#though the issue is i dont really care about the programming part of working on games… whoops !

[websitesdotcom]

I love having hobbies this shit is so awesome . I think this is why i’m feeling unsure abt my career path

[rigil-kentauris]

tw unresolved whining

so i had to cancel my writing ai subscription today because i found out they were doing images and its just making me reflect. i dont use it so i didnt notice, i mostly just wanted to tool to grow and mature. it was like my one indulgence. anyway. i wasnt involved with ai writing tools at the the BEGINNING beginning, but i was definitively there before All This. and i remember having never been so excited in my life about writing. i hadnt actually had fun writing in years, i realized (went to college for creative writing degree, for reference. like this was supposed to be my whole ass Life).

and i felt so hopeful, because it seemed to me that this was the perfect tool for me personally. it filled in all the parts of me i struggle with because of Depression and Exhaustion and We Live In A Society disease. im not sure whether or not i was using it like it was supposed to be used back then (definitely not how its supposed to be used now), but it reall felt like having a dance partner. we went back and forth sentence by sentence (sometimes word by word), making something that pushed and challenged me because it would 'write' things that i wouldnt have even considered. and i could go off of that one word or turn of phrase for paragraphs. until i got stuck. and i suppose you could get that if you wrote with another human being, which could be cool, but it was also a paradoxically safe space. sometimes you dont want to write extremem trauma whump angst with other people and i think thats okay

and it was fun. and there were issues. but it was okay

and then the art bots came.

and i felt... angry, obviously, on behalf of all the artists who were getting jacked. but i was also... pissed off. because all of a sudden people hated AIs for theft unilaterally (a good thing to be mad about) but they hadnt given a shit before. back when it was writing. because i am also a writer of normal human works. on places where content was being scrapped from. and all of a sudden there was a new cultural norm, at least in the circles i cared to be in, and no one cared about writers. at all. in fact to date ive only seen one post/piece about ai theft of text and i went out looking for that.

and it was like. i hadnt thought about the datasets before, not really. no one thinks of this is stealing (fiction) writers jobs. its only just now, like the past couple months just now, becoming a talked about problem because it steals journalists and REAL writers jobs. academic jobs. serious good people. not nasty little fiction writers. much less poets i am not a poet but i have never ever seen anyone talking about ais taking jobs from poets. and they can. people who think ai cant write mostly, i think, dont know how to use them correctly. (then again i also think people who think they CAN write fall under the same umbrella, so... ai writing programs have. problems as unique spottable and predictable as image ais adding an extra finger.)

anyway at the time, though, i hadnt really thought about tet theft in datasets. back then you really had to KNOW what generative ais were to understand what was going on. no one was explaining except to other people who got it. and of the people who got it, no one was talking about it. i wish they had been. obviously we are all of us individually responsible for our participation in society but. why wasnt anyone talking about it before? why is it okay to steal someones words? or at least, passable. why is it still passable?

it just makes me feel things. and i dont have any answers. besides that writing AIs should be the EASIEST thing in the world to fix. unlike with art, the public domain for written fiction is both massive and still popular. as in, people will use an AI trained on older writing whereas AFAICT, the only ai image makers that make money need to mass-steal anime and pop art. no one's arguing about Ye Olde Oil Painting Ai.

i dunno. it feels. odd. because obviously i cant support a place that steals. but i feel some kind of emotion about dropping a tool that made me feel connected to writing again, in order to support a (good and important) fight that doesnt seem to care about writers at all

i dont have any resolution. just upsetness. i wish we could use this tool for all the good its capable of. instead right now its just a big theft machine.

one day with the march of tech i guess we'll be able to run beasts like these on our own, and then i think we'll see more ethical options. it just sucks in the meantime.

[youcouldtouchfire]

i have complicated feelings over this show. mostly i dont want to be in it. it makes me feel worthless and disconnected from my friends. i can't say i have come home from a rehearsal not crying in my car. i don't like being a part of it and however maybe irrational it is, i feel like no one wants me here either. i keep waiting to feel better about going but i don't. i don't know why it's like this. the way i feel is an insane overreaction to everything. i know it's illogical and so inconvenient to feel like this and still i do. i was hoping id miss the first read because i knew id hate seeing my friends so excited and id feel bad that i couldn't relate. i was out with friends when the cast list came out and Isabelle called her mom and i sat in a bathroom because i didn't want anyone to see me cry over something as unimportant as this. i know i can't quit because i couldn't explain it to my friends or family. my parents would be pissed if they thought i gave up because i wasn't good enough which i know is really just the core of the issue. it's hard to finally reach the point where you have to acknowledge all that you aren't, especially when that's all You've wanted for years. i have ambitions and talents for after high school but if im honest with myself i know that if i was a skilled singer id be going into theater, and that's what i really always wanted. i would do this professionally if i was good enough but im not and it sucks that im not good enough to even be a lead at my high school, let alone a real community theater around here. it's not anyone's fault but i feel like this is the final nail in the coffin for a dream i didn't realize i hadn't given up on until this. i don't have the time or the money to get really good at it in time before im done in highschool. it sucks that this is my favorite thing in the world and i work so hard and i feel like it amounts to nothing and no one cares. i sort of feel like im not good enough and that all of the hard work and time i put in doesn't matter because im bad at it all. i feel like it doesn't matter that i took on five leads in the play or scheduled extra rehearsal time for speech or did all state and all state camps or volunteer for everything i possibly can or do as many speech groups as possible, i feel like it'll never matter and ill never be able to be in even the same sentence as "lead role". it's hard to deal with a loss that big when i know it's not because im unreliable or not dedicated to this program. ive been told that i am important to this and im reliable and i "lead by example" so when im aware that i know that's not the issue, it's hard to not feel like it's a skill thing. i just wish someone would tell me to stop hoping though.

i know im not supposed to compare myself to Isabelle and aj but it's not fair that i get treated differently than them. i can remember multiple times when isabelle is given compliments while im standing right next to her and no one ever says anything to me. last year at variety show vasey told Isabelle her solo act was incredible but she didn't say anything to me, who had a solo act that same night. i was standing shoulder to shoulder with her.

i don't know why people treat us differently. i wish they didn't. i feel worthless in comparison to her because regardless of the intentions people pay her compliments they don't pay to me, and they like her more than they like me. i remember this stuff and i just wish i didn't.

i keep waiting for some reason to stay. i don't know why I won't quit when it makes me as upset as it does.

[popculturebuffet]

Ducktales Treasure of the Golden Sun: Three Ducks of the Condor or Now with More Racism!

Hello all you happy people! And welcome back to my look at Ducktales: Treasure of the Golden Suns!, the pilot episodes that started it all. This look was one of my patreon stretch goals. To explain them in case some of you aren’t familiar with patreon it’s essentially like a kickstarter stretch goal: every milestone I reach in my monthly earnings means a crop of reviews for you guys, with this being 10 and my review of the movie, and the goofy movies in two weeks and September respectively, being the 15 dollar one. So if you want reviews of the OTHER Ducktales mini series Time Is Money and Super DuckTales, then hop on aboard and help me reach my 20 dollar goal so I can keep making these reviews for a living and give you all more. Said goal also includes a Darkwing Duck review eveyr month AND a review of teh Danny Phantom special The ULtimate Enemy so hop on board HERE AT MY PATREON.  Patrons also get exclusive reviews, access to my discord server (Though if anyone would be more intrersted in me making that public let me know), and to pick a short each time I do a birthday special for a character from Looney Tunes, Disney and Beyond. And next month is my boy Donald’s so since you all already sat out goofy NOW is the time. 

So now my very necessary plug is out of the way, i’m very poor, we can get to the review proper:

When last we left off Scrooge and the Boys went on their first proper adventure together, heading to Central America to follow the map from the first episode and running into Dr.Claw  El Capitan and his new best buddy Glomgold. Mild racisim, moonsoons and much better pacing ensued. 

So join me under the cut as my boy Donald returns, some iconic characters are introduced in Webby, Launchpad and Beakly, though this series only made one of them iconic to be fair, and we get some more mild racisim because fuck my life. Onward to the cut! 

So yeah as I’ve mentioned a few times now this episode had a content warning.. which was fair as there is some pretty cringy stuff in here but it had the side effect of me holding my breath until the racisim came up and whapped me in the face. So i’m keeping that tension up for you guys so I don’t have to suffer alone. 

We open at the Mansion. Scrooge is trying to find a governess for the boys, but they keep scaring off all the clients because they don’t like the idea. And for once.. i’m on Scrooge’s side here. Yes I know there’s a sterotype of rich people hiring a nanny to not have to parent. and it’s sadly often true and it’d SEEM like Scrooge is doing that.. but really he just wants the boys to be safe. He’s fully grown to care for them and just wants someone cheap and responsible to look after them while he’s busy and clearly still makes time for them. As someone who is a former nanny, albeit for someone working class, I get that as much as you WANT to spend every moment with your kid you often can’t. I say all this because SO MANY kids movies and shows villianize parents for not spending time with their kid when their clearly just working to support them. There are nuanced exceptions to this and refreshingly Craig of the Creek has outright avoided this: JP’s mom is gone almost all the time due to working as an airline pilot, but while he clearly misses her he never resents her or guilts her over it, he understands sh’es supporting him and goes out of his way to make sure his friends can meet her. It’s really swee.t And while again I get it, this guys a billionare, most examples aren’t, Scrooge still really CAN’T stop working: He has more money than god and like most bilionares REALLY should give most of it to charity or to help with programs instead of hoarding it in a massive bin.. but he’s also got tons of companies, factories, investments... people COUNTING on him to make sure these are working correctly and keep their jobs. So yeah i’ts nice that the show isn’t demonizing scrooge for this or dosen’t even consider it: he’s getting help beacuse he needs it, that’s what’s important. 

So while the boys widdle down the nannies, Scrooge talks to a renowned coin collector. He does show off his collection to the guy, but his main goal is naturally to show him the coin from last time. Turns out that naturally for a five part episode the treasure they lost last time was just a fraction of the real thing and the real titular treasure is a mythical horde even Scrooge, who normally has proved something out of myth is very real 5 times before breakfast, didn’t think existed. 

Something I do love about this five parter is how every treasure hunt has ended up being important each piece of the puzzle leading to the next like any good treasure hunt. As for where this one leads the collector HAS heard of only one other coin like it, up in the Andes Mountains in a mysterious fortress whose mountain habitat and being a fortress makes it hard to get to and the owner is apparently a real piece of work.. but Scrooge isn’t afraid of a little hard work and is ready to go after it.. he just has to find a Nanny first. 

And he does as there’s only one left: Mrs. Beakley, who we FINALLY meet after two episodes. Yeah for some weird reasont his episode choose to cram the rest of the major main and supporting cast into one episode.. it still works, they all still get great introductions it’s just weird to me when you have five episodes to not say introduce Launchpad last time. 

But regardless as I said it’s a good intro.. despite the boys wilding a lasso and a snake.

 Beakly is unphased and even dosen’t remotely fall for them trying to say she got the wrong name. And while Scrooge is a little impressed, he’s even more when she states she’ll work for free... with one condition: Free room and board for her and her grandaughter, Webby, who has been there the whole time and looking cute as a button. Scrooge is unsure but one minute of Webby being adorable later and he’s agreed. She can’t eat much right? He also hopes she’ll help the boys not be douchebags, unaware that their inherent poorly written sexisim means that was never going to work. And why yes I will call it out eveyr time it happens because it happens every time they have an episode together and only gets worse. 

He goes to Gyro for help and Classic Gyro.. is utterly delightful. While I clearly have issues with Classic Scrooge, whose a greedy poorly aged asshat and the boys, who are sterotypes of male children, Gyro? He’s nice, friendlya nd eccentric, using a delightfully wakcky pogo hat thing to think and takes only a mintue to figure out how to solve a seemingly unsolvable problem and only needs a few hours to build his cool looking bird ship, using bird legs to offset the hard to sort out landing conditions. But since it’s a fancy bitch, it needs a pilot and i’m sure we all know where this is going...but since Carol Danver sis busy he has to go with Launchpad. 

Launchpad’s intro is great, cheerful as he does a job testing a plane and naturally crashes it, and when thought dead walks out seconds later unharmed and jolly as ever. Scrooge is naturally terrified of the prospect of flying with him but dosen’t really have another choice “I hope my insurance is paid up.” Scrooge it’s you.. of course it isn't. 

So with that our hero bids a farewell to the boys and ends up unteitonally coming off MASSIVELY unlikeable. No really he leaves them behind for their saftey despite needing help... and then upon finding out Donald is going to be on leave soon in the andes, and just assumes that YOU KNOW, he’d LIKE to go on a dangerous exausting adventure instead of actually get some rest after working in the goddamn navy and STILL dosen’t take the kids along despite having a very tearjerking farewell IN FRONT OF HIM that happened at most a month ago. Granted i’m suprised Donald is getting leave this soon.. but since I genuinely like to look into this sort of thing and the last time I didn’t I was correctly reminded Gulliver’s Travels was a satire.. and found out someone HAD actually watched the Jack Black movie. I only vaugely remember a trailer.. I thinkn it was a trailer? Maybe it was the middle part of a juinor novelzation where htey have all the photos? I really don’t know. I know almost every pokemon on sight but not where I saw pictures of a forgetable jack black movie, what a shock. 

