#trap exploit

[secretsimpleness]

Brought to you by @butter-and-too-much-bread, who shared to me this idea in... 2020... Warden Cousland, Allison, Sten, Darkspawn 1 and 2 / Dragon Age Origins (c) Bioware

[alwaysbewoke]

[solarwreathe]

i designed a sheikah outfit for josha like purah and robbie. they gifted it to her, but josha added the depths elements later because no one tells the president what to do.

i wanted to keep it in line with the modern sheikah's sense of style, with some allusions to their past ninja antics, hence the bandages and assassin's creed hood. all the better to slip out of lookout landing undetected. strict parents make sneaky kids, purah!

[thephilosophersapprentice]

that's it I'm declaring Kaladin Stormblessed patron saint of people working minimum wage

[bibibbon]

Tbhx and the disposability of man pt3

Here is part 1 aka lin Ling's arc

Part 2 aka yang cheng's arc

Lucky Cyan's arc both explores the disposability of her true self for a polished image and what it's like to be moulded into a product so your guardian can live their dreams through you.

This starts when Ms. Zhao starts to use cyan for her own benefit, although a few moments back, she charges in trying to stop the kids from 'bullying' her as she puts it. The word spreads among the staff of the orphanage and little by little cyan begins to be seen as just a puppet for good luck. Get cyan to do this for the best possible outcome or get her to choose something or bless something for you. It doesn't matter that she is a child, an orphan who is directly under your care she is a good luck charm that is bound to guarantee the best possible outcome. Through this, cyan begins to lose the little humanity she was allowed in the first place and begins to be just viewed as a commodity that must serve the people who believe in her.

The orphanage's care comes at price, and this is the price forced onto cyan. A cruel price indeed that further robs her of her sense of self.

While the Dean tries to call Ms zhao out for this and tries to deem himself as above this type of behaviour he quickly goes back on his words and also exploits cyan for his own personal gain, although his exploitation I would argue is way more sinister than Ms Zhao's since he is under the belief that this is something that benefits both him and cyan when in reality that's far from the truth.

Again, even with the Dean, the message of the orphanage's care comes at price, and a price that strips cyan of who she is and who she wants to be is repeated.

While Ms. zhao is criticised for using cyan as a money tree, the dean goes a step further and tries to live his life through cyan controlling every aspect of her that he possibly can. Episode 9 reveals that the reason the orphanage was created in the first place is to nurture heroes, and the dean picks cyan as his victim. A girl granted an immeasurable value of luck can both allow him to live his dream of being a hero, but she can make as much money as he desires.

He builds the image of the sacred maiden for her laying brick by brick, from building a whole church, selling merchandise, advertising the whole thing and even restricting her from what normal kids her age can do. Cyan will spend the whole day practising, she will almost always be seen wearing her maiden outfit, she will cover her hair, authentic parts of herself so she can live up to an indescribable image.

This further dehumanises cyan. If she wasn't already dehumanised by the staff in the orphanage, she is now fully dehumanised by her own peers who watch their step and themselves whenever she is around. This isolates her from everyone and everything, and the only one that manages to break that is lou.

Even though cyan does defeat the Dean and escapes his grasp, she isn't really free in the end, considering her new predicament with Micky and DOS.

Micky doesn't try to hide it in any means. He quite literally tells cyan if she likes her new character, taking the time to explain that the only reason they even ditched the sacred maiden image is not for cyan's sake or for her wants but because the public has been shifting and wanting more independent female heroes and that this new image only exists because of that purpose. Again, cyan is only here to fulfil a role. When the people wanted a maiden of luck, they got the maiden of luck, and now when the people want an independent loud and vibrant hero they will get exactly that not because she is in control but because that's what society wants. Again, under DOS she is simply viewed as a commodity however, she does now have people that care for who cyan is as a person and while that might not be enough its something in the grand scheme of things. In the grand scheme of things, at least there will be some who know who cyan really is and not just a made-up character wearing a costume and acting to please the masses.

The show does also go out of its way to make it clear that cyan doesn't want to be a hero. Her becoming a hero was for lou and now that she has found him and that he is safe I wonder if there will be any season 2 conflict with her wanting to be a musician more than her fully wanting to be a hero and having to live up to another character forced upon her by another man who is supposed to care for her.

