#unless it's something else entirely! most dichotomies are false!

[flavia-draws]

i love heaven because david either means that heaven would be boring or that nothing ever happening would be fun, and those are both so davidbyrneish things to think that it's extremely difficult to tell which one is intended

[eyesanddragons]

The best way to describe my thoughts on canon wof (based on your reblog about liking the concept of wof)

Arc 1- fine enough, just add or remove minor things, make starflight not just a background character after he becomes blind, also no Sunnyflight crush stuff cause that is weird, give a bit more sympathy/focus to false dragonet’s of Destiny. (Or save that for arc 2 tbh), most changes I’d make are more preferential.

Arc 2- If Darkstalker is made big bad do not have our heroes enchant Darkstalker into a different dragon as the way to defeat him unless it is set up as something Darkstalker is willing to do. Do not treat Darkstalker as born evil (not counting stories Nightwings and icewings have of him cause those make sense) give more rules to animus magic,

Anything else in arc 2 is mostly character stuff with focus more on the war trauma most of the Dragonets have, give more focus to healing from the Pyrite spell and how traumatizing that spell would be.

Arc 3- Queen Wasp is evil full evil dictator. No plant actually controlling her and no scavenger/human plot (none at all, I really hate humans being major characters in wof and not just a weird little cryptic species in the background at most)

No throwing out animus magic because it is very cheap and dumb.

Give more focus to Silkwing resistance and what it does.

No bumblebee or if there is any bumblebee have her appear rarely and be given to the more involved Silkwing Resistance to protect.

I’d argue that involving Pyrrhia would not be necessary to give more time to focus on the state of Pantala.

This arc would probably be the best arc to kill off a main character/POV character/ former POV character. I don’t have any specific ideas because of how much is thrown out. But I think a main character death could be really impactful to show how strong the regime is.

Don’t make the story say “not all hivewings” you can have some nice hivewings if you want but don’t excuse all of them.

A neat subversion could be a belief that all Hivewings are innocent which leads to our main characters (Cricket POV would work best) to getting ‘help’ from some (maybe high ranking) hivewings while they are not mind controlled. Then it is revealed they set a trap and plan to kill/capture the resistance.

So in a nutshell- arc 1 is okay, arc 2 is on thin ice, and arc 3 is dead to me.

(I haven’t read any of the books since dragonslayer and I feel like I dodged a bullet from all the stuff I’ve heard about it)

(It feels weird to see how non canon (past book 12) all my wof work really is, I basically made my own sandbox with the concept and ran away lol)

Arc 1 is definitely the most solid of the three arcs, it has a lot of issue still (like what you've said about the false dragonets and Starflight) I think the way the Rainwings are handled SUCKS so I'd like to change that if I could (I know they were trying a subversion of the "hero finds there long lost people and there powerful" thing but on the flipside they made it so that the stereotypes that Rainwings are lazy and spoiled are actually right and they have to teach this entire kingdom that there lifestyle and culture is wrong and it just rubs me the wrong way, also like, the rainforest is an incredibly dangerous place, oh and also somehow they were lazy for...eating fruit and doing agriculture and not fighting in a war and its like???? and like the Rainwing government had its Issues but the idea that they have to...change a good portion of there culture and lifestyle is just...really off-putting) plus Wings Of Fire's Good Victim/Bad Victim Dichotomy is...still really prevalent in Arc 1 and I'd rather that not be there, I really dislike the way WoF as a whole handles Trauma.

But yeah Arc 1 is the most solid out of the three.

Arc 2 my beloved/beloathed, is weird, cause I really do love a lot of the character writing in Arc 2 specifically, I think it was the best in Arc 2 when it came to characterization, at least for the Jade Winglet (until the last Book RUINED EVERYTHING) but I feel like this Arc just, did not need a big bad at all, the issues the characters were facing were so much more personal it just wasn't necessary, The DoD's main problem was the war, they had smaller, more personal issues but they had the set goal of stopping the war, The Jade Winglet on the other hand don't have that kind of goal, there plotlines are more about dealing with the issues that come from having to fit societal expectations, growing up, trauma, lacking control of your life, being deprived of your choices and just generally things that are more personal, they don't need to stop a big bad, and even then, I personally think there emotional issues were way more interesting than Arc 1's "Stop the War" but that's cause I like character driven stories.

Hard Agree on the Darkstalker stuff, honestly the worst thing about the Darkstalker plotline for me is that, Darkstalker could of worked Thematically, he could of been So Good, but all his elements just mess everything up, if he didn't do genocide they'd you would have an abused child who doesn't want anyone to go through what he did and thus asserts control and takes away people's choices out of a feeling of necessity, that this is the only way to make sure people (including him) will be happy, which makes him parallel The Jade Winglet and has some interesting symbolism, if he was just a genocidal villain who wanted to control the world and wasn't portrayed sympathetically at all (so no abuse plotline and Darkstalker Legends and yadadada) then he could just be a kaiju representing the larger conflict without having any bad implications attatched to him. And him being inherently evil was such a bad move on multiple levels, Turtle in the last book just had to wrestle with the idea that no, he wasn't going to turn evil just because he was an animus dragon, and really the idea that someone is "Inherently" blank is one of the things The Jade Winglet are dealing and coping with, it wouldn't of been so bad if Darkstalker was just a pure evil villain but he's not, so it doesn't work, not to mention the problems with depicting your traumatized character as being inherently evil and always going to do bad thigs even though we know they grew up in a abusive household, framing him as inherently evil, the thing his dad was so insistent he was, is just a bad idea.

