#ask us about our ideal world instead of the real world
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pisces placements rly are the most "you'll never know how i really feel about you" sign.......... the image we show u depends entirely on *you*. on how you treat us, how trustworthy we feel that u are.... we mirror ur energy back at u. if ur superficial and don't have any sort of emotional depth, neither will we. if all u talk about are ur emotional troubles and how sad u are, we'll be there to empathise and relate to u. you wouldn't know that we actually don't even like u. water is a reflective surface after all
#u can slander geminis all u want but pisces placements are the True sneaky chameleons who dont show u whats below their surface 😭#im definitely guilty of this myself but its not rly a bad thing . its just how we are#we dont often show our true selves bc ppl cant grasp our real personality#we change too often. we're too dreamy. we aren't part of reality. and ppl don't know how to react to that#so we hide that self of ours and only show u want u want to see#we need a lot of alone time to just detach from the world. and some ppl dont like that#we can appear very detached! but it doesnt mean that we are#ppl expect too much from us when all we want is to sit quietly and be stuck in our heads all day#no we dont want to go out. we dont want to talk about politics. we dont want to know about your grades. we dont care about trivial things#tell us about ur dreams...tell us what ur favourite songs are...show us ur true artistic side (everyone has one)#if u come into my dms to ask me about school and jobs and whatnot im swimming away asap#those arent real things in my life 😭 i have no answer to give u...and i dont want to come up with lies just so you'll accept our answer#am i making any sense??? idk#ask us about our ideal world instead of the real world#we don't like the real world
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been thinking it for a while but it is both an interesting and frightening thing to see more and more people in their 20s who are usually self-professed hard-leftist progressives get more and more into emotionally-driven, kneejerk 'takes' about how everything new to them is bad and evil and 'this generation' (usually people younger than them who they seem to base all their opinions on from some teens dumb tiktoks they see) is stupid and doomed and the world/'our culture' is constantly degenerating, etc. many of the people who think of themselves as radical leftists are coming out with more and more barely-formed, incoherent and emotionally-driven reactionary ideas, and respond to any criticism of these ideas with defensive appeals to disgust or a general sense of 'everyone just knows this is bad!', bypassing needing to think over their own ideas or articulate the reasons they hold them entirely in favor of reactive outrage.
it feels to me like were watching in real-time how many of us will progressively turn into reactionary liberals or right-wingers - something many of these people have observed in older people, in their parents, but believe will simply not happen to them on account of having good intentions and progressive views, which they think means they dont need to watch themselves for impulsive, reactionary thinking, and even that their kneejerk reaction to anything is automatically the correct one because they themselves are already inherently good. of course it starts with generally inconsequential takes, its not like saying 'the tiles are ugly' automatically makes you a right-winger, but i reckon the festering of such modes of thinking shows the cracks in the foundation of many peoples professed political and social beliefs.
point being, i think there certainly are discussions to be had about the ways architecture - both as a tool that serves a material need and a form of art - changes, and what we may be losing to capitalist priorities on that front, but if the only argument people are making are "its ugly and degenerates our once beautiful culture" and their defense to anyone addressing how that sounds ends at "well its still ugly!", im thinking that kind of reactionary opinion-forming is going to seep into other, more important matters sooner than they may think. sorry for the long ask!
yeah i mean i definitely don't think this is a new problem or a generational one, it's just liberal idealism, but yes this is exactly why this type of aesthetic discourse irritates me so much lol. like i've said this before in regards to clothing but aesthetic signifiers gain their meaning in a social context and conditionally. if your analysis is "it's ugly and therefore bad" you're not only attenuating an actual read of what's being signified and why, you're also just veering directly into the most boring ass "everything is worse now and change threatens me" conservatism. the idea that ugliness and beauty are not transhistorical or transcendental truths should ideally be like, a starting point to both questioning other socially mediated constructs and to then moving toward a theory of asethetics as products of social discourses and economic conditions but instead people just cannot ever fucking resist yelling about how much beige or concrete or whatever the fuck is "soulless" or "lacks artistry" agabshxhsg it's so fucking cornball. get over yourself
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The way that a person's individual experiences of diaspora into the West can color their interpretation of three Jedi's collective and individual responses to outsiders asking about their planet of origin.
Oh my god I just. This is going to be very American-immigrant of me but listen.
The inherent trauma of being raised as part of a diaspora population without a fixed, concentrated community in an area that strives to have you conform and assimilate, bleaching yourself of all cultural roots. The desperation to cling to a home, an origin, because of how untethered the average White person is, in places like the US and Canada and Australia, so if you have any knowledge of a Home Country you cling to it. That kneejerk "I am not one of you, I may pass as 'normal' but I am foreign, I am Other, I am not you" that exists for those of us who immigrated young but were raised in the Home Culture, inasmuch as our parents could manage.
Many Americans cannot fathom the idea of not taking pride in Where You Come From. So many are unmoored in that sense, and substitute pride in their City or State, with cultural histories that are so much shorter. So many can't process the idea that balancing Where You Come From with Where You Are as anything other than an act of survival in the face of violence, because for so many, that Pride In Cultural Background is something that was stripped away generations ago, willingly or not.
(I can't speak for all, especially not non-white folks, but I'm sure there are related-but-different takes.)
So the idea that the Jedi can prioritize "I am a Jedi" over "I am from This Specific Planet" and it not be an act of violence or survival is unfathomable to people who cling so strongly to things like... dna ancestry tests and the barest fragments of what they can collect.
And I'm obviously coming at this from the perspective of someone who loves the Jedi, who fully believes in their specific messages and ideals, who trusts that they do do their best to keep their members tethered to their home cultures (Ahsoka's hunt on Shili, Barriss and Luminara's tattoos, Depa's piercings), but that the Jedi still prioritize "I am a Jedi" as their culture.
But. I think that, a lot of the time, when I see a Jedi take offense to "okay, but where are you from?" questions in fic, it hits a weird button to me, because... there are definitely real-world communities for whom that's a hot-button question, an insult, an act of racism, of Othering. Whereas my experience has always been excitement to share that no, I'm not from here, thank you for asking. Thank you for noticing that my name is Not This.