There's a tragedy in how the things that cyan so heavily loves and finds freedom in such as music, rollerskating and her own clothing are twisted into things that trap her in her role whether that be by removing these things or changing them. If her arc had a darker tone, I can definitely see her paralleling nice a lot more in the way that the things they love are twisted into making her obey or having coperations suck the life and joy out of them.

[moonlit-tulip]

Purpose and Technique

There are two distinct things which are both often referred to as 'style', in creative contexts like writing / art / music-composition / etc.

The first—let's call it style-of-purpose—is style in the sense of patterns in one's choices of creative objectives. What sorts of concepts or themes or emotions or aesthetics or suchlike one is looking to convey to one's audience.

The second—let's call it style-of-technique—is style in the sense of patterns in one's choices of techniques to use in pursuit of those objectives. How one fills in all the implementation-details which, while necessary to fill in to fulfill one's objectives, aren't objectives on any deeper level than that. Prose-style, in a story being told for the sake of conveying a certain plot; character-design, in an art-piece being created for the sake of conveying a certain sort of brushwork; described events, in a set of song-lyrics written for the sake of conveying a a certain sort of feeling; et cetera.

Style-of-purpose is pretty much inevitable for anyone engaging in deliberate production or presentation of creative work for an audience. There's no practical way to avoid it, and not much reason to want to. Style-of-purpose is a habit, but not a constraint: it doesn't prevent you from doing what you want to do, but rather emerges naturally from doing what you want to do.

Style-of-technique, on the other hand, can very easily turn into a constraint. A technique effective in pursuit of one work's objectives can easily be counterproductive in another work. Someone who leans heavily on Hardboiled Detective Narration might have some trouble conveying their desired tone when trying to write a (prototypical, non-subversive) cute-girls-doing-cute-things story about water-skiing, for example.

As such, it's important, when doing creative work in any field where one intends to create new material, as opposed to just variations on the same themes over and over again, to have range. To practice a varied and ideally ever-growing array of different techniques one can use in any given part of one's work, so that no matter what one's creative objectives are one can pursue them effectively. Developing a strong distinctive style-of-technique across one's works, then, is a trap: an artist with that sort of style is one who isn't getting enough practice doing anything else, and who accordingly will have trouble doing anything else when they want to.

It's very easy to fall into a feedback-loop of finding a single effective technique in a given domain—a method of narration one is good at, or of lineart-drawing, or suchlike—and then, since that's the technique with which one produces one's best work, to use it and neglect other techniques. The longer one does this for, the larger the gap in quality between one's output with that technique and others grows, and the more tempting it becomes to keep on using that technique more and others less. And thus the less able one becomes to create works up to one's quality standards with any other techniques, even when those other techniques would, if performed with the benefit of practice, lead to more effective realization of one's artistic aims.

People talk a lot about trying to find their styles, when doing creative work. This is fine, when it comes to style-of-purpose. But, for style-of-technique, I recommend against trying to develop it for oneself, and in fact recommend actively avoiding developing it; it's far too easy to become trapped in a niche narrower than one can comfortably fit in.

[tumblingxelian]

Tyrian Callows - The Master of Murder, Mayhem & Multitasking!

So, I recently saw a post discussing Tyrian Callows and I wanted to go into why I find him quite interesting despite his overall demeanor seeming to be that of a nihilistic serial killer.

Off the cuff, when I first saw Tyrian I hated him, "Oh good, another cackling serial killer, I hope e only exists to die & be replaced".

Then he ambushes RNJR & suddenly, oh suddenly I'm having fun!

Because he's not just cackling & killing, he's bombastic, spewing purple prose and strutting around like he's on a stage, then flinging himself through walls for dramatic poses. He waits after receiving major surprise attacks to reveal they didn't hurt him.

He is in essence, a theater kid who happens to also be a cultist and serial killer and I think that is incredibly entertaining if nothing else.