And that's not even the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Arc 2! I could talk at length about how I think the way animus dragons are treated is bad, I have talked at length before, because I think the "soul becomes evil" animus magic thing is nonsense and I think Darkstalker's magic soul reader is also complete nonsense, and also goes against the themes of the arc-

God I've rambled a lot and these are very unorganized thoughts but I really wish Arc 2 was better cause there's so many things I like about it which just makes me more angry about how many bad things are in it.

On Arc 3...*aims BIG GUN at all the genocide, colonialist, and slavery apologism and fires 100000 bullets*

Arc 3 is dead to me, I hate it so much.

Sorry this is a bit rambly I have a lot of feelings about this series.

[lynyrdwrites]

Tempt My Trouble

More EraserMight! Because I want to be able to apply for that ‘zine, and the deadline is rapidly approaching.  Title comes from the Bishop Briggs song, which is so EraserMight it hurts.

Can also be read on AO3. 

---

The thing is, All Might has something of a reputation to uphold.  

             Aizawa Shouta on the other hand… well, Shouta is sure he has a reputation.  He just doesn’t particularly care about it.  Hell, maybe that’s what his reputation is.

             Not caring.

             But All Might… All Might is the Symbol of Hope and Peace.  He’s the hero’s hero.  When everything seems lost, just call for All Might and he’ll save the day.  For that reason, he has to belong to everyone and no one.  Approachable, but just one step beyond touchable.

             But Yagi Toshinori?

             Toshinori is entirely too touchable.  

             It’s the dichotomy of the man.  As All Might, he’s put on a pedestal, and even Shouta with his general disregard for what people actually think about him would have difficulty touching the man.  But when he is Toshinori?

             It’s with an almost vicious glee that Shouta likes to wreck Toshinori.  

             Like now, pressing the taller man’s hips into the bed as he rocks against them.  Their pants are still on, but the friction is oh so sweet, and Shouta watches Toshinori avidly, as he closes his eyes and clutches the bedspread, as though he can somehow physically make himself hold on just a bit longer.  

             Well… that won’t do.  

             Shouta grasps at Toshinori’s hips and adjusts the angle of his hips as they grind together.  Toshinori’s eyes flash open for a moment, and Shouta makes sure that he sees his smirk.  That he knows exactly what comes next.  

             Then he bends his head down, and presses kiss along Toshinori’s neck, making sure that he feels his teeth along his collar bone. It will leave marks, and Shouta doesn’t care.

             He wants to leave marks.  Maybe he can’t touch Toshinori when he is All Might, but he can leave a mark that will be carried beneath his costume; a secret kept hidden from the whole world, but one that they can both revel in.  

             “Shou…ta,” Toshinori groans, and Shouta wonders, if he knows how much he loves it – hearing his voice in exactly that tone of voice.  

             He hums against Toshinori’s skin, because it’s important to make sure that your lover knows what you enjoy. It’s one of the few things Nemuri’s said that Shouta has remembered, rather than blocking out of his memory.  

             Toshinori groans again, his hips arching against Shouta’s, and he pulls back, smirk still on his lips, to meet Toshinori’s semi-scowl. The blonde’s pants have gone dark over his groin, and Shouta chuckles as he pulls back, half reclining at the end of the bed as Toshinori pushes himself up on his elbows.  He looks down at himself, shirtless and a mess in his pants, and makes a grimace of distaste.

             “You could have at least let me get out of my clothes,” he points out, and there’s another thing that Toshinori does, that All Might never would.  The pout is adorable, in its way.  

             Not that Shouta would ever admit that to anyone, even to Toshinori.  He has some limits, after all.  He just usually tosses them out the window in this bed.

             “I could have,” Shouta agrees with a nod and a smile that means he’s feeling particularly disagreeable.  They both know that, and Toshinori is already looking half exasperated, though there’s also a glint of affection.  He always has that glint of affection; Toshinori is a very affectionate man – it makes it even more a pity that the public face he puts into the world has to hold such a carefully maintained distance.  “But it’s not fun unless I could sell pictures of the end result for a small fortune.”

             “No one would believe I was me anyway,” Toshinori replies.  His voice has the usual self-deprecation, but there’s also a hint of pleasure there, as though he’s maybe starting to see what Shouta sees; that the muscles and the ridiculous smile aren’t what make him valuable.  As if, maybe, he can find some amusement in the false picture the public has painted.  “So no one would pay a fortune for anything.”

             “I would,” Shouta replies, and then he moves so he’s on top of Toshinori again, before the other man can tease him for the uncharacteristically sappy remark.  They both know that Toshinori loves it, on those rare occasions that Shouta is willing to show his softer side, but it inevitably leaves Shouta feeling so inexplicably bashful that he doesn’t like to give him the chance to react. Instead, he goes on the distraction offensive, easing Toshinori’s too-large pants off of his hips.  His own soon join them.  

             He’ll wreck Toshinori again, before he lets the taller man switch their position, and let himself be wrecked as well.  

             They’ll fall asleep in each other’s arms, but Toshinori will be gone by the time the sun rises, and Shouta will be halfway to work, when he hears of All Might saving the day again.

             And then he’ll worry.  Because Toshinori can’t keep being All Might indefinitely – and perhaps there’s a part of him, that resents the Symbol of Hope and Peace, because All Might isn’t the one that Shouta loves.  He loves Toshinori.

             (Not that he’s said as much. Not that he will.  That would be embarrassing.)

             But he does.  He loves Toshinori – and All Might is slowly killing him.

---

             Toshinori has valued himself by his capabilities as All Might for so long that he had forgotten there was more to him than the smiling figure on magazine covers.

             Shouta is the first time he’s ever felt as though the truth of him held as much value as the glittering lie.  Sometimes, he worries that’s why he clings to the younger man so tightly, when he should be letting go.  He has an expiration date these days, and living to see the one you care for die is no way to live at all.

