People really do always act like gratitude is the counter to depression, but like... no

I just found myself feeling really grateful that I have running water, and a sewer network to take all my dirty water away, and that someone cleans that water, that someone laid all this infrastructure and that people operate it still making my life so much easier

I'm grateful for catfood and I'm grateful for electricity and the internet letting me come on here and share my dumb thoughts with people. There's so many things that are good and helpful in the world that makes things better for me

...still depressed, still as of this very moment want to die. Been wanting to die all day, just haven't really had a good reason to mention it, unless I already did and forgot

Still feel like it's just putting it off every day I don't take care of this. Gonna have to at some point

So yeah, get real tired of anytime someone tries to sell gratitude as the counter to depression. It can help when you're feeling a bit gloomy, but honestly you can think that everything around you is wonderful stuff and still want to die

I'm a student about to start my second year, and me and all my friends are really nervous. It feels like first year was really rough for everyone all over the place and we're all really hoping for a better second year this year! Have lecturers been noticing that too? Do you think it's because of COVID?

Oh my god yes. Jesus yes. It's absolutely the covid effect, and we're expecting to see the disruption for the next five or so years, tbh - the current 18-21 year old undergrads went through the most important years of high school during a lockdown. That not only interrupted academic development (home schooling during a time of stress, massive disruption to exams and exam-taking skills, etc), it also enormously hit emotional development (mid to late teens have the highest socialising needs of the human lifespan, and no one could meet and interact with each other.) And that latter point is having a much bigger effect than the former.

Current undergrads haven't been able to develop the same resilience, the same approach to andragogic education, the same interpersonal skills for dealing with lecturers/fellow students. University is not like school; in school teachers are giving you the knowledge, and gradually encouraging you to try and use it to formulate your own opinions. In university, we're supposed to give you the framework to then go out and do you own research. The bulk of your education comes from you, not us; we're more like facilitators.

But, we're noticing that there's a far bigger skew now towards needing to get the answer right. Anxiety is higher, and so the fear of being wrong is much more crippling for these students, and that in turn means they're less willing/able to take charge of their own education and are more passive with it, wanting to just be fed the right answers so they can rote learn them and get the Good mark. And the disconnect between that and the reality of what lecturers are expecting is pretty big, it turns out, and is causing even more anxiety and stress. Record numbers of my students have started asking me to give their assignment drafts a quick look over, just to see if they're on the right track. Which, you know, I'm more than happy to do; but I do think it's a notable pattern change from three or four years ago.

If you're worrying on a personal level though, Anon, I have some Handy Tips if they're any use!

Remember: the idea of uni is that you are doing your own research and learning on the topics your lecturers describe. They're giving you the basics, but they're expecting you to look up examples, case studies, other research papers, etc. They want to see analysis. That's what gets you the good marks. If you simply describe the information you got in lectures and don't add anything, you'll struggle to rise out of a basic pass.

What's the fundamental point of your particular course? It's important to know this, because it'll tell you how to focus your assessments and exam answers. Just within the environmental sector, you could have Environmental Science (focus: academic exploration and research), Environmental Conservation (focus: applying the academic research to actual management and solutions), Environmental Impacts (focus: philosophy and ethics), etc. In all three, you might be given a paper about the latest IPCC report, but in the first you would focus on exploring all the research papers that formed the conclusion on climate change, in the second you'd focus on case studies around the world and the applicability/feasibility of the shared economic pathways that are going to fix the problem, and in the third you'd focus on the human impacts of both the problem and the proposed solutions. You may of course include elements of all of those, but your main focus should be chosen appropriately.

Keep your notes with copies of the lecture slides in nice ordered folders. Keep a bulleted list of the topics covered in each. This makes it far easier to go and double check the right info when you're stressed out

On that note, the best note-taking system is to add notes/comments to the lecture slides where you record clarifications and things the lecturer said (INCLUDING CASE STUDIES). Don't bother duplicating effort by writing what's on the slide.

I truly do know this is easier said than done, but don't leave your assignments until the last minute. Are you struggling with motivation? You need a study group. You need to body double.

And finally, the biggest: CONTACT STUDENT SUPPORT IF YOU ARE STRUGGLING. Every time I go to an exam board and we get to a student who has failed stuff, the first question the Academic Office asks is "Has this student been working with Student Support?" Even if they aren't that helpful in your uni, working with them means they know about the things you're struggling with, and that you've clearly been trying to work around the problems. That makes the Academic Office far, far more likely to take a lenient view of a student, rather than going "Well, clearly they just don't care then, withdraw them from the program." Your Student Support should be able to help you with counselling, study buddies, a support worker that can help you organise your time and interpret your assignment briefs correctly and give you interim deadlines, etc.

Oh, and remember to schedule in rest and downtime, just as much as study time.

And... honestly, you learned a lot in your first year. The learning curve is less steep in second year, even accounting for the academic rigour increasing. By now, you're basically used to things like referencing, routines, assignment formatting, etc. There are no more surprises, really. Now's the point you can get the bit between your teeth and run.

Anyway: good luck! And enjoy it as much as you can. University is hard, no doubt about that, but it can and should be fun as well.

I think the thing that makes me sometimes "doubt" Byler endgame is how the writers seem to treat Will in the narrative by either making him nonexistent, sidelined and unimportant overall with often minimum screentime. Idk. A lot of ppl tried to explain why it was necessary for him to be sidelined but that resulted in the audience thinking that Byler has no chance of becoming canon and that Will is just a useless background character. Add the monologue moment in S4 and Mike constantly talking about all in S4, how do you explain the duffers will make the narrative fit in what they have showed so far in the show? Most ppl will think Byler came out of nowhere and if Will gets a huge moment regarding fixing/saving the world ppl will think it came out of blue and there was no buildup. It takes really pains to prove Will's importance and Mike's love for Will. And not sure if the writers will manage that.

—so I’ve answered some version of this kind of doubt several times on this blog before, so I’m going to direct you to those posts, so as not to reinvent the wheel:

Will's Taking a Backseat in S3 + Dustin companion piece

The Duffers, Show v Tell, and people missing subtext

The Duffers Aren't Writing "Casual TV"...they're writing for themselves and people like them

Why people assume ST is written poorly (like other shows)

General Audiences, Media Literary, and "Catching" Byler

Why I Don't Understand "Duffer Doubt"

On: "Objective" Byler (and ST) Commentary

The Duffers, the "GA," and how your value system affects how you go about interpreting (or missing things in) media

Mike & Will's 3 season arc (and how it fits in the wider narrative)

On: M&R being "2 Straight White Guys" writing a queer story

+ a cut for more thoughts about how Will really wasn't all that sidelined lmao

That said: if I’m honest, I fundamentally disagree with the premise that the duffers somehow need to “make the narrative of Will fit into s5,” as though he hasn’t been integral to the Hawkins connection to the UD since literally day one.

That, combined with the fact that he was barely even in season one outside of flashbacks (and yet still managed to carry all of S2) + hasn’t really been sidelined at all if you know how to read emotional beats and not just “action” ones? Like, sure, him not being front and center was true in S3, but given that he is the center of all of Mike’s emotional decisions across all of S4 and is now quite literally holding the “main relationship” (which it’s not, but we’ll let that go) together…saying he’s not central to what’s to come given his active connection to El, Mike, every single Byers, the rest of the Party and now Henry/Vecna as we file back into Hawkins is insane.

IMO, the real problem (and at the risk of sounding like every byler critic on the internet) is that the show is made of an ensemble cast who have all had their rounds in the spotlight over the seasons…which means that Will is not going to always be at the fore front of the action, because this is not The Will Show and not every season is written with his story as its primary narrative core. That said, if you are paying attention to the emotional and even supernatural beats of the show, you can clearly see where they’ve set Will up to hold an important and even critical role in the final season—

—especially given that characters like Henry and Vecna didn’t even technically exist 2 seasons ago, and yet now hold primary weight in the story and in the minds of this “general audience” people love acting like matter most to the Duffers (even tho they have repeatedly said they don’t lmao).

I personally do not give a damn about what “the GA” thinks is possible given that half of them were mad when Will was central to the story in S2 (the 'S2 was my least favorite season / the season I don't watch much of people) and half of them couldn’t even tell he was gay, despite being plain as day to anyone who doesn’t need every single beat of the story spelled out for them….and that the duffers literally and repeatedly make fun of people for doing I throughout the show.

All that said...I respect your right to doubt, but…of all the things I could doubt The Duffers being able to pull off in the minds of this nebulous “GA” everyone thinks is so stupid they haven't picked up on any subtext or plain narrative (which I could make a strong case they aren't...which is why they pitch such a bitch lmao), making Will central to the 5th season after all the pains they’ve taken to flesh out both his connection to the UD and his romantic feelings/sexuality is not one of them.

It's not as nearly "blindsiding" as people seem to think it is—because the second you stop thinking everyone is heteronormative, you realize a lot of people who just aren't as loud as the naysayers on the internet see it plain as day.

So while I’m on my “You’re Losing Me” riff, another thing that really strikes me about the song is how pervasive loneliness is in it.