Beyond that I find his fawning behavior on Salem intriguing. Like, even beyond his failure, when Salem is growing in fury & others like Watts & Hazel know to get the fuck out. He starts irrationally offering her acts of service in a bid to make her happy before fleeing as well.

Like, whatever is going on there is interesting if nothing else, I think.

Then there's the fact he is far more insightful than characters like him are usually written as but, its not at the expense of is manic disposition as it often ends up being with say, Joker, bleh.

What I mean is, Tyrian is very good at analyzing people, what they want, what they feel, what will hurt them the most, what above all drives them & can articulate it very easily. Ala his confrontation with Mercury only knowing violence & being too afraid to leave it.

Yet at the same time when out under pressure by Clover, Qrow & Robyn he very quickly starts losing his cool, his mannerism and behaviors become more unhinged & wild, he is legitimately not all there. & it is isn't until he's had time to cool off in the airship that he's back on his game.

Finally there is his 'rivalry' qith Qrow.

To me the fun thing is that there is zero rivalry on Tyrian's end.

Qrow is just someone who he met in V4 and knew to be a capable fighter & important enemy agent. He was excited to fight & kill him & was briefly knocked off his game when disarming Qrow did nothing to slow him down.

Most Hunters based their fighting styles on their weapons so disarming them tends to be a winning move unless they are Hazel, Tyrian or Yang style combatants.

But he was back on his game in short order and still having a great time and even managed to essentially score the win... Right until Ruby dismembered him & he did not take it gracefully.

To say the least, Tyrian is definitely arrogant, I think that much is self evident.

It makes sense, it took a cooperative operation of Mitral Hunters & Atlesian Specialists to take him down. The Queen of Grimm came to collect him herself. His Semblance lets him take Aura out of a fight. & by all accounts he definitely seems to be among the most dangerous combatants on Remnant even without said Semblance.

So yeah, not surprised that he was both knocked off his game & angry about the injuries but after that he doesn't seem to dwell on them much the way Cinder spent several volumes seething over the damage Ruby did to her.

His little foreshadowing moment to Ruby before the election massacre & enjoying Qrow's suffering during Volume 7 very much seem like things he'd have done regardless cos he's just like that.

Tyrian will however exploit the idea of a rivalry to his advantage.

What I mean is, Qrow makes it clear when ambushing him with Clover & Robyn that he holds a grudge over their last fight. Tyrian doesn't utilize that in the three on one beatdown he gets, he's barely keeping his head above water most of that fight.

But once he is back in the game he's cheerfully egging on the break down in the Atlas and Mantle alliance. He's completely ignoring Qrow until the man jumps on him & even then doesn't offer him any unique attention.

Its only once he's established that things with Qrow and Clover have degraded as far as they have that he jumps in. He avoids starting off too violently to see how things go & is well pleased by Clover's dogged commitment to his orders.

Also likely dismissing Tyrian as just a violent lunatic.

It is then and only then that he leans on the idea that he actually wants a rematch with Qrow. But even then he still patiently waits for Qrow to float the idea first. He is playing into Qrow's grudge & Qrow's belief in a Shounen style rivalry & with it the belief that Tyrian will ignore Clover themoment he is not interrupting the fight and duke it out with Qrow.

But Tyrian only plays along with that and instead uses Clover's defeat to end his fucking life and frame Qrow for it.

He certainly has fun twisting the knife but again, this is stuff he does with everyone when he gets the chance. & it serves to make things more complex for Atlas and the now rebellious heroes than it would if Clover & Qrow had died together. Especially as enemy reinforcements are coming.

After this, again, neither Qrow or Ruby warrant a mention from him.

This is his job, they were parts of his assignments and Tyrian just happens to love what he's doing. Which humorously aligns very well with the life advice he gave Emerald and Mercury. Even if that was just because he thinks it'd be fun to be given the chance to kill them.

Anyway those are my takes on Tyrian Callows, evil as fuck, but smarter & more interesting than the usual portrayals of his archetype!

Thanks for reading!

[ahalliance]

rewatching severance s2 and in e1 mark w. talks about how his branch got shut down which reminds me of how in the finale the MDR department that we know was set to be shut down once cold harbour was completed . which to me at least implies that mark w. and gwendolyn y.'s department had a similar cold harbour-esque situation that in their case was finished bc why else would their whole department have been shut down

[girlboywordwriter]

Hey

Under Sun and Sky or whatever please greet me warmly here-landers.