             Shouta is also the first time Toshinori has ever felt truly selfish.  And for that reason, he stays.

             But All Might is still a part of him, and as long as he is able, he will continue to do his part to save the day.  Even when it means putting himself in danger.

             Even when it means he awakes in the infirmary, the dark haired love of his life – not that Toshi would ever admit that aloud… not yet – sitting in the chair next to his bed, his feet propped up next to Toshi’s own while he balances a stack of essays on his knee, a coffee mug in his free hand.

             “I don’t suppose you’d want to share that.”

             Shouta looks up, and Toshi weakly points a finger at the mug.  It’s obnoxiously bright, but there’s a cat on it, and he figures it must have been a gift from Midnight or Mic.  They’ve made it their personal goal to bring more color into Shouta’s life, and everyone knows that the dark haired man is weak for cats.  

             He apparently isn’t feeling any of that weakness for Toshi, however, because instead of being a kind… well, Toshi isn’t entirely sure what he should call Shouta.  Boyfriend seems so insignificant, and not at all accurate when most of their alone time is spent in Shouta’s cramped little apartment, and the few times they are together in public they have to pretend to be distant acquaintances.

             But whatever he should call Shouta, it’s not kind. He stares Toshi straight in the eye as he tips his mug back, drinking the contents without ever once breaking eye contact.

             “Did you bring that just so you could do that?” Toshi asks, when he sets aside the mug and looks back to his grading.

             “I did,” Shouta replies, his tone entirely too agreeable.  He only sounds agreeable when he’s about to be stubborn.  That was one of the first thing Toshi had learned about him, back before they were ever Toshi-and-Shouta, were instead All Might and Eraserhead.  “Recovery Girl has strict orders out.  You don’t get caffeine until you’ve made a full recovery. Or anything else that might give you joy.”

             There are, admittedly, a severe lack of foods that Toshi is allowed that do give him joy.  His diet mostly consists of herbal tea and plain yogurt supplemented with far too many vitamins, and exactly one cup of coffee a day.  

             The only things that give him joy are the pudding and jello that Shouta keeps well stocked.

             “Is that really Recovery Girl’s order?” Toshi asks, struggling to sit up.  It takes one severe look from Shouta, and a hint of red in his eyes, for Toshi to sigh and slump back down, letting his head settle into his pillow.  “Or are you just in a bad mood.”

             Shouta doesn’t say anything, and for a while they let a companionable silence overcome them.  Shouta continues to grade, and Toshi lets his eyes drift shut, the sound of the pen scratching on paper making him relax.  The silence he can find in these situations is just another reason he continues to hold on, even though it’s selfish.  He doesn’t get this kind of silence with anyone else, not when they all expect that All Might smile and words of encouragement.

             “If you kill yourself prematurely,” Shouta says at last, his tone quiet, but his words still seeming to echo in the silence of the infirmary.  “I will never forgive you.  I realize you see your early end as being inevitable, but some of us would prefer you not help it along.”

             Toshi opens an eye, but Shouta still isn’t looking at him.  In fact, one could almost believe he hadn’t spoken at all, with the single-minded attention he seems to be giving the papers.  

             Toshi closes his eyes again, settles further into his pillow, and lets a small smile curve his lips.

             “I’ll take that under advisement,” he says, using the same tone of voice that Shouta had, just to poke at him a little bit. There’s a huff of exasperation, and then a rustling, and Toshi’s smile widens when he feels Shouta run a hand over his head, and press a kiss to his forehead.

             “See that you do.”

---

             Of course, All Might isn’t the only hero in their relationship, and Eraserhead might not be as inclined to rush into the heat of things, but he still has his moments.

             “And you say that I’m helping my death along,” Toshinori huffs when he lets himself into Shouta’s cramped apartment and sees the man himself standing at the stove. Shouta turns to look at him, and then sways, going suddenly pale, his hand clutching at his ribs.  “Where is Mic?”

             “I sent him home,” Shouta replies, and when Toshi steps up and lifts his shirt, his brow furrowing at the sight of the bandages there, there doesn’t argue, except to say, “it’s really not that bad.”

             “You’re barely standing upright.” Toshi lets the shirt fall back down and then looks at him, his brow furrowed.  The pot on the stove has chicken soup from a can, and he clicks his teeth in distaste.  But he’s pretty sure today was supposed to be grocery day, which means that soup is probably all that’s edible in the apartment.  “Go to bed.”

             “I need to eat,” Shouta replies stiffly, crossing his arms and then immediately dropping them with a wince when that manages to somehow pull at his injured ribs. “Recovery Girl’s orders.  And no, you can’t just order in takeout.  I’m injured.  Injured people eat soup.”

             “It’s from a can,” Toshi replies, his voice rather dry.  “I’m sure I can figure out how to heat up canned soup, Shouta.  Go to bed.”

             He fully intends to man handle the other man into the bedroom himself; if necessary, he’ll go full All Might.  In fact, he kind of wants to, if for no other reason than it would irritate Shouta, and right now he deserves to be irritated.

             Toshi is a little irritated himself, but he tries not to let it show as he helps Shouta into his bed, tsk-ing at the stiff way he moves, the way he winces as he gets into bed, sitting with the pillows fluffed behind his back.  Toshi will accept it for now.  He’ll have to sit up to eat anyways.

             “You’re unhappy with me,” Shouta notes, and Toshi just hums.  Shouta likes to say that he’s easy to read, so he supposes he shouldn’t be surprised that his distaste for the situation is easy to detect.

             “I’m proud of you,” Toshi counters, because that is also true.  Eraserhead is as much a hero as All Might, and Shouta had saved lives by acting recklessly.  

             “I knew what I was doing,” Shouta points out after a moment.  “I’m highly trained.  They wouldn’t let me teach future heroes if I wasn’t.”

