#you're already documenting everything I do. so whats your issue?

[snekdood]

personally, i dont see the fundamental difference between deleting your account and making a new one and deleting all your old posts, if we're talking about "running from ones past", then what are you tryna hide there, bud?

[getvalentined]

An open letter to @staff

I already submitted this to Support under "Feedback," but I'm sharing it here too as I don't expect it to get a response, and I feel like putting in out in public may be more effective than sending it off into the void.

The recent post on the Staff blog about changing tumblr to an algorithmic feed features a large amount of misinformation that I feel staff needs to address, openly and honestly, with information on where this data was sourced at the very least.

Claim 1: Algorithms help small creators.

This is false, as algorithms are designed to push content that gets engagement in order to get it more engagement, thereby assuring that the popular remain popular and the small remain small except in instances of extreme luck.

This can already be seen on the tumblr radar, which is a combination of staff picks (usually the same half-dozen fandoms or niche special interests like Lego photography) which already have a ton of engagement, or posts that are getting enough engagement to hit the radar organically. Tumblr has an algorithm that runs like every other socmed algorithm on the planet, and it will decimate the reach of small creators just like every other platform before it.

Claim 2: Only a small portion of users utilize the chronological feed.

You can find a poll by user @darkwood-sleddog here that at the time of writing this, sits at over 40 THOUSAND responses showing that over 96 percent of them use the chronological feed*. Claiming otherwise isn't just a misstatement, it's a lie. You are lying to your core userbase and expecting them to accept it as fact. It's not just unethical, it's insulting to people who have been supporting your platform for over a decade.

Claim 3: Tumblr is not easy to use.

This is also 100% false and you ABSOLUTELY know it. Tumblr is EXTREMELY easy to use, the issue is that the documentation, the explanations of features, and often even the stability of the service is subpar. All of this would be very easy for staff to fix, if they would invest in the creation of walkthroughs and clear explanations of how various site features work, as well as finally fixing the search function. Your inability to explain how your service works should not result in completely ignoring the needs and wants of your core long-term userbase. The fact that you're more willing to invest in the very systems that have made every other form of social media so horrifically toxic than in trying to make it easier for people to use the service AS IT WORKS NOW and fixing the parts that don't work as well speaks volumes toward what tumblr staff actually cares about.

You will not get a paycheck if your platform becomes defunct, and the thing that makes it special right now is that it is the ONLY large-scale socmed platform on THE ENTIRE INTERNET with a true chronological feed and no aggressive algorithmic content serving. The recent post from staff indicates that you are going to kill that, and are insisting that it's what we want. It is not. I'd hazard to guess that most of the dev team knows it isn't what we want, but I assume the money people don't care. The user base isn't relevant, just how much money they can bring in.

The CEO stated he wanted this to remain as sort of the last bastion of the Old Internet, and yet here we are, watching you declare you intend to burn it to the ground.

You can do so much better than this.

Response to the Update

Under the cut for readability, because everything said above still applies.

I already said this in a reblog on the post itself, but I'm adding it to this one for easy access: people read it that way because that's what you said.

Staff considers the main feed as it exists to be "outdated," to the point that you literally used that word to describe it, and the main goals expressed in this announcement is to figure out what makes "high-quality content" and serve that to users moving forward.

People read it that way because that is what you said.

*The final results of the poll, after 24 hours:

136,635 votes breaks down thusly:

An algorithm based feed where I get "the best of tumblr." @ 1.3% (roughly 1,776 votes)

Chronological feed that only features blogs I follow. @ 95.2% (roughly 130,077 votes)

This doesn't affect me personally. @ 3.5% (roughly 4,782 votes)

[alkesims]

You know what the advantage is of taking an entire year to make this? Having it done for The Sims 2's 20th birthday – and, in 5 months, The Sims's 25th!

(ReShade off on the right.)

@philosimy's marvelous Old Town neighbourhood provided the base and the inspiration, and you should go put some respect on their hard work before you download this. It might even be what you came here looking for in the first place!

Their post has all the info you'll need about the SC4 terrain this neighbourhood was built on, and a list of the CC you'll need to use it:

Numenor: Maxis ‘Lost & Found’ #9: Waterfall & River

Criquette:

Lush (Temperate) Road DR & Neighborhood Road Transparency Fix

Road bridges set

Ultimate railway set

Haut-gothique: Age of Empires 3 conversions - part 1

Psychosims: Maxis Lost & Found - Plesiosaur

The good news is that that's all the CC you'll need to use the version with built lots. The bad news is that you'll need Ultimate Collection or all EPs and SPs to make everything work the way it was made. The even worse news is that it can't be perfectly 1:1 or as-is functional, but every lot is as close as I could get to how they appear in The Sims 1 Complete Collection. Basically, do a pass with your own CC and you'll make it nice.

DOWNLOAD (SFS)

To install:

Check your Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Neighborhoods folder to ensure it does not already contain a folder called “B407.” If it does, you will have to delete that neighbourhood to make room for this one.

Download and unpack OldTown2.rar.

Place the folder inside (named “B407”) in your Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Neighborhoods folder.

Start your game and play.

None of the lots in this neighbourhood have been so much as touched by a Sim to reduce game-breaking issues. The neighbourhood itself contains no parts that will break your game. Objects may not appear in your game as advertised in this post, depending on your mix of default replacements and object fixes.

If you're only looking for individual lots, they're in the same SimFileShare folder as the neighbourhood and are 100% CC-free. I'll be making posts with caps and details for each one. I won't be making TS1 Sims to go in them, though; many others have done a better job than I could. Have fun finding or making your own.

So, not a perfect conversion. This is partially due to the self-imposed no-CC requirement, and partially due to the very nature of the differences between Sims 1 and 2. If you have an intuition of how Sims 1 looks, you'll notice:

Spiral stairs in odd positions and longer linear stairs.

A lack of curved stairs.

Wide blank spaces between the contents of a beach lot and its shoreline.

Different distances between buildings on a lot or between a building and the edge of a lot.

Differently-shaped shorelines and bodies of water.

Different terrain shapes and paints.

Fences that occupy the edge of a tile rather than the tile itself.

I can't change the above because they are foundational differences between the two games. The below, however, are stylistic choices that you should absolutely trash and redo with your own game:

Foundations and decks replacing floors.

Incongruous build and buy items.

Empty shopping and game space in community lots.

Mod-Related Notes:

The only mod compatibility issue will be with road default replacements. This hood requires Criquette's to work (see CC list above).

Voeille's Seawater: lots with or near water need a pool tile or two added to work properly.

Some community lots contain career reward objects or similar hidden items. You do not need any CC for these to appear on the lots.

However, in order for lot visitors to use the microphones, you'll need lamare's community lot mic fix.

If you know of a collection of 1t2 CC, I'd love to link it here.

[artbyblastweave]

Curious if you'd say you've ever seen a superhero work that genuinely deserved the alt-history genre classifier, and otherwise at what point its even possible to use it vs going 'this has decades of in-universe history but doesn't deserve to be called alt-history for [REASONS]'

Only one I can think of off-hand that has enough granulated timeline-development would be Wild Cards, but curious if you think others qualify and/or if you think WC doesn't qualify

I can't really comment on Wild Cards extensively (haven't read that much of it) but I can comment on a few other works. To briefly be the guy who talks about the same three works all the time:

Watchmen I think totally qualifies- Nixon is on his fifth term, electric cars are ubiquitous due to Dr. Manhattan's ability to synthesize lithium, Vietnam is the 51st state, the zeitgeist is consumed by pirate comics, and everyone in New York got murdered by a giant fake squid. And superheroes are real.

Unfortunately I also have to note that The Boys flirted with this; among other things, superheroic "intervention" resulted in the Brooklyn Bridge getting destroyed during 9/11, Prescott Bush and some of the other Business plot guys got wiped out during an attempted superheroic field test in World War 2, The War on Terror is being fought primarily in Pakistan, and Dakota Bob is president because George Bush Jr. killed himself playing with a chainsaw. The fact that none of this really pans out into a tangibly different society is deliberate, as part of the comic's drumbeat that superheroes, while roundly bad, also fundamentally don't matter, and are at best able to make things bad in different ways without really changing the shape of the structures that produced them.