[cottoncandylesbo]

it makes sense that big expensive events make waves on youtube, people like watching other people spend and waste money. it's how big names like mr beast got big- sponsors throw money at youtubers, they burn the money on giant film sets and wasteful garbage (think giant loot boxes, all the work for that squid game thing mr beast did, renting out event centers, etc,) then reap the money from those videos with very little fiscal investment from the youtubers themselves.

i think part of it is the grandiose presentation for sure, especially if (again mr beast is my example, but other youtubers have been known to try this) they claim it to be charitable or philanthropic. it already feels good to watch someone else live an expensive lifestyle and just play with money if you like them, and this works even better if you can explain it as a moral good.

people don't care that mr beast is exploiting people who work for him because that's how this entertainment is made. it's an inseparable part of it. if this didn't happen they wouldn't get their videos any more, and that's less comfortable to accept than it would be to choose to stop watching them.

[worldisahouseonfire]

I think something has happened to me, from a lifetime of trying to communicate with people who seemed committed to misunderstand me. I say one thing, and the way they respond, it's like they were listening to another audio track, or radio frequency. I think something happens when nothing a person says gets understood, believed, acknowledged, for years on end.

It becomes impossible for me to understand what even the point is of language. The more I try to correct, the less I make sense, even to myself anymore. And I worry that all the reasons people gave for not understanding me only served to make me more anxious and difficult to understand, even for people who wanted to make an effort.

I read things that Mel Baggs and other disabled writers wrote, and they're things that make sense with what I'm going through now. On the one hand it's validating to know I'm not the only one experiencing these things. On the other hand, many of those disabled writers are now dead, and the people who should be reading their words never have and possibly never will. If I send posts to people and they refuse to read them, and refuse to listen to me and what I can now quote from memory, then what would be the point of me writing or speaking at all?

I think a lot of people lose their voices and words this way.

I think a lot of people die this way.

Not because they're not articulate, not because they lack insight into what's happening around them, but because the people crammed in thickly around them are determined to misunderstand them, until the frustration boils over, meltdowns and 'behaviors' are had, and this is used as justification for chemical restraint, institutionalization, coercive control, and brilliant minds are vanished to silence their voices.

I don't want this to happen to me.

I think this is something that's been happening throughout the history of language and oppression to a lot of people, and it's a dangerous razor's edge to walk sometimes. Every word. Every facial expression. Every tone. Every movement. Every variation in volume. Where it's not merely about the perception of people in the immediate vicinity, but what they can write into charts and notes. What they can report to doctors, paramedics, agencies, therapists, and the sort of kangaroo courts that preside over involuntary commitment, guardianship, conservatorship.

Where anything you do or say or write, and even how you do it, can and will be used against you in the court of public opinion, so easily manipulated by those who can benefit from shutting someone up and away.

No staff have to be smart to do this. All they have to do is be more credible than those in their care. And this credibility is a function of their position. It's built into disability support services and welfare agencies, places and systems where we wind up when there is nowhere else to turn.

I live in an adult residential facility. When I was placed here, it was supposed to be temporary, to get me out of a dangerous shelter, to keep me off the streets and out of some inpatient situation. Much was not disclosed to me until after I was shuffled in. I am still legally my own person, and I'm alone.

The facility is getting paid over $10k a month for my board and care.

This facility has the highest restriction possible for a facility of this type, in order to be able to charge the maximum legal amount.

I have been here over a year. In that time I have not been able to access actual medical care.

Even in this expensive area, that much money a month could have paid rent, paid for a car and a printer/scanner, and paid for a graduate student from a nearby prestigious university to come over for a couple of hours twice a week to help me unfuck my life and actually access care.

When a business provides care for profit, they keep whatever they don't spend on those in their care. They keep whatever they don't spend on the staff salaries or training. They can hire people who don't even speak English, can barely read or write, and staff will be motivated to do whatever they're told by those who sign their checks. They see just how easily they could wind up in much worse jobs, working for people who haven't been groomed into terrified passivity, under the watchful metal eyes of Ring cameras in almost every room, whose footage is only accessible to the people signing the checks.