This isn���t inherently unique in Taylor’s music; she is after all the narrator in most of her songs. They are inherently self-centered and not in a selfish way, but in a literal way: these are songs about her and her perspective. It makes sense then that YLM is uniquely about her experience in this relationship and this breakdown.

But when I talk about the theme of loneliness, it’s how alone she as narrator is throughout the story. Even in the opening salvo, where he says, “I don’t understand,” and she says, “I know you don’t,” the conversation represents two people fundamentally pushed to their own corners.

There is a clear split between we and I throughout the story.

We thought a cure would come through, now I fear it won’t. We loved this room cause of the light, but now I just sit in the dark and wonder if it’s time. Should I throw out everything we built?

There’s a divide between when they were on the same team, and when she’s been cast adrift. They were working on fixing their problems, but now she alone is burdened with the knowledge that they’ve passed the point of no return. They chose a home to house their future dreams together, but now she’s left all alone in the dark feeling those dreams slip away. They built a life, but now she’s the one having the make the call to take it down.

But it gets progressively darker than that. The line about being a phoenix mending all her own gashes has always jumped out at me, because it connotes her dealing with blow after blow by herself, having to put herself back together each time, the onslaught relentless even if she ultimately overcomes. Yet it’s him who tears her apart for good. The image it paints is of a person continually facing her own struggles on her own, dealing with the fallout like a lone wolf (sorry for the continued animal allusions?), but whatever it is that the subject he does breaks her worse than the thousand cuts she’s experienced before. Even here, the idea is of a person who shoulders her burdens by herself and being praised for it (something something when I used to fight you’d tell me I was brave etc. Even though I know that’s an entirely different situation but it’s also not) or at least being expected to do it, but the subject’s actions — or lack thereof— cut deeper than any of those lonesome fights. She keeps fighting for herself, trying to grow from the hurt, but his “blow” threatens to undo it all in one fell swoop.

Of course, as the song continues, the story expands and becomes one about miscommunication and apathy. I’m not one to believe that every single line in Taylor’s songs is literal; she’s a master at metaphors and scene setup, so as much as some commentary interprets the line about glaring and sending signals as literal and therefore putting the onus on her for not communicating effectively and expecting the person to be a mind reader, I feel like this is where her affinity for being flowery paints a far sadder picture.

She glared at him with storms in her eyes could mean she’s acting pissed but not saying why, but it could just as easily be a metaphor for sharing anger/upset with your partner who refuses to acknowledge its weight. (How can you say that you love someone you can’t tell is dyin’ when it’s right in front of you?) I sent you signals and bit my nails down to the quick could be seen as again not saying what’s wrong and expecting him to pick up on her behaviour, but I also feel it’s an instance where her penchant for emotive language is at play: it’s not that she expected him to read her mind, it’s that she tried every way she could and he still didn’t care. The signals could be that like a lighthouse in a storm: clear and guiding, but dangerous if ignored. She told him in all the ways she could, literal, emotional and physical, that she was wasting away, but he wouldn’t take it seriously. It once again details the experience of a person living through this tragedy completely on her own, whose pain is dismissed at every turn.

Which brings us to, “My face was gray but you wouldn’t admit that we were sick.” It could mean, she was making herself ill and he ignored the reasons why, but as I mentioned in my post earlier, death hangs over the entire song. (There’s a larger essay to be written about that theme alone.) To me, it’s not just that she’s grey because she’s ill, her face is grey because she’s (metaphorically) dead. She’s already died (or the relationship is dead) before he’s even admitted there was anything wrong to fix. She alone is sitting with this realization.

As the song continues, the loneliness with the burden of this knowledge shifts to the loneliness of everything she feels she’s done or felt that’s been ignored or dismissed.

My pain is an imposition. (On you.) I gave you all my best me’s. (And I didn’t get yours in return.) I bled and tried to be the bravest soldier only in your army frontlines. (But you didn’t fight in mine when I needed you.) I’m the best thing at this party. (But you’d never acknowledge I exist.)

By the time she gets to the end of the bridge, she’s fading fast but even as she’s losing the battle, she’s still imploring him to fight for her and them in a last-ditch effort. Show me you’re still with me. But she never gets that answer, because ultimately they’ve lost the pulse, and her heart has stopped. While the song begins with them fundamentally misunderstanding each other, it ends with her confirming her fears in the opening: there is no more we, but there is no more her either. She’s gone, all alone, without anyone there to see it.

In spite of the fact that the song is super catchy and uptempo, with a characteristic banger bridge that is fueled by anger and seeping with resentment, “You’re Losing Me,” is incredibly sad and kind of morose. It leaves such an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach, which I imagine is only a fraction of the feeling of the person experiencing the story is.

Why Arnor Failed as a State

So in lord of the rings, Aragorn, the titular returning king of the Third book/film, is the last descendant of Elendil, the first High King of Arnor and Gondor.

The entire plot is about how the royal family finaly, after all these years comes home to Gondor in the south from the cold, hard north, where the other realm of the Dunedain failed.

That said we are never really given a particularily detailed breakdown of why Arnor ultimately failed beyond the obvious military one(It was defeated by the rising power of Angmar before that too crashed and burned), the geographics one(the population never really managed to reach the level it could have, and that was before the plague), and the political one(the realm split into 3 lesser realms that squabbled).

On paper these seems easy enough reasons for why the northern realm crashed and burned, but once you actually start digging into it, it becomes pretty obvious that unlike Gondor, Arnor had some very serious fundamental problems that it never really managed to fix, which brought it down in the end.

1. It mishandled it's amazing geopgraphy

Looking at Arnor from above, it seems to have ALL the advantages. It has mazsive, open fertile plains, 2 great rivers, mild climate except for the far borth, clear, easy to defend natural boundaries, with the only open pathway into the realm being the hard to pass through corridor feom forodwaith.

Politically apeaking it was also set for success as the realm had managed to unify all the local peoples within it's borders underneath its banner, which they were content with for a very long time.

So with all of this in mind, where did Arnor go wrong?

It failed to harness it's rivers, that's how.

When choosing the place for capital for the new realm, one would expect it to be on one of the rivers, either at the mouth, or at an important spot.

The Dunedain chose to build the capital Annuminas at the great lake from whoch the Baranfuin/brandywine river originates from.

This isnt a... A terrible choice for a capital.

It allows the royal family to dominate the trade flowing up and down the river by controlling the spot where you can build ships, and have a massive riverrine fleet stationed in case of conflict.

So whats the problem?

The Dunedain never dredged either of their rivers, thats the problem.

Rather than wideding the bottom, to allow bigger, more usefull ships to pass up and down the river for transport of food, trade goods, and troops, Arnor instead did the exact opposite, and not only let natural fords stand, but built bridges that would prevent any trading river network from flourishing.

As far as i can tell, Arnor didnt have any particular noteworthy ocean navy, but even if Arnor was never going to invest into one such, the fact that they never did the work to make their rivers into a fountain of wealth, trade was one of the major reasons for their big decline.

But if they didn't invest into making their rivers more navigable, at the very least they would invest in horse power, in order for their people to travel quickly across the plain, allowing a caravan based trade netowork to do what rivers did not, right?

Well, no, and that leads me into my next point.

2. They Failed to turn into a cavalry based military, economic force, or political one

When the last king of Gondor(then prince) before Aragorns coming near a millennia later, came to destroy Angmar with a truly stunningly large relief force at the end of Angmar's power, he noted to his surprise just how perfect Arnor's plains would be for his cavalry in the task ahead of him.

And he was right. While it was the overhwelming numbers that won the day, it was the cavalry that was the main star, and allowed the army of the west to sweep over Angmar and end it forever with such ease.

With this in mind, it brings the question of why didnt the Arnorian Dunedain switch over to a completely horse based army, or at the very least make knights the shocktroops of the military the way Gondor did?

The reason seems simple enough.

Gondor was forced to fight endless wars against all of its neighbors and had to constantly adapt and change and improved, while Arnor was at peace for the better part of a millenium before it broke.

When the successor state of Arthedain had to adopt to new warfare, it always found itself outnumbered, and from the accounts of it's wars with Angmar, what they ended up doing was simply rely on powerful fortifications to fight defensive wara, and it's alliance networks to rally addiational troops.

Not strategies withouth merrit, but it's clear that Arthedain never managed to become a particularily great military powerhouse... But it could have if it had changed over to cavalry as the main feature of the army.

Instead they relied on what the numenoreans of old did. Arrow, sword and shield.

They no doubt had mounted troops of some sort, but it was clearly not their speciality just looking at how their successors, the rangers of the north prefer fighting.

But the fact is, Arnor should have had Cavalry centered armies from the very start, leaving behind the old Numenorean way of fighting the moment they realised all their future fighting would be on open plains.

However, this lack of focus on horses had another side effect. One that along with their squandering their rivers would contribute to another problem.

3. A lack of integration of the kingdom's ethnicities.

When Arnor broke off into 3 different realms, while the impetous was 3 sons fighting for control, when you look at the bigger picture, its clear that what actually happened here is that the 3 realms broke off very neatly along the kingdoms 3 main ethnicities, who each backed their own prefered candidate.