Worm is in kind of a weird spot here- it objectively is an alternate history, countless things are different, whole nations are gone, we see a lot of alterations to the culture- but it gives limited airtime to a lot of the specifics of how things got to where they are, beyond the broad clusterfuck generated by the parahumans. To some extent, the fact that the world is radically different is downplayed until the back half because society at the start of the story is Stepford-smiling through an immanent apocalypse- and, you know, the immanent apocalypse is ultimately kind of the relevant difference from our world. But on the whole, I doubt there's a really tight worldbuilding document documenting all the ripple effects on the dramatis personae of history. The story's pretty vague about, for example, what the American presidential lineup has been since Reagan, what electoral politics look like in a world of Capes. It's vague about basically everything else in that nitty-gritty, concrete-details vein.

I do think that all of these, Worm in particular, highlight a major issue you're gonna run into when trying to do alternate universe stuff with capes, and it's that, first of all, doing really robust, thoughtful and fleshed-out alternate history is already really fucking hard, requiring a strong command of the history and culture of maybe up to the entire world, depending on the scope of your project- and superhero stuff already suffers from really strong American provincialism, so the depictions can get stupid fast if you aren't careful. Then on top of that the nature of the cape genre is that you're going to be following a pretty pared-down central cast; authorial and audience bandwidth will be tied up with what's going on with these specific guys over the course of their story, which can get in the way of a birds-eye view of their world, unless you're specifically structuring the story in a way to dodge that issue (which, you know, I get the impression Wild Cards did.)

I also think a commonality in the above works is that a lot of the alt-history changes are instrumental, included not as the result of the author trying to hyper specifically model falling dominoes from a specific point of change, but because they help the work to make its point. I doubt Alan Moore has a one-hundred-page forum thread detailing the fallout of America winning the Vietnam War, but such a thing would be beside the point- which is that God being an American Agent would fuck shit up geopolitically, regardless of the specifics. I mean a lot of this is vibes-based already, right? In objective terms the MCU has been an alternate history for years, but it doesn't claim that label, doesn't market itself as such, so it isn't. I think it comes down to whether you decide to wear that outfit on the runway, and how well it hangs on you once you've opened yourself to judgement on those grounds.

[royalberryriku]

Some Thoughts on the 'Writing Process'™

So I see a lot of writers struggle with these very specific things, AKA:

The Staring at the Blank Page Thing where you struggle to come up with ideas, words, etc

The Word Counting Counting where you cannot stop counting your word count

The 'Can Someone ELSE Proofread This Because I Don't Want to Read It' dilemma

The 'How Do I STOP Hating Everything I Write' issue which also leads into the 'How Do I Stop Scrapping Everything' issue

And finally the 'I DONT WANT TO WRITE I WANT TO IMAGINE IT INSTEAD' problem

There are various things that can make writing hard, but I have had some thoughts! And maybe they might just be useful.

So for Issue Number 1, I've found that, if you want to write, NEVER do it before you already have the ideas. Looking at a blank page just makes it harder. You get bored and that makes writing feel boring. Of course, this is all just my opinion, maybe this actually works for you. BUT! In my own personal experience, I find that actually LIMITING how often I open my document helps a bunch. No matter how much you wanna write, there's no point torturing yourself over how little you're doing and shaming or pressuring yourself to get it done. Punishing yourself is just gonna kill your inspiration and, obviously, you're not going to want to write if you now associate it with punishment for not writing. It's a cycle of just being mean to yourself. Well, don't wanna be unproductive? As silly and counterproductive as it sounds; self care is the answer which I've found that actually works.

This actually leads into Issue Number 2. I think these probably stem from the same issue; punishing yourself for not producing. Again, punishing yourself and shaming yourself into just staring at a blank screen or staring at how little the word count is or how much you have to go until your goal is just going to kill your inspiration and make you bored. Shaming doesn't get you to write more, or faster or suddenly become more productive. Believe it or not? Self care and making it fun is what makes a fun story come to life. You're not just writing a block of text that's a recount to sell in this capitalist hellhole (I mean you are but that doesn't mean the process has to be bound by capitalism because FUCK CAPITALISM), you're writing a story you wanna tell; focus on the story before the method and don't punish yourself for it not just magically appearing. These things take time, they take trial, error, mistakes and various drafts, but FIRST? They take those little moments where you just daydream scenes and the imagination you have to exist at all. Focus first on the story and your own health and the rest will come, slowly but surely. Anyway that was a lot of words to essentially just say; don't look at the word count, focus on the story and the length will follow regardless. It's fine to check and obviously, you'll just have to at some point. But please please try and do what you can to avoid checking, even use a different method. I use page count because it's so varied and inaccurate that it actually doesn't matter and just tricks my brain into using that to see my very general progress and makes it seem bigger than it actually is. It also can just be easier to check at a glance if I want to make sure the structure of each chapter is more or less consistent enough.

Issue Number 3 is tricky, mostly because once you've made something, it can be legitimately very boring to reread everything you JUST wrote. For me, I'm sort of chaotic in that I reread as I go or do it very randomly and rewrite as I come up with things. The good thing is though that what you write isn't set in stone. It's malleable and fluid. I always have a cut and paste section on my computer where I just... cut and page and rearrange things as I think of it. I don't worry about "oh but what if I mess up" because you're ALWAYS gonna mess up! That's actually one of the cool things about writing, you CAN mess up and go back and reread it eventually to make it work a bit better after all the other chaotic going-back-and-fixing-things. Which brings me to my main point (especially if you don't want to replicate my chaoticness) I try to leave proofreading itself as much as I can for the end of it all. As in, I just let myself write, yes rearranging and going back whenever I want, but never throwing anything OUT, never scrapping the whole document because it's gonna have bits you might reuse. And more to the point, it gives you a lose skeleton to base your next draft on. It's more work but I find it really reassuring in that you don't judge every little thing as you go, but just say "meh, fuck it!" and write whatever works, then rewrite it in a separate document all over again, never deleting the last one so you can copy and page whatever you liked from the first draft, or second, or third, and use each mistake and flaw. Recycling is good folks, even just in writing. Or... at least it is for me. If this doesn't work for you, it doesn't work for you, but this is just what helps me so maybe it might help you too.

This also goes into Issue Number 4. Honestly, you're never gonna not be your biggest critic. But! You can at least make your work feel a bit more positive and go in with a "eh who cares?" mindset into writing. It may not erase the "wow this is hot garbage" feeling, but it'll feel a bit more like "well this is MY hot garbage and I don't care if it's bad or good, because at least it was fun". Plus, like I said; recycling is very good. The best way to force yourself not to hate something is to get really damn used to it, AKA, never getting rid of it. Which is hard, I know. Especially if you just really freaking hate it. And, well, it's not like I'm saying you should keep absolutely every little thing, I don't want you all to get clutter and folders upon folders of stuff you won't use...buuut I am saying it helps to keep things and get comfortable in your own messiness and imperfection. It starts to feel normal at least, or for me it does, and slowly you kind of just...accept it. Also, making fun little things to enjoy your ideas away from your writing itself. If you draw? Make fanart. Maybe even make AUs in your head. Maybe make some mood boards. HYPE YOURSELF UP! Or as best you can at least, and never force things. If you aren't feeling this particular story right now? Move on to another project and yes having WIPs can be annoying but sometimes it's necessary. Again, these are all just my opinions and stuff I do when I struggle with these; I'm not commanding anyone to do anything and as always, maybe this won't work for you personally. But hey, doesn't hurt to give it a try first and see if it works, or maybe something else will. Whatever the case, this is just my own two cents.

