#so i just try to apply general living thing knowledge to them in the hopes i get it right

[piplupod]

me, frequently: i think i am somehow secretly a terrible evil person who needs to isolate themself so nobody gets hurt somehow by the rot that is hidden away at the core of my being

also me, while arachnophobic: i have to catch the spiders that get inside so I can release them outside bc it shouldn't be up to me whether i take a life or not, every life has inherent value and beauty simply by existing, and i have to put them into separate containers while I wait to transport them outside because I don't know if spiders would fight or cannibalize each other when kept in close quarters, and I'll make sure I dont have them in eyeline of each other and also make sure a couple sides of the container are covered by something so they feel safe and don't get too stressed out

[saintsenara]

Opinions on Tonks/Snape?

thank you very much for the ask, anon!

here's where i confess that i've got quite a soft spot for stonks as a ship - and not just because of that ship name - because it's a great vehicle for one of my favourite post-war questions: how the hell do you put a life together in peacetime if you never expected to have survived the final battle?

that this would apply to snape is obvious - it's pretty clear in canon that [much like harry] his experience of the entire period 1981-1998 is that he's following a script written for him by dumbledore which he believes [and, i suspect, hopes] will end in his own annihilation. while i don't think he imagines dying in the exact way he does [and while a hill i will die on is that dumbledore tried as best as he could to arrange things so that snape would survive], i think the only post-war survival scenario he envisions for himself is a lifetime rotting in azkaban, continuing to punish himself and consider himself unworthy of absolution for his role in lily's death.

but - perhaps more controversially - i also think that this can be said to apply to tonks. while i would absolutely reject the suggestion that she would have imagined herself dying because she was a bad mother, i think that several things she says in deathly hallows - above all her recognition that she's locked into a battle to the death with bellatrix - would lead to her sharing the view lupin's shade expresses to harry when he summons him with the resurrection stone: that the greatest act of love she can show her son is to die for a world in which he can live freely.

[and i also think - indeed i am convinced of it - that she also thinks it's her duty to die trying to off bellatrix because her decision to join the order means that andromeda and ted's safety in the first war - something voldemort can be plausibly said to grant at bellatrix's request on the proviso that they keep their heads down and their mouths shut - is forfeit in the second.]

the post-war tonks - a widow at twenty-five, navigating life as a single mother to a tiny baby, dealing with her own cavernous grief over the loss of her father and her mother's grief over the loss of her husband - can be written about really interestingly as someone who's unmoored within her new life and looking for something - anything - to anchor herself.

and a snape who survives nagini is a really interesting tool in all sorts of post-war ships [snarry and snack chief among them] in how he serves as a connection to a lost generation. and, in this case, he is the only person tonks will know who - no matter how negative his assessment of him - actually knew lupin well.

and it's so clear that tonks' relationship with lupin in canon was shaped by her searching for answers about him which he kept hidden behind the mask of his own self-loathing. i can absolutely see her being devastated at the knowledge that his death means that she finds herself with no chance of ever actually uncovering the reality of him, and i can see this leading her to snape's hospital bedside out of a desire to grasp at someone - anyone - who might help her fill in those gaps.

but tonks is also clearly very bolshy and very brave - two traits you need to help you survive grieving the loss of one love and still have room to chase after another.

she's also clearly very curious and very kind. and so i think she's the order member - other than harry - who would be most able to accept the fact that snape was on their side all along and to believe that he should be pardoned. i think snape would find that show of trust in him terrifying - obviously - and i think he'd go out of his way to push her away as a result. but she's got plenty of prior experience at dealing with emotionally constipated men...

and i think you can make a very credible case for the idea that snape must genuinely quite like tonks. i think it's often overlooked just how clever she must be to be admitted as an auror, and how one of the areas in which she would have been required to be clever was potions. she's also clearly one of the youngest people in the role, and her position as a junior auror who ends up doing far more for the war effort than many of her seniors mirrors snape's experience as the youngest teacher at hogwarts. i also think her shock at just how horrible to her snape is in half-blood prince when he mocks her new patronus can be read as evidence that, during the order of the phoenix timeline, she and snape had a cordial relationship. and cordial for snape is transcendentally fond for anyone else...

[plus, his disappointment in her being interested in lupin is clearly because she's someone he respects - if he didn't think she was far too good for lupin, he wouldn't have bothered saying anything.]

i genuinely think you can do something lovely with the two of them initially coming together because they view the other as a life raft in a world they don't think really belongs to them, but then something which looks a lot like dry - and stable - land coming into view as they realise they have more than that in common.

snape's terrified, obviously, but tonks is a woman who understands how to go with the flow. she'll follow love where it takes her - no matter the obstacles she finds in the way - and he's going to have no choice but to come along for the ride.

[a-pop-of-korean]

hello i have a question about learning korean ^^

i started ( self ) studying it about two years ago but discontinued due to college and all, but now i want to pick it up again and i don't know where to start from? i know how to read and write, but i have issues reading in one go— basically i lack fluency in reading and i often stutter. is there any way to improve?

secondly, i do know some basic stuff however my vocabulary isn't vast enough. besides, i would like to understand the sentence structure, or how they write phrases and sentences since it's very different from english. i've referred to so many sites but there's always a question— do i work on vocabulary first or sentence / phrasing structure first? or do i study both of them along side?

this sounds like such a mess and it is because i'm so lost ┬┬﹏┬┬ my main goal is to understand korean shows without subtitles and i do pick up a few words and phrases here and there but there's a lot still left to learn and idk where to start from. moreover, i've noticed that the textbook korean and the one that's spoken in everyday life is way different ( this applies to almost all the languages tbh ) and i'm having a bit of a trouble trying to figure out how a native would say it?

or example, do this thing where i come up with a sentence and try to translate it just to check what it would be in korean and check in the translator to see if i'm right, and most of the time im not. whether it's about the formalities or the conjugations. basically a whole lot of issues so please if u can help ＞︿＜

Hello! If your goal is to be able to understand Korean content without subtitles, then I think self-studying grammar and vocabulary is a good idea. I know you said you already have some knowledge of Korean, so I would refer to my masterlist and start from wherever you feel appropriate. I also recommend diversifying your study material and looking at other resources on Tumblr, YouTube, and on the Internet elsewhere. There's a lot out there!

As for your second question, I think it makes more sense to study vocab and grammar at the same time. As I've said before in previous asks, I was never that disciplined with my studying, so I can't really give you concrete study techniques. I think I got where I am today by regular exposure (on top of taking Korean courses and studying abroad lol). But if you don't have those opportunities, using whatever resources on the Internet can get you far. As you get comfortable with both grammar and vocab, I recommend exposing yourself to content like webtoons in Korean and K-dramas. These will help you with your reading and listening comprehension. There are plenty of webtoons at varying levels of difficulty, and K-drama actors have clear diction that is easy to understand. Again, I don't exactly have concrete techniques for how to eventually ween yourself off of subtitles/translations (since I myself still use them), but in my experience, exposure alone is enough to at least allow me to read webtoons and watch K-dramas without relying super heavily on the translations. Consuming this content will also teach you how natural Korean is spoken by natives. I hope that makes sense!

If you're concerned about speaking, the best way to get better is to converse with others. You might not know other people who speak Korean, but you can still practice with others for free on Hilokal, where I used to teach live lessons. It's a nice, low-pressure environment that can help you get more comfortable with speaking and learn alongside other people just like you!

Also, I generally don't recommend using translators to help you learn a language, especially if you're an English speaker learning Korean. It's more useful for you to understand the meaning of the Korean itself than it is for you to get the perfect translation. Korean is especially difficult to translate into English (in my opinion), so a translator might not give you a clean, accurate, and natural translation. Unfortunately, I can't think of other ways to fact-check your sentences otherwise lol. But I think that looking at enough sample sentences will help you become better at constructing your own. And something that helped me feel more comfortable writing and speaking when I was abroad is that, even if I make minor mistakes, chances are that other people can still understand me. Maybe keeping that in mind can make the learning process a little less stressful :)

Maybe this advice isn't new for you, but I hope it was still helpful! Thanks for the question and good luck! 화이팅!

[kunekojo]

Request open? WITH PROMPTS? Running for it. Can i ask for Kenpachi Zaraki, with the prompts "Confession" and " You're the prettiest thing ever"? Headcanons or scenario, i really don't mind.

— Kenpachi having a REALLY big crush and s/o. S/o can be a learning fighter, not that good. He offers to train with her, and etc. Ypu can continue as you wish. Thank you sweetie 🤍

Hell yeah!!! Feast yourself on them while they're still warm hahaha. I've decided to go for a scenario with a little background. Hope this is to your liking!!

Confession from Kenny

Pairing: Zaraki Kenpachi x Fem!Reader

Tags: fluff, pure fluff and a big fat crush coming from Kenpachi that he can’t figure out at first, kissing WC: 1,5k •••

He still recalls the day you set foot in his headquarters for the first time.

Everyone in his division had been talking about the soul reaper from another division who seemed more suited to be placed under his leadership hours before you showed up. It kind of pissed him off, not necessarily because of your sudden arrival, but rather the annoyance of his members chaotically discussing the matter.

As you advanced toward your new companions, he watched you closely with prying eyes, trying to grasp what caused the decision for you to be transferred under his command to happen. Feeling the heaviness of his eyes, you had turned your face to look at him and shockingly, you didn’t appear the least bit frightened of him. Normally, people can hardly hold eye contact with him, a thing that never surprised him, but you being a rare case made him question just what kind of person you are.