So long story short I DID google it. Here’s what I got

So given clealry more time has passed than we’ve seen on screen, enough time COULD have passed for Donald’s three day pass to kick in. So credit to the crew for actually thinking that out. They still get all the blame though for not only not seeing how bad not taking the kids to see the uncle whose like a father to them a month after he left when he CLEARLY can is bad, but how worse it is that the first break donald gets ina  month.. is spent helping scrooge against his will on a life or death treasure hunt. 

And I get WHY they wanted to try out having Donald on an adventure: he was in most of the carl barks material.... but I also dont’ get it as Launchpad was deisgned entirely to fill in for Donald when needed, we’re only three episodes into the series and this gives the wrong impression Donald will guest star a lot more. In practice while he still did get a meaty 8 episodes on the show including this one, 2 of which were cameos and the pilot only dosne’t count because of the exnteded slapstick sequence, and dosen’t appear at all after season 1, likely because Fenton’s introduction made him reduntant as he was an even more blatant Donald stand-in. It just feels weird to shove him into the pilot movie when we should be focusing on our main cast, epsecially with so many getting intorduced this episode. It woudl’ve made more sense for Gyro to be the third man instead and it woud’ve elmaited Scrooge’s uttelry horrible actions here of depriving his nephews of their surrogate father. 

So Uncle Dickstick leaves with Launchpad to go abduct donald.... and tha’ts not me being funny, that’s what actually happens. Donald is singing out on leave.. with his superior... weirdly doing paper work outside on the flight deck. 

And is angry at Donald because of him taking pictures and stuff and threatens him if he’s not back exactly in time... because look he’s on a boat with a bunch of sweaty men but as the most superior officer he can’t enjoy that so he has to get off SOMEHOW and ruining donald’s life just happens ot be a thing for him. 

So yeah Scrooge straight up naps Donald via claw and Donald is angry, wondering, as you’d expect “What’s the big idea”.. and once Scrooge clairfies he did it.. still asks that because what the fuck. And the episode treats this as comical, as it does Launchpad not understanding Donald.. and don’t get me wrong you CAN make a good “I can’t understand Donald Duck” joke, the 2017 series made PLENTY. But said series also spoiled me as they did it with far more effort, while also still showing just how much it would suck to have everyone around you struggle to hear what you say and never listen to you. They actually cared abotu Donald’s well being where as this one thinks “Gee you knwo what would go great iwth a hard month’s naval work? MORE WORK HELPING YOUR UNCLE GET RICHER FOR NO PERSONAL BENIFIT AFTER HE KIDNAPS YOU”. 

So our heroes.. and scrooge, head to Andes and find the temple and it’s here “Sigh” we met our antagonist. A Conquestador Douche who DOES have a name and it is on the wiki.. but is so generic and unlikeble I’m just going to keep calling him conquestador douche, whose introduced waving his sun coin around while the natives all bow to him because of the coin.

Welcome to the racisim! Admitely it’s not as bad as Treasure of the Lost Lamp, that’s a high bar to clear, but ti’s still not great to have the racist cliche of “character conquers a civilization because of they belivie he’s a messenger for their “silly” god”. And the saddest part is not that I didn’t notice this trope and how bad it was as a kid watching shows like this... but that as an ADULT about 4 years ago when I watched this episode how racist it and this trope in general was didn’t register to me at all. That.. really bothers me that it took me this long to pick up on things like this and i’m sorry for it. 

That’s honestly WHY we need these warnings and WHY i’m so hard on this racisim: it wasn’t necessary, it could’ve been removed and you clearly just didn’t care or didn’t realize it was racist. And even acceptable for the time dosen’t work for anymore: I learned recently that the creators of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, both white, hired black writers..and actually LISTENED, looking to them for personal stories and to check them if one of the white staff wrote something that wasn’t true to the black experience. I know that sounds like the bare minimum but this was the early 90′s, that kind of thinking wasn’t hte norm like it is in most writer’s rooms now.. and sadly not ALL writer’s rooms. Not only that but just today I ran into a MST3K skit that lampooned this kind of bullshit from not long after this episode. People clearly knew better, the writers of this episode just didn’t’t care

 So yeah, I get this was a kids show in the 80′s, I get the writing staff being almost all white.. but they still coudl’ve avoided cliche sterotypes and done something diffrent. It was was still wiithin white people like myselves power to actually think about something other htan themselves and we did not. So i’m never going to stop holding my own people accountable for just how BADLY we’ve fucked up in ways great and small because it still hasn’t stopped , likely never will so I won’t. 

But yeah.... the tribe here are portrayed as ignorant, mindless dumbasses who blindly follow tradition and a clearly corrupt leader. It’s patronizingly stupid to assume just because a belief system is diffrent than yours a person will belieive anything. Religion CAN make people act stupid, the fact many people are homophobic simply because the bible, a centuries old document written and distrbuted by humans that could of been altered by people with a clear homophobic agenda, says they should be. But there’s the very clear very gross implication here that any god but the christian god is invalid and simplifies wonderful and well thought out myths and beliviefs from various cultures into “well they belivie in da sun god because of the shiny coin”. It’s gross, i’m glad it’s stopped and it’s VERY telling that the closest Ducktales 2017 came to this was the most dangerous game night which while a tad cringe inducing at least showed the tribe it used was clever, disposed the person they mistook for a god after it was clear he wasn’t one , and were wholly sympathetic. 

Naturally Conquistadouche orders the tribe to attack Scrooge and it works briefly , though Scrogoe prepares to take on the ENTIRE villiage.. and given this is Scrooge and on this blog we’ve seen him take on an entire town before, and that was a more inexpericed less bastardly scrooge yeah their fucked, and only escape death because the coin falls out of scrooge’s coat when he tries to help donald who naturally injures himself trying to help. 

And since as per white dumbass racist logic, the villiagers thought Conquistadipshit was a messenger of the gods because of his coin, they think the same of Scrooge, this causes them to stop and bow instead and protect scrooge when Conquistadumbass tries to attack our heroes. Their given a room for the night naturally. 

Conquistadick demands they give him the coin and leave, but Scrooge has none of that: he has no reason to leave and has all the leverage so he instead demands to know wha’ts going on. 

Turns out Conquisineart is the decdendant of one of the crew from the ship Scrooge found: their captain rain off with it, leaving two of his men behind, though both had the map to the rest of the treasure and split it: one left for the Arctic, the other stayed and did the whole racist god bit. And somehow despite all the time passing Conquistadoodoohead still has his half and Scrooge aranges a trade for the coin. And why yes their is the obvious problem of “what if Conquistascoobydoo say tells them he’s the true god and attacks scrooge like he ends up doing in the climax”. And Scrooge’s plan.. is to have the plane ready and to run to it, despite Launchpad not being a mechanic and saying as much. Instead of you know... stealing the guy’s coin while he’s asleep or something or just having launchpad, whose bigger and stronger and donald whose not bigger but is also stronger hold the guy while Scrooge steals his sun coin, then simply walks to the plane with the map, the coins and all the leverage. at worst the guy tries to do the same scheme without any coins and as the end of the episode shows, that wouldn’t have worked. He was stupid. Oh and the cherry on  top of this shit sundae is scrooge objects to the guys tyranical rule.. but is okay with letting it keep going if he gets his coin and DOnlad, whose there for the deal, never call shim on it. 

We then get a bit of Launchpad being forced off a cliff to ride a giant Condor...

Look this episode is filled with racisit sterotypes, a generic villian and Scrogoe being awful. I’ll take a fun sequence of Launchpad riding a condor, with Donald providing an assit with his camera  by blinding the beast so Launchpad can ride him properly giving them more leverage now Launchpad is popular. And a deadline to fix things by tommorow. 

The next day Launchapd and Donald have defied logic and their own tendency to screw up and fixed the bird, while Scrooge makes the deal.. and naturally it goes EXACTLY how you’d expect and Scrooge runs, though our real heroes get thigns running. 

That’s when the people arrive on condors to persue, a fight insues yoru standard hero stuff.. not bad but given the racist context I can’t really enjoy it like Launchpad flying a condor.. which had some mild racisim in them making him do that as a ritual clearly deisgned to kill him but i’llt ake mild over pretty damn obvious. Eventually douchebag looses his coins, his ctizens abndon him. Happy end. 

So with the map Scrooge decides to do the logical thing.... have launchpad drop him in the middle of the ocean in a raft and steer there

Launchpad takes Donald home in time and his superior is mad he dosen’t give him a proper salute.. even though he CLEARLY just got home and is diisorented from a crash. Launchpad makes a quip and this episode mercifully ends. 

Final Thoughts:

This episode starts out okay.. but quickly goes downhill fast and steep. There are massive bits of racisim, massive leaps in logic, and massive amoutns of scrooge being a dick.. not his WORST in this series but it’s still bad. It’s just not very good. It’s the second worst episode of Ducktales i’ve seen, only held up by my boys Donald and Launchpad. This was miserable.

Next Time on Treasure of the Golden Suns: Our heroes head to the arctic for another offensive episode to rescue scrooge from his own stupidity.  Next Time on this Blog: We return to Green Eggs and Ham and hop on a train as our raging bitchcanoe mother and daughter duo meat our ambigiouslyg ay duo at last. 

See you at the next rainbow.

[indecisive-v]

NINJAMUFFIN DOING ANOTHER AMA ON TWITTER, HERE'S MORE SHIT FOR YA! keep in mind i'm just sharing the funkin related stuff, though i am including WAAAAY more than what i shared before 👍 go check out ninja's twitter profile for questions about stuff like ritz! questions in blue, answers in orange. if yall don't wanna read everything i MIGHT make a version of this post where i replace the answers with my own summaries of em (and if the questions are long, those too)

and here's a link to the ama tweet itself! dunno if it's still goin

Q: I figure the answer will be yes but do you have more plans to implement more guest appearances from people in the newgrounds community into FNF? Or are you all gunna focus on OG lore and stuff going forward

A: for guest appearances, I think we have always seen it as getting a healthy mix of both. PERSONALLY I'd like to lean towards having more OG stuff than guest stuff, BUT it's all a matter of what other boys think of that as well. I'm not the sole person working on game!

Q: Are you gonna release the full FNF game or are you gonna be releasing week after week? Like, are you gonna release week 8 or are we gonna wait some years until The Full Ass Game comes out?

A: Release plan for FNF right now is a few more updates or whatev to the 'demo' we have out right now, and then a long silence of probably no updates whatsoever until the full game is done (which will likely be a few years). That's partly why we made kickstarter for game.

Q: Hey so like, how much will Fnf cost after it's finished? And when will you ask the supporters what they want the game on?

A: It's all subject to change, but right now it prob gonna be standard 15-25$ lil steam indie game.

We will ask Kickstarter pledgers and whatnot what they want the game on SUPER close to when its released, to keep options open if we get onto anything like a console people want.

Q: 1. how was your day

2. are you releasing a week 8 song early like week 7, or are you goin full lockdown

A: I am doing GOOD today, and I think recently I've been good in general.

up to the mood, but so far we doing good about not having anything leak or whatev, so I think it'd be fun to have update come out with people not knowing what to expect at all. Build dat intrigue

Q: Will fnf ever get official plushies?? Seems like an untapped market

A: FNF plushies will prob happen some point, we have a lot of current merch stuff on our plates already though! (Mostly kickstarter type stuff, shirts, pins, posters, and all the physical OST stuff) Its a lot to sort out, but in time more and more stuff will happen. We r jus 4 boys!

Q: did you ever expect your game to blow up as it did? what was your first reaction to seeing it become super popular

A: FNF never had a humble moment, literally day 1 before the prototype even came out, the vid on twitter had like 5K likes overnight. Then when ludum dare version came out, it got 5K likes again, like it wasnt just a fluke. Was crazy, and def felt like somethin was different wit FNF

Q: Do you plan on getting other people to come in to help with the music? That seems like a lot of work to dump on one person, what with the erect mode and whatnot.

I guess the question could apply to all aspects of development. Will you be bringing on more people to help?

A: We definitely are getting help from other people. We are always keeping an eye on people for various different things. In terms of programming, already I've gotten 2 people (MtH and Geokureli) to help with certain Week 7 stuff (charting/polish, and loading stuff). Shit like dat

Q: Oh, also, will the Steam version be Workshop compatible? That'd really help streamline the process of downloading mods.

A: Steam version of FNF will likely NOT be Steam workshop compatible, because we want all the mods to NOT be spread out through different places. There WILL be modding support that is as streamlined as Steam workshop though. Mainly for non-steam versions of the game!

Q: Are there any chances that the game will have a physical release? Also any updates on a switch port? I remember one of you guys talking/joking about it.