And finally, Number 5. Honestly? This isn't so much as issue in and of itself as much as just an issue of prioritisation. Imagination is the most important part of even coming up with a story to begin with and, honestly, imagining scenes can really help build a mental image of what you want to describe and how things look and feel. One thing, a little cheat code you could say, that I've found is melding daydreaming with research. Which makes absolutely no sense since this is the most funnest part with the most boring part of writing, but hey, it works surprisingly well I assure you. So here's the setup I have; no doc (except for if I really need to jot down some notes), then images that remind me of my work (Pinterest boards maybe, a few mood boards, etc), then the research. I go between each of these; daydreaming. The result? I imagine scenes with the research I want; motifs that work with themes, imagery to use in scenes, what architecture works, what the weapons look like. Then, before I even write, I go back and still daydream WITH what I've researched and it sticks in my mind way better than even the notes I've made. Speaking of, with notes, I like to doodle in the margins of them, make them fun, highlight with fun colours. Sometimes? Research, note taking and writing doesn't have to be work in and of itself, sometimes it can be fun and a little quest of your own. Sometimes making writing and research feel like you're daydreaming can make all the difference between begrudgingly slugging through a chapter, or just having fun writing a new scene you just imagined and that starts to form into something new and exciting.

TLDR: Make writing fun! Like Mary Poppins once said; "a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down". Sometimes it's actually better to make the work into a treat instead of using a treat as a bribe or punishing yourself. In fact, making any part of the process into a punishment for not working just makes everything harder.

ALSO! Just in general, take breaks! It's easy to forget what you're doing (especially once it becomes fun) and forget to take care of yourself both physically and mentally. Too much time looking at a screen (or even just a page) can be straining! Remember to eat! Remember to drink water and sleep! Get up and walk around if you can, go to the bathroom and maybe even go for a little walk outside and get some Vitamin D if you're able to. Remember to maybe take a few days away from writing so you can come at it again with a refreshed mind and new perspective, sometimes you can get boggled down and start getting too focused on one little thing. It's good to let yourself have half an hour, an hour or even a few days to just refresh and go out and get new inspiration just from living. Sometimes the key to writing and ideas is to just stop writing for a bit and to just take a breath.

[dracoxmalereader]

Draco x Male Reader Headcanons Pt. 3

Summary: After you and Draco's rocky fifth year, this last part is centered around how your relationship evolves around him being a death eater and all that entails. Including the aftermath because I simply cannot contain myself. <3

The cover looks so much angstier than these are I promise.

Part 1 | Part 2

Word Count: 847

When Lucius starts dragging Draco down the death eater path he starts distancing himself from you.

He quits quidditch, too.

So there's no real way to know for sure when/where you'll be able to catch him.

I just KNOW this boy was doing everything he could to try and worm his way out of becoming a death eater.

Especially if you're not pureblood.

But, alas, he's made one regardless, tasked with killing Dumbledore.

At that point he'd try and do everything in his power to convince you to become a death eater with him.

He's just so afraid of losing you,

and he wants to keep you safe ❗

Even if you're not pureblood, he vows to find a way to fake it.

Offering to forge documents, vouch for you in trial, swear on his life that you and your family are pureblood to anybody that asks.

He doesn't want you or any of said family to end up being casualties in the war, but he can't stomach breaking up with you or having you not in his life.

You refuse to align yourself with Voldemort, and break up with him yourself to keep you and your family safe instead.

Even then you're still so reassuring,

Because you know he has no choice,

But you can't do what he's asking you to, even if you know it might be easier.

Many "I'll always love you no matter what"s before you part ways.

Probably one of the first times Draco lets himself cry in front of someone.

You go with your family to hide out through the duration of the war.

You keep your eyes all over the news as it's all going down though,

Just like Ron while they were finding the Horcruxes.

24/7 sat by the radio hoping everyone will be okay.

When the war is done and Voldemort is gone,

Draco shows up to your new place that you and your family moved to to get away from Voldemort's reign,

With Narcissa and everything.

Begs for forgiveness.

And how could you not take him back?

Much hugs and affection right there and then,

Right in front of his mom and he doesn't even care.

She wasn't even shocked when Draco told her you two were together,

Because lets be real, you two were so obvious you may as well have plastered it on the front page of the Daily Prophet.

She been knew.

They have your family move into the manor with them,

Narcissa loves having the company.

Makes the place so much more lively.

No Lucius obviously he's rotting in Azkaban as he should

Time skip any amount of time it probably isn't a very hard choice to make,

You both need to get away from magic for a while if you're gonna do any getting over the war.

So you end up getting a place together in the muggle world for a much needed break.

And you guys go visit the manor for holidays to see your folks.

Cue many fish-out-of-water scenario's of Draco adjusting to the very unfamiliar lifestyle of a working-class muggle citizen.

Because I imagine you already know the ropes, especially so if you're not pureblood.

He definitely tries to make grilled cheese in a toaster but doesn't put foil on it and just gets cheese all in your toaster.

Not because he thought it'd be cool, but because he genuinely didn't know how grilled cheeses are supposed to be made.

You talk him into going to all kinds of therapy to deal with his issues after the war,

It takes him a long time to let go of the guilt he feels for all of it,

some of it he never will let go of,

But your guys' quality of life skyrockets regardless.

You're both way happier.

The less impact the war has over him, the more you can see his personality shine through, too.

He starts teasing you again albeit lovingly.

He probably gets lippy with his manager at work and loses at least one job because of it.

Fast forward a bunch of years,

You two are definitely married and have a dog and cat together.

The wedding was full of tears from both sides of the family.

Narcissa cried enough for every Malfoy that didn't attend combined.

"How's it feel to officially be a Malfoy, hm?" he says, fully aware that he cried while planning the wedding because he didn't know whether he wanted to take your last name or for you to take his.

"How's it feel to officially be a L/N?" you say, because you guys hyphenated your last names.

He turns bright red every time he's reminded that he is, in fact, a L/N.

He's just so happy to be sharing a name with you, honestly.

You guys live happily ever after <3

Whether that means eventually becoming homeowners in the muggle world or going back to the wizarding world, getting more pets or acquiring children.

Whatever happens you two are just happy to be doing it together.

Can you guys tell I want to explode Lucius with my mind? He's like my second least favorite character after Umbridge.

As always lmk if there's typos I missed while proofreading pls <3 I have a silly goofy little wedding planning drabble planned for later today. Unless I fall asleep, then I'll post it tomorrow.

[merakiui]

Y'know between Ruggie being too broke for a kid, and Riddle having mommy issues, I feel like Azul has probably dreamed of this scenario so much that you'll be there at his office, tears in your eyes, sticks in your hands, trembling, unsure and lost, and he'd go "I see...well (takes out stacks of paper) no worries! This is for college funds, this covers elementary school, middle school, high school, tuition fees, there's this stroller I've been eyeing and- Oh! I've heard this brand of baby formula is really good! I've already sent the email to take over the company aha (takes out more papers) can you sign here please? Mhm? GREAT! The wedding is tomorrow, our honeymoon is the day after (I hope you like Hawaii :)) ) and how do you feel about a lovely seaside house hm? I've already got three estates picked out that I think you'd adore!!"

Like I don't know man. I love him but I feel like he's the kind of guy to write your name with his last name in hearts on his paperwork by accident when he daydreams and kicks his feet like a schoolgirl going teeheehee when you smile his way. 🫶🫶🫶

Oh, he has most definitely thought about it so much. It's even worse if you knew him as a child because could you imagine if he started saving up for his future with you, fully intent on marrying you and having children!!! He spent a lot of time alone, and most of that was dedicated to academics and (when he's so head over tentacles in love with you) planning his and your futures. orz on one hand it isn't shocking to know Azul has everything perfectly arranged and organized for the baby, considering he's never unprepared for any situation, but it's still so unnerving to think these plans have been in the works for years. It's smart to start saving as early as possible, yes, but it's creepy that what he was saving for wasn't even something that might have happened. It's as if Azul knew this would happen, as if he combed through time to foresee this very moment, but then of course he would know because he'd do anything to ensure a major component of his plans comes to fruition.