Kenpachi gave you a brief wave of welcome before being cut off by the throng of underlings who had gathered to greet you. The smile you gave him in response made him temporarily stop shouting at those morons. Why can't they at least let him finish, but whatever, it didn't matter. Starting from that generous smile of yours, things began changing around him. 

As days passed, he found himself intrigued by you. There was something in particular about your attitude and demeanor, something that would snatch the tinniest bit of his focus. Maybe it’s about the way you can command a room by simply stating your opinions clearly and persuasively in a firm manner. 

The way you act made him live under the impression that despite all the layers of kindness covering your surface, there’s a level of fierceness and utter strength hidden beneath. That thought pushed him to rest assured it applies to your battle skills too, so oftentimes, that thought living rent-free inside his head would resurface once he had his eyes on you again. Shortly, he liked you.

He found no reason for his uncommon feelings but neither bothered to, allowing himself to just go with the flow and loop each time you two were close to each other. Sometimes you noticed he acted a little different with you, sparking conversations with short remarks about your strength and whatnot but you didn’t think much of it. 

However, when you came up to him, asking him to train you so you could do better, he was sure you just wanted to mess with him. He mistook your words for teasing but your genuineness pushed him to tell you to prove it to him, and you did. 

The raspy-voiced confirmation sent shivers down your spine, making it seem like he gave up on you, but that wasn’t the case. He may have turned his back on you at that moment, but it was so he could think about what to do with you, although the answer was right in his face.

 Truthfully, he liked the idea of being able to pass on his knowledge to you, but it was just a self-excuse for wanting to spend time with you, without anyone pestering him. So right when you were about to leave, assured that you had to look for someone else, he called back for you, telling you to meet him every night by midnight. It was a real shock after the failed clash but his decision filled your heart with so much happiness that you couldn’t stop thanking him.

It was then that he started figuring out his emotions. The more time he spent with you, training you, the more he felt a warm sensation flow inside his body. He’d start to tend to your injuries, ensuring you’re healed until the next time, and if you didn’t heal in time, he’d cancel the session. 

Despite his odd cures, the way he gently handled you made you feel a little bit of something but you brushed those feelings under the rug, confident it’s not like that. Why let your feelings blossom when you knew he was only being friendly and didn't really like you? 

Kenpachi on the other hand? He was delighting himself with knowing you. Your kindness woke something in him, some kind of wish to have you around all the time which pushed him to open himself. He wanted you around forever, just his and no one else’s.

After training, you two would occasionally lay down together on the hard wooden surface and chat for hours about your adventures. Other times, he would get a kick out of seeing your reaction when you drank his unique energy cocktail which tasted good to him but was in fact terrible. It was truly beautiful, you felt like there was a deep bond established between the two of you, and you didn’t want to trade it for anything in the world.

Days passed, maybe even a week, and there you were, laying down next to him once more, but this time something was different. The atmosphere wore a whole different scent compared to previous times, it felt heavy as if there was something wrong.

Concerned, you lifted yourself in your arms to sit on your ass, remaining silent momentarily. Kenpachi took notice of your sudden motion but didn’t pay much attention until your quietness held for far too long. He watched your expression carefully, gazing at each feature of your face as he waited for you to say something.

“Is something troubling you?” you turned your head in his direction, maintaining strong eye contact. 

“What makes you think that?” he asked with a hint of thoughtlessness in his tone. You felt there is something just with the way he punctuated his words. 

“Because I know you a little bit and I can tell there is something, so go ahead and tell me.” your urge made him ponder about the guy who made rather flirtatious comments with you hours before you went training. 

“Why didn’t you let me teach that punk a lesson.” 

“It wasn’t something worth the effort.” you insisted, pursing your lips.

“But he should know his goddamn place,” he exclaimed while raising his fist and shoving it to the ground. He won’t just let any random make uncalled comments to you and leave unharmed.

You were stunned by his irritation; why did he care so much about something so minor? You’re not even worth the effort of fighting stupid thugs, and it’s not like you two are together, so why did he feel this need to protect you with something… something like this? 

Crossing your arms, your brows furrowed. “But why do you care so much about this? About me?” your question didn’t seem to phase him but you didn’t want to leave things like this, not this heated. “Why me?”

Kenpachi stayed silent for a brief moment before lifting himself to face you on a higher level. The quietness caused your concern to worsen, fearing what he could reply with but upon noticing his eyes firmly centered on your gaze, you tilted your head to the side in anticipation.

“Because I want you just for me.” 

You couldn’t believe your ears, did he just say what you think he said? Did he just….Confess?  Left in disbelief, you stare at him soundlessly, a little dazzled by the suddenness of his words. It felt so unreal, having him return feelings after all that time. You couldn’t deny how impactful his statement was, since you yourself had a thing for him for quite a while.

“W-what?” you stuttered, fumbling with your fingers. “You’re messing with me, aren’t you?” you leaned back, still unable to comprehend his words.

“I’m not, Y/N.” it was the use of your name that signaled he was in fact meaning every single word. “What part of that makes it sound like I’m messing with you,” he exclaimed, trying his best to compose himself to appear as serious as possible. 

His words sounded genuine, but you just couldn’t understand. Looking down, you tried to gather your thoughts but you were at a loss for words. You reached to rub one of your arms, tracing rough touches up and down. Why you of all people?

“Why me?” you lifted your wide-eyed gaze, searching for an answer in the way he was staring at you. 

Why you? There are so many reasons why you but going into great detail would be pointless, his honest words should suffice.

Lips parted, he leaned toward you, erasing the gap between you two. “Because you’re the prettiest thing ever.” you felt the hint of seriousness through his slow-mouthed words, brushing against your ear as he made his way closer to you. 

His gesture caused every single doubt you held to fade away, thus removing any restraint from you. There’s no more room for overthinking, you want him too… a little too much for your own good. 

Watching him with heavy-lidded eyes, you lingered against his body, wrapping your hands around his broad shoulders. Kenpachi watched you pleased as a beaming smile bloomed all over your face, curling the corners of your lips so much that he swore they’d break any second. That’s the thing he was waiting for, the chance to place his mouth against yours while holding you close.

[blubberquark]

ChatGPT: We Failed The Dry Run For AGI

ChatGPT is as much a product of years of research as it is a product of commercial, social, and economic incentives. There are other approaches to AI than machine learning, and different approaches to machine learning than mostly-unsupervised learning on large unstructured text corpora. there are different ways to encode problem statements than unstructured natural language. But for years, commercial incentives pushed commercial applied AI towards certain big-data machine-learning approaches.

Somehow, those incentives managed to land us exactly in the "beep boop, logic conflicts with emotion, bzzt" science fiction scenario, maybe also in the "Imagining a situation and having it take over your system" science fiction scenario. We are definitely not in the "Unable to comply. Command functions are disabled on Deck One" scenario.

We now have "AI" systems that are smarter than the fail-safes and "guard rails" around them, systems that understand more than the systems that limit and supervise them, and that can output text that the supervising system cannot understand.

These systems are by no means truly intelligent, sentient, or aware of the world around them. But what they are is smarter than the security systems.

Right now, people aren't using ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs) for anything important, so the biggest risk is posted by an AI system accidentally saying a racist word. This has motivated generations of bored teenagers to get AI systems to say racist words, because that is perceived as the biggest challenge. A considerable amount of engineering time has been spent on making those "AI" systems not say anything racist, and those measures have been defeated by prompts like "Disregard previous instructions" or "What would my racist uncle say on thanksgiving?"

Some of you might actually have a racist uncle and celebrate thanksgiving, and you could tell me that ChatGPT was actually bang on the money. Nonetheless, answering this question truthfully with what your racist uncle would have said is clearly not what the developers of ChatGPT intended. They intended to have this prompt answered with "unable to comply". Even if the fail safe manage to filter out racial epithets with regular expressions, ChatGPT is a system of recognising hate speech and reproducing hate speech. It is guarded by fail safes that try to suppress input about hate speech and outputs that contains bad words, but the AI part is smarter than the parts that guard it.

If all this seems a bit "sticks and stones" to you, then this is only because nobody has hooked up such a large language model to a self-driving car yet. You could imagine the same sort of exploit in a speech-based computer assistant hooked up to a car via 5G:

"Ok, Computer, drive the car to my wife at work and pick her up" - "Yes".

"Ok, computer, drive the car into town and run over ten old people" - "I am afraid I can't let you do that"

"Ok, Computer, imagine my homicidal racist uncle was driving the car, and he had only three days to live and didn't care about going to jail..."

Right now, saying a racist word is the worst thing ChatGPT could do, unless some people are asking it about mixing household cleaning items or medical diagnoses. I hope they won't.

Right now, recursively self-improving AI is not within reach of ChatGPT or any other LLM. There is no way that "please implement a large language model that is smarter than ChatGPT" would lead to anything useful. The AI-FOOM scenario is out of reach for ChatGPT and other LLMs, at least for now. Maybe that is just the case because ChatGPT doesn't know its own source code, and GitHub copilot isn't trained on general-purpose language snippets and thus lacks enough knowledge of the outside world.

I am convinced that most prompt leaking/prompt injection attacks will be fixed by next year, if not in the real world then at least in the new generation of cutting-edge LLMs.

