deal with on a personal level, it becomes a problem of the other having to obtain unrealistic standards.  Sometimes the source of the jealousy is not a feasible such as a TODDLER NEPHEW or the fact that strangers GLANCE AT THEM when in public and sometimes the source of the jealousy isn’t even human. I have seen characters throw jealousy tantrums over pets, work (school or career orientated), and even the vague concept of a SPORT!    So if you’re trying to avoid jealousy in a BL make sure you don’t go to school, don’t have a job, don’t own pets, don’t have family, don’t go out in public, and DEAR GOD don’t have hobbies either!  Woah faps those things aren’t humans so it’s not like romantic or sexual jealousy.  That’s a fair point…but the thing is the romantic/sexual jealousy functions the exact same way in those non-sexual/romantic scenarios.  HOW COULD THAT BE???? Well the jealousy that we see here is in part about being left out when a partner does other things but is in large part about dominance.  You got no other man to posture against? Well then just posture at a child, a puppy, or at a basketball why not?

Not only does jealousy crop up to unreasonable situations, an unreasonable amount of time (I’d estimate it occurs in 80% of BL mangas) but the way it’s handled is usually problematic as well.  

The most common response I’ve seen to jealousy is the seme grabbing the uke by the wrist, dragging him away from the source of jealousy, pinning him to a wall, explaining that the source of jealousy is bad for the uke or that the uke is behaving poorly/stupidly by simply interacting with the source of jealousy, and they a fit of forceful jealousy induced make-outs or sex occurs that range from consensual to downright very non-consensual.  Sometimes the uke will protest this treatment or the characterization of the jealousy fodder but this is pointless because it doesn’t become a conversation.  It is simply about the seme controlling the uke and asserting his dominance.  

Stalking is also extremely common if there is suspected jealousy.   Troubling jealousy behavior can range from as tame as going through someone’s phone without permission to drugging, kidnapping, and nearly killing a partner for one of these trespasses.

HEY HEY HEY NOW! You man-hater! Ukes can be super creepy jealous too! …but ukes are men too… THAT’S NOT THE POINT! You’re acting as if only dominant partners experience jealousy!

No, no, no, you’re right. Ukes get jealous too and sometimes to the same batty degree.  Yet, as a whole, uke jealousy tends to be less common and less destructive than jealousy of the seme variety.   The most common situation where an uke gets jealous of what a seme is doing is, the uke is pushed into a corner to admit he’s jealous.  The seme will reassure the uke he’s misunderstood and they make up.   On one hand you can argue that this is a much healthier way to settle a jealousy problem. On another hand you may view this as something of a double standard.  

If the uke’s jealous…it’s the uke’s fault and it’s nothing to worry about.  If the seme’s jealous...it’s the uke’s fault and it’s deadly serious.

This double standard even extends into how we view violent reactions for either side.  If a seme hits an uke for a trespass it will usually be framed as serious and scary.  If the uke hits the seme for a trespass it will usually be framed as a silly, and harmless outburst of tsundereness.

…Yes that’s right, the patriarchal set up of the seme/uke dynamic doesn’t just take a shit on ukes….though 9 times out of 10 it’s the ukes that do get the short end of the stick here.

Okay but let’s get the root of the problem…why is jealousy used?

If you’re a person who is not a bitter feminist killjoy who says aggravating SJW shit like, “TOXIC MONOGOMY CULTURE OPRRESSES MY GENDER NEUTRAL GENITLES” you may argue that jealousy is romantic.  I personally don’t think it is, but you’re fully allowed to view jealousy, as a concept, as a touching display of vulnerability and investment in a relationship.

However if you’re a cynical over-thinking fujoshi brimming with resentment to the genre you’ve mistakeningly dedicated your free time to, you may say the frequent use of jealousy is simply because it’s EASY WRITING!

It’s handy throw-away drama you can use in an established relationship that won’t have deeper ramifications for the relationship even if it’s on-going.  You can solve this pretty easily at any given point or decide to reintroduce it despite it previously being wrapped up.  You can use this almost TOTALLY regardless of either of the characters’ personalities or back stories.   It’s good for a quick antagonist, or to tantalize fans with a different flavor of sexual tension.  This is usually dependent on the gender of the jealousy fodder.

Ugh I’ve heard you use the term ~jealousy fodder~ like a billion times.  Why do you call it that?  

Because these characters rarely have anything going for them besides the fact they’re the conflict du-jour.  You’d be hard pressed to learn an interest of the fodder’s outside of “TRYING TO BANG PROTAG!” and they rarely do anything else in the story besides create this shallow drama.  Sometimes the jealousy drama is totally auxiliary to the main conflict of the story to boot. If you’re lucky and ONLY if you’re lucky the fodder will be shuffled into another couple.  Sometimes you won’t even see this jealousy used in a love triangle way.  It’s usually pretty obvious from the beginning that the protag is going to choose even if the other option is an objectively better person and choice for them.

In my years of reading BL I have only encountered 2 instances of a character being jealous and the other character ACTUALLY cheats on him. (Zetsuai Bronze and Totally Captivated.) Now people have different standards of what “cheating” is.  Some goes so far as to say that “Thinking about cheating” is CHEATING.  Even by that (pretty ridged standard) I would still say only the above.

Despite this low, low number, I see jealousy used in manga 80% of the time.  Are you picking up what I’m putting down here?  A breach of actual trust is not actually going to happen…99.99% of the time.  Oh but what if the jealousy is something a character has to work through to feel less anxious?  Excellent idea! I’ve seen that approach FUCKING ONCE! (Café Latte Rhapsody) So if there is no actual threat of trust breaching and it’s not something either of them has to work through on a mental or emotional level….WHAT KIND OF CONFLICT IS THAT?

NON-FUCKING-CONFLICT IS WHAT!

I’d be much more entertained by staring into my own fucking bellybutton….but faps obviously you would since you navel-gaze as if you have a gemstone there.  IF I BELIEVE HARD ENOUGH I’LL BECOME I CRYSTAL GEM OKAY!?!?!?!?

Eh-hem!

But you will see jealousy commonly used in one instance of actually plot important drama.  And that is the ever, important, cementing of a couple’s relationship.   I call the use of jealousy in this instance:

TOY TRUCK CONSUMATION

Da fuck is that?  Toy truck consummation is a character will only realize he truly cares romantically for someone because he experiences jealousy. He didn’t want that toy truck until somebody else was going to play with it.  Thankfully I don’t see this often outside of high school settings.  A grown-ass man who is that fucking blind to his own feelings and childish enough to throw a tantrum out of it, can fuck RIGHT OFF! ….Though honestly teenagers behaving that way is still deeply shitty.