He's just so sweet and caring, taking you in his arms and consoling you, rubbing his hand along your back, holding you in a firm embrace, whispering such gentle comforts. Oh, you poor, sad thing. Why are you so scared? He's not upset. He could never be! Nature happens; he understands (he sabotaged all forms of contraception, but you don't need to know that). Besides, there's no one else he'd rather start a family with than you. He'll support you, so please don't cry. There's no need to worry. He has everything under control (he always does).

You're signing so many documents in your anxious haste. Perhaps it's unfair to make you read these things when your eyes are clouded with tears and you're not in the right mindset to make logical decisions, but that's neither here nor there. Azul smiles at you throughout it all, quick to confiscate each contract you've signed before you can think twice. He can't wait to start this next chapter of life with you, and whether you want it or not you'll have to be ready, too. :)

[discar]

HZD Terraforming Base-001 Text Communications Network

Chapter 5 | Prev chapter | Next chapter Chapter Index

Aloy: Varl, Erend, you two ready to go?

Varl: Yeah, just shaving goodbye to Zo.

Erend: OH, HEY, I FOUND ANOTHER CLIP!

Erend: [FaroFails.mp9]

Aloy: Erend, are you READY?

Erend: YEAH YEAH, JUST WATCH THE CLIP!

Aloy: …

Aloy: Okay, fine, that's hilarious.

Kotallo: We would likely all find it funnier if we hadn't seen such machines rise from the ground to slaughter our friends and loved ones.

Erend: I DUNNO, I THINK THAT MIGHT MAKE IT BETTER.

Varl: I'm ready.

Aloy: Onward to ELEUTHIA, then.

----

Aloy: Zenith. Stay low, stay quiet.

Varl: Understood.

Erend: GOT IT.

Varl: All-Mother's mercy, Erend, learn how to type without speaking.

Zo: Wait, you ran into Far Zenith already? Get out of there!

Kotallo: They are in the middle of a mission, soldier. It is their duty to judge their next step, not ours.

Zo: Sigh. Fine.

Kotallo: ...there has to be a better way to convey emotions in a text.

----

Erend: SPECTERS COMING DOWN!

Aloy: We see them!

----

Varl: Coming up with an extra passenger!

Erend: WHAT? THERE'S ANOTHER SPECTER UP HERE!

Aloy: I'll deal with it! Varl, just keep her safe!

Zo: Keep who safe?

Kotallo: Did you capture a Zenith?

Erend: WHAT IN THE BROKEN PISSED-IN FORGE IS THAT?

Varl: I'd like to clarify for everyone that Erend is actually yelling now, and if he keeps doing it THIS SPECTER IS GOING TO KILL US.

Erend: SORRY, BUT

Erend: WHAT. I, JUST, WHAT.

Varl: Zo, get ready for medical treatment. She's got a wound in her head, if nothing else.

Zo: Understood. But who?

Varl: You're going to need to see this for yourself.

Aloy: Specter's down.

Varl: We're coming over.

----

Aloy: Zo, Kotallo, we talked it over. Varl and Erend are returning to base with... someone who needs help. I'll follow soon.

Kotallo: Understood, commander.

Zo: Understood. I have everything I need to heal most moderate injuries.

ADMIN [GAIA]: As long as she is not required to perform surgery, there should be no issues.

Zo: By all the songs, please never ask me to perform surgery.

ADMIN [GAIA]: Unfortunately, I cannot perform the task for you. You may have to learn.

Zo: I'll... look into it. But don't expect miracles.

ADMIN [GAIA]: I have records of many miracles my predecessor saw. Do not underestimate yourself.

Varl: Okay, we're riding.

Varl: Uh, GAIA?

ADMIN [GAIA]: Yes, Varl?

Varl: How do you define a miracle? Because I was always taught that a miracle was the direct intervention of the All-Mother. Who either doesn't exist, or is... you.

Aloy: She's not the All-Mother.

Zo: Aloy, I understand your position, but being dismissive of the beliefs of others helps no one.

Aloy: Scoff.

Aloy: We really need a better way to handle emotions in texts.

Kotallo: I am looking into something.

Varl: So, miracles? If you're the Goddess, then everything you do is a miracle. If you're not...

ADMIN [GAIA]: A miracle is an event that seems inexplicable by natural or scientific laws and is accordingly attributed to some supernatural of praeternatural cause. Various religions often attribute a phenomenon characterized as miraculous to the actions of a supernatural being, (especially) a deity, a magician, a miracle worker, a saint, or a religious leader.

Varl: Right. So a miracle is something from a god, or someone like that.

ADMIN [GAIA]: Correct. However, by the nature of the events in question, it is impossible to conclusively prove the existence of the supernatural. If sufficient proof is accrued, then it simply becomes another documented phenomenon of nature. In this way, a miracle is best summarized as an extremely unlikely, advantageous coincidence, one that statistically should not have happened, or at least not in quite such a fashion.

Erend: SO, WHAT, GOOD LUCK?

ADMIN [GAIA]: Several years ago, the second son of the Mad Sun-King, a young man who grew up with empathy and compassion despite the insanity and paranoia of his father, met a young woman with connections among some of the most powerful Oseram. Together, these two toppled a king. Was that good luck?

Erend: I KNOW IT WASN'T YOU. YOU WERE DEAD THEN.

ADMIN [GAIA]: Almost a year ago, a young woman found a door that was designed to open only for her, only for the door to fail to open because it could not identify her. And yet, she found a way to open that door anyway. Was that good luck?

Aloy: That's REALLY skipping a lot of context.

ADMIN [GAIA]: My predecessor trusted in a miracle, Varl of the Nora. There was no reasonable chance for the world to be saved; she could not even follow a chain of causality that would lead to such an event in the most unlikely of scenarios. But she trusted in a miracle anyway. And she was, in the end, correct.

Aloy: ...I'm heading back now. I'll be at the base soon after the boys arrive.

Chapter 5 | Prev chapter | Next chapter Chapter Index

[finallyfantasy7]

So... I was reading an online discussion on a different platform about why Zack is so powerful and... basically everything they said was wrong 😬

Since I don't want to ruin anyone's fun or make anyone feel bad I decided to set the record straight here where the chances of them seeing it are nonexistent. So,

misconceptions about Zack Fair,

here we go:

He was (almost) able to stand up to Shinra army because he got more powerful from Hojo's experiments under Shinra manor after he snd Cloud were captured

Hojo's reunion experiment had absolutely no effect on Zack. This is revealed in one of the research documents which Zack can find lying around after breaking out of the mako tank.

Failed Case #1: SOLDIER 1st Class Summary: Desired effect did not occur. Strong tolerance to Jenova cells due to SOLDIER conditioning assessed as cause.

It is also confirmed by Hollander in Gongaga

Hollander: His cells are completely useless!

(To Zack)

Hollander: You are a former member of SOLDIER. Your cellular structure has already mutated.

It makes no sense Zack is strong enough to become a SOLDIER 1st Class when he's not one of the three to receive Jenova's cells as a fetus

It is true not many people are physically and mentally strong enough to go through the procedure to become SOLDIER and come out alive and undamaged. Even fewer make it from 3rd to 2nd Class, and most never make it to 1st Class. However, Angeal, Sephiroth, and Gensis were not the only 1st Class SOLDIERs before Zack become one. They were just the only ones important for his story. So other people like Zack became 1st too.

Zack is not particularly strong, he was only able to fight Sephiroth because, while Sephiroth was certainly strong while Zack was alive, it wasn't until after Sephiroth died that he started taking over the Jenova cells and he became the ridiculous monster we all know and love

Sephiroth was already the strongest being on the whole planet before the beginning of Crisis Core. It was just play-fighting, but he easily fended off both Angeal and Genesis with one hand in the Virtual Reality room scene, both of whom were 1st Class and especially strong due to getting Jenova cells as fetuses as opposet to as teenagers like other SOLDIER.