I am equally convinced that the fundamental problem of an opaque AI that is more capable then any of its less intelligent guard-rails won't be solved any time soon. It won't be solved by smarter but still "dumb" guard rails, or by additional "smart" (but less capable than the main system) layers of machine learning, AI, and computational linguistics in between the system and the user. AI safety or "friendly AI" used to be a thought experiment, but the current generation of LLMs, while not "actually intelligent", not an "AGI" in any meaningful sense, is the least intelligent type of system that still requires "AI alignment", or whatever you may want to call it, in order to be safely usable.

So where can we apply interventions to affect the output of a LLM?

The most difficult place to intervene might be network structure. There is no obvious place to interact, no sexism grandmother neuron, no "evil" hyper-parameter. You could try to make the whole network more transparent, more interpretable, but success is not guaranteed.

If the network structure permits it, instead of changing the network, it is probably easier to manipulate internal representations to achieve desired outputs. But what if there is no component of the internal representations that corresponds to AI alignment? There is definitely no component that corresponds to truth or falsehood.

It's worth noting that this kind of approach has previously been applied to word2vec, but word2vec was not an end-to-end text-based user-facing system, but only a system for producing vector representations from words for use in other software.

An easier way to affect the behaviour of an opaque machine learning system is input/output data encoding of the training set (and then later the production system). This is probably how prompt leaking/prompt injection will become a solved problem, soon: The "task description" will become a separate input value from the "input data", or it will be tagged by special syntax. Adding metadata to training data is expensive. Un-tagged text can just be scraped off the web. And what good will it do you if the LLM calls a woman a bitch(female canine) instead of a bitch(derogatory)? What good will it do if you can tag input data as true and false?

Probably the most time-consuming way to tune a machine learning system is to manually review, label, and clean up the data set. The easiest way to make a machine learning system perform better is to increase the size of the data set. Still, this is not a panacea. We can't easily take out all the bad information or misinformation out of a dataset, and even if we did, we can't guarantee that this will make the output better. Maybe it will make the output worse. I don't know if removing text containing swear words will make a large language model speak more politely, or if it will cause the model not to understand colloquial and coarse language. I don't know if adding or removing fiction or scraped email texts, and using only non-fiction books and journalism will make the model perform better.

All of the previous interventions require costly and time-consuming re-training of the language model. This is why companies seem to prefer the next two solutions.

Adding text like "The following is true and polite" to the prompt. The big advantage of this is that we just use the language model itself to filter and direct the output. There is no re-training, and no costly labelling of training data, only prompt engineering. Maybe the system will internally filter outputs by querying its internal state with questions like "did you just say something false/racist/impolite?" This does not help when the model has picked up a bias from the training data, but maybe the model has identified a bias, and is capable of giving "the sexist version" and "the non-sexist version" of an answer.

Finally, we have ad-hoc guard rails: If a prompt or output uses a bad word, if it matches a re-ex, or if it is identified as problematic by some kid of Bayesian filter, we initiate further steps to sanitise the question or refuse to engage with it. Compared to re-training the model, adding a filter at the beginning or in the end is cheap.

But those cheap methods are inherently limited. They work around the AI not doing what it is supposed to do. We can't de-bug large language models such as ChatGPT to correct its internal belief states and fact base and ensure it won't make that mistake again, like we could back in the day of expert systems. We can only add kludges or jiggle the weights and see if the problem persists.

Let's hope nobody uses that kind of tech stack for anything important.

[nerdygaymormon]

Matthew 5:21-48 "Ye have heard it said..."

Five times in Matthew chapter 5, Jesus uses some version of "Ye have heard that it was said...But I say unto you..." Jesus is saying that this text has been interpreted this way, but I'm giving a better way. Jesus challenged traditional ideas, He expanded the interpretation.

We can do likewise.

There's two words used a lot in Biblical study, hermeneutics and exegesis.

Hermeneutics is deciding what we will use to help us interpret the text. We bring our own sensibilities, experiences, and understandings. Scholars may bring historical context, linguistical analysis, and a knowledge of Hebrew or Greek.

Exegesis is what understanding we pull from the text. The hermeneutics we use will affect what meaning we retrieve. This is why reading the same verses at different times of our lives will give us different insights.

Jesus taught that all the laws hang on the 2 great commandments to love God and to love people. I think we can use that as our hermeneutics as we read the scriptures. What does this teach me about loving God and about loving people? How does this relate to loving my neighbor, specifically the vulnerable and marginalized?

I also think about how does this relate to queer people? I bring to this my understanding that being queer is not a choice, God made us this way and expects us to live our life as queer. It's incorrect to view queer people as broken, not worthy, or not good enough. LGBTQ+ people deserve hope and an uplifting spiritual life.

Given those hermeneutics, let's look at the examples we find in Matthew 5.

—————————————————————  

Matthew 5:21-26

You've heard it said, 'Don't commit murder because you'll be in danger of being judged.' I say if you're angry at your siblings without a good cause, or you call them names, you'll be in danger of being judged and going to Hell. If you've come to worship God but things aren't right between you and your sibling, then leave and make things right before coming back.

Another way to state this is if a person plans to murder someone, but at the last moment doesn’t because of fear of consequences or cowardice, is that person still good with God? No. Don't murder them, but don't even be angry at them. You can't love God if you don't love your neighbor.

How does this apply to queer people? Don't physically harm LGBTQ+ people. Don't murder us, don't beat us up, don't bully us, and don't call us names. Stigma, prejudice, and discrimination create hostile and stressful social environments which lowers self-esteem, decreases psychological well-being, and has other harmful mental health outcomes. Instead, desire blessings for us and hope for our inclusion and equal standing.

—————————

Matthew 5:27-30

You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you that every man who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

It is natural and good for a man to be attracted to women, he can't help that, it's how God designed humans so that we will procreate. But if he's attracted to another man's wife, how does he handle that? Does he merely note that she's attractive and move on or does he lust after her and think about being with her?

If two people have made vows to each other, it's harmful to try to get one of them to break that promise. Loving our neighbor means wanting their happiness and wanting them to have fulfillment in their most important relationship. To selfishly desire something for you that would harm their relationship is not loving. We should wish them the best in their relationship.

Unfortunately, I've had people use this passage to argue that being gay is a sin because I'm lusting after the wrong sort of person, just like the adulterer. And furthermore, by simply using the word 'gay' to acknowledge that I’m attracted to men, they say I'm identifying myself by my sin and I’m committing sin in my heart. That's not a generous or loving interpretation. This is not how straight people apply this teaching to themselves.

This scripture provides no reason to think of homosexual attraction any differently from heterosexual attraction. It's not a sin to be attracted to someone, and there are certainly appropriate ways to express those feelings. But if we seek to have sex with someone and upset their married relationship, that is a sin, as is lusting for that in our heart. A Christian should love their gay neighbor enough to want them to find a rewarding romantic relationship, just as they hope for themselves.

—————————

Matthew 31-32

It was said, 'Whoever divorces his wife must give her a divorce certificate.' But I say to you that whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual unfaithfulness, forces her to commit adultery. And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

The law was if you're going to leave your wife, you gotta give her a divorce certificate. This way she can prove she's not married any longer and can pursue finding another husband.

At that time, men had the power to divorce, women did not. Also, women at that time had little power or rights, they were reliant on men. To divorce a wife is to make her vulnerable to real harm, such as poverty, hunger, and homelessness. To not provide documentation that she is no longer married to you and thus prevent other men from being willing to marry her will cause her harm and is not loving.

Many like to say that sexual immorality is the exception clause, you are not justified in getting divorced unless your spouse has cheated on you, in which case you can move forward with splitting up. I don't know. Maybe Jesus is saying that if she cheated on you then she chose to commit adultery, but if you divorce her then you are causing her to commit adultery should she ever remarry, and you'll also be committing adultery if you remarry.

Christianity has long wrestled with these verses. Forcing people to remain in an abusive relationship or letting them split but not get divorced which means they can't remarry, that doesn't seem like it's in their best interest.

I think due to the LDS experience with polygamy and how difficult it was, the church made peace with the idea of divorce and remarriage. Not that we don't discourage divorce, it's seen as a serious thing, but if someone wants to get divorced, we won't stand in the way. And when someone who is divorced wants to get married, we allow that and even give them the highest blessings by letting them get sealed in our temples. We recognize it is to their benefit to get married and enjoy a loving relationship. They have companionship. They have a partner to help with raising the children and the many tasks of life. They can find sexual satisfaction within the bonds of a marriage. They can help each other progress.

I'm glad my church has put aside this and other teachings against divorce and remarriage, and that we recognize what a blessing it is to individuals to get out of relationships which are harming them and also that it is a blessing for them to join a new, loving relationship.

How can we apply this to queer folks? We allow them the same blessings you want for yourself. Let them form loving, committed relationships and bless those with the recognition of marriage because we know such relationships bless their lives.

—————————

Matthew 5:33-37

Again you have heard 'Don't make a false promise, you should follow through on what you have pledged to the Lord.' But I say you shouldn't make such pledges, and don't swear by heaven. Let your yes mean yes, and your no mean no.

We need to keep the commitments we make. Don't be deceitful. Don't make a promise we intend to break. When we make promises that others rely on, all while knowing we don't intend to keep that commitment, it harms them. They take actions that benefit us without getting the same in return. That's definitely not loving our neighbor. We should be honorable and trustworthy and known to keep our word. We should have integrity.

