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theworldoffandoming · 2 months

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Extremely sad to hear that you didn't receive any character asks before, so I'm making up for it by sending LOTS! :3c Your characters are wonderful and I want to hear more about them. Feel free to answer as many or as few as you'd like!

How about 2, 3, 9, 15, 19, 24, 28, 42, 46, 52 for any characters of your choice :>

Oh my goodness!! Thank you!!

Uh let's see let's see!!

2. How loosely or strictly do they use the word ‘friend’?

Oh boy I have a whole essay on this one let's see!!

I wanna start out by saying that I have thought a lot the word for friend in the islanders' language, Zavira Kara. So I think once I talk about that I'll then define what a friend is for each of the characters. Slightly off-topic I guess but I have Thoughts™️

In Zavira Kara, the term for friend is often used in compounds that extend into romantic territory so isn't explicitly a platonic word, but is understood to be one way or another in certain contexts. But anyways, the word in question, 'tawe,' is a very simple compound comprised of 'ta,' meaning one, and 'we' (pronounced weh), meaning two. In its simplest sense it refers to a pair. They might use a different word when referring to more than one friend, not sure. 🤔 Anyways, tawe generally refers to someone you have a longstanding sense of camaraderie with.

Now for specifics.

Tsuname - Coming at it from this angle, a tawe is like a chair you can lean back on. If you've been out for a long time and are tired, they're someone you can come back to and rest for a while with.

Sz'nami - A tawe is like a door. Lots of potential, full of adventure and the unknown. Even doors you've passed through hundreds of times can still hold excitement and mystery, even if they've grown familiar.

Sh'zkai - At worst, a tawe is a chain. It holds you down, grounds you to the place where everyone expects you to be. At best, it's similar to Sz'nami's view. A door, full of unknowns and uncharted waters. It also makes it a little dangerous.

Ril'siiya - A tawe is everybody. You're a tawe, he's a tawe, she's a tawe. We're all tawe! Now a riho or a riha tawe... That's like a brother or a sister. That's much more serious and is a much closer bond. Not quite blood family, there's a small degree of separation there, but very close and in her case closer than she was even to certain blood relatives. A riha or riho tawe is someone's arms you can fall back into and rest in.

And that's all the islanders I'll do for now. Moving on...

Korosa - a friend is a joke to him. At best, perhaps it could be some kind of war bond. It annoys him to see people being friendly. Often leads him to believe people are conspiring against him (his defining trait is paranoia btw). It would take a long time for him to call anybody truly a friend. Deep down, I think he does wish he could have someone he could trust. Maybe that's part of what irks him about seeing people being friendly with each other. On the one hand he thinks it's stupid and they're stupid and that they're playing with fire and waiting to be stabbed in the back. Perhaps even thinks he's above them. That he's smarter for not making dumb decisions and trusting people like them. That all he needs are his weapons and his shop and his things. That he doesn't need them or their approval, let alone their affection. His craft speaks for itself and he knows his own worth.

Okay, maybe answered that in a roundabout way, but moving on XD;

3. How often do they show their genuine emotions to others versus just the audience knowing?

Shiido's very stoic, so it takes an audience look generally to know what's going on inside. If he's particularly angry sometimes some cold anger may slip through the cracks. Generally though he's learned not to show weakness.

Waizu is often a puzzle, creating a persona and acting kind to get the results he wants. Sometimes though, the faintest hint of his real emotions do shine through. He's a little more expressive around those he doesn't need to put on an act around, but even then there still can be a layer of distance.

Korosa is far more of an open book than he'd like people to think. Though he can put on an act, he's generally bad at hiding his real emotions, much to his detriment. His solution is generally just to mask everything with anger. Usually cracks start to form though and there will be something of a tell. Shaking fists, avoiding eye contact, stuttering depending on what emotion he's trying to hide.

Nell is a practiced performer. It generally takes someone he can let down his guard with or someone he's particularly angry with to start showing tells. A flick of the tail, a calculating look, a tilt of the head, whatever it may be. For everyone else he puts on a performance. Rarely if ever will you see any real emotion out of performance mode, but if you're lucky (or unlucky) you might get a few tells- an ominous blank stare if you've made him angry, or he's perceived a serious threat from you; an undertone of exasperation if you've annoyed him.

Tsuname I don't even think has ever tried to hide his emotions. That's not to say he's incapable of showing respect, though that does get a lot worse after he gets back from space. But yeah, generally he shows his emotions to any and everyone indiscriminately. If he ever does learn to mask, it will probably be with sorrow or great effort. Being told he was effeminate at a delicate point in his life I think kind of froze his maturity in time. It's only once he starts being mentored by Gangarame that he starts to learn how to take responsibility for his actions and be a man when he's felt like just a boy all his life.

Naru also tends to show her real emotions pretty indiscriminately and similarly lacks self-control. Ironically she might be slightly better on both fronts than Tsuname though. She does have moments of being more stoic and reclusive, especially later in life, but the former is generally her thinking face and the latter may be a more of a symptom of distrust and suspicion than emotional masking. A defense mechanism of sorts.

Sz'nami is more of a middle ground. She for sure shows emotions, but is one of the best at regulating. There's for sure little tells if she's hiding an emotion. She isn't able to completely mask her emotions, especially strong ones, but she definitely has some endurance when it comes to them and can pretty well mask smaller ones. Probably the healthiest emotional expressor of the bunch.

Ril'siiya - Very expressive, probably a middle ground between Tsuname and Sz'nami. More than happy to express how she feels, but has far more emotional endurance than someone like Tsuname. Is genuine and friendly with everyone she meets. Does little to mask fear, though it's a non-neglible amount. Will yell at you if she is genuinely furious, but you'd have to have pushed her far to get there. If you annoy her it will start seeping out. Though genuine and expressive, she does have a non-neglible masking ability and has the ability to process her emotions, even if they are loud. What the audience will get to know is likely details of what's going on with her behind the scenes. Characters might get more of an overview unless it's a deep conversation.

9. Do they give tough love or gentle love most often? Which do they prefer to receive?

Korosa- gives tough with a capital T. I don't even think he knows how to give it gentle and his efforts to do so would be stilted. I think secretly he'd prefer to receive gentle, though if he ever encountered it he'd likely perceive it as a threat.

Sh'zkai - If Korosa's is tough, hers is razor sharp. Even with someone she genuinely cares about she'd probably be pretty brutal if they came to her for advice. She might prefer to take it tough too. Though on some level she probably likes being treated gently, being fawned over makes her uncomfortable, so there's a line there.

(Terramun folk)

Kokuen - famous for her edgelady status. I think there's some part of her that wants to be treated gently, but when she encounters it she tends to assume the worst about people. She's not very good at taking tough love though. She prefers to dish it out in heaps, but doesn't tolerate it from anyone else.

Elyse - probably unintentionally sharp. It doesn't help that Kokuen's rubbed off on her. Though she can take it, she finds tough love kind of annoying, especially since it generally means a lecture from Kokuen these days. On the other hand, she doesn't know how to process gentle love, so she probably prefers somewhere in between. I think she appreciates people being genuine with her.

Harsha- prefers to dish it out gentle, but is more resilient to tough love than you might expect, probably also thanks to Kokuen. Too much can probably get annoying, but it'd have to be something intentionally sharp or biting.

Lico - gives gentle, prefers gentle. He grew up in a tough environment with a lot of criticism directed towards him, so he tends to be gentle with people. It's how he would have wanted to be treated.

Taffy - though he can for sure handle tough love, I think does prefer gentle. I think he can get a bit defensive when the tough stuff's directed at him. I think on general he's gentle with people, but will give it tough for particularly obstinate cases where actual harm could come from a situation.

15. What’s the most obvious difference between their behavior at home, at work, at school, with friends, and when they’re alone?

Shiido - I think for sure his expressiveness. Though he tends to mask around people, he's far more expressive when he's alone, though even then he might still hold a little back.

Korosa - probably acts pretty similar between work and being alone since he spends so much time at the shop, often by himself. Just puts on more of an act for people. When he's not at the shop, probably forced to be because of moving locations with the platoon, he might let down his guard a little in his tent.

Friends probably fall into that acting category until they really get through to him. Back with the platoon though, people generally gave up on getting to know him, so he didn't have any friends there. Even his customers usually just put in an order and tried to interact with him face to face as little as possible. He's pushed everyone there away and several people are frankly sick of him, even his commander.

19. What would they do if stuck in a room with the person they’ve been avoiding?

Korosa - Accuse them of stalking probably and make it out to be the other person's fault they're stuck here.

Naru - Squeeze herself into a corner and glare.

Shiido - strike up a conversation with them.

Tsuname - awkwardly wave and talk to them nervously.

Ril'siiya - express in no uncertain terms that she's annoyed with the other person and was trying to avoid them. Probably annoy them and poke them.

Sh'zkai - plot their demise.

Sz'nami - make awkward small talk with them.

Kokuen - make death threats probably.

Elyse - find a corner of the room to lay on the floor in.

Harsha - Say hello awkwardly and fidget.

Lico - Try to find out more about the other person.

24. Did they take a cookie from the cookie jar? What kind of cookie was it?

(Twin Scars characters; project on indefinite hiatus)

Isura - yes, sugar cookie

Megan - yes, it had pink glitter sprinkles on it

28. What do they tell people they want? What do they actually want?

I'll tell you what I want

What I really, really want

So tell me what you want

What you really, really want

I wanna (Hey!), I wanna (Hey!)

If you wanna be my lover

You gotta get with my friends (Gotta get with my friends)

Make it last forever, friendship never ends

Anyways... XD

Naru - especially as a teen she'd tell people she wanted a hug. What she really wanted though was a deeper relationship.

Shiido - will rarely tell people what he wants unless it's something mundane. If we're talking any emotional need, you had to have really bothered him to get him to express it. He probably wants to be left alone, which is true. He probably needs to decompress and think.

What he won't tell you is that he's trying to find the middle ground between conviction and happiness. That he'd only tell someone he really trusts. He wants to be happy without guilt. He wants to find a way to do things right. At least that's where he's at in his late teens.