             As far as jokes go, it’s a terrible attempt, and Toshi hopes the look he gives Shouta makes that clear.  And his ribs must be truly painful if Shouta is trying to joke at all.  He only has a sense of humor when he’s on pain medication.

             “I know,” Toshi says at last.  “I just… your early death isn’t inevitable.  So I’d appreciate if you wouldn’t court it.”

             Shouta quirks his head, looks ready to say something, and then stops, sniffing the air.

             “I think the soup is burning,” he finally says, and Toshi curses, rushing out to the kitchen to take care of the situation.

             The soup is beyond hope, so he heats up a new can. He chooses beef instead of chicken noodle, just so Shouta knows that he’s still not entirely happy.  Shouta rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t complain, and he even lets Toshi join him in the bed as he eats, though he won’t let himself be hand fed.  But he does twine their legs together.

             It’s nice.

             The whole thing is nice.  

             “I’ll take it under consideration,” Shouta says, once he’s set aside his empty bowl.  It takes Toshi far too long to realize that it’s a response to his earlier words, and lets out a snort of laughter.  Shouta lets him tuck him into a laying position, and he falls asleep, his side pressed to Toshi’s.  

             He could get used to this – perhaps he already has.

             It might be worth avoiding an early death for.

[beaft]

lengthy religion talk under the cut

i’ve been thinking a lot about god lately and i think i’ve figured out why organised religion (primarily catholicism) never felt quite right to me, and it’s because there’s such a huge emphasis on doing the things that god wants you to do - honouring your parents, not stealing, not committing adultery, etc - and that, to me, isn’t what it’s about. these are all positive things, on the whole, but honestly i don’t think god wants you to do or not do anything. i think we’re here to make our own choices even if those choices are fucked up, because choice is the most important - if not the defining - characteristic of being human. 

if you live your life according to some weird arbitrary rulebook set out by some being whose entire shtick is being ineffable sorry, mysterious and unknowable, simply because you’re scared of going to hell, the choice to be “good” isn’t really your choice at all. you’re motivated by fear, rather than the desire to genuinely make the world a better place. and this is why there’s so much corruption within the catholic church, because people tend to follow the guidelines to the letter without actually understanding why they matter. it’s like when a parent tells a child not to do something, and when asked “why” follows up with “because i said so.” like, what’s the point of that? it doesn’t teach the child anything. they learn that, say, touching the iron is forbidden, but they don’t learn why - and that means they’re far more likely to get burned simply because they don’t understand the theory behind the instruction.

additionally, the idea of heaven and hell isn’t something that appeals to me. i don’t believe (or don’t want to believe) in a place that exists solely to make human beings suffer. a god who could design something like that is not a god that i wish to believe in. if there was a heaven, and i did get in, i don’t think i could be happy there for the simple reason that i’d know other people - people who probably had good in their hearts and the potential to redeem themselves - were in agony somewhere else, with no hope of escaping unless they pledged themselves to the one who put them there in the first place. it doesn’t sit right with me. i don’t know what happens after we die, but i don’t think there are separate places for good people and evil people (partly because, as discussed in “the good place”, it’s a false binary that doesn’t take into account the vast complexities of human nature, circumstance, motivation and intention vs. result). everyone is a sinner. or no one is. it’s complicated! and the idea that you can measure out someone’s worth on a pair of scales and then decide where they ought to spend eternity based solely on that is fucked up. 

and if i may make a slightly embarrassing segue, this is one of the reasons i enjoy “good omens” so much. its message ties in pretty neatly with my own personal theology, which is namely that human beings are the primary movers of the universe, and a lot of what we consider to be immutable is actually... not. and a lot of what we consider to be planned actually... wasn’t. or it was, but not in the way that we’d expect. if god didn’t want us to eat from the tree, why was it there? because we needed to decide for ourselves. additionally, the idea that the biblical ideals of good and evil, as represented through the heaven/hell dichotomy, aren’t that far away from one another - simply different sides of the same coin - appeals to me. of course there’s evil in the world, but it’s not of supernatural origin; it’s mundane, petty, and horribly human. assigning it religious motivations (”the devil made me do it!”) is ridiculous, because the devil doesn’t make you do anything, and nor does god, unless it’s a question of influence and you simply acted according to what your beliefs told you. nevertheless. you still made a choice. 

anyway. that’s about where i’m at, with this.

[phoenixmarks]

Typing myself

It’s been suggested that I am mistyped a few times. I’ve been called an INTJ, INFP and ISTP before and the reasons are understandable. So after much deliberation I decided I’d post about it - because I think best while talking​ or writing, I might want to refer to this later on and…who knows? It might help someone else who thinks they might be mistyped or has been called mistyped.

Fair warning: right now I’m exhausted, having come off a 12 hour shift. But can’t sleep because my mind is too busy. So this might be a bit odd. And long.

So… Functions.

INTJs and INFPs both use Te and Fi rather than Ti and Fe. It’s been suggested that I use Fi and Te because of the way I’ve reasoned in some arguments. Here’s the thing, though.