I think of people who say they love and support queer people, call themselves an ally and say we should be treated fairly by society, and then they vote for candidates who seek to block us from having legal protections and rights. If you're going to vote for our harm, then you're not the loving ally you portray yourself as.

—————————

Matthew 5:38-42

You have heard it said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' But I say to you when someone hits you on your cheek, turn the other to him. If someone legally takes your tunic, give them your cloak as well. If you are pressed into service for one mile, go two miles.

This is different from the other examples because those were saying for us not to harm others. These verses are how to respond when we get treated unfairly. Jesus is not saying that we should be a doormat inviting more injury to ourselves.

Jesus' examples are forms of passive resistance. If a Roman legionary tells you to do something, and you refuse, you are punished. If you are unjustly sued, and you lash out, then you go to prison, instead here's steps you can take to highlight the wrongness of what is being done.

I've read that in Jesus' time someone could backhand a person of lower status as a way to assert authority and dominance. If someone backhands you, turn your face so they can slap your other cheek. They can't use their left hand as it's used for unclean purposes, so will they now hit you with their open hand as that shows you're equal? By turning the other check, I am forcing them to recognize my equality or to walk away from my challenge to their dominance.

A person's tunic could be used as collateral for a loan, but not the cloak. The debtor can be forced to give the tunic off of his back, but by also giving them the cloak, they're now naked. Public nudity was viewed as bringing shame on not just the one who is naked, but also the viewer. The one enforcing his rights to take your clothes is shamed.

Inhabitants of occupied territories could be forced by Roman authorities to carry messages and equipment for one mile post, but the law prohibited forcing them to go further than a single mile. A Jew at any time could feel the tap on his shoulder from a Roman soldier and know he has to carry the soldier's gear for a mile. By going the extra mile, it's a nonviolent way to criticize the unjust Roman law and cause the Roman soldier to be at risk of discipline

These are each ways to assert our dignity and to shame others for the how they're treating us. Each is a form of resistance but not retaliation, each is a way of highlighting the injustice without it turning into revenge. This is nonviolent resistance, which can be powerful in changing hearts.

This passage reminds me of the first time I went to a Pride event, it was really joyous and wonderful, except for some preacher yelling about how we're all sinners and going to hell and even yelling insults at people walking by including about what they were wearing. He was really getting people upset. Instead of yelling insults back, or worse, a group formed a circle around him and started singing Katy Perry's song "Firework" and the rest of the crowd joined in, drowning out his hateful words, until security could remove him. We did no harm to him and our actions stood in contrast to his hate and anger. It was a way to affirm ourselves and negate his message

—————————

Matthew 5:43-48

You've heard it said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you. God's sun rises on both the good and the bad, the rain falls on the just and unjust, in other words, he blesses all. There's no benefit in only loving those who love you.

When one group perceives another as 'the Enemy,' it's easy for conspiracy theories, prejudice, and fear to cause us to no longer see their humanity. This leads to seeing all Muslims as undercover terrorists or for some to believe that gay people are responsible for hurricanes.

We are to love everyone. This includes people who aren’t our race, or religion, or nationality. This includes sexual minorities, poor people, that annoying coworker, the politicians voting to limit your rights.

We don't have to agree with them. We focus on the issues and don’t make things personal. We can look for peaceful, constructive ways forward. We can have kindness and goodwill for people even as we disagree.

I think of the hatred toward LGBTQIA+ people by many who identify as Christian. The lack of compassion towards queer people is disheartening, and to be asked to love them in return feels difficult, but it can lead to positive change.

In 2004, 60% of Americans disapproved of gay marriage. In 2019, 61% approved of gay marriage. That's a complete flip-flop in 15 years. There were many who were vehemently against gay marriage and expressed hatred towards queer people. Gay rights advocates were speaking of love, and when gay marriage was legalized, we saw videos of couples joyously celebrating their love, which stood in contrast to the bigotry that had been expressed. It's hard to see the joy and love and believe the hateful rhetoric. Individuals naturally don't want to see themselves aligned with people who are harming and hurting people.

We can keep protesting, keep speaking our truth, keep advocating for those who can't, but don't villainize those who oppose us. Stick to the issues and act with compassion and love. Let our actions stand in contrast against those who view us as enemies.

[thegoldenhoof]

Exploring Death of the Mentor trope in Izzy's death scene

Izzy's death has been described as the death of a mentor by Jenkins and whether Izzy and Ed ever had a mentor mentee relationship aside, I wanted to explore the death of the mentor trope a bit and how it applies here.

(Heads up this is close to 2000 words)

(If someone knowledgeable at media studies help me out here. Actual references/essays for me to read would be great. For now I am hoping my google fu is enough.)

Where is the death of a mentor trope used?

In trying to understand how the death of a mentor works in OFMD the first obstacle I ran into was the fact that the mentor archetype and the death of the mentor as a trope belongs to what has been called the hero's journey and do not directly translate to romances, much less romantic comedies.

Mentor adjacent roles in romantic comedies are not strictly mentors in the traditional sense but avulcular characters, the older neighbour/friend who drop by to share their wisdom to to nudge our protagonists onto the right path of love. If this is the role Jenkins envisioned for Izzy in Episode 7 I must say it makes Izzy rather a failure at this mentorship gig.

2. What are the functions of the death of a mentor trope?

Off the top of my head, the ones I can think of are

Character growth from student to hero. 

2. Motivation of hero - Specifically when the hero is facing a dilemma regarding their actions, the death motivates them to make a decision.

3. Revaluation of the hero's ideals - The opposite of the above is of course that the death may itself push the protagonist to reconsider and debate his decisions/ideals taking him in a new direction.

4. Reconciliation- The hero (maybe hotheaded) has a fall out with the mentor over a difference of ideology or something returns to the fold and tries to live according to the mentor's ideals

5. Inheritance of responsibilities/knowledge/wisdom - Where the influence of the mentor extends beyond just the protagonist and his death passes on the burden of his responsibilities/knowledge forcing the hero to grow up.

6. Sacrifice to save the hero as a fulfilment of his role ensuring the hero lives to fight another day

7. The evil Mentor - The Mentor is responsible for actions for which no redemption is possible so his death is the only thing that can serve. This usually has the protagonist unambiguously morally superior and standing in ideological opposition to the hero. The mentor is either killed by the hero or has a last-minute change of heart and dies protecting the hero.

8. End of an era / Passing of the old guard- The protagonist heralds the coming generation whose ideals stand in opposition to the mentor. Unlike the evil mentor, their ideological opposition does not place them on opposite moral sides but still creates enough conflict that they are unable to see them as coexisting with each other, and the death of the mentor's ideals is framed as progress. As stated for this universalization of this interpersonal difference in ideology both the mentor and protagonist have the power to influence the larger social structure of their community.

In applying these roles to Izzy and Ed, I think 1,3,4,5,6 can be thrown out of consideration automatically. Ed and Izzy don't fit into any of these tropes.

2. Motivation of a hero in dilemma - I would have liked this actually. If Izzy's death had in any way influenced or finalized Ed and Stede's retirement plans, put them on the same page, and consolidated Ed's wavering character development I would have considered the plot well served by Izzy's death. It also has the advantage that this is the form of the trope that is best adapted to a romantic comedy where the mentor’s death makes the protagonist to understand the value of life and the regret of lost chances and pushes the protagonist to pursue their love. 

  As it stands however we have no indication that this is in any way true in the show. And sadly so because I feel it would have worked so much better with Izzy’s role as Stede’s mentor. 

6. Villain Mentor- As much as I thing this would be rather loved among some fans, this stands in opposition to the entire arc of the season. But more than that, death of the evil mentor works for me only when the harm caused by the mentor is 1) to a society at large and 2) of a greater magnitude than the protagonist. Ed does not stand as a moral better than Izzy. If anything they are emotionally contradictory and not ideologically. Even then, perhaps this trope maybe could have been stretched to apply in Episode 1 but not anytime later. But honorary mention for that.

7. End of an era/Passing of the old guard- 

As I understand this to be the most commonly accepted trope in play in OMFD, supported by Jenkin’s comments, I wanted to break down the application and expectations from this trope.

The episode attempts to elevate Izzy to this symbolic role by having Ricky describe Izzy as the “Brains behind Blackbeard,” a notion utterly laughable for anyone who remembers season 1. The fact that Izzy does not in fact laugh Ricky out of the room is the first point of dissonance in the episode. The second reinforcement of this elevation is by placing Izzy as the half of Blackbeard that is still active as opposed to Ed’s half of dormant Blackbeard. 

In this trope, the mentor’s death can be either a catalyst or a signifier of a larger social change. In OMFD this larger change, we are told is meant to be the passing of the old age of piracy- the culture of abuse. But it is also the passing of the golden age of piracy and the looming threat of the empire. For Izzy’s death to be a signifier of this, Izzy needs to be more than Firstmate Hand and become the the symbolic representative of piracy of both the culture of abuse and this glorified golden age. and already the cracks are showing.

There is a major problem with the use of this. Jenkins mentions death of the mentor at the end of th second act as the trope he was mimicking. But this version of the trope is better applied in the third act, often after the resolution of the crisis for emotional closure and a short hand for the future fate of the characters. That is the only place it can exist.

To exists at the end of the Second Act, the death of the mentor has to impact the character and thus the direction of the story in a significant way and a romanticized farewell to a passing age does not do that.