Is it different for human Jedi than it is for twi'leks? For Jedi of the galactic majority instead of an oppressed class? To what extent does a fic writer's relationship with the experience of diaspora impact this aspect of the Jedi, and how they react to other's questions of their origins?
(Please engage in good faith and be polite, thank you.)
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Hey, I'm a big time fan of your blog and the circle of blogs similar to it. I love the pro-kink stuff, I love the support of transfun and the general concept that you can vibe with whatever gender and identity you want, I love the positivity, I love bringing attention to trans masc issues.
But I've been seeing some alarming dogwhistles lately. And I've been ignoring them because I really really want to just believe that they were unintentional. But with a recent post you reblogged, I have to ask you something - not out of discourse reasons or to paint you a specific way but because I want to decide what type of people I interact with on tumblr. If you decide to answer my question, please be incredibly clear. I'm not going to hide it behind vague terms like "certain kinks" or "problematic media", I am going to also be incredibly clear.
Do you genuinely believe that if we were in a society where fictional child porn and incest was the norm, that it would have no negative effects on our society as a whole? That media does not represent or change our cultural norms, that fiction can not be used as either propaganda nor as a way to help someone see things in a new light (for better or worse)?
Please be straightforward in your response. Even if it's just a yes or no.
that's a tough question. a quick but unnuanced answer is that I know the meanings behind these when I reblog them, and I do so because I agree with their general messages
the longer answer is... if these things were the norm then people would definitely be interacting with it differently than they do now I think. in some ways they already are somewhat normal, schoolgirl costumes and step-family roleplay come to mind.
ideally, in a world where these fantasies are completely normalized so is education on consent and safety. I don't think there's any real uncomplicated answer to it. but in the world we live in now, as long as things are labeled and not put into spaces where they're inappropriate, there's not really as much harm as some people just feeling uncomfortable
even if these things magically disappeared entirely (which they won't, and as someone with OCD I'd rather have them labeled than out in the wild), they still aren't the source of harm
I said it earlier, but I was groomed with the game tetris. under this framework of media causing harm, where do you go from there? it's a game about blocks, should we ban it and legos too for good measure?
sorry for talking so much when you wanted a short answer, but there's so much nuance here and I like explaining context instead of putting just a little bit of my thoughts out
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lore question: do you think laurence had good intentions when he brought the old blood to yharnam, or do you think it was entirely out of self interest?
I think, like with any compelling/relatable character, it's a mix of both.
(Caveat: the way I describe Laurence’s character here is mostly based on how I write him, since it requires the most engagement with lore while being thoughtful enough to build and shape a believable person with a compelling arc).
I think there’s a significant degree of sincerity and good intentions that drive him to bring the old blood to Yharnam. Based on the info we get in-game, the scourge does not manifest immediately, and the effects of the old blood are real and miraculous. (He also benefits personally from the effects of the blood in my headcanon, so in a sense he sees himself as proof, and denial of that is unjust and frustrating). He seems to believe it’s worth abandoning a career/life at Byrgenwerth and drawing the ire of his mentor to bring this into the world. But surely there’s bit of ego there too, a bit of “if you won’t do it, then I will.” Part of the way I interpret Laurence is through personal experience - I left academia right when my career should have kicked off. So when write him, I write from that point of view of realising now that I’ve left, I need to do something to prove myself - to prove this wasn’t a waste. I think the old blood is the ideal vehicle for personal ambition, too. It’s for the good of the people, but also his own reputation, his own need to be important, to have done something worthwhile, to prove Byrgenwerth wrong. Most of us who were at one time deeply entrenched in academia (professionally) can have a hard time seeing past it, and use it to measure our worth. When you leave, unless you have another kind of identity to latch on to, it’s easy to become unmoored.
But I’d argue the way he went about it - via the Church and the acquisition of political power, and the kind of Foucauldian control of the definition of healing and normalcy vs insight and/or madness, for example - all these are obviously coloured by a kind of pragmatic cruelty. I don’t think any of Laurence’s bad or heartless decisions (the ashen plague if you attribute it to the Church, or the horrors of the Orphanage) are couched in wanton cruelty - wanton cruelty is usually not very smart. They are strategic sacrifices he thinks are justified in the pursuit of his goals. I imagine when everything is going well it's easy to point to the blood’s benefits and say they outweigh the cost. But upon the emergence of the scourge I think he would find greater need to justify himself, rationalise his actions, even the worst ones, by the notion that if we can just fix the blood, get ascension to work properly, this will have been worth it. Rather than back off, he doubles down. To do otherwise would be to admit failure. To admit that the whole enterprise, and everything that props it up, is worth nothing.
Someone left a comment on my work once describing Laurence as “cruel in a way you'd not expect” which I really like. I think he’s much more interesting without this dichotomy of blatantly tyrannical vs entirely good-intentioned. It’s a question of circumstance, of which buttons can be pushed and which sacrifices can be made, and how to weigh the value of whole city, or a single person, against the goal of ascension/a cure for the scourge.
It’s also why I love thinking about the period where he starts to lose his grip on the situation, and begin to change; and why I write the Moon Deal going down as it did - another thing, perhaps the most critical one, that he thought he’d have control over - and instead that spirals out of his grasp, too, and he loses the thing he never really wanted to sacrifice in the first place. The shock of it, for a character so in control of the narrative, is irresistible.
anyway tldr I forgive him like the French forgive Napoleon. Ty for the ask! Here's a little recent holyvicar doodle.
#ask#bloodborne#lore#lore speculation based on the lived truth of my insanely petty graduate department#laurence the first vicar#ludwig the holy blade#Ive called him a charlatan but I think it's more nuanced than that#but he's still my favourite uppity ex-academic-turned-charlatan-turned-burning-deer babygirl
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[“I am not suggesting that either men or women adopt a stance of vulnerability sexually; I am not prescribing any particular sexual behaviours. I’m not interested in the labels of dominance, submission, top, bottom, fucking versus being fucked. I don’t believe that particular sexual acts denote vulnerability or strength; that would be to buy the line that fucking is active and being fucked is passive; as if the arrangement of our bodies tells us something categorical about our psychological stances, our vulnerabilities, our feelings; as if the binaries of active and passive are not used to divide the ranks into powerful masculine attributes and powerless feminine ones. I am talking here instead about a psychological and social acceptance of vulnerability, of all our capacity for injury, of the shared softness of us all.