“You don’t know me.” - When it was said that I used Fi, this was the main reason given. Use of this phrase is a very Fi thing, true…but I’d say there’s a slight difference that must be accounted for. Fi will think that a person absolutely cannot know them well enough to make a judgement about them - when Fi disagrees with someone about their identity, Fi will put it down to a lack of deep understanding of who they, the Fi user, are. But sometimes it’s a simple fact that people don’t know you well enough at that time and you don’t have to be a Fi user to point it out. Yes, “thin slicing” is a thing. There are “vibes” one gets based on small, subconsciously absorbed details. Fe users (especially high Fe) are expert at using this. But… it’s still biased by ones own expectations and experience. It can be wrong - there can be information that’s not immediately obvious that needs to be accounted for. On the last occasion someone said I was an INFP, something that wasn’t being accounted for was Fe grip. Yes, when you have to rely on grips and loops and all sorts of justifications you’re probably mistyped - but in most cases, I don’t have to. In that particular case I really only got involved in the discussion because I was already on the edge and I tipped over it really quickly. I do have a certain mental illness and am prone to grip, and had been coming off a very long and trying day. Now, Fe grip does have some very Fi like behaviours - notably the famous Fi wall of text also shows up in inferior Fe if the person in question has enough confidence to actually send the text. My inferior Fe can be seen, however, in that despite me not really caring what others think of me, I still felt the need to make them understand what I’m saying. Inferior Fe means dominant Ti, which hates inaccuracy, and inferior Fe itself will generally not give a damn what others think, but occasionally just needs that external validation. Personally I think a high Fi user on the other hand would have quit that discussion long ago because…why bother? Fi will put them down to not understanding and will move on, because they’re exhausting and high Fi doesn’t need others to understand. I could be wrong about this, though.

As for Te, it was suggested that I was a Te user because of my emphasis on evidence and accreditation. However, consider that Ti is well known for wanting absolutely all the information about everything before starting to form an opinion - the difference between Ti and Te is that Ti will use external facts as something to assess, agree or disagree with, and ultimately will form its own theory which either supports/is supported by those facts, or contradicts them, whereas Te will take facts and use them as is. Te, as I understand it, cares less for developing ideas than using them. Te will say “here’s information and it proves me right” - Ti will say “here’s the information I was looking at, here’s what I think about it, do I make sense to you in light of/in comparison to this information?” As for asking others to offer evidence for their arguments - I’d say both Ti and Te are prone to that and Ti might even be more so than Te. Why? Because Ti has built its logical framework and will not adjust that unless you can prove it’s flawed. Lacking measurable facts, Ti will consider its own theories to have as much value as those opposing it, and will therefore stick to its own theory. In addition, if you offer facts that contradicts Ti, it will make every effort to reconcile those facts with its theories instead of entirely replacing its theories, as it’s loathe to discount its own reasoning. Compare Te, which will measure its facts against the opposing facts and, if the opposition makes a stronger argument, adopt those facts instead. Te has no qualms about abandoning what it thought was true - although Te may hang on to some information because it “worked” in some context, and Te believes the best measure of validity is results. I use Ti - I consider an argument valid based not on the amount of evidence supporting it, but on the consistency of the argument. Does it make sense to me? If not, I’ll do whatever I can to try and see it - asking for evidence in support of the argument, for example, to build a theory on, or to prove my own theory false - and I will always try to build a better theory that explains everything rather than abandoning my position entirely. Also, use of fallacies such as the No True Scotsman fallacy (which is the one I despise most) or false equivalents or false dichotomies, etc (hope those are the correct terms, exhaustion is catching up) immediately make me consider an argument less valid regardless of what’s being said.

Now as for perceiving functions, ISTP and INTJ both use Se/Ni instead of Ne/Si.

The argument for me being a high Se user was based on my physicality and on behaviour (long ago, when my mental health was at its worst) that would seem to indicate unhealthy but high Se - I was a victim of the jocks in school, just like many others, and I eventually decided to deal with their attacks by choking them. I’m not proud of it, but there it is. But think about it, though. Why choking? I am an expert swordsman with years of experience (the above mentioned physicality) which comes with good reflexes, well trained muscle memory and…in short, the ability to take a good swing at someone instead. The answer is Ne and inferior Fe. Inferior Fe, when unhealthy, may seek to be controlling. And the fear of suffocation is very primal. Ne offered that as a solution to the threat - it places me in a position of control and scares not just my victim but anyone else who might choose their side. For the same reason I had a habit of carrying around improvised weapons - intimidation is half the fight. Choking means that even if they’re not afraid enough to leave me alone, I’m in a position where it’s harder for them to fight back, and grows exponentially more difficult the longer they’re deprived of oxygen. Ne can, in fact, be used to facilitate violence.

As to my stacking - Ti Ne Si Fe. The best indication of dominant Ti I can offer is that I show inferior Fe, although there are other indications such as the way my first response to literally anything is “wait, let me think.”

I also show auxiliary Ne in the way I employ my Ti, plus tertiary Si both in how I treat experience as a “grab bag” of details to help me with new experiences and in my general rebelliousness. There's more, but too tired to elaborate and I don't feel the need to.

I may edit this once I’ve had some sleep. For now… Here you go. I welcome any questions or thoughts.

[kalesandfails]

tough love

Last week, I wrote about my belief in the intrinsic value of each human being, even those human beings whom our president and his merry bad of sociopaths don’t value. Forty-eight hours have elapsed, and that belief is still there, a hopeful little crocus that is entirely mine.

Of course, maintaining the belief that people are valuable, even when shitty bullies are saying they are not, though unfamiliar and threatening, is easier than maintaining a belief in the intrinsic value of people who piss me off. Two different dragons to slay, but one of them is ugly and horrible and I feel like a warrior queen, gutting it, and the other is my pet dragon and we’re pals and to be honest, I’m not entirely sure she does need to go.

Personally, my feeling is that people who survive in marginalized spaces, who find ways to live their lives within the constraints of a system that maintains and exploits their disenfranchisement to benefit others, are worth more than people like me, who haven’t done that. So it’s not hard for me to affirm the dignity and value of these groups as much as it is to let go of the expectation that the politically and economically powerful — whose power hinges on the systematic de-valuation of the people whose exploitation maintains it — will agree. It is much harder for me to affirm the value of people whose behavior does seem to me to be a Big Fucking Problem.