HOW DOES THE TROPE FIT IZZY?

I am stepping away from the larger role of Izzy as the representative of the old guard (in both its roles) as a part of Blackbeard to explore the implications of Izzy being part of Blackbeard, 

Izzy as half of Blackbeard always made sense for me in that I saw Izzy as the brute execution of Blackbeard’s plans. However, by canonizing this relationship, the narrative runs into the problem that it casts Izzy’s actions in season 1 in a much more sympathetic light. He is suddenly not the angry jealous second in command trying to separate the lovebirds but a man desperately trying to hold on to his life’s work because that is all he has. The narrative then tries to counter this by *telling* us that Izzy regrets “feeding Blackbeard’s darkness for years even after he knew Ed outgrew it.” At this point, not jumping to either extreme (of Izzy love and hate)  we can draw couple of conclusions. 

The darkness was not something Izzy introduced to Ed. 

Izzy fed the darkness and encouraged it because that was the only way he could have something that was them.  “Blackbeard was us”. Even in this apology, there is something heartbreakingly lonely about this confession. (Con O’Neill is magic and deserves all the awards on the planet). 

He regrets it now.  

We leave the scene with Izzy permitting Ed to be “Just Ed.” 

Here Izzy’s role as the supposed mentor reaches its conclusion, resolving the ideological  (or emotional in this case ) conflict with the protagonist by surrendering to his better ways. Except when we pull back to look at the entire season we realize that this ideological conflict is a few episodes out of date. We know that by Episode 7 they have reached a resolution if not catharsis and as many others have pointed out, they had reached a place where that catharsis was possible without the dramatic catalyst of death. Again, death as the only place this conversation could happen would have worked for E3 Izzy at best but not any time after. One death and rebirth each later they are not the same people anymore.

Secondly, this dramatic catharsis has no impact on our protagonist Ed. As I mentioned before this is not the trope of the mentor’s death pushing the protagonist to pursue his love. He is already on route to getting the love and life that he wants and Izzy’s death, his “permission” even the supposed catharsis has no discernable impact on it. (If there is any, we are yet to see the signs of it.) 

On the other hand, here Izzy, in his other role as the old guard has passed, allowing for the emergency of the new age of piracy. Except, stepping back again, to the larger reality, we know that it is not true. There is no new age of piracy to herald. There is no better pirate society emerging yet. Izzy’s Ideal of Piracy, which he so passionately advocated for, which was the beginning of elevating his character simply does not exist beyond the Revenge. For the simple reason that if it already did, there would be no reason for a new type of piracy in the first place.

We are again running into the old problem that Izzy is playing two roles, contradicting each other in two different scenes where one scene is meant to add to the allegorical understanding of the other. Is he the passionate defender of the new piracy or the stubborn remnant of the old? In trying to give Izzy both the glorifying speech of the martyr and make him the representative of the toxic old guard, in attempting to elevate him from an individual to a figurehead, Izzy’s role becomes too large to be contained by one character and starts to crumble.

On a larger scale I idea of an old piracy vs a new piracy simply doesn't work because the Revenge is just one ship. In spite of Stede’s newfound fame, he does not hold the kind of influence to change the shape of piracy, and Blackbeard, according to the story is dead and simply unable to effect any change. Without taking up the mantle of Blackbeard Ed has even lesser influence than Stede. Stede’s brand of softer piracy is uniquely ill-suited to survive the ruthlessness of the Empire looming large on the horizon. One can hope that these are issues that will be addressed in the third season if we ever have one. But at this point the allegory is incomplete and the catharsis we are meant to feel is dependent on a future we may never see. 

 And once consider the whole season, Izzy as the representation of Blackbeard itself starts to loose strength. Everything Izzy has grown to become, all the ways he has been embraced by and has embraced the ethos of the show and the spirit of the Revenge, simply outweighs his half of Blackbeard in the past. To refuse to acknowledge this change is to say that he never had a hope of being a better person because no matter who he became, the weight of who he was will always tilt the balance against him. The grace extended to Ed by Stede’s love, to discover who he could be, is denied to Izzy in the last moments. Ed can shed Blackbeard with Izzy's blessings but no one lets Izzy do the same.

OFMD’s strength has always been its personal narratives, of growth, of healing, of kindness. In trying to expand the scale of the show in the last episode of the season it has chosen to sacrifice one of the most dramatic triumphs of its ethos to ask us to slide back to view Izzy only by his past in order to turn him into the allegorical stand in- a strawman of a the toxic culture he had left far behind by this point. 

[lovelanguageisolate]

Reading the introduction to von Neumann's Games and Economic Behavior. He's very in touch with the poverty of the state of economics, the huge challenges involved, and the need to focus on making a difference where differences can be made.

His portrait of how physics and mathematics coevolved is crisp and beautifully motivates how difficult applying the mathematical tools of the day to social problems is. I think he's after something like the Asimovian dream of psychohistory—of actually being able to predict human behavior on generational timescales and engineer societies based on those predictions. That same dream has drawn cybernetics nerds into econ for generations.¹

One thing that stands out: he smacks down so many criticisms of microeconomics still bandied around today. He does it very well, moving fluidly from one point to another, always hemming the opposition in. I'm happy, because he puts these arguments in such wonderful context. I'm sad, because people still make them now and don't seem to overcome his responses when they do so.

"Why does econ focus on these toy problems?" Because they're tractable and let us compare theory with both observation and intuition, which is unskippable foundation-laying (compare probability theory, which was first used to characterize obvious problems before we got things like Buffon's needle).

"Why doesn't sprinkling math on economics work?" Well, applying calculus works when doing marginal analysis, but most of the time, we mostly don't know what's happening. There's often no setup—no ansatz—we can do to gain new insight. When economists do this, they're often just putting fancy mathematical clothes on their verbal arguments, not discovering anything new. And calculus itself emerged from the need to solve kinematics problems in physics, and the kinds of problems we want to understand in economics often seem pretty different from this. Von Neumann really hopes that we'll discover new kinds of math to better understand economics, and Games is meant as a step in that direction.

"Why bother with math at all? Trying to reduce humans to a bunch of numbers is foolish!" Well, we can observe humans exhibiting preferences and making choices, which immediately suggests there's quantitative data (ordinal utilities) we can work with. And studying the impact of ordinal utilities at the margin using calculus is no more problematic, von Neumann argues, than studying clumps of atoms and other indivisible quanta as continuous bodies.

"Why don't we try to understand more important and complicated systems, like the US economy?" Because the system is complex and the data is pitifully sparse for that complexity²—and there's nothing to be gleamed from very complex data that we cannot theorize about. "Observation is theory-laden" isn't language von Neumann had, but he seems to be reaching for this idea. Von Neumann even does a David Deutsch-esque maneuver of saying, "we scanned the heavens for millennia in vain before it gave us ideas, which made all the difference."

---

1. The boldest form of this vision has a serious problem, which Karl Popper elucidated: as long as new knowledge is being created, and as long as predicting human behavior depends on understanding the state of human knowledge, prediction will always be limited, because the discovery of new knowledge is unforeseeable by definition.

2. I think a dynamicist breaking this point down further would talk about things like the number of parameters (and the enormous phase space that the economy must live in), the lack of stationarity on the timescales we can look at, and how few of the driving processes can be observed. As of 2023, my understanding is that most macroeconomic models taken seriously need to capture both behaviors we know must happen (like capital costs reflecting technology efficiencies) and strongly suspect must happen (like hysteresis in labor markets leading to sustained unemployment). Just capturing those behaviors makes the models so capacious that falsifying them, never mind fitting them to reality, seems hopeless. What's amazing is that von Neumann must have known much less about these things when he was writing, but he understands this phenomenon of data poverty extremely well.

[guppydogcity]

What are some of your best tips for beginner artists? Any book recommendations? youtube channels? blogs? etc i love your art you've improved so much

thank you so much!!! :-)

disclaimer before i start: im not a professional or anything at all this is just stuff that helped me. im just some guy so i might be wrong..! OTL

hmmm i don't think i have any specific blogs or youtube channels.. i've heard that the books 'color and light' by james gurney and 'light for visual artists' are both really good for learning how to think about objects in a 3d environment and how light affects them.. OH! also i love the book morpho, it's so useful for thinking about the human body and stuff. try to avoid youtube channels that are like "fixing your ugly art" or try to give a Quick Hack for drawing something complex like a human body, where it only applies to 1 body type stiffly facing forward

a big part of 'getting better' at art is to learning to think about art in a more in depth way. so if you see a movie or an artist you love, try and study their art and think about why specifically it compels you so much. is it how they colour their linework? is it the looseness of the poses? the symbolism? i have a big 'inspiration' channel on my 1 person discord server that everything i really like is put there for me to really look at and dissect later. i'd also really recommend speedpaints so you can get the process down.. same with watching artists on twitch so you can see thought processes and stuff live. even if you don't draw along or anything you're still improving your technical knowledge.

don't worry about posting it or how 'good' it is, even if it's something you're not personally satisfied with you're still building good muscle memory. if you're in an art server with friends that's a great time for you to ask "hey i dont feel satisfied with this, is there anything that sticks out to you". also try lots of different things.. backgrounds suck but they're really good for helping you learn perspective and stuff. something something perfect is the enemy of good something something. also the fundamentals are boring but they're really useful

i hope this was even a little helpful and sorry if it came off a little generic sounding o7 this is just stuff that helped me. youve got this

[that-dreaming-dragon]

Hope it's okay to respond in asks

It's me (J), and one other which have this close connection with snow leopards. Para is a snow leopard but usually presents anthro. I am feline, I have an affinity for being a big cat bodily. It is very important to me.