Tsuname - For all his emotionalness, he may not actually be very honest with people about what he wants unless pushed. Even if it's something mundane, he may hem and haw until he has no choice but to ask. Otherwise he might find a way to get whatever it is he's looking for on his own. He also isn't very honest about his emotional needs unless it's very clear there's a disconnect and he's desperate enough to be understood. Most often, he'd probably tell people to leave for their own safety. If he's been pushed far enough into expressing that, leave quietly or tread with extreme caution and be prepared.

Ril'siiya - If it's some material object, she will give you a list. Otherwise, it depends. If you've made her angry and she wants you to leave, she will probably point away and tell you in no uncertain terms. She probably needs to recover her shredded dignity. If you've annoyed her, wow, you must have been really trying hard to. She will probably shoo you away so she can similarly recover. For any mundane need like that she'll be pretty upfront about it. She's bored, she will tell you and then go off to find stimulation. It's the deeper needs that are harder to get out of her. She buries a lot of that deep down and keeps it locked. Might not even be honest with herself about it, it's so shut down inside. Even then it's probably something generic, like, wants to be understood, maybe wants to be loved but the memory of her family being taken from her is right there with it so she flinches back from the idea and fills her life with all various things to keep it down and buried. She finds other ways to be fulfilled generally, and she isn't without familial love in the form of Sz'nami and even her grandmother to some extent. So it isn't like that need goes unfulfilled either. It's just not something she says with words, so relationships where she has to express those deeper needs verbally are harder for her.

Korosa - will tell people he wants to be left alone. Deep down though, he also seeks someone who will understand him.

42. If invited to a TED Talk, what topic would they present on? What would the title of their presentation be?

Elyse - Why Kokuen is a Bully and Should be Avoided

Kokuen - Why Clark is Definitely Stalking Me

46. Are they a listener or a talker? If they’re a listener, what makes them talk? If they’re a talker, what makes them listen?

Ril'siiya LOVES to talk. She will talk SO much. You really have to be serious and level with her to get her to listen. She will probably be looking for opportunities to keep talking though. She is someone who generally enjoys the cadence of her own speech and gets carried away.

Shiido - a listener with a slice of talking. He might talk just to keep the conversation going. But beyond conjunctive phrases, to really get him talking you have to get him going on something he's interested in and it has to be specific. Definitely don't hit him with open-ended questions. He will give the shortest answer possible. It probably takes knowing ahead of time what will work, a good guess or just luck, but if you start saying something like "I'm looking into getting a new spaceship..." He will talk endlessly about the different models and upgrades and automatically go into salesman mode and recommend you something based on what he knows. So I guess the method with him is act like you're looking for something he has some knowledge base in. This works with food to a lesser degree, but he may not be as loquacious. But yeah, really mundane stuff like that or even maybe specific stuff about flooring or other interior design elements might get him going a bit. Robots are also probably a topic he could talk extensively on given the right lead-in. If it's something mechanical there's a good chance he'll know something. If it's out of his depth, he'll probably recommend you do your research.

Tsuname - Definitely more of a talker. These days it's a little harder to get him talking, but he likes doing it. He certainly isn't comfortable just listening either. To get him really listening probably takes some finesse. It probably has to be someone really good with words and preferably knowing about him to get him to calm down and listen. Otherwise it probably took violence to get to this point.

Naru - talker, but she isn't that verbose, not unless you've really got her going. She'll probably listen just as readily if you level with her, but she will get uncomfortable if it goes on too long.

Sh'zkai - in theory she could be more of a listener, but she generally doesn't pay you heed. She prefers to be the one doing the talking, even if she uses speech more like a weapon and a shield than deriving any joy out of it. She probably would be more than happy to let you talk, she just won't listen. She only really listens if there's something in it for her.

Korosa - prefers to be the one on top of the conversation, but he will listen if you're sincere. He will definitely be the one trying to come out of top of the conversation at first though. He might learn how listen better later. There is still some part of him that likes to talk a little, but in general he uses them like knives. Tools for cutting open the conversation and getting at what lies underneath. If he feels he can successfully master the conversation, he does get some satisfaction from that though.

Sz'nami - While she for sure likes to talk and likes the sound of her own voice a little, she's more than happy to listen to other people. She definitely derives joy out of being able to bear someone's burden. It makes her feel important. She may get a little impatient if someone goes on too long, but it would have to be an especially long and self-absorbed rant to get to that point.

52. Do they act on their immediate emotions, or do they wait for the facts before acting?

Naru - especially as a teen she tended to go wherever her emotions took her. She had to learn the hard way that acting on them would lead to disaster.

Shiido - He operates more on convictions than emotions. If something isn't right he'll prioritize that over what his emotions are telling him. He's for sure a planner, especially when he has the opportunity to do so.

Sz'nami - a little bit of both I wanna say. She'll for sure act on emotion if she thinks the situation calls for it. There are other times she might want to get away and plan first though. Maybe step back and observe for a bit.

Ril'siiya - Depends on the situation. She tends to express her emotions pretty quickly, but there might be times she chooses to step back and observe/plan if she's uncertain or there's something that requires a little thought.

Thanks for all the asks!!!

#Kaze OCs #Oc talk #Oc asks #Oc ask answers #Kaze talks #Kaze talks about OCs #Aliens #Terramun #Twin Scars

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avengers-rule103 · 2 years

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"people should stop defining Steve by his relationship with Nancy"

but no one's doing that. no one is defining him by his relationship with Nancy, we're recognising that said relationship was a key part of Steve's character growth, just as much as looking after the kids is (which if anything he's way more definied as being the babysitter then he is anything to do with Nancy), just as much as his friendship with Robin is. I mean come on, Steve wasn't supposed to make it past season 1, everyone, stancy shippers included, knows that Steve was only supposed to be a road block in the way of Jonathan, and yet he has become one of the most well developed characters on the goddamn show. He's grown into an amazing leader and protector and big brother figure to and because of the kids, but with who did he make the promise that he'd look after them in the first place? "now i know you promised Nance you'd keep us safe, so keep us safe." and through the journey he has grown into someone who can finally be there for Nancy and be what she needs without pretending or running away or being influenced by his asshole ex-friends because through his and Nancy's relationship, through being with the kids, through being friends with Robin, he's realized that he doesn't want to be that asshole anymore, and in season 5 if Nancy's trauma gets resolved (which certainly looks like it's going to be a plot point) Nancy might just be able to love Steve again without any guilt or resentment towards their previous relationship weighing her down. All of it possible because they've both grown. Because they've both been key factors in each others growth. It's recognition, not definition.

#stranger things #i might as well be talking to brick wall for all the good this is gonna do but 🤷‍♀️#steve harrington #nancy wheeler #stancy

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justashadetalkative · 3 months

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GET TO KNOW THE MUN

NAME?: Gossy

(Picrew by Lunevani, found here. Thanks Swid!)

PRONOUNS?: Any non-neopronoun (he/she/they/it)

PREFERENCE OF COMMUNICATION?: Discord for any sort of involved conversation! Replies & tumblr messenger are both fine for short-form stuff, though.

MOST ACTIVE MUSE(S)?: Diamond for the most part; he comes naturally.

EXPERIENCE / HOW MANY YEARS?: I started roleplaying on online forums ~15 years ago, but I started doing DnD with my parents and pass-a-word-document-back-and-forth style rp with some IRL friends ~18 years ago.

BEST EXPERIENCE?: I don't really tend to think in terms of Grand Moments! I think that overall I've had a pretty good experience just, In General with rp. Exceptions have happened, but they've been mild and manageable.

RP PET PEEVES?: Lack of (positive) ooc communication is the main one that comes to mind. I want this to feel like something we're doing collaboratively, with good will and for the sake of having fun. I do also get disheartened if the initiation of interactions (e.g. ask sending, thread notions) isn't at least sometimes mutual, but that’s like... I don’t expect balance or anything; folk have varying levels of energy and anxiety and idea flow, and that’s natural! I just feel more comfortable with at least the occasional indication of reciprocal interest.

FLUFF, ANGST, OR SMUT?: Angst and fluff are both good! I'd theoretically be open to smut on Discord with the right characters & situation, but I've never actually written it.

PLOTS OR MEMES?: Definitely plots; I am so, so bad at improv, so it's kind of hard for me to respond to ic-memes a lot of the time. ^_^; That said, even when they're a challenge for me I do still like memes! They're a nice way to get new ideas flowing, and I like sending them.

LONG OR SHORT REPLIES?: Long and medium are best. Kind of like with plotting vs. memes, I do best when I have context to build from, and single-paragraph or shorter can start to be more difficult for me to work with.

TIME TO WRITE?: Fffff. Whenever I 1) have time, and 2) can convince my brain to cooperate. It's intermittent, sadly.

ARE YOU LIKE YOUR MUSE(S)?

We're all very queer. :P

Otherwise, Diamond's been hanging out rent free in my head since I was literally 4, so. I think there's absolutely overlap there and that it's also just anchored too deep down for me to untangle or notice specifics. xD

My other muses do often take at least one or two ideas, feelings, or questions of mine and extrapolate those to extremes; see where they'd go if they were big enough and internalized enough to be personality-defining. Clemcy and the fear of death, the arrogant know-it-all tendencies. Ithadel and the deep fear of overstepping boundaries, the self-knowledge of being a wet blanket in social situations. Oscar and the genuine belief that the whole point of it all is for us to care for one another and the world itself.

Phosa and Linast are question-based; I think a lot of their character struggles have grown out of my musings on the sometimes-immense discrepancies between who one is in raw instinct vs. who one is when acting purposefully vs. who one wants to be, and the further difference between true internal desire 'want' vs. wistful thinking 'want'.

tagged by: @archerwhiterp; thanks! :)

Tagging: @theovergrowth @needleandstory @desertfragments @writedisaster @oflostinfound @hearthtales @discipulusmaleficus

#(trying not to tag anyone Ali already got hah)#about the mun #ooc #tag games #archerwhiterp #writing flails

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brothersapart · 1 year

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I read so much of the brother multiverse and I wonder want are all of the borrower knacks that been revealed like there so much Smol. Also i really appreciate you continuing to upload for these awesome series for so many year!!