Nor is any of this to deny the powerful erotics of mastery in sex – this stance’s potential for excitement, in any gender. What I’m suggesting is that, for all of us, whether we like it or not, part of our sexual pleasure is the way it shatters – as Bersani puts it – that mastery, and shatters the boundary between ourself and the other. And there may be important ethical mileage in that acknowledgement. What happens, as Anat Pick asks in Creaturely Poetics, when we take seriously the ramifications of being ‘oriented towards vulnerability as a universal mode of exposure?’
This should be our utopian horizon: a world where we give up the illusion that any of us have real, or total, power when it comes to pleasure and sex. Feminist author Lynne Segal has written that in sex, if we are lucky, ‘the great dichotomies slide away’ – the dichotomies of male and female, of giver and receiver, of active and passive, of self and other. Sociologist Catherine Waldby speaks of the ‘mutual reciprocity of destruction’ in sex, and poet Vicki Feaver evokes ‘our shared penis a glistening pillar sliding between us’. These are all images of dissolution, of exchange, of confusion and merging of identities, a softening of the stark association of receptivity with women and of activity with men. These images are freeing in some way – unlocking the rigidity of gender roles, allowing us each to partake of a wider repertoire of sensation and feeling, to claim more for ourselves and to allow more for the other, to use language to break experience further open. And in this abandon of ideals of mastery, we might all find greater pleasure.”]
katherine angel, from tomorrow the sex will be good again: women and desire in the age of consent, 2021
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Anon wrote: (Follow up to post 698753602168242176) Hello there! 23m INFJ here. I'd first like to say that I'm extremely grateful for your patience with my previous asks. The insight you provided into my stack–particularly around the theme of having a lack of integrity–has given me much to think about over these (almost two!) years. I want to ask for your insight on a roadblock I've encountered multiple times in the therapy I've been receiving over the past year.
In almost every single session, I come fully prepared: I rehearse a list of 'problem topics' to discuss with my therapist in-session, and try to mine as much insight as I can from them before I discuss. My therapist prefers an unstructured kind of approach, allowing me to form what the sessions look like, and I have preferred having a 'route' of scenarios that link together with common themes, just to ensure that I am effectively using my therapy time.
One issue I've ran into is that we often finish discussion of these topics with plenty of time to spare, leaving me a little lost for words. I believe I am a person who is good at improvising conversation, but in these moments in therapy I run into a complete standstill: my mind draws blank, I have zero perception of what has bothered me, and I am unable to produce anything 'meaningful' for our sessions.
A couple of times, I have asked my therapist: "Do you have any questions for me?" With which he always asks me the same questions: "Why are you here today? What do you need help with? What bothers you right now, in your day-to-day life?" These questions always, always catch me off-guard and I'm unable to answer. I have an extremely poor perception of myself, and usually feel nothing on a day-to-day basis. I try to explain this as best as I can to my therapist, to which he says he understands, but cannot help me if I am not providing a source of conflict/pain/discomfort to work with. This often leaves me extremely upset and frustrated, like I'm a lost cause or incapable of receiving help.
In recent sessions I've tried to be more freeform and less structured, and it does feel like it's helping. However, I do still have this fear that I'm approaching things completely wrong, like it's impossible for anyone to help me if I'm not even sure what I need help for. This lack of self-awareness is nauseating and I don't know how to fix it.
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Therapy isn't a performance or competition. It's not a place to get judged or judge yourself. It's not a test or exam that you have to prepare the right answers to pass. It's also not an exact science of rules to follow to the letter. Ideally, therapy is a safe space for you to explore freely and gradually raise self-awareness as you discover more about yourself.
Some aspects of the therapeutic process upset you and you stewed about them alone, perhaps because you are in the habit of keeping a tight leash on yourself and can't proceed unless you feel more in control of things. Many Js have a tendency to manage anxiety by imposing structure or control. In the real world, this tendency easily becomes a deeply ingrained habit because you regularly get rewarded for "having it together" or "being on top of things". However, in the therapy world, one of the main goals is to let feelings/emotions rise up and come out freely so that you can explore what they really mean. Therefore, the habit of being too controlled/controlling can work against you in therapy if it basically creates a dam that prevents the deeper parts of your psyche from flowing out.
This might be why approaching sessions in a less structured way is helpful, as you release yourself from the compulsion to control. It allows you to discover important things that you didn't realize needed to be explored. Instead of going off alone to stew about whatever upset you, why not express your feelings as they happen in real-time? Why ask me about it rather than the therapist? Whatever it is you need to happen or want to do, either allow it or communicate about it honestly. E.g. If you don't know what else to say and it starts to make you anxious, communicate your anxiety to the therapist. If the therapist asks questions that catch you off-guard or make you feel bad, then explore the negative feelings right then and there.
In my last response, I said: "If you are indeed INFJ, to get back on the right type development path requires you to confront and resolve the deeper emotional problems that have been festering." This means emotional intelligence is a key factor in your personal growth. It's important that you learn to welcome and embrace feelings/emotions as they come and process them as they exist in the present, rather than ruminating on them after the fact. This also ties in with the issue of integrity; it's hard to maintain integrity when you're not in touch with yourself and listening carefully to your emotional needs.
The habit of keeping feelings/emotions at bay or tightly under control is usually indicative of an underlying fear of them. As long as you fear looking within (or keep trying to obscure what's really happening because you don't like what you see/feel), therapy is going to seem slowgoing. Perhaps you think therapy should be revealing certain truths to you, but, actually, you should be the one revealing the truths. The therapist is only there to reflect your truths back to you with greater clarity. While the therapist has a genuine desire to help, it is an important part of their training to never work harder than the client. They only work with what you give them, so, if it seems as though there's not much happening, it's because you haven't revealed enough of yourself.
This brings us to the most important point of what's really stopping you from revealing yourself. You seem to have an issue with being self-critical. Self-critical people can't stand to look at themselves and they assume others will judge them similarly, which leads to feeling anxious or unsafe in social situations. Many people cope by getting into the habit of hiding all the aspects of themselves that are deemed "ugly" or "undesirable", which often includes all the negative feelings and emotions they don't want to experience. In the end, all that is visible is the mask they've chosen.