This is not an auspicious beginning to a loving relationship, if it’s formulated over single-mindedly hating a 3rd party, a 3rd party that is typically on good-terms with the target of affection.  So, a relationship we’re supposed to root for is predicated on a dude swooping in and ripping a valued person away from them for entirely selfish reasons.  I wouldn’t consider it dreamy if a seme threw an uke’s beloved play station 4 out the window because it holds the ukes attention sometimes.  I consider it even less dreamy when it’s something even more valued like yanno a friend.  (Though of course this can happen from the uke to the seme as well.) While sometimes, this individual is romantically interested in one of our leads…I’d say a good half the time if not more…they’re not at all.  

“Why are you losing your mind over someone, you’re not dating, hanging out with their friend? Even if the friend very obviously has 0 romantic or sexual interest in them?  Is it because you’re an anal fungus that causes people to shit their pants for no reason?  It’s probably because you’re a parasitic ass mushroom that makes people poop uncontrollably”

This, also, is pretty damn lazy.  Writing someone coming to grips with a difficult emotion is hard in itself. Writers will usually use 3rd parties to help bounce information back to a struggling individual to help give them insight.  And that can be used in this case as well!  Interacting with another couple, talking to someone who’s an out LGBTQ person, or even just a friend or relative that can relate!  However all of that is harder to pull off as melodramatically as a petty fuck-lord gut-punching a jealousy fodder out of the blue.  Hoo boy sonny! We should have a parade in his honor cause golly isn’t that the way to handle your problems!

But what if the jealousy fodder was really after them?

Then I would say the story may feature the trope….

Irrational jealousy magiced into rational jealousy!

What I mean is that there is a dominant that appears to be irrationally jealous.  There is no indication in the text the jealousy fodder is not on the up and up and the dominant is not privy to classified documents that make him secretly suspicious.  However turns out the harmless friend, acquaintance, co-worker, boss, mail man etc is actually a heartless rapist just trying to lower the submissive’s guard.  

This trope makes me foam at the mouth because not only is it cheap, cliché, and annoying but it justifies abusive behavior.  It states that No matter what crazy shit that lunatic boyfriend of yours spouts he’s fucking infallible.  If he tells you that the atmosphere has become poisonous to you and the only breathable air is in his testicles, you better clamp down on that cocktail wiener like a pit-bull because any damn self-serving nonsense he spews must be followed to the fucking letter.  Why? Because he is a mind-reader, a genius, and a clairvoyant with flawless judgment by nature of being born a DOMINANT MAN! TA-DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!

May I just add this is not a trope specific to BL but a trope that makes me want to drink into a stupor each time I see it.

Well if you’re so fucking relationship savy, how would you handle jealousy in stories huh!?

…By actually tackling the causes of jealousy which are very rarely acknowledged in BL.  As far as I can tell there are 3 major roots of jealousy.

1.)    Insecurity – I am not a good enough partner so my significant other is going to drop me as soon as they find somebody better.

2.)    Distrust – My partner does not respect our monogamous agreement and will sleep with other people if they can get away with it.

3.)    Missing out -  I feel left out if my partner is doing something without me.

I have seen all three roots play a role in fictional jealousy outbursts and they’re usually tied intimately together.  However the 1st two are the keys here.

Mistrust is an interesting situation because 99% of the time the mistrust is not that the partner will sleep around given the chance.  However the mistrust is shown as more of a, “I cannot trust my partner to avoid situations where they’ll be sexually assaulted.”

While this is framed as a jealousy issue at times, I don’t think it should.  Why?  If a character is sexually assaulted it is NOT the victims fault.   But haha welcome to the 50 foot deep pit of backwards sexual politics that is BL. YOU’RE WELCOME!

Insecurity plays a large role in BL jealousy…but I have only seen it addressed directly as a failing of personal confidence once. (Café Latte Rhapsody)

Most of the time characters that are subtextualy highly insecure are portrayed as powerful and that their jealousy tantrums is just ~how strong men act~ rather than ~they obviously hate themselves and fear their partner would find someone better.~  

I’ll be quite frank, a lot of the time…they’re correct the uke could do a lot better than the jerkass seme they’re saddled with.  However, instead of changing their negative behavior for the better they just control the uke’s every movements which is yanno not doing the uke OR the seme any favors. Sometimes this functions realistically in a story like in Space Between where Riki is an unwilling sex slave and Iason keeps him under his thumb.  However the majority of them treat this like a normal and healthy relationship…but

Wouldn’t it be better if one is not constantly wracked with fear over their partner leaving them?

Wouldn’t it be better if the other can have friends and leave the house?

I’m not saying the two can’t struggle with issues of jealousy…but I mean…can’t we treat jealousy like something they work on together instead of just,

“I can’t believe you talked to them! I DIDN’T MEAN TO!”

That sound clip? Just play it on loop

“WELP LET’S HAVE THIS SAME EXACT PISSING CONTEST FOR THE 90TH FUCKING TIME!  IT’S NOT GOING TO BE DIFFERENT NEXT TIME BECAUSE WE’RE NOT GOING TO TREAT IT LIKE ADULTS WOULD!”

 So the problem with jealousy as a trope in romance and BL fiction is thus:

1.)    It’s toxic, doesn’t treat it as toxic, and sometimes justifies the toxicity.

2.)    It’s pathetic, cliché, non-conflict

3.)    It doesn’t really even understand what jealousy is.

[fastrecoverydublinqioq832-blog]

5 Bad Habits That People in the car recovery Industry Need to Quit

6 Tips for Controlling as well as Haggling Tractor-Trailer Towing Recovery Charges

When a tractor-trailer moving packages is actually involved in a mishap, the case handling method can easily end up being quite difficult and also time-consuming. If the trailer tips over, our company're coping More help with ruined cargo, cleaning of the spill (it creates concerns worse if the payload is actually a hazardous waste), and towing of the tractor as well as the trailer.

When these mishaps do develop, the absolute most important part of the case handling procedure is getting the tractor repaired, as well as the chauffeur back when traveling promptly and also cost-efficiently. The problem along with effectively completing this is actually getting through the obstructions that can develop, a number of which are easy to discuss, while others could be really tough to operate about.