Oh, knacks are one of my favorite parts! And they've certainly grown from how they were initially, becoming so important in the stories.

You can find a full list of knacks on this post, along with an explanation I worked out when I finally decided to fully define them.

That list might be missing a few, I think we did officially announce what Sherlock's knack would be while I'm pretty sure John Watson only has some guesses under the #borrower knacks tag I use to keep this sorted out.

(Smaug is trying to preen me while I answer this so I keep getting pecks to the face when I move against his wishes)

Some additional fun facts:

The strongest knack in existence was the ability to smite demons and monsters, just like an angel, and the person who received it was plenty strong enough to put it to use if they ever saw a demon.

Stan Baker has actually already used his knack in his borrower adventure, found in Brothers Chosen, but we won't see it discovered by the characters for a bit.

As useful as knacks are, there are limits to what they can be.

Borrowers cannot change their size.

Borrowers cannot shapeshift.

Borrowers cannot fly or teleport.

If you want to create your own knacks for characters, we'd love to hear the ideas! A great resource for them that I use is the Superpower wiki, and then adjust the power levels to what the borrowers can handle. They're not at the full superhero levels, of course.

Honestly, answering this has jazzed me up again for the stories, I've been trying to break out of a touch of depression the last few months so it's great to feel that energy again! Thanks so much for the ask!

Under the cut, I'll list out the knacks I can find, it might be a project for another day where I see if there's any others we might have announced separately:

Sam Winchester–

Enhanced Awareness: This can either enhance an already understood sense to supernatural levels, or give the borrower a ‘sixth sense,’ much like how Sam can feel if he’s being watched. His ability does not work on other borrowers, the angelic Grace around their souls keeping the perception from working on them.

Dean Winchester–

Enhanced Tracking: Trackers, like Dean, are able to use their ability to track down their target with undeniable accuracy. There are limits, as Dean can only track down objects he needs. He is unable to apply this to people, and if he can’t conjure up that sense of need, nothing will happen. This is not limited by distance, though if he’s far from an object, he only gets a sense of what direction it’s in.

John Winchester–

Perception Filter: The ability to be unnoticed and/or ignored in presence and actions. John’s ability is unique, so far as he’s discovered. He is unable to apply this ability to himself, but has found that if he concentrates, he is able to hide his family from notice, even if a human opens up the walls and looks right at them. This allows him to leave without worrying that they will be found, though of course, stuff doesn’t always go to plan.

Mary Winchester–

Terrakinesis: The ability to control the earth. While John’s ability tends towards more protective with his family, Mary is ready to go on the attack. She can’t affect entire buildings like the angels, but she can rock the ground just enough to knock a human off balance, buying time for her to escape. This works when there’s concrete, rock, stone, ect underneath the ground. She is unable to affect wood paneling at all and is cautious if she needs to go over a wood floor. With this ability, she was able to slowly carve out a safe home for her family underneath the ground. Adding in John’s ability to keep the family undetected, it seemed a good place to raise their two boys. Mary keeps several pebbles on her that she can flick at an attacker in case she needs a quick escape. Dean certainly got his accuracy from his mother.

Sherlock Holmes–

Time Distortion: The ability to slow down or stop time. A very strong knack that requires training to sustain for longer than a few seconds. In Sherlock’s case, he is able to slow down time around him, enabling him to escape with a speed that can’t be matched, and make observations that no one else would ever notice. When he stretches his ability, he can include others in this. He can’t stop time like an angel; it will always move forward

Bobby Singer–

Psychometry: Bobby’s knack allows him to learn from books and artifacts at a glance or a touch. He’s unable to read people, but if he gets an item of theirs, he can know what it was used for, how it will be put to use in the close future. This includes seeing that a knife will be used for a murder, before the murder happens.

Jacob Andris–

Supernatural Strength: Some, like Jacob, grow stronger than even other borrowers. This comes from their innate ability to turn their knack on their own bodies by instinct. While Sam and Dean receive the standard borrower strength boost while cursed, allowing them to lift around 12x their body weight, Jacob is able to lift, at only 18, a colossal 42x his natural body weight. If he was human-sized, he could bench a car without breaking a sweat.

Oscar–

Pyrokinesis: The ability to manipulate fire in limited forms. Oscar would not easily discover this knack, as a fire in the motel room walls might cause the entire place to go up in a blaze.

Walt Watch–

Telekinesis: The ability to manipulate objects outside of their direct reach. This can often cause a borrower to be mistaken for a ghost, moving objects in a house without touching them for a distraction. Walt Watch has taken the ability further, freezing two humans in place and later directing his power at himself to force his razor blade through Celeste’s neck despite her angelic invulnerability. This came close to burning out his knack.

Chase Lisong–

Emotional manipulation: The ability to influence the emotions around him, with no need for physical contact. A way for Chase to keep the peace among whichever group he’s in, or, if he can manage to get close enough, make a human tired or inattentive enough to escape notice.

Bobby Loran–

Power borrowing: Bobby is able to borrower the knack of other borrowers for a limited amount of time. One at a time, and since he’s not used to them he wouldn’t have as much finesse with them. He’d be quicker to burn them out than the actual “owner” of the knack.

Minnie Lisong–

Life detection: Very useful for finding out if a human is in a room, or seeing if there is a possibly dangerous rat or spider hiding in the walls.

Mark Bend–

Supernatural Strength: Unlike Jacob, Mark’s ability only applies to his legs. His legs are supernaturally enhanced, able to leap high into the air compared to a regular borrower.

Sean–

Invisibility: Though the borrower does not make themselves actually invisible in most cases, the invisibility knack allows them to camouflage and blend in to their surroundings. In Sean’s case, he can cause a cloud of distortion that hides himself and any of his friends that stand close enough.

There are knacks picked out for the following characters, but they have not been announced yet (as far as I remember, feel free to send in a message if I'm just forgetting them!):

John Watson

Stan Baker

Stan Baker's brothers (Seamus, Dylan, Simon and Levi)

Moira Wainscot

Kara Bolt

Harmony

Adriana of the Woods

Oh! And of course, if you think you know what one of the knacks might be, send in your guess and if you're right, we'll officially reveal it!

#borrower knacks #knack #sam winchester #dean winchester #a list of what we've announced

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theangrypokemaniac · 1 year

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Several reasons, @iloitse.

1. He's hated mainly for replacing Brock, and every following complaint is rooted in that, but it was a different situation to now.

We never knew Pokémon could last this long, how bad it'd get, and that one day, lineup changes would be expected.

This was the first time it happened.

All this talk of 'together forever' and 'you will always be my best friend', that the bonds formed on the road, from hardship and isolation, are eternal, and then they pull this on us!

It comes from nowhere: Oak asks them to visit Ivy, then Brock suddenly decides to stay.

Ten kids who needed him are left to his feckless, wandering old man, but a grown woman and three teenage nerdettes can't even bloody sweep up after themselves.

We lost Brock for no noble reason, just to simp for Ivy whilst working himself to death keeping these idiots alive.

Sod that, Brock! Come and run free with us!

It cheapened him. Someone devoted and supportive was now dumping Ash and Misty, two children, to their unknown fate, so he could perv on an old bird, begging for her 'gratitude'.

Therefore Tracey represents the sad, pathetic and degrading exit Brock got.

It's temporary only in hindsight.

For all we knew, Brock, someone we cared about, was gone for good, and I suspect that'd be the case had we immediately rolled over and accepted Tracey.

Anger at his loss should be seen as a sign of his value, when we couldn't imagine the anime without him.

Complaint got Brock back, which is a lesson to keep in mind.

Whenever they piss you off, don't just shrug and fall into place because 'it's like that now'.

Resist, fight back, withdraw all financial support, and they'll cave first.

If more if us had done that, we wouldn't be in this mess.

2. The Lost Lapras:

In his cack-handed introduction, (that is, if he's meant to be liked) Tracey, a complete stranger, imposes himself upon Ash and Misty, informing them he's their new travelling partner, about ten minutes after they've met.

Since they know Professor Oak, he insists on tagging along too, whether they like it or not.

Misty even says:

"Hey, you can't just invite yourself."

But he does! And her resentment of it, however fleeting it was, grants us permission to feel the same, as she and Ash don't want him either.

He's not only forcing his presence on them, but on us too, one episode after Brock left, fans still in a state of disbelief, insisting it's somehow a mistake.

Him showing up, determined to take his place, killed those hopes.

Now the rest of the episode intends to make up for it, proving he's not such a bad fella after all, but the damage was done.

Anyone who 'broke' the original trio was up against it, but to be so forward, presumptive and overconfident just got on our nerves.

Well too bad. I'm here now, and you'll just have to accept it.

I don't think so, love. That's why much of the original fanbase walked away at this point.

3. He's unfortunately something of a bland personality, with no stand-out moments or mannerisms anyone remembers.

There's a restraint and almost subdued quality to how he's written, as if consciously held back from fully taking part.

I don't remember Tracey generally being arrogant and selfish, but that was our first impression of him, and no other defined traits ever turned up to help him shine.

Therefore, having nothing else to grab, the idea he was secretly 'like that' underneath remained.

4. His 'thing' of drawing Pokémon, whilst harmless, isn't particularly interesting, either as an occupation or viewing experience.

We all drew Pokémon. That's our job. He ought to do mad stuff beyond us.

It works for an episode, perhaps even stretching to a mini-arc like Todd, but not for the whole region.

Ash, Misty and Brock had dreams needing a hands-on approach with Pokémon, which leads to action in fights, adventures, getting out and to hell with the risks.

Whereas Tracey's quest is entirely dependent on keeping back, staying quiet and still.

That's no good!

5. The Joy of Pokémon / In the Pink:

Tracey draws Joy and Jenny, and finds the latter attractive, so probably likes both.

If Brock's successor had been a fun, unique presence, he may have won converts in time.

Yet not only does Tracey bring nothing to the team, he's now leeching off his predecessor for character traits, and even that's a passing hint soon discarded.