A: Not impossible for FNF to get a physical release. We would want to see how far we could go with it though. I think it'd be super easy to do something wit people like LimitedRun games or whatev, but I think stuff like that can only go so far. I wanna see Funkin in mf Walmart!!!!!!

not that LimitedRun isn't going to be an option! Just we consider and pursue many different things! FNF release is years away, so we have time to think about everything. Whole mindset can be different just a few months from now.

Q: Out of curiosity, how are you dealing with all the popularity? It blew up so fast id barely be able to handle it if I was in your shoes.

A: The only way I've been able to handle it is having the other boys on the crew and being able to talk to them about all the overwhelmingness.

Part of it feels very lonesome, feels like NO ONE can come close to comprehending exactly how I'm feeling, except them. also other PALS!!!

Q: Do you own any of the bootleg FNF merchandise? Like any bootleg plushies or anything?

A: i dont, i genuinely think they r a waste of money, and I know any bootleg shit that gets made, we can prob go about and make it, and make it 100x cooler because we actually put effort into shit. bootleg shit just in it for the coin, so they aint gettin that from me

Q: How did you go about getting in contact with sr pelo for skid and pumps vocals?

A: Pelo i think was familiar and pals wit PhantomArcade a bit thru various Newgrounds things and collabs and whatnot.

pelo retweeted the first OG FNF posts first ever, and brought a LOT of attention to it. to pay him back, we put skid and pump in game! ask dave for more info prob

Q: what's the plan for having the full ass game open source if it's gonna cost money? couldn't people just download the source and compile the game for free?

A: when FNF is fully released, the full source code will be released as well.

the game will be DRM free so it will be way easier for people to redistribute the released/offical .exe instead of compiling it, so that's not the issue anyways. people will pay for things if they like it

Q: What are the chances of it getting on consoles like switch or Playstation, ps5 would definitely be my preferred way to play

A: it'd be a matter of hiring someone to build out backend stuff for those specific consoles. someone who knows their way around all the wacky code stuff, AND knows console hardware stuff. Then its just a matter of hittin up those console manufacturers (Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo)

the CLOSEST one is SWITCH. pretty much all of that backend is already made, so it just a matter of gettin all that access and shit.

i think in any case though, there's a lot of NDA stuff required, i dunno how much we'd be able to talk about it even IF we get that stuf sorted

Q: any ideas of releasing it on epic store or another platform?

A: Right now, the only thing that is 100% confirmed and WILL happen is a Steam version, itchio version, and mobile versions on respective app stores. Other storefronts aren't out of the picture though, but we don't want to spread ourselves too thin with it.

Q: Will you continue using HaxeFlixel to make the rest of FNF?

A: yes, because it is what I'm the most technically proficient in, and generally is VERY flexible. just a matter of ME becoming a better coder. It's ALL open source, so if I need something done a certain way, either I can do it, or we can hire someone to do it.

Q: have you seen game theory's videos on your game yet and if so, what do you think about them? (not talking about his predictions because i dont want spoilers. i like mystery)

A: it is always good silly fun to watch the Game Theory vids about Funkin with some pals, and see what matpat thinks of the game. i lov the vids, but wish he used my face less! Or at least used a cuter pic of me like this one!!

Q: Ok so: What does the future of FNF look like to you?

A: future of FNF is a rhythm game that not only exceeds every expectation that people have of it, but subverts most expectations and conventions as well.

Q: Do you plan on retouching on older weeks once the game is fully out? Like reanimating sprites, redoing some charting, updating the background, etc

A: retouching and probably overhauling certain aspects is almost definitely gonna happen. Everything is fluid and can be changed (and should be changed when necessary). i dont think anything should be too attached to, especially this early on in development

Q: I honestly do not care if the answer to this is vague as hell to keep surprises and shit lol but… Since Week 7 was the closest we’ll get to a playable girlfriend (still bf controlling tho), do you have plans to make girlfriend playable in spin-off things or just freeplay?

A: wouldnt be out of the picture for a playable GF, i don't think we've had some hard thing AGAINST it. just a matter of what we want out of the game, and what sort of story or whatev we could do with that concept

Q: How do BF and GF manage to meet famous newgrounds characters (such as pico, tankman and the others to come) like is this all in one universe/ timeline or are they being brought in?

A: i think they are all just there existing. i think there's a lot of wacky things in other media that try to justify crossovers, like MULTIVERSE bullshit or TIMELINE shit, but i dunno, its like subspace emissary. Captain Falcon and Olimar from Pikmin just hang out. Shit like dat

disclaimer that all lore shit is in phantomarcade head pretty much and maybe there is wacky dimensions or somethin

Q: Will the game have dlc?

A: its not too unlikely that we'd have expansions of some sort, but i mean right now we plan on packing in as much as we can into base game, and trying to make that as pure as possible.

if there is ANY dlc, i would personally want it to be 100% free updates

Q: How did you meet Phantom Arcade, Kawai Sprite, and EvilSker? And what do you think about the community and its controversies?

A: me and phantomarcade been fukin around NG for years so years and years ago we naturally crossed paths and became pals

about 2 years ago i found kawaisprites music on NG, and started talkin wit him, made Ritz wit him and we fell in lov

and evilsk8r i met cuz of FNF!!!

quik elaborate on evilsk8r, wanted artist for gamejam FNF was for (ludum dare), and OG person i asked wasnt available, so he referred me to evilsk8r, who I have never met or talked to before ever.

[dream-realm]

When you claim that socialist policies will make people dependent on the government or that the demand for them is proof that people want to be lemmings I don’t understand. What is the role of a government to you? Not trying to pick at you I am curious. What are your ideas for how I’m supposed to make sure I can get medical attention or a home? do I build my own and treat myself with herbs? Okay I’m teasing but I’m genuinely curious because I could learn maybe

(no worries, not taking you in bad faith) sorry to be long. id be curious for any thoughts, despite the vagueness..

not totally sure what you mean here. what would the role of the govt be with respect to those policies, how theyre implemented, function, etc. ? or what, in my opinion, should the role of govt be in a more general sense? i think i was more so venting about and criticizing the former than providing or developing any concrete thoughts on or about the latter, mostly because the role of govt per se is a large and obviously complicated issue. and i dont think we need an exhaustive normative theory of the role of govt to critique how it functions now and would function should policies of that nature be adopted.

the policies (i know we are being incredibly vague) will make people dependent on the govt, and are proof of their being lemmings lol, in the sense that they encourage us to organize ourselves and live our lives in a way that doesnt allow for or promote real self reliance and healthy reliance upon others. nothing most anyone does nowadays is done independently or with a small community: youre educated by the state, you are not involved in growing any of your food or producing any of your medication, youre under serious surveillance, even if you own a house or land you must always pay tax on it, etc etc. im quite aware that we cant all synthesize insulin at home, so hopefully you get what im suggesting. also, where its possible, i do think it would be good to build our own homes and treat ourselves and those we know medically, again, where its possible. 

consider the universal healthcare example. im not *morally* opposed to this idea. nevertheless i seriously doubt that if e.g. sanders became president and got this legislation through congress the program would work as people hope. sorry, though the logic works in the sense that, if everyone was forced into the program, there would be more money payed into it, etc etc, this doesnt “prove” that it would function effectively at all. nor does comparing the united states to other countries with far different population, demographics, history, govt. “prove” that it would work. people must realize that they are trying to shoehorn this idea into our govt system, the one that exists as we speak. there will be no grand overhaul of our govt and administrative state in one fell swoop. 

think about how this applies to something like coronavirus specifically. people have pushed the idea that if we had a universal healthcare system, we could have better adapted to the virus. for starters, as weve seen, the healthcare system itself is far from the only factor at play in terms of effective, unified response. we have a strong executive, and state govt, and thats not changing. theres also this idea surrounding how funds are moved around. govt says e.g. “we dont have the money” etc. we know they have it. but overhauling the healthcare system does not necessarily change how the govt budget works. in our system, the funds are earmarked for different places. there may be emergency clauses, but thats how it works. what makes you think that executive and state govt wont complicate the process of moving funds from one place to another, even during emergency? thats a dynamic literally playing out right now. and nothing about universal healthcare *necessarily* changes that. 

sorry to be so long, but i do enjoy this, though i dont have the attention to make really detailed arguments on here so i apologize for being abstract. suppose everything went perfectly, control was centralized to the healthcare and relevant govt bureaucracy, they have the discretion to use funds how they see fit, and especially suppose somehow everyone involved in this process at every single level is benevolent. do you know the type of data theyd have on you? everything health related. and everything could be justified: tracking, forcing you to stay inside, etc. and people would accept it because they wanted this system and this is the only way it can function effectively and efficiently. it only works better with increased coercion, and you know the means for this are already in place, and it obviously already happens in other ways. think especially now about what it means for the police to function “effectively” and whats justified to that end.

 i dont want faceless uncountable bureaucratic control over every aspect of my life.  i dont care if it functions perfectly out of sight. in my mind this continues a way of living our lives thats very much disconnected from humanity and community. the uncritical demand for these things is, to me, reflective of--sorry to be melodramatic--something like a new epoch in human history. im not interested in living in a world in which we dont attempt to directly take care of each other to the extent that we can. people often rightly criticize the myth of the nuclear family, and im quite aware theres many ways in which its state sanctioned, but god, at least many people can live through that in such a way that they love and care for their families, neighborhood, etc. where your care for other people is real and tangible and not facilitated through tax contributions from faceless nobodies. im not a critic of electoral liberal govt because i dont think we should help people, or that everyone has to pull themselves up, look out for only themselves etc. im a critic of it, and these socialist policies as existing within it, because they function with a conception of humanity and human life that i find completely alien and perverse. the willingness to think of myself and others in highly abstract terms that are neatly serviced by a benevolent govt is not natural to me. nor do i believe a system like this would foster already existing and dying forms of community. we are upholding a system that is allowing people to be born into the world in such a way that thinking of human life in these terms is natural for them, it becomes hardwired to some extent. im not that human, and im not interested in existing in that world. and i think in a very deep sense, if you accept the predominant liberal ideology etc., you actually dont have obligations to other people, at least not of the right sort, and thats dangerous and wrong. its not natural  to think of ourselves in terms and parts of these massive systems. i worry this is so predominate that theres no possibility for a popular appeal to anything else. and the predominance of it pervades everything, democrat, republican, socialist, etc

[chemicalmagecraft]

The Gamer Hero, Deku Chapter 20

We were gathered back in the arena field. Midnight explained to us how the next part of the sports festival would go. For the teams who won the cavalry battle, there was the combat tournament. The rules were simple. In each fight, we had to either incapacitate our opponents or remove them from the arena. And before the tournament, there would be other games that everyone could participate in. Even the tournament combatants could attend them, but Midnight-sensei suggested we not do that, because we should conserve our stamina. That really wasn't an issue for me, but I decided not to participate in those battles because it could be unfair to the others. Before we drew lots to see our placement, Ojiro raised his hand. "I'd like to withdraw from the tournament!" he declared.

"Oh?" Midnight said. "What brought this on? You do realize you're probably going to miss out on a chance to be scouted, right?"

He grimaced. "I don't even remember the cavalry battle. I don't want to move on to the tournament if I didn't even really do anything."

"Whoa, that's so manly!" Kirishima yelled.

The other member of Team Shinsou, Nirengeki from class 1-B, raised his hand. "I'd also like to withdraw, for the same reason..."

Midnight grinned. "I like your spirit! Alright, you two are out of the tournament! Now we need to get some students to replace them!"

After that, it was agreed that Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu and Shiozaki Ibara from 1-B would take their places. We all drew the lots, deciding who we'd fight and in what order. It was just my luck that I was in the first match against Shinsou. And then I'd probably have to face off against Todoroki after winning that...

"Midoriya, right?" someone asked me from behind. I turned to see Shinsou.

I opened my mouth to say something, but Ojiro's tail wrapped around my face before I could. "Don't say anything," he cautioned me. Shinsou snorted.

I removed Ojiro's tail from my face. "Because of his Quirk, right?" I asked. Shinsou stiffened. "If I had to guess, it's a mental Quirk. Some sort of mind control, tied to... people responding to something you say?"

He sighed. "Yeah, that's about right..."

"It sounds amazing for hero work. Too bad the entrance exam was robots, huh?"

Shinsou stared at me incredulously. "You... don't think my Quirk is villainous?"

I shrugged. "Quirks aren't really villainous. Well, if you have a sentient Quirk like Tokoyami's Dark Shadow that actively wants to be a villain then you could make that argument, but Quirks are normally controlled by the user. They're tools." I pointed at him. "If you use your Quirk for hero work then you have a hero's Quirk, and if you use your Quirk for villainy, then you have a villain's Quirk. Still, your Quirk would let you deescalate hostage situations and other villain attacks without having to fight, and even if you have to fight then there's always the possibility of a villain slipping up in the middle of battle. To be honest, I'd place a mind-controlling Quirk like yours pretty high on the list of Quirks I'd like if I didn't have mine."