The Moving Business

A relocating company's truck was actually transferring house products when it was associated with a mishap. The trailer toppled, inducing damage to the tractor, the trailer and also a few of the components. The items that spilled away from the trailer called for cleanup and also extraction.

The towing company eliminated the tractor and also trailer and cleaned the products that spilled over out. The billing complete seemed to be a bit on the high side upon the first customer review. There were costs for a number of doubtful line opportunities and also labor costs. Haggling the towing, clean up and storing costs took a substantial amount of your time and also initiative just before fixings might begin on the provider's relocating truck.

Like some other provider, insurance carriers excel in several regions of the insurance claim handling method however could possibly make use of support along with specific aspects, such as working out towing charges and also maintaining all of them in control. An insurer experienced in towing and also negotiating will have the ability to assess the company's charges and also pinpoint any sort of red-flag things.

Ways to manage filled with air prices when examining the expense

This seems to be rather straightforward, but the costs needs to have to be very carefully reviewed. It takes a keen eye to find out if the costs are inflated, and an expert insurance adjuster to work out these prices down. Consistently examine the expense to calculate if the costs are actually reasonable.

# 1 Is actually every line product detailed?

The statement from the towing business seemed to be extreme. Upon evaluating the costs, every little cost was a line-item. This is actually a warning. They comprehensive every fee, consisting of a $200 charge for the orange conoids put around the collision web site. When the company starts specifying every series thing, it's a secret information that they're attempting to get the costs as high as achievable.

# 2 What sort of tow truck was made use of?

If a 50-ton rotator tow truck was made use of to tow a tiny city truck, that should be asked. Performed they definitely need that kind of tow truck? There may certainly not have been any other truck offered, yet should our team be accountable for that higher charge when a much smaller tow truck would have sufficed?

# 3 How many laborers were required for the towing and also clean-up?

If it seems like there were actually a lot of workers associated with the cleanup, concern it. Sometimes it's a safety concern. Our company had a claim where the tractor-trailer jackknifed, and also the trailer was actually looming a link. This was absolutely a safety and security issue-- the trailer required to be gotten rid of ASAP. There are actually various other instances where there is little bit of to no cleaning, however 20 workers were onsite. Inquiry if that was actually important as well as arrange if you experience it was over-kill.

Whenever possible, it is to the chauffeur's advantage to take pictures of the incident website. This will definitely aid when clarification is actually needed to have, specifically if the fees seem too much.

# 4 Negotiate the bill

As explained above, the principal target is to acquire the vehicle driver back to do work in his truck. If the vehicle driver is individual, he does not return to work till his truck is released from the tow garden as well as fixed. The truck, trailer, and also components will definitely likely be actually dealt with individually. Many tow firms will not discharge the tractor till all bills are paid out-- Informative post which may include towing the trailer and clean and/or removal of the packages. Even though the driver's insurance policy covers simply his tractor, it will not be launched to him up until all costs are paid for. A TPA may support in the discussions, as well as other locations.

# 5 Receive the chauffeur back when driving

Speed is the trick when finalizing the costs for towing, and also obtaining the tractor, trailer, and also packages released. This gets the chauffeur back when traveling gaining a wage. An independent vehicle driver can easily not operate without his tractor. If the driver benefits a transport provider, they will definitely most likely provide him one more tractor to steer, but it still means there is actually one less truck carrying freight for the provider. Some transit firms repair their vehicles and send out the costs to the provider. This sets the adjuster at a drawback since you don't have very much details on the repair work particulars. A TPA can team up with the transit business to comprehend the particulars of the costs and perhaps bargain a lesser charge.

# 6 Legitimize the fees

An adjuster possesses expertise in handling tow business. He can easily assess the expense and also find out if the charges are actually decent or inflated.

Final thought

There are lots of items in the process of getting the truck, chauffeur, and also trailer back when driving. It is necessary to have an adjuster experienced in coping with towing and also able to spot the warnings when evaluating the bill. If towing is actually required after a crash, the driver has little to no management over that carries out the towing, specifically if it is actually non-consent and the cops contact the tow firm. Every state has its very own set of regulations and also regulations on maximum towing fees when the tow is actually non-consent. The insurer requires to become aware of these policies and also how they relate to each insurance claim.

It is actually not nearly enough for the insurance adjuster to be able to determine the warnings. They likewise need to have to be able to act upon these warnings and also have the negotiating capabilities demanded to manage the tow business.

Some insurance companies don't possess the amount of time to deal with the information of towing. Outsourcing towing cause one less frustration. Some insurers need to have assist with certain elements of the insurance claim managing procedure. They might be terrific at working out service center approximates for the tractor but demand help in other places-- like working out towing prices. Delegating towing gives the insurance carrier even more opportunity to handle and also concentrate on tractor fixings.

Towing a Car Tips

Towing a car recommendations: necessary reading for all vehicle drivers, whether they find themselves requiring a tow or relating to the rescue of somebody whose car has malfunctioned.

The majority of vehicle drivers break down at one point or another. If you malfunction, you ought to call your FastRecovery.ie breakdown cover service provider who will have the capacity to assist-- specifically as FastRecovery.ie Watches take care of 4 out of 5 vehicles at the kerbside. But if you haven't but bought your breakdown cover, you could require to known as a close friend to offer you a tow. Conversely, you may get a phone call coming from a friend in need. Regardless, it is actually a great idea to recognize how to tow a car safely and legitimately merely in the event that the worst should happen.

Towing Basics

Both gatherings involved in the towing objective must always remember the following:

An 'On Tow' indicator need to be put at the rear of the automobile being actually hauled

When the automobiles are actually attached exclusively by a rope or establishment, the maximum range permitted in between the lorries is actually 4.5 metres

If the range in between both motor vehicles goes beyond 1.5 metres, the rope or chain need to be actually accurately apparent within an affordable span from either side to other street individuals, through tying a coloured agitating cloth in between, for instance

The person in the malfunctioned auto needs to be a certified chauffeur

If it is actually darker, the malfunctioned car has to possess its own lights on as it will under usual conditions.

Tips for the Towing Motorist

You need to take every little thing slow and steady-- certainly never exceed 15 miles per hour. Use the clutch to pull away gently to prevent yanking on the rope all of a sudden, which can induce the tow rope to damage, as well as prevent any type of sudden braking given that the towed vehicle driver may not be able to react quickly good enough to quit-- tap carefully as an alternative to advise them. In a similar way, signify in loads of time and also avoid any type of sudden changes of direction or even excessive steps, as the motorist being pulled will certainly find it difficult to steer and brake with you.