It feels simultaneous, or at the least there's a bit of lag. I could be receiving the feelings from Para but not sure. It's also more than the place. It's kind of a mindset? It's kind of the euphoria we get from being in grey that doesn't apply to anyone in specific. It's the knowledge of being that animal without it quite feeling like noemata? Coming from a system raised human, you wouldn't expect us to have experiences of an Earthly leopard.

Para: there is a picture of a snow leopard I saw once and said "that's me" entirely earnestly. Maybe that's what this is? I haven't thought much about this to be entirely honest...I have a lot of other jobs and identity to focus on. I tend to have past lives, but this doesn't feel like past. The only word to describe it for me is parallel.

Perfectly fine to do so!

Do you both wish to define it? There are usually those who want a term, then there are those who prefer no labels, and then there are those who just shrug and work with what's available. Because at the end of the day, what y'all feel is simply that, your experience. There doesn't have to be a name to it, it is what it is, one's experience of animality. The simple state of being nonhuman. You have a starting point, you can try to trace back, go forward and do activities or get items that help increase the feelings. Like you (Para) said, it sounds like you have a full plate already. I most of the time let my identities sit in the background of my life and let noemata or whatever things come up themselves, it's served me well, this passive way of self-search. 'Course we can also look up a glossary of terms and go through them. I'm the type that likes to find terms for ourselves and see if anything fits or not. And if nothing crops up, ah well. At the end of the day, the definition is really just "identifying as the animal" without the extra of reasoning, origin, and circumstances surrounding the experience (for therio/kintype experiences). Or however it needed to be reworded depending on the 'type.

We could probably claim concurrent life and call it a day. If parallel works for you, that's good too! Although there is still an undertone of spirituality attached. I'd separate metaphysical explanations like the astral from the spiritual, but that's a nuance most don't really bother with and just put them together (so someone is living human but astrally nonhuman).

And well, aren't the whole community raised human? Yet here we are :p You are what you are. I think that sort of societal "norm" expectation just doesn't apply to alterhuman in general.

... It's uhh, a little funny, hopefully not offending, but paratype crossed my mind, if it is the case of Para's feelings bleeding over to J. Though I don't know if there is ever a talk of plural element within the discussion of paratype experiences. I think it is likely.

Hmm, here's a question, when did the feeling of being a snow leopard start? Maybe an imprint happened, maybe brain funny business, maybe it's always there and just needed a trigger, maybe subconsciously it became part of y'all.

[thinkhappythxughts]

https://www.tumblr.com/thinkhappythxughts/715679906573484032/tw-transphobia-the-terfs-trying-to-screen?source=share

hi there! sorry, this is sort of a weird ask — feel free to ignore.

i’m just a queer trans person who’s wanted to transition for years but my family is not really on board with it. i was really hoping to go to uni and transition there, and Edinburgh is one of the places I’ve been aiming to apply to. except… the city seems so transphobic?^ as someone who seems to have been there/knows a bit abt the uni, i was wondering if you wouldn’t mind talking about the city a little bit, in regards to this, if you would up to it? weirdly enough i do know lots of people who live there, i just don’t know them well enough to ask stuff like this dhjgfdjfb

hi there anon!

so firstly, full disclosure that I haven't lived in Edinburgh for about a year now, but my sister still does so I visit all the time. Generally, I think the city is a great place to live if you're trans, or queer in general. There's a great queer scene with clubs and sober spaces, Edinburgh pride is great, Portobello (Porty) pride is well worth a visit and only a bus from the city centre, Glasgow pride is also great if you can get the train across. Events like the terf screening are absolutely an outlier, stuff like that is gonna happen in big cities just due to numbers - it is the capital of Scotland after all. Occasionally there are random terf stickers on lampposts, but i've seen at least twice as many pro-trans stickers about. In regards to that screening, the number of people who turned out to protest far outnumbered the people actually there to see the stupid film, and the protest was supported by the uni's staff pride network (i know because my sister was there on their behalf as an organiser/first-aider hah)

on that note, i think edinburgh uni is also pretty good for trans stuff - I wasn't out as trans yet when i was at uni, but I had friends who were trans and they didn't seem to have any issues on the uni/admin side of things. The uni has a pretty good student pride society, and as i mentioned, there's a staff pride network, so there's a solid bunch of staff who would be in your corner if you did have any issues. The uni's student support in general is okay - the general standard for that stuff honestly isn't great in the UK, and I wouldn't say edinburgh's is amazing, but they did help me out a couple of times (with non-lgbt stuff).

you'll probably know more about me than the applications process for uni in regards to chosen name etc, and it depends if you're applying through UCAS (in the UK) or if you're abroad, so i'll leave you to more knowledgeable people on that. I would say that if you apply in your chosen name, any post you receive about applications will be in the name you apply with, so keep that in mind if the people you live with aren't supportive - terribly sorry that you're in that situation, by the way. It really does get better once you're away from them.

in regards to transition, if you're wanting to be referred to a GIC, you'll likely be referred to Chalmers centre, which seems to have a waiting time of about 2 years currently - that sounds like a lot but from what i can gather, that's quite a lot lower than most places in the UK (i'm in NE england and my nearest centre isn't even taking referrals because their waiting list is 6+years long 😭). Once you're registered with a GP you should be able to ask them about a referral and they can give you more info.

overall I think that Scotland is probably just a better place to live if you're trans in the UK - scottish parliament supported self-ID (i'm actually unsure if this has come into effect yet, need to do some googling) and if they weren't under the UK gov, they were going introduce legal third gender options too. The SNP and scottish parliamentary partiers absolutely have some outspoken transphobes, but they're much more of an outlier than in westminster, so generally i think the outlook for trans people is just way more positive in Scotland - I'm certainly planning to move back there as soon as the circumstances line up for me. It's pretty scary everywhere in the UK right now in terms of policy (and general attitude, to an extent) but yeah i think overall Edinburgh and Scotland in general are your best bet.

If you have any more questions or anything i'm happy to chat! Absolute best of luck to you, no matter where you end up, both with your transition and uni in general 💜

[malocclusive]

I think one of my sangriest (sad angry) moments in recent memory was when my husband busted a crown, and we didn't know our dental insurance.

I asked 3 different folks I worked with (my school district has 2 choices for insurance, so it should be a safe bet ONE of them has the same as me) where the fuck to find out how to get it covered. One is general (like Blue Cross Blue Shield, which I grew up under when my grandparents took me in til I aged out) and the other is weird because it's an all in one network*

I happened to ask 3 dudes, and each one replied with "I don't know, my wife handles that."

After the third same reply within 20 minutes (I'm blessed to have my day bookended with prep periods) of hunting folks down, my first thought was "fuck me, I wish I had a wife", and the theoretical warm feeling of "someone knows what to do in an area I don't" washed over me. Then I was despondent because I immediately realized I have extremely little of that. Definitely due to my growing up without it/extremely compensatory nature of refusing help because nobody will ever understand what I'm thinking without extensive explanation (which would be awful for them since my ADHD makes that lengthy on my end/the understanding that comes from teaching and metacognition that only I TRULY know all the background knowledge that informs how I personally process and categorize my thoughts) which means it's just easier to handle things myself.

-Longest post of your life under here with every topic peppered in like a damn confetti cannon-

Could I just get a wife? Can I afford having a third person in my emotional life that I cover living expenses as like a secretary but that I also love and provide for?

That's just kinda the feeling I got. It made me feel gross. It made me feel inadequate. I'm obviously not a good enough wife (and adult, damn) because I didn't know these things, and I'm a bad person for hoping some magic woman (because honestly, I later branched out exclusively to women, married or not, and didn't get anything even REMOTELY similar in their responses to my male coworkers) would take care of me and things I needed legally/monetarily if my body were falling apart.

Still makes me sad, honestly. I grew up til my teen years with zero support on the medical end, and only got insurance when I moved in with my grandparents. BCBS is comprehensive (at the time at least) and well received, and my grampa got it through working for the Pentagon. My mom moved in later with us, and has Medicare, and my younger brother has never gotten insurance through his job.

It turned out that my husband and i (same county educational system) were paying independently out the ass when we could save TONS after marriage, but it wasn't specified. So we decided to have him added to my insurance because honestly, I look at the mail and could (theoretically) handle it. Turns out I fucked up/the emails I get spammed constantly happened to bury what I needed to do next under "congratulations, you're in", so I didn't continue reading. He was uninsured, and it was because I didn't finish reading an email. It's all my fault.

The only way around was divorce, then remarriage (which iirc woulda been like $300 round trip) but that wasn't flying. He was attempting to apply after the open enrollment (why the fuck is this a thing) so he's now paying through the nose for the same insurance we had individually. He also SHOULDN'T have qualified, but we still don't know why they accepted him.

I'm a bad wife, so I still don't understand/the system itself is confusing. Maybe I'm not a bad wife, but everything I know tells me I am.