Child abusers, for one example. How do I see the humanity in someone who hurt me, and how is that recognition different from the “forgiveness” I was compelled to as a child, the “forgiveness” that actually ends up being equated with enabling — so that we aren’t allowed to “forgive” someone unless we also allow them to remain in their public office, as a pastor or a priest or a Supreme Court Justice, and spare them the “humiliation” of having to have their behavior held up to public scrutiny?

First, I think that someone can do really horrible things and also have intrinsic value. One of the people who hurt me as a child was also my savior in a lot of ways; in fact, a lot of the confusion and conflict about what went on between us — it’s nice, isn’t it, that relationship language in the context of a second grader and her grandpa? — stemmed from the fact that this was someone who also taught me to tell stories, who supported my dreams and affirmed my value when the consensus from everyone I encountered outside my home was that I was a worthless imposition.

I am sure that, say, Brent Kavanaugh and Woody Allen also have people who love them, people to whom they were good, people who they were not sexually abusing. I believe these women who came out in Kavanaugh’s defense probably had good experiences with him, because no one is claiming that a person is a monster when they accuse that person of sexual assault.The accusation of sexual assault hinges on the assumption that every other behavior of the person in question notwithstanding, the part where they sexually abused another human being is unacceptable.

The dichotomy where in order to say, this person sexually abused me, and it’s not okay, and I want it addressed, you have to also be saying, this person is a horrible person and must be written off entirely, is false in the first place and unhelpful in the second. It actually makes it harder for some of us who have experienced sexual abuse and assault — I can’t speak for everyone  — to bring it to others’ attention and seek recourse. Because on a really good, empowered day, I can say that it was wrong for another person to assault me when I was unconscious. That is never a good thing to do; it should never have happened. But I didn’t know the guy who did this to me — obviously, since I started the night thinking he was my pal and we were going to a party together, just two gayish buddies in rural Texas, us against a hostile frat boy world — so how can I say what kind of person he was or why he did this?

You force someone to commit to an indictment of an entire human being and that person’s life in order to have a specific act addressed, and the end result is that people back down, because their friend or their boss or their dad isn’t really a monster, so they, the survivor, must have made a mistake. Maybe you misunderstood. Maybe you’re crazy, or sick. Maybe if you had just spoken up, been less afraid, been less stupid, less drunk, less naive, this wouldn’t have happened. And the specter of Ruining Someone’s Life when all that person did is maybe rape you looms so large and false accusations are so huge a problem —especially for something so statistically rare — that the safest thing is for you to just deal, because we can’t go around casually destroying the well-being of those around us for our own gratification. Can we.

If you haven’t encountered at least one person in your life whose behavior is legitimately damaging and unacceptable to you, then one, I’m sorry for what must have been a deeply incoherent read so far, and two, get ready.

If you have, though, I think the first step to recognizing the intrinsic value in that person — however counterintuitive it may seem — is releasing yourself from any sense of obligation to “understand” their actions. It is possible that that person who hurt you did something entirely inexcusable and that that person also has intrinsic value, and you are under no obligation to ignore or minimize what they did in order to recognize that value. A “good guy” they may be: but if they raped you, they raped you, and their essential goodness apart from the raping is not what you’re discussing right now.

Part of what keeps us good is not being shielded from the reality of the bad things we do. I can still love you if you hurt me, but that love doesn’t require me to protect you from the having to see the damage you’ve caused and feel bad about it.

We try so hard to keep anyone from having to feel ashamed or embarrassed by the shitty things they did in the past, like shame or embarrassment or missed opportunities will kill us. They will not. People feel shamed and embarrassment for much less appropriate reasons than having committed sexual assault back in the day. And the insistence on this false dichotomy — if you expect this person to be held accountable, you’re saying this person is unredeemable — whoever is doing the insisting and whatever their motivation, the end result of it is that survivors who seek to live out their belief in the intrinsic value of every human being are put in an impossible position.

Survivor: you’re not saying this is a bad person, you’re saying that he raped you. You’re not “taking away this young man’s life”, you’re saying that he raped you. You’re not on a witch hunt, trying to destroy anyone. You’re describing a specific action that this person took and while that does not need to define that person, it happened, however inconvenient it is for someone else’s perception of who that man is, however awkward or shitty it makes people feel.

Affirming someone’s value is not the same thing as endorsing their behavior. You’re under no obligation to pretend someone’s behavior is okay in order to believe that person has value. Allowing someone to be their worst self — and I’d hope that sexual assault is as bad as most people get — is not an act of love. And holding a person accountable when they violate others is not histrionic or aggressive or going too far. If being called to account for your own behavior is understood hurts someone that badly, then maybe that person needs to do some introspective blogging.

[thepillareddark]

Myers Briggs tests are full of shit

Does no one else see that they’re just modern day star signs? People are willing to shit on star signs because they’re based off of something stupid and supernatural. How can the star alignment when you were born possibly have anything to do with your nature? Myers Briggs tests, which is the whole INTJ EFNT IDYF EINRYCHT thing, where E is extrovert and I is introvert, and the other four letters construct similarly blunt and unintelligent dichotomies, are just star signs where

1. The supernatural element is removed

2. You are given agency over the construction of the personality type

3. The test is taken once you have become who you are (as a consequence of both nature and nurture) and are therefore a fair reflection

But here are the things that are left in the Myers-Briggs that make them more or less exactly the same thing as star signs:

1. They cold read. This is the worst. Cold reading is when I tell your fortune by saying something like “You are facing struggles at the moment, but you’ve always been someone who plans and thinks their way through, while always relying on their emotions to guide them, so you’ll be fine”. This is true of everyone, and it strikes everyone as true when said it to them even though an emotional reaction and planned one are supposedly at odds (which will bring us on to point #2). Cold reading is the “way-in” for the test. It’s slightly chilling how much someone will believe you when you tell them their “personality type”, and how much people are invested in the “Oh my god that’s literally exactly me!” reaction.