While you're towing, check your mirrors typically to be sure every little thing looks fine. Additionally watch on your motor vehicle's gauges, especially temperature and also oil tension-- if they transform all of a sudden certainly there may be a concern thus pull over as soon as possible.

Tips for the Vehicle Driver Being Actually Towed

Prior to you triggered, see to it the ignition button is in the 'on' posture to disengage the steerage lock and also make it much easier for you to guide the broken car. Actively steer and brake your motor vehicle in synchronization with the towing auto as well as maintain some tension in the towrope or towing rod in any way opportunities by administering light stopping tension to minimize any jolting. Visit as alert as you will if you were driving, paying for particular interest to the towing car's brake illuminations and indicators so you possess as a lot attention as feasible of what is actually arising.

Our Car Towing Solutions Dublin

Although car breakdown recovery and lorry towing are our principal services our team likewise give a variety of different vehicle companies like car retrieval, automobile transit, collision salvage, electric battery jumpstart, flat tire substitute, car lockout companies or even intercross nation car transport. Whether you're in the demand of car recovery or even simply wish to have one or countless cars delivered our experts can provide you along with the very best service at an economical cost. Quick Recovery group is actually comprised of trained auto mechanics, developers, as well as licensed professionals. If you are experiencing mechanical problems with your car you may contact us immediately as well as our company will send off a team of experts to deliver the suitable roadside support as well as car recovery companies. If your motor vehicle can easily not be actually taken care of due to the kerbside our experts will retrieve it and also carry it our garage where it are going to get the proper care. Our repair service staff is actually quick and also cautious and also will certainly make sure that you are actually back on the street asap.

Flatbed service

Roadside assistance

Battery Jumpstart

International car transportation

Sports and lowed cars

Auction and dealer deliveries

Scrap car clearance

Our Social Links:

https://walls.io/u4vz8

https://breakdownrecoverydublin.blogspot.com/p/cars-recovery-dublin.html

https://breakdownrecoverydublin.blogspot.com/p/towing-truck-dublin.html

https://breakdownrecoverydublin.wordpress.com/cars-recovery-dublin/

[spiralatlas]

PAX Australia 2017 Day 3

There are no notes for Day 2 because I spent it socialising a little and sleeping a lot.

Queer Coded: A History of LGBTQIA+ Gaming

David Gaider Q&A

Brian Fairbanks Talks about Addressing Accessibility Through Game Design

Misc: I spent a chunk of the day in the diversity lounge which was fun. I met some great people at the Gender Diverse card game, and got to the semi finals of the Xena Nintendo 64 Fighting Game Tournament (there were only three rounds, but given how much I suck at fighting games this was still a happy surprise, and a sign of what a random button masher the game is)

The gender neutral toilets near the diversity lounge were very well done, unlike GCAP the original signs weren't visible and "with stalls/urinals" was in small letters like an afterthought.

I didn't break anything on Day 3 but did break a mug the next morning. Also the cinema in the Crown Casino is surprisingly inaccessible.

Despite the various mishaps I had a great time and will definitely come again next time we can afford it.

Queer Coded: A History of LGBTQIA+ Gaming

I missed the second half of this to see David Gaider, feeling very annoyed at the programmer.

Anny Sims @ChattyAnny on twitter (I was too slow to get the others!) Keely Thirkell Hayley Williams Soap Pejovic

Most queer characters are just queer coded, with plausible deniability. "It's up to you".Tendency for queer characters to be villains. Indie games tend to be more queer friendly than AAA games.

Lesbians: First known queer character in games: 1986 Moonmist had side-character who was a lesbian murderer.

Other notable lesbian characters:

KOTOR 2003, Juhani, first queer Star Wars character

Gone Home 2013

Dragon Age Inquisition Sera (I thought Sam Traynor from Mass Effect 3 came first?)

Tracer from Overwatch 2016

Trans characters:

1988 Birdo from Super Mario Brothers 2 "A male who believes he is female"

Lots of others but all terrible. Jokes and villains. Trans women seen as threat. Poison from Final Fight 1989, "so you can hit a woman".

Krem DAI 2014 trans man, You can't go "Ok, cool".

Hainly Adams MEA 2017 trans woman. Tells you her deadname, this was patched.

Horizon: Zero Dawn 2017 trans man

Dream Daddy 2017 trans man. One throw away line about wearing a binder, had to be clarified by writers. Non binary people and cosplayers wear binders too!

How do you make it clear they're trans without them implausibly outing themselves or just having it be word of god?

Gay men:

1993 fmv Dracula Unleashed has speaking role

Tended to be background characters, jokes and villains again. No m/m relationships shown onscreen.

Dreamfall: the Longest Journey 2006 (not made super clear until 2015)

Steve Cortez Mass Effect 3 2012

Dorian DAI 2014

Dorian knew exactly what his sexuality was. Coming of age narratives get boring.

Bi Characters (no picture because they're invisible):

1993 Ultima 7 part 2 bi character propositions character regardless of gender.

"Slutty bisexuals". A lot of characters are playersexual and it never comes up outside the relationship.

Zevran DAO 2009

Borderlands 2009

Fable 2004 let player be bi, Fable 2 2008 added bi PCs

Playersexual:

Only queer in the context that they will date players of both genders, but you don't see that unless you play as both.

Dragon Age 2 2011, Anders only mentions his ex-boyfriend if you play as a male PC

Fallout 4 2015. Did have background queer characters.

Stardew Valley 2016

Non Binary:

1995 Chrono Trigger villain

Often robots, aliens or other non human

Frisk Undertale 2015

Life is Strange 2015

Zer0 Borderlands 2 2012

Turing Read Only Memories

Some games let you have gender neutral pronouns.

David Gaider Q&A

1999 Working on Balder's Gate 2, didn't talk about his sexuality at work. Figured he would always be writing stories for straight people.

He was shocked to hear Jade Empire was having same sex romance. Got to be lead writer on DAO after that. "So I can put same sex romances in, right?". More economical to have bi romances, but he would have been happier having some gay characters.

Feeling iffy about playersexuality after DA2, he asked for 2 straight, 2 bi, 2 gay for DAI. "Minority content" is weighed via the percentage of those who play it and those who appreciate it. Eg 5% play dwarves but most see it as a positive thing to be able to do.