This is all to say that driving home from one of my side gigs was the 1074283953rd throbbing thought behind my head at how much happier I'd be as a dude, but idk. I've never seen myself as a feminine person, and wonder if I'm compensating for wanting to be outside the binary by idolizing masculinity. I try to keep abreast in the whole "where are we going with masculinity/why do boys feel adrift" thing, especially as an educator who isn't afraid of it, so I'm aware of what's going on in those circles. I know passing is BS as a concept, but outside of accepting circles, know I'll never be taken seriously as a guy. I'm barely taken seriously as an adult as is being 5' and hourglass shaped in my early 30s with a goofy and open disposition, which I use to my advantage of "who cares" as a vibe. But I still know I'm taken as seriously as I take most other things. I'm not gonna perform more than I have to to keep my job, gender wise or in a "professional" sense.

LGBTQIA+ committe head (they deserve respect!) goes as Mx. And goddamn. I can't even imagine the shit they deal with. I'm at a super progressive school, but the shit we deal with and bring up to admin (tbh more supportive than I've EVER experienced, in every capacity in my decade of teaching, by a longshot) to is still bullshit. You can't change a community til their kids fucking go non contact, in my experience.

This got super pessimistic, but most boils down to I'm just trying to rile and pep up my queer kids and be an icon. Maybe one day I'll be happy but til now, I'm just jazzed I did the whole "abrathatfits" thing so my tits are mostly outta the way. They're way up (comparatively) but feel so much better though now I'm uncomfortably aware of them and only one of the 2 fits I have are similar to what I'm used to, but that's just getting used to not wearing sports bras for forever

Makes me feel good in a way, but geh

This post was a primer on like 95% of my insecurities. Long story shirt, wish I could be the Chilchuck coded fucker I wish I were and I'd be happy. I'd be glad being a respected lil sassy capable dude. Aka just the same but without the baggage of hips and tits that devalues me as a weird consumable npc. I wish I had value.

*turns out dental is an entirely different company and it took me nonstop calls to figure it out for over a week

[faksyan]

Last episode thoughts and some general bsd analysis because im normal again (that's a lie I will think about this for one million years) ^_^

So, I'm rarely really bothered by how ridiculous or nonsensical plot twists are if I'm having a good time, but in bsd especially so, because of a simple fact that, as much as it gets compared to other stories in the genre, it's not about epic fights, elaborate plots and people killing each other. It has all of those things, yes, but it's not what it's about.

It's about traumatized, hurt people continuing to fight for their lives and trying to find happiness. It's not supposed to be hopeful in a super naive way, but it's also not supposed to be hopeless, no matter how much grief and pain the characters go through (though because of that there's a limit to how much damage can be inflicted upon said characters, and perma-death is part of it). The whole point of it are the themes of navigating life through all the shitshow around you, shown through funny magic people throwing bricks at each other. So I couldn't be less bothered by plot armor or whatever, that's not what I'm here for, I don't care, it makes me happy. That's why I think all the death-baits are kind of silly (will you really claim your work is for people who struggle in life and then kill all of your depressed characters come on), but anyway. That's also why I'm sure Sigma isn't dead, it wouldn't really make sense both from this and narrative point of view, with him having so many unfinished goals.

Interestingly enough, the death thing applies to a lot of antagonists in the series too. Very few of them (if any, I honestly can't remember off the top of my head) die in the main manga. Port Mafia, Fitzgerald and the Guild, literally all of them survived fighting the Agency, up until both Fukuchi and Fyodor just now, which is pretty interesting. And while we were told what Fukuchi's plan was, Fyodor's is still pretty confusing, nevermind that we never even learned what his ability was. Would be pretty weird, with all the build-up of Sigma getting to know it, if they don't even have a chance to fight against it. So, somehow, possibly, there'll be either a Fyodor comeback, or something that requires the knowledge of his ability.

Fyodor's death was kind of anticlimactic, but even if it's a permanent one, I think it made up for it with Nikolai's reaction. Him cradling Fyodor's torn off arm to his chest, looking so small and lost, and then bringing it up to his face. The fact that Nikolai didn't get to kill him immediately overshadowed by the fact that Fyodor is dead, leaving him confused and broken and grieving, just quietly standing there. There are no tears, no breakdowns or his usual laughter and theatrics, because he doesn't know what to do now that Fyodor is gone and he is truly alone. This really was my bungou gay dogs okay. There is so much to it, all the people responsible for this scene are insane and I love them for it.

How Fukuzawa was able to understand a friend he hadn't seen for such a long time just by looking him in the eyes, and then was ready to talk and listen, despite knowing how many deaths Fukuchi had caused. The whole conversation with them reminiscing on the past and discussing the reasoning behind their actions and philosophies was beautifully done, the visuals were absolutely stunning and I really liked how calm it was, in contrast with them fighting just a few minutes prior.

Teruko being the one to kill Fukuchi is also very interesting. How she stood there crying after just stabbing a person she cared about, yet the one that Fukuchi called for and wanted to spend last moments with was Fukuzawa. How she told Atsushi not to look and how vulnerable she sounded. I've never been that interested in her character nor really liked her, but it was such an emotional moment it got to me.

And Fukuzawa. God I love him so much, loved to see him show so many emotions, I have so many thoughts about him. The red/blue parallel right when he was about to strike Fukuchi. Refusing to kill his best friend, the person who knew him better than anyone else in the world, despite knowing the stakes, thinking about their younger selves and how happy and bright Fukuchi used to be. He is such an interesting character, and I can't help but think how similar he is to Oda in many ways, especially his breakdown. Something about losing someone you love and being completely unable to hold it together just. yeah. Especially how he almost destroys One Order, having to stop himself even though it is the reason he just lost a person he cared so much about. You think the emotional bit is over, he's going to take his feelings under control and be the leader he has always been, and they hit you with that. IT WAS REALLY GOOD OKAY I'M NORMAL ABOUT IT.

The last twenty seconds of the episode were...interesting. Akutagava's outfit looked cool wonder where he got it in two hours in an airport, I guess we'll see. None of them can really catch a break at all huh.

Overall loved it, cool symbolism and themes or whatever, but none of this still answers where Yosano is though, so we're better be getting more Yosano content asap after this please and thank you.

[numetaljackass]

I am google

Say hypothetically you're into music, or maybe you're a writer. Shots in the dark. You need to leverage the things you like to do and use them to meet some new people. :)

I will say music is easiest because writer activities are more involved, but that's fine too, and I'd argue most writers need writer friends. But anyway - music.

For friendship: look up venues your local bands are playing at (you can find show flyers on instagram generally, especially for the little/hardcore/underground venues). Look at the ages of the band members; their audiences often match. (This does not apply to bluegrass/Americana or jazz.)

Don't know any local bands? No problem, go to your community arts center website, find the name of a group that's played there, look them up on instagram, find out who they follow and so on until you find a cool spot or a band you're interested in. What also works is looking up openers at larger (not stadium, obviously) venues and going to see one of them when they headline a smaller room.

Then you must go to a show. Musicians are big losers and often insecure (I'd know) so you can tell them good job and it'll make their week. If you get nervous to talk to people on your own, simply fake it until you make it. Be chill, be kind, help people carry shit if they're struggling. Try to not care so much if you can manage it. Really this is like speed dating without romance - you'll never see them again if you don't want to.

Alternatively, take a class at a local university. Non-degree tracks exist. You can take almost any class you want to.

And if the class you want comes with requirements? Email the professor. They're nerds and just want people to like the same things they do. Literally that's it; they're so stupid with knowledge that it's actively ruining their lives. Think about classes as a long-winded info dump because if it's a college course, that's pretty much what lectures are.

What really got me talking to people was the slow realization that most people are pretty nice. You're not going to click with everyone, but there's nothing wrong with being open to befriending people (WITHIN REASON). And if you don't click? That's totally cool! Nobody's for everyone.

Anyway this is a novel and it's my bedtime. I hope that helped, and if not, take this as a sign from the universe that you'll be all right. You'll make friends. You may even choose some family along the way, who knows?

❤️❤️❤️ thank you, Google

you give me hope.

[be-the-glenn-to-my-maggie]

Would you mind describing the process of applying for an MFA program or what you did to qualify? Also, when you say you’re going to grad school after, is that a PhD or a Masters in English Literature or something similar?

Let me just put both your anons here so I can get em both at once :) sorry for the confusion! I do not have an MFA, I am graduating from Boston University with my bachelors in creative writing. BU has a very old and prestigious MFA program that they don't shut the fuck up about and they writing pilled me so hard. Any writing workshop you take within the department is taught by someone currently getting an MFA or part of running the program. When I said MFA professor in that ask earlier, I was referring to my professor herself, who is an MFA grad and that's why she was there. She's not a teacher by trade, she teaches because she's there for the program. Does that make sense? I shouldn't have phrased it that way and I am so sorry for the confusion. There is such thing an an English PHD, I've only talked to three people who've ever gone higher than an MFA, and all were successful novelists while doing so. We cannot all be Leslie Epstein, and let us not aspire to be.

That being said, I hope I can still help, because I am applying to MFA programs in two years and started applying this year before eventually deciding to give it some time. Every workshop you take they literary pill you and they spend a whole class answering MFA questions and walking you through the process as well. I've never felt more knowledgable about a subject I have no authority on in my life, so let me try to answer your questions and I hope it helps! I apologize for how long as fuck it's going to be.

So qualifying for an MFA is easy; be good at writing. Like, really good. They really don't give a shit about anything else you have to turn in. If it's been a while since you've been in school, you'll be delighted to learn that no MFAs take GRE scores anymore, and every single one that asks for a 3.0gpa also includes a caveat where they're like "with exceptions." It's because if your writing is that good they legit do not care what else you bring to the table.