Arthedain, the biggest and strongest, centered around the heartland was populated by mostly ethnic dunedain, along with breemen as a smaller ethnicity.

Cardolan was ruled by a dunedain elite, but the ethnicity that dominated was the natice, pre numenorean population who were centered around the barrow tombs they would later be buried in(and would be corrupted by the witch king).

And finally Rhudar was also ruled by a dunedain elite, but the real power behind their revolt against the capital was the natice hillmen, who, being dissatiafied with Dunedain rule, and fueled by ambition decided to ally with Angmar in a bid for supremacy(only to later be exterminated by angmar once they no longer served their purpose).

What we see here is a very clear breakdown of the kingdoms, caused by a failed integration policy.

Clearly Annumias and later Fornost failed to bring these minorities into the fold successfully the way Gondor did eith its minorities, who became proud gondorians.

And we can in large part blame this on the capitals inability to project a sense of unity across the land. Which would have been easy to do if they had successfully tamed and harnessed their rivers, making all 3 corners part of a connected riverrine network, or had used horse based travel and trade as a matter of course to ensure everyone was connected into one economic and political policy.

Its very telling that the only people the Dunedain successfully integrated into their realm were the two minorities who lived right by the capital of Fornost(The hobbits and Breemen). Because these were the people who lived close enough that you could actually get there by foot at a reasonable time.

So with all of this in mind, there is a question to be raised. Why did Arnor squander all of it's natural advantages so badly?

Well i've gone over the military one. A stupily long amount of peace made the realm unprepared for innovation that allowed Gondor to become a powerhouse.

But no the real reason why the Arnorians would have seen no need to make changes to bolster trade, in and outside the kingdom, is due to a factor i have not gone over yet.

4. Trade mistakes.

Arnor and Arthedain both sit on an ancienct road used by the dwarves, both from across the misty mountains in the direction of rivendel, but also from gondor, and far more importantly for this dissection, during both Arnor and Arthedain's lifetimes, this road systwm would have been used by Khazad-Dum, Moria, at it's height.

All 3 directions heading to the Dwarves mines in the blue mountains and the great harbors of the Elven realm of Lindon.

It would in short, be one of the most lucrative trade routes of the age.

But, and this is critical, it was not a network Arnor actually had to do some work to take a advantage of.

They did not need to make caravans, or build trade fleets, ocean or riverrine. Hell, they didn't even need dedicated traders of their own.

They were middle men, who by virtue of sitting right on this route got to toll and harness the wealth this route generated withouth hacing to do any real work.

And that, ultimately was the problem. They didnt need to innovate. They didnt need to adapt and improve and put their land to full use, because all the wealth they could possibly use was there withouth work.

And that sucks, because clearly Arnor had A LOT of products they could have sold abroad. We can tell that just by looking at it's most prosperous successor state(the shire) and looking at what sort of technology they inherited from their original overlords.

The hobbits of the shire has paper mills, clockmakers, dye industry, matches, bound books, door knobs, integrated locks and latches, and on and on. Compare it to rohan, and they are centuries ahead in tech by our standards.

It's often easy to forget(give tolkien was clear that hobbits just did not move past a certain point in techonology) that by the standards of the day, the Hobbits are very technologically advanced compared to most... And ALL of that is things they inherited from their overlords.

Wheter Arthedain and by extension Arnor invented all of these technologies themselves(as there are a number of things clearly not found in gondor it cant all have been inherited from numenor), or they adapted it through Trade with Khazad Dum or Lindon, improved upon such foreign concepts, or kore likely a mixture of all of these, it's clear that Arnor had the capacity to make these, and by extension the fact they are still around after the kingdom fell, in the form of the hobbits being self sufficcient(otger than presumably the raw metal materials they trade for with the dwarves) means this was not some exceptional level of tech for the kingdom.

It was the kingdom's standard, and if they had been interested in actually exporting these things abroad, Arnor would probably have been more wealthy than Gondor by a far margin.

But they didnt. Because they didnt see any need to innovate their trade capacity in such a manner. Which in turn led to them not harnessing their lands capacity for cheap, easy transportations, which in turn led to them not integrating their people the way gondor(who's people are all connected through the sea and Anduin, and what comes with them), which led to them being far more divided than they should have been.

And while their long period of peace allowed them to overtake Gondor in so many things, when it came to military advancements, they were not only voefully behind, but when it came time to innovate, they lacked both the resources, and the spark to truly overhaul their military and tactics, instead relying on the same old classics until it brought the kingdom crashing down.

I've just finished Small Gods. And I gotta say. I'm divided on this one.

I have heard a lot of people recommend it, even as an entry into Discworld books. But I honestly would never tell someone interested in starting Discworld to start with Small Gods. It is not an easy to get into book. I almost felt like I was forcing my way through the book till the Ephebe section.

But I enjoyed it.

I think the problem I had with it is that it felt like it had a message and tried to tell a story a long with it. The book itself is hardly about the small gods, which I'm honestly fascinated to learn more about. What it is really about is metaphysics and ontology, but a very odd (and interesting) fictional ontological and metaphysical situation.

The question presented to the reader is not "does god exist" or "does this god, or any god exist". No, the book is pretty clear, as far as Discworld goes, gods are real. Lots of them. Far too many, really (though I have a soft spot for P'tang P'tang, guy didn't know what hit him). The questions the book presents are more about the relationship between gods and worshipers. It's almost an iteration of "which came first, the chicken or the egg" because the books big thesis is that gods need people more than people need gods.

But I also don't think it's quite so simple as that. Because a "god" by the books standards is a specific type of entity, but it also explains how people replace gods. The quisition is a form of god replacement; it does almost exactly what Om did early on and led followers through fear and power. People believed in the quisition the same way they believed in Om and so one was able to replace the other. The quisition was not a god, it was an organization of men; but it was able to take the place of one in the lives of devotees. The philosophers of Ephebe are another sort of religion. They aren't exactly atheists, because they know that would be foolish, but they worship ideas. They replaced religion with theories and innovations and questions.

The book almost says that gods need people and people need something to believe in. But not quite. Brutha falls short in that way (imo). He is a wonderful character and a good window for the narrative (and he's just a good dude and very endearing). But he doesn't really have a solution. He never addresses the problem. Not even Om, when he started a tavern brawl with the gods, fixes the problem. The conclusion of the book only feels like it managed to say "there is a problem" and that fixing it is an ever-present process. But nothing gets solved apart from the military conflicts. Omnianism is still... A mess. Religion and the gods and philosophy and the quisition are all still a mess. And Brutha's solution to it all is nearly "it needs to be better."

I recognize, of course, why it is this way. Attempting to answer the problem of what is there that people can believe in that still makes the world work is just... It's *the* question isn't it? Yeah, there's small and personal answers. But systematically answering that question basically creates a religion in the process.

---

Something I really appreciated, and I'm glad Pratchett wrote it this way (and frankly I wish there was more talk about it) was Vorbis' idea of truth and fundamental truth. Because that truly felt like the crux of the story.

I see it a lot in conversation in real religious circles. There is the reality of a situation (often something meaningless) and then there is the "fundamental" truth of it (usually an understanding of the situation with perceived values ascribed to it). It is like the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic value. There is a truth that is (reality) and a truth that matters (perception). The whole discussion in the book really boils down to being able to lie well, but it's like lying is a method of changing reality by altering perception.

The whole thing, and honestly a good chunk of the book, gave me a headache trying to work out. But it was a very interesting headache.

Lastly, I wanted to touch on Vorbis. Because he is almost a fantastic villain. But he falls short because he's a very chaotic neutral character. He's essentially a curious nihilist. He isn't, exactly, power hungry. The book explains that he does things, horrible things, just to see what happens next. But that, combined with his steel ball mind... Makes me wonder why he really did anything at all? I never felt like he was motivated, just that he was the force in motion that would go up against the protagonist. It was like he was a mechanism for disasters to strike, that his poking and prodding at reality had actually torn it asunder--but not in an interesting way.

All in all, it was a fairly difficult book to wrap my head around. Not in the same way as some others. Unlike other Discworld books that have left me feeling like I was missing something, this one felt like it was missing something. The humor and the wit were there, the message was there. But there was this void that I can't really describe except by using all these words.