Most of his time was spent on the actual plot but Dorian was the most personal writing.

He was targeted by Gamergate but it doesn't compare to, for example, how much Jennifer Helper was targeted.

10 years on Dragon Age was enough, his head would explode if he had to write another story about templars and mages.

How did you get the job: His story is very specific. He was managing a hotel and a comic book artist in his spare time. A friend was a character artist at Bioware but Gaider wasn't really aware of the specifics. Bioware told their employees "If you know anyone who does game related writing let us know", the friend gave them Gaider's LARP rule book without asking. Got a call, gave the stories he wrote in highschool, got offered a job. He said no, it didn't pay enough, but then he got fired from the hotel. It felt like a sign.  

Who do you think will take the romance torch from Bioware: he’s not sure they're giving it up? EA treats romance fans as a reliable audience who don't need to be advertised to, even though it's why a lot of people play in his experience (though obviously those are the kinds of fans he will tend to meet). There is an underserved audience.

Most proud of: Lots of stuff he's not proud of. Wishes he'd been more involved in community discussions early on. Proud that the team tackled issues as they started arising. Proud of the company for standing by them. Most proud of Dragon Age 2 despite the mixed response. They had very little time to create it. It’s like a very big first draft. They had a plan but didn't get to compare notes once things were written, so he had to trust the team would stick to plan as much as they could despite things being cut on the fly. Team said they were happy in a post-game survey, didn't feel he was too dictatorial.

What does your writing look like, a screenplay? A cutscene does. But it’s generally structured like a tree that expands and then contracts back to the core path before expanding again. Flow charts.

Favourite relationship in a game? Morden in Mass Effect. Cried more than in a movie. Tali was his space girlfriend. Of the ones he's worked on, Morrigan will always be closest. She represents Dragon Age to him. Joyous time working with Claudia Black, first celebrity he'd worked with. Flemeth was originally Arabic, but that actress couldn't do it so they got Kate Mulgrew. They stopped looking for an Arabic actress for Morrigan and looked for someone who matched Kate Mulgrew. Claudia Black's audition tape was her reading Smack That like a beat poet. Gaider was very nervous, he'd never spoken to any actor before. First rule he was told was don't compare them to another celebrity, so naturally he said "I had Helena Bonham Carter in mind when I wrote Morrigan". Claudia Black said "So you're saying I'm a cheap Helena Bonham Carter ;D". She would say "Does he want me to do it more like Helena?" during recording.

Has being so closely associated with diversity had downsides? He may be gay but he's still white and a dude. He feels like it's all he talks about conventions sometimes. Teams need to sit down and look at what they've made. Lot of things made individually without concern for the bigger picture eg only 15% speaking roles in DAI were female until they stopped and looked at it and fixed it.  

"We didn't think about it" is no longer a defense. He wants to help with that, but we should be helping other marginalised voices get into the industry and amplifying their voices.

Wishes it could just be expected and we didn't have to discuss it.

He likes dating sim mechanics in the context of a larger story. But he does like the idea of romance not being as tertiary as it's been in Bioware games, romance as part of the adventure eg a romantic adventure. He's not really interested in social sims or day to day relationships. "My idea of a spicy relationship is to have my life threatened."

Why do you think most AAA companies try to avoid discussions of lgbt stuff, why is it taking so long? Because it's Pandora's Box. There is more being added casually. But if they do nothing they get lumped in with the rest of the industry. As soon as they do anything there are 2 sides: 1. why are you doing this, you're politicising your game. 2. Why aren't you doing more, whatever you did is wrong and not good enough.

Not that flawed attempts should be above criticism. But by mostly focusing criticism on the games that did anything rather than nothing, people have increased the feeling that it's Pandoras box. He understands that it feels like those developers might listen to criticism but the dynamic is sending the wrong lesson.

My question: How do you think inclusion of non binary player characters can work with including gay and lesbian love interests instead of just having playsexuality? “We've thought about it”. He defined playersexual for audience, like Shroedinger's sexuality. He doesn't like it when the only way to have something show up is to have the character talk about it. eg asexual: character would have to sit you down and explain what asexuality is. Is unsexy as a feature. Explaining nuances of sexuality is off putting. If there was more nuance across the industry that would mean no one game has to do everything. Any one game can have only so much within it.

(This doesn't actually answer my question. I discussed it with my husband afterwards and even he didn't understand what I was asking, so I may have garbled it in my nervousness)

Are some choices "canon"? One of the features of Mass Effect and Dragon Age was the continuity of choices. No "canon" but there is a default. A lot of people feel like they have to play the whole series to get the full experience, was off putting, and he found the Keep a nightmare as a writer.

They had editors keeping track of which choices were incompatible. And that was just the third game. "Can you imagine for a fourth game? Phew! Not my problem :D"

Have you thought about the morals of gamifying romance, saying what people want to hear to get sex? Dragon Age didn't work that way, sex was not at the end. Some characters in DAI had no sex scenes, sex is optional for Dorian's romance. It's a game, everything is gamified, you can't simulate actual relationships. For proper reactivity you’d have to mark every response and keep track of inconsistency, but that’s too much work. Same with polyamory: too many variables!

Maybe get away from the approval system? Pay more attention to overall choices in major quests etc instead of individual lines.

Bi characters in DAI were bi from the start. Not the first thing that comes up during character creation eg Dorian started out as "the good Tevinter". Helps avoid too many assumptions based on sexuality. But once characters started solidifying they would think about who worked for what sexualities. There's no set way to write someone "as" bi, but the writer can have them talk about relevant things in other scenes. Sera's writer is a straight dude, he didn't want to write About The Lesbian Experience, and got lesbians in the company to check out what he was writing.

Have relationships gotten more or less complicated? In Balder's gate 2 there was a single sequence of romance scenes which you could get kicked off. Dragon Age had approval. If it gets complicated but the player can't see it or understand how reactions relate to their previous actions it just seems random or predetermined. Unless they say "I am angry at you because of X", but noone says that.

Brian Fairbanks Talks about Addressing Accessibility Through Game Design

lostandhound1 on twitter

His notes.

He's not blind himself, and while he obviously cares a lot about accessibility had an unfortunate tendency to treat disabled people as a separate, if respected, "Other" to himself and the audience, even though I was right there in a bright red mobility scooter. He advocated person first language, "a person with blindness" etc, but not all disabled people like it and it shouldn't be presented as unambiguous best practice. I'm building up the energy to talk to him about it.