It doesn't matter what I say, what I understand, what I write. It doesn't matter what I experience.

All that matters is I have disabilities and I am poor. That is what is heard, instead of me. Like a loud, insistent, ringing alarm that drowns out my attempts to communicate. Like something that, once you know it, you can't ever un-know it, that undermines any willingness to understand, to feel respect for what I'm going through. Pity feels degrading, demeaning to put up with. It places me beneath the person feeling it, expressing it, exuding it.

It doesn't matter that I feel like a veteran of some of the worst shit imaginable, like I was born into a war on my very self, and I have largely had to fight and survive it alone.

Mel Baggs wrote about something -- I think sie called it the 'rule of two.' Where when there is just one other person accompanying you into a situation with a care provider, a doctor, someone in a position of power, then we get listened to more, treated a little more fairly. And the person doing the accompaniment may be mystified, if the expected discrimination and interpersonal badness doesn't actually happen. They may think we were exaggerating for dramatic effect.

But people thought that about femmes' overwhelming experiences of sexual harassment and assault, and Black people's overwhelming experiences of cop violence and harassment violence. It's not an accident that it mostly only happens when someone with too much power is alone with someone who is not considered a credible reporter of their own reality.

As a trans human I experience this also. As I child I experienced this with my abusers. And many, many, many disabled and chronically ill people experience this with care providers and caregivers, compounded the more marginalized and disbelieved we are in other ways.

I think there's a strong, strong tendency to want to differentiate and distance from people sharing stories of interpersonal harm. I don't think it's necessarily conscious, which is part of what makes it so difficult to interrupt. I think there's an instinctive, socialized, acculturated response that happens, in the knee-jerk responses people have to being told that a human is hurting another human. Interrogating details, heaping pity and unsolicited advice, a listener trying to feel safe again in their own experiences, in their own skin, in their own humanity. Trying to find reasons the victim of misfortunate brought it on themself, choices and mistakes the listener will of course never make. Never to live like that, or lose their job, or wear that, at that time of night in that neighborhood, with a person who in hindsight is easily evaluated as dangerous and harmful.

I don't know what to do or say about this. I think the more we ignore the reality that people don't have to mean harm to do harm, the more harm can proliferate. Like ignoring that termites can eat wood will wind up ensuring the house gets chewed to pieces around you -- like ignoring that black mold can grow in damp poorly-cleaned places inevitably ensures an equally unhealthy home -- ignoring the ways we all fuck up and fail to course-correct ensures that it's going to keep going, and going to get a whole lot worse, and eventually it won't be people making choices you're careful not to make yourself.

Eventually we will all harm others, and be harmed by others.

Denial is something that goes around and comes around. It seems like a harmless habit at first. But eventually you wind up dependent on so much denial, and so many people cooperating in that denial, that when some really bad shit goes down, you're alone.

And you're stuck in a place you can't leave.

And there's nowhere else to go.

And things are happening that are so bad that they are unbelievable, because everyone seems so Nice™ and everything looks so Pleasant™ whenever anyone with any power is watching. And the people who are saying that this shit ain't kosher struggle to string words together in a way that makes sense, and seem constantly afraid that if they speak up, things will get worse for them.

They seem, on the surface, quite Mad and unreliable. Paranoid, even. In spite of the fact that there are literal cameras watching them, and people 24/7 monitoring them and writing little notes in files that are kept under lock and key, that the subjects themselves can't see and can't contribute to.

And one of those subjects is you.

And people who don't have to live like you do tell you to be patient. Day after day. Week after week. Month after month.

They ask, over and over, if anything bad has happened. But they don't seem to understand or even believe the things you do say, or if they do, then what they do about it makes things even worse for you.

If you're lucky -- very lucky -- you have held onto a laptop computer, and have managed to stay off the worst of the mind-scrambling drugs by staying quiet and keeping to a minimum interactions with the people in a position to panic and administer those drugs. If you're very lucky, you have a lifelong habit of responding to confusion and anxiety by reading and reaching out online to find other people writing about situations like yours.