What's the use in getting rid of Brock then?

Not that this is so damning now, since Cilan, Clemont and Kiawe all replaced Brock, and all were blatant rip offs.

6. Brock came in as a solid, tough parental substitute, and retained that sense of authority.

Here was a comforting father figure who always came through in a crisis.

If there's trouble, he'll take care of you.

Tracey doesn't have that safe, reliable aura. No one looks to him for protection.

We were all children then. Having the 'adult' taken away, to make room for a boy you can feel isn't up to it, feeling it in that unspoken, primal level children do, is frightening.

Quite a bit of the vitriol against Tracey came from the age-old terror of losing one's parents and being left vulnerable and alone, which most of the main cast have experienced, and now, in a sense, it'd happened to us as well.

It's telling that when returned, Brock remained throughout Johto, Hoenn and Sinnoh, usually in the background, but that was enough.

Once retired, every following male was older than Ash, cooked and healed, shared knowledge about Pokémon, and constantly worried about a brother or sister.

Now we have Goh, who's useless, we have to stay at home.

It's too scary out there without Brock.

7. Brock has a sympathic backstory which immediately invites pity and good will.

Fans love that. Now they can ponder over all the things never said and theorize how the past shaped him.

Tracey came with NOTHING.

We don't know his family, hometown, or nationality even.

Just a pad, pencil, Venonat and Marill, and that's all yer ever getting, to this day.

(Although given the looks of this lad I suspect he's from Johto.)

Anyone willing to give him a chance is sabotaged before they even begin, as there's no material to work with, no substance to love in the first place.

How could we like a character who wasn't truly there?

Incidentally, someone on an old fansite attempted to supply him with a past.

They'd decided he was ashamed of his relatives for being 'hicks' who 'watched Nascar', so that's canon to me.

8. The Power of One:

The end of the world is imminent.

Had Tracey played a crucial role in its salvation, that would give him something, a footing to plead his case to viewers.

But he does eff all!

The writers ignored him, the dub cut his lines, so now even the production on both sides of the globe don't like him either!

This effectively condones our resentment, and perhaps it's a clue they'd listened and given up on Tracey by then, which is certainly more humble and responsive than they have been lately.

The most he does do, in pulling Ash and Misty to the shore, is just him in the right location, and unlike the rest of the cast, isn't motivated by any hidden depths.

• Ash ran into danger because he's a hero.

• Misty dived into the sea because she loves him.

• Team Rocket sacrificed their lives because they have good in them.

Not only could Tracey's action here be given to anyone, even a Pokémon, it's not based on any known quality.

You can't say it's love for his friends pushing him on, as that was never displayed previously, at least not so notably it was his stand-out trait.

9. There's just three Pokémon on the team.

Of them, only Marill has any popularity, and wasn't used enough.

Not until Hoenn did any Pokémon besides Pikachu and Togepi wander around freely, but Marill should've too and had interactions with them.

Boys liked Scyther, but it's a praying mantis, so girls didn't, and as they dominate the 'fandom' part of fan bases, their revulsion stuck.

Venonat was an odd choice. To me it looks fluffy and cuddly, but that's not an opinion too many share.

It's an endless circle: Tracey isn't 'present' enough to give his Pokémon the screen time to be lovable, and if they're not around, we can't warm to him as their owner.

This is the integral flaw in Tracey's existence:

When the spotlight's on someone else, he's boring and does nothing important.

But if he's the star, he's depicted as deeply unpleasant, suggesting that's how it'd always be were he given more to do.

I don't understand how the writers got it so wrong. I almost suspect it was deliberate.

10. Tracey Gets Bugged

You all know what's coming.

I remember him for two episodes.

He's a complete arsehole in both.

Team Rocket are minding their own business when Beedrill bursts the balloon and a scarred Scyther attacks them with its knife arms.

I used to be a Jessie maniac. What they did to her caused me supreme upset.

When she swears vengeance, we're expected to sympathise with the swarm, even though:

• Girls hate Scyther (my mother especially).

• It's a load of giant insects, i.e. the stuff of nightmares.

• The scarred Scyther who cut Jessie also beat Tracey's Scyther half to death, simply for being old and tired, so it could become leader.

• All the remaining Scythers (as in, the family of Tracey's Scyther) accepted this and left it to die.

Aside from his debut, this is the episode with the most Tracey coverage. We learn a little and watch him catch a Pokémon.

Every part of it offends me.

• Bug Pokémon are his favourite (freak).

Boys tend to develop an insect fixation to torment girls.

• He belittles Misty's fear of them.

• He jeers at Jessie's hair.

I like Ash and Misty so they're let off, not that they were at the time, but at least they haven't usurped Brock.

Any cheek is banter with old enemies, the same as they mock one another. Tracey never earned that right.

• He directs Scyther during battle, effectively ordering and intending What Happens Next.

• Scyther is rewarded for its behaviour by joining the cast, serving as a constant reminder for this picture:

...

All these years on, when I've not seen the classic era for a while, and the last four generations have destroyed what I felt for Team Rocket, besides soiling my memories of how they used to be, for now I know how it ends, and realize loving it was a waste of my life.

Even after all that, merely looking at this image awakens the distress I experienced as a child.

I HATED this episode, and refused to watch it again for years. When I did, I still closed my eyes at that point.

They might be burnt, blown up and electrocuted regularly, but it's cartoon damage and impossible to take seriously.

But getting slashed with a sharp implement feels much more serious as it's realistic.

There's a cold malice in it, intending to ridicule Jessie and James.

Here's a pair obsessed with their appearance, so we'll humiliate them with near-baldness, knowing it's the worst punishment.

That's the most graphic injury Meowth ever had.

I think he's been shaved, between the eyes, but as it's from a blade, it looks like part of his face was sliced off.

Skinned alive, even.

And we're supposed to consider this a happy ending 'cause Tracey's Scyther earnt the respect of the vicious monster who almost murdered him.

This, remember, is Tracey's starring episode, and what's the result?

Alienating the entire fanbase!

• Brock fans hate him for replacing a better character.

• Ash and Misty fans hate him for spoiling all the shipping potential by being there.

• Team Rocket fans hate him for delivering the most violent attack they ever received.

I know, I know, it'll be gone by the next installment, but in that moment, he disfigured them.

11. From a distance, Tracey appears the worst companion of them all, if one measured the negative coverage each is given.

This is very unfair. Later ones deserve it much more than him. But he was introduced at time when people still spoke their minds and were open in their dislike.

Nowadays everyone remains silent and puts up with stupidity for some reason, meaning the real bastards get away with it.

12. The most we know is Tracey was created to pander to Americans.

You can't come back from that.

I can never convey how much I hated Tracey back in the day, in that irrational, full-blooded and brutal hatred only children possess, but it's all gone now, even if I've dipped into it here as the memories flood back.

Can't hate Tracey now I've known Max.

Can't hate Max now I've known Iris.

And sometimes I go insane and imagine I can't hate Iris now I've known Goh.

Every single time, I think it's the worst it'll ever be, and it always gets worse.

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beth-march · 2 years

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Hi! I've been a fan of your blog since the fexi days, and I really love to hear your analyses of characters and shows! With that, I have a ST question. So I 100% believe that Mileven have been set up as an endgame couple since DAY 1 and think bylers are deluding themselves. BUT I don't understand why Mike was so awk with Will at the airport and can't find an explanation that's not "he's repressing his feelings for will". You understand Mike SO WELL I would love to hear your thoughts on this!

Hi! It's so sweet that you've been around for so long, and that you've stuck with me through my new interests. I'm so touched to be told I understand Mike well, he's my beloved, so what a compliment. Thank you for all of this, I really appreciate you 💗💗

So, with the airport scene, I think that Mike's awkwardness around Will can be attributed to the fact that they haven't spoken in months. Will used to be Mike's best friend, and now, they don't write to each other, they don't speak to each other on the phone, they've grown apart. Of course it would be awkward to then see each other in person again.

I've seen it being argued that they've lost touch because "Mike is repressing his feelings for Will", but I disagree. I think they lost touch because a) they're 2,000 miles apart, b) they don't share a bond comparable to El and Mike, and c) there weren't equal efforts to keep up the communication. In the roller rink scene, when Will was confronting Mike about how they had lost touch, Mike said, "Maybe you should've reached out more. I don't know. But why is this on me? Why am I the bad guy?"

They both stopped reaching out to one another. From Mike's perspective, the letters from Will stopped coming, so he stopped writing too, and he doesn't know why they stopped talking. He feels guilty, in the same way any of us do when we ignore a text from someone and then run into them before we answer. He feels confused and sad, in the same way any of us do when we think about the people we used to be close with, the childhood friends we've lost.

Actually, there's a lot to be said there. Mike and Will were close friends, best friends, and that relationship has been made so complicated by the development of Will's romantic feelings. For both of them. What used to be a friendship defined by closeness, understanding and support has been made confusing for Mike and painful for Will. If Mike finds out the reason - and he probably will, given the fact that El knows the painting has a romantic connotation ("I think he likes someone."), and she'll be able to tell Mike that she didn't commission the painting - it'll be just extremely awkward. Part of me would love to write that whole situation unfolding, while exclusively honouring Mike's perspective.

#belle answers asks #mileven

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struggle-but-its-all-ocean-floor · 8 months

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Out of curiosity, I know that some kpop companies (hybe, jyp, maybe etc.) are trying to start these international groups trained in the kpop mold but from all countries and all singing in English. Do you foresee there being an appetite for this? Is this still kpop to you? (full disclosure I was the anon that accidentally got hooked on dream academy and, though they don't show it, I'm really fascinated by the behind the scenes of it all bc it's really heart-warming how they've all seemed to develop such strong bonds despite many language barriers and many national backgrounds)

Somewhat relatedly, I'm interested to see how the genre is impacted long-term by the increased international focus, including doing more English tracks and an increasing preference for English-speaking trainees, potentially resulting in less focus on the korean market. The siloing of kpop to the korean market was of course bad in one way bc fewer people were exposed to it and got to experience the genre, but I wonder what the genre, to the extent that it can be readily defined, might stand to lose by focusing outward. Maybe nothing of course, and it's just another example of linguistic imperialism. It'll be interesting to see. I don't expect you to predict the future! I just wanted to put down some thoughts

I remember you! Welcome back!