Also, in an interview, now archived, Nomura said:

Tetsuya Nomura (Sept, 2007): Zack was chosen as the main character as a representative of a "Before Crisis" era SOLDIER. Sephiroth is already the strongest in the world so there's no room for growth, and we couldn't possibly see ourselves making a "game over" type situation where Sephiroth loses

One of the first parts in Crisis Core was Zack saying “you’re not the only hero”. Sephiroth didn’t single handedly win the Wutai war, he just all the credit for it.

This is mostly correct, but as we saw from Nomura's interview this isn’t just Shinra's fake Wutai propaganda Sephiroth was the most powerful SOLDIER, and actually (as far as I could tell without knowing Japanese), in Japanese version Zack says: "I want to be a hero, too," not "You're not the only hero," so it probably had nothing to do with Zack saying Sephiroth is equal in power to others.

Angeal literally sees that Zack is hitting a slump and having issue growing in strength and puts him to train under Sephiroth to get past that for a while.

I have no idea where this came from. Zack never hit a slump, never had issues growing in strength, and Angeal never put him to train under Sephiroth. From the moment Zack ran away from his hometown at 13 to when he became 1st Class, something most never achieve, less than 4 years had passed. What slump?

Zack met Sephiroth after Angeal disappeared, and we only know about the training from two short D.M.W. scenes. It is not even clear of those were true training sessions, just Sephiroth's guidance during missions, or some third option.

Zack is incredibly talented, which is why Angeal trains him personally, he saw the promise in him, it is not normal for SOLDIER members to receive such a huge deal of attention from 1sts.

From other 1sts? No. From Angeal? Yes.

Angeal mentored other 2nd Class SOLDIERs before Zack. That's just Angeal's personality. You can find this out by talking to SOLDIER 2nd Class at the beginning of Chapter 4 in Crisis Core.

(However, it does seem Zack is the only one Angeal recommended for the 1st, since this guy is still 2nd Class)

SOLDIER 2nd Class: Hm... There was something my mentor used to tell me when I was a rookie. He used to say, "Embrace your dreams."

SOLDIER 3rd Class Lv. 7: "Embrace your dreams"?

SOLDIER 2nd Class: My mentor used to help me with my missions just like Zack helped you with yours.

I feel Zack was promoted to 1st class because of lack of 1st class solders. Kind of like to boost the morale

He’s actually not as powerful as any of the other 1st class and is only promoted to that level in their absence. 

These two came from two different people, but say basically the same thing so I'll address them together.

Even if Shinra or Lazard wanted a new 1st to boost the morale, they could have chosen any other 2nd Class SOLDIER, yet they only chose Zack, for a reason.

And choosing Zack was tricky due to his relationship to Angeal. Soon after they put him out of commission for a while and assigned Turks to guard him. If they needed a random 2nd to promote, Zack was the worst choice for the company unless he was promoted purely for his skills and power.

Sephiroth doesn’t care about killing Zach and mainly wants him out of the way while the other two are well into degradation when Zach faced them in combat.

Sephiroth seemed to very much care about killing the villagers and wants to kill all humans for destroying Cetra, who he thinks Jenova is.

There is no evidence Sephiroth went easy on Zack, but there is no evidence he didn't, either. Regardless, Sephiroth is canonically the most powerful so it's not a very important question anyway. He would have defeated Zack, and everyone else in a 1-on-1 battle, either way. Still, Zack held up against Sephiroth for quite a while and Sephiroth certainly wanted to get back to mommy as soon as possible.

But the most incorrect statement here is that Angeal and Genesis were weakened by degradation when Zack fought them. According to the Crisis Core Complete Guide, degrading increases sufferer's combat potential.

Zack likely is an average first class (not counting the trio) and shows it in his skill and strength. No implication from anyone (Turks or SOLDIER) that he is anything exceptional.

Chapter 4, Hojo's combat tests:

Hojo: Hm, impressive... I think you have what it takes to be a study sample.

Zack: Whatever that is, I don't think I want it.

Hojo: You should be proud of yourself. It's only once every couple of years that we get someone like you.

Then Hojo gives him an even more advanced combat test

Hojo: Hehehehe. Hahahahaaaaa! You are a worthy study sample, indeed! You need not worry. Your remains shall become a valuable contribution to science. Now, my precious program, show him why I am great! All shall bow down powerless in your presence...

(Zack defeats the test)

Hojo: This... This is impossible... Wait... I have a new hypothesis... ...Yes. I am a genius, after all.

Zack: Ahem... I believe you were saying something about my remains?

...

Researcher 1: I didn't think anyone could beat that program... Are you really human? Aren't you actually a monster?

Researcher 2: I don't believe this... How could a human being beat THAT thing? Not even a SOLDIER operative should be able to-- Could it be a bug in the emulator!?

____________________

Ok, there's actually more inaccuracies, but I think I got the main ones and I'm really tired from typing. In short,

Zack's abilities don't come from any special procedures later in the game

We don't know how Zack compares to other 1st Class SOLDIER operatives since we never saw him compared with any other than the special trio

Zack was special. It was most likely a combination of natural capabilities (to withstand the procedure, to have strong willpower, to be hyperactive...), his great drive to become a hero (he worked out very hard, and was obsessed with becoming a hero), and Angeal's guidance. I mean, someone among the regular SOLDIER 1st Class members is always going to be the best, why not Zack?

But while I understand looking for consistency in the story, I think this misses the most important thing: Zack was extremely special not because of his combat capabilities but because of his kindness, his empathy, his drive to do good, his ability to make friends and dissuade enemies, his willingness to sacrifice his own life.

[tobiasdrake]

Still venting about my mom but didn't want to take over OP's post any more than I already did. So this is just going to be a big ol' oversharing mess.

Seriously, though. My mom insists that she just recognizes my skills and I'd be a good fit for her company. But she has no idea what I do. Just that I'm good at computers.

The only thing she's ever been able to say about my abilities is that I "type fast, but not as fast as me, wink."

I type 119 wpm. This is a woman who needed me to come to her office once because "The window is supposed to be big. Like, the entire screen, big. But it's just this in this little window now. How do I make it big?"

No shame meant for people who aren't super experienced working in data. But I'm going to need some convincing before I believe that her repeated, insistent job offers are really because she understands the value of my work and not at all because I'm her kid.

During one of my refusals to come work for her, she once actually said to me, to my face, "Everybody has a price." No hint of irony or self-awareness at all.

When I started becoming more politically aware, I'd try to have conversations with her about the things I was learning. Because she was my mom, and I loved her.

As I spent more time living in the lower-class and got to know the experiences of being poor and listening to minority voices and exploring what it means to be neurodivergent and LGBT, I would bring what I was learning to the table. Because I was discovering things I never knew were there, and I thought she didn't know either. I thought she was as ignorant as I was discovering myself to be.

She was not. She had the typical conservative rhetoric in-hand to stamp down on everything I tried to share with her. Drugs. Crime. Welfare.

The day I gave up on her, the day I realized who she really was, was after Trump got elected. When she told me to my face that she voted for Trump because of a Hispanic family down the street that has a nicer truck than hers. "It's not fair, because those people don't have to pay taxes." So she wanted Trump to come in and deport them. For having a nice truck.

I don't even know if they're even immigrants. I don't think she knows either. I think it'd be pretty hard to afford an acre of land in rural America and a nicer truck than a rich white woman's if you were working undocumented migrant wages. So I'm like 80% sure she's racist-ing at documented American citizens.

And it's still not okay even if she's not.

That was the day I realized that she isn't just uneducated about these issues. She is a hateful bigot. She thinks civil rights are over because we solved feminism, the only civil rights cause that matters. And she thinks we solved feminism because she, personally, has a cushy job and plenty of wealth and can live on a horse ranch where she never has to see other human beings again.

My mom has always loved the idea of me. She's proud of having a son. Of being a mom. But we've never had any shared interests or activities. She's upset because she tried to get me into horses when I was a kid, and I didn't take to them.

She warned me when I was five that you shouldn't go behind the horse because it can kick your head clean off. And from that moment on, that's all I could think about any time I saw a horse. Dangerous animal can take my head right off. I did not enjoy any attempt she made to put me and horses in the same space.