Shinsou's face softened. "You know, Midoriya, you're the first person I've met who didn't call my Quirk villainous."

"You should probably sue your Quirk counselor for malpractice, then."

He chuckled, then turned around. "You're a good man, Midoriya. I won't bother you again."

"Wait." He stopped. "I think it's only fair if you know a few things about me. First, there's a pretty good chance, depending on how our Quirks work, that your Quirk won't affect me right or might even just fail to work on me."

He raised an eyebrow. "How so?"

"My Quirk, The Gamer, works somewhat along the lines of RPG logic, meaning that among other things I have passive skills that grant me various affects," I explained. "One of them is Gamer's Mind, which came with my Quirk. It says that I have immunity to psychological status effects."

"I... see."

"I mean, I'll try not to get hit by your Quirk anyway because that's very unspecific, but I just thought you should know. I also have two other passives I think you should know about, Physical Endurance and Damage Reduction."

"So let me guess, physical attacks are useless on you."

"Not useless, but they do so little that to you it might as well be. Magical attacks aren't included in Physical Endurance, so comparatively speaking that's my weakness."

He sighed. "I guess I know what I'll be doing during the break."

I Observed him. "You have affinity for the sonic element, by the way. I'm guessing it's either because of your voice-based Quirk, or if any of your relatives have a more traditional sound Quirk, or maybe both?"

"So I have sound magic?" he asked. I nodded. "Good to know. Thanks, Midoriya."

"Was that really a good idea?" Ojiro asked after he walked away.

"Even with what I told him, he's probably not going to beat me, considering our stats and abilities," I said. "And if he displays more than just dependence on a powerful supporting Quirk, then he's more likely to get in the hero program."

"I guess..."

xoxoxo

"Seriously, are you two fucking dating yet?" Kacchan asked Tsu and Uraraka now that we were in the stands watching the pre-tournament game.

"What makes you think that?" Tsu asked, blushing slightly.

Kacchan raised an eyebrow. "Fucking seriously?"

Uraraka hid her blush behind Tsu's hair. It was easy to do, between Tsu having a lot of hair and the fact that Tsu was literally sitting on Uraraka's lap and snuggling up against her. "In my defense, I like body heat because I'm a frog," Tsu muttered.

Kacchan shrugged. "Sure, why not?" He then turned his attention back to me. He knocked on his seat in the passcode, so I invited him to my party.

acridThermogenesis: hey dont be mad

acridThermogenesis: but i may or may not have eavespropped on your conversation with half and half

acridThermogenesis: *eavesdropped

acridThermogenesis: what the actual fuck is my name deku

I sighed. I really should have noticed him. Actually, one of my elementals should have told me he was there.

conjuringGamer: Don't eavesprop on other people's private conversations, Kacchan!

conjuringGamer: This is your punishment!

acridThermogenesis: oh fuck you and your stupid references

conjuringGamer: How, exactly, do you get what this is a reference to anyway?

acridThermogenesis: fuck

acridThermogenesis: you

acridThermogenesis: and why the fuck did you never tell me that you were related to the ex number two hero

conjuringGamer: WDTAU

acridThermogenesis: the fuck

conjuringGamer: We Don't Talk About Undertow

acridThermogenesis:

acridThermogenesis: fair enough

acridThermogenesis: and in my defense

acridThermogenesis: half and half has been glaring at you for gucking ever

acridThermogenesis: 8fucking

acridThermogenesis: **fucking

acridThermogenesis: fuck why cant i type today

conjuringGamer: You do realize you used to be worse to me, right?

conjuringGamer: And I can certainly handle myself against Todoroki in a fight, if that's what you were worried about.

conjuringGamer: Or I could've just ran with Illusion Barrier.

acridThermogenesis: shit i dont know man

acridThermogenesis: stop busting my nub or whatever the fuck trolls say

acridThermogenesis: im sorry

acridThermogenesis: fuck it ill say it without the stupid accent so you know im serious

acridThermogenesis: I'm sorry, Deku.

conjuringGamer: Don't worry, I forgive you.

conjuringGamer: I was just messing with you.

acridThermogenesis: WELL DUCK YOU THEN

acridThermogenesis: fuck

acridThermogenesis *FUCK

I chuckled a bit. Annoying Kacchan was fun sometimes.

Uraraka Ochako: Um.

Hatsume Mei: Well this is awkward

Tokoyami Fumikage: I Think You 4cawt To 4emove Us 4om 4 Pa4ty, Mid4iya.

"Duck," Kacchan muttered.

"What?" Tsu asked. Uraraka snickered, then spat out a long strand of green hair.

xoxoxo

I walked down the corridor to the stadium. It was time for the first match. I took a deep breath, then felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned around to see All Might in his emaciated form. "Good luck, young Midoriya."

I nodded. "Thank you, All Might." I turned back to the opening and walked into the stadium.

"AND ON ONE SIDE," Mic-sensei shouted over the roar of the crowd, "WE HAVE THE KING OF MAGIC, MIDORIYA IZUKU!" I walked up to the stage and saw Shinsou emerge from the other side of the stadium. "AND ON THE OTHER, WE HAVE THE ONLY STUDENT FROM GEN ED TO MAKE IT TO THE THIRD ROUND! MASTER OF THE MIND, SHINSOOOOU HITOSHI!" I looked at Shinsou's level.

Give 'Em Hell, Kid

LV 19

Shinsou Hitoshi

"No hard feelings, right Midoriya?" he asked me. I shook my head, careful not to talk. To be honest I was looking forward to seeing what he'd thought of for me.

"WITHOUT FURTHER ADO, LET'S START!"

Shinsou smirked. The roar of the crowd died away, replaced by a ringing in my ears. He started to walk forward, and I heard the sound of his footsteps over the ringing. It was very loud, almost like the sound was reverberating all around me. Before I could react, I felt like all my sense of balance was lost, and I had an extreme feeling of nausea. I clutched my stomach, trying my best not to topple over. "Neat, huh?" he asked me, his voice amplified like the sound of his footsteps. I grimaced. My head was swimming. "I got the idea from my mother's Quirk. She can disturb people's inner ears with the sound of her voice, making them disoriented. I figured I could mimic that with sound magic. Judging from your reaction, I did pretty well."

I braced myself on an air platform and gathered my thoughts. It looked like he was taking his time moving because he had to concentrate on the spell, but it seemed like he was starting to get more comfortable, so that might change soon. Tactician told me that the effect the spell had on me manifested in the status effect Dizzy. I used Healing Hands on my head, causing the nausea and balance loss to fade. The ringing stayed, though. It felt more like it was the medium for Dizzy than a part of it. "Sonia," I thought.

"No use, Izuku," she replied. "Can't work with magic sound."

"Yeah, I figured it wouldn't be that easy." I kept up the Healing Hands with my left hand, though I knew that that meant I couldn't use it for any magic aside from the healing spell.

"It looks like you figured out a way around that. I wonder if you can keep it up while fighting me, though." He raised his hand and snapped his fingers at me. I Flash Stepped out of the way of the resulting shockwave thanks to the improved reaction time my high DEX gave me, but crashed into the ground when I was struck with Dizzy again in midair. I groaned. Flash Stepping shouldn't have caused Healing Hands to fail... "Looks like your healing spell can't keep up with it when you go that fast."

"That's probably it," I muttered as I started to get up. I noticed my mistake when the ringing in my ears stopped. For a second I felt very faint, like I was about to pass out. I almost fell back down. The feeling passed after a second, with a popup saying that the status effect Brainwashed had failed to affect me because of Gamer's Mind. "Ah."

Shinsou smirked. "So you are immune to my Quirk, but it still stuns you for a second." The ringing returned, and with it Dizzy. I noticed that my Healing Hands had slipped when Shinsou tried to use his Quirk on me. I put them back up, keeping both hands up this time.

"Limit Break!" I shouted, the glow of my Healing Hands getting brighter. "Healing Fists!" I jumped at Shinsou.

"Wait, what?" Shinsou said, then just barely managed to duck out of the way of my punch. The effort broke the spell, making my hearing return to normal. "Right, that's it." He took a deep breath and screamed at me with sonic magic. The shockwave hit me dead-on, blowing me back a bit even though I'd braced myself. I retaliated with a blast of wind strong enough to blow him to the edge of the arena. With a small gesture, I had Dune shift the ground under him, dumping him out of bounds. "Dammit."

"THE MATCH IS OVER!" Mic-sensei shouted. "Man, what was up with Midoriya? Did he eat a bad omelette or something?"

"If I had to guess, Shinsou did something," Aizawa-sensei said. "He either found a new use for his Quirk or made some sort of disorienting spell."

"If it was magic, wouldn't there have been some sorta glow?"

"Not all magic glows, Mic. You know this. You've literally used non-glowing magic."

I walked over to Shinsou. "Sorry about that," I said as I offered him my hand.

He took it and pulled himself up. "I'll consider it payback for the ear assault. Speaking of which, how're your ears? Would probably suck if I deafened you."

I gave him a thumbs-up. "I'm good, thanks to my Healing Hands. Though you might want to test it again with me or Shuzenji-sensei around, if you're really worried about that."

He nodded. "Probably a good idea."

xoxoxo

After making sure that Shinsou wasn't hurt from when I knocked him down, I went back to the section of the stands where class 1-A was supposed to sit. Ojiro was waiting for me by the door. "Midoriya!" he shouted. "Are you okay?"

I grinned. "Yeah, I'm fine."

"Deku!" Kacchan shouted from his seat. "The fuck was that?"

"Shinsou can use sonic magic now," I told him, then sat down next to him. "What you saw was him wreaking havoc on my inner ears."

"Damn." He chuckled. "So that was probably more difficult than your next fight's gonna be."

"What do you mean be that?"

Kacchan snorted. "We both know that between your ungodly physical defense and your elemental magic, the only person in the tournament who can match you in a straight fight is me, maybe also Uraraka but I'm gonna fucking destroy her. Half'n'half-"

"His name is Todoroki," I reminded him.

Kacchan rolled his eyes. "Todoroki might come close if he actually applies himself, but all he's really done is throw ice around. I'm guessing from what we already know about magic and Quirks that while Half'n'half's Quirk has ice magic acting to freeze shit, the ice itself isn't magical, meaning you can use an elemental on it easy. And even if not, can he really fucking put up with your bullshit as well as I can?"

"Yeah, I guess you're right..."

"And even though Tape Dispenser-"

"Sero."

"-might have a chance of winning against Half'n'half, can he even do a fucking thing to you?"

I thought about that for a moment. "It's probably arrogant of me to say that there's no way for him to beat me, but it isn't really likely, is it?"

"No fucking chance of that happening. Now shut up, the match is about to start."

Todoroki and Sero walked into the arena. As soon as the match started, Sero shot tape at Todoroki, wrapping him up. It looked like he was about to throw him, but...

Todoroki, without even moving, created the biggest wall of ice I'd ever seen with his Quirk, obstructing my view of the arena. It was so big that it cast a shadow over half the stadium, and Mifuyu told me the ice actually extended far above the top of the stadium. I scowled, my breath fogging up from how close the ice was to my face. "Kacchan," I ordered.

"Right." He summoned Pyra, and they started warming up the suddenly very cold area with light streams of fire. "You might wanna keep the water from drippin' on anyone, Tsu," Kacchan suggested.

Tsu just shivered and sluggishly buried her head in Uraraka's chest. "K-kero..." Uraraka wrapped her arms around her gently.

"Fuck. Right, you're a frog..." Kacchan sighed, then sent a few more flame strings around Tsu. "Deku, can you leave your water elemental here?"

I nodded, summoned Rayne, then slapped the metal railing meant to prevent us from falling onto the field. A microsecond's worth of Lightning Embodiment later, and I was on the other side of the railing and far enough to the left that I didn't crash face-first into ice. I stormed up to the arena, but looked toward Midnight before actually getting up on it. She was iced over...

"G-g-go r-right ahead, M-M-Midoriya," she shivered. I nodded and summoned Mifuyu and Blaise, who started helping Midnight, then stomped over to Todoroki.

"That was excessive, even for you!" I shouted, then shoved him away from Sero, who he was trying to melt out of the ice. With a gesture, I ejected him from the ice, grabbed him, then started warming him up. I checked up his sleeves and pant legs with probably a little more force than was actually necessary to make sure he didn't have any frostbite, then turned back to Todoroki when Blaise took over warming Sero up. "You do realize that your ice can kill, right?" He looked remorseful. Good.

"I was going to thaw him..."

I sighed. "I don't just mean Sero."

He tilted his head. "What?"

I stared at him incredulously for a moment before waving my hand in the general direction of the giant iceberg in the middle of the stadium.

"I'm aware that I used a bit too much force, but I made sure to stop the ice before it reached the audience."