I don't know if what I feel is right, but I don't really want to see people who aren't of Asian descent in kpop? Actually, my problem is more with white people from more privileged countries. Kpop's recent popularity in the West means Western countries, especially the US and in Europe, are being exposed to a different culture, and Asian communities in those countries are seeing themselves represented. Having songs with Korean lyrics such as LGO and the Savage Love remix reach number 1 on the Hot 100 is so cool. We're all so used to English we forget that it's just a language and that other languages are valid. I used to feel insecure about my English, despite it being great, because it isn't perfect and I don't sound like a native. BTS showed me how "random" it all is. In Kpop, Korean is the dominant language even if us outsiders don't speak it, and it's such a cool language. I became interested in Korean and less interested in English through Kpop. Most idols don't speak English that well and it's all cool, thus I was able to take pride in how fluent I am and stop regretting the fact that I'm not an English native speaker. I literally used to dream that I was born in the US or Canada, just because I would be a native English-speaker (nevermind the fact that English in an official language in other countries...). I still love English, but I don't worship the language anymore. Seeing a group form a small, ignored country become so famous that people even started learning more about it and its language felt like representation even to me who is from a "popular" European country - Portugal has grown a lot recently, but when I was younger no one talked about us, and a lot of people to this day think we're a Spanish colony or something. I used to feel so invisible and insignificant, especially being from a small town...

I don't know, I don't really want to see a bunch of privileged white Americans in kpop. They already have a whole industry for them. Maybe kpop will be like hip hop? It's still dominated by black artists but so global. Of course, there is the issue of culture appropriation... I don't know much about this topic, but my issue is: aren't most songs already in English? We need "kpop" groups singing in English too? Part of the beauty of kpop is breaking what you called the linguist imperialism. There's a difference between Asian artists singing in English to expand their reach, because that allows for representation, shows that Americans and Europeans aren't the only ones who can become famous, and inevitably exposes the artists' fans to their own culture and language too, and international groups singing in English. What do we even mean by international? If the groups are truly diverse that could be great in terms of representation, introducing audiences to different cultures and languages, etc. Are these groups mostly going to be made up of people from privileged countries? These companies will likely privilege native English speakers or fluent English speakers (more common in Western countries, I think?), and also white or of East Asian descent...

I'm thinking aloud but I don't really know the kinds of groups that are being put together, since I don't watch survival shows. I don't know if I'm being small-minded and trying to gatekeep kpop. I wonder what Koreans and Asian communities in general think about this?

But this is an interesting topic you've raised! I'm sure we'll be seeing a lot of discourse about it. For now these groups are just starting out, right? We don't know how successful they'll be. We already have XG who sort of fit this concept, but they're all Japanese so it's different. I wonder how confusing it will be for Western audiences who are just being introduced to kpop and now have kpop without Asians (or with non-Asians). And Asian countries where kpop is mainstream, would they care for these groups? They might be indifferent to them? It might not make a difference the language they're singing in or how they were trained?

Thanks for the ask! I'm too ignorant to answer you. These are more questions than opinions! I'd love to hear your thoughts, as someone with an actual understanding of how these groups are being created!

#ask #text #thanks for the ask!#don't know how else to tag this lmao

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kyotosummer · 2 years

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Spy x Family: The Protagonists' Lessons and How They will Advance the Plot

This series is slowly taking over my mind.

As I've been discovering more about the plot of Spy x Family, I've noticed that a complicated series of lessons are being learned by each protagonist, and not only that, but while Anya's learning her needed lesson from both her parents, Twilight and Yor are actually learning the OPPOSITE lesson of the other. This intrigued me enough to explore a little more about these lessons, what they could mean, and how they could advance the plot.

Yor's Lesson: Don't blindly believe what you are told about people without thought, even if it's from someone who cares about you.

This poor girl doesn't have a single person in her life who isn't keeping secrets from her and manipulating her on some level - from unconsciously to fully intentional. Interestingly, Thorn Princess has made a few things pretty clear since the start of the series:

She's been employed by the Garden since her parents died

The Garden gives her all information about her target. This includes: Their Location The Identities of Everyone With Them What Crimes They Have Committed to be Considered a Traitor

She does not ever question this information

Now, I believe Yor kinda "checked out" when she became the head of the house after her parents died and got an assassination job to keep food on the table for Yuri. It's a completely understandable situation, but she's unknowingly going down a path that will force her to do one of two things:

Stay loyal to The Garden, which has been taking care of her since she was a small girl. This will require her to eventually kill Twilight and abandon Anya to an unknown fate, but she will be able to keep her worldview intact.

Question how The Garden defines a traitor and whether or not their own ideals are as justified as they've made them appear.

This girl is tied into every political web she could trip and fall to - She's an assassin for a shadow organization that seems to be on the political side opposing Donovan Desmond's group. Because she does no research for her job outside of what she's handed, she doesn't know anything about the politics surrounding her job, and thus accidentally became friends with Donovan Desmond's WIFE OF ALL PEOPLE.

AND OF COURSE, TO TOP THE CHERRY ON THIS SUNDAE, her husband is a spy from the country hers could go to war against at any moment, and her brother is part of the secret police.

There's going to come a moment where Yor's going to be told she has to pick a side, no matter what. How she handles that will determine how much she's grown as a character.

Twilight's Lesson: You will have to blindly trust someone at some point, buddy.

This is why I'm intrigued by this story. Twilight's problem is the opposite - He has gotten used to questioning everyone's thought process so much that the only way he can comprehend a person NOT having an ulterior motive is if they're a complete simpleton.

Now, for the most part, this mindset has gotten him pretty far in life and it makes sense - Everyone this dude has ever gotten close to has kicked the bucket & all he has EVER received for the sacrifices and harm gone his way are congratulations for surviving and being told he'll never get a thank you but he should still be proud.

Twilight has been able to run away from his hurting of people in the past because he's constantly in enemy territory, but now there's a kid involved, and he has to rely on this kid to make friends and get him close to his target.

Now, we all know Anya's trying her little butt off to help her papa, but Twilight doesn't. He's only able to see what's on the surface, and that's causing him to not only underestimate Anya, it's allowing Anya to get to know him, which is something Twilight has not allowed anyone to do for a very, very long time. (except MAYBE Franky… maybe)

Along with Anya, he's also forced to rely on Yor, who is able to care for Anya when he's not there and help around the house. Yor has been able to get past his defenses because of her lack of ulterior motives, which caused Twilight to classify her as a simpleton and dismiss any other signs of something not being right.

Another thing to note: Twilight is avoiding help from his organization. Yes, he's worked with other agents, but he's chosen Franky, who is an informant FROM OSTANIA and not an actual member of the organization, as his partner for several spy events in the past (even trying to dress him up as Anya's 'mom' before Yor), and he's choosing to live with civilians over other agents for STRIX.

While this is working out for him in the story, if the situation were ANY different, it'd be blatantly obvious he is doing everything he can to basically work alone, and he'd probably fail.

(Franky, if you ever betray him, you BETTER feel guilty and YOU BETTER FIX IT. AND DON'T DIE DOING IT. Rootin' for you, bud!)

There's going to be a moment where Twilight/Loid/[[Redacted]] will find out about Yor and Anya, and I think that moment's going to come at a time where he'll be truly alone and only Yor (possibly Anya and/or Franky) will be there to help him. His level of growth will be determined on whether or not he's willing to accept it and trust them.

Anya's Lesson: Do Your Best, Respect Boundaries, Choose Love and it will Find You

Anya has all the backstory properties of a villain: a shady organization experimented on her, turned her into a telepath, and treated her as a test subject not worthy of comfort until she was able to escape. She goes to at least 4 different homes and everyone is creeped out by her/kicks her out. Even the guy running the orphanage Loid found her at wanted to get rid of her.

Even when she and Loid first met, she fully knew his interest in her was temporary, and planned to use him as much as he used her - as much as a 4 year old can. For her, this meant she got to play with spy gear...

...until that got her kidnapped, and the whole world changed.

I don't think it's been considered the impact of Twilight coming to rescue Anya. This girl has spent her entire life being rejected over things she had no control over, but this time she got in trouble because of something she really did and really messed up. In spite of that, and in spite of the fact that it would have been easier for Twilight to just go find another kid, he came back for Anya. Along with hearing his thoughts of guilt over getting her in danger and reminding himself that he wants a world where children don't cry. Anya ended up learning her first lesson about love and boundaries.

The story has been pretty blatant about Anya's progress, so I'm not going to go into too much detail, but throughout the story, we see her learning lessons through various means:

At school, Damian pushes her to do her best as her rival. Becky, who was won over by Anya defending her after Damian stepped on her foot (a lie but still), reminds her to practice self-care.

Yor helps Anya learn to do her best. Because most of Yor's thoughts are preoccupied by her profession in one way or another, Anya's attempts to read her mind for an easy way out usually end in failure. However, this forces Anya to be more creative and physical in her actions when working with Yor, which are outside of her comfort zone.

Loid/Twilight is the one teaching Anya to respect boundaries, which is HILARIOUS to me. Not only was that one of her first lessons with the whole kidnapping event, but he's lectured her about cheating on tests in the past (even though that would be an excellent attitude to have for the mission), is the one who drilled in her head that she needs to apologize if she hits someone (even though it was for the mission, still important), and he has frequent discussions with her about understanding people and their thought processes. The parts of his teachings that would be more harmful than helpful due to his spy lifestyle are usually countered by Anya sensing his thoughts about stress and his stomach, steering her interest away from her negative traits.

Both parents are teaching her about giving/receiving love in their own way. Yor is able to show her in their day-to-day lifestyle and her unconditional love, and Anya learns from Loid by reading his mind and seeing the thought process behind his actions. These different lessons are painting a picture for Anya really show her the full picture of love: Trusting them, Respecting their boundaries, and coming back for them.