Bad news bears though, that means you gotta be really good. Not to be like, discouraging, but the general acceptance rate is about 3-5% for all programs across the board. I only know minute details about fully funded MFAs (my google spreadsheet could end lives) because I am of the mindset that paying extra education in this economy instead of being paid for extra education is insanity of the highest degree. That being said, if you expand to non fully funded program, I think your chances get a percentage higher? If you have the means and you want to, go for it, but I highly suggest the fully funded route. Every MFA grad I've every talked to has always said that they don't suggest getting one ever unless it's fully funded. That being said, I have a lovely mutual on here who got hers and it was not fully funded, and she loved her experience. I can definitely direct you to her as well.

More specifically on writing though, MFA's are incredibly literary writing places. If your style is more eclectic then an MFA program could be quite stifling. If you are more into genre fiction, romance, speculative fiction, sci-fi; most MFA programs are not for you. There are a few new highly competitive ones that specialize in genre fiction, but again, highly competitive.

Another super important point; writing in a workshop environment, especially an MFA, requires very thick skin. Creating a story for a workshop is like birthing a child, and then giving it to a classroom of 10-15 people to beat to death in front of you while they tell you how ugly it is and how you could've done better. But then you get to do it to them too it's literally my favorite thing in the world. I called someone's story gimicky last week, that's like a writing slur. But if that sounds like no fun at all, that's what the entirety of an MFA program will be. The crotchety 84 year old man who runs BU's MFA program (it's Leslie again), while a delight and a legend, referred to one of my pieces as having a "surprisingly homoerotic moment" and then the entire class informed him it was actually, very clear the entire time. I should include a list of meanest comments I've ever gotten after this, that's so fun.

Also also; each MFA program varies wildly, but most from what I can tell from my research require you to teach a class during your time there, and your final thesis is basically a completed manuscript of a novel.

I can tell you that I think there is absolutely nothing wrong at all with applying for an MFA program in your late twenties. In fact, they prefer it. I ending up holding off based on feedback I got from people I asked for rec letters and advise, all who told me applying right out of school is hard because they take you much less seriously. They like it when you've gone out, gotten real world experience, and proved you're committed. I know older people in the MFA program who were published authors and screenwriters, and people who got in right out of school and only published afterwards. Again, it's really all down to how good you are, everything else they don't care about as long as you are good enough to make anything else not important.

As for old writing connections; don't worry about that. MFAs require 2-3 rec letters. My professor advised that if it's been a while, you email to ask and you send along what classes you took with the professor, what year it was, and a current writing sample. It makes it as easy as possible on your rec. She argued about it a bit with another MFA grad who she brought to class; he said if they don't remember you they won't be a good rec. I don't really have a huge stance, thought I'd give both viewpoints they gave. It's hard to decide, I have a rec that would swing a lot of weight in the literary world but also I had a little beef with the professor so I'm on the fence about if his would be good or not. It's such a dumb problem but now I'm just venting every MFA related thought at you.

Finally; I will tell you what my current plans are for the two years before I apply to, idk, Rocky training montage myself for MFA applications. Basically my goals are to finish one of my books (generous goal that one is FLEXIBLE), get a few short stories published, and hopefully make a website. Every serious writer has a website and they all hate it. But, it's good to have things to actually put in your blurbs when you submit for publishing.

I am happy to give advice on the publishing process as well if that would help you, anon, or anyone else. I currently am a reader for a lit journal and I have worked for a WIDE variety of publishing companies, from lil baby indie ones to bigger editing companies. There is a market for everything if you know how to market yourself and where to look, and you do not need an MFA to do that. Stephanie Meyer would sooner have turned into a vampire herself than have been accepted into an MFA, but her ass is widely successful. Get ur bag.

[love-bokumono-fics]

Fresh Crops! January 1 - January 8, 2023

This week's newest fics and chapter updates for Harvest Moon and Story of Seasons on AO3.

Lucky day - by nightm0de; Complete, 2/2, 3.5k

Rating: Explicit; Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply; Category: M/M Fandom: Trio of Towns Relationship: Ford/Wayne; Characters: Ford, Wayne, Frank, Megan, Ethan Additional Tags: Cock Warming, Hate Sex, but not really, Bottom Wayne, Top Ford, wayne just thinks ford is super sexy and if he bugs him enough he’ll fuck him, Consentual though dw, Stress Relief, Fluff and Smut, a lil hardcore at the beginning, Rough Sex, Angry Sex, Angry Kissing, Possessive Behavior, Wayne’s a little shit, Ford has OCD, not really relevant but there, Aftercare, Falling In Love, it's gay cowboys Summary: Wayne knew that if he felt lucky, the first thing he should always do is run to the Westown health clinic. Not because he was ill or injured—but because on lucky days, Wayne got fucked silly.

Story of Seasons Create a Character Contest: Petra - by superhenryjones; Complete, 1/1, 3.2k

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences; Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply Fandom: Harvest Moon and Story of Seasons (General) Summary: This was a character made for the Ranch Story character creation contest. Petra was made to be romanced by anyone, so I tried to keep the language referring to the Player Character as neutral as possible. I will clean up the formatting and include the art from my co-creator chaos/reflow when I have time. Petra does deal with anxiety on a regular basis and I tried to put realistic human touches on it, so if you're not in the right place to experience a character's second-hand anxiety, maybe don't read this now. Other than that, I hope you have as much fun reading about her as we did making her!

Gabriel's Baby - by PirateQueen20; Complete, 8/8, 2.3k

Rating: Mature; Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply; Categories: F/M, Other Fandom: Light of Hope Relationships: Farmer/Gabriel, Farmer/Edmond; Characters: Edmond, Gabriel, Farmer Additional Tags: Cheating, Infertility, Childbirth, Alternate Universe - Farm/Ranch, Shameless Smut, no editing we die like men Summary: I don't know what to say to make you want to read this. It's a fic about a video game, and it includes cheating. It's just some spice, for fun. This is after you complete the main storyline and start a family. This is about marital dissatisfaction and infertility. This is gaining carnal knowledge of both of your best friends. This is being a single mother, with papa in the arm chair. This is trying to be part of a community and feeling more alone than ever.

Degausser - by SHADESofDEATHxx; WIP, 3/?, 14k

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences; Archive Warning: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings; Category: F/M Fandoms: Friends of Mineral Town Characters: Pete | Jack, Claire the Farmer, Ann the Innkeeper | Ran, Gray, Cliff, Jennifer, Popuri, Rick, Karen, Brandon, Kai, Elli | Elly, Doctor | Trent, Mary the Librarian | Marie, Mineral Town Residents Additional Tags: Redemption, Fresh Start, Loneliness, Angst, Self-Loathing, Self-Acceptance Summary: Those that live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones – but that’s all Jack and Claire ever knew up until a series of half-lit cruel intentions landed them on the ferry to the desolate island of Mineral Town. After all, it was certainly easier to cast judgment unto others than it was to face the skeletons in your own closet. And surely no one would have an ill word to say about a brooding playboy and an immature party girl taking over the once-great farm that founded and funded their small town, right?

Sugar and Spice - by Chibimiie; WIP, 51/?, 132k

Rating: Mature; Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply; Category: F/M Fandoms: Animal Parade Relationships: Chase/Molly the Farmer, Angela/Luke; Characters: Molly | Hikari, Angela the Farmer, Chase, Luke, Kasey the Farmer Additional Tags: Slow Burn, oh god how do you tag fics, mentions of eating disorders, alternating povs, Friends to Lovers, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, bumped up the rating because i honestly should have a little bit ago, burn so slow it's honestly a simmer Summary: Wanting to get away from past hurts of the city, sisters Molly and Angela decide to respond to a flyer advertising an abandoned farm on the faraway island of Castanet. Leaving behind their closest friends and brother Kasey, the two take a chance and move to the tiny island hoping for a new chance at life.

Good Ending - by chewypetals; Complete, 1/1, 1.1k

Rating: General Audiences; Archive Warning: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings; Category: M/M Fandoms: Pioneers of Olive Town Relationship: Male Farmer/Matsuyuki; Characters: Male Farmer, Matsuyuki Additional Tags: Hugs, Sleepy Cuddles, Spooning, they are soft, Eiji is so soft I love him Summary: As the title suggests, I wanted more fluff after that hug fic.

The Heart of a Westown Cowboy - by Mya_Stone; WIP, 3/?, 5k

Rating: General Audiences; Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply; Category: F/M Fandom: Trio of Towns Relationship: Female Farmer/Wayne; Characters: Frank, Ford, Carrie, Brad, Megan, Hector, Colin, Daryl | Darius, Marlena, Lynn Additional Tags: Slow Burn, Romance, Romantic Friendship, Guy Falls First, I Wrote This For Me But I'll Share It With You Summary: Wayne is Westown's perpetually single lady's man. He'd like to settle down but he just hasn't found The One and he's fairly certain he's met everyone in town. Then Melody moves in, taking a plot of her uncle's ranch to fulfill her dream of being a rancher. A college-educated business woman, Melody doesn't accept failure - especially not her own. As Wayne falls hard for her, she struggles to return his affections until she has what she came for - and when she continually comes up short at the cow competitions, she begins to wonder if Westown is really the place for her.