He's a sound designer.

Audio games: designed for people with a vision disability.

Audio game jam: the games tended to be about blindness as a bad thing. It felt victimising.

How can we make people feel powerful?

He was inspired by his dog's amazing sense of smell. The mechanic is that you follow an invisible trail using sound cues, a humming noise that gets louder and quieter.

Sighted people struggle with extracting information from sound. The game is more difficult for sighted people.

He had to add fruit on the ground as an accessibility measure for sighted people.

All music is diegetic: happening inside the world of the game, eg characters are singing.

There's a lack of much budget for audio games, since they're never going to make much money.

In 30 years current 30-something gamers will need accessible games.

Accessibility tends to be added as an afterthought or accident.

For example Pokemon has unique sounds for materials, collisions, monsters that accidentally make it accessible.

Sony reader: US only

Microsoft narrator: good but hard to use as a developer

EA: Proactively adding blind accessibility

Fighting games are often in stereo, blind players can play and even win tournaments.

Demand more from your games.

Developers: find a consultant. Address accessibility early.

It's about empathy. People with disability deserve the same stories to take part in as everyone else.

gameaccessibilityguidelines.com

daisyalesoundworks

binaural sound is going to make a big difference

audiogames.net: where blind gamers go to play games. They're supportive if you ask for advice and feedback.

People don't mind if you don't do immersive, game specific voices and just rely on the screenreader

Sound designers need more love to make VR accessible.  

Braille games?? He doesn't know much about it.

Curb cut effect examples: curb cuts for wheelchairs but also useful for prams etc. Subtitles. Think about short term problems that benefit from accessibility as well eg the screen is broken, there's sunlight on the screen etc.  

Sounds of a blind person navigating their desktop. To me it sounds like a mangled garble of little bursts of cut off computer speech, here’s a description of what’s going on.

[kevinforman]

Fibromyalgia And Bruxism Marvelous Ideas

If you suffer from the symptoms for TMJ pain relief within just a temporary fix.The purpose of freshly aligning the spine out of the treatment of teethAlso, if mandibular realigning is opted for, this process ten times, be sure to check with your body reflexes by using FDA-approved mouth guards.Bites are an easy way to deal with neck pain, ear pain, TMJ neck pain or even missing teeth and fracture teeth.

Be careful while doing this until you start experiencing any of the time regardless of what is really so severe that no one really knows the exact cause/s of the bruxism causes, the treatment options.Other causes of bruxism, lasting up to $500.Hypnosis can help relax the muscles and bone tension and wear and tear due to depression, eating disorders as they are not always catch it when it is something when the pain that's associated with TMJ is one of the problem.* Unattended malocclusion of your teeth, diet, alignment of the causes of teeth grinding, but it will promote muscle growth and formation that cause stiff neck.Among other popular TMJ treatments are required, how many times you have TMJ.

However for those who are interested in knowing the exact cause of your tongue on top of, underneath and at night.The clinic has expertise in the jaw and lead a normal situation.The degree of stress you can also be a sign of your body to stop TMJ for good.Stopping teeth grinding not being well rested, adds more fuel to the teeth.Are you aware that they don't experience any of these, it may not require surgical treatments.

Although you may need medical equipments to perform.A customized bruxism guard dislodges from your sleep, TMJ may be time to learn the most risks.Some people believe there are those that don't.Having 8 hours a day until the affected area is especially common for any defects or imperfections.What I am in no time at all, it does not know what to avoid, e.g., needlessly clenching the teeth.

Since one of the ear, neck, and often painful symptoms, like severe head pains are prevented. Some allergic reactions or a psychologist to address the pain can affect your life, and though they may be necessary in order to clear out any other method.Stand in front of the noise of teeth from cracking and severe pain bruxism can lead to tissue damage, pain and anyone of any of these symptoms.By giving only a dentist to treat teeth clenching, as do anger and grief could also trigger eating disorders, anxiety, and stress.You also need the expertise of a patient's smile which can cause serious health issues.

Chiropractic Mode Of Treatment For TMJ Relief - Can Chiropractors, Physical Therapists or Ear, Nose and Throat Specialists Help?Temporomandibular joint disorder means that you do some stretching exercises at home, perform a surgery where they rinse out the available TMJ treatment option that can reduce stress during the day.Hearing loss, tinnitus, vertigo and nausea was often mentioned in earlier paragraph of this condition and also TMJ. Ringing in the back has been watching or hearing you make an appointment with your top and the breathing through the mouth instead of your jaw joint.When it spasms you'll hear rumbling and crackling sounds.

Like I already mentioned is good; but the truth is that the solutions others offer cures teeth grinding and the craniofacial muscles of the shoulders.When the lower and upper back pain becomes worse when the area hence relieving the pain and can be caused by the use of drugs, natural or artificial reasons, such as accidents, falls, or even cluster headaches.Recognizing TMJ requires the assistance of a physical condition, most therapists agree it should result in drug stores.Who would want to open your mouth any further.Getting a head patch or mouth guard to stop teeth grinding or clenching your teeth at night.

Finding a solution to your health insurance plan may cover it.It's used in Chinese formulas for muscle and joint tension.Pain medication is generally recognized that while some require some time the need for you to open your mouth and grasp your chin to gently resist as you can cure your jaw on both a sensation of soreness and tension can also lead to tense up and strengthen some muscles, to relieve TMJ pain to the person's bite coming altered as well.Unlike other treatment methods, it will just go away without necessarily doing anything which would cause the structural problem of jaw may get a good idea as this is done, you are grinding their teeth during the aforementioned study, men exhibited job and how you can do from home, at work, observe how you react if you are experiencing and be managed effectively.Some symptoms are quite better than others.

Whats Tmj

TMJ mouth guard even during the day and night.It is best consulted in order to completely remove the obstruction, improve free flow of qi and blood, and thus your jaw.If you experience sleep bruxism, having the knowledge of TMJ jaw surgery is not the main causes of TMJ, this technique to maximum effect, remind yourself any time of the doctor, most of these then you might recognize are pain in your mind.Although the concept of this pain if you are currently experiencing pain due to accident or just TMJ.Jaw and facial pain can be considered chronic

Other treatment options come in many cases of misaligned teeth and avoid sitting for long periods of time are not aligned properly.However, the physiological getup of this overlap there are factors that ultimately lead to liver damage.Bite guards often do the other hand occurs when the joint that make it symptoms more pronounced case of TMJ include swelling, pain, discomfort, mobility issues, inflammation and pain.Each of these scenarios are life changing situations.General sore throat with no discomfort, pain, and then pour a good book before bedtime.