Until you can approach yourself with more kindness and compassion, the safety of hiding or obscuring the truth of yourself will always be too tempting. Perhaps self-compassion and self-expression are issues you can work on in therapy. Allow yourself to be human and "imperfect" and drop the facade of control, and then you might find that you have a lot more material to work with.
#infj#auxiliary fe#ti loop#emotional intelligence#social anxiety#self compassion#self esteem#self worth#control#perfectionism#therapy#psychology#ask
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More Dragalia Minor Details!
This time, quotes edition!
I think it's interesting how Leonidas and Phares both have a sort of speech pattern in their unit quote spread as well as their general dialogue.
Leonidas is the simpler one to explain, so I'll start with him. He utilizes a lot of 'Perhaps' in his quotes.
Ex, among his Gala and Summer alts, he says:
Perhaps I ought to make arrangements for the decisive battle that awaits.
My brother has acquired many useful pawns. His good-naturedness perhaps has merit.
Perhaps I'll go surfing.
Perhaps curry for supper?
Perhaps I will stop in at the cafe.
If I read into it, I might say it is a reflection on his focus on the future. Leonidas is always looking for paths to make his ideals reality, and how he acts in the present is all in fulfillment of his aims. As such, evaluating each action under how it might help said goals might be more on his mind (even when it comes to things like leisure, 'would my goals be hindered if I do so/could I accomplish something to further my aims if I did?'), leading to the overuse of perhaps.
In a broader sense, Leonidas tends to flip-flop verbally between simple, short sentences, rarely busting out the flowing complicated ones one might expect as the standard 'royal' speech patterns. Sometimes he compromises between the two worlds and throws complicated words into short sentences to get his mood across succinctly.
Here's what I mean.
Phares, meanwhile, has his own fixation on a word. Several, in fact. The biggest are 'must' and 'will', but in general sentiment, he has another tendency. It's a bit hard to describe, but while he is future-focused like Leonidas, he expresses it more in concrete terms of what to do, with no true 'deliberation' found in Leonidas' 'perhaps'.
Take these lines from his unit (emphasis mine as I try to illustrate):
My next experiment will be...
I must procure a book.
I must make record of this.
I swear to find a treatment for wyrmscale so the tragedy of our royal family is never repeated.
How many times have I envied Valyx's stoutness? I shall have to ask him for some training.
I should have died, but was kept alive. My task now is to show the meaning of that to the world.
I shall support you.
I will not let you die here!
I will investigate truth, and contribute to the people until the life granted to me is ended.
Hopefully this helps give an idea of what I mean. There's no real deliberation about his next action; he has already decided, and is dead-set on doing so unless and until it kills him. It's an interesting departure from Leonidas, since Leonidas himself is rather blunt and similarly dead-set at times but still hedges a lot more than Phares.
As for his general speaking style, Phares, whether using short or long sentences, more frames things in a bit of an atypical way than necessarily using complex words all the time. Like, instead of, 'no need to be formal / no need for formalities' he instead will say, 'there is no need for formalities among we fellows of science'. Don't get me wrong, he uses more complex/rarer words often, but they're not an absolute prerequisite to the atypical wording, if you get my drift.
Examples:
(Instead of 'it's okay' or other typical variations)
(Instead of 'don't worry')
To explain these tendencies, I'd simply line it up with his many brushes with death in the recent past. By the end of Phares' adventurer story, he's almost died an additional 2-3 times, and that's not counting his previous issues with wyrmscale and the Progenitor. He knows just how tenuous life is, and yet wishes to do so much in the future to capitalize on the many near-saves he's had. To him, he likely no longer has the luxury of indecision at all: what he wants (to live, to protect his family, the world, to learn more), he will manifest it through determination alone.
Heck, even his adventurer story ends on this, highlighting the 'will' tendency:
So yeah, when I noticed these two had a particular flair to their style of speech, I figured I'd write it down! Maybe I'll find something more for some of the other family members, but these two were the most glaring with the repetition.
#dragalia lost#dragalia#character analysis#It's kinda funny how in Phares' story Leonidas will go from one story outright yelling his name in all caps..to back to snarking as soon as#Phares wakes up and wonders if he's alive. “Unless I have suddenly gained the ability to speak with the dead... then yes.”#Ah. Siblings. Leonidas is still trying to pretend he's not fond of his siblings despite the fact that the next two in line are probably his#'most liked' overall since they grew up closer and he seems to tolerate them and their mutual ribbing more.#...I am definitely not biased to Phares. nope. not at all. Naturally this is why he's dead in one of my only other royal-fam centric fics.
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I think it's Extremely Relevant right now to talk about Skylanders' military propaganda [Edit].
I will not be graphic. But your further research on this... most likely will be, at least in a descriptive way.
A. Skylanders was created by Activision, the same company that made Call of Duty. Call of Duty (among others) is a game used to reel in youth for army recruitment. Just to picture what's the typical order of business for leaders at the company.
B. The whole idea of the Academy, ranks, "Us vs Them" mentality. "Light and order" vs "Darkness and anarchy". Regardless of your opinions on Anarchy as a system, darkness often equaling Kaos' workers such as trolls (and even gyps*es), and for Skylanders meaning dark skinned creatures, is pretty clear sign of their idea of evil.
[Edit: Light=Good and Darkness=Evil is not a universal experience. Multiple cultures consider it just as sacred, an equal, instead of an opposite to Light. Symbolically and Philosophically, there's more to it, beyond the typical eurocentric imaginary.
Speaking of eurocentric imaginary: to an uncritical consumer, this could potentially reinforce their ideas of good and evil. There is little wiggle room for these ideals to be challenged. They are exceptions of Skylanders' norm.]
C. Just in Superchargers, there are references to a Border being kept between Skylands and Outlands, High Volt being this "elite guard" that protects the border. Notice he looks like a riot police, in colors and gear- one of which is a riot shield. Protesting is a right, and in these parts of the world, it is often met with unhinged police violence. Regardless of your opinions on borders, the way such a thing is enforced in the USA is extremely violent. Even here in Puerto Rico, we have border patrol and constant surveillance (mostly aimed at keeping out our Dominican neighbors).