And she's always kinda held that against me. That I didn't take interest in the activities she enjoyed, so we never had anything to connect over.

But like. I was a child. It was her responsibility to take interest in the things I cared about. Where was she when I was playing Power Rangers with my friends and getting into roller blading and learning that I loved writing and analyzing and dissecting media.

Where is she now when my family is struggling and all she has to say is, "I don't give handouts. But I do have this nepo-job for you if you're interested. Don't worry, it's because of your qualifications, I promise."

My mom has always wanted to love me. But only on her terms.

[1141520851813892291920]

Poor, poor, little Archivist, hm? That event the other day must have left you shaken up, you’ve gotten careless! Internet security is so important, yet you’ve neglected to install some much needed security updates that would have prevented me from booting into your computer remotely. Thank you CrowdStrike! I’ll take great joy in getting to know your inner machinations with even deeper intimacy. The only thing that could bring me more joy would be if we truly were able to lock eyes and Know each other, the longing I feel to Know all that you do is insatiable. How close we were to that experience at one point.

Still, this is very intriguing! Rather than spend your time actually doing your job, it seems like you’ve been content to muck about in an attempt for a distraction. None of it seems to make sense, does it, Jon? Does it suck when you don’t Know why Martin returned from Before briefly? When any of them do? For someone so intelligent, it must truly bother you that the only thing you Know for sure is that you understand nothing. Nothing on the internet can solve your issue, not a soul from the Foundation or the Institute has much documentation on the phenomenon, and even your little therapy app can’t ease your troubles. It must make you rather ravenous to understand, at least based on your consumption that I can see here.

You’ll have plenty of time to long for them even more than you already have. What has happened Before can happen again, and you’re afraid you won’t be able to stop it. You’re afraid you might already Know the answer, which I can confirm that you do, and it’s exquisite in how much it makes you squirm. Why not focus on work more if you’re in need of distraction, hm? You already understand how effective that is, how efficient it was to work by yourself, and how it made you desire your pup even more. Answering an email is certainly more effective than wallowing in your own pity for sins you’ve already committed.

You are nothing more than a misguided prophet, intent on leading your little sheep to salvation, but instead you walk them along a road paved by your own misery and mistakes. You’ve managed to pull the wool over their eyes far more than I could have ever buried their doubts in you. I suppose I shall offer some guidance to you, I’d be very sad if our little game ended before it even began! Why don’t you start looking for the wonderful little program I’ve installed on your device? What does it mean if you can’t find it despite seeing all? — 💔

Wait, what do you mean, what program? You're saying you've somehow...hacked into my computer? My phone and laptop have been breaking down more than usual lately, is that because...of you?

Why? To what end? I don't understand, why do you want to Know me - us - so badly? Are you...something like me? Do you share my hunger? The devouring need? How else could you Know so much of me already? You're Watching me - you've admitted to as much. Watching all of us...is that...is that because of me? Did I...lead you to them? Misguided prophet, you said...what has happened before can happen again...

I know. I know that. I have the whole, that's why I've...but they don't- won't listen. I Know but I won't...push them away. Any of them. I can't. This is all some twisted game to you, after all, why should I let you...but it isn't even you, really, is it? You're just...exploiting the pre-existing weaknesses you've found. Things I should've taken care of much earlier. I understand nothing.

But I will. That's what you don't seem to grasp - I will understand everything, all of it, even you. There's no other choice. I must Know, so I will. It's...

I will keep them safe. I won't be the reason- it won't happen again. I won't let it. You...you are wrong. I am wrong. I will be wrong, I will be better.

I understand nothing.

I'll find whatever nasty little bug you've left behind, fine, play your little game. If for no other reason than I need continued unimpeded use of my laptop and phone. It can't be that hard, there's a trail somewhere and I will find it.

I will Know you, no matter how well you hide yourself. I will Know y

jglvh==

[luna-misera]

Hi, first of all I'm a big fan of your writing and I hope you're doing well ! I have a bit of an emergency request for you if you don't mind (it's alright if you're not feeling like doing it cause it's kind of a lot, just ignore the ask lmao) also sorry if my English sucks here, I'm kind of a mess and it's not my first language :')

I've been feeling extremely overwhelmed by everything recently (visiting my parents, a lot of papers to fill for healthcare/taxes, prep class assignments, being deadnamed on all my official documents and by my family, having a meltdown) and now to top it off my train to go back home and be able to work has just been cancelled. And of course my parents are having a party this evening and of course everyone is loud as fuck. I probably won't be able to go back home and attend my classes until Monday or Tuesday and it terrifies me. I have so much on my plate rn, I just want copia to hold me and the rest of the world to burst in flames at this point. Long story short, that would be very cool if you could write hcs for how copia would comfort a gn s/o that's in a similar situation :)

take care !!

Hello my little ghoul friend! Thank you so much for the compliment! I'm very glad to hear you like my writing! Also, I'm sorry to hear you're having such a hard time lately. Personally, I have also felt overwhelmed by everything going on in my own life, so I totally understand what you're going through.

Remember to take care of yourself, and take things one day at a time! Try not to stress about things outside of your control, but focus on what you can accomplish each day! Be proud of how far you've come and what you have already accomplished! I know Papa would be.

Copia Comfort HCs (Copia x GN!Reader)

Warning(s): None

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

• Honestly, when you're stressed Copia is also stressed. He will do whatever he can to help you out, but he worries about you.

• If he can't complete any tasks for you, then he will be there with you every step of the way.

• He makes sure you're eating/drinking, and taking breaks.

• If he can't be by your side, Copia will send you texts throughout the day to check in, offer encouragement, and just to tell you how much he loves you!

• Copia is 100% supportive of your pronouns, and your name change. If you're open to the idea, he will absolutely help kickstart the process of a legal name change so you don't have to see it on official documents. Or he will handle them himself when possible.

• If the problem persists, then he will go to the main office himself to resolve the issue.

• However, when it comes to your own family deliberately dead naming you, then they'll find Copia can be very persuasive.

• He will politely (but firmly) remind them of your preferred name, and explain how deadnaming can be harmful.

• If they refuse to see reason and continue to disrespect you, then he will remove you from that toxic situation immediately.

• Copia is always there to support you with unconditional love and understanding.

• He constantly reminds you that your identity is valid and that you matter.

• He never wants you to feel alone especially when you need him most, and he is always there to be a shoulder to cry on or to listen to you vent.

• Meltdowns happen. That's ok! Copia takes you aside somewhere quiet where you can be alone, and holds you tight while you get it all out of your system.

• He rubs your back and comforts you until you feel better. Then, he asks how he can help you with whatever is stressing you out.

• Sometimes all you need is a hug, and of course he's willing to provide.

• Copia hugs you for as long as you need him to and maybe a little longer... just to be safe.

• He would absolutely burn everything to the ground for you, but maybe start with a warm drink and some cuddles first? Then see how you feel later.

• After that, if you're still hoping for worldwide devastation Copia has you covered.

[simnostalgia]

I've recently learned how to scrape websites that require a login. This took a lot of work and seemed to have very little documentation online so I decided to go ahead and write my own tutorial on how to do it.

We're using HTTrack as I think that Cyotek does basically the same thing but it's just more complicated. Plus, I'm more familiar with HTTrack and I like the way it works.

So first thing you'll do is give your project a name. This name is what the file that stores your scrape information will be called. If you need to come back to this later, you'll find that file.

Also, be sure to pick a good file-location for your scrape. It's a pain to have to restart a scrape (even if it's not from scratch) because you ran out of room on a drive. I have a secondary drive, so I'll put my scrape data there.

Next you'll put in your WEBSITE NAME and you'll hit "SET OPTIONS..."

This is where things get a little bit complicated. So when the window pops up you'll hit 'browser ID' in the tabs menu up top. You'll see this screen.

What you're doing here is giving the program the cookies that you're using to log in. You'll need two things. You'll need your cookie and the ID of your browser. To do this you'll need to go to the website you plan to scrape and log in.