As far as how these lessons will be tested for Anya, I'm not sure. I do know the show points out she can be very self-centered, and her #1 priority is to stay with her parents (specifically Loid), so the most likely scenario is that she'll end up in a situation where the best strategic choice is to go with the bad guys/separate from Twilight and trust he'll find her.

What does this mean for the story advancement?

Well, there's one last thing we have to consider first:

Twilight hasn't cried since THE INCIDENT, which anytime is mentioned comes with a "no one reached out to help/console" him comment.

So with that said, here're my thought about discovering identities, etc.:

Either Loid and Yor find out about each other at the same time, or Yor finds out about Twilight first.

If Twilight finds out about Yor first, he will DIP. Now that Melinda's in the picture, he may even ditch both Yor AND Anya. He is aware of the powerhouse The Garden is, and he knows he'd never stand a chance against Yor in a fight.

He may consider manipulating her on some level, but I see him choosing to leave everything behind over fighting her.

2. I think the reveal will actually involve both going to rescue Anya after she's been taken from them.

It would fit in a scenario where Anya's convinced separating from her parents is better for everyone, and it gives both of them a reason to be in their Professional Mode at the same time in the same place.

3. Most of the mental struggle of this reveal will be shown through Yor's mind.

Twilight has been telling himself he'll dismiss the family once the mission's done over and over again, so outside of a general surprise of Yor's identity, he's mentally prepared himself to separate from them. Yor will be the one to struggle with the fact that she's been married to 'the enemy' for as long as she has.

4. Twilight will be put in a position where he feels alone, and he will cry.

I REALLY think this will happen, and because it was his mom last time, the two best thematic parallels are either something involving his missing dad, or he thinks something happened to Anya.

IF it's because he thinks something happened to Anya, that would be a perfect moment for Yor to have to make her own decision on whether Loid should be considered a traitor, and then for Loid to realize he CAN trust Yor.

5. Once Twilight gets Anya back and understands the full situation, he will be SO PROUD OF HER.

IF I DON'T GET AN ENTIRE FRIGGIN' SPEECH BY HER PAPA ABOUT HOW RESOURCEFUL ANYA'S BEEN, HOW HARD SHE'S WORKED, HOW MUCH EFFORT SHE'S PUT INTO TWILIGHT'S PLANS, AND HOW AMAZING SHE'S BEEN DESPITE THE FACT SHE NEVER EXPECTED ANYONE TO FIND OUT, NEVER EXPECTED A REAL THANK YOU, AND ALL THIS WHILE WORKING UNDER CONSTANT THREAT OF BEING EXPOSED I WILL RIOT.

TWO-PAGES OF PRAISE AND THEN AN ILLUSTRATION OF JUST THE TWO OF THEM, LOID SO PROUD AND ANYA SO MOVED IS THE MINIMUM REQUIREMENT FOR ANYA'S EFFORTS. THAT GIRL IS WORKING HER BUTT OFF.

#Spy x Family #I JUST LOVE ANYA OKAY SHE IS PRECIOUS SHE MUST BE PROTECTED #Loid forger #yor forger #anya forger #long post

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erikahammerschmidt · 1 year

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thoughts about family

cw: mentions of traumatizing stuff

Imagine that you grew up in a community that was very religion-focused, and also very toxic and repressive. You were raised to believe that your church was, by far, the most important unit of society for you to participate in. Your love for your church was supposed to be among your strongest passions. Not being part of a church was considered unthinkable.

But your experiences with being part of a church were, overwhelmingly, bad ones. Your church did not let you express who you were. It punished you for saying what you believed, and for doing the things you enjoyed. When you think about it, all you can feel is oppression and fear.

By the time you've grown up and gotten away from this environment, you're full of negative feelings about not just the church you grew up in, but churches in general.

You've developed an ingrained idea of what a church is. And all the things that feel like defining characteristics to you-- the power structure within a church, the way it handles rituals and teachings, the way you're expected to think about other people based on whether they belong to your church-- feel inherently bad to you. They've been used to hurt you in so many ways that you can't imagine how they could ever be good things. You cannot hear the word "church" and have any positive thoughts about it.

And then, imagine you build a group of friends and acquaintances that you really love being with. They respect each other equally. They support your freedom and accept you for who you are. They connect with you over your beliefs and interests. And none of them are interested in church at all.

But, imagine that they still use the WORD "church."

Imagine that they even use it --a little bit-- like how it was used in your childhood. They use it to mean something good. A group that's important to belong to. A group you should care about deeply. A type of interpersonal connection that it's truly sad to see someone without.

But even so, they don't use it about anything that fits in your definition of a church. They use it, mostly, to mean this group of friends with shared interests. The community that, to you, is antithetical to the whole idea of church-- the community that feels like everything un-churchlike, a place of freedom and escape and refuge from church.

Whenever you insist that you don't have a church, your new friends correct you: "Of course you do! You have us!"

They bring up the word in every heartwarming conversation. They wax poetic about the importance of their "found church," and how "church isn't just who you share a religion with, church is the people who are always there for you."

There are so many ways they've respected your beliefs and accepted who you are. But this one, of all things, is where you find their limit. They simply cannot understand why you would not like the word "church," or would not want to use it for your relationship with them.

The closest they can get is to acknowledge that it comes from your bad experiences in the past. And their response to that is to insist that you just need to overcome it, to learn a new appreciation of what church can be, so that you can stop feeling so negative about it.

How would that feel?

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chacusha · 2 years

Text

Dreamwidth pitch

Sometimes I wish more people would talk to me on Dreamwidth but then I don't really talk about Dreamwidth and why it's good or how it works, so maybe it would be good for me to do that??

So I guess some of the basic selling points about Dreamwidth:

Signing up is free and quick. (Also, I believe you can have any number of accounts associated with the same email address.) It has a similar vibe to Tumblr -- a geeky/fannish space.

It is a journaling website based on LiveJournal. By this I mean that it's almost like having a diary where you can choose to make some parts of that diary public or semi-public (at which point it becomes a blog). Counter to the direction of a lot of social media sites which increasingly focus on metrics, engagement (in a numeric form of views/likes/notes/retweets/etc.), and wide availability and easy (or automatic) sharing of content so as to maximize those metrics, Dreamwidth goes in the opposite direction with a focus on privacy. Each post you make has three possible privacy settings: public (viewable by anyone visiting the site), friends (viewable only to people who you have intentionally granted access to your friends-only posts -- you can also freely define custom friend groups to select subsets of friends, although I don't usually use this level of compartmentalization), and private (viewable only by you). It's very easy to check which privacy setting you've used for a post and to change them after the fact. Because posts on Dreamwidth cannot be shared or reblogged, when you revoke access to your post, it is immediate and total because you control the only copy of the post. Usual internet exceptions apply: People may screenshot your post; the internet archive may manually or automatically take a snapshot of older content; or a person might still have "friends" access and then leak the details of a post outside of "friendslock", which would make semi-private material accessible to the public again even though you've tried to lock it down. But for the most part, you much less run into the issue where something you wrote when you were 16 is still public knowledge and can't be scrubbed from the internet. And because privacy settings are such a big feature of the site, there are strong social norms against violating someone's privacy by sharing details they've posted semi-privately outside of that space. I really like this aspect of Dreamwidth because being able to write up my thoughts on very personal things I'm thinking about or going through and have some close internet friends who I trust share their thoughts in response has been so helpful to me throughout my life. There are a lot of mental health benefits to keeping a diary and even more so when you can get semi-anonymous advice from people you know and trust on the internet. I cannot tell you how invaluable it has been to panic or vent about some situation I'm encountering for the first time and have an older and wiser friend give me some advice on how to approach it. I've really grown as a person through first LiveJournal and now Dreamwidth as its replacement because of the semi-anonymous (pseudonymous) AND semi-private way you interact with the site and other users, and I don't know any other social media website that can do this, except I suppose through DMs, but that always feels like having a side conversation whereas doing it on a journaling site makes it the main conversation, where it's easier to organize/search/sort through.

Dreamwidth was forked from LiveJournal many years ago by a small group of people who are very thoughtful and intentional about site design and purpose. You can see in the way DW and LJ have diverged since what the value is in having site runners who have a philosophy about approaching websites that's more than just "make money/break even." Dreamwidth is very "shoestring budget" in its feel -- it has fewer features, development is slow and (I'm guessing) largely done by the site founders or volunteers, and bugs are slow to fix. But on the flipside, the site is simple and loads quickly, the default look of the site is very clean and easy to read, and in addition, the site allows you to fully customize the default style in which content is displayed to you, something that other social media sites will never do (aside from a "dark mode", I suppose) because being able to establish and fully control the site look is key for a company's/website's branding. However, Dreamwidth goes another direction, because accessibility and accessibility features have been a value of the site owners from the founding, and they take that seriously. Dreamwidth is also very intentional about its content policy and takes pains to maximize free expression while still maintaining a safe environment conducive for dialogue and debate for its users. Finally, there are no advertisements on the site anywhere at all. Zero. How does the site support itself, then, you ask? It's based on a paid subscription model where a core of passionate users are willing to pay some money each year so that the site is able to support the amount of users/traffic it gets. This funding model means that the site remains the product being sold rather than the users (and their data/eyeballs). This is a good alignment to have because you want the site to be incentivized to be useful and valuable to users rather than to harvest as much as it can from its users so as to be useful and valuable to advertisers. Dreamwidth takes security seriously and keeps its users informed about potential security breaches (e.g. one where LJ's passwords were compromised, which led to DW accounts using the same password being similarly compromised). A comparison of what Dreamwidth and LiveJournal are like now is illustrative -- I find LiveJournal almost unusable because of the ads, loading times, and just general janky interface; LJ has also been subject to multiple purges and controversial content policy changes over the years. Being on Dreamwidth is almost calming and relaxing by contrast, even though it is clearly missing some obvious and sometimes very useful features like post-/comment-liking, video uploading, post scheduling, etc.