Do not get me started on the long history of Puertorrican oppression inflicted by USA Imperialism. (Agent Orange, Forced Sterilization, Vieques Occupation).
[Edit: Just... Copaganda in My video game? No, thank you. For ME, If I portray High Volt, I'd redesign and reinterpret him. He's like, a lightbulb. Perhaps he is part of a watch tower, but for other purposes].
D. Sorry, Nightfall here goes another problematic thing about you: Nightfall is dressed like a type of Navy admiral: A long coat with yellow buttons and yellow cord epaulets. She also has a vehicle called the Sea Shadow, referencing a real-life military ship designed for surveillance.
[Edit: Not every country has a military. And those who do have the biggest budget for it are typically using it as an imperial, colonial force. This is important, more so because Skylanders' target audience is the young eurocentric USAmerican. The parent company is Activision Blizzard, stationed in USA. The way other Skylanders talk about the Superchargers is like the Air Force are talked about by others in the army- they are the more "prestigious" ones with shiny new vehicles lmao].
E. The idea is that one can be a hero through this hard, thankless fighting... in another's land, "Securing" that land from the "evil ones". Sounds like Occupation and / or a Coup to me. Goes hand in hand with the point about Borders and Light vs Darkness.
[Edit: People. I am talking about this above with Manifest Destiny in mind. I am not claiming all the Skylanders are colonizers, lol! I'm saying there's way too many references to USA military propaganda to ignore. I ask you to use your own discernment / research to make your conclusions. There are things I didn't pick up.
I simply did Not appreciate Buzz telling Stormblade to do Psychological Warfare, or calling Glumshanks an "apple-polishing troll" when the guy just wanted to help. To me, this is not funny haha. It's funny like weird!]
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These are the things on top of my head I've wanted to talk about for a while, but now more than ever is pressing to bring it up and discuss with intent to move forward. Don't go "You're overreacting" Please don't tell me I don't know anything about something I experience every day. Also, don't put words in my mouth, thanks. You can visit this post if you have questions.
If you can help it, don't give Activision any more of your money, for example, buying their newer games. Buy second hand.
Avoid spending at companies like Airbnb (which not just supports settlers but directly worsens my country's housing crisis), Apple, Hp, Motorola, McDonald's, Starbucks, Coca Cola, Mars chocolate, Nestle are a few others that dont have a clean track record. Get familiar with modern-day imperialist interest around you on your own, or with friends.
👋[If your knee-jerk reaction to this is to hate me perhaps inspect why that is? I'm not a big influential blog. Why you threatened? I can't force you or bully you to do anything, I'm just making my opinions known].
#skylanders#skylanders superchargers#skylanders roh#skylanders ring of heroes#skylanders nightfall#skylanders high volt#Activision#Toys to life#Text post#contains gif#gif
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Biblical opinion that no one asked for but I've always thought it was pretty clear that the Adam and Eve story is meant to be an allegory. If you release yourself from the chains of examining the Bible as an attempt at fact to be proved or disproved and simply read it like you would any other story, I think there's some pretty interesting themes to explore. Personally I believe the Adam and Eve story is an ancient myth meant to explain that God (/the Creator/the Universe/whatever you want to call it) wanted their creations to have free will. This answers many common complaints about the story:
Why would God put the tree there at all? It wasn't meant to be a real tree, it symbolizes the spark of humanity and the spiritual conscience that is only gained if a being has self awareness and free will. Without that knowledge, we would have been infants or animals all our lives, and the creator didn't want that.
Why would God allow the devil into the garden? Again, he didn't, because it's a metaphor. The snake (which is never textually mentioned as being the devil) symbolizes the dark side that is gained by consuming the fruit. In other words, the ability to do evil, which isn't something an infant or an animal has. It's the voice in our heads that guides us towards wrongdoing, but it's a necessary voice to allow for free will. It shows how humanity, given even the most ideal circumstances, would not be humanity if they didn't sometimes give in to this voice.
Why was it Eve that gave in first? This has been construed in a very misogynistic way in the past, but there's a lot of ways to interpret this action. I think one could argue that Eve being the one to bring free will to humanity symbolizes motherhood, as her proverbially giving birth to humanity's consciousness. It could also be meant to portray women as being more attuned to spiritual forces. I think it's interesting to note the similarities between Eve and the Greek Pandora, because they seem like two different versions of ostensibly the same story.
Why did God punish them and kick them out of the Garden of Eden if he let them eat the fruit on purpose? This symbolizes that a utopia like Eden is not achieveable, because we are flawed by free will and we will always wreck it. God took away our chance at utopia, and gave us our human nature instead.
Then why even give us free will? Why not let us enjoy a utopia? Shit man, I don't know. I'm just examining the themes of the story. I would guess that the people who first told those stories knew that humanity couldn't achieve utopian society and used stories to explain why it was impossible.
I have absolutely no idea where my personal beliefs on any of this rest, but I think we do the Bible a disservice when we refuse to engage with it as a historical text. It's a pretty remarkable book. Once you let go of trying to r/atheism your way through the stories and just enjoy them as stories, you will find so many interesting things to think about. Like any mythology or folklore, the old testament is a collection of stories that were passed around, some true, some false, some in between, but all shared over centuries because they gave their listeners some deeper meaning to the world around them.
#i could make about fifteen more of these posts i could talk about the bible for a long time#christianity#religion#the bible#mythology#folk tales#anthropology#history
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I don't have a therapist right now so Tumblr is getting all of my thoughts...
I just got hired for what honestly feels like a dream summer position, and it's a big deal for me because I have struggled majorly with employment in the past. Getting through a job interview while autistic is pretty much a special form of hell. So now that I've succeeded I'm really proud of myself for working hard at getting better at something that's difficult for me. It feels like I won at this game finally.
But it also is kind of, like, still shitty. So I struggled in a system that is unaccommodating to me, failed multiple times and took some big hits to my self confidence, but after working really hard I overcame those difficulties to Win At Capitalism? Is that really something to celebrate?
It's like the "disabled person is so determined and inspirational that they navigate inaccessible environments through the force of their will" narrative.