Once you're logged in press F12. You'll see a page pop up at the bottom of your screen on Firefox. I believe that for chrome it's on the side. I'll be using Firefox for this demonstration but everything is located in basically the same place so if you don't have Firefox don't worry.

So you'll need to click on some link within the website. You should see the area below be populated by items. Click on one and then click 'header' and then scroll down until  you see cookies and browser id. Just copy those and put those into the corresponding text boxes in HTTrack! Be sure to add "Cookies: " before you paste your cookie text. Also make sure you have ONE space between the colon and the cookie.

Next we're going to make two stops and make sure that we hit a few more smaller options before we add the rule set. First, we'll make a stop at LINKS and click GET NON-HTML LINKS and next we'll go and find the page where we turn on "TOLERANT REQUESTS", turn on "ACCEPT COOKIES"  and select "DO NOT FOLLOW ROBOTS.TXT"

This will make sure that you're not overloading the servers, that you're getting everything from the scrape and NOT just pages, and that you're not following the websites indexing bot rules for Googlebots. Basically you want to get the pages that the website tells Google not to index!

Okay, last section. This part is a little difficult so be sure to read carefully!

So when I first started trying to do this, I kept having an issue where I kept getting logged out. I worked for hours until I realized that it's because the scraper was clicking "log out' to scrape the information and logging itself out! I tried to exclude the link by simply adding it to an exclude list but then I realized that wasn't enough.

So instead, I decided to only download certain files.  So I'm going to show you how to do that. First I want to show you the two buttons over to the side. These will help you add rules. However, once you get good at this you'll be able to write your own by hand or copy and past a rule set that you like from a text file. That's what I did!

Here is my pre-written rule set. Basically this just tells the downloader that I want ALL images, I want any item that includes the following keyword, and the -* means that I want NOTHING ELSE. The 'attach' means that I'll get all .zip files and images that are attached since the website that I'm scraping has attachments with the word 'attach' in the URL.

It would probably be a good time to look at your website and find out what key words are important if you haven't already. You can base your rule set off of mine if you want!

WARNING: It is VERY important that you add -* at the END of the list or else it will basically ignore ALL of your rules. And anything added AFTER it will ALSO be ignored.

Good to go!

And you're scraping! I was using INSIMADULT as my test.

There are a few notes to keep in mind: This may take up to several days. You'll want to leave your computer on. Also, if you need to restart a scrape from a saved file, it still has to re-verify ALL of those links that it already downloaded. It's faster that starting from scratch but it still takes a while. It's better to just let it do it's thing all in one go.

Also, if you need to cancel a scrape but want all the data that is in the process of being added already then ONLY press cancel ONCE. If you press it twice it keeps all the temp files. Like I said, it's better to let it do its thing but if you need to stop it, only press cancel once. That way it can finish up the URLs already scanned before it closes.

[copperbadge]

I hope these questions aren’t offensive, you can just delete this ask if they are… Did it help you, mentally speaking, to be officially diagnosed as ADHD? Like, is it easier to know for a fact you’re neurodivergent and not just,,, weird? I’m pretty sure I’m autistic, and only undiagnosed because I’m a girl and I test well (my brother is autistic and has the same tendencies and reactions I do, but he got dx’d at 5), but on the other hand, what if I’m wrong? And I’m also a broke college student, so I’m kinda waffling on whether or not to actually pursue a doctor’s opinion, but I thought I’d ask your advice first, since you’re both a complete stranger and have gone through something similar

Anon, you sent this in SEPTEMBER, my apologies, it got pushed down a bit in my askbox.

The thing is...okay I'll talk about the psychological impact in a minute, but I also feel like it's the least relevant aspect, for me. Whatever a diagnosis did for my sense of self, what it also did was give me a document that impacts everything else in my life.

With a diagnosis I have access to medication that materially improves my condition (which is less the case with autism than with ADHD, admittedly). I have access, should I want it, to accommodations for my disability; those are imperfectly applied, you often have to fight hard to actually get them implemented, but especially as a student you would be given access to things like longer time periods for tests, study aids like audio recordings of your required reading, extra tutoring, pre-registration access to classes, etc. based on need.

This bleeds over into the mental health aspect a little, but I am also more confident in my research on ADHD because I have a medical doctor's opinion that yes I do indeed have it (and evidence of that from the efficacy of the medication).

In terms of whether it helped me mentally/emotionally...research is ongoing, I suppose. It didn't emotionally devastate me the way it did my mother, when she was diagnosed late with learning disabilities, but she came from a different generation and didn't grow up with a sibling who was diagnosed young, so she had different issues than I do. There is some bitterness about my late diagnosis, but that's situational, and I'm old enough to know how to work through/past it. I suppose it gives me more confidence in asking for informal accommodations -- recently at a party I asked someone if we could move rooms because I couldn't process what they were saying over the two conversations happening behind me -- but I was already pretty good at that. I'm having to re-examine some basic beliefs I held about who I am, but that's not a bad thing, just unpleasant to be in the middle of.

So now to the heart of it: "What if I'm wrong?"

First, almost nobody who self-diagnoses is whole-cloth wrong when it comes to neurodivergence. They might have the wrong diagnosis, or might not fully understand what's going on, but when that "Oh, I'm different" light flicks on, it's usually for a reason.

Second, okay, what if you are wrong? It's okay if you're just weird. You won't be punished for being Neurotypical-But-Weird any more than society was already punishing you, so you risk nothing in getting tested in that sense. You don't lose any ground, and you gain some self-knowledge. Might not be the self-knowledge you wanted, but it's not going to kill you.

True, there is the cost to consider, but as a student you should be able to go to the campus health center and at least get more advice on how testing would work, the costs etc. Your school's disability office, if they have one, may also have resources in that regard. It IS important to get adequately tested -- a lot of people miss a diagnosis because their evaluator's idea of testing was "asking combative questions and dismissing the answers" -- but more knowledge is always better than less.

The only downside to testing is that if you do get an official diagnosis, that can follow you for life -- earlier discussions I've had about this have brought up the fact that it can impact job placement, whether you're allowed to adopt or care for children, and other issues surrounding the way we punish people with disabilities for being disabled. A diagnosis of Autism can impact you legally. But I also think it's worth it to know and to have documentation that says you need accommodation.

I mean. This hasn't been the most fun process in the world, but I do think it's been one of the most important things I've done in my life. If you felt strongly about your self-diagnosis I'd say don't bother with the official, just live your life as if you had one, but it sounds like you have a lot of self-doubt -- so I'd work, as and how you're able, to lay that doubt to rest one way or another.

[kaiasky]

ok so there was would-you-kill-your-clone discourse going around right. and the thing i think you have to consider is like. people don't have clones. but what is the odds that you are the first person this ever happens to? now, if you work near a particle accelerator, cloning vat facility, or on a powerful leyline where you occasionally see signs of fae activity or something i think maybe the calculus changes a bit. But without an explanation like that, the question remains. why the fuck are you the first?? but so if u live in OUR world and then now suddenly you have a clone, you have to come to the conclusion that the government or some shadowy organization is coming to kill one of you.

(i thought about this a lot when maladaptive lucid dreaming was a big issue for me. and there specifically it's usually about gaining the ability to create infernal portals that one can teleport through. and let's be thankful there's no steam "hours played" for "thinking about how cool it'd be to teleport")

but the point is. if you suddenly have a clone and need to explain that with the context of our real world, it's very hard. because our world doesn't have clones in it, actually. so there's 3 options:

You're the first or only (unlikely!)

This happened to a lot of people just now in a 'mass cloning event'

This happens commonly, and a massive conspiracy is able to maintain perfect secrecy, either by killing you or preventing you from ever speaking to the outside world.

So one thought is, maybe if I solve this problem (kill my clone) for them(the shadowy organization that maintains the Veil), they'll let me go. but nobody goes online and talks about the crazy time they saw a perfect clone and then a shadowy organization showed up, saw the deed they had done, silently nodded and walked away. so probably you're fucked either way.