2. Personality dichotomies are bullshit. 

Imagine a shy person you know. Are they really introverted? Or do they also speak their mind sometimes? Are you yourself someone who likes to stay indoors a lot, or go out and party with friends?

The answer will almost always be “both”. This is because there are extroverted people, and they are probably unhappy and rely on extreme self-projection, and introverted people, who are probably lonely and have trouble expressing themselves, and are not necessarily closet geniuses. It is much better to understand intro/extroversion as a series of sliding scales. I know shy people who don’t like going out, but do like hanging out, but not endlessly, and who do speak their mind, but don’t like to offend people, but do like to offend people sometimes. They want to be quiet and not put themselves out there with their arguments, but also are insistent on being represented fairly, and can get quite loud when comfortable. This person is a TEXTBOOK fucking introvert. They are also SO, SO OBVIOUSLY a TEXTBOOK extrovert. You see? 

It comes back to the problem of cold reading. The I/E division, which seems to me to have stuck as the division people are most convinced by and hold on to the most, is exemplary as something which would be better as a spectrum (and would still be reductive as a spectrum) but is instead a binary, either I or E. And once you tell people what they are they use confirmation bias to understand it as true of themselves. 

I only need to offer you a sample question to prove this:

“ You find it easy to stay relaxed and focused even when there is some pressure.”

The answer is nearly always “sometimes”. 

3. People hold onto them because it gives them an identity to turn to

4. People hold onto them because it makes them feel special

There’s a “16 personality types” website which will give you a little cartoon after you take the test with a title like “protector” or “scientist” or “mastermind” or “artist”. None of them are negative, of course, all of them are cold-reads, of course. But people like to self-conceive as a “knight” or as a “planner” or whatever, because it makes them feel like they have a particular set of skills. They are also special by default, not only because they might get a particularly rare type, but because 100 divided by 16 is 6.25%. 

5. People join groups for their type.

This is true of star signs. It strikes me that star signs are in a way a lot more real than Myers-Briggs, in fact, because what a star sign does is arbitrarily place you into an 8.3% of the population, and what the original designation was doesn’t matter because all you need for a group or to feel special is a nominal starting point, one which will never be tested anyway. So people go onto groups and say “I’m dating this guy, he’s a Scorpio, how do I get him to open up?” This is exasperatingly stupid, but if we were to imagine that the person followed the advice anyway, and imagined that they knew full well it was bullshit, then at least they’d have some sort of directive. The grouping into Scorpio wouldn’t eventually play itself out in reality by accident, but the grouping would still sort of exist.

Myers-Briggs are a whole lot worse because they attract people into groups who are as diverse as star-sign people, who then get snobbish and weird about their four letters. Because they’re not as entirely good-hearted and deluded as Star Sign people, and because they mistakenly thing there’s logic to the selection process they get into all sorts of weird situations.

But why are the tests harmful? Don’t they have at least some bearing on reality?

No, they don’t. The common defence is that they are at least a rough indicator, and that most tests will give you a spectrum of “agree” or “disagree” responses. This isn’t really adequate though, not least because you are still reduced into four letters, but because the extent to which you agree or disagree can change completely depending on how you interpret the question:

“You rarely do something just out of sheer curiosity.” 

Well, I personally have never been on holiday at random, I’ve never spent a lot on something as a stupid move, I’ve never told someone I love them at random. But I also think that I’m definitely willing to try new things, or act dumb sometimes, or go for a random walk, or buy a random food stuff because I want to know what it tastes like. So going into this question is an interpretative level of scale, an interpretation of “curiosity”, and an interpretation of “rarely”, which is way too much subjectivity.

The argument could be made that subjectivity is the entire point, that question interpretation is part of the test. But unless it becomes an accidental proxy for the test, which it’s not because you’re meant to actually answer the questions, then it just smears the results very badly. maybe, just maybe, a more rash person will answer with more extremes and that will make them more of an extrovert- but then we’re back to a circular argument anyway, because an “extrovert” is a largely false concept and shouldn’t really correspond to answer quiz questions rashly. In fact the idea of judging someone’s personality based on arbitrary question interpretation is an even worse suggestion than the idea that we can reduce someone’s personality to four letters from a REAL question.

But don’t they give at least a hint at what people are really like?

Well, no. Here I suppose I run into a wall, which is that these tests honestly don’t matter anyway, so much like with star signs people can believe what they want. I don’t believe anyone has ever turned up as an introvert on the test and then unhappily introverted themselves because it’s what the test said. But as mentioned earlier with the personality dichotomies I think they can never, ever be a good interpretation of a person. When I’ve brought this up to people they always say “well, yeah, my type changes depending on my mood”. Which to me is the most damning possible response- your mood when you answer the questions reveals your mood. That’s not a personality type. A personality type should be able to be a constant thing. That’s just disgraceful. The fact that anyone could say that sentence and not realise how full of shit Myers-Briggs is honestly shocks me. The fact that it’s a mood test confirms the idea that sometimes people act in an “extroverted” manner, sometimes “introverted”. 

And yeah, again, none of this matters. But at the same time I feel angry and a little worried that something which sounds so much like it might have sense to it could become more invasive and taken as true. So I just wanted to write this post, because it gets me riled up. I’m a Capricorn. I love to climb trees. I always thought that was a neat coincidence and left it at that. What Harvard did last year was use the Myers-Briggs to determine who should be in what rooms together. I mean, Americans are thick, but for a whole university to be tricked?

Not great.