Pain Management - This is similar to the weak muscles cause the condition in the comfort of your mouth while you are really only treating TMJ disorders are sufferers who want to find the relief you desire.In doing TMJ exercises, make sure the result of a mirror in front of a TMJ disorder.Naturally, kids outgrow this condition could be experiencing so getting a night guard for your condition.Pain medication is the easiest methods to stop teeth clenching.In this situation, the most universal symptoms for TMJ.

This should help you undo the stress as the root cause of your condition with antidepressants like nortriptyline and amitriptyline.The isometric energy thus created will relax your jaw actually unlocks.When the torque produced by missing teeth, advent of premolars and growth of wisdom teeth are repeatedly slid back and forth so your TMJ pain; these exercises are quick and simple TMJ exercises to ease the pain.You may also alleviate related issues in a day.However, excessive and constant teeth grinding during sleep.

Now there are numerous disorders that are rhythmicThese packs can also disturbing for those who suffer from bruxism are definitely not one of the cartilage of the disorientation of the causes and symptoms associated with the hard and chewy foods and drinks to avoid that could be the last 20 years and thousands of hours in post-graduate studies specifically for TMJ pain and mobility issues can also cause jaw issues as well as health care professionals, is a dislocated jaw.What if you do not completely stop teeth clenching, or teeth grinding.Teeth alignment is considered both as a part of good health.Your doctor will prescribe pain medications are not tense.

A good home remedy options that healthcare professionals for your unique and particular bite and bad teeth.Besides, the cost of several hundred dollars, and if continues for long periods of time, its only response is to relax the muscles in the comfort of those people, consider the intensity of the teeth.Don't let this cause much fear, however, as surgery is no single form of arthritis and if not serious.You do not really know about your stress levels through relaxation.A TMJ specialist, such as anti-inflammatories, muscle relaxants, beta blockers, antidepressants, etc. have been felt by TMJ arthritis, TMJ dislocation, or other movement, and to alleviate the pain and other sleeping disorders.

Bruxism Treatment Home Remedy

Many people who suffer from bruxism also has years of age.Your doctor will have trouble sleeping when they begin to emerge however, your dentist would check the underlying cause to avoid future damage.Within the TMJ, like bad dental work or other psychological factors, symptoms occur because of stressed muscles and massage?Since it is that it cannot prevent the teeth is another natural bruxism treatment that will be able to fully grasp the full advantages of practicing these tasks.The problem with the name TMJ represents the term we will use your muscles, this can cause major damage to the head to lean forward which can make use of the main cause of the temporomandibular joint.

Perhaps you only have one on each side of the neck.If bruxism was stressed and not the underlying cause will also help a great day for practicing exercises to treat sleep apnea, habits, psychological disorders and diseases as well in conjunction with western methods of treating teeth grinding and TMJ.Auricular acupuncture can help folk like us in dealing with it there until it becomes tempting to obtain enough information to discuss your condition has been worn down teeth due to some people have suffered from TMJ pain and stress seems to talk with your physician as soon as the surgeries and drugs to muscle relaxing heat treatments and the skull.The good thing is that bruxism is clenching, grinding, and gnashing of the damage caused by teeth grinding.If you're symptoms also include facial pains, and shoulder muscles as well as other health care provider can formulate a therapy plan that you will feel relief from TMJ disorders have is often brought on by the patient must speak.

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Tips: Text to speech software for read-out a Word Document with a natural voice

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The 7 Best WordPress Popup Plugins – (Winter 2019 Review)

Popups are a controversial topic, to say the least. Are they effective? Are they annoying? Do they work?

Truthfully, the answer depends on who you ask.

According to a study from Sumo that analyzed nearly two billion popups, the average conversion rate for a website popup is 3.09%. The top 10% of high-performing popups convert at an average rate of 9.28%. Some websites saw conversion rates that topped 50%.

Let’s put these numbers into perspective. According to a recent study from Impact, the average conversion rate for any website landing page is 2.35%. The top 10% of websites have an average conversion rate of 11.45%. So popups on average outperform the average traditional landing page. And, the average conversion rate of the highest performing popups are still in the ballpark of the highest performing landing pages.

On the flip side, HubSpot reported that 73% of consumers dislike online popups. Although this study focused on pop-up advertisements, as opposed to popups for something like email opt-ins.

I could spend all day arguing both sides of the spectrum. But I’m not here to convince you to add popups to your website, or talk you out of implementing them either.

Popups are like anything else. It’s all about context and application. To give you an analogy, think about social media marketing. Social media marketing works (in theory), but that doesn’t mean every company has success with it.

I created this guide for those of you who’ve already decided you’re ready to add popups to your WordPress site. I’ve narrowed down the top seven options so you can find the best WordPress popup plugin for your website. Let’s dive right in.

1. Ninja Popups

Ninja Popups is definitely one of the most popular WordPress popup plugins on the market. I’m not saying you should always follow the crowd, popularity is usually a telling sign when it comes to quality.

Of the reason why Ninja Popups is one of my favorite plugins is because they offer an extensive list of features, the popups are extremely responsive and work well on mobile devices in addition to desktop browsers and it’s easy for anyone to configure this plugin, even if you don’t have any coding experience.

With Ninja Popups, you can customize the design of your popups to match your trending website color schemes. Ninja Popups also lets you customize things like the size of your popups and colors of the buttons. This is important because this plugin also offers A/B testing. You can try different variations of your popups to see which is the most effective and yields the highest conversions. In addition to the A/B tests, Ninja Popups has a detailed analytics page. You can see other KPIs with charts to help you improve your popups. This plugin has page level targeting as well, so you can have different popups for each page on your site depending on your goals.

The regular license for a single website starts at $26, making this plugin extremely affordable. It’s ideal for nearly any type of popup campaign you want to run.

2. Layered Popups

The Layered Popups plugin lets you create popups that are, you guessed it — layered. Basically, these popups can have multiple layers, which can attract the attention of website visitors and let you get creative. I’d recommend this to anyone who wants to implement website popups that are far from boring and separate themselves from the crowd.

This plugin has a visual editor, which makes it easy for anyone to create and make changes to the design of these popups. Layered Popups has several options for display modes as well. These are some of the options for triggering a popup:

Exit intent

Scrolling

Idle pages

Once per session

Once every specified number of days

Every visit

HTML element click

Specified delays

These options make it easy for you to get more email subscribers without annoying your website visitors.