"And if you didn't?" I demanded. "If you overdid it so much as a bit more, then people would have died. Hell, if anyone in the audience has a Quirk that makes them more susceptible to the cold, then they could be going into shock as we speak! I've got an elemental keeping an eye on Tsu, and Kacchan's keeping everyone warm, but that's still an issue!"

Todoroki blinked. "Oh."

"Why did you do that?"

"I was annoyed from talking to my father, and I took it out on Sero. I apologize."

I clenched my fist. "Limit Break: Sublimation," I intoned. My arm buzzed with One for All, and steam rose from it. Without even looking away from Todoroki, I swung my arm back, shattering the iceberg into powder with a combination of ice magic and sheer force. The powder was quickly vaporized by the vapor magic I'd also put into my punch. "I sympathize with you Todoroki, I really do. But if this is the way you're going to act then I'm going to beat you." With that said, I turned around and walked through the mist I'd created to get back to my seat. With DEX only a little out of human bounds, I vaulted up the wall to the stands, nimbly pivoting on the railing and landing back in the chair I was sitting in before.

"Damn, Deku," Kacchan whistled.

"How's Tsu?" I asked Uraraka.

Uraraka stroked Tsu's hair gently. "Tsu-chan fell asleep. Should I wake her?"

I shook my head. "It's probably best to let her sleep, at least for now." I turned back to Kacchan and Observed him. "Do you need me to restore your MP?" I asked him.

He shrugged. "Normally I wouldn't take you up on that, but I've seen Uraraka training and I'm pretty sure that if she was one hundred percent and I wasn't then I would fucking lose."

Uraraka beamed. "Wow, Kacchan! That was basically a compliment! And it wasn't backhanded or anything."

Kacchan rolled his eyes, though he had a small grin on his face. "Fuck you, Round Face."

[alicezan-ncgred]

Bleeding Red

Preface: I’ve been bitching around the bush of this long enough. So, I’ve been really silent on a bunch of stuff that’s been eating me alive which has made me both inactive and unproductive. I’m going to get straight to the point, starting off with the TL:DR from my post on my main blog. Context: An anon asked me if I was alright because I hadn’t updated in a while.

TL:DR You probably didn’t ask this to hear about all the bad shit of my life so here’s the short of it. No, I’m not doing fine. I will try get next weeks post out on time and I’ll work on making up on the lost posts. Updates will return regularly, ‘ite.

Time for the thick and thin of it.

Insecurity and being shafted: I’m stoic, even at my worst I won’t say anything. I’ll push through regardless of my current condition and since I’ve gone years like this, it’s not hard for me to do. In my real life situation, I’m currently in a place of social isolation. This has lead to a somewhat near reliance on Tumblr to be my social outlet. This present many issues.

The main one is that I’m quite the isolationist. This has only been reinforced by many interactions throughout the entirely of my life. Because of this, I can’t say I’ve ever had anything really more than two friends at a time. While in a way this has helped me express myself so well through writing, it’s come at the cost of social skill. I don’t talk to anyone.

With this kind of issue you could easily imagine that the THREE PEOPLE (four now, but very limited) to ever directly talk ended up in a way shafting me. The first blocked and disconnected with me without warning or reason. At this point we’ve been talking to each for about a month and we hit it off very well and then one day, silence. Never heard from them again. That fucked me up hard when I finally realized what happened.

The second person left during the Tumblr P**n Purge. We were talking about how to contact each other on other platforms and then they stopped responding. I had already given contact to other platforms of which they pinged me in any way. Another person that I trusted massively on here just abandoned me and I’m still hurting from that. Wasn’t fair at all.

Then the third person was someone that I been following for a while. This person is actually the reason that I’ve been putting this off for so long. I don’t want them to see this post but they will. I got an ask from them that ultimately turned out to be misinformation. I said I wasn’t mad but I was. I was so fucking angry about it and I’m still kinda mad, but I didn’t want problems. I still don’t. I just didn’t want them to worry about it. This will come back later.

I try my best to be as inoffensive as possible. The problem with that is that much of the things I believe or enjoy are highly divisive. Hell, even my own identity can be seen as offence. I’m bisexual, non-binary (I’m currently still questioning this. I might actually be gender fluid but in the overall scheme, that’s worse than being non-binary), and nonreligious. I’m in a very religious area so you I’m still “in the closet” about much of this IRL. I though it would better online but with how much people are saying bisexuality doesn’t exist, or that non-binary isn’t a valid gender (or that being gender fluid make you insane and you should be locked up) and all the hate people who say they are this are getting, the very community that’s supposed to accept me, HATES me. I had a bi pride flag icon last year during Pride Month. I never doing that ever again. It was terrible.

I’m trying my best to come out of my shell like I said I would when I made this blog but it seems I’m just crawling further into it. People I think I can trust keep setting me up to fall, people I know in real life won’t ever accept my existence if they knew who I really was, and my own mental health problem and self loathing are eating me alive. But that isn’t the total of it.

Crumbling Pillar: I’ve always ended up in the position where things were thrown onto me. In which no one wanted to do, I was stuck with. Because of this not only do I have a severe distaste being around my family (beyond everything mentioned before hand) but I grew to have a negative out look on everything. This effect is still quite obvious in my writings, especially my poems. Out of the 14 poems on my poem blog @washed-soul​, only one has a happy meaning.

The one happy poem was called dreams. Under a metaphor it talks about how a demon kept me trapped in a dark space. I start to get better and nearly break free before I have a negative relapse back to my old ways. The poems ends with the demon putting a end to itself leaving the nightmare in which it was keeping me in to slowly fade away, letting one crack of light peeking through to become a window to a door until one day I walk free. When writing this poem, I never thought I would find myself rebuilding the nightmare but that’s where I am.

I’m done with holding things together that other people have placed onto me. Because of this, issues have began showing in my private life. Issues that should’ve been solved decades ago are only now being addressed. This change in the status quo of my life has caused many issues in my productive and mood. Between everything else I’m too tired to do anything.

Is that a reason, is that an excuse. No it isn’t but it’s the best thing I got as a reason. I’m doing my damnedest to do the best I can but of course, when it comes to the thing that matter I just fall short. Big fucking whopha my intelligence and capability does me if I can’t use it for anything that means a damn.

Meaningless Triviality: I’m a very emotional person. I’m very strongly bound to my emotions and if everything above hasn’t given it away, my emotions are very negative prone. But it just doesn’t stop there, it goes back into my memories. I can only honestly place 3 happy memories for certain that aren’t either A) a dream or B) me escaping reality through my mind. Besides that, almost all my memories are negative. 

People like to throw around the word Nihilist to describe themselves because today's culture is very, god while I hate to use this word, edgy. For those who don’t know a Nihilist is someone who views the world as being completely  meaningless and reject all religious and moral principles. I very truly struggle with this outlook of life. It’s a daily for me to berate myself saying “just kill yourself” or “I want to die” or just shutting down and crumpling up while say “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry” over and over again. Hell, I did that while writing this. 

I take things very hard, even the slightest transgression. I’m so used to trying to make things perfect and because people have the image that I’m the smart one, the mature one, the capable one, I’m left with the over hanging expectation of excellence. Almost no room for margin of error or being human. Since I’m the silent type, I put up no challenge and work to meet it. Only time I get any praise for anything too. 

I guess as a little self promotion to my main blog, for those that have read the very first few updates of my main blog @the-truth-behind-redacted, or read Defiance’s character sheet, while The Machine and Defiance are separate character, they both share the name Machine. That in part is a reflect of said above expectation. How ravenous and inhuman it can be all under the guise of something human. Those characters are the two sides to the same coin. 

Remember how I said I try to be un-problematical and how I try to avoid any potential conflict. In the first segment I told on how I lied about my feelings just so another person didn’t have to worry over something that honestly, in hindsight, wasn’t even really a big deal. But I also said how it consumed me in anger. I just don’t want to bother anyone over anything. It’s part of the reason why I am writing this post, as some way of a self enforced rehab program to get better. 

This absolute consumption of negative emotion has pushed me into a non human state before. I hit a point of absolute mental exhaustion and in such a self enforced bubble of actual hatred I became completely apathetic. I felt numb to everything. I watched and heard of terrible things happening to people, and felt nothing. I watched people lives crumble before them leaving them nowhere to go and LAUGHED. “Just another worthless pathetic worm on this rotting carcass of a planet being hit with the hard reality that life doesn’t care for them. What whimsical pathetic bullshit they deluded themselves with to think otherwise.” This isn’t an exaggeration on how I thought, this is what I actually thought. Which brings me too.

The Mandatory Sob Story: Roll your eyes everyone and get the tiny violin. I guess in order for everyone to exactly understand the place I’m coming from when it comes to mental health I’ll have to detail my experiences. I have a long standing history with mental illness. I have professionally diagnosed OCD, Bipolarism, Anxiety, Chronic Depression, and visual and auditory hallucinations. I take 600 mg of Seroquel a day as well as Amitriptyline when needed. I’m also still currently in therapy to deal with said OCD, Bipolarism, Anxiety, Chronic Depression, the visual and auditory hallucinations, as well as Suicidal thoughts, and my Nihilism. There’s a reason to why I’m so god damn familiar with mental illness and treatment plans.  

OCD and Bipolarism run in my family on my fathers side. My Father’s Father had them, my Sister has them, my brother most likely has them (however he refuses to see a doctor because he uses said possible mental illnesses as a get out of jail free card. He doesn’t want to be treated and he has FUCKING ADMITTED IT), my father has them, and I have them. I, however, have the misfortune of having it real bad. I said yes to well over half of all the total symptoms when I was being tested (I don’t remember exact numbers but I remember there being three pages worth of common symptoms) which was very worrying to the doctor. I was currently in an inpatient hospitalization program at the time for both suicidal thoughts and actions, and severe depression. 

On that, my graze in with suicide. Before I went into my first inpatient program I was contemplating suicide. I was sat in front of a mirror with a bottle of over the counter medication. It was an unopened bottle of ibuprofen, 1000 200mg tables. What I planed to do was down the whole bottle with benadryl and die in my sleep. I had the small box of benadryl got from the Kroger pharmacy and a hand full of ibuprofen poured out looking directly into the mirror. My suicide note was sitting on the desk on my room with an online copy on my laptop open.

I sat there for an hour in the dead of midnight complicating my life. I had lost all hope in the world, filled with hatred, anger, pain, and despair. I had no god or after life to look forward too, part way hoping that a Hell existed for me to burn in. I hated myself that much. I was close to taking the first handful before before I caught a glimpse of my own eyes in the mirror. In what was in a weird sudden epiphany I realized that I truly did become what I hated but not for any reason I told myself. I became the very bastion of negativity I sought to fight and rid of in what little friends I did have. That was what set off my path to recovery in spite of the medical system. I guess if people care I’ll make a separate post on that. 

Before I move on, I feel I should explain my history with the visual and auditory hallucinations. It should be no surprise that with everything else above, I also had extreme paranoia that led to me having very bad insomnia. Insomnia is, just like most other medical disorders like Depression, Self-harm, Anxiety, OCD,  Bipolarism, is romanticized to hell. Insomnia isn’t having one nights bad sleep where you got 5 hours of sleep instead of 8.

You know what Insomnia is? insomnia is being physical incapable of sleeping despite not sleeping in 2 to 3 day while your body suffers massive agony brought on by this. Muscle spasms and seizing, difficulty breathing, your eyes feeling like fire ants are eating them, and of course visual and auditory hallucinations. Now I already had issues with visual and auditory hallucinations even when I could get sleep regularly but the combined effects of my OCD and Bipolarism made this perfect condition of Insomnia, Anxiety, Paranoia, with the already added in disposition to hallucinations and I felt like I was actually losing my mind. 

My hallucinations presented themselves in three forms. Disassociation of reality, night terrors, or alterations of reality. Disassociation of reality often were complete black out moments. I would lose any perceived connect to reality and enter an episode of my mind. I can’t remember what they actually were but I do remember what it felt like. Cold sweats, anxiety to point where if I didn’t lock up I would vomit, actual physical pain, mind numbing fear, and intense fatigue. 

The second were night terrors often in the form of horrific “things.” I do remember these and most of them were as best as I could describe, forms of things that were vaguely human and formations of industrial machinery. The most vivid one I remember was of a long lengthy apparition that was for the most part human but many locations of it’s impossible physiology were rebar beams and mechanical sockets. It began when I was about to fall asleep and it was next to my window. The thing was making week groaning and gasping sounds before it violently slammed against my window breaking it then letting out a horrific howl that I can’t describe as it tossed itself out followed shorty after with the sound of bones breaking against the dirt. 

Now that might not seem so bad, exspecally with everything that is in horror movies or games now, but keep in mind that was fucking real to me. It was as real as the clicking of the keys of my keyboard as I’m writing this. As real as the chair I’m sitting in and as real as the wall in front of me. As far as my mind was concerned that thing, what ever it was, actually existed. It took me physical touching my window to make sure it wasn’t actually broken and checking outside to see if there wasn’t a body there. This isn’t the type of thing I talk about lightly. 