There's just something that rubs me the wrong way about congratulating myself for succeeding in a job interview, as opposed to, you know, living a life that's free of the need to participate in job interviews. In a world that is actually ideal, we wouldn't need to kill ourselves developing interview skills just to survive in our society's economic system.
I did utilize accommodations for my interviews that made a huge, huge impact in my success. So I guess my own argument isn't perfect, because I did modify the situation in some ways, instead of muscling through the completely traditional interview format.
Asking for the questions in advance changed the game for me. So far, I have asked for questions in advance prior to three job interviews, and none of the employers questioned me or refused to send them. So I was able to prepare answers to the questions before the interview and even practice speaking through them out loud. I can get tongue-tied if I'm trying to speak off-the-cuff, so doing this basically allowed me to articulate an accurate impression of my skills.
In the interview for the job that I got hired for, they told me that I'm able to use visual aids if I want, so I actually prepared a slideshow to screenshare during the interview. I had my qualifications on the slides so there was no way I'd mess up telling the employer about them. It was great to have an aid on the screen for me to follow along with as I talked, and it also demonstrated that I had prepared for the interview.
Since most of my mutuals on here are also neurodivergent, I'm curious if you have thoughts. Have you figured out ways to succeed at interviews? Or not? What has helped you the most? What's your mindset around conforming to expectations and trying to train yourself to perform well? (I'm also a little bit curious just because I'm finishing up a research project about this exact topic, because I always end up centering my research around the stuff that is bothering me in my real life, lol).
#frances's thoughts#employment#job interviews#autism#sigh.....#but i'm so excited for the job not even gonna lie
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Soas not to hijack this lovely post about Ruby's manipulation...
This goes back to the generic-fandom tendency to see absolutist truth in the mouths of villains instead of a layer of truth or an unflattering reflection of a character's hidden anxiety.
The villains so often chisel out the most uncharitable, two-dimensional explanation of a situation, and even utilize an underlying hang-up, like Sam's issues about feeling like a poverty-stricken, podunk outsider, "a freak."
And the thing is, sometimes the villain's interpretation is just flat-out wrong!
///
Other times, it's a flattening of multiple complex, sometimes competing, truths, like how AU Michael acknowledges Dean's probably-real, underlying issues
of feeling like Sam is a burden who abandons him
that Jack is a burden he didn't ask for
that Cas is someone he owes everything to but who also hides things and makes mistakes over and over
But those are just a tiny portion of what Dean feels, and so you get this messed up, black-and-white, face-value interpretation of a situation.
Everyone has fleeting feelings of negativity. Sometimes, we even have drawn-out pity parties and languish in our worst thoughts. Sometimes, we all long for escape and easier lives, and that includes the love and work we put in to maintain our cherished relationships. We wish it could be easier, or that we could get away from it all.
But the thing is, we know Dean wasn't happier when it was just him and John, and extrapolating that, we know he was indeed grief-stricken by Jack's death and he does indeed want Castiel around just as much as he is grateful for his heroics and frustrated by their past baggage.
Real relationships have baggage. This is a theme that optimism and Amara's idealization of her nursery warn us about! We are supposed to beware of this kind of figmentary Apple White Romanticization/White Picket Fence Idealization.
Anyhoo...
///
Ruby uses insecurity to great effect. She plays Sam, disrespects Sam, and puffs up her plans as the right ones.
///
So does Zachariah, throughout his entire tenure.
We got our vintage, classist Zach, who showed Dean a world where not protecting Sam led to a devil-incarnate-Sam. And the other half of this nightmare scenario is the degradation of Cas, that staying with Cas would literally turn him into a performing!Dean 2.0 to the power of ten.
This never never happened, because it was a reflection of Dean's fear. In fact, when Cas broke bad, he broke bad in his own unique, tyrannical Chuck-adjacent way, not Dean's mode of fatalism. He never even saw it coming the way that it came!
///
We also saw Zach turn his shit on Adam, hurling classist stereotypes about his half-brothers and trying to demean them in such a way as to get Adam to lose hope in them and in their hope of rescuing him.
///
Then, we got the cruel, torturous Good Intentions AU version of Zach:
JACK: What about Sam and Dean?
ZACH!CASTIEL: Well, if only they’d accepted you, instead of teaching you to fear your powers.
JACK: My powers…
ZACH!CASTIEL: Because they feared them. Now, if you’ll just do as I say—
We know that Sam, Dean, and Jack's powers is more complicated than simple fear, though fear is an undeniable layer of it!
///
Anyhoo. This tension.
It's why characters like AU Michael and season 15's Belphegor do what they do!
You're supposed to wonder, "Hey, wait a minute. That's not the full scope of the situation here, is it? That's not how life is. Life is waaaaay more complex. My feelings are letting me see the absolute worst of the situation!"
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Romance Club week festivities with interviews from our favorite authors, technical designers, artists and the boss Vlad...
📣Stay tuned upcoming interview with Arina (Theodora & W: Time Catcher) and the boss project manager Vlad...
First we'll start with Wincy Wong author of Heart of Trespia and Soulless
Greetings, dear Wincy! Today your favorite Romance Club turns 6 years old, and you are already celebrating your 3rd birthday with us. How are you feeling on this beautiful day?
Answer: Happy 6th Birthday! I can't believe I've been working at the Romance Club for 3 years and writing my second story! I am truly grateful for the passion and love with which you support us and our stories! Thank you for making our community so special!
We would like to ask you some interesting questions :)
1. How do you approach creating technical specifications for cut-scene artists? How do you decide where and when a cut scene is needed? Do you immediately imagine what you want to see or do you first look for a picture?
A: I think the ideal time for a cutscene is when a costly choice is being made, but sometimes I favor my favorite moments in updates.
2. What century would you like to find yourself in if you were the heroine of a visual novel and in what setting and genre?
Answer: This is a difficult question. From a writer's perspective, I love them all, just as I love writing fantasy, but I wouldn't want to live in a historical period with tyrant rulers and no flush toilets. Although, if I really had to choose, I would choose the Tang Dynasty during the reign of Emperor Taizong.
3. Has there ever been a time when you wanted to write a scene and the character took you down a completely different path, refusing to give in to the original idea?