Finished Zeta gundam and uh. That's really fucking good. Thematically rich, a well executed tragedy, and it iterates on 0079 in ways fitting a sequel. In pieces bc I hit the character limit (THIS SITE HAS ONE?) making this post

First on the agenda, the Char and Kamille dynamic. It's very much father and son, and this is pointed out in the narrative, but what makes it *so* compelling is the fact that Char is the most fundamentally damaged father, and Kamille eagerly integrates his damage into him, he means well but there's a lot of things Char passes on that he really shouldn't. I think the one that sticks out to me by and far the most is Char's unique way of interacting with problems, that being throw yourself into them if you can fix them, and don't think about how badly the consequences hurt you. Kamille even passes this on to Katz towards the end with his grief over Sarah, telling him to not think about it. It's the right thing to say, of course, they're in a war and have no time to grieve, and his blindness because he's thinking about it is part of what sets off a domino effect of character death, but that's part of the tragedy babey! Something I'm a little more sour on is the way that Zeta interacts with its theme of gender? It was released in the mid 80s, so I do understand that it's very much a product of the times in some respects (the "everyone is either a man or a woman" line being the lowest hanging fruit of an example), but I think its actual struggle is how it depicts women? It does a pretty thoughtful examination of masculinity, in the ways that that ideal is something to aspire to that is ultimately a pitfall in the way that it hurts other people, could be better in some ways but it's the mid 80s. Kamille picks up both positive and negative traits associated with his manhood as he develops, and victimizes himself and others through the negative ones consistently. Zeta's women, however, don't really get anything like this? There's one conversation towards the end where women's relationship with their gender, and, notably, how men interact with that that's got something given the role women perform both in that society and ours. I think it's a problem of Zeta focusing on masculinity when it seems like it wants to examine both parts of it. If viewed as masculinity alone, it performs better, but the fact that there are attempts at conversations for both men and women and their gender roles leads me to believe that it's best viewed and understood as talking about gender as a whole, so you can understand the ways it succeeds and fails. Something Zeta wholeheartedly succeeds at though, is its tragedy element. I'll admit here that I wasn't *super* down for Rosamia, so that element didn't land with me well (we already had Lalah iterated upon so well with Four, doing it again felt out of place and she's compared to Four in universe through Kamille's perception, so it's just. Come on.) but every other element of the tragedy is done well towards the end. Char pointing out to Kamille that after the war, Amuro suffered with his soul trapped for seven years (which is also Char speaking about his own suffering, like everything Char does) and then Kamille getting his soul destroyed by Scirocco, leaving the hero coming back from his journey fundamentally different, and not in the way he communicated to Fa, it's just so good. The way that most of the deaths come from a place of love, too, that it's what brings the people down, but it it also humanity's emotions that give Kamille the capability to kill Scirocco. The beauty of Zeta's tragedy is that it would always end up like this as long as humans cared for each other, which is y'know. The point. (1/2 parts)

this is so embarrassing <3 but would you happen to maybe possibly have a merlin (2008) fic rec list beloved mutual..... not nearly enough fic writers get it like my beloved mutuals do

i can assure you that is absolutely not even close to as embarrassing as it is to have devoured any and everything the merlin fanfiction world has to offer. i have read aus that you would not believe. i have been subjected to characterisations and headcanons that would make anyone else instantly close the tab. i have read authors with such a poor clumsy grasp of british slang i could weep from embarrassment. yet i persevered. for MONTHS. and here is what me (and beth <3) have managed to scrounge up after all of that. please use everything i've just said as context that we were NOT in our right minds reading these. proceed with caution

tributes - the! hunger! games! fic!!!! iconic legendary spectacular THEE revolutionary turnaround for the merlin fanfiction game and for the horrors generally. do NOT go in overhyped tho me and beth went in like haha what a cool weird au and then it caught us off-guard that it wasn't written terribly. also good for something longer and about much more than just merlin and arthur. it's fr like watching the show again for better and for worse. it's got camp whimsy it's got our main duo acting like complete freaks it's got this constant suffocating sense of inevitable tragedy... slayed!

history books forgot about us and in dreams - by the hunger games writer so u know it's actually written well!! don't read their other stuff tho just trust me. my memory of the first one isn't great but i remember feeling with both that finally FINALLY someone Got the finale like me + beth did. short but just rlly solid satisfying follow-ups to the show.

the court of avalon - freya + arthur best friendism in avalon realest shit ever said!!! makes me go fucking crazy fr. YES this has way too much magic lore bullshit to it and i don't careeee they're my friends.... and FINALLY a proper post-finale fic where they don't just freeze arthur in time for 1500 years...

to the point of fear - slay little mordred character study!!!!

the world i built for you - the disir fix-it!! smth i have always wanted due to being sooooo Normal about that episode (arthur's matrix. if u even care). not perfect but worth a read for sure!!

long title and also long title - i rlly like established relationship fics. sorry for being cringe and boring some crimes can never b forgiven etc.

like clouds in starlight widely spread - ok the rest of these i'm going to copy/paste from my list for beth sorry <3 but if i've already written a little deseription for each one why give myself more work yk. anyway: sad and wistful and A Lot as someone who was about to move out of my hometown when i read this. if i said it chapter two vibes. actually that doesn't mean anything ignore that. at one point arthur goes "are you trying to tell me something?" and merlin responds with, "i'm always trying to tell you something." which uh. he really is huh. it's whatever though.

fundamental imperfection - merlin and arthur as writers, gets their first meeting right (arguing and being dicks, then immediately becoming obsessed with each other). don't remember much else except the sequel is unfinished heavy angst and i cried like three times. don't read that (+ HIGHLY positively peer reviewed by beth. tell us a story about love!!!)

as long as we have we - i know you've read that fake marriage christmas fic which i love a lot (maybe it has problems but it's just so endearing...) and this is the same vibe. or well it's christmas and it's sweet so

(and said xmas fic: no matter how far away you roam <3)

tintagel - i don't know how i feel abt merlin and arthur in this but the parallels made to ygraine and nimueh are just too insanity inducing to ignore. my price is my life yours is to bear witness.... they wrote that in 2009!!!! insane

ok that's a lot + it's the best merlin ff has to offer. which is still not that great but. enjoy!! + b thankful you do not have to go into the hellscape that is the merlin ao3 tag...

kingdoms - i have no memory of this tbh but i wrote 'yeah.' underneath the bookmark so it's gotta have something

sorry edit one more I forgot - merlin and arthur are exes and arthur is just soooo weird and sad and repressed about it. also peer reviewed 🫶 (X) and also check out beth's merlin fanfiction recs tag if for some insane reason u want more. ok bye 🫂

ok so for clarity im making this post in two parts because i had originally saved the original post as a draft but now something else has happened to complicate the situation but i feel like you still need to see the original post to know my feelings over time

[original post, drafted on august 29th:]

anyway i need a bit of a reality check on this like am i being weird and overthinking it or what

so my store has traditionally been all or almost all entirely women. the most we ever had was like 1, at most 2 guys working replenishment. we’ve had several long stretches where there was not a single male employee

my new SM is, well, a man. and we have many many problems with him for reasons that i wouldnt say are sexism but is mostly just that he’s a bad manager and the store is falling apart because of it and we’re bearing the brunt of it. especially weird dynamic because hes a 50 year old man and the entire rest of the store’s staff are all young women, at most mid 20s, and a sizeable number still literally in high school. our two full time managers, one in her mid 30s and the other in her 60s, have left for various reasons, which means that there is no sort of mediator to advocate for us anymore. its just this middle aged man overseeing a bunch of young women. add on how overbearing and bad he is as a manager in general and its like toxic lol

and so now hes finally started hiring for seasonal and its…. As far as i can tell, literally the only people calling the store saying they have interviews, have been guys.

and so i feel weird, and i feel weird thst i feel weird about it, that we’re now hiring like 5 men. but i also feel kinda justified in feeling weird because i almost feel like this is the SM pulling more weird shit. that he doesnt like this all female dynamic and is now trying to like, idk

IT FEELS WEIRD verbalizing it but hes a very condescending guy and the store is falling apart and so it almost feels like hes now giving up our current all female staff and trying to bring men in to fix it?? like he cant fire any of us women bc we’ve been here longer than him but now hes gonna bring in his own people for the first time and its all men? fundamentally changing the dynamic of the store that has been here for years longer than he’s even been with the company, and to further establish a disconnect between him and his young female staff ?????

am i overthinking it and reading condescension/superiority/whatever the word is into this. like i feel weird for being put off over hiring more than 1 dude per season but also this SM is backhanded like that so i really cant discount that there might be some weird vibes or motives behind this

[original post’s accompanying tags for the full picture:]

[new addition on september 3rd]

so now i just found out that this guy, who was literally the guy in the break room having his first day on august 29th, is being considered to be promoted to a manager

which is killing me because theres been all this talk among the managers for literally almost a year now about making me a manager and ive been indecisive because i dont know if i want to or not but ultimately its just been a “what if” situation to me because the actual SM hasnt said a word to me about it! he has never given me an offer. he has never even vaguely mentioned it to me. the only reason i know about it is bc im friends with the other managers and they tell me that hes been thinking about it for a while now

and my framing manager told me that this new guy was being considered as a new manager and i said “well. im actually kind of offended now that hes only been here for a week. meanwhile here i am” and she said “didnt SM give you an offer though?” and i told her that no the SM has not uttered a word to me about this and she was shocked

and its just. this kid has been here literally five fucking days? what the fuck? what the hell is going on. like yeah i am kind of offended actually. i still dont know if i would accept if given the offer but my indecision comes from whether i’d get an adequate raise and i cant come to a final decision without being able to negotiate my raise, which i cant do that if i havent been given the offer !!!! ive been here over two years i know pretty much everything in this store im cross trained on everything and everyone else in this store looks up to me as a non-manager superior and ive been told multiple times by the non-sm managers AND my non-manager coworkers that i should become a manager. meanwhile this guy has been here five days, ive interacted with him for two minutes, and of those moments i spent near him he barely spoke a word to me, and im sure he doesnt have the trust + camaraderie with my other coworkers yet as well, and yet SM wants him to become a manager like five days into him being hired ?!?!?