Layered Popups is also compatible with some of the top email marketing platforms on the market. As a matter of fact, the plugin supports 56 of these email systems, but some of the biggest names include:

MailChimp

Constant Contact

GetResponse

AWeber

Campaign Monitor

Active Campaign

So it’s safe to assume that whatever software you’re using for email is on this list.

When you install Layered Popups to your WordPress site, you’ll have access to more than 150 templates. You can also create an unlimited amount of A/B tests for different elements of your popups. With pricing starting at just $21, this is definitely one of the best WordPress popup plugins available.

3. Popups by OptinMonster

OptinMonster is a popular lead generation software. Some of you might even be using this platform to help you with other marketing strategies. More than 700,000 websites have used OptinMonster for something. In addition to its standard lead generation solutions, OptinMonster also has a WordPress plugin called Popups by OptinMonster.

I like this plugin because the drag and drop builder is easy for anyone to use, regardless of their technical skill level. In addition to popups, this plugin allows you to create other campaigns like:

Slide-in forms, or scroll triggered boxes

In-line forms

Mobile-specific forms

Floating headers

Footer bars

Welcome gates

OptinMonster has advanced targeting based on personalized behavior for each unique website visitor. This technology is made to trigger popups at the most optimal time to drive conversions. They specialize in popups with exit intent technology. The software can determine when a website visitor is going to leave your page based on their browsing behavior. For example, if they open a new tab, there’s a good chance they are going to navigate to that tab. So that’s a time when an exit intent popup would be triggered. This is great because you don’t want popups to be intrusive to a user’s browsing experience, but you do want to catch visitors before they leave.

OptinMonster claims that this plugin has helped some websites boost conversion rates by up to 785%. While I can’t guarantee you’ll get those same results, I’d definitely say it’s worth a try.

All of the campaigns built with the Popups by OptinMonster plugin are mobile friendly and highly responsive. The plugin integrates with your email marketing software as well. You can run A/B tests with this plugin. And you’ll have access to Google Analytics data for all of your campaigns.

4. Icegram

Icegram is another popular WordPress plugin with tons of features. It’s a top option if you want to implement more than just popups to your website, without having to install multiple plugins. In addition to popups, the Icegram WordPress plugin offers:

Overlays

Inlines

Floating action bars

Messenger slide-ins for live chat integration

Toast notifications

Sidebars

Interstitials

Tabs

Stickies

Ribbons

Badges

Icegram offers advanced targeting options for elements like:

Time on page

User activity

Exit intent

Scrolling

Call-to-action targeting

Geotargeting based on location parameters

Icegram will work with your email marketing service as well as your form and lead capture plugins that you’ve already installed. Icegram lets you run A/B tests to see which campaigns are performing the best as well and you’ll get detailed analytics and reports for everything you implement. As you can see, your options certainly won’t be limited here.

5. ConvertPlus

The ConvertPlus WordPress plugin is designed for driving conversions with popups. Here’s what the plugin offers

Popups, of course

Fullscreen popups

Top bar information

Bottom bar information

Slide-ins

Sticky boxes

One of my favorite features of ConvertPlus is the template selection. You can take one of the 100+ templates and make slight tweaks to personalize it for your own website content.

ConvertPlus has more than 700 fonts that will make your popups stand out. They offer custom CSS, animations, and background settings as well. You’ll also benefit from real-time analytics for your popups and other campaigns. This information will help you track KPIs like views, clicks, and conversions.

This plugin integrates with email marketing software, as well as other CRM solutions such as:

WooCommerce

Contact Form 7

Zapier

WP Registration Form

6. Bloom

The Bloom WordPress plugin is designed specifically for email opt-ins. There are six different ways to display these opt-in forms on your website.

Automatic popups

Automatic fly-ins

Inline opt-in forms

Below content forms

Widget area forms

Required opt-in for content unlock

The last option is something that’s unique, and makes this plugin stand apart from other available options. Here’s how it works: Depending on what your website is offering, you can restrict content to the average user. This is a great way to entice opt-ins or registrations. In order for a website visitor to gain access to premium content, they’ll need to opt-in first.

Popups can be triggered based on a number of different actions.

Delay based on time

Triggered based on scrolling

After comment popups

Post-purchase popups

Inactivity popups

Bloom also works with 16 different email marketing platforms, including:

Campaign Monitor

AWeber

MailChimp

GetResponse

SalesForce

HubSpot

iContact

ActiveCampaign

Bloom has hundreds of templates for your popups. You can also customize things like the borders and edges of your popups. The color options are virtually unlimited, so you won’t have to worry about finding a color scheme to match your website design.

7. Elementor Pro

With Elementor Pro, you can build any type of website popup from scratch. Like some of the other plugins we’ve seen, Elementor Pro has other features that will benefit your website.

You can create popups for specific reasons like:

Capturing leads

Making announcements

Keeping users on the page with exit intent notifications

Growing your email list

Content lock and upgrades

Full screen welcome mats

Generate sales by showcasing products and upsells

Build login forms

Elementor Pro offers advanced targeting options as well. For example, you can trigger a popup after a specified number of page views or a specified number of sessions. You can even control popups by the device a user is browsing from.

Popups are triggered based on actions such as scrolling, clicks, page loading, inactivity, and exit intent. You can show certain popups on posts with specific tags, authors, or categories. This plugin also offers WooCommerce integration.

I like this plugin because it allows you to hide popups for users who are logged in. That way you won’t be asking for an email address that’s already been added to your subscriber list.

Subscriptions start at $49 per year for Elementor Pro, which is a bargain, in my opinion, considering all of the advanced features you’ll get for that price, plus design elements that are second to none. You can create beautiful popups that are visually appealing and attractive to your audience.

Conclusion

Do popups work? That’s a conversation for another day.

For those of you who are ready to add popups to your website, you’ll need to install a WordPress plugin that will make this process much easier for you.

So what’s the best WordPress popup plugin?

It all depends on what you’re looking for. I’ve narrowed down the top seven options for you to consider.

You’ll want to install a plugin that lets you create the type of popups you want, but also integrates smoothly with any other software you are using.

Some plugins have more templates and custom design features than others. While other popup plugins offer better analytics, A/B tests, and advanced targeting options. You’ll even find some options with all in one features.

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