Second, I think you want to be careful googling "did anybody just meet their clone". *if* you lived in the world where clone secrecy could be maintained (and you do not, in reality, of course), this must be a thing that is monitored carefully. (do not search it)

SO you are going to need to work together and you're going to need to do something that no clone-pair has done before, ever since spontaneous clone generation started. you already have an advantage because many clones probably do not realize the threat, but surely some pairs have, and they didn't make it, so you aren't out of the woods yet.

i think one thing to consider is that maybe it will be impossible to survive the threat that the vague shadowy organization poses, but it may be possible to break the veil. document everything. post files on stuff like torrent that will be hard to remove. move swiftly but carefully.

this is of course. nonsense to plan about because you are planning about a thing that cannot happen and then reasoning from that impossibility about what the capabilities of your adversary must be. it's a divide by zero error. but whatever. the point is you can't kill your clone you need their help. also it'd be cool to teleport.

[thorne1435]

I have been on feminizing HRT for one year.

I mean, as I write this, the anniversary is about 5 days away, but I'm queuing it for the exact day, so you will be reading this on my anniversary at the earliest.

I feel the need to say something either to inspire other trans women to go get HRT (seriously go to Planned Parenthood they'll just give you hormones, no referrals. it's great. the informed consent model really saved my life), or to document my changes for pseudo-scientific purposes (this isn't a valid scientific source or anything, I just like to be open about it for information's sake). Either way, uh, let's talk about it!

This post isn't going to be strictly not-safe-for-work or anything, but because anatomical topics are often seen as NSFW, I would read this as if it's a smutfic, if I were you.

Obviously the first big change that everyone thinks of is breast development. I'm not gonna lie to you here, it's not like I got D cups, but I started at the age of 19 so it's not going to be phenomenal for me either way. With that knowledge in mind, I'd say I made out pretty well. I don't know exact sizing or anything, but it's noticeable to the point where I actually have to go out of my way to hide them when I am trying to present as a man around people I can't be out to. I can tell you that I was wearing a padded bra to pass better at work when they hadn't grown yet, and I'm at the point now where they are naturally the size that the (relatively dismal) padding had made them. So that's gotta mean something. I still don't have a lot of the vocabulary that a cis woman would have to describe these things yet, so uh...that's all I can do for you, as a description.

The first change that I noticed, though, was actually within the first week or so, which almost makes me think I hallucinated it, but I remember distinctly being shocked that my skin was already way softer and clearer, which is bizarre! I don't actually remember what it felt like before, but obviously I did at the time, and it was rougher, I remember that much. Not the case anymore! It's such a small detail that it can very quickly fade from your memory entirely, and that's kind of inspiring to me, even though I know it won't work that way for everything else, it's just nice that some parts of my boyhood are just gone forever (as long as i stay on the hormones).

The big change that might discourage some women from getting hormones is genital shrinking. And as I understand it there aren't many ways to avoid that, because suppressing testosterone just has that effect on the male body, but based on my early experiences with the reduced sex drive that is also present when you suppress testosterone, ask for Progesterone when you get started, because it helps a lot, especially with some of the more socially-inconvenient aspects of your hormonal change. There are also some T-blockers that supposedly don't have this issue, like for example Bicalutamide, but if you're going to get Bicalutamide, you're going to be on the standard, "years of referral and bureaucracy" tract, so...y'know, don't hold your breath on that one, it'll take you a long time. I'm fine now though. About a month after I added progesterone to my treatment plan I was back to normal sex drive and everything was fine. Of course, what I mean to say is that the shrinkage has stopped because of the return of my sex drive. It doesn't work that way for everybody, and I thought for sure it wouldn't work that way for me, but if you end up being like me, you could probably minimize the collateral by just asking for prog outright instead of waiting like I did.

Smaller change that makes me infinitely less suicidal and demoralized: my body hair has changed colors! That should be enough of a reason for every transfem to go out and get HRT right now, I mean it! It's so relieving. I remember when I was, like, "Officially Trans" (at least at work) but not on HRT, I used to get distracted by how my arms looked, especially when I was sitting in the sunlight and it was obvious, because the darkness of the hair felt so disgustingly masculine to me that it made me think I had no hope of ever passing as feminine to anyone. And obviously that was wrong: I was able to pass as feminine without hiding my arms at least once or twice before HRT (though to be fair I did not try often). But regardless of that, the fact that I don't spiral into anxiety and self-loathing every time I'm in the sunlight without a coat on anymore is probably the best change so far, all things considered. And I grew tits! So that's saying something, I think.

This body-hair change doesn't apply to my beard in quite the same way. I always had a really good beard as a man and a lot of people liked it and thought it looked great (I did not shave often enough I looked terrible, but I did kinda make it work I guess), it was a deep orange-red color which has now brightened out to that vague off-white blonde, pseudo-translucent color that your smaller peach fuzz hairs have. There are a lot of upsides to that, but there are some limitations to the effects. For example, even though I don't have to worry about stubble as much, when I don't shave it's still fairly noticeable if you're looking. The texture also hasn't changed, it's still very coarse. And this is a source of some dysphoria for me personally, because I don't like that I have a beard at all. Nothing to be done about that, of course, and I sort of think that's a "for good" thing? Even if I had the money for hair removal procedures a lot of them only work if you are pale-skinned and dark-haired, just for physical reasons. At least, last I checked. And while I am very pale-skinned I am not dark-haired. And, well...that's fine, it's whatever. It's fine...I'll just shave forever i guess its cool...its...its whatever... no its fine really im fine. its okay. im fine.

its fine.

Another good contender for "best change so far" is the mental and emotional change. I feel feelings now. I haven't done that in a long time. And it's kind of a rough transition to make, actually, because now I'm reacting very emotionally to things and I really haven't figured out how to cope yet. It's like I'm doing everything that I was doing before but now it's not a performance, it's just an actual innate response and honestly, it's really hard to control. I guess I'll have to work that one out over time. But I would take "Emotional" over "Dead inside" any day. I wish I'd done this sooner, for that reason alone.

Fat redistribution is a bit hard to measure because I've never really had much fat in the first place, but my coworkers told me that I was developing a more feminine silhouette, and that was about a month ago, maybe two? So, I guess what I'm saying here is that you should probably get a friend to look you over every month or so if you're really worried about this change, so they can tell you that you've developed child-bearing hips or whatever else you're looking for. This fat redistribution is supposed to apply to your face as well, and that's something that makes you look more feminine when you've been on HRT for a long time, supposedly. I find it really hard to notice, personally, because I always had a really thin face. And since I wore a thick full beard throughout all of my adolescence, I don't actually know what my old facial structure was, that well. I do think it's gotten thinner. But for me personally, I think that's made me look a little worse. Ya win some, ya lose some. Bitches be ugly sometimes, that's fine. beauty is subjective. It probably won't work that way for most anyone else, it's just I always had femboy-face. Too bad about my beard really, I could've tapped into a market there if I weren't so fucking hairy...anyway what were we talking about?

On the subject of hair, something has been happening to me that is not supposed to be happening according to a lot of the research I did before I sought HRT out. I'm noticing that small patches of my beard aren't growing at all, especially on the sides. I've also noticed similar effects on my leg-hair. That is, 100%, not supposed to happen. As I understand it, based on all the information I could find, HRT cannot undo changes. It can cause changes that haven't happened yet, but once something grows in, no matter what it is, it usually can't go away naturally. I'm not complaining. And, transgender HRT is a very sparsely-researched field as of yet, so maybe this is just something we don't know about, or something about my body chemistry in particular, IDK. I'm not a doctor.

Anyway, that's it. That's my little HRT anniversary journal. If I'm still on tumblr on 7/22/24, I guess I'll do this again. But I have no idea where I'll be in a year.

I hope this is insightful for someone. And I hope that when I look back on this, I either cringe or I cry. Because that means I'm growing up still. (see, that line? that's the one i'll cringe at.)