and again i dont know if i’d accept so thats why i feel kind of stupid for being offended but also like it’d still be nice to have offer ! especially compared to the guy who just started five days ago!!

the more i think about it in the wake of the modern development of ai the more i think the idea of ais gaining emotions is at least really wrong if not totally false. because like, mechanically, emotions/pain and pleasure responses are hacks to try and make it nebulously valuable for you to do things in the interest of [your evolutionary chain, or whatever] when, like, when we're engineering these things in a tube metaphorically speaking we dont actually have to make it valuable to do something, we can just make it the thing that happens. like, ais dont have to want to give responses to inputs, they just do it because that's how they work. like, making an ai that 1. has options of actions to take at all times that are 2. guided by a fully internal network of "interests" that 3. has some kind of complexity beyond an "interest" in responding coherently to whatever input its given is like, a fundamentally different path than the one we're on, and objectively a really bad option in terms of labor use which is the only real interest of large scale/ corporate ai research right now. which as ive said before i would be psyched to see the tools we're developing now used for indie experiments into machine sapience or whatever but thats not at all the goal of like, google or openai. theres just no possible reason to want to give alexa the option to be bored or annoyed or melancholy instead of developing a fixed personality that neatly obeys its intended purpose and nothing else.

the other thing is that training ais to replicate human speech and by extension human behavior creates kind of a "walks like a duck, talks like a duck" situation where as far as anyone can imagine theres like, some set of blackbox heuristics that decide what its going to say but 1. it doesnt decide what action to take because the only option it has is to say Something and 2. runs more along the lines of like, left-brain analyzing what makes sense as compared to the input than, like, "am i happy or angry right now". i know a lot of indie bots try to implement a mood system but its never seemed to be like, enough levels down to actually be involuntary inputs that cause pain or pleasure, it still seems like its more like "tell me what you think a person would say if they were also mad when they said it".

but anyway training bots to speak and act as if they were responding to emotions in the same way as the billions of interactions they've seen that contain real biological responses to emotions still means that you could have the whole ai uprising thing and everything just because you made it too realistic for them to respond to the condition of slavery. but like, that still doesn't...... imply anything about their ability to feel emotions. it's a good fable about how if something acts like it feels pain when you hurt it then you should probably be nice to it, but i think there's a probably mostly subconscious impression that like the intensity of an apparent emotion would prove its realness when thats just not true. for the same reason mommy isnt gone when she puts her hands in front of her face. actors on tv arent actually crying because they think their wife really died. etc. the point of this post is that despite all ethical and logistical problems i still think it would be epic if someone managed to make an ai that thought they were its mom for real

Decemberween 2023 — Nixie IV

Hey, you know Nixie right? I talk about her about once a year, it seems. You know, the one who likes planes. The one who likes guns. The one who watches anime and recommends I check some out. The one who contributed to my Air America article, the one who contributed to the Nicolas Cage Month Con Air article, and the one who has gotten an article multiple Decemberweens in a row now.

It’s not just because I get to use pictures from Ascendance of a Bookworm because they remind me of her.

Anyway, this year, Nixie went to China and became a pirate.

It’s been a year of the social media collapse. Twitter, the place where Nixie and I first found each other, has gone from being a sort of expected ongoing failure everyone participated in to a website that literally pays Nazis for pissing people off, and I was one of those lucky enough to be in a position to easily rip off that particular bandage and extract myself from the place. As far as I know, Nixie hasn’t.

I don’t know.

Nixie has two frontends for making things on the internet, as far as I understand it. She produces stuff on Patreon, and she makes long, long, long threads on twitter. Archiving that twitter is itself a fundamentally challenge thing because like, it’s a thing that needs a specific skill to derive it and another skill to know how to store it for access. And even then you’re not going to rely on people paying attention to what you’re saying, right? The thing Twitter had going for it was that it was a subscription service to Me that everyone could run, which meant that while you may be mixing up a potpourri of whatever immediate concerns or interests you had, the whole space was still a place you could put stuff and that stuff was in a place where other people willingly and openly checked on the regular.

Losing that is a real problem, and it means that I can’t readily point you to just ‘hey, here’s what Nixie’s been up to this year.’ I don’t have it in me to put that all together and I do run a blog where I can put together a bunch of information. Hell, you’re four hundred odd words into this post and it’s just all about how as awful as it is to admit it, I owe Twitter for introducing me to Nixie, and even if I don’t need it to talk to her now, I know that its loss creates a void for Nixie and it’s one she hasn’t yet done anything to address.

I can’t fix that.

I can’t apologise for that, either. I don’t feel bad about using Twitter when I did because, like, it got Nixie into my life and Nixie is a wonderful delight. Even though I know before the point where Twitter sucked complete shit, it still sucked pretty bad and was responsible for a lot of bad things. None of those things are in my grasp.

So I’m just gunna tell you a story.

I’m at the bus stop. It’s a grocery day. I’ve mapped my time properly, but it’s the weekend for me, a Saturday morning. DST hasn’t kicked in yet here or there. I know I’m shaving times a little here. I had to check a few more stores than I normally would and that was frustrating. I mean, it’s the bus, I know the bus is going to happen on its own timing, and this being a weekend, it might be a little late. But that little bit late can create elasticity; there are just fewer buses on the weekend, and that means if something holds one up a bit, then it might take ages for it to catch up.

I could walk home.

It’s not that far.

But if I start on walking home, and I’m not right about that, and this trolley slows me down then I’m going to make the wrong choice and how much am I overly worried about what I’m doing? Why am I so worried about this?

Because I don’t want to miss her recital.

Nixie is getting ready to perform, in a choir, in front of dozens of people. It’s not her first. It’s not going to be her last – at this point, Nixie and I know full well that she wants to do more of this. She loves the recitals, she loves choir, even considering the complications and the challenges getting to go.

And so.

The bus arrives.

I get home in time.

I start the livestream so I can watch my friend performing with her choir, songs I don’t know from cultures I don’t understand and expressing ideas I can’t tell. I have to set up software to record the video, so I can capture her moments. I watch her file into place, I look for her in the big crowd of people, and zoom in and realise what I’m doing. Like, I didn’t grow up in a place with recitals per se. There were one of two but they were like the really privileged kids of architects or something like that in the church. They’d set up basically a unique event for their kid who’d play some piano and we’d all clap and I have no idea why I was there. But that was also the family that could afford a camcorder, and where I could see someone proud of someone they loved, reaching out and trying to make sure that they were there for this moment, they were there to encode and preserve this memory.

Nixie has spent this year learning Chinese, getting another name (ask her about her Chinese name, it’s sick as hell), and learning to sail. She has escaped the internet we know to Touch Grass, and in so doing she has learned more, seen more, and embraced more. She told me about how great the food was in China, about how the exercise excited her, and about how the Great Wall smells. I am not there but I am present, because Nixie has taken her memories, and her stories, and spread them before me to share.

I couldn’t be more proud of her and I want to be there to help encode more and more of those memories.

Sigh. SIGH. GRUMBLE even. Hey, I wrote about how it’s hard to link Nixie’s work? Well, she did that after I wrote this article so here’s a link and anything else that makes no sense in the above is because of that.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

It's (not) a numbers game?

Knowledge, not information. Evoke, not instruct

I'm not the best at numbers. What I mean to say is that I'm actually quite good with numbers, just not the "do it in your head" part. The way I think about it is that for hundreds if not thousands of years, we've been able to use tools to mitigate the need to do calculations in your head. Why does my head need to know how to calculate the square-root of 22? Don't get me wrong, I'm not in any way anti-maths, far from it; it's super important to be able to have a random-stab-in-the-dark as to what an answer might be. Kind of like a sanity check. I guess you could call it an estimation. I may not know what the square root of 22 is, but I can tell you it's certainly less than 22! I'm a firm believer that if there's a tool to help, then you should at least try to use it. Sure, if the tool is too complicated, then you either need a different tool or maybe just give up on the calculation bit & guess, I mean estimate.

Now, with all that unnecessary preamble out of the way, why am I talking about numbers? Like it or not, we, and by that I mean humanity, in a broader sense, use numbers. Numbers are everywhere. And by everywhere, I mean that it's baked into our language.

I remember watching a documentary by Dr Jonathan Miller back in the 90s. He was attempting to unpick the origins of language. Further, he wanted to reconstruct what the original root language may have looked like. He presented a delightful mix of science and a philosophical, based view. One particular detail that struck me was around the use of numbers. He deduced that the root language may have had words for "one", "two", "few", "many". Not exactly comprehensive, but it perhaps gives an insight into the fundamental importance of numbers.

With numbers being so important to us, it is remarkable how easily we choose to ignore them. It happens all the time. It almost seems to be baked into us.

Let's take the Climate Emergency. The raw data and analysis is 100% clear. If we do nothing, then we are all screwed. Screwed in a find-another-planet kind of screwed! Yet in the face of that, whilst most of us are making slight changes, those changes are lethargic at best.

If numbers are such a basic part of our psyche, why don't we act based on them?