Finally there is the alteration of reality. This is very simply but it’s something that fucked with me hard. For very little meaning or warning, I would have trouble interpreting the world around me. My hearing and sight would be warped and there wasn’t any real way to tell what I was hearing or seeing was real or not until the episode was over. The way I got through these was the ultimate fake it till you make it. Obviously, very often I failed and this created issue in my schooling. 

Ending Message: I’ve been in a very bad state for a while now and as it is now, no signs of getting better. I also strongly believe my medications are being to fail me which I’ve been telling my doctor and therapist for over a year now but nothing’s been done. Mainly it’s my Depression but insomnia episodes are beginning and my own paranoia been on the rise. It’s gotten to the point where I can’t even look at a creepy image or thumbnail without having a very bad episode. 

I’ve managed to eat something today which was nice but my body is cramping hard. And to possible stave of a possible comment, I’m biologically male. Like I said I’m not in the best head space, or living for that matter. If this gets better, only time will tell. 

[communist-cat-girl]

sup im back at it on my prager U rants

Ever High School Principal Should Say This

o boi

so the preamble is good, teachin the young is p much the best thing i could think of.

change 1 kinda sounds dumb right off the bat honestly; also if youre gonna so arbitrarily diss integral parts of people then why not also ignore sex or gender identity? also he mentions red people, native americans, but doesnt say north america in his “i dont care about your origins” part and also oceania isnt pictured which is mostly just weird? its not a problem i have i just think its a random choice.

i hate his part on individual identity because character, scholarship, and humanity are effected by ones race, sex, gender identity, sexual identity, so on and so forth. your character is influenced by your past, what you were taught, and different people are simply taught different things and learn different things through experience. scholarship is a dumb one as ive never seen it used in that context and apparently its not even correct?

ive looked around and everyone supports this collection of definitions soooo??? finally the humanity one is kindve just hypocritical; humans are unique due to their sentience and sentience creates these concepts such as race and gender and sure it hasnt done us very well but its still part of who we are. the national identity part is just silly. i dont really have to explain that, its just such a dumb patriotic thing to say that isnt the case for certain students.

“if you wish to be yourself sorry, you have to go to another school because we believe in different opinions than you.”

“or whatever else may become In Vogue in our society” what??? race, ethnicity, gender, sex, these arent new topics. these have ALWAYS been issues, esp with the youth. just cause you dont wanna look them in the face cause youre a coward doesnt mean they arent real. also how do these clubs cultivate narcissism? how is it narcissistic to learn other perspectives? even if you yourself are queer, goin to a gender club or a gender theories course is extremely important to understandin how others think because even we dont all feel the same way about gender and sexuality.

the purpose of education is a tad bit of a tricky topic so makin such a Line In The Sand definition for it kind ignores the beliefs of students and teachers alike.

he again calls ethnicity, race, and sexual identity a like narcissistic topic which again boggles the fuckin mind. imagine a cishet white guy goes into these classes or clubs, is he narcissistic? is it bad to go to an asian culture club? an african american history class? a lecture on gender theory??? like come on dude what the fuck are you even talkin bout at this point

change 2 is honestly smart but for the rong reasons. we dont feel united cause of a langauge you absolute mongoloid, not every american speaks english. thats just the facts. im sorry you refuse to see it. but learnin english is important to life in modern america so makin sure people are good at speakin it is doin your job as an educator for sure.  

“[on bein taught in a native langauge] this is not the right school for you” who asks for that? a deaf person doesnt walk up into a public high school and go “yo can yall do sign for me?” we both have schools for deaf people and personal interpreters ... so ... i dont really get this point.

change 3 is redundant, this is how schools already work.

change 4 is, again, redundant.

change 5 is ... what? the hells a self-esteem program? i want to a VERY liberal magnet high school and i have no idea what hes talkin bout. i kinda want them though, itd help nervous kids goin thru puberty feel better about the horrors of the adult world. i sure fuckin needed one i guess.

change 6 is, finally, the last. oh fuck its redundant AGAIN. AND HOW ARE RACISM, SEXISM, ISLAMOPHOBIA, HOMOPHOBIA, GLOBAL WARMING, TOBACCO, AND GENDER IDENTITY POLITICAL ISSUES??? tobacco is a HEALTH issue. gender identity is a HEALTH issue. global warmin is an ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUE. racism, sexism, islamophobia, and homophobia are social issues which sure id call political but how is it bad to teach about this??? you just said you didnt want propaganda then you immediately fill kids heads with pro-conservative propaganda??? that kinda sounds like a politically biased teachin system. 

SEXUAL RELATIONS ARE A HEALTH ISSUE OH MY FUCKING GODS!?!?!?!?

No one. Fucking No One wants to be a victim. We are not taught to be victims. We do not victimize ourselves. thats it. thats all there is. next topic please im goin to have a stroke.

the pledge of allegiance is a highly political topic and the textbook definition of propaganda you hypocritical dipshit.

man i wish i was a dane.

[sherleneluther]

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[rogerrachel1995]

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[eznews]

Charisse Jones USA TODAY

Published 5:29 AM EDT Aug 17, 2020

Traci Wells was at a school board meeting when she found out the springtime balancing act between her job and helping her children with online schooling would stretch into the fall. 

“I was like, I cannot do six more months of this,” says Wells, a mother of four, who is director of education for the global health program at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine. With her husband working as well, “I don’t know how we’re going to be on all the calls and get the work done when we have these responsibilities. It’s just really, really hard.”

When the coronavirus outbreak led schools to shut down in the spring, parents had to quickly rally, juggling their jobs with the added roles of teacher, tutor and occasional IT technician.

It was a stressful time, but one that many families presumed would be temporary, coming at the end of the school year. But as the virus surges throughout the U.S. and many school districts again shift much or all learning online, those remote routines are resuming with no clear end in sight.

Now employers and employees are grappling with how to adapt to a new reality that may require them to extend short-term fixes and create more long-term solutions, whether that’s staggering schedules, splitting jobs between two workers or offering leaves of absence. 

“I think employers had to very quickly allow a lot of things in the spring that they can’t sustain on an ongoing basis without a little more thought and a little more structure around it,” says Patty Pryor,  a principal and litigation manager for the law firm Jackson Lewis who focuses on disability and leave management issues. “There has to be flexibility for all this to work out.’

The stakes are high. Without support, some overwhelmed parents, particularly mothers, who typically take on more of the caregiving burden, say they will likely drop out of the workforce — and many already have.

Mothers stop working

An analysis of federal census data by the Center for American Progress found that from April through July, roughly a third of unemployed millennial mothers were not working because of the closure of a school or child care facility–about three times the number of young fathers who were out of work for the same reasons.

But businesses still need their employees to perform to maintain the bottom line. Among companies, 66% say they are not planning or considering altering performance expectations or career development and promotion processes for workers dealing with child care issues, according to a survey by Willis Towers Watson.

And morale may plummet as employees without children feel pushed to pick up the slack for their colleagues who are parents.

‘’There’s a lot to balance and think through,” Pryor says. “Employers are really struggling because of that. It’s not just dollars and cents.”

Still, some are trying to step up to the challenge. 

“In the spring we hoped this would be a sprint, but it is becoming clearer this is looking like a triathlon,”  says Joanna Daly, human resources vice president for IBM which has more than 350,000 employees globally, 90% of whom are currently working from home. 

“We really don’t want our employees to be burnt out, so part of this is to listen to what employees are needing and being prepared to respond in real-time.’’

IBM is now offering four additional weeks of flexible, paid emergency leave that can be used in increments or in a single month-long stretch.   

“They can use (it) a couple hours at a time,” says Daly. The company will also start offering an emergency back up care benefit in early September, enabling employees to use a center or to get in home assistance when normal child or elder care arrangements fall through.

And IBM employees who want to work from home can do so until the end of this year, even if their offices have reopened. Company management will weigh whether to continue allowing that option in 2021.

IBM is not alone in offering more malleable choices for employees.  

RBC Capital Markets, the investment banking arm of the Royal Bank of Canada,  is recording meetings so staffers can tune in when the time is most convenient.

“It could be at 10 o’clock at night, or 6 in the morning,” says Liz Lieberman, the company’s head of human resources in the U.S.

Remote work, and job sharing, where a pair of employees trade off days performing the same role, were options before the pandemic,  Lieberman says. But such arrangements may become more commonplace because of the ongoing challenges caused by the health crisis.

The company is also taking into account how some workers are juggling jobs with family responsibilities when evaluating their performance.   

“There’s a lot of understanding around what people are able to do,” Lieberman says. “We have to prioritize…It’s quite a daunting experience to be doing two full-time jobs at the same time.”

Productivity will dip with remote learning

More than half of working parents say they will be distracted to a moderate or significant degree as they carry out job tasks while helping their children with remote learning, according to Perceptyx, an employee survey platform. 

Meanwhile, the survey found 42% of working parents are also somewhat or greatly worried about their job security because they are having to grapple with their kids being at home.

Even sympathetic employers may face a dilemma since they need a steady workflow to stay financially afloat. 

A PwC survey in June found that 44% of employers felt employees were more productive working at home during the pandemic, vs. 31% who believed they were less productive and 25% who felt work output was roughly the same.

“As much as employers really want to be helpful and recognize the issue parents are having,” Pryor says, “there is also the economic reality that they can’t afford to pay people who aren’t actually being productive and pulling their weight.’’ 

But being too inflexible can cost businesses current workers as well as future recruits.

“For organizations who are not providing the flexibility and support to work from home with children present, more than one-third of parents plan to quit within the next year,” says Brett Wells, director of people analytics at Perceptyx.

The Perceptyx survey also found that women in senior leadership roles were 1.5 times more likely to say they plan to quit within the next 12 months.

‘No more boundaries’

But for Traci Wells, quitting is not an option, financially or emotionally.  

“I’ve loved being a working mom ,” she says. At the office “I’m fully engaged and present, and when I come home … I’m the person who didn’t check emails in the evenings or weekends unless it was absolutely necessary.” 

But since the spring, the office, the classroom and her family’s home have all merged “like there were no more boundaries,” Wells says. “We’re all at home in a small space trying to make things work.”

When it became too much, Wells says her manager went to bat for her, encouraging Wells to take the leave allowed under the federal medical leave act when she was unable to take off under a similar university program because she was deemed an essential worker.

“I didn’t realize how bad it was until I took the break,” Wells said of the pressure she’d felt juggling work with her added responsibilities at home. 

Before her leave, Wells tried to create an office out of her bedroom, but “sometimes there was literally no place to go,” she says. “The baby would be napping in one room and the older kids are on calls, and my husband would be on an interview and I’d have a meeting (all) at the same time.”

While her husband has been helpful with household chores, he would sometimes forget to put their daughters on their scheduled calls. Wells was the one the girls came to with questions about their Spanish homework. And then there was her young son, whose preschool was also closed at the time.

“Part of what made it so incredibly difficult was having a three-and-a-half-year-old who didn’t understand that Mommy was on a call and would literally be crying behind a locked door saying ‘Let me in. I want a hug,’ ” she says. “He doesn’t understand you’re here … but you’re not really available.” 

Remembering those struggles as she looks toward the fall is making her “anxious that it’s going to get to that again.”

After finding out that her children’s learning will take place online at least initially when school starts August 20th, Wells went on family leave in early July to ease some of her stress. 

Wells is due back to work on Aug. 24th, though the leave could be extended until the end of September. Her employer continues to be supportive, but Wells says it’s been harder to ease the pressure on herself.

“The stress and anxiety I have is coming from myself and who I am and how I like to perform,’’ says Wells, who was the first person in her family to go to college and went on to earn her PhD. “The other thing that weighs on the back of my mind is, when they do have to have furloughs and make cuts, how are those decisions going to be made? And how are those going to impact working parents and working  mothers in particular?”

‘I don’t get that break’ 

Harriet Thomas, a mother of five, says her children began school remotely on Aug. 3.

A supervising child support specialist for Los Angeles County, her employer has been flexible, letting employees work remotely and shifting start times to when it’s more convenient for them.

Thomas’s days start with her logging on to her computer at 7 a.m. The four older children, who range in age from 4 to 8, get up an hour later. Then, with Zoom classes, lunch breaks, and supplemental lessons in subjects like cursive during the afternoon, the day doesn’t slow down until everyone goes to bed at 8 p.m.

Thomas also has a 1-year-old daughter that her husband tends to.

She appreciates not having to commute nearly two hours each day, and enjoys being able to supervise her children’s education. But Thomas says there’s a constant push and pull.

“I …  have to decide which issue is more urgent, what I’m doing online with work or their immediate issue,” she says of her children. “I may have to stop what I’m doing to find whatever school supply they’re looking for … It’s rough sometimes, but I have to do it.’

She’ll also likely have to put her pursuit of a doctorate degree on hold since she no longer has the office lunch breaks or small window of time between leaving work and picking up the kids to study.

“I never have time for myself,” she says. “With them being at home, and me being at home, I don’t get that break.”