How tagging works on Dreamwidth: This is probably the biggest difference in how Tumblr/AO3 and Dreamwidth work. On Tumblr and AO3, tags are universal across the whole site. When you tag a post with something, then it will appear in global searches for anyone browsing that tag. Heck, on Tumblr, it might pop up unsolicited on someone's dash if they follow that tag. Tags are the main way people find and are recommended content from people they're not already following. On Dreamwidth, though, tags only apply to your blog. There is no universal tag search. I mean, you can search Dreamwidth for content you're interested in; you can also search users based on what tags they've listed in their "Interests." In my experience, though, this tends to not really turn up much useful stuff; you'll likely get a lot of weird/niche content probably not meant to be viewed by a wider audience, as well as users and communities who haven't updated their journal in, like, five years. Not very useful. (In general, content production and content discovery are extremely anemic on DW, a downside I discuss more fully below.) However, what this means is that tags are 100% geared toward the function of helping you organize your own blog. You have full control over your tagging scheme. Much more than any social media website I can think of (Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram for sure), Dreamwidth facilitates having a complete record of every post you've written and helps you easily find specific content again even if you wrote it years in the past. This is why I say the site is very good for journaling. It's easy to double-check things like: "In order for people to understand this part, they need to read that post where I talked about that grocery store incident. Where is that post?" "How long have I been having this issue at work? Oh wow, my first post on this was eight months ago." "Where are all the posts I've made with my TV show reviews?" (Tip: The default setting on Dreamwidth is to display only a selection of the most frequently used tags in alphabetical order on your main journal page; I would recommend overriding this immediately to set it to show all tags because your tags are going to be a SUPER useful navigation tool for sorting through your own posts.)

Features that support having actual conversations with your friends rather than shouting one-sidedly into the void and maybe getting a supportive like in response IDK: Fully-threaded comments (and also, no "like" button). *old lady voice* Kids these days don't appreciate the value of a fully-functional comment threading system! Okay, so Dreamwidth allows you to start new comments in response to a post and reply freely to other comments, creating a kind of hierarchical tree structure. All the discussion associated with a post is viewable on a single page, and this means you can have a pretty detailed back-and-forth with the author of a post without coming off as hostile or without awkwardly spamming your followers with one half of the conversation, which is how conversations work on Tumblr. The comment character limit is 16k characters (~2500 words) so you can reply fully to a post rather than needing to condense the essence of your reply into a brief comment. You can talk not only to your friends but also to your friends' friends who are contributing to the discussion too. Separation of public and private spaces: I won't go into this too much but Dreamwidth has "personal blogs" (private spaces) and "communities" (public spaces moderated by the leader of the community) that work very differently (have completely different mechanics underlying them). Unlike Tumblr and Twitter, this means there is a clear separation between public and private spaces, behavior norms in each, and who you're accountable to when interacting in each space, which does a lot to ease social interactions and make them less fraught and contentious. And unlike sites like Reddit, you actually GET a private space without having to interact entirely in communities/special interest forums. These sets of features means that you can have a very deep, easy-to-follow conversation in a semi-public forum on a wide variety of topics while keeping the conversation all in one place and allowing interested people to follow the conversation. It's just a set of features that prioritizes responding to content with high-quality conversation rather than the mere sharing of content without comment.

If you're interested in joining Dreamwidth, here is a word of warning and then advice:

The warning is that, unlike Tumblr, it is very hard to make friends on DW. On Tumblr, you can make friends by browsing tags and journals of people who post things relevant to your interests or who interact on the posts YOU'RE making and sharing; you can follow someone whose content you enjoy and want to continue seeing and maybe they follow you back and start interacting with your posts! Cool. Easy. DW makes this process problematic in many ways: (1) as mentioned earlier, content discovery is difficult, (2) in some cases, most or all of people's content may be friendslocked which means you cannot preview it before you decide to approach someone suggesting to be friends, (3) assuming you do find a stranger whose (public) content is interesting, you can "subscribe" to them (the equivalent of following on Tumblr; their content now regularly shows up on your dash ("friends page")) and/or "friend" them (this will give them access to YOUR friendslocked posts); the person you subscribe to or friend will get a notification of this action, but this doesn't actually mean you are or will be "friends." You see, in order to be friends, someone needs to subscribe and friend you back. For the first thing, that means being interested in your content (usually not an issue; even if you don't have any content, people are willing to take a chance on you and subscribe back). But the second thing is more important -- by friending you back, that will grant access to all the friendslocked entries. Just because some stranger on the internet is interested in what you post and is like "Friends?" and give you access to their friendslocked entries doesn't mean you actually trust that person enough to give them full access to your years and years of friendslocked writing, you know what I mean? So making a random friend request might just result in being completely ignored. Instead, you often need to give someone the context for why you are interested in being friends, introduce yourself, and ask for their permission to friend before hitting that button.

Okay, so what this means is that it is very hard to find potential friends on DW and trying to friend people can be way more work than creating a new account and clicking some buttons on people's profiles. So how do people make friends on DW?! In order to get around this, people have come up with several things:

Friending memes: These are activities that happen every so often where someone gives people a form to fill out (where you talk about various interests and type of things you post about on your blog, potential dealbreakers in your content, etc.) and people browse through other people's comments and when they find someone who looks interesting, they can reply and be like "Hey! You seem like an interesting person. I also post about camping and photography. Want to be friends?" It's like, uh, speed dating but for online friends? This is much better than a cold approach as described above. In particular, every January on Dreamwidth, a group of people runs an activity called the Snowflake Challenge, where they have various fannish activities and challenges and you can choose to participate in whichever ones you like. A lot of them act as kind of icebreaker questions, and you can strike up conversations with other people by browsing things they've posted, and at some point in the activity, there's always a friending meme. Usually reccing active communities and helpful resources on DW is also part of the Snowflake Challenge (which is SUPER useful because being on DW can be like walking through a graveyard sometimes), so it's great for people who are new.

Stickied friending posts at the top of journals. These posts will often explain what kind of journal the person keeps, what content they post, how much of their journal is friendslocked, requirements for friending, etc. Comment there to introduce yourself, explain why you are interested in friending this person, ask to be friended back, etc.

Participate in public-space "communities" first and use that to find friends. Okay, okay, a bit difficult because there are a lot of communities on DW that are *tumbleweed blowing in the wind* -- dead. Abandoned. So quiet and unresponsive that it's almost worse than being fully dead because there are people there who will sometimes give you a bite but it's just not enough to feel worth the time and now you're all embarrassed for yourselves and each other. Here are some recs of active communities: dw_community_promo (for finding (newly) active communities, not necessarily fannish in nature); fandom_on_dw (any kind of fannish activities/communities); fandomcalendar (fannish events); thefridayfive (a currently active community that posts a collection of five questions each Friday; great for icebreakers and you can browse other people's answers); addme_fandom (if a friending meme were a community instead; this comm also has a lot of resources for new joiners of DW in its sticky post). Active but maybe a bit drama-llama-y (you may or may not enjoy these): fandomsecrets (an EXTREMELY long-running community run by maybe the most tireless/superhuman mod I know of; you can anonymously submit images containing a fandom-related secret you have, and they get posted in random order over the following week and people discuss in the comments -- it's a great multifandom space, especially if you want to vent about some fandom drama you're going through or an unpopular opinion you have, but can be intimidating to interact there non-anonymously due to the nature/contentiousness of the secrets/discussions sometimes; also, sometimes people are mean :(); fail_fandomanon (a fandom gossip comm, essentially, but also a good multifandom discussion place; very difficult to find friends, though, due to the anonymous posting requirement but it's very active and gives you plenty of reading material if you largely like to use social media to read interesting stuff you didn't know about before. Also, its "Ask meme" threads and its personal posts are great for getting anonymous help and advice -- like you know those newspaper advice columns or r/AITA or r/relationships? That kind of thing. You can be very detailed about an issue you're having in your personal life and people will give you advice. Even more so than fandomsecrets, "lightly bitchy and petty" is kind of the vibe of this place, and anonymous trolling is commonplace (one rule of the comm is "don't be THAT much of an asshole" which kind of gives you an idea of what baseline level of politeness we're talking about here). It's got a complicated set of norms that have developed over time (see, for example, the elaborate comment titles and the sheer number of acronyms flying around), which can make the learning curve for delurking pretty steep.

Weirdly, the type of communities in which I have made the longest-lasting LJ/DW friends have been "landcomms," a special kind of competitive fannish activity community. I think they were based on the House Cup of Harry Potter. At least, it's easiest to explain it that way: there are multiple "games"/"rounds" (each lasting 3 months, say) where all the participants are sorted into teams, and they earn points for their team by participating in various challenges and activities set up by the mods. I no longer have time to really be active in any of these but WOW they really help you make friends who you know pretty deeply because you're interacting and strategizing with your fellow teammates, and over time you get to know the regulars quite well. These communities often lock all their content and activities to members only, which means that it's a good sandbox to experiment with fannish creation because the audience is fairly small and a priori quite supportive. You can experiment and put your work out there in a way that isn't like "now everyone on the internet has access to this and can judge it." Anyway, I'm too old to participate in these, but apparently lands_of_magic is an active multifandom landcomm and might be worth checking out.

Some other random features of Dreamwidth that I like, and also the major weaknesses of Dreamwidth as a site:

Strength: You get multiple icons/userpics. It's kind of weird to me that social media sites have done away with the ability for users to have multiple userpics (I suppose it does make it easier to identify who is saying what!), but in any case, this is a weirdly unique feature that LJ/DW have -- you can upload multiple 100x100 little images and choose which one to accompany each post and comment you make (or just use your default icon). Icons on DW, to me, are like custom emoji on Discord. They are ways to be expressive through images without the need for words, they can be quite personal, you get some slots for free, but because a lot of people get REALLY into them, users are literally willing to pay money for more slots that they can use. Anyway, you get 15 icon slots by default, and there are a lot of users and communities dedicated to making icons that people can use. It's fun!