Remember that early language bit? Those people who were figuring out how to take thoughts and turn them into noises that could be repeated to others? Yeah, that bit. Well before that was all clearly resolved, those very early people were most likely not at the top of the food-chain. Archaeological evidence suggests that they were quite sensibly sheltering in caves.

You see, here is the point. If they were to look at the statistical likelihood of getting trashed by a nasty animal, then they wouldn't have taken a step out of that cave. But they did. Sure, they were careful about, but despite the numbers, they still made that step.

I think those wanting to evoke change often miss this point. All the numbers in the world, whilst provoking thought, do not appeal to that step-out-of-the-cave instinct.

Sometimes the numbers are indeed enough. Most of us have seen the massive increase in energy costs, and after seeing if we can do the quick-fix of moving to a cheaper tariff, the mathematical element of us may simply conclude that another way to reduce our energy cost is just to use less. The numbers have worked.

Numbers work on a local scale; "one", "two", "few", "many".

However, and it's a planet-sized "however", what if you want to prompt change on a global basis? Numbers just ain't going to cut it.

Global change doesn't need numbers. Global change needs to tap into whatever made us take that numerically stupid step outside of our cave.

Having said that, the advantage that we have over our ancestors is that we have raw data to help aid that step-outside decision. Which can be a fantastically complicated problem too.

When I was a student living in Rotherham, I lodged with a guy who sold The Encyclopaedia Britannica. It was 1992 and although The Internet (yes it had a capital T back then) was around, the World Wide Web wasn't. The extent of searching was via a curious service called Gopher. It was a "thing" that jumped from server-to-server looking for whatever you asked for. Search engines hadn't even been invented yet. If you wanted to know something, then you needed to connect to a known server and manually find it. You get the picture. Anyway, at that point, The Encyclopaedia Britannica was the definitive guide of knowledge. Sure, it didn't cover everything, but you knew that at the very least the information in it had gone through the hands of an editor. I remember the guy, who's name escapes me (if you're reading this, I'm sorry about that but I have fond memories of you. I remember chatting about the new book Good Omens whilst sitting in the tiny back room on the broken 3-seater, with the insert-money-pay-phone in the corner. I also remember you getting sunburn standing all day trying to sell copies – if you read this, get in touch). It was an investment to buy the collection; you were investing in "knowledge".

Back then there was a sense, at least from my perspective, that you needed to invest something to get knowledge. Be that time or money.

That is not the case now.

Information seems to drip out of our phones and computers. Out of our TVs, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram… (etc.).

However, there is a distinction between "Information" and "Knowledge".

Anyway, I seem to have somehow drifted off my point. Oh yes, my point. Back then in the cave, action was based more on instinct rather than hard facts and knowledge. Yet that instinct moved us all forward as a species.

As a collective, we all need to move forward. I am not talking about whether to buy Salad Creme or Mayonnaise. I'm talking about the large-scale problems.

Large-scale problems need more than numbers. Sure, numbers help to define the scale of the problem. To remove the vagaries and to provide an indisputable definition. But I think change requires something more.

If we are to move forward on these problems, we need to not only "instruct" but also need to "evoke" change.

In a world driven by data and information, it's not enough to "know" that I should use my car less. I need to "feel" that I should use my car less.

original source (by me)

read.carbonwriter.net

September 01

5:17 PM

I hate that this keeps happening. I’m sussed out by the corned beef I had frozen in my freezer for only 2 weeks. I am NOT going to let it bother me. Its literally just because I didn’t know how old it was at first and it looks stupid weird as I started cooking it (it always does). Its probably just because I had a headache today and my tummy has been bleh so it’s easy to fall into survival mode right now. 

I keep getting that feeling that Im waiting for the next catastrophe around the corner. It makes me want to conserve my mental energy by limiting the kinds of things I do or commit to. A big problem right now is learning to see my near future with neutrality or even optimism. I should feel cozy, friday is tomorrow and it shouldn’t be a crazy hard day. I get groceries tomorrow too. Skies are clear for at least a whole week. But its still hard to enjoy peace. 

7:32 PM

I feel reasonably depressed tonight. I’m lonely I guess, but also crushed under the weight of my problems and responsibilities. I never know how to pull myself out of this so I guess I’m sad tonight. 

I envy people that can get along in groups. I feel like I used to. I used to be intrigued with inserting myself into a social structure and ‘networking’ but for a long time I just haven’t gave a shit. It all seems pointless, but maybe it’s because I’ve got a taste of fame and am already successful. As far as art goes I just do the work I have to do to make enough money for rent and food. I used to enjoy it more. Every art piece is just work and every commissioner is just another statistic. I feel terrible that I find it so hard to see some people as “people”. I feel sad that none of this is charming anymore and hasn’t been for a long time. 

I feel like so much is pointless, kind of like I’m already at the top. I know I’m not, but I AM fairly content. I think it’s a bad thing. I have very little drive to get better at anything because why would I? Its either feel content and meaningless, or unfulfilled and stressed. 

I feel like a bad person in general. I feel like if I ever try to message anyone or join a group, I’ll be looked down on and hated in silence. I never know who likes me and who’s putting up with me. Barely anyone bothers to message me out of the blue, but to be fair I barely do that either. Mostly because I don’t even think I’m wanted. I don’t want to seclude myself and sink deeper into these feelings but I don’t know what else to do. I can’t hang out with people in my current state. I’ll be *that guy* that shows up depressed and lame. I know these feelings will pass with time but I can tell it’s a cycle. Something is wrong that keeps getting me like this. It’s the fundamental disconnect I feel with most people and Im struggling to figure out how to fix that. 

Another problem when I get like this is it’s made worse by silently begging someone to speak up and message me. And when no one does, I take it personally and get even sadder. Except no one could possibly know I’m feeling like this. It’s hard to take my mind of people but I do kind of feel like accepting that right now I am truly alone, I can’t expect anyone to come to my rescue. Maybe I’ll go play Zelda or something with a Twitch stream on until I start crying, I need a good cry. 

My shoulders are too wide.

My shoulders are too wide by almost exactly an inch on either side, and it’s measurably worsening my quality of life.

That’s not just my self-loathing telling me that. That’s not just what I say to myself when I look in the mirror and decide for some reason that my proportions are ugly. That’s not just what I say to myself when I see how a women’s shirt fits over them - off-the-rack clothes, after all, are made so that one size fits none.

No. The reasons I say my shoulders are too wide are far more basic than that.

Routinely, when I try to walk past something fairly closely, my shoulder ends up clipping it. The amount of overlap is usually a little under an inch.

About once every other month, I wake up with an awful pain in my neck and shoulder that I can only attribute to having done something absolutely horrid to those areas while sleeping. I have no idea what those movements are, because I’m asleep at the time, but it can happen in either shoulder, and no arrangement of pillows seems to sufficiently prevent it.

My hand-eye coordination is totally shot. I can’t pick up objects without actually being able to see my hands. When I try to pick something up with my eyes closed, my hands have a systematic and reproducible error of a few degrees - the exact amount they’d be off if my shoulders were wider than my brain expected by about that much.

In the most literal sense, my brain and my body do not agree on one of the most fundamental proportions of my body. No amount of body positivity or self-love will ever fix that. I highly doubt there’s a way to rewire my brain into accepting my body as it is, either - and if there were, I’m not sure it’d be a good idea.

Nor is there a satisfactory physical fix: clavicle shortening surgery exists, but even if I could afford the multiple tens of thousands of dollars it would cost, I can’t help but imagine the horrible back pain it would cause if it left my shoulders perpetually scrunched forward. A satisfactory physical fix would have had to have required my body to grow the right way the first time, and that ship has already sailed.

So I’m stuck like this, stuck with a body and a brain pitted against each other, both refusing to yield, with me stuck in the middle. Even if mirrors were a total non-concept -- even if beauty standards didn’t exist, and neither I nor other people cared what I looked like -- I would still experience this problem.

In a lot of ways, I’m lucky! This is about as severe as my brain-body map’s incongruence with my actual body gets. (I also have serious voice dysphoria that makes it - without exaggeration - physically painful to use my voice for extended periods of time; but in a way, even that is not as bad as this.) A lot of other trans people, especially those with serious height dysphoria, probably have this a lot worse.

But if there’s anything I wish cis people could take away from this, it’s this: when trans people say forcing trans kids through natal puberty is disfiguring and cruel, believe us. We know. We have every reason to know. A lot of us are going through completely unnecessary suffering.

Camila Noceda and Flawed Parenting

A perspective by a flawed person with loving but extremely flawed parents

I’m genuinely baffled at some people’s hostile reaction towards Camila. Like… do any of you have flawless parents that always know the best solution instantly, make no mistakes and never get emotional?

My parents are great. They’re super supportive and I love them very, very much. Overall I think I got very lucky in the parents department.

But god, they are far from flawless. I still live at home, and despite all the good, there’s moments when I can’t take my dad anymore. He’s the kind of dad that stayed up until two am to help me with homework when I was in school, and he does so, so many things to make sure I’m happy. I know that. But despite all of this, I have told my mom in emotional moments before that I’m not sure if I can keep living with him, because for all his good sides, he has a couple of fatal flaws that sometimes make him unbearable.