‘I don’t want to be the bottleneck’

Mary Richards, a mother of three in Monona, Wisconsin, says her children’s school year will also start out with virtual learning. That means she will be juggling her work as an accountant for the city of Madison with trying to keep her 5-year old daughter engaged with online lessons, while trying to get her 1-year-old to sleep twice a day. 

When she puts the baby down for her naps, Richards often sits beside her, pecking quietly on her laptop. “I might be working, but I also have one eye on her the whole time too,” she says. “So I’m definitely not as productive.”

Her employer has been understanding. Still, she doesn’t want to spark resentment among colleagues.

“I know how it feels to wait for somebody else to do their part,” Richards says. “I don’t want to be the bottleneck.” 

Friction arising between employees who are parents and their peers who are not is a real concern.

Among workers without children, 39% believe their colleagues who are parents are more distracted, according to Perceptyx. A quarter say their workload has increased and become harder to tackle because of their peers who have children, and 29% say their colleagues who are parents are less productive.

Retention, recruitment on the line

But many employers believe workers need flexibility during a challenging time.

Among companies, 59% have offered flexible hours to support the caregiving responsibilities of their employees and another 29% are planning or considering that option, according to Willis Towers Watson. And 51% of businesses will enhance their flexible hours offering this year or in 2021, while 28% will boost their back up child care benefit.  

With so many employees facing similar challenges, employers “have to think about retention issues, and they have to think about how they’re viewed in social media and otherwise for future recruitment efforts,” Pryor says. 

Perceptyx found that 92% of employees who strongly believe their employers are providing the leeway and support needed to work from home while caring for children plan to stay at the company for at least the next 12 months.

Some employees may also want to consider switching to a part-time schedule even if it means a pay cut, says Pryor. And working parents could possibly hire high school or college students who are also learning remotely to supervise younger children who are at home.

“There are options in how to make it work,” Pryor says. 

Follow Charisse Jones on Twitter@charissejones

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[hwngjh-blog]

hello i’m tae and this is my annoying son jaehyun who i literally birthed ?? pls love him and don’t be too mean to him even though he can be pretty mean himself. i’m in gmt+1 timezone and i love suffering & angst? i especially love it when my muse is suffering more than i am so pls hmu with those angsty plots. i haven’t been on tumblr rp for the majority of this year so pls be patient with me while i get back into the swing of things, i’m also not so good at talking about myself ooc so i’m gonna go ahead and jump into info about jae!! under the cut is just some basic outline info of his personality... full stats and some plots/potential connections will be added up shortly too. thnx for listening 

hwang jaehyun, 23, concept artist and ugly fucking aquarius 

(he doesn’t really have a hugely tragic background besides his parents being majorly ugly)

pls dont try to talk to him about your feelings just yet unless you want him to run away. 

he struggles w/ his own emotions and can’t really handle listening to other peoples feelings bc who signed up for that? probably not jaehyun

pretty untrusting and unwilling about allowing people too close to him, i’d imagine he has some close friends but it might be difficult for new ones to get super close to him without a lot of effort on their part and proving to him that they won’t just abandon him and his friendship?? #trustissues

once you get him talking, he’ll never stop, especially if it’s about a topic he’s really interested in or feels passionately about. 

works as a concept artist so most of his work is digital art atm but does a lot of freelance & commission work on the side. Knows he’s a good artist and doesn’t fuck w/ pretending to be modest about his work. dabbles in sculpting and legit painting, too but that’s mostly for freelance and commission work

pretty judgemental and finds it hard to accept that he could be wrong about something, kinda dogmatic if i’m being honest but if he likes you then he’s more willing to let it go and admit he was wrong. tho if you disagree with him about something he really thinks he’s right about or is passionate about then you can expect to see steam coming from his ears within 0.01 seconds since he gets mad pretty quickly.

generally quick to annoy but he does his best at hiding it? which brings me to the point that he usually wears his heart on his sleeve w/ people he’s comfortable with. 

i guess if he likes you, not romantically but just in general, then he’s just soft as fuck

his family is wealthy upper class, living and working in seoul. they own a big chain pharmaceutical company and they wanted him to take over once his father retired, which he was originally going to do, he studied business in college for about a year before realising it made him fucking miserable and stressed and dropped out without consulting his parents.

lied about still being enrolled while actually enrolling in an arts program. originally found his passion for art during high school, where he joined an after class art club and excelled straight away. he told his parents about it but they never really took it seriously?? he even invited them to one of the schools art exhibitions but they never turned up.

this all caused them to essentially cut him off and refused to talk to him for a few years. they tried to reconnect w/ him and attempt contact with him but he rejects their calls, dodges them if they tried to visit and doesn’t visit them during the holidays or special occasions. 

he has three younger sisters who he’s still in contact with though, it’s mainly his parents he wants to avoid. his fathers health is rapidly deteriorating and he’s starting to feel badly about not being in contact w/ them but *shrug* he hates them so it’s not really his issue anymore, right? 

there’s a lot more angsty shit to his background but i’m not going to detail it here because it’s not info that jaehyun would just tell anyone, he’s pretty secretive about his past (for literally no damn reason) and only talks about it if he really needs to. you’ll have to get to know him to find out or wait for his full length history :3 

moved to jeju to get some peace and quiet so he could work without too many stresses in his life tho *idk if thats going well for him or not* (give me a roommate plot??) 

literally stays up all night long watching vine compilations and furiously playing uno on his phone instead of working (this is legit information pls take it seriously) 

obviously a night owl and lives on 50 cups of coffee a day. also constantly has a bad back from being hunched over his desk 24/7

loves having a muse and someone who inspires him?? he might not be painting portraits of them all over his apartment but he def would incorporate parts of them into his character designs or just create art in general that reminds him of them

also literally tries his hardest to convince people he just doesn’t care about anything or anyone??? and u know what, sometimes he actually doesn’t care but he says it so often that it’s hard to tell when he’s being truthful about it, even he can struggle to tell at this point.

he’s very spontaneous?? moving to jeju was just a sudden decision on his part and he doesn’t really consult other people before doing stuff? he just does it and then if it goes wrong or he has to suffer consequences then ig he’ll suffer

kinda apathetic and uncaring, honestly. he doesn’t have much patience for people being idiotic and doesn’t necessarily always feel bad about doing or saying something that might hurt other people. 

tho if he likes you (yes this again) he’ll probably feel bad straight away but that doesn’t mean you can expect an apology from him

if you really hurt him, he’ll probably give you another chance because he just really can’t stand the idea of being alone??? tho he won’t ever forget what you did to hurt him

i’m tired now so i’m going back to sleep but jaehyun is just a hard shell w/ a semi soft inside (i say semi soft because there’s still some push and pull even if he opens up) who needs to be loved so pls.... 

anyway that’s it i’m going back to bed now. my plots will be up soon but pls feel free to msg/im me for plotting/connections!!! 

[feckyeslife]

we now return to a dramatic critique of “Four” picking up where we left off. Having just finished The Initiate, I needed to take a long break before coming back to this... writing.

(side note, I somehow skipped the Son and had to go back to read that about 10 pages into the Traitor)

THE SON

- Four waxes a bit poetic about how he’s not Abnegation anymore and it kind of amuses me because he’s not really Dauntless, either. 

- Max comes in to ask/encourage Four into picking Leader. The smoothness of the process makes me feel a lot better about my own Leadership training fic scenes, though the fact that it takes over a year gives me pause because it’s implied in the next section that Eric had given Four orders on how to lead training in that interrum year. So... either trainee-Eric was given some power or he finished it quicker than a year. Or continuity doesn’t matter in this collection of short stories -.- Also he TAKES the role? Whaaaat.

Putting the rest under a cut to save all y’all’s dashboards. But there’s more. So much more.

- Zeke volunteers Four to be on a double date with him and it was the perfect moment to question if Four might have possibly been not-straight, but alas. 

- Alright I know I was a bit tipsy by the end of the last read-through but how have these people already forgotten / not realized that Four came from Abnegation? It feels awkward and forced in this moment bc this is literally like... not even a week after Initiation. Not enough time to have legitimately forgotten to consider that maybe he was an Abnie. 

- The banter about hand-holding is lame and awkward. No 16 year old boys banter about hand-holding, I’m SORRY. 

- Also Shauna’s interest in Zeke is just *yawn* like I don’t care that she’s jealous of this double date.

- Someone was in Four’s apartment and broke a drinking glass. I facepalm and wonder why a single apartment would have its own kitted out kitchen when they have a MESS HALL

- Four’s internal thoughts about Dauntless wisdom of living life without fear are actually very nice. This is the side of him as a protag that would have been interesting because it’s less self-righteous as the rest of his actions and comments in the other books.

(for those just joining us, VRoth stated that originally the series was about Four as a protag and honestly it makes way more sense. And would have allowed Tris to be a very solid side character and *gasp* even a failed love interest to show that the world isn’t always perfect and you don’t always actually work with the girl you ~have love at first sight~ with)

- The training program includes tests to see how quickly they learn and Four - and the narrative - once again one-dimensionally claims that this is an Erudite quality and therefore odd. How freaking hard is it to acknowledge that intelligence is something that the military Leadership would need? Very hard, apparently.

- Max passes out info sheets for them to fill out and it’s like My First Fascism spelled out. Very dystopian and, again, a better cue for the reader than how very straightforward the tension was with Tris’ initiation. A little heavy handed but not terribly so. 

- OKAY HERE AGAIN with the inconsistencies. Earlier I made the comment about him hiding his heritage and it was flavored with OH NO THEY CAN”T KNOW I’M ABNEGATION. Here during the double date, there’s a moment where Four is asked how he met Zeke and if he was a transfer. Four thinks that he doesn’t want people to think he’s uptight and also doesn’t want to cue in about his parentage. But the feeling is so different from earlier. Naturally this means that he just straight up lies and claims to be DB. /sigh

- Nicole is conventionally attractive and as flat as a pancake, character wise. She gets pissed that Four is being a shitty date - he is - but has to walk about because he doesn’t call her pretty. 

VROTH THIS IS NOT HOW TEENAGERS TALK. I’M SORRY BUT WHAT THE FUCK. 

“Personality is much more important that-”

“Than my unsatisfactory looks?”

- Shauna once again is upset that Zeke’s mackin’ on a girl that isn’t her. I’m yawning and bored that this is as dramatic as VRoth thinks the background relationships can get.

- I might actually vomit the next time we’re introduced to a side character whose entire description is just LOOK HOW COLORFUL THEIR HAIR IS AND ALSO SO MANY PIERCINGS!!!!! Sidenote, this was actually Lauren being re-introduced. 

- please please please dont make me read through VRoth trying to describe code. i’ll do anything. no? I have to? fine.

A) Lauren explains shit too fast, for too long, and doesn’t give people paper to even make notes. that’s not teaching that’s torture

B) Eric’s a smug jackwad about already knowing it all and I love him for it even though it’s a dick move. Remember, the last time he and Four interacted was when Four beat the shit out of him after he conceded.

C) Why the fuck would Dauntless be writing their own code to do stuff? I get that you might need to tinker with settings or whatnot, but are we honestly jumping to a world where the program to call up a security feed is something that you have to hand write or piece together to get working?

D) the punctuation that VRoth has Four paying attention to are periods (fine) quotation marks (alright) and backslashes (nope). Not a semicolon? REALLY? What language is she assuming they’re using? 65% of all my code errors ever were misplaced semi-colons or improperly nested loops.

E) apparently the only errors they’re looking for are like Baby’s First Code issues because there’s not a mention of BASIC shit like loops, defining variables, or even having to decipher the logic of any of the programs which is, you know, how you do code review. 

- Ah the intruder has to do with his mother. Alright then. But why the fuck did they knock a drinking glass down? Unless they’re two unrelated break ins. 

- Cameras are everywhere in the world yeah yeah but what about when Edward gets stabbed? Ah yes, getting Peter caught then would have broken the plot so clearly they weren’t in the initiate dorms.

- So here’s where there’s basically confirmation that Eric’s been an Erudite pawn all along. I don’t have to like it, so I won’t. 

- Four waxes on about acknowledging that he’s his father’s son and once again it’s slightly grounding as a character and further drives the knife into my metaphorical back that he’s such an ass in Insurgent.

- Evelyn is totally Jewish in heritage. Curly haired, hooked nose. Mmm. Part of me wants to extrapolate about the outright Christian nature of Abnegation versus the other persecuted people - the Factionless - but I’ll hold off because I’m too tired to do it well.

- Evelyn pulls the same crap about the city changing and people needing to pick a side. It’s classic dystopian YA lit and makes sense if only because we’ve all already read Insurgent and seen the city make those choices. But two years before that all boiled over, its a bit... meh. The dialogue once again is very heavy on crap like “Jeanine Matthews frequents Dauntless headquarters” and other crap that people don’t actually say unless they’re writing something down or making a speech. 