Unfortunately a lot of the people in situations like yours are just as disbelieved and anxious and afraid and wound so tight you and they set each other off all the time. It will be like interacting with other burn victims while still trapped in the burning house. You will argue over whose burns are worse and how far away you have to stay from each other, and who should get priority for any ointments and bandages hurled in through the flames. (Metaphorically speaking.)

You will realize just how many of you there are. And you will find writing by people who are now just charred skeletons, who never made it out. You will wonder how many others didn't have the great good fortune to have words to put to paper, who died voiceless, stories untold.

You will try to help each other, but there will never be enough soothing or healing or supplies or support to go around. You will wind up hurting others. You may wind up feeling just as awful as the people who are calling platitudes on the outside, telling you to just be patient, asking who set the fire, and not believing you when you tell them that the arsonists, wearing flameproof suits, are still wandering through the house setting and feeding fires.

They will tell you that those people are firefighters.

The arsonists will tell you they are fighting fire with fire.

This will seem like absolute bullshit. No one who's not an arsonist is coming into the inferno anymore, so there's no one to tell except each other. But it feels horrible to keep harping on it, so doing almost anything else, anything distracting, is essential so as not to just lie down and feed your pain-wracked exhausted flesh to the flames.

You will get really, really pissed about the trollish people who ring the house and mock you and others like you for 'letting' this happen to you. You will yell back sometimes, and they will become absolutely unhinged and go round up their trollish friends to investigate your entire life and say horrible things about your personal private business, both to you and everyone in earshot.

You will, understandably, be feeling a bit misanthropic and apathetic.

You will probably hate people who tell you that the only fire is a bad attitude, and that if you wanted to get up and leave, you could.

You will probably hate people who think you need a therapist to fix your way of thinking about and responding to being in hell.

On the bright side, you will probably come around to appreciate the really dark humor of the people you're burning with. Laughs will be your only morphine, sometimes, and they may sound maniacal, because you all need them so bad.

You will probably wonder if this is actually what Madness is -- pain whose context is not understood and experienced by others.

And if you are lucky, and have the capacity for it, you may read and listen to things Mad people have written and said through history.

You might come to think that the real madness lies not in your perception of what's actually happening, but the yahoos outside calling syrupy-sweet reassurances and platitudes in to all of you, chasing the denial dragon like absolute fiends.

You may wonder if there was ever a time when your world was not a house on fire, or if it was just a dream you once had.

You might write. You might sing. You might cry. You might rock. You might roll. You might sleep. You might even come to enjoy your nightmares, because at least they go away when you wake up into the nightmare that never ends, and they're a change of fuckery.

You may develop more of a taste for swearing, especially really creative swears. They will be honest.

You may start writing and be unable to stop.

You may despair, knowing that no one has the patience and attention span and desire to read that much anymore. Especially if there aren't any cat pictures to go along with it.

You may post it anyway. And include a cat picture at the end as a reward or apology for anyone who read all the way through. Gods only know what someone who read all the way through this is going through (as long as they're not out trollin' & hatin').

And even though you don't know them, and may never compare burn scars with them, or trade cool rocks with them, you'll feel love for them, as I love you, right now. And you'll hope, as I do, that your love -- so painfully necessary to feel right now -- is received with understanding, and can be passed on, as it was to me, as I pass it on to you.

You matter. Your voice matters. Your words matter. What you have to communicate without words matters. It really fucking sucks that you're stuck where you are, wherever you are. I hope one day you get out, and laugh in the rain, and cry in the sun, and do all the things you love and want to do. You are human, and you matter.

Here it is, your moment of cat:

[starscreamingg]

gonna be real if transformers one bombs we should just start setting things on fire

[ottisbuns]

...I might have a new favorite character.

[nando161mando]

These Companies Want to TRAP You

[snippydippy]

Alastor's timid puppet

Finally finished it! Leanne is an idiot who needs to learn not to trust just anyone willing to give her a kind word every now and then

[mmmthornton]

God, I need to make the video I have in my head about this, but every time I hear this song from the Nope soundtrack I think of the ending of RGU.