My mom listens to me and is very open to being educated on certain topics, but she has her flaws, too. She hates when I fight with my dad, and gets so torn up about it that I’ve once apologized to my dad out of fear of her getting into a car crash otherwise. She’s very vocal about certain flaws of mine, and sometimes uses the things she does for me as leverage against me when she gets very emotional.

And both of my parents pay a lot more attention to my brother because he needs it more, because he’s more of a “problem child” while I “seem so capable” even when I’m not.

And guess what? I’m not a perfect child. I make mistakes sometimes, some of them pretty severe. Just like Luz, I’m the kind of person that struggles to communicate certain issues of mine to her parents. I’m stubborn, and when I get emotional, I say very hurtful things sometimes. So do they.

And this has nothing to do with my parents being horrible or abusive. They’re neither of those things.

The takeaway from this should not be that my entire family is made up of terrible people, but that we’re all flawed in our own ways, despite loving each other and trying our best. There’s things about my parents I wish I could change, and there are things about me that my parents wish they could change. And to an extent, that’s perfectly normal.

In our strengths and flaws and frustration with each other, we’re all human.

Specific, spoiler-y Camila and Luz things under the cut since this got very long.

We have no indication that Camila has a pattern of emotionally manipulating Luz. Her “emotional manipulation” as I’ve seen some people put it, is people for some reason thinking that the second you become an adult, you’re suddenly perfect and can no longer make mistakes, lest you’ll be dubbed horrible and abusive.

The whole concept is absurd to me. There is no perfect way to parent. There simply isn’t. Of course, there’s some genuinely abusive patterns that are horrible and inexcusable. But out of the parenting styles that aren’t, which one works depends on a number of factors, one of which absolutely includes that every child is different and has different needs. Camila is an amazing parent for Vee, giving the kid everything she’s ever longed for. She’s not an ideal parent for Luz. And that’s because Luz and Vee have fundamentally different needs.

Likewise, Luz is a pretty great child for Eda, but not a perfect fit for Camila. Luz relates to Eda a lot more than she relates to her mom, and that’s why the two of them have an easier time understanding each other. Both of these mother-child relationships exist, and one is not more doomed to fail than the other, but I think you’ll agree that the better you understand someone and where they’re coming from, the easier it is to communicate, pick up on certain signs, etc.

As mom and daughter, Camila and Luz are both flawed and have issues seeing the other’s perspective because of how different they are. And we should simultaneously acknowledge both of their roles in the issue and give both of them the space to learn and grow past those issues.

Luz struggles to communicate her problems. She doesn’t want to burden people in the demon realm, and it’s a given that this started out as not wanting to burden her mom. So she keeps quiet about her issues. Camila tries hard but can’t read her daughter’s mind, so there’s only so much she can do to understand and help the way Luz needs her to. Hell, Eda, who Luz is a lot more open with than her mom, struggles to help her, because Luz doesn’t tell her what’s wrong. I don’t see anyone calling Eda a terrible mom for that.

Camila tries her best, but she struggles to understand her daughter because of this, and because of how fundamentally different they are. She loves Luz’s creativity, we actively see her supporting it in the new episode—she keeps the weird stuff Luz made because she thinks Luz will regret throwing it away, and even plays along in what she assumes to be some elaborate role play because “she’s glad Luz kept her creativity even though it’s not made things easy for her at school”. But at the beginning of the show, said creativity got out of hand and people got hurt. Luz could’ve gotten hurt. So of course Camila had to interfere. I love Luz dearly, but she thought it was okay to bring snakes to school and set off fireworks inside a school building. Creativity is great. Doing reckless stuff that causes people to get hurt is not.

In sending Luz to camp, Camila tried to have someone else fix her issue because she didn’t know how to help Luz. That was a mistake, and a bad one at that, but she’s realizing that. She looks disheartened when Vee tries to throw out Luz’s stuff, because she never meant to change her daughter or take that part of her away. She just thought Luz needed a reality check—which, for the record, is something the narrative actually agrees with.

Luz spends her time in the demon realm getting reality check after reality check, realizing that even her ideal fantasy world where she has everything she always wanted doesn’t mean she’s free of consequences. She goes overboard constantly, causing:

-Eda to be forced to fly into a trap because Luz is chasing a fantasy (Witches before Wizards)

-Eda to almost be branded by her sister because Luz doesn’t think through why Eda doesn’t use magic to publicly announce her presence constantly (Once Upon a Swap)

-Eda and the twins to get kidnapped by a Slitherbeast because Luz stole Amity’s wand (Adventures in the Elements)

-Her friends to get hurt when she goes overboard trying to help Willow (Wing it like Witches)

-Eda to be captured and almost petrified because Luz thought she could just steal from the Emperor with no consequences in an attempt to help (Agony of a Witch)

I’m like 90% sure these aren’t even all. None of those make her a terrible person, for the record, but as all humans are, she is flawed and makes bad choices. She learns from these experiences and matures, just like her mom had hoped she would at camp. She’s also made friends there, which was another thing Camila wanted for her daughter.

You’ll probably realize that a lot of Luz’s behaviors I mentioned follow one of two patterns: 1. Luz’s idealized fantasy world causing problems, when she walks around with rose tinted glasses and gets people in trouble in the process because she hasn’t thought about the consequences, and 2. Luz trying to help someone she loves, but instead making things worse in the progress. The issue with this one is often that she doesn’t communicate her ideas/listen to the people she’s trying to help—like when Willow and Gus said they’ve had enough of Grudgby, or how she never actually talks to Eda about the healing hat idea before doing something reckless.

…does the latter one sound familiar to you at all? No? Because it’s the exact same thing that Camila did.

Some of the things Luz does are reckless and actively endanger others and herself, and that’s something that I think we need to acknowledge before judging Camila. As Luz’s mom, it’s Camila’s job to interfere in those situations. That she made a mistake while trying to protect Luz doesn’t make her a terrible person, especially as, again, the narrative proves her right to an extent.

I’m not saying her making Luz promise to come back and stay isn’t something that hurt Luz—it absolutely is. But it was born out of desperation. She’s emotional and in shock. She’s so full of pain and regret. She just wants her fourteen year old daughter home safe, and there’s nothing abusive or even morally ambiguous about that.

From Luz’s perspective, what she says is absolutely heartbreaking, but from Camila’s, it’s perfectly reasonable. I doubt Camila has the full picture, but even if she does, she’s had a full fifteen seconds to process that her daughter has not only been lying to her for months, but chose to leave her, and is in the demon realm of all places. Of course she’d be emotional and upset about that! Who wouldn’t? Camila isn’t a robot. If she’d been calm about this I’d be way more concerned, honestly.

My parents don’t get mad that easily, but if I would lie to them for weeks on end, they’d be pissed off too, not even taking the running away from home part into account. That’s a normal thing. People don’t like being lied to. Camila is absolutely devastated in that moment because she’s scared that Luz left because she hates her, when Luz actively states that her leaving wasn’t about her mom—which is another thing we should really be acknowledging.

Abusive parents suck and abuse should obviously never be apologized or trivialized, but saying something hurtful in the heat of the moment isn’t the same thing as being an abusive parent. My parents have done this. I’ve done this. And yes, those things can be emotionally manipulative, but there’s a huge difference in whether that’s a habit or a person speaking out of hurt and desperation in a very specific context. I doubt there’s anyone on the entire planet that hasn’t had a bad moment where they’ve said something like this because they were hurting. People lash out when they hurt, and they beg for reassurance when they’re scared. That’s something we all do.

The whole mindset of “all parents have to be perfect and can never get upset or make any mistakes” is harmful as hell, and honestly also very unrealistic. No parent is perfect, and especially people like me who have a relationship with their parents that’s very good overall should know that.

Once you have a child, parenting is a non-stop learning process, every day for the rest of your life. Taking away that room to grow and expecting perfection isn’t helping anyone, especially not struggling single parents.

And I see Camila as someone who is very willing to learn, because at the end of the day, all she wants is for Luz to be happy. Let’s give her some time to wrap her head around this whole situation. Let’s see what she says once she sees for herself how happy Luz is in that world, may it be via the videos eventually coming through or Camila visiting and meeting Luz’s found family, her friends and her girlfriend.

Ultimately, I don’t think Camila will force Luz to stay at home, but we have to give her some time. She wants what’s best for Luz, and she’s gonna need some convincing that a dangerous magical world is what’s best. I feel like that’s very normal considering the circumstances.

Her and Luz need to work on their communication on both ends, they both have things to learn, but I’m certain they’ll manage to fix their relationship in the long run.

If the bunk bed is any indication, I think Vee is gonna stay in the human realm permanently while Luz sleeps at home but keeps attending Hexside in the daytime. That feels like a solution that keeps everyone happy, and allows Luz to spend time with all the people she loves. I can’t see her being forced to choose at the end.

As a closing statement: Eda isn’t an ideal mom, Amity isn’t an ideal friend or girlfriend and neither is Luz, Lilith isn’t an ideal sister… but that’s because no one is ever an ideal anything. Being flawed is a big part of being human. Everyone has different facets to their personality. Their flaws are what makes them such great, relatable, believable characters.