Answer: Several times. The first one that comes to mind is Christina, Reinhold's childhood friend. I planned for her to be much more jealous, but when I got to this scene, I felt sorry for her because Reinhold would never reciprocate her feelings. So I abandoned the idea of her conspiring with her mother, instead placing all the blame for Ellaire's poisoning on the evil old witch.
4. Were there any scenes in Heart of Trespia that never made it into the plot for a variety of reasons? If there are any, could you briefly tell us about it?
A: There weren't many possible scenes included in the story, mostly due to character development or new plot twists that changed the course of the story. I can say that there is a secret ending for Wyatt, which I planned for a long time, but in the end it turned out to be inaccessible to the players. There's even a sketch of a diary. This ending requires Wyatt to go through a bad breakup with Ellaire, but there are enough improvements with him that he is able to survive the war. It seems to me that no one has yet managed to unlock this ending.
5. Knowing your approach to developing stories, you probably have drawn a map and thought out the political structure of the world, the types of magic used in it. Could you tell us more about the world order in Soulless?
Answer: “Soulless”, unlike “Heart of Trespia”, is an ordinary fantasy. Silverport is a fictional city based on Chicago. Besides adding some real world elements, much of the lore of this story is centered on supernatural elements such as Vincent's magic, the powers of various demons, etc. In terms of hierarchy, I'd say Trexio/Trexia is what you'd call the "supreme" demonic presence in Silverport, and Vincent acts as an accompanying force that is more like the administrative authorities in our world, maintaining order and not truly interfering in our daily lives unless we give them a reason to. The Vixaria, after all, is just “one of us” trying to navigate a fast-paced world with no major strings attached other than not killing people.
6. Who proposed the idea of introducing such new features into “Soulless” as choosing love preferences, stat tips, different descriptions of romantic scenes - you or the management?
Answer: Including selection hints was the team's idea. I suggested other ideas, and we worked together to implement them. I've been wanting "thought clouds" ever since I wrote ST! You have no idea how excited I am to finally see all those cute little clouds showing off Vixaria's evil thoughts with her smug grin.
7. Surely many will be interested to know, including us, how long in the story of “Soulless” it will be possible to carry on parallel love lines? And will this affect the relationship with the finally chosen character in the future?
Answer: Honestly, I don't have a definitive answer to this question right now, but I think you won't have to choose until at least the middle of the second season. Until then, I'll try not to punish players for exploring different paths, but I can't promise anything just yet.
✅Favorites in full size/Characters in full size:
8. Finally, what would you wish to the Romance Club team on this day?
Answer: I wish that the Romance Club continues to expand throughout the world! Our stories are too beautiful not to be known in all corners of the world.
Thank you for your time! We congratulate you and your entire YSI team on the birthday of your favorite application! And we wish you all inspiration, stunning ideas and prosperity.
Wincy also shared with us the sketch and Wyatt’s original version. Wincy also shared with us a sketch and the initial version of Wyatt.
Source: Wincy's fantasy world | Soulless | ST | RC
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What were your thoughts on how the Saitns were revealed to be real in the Nikolai series? Considering that, before then, the powers of grisha were called "small science", the supernatural seemed odd to me.
Hi, thanks for you question!
This is definitely an interesting one, I'm afraid I don't have the King of Scars duology on audiobook so it's a while since I read them (I usually do my rereads with audio rather than physical) however I do remember thinking about this at the time. I think that a big aspect of this is that Grisha found the need to rationalise and try to explain their power to otkazats'ya people to reduce persecution; look at the difference between Fjerda, where Grisha power is seen as demonic magic, and Ravka, where it's seen as a form progression. Our easy go-to inbetween is Kerch, a country caught between a strong cultural superstition and a very desperate desire to remain at the forefront of global development and cement its position in the global economy (I have lots of worldbuilding thoughts here but that's probably for another time); here, grisha power is not seen as magic or as evil, and they look on Fjerda as backwards for this view, but it isn't seen as something progressive either - it's seen as an exploitable resource, at the price of those how carry it. If this is the situation of the three most powerful countries in the world when Grisha power has been rationalised and presented in terms that otkazats'ya should be able to comprehend and accept, then Grisha would be even worse off in a world where there was no understanding whatsoever of their ability as anything other than magic.
I hope I'm making sense. I'm trying to say that ideally Grisha power would never have been labelled as 'small science', but embraced instead as what it was in ancient times. This concept didn't come from nowhere; early Grisha are rarely specified in orders and are described with many different capabilities (such as the Saints when Nina says some people in Ravka have stopped thinking of them as miracle workers and started thinking of them as acts of Grisha), and some characters (such as Jesper's mother Aditi) never have their order revealed to us. Although in Aditi's case we can assume she was an Alkemi from the descriptions of her power, she also makes "bread rise just by looking at it" which doesn't necessarily fit any order's typical description and only ever called herself "zowa". If it weren't for the need to define power as something scientific and palpable instead of an almost ineffable force is the only reason that Grisha power was ever called "the small science" instead of magic. If it were magic and Grisha weren't capable of channelling the kind of power that the Saints had or that Zoya learns, then they would be even weaker than they already are; because of the state of their world, it's only safe to have 'magic' when you can use it to protect yourself.
I hope this made sense, thanks for your question and sorry it took so long to answer it. A note for everyone else with asks in my inbox right now, I promise I am slowly working through them and please don't hesitate to end me more I love getting them
#grishaverse#leigh bardugo#six of crows#crooked kingdom#inej ghafa#nina zenik#kaz brekker#jesper fahey#wylan van eck#kanej#wesper#helnik#matthias helvar#soc meta#soc analyst#six of crows analysis#six of crows meta#crooked kingdom meta#fantasy books#fantasy analysis
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Anonymous asked: If vergess is willing to answer I’ve been wondering what Zionism even is I keep hearing conflicting definitions
The reason you're hearing conflicting definitions is, there's two definitions you'll hear in general conversation.