- SINCE WHEN ARE TATTOOS ABOUT DAUNTLESS SUPREMACY? Where is this jump in LOGIC? Ugh ugh ugh the whole Divergents-are-better-than-everyone-bc-we-know-how-to-be-multifacited narrative is horrible and lame. Suddenly there’s active call-outs that people are faction traitors and concerns that even situated Dauntless feel like they need to prove themselves. Where is any of this? It’s all tell and no show beyond the special people like Amar and Four and Tris who have already been made special by the narrative paying attention to them. If we saw someone like Lauren concerning about being “dauntless enough” I would take it with less complaint, but instead it comes off as just WE GOTTA RAMP UP THE TENSION.

- There’s talk again about “if we believe that Dauntless truly is the superior faction” then blah blah blah, Eric’s ideas for training (which on their own make sense to me). Four gets on about the actual idea of choosing values over supremacy like a normal human being. There’s also this assumption that people getting kicked out wouldn’t kind of deserve it - again, it’s a military so freaking AL should not be in it, I’m not sorry. Four makes the assumption that the “small, smart, brave” wouldn’t be able to succeed which really shows that either people aren’t being trained to use their skills - christina did fine as a small, smart, brave girl in fights - or we just needed the casual reminder that Tris and people like Tris are the special ones who manage to survive and shouldn’t have. If I were Four, I would counter Eric’s arguments against the bs supremacy ideas and also support giving proper training and evaluation so that “qualified” doesn’t only mean big and beefy. But, hey, that argument’s tough to make. His arguments hinge on the whole idealism crap and doesn’t touch real goals beyond “take out the knife throwing” which of course isn’t going to impress. 

- Max has Eric leave and actually is a bit... mature in the conversation with Four? He doesn’t talk down to him and it’s rather jarring compared to the earlier conversation. Four still thinks Max just wants someone to control which doesn’t mesh with this conversation or even really with the earliest one of the section. He seemed to genuinely think that Four had solid qualities but dealing with others in power clearly isn’t one of them. Or really, dealing with Eric. 

- Eric gloats, fully in the evil villain role. I’m unimpressed. He works best as Four’s antagonist, though, rather than Tris & Co’s. Another reminder that the direction of the story has always been on Four and his struggles, not Tris’.

- We get acknowledgement that of COURSE Four’s going to be a good teacher because he taught Shauna that one time (because he’s a boy and she’s a girl nevermind the fact that she’s grown up here)

- The section ends with him leaving a message for Evelyn that one day he’ll support her but not yet. After he just had this section rambling about how he chooses the middle path to be himself and find moments of rebellion against the people trying to control him INCLUDING Evelyn. Doesn’t seem very rebellious to yield to the woman who doesn’t care about you as a person, just as a weapon or a tool.

THE TRAITOR

- .”Beatrice. That name is so wrong for her.” I’m like 80% sure that this is the only time i’m gonna agree with him. But also, I feel like i remember him calling her Beatrice in Insurgent sooooo

- Tris was fragile-looking when she first entered Dauntless. Not a great descriptor but not the worst.

- Two years later and he’s still broody mc brooderson. His supervisor in the Control Room reminds him it’s alright to have fun and he literally grumbles under his breath. 

- He get’s Max’s password from the security feed because Max is bad at typing. I almost want to sin that just because even if you suck at typing, you can usually do your password (esp one that’s just numbers) entirely by instinct. But maybe - just maybe - Dauntless rotates passwords and Max just sucks. Either way, meh. 

- Lauren’s part of the technical staff. An interesting (re)discovery [I had read this before realizing I skipped the other part]. She helps him to get a program to mirror Max’s computer under the pretext of a prank on Zeke. I’m a bit befuddled simply because... How would Four ever prank Zeke with a mirroring program? Like, they just watch security feeds and maybe write reports? I also feel like it reflects even more poorly on Dauntless that they’re cool with pranks like that. But, then again, Dauntless is a bunch of morons according to VRoth’s POV so, I guess I can’t be too surprised. 

- The conversation /chewing out by Gus is SO stilted and awkward. We already got the info dump about taking feeds out of rotation but here we get literally the same explanation as Four’s defense. A good edit would have eliminated the awkwardness. Also, Four getting called out for being shitty at his job amuses me because from Tris’s POV in the other books, he can do no wrong. 

- Four gets Edward and Will mixed up in his head. These are his kids for the past x weeks and he doesn’t know who the “blonde erudite” is? Sideyeing so hard.

- Max and Four duke it out verbally over the stabbing as Four insists that it’s Eric’s fault bc the kids are so wound up. And Max gets some niiice jabs in about how Four could have a better leg to stand on if a) he stopped insulting every superior officer in his path and b) didn’t back down on the leadership role. Also a jab that, hey, you know who’s 100% at fault? The person who STABBED EDWARD!

- Ugghhh Tris is Dauntless but the faction “isn’t really Dauntless anymore.” Dude you’ve been here 2 years. You refuse to work with the current system to help it to teach the real values. Like here, where you refuse to call Tris out for insubordination - or at least WARN her that she’s getting away with it - and earlier complained about how you got bitched out for stopping last year’s fights. Figure out how to teach real lessons Mr. “Great Teacher” while following the letter of the writing. 

- He also pulls the “i’m hard on Tris because she can take it” line and I’m unamused. He had the time here to actually say what he wanted to say or at least a version of it that isn’t tempered by being a dick like he claimed ten seconds ago he wasn’t with her because he “respects her.” The amount of flip-flopping could fill a beach.

- he touches her back and it addles his mind. Either his balls are that blue or VRoth is laying on the one-sided attraction a bit thick. 

- I don’t remember this scene being this long in Divergent, but at least Tris is getting credit for being perceptive about things. Even if that perception is just to put Four on a pedestal of “so much better than Eric/Dauntless.” There’s also more detail about how training had ACTUALLY changed to previously include padding and not bare-knuckle boxing. Six years ago. I’m 200 pages into this short story and this is the FIRST empirical evidence that Dauntless had changed before Four got there beyond early Fear Landscaping.

- Tris calls Eric jealous and Four spends a hot second considering that Eric might actually have motives and emotions beyond cocky. It’s the best I’ll get and I’ll take it.

- Two years into Dauntless as Four “tries a Dauntless expression” to tell Tris that she doesn’t look like she’s been crying. Two years. What a friggen outsider. Again, makes sense with the previous storyline but not really in the actual story because, gee, if he’s such a good Dauntless why is he an outsider? (well because Dauntless - even the non-Erics or Maxes - is horrible, don’t’cha know UGH)

- He discovers the plans for the attack on Abnegation and claims how this makes sense because of how much Max and Jeanine hate the Abnegation. Far as we’ve seen, Max doesn’t give a single shit about Abnegation, but hey, it wouldn’t do to have a villain who didn’t hate where the protag came from. 

- Please lets note how even in these scenes, Tris has displayed no actual return affection towards Four’s tiny attempts at connecting with her. It’s all about Four.

- He goes to mommy dearest about the danger of Max and Jeanine’s plans. It’s regrettably the only logical thing to do. And mommy doesn’t care. The only interesting thing about this is that this is the only scene that doesn’t present the attack on Abnegation as an attack on the poor innocent Christians. They’re shown as liars and backstabbers, supporting Marcus rather than good hearted folks helping the Divergent. It explains Four’s desire to back his mother in Insurgent rather than the rest of the city. 

- We hit one moment of Tris actually responding to Four’s kindness which I feel like I need to emphasize is the only time that he’s actually said nice shit without being a tool before or after it. Weird how girls don’t like that.

- Earlier Four couldn’t remember who the Blone Erudite transfer was but he can tell from the shape of a hooded figure that Al’s the third attacker. Mmmkay.

- UGH he hates the fights but he doesn’t resent how Tris beat Molly into a pulp and beyond because she’s got tits and Eric doesn’t. It’s as simple as that. Sorry, not sorry.

- Four’s internal dialogue: I need to find someone I can trust. This girl is cute and she also beats people into a pulp when she’s upset but this will never happen again and any further rage from her will result in me telling her to stop and be a better person but this is what connects us right now so it’s okay. 

- Four makes a pathetic attempt to consider reporting the assault to Eric who uses it to rightly call out Four’s inability to control his kids. Then Eric goes over the villain line again and says it’s a way to tell who the strong and the weak are. Yawn.

- Holy balls, Shauna and Zeke get brought in to be Four’s muscle and scare Peter. I get why we never saw this through Tris’ POV but you THINK it could have maybe been mentioned? Also we get a tiny glimpse into Dauntless culture as they threaten to ruin Peter’s reputation forever, etc etc. Not that any of this really matters because all Dauntless are dumb, remember? Only the special main characters matter. 

- Zeke also makes a vague insinuation about Al falling into the chasm and I’m suddenly a bit astounded as the next scene is, well, Al’s body being dragged up. Four realizes he’s been a shitty instructor and a choir of angels sing “of course, you idiot”

- There’s the scene of Tris and Four after Al’s death where he attempts again to give her half answers and sideways comments that only serve to frustrate her and me. And the stupid line about pushing her until she breaks because he thinks how it doesn’t mean he wants to hurt her but it’s so CLEARLY not his actual goal in literally any of their interactions, even from his POV! Where does this line come from? His imagination?

- We flip-flop again, this time about how most of Abnegation IS actually good don’tchaknow

- There’s the re-do of the fear landscape where we go back to other-book canon where jumping off the side is all well and good because you don’t need to have a perfectly logical reaction to the landscape. Mmm. Tris is also like 80 times better than him, still. Just sayin’

- I’m again reminded of how quickly they go from one sided to barely flirting in the fear sim to touching casually and him kissing her forehead. All those subtle intimacies are just way too sudden. Ugh.

- His decision to go to Marcus is driven by the desire to protect her and I’m once again a bit nauseated by the idea that Tris has to be protected by someone. It makes sense for his character and as much as I’m nitpicking this story, it’s a better, clearer story arc than Tris’. I love Tris to death, but the story of the trilogy is not hers. It’s her dealing with the fall of Abnegation and then tumbling into Four’s family drama. Everything works WAY better from his POV (with tweaking and with her breaking up with him because I say yet again HE IS SUCH A DICK IN INSURGENT)

anywho i’m skipping the last three “bonus scenes” because I need to take a break and also not kill myself.

[tithtalks]

some talk about writing and novels and ideas and whatnot:

i’ve been getting a little more inspired (if not more motivated) to write lately (which is 99% to do with the fact that I’ve been blowing through my mom’s collection of stephen king novels; as much as i hate to subscribe to popular writing advice, the two major suggestions of “read more” and “write more” are really it) but motivation problems aside, i’m also suffering from a bad... fear of failure? i guess 

like.... i used to be that way with art, but now i’ve gotten in that mindset where i can view all art as practice and not be disappointed by feeling that i haven’t “arrived” at my fullest potential. for some reason i cannot logic my way out of that feeling with writing! you’d think if i could apply it to one situation it’d work for the other, but noooooo

part of the problem is that i have a hard time, as i’m writing, of determining whether each sentence is both interesting and necessary as i’m writing it. there are so many times where i’ll write a whole passage and then skim over it later and realize that..... it’s boring? either because nothing happens or because the thing that happened was boring and it was just a natural progression of an uninteresting plot thread... 

it’s not as if i’m obsessed with originality, because i am not the type of person who even gets bored reading about the same thing over and over (honestly i crave a good pseudo-medieval fantasy adventure from the secondhand bookstore now and then and i must have read dozens by now) so much as it is..... i just feel as though i write and write and write and none of it is something i would want in a final draft, or that i feel as though there are parts that are necessary but not interesting- i need to just skip over them, or change them, or do the necessary part but in a more interesting way... i dont know. it’s frustrating. 

for example, i ended up with a lot of “boat scenes” in my first draft of my last NaNo project. my characters are spread out all over the world, and all of them are traveling places, and many of them are traveling on boats (although i used “boat scenes” here for travel by donkey, horse-drawn-carriage, etc as well, but its worst with boats). nothing! happens in these scenes, or, if anything does happen, i end up spending three pages describing how it happened rather than summing it up in one sentence. and i know i do this and yet i cant seem to force myself to stop it. perhaps “show dont tell” was hammered into my brain too hard and now any amount of telling has been eliminated from my programming 

another issue i’ve been having is this... weird conflict with giving characters motivations. for some reason i’m just.... practically allergic to giving characters simple motivations like “to save my father whose health is failing” or “to find my brother” or various other......... entry-level-protagonist motivations. the sort of motivations where you start out a YA or shitty fantasy novel and the spunky protagonist has this goal and then three chapters in you figure out that that’s not really going to be important at all in this novel because the Real Plot shows up and kicks around all the characters and when you finally find her brother you’re not even sure the protagonist cares anymore. (or he’s evil. or he’s dead). i suppose i could go for a good old fashioned gold digging protagonist, but those tend to either learn that friendship is more important and forget about the money, or keep caring too much about money and live out the rest of their days unredeemed. 

im losing my train of thought so i’m gonna stop this here but i’ll have more to say on the topic eventually i’m sure