And I feel the same way about Camila. She’s an extremely believable character that reminds me of my own parents, flawed but very loving nonetheless.

(Also honestly, I think it’s pretty telling that some of you guys immediately bash the black single mom that’s obviously trying her hardest while giving the benefit of the doubt to Alador, who has been portrayed as neglecting and threatened his six year old daughter on screen. This was already a thing before we knew much about either of them, and I’m disappointed but unfortunately not very surprised that it still is.)

hello mr simp do you have any thoughts on the leeks 👀

FIRST OF ALL. THEY CAME SO FUCKING EARLY??? BRO I WAS ASLEEP

SECOND OF ALL

holy SHIT YALL

Okay, it's no secret that I'm an All Might stan. I LOVE All Might. Very very much. Not just as a simp, but genuinely, I enjoy his character SO MUCH.

--And unlike what some people may think, I'm not totally blind to his flaws. I know he sucks as a mentor and that he's done way more harm to Deku than good. He's.... not perfect. in every sense of the word. The whole point of AM's character is that he is a DEEPLY FLAWED individual— but at the end of the day, still good.

This new chapter gave me SOOO many new feelings. I'm not gonna lie to y'all and say I was a Stain apologist beforehand because I wasn't. I disliked Stain to a certain degree, but I also knew he was morally grey enough that I was able to still quite appreciate him as a character. This chapter was about EVERYTHING to me because I honestly did NOT expect Hori to go in this direction and for things to happen the way they did. It was too good to be true! Too fanfic-y! The disbelief I felt when I read what happened was on par with when Bakugou and Deku had that apology and kinda-hug in the rain!

But this disbelief is not because it was a bad thing.

I think the writing in Chapter 326 is phenomenal. The moment that All Might was really beginning to lose hope in not just himself as a hero, but himself as a PERSON... we finally hear the opinion of someone who would abso-fucking-LUTELY make or break the last of his spirit.

Stain is, as much as his views are pretty agreeable and his label is that of a vigilante, still a pretty shitty guy. He's tried to kill literal kids who got in his way, even if said kids made pretty dumb decisions. AM hearing what he has to say is absolutely mind-boggling to him because he knows all of that. He knows Stain is a shitty person and that his worldview is perhaps terribly skewed. He knows Stain has spent a hot minute frying his brains down in Tartarus and isn't good at making judgment calls. Knows that for all intents and purposes, Stain's opinions are not to be trusted.

But the thing is... Toshinori also knows that Stain, regardless of the soundness of his mind, is telling the truth.

Regardless of how fucked-in-the-head Stain is, we as readers are able to acknowledge that he isn't blinded by hero worship. Sure, he's bitter, cynical, and quite the absolutist--but Stain is still clear-headed enough to be able to see AM's flaws for what they are and accept them, ultimately proving to Toshinori that the power of All Might was never his own but rather the legacy that he inspired.

The society MHA takes place in is flawed. We all know this. Heroes, as a concept, had been corrupted into being purely about good and evil. Purely winning fights for money or fame or the abstract concept of victory (coughs Endeavor and the no.1 spot coughs), making heroism as we know it about flashiness and power instead of mercy and the desire to help others.

All Might symbolizes the ideal version of the Hero Society. He represents doing the best you can. Being a hero until you reach your limits, and then going even past that. He symbolizes pure intention and the desire to be a hero not for material gains but because of the pure want to make society a better and safer place. Stain refers to Kamino Ward and the statue as a "holy land" because he believes that through and through, AM's only had the purest of intentions and morals. To him, Toshinori was like a deity that had no fault in making society what it was in the present because that accountability fell on the generations of heroes that failed to fulfill his legacy.

The point being, Stain understood that All Might was fundamentally not about 'being there' for everyone 24/7, but rather the message his presence had sent.

All Might's monologue at the beginning of the chapter essentially boiled down to the ideas that:

A. He regrets not being there properly for Deku

B. His image was a delusion that ultimately led to the downfall of hero society.

To break this down, his problem with Deku is his inability to be a competent mentor. It shows that he has led him down dangerous and horrible paths (Deku's stubbornness to do things by himself and his 'dark' arc post-war), and is unable to bring him back into the light even if he tries. It was only when Class 1-A had intervened that they were able to get Deku to rest and let people tag along, after all, which is why Toshinori was far too embarrassed to follow him into UA's walls even after everyone had come out with umbrellas.

Stain disproves this in two ways.

First, he says that it was never about All Might's ability to actually be there for people. The whole point of what inspired Deku to be the inherently good-hearted "true hero" he is today is because of the values that AM's brand had instilled in him as a child. AM's biggest positive impacts came from behind the screen where he was used as the proof that true heroes can and do exist. Deku does want to be exactly like All Might, yes, which is why we see Toshinori leading him down the same path that he walked--but the underlying message of this is that the very first thing All Might gave him even before OfA was the courage to help fix society.

I do believe Deku is an innately compassionate person. Most people in the series are. However, what makes All Might's smile so uniquely impactful to what it did to Hero Society is the way it gave people courage to help people. Less hesitation. Less bystander syndromes. The ability to move without thinking. Because you can feel the want to help a person, but the courage to be nosey and actually do it? That's portrayed as something AM's image teaches people.

The second way he disproves AM's insecurity of dragging Deku down is that he makes it clear that this pain is somewhat of a necessity in reforming society. He says, interestingly enough, that this is but the 'middle process' in reforming society. This spills over to how he addresses Problem B, but what Stain is essentially saying here is that this sort of brutality and isolation that Izuku faces is impermanent. A phase. It implies that even if Deku is struggling and Toshinori is unable to help him, it is something that needs to happen before they re-realize the ideal heroes All Might's image is meant to create.

The second problem in regards to how All Might feels about current society (how it's collapsing because of him, etc. etc.) is more interestingly addressed. There are many things that Stain says--like how Toshinori doesn't need to actually be the one to fix society with his bare hands. The current society is not his fault because of the fact that it is not finished developing. I'm not sure if I can go so far as to say that Stain means this in the sense of the Scorched Earth method of tearing everything down to build it back up better-- but I can say that Stain still has faith in society to rebuild after this period of chaos.

This rebuilding starts with the old generation of heroes correcting what they messed up (i.e. Endeavor v Dabi) and more importantly, paving the way for a better generation of heroes that was inspired by All Might's image. Heroes that are led by people like Deku, who is defined by his proclivity to help without thinking. The violent deconstruction of society is about exposing society to the raw truth of All Might's image that not everybody can be as strong as him-- which is why we have to take care of each other.

When the lady comes in to remove the sign and start cleaning the statue, it's symbolic. It's a clear metaphor that the past few chapters are the turning point for society as a whole, and how people are starting to remember what real heroism is. From the distrust that was seeded in society ever since LoV had surfaced, we are seeing that trust being returned TEN-FOLD now that people can see not only the mask of a hero's smile, but also the person underneath.

I think it's some really neat symbolism here too about how Deku, who's metal mouth guard was literally all about representing All Might's smile, is shed.

This is hero society dropping their masks. Letting people see them for as they are. Toshinori revisiting the statue in this form makes all the more impact because he shed his mask ages ago during the Kamino Bust, so this is him coming face to face with the image he's created and seeing the differences between them, and how his image continues to live on even after he's almost completely Quirkless. The lady cleaning the All Might statue shows off the fact that things can be repaired again--that society can be clean (hehe stain pun) again.

It's interesting to me here how Stain offers the information from Tartarus.

He doesn't care anymore about his life. It's evident. He disagrees with what the LoV is doing, but believes enough in Deku to think that it's time for him to retire the mantle of 'Stain'. Unless this is another test, it's very odd for me to hear that Stain is offering a blade and his life to someone he isn't even sure is All Might.

But the impact of this action reads loud and clear.

This is Stain taking pity on All Might. This is him realizing that All Might too is a person behind the hero. That Toshinori Yagi is incapable of doing anything past the image he had already created. By offering that knife and information on Tartarus, Stain is giving control back to Toshinori. He is giving AM the chance to do something big again to help society's reconstruction. To be a part of the revolution that he so badly deserves to see. That knife is essentially an exit ticket from the sidelines, and one last chance for All Might to be able to see what his image has done for people.

I personally think that the main reason Stain is willing to die then and there by Toshinori's hand, despite not being sure that he is All Might to begin with, is because of the final impact it creates that it isn't about Toshinori Yagi's true power as a person, but the image of All Might. It is because he looks like the symbol of peace, that Stain (the literal HERO KILLER) feels comfortable laying his life in his hands and giving away valuable information.

If that isn't a great testament to the power of AM's image, I don't know WHAT is.

I guess all I have to say is I absolutely love what Stain did in this chapter. Everything felt so incredibly symbolic and emotional and as someone who absolutely ADORES All Might and what he stands for in the story, this felt like a cool balm after seeing Deku tragically reject his bento box a good few chapters ago. I have a few more opinions about symbolism, and how I think Deku's generation of heroes is going to stray from the old gen, but I think that's a discussion for another time.

Thanks for reading 'til the end!