Love,

Alex

[transhumanitynet]

The Great Filter: ASI Will Save Humanity (pt.3 of 3)

This piece is part 3 in a three-part series about the Great Filter concept, with a particular focus on the risks and challenges facing humanity in the 21st Century. Part 1 introduced the Great Filter idea, and part 2 reviewed the emerging global risks which may be candidates for humanity’s own experience of the Filter. It appears that humanity must transcend its current challenges or be destroyed by them, so part 3 will now examine the question of what “transcendence” means, and what it would require.

Never Trust A False Dichotomy

It would be a mistake to assume that there is a hard distinction between extinction and survival – even flourishing – at the level of the total human population. Positive and negative Great Filter scenarios are not mutually exclusive. In other words, there is an entire spectrum of scenarios between “everybody dies” and “everybody lives (in some way that is effectively invisible to extraterrestrials)”. It is quite plausible that as global threats converge toward an extinction event, and some proportion of human civilization is destroyed, then the remainder could still survive and even thrive with the help of exponentially advancing technologies.

Thus two Great Filter scenarios would have simultaneously come to pass, with one part of humanity falling silent in a way we naturally hope to avoid, and another part falling silent through achieving vastly greater control over our physical circumstances, technologically transcending both the global crisis and the historical constraints of the observable universe we inhabit. Obviously we would vastly prefer that everybody live over any alternative, and must work to maximize the degree to which humanity survives and thrives, but the point is that positive outcomes do not come about “automagically”. We must plan extremely well, and work extremely hard to achieve them. So, what can we do to maximize our chances of survival?

What is ASI?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies may be considered to exist on a spectrum of “strength”, or completeness. “Weak” or “narrow” AI is the traditional paradigm, which focusses on software dedicated to solving particular problems which would require intelligence of a human being, such as playing chess or other games, or diagnosing diseases. “Strong” AI, also known as Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), is able to intelligently handle all tasks that can be completed by humans, at approximately the same level of ability as humans. An AGI which has developed general cognitive abilities beyond human capacity in most or all tasks is known as an ASI, or Artificial Super-Intelligence.

There is a distinction to be made between intelligence (as defined by AI researchers) and conscious, phenomenological awareness, but here we will make the reasonable assumption that an AGI would have to at least arguably be conscious in order to count as such a thing (since conscious examination of one’s own mental contents is a defining feature of human General Intelligence). It is hard to credit the idea of an entirely non-conscious / non-sentient ASI, as whatever incredible powers it might have, it wouldn’t have any capacity for the one thing that defines a human mind as such: Subjective experience. A powerful machine learning system may well be able to solve many problems, and may even be considered superhuman in some “alien AI” sense, but without subjective awareness it would be subhuman in at least one very important sense, and AGI is invariably defined in terms of human-equivalence.

Why is ASI important? We have already established the importance of advanced technology to our collective survival as global crises deepen. With the latest tools at our disposal we would not only have a chance of finding solutions to potentially deadly problems, but we would also have a chance of defending our friends and future from anyone else acting in a dangerously selfish or misguided manner. ASI is by definition the ultimate technological tool, commonly referred to as humanity’s “final invention”, because it would have the power to recursively design and create new, increasingly advanced generations of itself, rapidly becoming complex beyond human comprehension.

It is hard for humans to grasp what unbridled intelligence might be capable of… to understand the ways in which it might be able to radically remake our world. What we are talking about here is a mind – or an ecosystem of minds – that dwarfs humanity’s collective intelligence, and which sees easy solutions where we can only see life-threatening, intractably complex problems. The possibilities truly are breathtaking, if you take just a little time to think them through. The opening chapter of Max Tegmark’s book “Life 3.0” does a good job of illustrating how ASI could more or less sidestep mundane, human political-economic obstacles to a better future (no matter how insurmountable they seem to humans), just as its opening overture… from there, the symphony proper could rapidly make every human dream come true, and every human concern a matter for the history books.

Fundamentally, however, the issue is much simpler than any idealistic aspiration: We want to live. The logic of the Great Filter and the growing threats faced by humanity together make it clear that a change is coming, and unless we can harness the power of the greatest technologies available, then the chances of our survival will be lower than they could otherwise have been. Furthermore, if those technologies fall into the hands of others who have no concern for our safety or wellbeing, then our chances of survival rapidly drop to zero.

As the world accelerates, both toward good and ill, and with an uncertain outcome, then we must embrace the power of ASI to survive and thrive. Where that is an option, half-measures and vacillation only heighten the risk. Under those circumstances, ASI is necessary. ASI is survival. If we wish to survive into the future, then we must embrace it wholeheartedly.

To summarize this three-part series:

[1] The Great Filter logic tells us that unless humanity is the very first technological civilization to appear in the observable universe – or we’re simply not good enough at looking for obvious signs of life – then something happens to all advanced civilizations which makes them apparently disappear.

[2] Looking at humanity’s own situation in the 21st Century, we can clearly see both good and bad things which could make our civilization apparently disappear overnight. On the bad side, global threats are converging at an accelerating pace, coalescing into a single Threat Function, representing the extinction of humanity and perhaps all life on the planet. On the good side, exponentially advancing technology could save humanity and heal the planet, transcending the observable universe in the process.

[3] ASI is survival. If anyone survives and thrives in the post-convergent-threat environment, it will be those who adopt and control – who have merged with – the most advanced technological tools. Opposition to, or half-hearted acceptance of this agenda will only reduce your chances of survival. The part of humanity that survives and thrives will be that which acknowledges that there is no standing still; We must move forward resolutely, or fall back into the abyss. That is the essence of the Great Filter.

The Great Filter: ASI Will Save Humanity (pt.3 of 3) was originally published on transhumanity.net