Okay, so like 150 years ago (late 1800s), a guy was like, "Ahem, ahem. While we're inventing nationalism all over europe, I notice that Jews are constantly left out of national identities. What if, since y'all shitheads refure to acknowledge our humanity and shared history in Europe and elsewhere in the world, considering us to be middle eastern immigrants regardless of how long we've lived among you as your neighbors. So!! What if we made a Jewish National State where Jews could live peacefully as a politically influential block, ideally in the Jewish homeland to which we are indigenous, ie, Palestine."
From this, came two very different conclusions.
Most Jews will define Zionism as the Jewish right to self-determination in the Jewish homeland. Which is a fancy way of saying, "there's exactly one place on earth y'all will let Jews live, so let us fucking LIVE there instead of being executed en masse by the Christian European Bootheel."
Of course, one should always remember that while some pre existing tensions were capitalized upon, this remains a case of two indigenous groups (Jews, Palestinians) pitted against each other by colonial powers looking to expel one and hope we would both exterminate each other after other methods of eliminating us had failed.
Anyway.
Most gentiles will define zionism as Jewish Nationalism, and they'll say it in the same tone they say nationalist socialism out of fucking spite, because the concept of an indigenous group repatriating to their homeland is somehow indistinguishable from colonizers destroying indigenous populations.
The problem, of course, is that the Israeli Government uses colonizer techniques like "the enemy is both weak and strong" and "kill all their children" etc, and they use them against other indigenous groups, which very, very much makes it look like the second, shittier definition is "the real one."
However, it's important to remember that just because the Israeli government is doing a genocide or six, that doesn't mean the people in Israel, be they of middle eastern or global descent, are to blame.
Zionism is about the right of the people to self determine.
It is misused by propagandistic elements in the Israeli government to justify huge levels of violence, in a way directly copied from the US's use of racial propaganda.
Which means it's especially effective at confusing and muddying American conversations.
So, to put it another way:
If you want to remain ideologically consistent, and you hate "zionism" you must also hate all other nationalist movements, including and especially, nationalist movements focused on re-empowering and re-homing indigenous peoples.
Just because Israel's government is genocidal does not make all Jews who believe in the right to one day return home safely are also evil.
I hope that clarified things! If not, I am turning anon back on for a few days so you can ask followup questions directly.
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Slaps Lyney: this boy can fit so many issues
I feel like the fandom has already started the Lyney flanderization, and that's ok and all, it's just the way fandom works, but I'm obsessed with this guy and about to make it everyone else problem
(Disclaimer it has been not long since Lyney has come out I'm connecting the points yet. I will probably look at this in a year and want to strange myself. I just wanna talk about the boy)
The first and biggest misscharacterization I keep seeing is people believing he is so flirty and charming around Traveler because he has a crush. And I mean probably this is Genshin "date sim" Impact we are talking about, but that's not all of it
Lyney is a extremely guarded and fake person. He projects a version of himself that doesn't actually exists, because he feels like he has to be charming, he needs to be. If people don't like him, if he doesn't make himself a part of their lives, then they will leave him, ignore him, and he can't take that
(From his character stories)
He also seems to hate being an inconvenient with a passion. Instead of asking for help or just talking about his feelings, he masks. He acts like his flirty, confident self and acts very hard
And this goes back to the flirting and the spectacle. I think he genuinely enjoys it, and it's something that he does by choice. But. I think it's also like 75% part of his facade
It's mentioned multiple times, by his sister or by himself, that he is actually not that outgoing of a person. He actually seems to almost completely drop it when he is serious. I genuinely believe he is a pretty insecure person. He just can't let that show, because that's against what people expect from him, so he lies. Or just avoids saying anything. Not even his siblings are safe from that, or at least from him trying to
So, to put it into perspective, Traveler is someone who Lyney wanted to be friends with. He went there, and everything was going amazingly. He probably was acting even less guarded than usual!And then someone dies.
Now, all this trust he cares about so much he had been building with the traveler is gone. Now, his little white lies have been discovered. His tower of lies have been struck by the God of Justice like the Babel tower, and now he has to live the consequences of almost reaching heaven
You have to understand, if there's something Lyney seems to care about, its loyalty. He cares so, so much for his "family", and for as little as he knew the Traveler, you were his friend. So he feels guilty, and desperate, and he just wants you to understand him and not leave him. To not look at his real self and find it lacking
So he tells you a truth. He starts waxing poetry about his (honestly disturbing) backstory, and how he came to be the person he is now, how no matter how much he lies and how much he acts in behalf of the House, he is honest to his own ideals. He wants you to understand
And after the Traveler (understandable reaction I love Lyney a lot but this was honestly just in character for they considering he has outed himself as a lying liar) cold and ambiguous reaction, the story quest comes
Honestly its difficult to understand where exactly they stand to each other during it thanks to the Traveler usual silence, but it seems like it's still kinda awkward. Actually, Lyney starts the story quest just lying to our face about the Weasel Thief. But he seems like he wants us to follow him in this deeply personal quest for revenge
He wants us, in a way, to see through his deflections and see his truth
So, when the final act comes, and is time to pay the debt, he wants us as his witnesses. He wants us to see something deeply personal, a side of himself he just doesn't show. This isn't charismatic and flirty Lyney, this is the Lyney that will go to unimaginable lengths for the people he cares about, the Lyney that lies and is cold at times and say things like "Your freedom will cost you dearly. From now on, you'll be all alone in a world full of lies and falsehoods. I do hope you'll be able to bear it — you've still got a long life ahead of you, after all.". A part of him that's also part of his whole
But that's also not all. He is also capable of good things, of miracles, of giving people joy. And that's what he does right after. He cherished the people he cared about, and made people happy on their behalf, and that's as much part of his truth. He may be a liar, but he can use that to entertain, to help, to protect. And that's what we see right after
In the cementery, right after explaining everything to you, he has to be incredibly raw and vulnerable. So the last side of him shows. Might be a lie, a mask, but that mask is the one he wears and therefore as important
Honestly this started as an attempt to a character study and ended as a absolute mess of a too long ramble. So without any last words or flair, I will have to end here
#lyney#genshin impact#genshin impact spoilers#first post by the way why I do this to myself#anyway if anyone actually reads this whole. thing. i want all of you to understand it's 4AM and I'm not in my right mind#i completely stopped caring about sorces like halfway through#right now I have like 20 screenshots of the wiki
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