Strength: Dreamwidth has a very powerful and simple HTML editor. Weakness: I have never used Dreamwidth's rich text editor, and everything I hear from people who have used it suggests it is an unusuable eldritch horror. Cannot verify that experience, but even without using it, I am pretty confident that DW's "WYSIWYG" editing ("what you see is what you get" -- that is, however you format a post while drafting it, that's what it will look like to other people when posting) is extremely far behind other social media sites. If I were to post and format this post on Dreamwidth (and I will), I would be able to do a lot more with controlling how the bulletpoints look and are nested, and I could do things like create sections in the post that make it easy to navigate to specific sections, and I could do things like add tables and collapsible sections because I think Dreamwidth allows almost any HTML5 tag (more so than e.g. what AO3 allows). On the negative side, however, it is much harder to do things like arrange images in a photoset on Dreamwidth. In short, you WILL need some kind of HTML knowledge to do anything fancier than paragraphs of text (images, embeds, polls, bulleted lists, etc.). However, if text is all you're doing, it's a really nice editor. And for power users, HTML is a good skill to have and unlocks a lot of possibilities with your posts, and DW is one of the best interfaces for doing pared-down, simplified HTML editing I've ever used.

Strength: Some more on accessibility: So remember how I said that DW lets you control the way the site is displayed to you? This means you can heavily customize how your reading page and blog looks, what links and sidebar widgets are available and where they're placed on the page, etc. But you know, that kind of freedom can be dangerous. As you might know well from Tumblr, what about people with custom blog styles that are a horrendous viewing experience -- autoplay music, flashing gifs, low text-background contrast, color scheme that makes your eyes burn, etc.? Well, DW has thought about that. Whenever you get a link to a DW post or someone's DW blog and you don't like the style, you can just append ?style=site OR ?style=mine OR ?style=light to the URL and voila -- it's readable again. ?style=site will display the page in DW's standard style which is a light grey + red/pink highlights style that is designed to be easy on the eyes. ?style=mine will display the page in YOUR custom style, so if you've made tweaks to the site style to optimize your reading experience, you can now apply it everywhere you like. Finally, ?style=light displays the page with minimal styling so that it can be loaded quickly in situations where your connection is bad. All of these things allow you to have an optimal reading experience.

Strength: Polls. If you have a paid account, Dreamwidth lets you make polls. This is probably the number one reason why I have a paid DW account, to be honest, because polls are really useful for running communities and getting feedback. Like, when I mod communities and I want to get the opinion of members, I can post a poll, and my paid account lets me do this in any community as well as on my personal journal. I used to run a lot of fanwork contest type communities, and you can conduct voting pretty easily that gives each user one vote, which is hard to ensure through third-party voting mechanisms. The downside here is that the opposite is not possible -- you can't run a poll that is open to the general public. I believe all poll participants need to have a DW account in order to participate.

Weakness: Dreamwidth's image-posting capabilities are still quite weak. It is only relatively recently that Dreamwidth allowed you to upload images to the site at all. A free account gives you only 500 MB, which is enough if you want to post a graphic or a photo here and there but not a lot if you're posting e.g. your full set of vacation photos or gifsets or reams of screencaps or whatnot. The upload interface leaves much to be desired. It is very difficult to add images to posts -- you either need to use the rich text editor (which comes with its own set of challenges) or you need to be pretty comfortable with HTML and understanding what <img src=""> means. DW does provide some copy and pasteable HTML code to put your image into the HTML post editor, but yeah, putting an image in a post is not the click-and-drag experience that it is on most modern social media sites. When I want to add some images to a post, the process is like this: Open a new tab and go to the DW homepage. Click Create > Upload Images. Upload files. Make sure the privacy settings of the images match my post. Get each image embed code and go back to my other tab where I'm editing my post and paste it in. Repeat for all images. Yay. It is certainly not a simple experience.

Weakness: There is no reblog function. This can have some benefits: as mentioned, you own the only copy of your post -- if other people want to share it, they have to give people the URL to it. However, let me be very frank about the downsides: it means that Dreamwidth is not a low-effort content-sharing website like most social media sites are nowadays, which has two major ramifications: First, you cannot create an interesting blog simply by following interesting blogs and curating an interesting feed. I mean, I suppose you can kind of do this by collecting interesting links and posting them as a DW post every so often, but that's still very different from how modern social media works where you just directly share the interesting content and that IS your blog. What this means is that in order to have an interesting blog, YOU have to consciously craft/draft your own interesting content from time to time; you cannot just rely on encountering interesting content from other people. What THIS means is that your DW blog is inevitably going to be quite personal. This can be pretty intimidating for someone who is starting out. I remember my first LiveJournal post (which even 18 years later took me about 10 seconds to pull up on my laptop -- the archival functions of DW are AMAZING) was essentially me saying "Hm… well I got this LJ but I don't know what kind of things to use this thing for or how long I'm going to keep it…" Anyway, it's always very awkward starting up a DW blog because you can't just find some content you find really cool and just share it and people get to know you and your tastes and your interests that way. Nah, you're kind of thrown into the oversharing deep end here. You're going to have to personally write something if you want people to have something to read. Second, keeping a DW blog can be a non-trivial amount of effort. Like I mentioned, you can certainly use your blog to curate content, but it requires some amount of work and effort to do even that. You can't just scroll and click and bam, you've added some content to your blog.

Weakness: Dreamwidth is very lo-fi and text-based. I mentioned the difficulties of uploading images; I mentioned the lack of a share button. What Dreamwidth is geared toward is plain text posts. I recognize this is very not ideal -- where are the visual aids? The images to break up all the dry walls of text? The whole experience of being on Dreamwidth is doing a lot of reading. And a lot of writing. A LOT. Sometimes people just don't have time for that. I get it. I mean, you can choose how often and how much to write and how much of your reading page you want to read, but regardless of how frequently and for how long you choose to engage with the site, it is never going to be an easy scrolling, filling-a-three-minute-lull-in-the-middle-of-the-work-day sort of experience, IMO. The content can be very interesting but it's got a high barrier to entry.

Weakness: Content discovery is very difficult. I discussed this earlier. But Dreamwidth really doesn't do much to shove content in your face. It doesn't have recommendation algorithms. This can be good because it helps you curate your feed to content you enjoy and people you trust, so you rarely have to block people because they are irritating you. You can just not follow them or easily scroll by their posts (DW is very text-based and high barrier to entry, right, so it takes a lot of conscious effort to consume content; it's not the type of site where you can run across the worst opinion you've ever read in your life and by the time you realize what it is, you've consumed the whole post). Spammers also aren't really a thing. But it means that you really do need to build up an interesting set of people/communities to follow or there's nothing for you to read or DO on the site. It also means that people will not just stumble across YOUR posts unless you put forward effort to promote them somewhere (e.g. in an active relevant community, which, you know, may not exist). You're never going to get that dopamine hit of people liking and reblogging your stuff instantly after you post it. And even when you want to share something widely, it can be tricky trying to figure out whether that's possible at all. Strength: On the plus side, I suppose it really is like having a private little sandbox. Like you're over here going "vroom vroom" with your toy cars or whatever, and it's extremely unlikely you'll get some rando barging into your replies talking about how your car-playing is all WRONG and here's what you should do instead.

Weakness: Dreamwidth is "dead." I mean, you can still find plenty of people who are active on DW. I have a great, very active set of friends whose posts I enjoy reading (and they all post different sorts of things; I have enough friends that I can't actually read all the content I'm interested in, but I do try) and who regularly respond to my posts. I'm very happy there. Personal blogs are doing fine. But personal blogs are only one half of Dreamwidth -- the other half are communities (public spaces) and those are not doing so well in my experience. You have a couple of active islands I mentioned above, and if your fandoms are sufficiently big, you can probably find an active discussion comm for them. But if your fandoms are small or even if you're in a big fandom that just doesn't seem to have found a dedicated mod and a critical mass of active users interested in public discussions, then you're shit out of luck when it comes to public discussion venues on DW. Depending on your needs/interests, this might be fine, or it might be a dealbreaker. For me personally, as someone who was on LJ in its heyday, the lack of communities is a bit demoralizing. It's certainly quieter and it has this feel of there being a few towers of refuge in a barren landscape that people are flocking around. And like I said, communities help you make friends. And it's just a different way of interacting with people, which I value in a social media site, and I can't really meet that need on DW with the current size of its userbase.

Weakness: There is no ask system. There are DMs; sometimes people play askbox meme-style games in the comment of posts (someone posts a list of questions, people comment to select the ones they want the OP to answer, OP replies in the comment thread with their answers); and I suppose you could create a stickied post with anonymous comments enabled to act as your askbox, but there's really no equivalent to the big set of functionality that is the askbox system on Tumblr. There's no way to privately ask someone a question, and that question can then easily be published or replied to privately at the discretion of the blog owner. If you'd like to poke someone to check in with them, the only way to do that is with a DM or a comment posted on a random blog entry; there's not really an easy way to ask a question or propose some content to someone's blog with asks the way there is on Tumblr.

Anyway, I think I've covered the main things about using Dreamwidth. I always want more people to come talk to me on Dreamwidth because I feel like that site is the only place that facilitates people getting to know me both on a purely fannish level and on a very personal level (I know people can make the personal + fannish sharing combo work on Twitter and Tumblr, but having everything be out in public just really does not work for me). But I realize it's hard to just start using a site you're unfamiliar with, especially one like Dreamwidth that tends to have a bit of a learning curve and is generally out of step with the direction of modern social media. And especially when you don't have many friends there already, which is probably the case for most people. But it's a site I respect and trust a lot, and I think it facilitates deep, long-lasting friendships. More than anything, I think the main difference between DW and Tumblr is that Tumblr is mainly a site for sharing content with other people and reacting to it, while DW is more geared toward helping you organize your life and your thoughts. They have a lot of overlap in terms of the kind of personal and fannish musings and experiences that can be shared, though. Anyway, if you're interested in joining Dreamwidth but it's intimidating/confusing, please reach out! I have lots more recs for active communities depending on your interests, too!

(Probably the best way to do that is on the Dreamwidth version of this post.)

#anyway posts like this are why I'm not a good fit for Tumblr lol #social media #dreamwidth #complaining about tumblr on tumblr

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